Wiseguys: Blast From the Past
Wiseguys: Blast from the Past
HIGH BALLS
An imprint of Torquere Press Publishers
PO Box 2545
Round Rock, TX 78680
Copyright
O
2011 by Aaron Michaels
Cover illustration by Alessia Brio
Published with permission
ISBN: 978-1-61040-567-6
All rights reserved, which includes the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever except as provided by the U.S. Copyright Law. For information address Torquere Press. Inc., PO Box 2545, Round Rock, TX 78680.
First Torquere Press Printing: September 2011
Printed in the USA
The family from Jersey showed up at Tony and Carter's deli at five after two on a Friday afternoon mid-way through August.
Tony tried not to react. Easier said than done, but just because the family was from Jersey didn't mean the guy knew Uncle Sid or the rival family that had wiped out Sid and every other member of his business family.
Everyone except Tony and Carter.
Carter was in the back. He'd just put two pans of lasagna in the oven in preparation for the dinner crowd, and he'd be starting in soon on the pizza dough. Carter had been experimenting lately with pizza. Not designer pizzas loaded with artichoke hearts and goat cheese like they had in those fancy schmancy places in L.A., but good old-fashioned Italian sausage and pepperoni with plenty of mozzarella and a hand-tossed crust, just like they used to get in the Italian delis back home in Jersey. So far, the customers loved it, locals and tourists alike.
Nothing like a taste of east coast Jersey in a little Idaho town fifty miles south of the Canadian border. Odd place for a couple of former wiseguys to start a new life. Odder still for a couple of former wiseguys to settle down like an old married couple and open their own deli, not that Tony had one single complaint. He'd put a couple of pounds on himself sampling Carter's experiments.
"The good life," Carter said whenever he kissed Tony's slightly rounded belly.
"You complaining?"
"Naw. Put a little meat on them skinny bones. Give me something to hold on to."
Tony had always been skinny as a rail. That was one of the reasons his Uncle Sid had been grooming Tony for the business end of the business.
The kid's got no muscle, he can't scare anybody,
Sid always used to say. Tony had hated it when his uncle said shit like that around the old man's lieutenants. It cost Tony the respect the old man said everybody in the family deserved.
Not that it mattered now. Sid was dead, gunned down with the rest of his crew in a neighborhood restaurant the family had controlled. Tony would have been dead, too, if Carter hadn't gotten him out.
Even now, the few extra pounds Tony had packed on from eating Carter's cooking had all settled around his middle and left the rest of him lean. He wasn't sure whether he liked the additional weight, but as long as Carter didn't care, Tony could live with it. So long as he didn't get his uncle's beer gut. Tony didn't want to become one of those scrawny old guys who looked like they swallowed a basketball.
Carter didn't have Tony's problem. Carter was a big man, but on him the weight was all muscle, even with all the pizza and lasagna and baked ziti he ate. Back in Jersey, Carter used to work out on a heavy bag at the gym when he wasn't busting heads for Sid. Since they'd opened the deli, Carter got a workout hefting fifty pound bags of flour and heavy metal pans the size of sheet cakes full of the classic Italian food that kept them in business.
By the time the family from Jersey walked through the deli's front door, the lunch crowd was over for the day and Tony was busy restocking the cold case with thin-sliced Italian salami and provolone. He kept twice the amount of food they would ever need in one day in the cold case, because back home the deli cases had been filled to over-flowing. The secret to success, someone had told Tony when he was a kid, was to look successful. In the delis of Tony's memories, that meant stocking more food than you hoped to sell.
Tony had taken that advice to heart. Not only was their cold case full of meats and cheeses, antipasto and salads and cheesecake, the walls on both sides of the deli were covered in shelves stocked full of everything from dry Italian salamis and pepperoni and jars of cured olives and capers and bags of every kind of dried pasta Tony could find, to olive oil, canned tomato and marinara sauce, canned Alfredo sauce, strings of garlic, pickles in glass canisters filled with brine, and loaves of bread delivered fresh daily by a local bakery. Pans full of baked ziti and lasagna and veal parmesan steamed on hot trays off to the side of the cold case. Tony wanted people to know they were in an Italian deli even with their eyes closed. He wanted their mouths to water before they stepped close to the counter.
He shouldn't have been surprised to see a group from the old neighborhood. The whole town made its living on tourists. The town bordered the west side of a lake that reminded Tony a lot of Tahoe, or what Tahoe must have looked like before gambling moved in.
The deli was less than a two block walk from the lake. Tourists who had been out on the lake all day and didn't want to go to a fancy restaurant somewhere else on the town's three-block main street would start showing up around four looking for quick takeout. A few regulars, locals who didn't like to cook in the summer, either, would start showing up around five-fifteen. If the day was a good one, the deli might even get some calls for takeout before Tony and Carter closed up shop at seven. Let the fancy restaurants cater to the late-night crowd. By seven, Tony was tired enough that all he wanted to do was go home and spend the night with Carter.
Tony pegged the family as part of the old neighborhood before they ever opened their mouths. He'd never seen them before, but he could tell Jersey girls anywhere. It was a combination of the hair and the makeup and a certain way of walking -- attitude and swagger and tough-girl entitlement. Back when he'd still been part of Uncle Sid's family, Tony's aunt had trotted out girl after girl from the neighborhood in an attempt to get Tony to settle down. He knew the look.
"Oh, man, this smells like home," the man said, his voice loud and expansive. "You ever think we'd find something like this out here in the sticks?"
"Think they have ziti?" the woman asked. "I haven't had a good ziti since we got on the plane."
The man was in his late forties, solid, olive-skinned and dark-haired. He had dark eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses and the kind of permanent five o'clock shadow only a heavy beard could produce. He had a big gold ring on his pinky finger and brought the smell of rich cigars and old liquor with him in the door. He walked with the slight swagger of a man who didn't expect to be messed with.
The family had two kids with them, a bored-looking girl of about thirteen, iPod buds in her ears, a too-short baby doll tee showing off her tanned adolescent belly, and a boy of about eight. The boy was skinny and dark-haired, his tee-shirt hanging off him like he was a coat hanger. He had dark eyes that seemed to see everything but hold it deep inside, like his own little secret. He reminded Tony of himself at that age.
"What can I do for you folks?" Tony asked. He didn't smile. Even after months of not being a wiseguy, putting on a smile for strangers still felt fake. Carter, now he could smile at anyone and make it look like they'd been friends for life. Then again, Carter could glare silently and make the object of his stare consider just how fast he should leave town.
"You have ziti?" the woman asked Tony.
"Got a fresh pan." Carter had brought it out an hour ago. Tony had only served up one portion so far.
"That's what I want," she said.
"You're not gonna eat it all," her husband said.
"Then I won't eat it all. What do you care? I'll save it for later."
"Get her ziti," the man said to Tony.
The kids ordered sandwiches, and the man wanted a meatball sub. Tony went about putting their order together, all the while conscious of the man's eyes on him.
"You're from back home, too," the man said to him.
Tony spooned meatballs and sauce on the fresh roll. "Yeah. Been out here a couple of years."
"Where from?"
"Trenton," Tony lied. "My pop had a place back home."
"I been to Trenton a few times. What's your pop's place called?"
Tony wrapped up the meatball sub in foil, then dished up the ziti in a to-go tin. "Closed up when I was just a kid. I'm kinda winging it here, going from what I remember."
"Good memory."
Tony was pretty sure the guy caught that Tony hadn't really answered the question. Tony was ready for the guy to press the point, but he didn't.
Tony crimped the edges of the to-go tin to keep the cardboard cover in place over the ziti and went to work making the kids' sandwiches. Maybe he and Carter had gotten lucky this time. Running into another Jersey guy was bound to happen sooner or later. Even if the guy was connected, it didn't mean he'd know them from a hill of beans.
Then Carter stepped through the door from the kitchen, and Tony knew their luck had run out.
Not that the guy said anything. Neither did Carter, but it was obvious they knew each other. The man's eyes narrowed behind his wire-rims, and the air suddenly felt thick, like before a thunderstorm when the clouds were gathering overhead, heavy with rain, but nothing had happened yet.
Carter stared at the man, eyes flat. Carter kept his hair shaved down to his scalp. His skin was dark olive and deeply tanned, with sweat beaded up from the steam in the kitchen. He wore a plain white tee-shirt that snugged tight over the thick muscles of his arms and the hard bulk of his chest. Even without a word, Carter's mere presence implied a threat, and Tony could tell the man from Jersey knew it.
Carter looked away first, as if the guy from Jersey didn't matter. "I got something in the back I want you to try," he said to Tony. "After you're done here." He went back into the kitchen without another glance at the man.
"Trenton," the man muttered under his breath, as the kitchen door swung shut after Carter. It sounded like the guy was cementing the lie in his memory. He handed two twenties to Tony. "Keep the change, kid," he said, then he and his family took their food and left the deli.
No one else was in the deli to see the exchange. Tony wiped his hands on the apron he wore tied around his waist and went through the door into the kitchen. "You want to tell me who the hell that was?" he asked Carter.
"Enforcer for Luciano." Carter opened the oven and checked his lasagna. "I busted heads with him once, back when your uncle owed Luciano a favor. We went calling on this corner grocer thought he didn't have to pay."
Carter didn't say what happened with the grocer. In a situation like that, there were only two possible outcomes. Either the grocer paid and the enforcer went away happy, or the grocer didn't pay, in which case the grocer went away permanently. Back in the day, Tony never asked Carter the specifics of what he did. He didn't want to start now. Not unless it was going to cause them trouble.
"We got anything to worry about?" Tony asked.
Carter shut the oven door. "Depends on who Luciano owes favors to."
In Tony's old life, favors were the currency of business between the families. Every family craved power and respect, that went without saying, but favors from one family to the next might keep your own people out of jail if the cops were on someone else's payroll but not yours. Favors bought you building permits and delivery routes and a cut of another family's action. And every once in a while, favors bought you someone like Carter to help keep the local businesses in line.
Luciano's people hadn't been the ones who hit Uncle Sid and his lieutenants back in Jersey. That had been a young family with a boss who had something to prove, and he'd done it by turning a family restaurant into a killing field. But just because Luciano hadn't wiped out Uncle Sid's entire operation in one single blow, that didn't mean Luciano wasn't allied with the new boss or didn't want to curry favors.
If Luciano wanted a favor in return -- a big one -- he'd report to the new guy that Sid's nephew, the one he'd treated like his own kid, the old man's only relative who'd survived the hit, was alive and well and running a deli in Northern Idaho.
"Guess we better watch our backs," Tony said.
Carter wiped his hands on a towel and leaned back against the stainless steel sink, soapy water steaming behind him. "We could pack up," he said. "Get in the van. There's a whole lot of country we haven't seen yet."