The Power Of The Dog (15 page)

“It’s expected of us,” O-Bop says. “It’s a respect thing.”

Moretti knows it’s coming. He’s holed up in his place on 104th, off Broadway, and he’s been drinking on it. Hasn’t made a meeting in a couple of weeks—he just stays drunk—so he’s an easy mark when Callan and O-Bop come through the door.

Moretti’s lying on the floor with a bottle. Got his head between the stereo speakers and he’s listening to some fucked-up disco shit with the bass booming like distant artillery. He opens his eyes for a second and looks at Callan and O-Bop standing there with their guns pointed at him, and then he shuts his eyes and O-Bop yells, “This is for Mikey!” and starts shooting. Callan feels bad about it but he joins in, and it’s weird, blasting a guy who’s already down.

Then they got the body to deal with, but O-Bop’s come prepared and they roll Moretti onto a sheet of heavy plastic and Callan now realizes how strong Eddie Friel had to be to cut meat up like that. It’s hard fucking work and Callan goes into the bathroom a couple of times to throw up, but they finally get Moretti into enough pieces to get him into garbage bags and then they take the bags out to Wards Island. O-Bop thinks they should put Moretti’s thing into a milk carton and walk it around the neighborhood, but Callan says no.

They don’t need that shit. The word gets out and a lot of people come into the Liffey to pay tribute.

One guy who doesn’t come in is Bobby Remington. Callan knows Bobby is scared that they think he gave them up to Matty, and he knows that Bobby didn’t.

Beth did.

“You were just trying to protect your brother,” Callan tells her when she shows up at his new apartment. “I understand that.”

She looks down at the floor. She’s come looking good; her long hair is brushed and shiny and she’s wearing a dress. A black dress cut just low enough in front to show the tops of her white breasts.

Callan gets it. She’s come over prepared to give it up to save her life, her brother’s.

“Does Stevie understand?” she asks.

“I’ll make him understand,” Callan says.

“Bobby feels awful,” she says.

“No, Bobby’s good.”

“He needs a job,” she says. “He can’t get a union card …”

Callan feels weird hearing this addressed to him. It’s the sort of favor people used to ask of Matty.

“Yeah, we can do that,” Callan says. He’s holding paper from union officers in teamsters, construction, whatever. “Tell him to come around. I mean, we’re friends.”

“How about me?” she asks. “Are we friends?”

He’d like to make her. Shit, he’d love to make her. But it would be different, it would be like he was taking her just because he can, because she owes him. Because he has power now and she doesn’t.

So he says, “Yeah, we’re friends.”

To let her know it’s all right, it’s cool, she doesn’t have to put out for him.

“And that’s all we are?”

“Yeah, Beth. That’s all.”

He feels kind of bad because she’s dressed up and put on makeup and everything, but he doesn’t want to go to bed with her anymore.

It’s kind of sad.

Anyway, Bobby comes around and they hook him up with a job that his new boss assumes is a no-show—and Bobby doesn’t disappoint him in this regard—and other people come in to pay their vig or look for a favor, and for about a month Callan and O-Bop are playing junior godfathers from a booth in the Liffey Pub.

Until the real godfather calls.

Big Paulie Calabrese reaches a hand out and demands that they come to Queens to explain to him personally why (a) they are not dead, and (b) his friend and associate Matt Sheehan is.

“I told them it was you guys whacked Sheehan,” Peaches explains. They’re sitting in a booth at the Landmark Tavern, and Peaches is trying to eat some fucking lamb shit with potatoes and greasy brown gravy poured all over it. At least at the sitdown with Big Paulie, they’ll get a decent fucking meal.

It might be their last, but it’ll be decent.

“Why did you do that?” Callan asks.

“He has his reasons,” O-Bop says.

“Good,” says Callan. “What are they?”

“Because,” Peaches carefully explains, “if I told him I did it, he’d have me killed, no question.”

“This is a great reason,” Callan says to O-Bop. He turns back to Peaches. “So now he’ll just have us whacked.”

“Not necessarily,” Peaches says.

“Not necessarily?”

“No,” Peaches explains. “You guys aren’t in the family. You’re not made guys. You’re not subject to the same discipline. See, if I were going to kill Matt Sheehan, I’d have to get Calabrese’s permission, which he would never give. So if I went ahead and did it anyway, I’m in serious trouble.”

“Oh, this is good news,” Callan says.

“But you guys don’t need permission,” Peaches says. “All you need is a good reason. And the right attitude.”

“What kind of attitude?”

“Toward the future,” Peaches says. “An attitude of friendship. Cooperation.”

O-Bop gets seriously geeked. This is like a dream come true.

“Calabrese wants to hook us up?” he asks. He’s practically coming out of his seat.

“I don’t know if I want to be hooked up,” Callan says.

O-Bop says, “This is our shot! This is the fucking Cimino Family! They want to work with us!”

“There’s another thing,” Peaches says.

“That’s good,” says Callan. “I was hoping that wasn’t, you know, everything.”

“The book,” Peaches says.

“What about it?”

“My entry,” Peaches says. “The hundred grand? Calabrese can’t ever know about that. If he does, I’m dead.”

“Why?” Callan asks.

“It’s his money,” Peaches says. “Sheehan laid off a couple hundred from Paulie. I borrowed it from Matt.”

“So you’re ripping off Paul Calabrese,” Callan says.

“We,” Peaches corrects him.

“Jesus God,” says Callan.

Even O-Bop doesn’t look so enthusiastic now. Says, “I dunno, Jimmy.”

“What the fuck?” Peaches says. “You don’t know? I was supposed to whack you guys. Those were my orders, and I didn’t obey them. They could kill me just for that. I saved your fucking lives. Twice. First I didn’t kill you, then I took out Matty Sheehan for you. And you don’t know?”

Callan stares at him. Then he says, “So this meeting. It’s gonna make us rich, or it’s gonna make us dead.”

“That’s pretty much it,” Peaches says.

“What the fuck,” Callan says.

Rich or dead.

There’s worse choices.

The meeting is set for the back room of a restaurant in Bensonhurst.

“Goombah Central,” Callan says.

Very convenient. If Calabrese decides to kill us, all he has to do is walk out and shut the door behind him. He goes out the front, our bodies go out the service entry.

Or exit, or whatever.

He’s thinking this as he’s looking in the mirror trying to knot his tie.

“Haven’t you ever worn a tie before?” O-Bop asks. His voice is high, nervous.

“Sure I have,” says Callan, “at my First Communion.”

“Shit.” O-Bop comes over and starts to tie the tie for him. Then says, “Turn around, I can’t tie it backwards like this.”

“Your hands are shaking.”

“Fuck yes, they’re shaking.”

They got to go to this sitdown naked. No hardware of any kind. No one carries a gun around the boss except the boss’s people. Which is going to make it even easier to take them out.

Not that they intend to go out unaccompanied. They got Bobby Remington and Fat Tim Healey and another kid from the neighborhood, Billy Bohun, going to cruise in a car outside the restaurant.

O-Bop’s instructions are very clear.

“Anyone other than us comes out the front door,” he tells them, “kill them.”

And another precaution: Beth and her girlfriend Moira are going to be having lunch in the public part of the restaurant. Beth and Moira are also going to be having a .22 and a .44 in their respective handbags, just in case things go sick and the boys have a chance to get out of the back room.

As O-Bop says, “If I’m going to hell, it’s going to be on a crowded bus.”

They take a subway to Queens because O-Bop says he doesn’t want to come out of a happy, successful meeting and get into his car and have it go boom.

“Italians don’t do bombs,” Peaches tries to tell him. “That’s Irish shit.”

O-Bop reminds him he’s Irish and takes the subway. They get off in Bensonhurst, and him and Callan are walking down the street toward the restaurant and turn the corner and O-Bop says, “Oh, fucking shit.”

“What, oh, fucking shit? What?”

There’s four or five wise guys standing out front of the restaurant. Callan’s like, So what, there are always four or five wise guys standing out front of wise-guy restaurants—it’s what they do.

“That’s Sal Scachi,” O-Bop says.

Big, thick guy, early forties, with Sinatra-blue eyes and silver hair, which is razor-cut short for a goombah. He looks like a wise guy, Callan thinks, but then again he don’t look like a wise guy. And he’s wearing these real square black shoes, which are polished so they shine like black marble.

This is a serious fucking guy, Callan thinks.

“What’s his story?” he asks O-Bop.

“He’s a fucking colonel in the Green Berets,” O-Bop says.

“You’re shittin’ me.”

“I shit you not,” O-Bop says. “Tons of medals from ‘Nam, and he’s a made guy. If they decide to take us off the count, it’s Scachi who’ll do the subtraction.”

Now Scachi turns and sees them coming. Steps away from his group, walks up to O-Bop and Callan, smiles and says, “Gentlemen, welcome to the first or last day of the rest of your lives. No offense, but I have to make sure you’re not carrying sidearms.”

Callan nods and lifts his arms. Scachi pats him down with a few smooth moves, all the way to his ankles, then does the same with O-Bop. “Good,” he says. “Now shall we go get some lunch?”

He takes them into the back room of the restaurant. Callan’s seen it before, in about forty-eight freaking mob movies. Murals on the walls depict happy scenes from sunny Sicily. There’s a long table with a red-and-white-checkered tablecloth. Wineglasses, espresso cups, little pats of butter sitting on iced plates.

Bottles of red, bottles of white.

Even though they’re exactly on time, there’s guys already there. Peaches nervously introduces them to Johnny Boy Cozzo and Demonte and a couple of others. Then the door opens and two hitters come in, chests like butcher’s blocks, and then Calabrese comes in.

Callan gets a glance in at Johnny Boy, who has a smile on his face that’s dangerously close to a smirk. But they all do that Sicilian hugging and kissing shit and then Calabrese sits down at the head of the table and Peaches makes the necessary introductions.