Johnny Porno

Chapter 37

“You put on any more weight, Jimmy, I’m not sure I’ll be able to reach it next time,” Sharon Dowell said. “I’ll need an oxygen tube to get anywhere’s close.”

She was sitting on the couch with her legs up on an ottoman. Except for a pair of underwear, she was naked underneath her robe. She had been smoking a Virginia Slims cigarette. She took a last drag before crushing it out in an ashtray already crowded with crumpled cigarette butts.

“I’m serious,” she said. “That stomach pressing down on my head. It’s not easy going down on you. My neck hurts now.”

Jimmy was standing in her bathroom doorway. He had just pulled up his XXXL boxer underwear. He looked from Sharon to his watch and said, “You talk to the kid?”

Sharon moved the ashtray from her lap to the end table. “This morning.”

“And?”

“I laid it on thick. Told him it was Jerry’s birthday a few weeks ago. It was.”

Jimmy pulled his XXL polo shirt over his head. He struggled finding one of the arm holes. “Who’s Jerry?”

“The guy directed the movie,” Sharon said.

“Oh. I’m wondering we’re better off keeping the number low or not. Guys like Louis, con artists at heart, sometimes they smell a sting.”

“Lowballing it’s one way to go, sure, but guys like Louis are always looking for the big score,” Sharon said. “Lowballing might discourage him.”

“And we don’t wanna do that.”

“You said you’d have a car. That still a go?”

“Yeah,” Jimmy said. He was pulling on his pants now. “There’s a line waiting on Louis. He owes guys all over.”

“Car’s gotta look the same as the one in the movie.”

“Guy over in Canarsie said he had one, Fleetwood Eldorado. They got a ring there, some crew working with a guy named DeMeo, they’re rippin’ off cars like kids takin’ bubblegum from a grocery store.”

Sharon yawned.

“Guy says he’ll bring it over late tonight, early tomorrow.”

“Then I’ll get Louis to come over and take a look at it,” she said. “It’ll help he didn’t see the movie, though, he don’t know exactly what it looks like. I tried baiting him with that, seeing the movie. I don’t think he’s much interested.”

“You got the kid hopped up on the director angle, it won’t make a difference he saw the movie or not. Just don’t let him get too close. The paint the guy uses might not be dry.”

“So long’s he don’t wanna meet Jerry. Last I heard, the poor guy’s hiding from all the court crap.”

Jimmy sat in an armchair facing the couch to put his shoes on. “It don’t work, my friend from Canarsie comes picks the car up the next day, brings it back.”

“You’re not paying him for it?”

“Guy owes me a favor.”

“You probably should air those out, your shoes.”

Jimmy finished tying his shoes, cleared his throat and then stood up.

Sharon said, “I have to give the guy anything, he brings the car tonight?”

“I’ll leave you something, but you could always blow him, keep it for yourself.”

“Fat and funny.”

“It wasn’t a joke.”

The two stared at each other until Jimmy finally smiled.

“Yeah, it was,” he said.

“Maybe it’s the years since,” Sharon said. “After Benny was married I wasn’t picky enough.”

Jimmy winked again.

“Well, it’s up to you now,” Sharon said.

“I got him going pretty good with this car. Told him the guy wants to buy it gets wood from the idea. Said he can’t wait to sniff the seat where the broad sat behind the wheel.”

“Louis’ll like that,” Sharon said.

Jimmy grabbed his sports jacket from the back of a dining room chair. He pulled his wallet from his pants, pulled out two twenty dollar bills and dropped them on the table.

“Get some cold cuts,” he said. “The other twenty’s for the guy brings the car.”

“And if I do blow him?” Sharon said.

“I’ll tell you what,” Jimmy said. “Guy tells me he liked it, I’ll owe you.”

Nick had been lost more than twenty minutes before he remembered the road atlas Mike DiBella had told him he kept under the front passenger seat of the Monte Carlo. He had taken a peek at it before leaving Williamsburg to get a general idea of where Northport was in relation to the LIE, and although Nick found the town easily enough, once it was time to get out of there the escape routes he had planned all turned to shit.

The adrenaline rush he’d felt after breaking John Albano’s windshield had become genuine panic when he first realized he was lost. After driving in circles in and around Northport and then winding up on Malcolms Landing for a third straight time, Nick had started to sweat.

He parked alongside a fire hydrant, grabbed the road atlas and found the page with Northport. He glanced to his right and saw the water that was the Long Island Sound, then looked back at the map and realized he had driven in the exact opposite direction of the LIE. He kept the atlas open and drove street by street, purposely circumnavigating the hot spot on Main Street where it was still possible, he feared, to run into John Albano. A few minutes later, he’d found Bayview Avenue and eventually Route 25A.

It was a while before Nick was familiar enough with his surroundings to relax. He was headed east on the LIE and thinking he should play up the family emergency he’d told back at the bar and maybe spend some free time making it look good. There were a few theaters he knew of in Queens and on Long Island where he wouldn’t be spotted and decided on Green Acres in Valley Stream.

He was relatively calm again when he remembered yesterday’s dry run for Eddie Vento to John Albano’s Massapequa stop. It had pissed him off to be used like that. Nick didn’t appreciate being a stand-in for Albano or a shill for the police. Between running Vento’s family around like a chauffeur and having to eat the punch he’d taken from Albano, and then having to play make-believe for the cops, Nick was feeling more like a gopher than a guy on his way up. It certainly wasn’t helping his ego to know the fifty dollars he’d fronted Stanislaus Bartosz had been wasted on a dead man.

It was close to five o’clock when he pulled into the theater parking lot on Sunrise Highway. He had a cigarette to further relax his nerves. He strolled outside the theater to look at the movie posters lining one of the walls and was curious when he spotted the kid from The Andy Griffith Show on one of the posters. Opie, he remembered the kid’s name was.

Nick went inside the theater to check the times and saw there was a 5:30 showing of American Graffiti. He bought a ticket, a bucket of popcorn laced with butter and an oversized Coke. He took a seat in the rear of the theater and began munching on the greasy popcorn. He was still wondering about Opie and whatever had happened to him after The Andy Griffith Show when he spilled some popcorn onto his chest and realized he was still wearing the whistle.

Then Nick remembered the kid that had been playing stoopball across the street from John Albano’s Buick and he was nervous all over again.