Johnny Porno

Chapter 48

Angela Santorra bypassed the crowd because her husband had been brought in by ambulance. She waited for him in the partitioned area he’d been assigned a few hours earlier.

She didn’t hear the curtain open when Nick was back from having his broken nose set.

“Air a kids?” he grunted more than said.

Angela could see his upper lip was very swollen along with his cheeks around the bandage.

“At Mom’s,” she said.

“Ors or ine?”

“Mine. You okay?”

“I ook it?”

She saw there was black and blue around the edges of the bandage near his eyes. His lip was gross. She wondered if he had lost any teeth.

“What happened?” she asked.

“I ot umped. Ee eyes.”

“What?”

He held up three fingers. “Eee,” he said.

“Does it hurt?”

“Ony en I eeth.”

“What?”

“Es, it urs.”

She tried not to talk to him during the drive home. He had that look that scared her, the way he sometimes got when he’d made a big bet and lost. Like a few months ago when Secretariat won the Belmont Stakes and Nick kicked the television screen in because he had wheeled all the other horses on top of Secretariat, four fifty-dollar exactas he had sworn would make them rich. His eyes had that same look then they did now.

Angela didn’t know what had happened the night before. She assumed it had to do with what had happened last week when he came home with that knot on his forehead and said some guy had given him a cheap-shot. Maybe it was the same guy again. She wasn’t sure she believed it was three guys.

She managed to keep him calm until he told her to turn left rather than right on Cross Bay Boulevard near their home.

He grumbled when she asked why.

She didn’t understand what he’d said and asked again.

“A un,” he repeated.

“I’m sorry, Nick, I can’t understand. What?”

“A un. A un.”

She saw he had those eyes again. “I can’t make out what you’re saying.”

He pumped his right hand a few times until she realized he had made a gun out of it. “A un,” he said. Then he pointed left for her to turn that way.

Angela didn’t bother asking anything else.

Holly hadn’t said a word the entire trip. Louis stopped at a service area along the Garden State Parkway to call about the Cadillac Eldorado. Sharon Dowell yawned into the phone when she answered after six rings.

“Hey, doll,” Louis said.

“Huh?” Sharon said.

“It’s me, Louis.”

“Oh, you woke me,” she said with no emotion.

“Sorry.”

“Can you call back? It’s not even noon yet.”

“Late sleeper, huh?”

“What do you want, Louis?”

“You’re the one told me to call.”

“To call, not to wake me.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s here.”

“What?”

“Your car.”

“It is?” Louis felt a tingle of excitement.

“In the driveway,” she said.

“You serious?”

“Louis, it’s too early in the morning for me to joke. You can come see it this afternoon, but not before three o’clock.”

“This is great. How’s it look?”

“Like a car. A big one.”

“Great. And you have the paperwork?”

“Yes. He already signed it over to me.”

“To you?”

“Don’t worry, I don’t want it. You buy it from me and I’ll sign it over to you.”

“Wait a minute. You bought it? For how much?”

“I bought it as a technicality. He’s waiting on the money.”

“How much?”

“Original sticker price.”

“What was that?”

“Seventy-five hundred.”

“Seventy-five? I thought it was closer to six.”

“Look, hon, we can argue about it when I’m awake.”

Louis huffed. “Alright, but the car looks good?”

“It’s beautiful, yeah.”

“Okay, I guess.”

“You guess?”

“Okay. It’s okay.”

“Good. I’m going back to sleep now. We’ll talk again later.”

“Alright.”

He didn’t like the twist to the car deal, but Louis was still excited when he hung up. He glanced at his watch and saw he could make it back to New York by mid-afternoon. When he returned to the car Holly was gone.

“Now what?” he said.

He decided he’d give her two minutes.

“Put me through to Eddie,” John told Eugene.

He had stopped on his way to his mother’s and made the call from a pay phone on Metropolitan Avenue.

“This John?” Eugene said.

“Yeah, Eugene. He in?”

There was a pause before Eddie Vento said, “It’s me.”

“I didn’t steal that money,” John said.

“I’d like to believe that, but you don’t make it easy.”

“I’m telling you I didn’t steal it. I figured you’d think it was me is why I didn’t call or come back to the bar.”

“And I’m telling you I can’t just take your word.”

“Why not ask the little prick busted my windshield when I was in Northport,” John said. “Last night I busted his nose.”

“Excuse me?”

“Santorra, Eddie. The prick gave me flats during the week, then busted my windshield the same day I was robbed.”

“You fuckin’ kidding me?”

“I broke his nose and I’m not about to apologize for it.”

“After I told you hands off? You’re talking an awful lot of shit for a guy in your position.”

“I’m no tough guy, but I’m not gonna let some punk like Santorra take potshots at my car and then maybe set me up for the crime of the century.”

“The way you two talk about each other makes me suspicious of both of yous.”

“You’re joking, right?”

“Remember who you’re talking to, jerkoff.”

John could see Melinda watching him from the car.

“You there?” Vento said.

“I’m here,” John said.

“The point is I need to see your face up close where I can read your eyes better than through a phone.”

“I’m sorry, Eddie, but I can’t do that yet. I need to clear myself of this bullshit and getting my legs broken won’t make it any easier.”

“Who said anything about breaking legs?”

“I’m not coming in yet.”

“You’ll do what I tell you to do, my friend.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” said John before he hung up.

“How’d that go?” Melinda asked when he was back in the car.

“It didn’t.”

“Where to now?”

“My mother’s place.”

“You sure?”

“I need to make sure she’s out of there. I don’t trust these pricks. They get to her, she’ll sign her house over.”

“It might buy you time if they think they’re getting paid. Why you should tell them you have it. I have it.”

“I’m not letting you or my mother get robbed.”

“Maybe we don’t see it that way, saving your life.”

John was preoccupied wondering why Nancy had gone along with such a crazy scheme. Melinda turned east onto the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway when he finally realized why.

“That bitch!”

“What?” Melinda said.

“Nancy.”

“Excuse me, but about fucking time.”

“She told my mother about the money,” John said.

“She was probably counting on telling her.”

“It’s how she justified this from the start.”

“They steal from you and your mother pays it off so nobody gets hurt.”

“Only Nancy’d be stupid enough to think nobody’d get hurt.”

“She knew exactly what she was doing,” Melinda said. “Stop telling me how stupid she is. Right now you’re the stupid one in all this. You’re the one protecting everybody else.”

John saw a sign for an exit and pointed to it. “Take McGuinness Boulevard.”

Melinda checked her rearview mirror and switched from the middle to right lane.

John leaned across the console. “I appreciate your concern,” he said. “I do.”

“It’s about time.”

“Now how ’bout a kiss?”

“How ’bout I break your face?”

“Never mind,” John said.

She was glaring at him again. He winked.

“I’ll kick your ass,” she said. “I swear it.”

Brice was growing anxious waiting for Kelly outside the Sutphin Boulevard subway stop. He knew Levin was watching from the van parked half a block behind the Mustang and was nervous Kelly might spot the surveillance. The two had trailed Kelly to a Queens precinct less than an hour ago. When Brice called the precinct, Kelly had left a message for him to meet outside the subway stop. That was ten minutes ago.

Brice finished the last of a Yoo-Hoo drink and stuffed a napkin inside the mouth of the bottle before setting it down on the floor beneath the passenger seat. As he straightened up, he glanced at the Daily News and saw the headline: Agnew’s Lawyers Start Own Probe.

“Everybody’s dirty,” he said.

A moment later he yawned into a fist. A loud knock on the passenger window made him jump.

“Jesus Christ!” he said.

Kelly removed the Daily News from the passenger seat as he got in the car. “Morning, boyo.”

“More like afternoon,” Brice said.

“I got a lift,” Kelly said.

Brice pulled the fifty-dollar bill from his pants pocket and held it up. “I think you dropped this in my car.”

Kelly waved it off. “Careful, boyo, we’re in the jungle here. They’d cut your nuts off for a pound, never mind something that big.”

Brice went to hand him the bill.

Kelly waved it off again. “Isn’t mine,” he said. “I haven’t seen one of those since I was married.”

“It was on your seat after you got out,” Brice said. “I didn’t put it there.”

“You ask Levin? He sat up front the day before, right?”

“Only till you came, but there was too much traffic back and forth between you two for it not to’ve been noticed. I know it isn’t mine.”

“Looks like it is now.”

Brice was still holding the bill. “You gonna take it?”

“It’s not mine. Keep it, boyo. Get yourself laid tonight. At least put it away before you get us both killed.”

“Shit,” Brice said, stashing the bill in his pants pocket.

“You talk to Levin?” Kelly asked.

“Nope.”

“Give him another few minutes. At least it’s not a sauna again today. Rain last night must’ve helped. Maybe it’ll keep the apes in this jungle in their trees. I’m on the train here once a few years ago, this part a the Congo, there was a guy must’ve shit his pants six years ago the stench was so foul. Which is one reason I don’t like Jamaica. A guy has to piss, his tires could disappear. But don’t talk like that in front of Levin. Guy’s a bleeding heart faggot it comes to the darkies.”

“There’s a rash of stolen cars over in Canarsie,” Brice said. “Worse than anywhere according to a friend a mine in the precinct there, the Sixty-ninth. That’s a white neighborhood.”

Kelly didn’t get it. “Yids and dagos,” he said. “Going back to forever, they had that turf, Canarsie.”

Brice checked his rearview mirror and saw the van was still there. The few minutes they were supposed to wait for Levin turned to twenty while Kelly read the newspaper. Brice finally mentioned the time and Kelly got out of the car to use the pay phone. It was noon already.

A few minutes later Kelly returned to the car thumbing toward the street.

“What is it?” Brice said.

“He’s out sick again, the lazy fuck. But I need you to drop me off somewheres.”

“Where?”

Kelly got in the car. “Queens,” he said.

“What’s there?”

“Me, when you get me there. You’re going to Levin’s place to see if he’s really out sick or just jerking my chain. I had it with that guy.”

“What? I’m not spying.”

Kelly motioned toward the street for Brice to start driving. “It’s an order,” he said. “Now, let’s go.”

The pain in his nose had shifted to his mouth and then his teeth. Then it turned into a headache and he couldn’t blink it hurt so much. Nick was on Quaaludes and codeine and had taken half a dozen aspirin as soon as he got home, but now that he was awake again, his head felt as if it would explode. He took a bunch of his wife’s diet pills to help him shake the grogginess.

He had made Angela take him to a guy he knew sold guns. It was right after they left the hospital when he was still numb enough not to feel the pain. The guy had showed him three pieces, all used, which meant they had all been stolen, found or pawned, not the best weapons in the world to use because of their prior history, but Nick was obsessed with getting John Albano and didn’t care. He paid seventy-five dollars for a semiautomatic handgun that looked and even felt a little shaky when he pulled the trigger on an empty clip.

“Is ing onna all a-art en ah oo it?” he’d asked the seller.

“What?” the seller said.

Angela helped translate. “The way it looks, he said,” she said after Nick mumbled something unintelligible. “He thinks if he shoots you from across the room it’ll fall apart in his hands.”

“I’ll tell you what,” the seller had said to Nick. “Go stand over there and I’ll shoot you with it. It falls apart, I’ll give you your money back.”

Now that he couldn’t sleep anymore he was anxious to shower and get a start on searching for John Albano. All he could think about was the beating he’d taken outside the bar and how he’d have to face everybody a second time, except this time it was even worse, his nose had been broken, the discoloration would be with him for weeks, not to mention his nose would be crooked.

And then there was Eddie Vento. How was he supposed to deal with that cranky fuck after this?

Nick was half out of the bed and about to give up and go back to sleep when the phone rang. He couldn’t move fast enough. His wife said hello into the receiver and told the caller to hold on before passing it to Nick.

“Aloe?” he said.

“It’s me,” Eddie Vento said.

“Air,” Nick said.

“What?”

“Air.”

“The fuck you saying?”

“I ant alk,” Nick said.

“You can’t talk?”

“O.”

“Okay, then listen,” Vento said. “I got a call before from a mutual friend said he kicked your ass again, broke your nose or some shit. Maybe that’s why you sound like a retard. All I know is I want some answers about what the fuck he told me, some of which I already confirmed, which you didn’t tell me the other day when I asked you.”

“Ott?”

“Never mind what,” Vento said. “Just get your busted ass down the bar and wait for me there so’s I can see for myself the number this guy did on you again.”

“E umped me.”

“Yeah, right.”

“E id.”

“Yeah? Okay, uck ooo.”

Nick tried to clench his teeth in anger. Biting down sent a jolt of pain up through his jaw to his head.

“Uck ee!” he said, then it hurt all over again.

Stebenow had called the old lady Bridget Malone looked after in the building where she lived with Eddie Vento. He left a message for Bridget to call her uncle at his office. The number Stebenow gave was a pay phone at a diner around the corner from Fast Eddie’s where he was having breakfast. He ate a western omelet, toast, a corn muffin and drank five cups of coffee before he gave up waiting and went to the apartment.

He used the pay phone to leave Detective Levin an emergency message. Then Stebenow called Bridget’s home phone number. Nobody answered.

The bar had already been open for business a few hours when Stebenow parked off the near corner. He walked past the front window without looking inside. He walked a dozen or so yards past the bar, then turned and approached the front door alongside the bar entrance.

There were two floors above the bar, each with two apartments; one at each end of the hallways. Stebenow stood close to the front door while he picked the lock. He walked up the first flight of stairs to the landing and listened before going further. Vento’s apartment faced the street. The door was at the far end of the narrow hallway. Stebenow had no idea whether the wiseguy had spent the night there or not. He removed the Sig-Sauer as he made his way to the apartment Bridget shared with Eddie Vento.

He knocked on the door and listened for a response.

Nothing.

He knocked again, this time a little louder. He waited, heard nothing again, then glanced down the hallway as he slid the handgun into the waist of his pants. He picked the lock, then carefully opened the door. Using the door as a shield, he looked down the apartment hallway. The bathroom door was open at the far end of the hall, but the light was off. He quietly closed the apartment door, took another glance around the apartment from where he stood, but noticed nothing out of order. He raised the gun and stepped into the living room. He scanned the room from one end to the other. Again, nothing seemed out of place.

Stebenow took careful steps toward the back of the apartment. Halfway between the kitchen and bathroom was a door he assumed led to the bedroom. He looked down and noticed scuff marks on the floor. He raised the Sig-Sauer to chest level with his right hand as he opened the door with his left. The door stopped after no more than a foot. Stebenow called Bridget’s name, but there was no answer.

He pushed on the door with both hands until it opened enough so he could pass through. He stepped into the bedroom with the gun leveled out ahead as he scanned the room. One of two windows leading to the fire escape was open. Stebenow looked down and saw the tip of a pair of shoes sticking out one end of a rolled-up rug, what had been blocking the door.

“Oh, Jesus,” he said. “Oh, fuck.”