Tony Partly Cloudy (4 page)

Tony turned in surprise to look at Nona Maria. He had never discussed this with her. But Nona was asleep in her rocker. Or at least pretending to be – Tony wasn’t sure he was buying it. But then, he wasn’t sure of much of anything at the moment.

“Yeah, Pops,” he finally said. “It is. It really is.”

Frankie gestured toward the papers Tony was clutching. “So this school, this Kean University over in Jersey – they said they want you, right?”

Tony laughed. “Well, they said they’d let me in. I don’t know I’d go so far as to say they
want
me.”

“Of course they want our Tony,” Rosa announced. “What’s not to want?” Tony blushed.

Then Frankie asked the question. The question that could put a cork in this uncharacteristic outpouring of affection and encouragement.

“So what’s all this gonna cost? I mean, what are we looking at here? Four years, am I right?”

Tony nodded. He began to shuffle through the paperwork, but he was just buying time. He knew the numbers. Knew them by heart. Hell with it, he thought, putting the papers down and clearing his throat.

“Yeah, Pops,” he said. “Four years. It would depend on what classes I took, but they give you an estimated annual cost.”

Tony told him the number. Frankie whistled.

Tony decided to keep going. Might as well tell him all the bad news, he figured. “Of course, if I live on campus, the room and board is even more.”

“Why would you want to live on campus?” Rosa demanded, a shocked expression on her face. “You’ve got a perfectly good bedroom here, and we’re only a few blocks from the train. And you can’t tell me the cooking in their – what do they call them –
cafeterias
would be anything like the food I—”

“Rosa!” Frankie said, silencing her. “One thing at a freakin’ time, okay?” He looked at Tony. “That’s a lot of dough.”

“I know, Pops, believe me. But I think I could maybe qualify for some financial aid. I got good grades, and I did real good on the SAT – that’s a test they had me take last year.”

“Financial aid – what is that?” Frankie asked, his voice suspicious. “Is that like a loan?”

“Well, yeah, they do have loans, or sometimes they just give you the money, if your scores are high enough, and if, you know, you can show them that you need the money.”

Frankie’s expression grew colder. “And how do you show somebody that?”

Shit. Tony had been dreading this. “Well, they have you fill out forms where you tell them stuff like how much money you make, how much your house is worth – things like that.”

Frankie’s face was frozen. Finally he said, “That ain’t gonna happen.”

Tony began to speak, but the look on Frankie’s face stopped him. It was over. Shit, it was over.

Frankie spoke. “So I guess we just gotta come up with the money.”

“What?” Tony said, baffled.

But Frankie was already off and running. “You get summers off from college, same as in grammar school, right?”

“Yeah, but what—”

“And you’ll turn eighteen this year, right?”

“Yeah, I’ll—”

“So when you turn eighteen, you get your Class B. You drive during the summers. You’ll live at home, at least at the start.”

At those last words, Rosa began to stir, but a stern look from Frankie stopped her. He was on a roll, so she let him continue.

“And you’re going to need to work during the rest of the year, too.”

Now Tony tried to interrupt, but Frankie cut him short with a wave of his hand. “Not too many hours, though, ‘cause you gotta study and all. So we need the job to be easy, but pay good.” He gazed at Tony appraisingly. “I’ll make some calls, see if I can set something up with some people I know.”

Tony knew he was talking about the family business – it was as close as Frankie would come to discussing such matters in front of Rosa. Rosa ruled the house, but the family business was ruled by men. That was simply how it was.

Frankie continued, “I got some money saved up, and I can maybe make a few calls about picking up a little extra work myself.” He looked at Tony, nodding. “So I think maybe we can do this thing.”

Tony was dumbstruck. Who were these people, and what had they done with his real parents?

“You mean it, Pops? You’re okay with this?”

Frankie looked at his son a long time. There might have been something resembling affection in his gaze. Or at least an absence of murderous intent – with Frankie that was about the most you could hope for. “This is something you really want to do,” Frankie finally said, the question voiced as a statement.

“Yeah,” said Tony. “I want it something awful.” He was looking his father straight in the eye, something he rarely felt brave enough to do. Frankie met his gaze, and held it.

“Then it’s settled,” Frankie said. He shifted his gaze to address his wife. “My son is going to college.”

My
son. Tony liked the sound of that.

IT WASN’T EASY. Going to school, working, trying to wrap his brain around all the science and math involved in meteorology. It was hard. But Tony loved it, loved every minute of it, because he was learning about something he loved. And – even better – he was surrounded by other people who loved the same thing.

For the first time in his life, his interest in the weather – hell, it was a
passion
, if you were calling a spade a spade – did not make him an outcast. Every student in the program was a kindred soul, each somehow drawn to the study of the skies, each in awe of the power those skies could unleash. Tony felt liberated, thrilled to be free to pursue his interest with undisguised enthusiasm, with no fear of being thought of as a nerd. Hell, they were all nerds here. So it was a level playing field.

Or at least it became one. There was an awkward preliminary period, when all of the first-year students were checking each other out, like dogs sniffing each other’s butts. A hulking brute of a young man, looking easily ten years older than his years, Tony stood out among his wispy, bookish classmates, his strong Brooklyn accent clashing with their squeaky, prim voices.

But his obvious passion for the weather soon won them over, compounded by his amazingly good instincts. Even as freshmen, most of the students in the program already fancied themselves expert weather forecasters, but Tony consistently predicted the local weather with greater accuracy than any of them.

And despite a daunting physical appearance that suggested the makings of a Frankie B Junior, Tony had an easygoing gregarious quality that tended to win people over. The off-color New York comedian Andrew Dice Clay was popular at the time, and Tony’s classmates found the similarity between Clay’s crude accent and Tony’s to be a source of constant amusement – and a prime target for mockery. Tony took the teasing well, and was secretly delighted when his classmates’ deliberate mispronunciation of
Tony Bartolicotti
spawned a new nickname:
Tony Partly Cloudy
.

“Hey Tony,” they’d say, in a cartoonishly bad impression of a Brooklyn/Italian accent, “I want you to meet my friend here, Joey Bag of Donuts. Joey, this is Tony Partly Cloudy. Hey, bada bing, fuggedaboudit!”

Tony had taken much harder ribbing in high school – often with far more threatening undertones – so none of this bothered him. He was happy. He was studying the weather, doing well at it, and that was enough. Life was good.

Money was tight the first year. Tony continued to work three or four nights a week at Mario’s, doing much of his studying on trains and buses as he commuted to and from the Kean campus, twenty miles away in Union, New Jersey. His father managed to get him occasional odd jobs for the family business, but nothing steady.

Every now and then Tony would get a call to wash and wax the Mercury, put on one of his father’s suits, and pick somebody up at the airport – usually Newark, sometimes LaGuardia. Invariably his passenger would be a well-dressed Italian man who would completely ignore Tony’s attempts to engage him in conversation. Tony would deliver his charge to some predetermined location – usually an expensive hotel or Italian restaurant – and then wait in the car for the man to return. This afforded Tony more study time, so he always took his briefcase full of books with him. His briefcase was another target of frequent ridicule at the school – everybody else in Kean’s Meteorology department carried a backpack. But Tony wasn’t a backpack kind of guy – it seemed somehow...
undignified
.

When his schedule got tight, Tony sometimes went to school dressed in a suit, either in preparation for a job, or at the conclusion of one. He made a conspicuous figure in the school hallways, a looming giant in a dark suit with a briefcase walking among a bunch of longhaired kids in jeans and sweatshirts, prompting some people to call him
the hit man
. That nickname he didn’t like so much.

But the pay for these occasional chauffeuring gigs was excellent, and Tony felt good in a suit and tie, even if they were borrowed from his father. In a suit, he felt like he had some class. He began to set aside money from these jobs to invest in a suit of his own.

Apparently the family business was happy with his work. During the summer after his freshman year, Frankie came home with some big news. An apartment had been secured for Tony in Newark, which was much closer to Kean University. Tony’s rent was being “taken care of,” according to Frankie, with the stipulation that at any time Tony might be asked to entertain certain gentlemen guests.

Tony was both thrilled and worried. “Pops, what do you mean by
entertaining
these, uh,
gentlemen
?” he asked, concern furrowing his face. “They don’t mean nothin’, you know,
sexual
, do they? ‘Cause if they think I’m gonna, you know,
take one for the team
just so’s I can have a place of my own—”

“Jesus, no!” Frankie said, choking on his beer. “I told you before – I’m not going to get you involved in anything bad. Nothing where you could get hurt, or pinched, or nothin’. And definitely nothin’
weird
.”

Frankie paused to light a cigarette. “Look, Tony – it’s like this. There are people in this line of work who sometimes need a place to stay, you know? Someplace other than their place of business.”

“You mean like someplace to hide out?” Tony asked, genuinely interested.

“Actually, Tony,” Frankie said, blowing out a lungful of smoke, “it’s kinda the opposite. Sometimes these people need to be seen – lemme see how to put this – at a certain place, at a certain time. So that the people who see them know for sure that these guys weren’t someplace
else
– someplace where maybe some stuff was going on.”

Wading through the euphemism-ridden explanation, Tony found himself thinking out loud. “So these guys basically need a – what do you call it – an
alibi
?”

“Bingo,” said Frankie.

♠ ♥ ♣ ♦

Tony moved into the apartment two weeks before the first semester of his sophomore year began. It was tiny and Spartan, but he loved it. The biggest adjustment he had anticipated was having to do his own cooking, a task his mother had always handled. But he soon developed an awe-inspiring Tupperware collection, as each weekend his mother bombarded him with enough food to last him most of the week. Tony went home for most weekends, working the busy Friday and Saturday night shifts at Mario’s whenever he could, interspersed with sporadic chauffeuring jobs for the family business. He settled into a comfortable routine, which allowed him to focus on his studies.

It wasn’t until November that Tony got his first summons to
entertain
. Frankie called him late on a Tuesday night, waking Tony up.

“Pops, what’s up?” Tony asked, groggy with sleep.

“Tony, listen. Wake up, and grab a pencil.” Frankie waited while Tony shuffled around, looking for something to write with.

“Okay, go ahead,” Tony finally said.

“All right, here’s the deal. You’re going to get a phone call tomorrow night around seven. Make sure you’re home to answer the phone, okay?” When Tony didn’t respond, Frankie spoke louder. “Okay, Tony? Don’t fall asleep on me!”

“Yeah, okay,” Tony muttered. “Be here at seven. Got it.”

“Write it down. Are you writing?”

“Yeah, yeah – I’m writing.”

“Good,” Frankie said. “There’s more. The guy who’s going to call – he’s going to act like he knows you. He’ll probably talk to you real chummy like. You need to do the same. Act like you know the guy – like he’s your pal.”

Tony rubbed his eyes, trying to make sense of the conversation. “What – does this guy think I’m somebody else or something? And wait a minute – when you say
chummy
, you don’t mean—”

“Tony, for Christ’s sake! I told you it’s nothing like that.” Tony heard his father exhale deeply, and knew Frankie was smoking, as usual.

“Tony, look,” Frankie continued. “These kind of guys, when they talk on the phone, they gotta keep everything light, you know? In case somebody is maybe, you know, listening.”

Tony froze. “What the hell? Are you telling me my freakin’ phone is tapped?”

“No, no! Not your phone. But some of theirs... maybe. But definitely not yours. As far as I know.”

Tony sighed. “As far as you know.”

“Tony, what can I tell you? You know this line of work is a little different. I’ve never made no bones about that, have I?”

“No,” Tony admitted.

“And have I ever steered you wrong? Have I ever sent you on a job where you had to do stuff you didn’t feel okay about?”

“No.”

“That’s right, no. And I’m not going to. That’s not how I do things.”

Tony was starting to feel a little better about this. “So what’s this guy’s name – this
pal
who’s going to be calling me?”

There was a long pause. Tony waited, recognizing the sound of Frankie’s Zippo being flicked open. Exhaling, Frankie spoke. “His name is Jimmy.”

“Jimmy who?” Tony asked impatiently while he scribbled the name on his note pad.

“Carbone,” Frankie said softly. “Jimmy Carbone.”

Tony dropped the pencil. “Jimmy Carbone?
The
Jimmy Carbone? The
Electrician
?”

Jimmy “the Electrician” Carbone was extremely high up in the East Coast branch of the family business. The kind of guy you saw on the news now and then, heading down the courthouse steps into a phalanx of reporters and photographers, an overcoat draped over his arms to hide the handcuffs. The kind of guy the newspapers carefully described as “having ties to organized crime.” The kind of guy who got arrested often, but who never got convicted.

“Jimmy Carbone is going to act like he’s pals with
me
?” Tony demanded.

“Yeah – what’s the big deal? You’re actually related, you know,” Frankie said defensively.

“What?” This conversation was getting stranger and stranger.

“Yeah,” Frankie said, “I’m not sure exactly how, but he’s like a second cousin-in-law, or maybe a grand-uncle-in-law, or some shit like that. Maybe once removed. But I’m pretty sure he’s family.”

This was actually not that implausible, Tony realized. Hell, almost everybody in his neighborhood was distantly related somehow. Italian families were big, and they still tended to marry within their culture, at least in Tony’s world. And, he reflected, they called it the family business for a reason.

“Pops – you ever meet this guy? I mean, is he like they say he is?” Jimmy’s reputation for extreme and sometimes very creative brutality was the stuff of legend in Tony’s neighborhood. He had supposedly killed one of his enemies by plugging his dick into a light socket. That might have just been a myth, but it gave you pause. There had to be
some
reason they called him “the Electrician.”

“He’s supposed to be a real nice guy,” Frankie said, maybe a little too emphatically. “And the people that I work with, you know, when I pick up these side jobs – they’re good people. They’re not going to let anything happen to you. That’s the arrangement I got with them – nothing real dirty, nothing dangerous. Just stuff where they need somebody, you know,
dependable
.”

Before Tony could ask any more questions, Frankie said, “Listen, it’s late. You got school in the morning, am I right? You should go back to sleep. I just wanted to give you a heads-up about this thing with Jimmy. So you’re good, right? You know what to do?”

“Yeah, Pops,” Tony said, yawning. “Seven o’clock. Phone call from Jimmy C. My
pal
Jimmy C.”

Frankie ignored his sarcasm, saying, “Good. Now get some sleep.” Tony was left listening to a dial tone.

He went back to bed, but he couldn’t sleep. His mind kept racing, wondering how to deal with talking on the phone to someone like Jimmy. He knew the guys he had been driving around in his father’s Mercury were gangsters, but they weren’t big names, at least not to Tony’s knowledge. Jimmy Carbone – he was in a different league. Jimmy had a
reputation
.

What did you say to a guy like that? A guy who’s supposed to be your pal?
Hey Jimmy, how they hangin’
? What if Jimmy was offended by that kind of familiarity, and decided you’d look good plugged into a light socket?

Jesus, what had Frankie B gotten him into?

Tony wasn’t naïve about the family business, nor about his father. Frankie B had worked his way up in the moving line, first hauling furniture up the endless flights of stairs in Brooklyn walkups, then driving the trucks, and eventually working as a dispatcher and fleet manager. The moving line’s ownership could be traced – with extreme difficulty – to the family business, but the line itself was legit: they really did move people’s belongings and furniture.

Frankie B was an imposing figure who commanded respect wherever he went, but that was because of his size and demeanor, not because he was considered a gangster. Himself a product of first-generation immigrants, Frankie was a working-class guy, and he tried to pass those values on to Tony. But Frankie was also a realist. He was Italian, he was tough, and he knew how the world worked.