Чарли Стелла - Johnny Porno

“She’s the kid’s mother,” he told her. “Anything happens to her, it’s my son who suffers. She’s still his mother.”

Melinda bit her upper lip.

“I’m not saying she’s a model mother,” he said. “But she is his mother.”

“Then she’s the one should return the money she stole.”

“How’s she gonna do that?”

“Jesus Christ, John,” Melinda said. “She’s not half as stupid as you think. I’m sure she’s got quite the little stash someplace.”

“She won’t give up Louis. Those two have a history. A sick one, but it’s there all the same.”

“Is there even time to do any of that? These people will want their money right away, won’t they?”

“If they can squeeze more money out of it, they’ll take it like an annuity. They’ll probably charge interest on what was stolen and turn thirteen grand into twenty. It comes to money they’ll make whatever deal nets them the most.”

“Would they still hurt somebody?”

“You bet your ass they will,” John said. “I already owe them for nailing one of their own, the punk who broke my windshield. This, now they think I’m involved, they’ll come after me with baseball bats.”

“Jesus Christ. What about the police?”

“No thanks.”

“Why not?”

“They can’t do anything that can help. And if Eddie Vento thinks I went to the police, they’ll put a contract out on me.”

“Contract?”

“I’m not going to the police, Melinda, so let’s drop it.”

She covered her head with both hands.

“You okay?” he said.

“No, I’m not.”

“You got aspirins?”

“Aspirins, Jesus Christ. Look, stop worrying about other people for a minute. Worry about yourself.”

“I’m gonna have to give myself up,” John said. “Or they’ll go after Nancy and maybe my kid. I can’t risk that.”

“That’s crazy. I have a few dollars. I can help.”

“No way, Melinda, forget it. I still feel like a deadbeat for when you paid for my coffee.”

“If you tell them you have money and they see it comes from me or somebody else, you make them go with you to the bank, they’ll have to believe you were robbed. You can pay me back later. I don’t need the money. It’s just sitting there anyway. It’s not going to make me rich.”

“And how do I pay you back?” John said.

“Whenever, I don’t care.”

“No.”

“John, damn it.”

“No.”

“Forget your pride for two minutes,” Melinda said. “This is your life we’re talking about.”

John glanced up at the clock. “Can I borrow your car?”

“What? Why? Where are you going?”

“To see Nancy.”

“What for?”

“Convince her to leave my son at my mother’s, for one thing. Maybe she knows where her ex is and I can get the money back before he blows it.”

“You going to protect her now?”

“Jesus Christ, Melinda.”

Melinda was clenching her teeth. “Go,” she said.

“The keys?”

She got them from her purse. He leaned in to kiss her on the mouth. She turned her head and he kissed her cheek instead.

“Thanks,” he said.

“Be careful,” she said.

He started for the door, stopped to look back at her, then nodded and was gone.

“I used to come here when I was a kid,” Eddie Vento said. “My grandfather used to take me on the boat rides they had. Was a nickel or something.”

“My old man said it was a swamp, Canarsie,” Kelly said.

They had met at the pier a few minutes earlier. Vento led the detective around it starting from the east end, where he pointed toward the sanitation fills off the Pennsylvania Avenue exit on the Belt Parkway.

“Still stinks when it’s humid,” he said. “The shit the city dumps there. I used to gag sometimes.”

“You sure it’s the garbage?” Kelly said.

Vento didn’t understand until he saw Kelly was pointing at a group of Hispanics sitting around a late-night barbecue. He ignored the remark and said, “I got a guy missing in action. He’s missing and so are copies of the film and a lot of money.”

“How much money?”

“Enough I’m looking for help.”

“He’s one of yours?”

“I just said.”

“Any ideas?”

“Not really. Only something ain’t right. I just give him a bunch of new stops, he doubled up what he had and then this. There’s some other shit going on between him and another guy don’t make sense either. Run his plates. I already sent people where he lives. I need you to track his plates.”

“I can’t put an APB on a guy robbed the mob, Eddie. I’d need more of a reason. Legally, I mean. Wouldn’t look good.”

“Now you’re being a jerkoff.”

Kelly stopped walking. They were at the north end of the pier. Kelly pointed out across Jamaica Bay.

“I once took a broad there, the island out there,” he said. “Jewish broad worked for my brother wound up ruining his life.”

Vento waited for more.

Kelly said, “He was a happily married man, my brother. Very religious. Sanctimoniously so, until the Jewess with the big tits had him eating out of her hand.”

“He was getting some on the side. So?”

“Point is, except for under her bra, he never bothered looking into the twat he was banging. She stung him for close to twenty grand.”

“You couldn’t help him?”

“We weren’t talking. When I say he was religious, I mean it. My brother should’ve been a priest instead of a lawyer. He didn’t approve of my lifestyle.”

“He knew you were dirty?”

Kelly flashed a sarcastic smile. “No, he didn’t,” he said. “But he knew I screwed around on my wife and that I drank. Until his girlfriend, those weren’t venal sins. Screwing around he thought of as mortal sin. Seriously so.”

“Okay, I bite. What happened?”

“She went and dropped some pictures in the mail. This after he’d re-mortgaged his house and handed over twenty grand. My sister-in-law saw them and ran to the pastor of their parish, nitwit that she was, and when my brother found that out, his priest knew, he went down his basement and blew his brains out.”

“Jesus Christ, over a broad?”

“Over his sins. I’m convinced it had to do with her going to the priest, his wife. Which was one reason she never saw the cash he’d stashed in a safe-deposit box, which is another reason I don’t use one. I like my cash close at hand. A good old American safe with a loaded thirty-eight inside the event it’s some dumb bastard comes to rob me, has me open the thing for him. Anyway, I found one of the safe deposit keys on Michael’s St. Christopher metal. God only knows who had the other one. I know it wasn’t the broad he was screwing because there was still money inside when I opened it.”

“Tell me you went after her.”

“I did the due diligence he should’ve, albeit too late.”

“And?”

Kelly pointed to the island. “Like I said, he was a sanctimonious asshole, Michael was, but he was still my brother.”

“And I needed to hear this why again?”

“Your girlfriend,” Kelly said. “Something tells me she’s not as intimidated of you as you think.”

“Explain,” Vento said.

Kelly had to be careful. He couldn’t let Vento know he’d tried to have her killed and had failed. He said, “You know about her other boyfriend, right, the one died in the joint?”

“The jerk she was all goo-goo over, yeah.”

“She was busted with him. You know that?”

“I’m the one told you. Yeah, she got caught transporting or some shit. Big deal.”

“So, when he died, they had to know she was working for you and they never followed up on her. You know if she gave the boyfriend up?”