Johnny Porno

Chapter 39

Louis took the Belt Parkway west. When they drove past the Cross Bay Boulevard exit, Holly turned in her seat.

“Isn’t that where you live?” she asked.

“It’s where I get off to go home, but we’re not going there.”

“Where we going?”

“I’m not sure yet. Staten Island maybe. Maybe Jersey.”

“Why?”

“It’ll be safer. Just in case.”

“In case what?”

It was her first show of fear.

“Why risk it and find out?” Louis said.

He was thinking ahead of a potential disaster; if Nancy broke down and ratted him out, for instance. Louis wouldn’t return to his apartment until he knew for sure. He would call work in the morning and remind them about his emergency the other day. He’d ask for the rest of the week off and hope they’d forward his check when he knew where he was going.

Holly still didn’t know that Nancy had been involved, but Louis couldn’t be sure his ex-wife hadn’t seen his girlfriend. If she had, Nancy might blow a gasket and give him up; a woman scorned was a dangerous animal.

They were close to the exit for the Verrazano Narrows Bridge when Louis decided to get out of New York.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been to Staten Island,” Holly said.

“You don’t know?”

“I always meant to take a ferry ride, but haven’t got around to it yet.”

“Only cost a nickel to ride that ferry,” Louis said. “Staten Island was like going to the country when I was a kid. My uncle had a bungalow there. It’s starting to get crowded now. Pretty soon it’ll be as bad as Brooklyn.”

He glanced at the bag of money between her legs, checking on it to make sure it was still there and hadn’t flown out the window or something. It was starting to make him nervous, all that cash.

“We’re gonna have to lay low for a while,” he said. “With the money, I mean. And you can’t talk about it with anyone.”

“Of course not,” Holly said. “I would never.”

They drove in silence through Staten Island to the Goethals Bridge exit on the expressway. Louis was thinking they’d go down to the Jersey shore someplace and stay at a hotel there a few days. Holly would give him shit about taking off from school, but he could always put her on a bus or train back to the city.

“I guess we’re going to New Jersey,” she said when they were mid-span across the bridge.

“You ever been to the shore?” Louis said.

“Nope.”

“Wildwood? Atlantic City?”

“Nope.”

“Maybe we’ll go there. They’re talking about allowing gambling there some day, Atlantic City.”

“I have class in the morning.”

“Skip it.”

“I’m not sure I should.”

“Your class with the perverted professor?”

“Yeah. It’s going to be weird until finals next week. I’m going to feel awkward.”

“I doubt you’ll need to worry about anything in that class,” Louis said. “He’ll probably give you an A whether you show up or not.”

“I have my other class in the afternoon. That one I shouldn’t skip.”

“Not even once?”

Holly shook her head no.

Louis didn’t see her. “Huh?”

“I guess,” she said. “But I’ll have to be back Tuesday for acting class.”

“Consider it done. Meantime, though, I’m gonna cover you with all that cash after we count it.”

“Cool,” Holly said.

“Yeah,” Louis said. “It is, isn’t it?”

John stopped at the pool party to see his son. He gave him a hug and a kiss and was on his way. A few minutes later he spotted the Buick on Merrick Boulevard and parked behind it.

The engine was still running, which meant it had been hot-wired by whoever had taken it. The gym bag was gone, of course, and the doors were locked. John saw there was a pay phone and used it to call the bar.

“Fast Eddie’s,” Eugene answered.

“It’s John. Nick Santorra there?”

“Hey, John, how’d you make out? You find the kid?”

The question caught him off guard. The missing money was all he could think about.

“Yeah,” John said. “He’s okay, thanks. Was on the rides at a bazaar. Santorra there?”

“A bazaar?” Eugene said. “Fuckin’ kids.”

“Nick there?”

“No, not yet.”

John realized he couldn’t mention the missing money. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll call back.”

“Right,” Eugene said.

John hung up and tried to focus. In another hour or two Eddie Vento would start to wonder where the hell he was. Then they would remember the emergency call Nancy had made about his kid. They would call some of the guys John had stopped to collect from earlier and it would start to look bad. No later than tomorrow morning he would be the worst kind of fugitive, one from the mob.

He had to get the Buick off Merrick Boulevard before it was towed. Then he had to get Nancy’s car back to her. He drove to a gas station a few blocks away and told one of the mechanics about the Buick. He gave the guy a five-dollar bill and drove him where it remained idling at the curb on Merrick Boulevard. The mechanic used a slim-jim to unlock the door.

John drove the Buick back to the gas station with the mechanic following in Nancy’s Dodge. He used the phone at the station to call Nancy, but nobody answered at the house.

He asked the mechanic if he could leave the Dodge there until someone could pick it up later. The guy hesitated until John handed him another five-dollar bill. He tried calling Nancy back, but there was still no answer. He wasn’t sure if he should call Melinda, but decided he had to. She answered on the first ring.

“I’m in a spot,” he told her.

“John?”

“Yeah, sorry. It’s me.”

“You okay?”

“No, not really. I was robbed. My car was. I just got it back but they took the money I was carrying.”

“What money?” she said, then must have realized what he was talking about. “Oh, God, John!” she gasped. “Oh, God.”

She’d watched the first four innings of the Yankee game before she fell asleep on the couch. The phone woke her. It was John and he’d been robbed, he told her. She listened to an abbreviated story of what had happened and grew more nervous by the second. She agreed to meet him in Valley Stream. When she got there John was waiting alongside his car.

The first thing Melinda noticed when she parked in front of the Buick was the windshield. It had been shattered.

“What happened?” she asked.

“I think that was the setup,” John said. “Happened in Northport. I think the guy robbed me did that first, the windshield. Then at the bazaar I got out of the car without thinking. I left the bag with the money and when I came out the car was gone. I found it a few blocks from here. They left it running with the doors locked.”

Melinda made him retell the story starting with the call from his ex-wife. When he finished telling her the details she was suspicious, but not of John.

“Your ex-wife called and told you your son was abducted?”

“She’s a moron,” John said. “She did it to prove a point to her husband. Claims he always defends me. It had to do with him letting me in their house and making me a cup of coffee. She’s nuts. Apparently he figured it out too and left her.”

“She told you she made a bet and you believe her?”

“It’s what she said. It’s crazy, but so’s she.”

“You sure she isn’t involved?”

“What?”

“Your ex, John. You sure she isn’t part of it? I mean, it’s pretty crazy what she did, calling you like that, claiming your son was abducted.”

“She called the bar first. They’re the ones told me.”

“The bar where the money has to go,” Melinda said. “Doesn’t that make you look even worse now?”

“Was the only way for her to get in touch with me. I gave her the number in case of an emergency when I first started working weekends.”

“Something isn’t right,” Melinda said. “I can’t see a mother doing something like that. It’s vicious, John, and it’s calculated.”

“Nancy doesn’t know Santorra. This was him, I know it.”

“The guy you had trouble with?”

“Yeah, the guy robbed me. Same guy got loud in your diner. He’s the one broke the windshield. He probably sent the guy who hit me in front of your house.”

Melinda wasn’t buying it. Something wasn’t right about his ex-wife and the story he’d just told.

“You sure they don’t know each other, your ex and this other guy?” she said.

“What? No way.”

“You’re sure?”

“Positive.”

“Maybe it wasn’t him.”

“Had to be.”

“Maybe it wasn’t.”

“It wasn’t Nancy,” John said. “There’s no way. She’s not smart enough.”

“Unless she wasn’t depending on her smarts,” Melinda said. “Tell me again what happened when you got there? What did she say? What she do, your ex?”

John told her what had happened again. She could tell he was skipping some of it and slowed him down.

“I’m in a bind here,” he said. “I don’t know what to do next. I had any brains, I’d hop a train somewhere.”

“Let’s just figure this out,” she said. “Step by step, what happened? Go slow.”

He huffed a few times in frustration. Melinda coached him along. “She waved you inside, brought you to the back of a tent, then out to a parking lot and grabbed your arm?”

“I was furious when she told me it was a bet,” John said. “I told her she was crazy, then tried to head back to the car. She grabbed my arm and apologized.”

“What do you mean? Why?”

“I don’t know. She was trying to explain herself. She told me about Nathan and the bet she made with him.”

“Did you talk to him, to Nathan?”

“No, why would I? It’s not his fault she’s crazy. He’s a decent guy.”

“And then you went back out and the car was gone.”

“Yeah,” John said. “Why? I don’t get it.”

Melinda sighed.

“What?” John repeated.

“Think about it,” she said.

“I have. I did. What?”

“Unless I’m completely off, John, it sounds like your son being abducted was one big diversion. And your ex-wife getting you inside the tent and then out to the parking lot was the biggest part of it.”

John stared blankly.

Melinda huffed. “Think about it,” she said.