Casino Moon

19

MOST PEOPLE DON’T KNOW it, but being aroundconcrete can be a very sensual experience. Watching it pour slowly down the chute. Sloshing around in it in your rubber boots. Feeling it settle. Hearing the whine of the trucks. Most mob guys only get involved in construction so they can show a legitimate source for their income, but I actually liked the work itself. There was just something satisfying about beginning a job and seeing it through to the end.

It also took my mind off all the trouble I had brewing. After the threat from Nicky, I’d had to move Carla and the kids over to her mother’s house until I figured out how to protect them. Then there was Rosemary. My thoughts kept coming back to her body like it was the melody of a song. I didn’t want to be the kind of bum who ran out on his wife, but I knew I belonged with somebody else. And on top of all that, I still hadn’t raised the money to get Elijah into the fight game.

For the moment, though, I was in some lady’s yard, installing steps from her driveway to her front door. I had my truck and four Puerto Ricans mixing cement, sand and water on the sidewalk with their shovels. Everything was going just fine until Vin came up behind me and scared me half to death.

“What the fuck?” I said, jumping back a little. “How the hell did you find me?”

“Richie had the address on a bill at the office. You know, you oughta get a beeper. Give us a way to find you.”

“Yeah, that’s all I need. First job I get in a month, you’re out here, bothering me. The lady inside sees you, she’s gonna think she’s paying for an extra man.”

In fact, she already looked like she was having a fit. Tall redhead in a New Jersey Giants jersey. She’d been standing at the screen door watching us all morning, as if we weren’t trustworthy.

I went back to stirring the soapy-looking concrete in my wheelbarrow as my father stood there looking over my shoulder.

“You sure you got enough sand in there?” he said. “You know that’s the most important thing.”

“Ah, what do you know about it? Sand isn’t the most important thing. It’s the aggregate. You got to have the right mixture of big rocks and little rocks. That’s what you don’t understand. It’s having the right balance that makes it work. Just like the casino business.”

“Wha?”

“It’s like a casino,” I said, taking off my bandana and wiping my brow with it. “If you read that article I showed you about Dan Bishop, you’d understand. You don’t make all your money off your high rollers or your slot players. What you need is a mix of the high, low, and middle.”

My father glanced over his shoulder at the lady of the house, still watching us from the screen door thirty yards away.

“Women,” he said. “I think they’re all getting too much power.”

“Just don’t blow this job for me.”

“Let me tell you something.” He spat on the grass. “You went with Teddy full-time you wouldn’t have to work like this in the first place.”

I noticed he had a brown paper bag in his hands and he was balling it up nervously.

I tipped the wheelbarrow a little and wiped my palms on the sides of my jeans. “How many times do I have to explain this to you? I don’t want anything to do with the crew.”

He wasn’t listening. He was staring at the screen door. He gripped the brown paper bag with all his might and thrust it into my hands.

“Here, take this fuckin’ thing already,” he said.

The unmistakable weight of a gun went right from my hand to the pit of my stomach.

“What’s this?”

“It’s for Larry’s son Nicholas,” he told me.

I started feeling a little dizzy.

“I’ve got nothing to do with him.” I twisted the top of the bag into a paper swirl and looked for a place to drop it. “Why’re you giving me this?”

“He thinks you did his father,” my old man explained, running his fingers through his shock of gray hair and taking a half-done cigar out of his pocket.

I rested my butt against the side of the wheelbarrow and tried not to slide in. Something behind my eyes was starting to swell. “Why’s he think a thing like that?”

“I dunno.” My father lit the half cigar. A couple of embers fell and clung to his polo shirt. “People get ideas. Teddy wants you to go with Richie, take care of it.”

I looked up at the overcast sky and the fading sun as though there was someone up there I could appeal to. “But this was your deal all the way. I’m not even part of the Family.”

My father looked somber. “Teddy wants to see you do some work.”

“So what? If Teddy wanted me to chew glass, would I have to do that too?”

All my life I’d been trying to get away from that fat fuck, and here he was coming after me again.

“Why can’t you just see the man is an asshole?” I asked my father. “He’s dragging both of us down into the mud.”

“He is not an asshole! If it wasn’t for him I’d still be boosting cars off the street in South Philly.”

“And what’re you doing now?!” I almost shouted. “You say that like your life is so wonderful now! Don’t you see it?! This whole way of life doesn’t mean anything anymore. It’s for the museums and history books!”

“It means nothing, ha?!”

My father suddenly grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and pulled my head down. “Come here, you little motherfucker,” he said, ripping his shirt open with his free hand. “Look at these, look at these.”

Through the thickets of gray matted hair on his chest, I could see at least three bullet scars, not counting the nick onhis shoulder from Larry, and countless stab wounds. I looked up at the knobs and ridges on his face.

“Does this mean nothing?!” he demanded. “Is this for the history books? I took ten bullets and lived. I been stabbed by more cocksuckers than you ever shook hands with. I did five years in Graterford. And you’re trying to tell me it don’t mean anything?”

“That’s not what I said.”

“I’ve lived and I’ll die to keep this way of life.”

He stood back from me and banged his hands together, grabbing air and expelling it hard like an old steam engine.

“I never asked much from you,” he said. “I never expected your love. And if you don’t wanna follow my footsteps in the borgata, I guess that’s all right too. I’ll have to learn to live with that.” He paused and took another deep breath. “All I ask of you is that you be a man among men.”

A man among men. He might as well have struck a gong between my ears. Yes, that was what I wanted. To be a man among men. My father was like an old ape beating his chest and bellowing at the sky. He had this brutal churning force going inside of him and he was trying to pass it on to me. And the truth was that deep down I wanted it too.

The lady of the house was still gaping at us from the screen door. My father’s shirt was open and my jeans were falling down. We straightened out quickly and both started laughing like it was some big joke. She must’ve thought we were both crazy.

My father buttoned his shirt and got a long brown Ace comb out of the back pocket of his chinos. “Now Nicky has gone around making threats against the family,” he said quietly, trying again to tame his hair. “Your family. As a man, you know what you have to do.”

“And what happens if I say no?”

“I dunno.” He gave up and put the comb away. “A guy loses his nerve, anything could happen.”

“It’s not right,” I said halfheartedly.

But it was a foregone conclusion. Something had to be done about Nicky. We couldn’t go to the police and ask for protection. Because then we’d have to talk about what happened to Nicky’s father.

I picked up one side of the wheelbarrow and looked at it. The mixture was beginning to harden and if I didn’t pour the rest of it quickly, the whole load wouldn’t be of any use.

“It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world for you, do some work,” my father said, looking at the unfinished steps. “You could get outa doing this awhile.”

“I told you, I like doing this.” I started picking pieces of dried concrete off my arms and shoulders.

“Well, you ain’t any good at it.” My father stepped on one of the forms I was using for the steps. “It’s all uneven here. Besides, you gotta reinforce it. We’re on an island here. Otherwise, a year from now, this will all be cracking and they’ll have to rip it out. You should’ve asked somebody what you were doing first.”

I put down the paper bag and picked up the trowel. We both stopped talking and just stared at the steps awhile.

I wondered if it was too late for me to get into demolition work.