Warren Murphy: Look Into My Eyes

People were looking strangely at them. Vassily could sense that. He didn't care. The man had red hair, blue eyes, and was six feet tall, almost a half-foot taller than Vassily. He was also by any reasonable estimation a good ten years older than Vassily.

"Pop, making your bones is killing someone for money."

"So where does this Bangossa fellow live?"

"Queens. He's been under surveillance for a month. And he knows it. Word on the street is he's going crazy 'cause he hasn't busted anyone's skull in a hell of a long time. Everyone's waitin' for him to break."

Vassily got the address of the stakeout, took a large sugary roll from the counter, told the counterman his son would pay for it, and headed out for Queens, New York, and the address of the stakeout.

When the wife of Johnny "The Bang" Bangossa saw a little fellow with sad brown eyes come up the walkway to their brick house in Queens, she wanted to warn him to stay away. If he did not stay away, Johnny would mangle him, the police stakeout that everyone knew was in force would close in, and Johnny would be incarcerated, using the remnants of the sad-eyed little fellow as evidence, probably for a lifetime, leaving Maria Venicio Bangossa virtually a widow. A woman without a man. A woman who could not marry again because in the eyes of the Church she would still be married.

Maria Bangossa opened the door.

"C'mon in," she said. "Have you come for Johnny Bangossa?"

"Indeed 1 have," said Vassily Rabinowitz. He was amazed at how much red brick was used in this house. Someone would think this was a bunker. The windows were small and narrow. The roof was low, and nothing but brick reinforced by brick was used in the exterior.

Inside, furniture glistened with a sheen he hadn't seen anywhere else in America except on luncheonette counters. Suddenly Maria Bangossa realized she was talking to her mother.

"Ma, he's in a lousy mood. I just leave some pasta by his door three times a day. I don't go in. You gotta get outta here."

Maria saw her mother shrug.

"Don't worry already. We'll be all right, and everything will work out. Just show me where the animal is."

"I'm fine, Ma, and Johnny's in his room. But he's sleeping. He's even worse when he wakes up. I rush out of bed because I don't want to be near him when he opens his eyes."

"It's all right, Maria. Your mother will be fine," said Vassily.

The carpeting was a deep maroon and looked like bad imitation fur. The lamps were porcelain figurines holding facsimiles of fruit. The stair banister was made of chrome. Airports were better decorated than the home of this Johnny Bangossa.

When Vassily got to the room, he knocked on the door and called out.

"Hey, Johnny Bangossa, I want you should talk with me awhile."

Johnny Bangossa heard the foreign accent. He heard it in his house. He heard it outside his room. He heard it while he was asleep and when he awakened from that sleep. The first thing he did was swing wildly, hoping someone was near him and would be crushed by the blow. But his fist met only a piece of the wall, shattering plaster.

The voice had come from the door. Johnny grabbed the corners of the door and ripped it away. Standing there in front of him was a little man with sad brown eyes, probably a Jew.

Johnny reached for the Jew. His anger almost blinded him.

Vassily Rabinowitz saw the big, hairy hands come down toward him. Johnny Bangossa filled the doorway. He wore an undershirt. His massive shoulders were covered with hair. His face was hairy. His nose was hairy. Even his teeth and fingernails seemed to be hairy. He had small black eyes that looked like coal nuggets, and a wide face that underneath the hair was very red.

Vassily sensed he was going to die very soon. And then he locked eyes with the massive man.

The hulk paused, then cringed.

"Hey, Carli, leave me alone. C'mon, Carli," whined Johnny Bangossa, covering his head and retreating into the room.

"I'm not going to hit you. I need you," said Vassily.

"Don't hit," said the large man, and he winced as though he was being struck on the head.

"I need you for protection," said Vassily. "You will be my bodyguard.'

"Sure, Carli, but don't hit."

Vassily shrugged. He knew his bodyguard would be actually feeling the slaps and cuffs used by the person who raised him.

It was a bit unsettling to walk downstairs with a hulk of a man wincing, ducking, and covering his head.

Maria Bangossa stood in shocked amazement as the two of them left the house. It was as though her beloved husband was reacting to his older brother Carl who had raised him. Johnny had said Carl had raised him strictly, in the old-fashioned way. Nowadays, with the advent of social workers, this was considered child abuse.

Carl Bangossa had been proud of the way he raised his younger brother Johnny to follow in the family footsteps. Unfortunately, Carl never saw Johnny reach manhood because Carl too followed in the Bangossa family footsteps.

He was buried at the bottom of the East River in a tub of cement. It was the Bangossa way of death. A greatgrandfather was the only one to have died in bed. That was the place he was stabbed to death.

"Hey, Carli, there's a stakeout here," said Johnny as they reached the sidewalk.

"What is stakeout?" asked Vassily.

"You don't know what a stakeout is?" asked Johnny, and then ducked, expecting a hit in the head for asking that kind of question.

"You tell me," said Vassily.

The large hairy man talked a foot over Vassily's head. This Carli had to be big also. A stakeout, he said, was when the police were watching you.

Why were they watching him? Vassily asked.

" 'Cause they hate Italians. You know, you got a vowel at the end of your name and they think they got a right to lean on you."

"All Italians?"

"No way. Some of the paisans are the worst cops and prosecutors. You got a vowel at the end of your name, they lean on you harder."

"And a paisan is?"

"Carli. You crazy? . . . Sorry, Carli. Sorry. Don't hit. Don't hit. All right."

It was very difficult dealing with someone who had been raised with violence as a teaching tool, but Vassily came to understand that the policemen in the stakeout were sitting in a car across the street.

"You stay here, Johnny. I'll take care of them."

"Not in front of my house. They'll get us for sure. You can't kill a cop in front of your house. We'll never get away with it."

Johnny Bangossa felt the slaps and the hits on his head, heard Carli tell him not to worry about it, and then to his amazement saw his older brother walk over to the car, and not kill anyone. Nor did he have money in his hands. He only spoke to them and they drove away.

That was even more amazing than Carli being alive. Johnny could have sworn Carli had been put in the East River for good.

"Hey, Carli, word had it you was sleeping with the fishes," said Johnny.

"Don't believe everything you hear," said Vassily Rabinowitz.

He now had his bodyguard, but of course one had to be able to feed a bodyguard, and probably pay him too. Vassily needed a business, He could go into a bank and probably withdraw money, but sooner or later, numbers, which did not lock eyes with people, would show something was wrong and eventually people would come looking for him. Besides, he had looked in one of the banks and there were cameras on the walls. They would probably get his picture anyhow. He could have become the lover of a wealthy woman or the lost child of a wealthy man. But he had not come this far to be cosseted with some stranger who needed to be intimate. He wanted freedom. And to have this freedom he knew he had to start his own business.

And what better business than what he did better than anyone else in the world? He would set up an office to supply hypnotism. He was, after all, the best hypnotist in the world.