Чарли Стелла - Johnny Porno

“It might buy you time if they think they’re getting paid. Why you should tell them you have it. I have it.”

“I’m not letting you or my mother get robbed.”

“Maybe we don’t see it that way, saving your life.”

John was preoccupied wondering why Nancy had gone along with such a crazy scheme. Melinda turned east onto the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway when he finally realized why.

“That bitch!”

“What?” Melinda said.

“Nancy.”

“Excuse me, but about fucking time.”

“She told my mother about the money,” John said.

“She was probably counting on telling her.”

“It’s how she justified this from the start.”

“They steal from you and your mother pays it off so nobody gets hurt.”

“Only Nancy’d be stupid enough to think nobody’d get hurt.”

“She knew exactly what she was doing,” Melinda said. “Stop telling me how stupid she is. Right now you’re the stupid one in all this. You’re the one protecting everybody else.”

John saw a sign for an exit and pointed to it. “Take McGuinness Boulevard.”

Melinda checked her rearview mirror and switched from the middle to right lane.

John leaned across the console. “I appreciate your concern,” he said. “I do.”

“It’s about time.”

“Now how ’bout a kiss?”

“How ’bout I break your face?”

“Never mind,” John said.

She was glaring at him again. He winked.

“I’ll kick your ass,” she said. “I swear it.”

Brice was growing anxious waiting for Kelly outside the Sutphin Boulevard subway stop. He knew Levin was watching from the van parked half a block behind the Mustang and was nervous Kelly might spot the surveillance. The two had trailed Kelly to a Queens precinct less than an hour ago. When Brice called the precinct, Kelly had left a message for him to meet outside the subway stop. That was ten minutes ago.

Brice finished the last of a Yoo-Hoo drink and stuffed a napkin inside the mouth of the bottle before setting it down on the floor beneath the passenger seat. As he straightened up, he glanced at the Daily News and saw the headline: Agnew’s Lawyers Start Own Probe.

“Everybody’s dirty,” he said.

A moment later he yawned into a fist. A loud knock on the passenger window made him jump.

“Jesus Christ!” he said.

Kelly removed the Daily News from the passenger seat as he got in the car. “Morning, boyo.”

“More like afternoon,” Brice said.

“I got a lift,” Kelly said.

Brice pulled the fifty-dollar bill from his pants pocket and held it up. “I think you dropped this in my car.”

Kelly waved it off. “Careful, boyo, we’re in the jungle here. They’d cut your nuts off for a pound, never mind something that big.”

Brice went to hand him the bill.

Kelly waved it off again. “Isn’t mine,” he said. “I haven’t seen one of those since I was married.”

“It was on your seat after you got out,” Brice said. “I didn’t put it there.”

“You ask Levin? He sat up front the day before, right?”

“Only till you came, but there was too much traffic back and forth between you two for it not to’ve been noticed. I know it isn’t mine.”

“Looks like it is now.”

Brice was still holding the bill. “You gonna take it?”

“It’s not mine. Keep it, boyo. Get yourself laid tonight. At least put it away before you get us both killed.”

“Shit,” Brice said, stashing the bill in his pants pocket.

“You talk to Levin?” Kelly asked.

“Nope.”

“Give him another few minutes. At least it’s not a sauna again today. Rain last night must’ve helped. Maybe it’ll keep the apes in this jungle in their trees. I’m on the train here once a few years ago, this part a the Congo, there was a guy must’ve shit his pants six years ago the stench was so foul. Which is one reason I don’t like Jamaica. A guy has to piss, his tires could disappear. But don’t talk like that in front of Levin. Guy’s a bleeding heart faggot it comes to the darkies.”

“There’s a rash of stolen cars over in Canarsie,” Brice said. “Worse than anywhere according to a friend a mine in the precinct there, the Sixty-ninth. That’s a white neighborhood.”

Kelly didn’t get it. “Yids and dagos,” he said. “Going back to forever, they had that turf, Canarsie.”

Brice checked his rearview mirror and saw the van was still there. The few minutes they were supposed to wait for Levin turned to twenty while Kelly read the newspaper. Brice finally mentioned the time and Kelly got out of the car to use the pay phone. It was noon already.

A few minutes later Kelly returned to the car thumbing toward the street.

“What is it?” Brice said.

“He’s out sick again, the lazy fuck. But I need you to drop me off somewheres.”

“Where?”

Kelly got in the car. “Queens,” he said.

“What’s there?”

“Me, when you get me there. You’re going to Levin’s place to see if he’s really out sick or just jerking my chain. I had it with that guy.”

“What? I’m not spying.”

Kelly motioned toward the street for Brice to start driving. “It’s an order,” he said. “Now, let’s go.”

The pain in his nose had shifted to his mouth and then his teeth. Then it turned into a headache and he couldn’t blink it hurt so much. Nick was on Quaaludes and codeine and had taken half a dozen aspirin as soon as he got home, but now that he was awake again, his head felt as if it would explode. He took a bunch of his wife’s diet pills to help him shake the grogginess.

He had made Angela take him to a guy he knew sold guns. It was right after they left the hospital when he was still numb enough not to feel the pain. The guy had showed him three pieces, all used, which meant they had all been stolen, found or pawned, not the best weapons in the world to use because of their prior history, but Nick was obsessed with getting John Albano and didn’t care. He paid seventy-five dollars for a semiautomatic handgun that looked and even felt a little shaky when he pulled the trigger on an empty clip.

“Is ing onna all a-art en ah oo it?” he’d asked the seller.

“What?” the seller said.

Angela helped translate. “The way it looks, he said,” she said after Nick mumbled something unintelligible. “He thinks if he shoots you from across the room it’ll fall apart in his hands.”

“I’ll tell you what,” the seller had said to Nick. “Go stand over there and I’ll shoot you with it. It falls apart, I’ll give you your money back.”

Now that he couldn’t sleep anymore he was anxious to shower and get a start on searching for John Albano. All he could think about was the beating he’d taken outside the bar and how he’d have to face everybody a second time, except this time it was even worse, his nose had been broken, the discoloration would be with him for weeks, not to mention his nose would be crooked.

And then there was Eddie Vento. How was he supposed to deal with that cranky fuck after this?

Nick was half out of the bed and about to give up and go back to sleep when the phone rang. He couldn’t move fast enough. His wife said hello into the receiver and told the caller to hold on before passing it to Nick.

“Aloe?” he said.

“It’s me,” Eddie Vento said.

“Air,” Nick said.

“What?”

“Air.”

“The fuck you saying?”

“I ant alk,” Nick said.

“You can’t talk?”

“O.”

“Okay, then listen,” Vento said. “I got a call before from a mutual friend said he kicked your ass again, broke your nose or some shit. Maybe that’s why you sound like a retard. All I know is I want some answers about what the fuck he told me, some of which I already confirmed, which you didn’t tell me the other day when I asked you.”