Johnny Porno

Chapter 42

“I used to come here when I was a kid,” Eddie Vento said. “My grandfather used to take me on the boat rides they had. Was a nickel or something.”

“My old man said it was a swamp, Canarsie,” Kelly said.

They had met at the pier a few minutes earlier. Vento led the detective around it starting from the east end, where he pointed toward the sanitation fills off the Pennsylvania Avenue exit on the Belt Parkway.

“Still stinks when it’s humid,” he said. “The shit the city dumps there. I used to gag sometimes.”

“You sure it’s the garbage?” Kelly said.

Vento didn’t understand until he saw Kelly was pointing at a group of Hispanics sitting around a late-night barbecue. He ignored the remark and said, “I got a guy missing in action. He’s missing and so are copies of the film and a lot of money.”

“How much money?”

“Enough I’m looking for help.”

“He’s one of yours?”

“I just said.”

“Any ideas?”

“Not really. Only something ain’t right. I just give him a bunch of new stops, he doubled up what he had and then this. There’s some other shit going on between him and another guy don’t make sense either. Run his plates. I already sent people where he lives. I need you to track his plates.”

“I can’t put an APB on a guy robbed the mob, Eddie. I’d need more of a reason. Legally, I mean. Wouldn’t look good.”

“Now you’re being a jerkoff.”

Kelly stopped walking. They were at the north end of the pier. Kelly pointed out across Jamaica Bay.

“I once took a broad there, the island out there,” he said. “Jewish broad worked for my brother wound up ruining his life.”

Vento waited for more.

Kelly said, “He was a happily married man, my brother. Very religious. Sanctimoniously so, until the Jewess with the big tits had him eating out of her hand.”

“He was getting some on the side. So?”

“Point is, except for under her bra, he never bothered looking into the twat he was banging. She stung him for close to twenty grand.”

“You couldn’t help him?”

“We weren’t talking. When I say he was religious, I mean it. My brother should’ve been a priest instead of a lawyer. He didn’t approve of my lifestyle.”

“He knew you were dirty?”

Kelly flashed a sarcastic smile. “No, he didn’t,” he said. “But he knew I screwed around on my wife and that I drank. Until his girlfriend, those weren’t venal sins. Screwing around he thought of as mortal sin. Seriously so.”

“Okay, I bite. What happened?”

“She went and dropped some pictures in the mail. This after he’d re-mortgaged his house and handed over twenty grand. My sister-in-law saw them and ran to the pastor of their parish, nitwit that she was, and when my brother found that out, his priest knew, he went down his basement and blew his brains out.”

“Jesus Christ, over a broad?”

“Over his sins. I’m convinced it had to do with her going to the priest, his wife. Which was one reason she never saw the cash he’d stashed in a safe-deposit box, which is another reason I don’t use one. I like my cash close at hand. A good old American safe with a loaded thirty-eight inside the event it’s some dumb bastard comes to rob me, has me open the thing for him. Anyway, I found one of the safe deposit keys on Michael’s St. Christopher metal. God only knows who had the other one. I know it wasn’t the broad he was screwing because there was still money inside when I opened it.”

“Tell me you went after her.”

“I did the due diligence he should’ve, albeit too late.”

“And?”

Kelly pointed to the island. “Like I said, he was a sanctimonious asshole, Michael was, but he was still my brother.”

“And I needed to hear this why again?”

“Your girlfriend,” Kelly said. “Something tells me she’s not as intimidated of you as you think.”

“Explain,” Vento said.

Kelly had to be careful. He couldn’t let Vento know he’d tried to have her killed and had failed. He said, “You know about her other boyfriend, right, the one died in the joint?”

“The jerk she was all goo-goo over, yeah.”

“She was busted with him. You know that?”

“I’m the one told you. Yeah, she got caught transporting or some shit. Big deal.”

“So, when he died, they had to know she was working for you and they never followed up on her. You know if she gave the boyfriend up?”

“Do you?”

“When she start with you?”

Vento shrugged. “The guy was already inna’ joint I put her to work.”

“When’d you start fucking her?”

“Week or so after he was locked up. So?”

“It’s worth looking into is all.”

“You know this cunt is talking to the law or not?”

“I don’t, not officially. I’m just saying is all, you’d be smart to perform some due diligence of your own.”

“The fuck does that mean?”

“Maybe you should take a look-see around that apartment of yours and make sure there aren’t any electronic devices you didn’t put there yourself.”

Vento took a moment. “Okay,” he said. “I will.”

“As for the other thing,” Kelly said, “maybe your MIA saw an opportunity and took it. He was carrying a lot of cash, it had to be tempting. He have any roots?”

“A wife and kid. Ex-wife.”

“Then the kid is the one we should work through.”

“We don’t fuck with kids.”

“You can always farm it out. I don’t mind mercenary work.”

“No,” Vento said.

“You want the money back?”

Vento glared at Kelly.

“I’m just saying,” the detective said. “There’s a reward for this money, I’m not shy about getting things done. The guy gives a fuck about his kid, I’ll get to him.”

Vento remained silent.

Kelly said, “I’ll take that as a yes.”

Louis took the Garden State Parkway to exit 40, then the White Horse Pike East. He told Holly they would spend the night at one of the motels outside Atlantic City and go to the Boardwalk the next day for some saltwater taffy, maybe go on the rides on the Steel Pier.

He pulled into a motel parking lot with a view of the water three miles from the famous Boardwalk. The Wind Bay Inn featured a sad-looking swimming pool out front, color television and electric-fingers beds. He paid cash for the room and asked for three dollars in change for phone calls he might or might not make, depending on his mood after getting a few hours sleep.

Holly was still excited about their adventure. She pulled off her bell-bottoms and paraded around the room in her white panties and halter. Louis used the bathroom first, taking a shower after he was finished with the toilet. He wrapped a towel around his waist when he came out. It fell off when he went to lift the gym bag.

“You shaved yourself?” Holly asked.

Louis followed where she was looking and realized he’d exposed himself. “Had to,” he said. “Jock rash.”

Holly pointed. “What’s that white stuff?”

“Cream for the rash.”

Holly wasn’t convinced. “They made you shave for that?”

“It’s not VD,” Louis said, “if that’s what you think.”

“Okay, rash from what then? From where?”

Here we go, he thought.

“I don’t know what,” he said. “Running probably. I went for a jog last week and felt a cut there, a burn, and I didn’t take care of it.”

“You’re sure it’s not crabs?”

Louis set the gym bag on the bed. “Where would I get crabs?”

“From another woman.”

“I didn’t sleep with another woman.”

“Your ex-wife.”

He unzipped the bag. “Let’s not ruin this, okay?”

Holly put a hand across the gym bag.

“The rash is why we didn’t have sex this morning, isn’t it?”

“Partly. Move your hand.”

“No, tell me. Is it really a rash or something else?”

Louis pulled the bag away. “It’s a rash, Holly. That’s what it is, a rash. Men get those sometimes. It isn’t the end of the world. I went to the doctor and he gave me the cream, told me to shave myself and apply it.”

“Okay, if that’s the case, then we can fuck.”

“Don’t take it the wrong way, but right now I’d rather count this money.”

Holly reached behind her and undid the halter. It dropped from around her neck to her lap, exposing her breasts.

“And now?” she said.

Louis looked from her breasts to the bag and said, “Just a rough count first, but let me chain that door lock first.”

Nancy hadn’t been slapped that hard since the fifth grade when Sister Mary Michael caught her and two of her friends smoking in the lavatory at Holy Family during homeroom. She remembered she couldn’t even cry it had hurt so much.

It’s what she was thinking about after swallowing two Bayer aspirin at the kitchen sink. The tall one had pushed his way inside the house and then helped her up with one hand before slapping her across the face with the other. She remembered gasping from the slap and then there were bright lights she saw in her head just before she hit the floor.

She’d heard footsteps on the stairs behind her when she sat up, but the tall one was still standing there right in front of her, daring her to get up. She hadn’t moved.

When the short one had finished looking through the house, he stood over her, too, then pointed a threatening finger at her and said, “This shit you and your ex pulled today isn’t going away until the money turns up.”

She had been too scared to reply. She was thinking she had nodded and might’ve said, “Okay.”

Then the short one had kneeled down alongside her and reached a hand up her skirt and grabbed her there hard and she gasped again.

“I’ll pull them out one a time, your cunt hairs, I have to come back,” he had said.

After they left, Nancy had managed to crawl to the kitchen and use a chair to stand up again. She glanced at her reflection in the small mirror alongside the wall phone and could see the right side of her face was puffy.

Then she was sick and had to use the toilet. She was still dry-heaving when she heard the phone ring. Her ribs hurt too much to move. She ignored the call.

A few minutes later the phone rang again. Nancy had managed to make it back to the kitchen. She answered the phone in a weak, cracked voice.

“Hello?”

“Nan?”

She couldn’t speak.

“It’s John.”

“Oh, God!” she cried. “What have I done?”

John’s emotions ran the gamut from guilt to rage after Nancy told him what had happened. As much as she deserved the trouble she had brought on herself, he couldn’t deal with a woman being slapped around. He did his best to calm her down and walk her through what she had to do, but it wasn’t easy. Now that she was finally remorseful, it was getting in the way.

He told her to go upstairs and turn on the lights in her bathroom and bedroom and to try and peek out a window to see if the two goons that had been inside the house were gone. He was guessing they weren’t, and when she returned to the phone downstairs a few minutes later crying hysterically again, she confirmed his suspicion.

The next part was tougher. He had her go down to the basement and then out through the cellar stairs to the backyard. Then she was to climb the fence to their neighbor’s yard and walk out the driveway on the next street where he would pick her up. If she met anybody along the way, if one of the neighbors saw her or walked into her or whatever, she was to keep going until he picked her up.

He’d made the call from a telephone booth on Cross Bay Boulevard, close enough to be there in a few minutes, but also exposed enough to be seen from a passing car. “Don’t say anything to anybody,” he’d told her. “Just get out of that driveway and head up toward the far end of the block. We don’t want anyone spotting the car or they’ll give a description.”

“I won’t,” Nancy told him.

Five minutes later he positioned himself low behind the steering wheel of Melinda’s Valiant. He had parked half a block from the house directly around the block from Nancy’s. Six minutes later he spotted her in the middle of the street, not where he had told her to go. If one of Vento’s men were circling the block, they would spot her.

So would anybody looking out their windows.

He pulled away from the curb and raced up the block. He was waving at her to get in when she screamed about as loud as a woman could.

“Jesus Christ,” he said once she was inside the car.

He could see the windows of the nearby houses light up as he pulled away.

“I’m sorry, John,” Nancy said. “I’m scared. I’m so scared.”

“Okay, calm down,” he told her as he sped through the neighborhood toward the highway.

“You get their names, the guys hit you?” he asked.

“No, but it was just one guy hit me,” Nancy said. “And he grabbed me, too. Down there.”

John felt his teeth clenching.

“Where can I take you is safe?” he said.

“I don’t know. Nathan’s, I guess. His sister.”

“Did you call him?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“He left me, John. I told you.”

“He’s still your husband.”

“What could he do?”

He knew she was right. It wasn’t Nathan’s problem to start with and shouldn’t become his now.

“What about your boyfriend? You call him yet?”

She was sniffling again. “I don’t have his number.”

“What do you mean, you don’t have it?”

“He’s not home. I don’t know where he is.”

“It was him, though, right? Louis took the money.”

She began to cry again.

“Son of a bitch,” John said.

“I’m sorry,” she sobbed. “I really am.”

As soon as John had figured out she was still screwing her first husband, he’d started divorce proceedings and moved out. The marriage had been a mistake, but they’d had a child together. He could live with his bruised ego, but there was no way he’d walk away from his son.

He had never confronted her about Louis when he found out because it didn’t matter. He and Nancy weren’t happy together and it wasn’t Louis’s fault. John had done what he had to do instead of making a bigger drama than was necessary. He’d moved out and filed divorce papers and seen his kid whenever he wanted until she’d started dating Nathan Ackerman and instituted new visitation rules.

Then when he’d lost his union job, John was too busy hustling odd jobs for an income to support his son and himself. The biggest mistake had turned out to be taking the weekend job Eddie Vento had offered him at the bar in Williamsburg. The way John saw it, even though Nancy had set him up so Louis could rob him, at least some of the responsibility was his own for getting involved with people he knew he shouldn’t have.

Those people.

It was the only reason he didn’t throw her out of Melinda’s car right then instead of pulling into a hotel parking lot on Conduit Boulevard near JFK and helping her hide from the people who were really after him. He escorted her up to a room on the third floor overlooking the Belt Parkway and sat her down on the bed while he dialed Nathan’s sister’s house. The phone rang three times before a woman picked up.

“I’m very sorry to trouble you at this time, but is Nathan there?”

“He’s sleeping. Who is this?”

“My name is John Albano. I’m Nathan’s wife’s ex-husband, one of them.”

“What’s this about?”

“It’s an emergency. Can you please put Nathan on?”

There was a pause on the line John assumed was the woman waiting for more of an explanation. Then she said, “Hold.”

John tried to hand the phone off to Nancy, but she waved him away.

“He won’t talk to me,” she said. “Please, John.”

“Hello?”

It was Nathan.

“It’s John, Nathan. I’m very sorry to bother you.”

“What’s wrong?”

John gave him an abbreviated version of the story, then asked if he would help Nancy.

“Is your son okay?” Nathan asked first.

“Jack’s fine, Nathan. He’s with my mother.”

“Thank God for that.”

“Can you help Nancy in the meantime?”

“I was supposed to travel to Boston in the morning, but I already canceled. I told them it was a family emergency. It is, I suppose. I was planning on getting my things from the house. Where is she?”

“Right here at the hotel. She just checked in. I have to get going soon, though. I can’t stay.”

“Her first husband used her to rob her second husband and now her third husband is going to hide her from the mob,” Nathan said. “Is that about it?”

John couldn’t help chuckling. “It’s almost funny, you put it that way,” he said.

“You’re a better man than me, John.”

“Not in a million years, but I’ll understand if you don’t want to get involved.”

“Give me the address,” Nathan said. “I’ll come by but not tonight. I’ll pass by in the morning. I can’t make any promises after that.”

“Understood,” John said. He gave Nathan the hotel address and said goodnight.

“Good night,” Nathan said.

John hung up and turned to Nancy.

“Is he coming?” she asked.

“You don’t deserve his help, but he’s coming tomorrow. Try not to blow it when he gets here.”

“He wants me back?”

“Jesus, Nan, no. I doubt it. Just try not chasing him away before this is over.”

Nancy started to cry again, then noticed the bruise on his forehead for the first time and pointed at it. “What happened?”

“What’s it look like?”

“Oh, my God. Now you, too.”

“Save it,” John said. “There’ll be plenty more to be sorry about if we don’t get that money.”

“They said they’d come back.”

“And they will. You can bet your ass on that.”

“Can’t you stay?”

“No.”

She covered her face with both hands.

“You should’ve thought about this before you helped that asshole rob me,” John said. “He’s probably in Vegas gambling it away while you were getting slapped around, your hero.”

“I hate him!” Nancy yelled.

“Yeah, for now,” John said. He got up and headed for the door.

“John!”

“What?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Sure,” he said. “I almost feel sorry for you.”

“Please,” Nancy said.

John left.