Thieving Weasels (9 page)

I
N
THE
MARKET
FOR
A
FUN
-
FILLED
AND
EXCITING
SPOT
TO
spend Christmas? Then I recommend avoiding mental hospitals at all costs. Unfortunately, that's exactly where I found myself on the morning of December 25, sipping fat-free eggnog and watching a conga line of drugged-out zombies doing a yuletide version of the Shady Oaks Shuffle. I could hardly wait until New Year's.

To be fair, Christmas was never a big deal around our house. This was for practical as well as religious reasons. With every library, department store, and government office closed for the holidays, there was nothing around worth stealing, and even my mother couldn't generate much enthusiasm for breaking into people's homes on Christmas. But there was more to it than that. If there was ever a day when the absence of a father in my life was most heartbreakingly apparent, it was on Christmas. Every
December I told myself that
this
was going to be the year my father slid down the chimney and transformed us into a real family. It never happened, and my mother and I usually spent Christmas morning watching TV, munching on candy canes, and counting the minutes until we could go to Uncle Wonderful's for dinner.

Shady Oaks had plenty of candy canes, but the trip to Uncle Wonderful's was out of the question because my mother was not allowed to leave. This was fine by me. I had other plans, and as mouthwatering as Aunt Marie's Christmas pork roast and linguine with clam sauce could be, I found the prospect of seeing Claire far more appetizing. Besides, after my fight with Uncle Wonderful, I figured my chances of returning to Wheaton were close to zero, and this would be my last opportunity to be alone with Claire. I tried not to dwell on it as I boarded the train at Grand Central, but with only drunken holiday revelers and spectacular views of the Hudson to distract me on the train ride north, it was all I could think about. We pulled into the Saratoga station twenty minutes late, and when I saw Claire waiting for me on the platform I practically catapulted off the train.

“Merry Christmas,” she said, wrapping her arms around me.

“And a very
Feliz Navidad
to you.”

Claire took a step back and said, “I can't believe you're actually here. C'mon, I have a surprise for you.”

“Me first,” I said, and handed Claire a small box.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Open it and find out.”

Claire tore into the wrapping paper, and when she saw what was inside she actually shrieked.

“Holy Crap Balls! It's just like the one I lost!” She reached into the box and pulled out a tiny gold horseshoe for her charm bracelet. It cost most of what I'd earned in the cafeteria that fall, but just seeing the joy on Claire's face was worth it.

She held up the charm to take a closer look. “How did you know what it looked like?”

“I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill Santa.”

“No, really. How did you figure it out?”

“I found an old picture of you on Facebook and blew it up. The charm was a little blurry, but I found a company on the Internet that could reproduce it and I guess they did an okay job.”

“They did a
fantastic
job,” she said, hugging me. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

“What's your surprise?” I asked.

Claire reached into her pocketbook and handed me a small gift bag covered in mistletoe. I stuck my hand inside and pulled out a brand-new iPhone.

“It's good to go,” she said with a grin. “I set all the preferences, and it's linked to my father's corporate account so you don't have to worry about the bill.”

“You sure that's okay?”

“There are so many phones on that account he won't even notice it. Push the button on the front and swipe up from the bottom.”

I did as she told me, and a music player appeared on the screen. I pressed Play and a Foo Fighters track blasted from the iPhone's tiny speaker.

“Wow,” I said.

“I filled it with all your favorite songs, and there's a fifty-dollar credit in your iTunes account for apps and more music.”

“This is awesome,” I said

“It's for my benefit as well as yours. Now we can text each other and do FaceTime whenever we want.”

I followed Claire into the parking lot and looked around for her father's Mercedes. We stopped in front of a new BMW instead, and Claire pulled out her keys.

“Is this yours?” I asked.

Claire nodded.

“And you got it today?”

She nodded again.

My heart deflated. Next to a forty-five-thousand-dollar BMW, the charm I had bought her was nothing.

Claire must have read my mind and said, “It's just a car, Cam. I still like your present best.”

“I guess . . .”

“No, I mean it. You went to a huge amount of trouble finding that charm. My father probably had his secretary order this over the phone.”

“Thanks,” I said, not really believing her.

“Want to drive it?”

I stared at the car before me. The prospect of driving a
spanking new Bavarian pleasure mobile was too good to pass up. “Sure,” I said.

She tossed me the keys, and we hopped inside. Claire paired my iPhone to the BMW's sound system, and music poured from the car's sixteen hidden speakers. I'd thought my Mustang was fun to drive, but Claire's BMW was even better, and as we blew past the horse farms and palatial estates north of Albany, I forgot all about Princeton and my family and not going back to Wheaton. It was just the wheel in my hands, the road at my feet, and the beautiful woman beside me. And for a little while I was happy. Really, truly happy.

It took forty-five minutes to get to Claire's house, and when I saw where she lived I nearly passed out. At school, Claire's wealth was way more abstract. Sure, she had expensive clothes and a nice computer, but we both lived in the same dumpy dorms and ate in the same soggy cafeteria. Chateau Benson, on the other hand, told an entirely different story. I eased the BMW to a stop and stared at the twenty-room behemoth before me.

“You actually live here?” I asked.

“Just until they finish renovating the big house.”

“Really?”

“No, not really. Of course I live here. Pull up ahead, we don't have much time until the party starts.”

I was hoping this meant we were going to read Claire's essay (not to mention the Possibility of Expulsion), but for some silly reason she wanted to show me around. I parked
the BMW in the four-car garage and followed her down a brick path to the stables.

That's right, I said stables.

“This is Crayola,” she said, trotting out a massive brown stallion. “I've been riding him since I was ten and I love him like crazy. So try not to be jealous.”

I gave Crayola the once-over and froze when I saw what he was packing between his horsey thighs.
Damn
, I thought. Is there anything about this place that's not intimidating?

“What do you think?” Claire asked.

“He's, uh, huge.”

“He's not that big. Wait a minute. Don't tell me you've never been this close to a horse before?”

“Does a pony ride count?”

“My God, what do people on Long Island do all day?”

“Steal cars. Worship Satan. You know, the usual stuff. But seriously, I can't believe you actually climb on top of that thing. Do you get nosebleeds from the altitude?”

Claire pointed at me and smiled. “I think someone here needs a riding lesson.”

“Not in a million years.”

“You're not scared, are you?”

“Of course, I'm scared. A horse's brain is way too small for the size of its body. It's a scientific fact.”

I was about to make a crack about the size of Crayola's crayon, then thought better of it. Some things are better left unsaid. Besides, Claire was already putting Crayola back in his parking spot—or whatever it is you call the place
where horses sleep at night. Nursery? Solarium? Whatever.

Next up was a tour of the house. It's embarrassing to admit, but the first thing that popped into my head was what a fantastic time I would have had robbing it. After a few minutes, however, my attitude began to change. There was something about being in the very place where Claire grew up that was almost hypnotic, and I felt this incredible desire to have known her as a child. I wanted to travel back in time and be with her when she took her first step and gave her first doll a haircut. I wanted to be her high school boyfriend and witness every part of her life simultaneously. The feeling was overwhelming and I knew—right then and there—that I would have to take Roy's job.

It's the only way
, I told myself. Yes, there was a strong chance my family would pull some kind of stunt, but that didn't matter. I wanted to live with Claire in a world of stables and horses, and if that meant going up against my family so be it.

• • •

Does it come as no surprise that I hated Claire's friends? Every Amber, Tiffany, and Scott Merriweather the Third (“Scottso to my friends, bro.”) made me more jealous than the next, and it took less than ten minutes to break the vow of sobriety I'd made lying on the pee-pee protector on my mother's bathroom floor. I'd never had a gin and tonic before, but it went down fast and cool, and that's all that mattered.

The only problem was the more I drank, the more I felt
like a fraud. I tried to act like Cam Smith, but every time I opened my mouth Skip O'Rourke came pouring out. It made no sense. These were the same kind of people I'd been shining on for three-and-a-half years at Wheaton, but after just one week with my family I'd lost the ability to communicate with them. It was like I'd been infected by a virus. Except there was more to it than that. There was something about the way Claire and her friends carried themselves that I found more intoxicating than gin. They moved with this air of effortless certainty that seemed to say no matter what happened to them everything was going to turn out just super-duper, and that all the good jobs, fancy houses, and beautiful spouses were just waiting there for them to pluck off the tree of good fortune.

And damn it if I didn't want to be just like them.

Finally, thanks to a cocktail of one part resentment and two parts envy, I was driven from the party. I found a window seat on the second floor and stared down at the river of luxury vehicles clogging the driveway.
Look at that
, I told myself. The sticker price of just one of those cars would solve my problems three times over. I shook my head. Maybe it took one to know one, but something about their wealth struck me as almost criminal.

“Here you are.”

I looked up, and Claire was standing in the doorway.

“Hey,” I said.

She joined me at the window. “Having a good time?” she asked. “You seem a little preoccupied.”

“I'm just tired.”

“Maybe this party wasn't such a good idea.”

“No, it's great.”

She ran a hand through my hair and adjusted the curtains. “I love this spot. When I was a little girl I used to hide up here for hours. One time my parents even called the police.”

The P word rattled my brain, and I stared into Claire's eyes. Her pupils filled me with awe, and I wanted to hide inside them forever. Then the craziest thought occurred to me, and for one drunken moment, I thought I'd discovered the answer to all my problems.

“Marry me,” I blurted out.

“What?”

I grabbed Claire's hand and got down on my knees. “Claire Benson, will you marry me?”

“You mean now?”

“There must be a Justice of the Peace or a sea captain around here someplace. I'll defer my admission to Princeton and get some kind of job to support us. On weekends we can go for drives in the country, or go skiing, or do anything you want. It'll be magic. It'll be great.”

“What kind of job will you get?” Claire asked.

“I don't know. I can work at a Home Depot or something.”

She pulled me up from the floor. “How many drinks have you had?”

“Not too many. Why?”

“Are you crazy? You just got accepted to Princeton. Why would you want to work at Home Depot?”

“It'll only be until you graduate. After that, I'll get a job at a bank or something. Don't you want to get married?”

“Well, it's always been my dream to be proposed to by a man who's so drunk he might ask Crayola to marry him if I say no.” She grabbed my chin. “What's the matter? You look like you're about to cry.”

“I do not.”

“Yes, you do. Is everything okay?”

My mind flashed to Fat Nicky and what would happen if the job went south. “I sure hope so . . .” I mumbled.

A look of concern crossed Claire's face. “Cam, is there something you're not telling me?”

“Of course not.”

“Good, you had me scared for a second.” But she didn't look convinced.

To change the subject, I put my head on her shoulder and said, “You have nothing to worry about. Everything's going to be fine.”

I, on the other hand, had plenty to worry about including a sick mother, a vengeful uncle, and a cousin facing a manslaughter charge—to name my top three. Add to that an ex-mobster who wanted me to kill a man for him, and my life was a certifiable disaster. Lucky for me I was too exhausted to deal with any of it and passed out ten minutes later. So much for reading Claire's essay or
the Possibility of Expulsion. The good news was I didn't have to say good-bye to her friends. The bad news, as I learned the next morning, is that a gin hangover makes a beer hangover feel like a group hug from a busload of cheerleaders.

“T
HERE
HE
IS
!”
MR
.
DENU
NSIO
SAID
WHEN
I
WAL
KED
INTO
his room on my first night as an employee of Shady Oaks. My hours were twelve at night to eight in the morning, and as far as temporary jobs went, it wasn't half bad. Yes, I had to mop floors and scrub toilets, but I was totally unsupervised and had plenty of free time to hang out with Mr. DeNunsio and plan a murder I had no intention of committing.

“You wanna drink, kid?” he asked as I closed the door behind me.

“No thanks, I'm not supposed to drink while on duty.”

“On duty?” he said with a laugh. “What are you doing? Guarding the mop bucket?”

“Gimme a break. I just got this job.”

“Then you better start off on the right foot.” He pulled a bottle from his nightstand and held it up for inspection.
“Anisette, straight from the old country.” He poured shots into two plastic tumblers and handed me one. I held it to my nose, and it smelled like a combination of licorice and paint thinner.

“Salute!” He threw back his drink with a single gulp and punched himself on the chest. “Damn, I wish my gut was in better shape so I could have a little Scotch once in a while.”

I took a sip of the anisette, and it burned my throat like industrial-strength mouthwash. While I tried to regain the ability to speak, Mr. DeNunsio pulled an asthma inhaler from his robe and sucked the mist deep into his lungs.

“There,” he said with a cough. “That's better.” Then he grabbed a pack of Virginia Slims off his nightstand and lit one up.

“Just out of curiosity,” I asked. “What's the point of using an asthma inhaler if you're going to smoke a cigarette afterward?”

Mr. DeNunsio shook his head and laughed. “What are you? Stupid? The inhaler is to open my lungs
for
the cigarette.”

I laughed until I remembered what I was doing there, and the laugh died in my throat. This was the part of the job I hated most. The lying. Even at four years old I felt dirty making friends with people I knew I was going to rob. And yet, like most things I did as a kid, I was good at it.

“I almost forgot,” Mr. DeNunsio said. “I have something for you.” He reached into his robe and handed me an
envelope. I tore it open and found five twenty-dollar bills inside.

“What's this for?” I asked.

“Road Runner.”

“What?”

“That horse you told me to bet on last week. That's your cut.”

I tried to hand back the money. “I don't deserve this.”

“The hell you don't. I was all set to lay down a C-note on Sandy's Pride. Well, guess what? Sandy's Pride stopped to smell the roses, and Road Runner paid out five-to-one. Your advice made a six-hundred-dollar difference in my finances.”

I put the money in my pocket. All I needed were sixty more Road Runners and I could return to school without pretending to kill someone.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Listen, son. There are two types of money in this world—easy money and hard money. And the only difference between a millionaire and a bum is the millionaire knows easy money pays the bills just as well.
Capisce?
”

I nodded.
“Capisce.”

“Good, now let's get to work.”

“First I have a question.”

Mr. DeNunsio raised an eyebrow. “Only one?”

“One to begin with.”

“Okay, shoot.”

“Why us? I mean, why my family and not some professional?”

He took a last drag off of his cigarette and dropped it in a coffee mug. “Two reasons. The first is your family isn't part of the mob. You hear all this stuff about honor and vows of silence, but it's a myth. Everybody talks. It wouldn't matter if I was in freaking Afghanistan, two minutes after I asked a goombah to whack Fat Nicky, ten guys would be talking about it on Mulberry Street. Second, and the main reason, is I can't afford anyone else. Sure, I've got a few bucks in the bank, but this place is expensive, and I plan on living a lot longer. A real hit would wipe me out. Any more questions?”

“Not for now.”

“Good.” He reached into his nightstand and pulled out a photograph. “Okay, this is where he lives.”

I stared at the photo, and something about the house looked familiar. “Where is this place?” I asked.

“About three miles from here.”

“On Pine Wood Drive?”

“You know it?”

Of course I knew it. Fat Nicky lived less than five blocks from the Cheshire Arms, the apartment complex I had almost burned down as a kid.

“Yeah, my mom and I used to live nearby.”

“Damn. That complicates things. You're a known quantity there.”

I shook my head. “It was a long time ago. Besides, I know the area like the back of my hand. The yards, the canals, everything.”

“Canals?”

“Yeah, the backyards go straight to the water and are connected by canals instead of alleyways.”

“No kidding?” he said. “That might work in our favor. You can swim, right?”

“Like a fish.”

“Good deal.” He pulled out a second photograph and handed it to me. “That's him.”

I took the picture and sized up the man I was supposed to kill. Fat Nicky was around seventy-five years old and his face was dotted with age spots. He looked tired and frail, and the first word that popped into my head was “grandpa.” I tried to hand back the picture, but Mr. DeNunsio refused take it.

“Look a little longer,” he said. “Memorize it. Because after tonight, neither of us can have a picture of him in our possession.”

I stared at the photo and asked, “How come they call him Fat Nicky? He doesn't look that fat to me.”

“He lost a lot of weight after he got shot.”

“Then why do they still call him
fat
?”

“Once you get a nickname you're stuck with it.”

“What's yours?”

“Sally Broccoli.”

“Sally Broccoli?” I said with a laugh. “How did you end up with a name like that?”

“I used to work with my pop selling vegetables at the Hunts Point Market. Some wiseass came up with the name and it stuck.”

“I guess it's better than Tony Toe Cheese.”

“You can say that again.” He took the picture and tore it into little pieces. “And just to give you a taste of the kind of person we're dealing with here, the first thing Fat Nicky made me do after I joined his crew was shake down my pop for protection money.”

“Did you do it?”

“You don't say no to these guys.”

“What happened?”

“He made me break three of my father's fingers. One at a time.”

“Jesus.”

Mr. DeNunsio sighed and reached for the anisette bottle. “Trust me, son. Jesus had nothing to do with it.”