Johnny Porno

Chapter 43

“The man tells me I have to stay, I have to stay,” Nick told his wife over the phone. “I can’t come home yet.”

“Are you in trouble?” she asked.

“No, but I would be if I left, so I’m staying.”

He saw Eddie Vento leave earlier and although it didn’t look like he was coming back, Nick wasn’t sure he could take the chance and leave. That had been a few hours ago. Now it was after one in the morning and none of Vento’s crew was there.

To top it off, word was they were out searching for John Albano.

“It’s not fair you have to stay,” Angela said. “Nick, I mean it. You’re always the one getting stuck. I wish he’d find himself another driver.”

“Okay, that’s enough,” he said. “I can’t leave yet and you’re starting to talk stupid. I’ll be home soon as I can, but don’t forget I don’t have the car. I’ll have to take a cab.”

She was saying something else when he hung up.

Nick wound up staying until closing. At three o’clock he called a local car service. He waited outside where he lit a cigarette at the curb. He was alone on the street and anxious to get home. He leaned against a car and took a nervous drag on his cigarette. Headlights turned onto the street at the corner and got his attention.

He assumed it was his cab and tossed the cigarette as the car pulled into a space alongside the fire hydrant about five yards from where he was standing.

Nick put his arms out. “What the fuck?” he said.

The car’s brights flashed, blinding Nick. He shielded his eyes and didn’t see it was John Albano until it was too late.

He took the first punch to his gut and doubled over. He was gasping for air when a knee smashed his face. Nick dropped to his knees first, then the rest of the way face-first against the pavement.

He lay there unconscious a good fifteen minutes before the local car service driver woke him.

John had called his mother again from the lobby of the hotel when he left Nancy. Marie Albano had been asleep but still managed to answer on the second ring. She said she’d gotten a phone call from his ex-wife earlier, something about the mob wanting their money back. It took John ten minutes to calm his mother. When she was listening again, he told her to take his son someplace safe the next day and not to tell Nancy or anybody else where they were.

It took him another few minutes to reassure his mother that Nancy had been lying. When Marie Albano finally let her son hang up, John rushed to get to the bar in Williamsburg. He hoped for an opportunity to talk with Eddie Vento alone.

He drove to the bar using the Belt Parkway and BQE, speeding the entire way. He parked off the corner of South Second and Hooper Streets, less than a block from the bar. John figured it was the last place Eddie’s crew would look for him.

He waited until the place emptied out, but still there was no sign of Eddie Vento.

He waited another half hour and was about to leave when he spotted Nick Santorra. The punk had stepped into the street with a cigarette and seemed to be waiting for somebody. All the bullshit Santorra had pulled over the last week ran through John’s head; the verbal abuse, the fifty bucks it had cost him for knocking the punk out, the flat tires and the windshield. It was like that last poke in the chest the first time John had hit him.

He drove and parked alongside a fire hydrant. Santorra approached the car with his hands out wide and was shooting his mouth off about something when John turned on the brights. Then he got out and did a quick number on the punk. A few minutes later he saw he had blood on his pants. He stopped for a red light about three blocks from where he’d left Santorra in the street. He found a packet of tissues in Melinda’s glove compartment and wiped his pants as best he could.

On his way back to her place he took a slight detour to see if the Buick had been found yet. He saw a police car double-parked alongside it and kept driving. He figured Eddie Vento already had somebody in the police department looking for him or why else would they stop to search a car with a broken windshield in the middle of the night?

When he got to her place, Melinda was waiting up for him. She looked exhausted and angry when she answered the door, but then she kissed him long and hard on the mouth.

“I was so worried,” she said when their mouths separated. “I want you to leave phone numbers where I can reach you. I can’t stand waiting around like this. I didn’t know where you were or what was happening.”

“It’s okay,” he told her. “Everything is okay.”

“I mean it, damn it. I want phone numbers there on the fridge so I can call someone. This was horrible waiting here like this.”

John kissed her. She kissed him back, this time getting more involved. He used his foot to shut the door behind him as she squeezed him tight against her. They were still kissing when Melinda locked the door.

It was a simple note, but telltale nonetheless.

It had not been easy for him to kill his wife. He had loved Kathleen and had hoped they would last, but the brief note she had left on their refrigerator door back at the house and how she’d seemed to try and trap him over the phone afterward told him it was over.

He had used a credit card to break into her hotel room and was waiting for her outside the bathroom while she showered. She had just stepped out of the bathroom and was turning toward the bed when he shot her in the stomach. The force of the bullet knocked her to the floor flat on her back.

The shock registered in her eyes. She was gasping for air as Billy took one of her hands.

“It’s okay,” he’d told her. “Lay quiet.”

Her arms had started to twitch when she tried to sit up. Blood spurted from her mouth. Billy felt a tear run down one side of his face when she began to choke.

He squeezed her hand tight as she tried to speak. She could only manage to say part of his name.

“Illy… Illy.”

After she’d passed, Billy dragged her body inside the bathroom. He left the Do Not Disturb sign on the motel room doorknob. It would probably be maid service that discovered Kathleen when they went to clean the room later in the morning. Then Billy took his wife’s Karmann Ghia from the motel parking lot just to delay the inevitability of the police looking for and finding it. He had figured he would use Kathleen’s car rather than his own and then dump it when he was finished with John Albano. He could always steal something off the street to escape with afterward.

Now that he could focus on Albano alone, he headed east on the Belt Parkway toward Canarsie. Unless he had spent the night with his girlfriend at her place in Queens, Albano would have to return home for work Monday morning.

He’d made it to Canarsie within fifteen minutes of leaving the motel. He was careful with the lights on Rockaway Parkway, making sure to stop well in advance of them rather than take the chance on running one and being stopped. He drove past the firehouse and then the building where Albano lived and saw the old man was sitting on the stoop again.

He parked the Karmann Ghia on the next block and took his time walking back. He hoped the old man would go inside so he wouldn’t have to pass him, but the guy was still sitting there when Billy crossed the street.

“Who you are?” the geezer asked.

“I’m looking for a friend,” Billy said.

“Who?”

“John Albano.”

“He’s not home.”

“You sure?”

“I doesn’t see him.”

“I’ll try his door. Excuse me.”

The old man wouldn’t move. Billy stepped around him.

Nearly fifteen minutes had passed and the guy that had gone upstairs to look for John wasn’t back yet. Alexis Elias hadn’t seen where the man had parked, but he’d recognized the sports car when it passed in front of the building earlier. It looked like the one that had nearly hit John Albano a week ago.

Unless he’d gone out through the back, the man was still upstairs. Elias decided to go see. He climbed the two flights of stairs, then stopped to remove his shoes when he reached the third-floor landing. John’s apartment was off to the right. Elias shuffled to the door and listened. He heard a chair being dragged along the floor and quickly knocked on the door.

There was no answer. Elias knocked again, then put his ear to the door, but the movement inside the apartment had stopped.

“Hey,” he yelled. “What you’re doing in there?”

He knocked one more time.

“I call police,” he said.

The footsteps inside the apartment moved quickly. Elias was still leaning close to the door when it opened. Then, before he could react, a hand reached out and grabbed him by the front of his T-shirt and pulled him inside the apartment. He was half dragged, half shoved into an armchair in the living room. Then the man stepped back and Elias saw he had a gun.

“Mobster,” Elias said.

“Not exactly,” the man said. “But who are you?”

“What you are doing here?”

“You first.”

Elias sat back in the chair.

“Okay,” the man said. “Have it your way.”

He raised the gun. Elias didn’t flinch.

“Tough old bastard,” the man said. Then he lowered the gun a few inches and whipped it up fast and hard under Elias’s chin. The old man’s eyes fluttered a few times before they closed.