Little Easter

Mr. Wizard

I didn’t know what I’d do when I got there, but I was going. I didn’t know how I’d find MacClough when I arrived. Maybe I’d just wait for the sound of gunfire and follow its report. For months the tension coiled and now the spring was unwinding. As I raced foolishly along the snowbanked expressway, I wondered about the spark that had initiated the gyre’s unraveling and who might be felled by its blind momentum. The answers lay an hour away, across the bridge in Staten Island.

At the Knapp Street exit of the Belt Parkway, my soul shifted moods and, for a few moments, I could ponder summers of stickball and fireworks at the beach. Knapp Street marked the far border of my old neighborhood and until my ancient Volkswagen passed Cropsey Avenue, my heart would refuse all thoughts of Mafia kings and fallen maidens. From the parkway you could see D trains crossing noisily overhead. Their metal wheels shooting stars at the night, grinding along the tracks to and from Brighton Beach. Just east of the subway trestle sat the concrete bunker that had been my junior high school. I often imagined Hitler taking more comfort there than any seventh grader.

Further on, where the road rises and falls over Ocean Parkway, you pass the white brick butcher shop called Coney Island Hospital. Then, just ahead, came Lincoln High School. I always looked in back of the school at the football field, for it was there that I’d known my only moments of glory. It’s tough to stare forty in the face having left your glory in the grass and mud behind your high school. Tonight my glory was entombed in a gray foot of Brooklyn snow. But the skeleton skyline of the Coney Island rides, rising above the horizon like the bones of dormant dinosaurs, pulled my heart up through the snow and into the present. I was passing Cropsey Avenue. Soon, I would see the bridge.

There, spreading out across the moonlit narrows between Brooklyn and Staten Island, was the Verrazzano, its cold, ashen paint negating the span’s majesty. I could recall a time when only ferries held the two boroughs together and trips to New Jersey were partly a sea adventure. And when bridge construction began, two slab footings rose up from the water like tombstones. But the bridge’s completion meant more than easy trips to Jersey, for with any bridge comes migration. Once the Staten Island Express-way was flanked by sad houses on lonely hills. Now town houses and shopping malls dominated the landscape. Why should Staten Island be any different from the rest of America?

The Verrazzano had other effects beyond the destruction of the Brooklyn ferry. White, blue collar families-mostly Italian, some Irish, a few Jews-with a stomach for the stink of Jersey, the perfume of landfill, and disregard for increased cancer risk, ran gladly across the span to a suburb in the city and away from the Great Society, overcrowded streets and the melanzane. In Italian, melanzane translates into dark skin. In slang, it translates into niggers. And like all migrating hoards, the blue collars brought along their parasites. A handful of Mafia dons, always out of place and out of touch on Long Island, found nirvana in Staten Island. From their gaudy castle compounds in the Todt Hill section of the borough, they could run the family business by the swimming pool and be just fifteen minutes and a toll away from their territories. I was headed for one of those castles right now, but I doubted if the Gandolfos were out back taking a swim.

I held the hastily scribbled directions against the steering wheel, alternating glances between word-map and road. Larry Feld hadn’t been eager to turn over the address nor had he coughed up the directions easily. He also didn’t appreciate my request that he not phone ahead to the Gandolfos. I understood his position. Although the where-abouts of the Gandolfo digs aren’t a national secret, the family would not be pleased with Larry for giving out the info without permission. But they could get over that. However, if Larry neglected to warn his client of impending danger-which MacClough’s behavior clearly represented-and some harm were to come to the Gandolfos, Larry was as good as dead. As Feld put it: “Those guys will make cutting my balls off seem like a suspended sentence.”

Let it suffice to say that it took all I had to convince Larry it was in his best interest to acquiesce to my demands. It was an amazing conversation, but that’s for some other time. After promising Larry that I’d never disclose who’d given me directions, I asked him if he knew what all this lunacy was about. He said he had a pretty good idea. I asked him if he knew a woman named Leyna Brimmer. He said he didn’t. That question made him curious, but I held him at arm’s length. I said good-bye. All he said was: “Watch out for the old man.” I promised I would, though I wasn’t at all sure what he meant.

At the moment I was busy watching out for landmarks and streetsigns. The roads were remarkably well plowed given the recent weather, but that’s always the case in an area with a concentration of top level Mafioso. I’d never been through this neighborhood before, but I was willing to wager the mail got delivered early, the garbage got picked up quietly and on time and that around here the crime rate dipped into negative numbers. Wiseguys have always understood the value of intimidation and big tips. No one servicing these homes got five bucks and Grandma’s fruitcake for Christmas.

I knew I was close to my final destination when I saw it. The “it” I refer to is the former residence of the late don Pauly “Ping Pong” Palermo. The Cemetery, as the estate is affectionately called on the street and in the press, was Don Palermo’s monument to ill-gotten money and bad taste. I had only heard about its pink-rock perimeter wall and statue garden replete with a black marble reproduction of Stonehenge, a plaster animal menagerie and a circular arrangement of eleven eight-foot-tall bathtub Marys painted alternately in red, white and blue and green, white and red. You could see where the place got its nickname. The main building was sort of a combination Bates Motel, amusement park funhouse and mausoleum topped off by a satellite dish big enough to gather residual radio waves from the Big Bang. The place was such a disaster, even Don Palermo had trouble cajoling and bribing the appropriate functionaries into letting him build it as planned. In New York, where the unofficial city motto is “I never met a bribe I wouldn’t take,” that speaks volumes. When “Ping Pong” went ding-dong outside a Brooklyn luncheonette, the cops said he was whacked by a rival gang member. I think it was the editor of Better Homes and Gardens.

I left the Cemetery behind and rolled to a stop along the curb about a block down the hill from where Larry had said I’d find the Gandolfo stronghold. Mine was the only car parked on the street for as far as I could see ahead or behind me. I didn’t like that. Nor did I like being down-hill from the house. If I was forced to approach the place, Gandolfo’s soldiers would have a fair chance of spotting me no matter which direction I came from. Never underestimate the value of taking the high ground. Clearly, the Gandolfos didn’t.

Okay, so now I was here and no bands played Stars and Stripes Forever and the borough president wasn’t waiting to greet me. Back in Sound Hill I thought I might work out a plan by the time I got on location. The fact was, I hadn’t worked anything out and the only thing I could think of were the gargantuan Virgin Marys huddled like a football team in Pauly Palermo’s yard.

I stepped out of my car. The rotten-egg breeze blowing in from Jersey was strong, but not howling strong and the only sound on the street was the creaking of the trees like an old man’s knees in the morning. When the gusts died down, even the trees were silent. I hesitated to put my feet in stride for fear of their signature echoing in the silence and the sulphur of the night.

I waited for the wind to come up again. When it did, I walked further down the hill to the last intersection I’d passed. There were a few curb-parked cars adorning the cross street, but none of them was MacClough’s ’66 Thunderbird. I hadn’t really expected to spot it on the boulevard. He’d probably parked it a neighborhood away and taxied up here. Maybe he made the trek on foot. Maybe he wasn’t here at all. Yeah, and maybe we were all just angels dancing on the head of a pin. Johnny was around. I could feel it. I turned back to my car.

Five steps up the hill I thought I heard a footfall crushing snow behind a high hedgerow which ran parallel to the curb. I stood my ground and held my breath like some teen-age cheerleader in a cheap slasher movie. I waited for another step in the snow somewhere behind the bushes. I could feel the sweat leaking down my back, my heart thumping so hard it hurt. For a few seconds, nothing. Then it came at me, the curved mirrors at the back of its eyes reflecting the streetlight shine. I jumped, not quite to Delaware. Fucking cats! At least hockey masked mutants with razor sharp machetes don’t purr and nuzzle your ankles after springing from the indigenous vegetation. They may well hack your limbs off, but they don’t nuzzle and purr.

When my calico companion had tired of laying scent claim to my lower extremities, she sat, licked a paw or two, and looked up. She was clearly puzzled by my nervous laughter and presence there in the gutter in the midst of her territory. I tried to convey that I was equally confused. The mood changed suddenly. Her head twitched left then right, eyes widened, now glowing with fresh light. She darted. A horn blew. Tires screeched. I jumped to the bushes.

“Fuckin’ asshole!” the unseen driver shouted at me and pulled away.

Too bad he left in such a hurry. I wanted to compliment him on the accuracy of his assessment. I stood, brushing my scraped palms against each other as a toddler might when leaving the sandbox, and took a few shaky paces up the hill. When I reached a gap in the hedgerow, something cold, hard and round pressed into the back of my neck. Mr. Wizard once explained that steel isn’t actually colder than other materials. It’s cold to the touch because it absorbs heat from our flesh. Obviously, Mr. Wizard had never had the barrel of a gun pressed against his neck. Gun metal is very cold. Trust me on that.

Never mind Mr. Wizard. Some awfully ugly thoughts went rattling around my head. Larry had phoned ahead to cover his ass and I was going to be hung out to dry. Maybe not. Maybe one of Gandolfo’s boys had spied me from up on the hill and had come down to check me out. Maybe this was another wiseguy’s house and he didn’t like me playing with his cat. In any case, I wasn’t looking forward to the rest of my life.

“Just take an easy step back and join me. I’m kinda lonely behind here since ya scared the cat away,” casually ordered the voice attached to the man attached to the pistol.

Usually, I have real problems dealing with authority, but I’ve found that placing a gun on my neck is an effective short-term therapy. This time though, the weapon was unnecessary. I followed the casual commands and came face to face with my therapist.

“Hey, MacClough,” I smiled. He didn’t.

“That guy in the car was right,” the ex-detective greeted me, holstering his stubby.38. “You are a fuckin’ asshole. Why couldn’t ya just stay out of my business?”

“Because it isn’t business and it’s not just yours. I was the one who let Azrael walk outta the Scupper that night. I was the one who found her body.” That made the tough cop grimace. “No, Johnny, whatever this is, it isn’t all yours.”

“And what the fuck do you know about anything?”

“Stop it, MacClough,” I admonished in a furious whisper.

“Stop what?” He was good at a lot of things. Acting innocent wasn’t one of them.

“I know, Johnny. Maybe even more than you.”

“Get outta here. I got work to do,” my therapist gave me a symbolic shove on the shoulder and started to turn.

“I know about the baby.”

He stopped turning. “The ba-”

“Yeah, MacClough, the baby. Azrael’s daughter.”

The night went silent again. The wind, regaining its throne, blew swirls of loose snow at the sky and into our human faces. Johnny closed his eyes, and tried to let the wind scrape away two decades worth of questions and pain. We both understood that the wind was doomed to fail.

“How did you find out?” he asked, interrupting the pain.

“Would you believe it came to me in a dream?” I wasn’t lying.

MacClough formed a bitter smile with his closed lips and pushed spurts of moist air thru his nostrils.

“Is she yours, Johnny?”

“Could be his,” MacClough pointed up the hill. “I don’t know. What I do know is that she’s Azrael’s. That was always enough for me.” He didn’t really believe that, but this was neither the time nor place to debate the matter.

“How’d you find out about the baby?”

“About two years after the Gandolfo trial, I was in the federal courthouse in Manhattan to give testimony in a drug case. I’m walking outta the mens room and this FBI type bangs into me. He apologizes and whispers in my ear to look in my coat pocket when I get home.”

“A note?”

“A letter.”

I felt like asking all about it, but I could pretty much figure out its content. Anyway, my feet were getting cold and I had the feeling that my solitary Volkswagen was going to start attracting the wrong kind of attention.

“I don’t suppose I can talk ya outta tryin’ to get in there?” I lapsed into nervous Brooklynese.

“No. There’s some things that’ve been waitin’ over twenty years to get settled. I’m tired of waitin’.”

“Then I’m comin’ along for the ride.” I smiled. He didn’t.

“No.”

“Listen, MacClough. I could waste some more time reasoning with you, but I’m tired and my brain’s tired of being twisted in knots,” I walked right up in his face. A very red flag thing to do to someone from Brooklyn. “The bottom line here is if I don’t get in, you don’t get in.”

“Back off,” he warned.

“I’m gonna march up to the goombah’s front gate and announce very loudly your intentions. I figure someone might be interested. So you got an easy choice. Take me or shoot me.”

The ex-detective rubbed a pensive hand along his chin and screwed his face up with thought. “Okay, ya crazy fuckin’ Jew,” he said reaching one hand behind his back and reintroduced his.38,” have it your way.” Johnny held the gun’s stub nose so close to my eyes, I could practically see its rifling. He smiled. I didn’t.

“You’re not gonna shoot me,” I scoffed with all the self-assurance of blind tightrope walker wearing spiked heels. “One shot and those boys on the hill will be down here like Italian lightening.”

He put the gun down, laughing: “I surrender. I surrender. You wanna get killed, fine. Better they do it than me.

“My, what a comforting thought.”

“Here’s the deal,” MacClough instructed. “They got good security up there, but even the best security gets lazy. No one’s tried to whack a Gandolfo in years. The biggest threat those greaseballs usually face is from some smart-ass fed dressed up like a caterer tryin’ to plant a bug in the don’s kitchen. Laziness breeds predictability.”

“Shift changes.”

“For a second-rate writer and a third-rate insurance man, you surprise me,” was his backhanded compliment. “These guys must eat prune and oat bran pasta they’re so fuckin’ regular.” He looked at his watch. “Do you still carry that extra gas can in your bug?”

“Yeah,” I was having a wave of second thoughts.

“Good. This is what I want you to do. In fifteen minutes. .”

The plan made sense if you liked stunt work and exploding Volkswagens. I’d never done any stunt work and since it was my Volkswagen scheduled to go up in flames, you could understand my trepidation. I was supposed to pull my old bug up to the front gate during the changing of the guard, come staggering away from the car, count to five and run like hell back down the hill. It was MacClough’s responsibility to hit the extra gas can shoved into the VW’s engine compartment. After I’d set the world’s record for the downhill run and my car went boom, Johnny and I would rendezvous at the soft spot in the perimeter security. From there, I was just supposed to shut up and follow.

“How’d you find out about the hole in their defense?” I asked, regressing to football terminology.

“I got a friend on the job that had the Gandolfo surveillance detail for five years. He knows the grounds better than the fuckin’ landscapers.”

“Do we have to blow up my car?”

“If ya wanna play, ya gotta pay,” Johnny offered up like a bad Lotto commercial. He checked his watch again. “Okay, let’s get goin’. It’ll take a minute to get that gas can wedged in there.”

“See ya.”

We shook hands and I turned for the hole in the hedges. I’d put about two yards between us when snow at my back crunched beneath someone else’s feet. There was a silent eternity in the instant between those footsteps and the slamming collapse of my skull. After the long journey to earth in that shadow moment between unconsciousness and light, the snow felt strangely warm against my cheek. Johnny knelt down next to me, checked my eyes and the sore spot where his gun butt landed. I could see his lips were moving, but the snapping of flames searing my brain drowned out MacClough’s words. I’d like to think he was telling me I’d live and that a concussion was worth it if it meant I could keep my Volkswagen. He was more likely calling me a guillible prick. And if he wasn’t, he should have. I didn’t try to speak and when I saw johnny disappear behind some trees, I closed my eyes and wandered into the moonless night of dreams.