(2004) Citizen Vince (13 page)

“So what’s this Ray Sticks do? What’s his specialty?”

Benny takes a bite of pork chop. “I got this client who knows Ray Sticks, plays cards with him. He says Sticks has the reputation…he’ll do anyone anytime. No conscience. Guy’s a friggin’
factory. Full service. Loves his work. But supposedly”—Benny looks around—“he especially gets off doing women.”

“Women?” Vince imagines Ray’s black eyes again.

“Lot of the old button guys won’t take a contract on a kid or a woman. But with the Colombians now, and this cocaine, everything’s crazy. All the old rules are gone. Women. Kids. Whole families. Done. And this Ray Sticks, he takes these kinds of jobs, the ones that some of the older guys won’t do.”

Vince takes a drink.

“Guy’s an animal. I’m telling you, Marty, if it is this Ray Sticks they sent after you…well, it ain’t good. It can’t get any worse than that.”

“Why me?” Vince finishes his drink and waves the glass at the bartender.

Benny chews on a piece of pork chop and shrugs his narrow shoulders. “I asked enough questions to get myself disbarred and indicted and maybe killed. I got no idea. Maybe someone inherited Coletti’s paper on you. Maybe they’re clearing the books. Or someone told ’em where you are and they want to send a message to snitches. Who knows why these things happen?”

The bartender brings Vince another drink. He takes a full sip and looks down at the table, trying to put the pieces together. When he looks up, Benny is staring at him.

“What?”

“You look different,” Benny says.

A ghost. Vince runs his hand over his stubbly head. “Yeah, this haircut.”

“No. Not that. You look…I don’t know, different.” He takes a drink. “So what are you going to do, Marty? You gotta run, right?”

“I don’t know,” Vince says. “This town where I was…if they could find me there, they could find me on the moon.”

Vince sighs. “This is gonna sound crazy. But I brought a little
money. I was thinking, what if I just repay the money I borrowed? What if I march in and act like it’s no big deal. Just go pay it off.”

Benny laughs, and then sees that Vince is serious. “How much do you have?”

“How much you think I need?”

Benny shrugs. “Three years’ action on fifteen grand, they’re gonna want sixty, and they’ll probably still waste you on principle.”

Vince stares into his bag. “I don’t have sixty.”

“How much do you have?”

“I brought ten.”

“Ten thousand?”

“I got more at home. I’ll tell ’em, the only way to get the rest of it is to let me go home and I’ll send it to ’em. That’ll be my insurance.”

Benny stares at Vince, then smiles sadly and takes the last bite of pork chop. “Make sure you hold a couple hundred out for your coffin.”

VINCE HAS AN
address in Bay Ridge for old Dom Coletti. He walks two blocks and descends the tile steps of the subway station on Broadway, thrilling at the rush of smells and sounds; roasted chestnuts and cigarette smoke and the seizing of train brakes. A couple of kids bump him as he waits for a token and his hand reflexively goes to his wallet as he queues up to the turnstile and then—you’re in: fluorescent lights on tile walls, some stoned Latin guy yelling on the dark platform—
“Pacífico!”
—while a woman in a dirty sundress plays the theme to
Rocky
on a hail-pocked clarinet, the case at her feet littered with nickels and dimes from commuters hiding behind tabloid shields; on the platform they shift and step and stare down the tunnel—desperate for the space between them—and you smile at the clacking groan of a train coming, lean out over the tracks down the black tunnel to see the faint
Cyclops light and feel the first breeze—dust and garbage—and then a gust of pure nostalgia as newspapers dance and the B train bursts into the station—
clathup, claathuup, claaathuuup
—and squeals and grinds to a stop.

Doors pop and people on the platform drift onto the train, swing around poles into plastic seats, eyeing one another, clinging to purses, backpacks, and shopping bags. The car smells like piss. Vince stands, thrilled to be reading graffiti again, like someone seeing his hometown newspaper for the first time in years. Chulo is still a motherfucker. Jennifer continues to eat big cock. Finally, Vince takes a seat and closes his eyes.

Cross the river, off at Seventy-seventh Street in Brooklyn, Vince walks eight blocks and finds himself in front of Coletti’s building, a clean three-story walk-up, almost in the shadow of the Verrazano. He takes a deep breath and starts for the door. Kids on the stoop part for him and he steps into the foyer, reads the name-plate, and rings 3B. After a minute, an old woman’s voice comes over the intercom, bursting with static. “Yes?”

“I’m looking for Dominic Coletti.”

“Who are you?”

He fights the question’s significance. “An old friend.”

The door buzzes and Vince goes up a wide staircase, the thick wooden railings carved and tagged with mild graffiti. On the third floor, an old Italian woman waits in a doorway, black wire hair, deep furrows around her eyes and mouth, sprouts of thicker black hair erupting from two big moles on her chin.

“Mrs. Coletti? I’m…Vince Camden.” Offers his hand.

She ignores it. “You’re such a friend to my husband, how come I never heard of you? How come I don’t recognize you?”

“I’ve been out of New York for a few years. My hair was longer.”

“And you say you used to work with Dom?”

“Yes.”

“At the old place in Queens?”

“Yes.”

“You a plumber?”

Vince remembers that Coletti was a plumber by trade, though like all connected tradesmen, he probably never worked a day as a plumber in his life.

“Because you don’t look like a gangster. You don’t even look Italian.”

“No,” Vince admits. “I’m not Italian. And I’m not a plumber.”

She turns in her housecoat and goes into the apartment. Vince follows her. The apartment opens to a small living room, dusted with age. The simple wallpaper is either faded beige or a white that’s gone old and dusty. There are framed pictures of grandchildren on every flat surface in the room—end table, coffee table, TV, sideboard, mantel, and dining-room table. All of the grandchildren, boys and girls, seem to have the same shoulder-length, comb-furrowed, jet-black hair, parted perfectly in the middle.

“What do you want with Dom?”

“I just…want to talk to him,” Vince says.

“Nobody comes to see Dom anymore.” She frowns. “It’s a goddamn crime. He made a lot of money for you people. He was always loyal, and when one of you guys went to jail, Dom took care of his family.” She leans in close. “And how do you reward him? When he was in did you come to see if I needed anything? Or now? Do you young guys come by? You young guys, making all your money with your drugs, going to the Studio 54. I read the papers; I know about the Studio 54. Do you come over and thank my Dominic?
Grazia, paisan…famiglia!
Do you do this, plumber?”

“No,” Vince says. “I guess not.”

She mimics him: “I guess not.” When there is nothing more to add, she turns and goes to a small hallway connecting three doors. Vince follows. She pauses in front of a tabletop shrine—nine votive candles draped with rosary beads and some figurines of Mary and a handful of saints crowded together, looking to
Vince like out-of-work foosball men in robes, yellow hair, red lips, and blue eyes painted just slightly off center.

She crosses herself and opens a door and Vince follows her into a dark room. It smells like decay and shit. In the center of the room is an old hospital bed with a crank at the bottom. Sitting on the bed, naked except for a large plastic diaper, is the last seventy-five pounds of Dominic Cold Blood Coletti. His arms are crooked and his fingers snarled on his bird chest like he’s holding on to a branch. His skin is pale bark. One of his legs is draped off the side of the bed, the toenails long and jagged. But it’s Coletti’s face that gets to Vince. He is in midgrimace, his eyes closed, wrinkled mouth forming over the letter
O,
white scum around his lips. He breathes in rasps and fits.

“He had a stroke,” Vince says quietly.

She nods. “The doctors don’t even know how many. They say he’s having them all the time now. You don’t even see them anymore. But he feels them. I can tell.” She carefully pushes his leg back onto the bed and pulls a blanket from the floor and drapes it across him, from the stomach down. “Dom. This young man is here to see you.”

Coletti’s right eye flutters open and he takes Vince in. That eye is noncommittal, but after a moment, knowing.

“Do you want to talk to him, Dom?”

Vince watches the old man’s face but sees nothing except a couple of blinks.

“Okay, then,” she says. “I’ll leave you two alone.”

“Can he understand me?”

“Can you understand him?” she asks her husband. He blinks twice rapidly and Mrs. Coletti turns to Vince. “Two blinks means yes. Three means no.”

“What does one blink mean?”

She scowls at him. “It means his goddamn eye is dry. If he needs something he’ll just blink and blink and blink. Then come and get me.”

She leaves and Vince looks around the dark room for a chair. There is a folding chair in the corner and he drags it over, squeaking across the floor. He sits, and leans forward on his knees. He speaks quietly. “Do you know who I am?”

Coletti blinks twice.

“Look, I’m sorry for the way everything turned out.”

The eye just stares at him.

“I’m sorry about Crapo and Bailey, too. I didn’t know it would be so hard for them. I was in trouble and I didn’t have the money and it seemed like the only way—”

The old man blinks three times and then closes his eye. A chalky blue vein runs across the lid. No more excuses.

“Okay,” Vince says.

The old man opens his eye again. Waits.

“Look…I have to ask you—do you still have paper on me?”

Coletti blinks three times. No. His breath is heavy and stale.

“There isn’t some old friend of yours who might still want to take me out?”

Three blinks. The eye stares.

“
Someone
is after me.”

The eye just stares.

“It isn’t you?”

Three blinks.

“You don’t have any idea who it might be?”

Three blinks.

“Okay.” In the dark now, he can make out the room. On one wall are pictures of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge under construction, its ribs exposed. On another wall, photos of thorough-bred horses. He remembers Dom used to love the horses. “Okay,” Vince says again. “Thank you.” He reaches in his duffel bag and pulls out the envelope of money. He counts out four thousand in fifties—eighty bills—and sets the thick stack on the bed next to Coletti. The old man raises his eye to the top of its lid and then
down to his chest. Vince picks up the money and slides it into Coletti’s clawed hand—his skin cold and hard. The old man blinks twice, emphatically. Yes.

“It’s only four thousand,” Vince says. “Less than a third of what I borrowed. I don’t know if I can pay off the points, but I’ll send the rest of the principal as soon as I get back home. Okay?”

The eye just stares.

“And if you’re…gone, I’ll send it to your wife. Is that okay? Will we be straight if I do that?”

A pause. Two blinks.

“Thank you.” Vince pats the old man’s chest, and then stands. The eye follows him. “Can I ask you something?” Vince says.

The eye stares.

“Did you always like it, the life?”

The old man just stares.

“What if someone offered to let you start over? New name. New city. Everything. Just walk away. Do you think you could you have done that?”

The eye looks past Vince. Blinks twice.

Then the old man closes his eye. Vince waits for a second and then goes out. The air outside the room is clean and Vince breathes heavily. Mrs. Colleti comes into the hallway, walks past Vince and into the bedroom.

Vince walks through the living room and is at the door when he hears Mrs. Coletti’s voice at his back.

“You left that money for Dom?”

He half turns. “Yes.”

“Why?”

“I owed it to him.”

She stares for a minute and then her eyes narrow. “Marty Hagen.” She says his name like a slap. “That’s who you are, isn’t it?”

He doesn’t say anything.

“Goddamn. Do you know that Dom never even blamed you?
Never said a cross word about you. He actually liked you. Do you know he would’ve eaten that money you owed him.
Eaten it.
That’s the kind of man you ruined, you worthless—”

Vince looks at the ground.

“My Dom, he knew Profaci. The Gallo brothers. I fed Joey Colombo right here at this table. In forty years, Dom never crossed the wrong people, never did more than a weekend in jail. He was a pro. Didn’t work in his own neighborhood, didn’t sell drugs. Raised six kids so they wouldn’t have to do what he did, got them into trades and good jobs. Our oldest, Paul, is an accountant. Our youngest, Maria, is a pharmacist in Orange. And then, when his work is done, when my Dominic should be relaxing and playing with his grandchildren, he gets taken down by some stupid thief who can’t pay off a debt! For what? A few thousand dollars? Bah!”

Vince looks at his shoes.

“It was like watching a tiger get taken down by a mosquito.”

“How much time did he do?”

She waves her hand like it’s no big deal. “He pulled a year. They thought they could turn him, get him to wear a wire, but he wouldn’t budge. Not Dom. Not for a year, not for eighty. He had character, which you wouldn’t know from your ass. But it ruined him. He got out and his hand didn’t work right, and then the right side of his face went—” She looks to the old man’s door. “Why did you bring that money? What do you want?”

Vince flinches. “I wanted to do the right thing.”

She refuses to look away, or to allow him to look away. “Well, you’re too late to do it here.”

WHEN YOU’RE TAILING
someone, it is best to be like a shadow at three o’clock, not
behind
the subject but
parallel
with him—a lane over, or even better, on side streets and alleys, two steps over and
one behind. That way the target looks over his shoulder, straight back, and sees nothing. This method requires concentration and anticipation, but it sharpens the senses and eventually you know where he’s going before he does. At least that’s Alan Dupree’s new theory. He walks blindly through the terminal at LaGuardia, feeling more like a tourist than a cop, his first time in New York, looking for a tough guy whose name may or may not be Vince Camden. Needle, I’d like you to meet Haystack. In fact he wonders if that’s why Phelps
let
him make the trip when they got it approved, because he realized it was such a long shot. Let the rook waste his time.