“Ain’t it a sight?” raves Jimmy.
“A sight and a half,” I agree.
“Come on, we’ll show you the inside.”
“Wait a minute,” I protest. “I’m underage.”
“Nobody’s going to card you,” laughs Ed. “You’re with us.”
“Besides,” adds Jimmy, “you’ve got to meet Boaz. Maybe you can straighten him out. You know, get him to stop bleeding us.”
I quail. “Me? I’m a high-school kid! What could I possibly say to a guy who runs a place like this?”
“Well, for starters,” says Ed, “you can tell him your name.”
“Vince?” I echo, bewildered. And then it becomes clear. Teenager or not, my last name is Luca. Jimmy and Ed are hoping that this Boaz person will take one look at me and assume I speak for my dad.
I’m really mad. “You planned this!” I accuse. “I wondered why you showed up just because I asked you to! You’re not interested in budgeting! You just want me to convince this guy you’re under my father’s protection!”
“Aw, Vince,” pleads Jimmy, “it’s not like that.”
“It’s exactly like that! Well, I won’t do it! What’s more, if you guys go in there and tell them I’m with you, I’m going to make sure my dad knows you’re using his name when you’ve got no right!”
Well, that gets a reaction. I’ve never heard so much apologizing in my life. The two of them scramble out of my Mazda and hotfoot it past the velvet rope into the club. Just before the door swings shut, I catch a quick glimpse of a lone dancer wrapped around a shiny silver pole. The silhouette of her figure keeps me sitting there, hanging out the car window, long after the door closes. I guess I’m hoping it’ll open again and give me another look.
It does, a minute later. And this time I don’t even see my dancer, because out onto the red carpet step three of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen. Even through baseball caps and bulky sweatshirts, it’s obvious they’re knockouts. Good old Ed was right about one thing: the ladies of the Platinum Coast really are smokin’.
Then one of them looks right at me, and calls, “Vince?”
I almost tumble out the car window. But then I recognize her. It’s Cece, my “present” from Tommy. She remembers me! Then again, she probably doesn’t run into too many guys who turn her down.
I get out of the car and move to shake her hand; she hugs me. I’m uncomfortable at first. But she says, “No hard feelings, right?” and the awkwardness passes.
“You dance here?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “I’m not a dancer. I work my appointments out of the office. It’s not a real club, you know.”
Confused, I motion toward the mirrored door. “There’s a girl onstage—”
“That’s just for show,” Cece assures me. “Boaz and Rafe move swag in and out of the back, and a lot of us girls take our calls here. That’s all there is.”
It’s hard to concentrate with her standing so close, but I think I get the message. “Are you saying this place is a front?”
“Jeez, no!” she exclaims. “This is Boaz’s masterpiece, his biggest score. He and Rafe sold about seven hundred percent of the club to silent partners. And they’re milking them dry, the poor dumb jerks.” She stares at me. “Are you okay, Vince? You’re white as a sheet.”
“I—I’ll give your regards to Tommy.” On wobbly legs I climb back in the car. I’m three blocks away before I realize I’m going in the wrong direction, heading for New Jersey instead of Long Island. Turning around is an act that requires almost more than I can give. I can’t make the simplest decisions. Should I warn Jimmy and Ed that they’re getting scammed? Of course! So how come I’m driving away? It’s as if I think that by putting distance between me and the Platinum Coast, I can remove myself from this whole sick business.
I go through the Midtown Tunnel, but pull over just past the tolls. If I drive on the expressway in this state of mind, I’ll be in grave danger of wrapping myself around a telephone pole.
My brain is in overdrive, figuring angles like a computer analyzing thousands of permutations. How stupid I was to think I could get those two over a hump and back on their feet again. They’ll never get square. Even if they cut off Boaz, the loss of their investment and the interest on the debts they incurred to make it will drag them under. And what does that mean? For starters, I can kiss the six hundred good-bye, but that’s not what bothers me. It’s Jimmy and Ed. They might be able to bluff through a month here, a month there. But in the long run, the cards are stacked against them. And they’re going to pay with their bones and fingers, which is appalling enough. But one of these days, they’re going to pay with their lives!
I pull back into traffic, calmer, but far from calm. If I ever needed proof that the vending-machine business isn’t for me, here it is. I’m barely grazing the surface, and I’m already in way over my head. There’s only one person with a prayer of being able to sort all this out.
When I pull up in front of our house, there’s a big limo parked on the circular drive, and Dad, Tommy, and Ray are climbing into the back.
I hit the ground running. “Dad!…Dad!”
My father pauses. “I’ve got a meeting, Vince. Mom’s keeping some ziti hot for you.”
“Dad, just give me a minute!”
“You okay, Vince?” calls Tommy from the car. “You don’t look so hot.”
I just blurt it all out. “Jimmy and Ed are getting ripped off! They’re never going to be able to pay back that money!”
“That’s not my business,” my father says firmly. “And it’s definitely not yours.”
“How can you say that?” I explode. “Of course it’s your business! You’re never going to get paid! And you’re going to have to do God knows what because of it!”
My father fixes me with the Luca Stare, which shuts me up in a hurry. “I don’t want to hear it. And I definitely don’t want it hollered all over the neighborhood. Do you think you’re the first scared kid to come to me wild-eyed and babbling like this? I’ve seen it a million times, and it always means the same thing: something you’re arrogant enough to think you’ve got under control is starting to get away from you.”
“You’re my father!” I manage. “Help me!”
“I am helping you,” he barks, “if you’d pull your head out of your butt long enough to see it! I cut you a lot of slack, Vince, because I was trying to let you find your own direction. It stops today. Listen good: starting now, you don’t talk to Jimmy Rat and that Ed guy. And I’m going to pass the word on to them that they don’t go anywhere near you.”
“You’re signing their death warrants!”
But Dad doesn’t answer. In his opinion, the law has been laid down and the issue is closed.
I hear Ray’s voice: “Is it okay if I catch up with you guys in my own car?”
“Sure, why not?” my father says wearily. “Go bang your head against a brick wall for a while.”
Ray gets out of the stretch, and my dad climbs in. As we watch the limo drive off, he puts an arm around my shoulders.
“Friendly piece of advice. Never say ‘warrant’ to your old man.”
I laugh, but I feel like I’m on the verge of crying. “It’s not funny.”
“No, it’s not,” he agrees solemnly. “It’s business.”
“Business sucks.”
He’s kind but firm. “Maybe your father’s right to be worried about you, Vince. You don’t know the difference between work and play. Work is hard. It takes all day, and nobody questions the fact that some people aren’t always happy with the results. You think it’s different in any other business? You think on Wall Street, if you screw up, you don’t get fired?”
“Fired, yeah,” I reply. “Nobody gets killed.”
“You don’t know for sure that anybody’s going to get killed here either,” he reminds me. “Your old man’s a tough guy, but he’s not a monster. He’s happiest when everyone gets paid, and your uncles sit around all
day playing cards.”
“But he’s not going to get paid.”
Ray shrugs. “There’s probably going to be unrest in East Bumwipe tomorrow. I don’t like it, but you don’t see me getting on a plane to try to stop it. There are a million things you can change and a million things you can’t. You’re a seventeen-year-old kid with a big future. You’re going to college next year. You’ve got a great girlfriend—that’s still going on, right?”
I nod. “It’s a little complicated, but nothing I can’t handle.”
“That’s what you should be focusing on. Tell you what. I know this guy, owns a restaurant down in Lido. Real romantic, right on the water. Take her there tomorrow night. I’ll set the whole thing up.”
“You’re buying me off.”
“Women love this place,” he persists. “Trust me.”
“Now you sound like Alex.”
“Except I can get a date,” he reminds me.
“All right.” I clap him on the shoulder. “Thanks, Ray.”
“Anytime. Hey, I’ve got to fly. Can’t keep the boss waiting.”
I almost ask it then, the question that’s been on my mind ever since I was old enough to understand that the vending-machine business isn’t really about vending machines. It’s true. I’m seventeen. I’ve got my whole life in front of me. Ray Francione was my age once too. What would make a stand-up guy like him choose to become a gangster?
Was it the money? The women? A rebellious streak? Who knows what makes a person choose a career outside the law?
My father says it was his first paycheck that did it for him. Supposedly, Dad took one look at the deductions for tax and Social Security and decided Uncle Sam was shaking him down. Now he’s a kind of government, and in his world, a percentage of everything goes to him. As far as he’s concerned, he just turned the tables on a raw deal. It’s no small accomplishment. Lawyers, doctors, bankers—Dad’s as sharp as the best of them. He could have been anything.
Could have been…
Is there really any point to applying those three words to Anthony Luca and the people who work for him? They make their choices and that’s it. For all I know, with the right agent, Uncle Pampers might have been Garth Brooks. Instead, he keeps undertakers in business.
Choices.
I hope I make the right ones.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
KENDRA AND I GET the idea to make a big thing out of Ray’s dinner. Get dressed up, go early, stay late, the whole nine yards.
I’ve resolved to give my father the silent treatment over Jimmy and Ed. Wouldn’t you know it—I can’t figure out how to tie my tie. Tommy doesn’t have a clue. Neither does Mom. Guess who that leaves.
I find Dad downstairs at the wood lathe, hollowing a spinning bowl with a chisel that looks like a toothpick in his beefy hands. I stifle a laugh. The vending-machine king of New York is sawdust from head to toe.
I can’t resist. “The yeti lives!” I cry.
He shuts off the machine. “How’d you like to visit the Himalayas?” he growls. “One-way trip.”
My smile disappears. Threats from my father, even joking ones, aren’t funny anymore. They probably never were.
“Help me with my tie?” I ask.
He takes a step toward me, and a blizzard of wood shavings is airborne. “I’ll meet you upstairs,” he says. “I might have to turn the Shop-Vac on myself.”
When we finally get to the tie, he has to stand behind me, reaching around my shoulders, because he can’t form the knot mirror image. “When did you get so tall, kid?”
I step away from him. “Thanks,” I mumble.
“I think it’s great of Ray to set this up for you,” he says. A peace offering, I think. He sounds uncomfortable. Anthony Luca doesn’t have to mend fences very often. It’s usually the other guy’s problem to make it up to him. “I hope I get to meet your girl someday.”
“Maybe you will,” I say lamely. But in reality, the only way I can see that happening is if his racketeering trial happens to fall on Take Your Daughter to Work Day. I feel instantly guilty for the thought. He’s my father, and I can’t bear the idea of him going to prison.
“You were right all along,” he continues. “The Life isn’t for you. I never should have let you get involved in that thing.”
That thing. Classic Anthony Luca. When we’re not in the basement, and the FBI might be listening, there are no specifics in the Luca house. It’s all “things,” “situations,” sometimes “whatchamacallits.” “Problems,” too, although problems can also be people. Before he became a corpse, Calabrese was a problem.
I don’t give Dad the satisfaction of an answer. I am involved in this thing, and nobody can undo that, not even the great Anthony Luca.
He sure can make it difficult, though. I spend the whole day trying to call Jimmy Rat with no success. I do manage to reach Ed on the bimbo hotline, but the instant he hears my voice, he freaks. “Jeez, Vince, ya trying to get me killed?” Slam.
My father’s edicts have a way of hitting the streets in record time, and I don’t doubt that Uncle No-Nose is very effective at getting his point across.
Dad takes one last stab at making up. “I know you’re mad, Vince. But one day you’ll see that this is what’s best for all of us.”
For him, maybe. Possibly even for me. But I can’t imagine any way this could work to the benefit of Jimmy Rat and Ed Mishkin.
I pick Kendra up just a block away from her front door, carefully tucked behind a stand of foliage. I reflect that I’ll need a new hiding place soon. The trees have lost a lot of leaves, an occupational hazard of dating in late October. In the winter, this spot will be in the direct line of vision of Kendra’s upstairs hall window.
I see her legs first, longer than I remember, moving down the sidewalk. She comes into view from south to north: miniskirt, top, etcetera. By the time her face appears, I’m craning my neck like a construction worker. Kendra is one of those low-maintenance girls who always manage to look good with almost no effort. For her, doing her hair means toweling it dry. I’ve never seen her like this before, dressed up, made up, hair up. She’s so—up!
I’m proud. I know that’s a shallow way to be, and very Luca. In the vending-machine business, beauty is less than skin deep; it’s actually skin. But I can’t help myself. I, who have rubbed elbows (and almost more than that) with the likes of Cece and therefore know what I’m talking about, have a hot girlfriend. Maybe that makes me no better than Ed Mishkin, but it feels great and I don’t care.
I watch her fold those legs into my passenger seat. “You look nice,” I say, understatement of the millennium.
“You too.”
And we laugh like idiots and drive off, happier than anybody has the right to be.
The restaurant, Topsiders, is built right out onto a pier, with a perfect view of the water through twenty-foot-high glass panels. The place is crowded, but they’re expecting us at the desk. So while everybody else waits for tables, the maitre d’ whisks us off to the best seats in the house, right by the window.
She’s amazed, but I’m quite used to this treatment. You think Anthony Luca ever waits for a table? I always used to hate our “special status.” But tonight I see it through Kendra’s eyes, and I’m not even embarrassed to admit I’m psyched.
“Connections,” I reply to her amazed look.
She complains about being naïve, but it’s something I really like about her. It never occurs to her that these are the very same kind of connections that her father spends his days investigating.
The dinner is a blur. It’s funny, I can go on forever about the bad things, the things that go wrong, like Angela O’Bannon, and my Web site, and this mess with Jimmy and Ed. But about a perfect night with Kendra, I don’t have much to say. Maybe I just can’t think of a bunch of flowery words to describe how the moon is right. But it is, shining full, casting a silvery trail along the water. I remember great food, but food isn’t what’s important. I have a very clear
recollection of Ray checking up on us. He doesn’t even say hi—doesn’t want to intrude, I guess. I catch a quick glimpse of him, peering through the potted palms, making sure our table is just right, and we’re having a good time. I look back a moment later, and he’s gone.
I almost run after him. I want to introduce him to Kendra so we can thank him. Then I realize that’s not Ray’s way. He’s a terrific guy, the best. But he likes to stay under the radar screen. Even in Dad’s organization, where he’s a rising star, he keeps a low profile, content to baby-sit my brother rather than go for the big money and the glitz. He wouldn’t want us to make a scene. But just seeing him there for a split second leaves me with a very warm feeling.
Maybe that’s why this night is so spectacular for me. How many times can you sit back and say, This is me. When I picture my life exactly the way I want it to be, I’m right here, right now. And Kendra Bightly is the girl sitting across from me.
I can’t bring myself to tell her that she’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me, and I love her. I want to. I can feel myself actually starting to do it a couple of times. But I’m a Luca. My DNA is engineered for scratching myself in a sleeveless undershirt, not sharing my emotions. Still, just the fact that those words crossed my mind—the big three—that’s huge.
Afterward, when I drop her off, I can’t even make it all the way home before I need to hear her voice again. But when I turn on my cell phone, the service has been shut off.
Ray warned me about this. Cloned phones don’t last forever. Eventually, the company figures out that you’re bootlegging the service. Pretty soon the police will trace the number. They’re probably trying already.
Following Ray’s instructions, I drive to the beach and pitch my cell into the ocean.
The thing about cell phones is, you don’t realize how much you need them until they’re gone. I’ve never felt so out of touch. I try Kendra from a pay phone a few times, but one of her parents always answers, so I hang up. I wonder if she’s trying to call me and getting a message that the number is out of service. I even do a few drive-bys of her house, but she’s not outside, and I can’t catch her attention in a window.