Wiseguys In Love (27 page)

The sun had set when they pulled up in front of Tony's mother's house. Michael and Lisa were silent as they listened to Tony mutter. He unhooked his safety belt and opened the door.

“Youse wait here,” he ordered, then gave Lisa a quick smile.

They watched him slam the door, and Michael was just about to say something when he heard the screech of a car behind them. They watched a white Lincoln turn hard in front of them, watched it bounce up onto the curb and run over three garbage cans, then drive onto the lawn, almost hitting Tony, before it came to a stop.

“YOU SONOFABITCH!” Angela screamed out the window as she slammed open the car door.

“What the hell—” Tony had just turned to face her when they watched her take her purse and swing it into the side of his head.

“You—stupid bastard! You shit! What do you think you are!” she said, slamming him again and again. He grabbed the bag. Michael and Lisa watched as they wrestled with it, both grunting like prizefighters. Tony succeeded in pulling it out of her hands and the purse went flying into the shrubs next to the front door of the house. They watched her raise her hands and try to drag her long bright red nails across Tony's face. He grabbed one of her wrists. Michael watched her begin a roundhouse with the free arm.

He opened the car door.

Tony ducked the blow and turned her around, holding her arm behind her in a lock grip.

“What the fuck's wrong wid—”

“You're gonna die, Tony! I swear it! I'm gonna make big trouble for you. I called my father! He's gonna get you, Tony!”

“What the hell are you talkin' about?” Tony yelled back at her.

She kicked him in the shins with the spike of her high heels, and he gave a scream and let go of her, dropping his hands down to grab his shin. She gained balance, and Michael watched her back off, as her spikes sunk down in the wet lawn. In a flash, he knew what she was going to do.

“Oh, Jesus.” He got out and grabbed at the door as he watched Angela begin to run back to Tony.

Her stone-washed jeans were so tight that as she raised her back leg to kick Tony in the head, like you would kick a football for a touchdown, the material held her leg back, giving Tony time to sweep his arm around and pull her remaining leg out from under her.

He shook his head at Michael, who was running up onto the lawn as Angela went down. Lisa had gotten out of the car and was staring at what she could see in the light from the street lamp. The outline of Tony's mother behind the screen door caught Michael's eye.

Tony quickly fell on Angela, pinning her shoulders to the damp lawn as she struggled. He leaned down over her as she screamed and spit in his face, and Michael, who had been coming to his rescue, realized that there was a grin on Tony's face.

He leaned over her, watching her blond hair get matted and seeing a leaf stick to it as she struggled underneath him.

“My father's gonna get you, you rat-fuckin' bastard.”

“You should watch your mouth, Angela. You father know you curse like this?” He chuckled at her, which made her struggle even harder.

“Now, what's your problem?”

“I'm gonna make big trouble for you, Tony Macarelli.”

“Yeah? Why?”

“You know why, you sonofabitch!”

“No. Why don't you tell me?”

“What you did last night.”

“I didn't do nothin' to you last night.”

“You fuckin' liar! You did a number on Joey D.'s car parked in my garage.”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

“My father knows what you did—”

“Yeah, what the fuck was Joey D.'s car doin' in your spot?”

“It ain't none of your fuckin' business.”

“Yeah? Your father know what kind of lowlife you been hangin' out with? You wanna tell me that?”

“You don't own me, Tony Mac. You broke up with me, remember? Huh?”

“I don't know nothin' about no car. Maybe it was one of Joey's business problems. The guy's scum.”

“Yeah, you wish. You're so low and stupid, you wouldn't know a real man if you fell over one—”

“Oh yeah, takes a real man to sell junk to kids—”

“He don't do nothing like that, he's a restaurateur,” she said, raising the tone of her voice as though she was referring to the Pope.

“Who's being stupid now, Angela? I break up with youse and what do you do? You tell your father I was gonna marry you. I never said nothin' about marriage. Then you go out with scum, and you come driving in here, saying I did a number on some lowlife's car and wrecking my front lawn. I don't know about you, Angela. You better straighten out here,” he said, staring down at her and lying on her with his full weight. He could feel her trying to squirm out from under him, the way she used to do when they'd just done it. She began to turn red from the pressure. He let her gasp once or twice and then slowly got off of her.

She got up, crying. She looked around for her purse and finally stomped off to the car. Her shirt and the rounded ass of her jeans were muddy and grass-stained, her hair was disheveled, and Lisa couldn't take her eyes off her.

Angela teetered slightly as her heel sank down and stuck in the lawn. She tried to pull it out, then finally stepped out of the patent-leather pump, leaned down, and unevenly ripped it out of the lawn. She stood still for a moment, then whirled around, holding the shoe.

“I'm gonna get you for this, Tony Mac.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“I don't know how, and I don't know when, but I'm gonna make you pay for what you done.”

“I didn't do nothin'.”

She stared up at him and a smirk came across her face as she held the shoe like a gun and bobbed up and down on one heel. She slowly began to walk toward him. He stood his ground, watching her look over his body almost hungrily, up and down. He felt a warm flush across his body as he looked over hers, and he licked his lips. He knew he'd won this round. There was one thing Angela could not resist, and that was muscles.

“I know what you think and when you think it, Tony Macaroni, and if you think this is it, you're wrong. There ain't too many women out there know what you do and how you do it. I waited a long time for you to come around to me. I had to watch you go through everyone else, and I waited, and then you shamed me.… I'm gonna get you for this.” She was so close to him that he could just feel her.

After all the wrestling, he could've fucked her on the spot.

She gave a sneer, watching his eyes roam over her body.

“So you just watch out.” She turned and bobbed up and down with as much dignity as she could muster, then got back in her car.

She pulled out quickly, leaving two tracks in the grass, backed noisily onto the street, and as she drove off she gave him the finger out of the car window.

Tony stood still, watching her go, then looked down at Michael.

“She's crazy. The woman don't know nothin',” he said, and then walked into his house.

*   *   *

Henry walked into his apartment and collapsed on the bed. He'd managed to lose Morris somewhere out on the Island. His eyes hurt and he could barely see from lack of sleep. The room began to spin as he heard the phone ring in the living room. It rang three times and then the machine picked up.

“Henry, this is your mother. Your behavior today was unacceptable, and you taking your sister's car was outrageous. You've finally pushed it to the limit. I'm calling to inform you that by Monday afternoon I intend to cut you off from this family … that includes the money. I certainly hope you'll be able to get by on what you make.”

Click.

He lay there staring at the ceiling. That was all he needed, idle threats from his mother. She never appreciated how difficult his life really was. Tiffany was probably responsible for this. As he lay trying to figure out a way to get back at her for this, the phone rang again.

He stayed still and waited for the machine to pick up.

There was a deep man's voice he didn't recognize, asking whether he was there. After a moment or two, the man hung up.

He had to catch some sleep, he thought finally, and then rolled over and passed out.

*   *   *

The lights from the police cars lining the street bounced off of the dark brick buildings. Static, followed by voices over radios, echoed in the quiet as men moved about, ducking under the yellow crime-scene tape they'd used to mark off the building. Upstairs in the third-floor corner window, the light was on, the only one for blocks in the closed downtown Brooklyn business district.

Two detectives were leaning over the body as the duster dusted for prints. Rough chalk markings outlined the body. Officers and detectives milled about, poking into things, pulling open drawers, looking about in files.

Another two men were taking inventory of the safe behind the desk. One wrote down every item the other pulled out.

In the outer office sat the cleaning woman, shaking and sick from what she had stumbled and fallen over in the dark. A young officer handed her a cup of tea, and another officer sat with a tape recorder on, asking her the usual questions.

She'd been cleaning the building for twenty years.

No, she'd never seen anything like this.

Yes, she'd actually fallen over it.… Well, she'd run out of the office so fast, she might've moved the body a bit, but she wasn't sure, and she wasn't going back in there to check.

It took ten minutes before she
could
dial the phone. She felt another wave of nausea come over her as they asked more questions.

“It's gotta be a hit, George—it's too clean,” she heard one of the officers opine in the other room as someone handed her a pack of cigarettes. She lighted one shakily and informed the officer with the tape recorder that she was going to quit on Monday.

*   *   *

Rosa Morelli had been sitting in her kitchen when the buzzer rang. She'd quickly jumped to it, pushing it without asking who it was. She sat back down at the table and lighted a cigarette in anticipation of what she knew was going to be a nice fat check and the gory details of how Tony had done the number on Henry Foster Morgan.

The door swung open, and Rosa's face dropped as Sophia Bonello stepped inside.

“Sophia—” she began as she watched her close the door behind her.

“Rosa Morelli, I come here about my son. I don't know what you got him doing, but I want it to stop now.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Rosa screeched.

Sophia held on to her bag tightly and stepped toward the woman.

“You lower your mouth—I'm not Solly here. You can't push me around. Now tell me what you got my son doing.”

“You get out—” Rosa began, and started to stand up.

Sophia pushed her back down in her chair.

“You gotta big mouth, Rosa, and you been driving everyone crazy since that
stunadze
you married got himself all shot up. Now you got Solly convinced he gotta look out for you—and that's fine, but you're dealing with me now.… Gina and I wanna know what's going on here.”

Sophia stood very still, looking down at Rosa. She knew Solly's mother would enjoy seeing this. Rosa was the biggest pain in the ass she'd ever met. She watched Rosa go slightly pale at the mention of Gina's name.

“What's going on with my son and Tony?”

Rosa sat still, then slowly drew in a breath.

“They fired me,” she began, and Sophia actually watched tears come to Rosa's eyes for the first time since they'd buried her husband over thirty years ago.

*   *   *

They'd been sitting in front of Henry's apartment on Grand Street for five hours; now it was after midnight. Every time a cab had come down the block, both Michael and Lisa had held their breath, waiting for Henry to appear and for Tony to go through with Rosa's orders.

Lisa was stuck in the backseat the entire time and kept meeting Michael's eyes in the mirror. They would look at each other for a brief moment until the memory of the night before flushed each of their faces and then they would automatically shift their vision before Tony could notice.

She had stretched out across the backseat after a while, but now she was staring at a restaurant and bar across the street. People walked in and out, oblivious of the car and of them, and she wished she was one of those people, blissfully going out to dinner and then to a club.…

The sight of the woman on Andrew's lap flashed through her mind and she felt oddly numb to it now. She remembered the dinners she had sat through with both of them. How they must have been laughing at her. The naïve good little woman who never asked questions and never interfered. She tried to think back to the first night he had brought her over. She wondered whether he had been sleeping with her at that point or if it had started later. Cynthia was introduced as “someone who works with me.” After dinner, Andrew insisted on walking her home because, he had told Lisa, “New York was a dangerous place.”

Yeah, it was dangerous all right, dangerous for the trusting.

That was probably why Cynthia had never returned her phone calls about getting together, Lisa thought. For the longest time, she had thought Cynthia just didn't like her. Now the whole thing made perfect sense. The woman was sleeping with Andrew. Of course she wouldn't want to become friends with the woman he lived with, or maybe she had enough human compassion not to do that.

They must have laughed over it, watching her trying to make friends with Cynthia, trusting Andrew with her. Oddly enough, she felt hollow inside when she thought of Andrew. It was as if she were erasing him from existence. She would think back over all the times he hadn't shown up or all the times he'd been inexplicably late, and then she would let them go. Michael was right about her having no self-respect.