The Life and Times of Innis E. Coxman (16 page)

Their
eldest son reached the customer’s home and knocked on the huge wooden door. His
knuckles had barely finished rapping the oak before he sprinted to meet the
rest of the family at Louis Armstrong International. A hastily booked flight to
New York was firing up to take them away.

The
Poliona family, minus the youngest member, solemnly boarded a Delta plane and
bid their private farewells to Marco and their city. As they taxied on the
runway, tears flooded the crevices of Mrs. Poliona’s grizzled face. She was
exhausted, but she could rest easy knowing that another life awaited them in
the East; that little Marco finally had a fair shake in the South.  

So
it passed that Marco’s life truly began when he was gifted to the notorious
Mafioso Peppino Ballasacko along with his order of
tagliata di manzo
and
strawberry
cannolis.

***

An
importer of fine art and Italian cheeses, Ballasacko was a respected member of the
business community who wielded great influence in local affairs. Known for his
benevolence and entrepreneurial savvy, he organized events for charities,
lunched with members of the political circle, and attended Saint Hypocrites on
Sunday mornings. He’d been a decorated soldier during the Vietnam War, and was
renowned for his shrewd financial acumen.

But
his shellac was tacky. Everyone from the mayor down to the lowest gutter hood
knew how the “Italian Battalion”
really
did business.

Ballasacko,
commonly known as Don Balls, was head of the bayou branch of the mob with half
the city fathers in his bed. When a corrupt politico pulled his thong to the
side to expose the city treasure chest, Ballasacko yanked his hair and violated
every fiscal orifice. He got a cut from everybody—from the little black kids
who tap danced for the smiling tourists in the Quarter, to the councilmen who
accepted graft from the shady construction companies.

If
there was an apple pie cooling on a windowsill, he got a slice.

You
didn’t satisfy his sweet tooth, you were garroted with piano wire and
dispatched to the Gulf.

His
charm was endearing, his bootleg funds bought him protection, and the threat of
bodily harm to any would-be whistleblowers kept it the best open secret in town.

***

Don
Balls was aware of Marco’s origin from the get-go. For him, the lineage was a
technicality. He was often heard to joke in his thick Cajun accent, “The little
fucker was ugly as sin! When the priest would go down there to pray over him,
me
and the boys would take bets on how many novinas he’d
have to say before he purged the demon! Hahaha!” He’d slap his knee with a
great belly laugh. ”Aw yeah, everybody in the neighborhood knew where that
gargoyle came from. But you know me, I said, ‘Sure, I’ll raise the little
elephant man. And if I can’t fix him, maybe I can sell him to the circus!’
Hahaha!”

Marco
had usually excused himself from Christmas dinner by the time Don Balls got to
the finale of his story.

The
Don clutched the tot in his talons, raising him as one of his own, giving him
all the perks that come with having a father who can buy your grades or bury
obstinate teachers. He showered him with gifts, money, plastic surgery, and
affection, same as his other children, though the plastic surgery was
somewhat
mostly
really for Marco.

As
the boy grew, he came to know the origin of his birth, having been clued in by
a relative when he was five. It changed the dynamics of his world dramatically.

Marco
built a wall of estrangement, shutting himself off from his adopted family and
blooming in a bubble of his own creation. He knew he’d never be a blood heir to
the Don, and his frustrations manifested themselves in disturbing fashions. He
began to show rot of a bad seed.

Consensus
held that Marco was a depraved child who turned dangerous when he didn’t get
his way, bullying other children and pulling practical jokes that bordered on
the alarming. Favorite pastimes included pissing on the narcoleptic butler when
he had an attack, substituting cap guns for the crew’s Sig Sauers—a
laugh
riot
at one of the Don’s assassination attempts—and replacing the maid’s
tampons with string cheese and Nerf bullets. His personality intensified one
hundred fold as he got older, running his own clique with the maturity of a
spoon-fed toddler.

Poliona
became a self-indulged prima donna with no concern for the happiness of his
crew. Then he became my boss.

***

I
was brought directly from the restaurant to meet Don Balls at one of his
Haitian massage parlors. It was located in a Godforsaken part of the city just
two blocks past a day-old robbery/homicide at a corner liquor store. Marco and
I walked into the lobby of the brick building where I was instantly smacked
with the scents of sex and cocoa butter. A woman with skin like dark roast
coffee leaned on an empty glass case in the lobby. She flipped tediously
through a foreign magazine and ignored me when I spoke. Marco divulged that she
knew just enough English to arrange a service and collect the dough.

Red
light bulbs suspended in track lighting lit a red carpeted hallway with blood
red shag on the walls. A closed door at the end offered a woman screaming
profanities—at least they carried the force of profanities—in Haitian Creole.
Followed by the lightning crack of a whip.

I
glanced at Marco. He gave me a horrific leer normally reserved for pederasts. I
choked back my vomit and followed him to the Don’s office at the end of the
hallway, past the screaming girl.

Her
cursing had turned to quiet sobbing.  

Before
Marco could shut the door, the Don was heaving his portly, red-tracksuited
frame up from the well-worn armchair to shake my hand and introduce himself. I
told him my name and where I was from. His chunky cheeks pushed his horn-rimmed
glasses to his forehead when he smiled. He said he had family around there,
lamenting that he hadn’t visited in some time. After a brief trip down (his)
memory lane caboosed with a drink offer at 7:45 in the morning, we got down to
business.

The
Don said he’d been having problems satisfying debts from gamblers and
bit-borrowers. Said he was looking for a collections man. He eyeballed me like
a pimp inspecting a new girl, saying I’d be perfect for the position provided I
checked out (re: wasn’t a cop). He said I was a “big fucker” and looked like I
could really “put it on ‘em.”

I
decided to tap the Don’s funny bone to score some points. “Well, I don’t know
about ‘puttin’ it on ‘em,’ but I sure did ‘put it in ‘em’ a few times when I
was in the clink! Bent ‘em over their bunks and everything! They weren’t gonna
put cherry Kool-Aid on
my
lips! No, sir!”

The
two of them stared at me like I’d been caught jerking off in church. You could
hear a flea fart. I was beginning to think my attempt at cute had earned me the
oil drum, maybe a railroad spike through the neck. The Don did a double-take
and laughed so hard I thought he was going to piss his chic running suit.

He
looked to Marco with an arched, bushy eyebrow, grinning and grumbling something
in Italian while giving an imperious wave. I just knew it was sign language to
put a bullet in my head. Instead, when I looked at Marco, he gave me a nod, his
face still twisted from my ill-timed sodomy humor.

Don
Balls was a busy man and our meeting was drawing to a close. Getting up from
our chairs for farewells, I nonchalantly asked what’d happened to my
predecessor. He grinned and said he’d “grown a conscience,” his tone indicating
that whatever befell him would happen to me should Jiminy Cricket set up shop
on my shoulder. I didn’t need him to elaborate.

***

I
immediately went to work, rising quickly through the ranks, forging friendships
in the process and growing closer to Don Balls every day. Soon, my stance as a small-time
street collector morphed into a grander position, one of stature,
responsibility. Muscle and moxie may have been my entry-point, but loyalty and
diligence earned me a spot that was normally held for those with pure marinara
canoeing through their veins.

Out
of the blue, Marco asked me to attend a dinner on the edge of the city. He was
being nice. I knew damn
good
and well he wasn’t
“asking” me anything. The tones of his invitation seemed ominous; the Don never
ventured that far out of his enclave and I didn’t like my chances for survival.
My paranoia told me that dinner was going to be an entree of lead with a side
of concrete.

Thank
the fuck Christ, sometimes it pays to be wrong.

After
a bottle of red wine and some wonderful Italian cuisine, I was given the
dubious title of Man Mixer in the Don’s organization.

Sounds
like a dating site ran by The Village People, huh? That’s what I thought, too.
But no, it wasn’t that sinister.

I
was the last frontier of bad debt for Don Balls, acting as umpire in the deadly
game of Mafia Bankruptcy. Only the outfield extended well beyond Chapter
Thirteen.

To
hear him describe it, my job was to, “exact retribution on the borrowers who
did not recompense loans in a timely manner,” when in truth what I did was locate
deadbeats who didn't pay their loans and mixed the last pair of shoes they ever
needed, sending them screaming off the starboard side of a yacht for a one-way
plunge into Fishville.

It
sounded less evil when he said it.

And don’t judge me!
I had a goat to take care of.

***

Things
couldn’t have been better. The Don was pleased with my work, I was making money
hand over fist, and Fred had a blast playing with the new toys I got him (you
never know the durability of a pocket pussy until it’s been gnawed to the
rectum by a wild goat). Things were looking up for the first time in a long
time. Too bad there was a drop of piss in my orange juice.

Ever
since I’d gotten the promotion, Marco had acted cagey. I felt the cold shoulder
that night at dinner, but in the following weeks he shit icicles whenever we
shared the same space. It started with the little things: gone were the rides
to work together, getting high as we rode around collecting debts became a
thing of the past, and freebies from my favorite Haitian girl were a distant
memory. What made it all the more unnerving—what we didn’t talk about—was that
I knew what was bothering him:

Jealousy.
The way he saw it, an outsider absent of Italian heritage had come in and
usurped a position that rightfully belonged to him, or at least another Made
Man. What I didn’t foresee were the lengths to which he would go to reclaim his
place.

***

Picture
it: a one-room cinder-block shack housing farm equipment somewhere on the rim
of the Big Easy. Hidden by sickly-sweet stalks of unrefined sugar in one of the
Don’s cane fields. An indoor spigot jutting from the wall with a hose attached.
Water droplets clawing their way through the cracked ceiling as a hurricane
drives the living to seek dryer conditions. Buckets strewn about the room to
catch it all. Me and one of Marco’s boys milling around performing mafia
duties. Some blubbering deadbeat tied to an old chair with strips of bare wood
showing where paint used to shine. Crying like the little girl who didn’t get the
pony for her birthday. Shoeless feet in a silver wash tub. Gas heaters to
combat the humidity.

Quikrete
needs help in that kind of weather, you know.

***

Sal
and I circled the guy like vultures waiting for a horse to keel over in the desert,
smoking cigarettes, sniffing lines, enduring what seemed like an endless wait
for the concrete to solidify, chewing the fat over a vacation that Sal had
planned and periodically telling that crying bitch in the tub to shut his
mouth. The concrete was hard but nowhere near to acceptable standards. His
whining was becoming unbearable and I wanted to put a bullet in his brain just
so he’d shut the fuck up. But the Don wanted him drowned, not shot.

We’d
been there for over twenty-four hours.

I
told Sal I was going to retrieve another heater from my Chrysler parked just a
few yards from the shack. He’d forgotten to bring the raincoats like he was
ordered to and I was drenched as soon as I opened the door. I ran to my car and
unlocked the trunk, slamming the lid when I had all twenty-three-thousand BTUs
cradled snugly in the crook of my left arm. I hurried back to the rickety
wooden door and kicked it open to bask in the warmth of dry shelter, only to
find Sal
filling the tub with water from the
goddamn fucking water hose!

I
felt like a child catching his parents during coitous and discovering why the
cucumbers were always a bit tangy.

I
placed the heater at my feet, not even shutting the door. Over the deafening
wind of a category three hurricane and sheets of stinging rain beating my back,
I politely asked that joker, “Sal! What the fuck are you doing?! This guy has
had six months to pay up and the Don wants him gone!”