Warren Murphy: Mafia Fix

The youngsters inside the doughnut store jostled playfully. A young black girl and a young white girl, their books clasped firmly to their budding breasts, giggled and looked at a young black man in floppy hat, white twill shirt and flared pants who held something out to them in his fist. He was laughing too, taunting them.

He wiggled his clenched fist and threw back his head laughing. The two girls exchanged glances, then giggled again. The glance said: "Should we?"

The white girl reached out to the black hand holding something. The hand withdrew. She shrugged. The hand went forward again, and opened up. It held a small glassine envelope. The black boy laughed. The white girl snatched the envelope and laughed.

And Remo thought of the picture of the OD that Smith had shown him on the cruise ship. And suddenly, he didn't feel so bad about being a machine.

The mayor and the editor were next.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Willie the Plumber Palumbo had been told not to worry. He had been told not to worry by Don Dominic Verillio. He had been told that twice that afternoon.

So Willie the Plumber went to the Oyster Cove Bar and drank three old-fashioned’s to buck up his courage.

When Willie the Plumber was told not to worry by anyone, he worried. When he was told not to worry by Don Dominic Verillio, he often had trouble containing his bladder.

So he spent much of the afternoon helping himself not to worry with the old-fashioned’s. And by 3 p.m., he was not worrying all that much. He knew that he would not have a care by midnight if he kept at it, but he also knew that by dawn he would be burdened with an overabundance of troubles if he did not put down the last old-fashioned and do what he had to do.

Since Willie the Plumber was a man of understanding and compromise, a man who knew that others had to live also-his philosophy behind bribes-he was not too overly harsh on himself. He ordered one more old-fashioned and drank half of it, leaving a dollar tip for the bartender.

He went outside where his blue Cadillac Eldorado occupied the previously empty space in front of the fire hydrant and removed the parking ticket from the windshield. He could get it discounted to $5 from $25, and a parking lot four blocks away would have cost him $4. Besides, getting a ticket fixed reaffirmed his status to his compatriots and himself.

Willie the Plumber opened the unlocked door of his car, dropped the ticket in the glove compartment on top of a small pile of tickets. He got them cleared once a month when he paid all his monthly bills. Willie the Plumber did not have to lock his car. Only nobodies locked their cars.

The blue Eldorado gleamed with a just polished shine. He had the car polished every day by a car wash near his house, the engine checked every month by the Cadillac dealer, and had it tuned up every six weeks. His cars never failed him.

He was a thin man with a racking cough that, no matter how violent, failed to even jar the ash on the end of the eternal cigarette he held in his mouth. He saw the dentist when the pain was so bad he couldn't sleep and the doctor twice-once when he thought he was going blind and another time when he thought he was dying. From time to time he would pass out.

For this condition he would consult a druggist who would tell him to consult a doctor. Willie always said he would, and got in return some powder or pills, or some drops.

"Passing out," he once explained, "is just nature's way of telling you to slow down."

He put the key in the ignition, blanked out momentarily, then started the car. It purred. It moved with graceful ease into the traffic.

He drove through the commercial district and then turned, going past tree-shaded private homes, two stories and two families. He hit the main boulevard and turned left, down toward the southern end of the county. Five blocks past the brick and aluminium buildings of St. Luke's College, a Jesuit school done in twentieth century garden-apartment architecture, he turned right down a block of elegant homes with old oak and maple trees in front, wide, strong and rich. The homes were tudor and colonial, with a natural manicure to the lawns, and a cleanliness and brightness that came only with expensive maintenance.

Willie the Plumber pulled to the curb and stopped the car. He lit another cigarette from the one in his mouth', then carefully put the dwindling butt out in the car ashtray next to the radio-stereo-tape system.

He swung his $85 Florsheims out onto the street, and got up by throwing himself after them. He breathed deeply. He did not pass out. That little triumph behind him, he shut the door of his blue Eldorado.

He walked purposefully around the front grille inspecting it as he passed. There was a smudge near the left headlight. Willie took his blue handkerchief out of his coat pocket and bent down, wiping at the smudge. It came off, thank goodness. He coughed up some brownish-red substance which lodged deep in the grille. Willie kneeled down and pushed the handkerchief into the grille to get at whatever it was he had coughed out. The grille cleaned, he rose, and feeling dizzy for a moment, waited.

Then he walked again, past a lawn sign that said "Rosenberg" to the steps of a tudor-style house with wood beams lacing off dappled white cement.

He rang the doorbell. A stocky woman in a knit suit answered the bell.

"Oh, it's you," she said. "Just a minute. I'll see if he's home."

Willie the Plumber heard Mrs. Edith Rosenberg walk up a flight of steps to the second floor. She had left the door open.

He heard her knock. "Gaetano?" came her voice.

"Yes, Mrs. Rosenberg," said a deep muffled voice.

"That awful man is here to see you again. The skinny one who coughs."

"Oh. Okay, send him up. Thank you, Mrs. Rosenberg."

"You really shouldn't associate with such people, a nice boy like yourself."

The nice boy Mrs. Rosenberg referred to was the quiet man who rented the second floor, who shared Friday night dinners with the Rosenbergs, who would listen to how her family wasn't worthy of her and how Mr. Rosenberg thought of nothing but the business.

The nice boy, Willie the Plumber knew, was Gaetano Gasso, Verillio's enforcer, whom everyone called Mr. Gasso, who did not have a name like Ducks or Rananas or the Plumber, because no one would venture testing one out, even when Mr. Gasso were not present.

Mr. Gasso could freeze people by looking at them. Mr. Gasso did not like putting guns in people's faces and then pulling the trigger, although he would do that if there were no other avenue available to him.

Mr. Gasso liked to pull off arms and legs. Mr. Gasso liked to blend other people's skulls with chairs and tables, with sides of walls when appropriate.

Mr. Gasso liked to crack ribs. Mr. Gasso liked people to fight back. He liked them to fight back with fists or clubs or guns. For guns, he used guns. But sometimes he used cars. Cars were good against guns. When cars drove into people standing against walls who used guns, they made cracking sounds from the chest down. Then Mr. Gasso would finish what was left, and pull the glass splinters from his own face.

One time he pulled a bullet out of his face. But Mr. Gasso didn't stop using cars. One time, while ameliorating a Teamster dispute, Mr. Gasso was hit in the face by a truck driver with a sledge hammer. The truck driver was put back together with wires and through great perseverance became one of the really -great wheelchair basketball players, although his left hand dribble was never much good, because he had no nerves left in that hand. Mr. Gasso knew his jaw was broken a week later, when he bit into a Tootsie Roll.

People did not tend to joke with Mr. Gasso or make disparaging remarks. Even people who did not know who he was. There was always a table open for Mr. Gasso at nightclubs and restaurants, although he never tipped.