Sons and Princes (8 page)

8.

Chris tracked the winter of 1977 daily through the window in his room at St. Vincent’s Hospital. Cold and gray, and occasionally stormy, it reflected perfectly the state of his heart. For four weeks, with his right leg hanging from a counterweighted pulley, there was nothing to do but look out at Seventh Avenue and contend with the numbing reality that he would never run competitively again. Occasionally, a storm of anger would rise and howl in his head and then abate, matching the winter storms outside that blew snow and grit sometimes horizontally across his window, temporary distractions from the bleakness. Toward the end, his cast was shortened and he was allowed to hobble around his room using a walker. His left leg had been set and casted as well, but it could bear some weight. He had been told that the cast on the left leg would come off in a few weeks, but that the one on the right leg, where a steel plate and screws had been used to bring his shattered tibia together, would have to stay on until the spring or early summer. One or both of his parents came every day to see him. He was bitterly angry at his father, but out of a misguided sense of fairness, he did his best to shun them both.

It was snowing on the day of his discharge. Joe Black, his face red and his dark overcoat and fedora still wet, appeared early in Chris’ room to take him home. His roommate of the last few days, a basketball player at NYU who had had knee surgery, had gone home the day before and his bed had not been filled. Chris, pushing his breakfast aside, had spent the fifteen minutes before his father arrived practicing with the walker, dragging himself from door to window and back again until he broke into a sweat and had to stop. He had just settled back into bed when Joe Black entered the room with his usual quiet step.

“You have some color,” the senior Massi said, after drawing a chair near the bed and seating himself. “Your face looks good.” Chris’ broken nose, resulting when his face bounced off of the windshield on impact, had healed on its own, and the bruises around his eyes had subsided and disappeared after a couple of weeks.

“You’re early,” Chris replied. “They told me nine sharp.”

“I know. I wanted to talk.”

Chris did not answer. In his moments of high fury over the past four weeks, he had assembled a series of diatribes against his father, some cold and deliberate, some hot and emotionally-charged, all meant to deliver stinging blows. But now that the moment of truth had come, these searing indictments faded from his head.

“Talk?”

“Yes, talk.”

“About what?”

“About me.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Yes, but the time has come.”

“What about me,” Chris said, suddenly finding his voice. “Why can’t we talk about me? I’m the one who’s crippled.”

“You’re not crippled. Your legs will mend.”

“Go ahead, then, talk.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t come to your track meet. I could have taken you home.”

“You were working.”

“Yes.”

Eying his father across the short distance between them, Chris knew with the instinctive certainty of the young, but nevertheless with a mix of despair and apprehension in his heart, that the revelations made by father and son this day would in all likelihood have to suffice for a lifetime.

“You have heard that I killed your friend’s father,” Joe Black said, and then, gesturing toward his son’s legs, “you think that’s what’s brought this on your head.”

“No, I don’t. It’s just bad fucking luck.”

“You weren’t meant to run.”

“I guess not.”

“You were meant for other things.”

“That’s for sure.”

“Do you know what I do, Chris?”

“No.”

“Do you want to know?”

Chris had been hoping for a month for a collision with his father, but not on this very issue.
You asked for this,
he said to himself. If he could, he would have run from the room, run from Joe Black’s soft voice and calm, implacable manner, run from the precipice beyond which gaped the rest of his life.

“No,” he answered.

“I will tell you. I kill people.”

Chris gazed at Joe Black now as if seeing him for the first time in his life, and for a second, he thought he saw in his father’s coal-black eyes what it was that made him a killer. What he saw wasn’t frightening or repulsive. It was a coldness. He could kill. He had crossed a boundary that most people never come close to.

“Why?”

“If I told you of my life, Chris,” Joe Black said, “I would feel that I was begging for your approval. I will tell you this much. I first killed when I was seventeen, in order to eat. When I came to this country, I made a contract for life to follow the orders of don Velardo, which I have done and will continue to do.”

“What happened with Ed’s father?”

“He attacked me without cause.”

“Did he have a gun?”

“No, but Logan did, and I could not take the chance that together they would kill me. I am sorry you have lost your friend.”

“He hates my guts.”

“Openly?”

“Yes.”

“Then you are forewarned.”

“Of what?”

“If he is like his father, he will brood, and not forget.”

“I’m not afraid of Ed Dolan.”

“That’s good,” the senior Massi said, “because, one day, you will be tested, by him or someone like him. When that day comes, remember what I said here today. Do not beg for any man’s approval, even if he is your son, or your father. And once you give your word, you must keep it, or die trying.” Joe paused to look at Chris, then said, “If you have a last question, I will try to answer. Otherwise, I will help you to dress, and pack your things.”

Chris turned from his father, and looked out the window, where he saw the snow swirling on the wind. The fear and anger that had welled up in him when Joe Black walked into the room, saying he wanted to talk, had subsided. He would never run track again. His father was a hitman for the Mafia. His mother was pummeling his father with his five-year-old brother. There was enough to contend with in these simple facts. More than enough. Turning back to Joe Black, he shook his head. “No,” he said. “I can’t think of anything.”

“Good,” Joe replied. “Then let’s get you home.”

9.

On the day after cleaning out Rose and Joe Black’s house – a Saturday – Chris headed back to Jersey to pick up Matt and Tess for an outing in New York. They lived in the same house in North Caldwell that Junior Boy had bought Chris and Teresa as a wedding present in 1985. As he was parking in front, he had a glimpse of Matt washing Teresa’s car at the bottom of their long driveway. Tess was sitting on the front steps talking on her cell phone. Chris bent over and kissed her on the top of her head, then rang the bell. Teresa, her dark, naturally wavy hair long, like Tess,’ was wearing cream-colored linen slacks and a pale blue short-sleeved cashmere sweater. Her face was made up and she was wearing understated but very good jewelry.

“Come in,” she said, motioning him through the wide entrance foyer into her spacious kitchen. “I don’t have anything to offer you. I’m going out.”

“That’s okay. I’m fine,” Chris’ said.

“We have to talk,” Teresa said.

“What’s up?”

“First, my father wants to know what time you’re bringing the kids back. They’re coming over for dinner and he wants to stay and talk to you.”

Chris did not answer immediately. Junior Boy could have used any number of intermediaries to arrange a meeting. Doing it through Teresa meant that he wanted her to know about his new relationship with Chris.

“Tell him around nine o’clock. What else?”

They were standing in the kitchen, Chris leaning against a counter near the refrigerator and Teresa opposite him near the open doorway, through which they could both see Tess still chatting on her cell phone. It was obvious to Chris that his ex-wife’s dark eyes were glittering with something much more than curiosity over his meeting with Junior Boy, however unusual that might be.

“He mentioned Matt going to LaSalle in the fall.”

“Good.”

“Good? What’s going on Chris? Did you make some kind of a deal with him behind my back?”

“Is washing your car your idea of punishing Matt for what he did?”

“What did he do? He got into a fight. Didn’t you get into fights when you were his age?”

“I never broke anybody’s arm and ribs with a baseball bat. What he did was ugly. If he does it a few more times he’ll be an ugly human being. Doesn’t that bother you, Teresa?”

“Are you going to work for my father, Chris? Because if you are, you’ll really be a hypocrite. I don’t know what you’re cooking up, but whatever it is, don’t think you’re getting Matt from me. I’ll fight you both.”

Chris knew this to be a hollow threat. Junior Boy’s power over his daughter was complete. It extended to all areas of her life. The fact that it was rarely exercised made it more effective, not less. Teresa had traded her independence if not her soul for the high and safe and very comfortable ground on which her father kept all those whom he loved. Chris could take no satisfaction from this knowledge, however. He was about to make a similar bargain with the don. The only difference he could see was that while he would keep his independence, he would lose his soul. The more Teresa clung to Matt, though, the more Chris was convinced that he was doing the right thing in taking him from her for a few years. A few very important years. Looking now at his ex-wife, he could see fear and something close to hatred in her eyes. But he did not care. He would return Matt to her a man, not a thug or a mama’s boy like Joseph or, what seemed more likely, a Caligula in the making. That’s all he cared about. Teresa could get in line with the others who had turned on him: his former law partners, the bar association, Paulie Raimo, Ed Dolan. One more adversary wouldn’t matter.

The track event was the Nike Outdoor Classic high school meet, held at Columbia’s Baker Field. Chris had purchased tickets weeks in advance – unnecessarily, since the seventeen-thousand-seat stadium was only about a third full – hoping he would be able to bring Tess and Matt, to show them something of what he had done, once, in his life. The day was beautiful, and there was a full schedule of both boys and girls events, involving individual runners and relay teams from all over the country. With Chris’ help, Tess was able to follow the girls pentathlon, in which identical seventeen-year-old twins from Texas vied for the lead all day. The one Tess was rooting for won the championship when she beat her sister by a fraction of a second in the eight hundred meters, a race that had the entire crowd on its feet.

Chris caught his breath at the staging of the boys mile, wondering if his record would be challenged or broken, but no one came close. The winner, a tall, angular boy from Maryland, ran the race in 4:28, with a Haitian boy from LaSalle Academy coming in second at 4:29.5. After this race, Tess went off to the ladies’ room, handing Matt her program. Chris watched him as he studied, at first casually and then with increasing interest. Chris knew that his name, with the numbers 4:07 after it, appeared in the
world high school records section
, under the names of Jim Ryun and Marty Liquori. Matt had been told about Chris’ running career, and the car accident that ended it, but had never spoken of it. He had seen the top six school boy milers in the country – twenty-five years after his father set his record – run their hearts out with the winner twenty-one seconds off his father’s pace.

“Dad,” he said, showing Chris the program, “did you see this?”

“Yes,” Chris answered, “that’s me, or was me. Did you see the kid from LaSalle? He’s only sixteen. He can be really good.”

“How old were you?”

“Two days short of sixteen.”

“That’s unbelievable.”

“What would you think about going to LaSalle, Matt,” Chris said, “living with me in the city? You could run track, break all my records.”

Chris could see that Matt was about to say something, but checked himself. They locked gazes for a second, and in that second, Chris had his first glimpse in months of his son.

“The exam is in July,” Chris continued. “I can pick up an application for you.”

“That’s an impossible record to break.”

“I wasn’t finished. I wanted to beat Ryun and Liquouri. It was all I thought about. Until my accident.”

Matt had made an effort today to suppress the gangster pose he had been affecting. He did not realize that the sullenness that had taken its place was just as wearing on his Chris’s nerves. Chris now saw what looked like thoughtfulness in his son’s eyes, and he was grateful. After twenty-five years, his few moments of glory as a track star had finally done him some good. “Think about it,” he said, and then Tess returned, and all three turned their attention back to the stadium floor.

After the meet, Chris drove downtown to Carmine Street, where they browsed in the Unoppressive Nonimperialist Bargain Bookstore. Tess, a voracious reader and nascent political junkie, bought five books. They had dinner at Cent’Anni, the only Italian restaurant left from Chris’ boyhood days on the three blocks that make up the whole of Carmine Street in its diagonal span from Seventh to Sixth Avenue. Chris had left a message on Joseph’s answering machine inviting him and Marsha to meet them, and to his surprise, they did.

Chris had never met Marsha, and she surprised him as well by turning out to be very far from the newly, and richly divorced, fashion-obsessed, desperately fading beauty he had pictured in his mind. She was a petite blonde with a British accent and freckles, looking more like thirty-two – Joseph’s age – than forty-two. An illustrator who had crossed over into the fine art world, and whose work was selling at a fancy Soho gallery, Marsha certainly had money, but she had earned it, and, if talking to her for one evening was any guide, she seemed to really like Joseph, and why not? Chris had never seen his charm and gentlemanly attentiveness, not to mention his luxurious beauty, more on display than they were that night.

Marsha noticed Tess’ bag of books, and they began discussing politics, while Matt told Joseph about the track meet, emphasizing the twenty-one second difference between Chris’ record-setting race in 1977 and the time run today by the “best high school miler in the country.” Their conversation shifted to major league baseball. They were both avid Yankee fans and they began to plan their first outing of the year to Yankee Stadium. Chris had always had misgivings about their relationship. Not because he was afraid that Joseph would be a bad influence on his impressionable son – the only time that Joseph acted like half a man was when he was around Matt – but because he was certain that sooner or later Matt’s heart would be broken when the real Joseph – the sweating, trembling, pasty white, morally weak heroin addict – was revealed to him. Tonight, he was grateful for their bond, for their talk of track and baseball. Tonight, Matt was just a boy talking to the uncle he idolized. Soon, Chris would take a step that would put him beyond redemption. But tonight, he would try to enjoy what was left of his small family, putting aside for an hour or two the thoughts of skulls on desks, body parts in suitcases, childhood daemons and revenge that had been swirling in his head for the last ten days.