Чарли Стелла - Johnny Porno

John put his hand out. “I’m John,” he said.

She pointed to her name tag. “I’m assuming you can read,” she said.

“It’s a pretty name,” he said. “And, yeah, I do hate assholes like that. More than you could know.”

Eddie Vento had both feet up on his desk when Tommy Burns appeared in the office doorway. Vento set aside the Racing Form he had opened across his lap and removed his feet from the desk.

“Tommy me boy,” he said. “The mick that does the trick.”

“Mr. Vento,” said Burns, extending his right hand.

Vento stepped around the desk, slapped Burns’s hand away and gave him a bear hug, lifting him a few inches off the ground. “You sure your old man isn’t Italian?” he said. “They changed the rules, you know. We could add a vowel your last name, get you made now.”

Vento gave Burns one last squeeze before releasing him.

“I wish,” Burns said, “but the old man was the real deal. Galway to Boston to New York. Knocked up my mother here, hung around long enough to teach me to take a punch and off he ran. He’s still alive, it’s in Boston. Haven’t seen or heard from him since I made my confession a dozen years ago.”

Vento slapped Burns on the back before returning to his chair. “He did something right, your old man. I had a dozen guys half as tough as you I’d be one happy guinea.”

“I appreciate it, Mr. V. My father, too, I suppose.”

Vento opened the second drawer in his desk and removed a stack of twenty-dollar bills secured by a rubber band. He set the money on top of the Racing Form and pointed to one of two folding chairs facing the desk. “Sit,” he said. “That’s a bonus, fifty fresh ones from the Williamsburg Savings Bank.”

Burns looked at the stack of cash. “Wasn’t a big deal,” he said. “Tommy DeLuca left a trail of skanks he was sleeping with after he was flush with what he stole.”

“I won’t ask where you kept him, but I am curious where you gave him the manicure.”

“Hudson Street,” Burns said. “One of the lithography joints runs along the entrance to the Holland Tunnel downtown. Guy works in one owed me. Let us up, showed me how to use one of the paper cutters they have. Very clean.”

Vento’s eyebrows furrowed. “Who’s us?”

“Not to worry, family on my mother’s side. Was here visiting the week before, was back in Galway the next day.”

Vento’s concern evaporated as his eyebrows relaxed again. “What can I say? Balls and smart. I really do wish you were Italian.”

“The trick was the dumpster,” Burns said. “Getting him in the thing. I must’ve hurled half a dozen times before I got home. Spent the first hour burning my clothes and the next two showering. The dead, Mr. V., they fucking stink.”

“So they say,” Vento said. He grabbed a bottle of Johnny Walker Black and two shot glasses from a shelf behind his desk. He set the glasses on the desk and poured two drinks.

“You’re making your way in this world,” he said. “A couple days ago I passed your name along to a friend of mine. Guy might be a boss someday. He’s having issues with his wife, asked if you’d have objections to something like that. I told him no. Was I right?”

“He’s a friend of yours, say no more.”

Both men grabbed a shot glass.

“Salute,” Vento said.

“Sláinte,” Burns said.

They touched glasses and downed their drinks. Vento immediately poured refills. He noticed the money still on the desk and pointed to it.

“Take that,” he said.

Burns took the cash off the desk and folded it before stashing it inside his right pants pocket.

Vento said, “You might want to count it.”

“I wouldn’t insult you.”

Vento winked at Burns and raised his glass. Burns grabbed his glass and the two men downed their drinks in silence.

“It okay if I smoke?” Burns asked after setting the shot glass back on the desk.

“You gotta ask?”

Burns lit a Camel regular. Vento relit a cigar he’d left in an ashtray.

“I might have something special coming up,” he said.

“I’ll be around,” Burns said.

“Good, because it can’t be one of my own. This one brings extra heat.”

“Sounds like a badge.”

“It is and it has stripes and has to disappear, the time comes. Disappear as in vanish.”

“The meantime I’ll prepare.”

“Do that, because this guy, he goes, he can’t be found. Not while I’m around.”

Burns took a long drag off his cigarette.

“You ever think to use a filter?” Vento asked.

“Too used to these,” Burns said. “Anything else, I wind up sucking harder just to get a taste, give myself a headache.”

“This badge,” Vento said. “He’s dirty so there’s a hefty stash somewhere we don’t know. You find that on your own, it’s yours on top of a fee.”

Burns acknowledged the tip with a head nod.

“Meantime, keep your distance from this joint until I call you,” Vento said. “Go out the back when you leave from here. It’ll make the feds filming the entrance dizzy you don’t come back out the front.”

“I saw them on my way over,” Burns said. “They’re in a plumbing van off Hooper Street. They stay out there all night?”

Vento poured himself another shot. “Giving each other hand jobs, probably.” He held the bottle up.

Burns declined. “I’m up early for mass tomorrow,” he said. “My mother’s a stubborn woman. Insists I go with her every Monday.”

Vento set the bottle back down, downed the shot he’d poured for himself, and stepped around the desk to hug Burns good-bye. He said, “Don’t blow it all on one broad, the money.”

“Never,” Burns said. “I’d give it to my mother, but then she’d hand it off to the church and I’d have a problem with that, it being blood money.”

Vento was feeling the booze. He took an awkward step back and had to grab the desk. “You think the church gives a fuck where their money comes from?”

“Probably not, but I’d know,” Burns said. “I still get nightmares from the statues in Holy Family when I went to school there. I even think about them, I see them moving. In my head like. The eyes and whatnot.”

“St. Anthony?”

“Huh?”

“You pray to him to find your pecker?”

Burns got it. He forced a chuckle. “Another thing my old man gave me, I’m sure,” he said. “Fuckin’ Irish curse.”

“Well, just let me know when you wanna get it wet, your limp noodle. I’ll send a broad over take care of you.”

“I’m free tomorrow night. Or is it tonight already?” He looked at his watch and said, “Tonight, I guess.”

“You still by the Canarsie market?”

“Ninety-third between Foster and Farragut.”

“You alone?”

“I’m having company I will be.”

“Okay. Still go for the dark stuff?”

“I do indeed. A little meat on their bones is good, too.”

“I’ll find somebody,” Vento said. “Somebody clean, but wear a hat anyway. Never know with these broads. Some don’t know enough to douche, the stink alone’ll peel your eyelids.”

“It’s the way of the modern world,” Burns said.

“What’s that?”

“Last thing the old man said to me before he scrammed. Told me he was leaving, I started to sniffle and he cuffed me one. ‘Don’t look at me like that, boyo,’ he says. ‘Parents split up all the time nowadays. It’s the way of the modern world.’”

“He was right, your old man, the way things are today.”

Burns said, “And a fuckin’ shame it is.”

Before he went to the bar to sell his last ounce of marijuana, Louis double-checked his gambling figures for the week. He had called in six bets Saturday afternoon and lost five, two of the favorites he’d bet, Cincinnati and Los Angeles, laying two-to-one. Sunday he’d bet the Reds again and lost again. He also lost the other five bets he’d made, but at least those were underdogs and he wouldn’t have to pay a premium for laying odds. He would need eleven hundred dollars for one bookie and another six hundred for the new office he’d been calling to shop a better line.