Don DeLillo - Underworld

"They come out of the bowling alley. Then they go over to the window and order whatever they order."

"Ever seen them before?"

"Here? They never been here."

The two guys put their paper cups back on the counter and walked toward Third Avenue and Nick and Grasso followed, with the dog trailing. The guys knew there was someone behind them. Not that they turned. But Nick saw the way they stopped talking and the way their stride seemed, maybe, to tighten a little.

"What's it say on the jackets?"

"Hawks, I think."

"Ever hear of them?" Nick said.

"Never. Hawks? What fucking Hawks? Plus I don't think it's a team. I think it's a gang."

They went past the funeral home and walked a block and a half along Third Avenue through the slatted shadows of the el and then the two guys stopped and turned around.

Nick and Grasso walked up to them.

"Hawks? What's Hawks?" Grasso said.

They didn't answer. One guy ready, the other still thinking about it.

"You live here, the Hawks? Because I don't think I seen any Hawks before."

They didn't answer.

The dog caught up to them and began to go nose-twitching around the feet of one of the guys.

"It's better, you know, at night especially, if you stay where you belong. In the day too," Grasso said. "But at night especially because otherwise people get the wrong idea."

The train passed over with a great staccato clatter and they all waited until it was past. But then the two guys didn't say anything.

"I still don't know what's Hawks. I aksed nice. But I don't hear no explanation."

Cars creeping around the el pillars when they made a turn. And Mike the Dog sniffing at the guy's shoe and the guy sort of flicking the shoe, doing a little foot-jerk that made the dog back off, and Nick stepped up and punched him.

A car stopped in the middle of a turn.

Nick stepped up and hit the guy once, a fair to good shot that caught him on the temple when he tried to duck under, and this car came to a sudden stop and four guys got out and left the doors hanging open of this car just stopped in the middle of the street.

They were guys from the other poolroom, Turk and his fuckface friends, and one of the black guys started running but the other one stood there and glared, six white guys and a brown dog more or less surrounding him.

Nick half smiled at Turk.

"He kicked my dog," he said.

The one still here was the one he'd hit and he was looking at Nick, glaring, and Nick shrugged and smiled and the guy turned and walked away slowly and the four other guys took a breath and hitched their pants and got back in the car. The doors closed bangedy bang and the car drove off.

Grasso said, "Fucking Turk."

"I know."

"Thinks he's king shit walking the earth."

"I know," Nick said.

"Where'd you get that animal?"

"Lives at Mike's."

"I never seen an animal so ugly."

Nick faked a punch to the guy's head and they walked back to the lighted streets with the roar of the el behind them.

About a month later the man was back in the poolroom, standing at the counter late one night, with Mike, they're eating baked ziti out of tin plates.

Mike flashed the light over the table where Nick was playing.

When Nick looked up he said, "Come over here."

Nick walked over with a self-conscious saunter like he was about to meet his future father-in-law.

"Mario here, he wants to say something you should listen to. Mario knew your father just after the war. During the war and after the war."

Badalato was standing with his back to the room and Nick went around the counter, where Mike was standing, behind the counter, so he could face the man.

They had glasses of wine, which Nick had never seen in here, and they had a canister of red pepper they passed back and forth, eating standing up, every forkful of ziti trailing long strands of mozzareir.

"I knew your father. Jimmy. I liked Jimmy."

Nick could not fail to understand the consequence of the moment, a man of this particular life who is going to talk to him about his father.

"Mike told me. He said, Jimmy's son he comes in here. Jimmy Costanza. I said, I haven't heard this name in a while. I liked Jimmy, I said."

And the consequence of the man himself, the thick hands and dark brows and thick hair and the slightly flattened nose, like a boxer's.

"I said. What did I say? Jimmy had a talent, this guy, he's mister invisible."

Nick could not fail to understand the weight of the occasion. But he was also wary of it, he was hesitant, he wanted to say something unsolemn because anything about his father made him apprehensive.

"The way I understand it from Mike, you think your father had no choice in the matter. How he left. How he disappeared. Somebody put him in a car. This is what you think, as his son, is what happened to the man. And they drove him somewheres. But I have to tell you one thing."

Badalato took a sip of wine from the low squarish glass.

"Nothing could of been done to your father without me knowing about it. I have to tell you this. I would of known. And even if I don't know beforehand, which isn't about to happen, but even if it did, then I find out later. I would of heard. You understand what I'm saying? It's not possible this could happen without me knowing about it sooner or later."

The warm smell of the food was making Nick hungry and he couldn't help wondering how the food could be carried here from a restaurant still steaming hot.

"I liked your father. I don't think Jimmy had serious enemies. He owed money, so what? If somebody owes you money, you work out an arrangement. There are ways to do these things where you use simple business methods, the way Mike runs a business, the way a haberdasher runs a business. You buy a suit, you pay so much down, so much a month. You buy a car and so forth."

The man looked at Nick while he spoke. He didn't sound superior or offhand. He wanted to make an honest connection and get his point across.

"Jimmy was not in a position where he could offend somebody so bad that they would go out of their way to do something. No disrespect but he was penny-ante. He had a very small operation he was running. Made the rounds of the small bettors. Mostly very small these bets. This is what he did. Factory sweepers and so forth. You have to understand. Jimmy was not in a position to be threatened by serious people."

Nick watched him take a bite of food. He could not help feeling grateful. The man stood there and talked to him. The man took time to tell him something he thought would settle the matter in Nick's own mind.

"I appreciate," he said.

"I liked your father. And I know what it's like, myself, to lose a father at an early age. From cancer this was."

"Your taking the time. I appreciate."

"Forget about it. Go finish your game," the man said.

Nick shll had the pool stick in his hand. He gestured toward the light over the table.

"Mike, tell me you're not gonna charge me for the time you guys spent eating ziti."

The men enjoyed that. He went back to the table and finished the game with Stevie and Ray. They wanted to know what he'd been talking about with the guys at the counter.

He thought of a half-ass joke but then said nothing.

He was grateful for the time, genuinely, but he didn't think he had to accept the logic of the argument. The logic, he decided, did not impress him.

They played cards down there, pinochle, and drank homemade wine, in the room under the shoemaker's shop, off the dim passageway that led out to the yards.

Bronzini looked on, sitting in when someone left but otherwise a kibitzer, unmeddlesome, content to savor the company and try the wine, sometimes good, sometimes overfermented, better used to spike a salad.