Big Money (Austin Carr Mystery) (9 page)

TWENTY-THREE

“What are you looking at?” Tony says to me one minute later.

“Nothing.”

Not a lie actually because Tony Farascio’s question should have been, what’s looking at
us
. Gina in particular. Not that I’m about to tell Tony that two rough-looking gentlemen are ogling his wife. This joint being Tony’s turf, I figure Gina’s husband would exhibit few qualms initiating combat over her honor. I’m afraid on Mulberry Street this means we could all die in a haze of armor piercing bullets.

Personally, I’d rather
get back to New Jersey.

“Don’t brush me off,” Tony says. “Somebody checking us out?”

Damn. Here it is again, that special Austin Carr moment when I know I am about to speak words that will produce inevitable, disastrous repercussions. Nevertheless, I will make my little speech...because...and here’s the unvarnished truth for a change...I’m a blabbermouth who craves the sound of his own voice.

“Two guys came in
through the kitchen a minute ago, sat behind you,” I say. “In the corner. Seems like they might know you ... and Gina.”

Boy,
I wish I’d kept my mouth shut. Regret always starts at the sound of my first words. When am I going to learn? This dysfunctional, self-destructive Gift of Gab is becoming a major and serious handicap. Wonder if I could get one of those special license plates with the embossed wheelchair?

No offense to those with missing limbs.

Tony spins to check out the new customers.

Gina’s gaze has
been avoiding mine all night, but now her dark eyes fix on me, a hard angry glare. A chunk of bread she was about to dip into a dish of green olive oil leaves her hand and flies in my direction.

Guess she know
s I’m a blabbermouth, too.

Tony’s German Shepherd eyes drift back to me and Gina. “Wise guys,” he says. “The one with the shrimp lips is named Jimmy something
. I know the other one, too.” Tony focuses on Gina. “They’re both part of Nunzio’s crew.”

Gina frowns. “What are
they
doing here?”

“I don’t know,”
Tony says. “Think I have to ask them.”

Over Tony’s shoulder, movement draws my gaze. “You don’t have to,” I say. “They’re coming over.”

Sinatra’s singing “New York, New York” now, the recording of Frankie with RCA’s big studio orchestra filling the little restaurant like the smell of cooked tomatoes. Wine bottles rattle and hum. With my hands on the table, I can feel the drums.

Tony stares over my shoulder. “Which one you want?”

I shake my head. “They don’t look like they’re going to start anything. Maybe they just want to say hello.”

“I’m not talking about the two guys behind me,” Tony
says. “I’m talking about the muscle behind
you
.”

My head snaps. The Creeper and his friend with a diamond earring are headed our way.

Gina saying, “This would be a great time to show these people your gun, Tony.”

“I left it in the Town Car,” he says.
“In case we need it later.”

“Perfect,” she
says.

The one Tony calls Shrimp Lips stops closest to Gin
a. His lips really do look like boiled crustacean. Pink with blistered white stripes. I bet he’s a lousy kisser. He says to Gina, “Hello, Sugar. Want to dance?”

Gina makes a show of
searching for a dance floor. “Where?” she says. “On the table?”

Shrimp Lips
stares down at Gina’s considerable cleavage—slow and deliberate, his eyes leering and insulting. “Honey, with that set of tits, I’d be happy if we just wiggled around right—”

My jaw falls
at the barnyard word. I can guess what Tony’s response will be...
duh
...and here it comes, Tony’s right fist leading his shoulder and hips out of his seat. His knuckles smash Shrimp Lips’ gooey mouth, and the sharp sound of breaking teeth and bone cracks the air like a whip.

Gina’s molester tumbles
backward into the neighboring table. A man there yells. Two women scream and cower, knocking over a plate, glasses and silverware. Shrimp Lips grabs a tablecloth on the way down. The rest of that table’s dishes and glasses bust onto the floor.

Gina yanks on Tony’s sleeve
as a thick arm encircles my neck, choking off my air. Jesus. My vision gets weird. Slow-motion. Everyone in the restaurant
was
watching. Now they are fighting. Honest to God, every single face in the previously subdued restaurant is now distorted in anger and frustration. Clenched teeth. Fierce eyes. Grunts and groans erupt around the room like steam jets of hissing bile.

Way i
n the background, Frankie is singing “
top of the heap
.”

Might have blacked out for a second th
ere. I guess it’s Shrimp Lips’ partner choking me. I don’t know for certain because I can’t turn behind me, and even if I could, I probably couldn’t see because my eyes are halfway out of their sockets.

If that makes any sense.
I’m not sure. Weird vision was just the first sign, or symptom, that a lack of oxygen could be affecting my cognitive abilities.

A fist hits me in the mouth, and the python around my neck rips over my ears
. The punch has knocked me free of the headlock.

Before
I can regain my feet, a giant beast compresses me onto the floor. Must be a moose. Or a grizzly bear sitting on me. Destroying my urban illusion of being in control of nature.

No. Wait. It’s human. Almost.

It’s Max, the Creeper.

Notice I said “destroying” my urban illusion, not “decimating?” TV newscasters and movie scriptwriters think the words are interchangeable,
and they eventually will be, thanks to the word’s never-ending misuse.

For
the last two thousand years, decimate meant to reduce by ten percent. Comes from the same Latin word as decimal. It’s what Caesar used to do to his troops when food ran low or certain units performed poorly. Centurions would count off every tenth man and kill him. A scene of slaughter, yes, but hardly the same as destroy. Ninety percent survived a decimation.

A shrieking lizard-brain alarm goes off when I realize what I’ve been thinking about. I’m definitely running short of air. Playing
Jeopardy
while my oxygen depletes. Caesar and his Centurions.

I twist my face right, gasp a mouthful of air, then throw my shoulders to the left. I successfully almost break my neck.

Fists punch my face. My head gets smacked against the floor. I hear a voice in my head begin to hum. Gina’s screams become a distant wailing, a spinning circle of smoky black sleep. The dark tornado sucks me inside.

TWENTY-FOUR

“Come on, get uppa.”

The familiar, thickly accented voice cancels a nightmare about having my hea
d crushed. What is
Mama Bones
doing here? Or, more to the point, where the hell
am
I? My head’s full of blood and mucous, ready to split like an overripe olive. My nose feels like a wad of prosciutto. Oh, yeah. Now I remember. I’m at the best little Italian restaurant in Little Italy. The joint right off Mulberry Street where Creeper beats up one lucky guest before the pasta. Keeps the customers in line.

I roll to my hands and knees,
the wood floor wet beneath me, and let Mama Bones’ sturdy two handed grip tow me onto my feet. Mr. Vic’s mother owns major grasping and pulling forearms. Like Caterpillar back-hoes. To develop that kind of hand strength, Mama Bones must have filled out thousands of phony bingo cards.

Two young men I remember from Mr.
Vic’s sailing-away party in Atlantic Highlands stand watchfully behind Mama Bones. Dark-haired, dark-eyed, both wear black chinos, black Nikes high tops and black T-shirts. Both of them buff and athletic. Mr. Trim and Mr. Fit.

What’s up with them?

“No time to answer questions,” Mama Bones says. “These are my nephews, Tomas and Gianni.”

Gee. Suppose there’s anything to Mr.
Vic’s claim his mother actually reads minds? Nah. It’s obvious and natural that I was thinking of asking that question, right?

The restaurant is quiet and empty of customers now except for our little group, basically the two nephews, Gina and Mama Bones around me and Tony on the floor. How long was I out?

Mama Bones squats beside Gina and touches the younger woman’s shoulder. Her hand rubs Gina’s back. It’s a side of Mr. Vic’s mother I haven’t witnessed. Almost warm and caring. Maybe I’m dreaming.

“We gotta go, honey,” Mama Bones says.

Gina’s hands and gaze won’t leave Tony’s face, the dark-haired beauty no longer Queen of Anything, just a shocked and frightened woman. Kind of the way I felt when Creeper hauled me and Ryan around the Locust Tree Inn, Creeper with one arm for each of us, carrying us like broken lamps.

“Tony’s hurt,” Gina says. “We have to get help.”

Mama Bones leans across Gina and touches Tony’s neck. Her fingers don’t stay in contact more than three or four seconds. “We’ll take him to the hospital,” Mama says. She waves for Tomas and Gianni to lift him.

“Come on. Get up
,” she says to Gina.

“I hear a siren,” Gina says. “I should stay and tell the police.”

Mama shakes her head. “That’s not a good idea. This is Brooklyn. If the cops keep you overnight, Tony’s boss will have you killed in jail.”

“
Tony’s
boss? Why would he hurt me?”

Just what I was going to ask. We have a lot in common, Gina and me.

“Who you think ordered this, huh?” Mama Bones says. “You think Bluefish sent his Jersey people to Brooklyn without permission?”

Mama Bones leads our hurried, sh
uffling troop through an empty, dirty kitchen. Wonder why the chefs and waiters left in such a hurry?

Outside, in an alley busy with delivery vans and trucks,
a handful of the restaurant’s curious staff, Gina first tumbles in row two behind the driver’s seat of a very clean white Cadillac Escalade. But when Gianni and Tomas stretch Tony’s wounded frame out in the Caddy’s extended trunk, Gina changes her mind and wants to ride in back with her husband.

Gina screams
a few seconds after crawling close beside him.

Mama Bones grips my arm. “Her husband is dead,”
she whispers. “That animal Max broke Tony’s neck.”

TWENTY-FIVE

Travel directly into Manhattan after your flight lands in Newark-Liberty International Airport, the New Jersey you see and remember consists primarily of smoking oil refineries, fleets of garbage trucks and rusty iron bridges. Very urban Americana, of course. But decidedly unappealing.

To snap anothe
r mental image of Jersey, drive south on the Turnpike to the Garden State Parkway, south again to watch the scenery slowly transform into forests of maple, pine and oak. Rivers, wooded hills and salt-water sloughs. Farms with horses and barns. The rural suburbs of central New Jersey equal anything you might see in Connecticut or Massachusetts.

A
nother thirty minutes south on the Parkway and you’re in New Jersey’s pine barrens, a desert-like, endless brush of stunted, twisted, yellowish evergreen scrub that makes the night drive from L.A. to Las Vegas look scenic. The acidic land and dwarfed, sickly trees look slightly bleached.

“Where are we going?” I ask
. We’re about an hour out of Brooklyn.

“Somewhere Bluefish won’t
look for you.” Besides the accent, Mama Bones’ language and tone also carry a certain confidence I wish I could share. When Gina discovered Tony was dead, she went off like a hotel smoke detector, and it was Mama Bones who brought Gina around with a small but magic smack. The old woman’s bag of tricks definitely carries big mojo. But I just witnessed a murder, and I can identify at least three of the four guys sent to kill Tony. If I’m Bluefish, I not only
look
for me under every rock, I station a man at each one to wait.

Gianni’s driving the Escalade
, a big SUV that rides much smoother than a Chevy Suburban. Tomas rides shotgun. Mama Bones, a nonverbal Gina and yours truly stack the next row. Tony is still in the back. Hard to believe the guy with German Shepherd eyes wound up dead searching for a plate of baked mac.

“If Bluefish’s people wanted Gina and me dead, why didn’t they kill us tonight?” I
ask.

“Their orders
were to kill Tony,” Mama Bones says. “Gina was supposed to get an emergency phone call, be out of the restaurant. You were even bigger surprise. But when Bluefish finds out
you
and Gina watch his men kill Tony...guess who’s gonna be next on his list.”

Gina leans against me, her body loose from exhausti
on. Despite all that’s happened and my shock over Tony’s murder, Gina’s weight warms me in places I shouldn’t be getting warm. Unbelievable. Down, boy. It’s rare, I admit, but sometimes even Austin Carr can show couth.

“How do you know all this, Mama Bones?” I
ask.

Mama Bones leans forward to touch
the driver Gianni’s shoulder. “It’s the next exit.”

It’s not an easy movement to pick up, the dark-haired, black-shirted young man presenting only minimum outlines, but Gianni nods.

“How do you think I know, smarty pants?” Mama Bones says. “Maybe me and Bluefish in the same business, you think? Maybe I
work
for Bluefish?”

“And he told you they were planning to kill
—”

“Bluefish told
me nothing,” she says. “But me being there probably saved you and Gina, at least for a day or two. We have to move fast.”

Gianni guides the Escalade off the Parkway. We roll through a stop sign at the end of the short
off-ramp, turn right onto a ribbon of blacktop running into New Jersey’s scrub pine forest. A full grown female deer bounds into the SUV’s headlights, and then is gone. Planets stare and stars blink at us from a narrow strip of sky, an overhead source of vague light between the trees.

“But you heard what was going to happen,” I say, “and
so you tried to help Vic’s friend Tony? I’m trying to understand why you were there.”

The SUV’s tires hum against
the soles of my feet through the floorboard. Another deer watches us from the tree line, this one’s eyes glowing neon yellow. Or do those night-vision lenses belong to some
other
kind of animal? A hunter, perhaps. Sharp beaks or a mouth with fangs.

“I mean, I know you didn’t come to save
me
,” I say.

Mama, Gianni and
Tomas laugh on cue like a warmed-up TV taping audience. Johnny Carson never had a crowd so well prepped.

Gina
touches my arm. “Mama Bones came for
me
,” she says. “She’s my aunt. My mother’s sister. I’m
named
after her.”

Gina.
Angelina. Right. I knew that.