the Bar Studs) Page 10

  “I think so.”

  “If not, get some.”

  Cindy pushed the bills into the pocket of her slacks. “Do you eat aluminum foil too?”

  “Just do what I tell you, and I want my steak rare. Get going.”

  Cindy returned to the bedroom for her shoes and coat, and Adrian turned to Julie, whose expression of admiration still hadn’t diminished. “Where’s the bathroom?” Adrian asked.

  “The bathroom here is divided into three parts,” Julie explained. She pointed to a wooden enclosure on a platform against the brick wall in the living room. “That happens to be the shower, the toilet bowl is in a little room off the bedroom, and we wash up in the sink over there.” She pointed to a modern sink and cabinet area that looked out of place in the dingy apartment.

  After shitting, showering, shaving, and brushing his teeth with one of the brushes above the sink, Adrian returned to the slovenly bedroom, whose walls were painted dark blue, and dressed for the day. As he was tying his shoelaces, Cindy returned with three large bags and the Sunday Times, and Julie was drying off after her shower.

  Adrian walked to the kitchen. “Have either of you broads got a scale of some kind?”

  “My Weight-Watchers scale is broke,” Julie said.

  “That’s a big help.” He took the Times from the kitchen counter and carried it to the living room, where he spread out several sheets of it on the dirty oriental rug.

  “What are you doing?” Julie watched him and buttoned on a red and white cowboy shirt.

  “Trying to make some money, since we’re all out of work.” He walked to the bedroom, took one of the marijuana packages out of his suitcase, carried it back to the living room, slit open the wrapping with his switchblade, and spilled the contents onto the spread newspaper.

  “Can I help?” Julie asked.

  “Separate this into sixteen equal piles, while I roll a few joints.”

  Julie got on her hands and knees, and with her cute little ass pointing in the air, began to make little mounds of greenish-brown marijuana. Adrian rolled five perfect joints, lit two, and gave them to Julie and Cindy. The smell of boiling coffee, frying steak, and pungent smoke, filled the apartment as Adrian lit one for himself, and the Sunday afternoon dissolved into a euphoric haze. Julie interrupted her work to put a scratchy old Joe Cocker album on the cheap stereo, and then returned to her piles of marijuana.

  “What are we selling this stuff for?” Julie asked above the roar of the Grease Band.

  “Fifty bucks an ounce.”

  “That’s pretty high.”

  “It’s worth it.”

  “Yeah, it’s better than what I’ve been smoking.”

  “Call all your friends and tell them.”

  When all the marijuana was equally distributed in sixteen piles, they wrapped each pile in aluminum foil, and then Cindy served a huge breakfast. Stoned out of their minds, they giggled like children and ate, telling funny stories and remembering obscure, forgotten experiences, while Joe Cocker sang about the Delta lady, the man who came in the bathroom window, and about how everything was going to be all right, uh-huh.

  * * *

  From Morgan’s apartment, Johnny Mash took a cab downtown to Little Italy, getting out at Kenmare Street and Mulberry. He paid and tipped the cabbie and then walked down Mulberry Street past the old gray tenements with rusting fire escapes, as young boys chased around him and old ladies in black coats stood in doorways and gossiped in Italian. Johnny Mash grew up around here, but his mother now lived in New Jersey with his older sister Angela. He hadn’t seen them for over a year.

  Near Grand Street was a storefront with the bottom half of its window painted black, and on the black part was stenciled THE PALERMO SOCIAL CLUB. Underneath the letters was a decal of crossed American and Italian flags rippling in a breeze. He opened the door, stepped inside, and saw old men playing cards around wobbly tables. At the rear of the dark room was a color TV set being watched by more old men, and in the corner was a gleaming chromium espresso machine.

  Several old men looked piercingly at him, and then one stood up, lay down his cards, and held out his gnarled hand. “Well-a if it ain’t Johnny Mash! What’s-a new, kid?”

  “Not much.” Johnny Mash grinned and shook his hand, and then other old men stood up and held out their hands. When Johnny Mash was a boy these men had worked in factories, on construction sites, or as cabbies. He remembered them as burly tough men, and now they were old, wrinkled, and sickly. It was hard for him to believe such a transformation could take place.

  After he shook all their hands he walked to the rear of the room, entered a short dark corridor, and knocked on a steel door. A tiny window in the door opened and a bloodshot eye bobbed around in it. Then the door opened and a short fat bald man was standing there.

  “Johnny Mash!” the man shouted, holding out his hand.

  “How ya doin’, Joe?”

  “Real good—come on in, you son of a gun. Whataya know?”

  “Not a fuckin’ thing.”

  Johnny Mash stepped into a dark rectangular room that smelled like cigars and beer. Six evenly spaced pool tables were lined up down its middle, their green cloth covering glimmering under shaded light bulbs that hung from the ceiling. Due to the position of these bulbs, the bottom halves of pool players were brightly illuminated while their tops were veiled in shadows. Colored and striped billiard balls shone under the bright beams.

  “Whosat!” yelled a man in the room.

  “It’s Johnny Mash, for chrissakes!”

  “Johnny Mash!”

  The men left their games and advanced with big smiles and pool cues in hand to Johnny Mash. They were young and middle-aged, dressed fancy and sloppy, smoking cigars or cigarettes. Johnny had gone to school with some of them, and knew others from the neighborhood. They embraced him, shook his hand, slapped his back, and asked how he was doing.

  “I was doin’ okay until today,” he told them as they crowded around. “I just found out that the fuckin’ bar where I’m workin’ got closed down, and now I’m on the street.” He snapped his fingers. “Just like that!”

  “How’d that happen, Johnny Mash?”

  “I don’t know for sure, but the guy who ran the joint didn’t own it—his cunt did, and she musta got mad at him for somethin’. She prob’ly found him in the sack with her sister, maybe.”

  “She wuz a sore loser, right?”

  “She’s a fuckin’ mook!” Johnny Mash replied.

  They all laughed uproariously and he became wrapped in the warm sound of their voices. These were his friends, his goombah buddies, they’d do anything for him and he’d do anything for them. They understood each other.

  “So whataya gonna do?” asked Joe, the fat man who’d opened the door.

  “I thought I’d talk to my uncle Al and see if he knows about anything. He in?”

  “Yeah,” said Joe, “but he’s got some people in there wit’ him. I’ll tell him you’re here after they leave.”

  “Good enough.” Johnny Mash walked to the rack of cue sticks on the right wall of the room. “Anybody wanna shoot a little pool?” He pulled down one of the cue sticks and sighted down its length to make sure it was straight.

  “Right over here,” answered Tony La Barbara, a tall thin young man in a green silk shirt and charcoal gray slacks. “I’ll be ready for you as soon as I finish wipin’ out Sammy here.”

  Sammy Lambrusco, squat and round-shouldered, puffed a cigarette dangling from his lips and looked defeated already. He returned to his game with Tony while Johnny Mash pulled off his leather jacket, hung it on a hook, and rolled up his sleeves. He still felt lively from the cocaine he had snorted at Morgan’s, and when he closed his eyes he saw red lines dancing before him. Leaning against the wall, he rested the heel of his pool cue on the floor, opened his eyes, and watched Tony La Barbara slaughter Sammy Lambrusco. Tony looked like an elegant long-legged spider as he stalked around the pool table and slammed in ball after ba
ll. Johnny Mash figured Tony was pretty good, but thought he could take him. After a while Johnny Mash walked to the cooler, took out a can of Rheingold, paid Joe for it, and returned to his spot.

  Before he finished half the can, the game was over. Sammy paid up, throwing dollar bills one by one onto the pool table.

  “You’re next,” Tony said, sipping from his can of beer and looking through snake eyes at Johnny Mash. “I’m gonna clean your pockets out.”

  “You’re gonna shit, too.”

  Joe racked the balls, Johnny Mash and Tony each hit one toward the far bank, and Tony’s ball came closest to the bank so he won the right to break the rack. Tony placed the white cue ball at an angle to the rack, bent over, and positioned his cue stick. His right hip jutted high in the air. He worked his cue stick back and forth smoothly a few times, propelled it forward, and knocked the cue ball forward so hard it became a long white line on the green table. It smashed into the rack of balls, exploded them apart, and two balls rolled into the two end pockets.

  “Ready to quit?” Tony asked, smiling like a wise guy and chalking his cue.

  “I don’t quit.”

  Johnny Mash hadn’t played pool for awhile so lost the first two games. By the third he was getting the feel of the action, and managed to win. During the fourth game, while concentrating on a complicated bank shot, he heard footsteps and voices at the rear of the room. Looking up, he saw three men in suits walk in through the back door, which led from Al Liggio’s office. Those were the ones who’d been meeting with Uncle Al. Johnny Mash saw Joe go back through the door.

  “What the fuck you waitin’ for?” Tony asked. “Shoot!”

  “Hold your fuckin’ horses!” Johnny Mash focused on the cue ball, tensed, and slid the stick forward through his fingers. The cue ball sped forward, clipped the ten-ball on the side, the ten-ball hit a bank, and then it rolled slowly toward a side pocket but missed dropping in by half-an-inch. “You dirty cocksucker!” Johnny Mash angrily stamped his foot on the floor.

  “I’m gonna wipe your ass this game,” Tony said.

  “Yeah—witcha nose.”

  Joe returned through the rear door as Tony was lining up his shot. “Hey, Johnny Mash—Big Al wants to talk to you—right now!”

  “I gotta go,” Johnny Mash said to Tony.

  “You just got your ass saved.”

  “I’ll be back and we’ll see.”

  “I’ll be waitin’.”

  Johnny Mash pushed his cue stick into a slot on the rack and walked toward the back door. He knew everybody was watching him, because anyone who visited Big Al Liggio in his office was important. Big Al was a capo in the local Mafia organization, and once had been a button man for Frank Costello.

  Johnny Mash entered the large dark office. Al Liggio, a broad-shouldered man of medium height, sat behind a massive wooden desk and smoked a cigar. He had black hair parted on the side and streaked with gray, a trimmed moustache, and wore a well-fitting dark blue suit. His hands were folded on a stack of papers on his desk. Red drapes covered the windows and the only light in the room came from a yellow lamp near his chair.

  “Nice of you to drop in,” All Liggio said sarcastically. He stood up, didn’t smile, and held out his hand.

  Johnny Mash shook it, feeling uneasy. “It’s nice to see you again, Uncle Al.”

  Al Liggio pointed to a chair covered with green leather. As Johnny Mash sat down he looked back to the door and saw a dapper man sitting on a chair, and beside him sat an older man with a broken nose, also neatly dressed. These were Al Liggio’s button men. Johnny Mash crossed his legs, looked at Al Liggio, and made himself smile.

  Al Liggio puffed his cigar and sent huge puffs of smoke billowing toward the unlit crystal chandelier on the ceiling. He didn’t smile back. “You need a shave,” he said.

  “I didn’t have a chance to shave this mornin’.”

  Al Liggio frowned. “Whataya hear from your mother?”

  “I ain’t been out to Jersey for awhile.”

  “Why not?”

  “I been busy.”

  “I’m busy too, but I get out to Jersey to see her from time to time. You think you’re busier than me?” Al Liggio was Johnny Mash’s mother’s baby brother, about twenty years younger than she.

  “I’m not busier than you,” Johnny Mash said, not able to look Al Liggio in the eyes. He was glad Uncle Al didn’t know about his wife, even if she wasn’t Italian.

  “Then what the fuck’s the matter with you?”

  Johnny Mash shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “Whenever I go there she asks about you, and I don’t know what to tell her. There ain’t no excuse in the world for you not to see your mother every once in a while.” He pointed his cigar at Johnny Mash’s head. “You’d better go out there.”

  “Okay—I’ll go out.”

  “You workin’ tomorrow?”

  “No, and in fact that’s what I wanna talk to you about.”

  “Then go out tomorrow. You got enough money to get there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay. Now whataya want?”

  Johnny Mash leaned forward in the chair. “Well, the bar I was workin’ in closed down, and I was wonderin’ if any of your friends might have somethin’ for me.”

  “Where was you workin’?”

  “A joint called Adrian’s on Seventh Avenue in the Village.”

  “Oh yeah? Adrian Graham’s joint?” Al Liggio closed his left eye, which was stinging from cigar smoke.

  “You know Adrian?”

  “Sure. How come he got closed up?”

  “The joint was really owned by his broad, and she closed it. I think she musta caught him in the sack with somebody.”

  Al Liggio chuckled. “That sounds like Adrian. Does his broad know anything about bars?”

  “Naw, she’s some kinda lawyer. Handles immigration cases.”

  “Maybe she’ll wanna unload the place. What’s her name?”

  “Sandra Goldstein.”

  “You do a good business there?” Al Liggio wrote on a slip of paper.

  “Real good. Adrian’s got a lotta friends.”

  Al Liggio wrinkled his forehead. “Maybe I can buy the joint and let Adrian front for me. Ain’t he got a record?”

  “Yeah, felonious assault.”

  “I can get around that. You pretty close to him?”

  “Yeah—I met him in the can. That’s how I got to work for him.”

  Al Liggio scowled. “I know all about you and the can. Asshole.”

  Johnny Mash looked down at his hands.

  “Too bad that cop didn’t shoot you. You think you’re a cowboy or somethin’?”

  “That was a long time ago.”

  “You’re tryin’ to say you’re not as stupid as you were then?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Then how come you can’t find time to see your mother?”

  Johnny Mash sighed. “I told you I’d go tomorrow.”

  “You’d better.” Al Liggio blew a jet of smoke out the side of his mouth. “And you only come to see your uncle Al when you want somethin’, right?”

  “I know you’re busy and I don’t wanna bother you unless it’s important.”

  Al Liggio looked hurt. “You think I’m too busy to see my sister Mary’s only son?”

  “I don’t like to bother you.”

  “You’re fulla shit!” Al Liggio’s eyes were angry as he bent forward. “You don’t give a shit about your family because you’re just like all the other bums who hang around in the Village. All you care about is cunt, right?”

  Johnny Mash realized he couldn’t win. “I guess so.”

  Al Liggio lay his cigar butt on the ashtray, leaned back in his chair, looked Johnny Mash up and down, and then smiled. “Okay, you’re still young and I guess we shun’t expect miracles. I wasn’t such an angel when I was your age neither, although I always took time to see my mother, rest her soul, and I never did nothin’ crazy like try
in’ to hold up a bar all by myself. I’ll make a few calls and see if I can find somethin’ for you to do, and then I’ll see about Adrian’s joint, so’s maybe you can go back there. You know where Adrian is?”

  “No, but I guess I can find out.”

  “Find out and tell him to call me. You need any money to tide you over?”

  “I could use a little.’

  “How much?”

  “A couple hundred?”

  “Okay.” Al Liggio reached into his pocket and then froze, his eyes peering at something very far off. His hand came out empty, he scratched his cheek, and then fingered through the stack of papers on his desk. “I just thought of somethin’.” He pulled out a sheet of paper, looked it over, and raised his eyes to Johnny Mash. “You used to be a pretty tough kid. How about now?”

  “I can take care of myself.”

  “You think you can take care of a little hit, for five grand?”

  A firecracker went off in Johnny Mash’s brain. “You mean knock somebody off?”

  “What else would I mean?”

  “Who?”

  “A little punk. He’s doin’ somethin’ he shun’t, he’s been warned a couple times, and now he’s gotta get knocked. You think you can handle it?”

  “Ain’t you got special guys for stuff like this?”

  “Yeah, but this guy’s just a punk. Anybody with a little balls could handle him. When I was your age I useta do lotsa little jobs like this. All you gotta do is come up behind him and hit him in the head.”

  “Has he got any buttons?”

  “Nah—he’s a real nobody, but he thinks he’s hot shit. Listen, if you don’t wanna do it I’ll get somebody else. Since you was outa work I thought…”

  Johnny Mash interrupted him. “I’ll do it—what the fuck.”

  Al Liggio smiled. “Good. You ain’t got heat, I don’t suppose.”

  “What would I be doin’ with heat?”

  Al Liggio called out to the button men sitting beside the door. “Go downstairs and get me a big one!”

  The man with the broken nose stood up and went out the door, and Al pulled an 8 x 10 color photograph from the papers on his desk. “This is the guy.” He handed the photo to Johnny Mash. “His name’s Tino Fernandez.”