The Mafia Hit Man's Daughter (5 page)

“Yeah, why?”

“You don't look so good.”

“Well, I'm fine. What do you mean?”

Meanwhile, I couldn't even talk—my mouth was like cotton mouth and my tongue was numb.

“Are you sure you want me to take you home right now?”

“Yeah, take me home. There's no problem.”

I was brain-dead at that point. I didn't even understand what was going on around me. Everything was a joke.

“Okay, but are you sure?”

“Yeah, take me home. What are you looking at, anyway?”

Here was Larry trying to help me and I was being a little brat.

When I walked into the house, I knew I was pretty messed up. Usually when I walked in, the first thing I did was say hi to my parents and ask them what they were watching. The family room was the first room you walked into, so there was no way around seeing them.

That night I walked right past both of them. I ran downstairs into the bathroom and locked the door. I looked at myself in the mirror. My pupils were huge and my eyes were bloodshot.
Oh, my God, I'm dead.

I turned the water on and grabbed the soap. I figured I'd wash my face and tell them I got soap in my eyes. Then I heard my mother stomping down the stairs. She started pounding on the bathroom door and screaming.

“Linda, open the door!”

“Wait a second. I'm washing my face.”

“Open the door . . . now.”

“I'm washing my face.” I could hardly talk, so everything was coming out all garbled. I finally opened the door. I was wiping my face.

“You know, you made me get soap in my eyes.”

She took one look at me and screamed for my father. I couldn't believe she was doing that to me.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
He was running down the steps so fast. The minute he saw me, he said, “She's high.”

“No, I'm not. Really.” I was so messed up, it sounded like I was talking in a different language.

“She can't even talk. What did you take?”

“Dad, I didn't take anything.” I was so stoned. I was talking gibberish and they couldn't understand me. I must've smoked some heavy shit that night.

I kept trying to convince them that I wasn't high, but they kept screaming at me and saying, “Oh, my God.” They were having this conversation about me, but I couldn't understand it. I was just standing there looking at them. I couldn't believe it was happening. Everything around me was moving at crazy-fast speeds and my brain was working in slow motion.

I knew I was really dead at that point, so I figured I had nothing to lose.

“I hate you. I hate you both.”

“Who were you with? We want to know who you were with.”

“I'm not telling you anything.”

“Look at her, she can't even talk,” my father said. He was getting really pissed because now they knew I was high.

“You little bitch, you're dead,” my mother said.

“Shut up.”

I was really pissed at my mother, so I was fighting with her. I tried to make a run for it up the stairs. But my father put his foot out. I wasn't sure what he was trying to do, because I was stoned. Maybe he was trying to stop me. All I knew was that he put his foot out, and I thought he tried to kick me because he was mad. I didn't understand because he had never raised a hand to me,
ever.
I was so mad—I started screaming at them.

“I hate you! I don't want anything to do with either one of you. This is your fault because you people make me live a crazy life, and I don't want anything to do with it. I want to go live with my father. I'm calling him right now!”

They weren't about to let me get away with that.

“That's it, you're punished. You're not allowed out of this house. We're going to find out everybody you were with,” my father said.

“I'm calling my father. I want to be with him. I don't want to live with you two. I hate you.”

Right about then, I started to sober up. Maybe it was the shock of everything, but I was beginning to wake up out of it.

But I just kept screaming at my father: “I hate you! I hate you! Don't tell me what to do. You're not even my father.”

As soon as I got those words out, my father started to cry.

“I' m your father. I'm your father.”

“No, you're not. You're not my father. Charlie is my father.”

“Linda, I'm your father. I've always been your father. There's been no one else but me. It's always been me.”

“What are you talking about? What are you talking about now? You're not my father. I don't understand what you're saying.”

Then my mother started to explain.

“Listen, we never told you because we didn't want to upset you or confuse you.”

“You don't want to confuse me? What are you talking about?”

“Well, Charlie is really not your father, okay? Charlie is not your father. So don't think you're going to call Charlie,” my mother said.

“Right. You're just saying this because you don't want me to call Charlie and live with Charlie. This is bullshit.”

“No, this is the truth.”

And then my father told me the whole story about why my mother married Charlie. I was thinking about what he was telling me, but I didn't want to hear anything else. I was still fighting them.

“I'm still calling Charlie. I don't even believe you. I don't even know what you're talking about.”

“Listen, go wherever you have to go,” my father said.

“You guys are really crazy. And then you wonder why I'm getting high. I want to get high right now. I don't understand why you guys are telling me this. I don't understand you people.”

I was in total shock. My mind was racing a mile a minute. They were telling me this whole crazy story. Was it true? I didn't really look like Charlie. I didn't have any idea what they were talking about. My head was rocking. I couldn't take any more. I had to go to sleep. I told my parents I was going to bed and I didn't care what they were doing. Finally they went back upstairs.

I had no idea why they decided to tell me Greg was my father then. They must have been in shock, too—seeing me so high that they felt they had to rationalize the way we were living. Maybe they felt guilty because of what I did. Maybe they were thinking they had to tell me the truth so I would stop doing drugs and get back on the right track.

The only thing I could think of was that my words hurt my father so bad because he loved me so much. A day didn't go by in my father's life that I didn't tell him I loved him—even when I thought Charlie was my real father—not one day. I told him I loved him at least ten times a day. And every night before he went to bed, or before I went to bed, I'd kiss him and say, “I love you. I love you, Dad. I love you so much.”

So for him to see me high—and for me to be screaming, “It's your fault. I hate you”—was the breaking point and he had to tell me the truth. But at that moment I didn't care. I hated him. And he made me hate him even more the following day.

I crashed on the couch in the basement that night. I woke up the next morning and I heard them upstairs in the kitchen. Then I started remembering everything. I was really scared. I knew I was
so
dead. I didn't want to go upstairs because I didn't want to deal with it.

Then I heard, “Linda, get up here.”
Oh, my God. My father.

I went upstairs and he gave me the whole speech about drugs.

“You're punished. You're not allowed out of the house. You're not allowed to hang out with those people. We're going to find out who you were with.”

I couldn't get a word in. I had no idea what was going to happen, but I had to play it cool.

“Whatever.”

I knew I was in trouble. I thought the kids I was with were in trouble. But never—not for one minute—did I think he was going to do what he did.

My parents knew who I hung out with, so my mother called the mother of one of the girls in the group.

“My daughter was with your daughter last night and they smoked pot.” My mother didn't know for sure, but she figured she could get some information.

“Not my daughter, she don't do that.” There really wasn't anything they could do to the girl, anyway, so my mother just yelled and screamed at the lady.

Then my father went out with some of his crew and somehow they found out that I had been smoking pot with my best friend, Greg Vacca. I loved him then, and I still love him. We used to hang out every day. I guess you could say he was my first boyfriend.

Next thing I knew, my father came back to the house.

“Guess what? You want to smoke pot? Now your friends pay the price, and you don't have friends anymore. You're not allowed to hang out with them anymore.”

I started screaming. “What do you mean, my friends ‘pay the price'? What did you do? What did you do?”

“Don't worry about it. It's not for you to know.”

“What do you mean, it's not for me to know? I want to know what you did.”

Of course, I cared about the other people, but I didn't care about them as much as I cared about Greg. My father knew that. So, who did he go after? He went after the guy I hung out with the most. Greg was my buddy, and he caught the beating of his life. He was only sixteen.

I didn't even have a chance to warn him, because I didn't know what was going to happen. He was walking in the neighborhood and my father and his crew picked him up and put him in the car. They beat the living daylights out of him and then literally dropped him on the side of the road.

I didn't want to hear anything about it, so I ran upstairs to my room. A little while later the doorbell rang. After a while my father yelled for me to come downstairs. When I did, I saw Greg and his father sitting in the living room.

When I saw Greg, I almost died. My heart was broken. He just glared at me. He gave me such a nasty look. He thought I told on him, but I didn't. I didn't tell my parents anything about what had happened that night.

Greg was just sitting there. I couldn't bear to look at him. His head was misshapen. There were bumps the size of grapefruits. His eyes were completely shut except for these little slits. His lips . . . I didn't even know how they stayed formed. I don't know how he survived that beating.

Greg's father knew my father, and he knew what my father did, but he didn't care. His son had been beaten up so badly that he wanted to kill my father. Greg's father wanted to know how my father could beat up a sixteen-year-old boy.

“Listen, I don't give a fuck what you say, this is what he did.”

“What do you mean, this is what he did? Your daughter was smoking, too.”

“I don't care. He should know better. He's older than her. He knows who I am. He knows what's going to happen to him if they get caught. So, why would he go and smoke pot with her?”

I knew that my father wasn't a regular guy. He was a street guy, but I didn't know he was a full-fledged gangster. I didn't yet understand the concept of “gangster.” What he meant was that people in the neighborhood knew who he was. Greg knew my father was a scary guy, but did he know my father was in the Colombo crime family? No, probably not.

My father and Greg's father kept going at it. Greg's dad didn't hold back what he had to say. I gave him credit for that—he was pissed off and held his ground. But he knew there was nothing he could do. What was he going to do? Call the cops? And then what?

Finally Greg and his father left. It was just my father and me. I was traumatized. I couldn't stop crying.

“I hate you. How could you hurt Greg like that? Of all the people. Of all my friends. How could you do that to him?”

He just looked at me.

“That's what happens when you do stupid things. Maybe next time, you won't do stupid things.”

I felt terrible. My father made me think it was my fault. I was miserable and depressed over that for a very long time. I cried for Greg. For him and for me. I really didn't have a lot of friends, and I lost my best friend. He hated me after that—hated me. We didn't talk for years. I lost all the other friends I hung out with, too. They knew somebody got beat up because of me.

I sat on my stoop—it seemed like forever—waiting for him to come by so I could talk to him. I wasn't walking the streets anymore.

One day I saw him and I tried to talk to him.

He looked at me with such hate.

“Don't ever come near me again.”

“But I didn't tell him.”

“Then how did he know?”

“He just knew. If he didn't know, he was going to beat you up, anyway, and try to find out. I had no say in it.”

My father knew Greg was my closest friend, so Greg was the one who was going to get it. That's just the way it was.

The whole neighborhood where I hung out hated me after that—the whole neighborhood. I couldn't hang there ever again. All I could do was stay in my house. The girls in that neighborhood all wanted to beat me up. They didn't care who my family was—not that they really knew at that age—but they didn't care that my father was a scary guy.

There was this big girl, and her name was “Fat Karen.” She came up to me one day when I was sitting on the stoop and hit me in the face with a closed fist. My father and mother heard me scream and ran outside. My father almost hit her—he never hit women—because she hurt me. My mother had to grab his arm.

Growing up, I always felt that nobody liked me. I figured I must be ugly because nobody wanted to talk to me. A couple years after all this happened, I asked my father about it.