Marked Man

22

I had been putting it off, but I could put it off no longer. It was time to face the darkest of all my demons and to find some answers to questions that had been plaguing me from the start of the Charlie Kalakos case. It was time to visit my dad.

I didn’t call ahead, there was no need. It was a Sunday afternoon, which meant my father would be home, alone, sitting in his La-Z-Boy watching the game, with a can of Iron City in one hand and a remote control in the other. It didn’t much matter in what month the Sunday fell. In the fall and winter, he watched the Eagles. In the spring and summer, he watched the Phillies. And in the dead months of February and March, when baseball and football were both on hiatus, he watched whatever: beach volleyball, alpine skiing, Battle of the Network Stars. Just so long as he could sit and wince, drink his beer, grumble at the television. That’s what Sundays were made for.

When I arrived at the little Spanish-style house in the little suburb of Hollywood, Pennsylvania, things didn’t seem quite right. First, there was a beat-up old yellow taxicab parked right out front. Then, the front door was slightly ajar. It was not like my father to keep the front door slightly ajar. He kept his house like he kept his emotional life, buttoned up and locked tight, all to hold the world at bay. But even stranger was that I heard voices coming from his shabby little living room. It had to be the television, I figured, but it didn’t sound like a couple of announcers discussing the offensive futility of the Phillies’ lineup. It sounded almost like a friendly conversation. Between real people. In my father’s house.

“Dad,” I said. I opened the screen door, knocked on the slightly ajar front door. “Dad, are you there?”

“Who’s that?” came my father’s growl, which would have been a marginally acceptable response if I weren’t an only child.

“Dad, it’s me.”

“What do you want?”

“I just came to say hello.”

“Why didn’t you call first?” said my father. “I’m busy.”

“Dad?”

“What?”

“Can I come in?”

“No.”

“Oh, don’t be unsociable like, Jesse,” came another voice, high and jaunty. “Even a crocodile don’t turn away his own young. Invite the boy inside. This is a fortuitous treat, it is. Might liven up the conversation.”

“I’m coming in,” I said, suddenly apprehensive.

“Boy knows his mind,” said the other voice. “I like that.”

I pushed open the door, stepped into the living room, and there he was, my father, on his La-Z-Boy, beer in hand like every other Sunday, except the television wasn’t on and he wasn’t alone and there was a peculiar worry on his face. Two men sat side by side on the sofa, beers in their hands, both older even than my dad. One was huge, with big hands, a wide jaw, a mop of gray hair cut badly. The other was thin and dark, with a blue captain’s hat cocked on his head. And somehow, in the geometry and atmosphere of the room, I tasted the acrid scent of latent danger.

“Let me guess,” said the thin man with the captain’s hat. “You the tiger cub, right? You that Victor, the one we all been seeing on the television.”

“That’s right,” I said. “And who are you?”

“Old friends of your father,” said the big man in a slow, deep voice.

“I didn’t know my father had old friends,” I said.

“Well, he do,” said the thin man, before he took a swig of his beer. “And we is it.”

“That’s pleasant,” I said, looking once again at my father’s worried face. “Old friends getting together, drinking beer, talking old times. And the cab outside?”

“Mine,” said the thin man.

“It’s quite yellow.”

“It’s a Yellow Cab, fool.”

“You fellows mind if I grab a beer, sit down and join you?”

“If you’re going to the fridge,” said the thin man, raising up his can, “fetch me another. All this reminiscing, it builds up a thirst.”

I stole a look at my father once more before stepping into the kitchen and pulling two beers out of the refrigerator. I wasn’t just then in the mood to drink, but I figured I’d join in. My father didn’t seem so happy to see his old friends, and less happy that I had stopped by at the same time. And I had a strong sense of why. I had never seen the two men before in the entirety of my life, never in the flesh and never in a photograph, but I recognized them all the same.

“So how do you guys all know each other?” I said when I returned with the beers.

“From the old neighborhood,” said the big man.

“Your daddy was younger than we was,” said the thin man. “But we still remember when he went into the army. All spit and polish, with his feathers preened. From the snappy side of town, he was.”

“That’s enough of that,” said my father. “We don’t need no more old stories.”

“Sure we do,” I said. “I love old stories.”

“He wore his hair all swept up and back, shiny black, it was, and a little wavy. That was the Jewish in him. And he always had a tube of grease and comb with him. Always getting that hair just right.”

“And good with the girls,” said the big man.

“Course he was,” said the thin man. “Take a lesson, boy. Never underestimate the power of a good head of hair.”

We all laughed at that, all but my father, whose hair wasn’t anymore black and shiny.

“So what brings you here this afternoon?” I said.

The two men on the couch glanced at each other. “Just visiting,” said the big man.

“Really? Just visiting, out of the blue?”

“Well, Joey did have some business to talk about.”

“We was talking with your father,” said the thin man, “about a moneymaking proposition. Ralph and me was discussing it together, this opportunity, and we thought we’d give our old friend Jesse here a taste.”

“Why, that is so nice of you,” I said. “Isn’t that nice, Dad?”

“I already told them to keep me the hell out of it,” he said.

“Oh, Jesse’s just not seeing the possibilities,” said Joey. “He’s always been like that, so busy looking down at the sidewalk so he won’t trip over those feets of his that he can’t see what’s up there to be grabbed.”

“I see it all right,” he said. “I just don’t want anything to do with it. And neither does Victor.”

“My dad’s a little shortsighted when it comes to money,” I said, which was something I believed all my life but knew now to be untrue. “Though I myself might be interested.”

“What do you say there, Ralph,” said the thin man. “Think we ought to let the kid in?”

“I guess we don’t have a choice, do we?” said Ralph.

“Not no more,” said the thin man. “Being as you showed up when you did, smack in the middle of our discussions.”

“Good for me, huh?” I said, my grin so wide it hurt my cheeks.

Joey took a long drink of his beer, nodded his head. “So this is it, Victor. We have received an offer, a very generous offer. Something that could change all our lives, and let me tell you, speaking for Ralph and myself, our lives could use some changing.”

“Mine, too,” I said.

“It’s an opportunity to take advantage of, don’t you think?”

“He don’t want nothing to do with it,” said my father.

“Let the boy decide for himself,” said thin Joey, tilting back his cap, leaning forward. “We have an offer from a certain party to purchase an object that belongs to us. It’s simple enough, and the terms couldn’t be more generous.”

“Oh, terms could always be more generous. Getting them more generous is my specialty. Tell me who it is you’re talking with, and I’ll give him a ring.”

“We don’t need you negotiating for us, fool,” said Joey. “I didn’t spend thirty years driving a cab without learning how to negotiate the fare.”

“But if you like the deal as it is, then sell the damn thing by yourselves and be done with it. You don’t need me or my dad. That’s capitalism.”

“Yes, yes it is. Precisely put.”

“But there’s a problem,” said the big man.

“There always is, isn’t there, Ralph? Let me guess.” I closed my eyes, rubbed my hands over my face as if trying to pull an idea out of the air. “Something makes me think you don’t know where this object is.”

“Jesse, why didn’t you tell us your boy here was an Einstein?” said Joey. “Why didn’t you brag on him? I had a boy like that, I’d tell the world.”

“He’s not as smart as he thinks,” grumbled my father.

“Actually, Joey, since my father isn’t really interested, we don’t need to involve him in these discussions any further, do we?”

“This is the deal of a lifetime, and you want to cut out your own dear dad?” said Joey. “I admire the hell out of that.”

“My father and I have learned never to mix business with blood. Why don’t we go someplace to talk?”

“How about a bar?” said Joey, smacking his lips. “All this talk about money builds up a thirst.”

“I bet a lot of things build up a thirst for you, Joey.”

“Don’t never trust a man who don’t drink or don’t laugh,” said Joey. “That’s what my daddy taught me. That and not to trust nobody named Earl.” He swallowed the rest of his beer. “Which was, unfortunately, my daddy’s name.”

“Then let’s go,” I said. “The drinks are on me when we get where we’re going.”

“Why, that is most generous of you, squire. Most generous. Let’s be on our way, then. I’m sure your dad’s got better things to do than waste his time talking to old friends.”

“I’m sure he does. Just give me a minute with him, won’t you, for some family stuff?”

As soon as they left to wait for me outside in the taxicab, I sidled over to my father, still in his chair. He roughly grabbed my sleeve. “Do you know who they are?” he said.

“Yeah, I know. They’re two of the guys who used to hang out with Charlie the Greek thirty years ago.”

“Then why are you getting involved with them?”

“To remove them from your house, for one thing. They only came to you to get to me, and you didn’t seem so happy to have them here.”

“It’s Sunday. The Phils are on.”

“And you wouldn’t want to miss that.”

“What are you doing here anyways?”

“I wanted to see how you are. And maybe also to ask a few questions. Like why you owe that old witch Kalakos a favor.”

He turned away. “None of your business.”

“It is now, since she’s using it to rope me deeper into her son’s cesspool. You’re going to have to tell me sometime before I get submerged. But not now. Now I have to share a pitcher with Big Ralph and Little Joey.”

“Be careful.”

“Oh, I think I can handle a pair of sweet old guys like that.”

“They’re not that old, and they’re not that sweet.”

I looked at the still-open front door and the Yellow Cab waiting outside for me.

“When they were boys, they roamed the neighborhood like wolves,” said my father. “They beat some kid to near death with a baseball bat.”

“You got me into this.”

“I made a mistake.”

“I don’t think they’d let me ditch them now, do you? Besides, I have a question they might be able to answer.”

“Like what?”

“Like who the hell knew enough to make those two old crooks an offer.”