“It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world for you, do some work,” my father said, looking at the unfinished steps. “You could get outa doing this awhile.”
“I told you, I like doing this.” I started picking pieces of dried concrete off my arms and shoulders.
“Well, you ain’t any good at it.” My father stepped on one of the forms I was using for the steps. “It’s all uneven here. Besides, you gotta reinforce it. We’re on an island here. Otherwise, a year from now, this will all be cracking and they’ll have to rip it out. You should’ve asked somebody what you were doing first.”
I put down the paper bag and picked up the trowel. We both stopped talking and just stared at the steps awhile.
I wondered if it was too late for me to get into demolition work.
20
TEDDY AND RICHIE AMATO were sitting in a car parked outside a discount department store on Atlantic Avenue. A homeless man with long nappy hair and no shirt lingered on a fire hydrant nearby.
“All right,” said Teddy. “You got everything?”
“I got everything.” Richie looked at himself in the rear-view mirror, admiring the way the Anadrol and horse steroids pumped up his shoulders and made his neck swell like a tree trunk.
“Well, if you don’t, speak now. You don’t get any points for not asking.”
“I got everything. I told you.”
Teddy struggled out of his seat belt and took a pack of Camels from his coat pocket. “Remember. Bang, bang. Get in, get out. You see Larry’s kid Nicky, you fuckin’ shoot him. No hanging around looking at the scenery.”
Richie frowned and his brow looked like a girder coming down on his eyes. “What do you think? I never done this before?”
“If you’d ever done it before, you wouldn’t still be trying to make your bones.”
Teddy stuck the cigarette in his mouth and lit it. He looked like an enormous time bomb waiting to go off. The homeless man got up off the fire hydrant and went into the department store.
“You know, it may take a couple of weeks for me and Anthony to track him down,” Richie warned him. “I know Nicky’s been running around a lot.”
“Just don’t draw it out longer than you have to. Remember how long it took with them horses. What’re you using anyway?”
“I got a .45,” said Richie. “Anthony’s gonna have the .25 his father gave him.”
Teddy blew out enough smoke to fill the car.
Richie put his thumb and forefinger up to his nose and caught a drop of blood coming off the tip. It was all these steroids he’d been taking. They’d given him a body he’d only dreamed about as a boy. A fifty-three-inch chest, nineteen-inch arms. But when he saw the side of his neck in the rearview mirror, it was a boiling stew of veins and sinews. Maybe he ought to try tapering off on the ’roids. That story on TV the other day said they could shrink your balls to the size of peanuts. He hoped it wasn’t too late.
“Don’t be an asshole and leave them guns lying around afterwards.” Teddy coughed twice into his fist.
“I know.”
“And listen,” said Teddy. “If this other kid gives you a hard time, don’t be afraid to whack him too.”
“What?” Richie looked stunned. He fingered his wide, heavy jaw as if he’d just been slugged. “We’re talking about Anthony. You’re kidding, right?”
Teddy looked at him a long time. The homeless man came out of the department store, holding a Barbie doll and kissing it.
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m kidding.”
“What were you saying? You wanted me to whack Anthony, instead of Nicky.”
“It was a joke, you moron.”
“Don’t call me a moron.” Richie turned his neck like he had a kink in it.
“Well, don’t act like one.”
21
ON JULY 4TH, Richie Amato and I were sitting in a borrowed car on a side street near the Inlet. I think it was a red 1991 Reliant. Richie was in the driver’s seat running his mouth.
“Let me tell you something. I got a lot of respect for Joey Snails but he’s a no-good motherfucker.”
“Why’s that?” I looked over the dashboard at the street in front of us.
At any moment Nick DiGregorio’s car would come rolling along, and then one of us would have to get out and shoot him. And with the way my stomach was turning itself inside out, I hoped it wouldn’t be me.
“I’ll tell you what Joey’s problem is,” Richie said, shifting in his seat and jangling the chains on his runway-sized chest. “He’s a dumb shit, that’s what he is. The other night we’re supposed to do a job, right? So what does he do? He shows up shit-faced and instead of bringing a gun like he’s supposed to, he’s got a crowbar, a radio, and a coat hanger ...”
“A coat hanger?” I had trouble focusing. My mind was on what we were about to do.
“Yeah, he thinks he’s gonna go in through the side and puncture the intestines,” Richie said. “I know it’s fuckin’ stupid, but I figured with the crowbar is okay. I mean, we’re only supposed to be breaking legs here. We’re not animals, are we? Anyway, fuckin’ Joey Snails. As we’re coming into the stall, he trips over a fuckin’ bale of hay or something ...”
I came back into the conversation. “Wait a second. As you were going into the stall?”
“Yeah, that’s what I said.”
“Wait.” I gave him the time-out sign. “You went into a stall to whack somebody?”
“That was the contract.”
“What were you doing? Putting a hit on a horse?”
“Yeah,” said Richie. “You didn’t know about this? Ted worked out a deal with someone he knows at an insurance agent. We do this racehorse and he’s supposed to split the money. Except fuckin’ Joey Snails let the horse out of the barn. He got this idea in his head he’s gonna get this horse Snowflake to stand in a tub of water while he throws a radio in. Make it look like a heart attack. Instead he lets it out and we have to go chasing it in the middle of the fuckin’ night. With a crowbar, a coat hanger, and a radio. I tell you the guy’s an idiot.”
You should know, I thought, adjusting the rearview mirror. Look at him sitting there. Fuckin’ Richie Amato. Poster child for anabolic steroids. Who once made a bartender who owed him money blow him in front of a room full of people and then got mad when somebody called him a faggot afterwards. Fuckin’ Richie. With his monobrow and his $250 Italian loafers and the light slacks he paid a hundred dollars for and still couldn’t fit into. Richie’s idea of a good time was carrying around Ted’s coat for him on a summer afternoon and then hanging out in a bar with him all night, laughing at Teddy’s jokes and checking his own hair in the mirror.
What a life. Everything you did, you gave half to Teddy. And if you were a dope like Richie, half the money you got to keep you wasted on clothes, gambling, or broads. God forbid you should get pinched driving around drunk or something stupid like that, because then the Big Guy would make you pay for your own lawyer.
But here was Richie smiling away at himself in the mirror. Like his life was just so terrific. He wasn’t even a made guy yet, but anything Teddy told him to do he’d do. Go ahead. Shoot somebody in broad daylight. Do it cowboy style. Make some fuckin’ noise. That’s what the Big Guy wanted. Hell, if I’d left it up to Richie we’d be doing this hit in the lobby of the Taj Mahal instead of a quiet side street near the Inlet.
In a way it didn’t matter. I was just counting on Richie to pull the actual trigger. I didn’t want to be responsible myself.