Second Skin (18 page)

What Mick liked best was to visit his grandfather at work. His office was above the Mastimo Funeral Home on Conduit Avenue. Tony Mastimo was an old-time funeral director with four daughters and no son to carry on the business. He was old and tired when he sold out to Grandfather Caesare, but perhaps not as old and tired as he made out to the world at large. Caesare made him an offer he was smart enough to accept. Now he lived with his new wife in a small but neat row house in Bay Ridge and played boccie when he wasn’t taking her on trips to Europe.

It was a good deal for everyone involved. Within six months of taking over, Grandfather Caesare had magically turned the funeral parlor into a cash cow. Within a year, he had opened two other Mastimo Funeral Homes in Queens, all of them instantly successful. Such was his charisma and his repute.

Grandfather Caesare’s rise in Ozone Park was altogether meteoric, but not without its rough spots. Jealousies quite naturally erupted both from those who were his rivals and from the family remnants of those who had been displaced. Those latter were no longer around. Most had simply disappeared, although it was true that several of the most vocal and openly antagonistic had been found in the backseats of anonymous cars in the junkyards at the end of Pennsylvania and Fountain Avenues. To a man, they displayed a single bullet hole through the back of their heads, which was enough to subdue or at least silence the rest of Grandfather’s enemies.

Grandfather liked three lumps of sugar in his espresso and a generous dollop of anisette. This and many other minuscule peculiarities Mick memorized instantaneously so that after school, when he visited Grandfather at his place of business above the Mastimo Funeral Home on Conduit Avenue, he could provide these services for the old man. Most often Mick took the Green Bus Line, but sometimes in good weather he biked over.

Naturally, his brother, Caesare, scoffed at such servitude, since he was already out on the street with a gun he knew how to fire, but Mick ignored his brother. Unlike his older brother, who was eager to make his bones, daily violent confrontation with the dangerously low IQ
gavonnes
of either Ozone Park or East New York held no special interest for Mick. And when he was with Grandfather while he was working, he could silently observe all that went on: the
capi
who came to do business and to genuflect before the old man, the friends who gathered at the round oak table to smoke hand-rolled cigars and drink wine, clear spirits, and espresso, and to talk. He learned from his grandfather the nuances of command, the necessity for humor and the darkness of life. Gradually, he discerned something that fascinated him: his grandfather had made acquaintances and, it seemed by the number who sat with him, even more enemies, but almost no friends, or at least people in whom he could confide with openness.

‘Friendship is a strange and unruly animal,’ his grandfather once said to him as he stirred the sugar into his espresso. ‘Like a lame dog you take offa the street and nurse back to health who then bites you onna hand, you must treat friendship with equal amounts of apprehension and skepticism.’

They were alone in Grandfather’s office, which when it didn’t smell of espresso and anisette and fear, smelled strongly of sickly sweet embalming fluid. Outside, it was pissing down rain, the traffic along Conduit hissing like serpents aroused from slumber.

He took a long drag of his cigarette and seized Mick’s shoulder in his bone-crushing grip. The smoke, let out in a soft sigh, closed one eye. ‘Me, I prefer the company of my enemies and I’ll tell you why. I know who they are and what they want from me.’ He turned Mick around so that he could fix the teenager with his black eyes. ‘Besides, the more time you spend with your enemies, the better you get to know ’em.’ He smiled then, and it was as if Mick’s whole universe expanded exponentially. ‘But you, you smart dunce, you already know that, don’t you?’

Grandfather then did an extraordinary thing. ‘Here, sit down nexta me,’ he said. He pulled over a cup and poured espresso into it. He plopped in three cubes of sugar, stirred it with a small spoon, then pushed it over in front of Mick. ‘Drink up. It’s timea you enjoyed a little of what you bring to me.’

It was the first and only time that Grandfather Caesare in any way acknowledged that he knew why Mick so often visited him at work.

Mick’s older brother, Caesare, may have had no respect for Mick, but he was not above using him when the need arose. Mick was not then so much the rebel that he could refuse his brother, but somehow, he always ended up regretting his involvement.

Take the incident of the turquoise Fairlane. One day Caesare comes to Mick and he says, ‘Hey, kid, I need ya t’do somethin’ for me. It’s easy, don’t worry. Even a civilian like you can do it, no sweat.’ He put two sets of keys into Mick’s hand, one for a car. ‘I wancha to go inta Manhattan. There’s this faggoty blue Ford Fairlane parked ata meter on Tenth Avenue. By Fiftieth Street, okay? All’s you gotta do is get in an’ drive it to this here address around the corner from the Jamaica Avenue post office, right?’ He told Mick an address. ‘This other key’ll open an apartment ona fourth floor. Piece of cake.’ He put a twenty-dollar bill in Mick’s hand. ‘There’s twenty more when you deliver both keys to the man’ll be there, okay?’ Mick nodded. ‘Right. Got that driver’s license I gotcha says you’re eighteen?’ Mick nodded again. ‘Fuck you waitin’ for? Get goin’.’

This Mick did. Not that he didn’t resent being spoken to this way. Not that he didn’t have misgivings about anything his brother asked him to do. But family was family. The Fairlane – actually a beautiful turquoise – was parked just as Caesare had said. The meter still had time on it and it had a full tank of gas. It was some beautiful set of wheels, and Mick spent a half-hour admiring every line, every dazzling inch of chrome. At last, he started her up and pulled out into traffic. Everything was fine until some schmuck ran a red light at the big intersection at Thirty-fourth Street and cut him off. He almost accordioned the front end of the Fairlane, and although he was able to keep the car from being scratched, he was royally pissed off.

The other guy, a civilian in a brown suit, was so shaken up he shook his fist in fury at Mick. That was not the smartest thing for him to have done because it got Mick even more pissed off. All the pent-up anger at his father and his brother erupted out of him like a volcano blowing its top, and he strode over to the other motorist, hauled him out through the open window, and beat the back of his head against the chrome of his white Chevy until blood started to run.

Perhaps it was the sight of blood running, but he suddenly came to his senses, and letting the motorist fall against the car, he strode back to the Fairlane on rubbery legs, slammed it in gear, and roared away.

He arrived in Jamaica without further incident, passing by the grimy stone facade of the post office on Jamaica Avenue. He parked across the street from the apartment, locked the car, and went up the brownstone stoop into a dim vestibule that smelled of garlic and rosemary. He took the stairs two at a time, thinking about what he was going to do with his forty dollars, and rapped on the appropriate door.

When there was no answer, he used the keys and let himself in. He was in a sparsely furnished one-bedroom that smelled of old gym socks. An old Norge hummed in a linoleum-covered kitchen. In the tiny bathroom, a tap dripped into a sink whose bottom was the same color as the Fairlane.

No one was home. Back in the living room, he went around the brown tweed couch, glanced out the window at the Fairlane parked beneath a Dutch elm tree, dusty with soot. He put the keys on the kitchen table, which was covered with a faded patterned piece of oilcloth, and opening the Norge, put some ice on the knuckles of his right hand, which were sore and skinned from his altercation with the motorist on Thirty-fourth Street. He wanted to leave but he also wanted his second twenty. Out in the living room, the telephone began to ring.

After a moment’s inner debate, he went and picked up the heavy black receiver.

‘Mick, that you?’ said a familiar voice in his ear.

‘Caesare?’

‘Fuck you do? I tol’ you zackly what you had to do. Fuck you do?’

‘Do?’ Mick said, bewildered. ‘What did I do?’

‘Fuck do I know? But I getta call from our man inna precinct, cops is after the man that drove the Fairlane. Seems some insurance salesman called the police once he got to the emergency room of Roosevelt Hospital, gave the cops the license plate number ova Ford.’

‘Jesus.’

‘You tellin’ me,’ Caesare said. ‘Look out onta the street, kid, tell me whatcha see.’

Mick craned his neck. ‘Ah, fuck, a cop car’s what I see.’

‘Yeah, you do, you little prick. An’ you know what’s inna trunka that Fairlane? Ten poundsa pot an’ the same of heroin.’

Great,
Mick thought.
That fuckin’ brother of mine. Now I’m in the same sackful of shit he’s in.
‘Fuck you doin’ with that shit?’

‘Fuck you think I’m doin’? Makίn’ a fuckin’ living while you’re playing busboy down by the funeral.’

‘Grandpa says drugs have no part of our biziness,’ Mick said, somewhat judiciously.

‘Listen to the big shot,’ Caesare said, his voice dripping contempt. ‘Fuck you know about the biziness, kid? Fuck all, is what. So you leave makin’ the money to me. Times is changin’ but Grandpa he’s still got one foot inna Hole. All due respect to the old bird, but the world’s passin’ him by.’

If Caesare had been in the same room with him instead of connected by voice through a telephone cable, Mick was quite certain he would have wrung his neck or at least tried to for that kind of remark. As it was, all he could muster was, ‘Fuck you.’

‘Hey, watch that fuckin’ mouth, kid.’ Caesare chuckled. ‘Well, now you know what’s what, here’s what you gotta do. You gotta get the shit outta the trunk without the cops knowin’.’

‘But Caesare –’

‘Just do it, kid,’ Caesare barked, ‘or I swear I’ll come over there myself and beat you black-an’-blue.’

Mick slammed down the receiver and stood with his hands jammed in the back pockets of his trousers. He peered out the window. Fuckin’ cops. They’d be sitting there all night waiting for him to show. What the hell was he gonna do?

The light was fading. At six o’clock, he was still wondering how he was going to get Caesare’s stash when he saw the cop car take off. A couple of minutes later, another one took its place. He sat up and paid careful attention. Sure. He should have thought of it before: shift change. When was the next one? He racked his brain for the information he had picked up on the street. Four in the morning.

He settled into the apartment, made himself some pasta with tomato sauce, then got a couple of hours of sleep. He was up at one and then three. After that, he couldn’t fall back to sleep. Besides, there was no time. He had to be in place when the shift changed. And he knew he had to be lucky. If the four
A.M.
car arrived before this shift was up, he was fucked.

It didn’t. At four on the nose, the cop car swung out of its spot, cruised off down the street. As it turned the corner, heading up to Jamaica Avenue, Mick was tearing across the street, key in hand. He fumbled at the Fairlane’s trunk lock, got it open. He filled his arms with Caesare’s shit, slammed the trunk shut, and hotfooted it out of there.

It should have been that Mick was happy to drop the shit into his brother’s lap and Caesare pissed at how he’d fucked up, but the funny thing was, it turned out just the opposite. In fact, Mick was so scared by his brush with the cops, he was in a towering rage when he came into the house.

After a brief glance to make sure they were untouched, Caesare put the packages aside and, grabbing Mick around the shoulders, bent his head so he could kiss the top of it. ‘Kid, I gotta admit I never thought I’d say it, but you’re so okay you should come work for me.’

‘Hey, cut it out,’ Mick said, flailing his arms like a windmill. He stood back from his brother, looked around to make sure their mother or Jaqui wasn’t in the vicinity. Then he pointed a finger at his brother and, with heretofore unknown storm clouds beetling his brow, said, ‘You sonuvabitch, if you ever get me involved in your stinking drug runs again, I’ll cut off your balls.’

Instead of taking offense, Caesare laughed. Why wouldn’t he? This was his younger brother talking, a skinny kid who preferred hanging out with their grandfather than making his bones on the street like every other male his age. Who could take anything he said seriously? But Caesare did object to one thing. ‘Keep your fuckin’ voice down. Fuck’smatta wich you? Ya wanna broadcast this alla way to the women?’

Mick knew what Caesare really meant. He didn’t give a shit about the Leonforte women, who were, in any case, nonentities as far as the biziness was concerned. He was terrified Grandfather Caesare would get wind of what he was up to, and then, the favorite or not, he’d really catch it.

‘I want my money,’ Mick said.

‘Sure, sure, kid.’ Caesare drew out a roll of bills, which he carried just like the older made men they saw around the neighborhood. He peeled off a bill. ‘Here’s your twenty.’

But Mick shook his head. ‘I deserve more than that.’

‘Fuck for?’

‘Hazardous duty, Caesare.’ Mick held out his hand. ‘I got your shit past the cops. You owe me.’

Caesare looked hard into his younger brother’s eyes and saw he wasn’t kidding. He also knew the kid was right and he laughed. ‘Fuck you. I tol’ you forty an’ that’s what you gettin’.’

Mick grinned at him. ‘I wonder what Grandpa would say to all these drugs you’re selling.’

‘You know fuckin’ well what he’d say.’ Caesare’s eyes squinted hard. ‘You little extortionist.’ But he was grinning as he forked over another two twenties. ‘Here, fuckface, don’t spend it all in one place.’

‘Eighty dollars,’ Grandfather Caesare said, staring down at the four twenty-dollar bills Mick had laid on the round table in his office. The place stank of formaldehyde, cigar smoke, and stale sweat. Mick had watched for three hours while the old man negotiated with his allies and enemies for pieces of turf that had been under dispute so long they were known as a battle zone for the Saints and the Fulton-Rockaways to let off steam. Now, with increased vigilance by the cops, that no longer seemed like such a good idea.