The Best American Mystery Stories 2017

Steven Popkes The Sweet Warm Earth

From Fantasy and Science Fiction

In the summer of 1961, I was working for Bernie McLaughlin and the Charlestown mob up in Boston. I wasn’t important, you understand. I was an enforcer. I made sure debts got paid.

That Labor Day, when Georgie McLaughlin felt up Bobo Petricone’s girlfriend and was beaten half to death by the Winter Hill Gang, I got nervous. When Bernie couldn’t get satisfaction and was caught trying to put a bomb in Buddy McLean’s car, I knew the time had come to move on.

I called my cousin Joey in Santa Monica and he said, Larry, come on out here. I’ll take care of you.

So I loaded up my car and drove west before the gang war started. I made it to Los Angeles by the beginning of October. Just as well. McLean shot Bernie full of holes by the end of the month.

I didn’t care. California was like in the movies.

First thing I noticed was the light, a golden syrup poured over everything. People glowed. The colors of the buildings, the trees, the cars — everything looked lit from inside, shining through like the way flame shines through the wax of a candle. I never knew until then how dull and ugly it was back east.

It was warm — I mean, even the dirt was warm. Even in the dead heat of a Boston summer you could still feel winter underneath. Heck, in the middle of every August there always came a day or a week when you could feel October rolling toward you. Summer was something temporary. Something chancy. Maybe it would come this year. Maybe it wouldn’t. No one was going to tell you.

But here there was no hunching your shoulders against the cold, no ice on the trees, no hiding from the snow. Here the air smelled like summer all the time and winter was something that happened somewhere else.

And the women. I mean, it’s not like they were naked, but you needed no special instructions to know what was underneath. They were all tall, beautiful, and walking like they knew exactly who they were, what they could do, and who was in charge.

I decided then and there: I was never going to leave.

Joey got me a job with the DeSimone outfit watching the Los Alamitos track.

It was my job to keep an eye on the horses and the bettors to make sure that everything we didn’t control was on the up-and-up. Los Alamitos was a fairly honest track. Our outfit didn’t fix it. I was there to make sure nobody else did either. I didn’t work for DeSimone directly, of course. Joey and I both worked for a soldier named Alfredo Paretti.

Mind you, this was back in the days of the Mickey Mouse Mafia. Mickey Cohen was already in jail. Simone Scozzari was losing his deportation appeal. Frank DeSimone didn’t have good control of things. He was just a whipping boy for Chicago and New York. DeSimone’s weakness didn’t make my job any easier. There were always two-bit attempts to drug this horse or hobble that one. Not what you would call a glamorous job. Even so, it was better than waiting for the shoe to drop up in Boston. And as November rolled around and I remembered the miserable rains that always settled in by Thanksgiving, I felt like kissing the warm Los Angeles earth.

Sure, I’d seen horses. In the circus or driving past farms where they were standing in a field staring at nothing in particular. The Boston cops even had a horse patrol.

None of that prepared me for the horses of Los Alamitos.

They were big — their shoulders were as high as my head. Their bodies were marked by muscles defined as carefully and precisely as if they were professional bodybuilders. They watched you.

I’d played the dogs in Boston for years, so I thought I was knowledgeable about racing animals. But these were thousand-pound beasts ridden by humans no bigger than monkeys. The first time they roared past me at the fence, I cheered.

So: it was a beautiful day in early 1962 and I was sitting just outside the barn entrance, reading a week-old Boston Herald, smoking a Chesterfield. Big Teamsters strike up in Boston and it looked like the old Winter Hill Gang was in the thick of it. Just marking time until Buddy McLean got out of jail. Again, I was ready to kiss the sweet earth.

This tiny old guy strolled in and showed me his pass. I’m not the biggest man in the world but I sure towered over him. I mean, he barely came up to my chest — I’ve seen bigger jockeys. I nodded like I’d checked him out and went back to my paper, but I kept an eye on him. He went up to I’m a Nobody — a big black mare, seven to one in the third race — and started talking to her. Nothing important, just asking her how she was feeling and was she going to win or place?

That made me watch him even more closely. I marked that big nose and deep grooves in his face — like the old Italians I used to know. I thought, If he’s connected, I’ll have to be careful. Those guys back east weren’t always polite.

Then he reached out and scratched behind the horse’s ears and I was up and over to him.

“Sorry,” I said. “Can’t touch the horses.”

He started. Then looked guilty. “Just scratching an itch. She asked.”

“Yeah. Right. No touching.”

He nodded and bowed slightly to me in that old-world way I hadn’t seen since I left Boston. I got to say, it charmed me.

“Antonio Bernardi,” he said. “Sorry to break the rules.”

“Larry Mulcahey. It’s all right.” I felt a rare need to explain. “We have to protect the animals. Some folks might do something to rig the race.”

Antonio nodded. “I understand completely.” He walked around, continuing to talk to the horses. I leaned against the door and let him, but watching. Then he tipped his hat to me and left. I went back to the Herald.

Come the third race, I stood and watched from the fence. I’m a Nobody tore up the outside, cut to center, and placed third. Four-to-one payout. I went to the windows and waited. Sure enough, old Antonio picked up his winnings from the window and caught a bus. I cut in line past the dirty looks and asked the clerk what Antonio took home.

“Forty bucks,” he said.

“Thanks.” I wandered back to the stables, thinking. Forty bucks isn’t a lot of money, but it’s more than dinner and a cup of coffee. I’m a Nobody was back in her stall and the jockey was there.

I came up beside him. “You had a good run?”

“You bet!” The jockey grinned, real excited. “Who knew the nag had it in her?”

I reached up and scratched behind her ear like I’d seen Antonio do. She pulled her head back and glared at me.

“She don’t like that sort of thing,” said the jockey. “She’s real particular about her ears.”

“Yeah.” I didn’t feel anything like a needle mark, but I’m not a vet. The horse wasn’t shaking or anything. Antonio hadn’t slipped her a goofball.

“Particular,” I said. “Some girls, eh?”

The jockey laughed.

I asked the window guard about Antonio. “The old guy?” he told me. “He’s been coming here for years. Likes horses.”

The next day I planted myself in front of the barn like it was my favorite place to be. Antonio arrived in the morning. This time I made a show of checking his pass, to see if he got irritated or tried to get something past me. But he just played the innocent old man. Maybe that’s exactly what he was.

“Your horse came in yesterday,” I said.

“Sometimes they do me a favor. Keeps me in vino.”

“Where are you from?”

He picked up immediately on the question. “Siena. Greatest town for horses in all of Italy. I came over after the war. Ever been?”

“No.”

“You should have gone before the war. Beautiful. Now, not so good.”

“Pretty rough over there?”

“Terrible. You would not believe.”

I nodded, dropped my cigarette, and ground it out. “You know, Antonio, I have to watch the horses.”

“Yes. It is an important job.”

“I suppose. If somebody were to slip them a needle, I’d have to hurt them.”

His face went stern. “Absolutely.”

I let him go and he walked around talking to the horses again. Sure enough, he took home sixty bucks. I lit another Chesterfield, thinking.

Watching the track wasn’t my only responsibility. Sometimes I had to look out for DeSimone’s or Paretti’s interests. Say somebody wanted to take home more than they could from the windows. Say somebody made a bet on credit to somebody in the organization. It was my job to keep everybody honest — not that much different from Boston. It didn’t happen often. Most people were smart enough not to cross us or were able to offer up something else in trade.

But not everybody’s that smart. The day after I talked to Bernardi I got a call from Joey that I needed to visit a Harry Cohen — no relation to Mickey. I checked that first thing. Big guy. Used to be a boxer. I visited him at a gym down on Figueroa where he worked out to keep his hand in.

Harry was no stranger to debt collection. He used to work for Paretti but got out of the business to become a long-distance trucker. My visit to the gym was a sort of professional courtesy. I wanted him to get the message that I was serious but not a fanatic or anything. I wanted repayment of the debt without trouble.

Harry figured out who I was soon as I came through the door. This was not brilliant detective work; I was the only one in a suit in the middle of a bunch of guys wearing boxing trunks and sweatshirts.

He stood up, a head taller than me. I kept my hands in my pockets; I had a blackjack ready and my piece shouldered and loose. I wasn’t about to give up home-court advantage without equalizers. I’m peaceful, not stupid.

“Paretti sent you?”

I nodded. “Got twelve hundred?”

He laughed. “Do I look like I’m good for that kind of money?”

“You got paid from Hamm Trucking this morning,” I said. “A couple of hundred from that would be a gesture of good faith.”

He laughed again, ugly. I figured I was about thirty seconds from having to prove my point.

He sneered at me. “How about I send you out of here in pieces as a gesture of my own?”

I whipped around, blackjack in my left hand, and caught some mug across the temple. I kept turning, pulling out my piece with my other hand, and it was in Harry’s face as he started to move toward me.

“Not a good plan, Harry.” My piece was an old army.45 from the thirties: so big it hypnotized people. Harry stared down the muzzle, cross-eyed. I heard movement behind me and pulled the hammer back. “Not good at all.”

Harry waved someone off I couldn’t see. “That could have gone better.”

“You get paid every week,” I said. “Two hundred now isn’t going to break you. Then we figure out a payment plan. It’s a good deal and leaves your parts intact. Otherwise it’ll be messy. Of course, I’m from Boston. We’re used to messy up there.”

“Okay,” he said sullenly.

I slipped around him so I was covering his back. Then I pushed him away. We were the center of attention. “Get it.”

He walked off slowly. The other boxers were watching me. Two of them were in the ring, hot and full of red meat. They’d have taken me on if they thought they had half a chance.

I sat in a chair, my back to the wall. These guys were small change. Dinner fighters. Not good enough to do more than entertain half-drunk Mexicans on a Saturday night. They thought they were tough. I sighed a little, thinking of Buddy taking down Bernie in broad daylight. I hoped Harry was smarter than he looked.

Harry came back and my estimation of him went up a couple of points. He handed me a crisp set of bills: two hundred bucks plus an extra twenty.

I held the bills for a moment. Why didn’t people do what they were told? “That’s more than I said.”

“It’s a gesture of good faith.”

It was an excuse. An opportunity to be insulted. A chance grab at control. I handed him back the twenty. “I appreciate the gesture, but I said two. You give me a hundred a week through June and we’re square. You miss a payment and I take a piece of your right hand or maybe an ear. You miss a second payment and I’ll have to justify taking a loss. Understand?”

“I understand.”

Maybe he understood.

I started to get up and with a roar he took a swing at me.

Maybe not.

I caught his fist in my hand and bent the wrist until it was just short of breaking. He gasped and dropped to his knees: that or lose the wrist. I leaned down and spoke slowly and clearly, as if he were three. “I don’t bluff and I don’t argue. If you don’t like the deal I can always burn down your house, slaughter your wife, and fuck your sweet little daughter, all in front of you. Then gouge out your eyes with a grapefruit spoon so it’s the last thing you ever see. Your call.”

He gasped from the pain. “Sorry, man. Don’t break it. I can’t drive with a broken hand. I can’t work the shift lever.”

I let him go. “Next week.”

I walked out into the sunshine. Next to my car, I lit a cigarette and took a deep breath. Stupid people pissed me off. Guys pounding their chests and pretending they’re chewing the thighbone of an ox — none of it meant a thing. Of course, dealing with stupid people was part of the job. If they weren’t stupid, they wouldn’t borrow money from a shark like Paretti. What level of stupidity is it to welsh on the payback and then threaten someone like me? Paretti wanted the money. He didn’t want broken bones and dead boxers. But if broken bones and dead boxers were the price required to keep the status quo, he was willing to pay it. Stupid not to see that.

Back at the track I watched Bernardi for a week or so. He never bet enough to shift the odds, but he always won something.

It put me in a funny position. By now I was pretty sure he wasn’t connected; just an old Italian guy going to the track on his own. Although a string of luck like this was suspicious. I could have asked Joey about him, or Paretti. But that would have made him something to be dealt with. As long as he wasn’t officially a problem I could ignore him. Then again, if it turned out later he was a problem I had already known about and didn’t act on, I could be out of a job. Or worse.

I was waiting when he showed up.

“Mr. Mulcahey,” he said.

“Mr. Bernardi,” I responded. “I’m thinking I may have to keep you out of the barn.”

He looked startled. “Why?”

I took a drag on my cigarette. “You’ve been winning—”

“Only small amounts!”

I nodded. “You’re doing something to the horses. It’s fixing the races. I can’t have that.”

He spread his hands. “I fix nothing. I merely encourage them as you would encourage a friend to do his best. Besides, I only work the small races. The tryouts and jockey starters. Nothing important to Mr. DeSimone.”

I noticed he mentioned DeSimone. “Yeah. There were no needles or pills. I would have had to hurt you for that.”

“Of course!”

“What are you doing, Mr. Bernardi?”

He hesitated for a minute.

I sighed. I don’t like hurting old people. Leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

“I talk to them,” he said finally.

“Yeah. Right.”

“No. Truly. When I was a boy, I lived in Dormelletto, near the mountains. My father worked for the great Federico Tesio. I was born in the stables. I learned the smell of horses before I learned to nurse. I myself helped train Nearco, the greatest thoroughbred champion that ever lived!”

“Who is Federico Tesio?”

He gave me a withering glare, and then his expression softened like a mother who’s lost her temper with her idiot son and thought better of it.

It made me laugh out loud. “Okay. You talk to the horses.”

He held up his finger. “Only if they’re willing to listen. I find out which horse is most excited for the day. I talk to them. They pass the time with me — I admit that sometimes a horse might take such pleasure in the conversation he runs more strongly. But I have done nothing to him.”

“No drugs. No touching.”

He drew himself up to his full height — maybe five feet. “Never,” he pronounced.

I thought about it for a minute. “Okay. But if you touch the horses—”

He shook his head violently. “Never!” He watched me for a moment. “You should meet them.”

“The horses? They’re just horses.”

“Not so.” He pointed to a brown gelding in the far stall. “Consider Fraidy Cat. He has a terrible crush on one particular jockey named Phillip. Loves the man. Would take him as a mare if only he could but instead must satisfy himself by running his heart out for him. Or consider Island Queen. She is the sworn enemy of Pale Pauline.”

“Which one is she?”

“She’s not here today. Don’t bet on Island Queen. She never performs well unless Pale Pauline is racing against her. Then the two will try to murder one another.”

“Why?”

“Who can know? They’re horses. They feel what they feel. They do what they do. Whatever hopes and dreams they have are the hopes and dreams of horses, not people.”

“What about that one?” I pointed to a pale gray mare.

He didn’t speak for a moment. Then: “That is White Glory. I don’t know her. She is quiet about herself and speaks only of the farm she has left behind. She is very sad.”

I laughed. “You’re so full of it, it’s entertaining just to listen.”

Antonio was at the track nearly every day, and there weren’t many other people I could talk to. Jockeys are about as dull as they come, and I didn’t see Joey that often; he was too busy. Any conversation with Mr. Paretti was over the phone and pure business. There were other soldiers I talked with every now and then: Go get this bag and deliver it to this guy. Pick up this car and take it down to niggertown and leave it but take the license, registration, and identification number. Go get this guy and bring him over to this address. You don’t have to stay if you don’t want to.

The soldiers were duller than the jockeys.

Not that the guys I left up in Boston were any better, but their topics of conversation were more interesting. We might talk about family back in Ireland or how the British and the IRA were trying to blow each other up. We had pools on the next likely spot the IRA might attack. Won some of them, too. And Boston politics were downright fun to watch — Los Angeles politics consists of one dumb guy arguing with another dumb guy, both of them crowded off the front page by which movie stars were sleeping together. I mean, I wouldn’t read about Elizabeth Taylor even if she were caught screwing a goat.

Okay. Maybe a goat.

I liked Antonio. He was pleasant and smart — he knew the difference between a simple dirty joke and a really rough one and when to tell which. He had been around the old country and had the stories to show for it. He liked beer and Italian wine and he had some Italian magic with fish that came deep from the dark heart of Tuscany. I can’t say we ever became friends exactly, but we enjoyed each other’s company. We talked about everything, and when we exhausted normal conversation we came back to the horses. Always he spoke of the horses: this one’s triumph, that one’s tragedy, the loss of that one’s friend or this one’s unrequited love.

Then Mr. Paretti told me to take care of a Leo Bernardi by the end of the week.

I didn’t look him up immediately. Instead I waited at the stables for Antonio. Los Angeles wasn’t so big that the name Bernardi was all that common. I decided to brace him about it. Family members can be fair game when you’re collecting a debt.

His face fell when he saw me. “I am in trouble?”

And like that I decided against it. “No. Just something on my mind.”

He put both hands on my elbows. “You are troubled, Larry.”

I shook my head and disentangled his hands carefully. “No.” Besides, I thought, it wouldn’t be professional.

Leo liked to hang out in a bar down in Long Beach. He must have known he was marked. No one can be that stupid. But he was still in the same place, sprawled over two stools at the end of the counter and joking with the waitress. He was pretty lit when I arrived.

I looked around. The floor was sticky and there was a doorway obscured by a black curtain. Had to be hookers or stag films. The place stank of rotten sawdust and old beer. There were a dozen men at the counter and a few filling out the tables and chairs but little or no conversation. A stage occupied one end of the room, but there was nothing happening and I got the impression nothing had happened for some time. The only rough character tended the bar and ignored everyone except me. We sparked on each other, neither wanting difficulties where there didn’t need to be any. He checked out the rest of the room and settled on Leo instantly, then moved away to the far side of the bar to watch.

I sat down close enough to Leo that he had to move his legs. I gave him an insulting once-over and he snarled something at me. I tried to look small and weak to invite attack as I snarled something back, mentioning his mother. He roared up off his stool and I slammed my elbow into his gut and got out of the way as he puked all over the bar. I grabbed him in an armlock and dropped a fifty to cover the mess. Seconds later, Leo was on the sidewalk, under my control, and still emptying out.

He blearily looked up at me and I took that to mean he was done. I clipped him on the back of the head and he went limp enough to fit into the trunk.

I’d booked a room at a motel a few miles out of town across the highway from a training track — one of those no-questions-asked sort of places.

Antonio pulled in right behind me.

I got out of the car slowly, watching him. I had figured him unconnected. Was I wrong? “What are you doing here, Antonio?”

“I followed you.”

“I didn’t know you had a car.”

Antonio glanced at my trunk. Thumped it. There was no sound.

I lit my cigarette. “Who’s Leo Bernardi?”

He swore softly in Italian. “My brother’s boy. He and I came over together, but we didn’t see things the same way. You ever get involved in one of those family fights like in the old country?”

I shook my head.

He looked off at the track. Some two-year-olds were working out, running short sprints and then walking off the sweat. You could hear the trainers and the jockeys planning strategy.

Antonio turned back to me. “Back home you had family everywhere. Your sister married some guy you didn’t like or your uncle had a wife nobody could stand. Angry words were said and thereafter the guy or the wife wouldn’t be spoken to. For a while. But the family was always there. That wife’s brother might be the local butcher. Were you going to quit eating meat? Or the guy married to your sister was part of the family that ran the dairy farm. Were you going to stop eating cheese or drinking milk? Eventually the families would force people to be at least cordial to one another. Otherwise the town would fall apart.”

He shrugged. “Here it is different. Family isn’t everywhere — people are in different towns, different cities, different states. If you don’t like the butcher, you can go down the street to another one. If you don’t like the cheese, buy somewhere else or eat that health-food crap. If you don’t like what someone says to you, this is America, right? You tell him to buzz off.” Antonio shook his head. “My brother was a bum. I didn’t like him and told him so and that’s the last I see of him. He runs off and I hear nothing until the boy’s mother dies of emphysema four years ago. My brother is nowhere to be found but he left her with a boy, now a man. The bum could be dead for all I know or care. I only know about any of this because she’s on her deathbed and wants me to look out for my nephew, named after my bum brother. She dies. But my brother lives on in his son. Leo is a gambler. He’s a drinker. He chases after women. He is too lazy for work and too stupid to make crime pay. A year ago he disappears and today you have him.”

“Are you telling me you knew this day would come?”

“That Leo would fall afoul of one of you people? That was a certainty. That it would be you in particular? No. That is mere coincidence. I never expected to hear of it beforehand but only to learn his fate in the papers. How bad is it?”

“Bad,” I said. “Eight thousand with the vig. Paretti wants this resolved by the end of the week. No payment plan. No options. Maybe he pissed off Paretti or Paretti wants to make an example of him. Or maybe Paretti’s strapped for cash and needs to call in every marker he can.”

He didn’t say anything for a long moment. “Allow me to accompany you. Perhaps I can be persuasive.”

“You stay here. I’ll call you if I need you.”

Leo came around as I dragged him up the stairs.

“What the hell?” he yelled as I slammed him into a chair.

“I work for Paretti.” I pulled over another chair and sat across from him.

He blanched and didn’t say anything.

“Eight thousand dollars?” I said. “Ring any bells?”

“I haven’t got that kind of money.” He stared back at me, sullen.

“Can you get it?”

“I don’t know where.”

“Would you be able to figure that out minus a couple of fingers? Or an eye?”

He kept quiet, just glared at me.

I shook my head. “Tough guy. I know all about tough guys. All bluster and beef. If you’re tough enough, you can stand anything. If you’re angry enough, you can overcome anything. Nothing but blind faith.” I leaned forward. “You want to know the truth? If I chop off your legs and arms and pull out your tongue, you’re just the toughest guy in the cripple ward lying in your own shit. Is that what you want? Paretti gave me the green light, anything I want to do. So either you give me the money or all you’re good for is holding down a rubber sheet. Which is it going to be?”

I could see I got to him. Now came stage two: the lying. I never liked this part — it was a natural follow-on from the tough-guy stage. My sister’s sick. My mother is dying. I haven’t got the money.

The lies would come thick and fast. Until I passed through this stage I couldn’t get to the begging. That was when I’d find out where his money was. Not that he had enough — I knew that right off. If I hadn’t already come into this knowing it, I could have guessed by the desperate pitch of his bravado. Harry Cohen could pay Paretti back and was fighting to keep the money. Leo Bernardi couldn’t and was fighting to keep me from finding out. I could tell the difference.

“Okay. I got the money. Not on me, of course. But stashed. I was holding on to it—”

I took my cigarette, grabbed his knee, and stubbed it out on his thigh. Leo screamed.

“Leo,” I said gently. “You give me every dime you have. Every penny. I want your bank accounts. I want the deed to your car. I want your shirt and your shoes. Then, if I think it’s enough, I might let you keep something. Otherwise I’ll take everything you have, including your body. When I’m done, you won’t even be able to beg me to die.”

The light dawned. Then he looked over my shoulder and hope came back. “Uncle Tony!”

I shook my head. I didn’t turn around. “You were supposed to stay in your car.”

“Uncle Tony. This guy’s going to hurt me—”

“Shut up, Leo. You’re an idiot.” Antonio searched Leo’s face, then turned to me. “Eight thousand, you said?”

“That covers it.”

“I’m good for it, Uncle Antonio! Honest.”

Antonio stared at him like a bug. “Shut up.” He rubbed his face. “He’s my brother’s boy.”

“You have eight grand?”

Antonio shook his head. “No. But I know how to get it.”

He stood at the door of the stables for a long time. He looked at me, pain lining the wrinkles on his face. “What can I do? He’s my brother’s boy.”

I shrugged and didn’t say anything. What did I know about it?

He went in and wandered from one horse to another and then stopped. I could see him through the door talking with one particular horse.

Afterward we went up to the betting window and he put down a thousand on I’m a Nobody to win. Thirteen to one.

Then we went down to the fence to watch.

We sat through two races before ours came up. I’m a Nobody was dancing in the stall. Then came the bell.

I’m a Nobody tore out ahead in the first few seconds and stayed there, running hard, strides out and in. I remembered the track back east. Dogs run like that. He came by, eyes wild and the whites showing, mouth open and slavering, sweat splattering us as he passed. He whipped by and a moment later came the rest of them.

“He can’t keep that up, can he?” I asked.

Antonio shrugged. “Who can say?”

I’m a Nobody didn’t flag on the far turn. Coming back on the far side, I could see his sides heaving. Something dark was hanging from his mouth, but he didn’t waver. He roared through the home stretch and crossed the finish line. Kept going until he passed the stalls. Passed the gates. Until he reached us. Then he stopped, breath ragged and deep. The jockey was pale and frozen, staring not at us but at the horse.

Then, like some great oak, I’m a Nobody wavered, caught himself, and fell on his side. The jockey rolled off to his knees. He held the horse’s head and murmured to him. I’m a Nobody snorted, blood coming from his mouth, and stopped breathing. Everything was silent for a few seconds.

At that point, the crowd around us roared and moved forward. “Come on. We have to get out of here.” I jumped the fence onto the track and pulled Antonio over. We ran through the mud until the crowd thinned. I climbed back over and hauled him across.

“First the window,” he said.

We took just enough time for Antonio to claim his winnings. Then out of the park and into my car. Down Katella and over to a bar I knew on Cerritos. I hustled him inside and toward a dark booth at the back.

Antonio said nothing. He pulled out the money and retrieved a thousand, then gave me the rest.

“That’s too much.”

“Yes.” He fell silent.

I ordered us a couple of beers. I sipped mine. Antonio left his untouched. Once or twice tears welled up and fell on his cheeks. His expression didn’t change and he didn’t wipe them off.

Finally he roused himself. “Larry? Can you drive me home?”

I could. He lived in a tiny bungalow a few miles away. He shook my hand in a formal way and walked slowly up the path and inside his house without looking back.

The total had been $13,000. Minus Antonio’s seed money and what Leo owed Paretti, I had $4,000 left. I put it in a coffee can in my apartment.

Antonio didn’t come back to the track, and after a couple of weeks I looked him up. He was gone. I put out a couple of feelers — not enough to attract much attention. I didn’t want anybody taking too much interest in the old man. He’d sold the bungalow for cash and left town. One guy said he went back to Italy. Another thought he’d gone to Atlanta — why, he couldn’t say. Why would anybody voluntarily go to Atlanta?

I didn’t ask Leo. I didn’t want to see him.

Six months passed.

Once I’d delivered the money to Paretti, the word had gone out: Leo was a bad risk. Nothing personal, you understand. Just business. Unless you seriously want to make an example of someone, it doesn’t make sense to get into the same position twice. Apparently some bookie in Santa Monica didn’t get the message. Leo ran up a quick $3,000 note before he was found out. Then, of course, he tried to skip town and Paretti called me.

I could have paid it off. I had Antonio’s money. But I kept thinking of I’m a Nobody, dying in front of us. It felt like a promise.

So I went looking for Leo.

The papers loved the “brutality” of the crime, and I took a quiet trip up north to Crescent City for a while.

I rented a little house on the ocean end of A Street. I drank coffee and read the paper for nearly a year. I joined a little boxing club on the other side of town to keep my hand in. Nothing much — maybe half a dozen of us taking out our boredom on each other. I bought a boat and learned how to fish in the deep blue sea.

Back east, Buddy McLean got out of jail and the war started up in earnest. It was the weekly Irish slaughter.

I went back to work in ’63 — just after Kennedy got shot. DeSimone was on shaky ground with the organization. Joe Bonanno put DeSimone on a death list but didn’t carry it out. DeSimone got pretty crazy at that point, so we all kept our heads down to avoid any shrapnel. The paranoia must have killed him in the end; he died of a heart attack in ’67 and Nick Licata took over. We all breathed easier.

Then Alfredo Paretti retired and Joey and I both wanted his job. I took Joey out on my boat and came back alone. He’d done right by me so I made it quick. He thought I’d agreed to let him have the job. He never had a chance to regret it.

That’s where I’ve stayed: lower management. High enough I don’t have to do the heavy lifting but low enough not to be a target.

I still read the news from back east, where winter is close to the bone and the alleys stink of garbage. The names change in the Irish mob, but they manage to keep enough blood in the streets to stay the same.

Sometimes I go to the track. I don’t bet but I like watching the sweaty grace of the horses. I think of Antonio often. It’s not the same without him.

But the horses are beautiful. The weather is picture-perfect every day and everybody is tanned and smiling. Antonio’s money remains in the same old coffee can.

I still kiss the sweet warm earth of California.