Josh Stallings - Beautiful, Naked and Dead

“He says all kinds of stuff. You hurt his pride. It was like you were saying you were better than him.”

“I’ll take my chances. Come on, Bobby, it’s a short drive and ‘a hello how are you’.”

“Forget about it. Ain’t going to happen.”

“I’ll tell him you sent me.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“I need this.”

In public we may have called the old man The Pope, but to his face we called him Sir. He’d been the head of the LA family going back to the day. In all those years the man had never seen a single night in the cage. In part this was because he never let the business actually touch his hands, also he insisted that the LA family stay clear of drugs, but the main reason for his lack of jail time was that if anyone even thought about ratting him out, they wound up as so many body parts floating in the LA river. He was old when I was a kid, but walking into the restaurant I wasn’t prepared for what fourteen years had wreaked on his body. His once large frame had collapsed in on itself. His skin hung grey and loose like a cheap suit after a two week run. His silver hair had gone to near transparent white and fringed his shiny cue-ball of a skull. Cigars had taken his larynx so that when he spoke he had to press a finger against a small voice prosthesis in his throat.

“How you doing, sir?” I asked, sitting down across from him.

“I speak out of a tube in my throat, I shit in a bag and my dick only gets hard when I pop six Viagra. How the hell you think I’m doing? You come here to bust my chops you little cock sucker?”

“No, sir. I meant no disrespect.”

“Hell you didn’t. Look at you, you’re a walking disrespect. Manny don’t pay you enough to buy a suit? Or even a razor?”

“I, um…”

“Johnny,” his metallic voice squawked to the waiter. “Get the kid a slice with prosciutto and peppers.” Refusing to eat in front of The Pope was a sin, one he never let you commit. “I can’t take good food any more. Not that it would matter, I got no more taste buds see? Do yourself a favor kid and die young. This growing old is the craps.”

We were sitting in Figueroa’s, a small Italian restaurant and bakery in the Los Feliz area. His crew looked more like a V.F.W. meeting than a mob. Fifty would have been a youngster with this group. Not that their age made them any less dangerous. Most of these guys had more bodies to their count than I had bad debts. Bob had gone in first, cleared my way and then faded back onto the street. He had no desire to be around if it went sideways between me and the old man.

“I need to ask you a question,” I said, my eyes darting around the room.

“So ask. Don’t worry, I have this place swept daily.”

“I know Uncle Manny kicks you a piece off the top, not that it’s any of my business.”

“Did that little towel head send you to me?”

“No, he doesn’t even know I’m here. Problem is I may have to jam up two Armenian punks, caught them running a protection racket on my girls.”

“Inside the club?”

“Yeah.”

“Cock-sucking sons of bitches.”

“I don’t want to step on any toes. But you know I can’t let it pass.”

“These Armenian pricks have some balls, huh? If it was ten years ago, I’d just take them off the count and call it a day. New York wants us to make peace. They’re trying to strike a deal with the Russians. This is the golden age of mergers, huh kid?”

“I’ve heard they have a mob set up out of Glendale.”

“Fuck that. A few crews at best. But they’re growing balls fast. Gas station tax scams, credit cards, cloned cells, some loan sharking. They keep it in their neighborhoods and out of the press. I had a little boundary dispute with them. These Russian bastards don’t scare easy I’ll tell you that. I put three of their pawns in the grinder before I even had their attention. Now this crap in my territory. If it’s sanctioned, bodies got to drop. Let a man shit on your lawn, he’ll be screwing your wife by nightfall.”

“You’re a poet, sir.”

“Whatever.”

“If these punks are freelancing?” I asked.

“Then you’d be doing me a favor by squashing them.”

“Who do I have to ask before I pull the switch?”

“Rafael Hakobian, he’s running things since his brother took a federal fall two years ago. I’ll have Frankie make a call, an introduction, nothing else. You go in alone, you come out if you’re lucky.” The waiter placed a slice of pizza in front of me. Say what you will about the Wops, they make a mean piece of pie. “No shit, kid, these fucks are some evil pricks, kill cops, kids, girls, they just don’t seem to care. In ninety-four, we had a council meeting after bodies started washing up on Brighton Beach, I said we should take them down, but the New York families wanted to wait and see. Well, we saw. Now, I say go to the mattress and they say we negotiate. When did the world go to the pussies?”

“Maybe they’re all just looking out for their piece of the pie.” I said, taking another bite of the thick-crusted pizza.

“Yeah, and we’re going to lose the whole pizzeria in the deal. You don’t come out of this Russian fuck’s crib, ain’t shit I can do, we’re clear on that, right?”

“I’m on my own, Sir, I got it.”

“And you still want to go in?”

“No, but I have to. Nobody fucks with my girls, you know that.”

“Uncle Manny don’t pay you enough to die, so why?” I could tell he really wanted to understand what would make me do it. I thought about it for a moment looking out the dirty window. On the street a Latin immigrant woman pushed a shopping cart with all of her worldly possessions piled high, her face was deeply wrinkled. I wondered if this was the promised land she had hoped it would be. Two Cholos in a candy apple red Impala rolled by like a cool jet of red steam.

“I guess the truth is, there’s only so much you can let pass, then you start drawing the line. Don’t draw the line somewhere, it all turns to shit. It’s like live and let live, but you cross the line and fuck with what’s mine and you will go down.” He looked at me for a long moment then nodded appreciatively, he motioned for one of his boys and sent him to make the call. While he did, we talked about horses, who we liked, who was overrated. He told me about his son, a big time lawyer, lived up in Santa Barbara. There was no pride when he spoke of him. I think the Pope was aware he was the last of his kind, a dinosaur who could feel the cold breath of the ice age on the back of his neck. The new generation of mobsters had M.B.A.’s and law degrees and when they stole it was all legit. Enron alone made his whole career look like boosting hubcaps. His man came back and whispered in his ear. The Pope nodded briefly then turned back to me, slipping me a piece of paper with an address on it.

“Go with God kid,” he said, making the sign of the cross. “If it turns out freelancers are pissing on my turf, I would consider it a personal favor if you put the hammer down on these stray dogs.” The steel returned to his eyes, reminding me that deep down beneath all his age and ailments was a man who could kill you with a claw hammer and not have it ruin his appetite, such as it was.

The address was in the Glendale Hills, expensive sprawling California ranch-style homes littered the steep streets. Most of the houses were designed to cover every inch of available building space, a perfect example of the mansionization craze: take what is already fatally ugly and make it bigger. The thin roads were clogged with gold trimmed BMW’s and Mercedes Benz’s, it was ghetto rich, all flash, telling the world you had made it up the hill, ornate iron fences, huge brass door knockers. It screamed like a ten-pound gold neck chain “I have cash, look at me.” It was all show, no go, just more fools spending every cent they have to prove to the world that they are here, that they are worthy. If they thought all this stuff would protect them from the random spin of the wheel, they had an awakening coming.