Bruce DeSilva - Cliff Walk

Aw, crap. I checked my watch. Those meetings started at eight o’clock. If I hurried, there was still time to visit my bookie.

I shoved open the door to the little variety store on Hope Street and heard a familiar ding. Ever since I was a kid, that old brass bell had announced my visits to the storekeep, my old friend Dominic “Whoosh” Zerilli. For most of those years, it had dangled over a door on Doyle Avenue. The bell was one of the things Whoosh had salvaged after the arson there last year.

Teresa, who worked the register on weeknights, was hunched over the glass candy counter, studying the front page of the National Enquirer . Judging by her furrowed brow, it was hard going. I leaned down and plucked out her iPod earphones.

“And they say that young people don’t read newspapers.”

“Hi, Mulligan.”

“How are you, Teresa?”

“I’m bored.”

“Of course you are. It’s the universal teenage affliction.”

“Finally ready to take me on that date?”

“Soon as you grow up.”

“But I turned eighteen last week!”

I muffled a laugh. She pouted.

“So are you gonna buy something or what?”

“Just came by to see the old man.”

She rolled her eyes. “He’s in the back.”

I strolled down a narrow grocery aisle. To my right, Ding Dongs, Twinkies, Fruit Pies, Honey Buns, and Devil Dogs. To my left, a rack of soft porn magazines with names like Only 18, Black Booty, and Juggs . Just ahead, coolers stocked with Yoo-hoo, Coca-Cola, Mountain Dew, Red Bull, and twelve brands of cheap American beer. The illegal tax-stamp-free cigarettes were kept out of sight behind the counter.

At the end of the aisle, I climbed a short flight of wooden stairs and knocked on a reinforced steel door. When the dead bolt snicked open, I turned the knob, stepped into Zerilli’s private sanctum, and was greeted with a low woof.

“He won’t hurt you none,” Zerilli said. “He’s fuckin’ harmless.”

“Where’d you get him?”

“The pound.”

“Got a name for him yet?”

“Calling him Shortstop.”

“How come?”

“’Cause Centerfielder’s a stupid fuckin’ name.”

Shortstop got up from his spot in the corner and wandered over to lick my hand with a blue sandpaper tongue. He was a big dog, probably had a mastiff or two somewhere down the family tree.

“I turn him loose in the store at closing,” Zerilli was saying. “Figured he’d discourage the neighborhood kids from breaking in again, but it ain’t workin’. Useless fuckin’ mutt loves everybody.”

I almost asked if he was going to keep the dog, but from the way his fingers were working behind its ears, I had my answer. The phone rang, and when Zerilli reached for it, I noticed a tremor in his right hand. That was new. He turned seventy-five last March and was finally starting to show his age.

“Eight points,” he told the caller. “And the over-under is thirty-seven.” He paused, then scratched some code on a scrap of flash paper with a yellow pencil stub. “Okay, you’re in for a dime,” he said, and hung up.

“Pats game?”

“Yeah. Want a piece?”

“Not this time, Whoosh.”

“Don’t blame you. Brady’s third game back from knee surgery, it’s hard to know whether he’ll be throwing more touchdowns than interceptions.”

He picked up the flash paper he’d recorded the bet on and dropped it into a metal washtub by his feet. If the cops ever raided the place, something that hadn’t happened in years, he’d just drop a lighted cigarette in the tub and… whoo s h! Which was how he got the nickname.

Zerilli fussed with his blue rep tie, loosening the Windsor knot. Then he drew a Colibri lighter from the inside pocket of his black Louis Boston suit jacket and set fire to the unfiltered Lucky that had been dangling from his lower lip. He took a drag, blew it out through his nose, and scratched his balls through his boxer shorts. As usual, he had removed his suit pants and hung them in the closet to preserve the crease.

I sat in the wooden Windsor visitor’s chair, and Zerilli presented me with a box of illegal Cubans. I pried it open, took one out, and clipped the butt with my cigar cutter. Zerilli leaned over to give me a light.

“Swear on your mother you won’t write about anything you see or hear in here,” he said.

“I swear,” I said, not mentioning that there was nothing to write because everybody already knew what went on in here. This was our ritual. The only thing that ever changed was the brand of Cubans. Sometimes Cohibas, this time Partagás.

“So,” he said, “I’m guessing this ain’t just a social call.”

“Not entirely.”

“You here to talk about Arena’s labor racketeering case?”

“No.”

“’Cause I got nothin’ to say about that.”

“Of course you don’t.”

“Salmonella, then?”

“Right.”

“The fuckin’ prick dead or not?” he asked.

“Looks like, but I can’t say for sure.”

“Humph.”

“What can you tell me about his operation?”

“The Internet porn, not a fuckin’ thing.”

“The clubs, then?”

“He don’t bother with them no more,” Zerilli said. “Turned them over to his daughter Vanessa a couple of years ago after she finally got her fuckin’ business degree from URI. What I hear, she’s a bigger cocksucker than him.”

“She making a go of it?”

“Oh, yeah. Was her idea to put in private rooms so the strippers can screw the customers. ’Stead of just blowing them at the tables. Bitch calls ’em VIP rooms. Shitty little booths with cum-stained vinyl couches. Jesus, what a joke.”

“Any friction with the six clubs Arena and Grasso run?”

“Nah. The joints are all jumpin’ on the weekend, pulling in customers from all over New England. Some of ’em come in on chartered buses from Boston and New Haven, for chrissake. Do a pretty good business most weekdays, too. There’s enough fuckin’ Johns to go around, Mulligan.”

“The Maniellas still aren’t connected, right?”

“Business they’re in, they gotta know some people. Back when porn was on videocassettes, before the Internet fucked up a good thing, crews outta New York, Miami, and Vegas handled the distribution-kept all the porn shop shelves stocked with filth. But the Maniellas ain’t part of This Thing of Ours, if that’s what you’re gettin’ at.”

“So how much is Vanessa paying Arena and Grasso for the right to run her clubs on their turf?”

“Ah, shit.” He stubbed out his cigarette, shook another from the pack, and lit it, the flame wobbling in his trembling right hand. “I don’t wanna talk about that.”

“No?”

“Fuck, no.”

“Touchy subject?”

He looked away and started in on Shortstop’s ears again. Drool dripped from the dog’s maw and puddled on the linoleum. A minute passed before Whoosh turned his attention back to me.

“So,” he said, “are you wasting my fuckin’ time, or are you gonna lay down a bet?”

“Okay, Whoosh,” I said. “What’s the over-under on when the Dispatch goes belly-up?” I expected a chuckle. Instead he deadpanned:

“Three years.”

That stopped me.

“Seriously?”

“Three years from Columbus Day, to be exact.”

“People are betting on that?”

“Come on, Mulligan. People bet on every fuckin’ thing.”

I let out a long sigh. “Give me fifty bucks on the under.”

“Figures. All the guys from the paper are takin’ the under.” He picked up his pencil stub to record the bet.

I pulled out my wallet, paid him the twenty-five dollars I’d lost on Saturday’s URI-UMass football game, and got up to go, still puzzling over why Vanessa’s payoffs to Arena and Grasso were such a touchy subject. I had my hand on the doorknob when I tumbled to something.