Gangster Page 11

  “He doesn’t,” Angelo said, keeping up his silent count.

  Angelo patted the bills into a neat pile, pealed off three hundred dollars in tens and tossed them back into the shoe box.

  “Get dressed,” he said. He stood up, looked down at Lisa and handed her the rest of the money. “Pack all your clothes. Then take this money. Buy yourself a train ticket and go find those mountains.”

  “What about Ralph?” Lisa barely got the words out. Her mouth had gone dry.

  “I’ll talk to him,” Angelo said.

  Lisa jumped off the bed and threw her arms around Angelo, nearly knocking him off balance.

  “I want to thank you so much,” she whispered into his ear, holding him close.

  Angelo lifted her head and looked into her eyes. “Thank me by forgetting you were ever here,” he said. “I don’t even want it to be a memory.”

  • • •

  “WHAT TOOK SO long?” Pudge asked. He was standing behind Ralph and had one hand on his shoulder. “What’d he do? Bury it?”

  Angelo walked over to Pudge and handed him the shoe box. “He’s three hundred short,” he said.

  “What are you saying?” Ralph shouted. He looked from Angelo to Pudge, his mood ricocheting between anger and fright. “I don’t know what shit your friend’s trying to pull on you, Pudge. But I put that money in the box myself. All of it.”

  Pudge slapped Ralph on the back of the head with the shoe box and then tossed it to the floor. He held the money in his right hand. “All of it ain’t in my hand,” he said. “Giving me half is like giving me nothing.”

  “Don’t scam me on this one, fellas,” Ralph pleaded, lines of sweat running down his face. “You wanna take my money, do it another time. Not when I’m this far behind on my payments.”

  “You’re still behind,” Angelo said. “Three hundred dollars.”

  Ralph stood and pointed a trembling finger at Angelo. “You son of a bitch!” he shouted. “You know that money was there. It was either you that took it or that little tramp in my bed.”

  “Box was closed when I got in the room,” Angelo said. “The girl didn’t go near it.”

  “What are you going to do about this, Pudge?” Ralph asked, turning his back on Angelo.

  Pudge stared at Angelo for several minutes and then nodded his head. He folded the money and shoved it into the side pocket of his jacket. “I’m going to do you a favor,” Pudge said.

  “What kind of favor?” Ralph asked, looking from Pudge to Angelo.

  “You got another week,” Pudge told him. “That should give you plenty of time to get the three hundred you still owe. We’ll be back then to pick it up.”

  “And Lisa leaves exactly the way she is right now,” Angelo added. “Any different and I’ll hear about it. Then, I’ll be back here a lot sooner.” He looked at Ralph, who was trembling furiously. “Be smart,” Angelo said. “Vote to live.”

  As they walked out of the drug dealer’s foul-smelling room, Pudge turned to his friend and partner. “I don’t know what went on in there,” he said. “But she’s not gonna use the money for what you think she’s gonna use it for.”

  “All I did was give her a chance,” Angelo said. “What she does with it is up to her.”

  “Sometimes I wonder if you’re tough enough for this business,” Pudge said. “Then sometimes I wonder if you’re just so damn tough, you don’t care what it is I’m wondering.”

  • • •

  I TOOK A deep breath and smiled over at Mary. As she told me her stories about Angelo’s early days, she would make a point of looking at him, occasionally reaching out her hand and resting it on top of the bedspread. It was almost as if he were speaking to me through her. She was his anointed messenger and it was a role she gladly accepted.

  “Do you want to go and get something to eat?” I asked. “Or maybe just take a walk? Be nice to get out of this room for a while.”

  “I don’t know if that’s such a good idea,” Mary said, a sparkle in her eyes. “Angelo always said you liked to eat strange food.”

  “To him, that means anything that doesn’t have red sauce over it,” I said.

  “He told me if someone was ever going to poison his food, he would at the very least die eating something he enjoyed,” Mary said. She stood and leaned over, grabbed her coat from the base of the bed and tossed it casually over her shoulders.

  “I’ll keep it simple,” I said, placing a hand against my heart. “I promise. Nothing more foreign than a burger and coffee. At this hour, that’s probably all we’ll find that’s open anyway.”

  “Sounds safe enough.” She threw a quick glance over toward Angelo, his eyes and mind still closed to the outside world, as she led me out of the room.

  As we walked together, first down the hospital corridors and then onto the Manhattan streets, I talked to Mary about the resolute eating habits of Angelo and his crew. I found gangsters loyal, first and foremost, to food from their country of origin. In Angelo’s case, that was Italy. After that, everything was broken down into distinct categories not found in any cookbook. Eating Chinese food was an accepted ritual that started when the Italian mob began to do business with the Triads in the 1930s. The Friday nights of my childhood were spent with Angelo eating Chinese takeout spread across a black table in white containers in the back room of his midtown bar. “Ordering Chinks on Friday night is an American tradition,” Pudge, the gangster equivalent of Julia Child, told me. “It’s the one thing we do that everybody else does.”

  Other cuisines presented a greater ethnic dilemma. French food was almost always ruled out. “They don’t wash regular and you can’t trust people like that with food,” Pudge elaborated. Eastern European meals of any kind were not even considered. “Be serious,” Pudge would say, “they can’t feed themselves over where they come from, how they gonna feed me?” Jewish food was acceptable, especially since much of Angelo and Pudge’s business dealings were with gangsters from that background. “You can never go wrong with a bagel and a little cream cheese,” Pudge said. “It goes down good with coffee.” And soul food, like any other gangster dealings with African-Americans, was handled quietly. “To tell you the truth, as good as their food is, you can only eat that stuff when you’re young,” Pudge said. “You get older, it gets to be tough on the stomach. That’s reason number one why not too many black gangsters live to be old men. It’s not the bullets that do them in. It’s the short-eye ribs.”

  • • •

  THE BLANKET WAS spread out under the shade of a large, leafy oak tree. It was a breezy day with a warm sun holding off the impending arrival of cold weather. Isabella lifted the lid on the large wicker basket and began to gently pull out its contents. Angelo sat across from her, his arms stretched out behind him, a serene look spread across his face. She caught his look and returned it with a smile. “I made roasted peppers and cheese sandwiches,” she said. “And my aunt made her olive salad for you. She says you can’t ever eat enough of it.”

  “She wants me fat,” he said, watching as Isabella carefully set out the food, plates and silverware. “She said fat men make better husbands.”

  Isabella placed two thick sandwiches on Angelo’s plate and tilted her head away from the sun’s glare. “You’ll make a good husband.” She widened her smile. “It won’t matter what you weigh.”

  When he spoke, his voice was serious and quiet. He leaned forward and put a hand on Isabella’s arm. “Will it matter what I do?” he asked.

  Isabella stared at him for several moments, the smile passing from her face and then nodded. “I only know what I see in front of me, Angelo,” she said. “And what I see is a good man who is sometimes sadder than he should be.”

  “I’m never sad when I’m with you,” Angelo told her. “These last few months have been happy ones for me. It’s just not easy for me to show you or tell you how I feel.”

  “Why?” Isabella sat inches across from him, her long white skirt spread out around her, the
wind pushing her thick hair past her face.

  “I see the way you are around your father and the rest of your family,” Angelo said, looking away from Isabella and out across the Central Park skyline. “How quick you all are to laugh, hug, kiss, even cry. I wish I could be like that. But I know that I never can. And I’m afraid that might not be enough for you.”

  “To me, you will always be the handsome boy in the rain who bought me a piece of fruit. That is the Angelo that has touched my heart. I don’t need you to be anything more.”

  “Will you feel the same, even after you know more of who I am?” Angelo asked, close enough to Isabella to smell the sweetness of her skin.

  She looked deeply into his eyes and smiled her little girl smile. “There is nothing that can change the way I feel,” she said. “Even if you grow fat eating all of my aunt’s olive salad.”

  Angelo smiled and let out a rare laugh. “Then we should eat,” he said, the fall sun gently warming them both.

  • • •

  IDA THE GOOSE had her back to Angelo and Pudge, one foot resting on a tree stump, one hand holding the wooden end of an ax. The sun was coming down off the mountain, washing the wooded valley below and Ida’s cabin above in a final blast of strong light. Angelo and Pudge each carried a bucket of fresh beer in one hand and a bottle of scotch shoved under one arm. They had parked their sedan down the hill and walked the steep incline up to Ida’s place. It was late on a Saturday afternoon and the drive to Roscoe had taken most of their day. Angelo enjoyed the beauty and the serenity of the surroundings as well as the sense of freedom he felt behind the wheel of a car moving across an open road. Pudge slept for a good portion of the ride, more at home walking a concrete pavement than trekking down a dirt path. They had visited Ida three times since her move upstate six months earlier and each time found her to be as relaxed and as happy as they’d ever seen. “I don’t get it,” Pudge said to Angelo, as he stared out at the passing rows of trees. “You’d think Ida would go nuts living out here in the woods. You gotta wait for it to rain just to have something new to talk about.”

  “I like it up here,” Angelo said. “It’s quiet.”

  “So are cemeteries,” Pudge said. “And I don’t want to be found in one of them anytime soon either.”

  • • •

  IDA THE GOOSE lit a cigarette as Angelo and Pudge drew closer. She tilted her head back and blew the smoke toward an unmarked sky. “You boys would make for a pair of terrible hunters,” she said, turning her head to glance over their way. “Unless you wanted to be seen and heard by anybody within ten miles.”

  “We would have crawled our way up,” Pudge said. “But we didn’t want the beer to spill.”

  She stomped out her cigarette with the toe of a worn boot and walked up toward the cabin. “I got a beef stew on low boil,” she said. “And some fresh cornbread a neighbor gave me. Put the beer next to it and it sounds like a meal to me.”

  “It doesn’t matter what you got,” Pudge said, falling into step behind Ida. “I’m close enough to a faint I’ll eat anything.”

  Angelo lingered a little farther behind, taking in the fresh-air scents and postcard scenery. Though he sorely missed Ida’s company and counsel, he appreciated her quest for peace and was happy she had found it in such a place, far removed from the risks and turmoil of a gangster’s life. He wondered if he would survive the business long enough to seek and find his own corner of solitude.

  • • •

  THEY ATTACKED THEIR meal with country hunger, each one finishing two large bowls of stew and a half dozen heavily buttered cubes of cornbread. They ate in silence, at ease with one another, content to let the meal rule over conversation. Pudge tapped into the second pail of beer and Ida had a fresh cigarette poised by her mouth when Angelo spoke his first words since they had sat down at the small dining-room table.

  “I’m thinking of getting married,” he announced.

  Pudge and Ida looked at one another before turning their gaze to Angelo. “You got somebody in mind or is this just a feeling that’s taken over?” Ida asked.

  “Her name is Isabella,” Angelo said.

  “The butcher’s daughter you walk home from work every day?” Pudge asked, incredulous.

  “Yes,” Angelo said.

  “You in love with her or you just think you are?” Ida asked.

  “It’s for real,” Angelo told them. “I wouldn’t have said anything about it if it wasn’t.”

  “That’s bad,” Pudge said. “She feel the same way about you?”

  “Not in so many words,” Angelo admitted. “But I can see it in her face.”

  “That’s even worse.” Pudge poured himself a fresh mug of beer.

  “What kinda work does she think you do?” Ida asked.

  “I told her I work for a downtown businessman, but she’s too smart for that to last long. And if she’s going to be my wife, she will need to know the truth.”

  “She doesn’t need to know anything,” Ida said. “At least not from you. If she’s as smart as you say, she’ll figure it out on her own. If she hasn’t already.”

  “You sure you wanna go and get married this early?” Pudge asked.

  “I’m not like you, Pudge,” Angelo said, his voice calm, his beer glass untouched. “I can’t go from girl to girl and forget about them the minute they’re gone. I wish I could. It would make my life a lot easier. But it’s just not the way I am.”

  “I almost got married once,” Ida said with a smile crammed with memories. “I was still young, long before I got hooked up in the rackets. We exchanged rings and even looked at places we might live.”

  “Did you love him?” Angelo asked.

  “I was young enough to think so and old enough where I should have known better,” Ida said.

  “So you bailed on him?” Pudge said, exchanging his empty glass of beer for Angelo’s full one.

  “No, it was his call,” Ida said, shaking her head. “He swept me away, only it was not the way I had in mind. He went and married someone else. He left my life as fast as he came into it.”

  “You ever see him again?” Pudge asked.

  “Once, years later, he came into the Café,” she said. “His marriage had busted up by then. He looked different and so did I, but we recognized each other. We didn’t say anything. He ordered his drink, finished it and walked out. I guess it ended the way it was meant to end.”

  “Any of this cheering you up?” Pudge asked Angelo.

  “I don’t know what to say to her,” Angelo said, his eyes moving slowly from Pudge to Ida. “I have never told anyone I loved them. The few that I do love know it without me having to say anything.”

  “That only works with people like us,” Ida said. “A young girl needs to hear the words if she’s going to believe in the man.”

  “If you really feel it, it’s not going to be a hard thing to do,” Pudge said. “Even for somebody who hates to talk as much as you.”

  “She’s a lucky girl,” Ida said, raising a glass of whiskey toward Angelo, a lilt of sadness in her voice.

  Angelo sat back in his chair and nodded. “I hope that will always be true.”

  The three stayed together until the beer ran out and the whiskey bottles were empty. Then, their good-byes said under a clear moon, Angelo and Pudge left Ida on her front porch and walked back down the incline toward their car. They drove away from the wooded stillness and back into the dangers of New York nights.

  • • •

  MARY SETTLED ONTO the circular stool and watched the elderly man behind the counter write down her order. “This is nice,” she said. She smiled as I slid the menus back in place between the ketchup bottle and the napkin rack.

  “Don’t expect too much,” I said. “I’ve been coming here since I was a kid and the food was pretty bad even then.”

  “No, I meant being with you,” she said. “I’ve always wanted us to spend some time together but I could never quite manage it. I’m only sorry it�
�s happening now, under such sad circumstances.”

  “Why would you want to spend time with me?” I watched as the counterman slid over two large glasses of Coke with crushed ice.

  “Well, Angelo spoke about you so often,” she said, pulling the white paper from her straw. “I wanted to see for myself what kind of young man you were.”

  “Have I let you down yet?”

  “No,” she said with a bright smile. “But there’s still plenty of time.”

  “What sort of things would he tell you?” I asked.

  “Just general information. Being specific is not one of Angelo’s strengths. But I know you’re married and have two children. I know you have your own business. And I also know you’re a terrible actor.” She laughed as she said the words.

  “I can’t believe he told you about that,” I said, shaking my head. “I can’t believe he would even remember it. That was so many years ago.”

  “Angelo would put an elephant’s memory to shame.” Mary moved her arms away from the counter as the old man put down two cheeseburger platters in front of us.

  “I was just a kid, about sixteen,” I said, reaching for the ketchup. “I had saved some money from a summer job and signed up for an acting class down at HB Studios in the Village. You know, just to see if I was any good at it.”

  “And were you?”

  “I thought so,” I said. “And I thought so even more when I got a part in an Off-Off-Broadway play. I got so excited that I asked Angelo and Pudge to come down and see me in it.”

  Mary put her burger back on the plate and kept a napkin folded and spread across her mouth, trying to bury her laugh. “And?” she asked. “What was their critical reaction?”

  “Pudge said it would be best for everybody if he found the writer and the director and shot them both,” I said. “And that it would be best for me if I tried another line of work.”

  “And Angelo?” Mary said, now not even bothering to hide the laugh. “What did he have to say?”

  “He said Lee J. Cobb and George C. Scott were great actors.” I had to smile at the memory. “And they had two things I didn’t have: talent and a middle initial. Then he put on his hat and walked out of the theater. We never talked about it again.”