Deadly Lullaby (12 page)

Think I'm wearing you out now, my friend, just wait.

“Just a few more questions, Taquan”—a pause—“then you can go back to your cell.”

He bolts upright like a jack-in-the-box, blinking himself alert. “Nah, I'm good, I'm good. Ask anythin' you want, man, no prob.”

“If you insist,” I say, smiling to myself. “Okay, you see this short, stout guy standin' there when you walk through the bushes, and one of the first things you thought when you saw the girl was that the man had killed her, right?”

He nods. “Oh yeah, yeah, that's what I thought.”

“What did you see that made you think that?”

He sits back in his chair and folds his hands in his lap, thinking harder than he's thought since we met. “He was
there,
man.”

“Taquan, you don't want to pin it on the guy just because he was there, do you?” I lower my voice. “I mean, you were there, too.”

This stuns him, probably scares him more than he lets on or even realizes at this moment, but it gets him to thinking. He finally says, “I guess he could'a walked up on her and found her just before I did. Maybe heard the noises I did and just got there when I did, you know, and got scared of me the way I got scared of him and run.” He shakes his head as if to rid himself of that thought. “But I don't think so. It was his voice, like the way he said whatever it was he said. It was so
mean,
you know? And the way he stood there lookin' at her, it was like, ‘Fuck you, bitch!' ”

“Do you remember any word he spoke at all?”

He shakes his head. “No, just heard the voice, wasn't listenin' for words. It just wasn't nothin' I made out…”

Down goes his head into the crook of his arm again.

I've tenderized him as much as possible.

Time for the whiplash: “Taquan, look at me.”

He struggles to raise his head, like there's a sack of cement resting stacked on top of it.

“You're full of
shit.
”

Confusion, hurt. “What?”

“You expect me to believe the bullshit you just laid on me?”

“I told you I was stoned and it was—”

“How'd you lure her into the bushes? Offer her cash you didn't have in exchange for a little pussy?”

“Naw, that didn't—”

“Rock, then, you offered her rock.”

He shakes his head so hard the force could dislodge his brain stem.

“There were half a dozen condoms in her purse, Taquan, and a blade and a pipe, so we figure her for a hooker. You knew she was a hooker, didn't you? You'd seen her around before last night, hadn't you?”

“Yeah, but—”

“
Yeah?
You'd seen her before and you didn't mention it until now?”

“You didn't ask me, man, what're you tryin' to—”

“You'd fucked her before, too, hadn't you? Knew she carried cash.”

“I can't afford to buy pussy, shit. I can't afford
food.
” He sits back, crosses his arms.

He's retreating, closing up. Not a good sign.

Take the foot off the pedal.

“Sorry, Taquan.”

He swivels his head to me. Those eyes: Distrustful. Hateful.

“Tell me,” I say, “where had you seen her around before last night—in the park?”

Still sulking, he nods his head, talks to the tabletop. “Yeah, and downtown, too, 'round the mall, hangin' with some black chick.”

“Yeah? What did the black chick look like?”

A little shrug, eyes still staring down the tabletop. He shifts in his seat, twists his neck. Bad signs.

“When's the last time you saw them?”

A shrug again.

Fuck, losing him. Time to attack. I stand, lean over the table into him. “She pulled the blade on you in the bushes, didn't she?”

“No.”

“You offered her rock for pussy, or offered her cash you don't have, and then you go in the bushes to do the deal. You know her, you know she's got cash and rock in her purse, so you start to rob her. She pulls her blade, and you go into a crack rage and choke her out.”

He shakes his head, tears well up in his eyes. Tears, good. Tears are good.

“I know you didn't mean to, Taquan. You just lost control. Admit it and you'll dodge murder one. The prosecutor'll pop you for nothing more than murder two, tops, maybe even reckless homicide. Admit it and the state won't pump your ass full of Jesus juice in the death house at San
fucking
Quentin!”

Taquan's ready to talk, to confess. Tears spring from his eyes now, fucking streams of them. He backhands snot from his nose, turns to me, speaks. “Now you're doin' what you said you wasn't gonna do. Try to get me to admit to somethin' I didn't do. I don't want to talk to you no more. I want one a those lawyers you told me about.”

Shit.

The Venetian Social Club always served as the primary gathering place for the Balboa and Sacci organizations, and for years I came here almost every day. The place appears deserted, and there are no human sounds to conceal the loud creaks my footfalls make on the old vinyl flooring in the foyer. When I veer right toward the bar area, a deluge of memories flood my thoughts, the voices and images of long-departed friends and enemies sweeping all immediate business concerns from my mind. My reverie is interrupted when Sam the bartender emerges from the kitchen behind the bar.

“Babe!” he says. “Thought I heard somebody come in.”

Sam gives me a sincere welcome back, shaking my hand across the bar top and gripping my shoulder much more affectionately than I would have preferred. He pours me my usual vodka rocks and plops in a squeeze of lime as if I last bellied up to the bar yesterday. He seems gratified when I acknowledge his thoughtful gesture with a warm nod, a smile, and a “You are the best, Sam, the very best.”

“Babe, I gotta say, eight years in the can has left you no worse for the wear. You don't look any older than the first time you walked in here. You were what then, sixteen?”

“Jesus, Sam,” I say, “does Nico have you slinging drinks for nothing but tips now?”

“I ain't hustling you for a tip,” he says. “Just noting a fact: You still look like you.”

Looking around me, I say, “I guess this joint and everyone in it is frozen in time.” The Venetian, in fact, still resembles a well-worn VFW or Foreign Legion post, with its old wood paneling and mismatched dining room furniture haphazardly arranged in front of the beat-up bar. To my delight, the framed poster of J. Edgar Hoover still hangs on the wall to my left, one that has him aiming a tommy gun at the room. At the bottom of the poster are written the words “Freeze you dirty rat!,” which Anthony “Tony Rocks” Stone (may he rest in peace) wrote there years ago during a swacked-out party that followed Mr. Balboa's first acquittal on federal racketeering charges.

Sam claims to vividly remember the first day I ever came here, though I tell him he cannot remember it as vividly as me. I tell him the date was September 30, 1979, the first date I always note when tracing the genealogy of my so-called Life of Organized Crime. This date stands out not only because it was my sixteenth birthday, but also because it was exactly six months to the day after I had joined my third set of foster parents in eight months. Turned out they were the last set of foster parents I ever had: Frank “The Beast” East and his wife Connie, a childless couple in their thirties. Frank comes up in our conversation almost right away, Sam commenting that “The Beast” was a perfect nickname for him, a tall and muscled, red-headed SoCal native who anybody would agree was an alpha male's alpha male. A Vietnam vet who wrenched Hueys in the war and became a car mechanic when he mustered out, the Department of Children and Family Services concluded Frank was the perfect person to set me upon the straight and narrow path that the so-called criminal abuse of my father had caused me to stray from. The department's background check did not uncover Frank and Connie's connection to LA boss Dominic Balboa through then-underboss Joe Sacci: Frank operated a chop shop out of his commercial garage and Connie manufactured the highest quality LSD in Cali at the time in her basement lab. I learned of the Easts' so-called criminal association about a week into our relationship, the very day I was arrested for joyriding in a stolen '69 Firebird.

Frank slapped me around after retrieving me from juvie detention, then sat me down the way a real father should and taught me how to steal a car without getting caught. (Frank's Ten Commandments of Car Theft,
verbatim:
I Always keep your hair short and well-groomed. II Always wear a conservative shirt and sports jacket, the latter of which you use to conceal your slim jim and flat-head screwdriver. III Walk at a normal gait, deliberate but never rushed. IV Smile. V Avoid targets in residential neighborhoods and parking garages; vast, unattended parking lots with several exits present the least risk. VI Be sober. VII Know the makes and models of the cars you are after and become intimately familiar with their locking and ignition systems. VIII Practice, practice, practice. IX Do
not
joyride, dumbass. X Do not steal hubcaps, because when you steal hubcaps you are putting a wetback or a spade out of work.) I obeyed Frank's instructions to the letter and turned over twenty cars to him that summer. Frank then brought me to the Venetian for the first time to introduce me around and show me off. Dominic Balboa—the son of John Benedict, the so-called founder of the enterprise—was the head of the family then, a big man, tall and broad of stature, with a head full of wavy salt-and-pepper hair and a life of hard-earned wisdom that backlit his eyes. There were six or so wiseguys standing around me and Frank at the bar, busting my balls the way hard men do with a kid, and they grew hushed and parted like the Red fucking Sea when Mr. Balboa walked up to me. He neither needed nor would have tolerated an introduction, just got in my face and said, “Hey, kid, I've heard about you. Word is you're a car thief. Is what I hear right? Are you a
car thief
?”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Balboa,” I said, which are the only words Frank told me I could say in the event I met him—unless, of course, “No, sir, Mr. Balboa,” would have been more appropriate.

“Well that's fuckin' beautiful,” he said. “Young man like you embarking on a life of crime when you ought'a be shinin' apples for your teachers, readin' books and such. Boy, haven't you heard that a life of crime don't pay?”

I could not help but make a point of checking out the rich, tailored silk suit he wore, his custom-cobbled Italian shoes. “Obviously crime pays, Mr. Balboa, um, sir, or guys like you would do something else.”

You could chew on the silence that stifled the air, no one willing to react to my statement until they saw how Mr. Balboa did. Expressionless, he simply shook his head at Frank and said, “Out of the mouth of babes,” and walked away.

Hence, my street name.

Me and Sam exchange a few more memories about Frank and Connie, including the sad observation that they both died young, both of lung cancer in their midfifties and within a year of each other. “I miss them,” I say. “They treated me like their natural son.”

Sam nods and thinks a beat, leans over the bar, looks around, and lowers his voice as if to avoid electronic surveillance. “Speakin' of sons, you hear what Leo did to those two mooks in here yesterday?”

“I did, yes.”

He slaps the bar top, shaking his head in wonder. “Handled 'em like they were fuckin' tacklin' dummies. A chip off the old block, man, chip off the old block.”

A door opens and closes in the distance behind me, followed by the creak of two sets of footsteps, then, “Babe.”

I turn, smile, and say, “Hey, Nico, long time.”

An old guy named Jimmy Coyle trails Nico, a sight that makes me uncomfortable.

I shake Nico's hand, then Jimmy's, saying hello to Jimmy but unsure whether he recognizes me. Me and Jimmy have known each other a long time, and Jimmy is not that much older than me; his mind, though, I hear, has worn out even faster than the rest of him.

Nico says to him, “You remember Babe Crucci, right, Jimmy?”

Jimmy Coyle's eyes are blank. “Yeah, sure, how you doin', Gabe.”

“Babe,” Nico says to him. “His name's
Babe,
Jimmy.”

“Oh,” Jimmy says, and robotically sits in the stool next to me.

When Jimmy turns his back to him, Nico looks at me and twirls a forefinger around his ear. “Hey, Jimmy,” he says much louder than usual, touching Jimmy's shoulder. “I need to talk to Babe in private. Sam wants to show you his new kitchen. Right, Sam?”

“Yeah, Jimm—”

Jimmy talks over Sam, his face reddening. “Yeah, that's fine, fine. I'll let you humps talk.” He jabs his finger at Nico. “Just don't you forget what I told you back there, okay, Nico? I'm right, goddammit. You watch, goddammit. You just fuckin'
watch.
”

“Sure, Jimmy, sure, I will.”

“C'mon, Jimmy,” Sam says with a wink. “I got us a fresh bottle of premium gin back here, my private stock.”

“Oh, boy,” Jimmy says, and practically jumps from his stool and heads for the kitchen door.

Nico sits on the barstool to my left, sighing and shaking his head. “Poor bastard.”

“No shit,” I say. “Getting old before your time is a real bitch. Just now, what was he claiming to be so fucking right about?”

Nico waves my question off. “Just bullshit,” he says, and brightens up. “It's really good to see you, man. You look good.”

Me and Nico have already talked on the phone a couple of times, almost entirely about Leo, but this is the first time we have come face-to-face since my release. Nico grew up at the Venetian, and the way his eyes meet mine at this moment makes him a kid again in my mind: he is about to hustle a buck by offering to wash my car or pick up my cleaning, or is ready to tell me a funny story about how stumbling drunk one of the honchos got here at the bar the night before.

Nico looks at his watch. “Wish I had more time to spend with you, but I don't want to be here when what you got going down here goes down. Darkie should be here soon. I filled Sam in on what he's supposed to do, and everything else is set. You need anything?”

“Other than a day off and a little sanity, no.”

He gives me a knowing smile as he rises from his stool. “Let's get together soon when we can do it right. Maybe get stoned and drunk on our asses.”

“How about later today at Joe's place? Word is he is having a little get-together.”

He brightens. “Joe said nothing to me about it, but that's not unusual. I'll be there.” He gives me a wink and a pat on the shoulder and walks out.

Darkie D'Arco joins me at the bar a few minutes later, having parked his ride in the rear loading dock next to Jimmy Coyle's. Jimmy walks out from the kitchen not long after that, and again I have to remind him who I am. Both Darkie and Jimmy have been connected to the Balboas and to Joe Sacci as long as me, more or less, and we have what turns out to be an uncomfortable reunion over drinks—at least it is uncomfortable for me. Darkie suggests we all have lunch in a private dining room in back, and Jimmy Coyle and I agree.

Unknown to Jimmy Coyle, this lunch was not the random occurrence it appeared to be.

Unknown to Jimmy Coyle, this lunch is business.

As nostalgic as my return to the Venetian has been, I must admit this is not where I wanted to eat lunch. The primary reason I did not want to eat lunch here is Maggie. Maggie wanted to have lunch
alfresco
at Café Bonaparte, just steps away from Hermosa Beach, where we would eat chicken salad spread on fresh croissants against the backdrop of crashing waves and screeching gulls. After lunch, we planned to buy updated clothes for me on the nearby Hermosa strip, then proceed to my house where she would serve me my daily lunch dessert—i.e., her.

I reluctantly canceled my date with Maggie this morning after Joe Sacci called at the tail end of my conversation with Chief. His call involved an offer of new business, business that led me to have lunch here at the Venetian with Jimmy Coyle and Darkie D'Arco. Believe me when I say Joe and Viktor had to promise me a lot of money to pass up my afternoon with Maggie—a lot of money.