Vengeance: Mystery Writers of America Presents

BLIND JUSTICE

BY JIM FUSILLI

Angie and Turnip were best friends for as long as either could remember, beginning when Angie came to Turnip’s aid, grabbing Weber by his pale hair, bloodying his nose with a roundhouse right, then dribbling his skull on the sidewalk. Bobby Weber was in the first grade, Angie and Turnip in kindergarten at St. Francis of Assisi in downtown Narrows Gate.

That was twenty years ago, the winter of 1953, and since then nobody picked on Turnip twice.

Though they were unemployed, neither Angie nor Turnip lacked: Their widowed mothers, both of whom were born in the Apulia region of southern Italy, received pension checks from Jerusalem Steel as well as Social Security. They gave the boys what they wanted and then some, provided they spoke not of the source, figuring if anyone knew they received so much for doing nothing, the flow would be tapped. Whatever extra Angie and Turnip had, the neighborhood figured it came from those little jobs they did on the side.

Entering Muzzie’s one afternoon, Angie and Turnip were surprised to find, lounging on a platform above the round bar, a woman wearing only a purple boa and shoes that seemed made of glass. Last time they were here, they had seafood with a marinara sauce so spicy Angie knew Big Muzz was hiding two-day-old scungilli.

“Muzz,” said Turnip as he mounted the three-legged stool, “what happened to the scungilli?”

“There’s the scungilli,” Little Muzz said, nodding up at the stripper. He was checking pilsner glasses for cracks.

Propped on an elbow, the droopy blonde filed her nails.

Turnip held up a finger. “Yeah, but what’s she do?” he asked the bartender.

A Ping-Pong ball shot from her fica, just missing his head.

“That,” Little Muzz said.

“Who says?” Turnip asked.

Inching away, Angie already knew the answer.

“Who?” Little Muzz replied with a dark shrug. “Like you don’t know who.”

Big Muzz’s voice rumbled from where the kitchen used to be. “Turnip,” he bellowed. “Soldato wants you. Now.”

Turnip frowned as he faced the red-velvet curtain.

“Muzz? Now? I ain’t here for three months,” he said. “What’s ‘now’?”

Little Muzz spoke soft. “Maybe he seen the car.”

Turnip drove a ’69 canary-yellow Super Yenko Camaro 427 with a V8, an M-22 four-speed manual transmission, and custom-made spoilers front and back. Zero to sixty in 3.7 seconds on the ramp to the turnpike. Now it was parked in the bus stop on the sunny side of Polk Street.

“Soldato wants me?” Turnip whispered. Without thinking, he tapped the .45 in his jacket pocket.

“Apparently,” Angie replied, knowing full well the car had nothing to do with it. Big Muzz made a call. Which meant Soldato had an eye out for Turnip. For what, who knows?

TURNIP GOT HIS handle when some roly-poly ice cream man translated his surname to impress the other kids on line. That evening over dinner, he asked his father why the wiseass threw him a new hook. His father, who knew damned well rapa was Italian for “turnip,” said, “Because you look like a fuckin’ turnip, that big fat ass you got.”

Later, Angie told Turnip his old man must’ve been thinking of a butternut squash or an eggplant, a turnip being more or less round. Either way, Turnip was displeased and he took to weight lifting to change his body shape. It worked, even if the name stuck, and now he looked like he didn’t need Angie knocking the Webers of the world off his back.

At about the same time, Angie realized that he wasn’t going to be much bigger than his old man, who went about five and a half feet in work boots. Also, he’d have to wear eyeglasses. But by then, he’d been discovered to have an IQ of 154 and was in a class for the advanced. Soon, it was common knowledge that Angie, the toughest kid in Narrows Gate, was also the smartest.

About fifteen years later, it dawned on Silvio Soldato that Angie and Turnip were a dangerous duo. Very dangerous, these two, he mused. Brains and brawn. Mind and muscle. Hmmm.

The problem in this case, he noted, was that usually when you had a Hercules and an Einstein, at the same time you had a moron and a weakling. Not so with these two. Turnip had a fresh head, especially with numbers and mechanics, and little Angie was pazzo times three — everybody in town knew he’d crammed those turnips down the ice cream man’s throat when he was ten years old. Each time a guy turned up on the waterfront with his shins shattered or his ears pinned to his cheeks, Soldato made Angie for it, wondering how he always walked away clean.

Soldato wanted them broke up, now and forever, and for six weeks he thought about how to do it. Killing them both would look desperate, he reasoned, and killing one would send the other one seething toward revenge. He considered having the brakes go on the Camaro as Turnip and Angie headed down the viaduct, careening them to a fiery death at the Getty station. But then he started thinking maybe Turnip could figure some way out of the crash, twisting and maneuvering, tires squealing. Kid drives like he was born behind the wheel, that son of a bitch, him and his Camaro.

Then he decided, the lightbulb going bright.

Now Soldato was sitting in his booth at the Grotto, enjoying a late-afternoon meal of zuppa di vongole over linguine, and here comes Turnip. Alone and more or less right after Big Muzz said. A good sign, he thought as he watched Pinhead frisk him, concluding by giving his nuts a threatening tug.

Turnip shivered as he shook off the September chill.

“Mr. Rapa,” Soldato began. “How’s the Camaro? And Angie?”

“TWO QUESTIONS, AND there was the entire plan,” Turnip said.

“The shit heap gave it up before I had my ass in the seat. What a fuckin’ babbo.”

“So he said that? Just like that?” Angie asked.

“Not in so many words, no. Different words.”

“What words?”

“Ang, how the fuck do I know? I got the gist of it, all right?”

They decided to play it safe, leaving the Camaro in Turnip’s garage. Angie had a beat-up burgundy Impala, one of about three thousand in Hudson County. He drove it north on Boulevard East while Turnip took the 22 bus up to Cliffside. Now they were in the Bagel Nosh in Fort Lee, figuring nobody was eyeing the joint.

“The one sentence,” Angie insisted. “Repeat that one —”

“He said, ‘I don’t want to see him no more.’ ”

“Meaning what?”

“Well, I don’t think he wants you to move, Ang,” Turnip chuckled.

“And you don’t take me out, he’ll blow up the Camaro. What’s wrong with this guy? Did you tell him they made a lot of Camaros?”

You had to be half a fag to drink Tab, but Turnip liked the taste. “In fact, Ang, they ain’t made that many Super Yenkos.”

Angie narrowed his eyes and sat back in the orange booth.

Silence hung heavy. Soon Turnip wondered if his friend could kill him with a plastic spoon covered with chicken liver.

“I’m saying, that’s all.”

Angie tapped his fingers, one after the next, and Turnip began to squirm.

“Ang,” he said finally, palms up. “What the fuck . . .”

Angie adjusted his eyeglasses. The color began to return to his face.

“Let me guess your plan,” Turnip said. “You let me guess?”

“Yeah. Go guess,” he replied, dabbing at the corners of his mouth with his thumb and forefinger. He’d noticed the knockout behind the counter. A schnoz on her, but those dark curls and like an hourglass under the Bagel Nosh uniform. A streak of mischief too: He could tell she liked that he wouldn’t return when they were done.

He had to ask if she had a friend. A friend with a car didn’t mind driving Turnip down to Narrows Gate after.

“You want to find out where they got another ’69 Camaro,” Turnip said, sucking on a lemon slice.

Angie stood. “No. Jesus . . .”

Looking up, Turnip frowned. “What then?”

“When I come back, you tell me how Soldato’s connected,” he said. “Let me know if there’s somebody maybe who wouldn’t want to, you know, make a move, given his misstep.”

THOUGH IT WAS a short ride under the Hudson from Little Italy, Narrows Gate no longer drew much attention from the Five Families. The Gigentis still had a slice via the creaking waterfront, but the shipyards had closed, the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company moved, Venus Pencil too, and now the city’s population, once as high as sixty thousand, was down to less than half that. And half of those left were melanzane who’d turned the projects into Little Harlem.

Seeing the Mob now thought the place an ass pimple, Soldato had moved in and set up his own operation, running a numbers racket that catered to the old-time Italians, the coloreds, and the Irlandese. Soon, come eight thirty at night and almost everybody left in Narrows Gate was throwing elbows, grabbing the bulldog edition of the Daily News for the total mutual handle at the track to see if the last three numbers matched their bet.

Given it’s a thousand-to-one shot to hit on the nose, Soldato needed a rake to collect, taking in maybe two large a week in small change and paying out less than 7 percent. Most of that went to his army of bookies, all blue-haired grandmothers who knew everybody on the block who wanted in. Somebody gave him shit he’d send Pinhead to bruise her sensible. Grandma in ShopRite with a fat lip and a shiner, and soon everybody’s back in line, the thing almost running itself.

Angie knew the donnaccia with the Ping-Pong ball at Muzzie’s was a sign that Soldato wanted to expand. But the Gigentis sent hookers through the Lincoln Tunnel for action all over the county: One Saturday 4:15 a.m., Angie and Turnip counted sixteen zoccolas waiting for a New York–bound bus outside a motel only a mile from Muzzie’s platform.

Clear, Soldato asked nobody what he could do.

Angie got his meet at two thirty in the morning at Sal Rossi’s on Houston Street with six feet of poured concrete named Bobo. Him and his giant melon coming out of the kitchen and Angie wondered if he’d made the right play.

Adjusting his sunglasses, Bobo passed on the handshake and said, “What?”

Angie was no pigeon. “It’s about propriety,” he said.

Bobo went, “Uh?”

“He put the puttana two blocks from a school. Muzzie’s is the place. It used to be a nice restaurant. Long row of brownstones around the corner. Two, three generations in the same building.”

“Muzzie’s.”

“Now you got mothers going by with their little kids, teenagers hanging around . . . It’s not a class move and people are thinking it’s you.”

“Me?”

“The family.” Jesus.

“Yeah, right, and . . .”

“And the cops come, and the newspapers,” Angie said, “and soon they’re closing down the York Motel and half the whorehouses on Tonnelle Avenue. In time, it blows over and he moves in on your territory.”

Bobo thought. Then he said, “Who is this guy?”

“Soldato. Right now he’s under the protection of nobody. But after he makes his move, he seeks an accommodation . . .”

“And you got a hard-on for this guy why?”

Angie sat back and lifted his palms. “Why?” he asked, feigning surprise. “Because he figured this. You and me. So he tells some guy he doesn’t want to see me anymore.”

“Maybe you hop a Greyhound or something.”

“No good. Not for the long run.”

Bobo agreed. Then he rubbed his chin. “You want in?”

“Hell no. It’s yours and God bless you.”

“But what?”

“One, Muzzie’s goes back to scungilli and calamari.”

“Two is . . . ?”

“Nobody misses this guy.”

Bobo couldn’t decide on his own, Angie knew, but how the big guy left the table told him he was going to get his way.

HE WAITED UNTIL “Mala Femmina” ended on the jukebox and joined Turnip at Sal Rossi’s horseshoe bar.

“So?” Turnip asked.

“It’s done. You’re off the hook. Drive in peace.”

Turnip smiled his relief.

“So what happens?”

Angie said, “Stay out of the Grotto until I tell you.”

They wandered onto Houston. Traffic to the FDR was backed up to Mulberry Street.

“Ang, I’m surprised at that guy, to tell you the truth.”

“How so?” They turned up their leather collars in unison.

“If he gives you a hard time, I’m sitting there,” Turnip said. “I can put two between the third and fourth buttons before he knows what hit him.”

“Not likely,” Angie said as they headed toward the garage on Elizabeth Street. “The guy at the bar with the wavy hair, black suit, resoled loafers? Playing with his onyx pinkie ring?”

Turnip frowned. “Three stools down? You’re shitting me.”

“Carrying double. On the right ankle and the ribs.”

“How’d you — your back was to him. How’d you make him?”

“My guy’s sunglasses,” Angie said. “Plus your guy got up when the genius scratched his chin.”

Turnip shook his head in wonder. “How you like that.”

As they walked in silence toward the Camaro, Turnip pondered how much his friend could achieve if he had a speck of ambition.

PINHEAD WENT PAST the bar and poured himself a big cup of hot clam broth, dropping in a couple shots of Tabasco. Screaming at the widows gave him a scratchy throat, so he threw it down, thinking a Schlitz chaser.

“Yo, Pin,” said Milney, the night bartender. He wiggled a crooked finger.

Pin said, “What?”

Milney leaned over. “The senior center on Fourth Street,” he whispered. “Some bullshit in the lounge. Take a cab, but go.”

Pin understood and he threw Sally B a fin.

Milney slipped it over the half a yard Turnip gave him a half hour ago.

Outside the Grotto, Pin flagged the first cab that rolled the corner. He didn’t notice Angie behind the wheel.

Soon, they were on their way toward the Jersey City end of the viaduct, taking the cobblestone road behind the last horse stable in Narrows Gate.

“Angie, you got some set of coglioni on you, you know that?” Pin said. “But I admire that. I do. Tells me we can do something, a guy like you.”

Angie looked in the rearview, seeing if the barbed wire he’d used to tie Pin down was making a mess of the vinyl seat.

“Pin, there are five stages of receiving catastrophic news,” he said. “You blew through anger — wisely, if you ask me — and you’re bargaining now. Which means depression is next.”

“Hey, Ang, smart is smart, but sometimes what’s smart in books —”

“You don’t hurry, there’s no time for acceptance.”

Fourteen minutes later, Pinhead went over the rusted rail atop the viaduct and landed two hundred and thirty feet below, smack on a chain-link fence outside the bus terminal, the cops trying to figure how the barbed wire got hooked so thorough around the weasel’s neck and hands.

“SYMMETRY,” SAID ANGIE as he entered Muzzie’s, old Maxwell House coffee can in his hand. “I love it.”

Muzzie and Little Muzzie came from the kitchen. The asbestos in their hair and on their faces reminded Turnip that soon they’d be coated in flour, making fresh linguine for the seafood and flaming-ass sauce.

Turnip sat next to his friend at the bar and pointed to the nothing where the platform had been. One of the Muzzolinis had spackled the holes.

“What happened to Miss Ping-Pong?” he asked.

Little Muzzie, who now feared Angie more than ever, shrugged. “I heard the Gigentis are opening some new clubs on Tonnelle Avenue.”

“Could be,” Angie said. “You of the mood to pour a little sambuca?”

Big Muzzie stepped up. “We’re closed —”

“No problem,” said Little Muzz, going quick to the round bar, yanking back the canvas cover, and coming up with a bottle. With Pinhead two weeks dead and Soldato missing, Little Muzz was looking to the future.

Turnip smelled the anise through the cap.

Two shot glasses, and Little Muzzie retreated as the friends set their elbows down to raise a toast.

“To what?” Turnip said.

“To Soldato,” Angie replied, “and to being careful what you wish for.”

Turnip didn’t get it, but he sipped anyway, expecting a coffee bean to bump his lip. When he put down the little glass, he said, “So you’re going to tell me?”

“Tell you . . .”

“What’s in the coffee can?”

Turnip shook it and heard something rattle inside.

“You like to guess,” Angie said. “Guess.”

A minute later, Turnip said, “I could use a fuckin’ clue, Ang.”

“What did Soldato say?”

“He said he didn’t want to see you no more.”

“Which did not mean . . .”

Suddenly, Turnip recoiled.

“Bingo,” said Angie.

“Madonna mio, Ang.” Then he whispered, “You took his eyes?”

Figuring the Muzzies were peeping, Angie nodded slow.

Turnip blessed himself.

Angie said, “Nobody puts you on the spot, il mio amico.”

His head spinning, Turnip asked, “Ang, dead or alive?”

Angie dipped his little finger in the sambuca. “What do you think?”