Wiseguys In Love Read online

  “I’m not gettin’ up at five-thirty to go tell somebody my sins, okay?” he said, half-running to the front door.

  “But if—”

  “Ma, you got my bullets, you got me to wear the coat, you got enough this morning. Bye.” He kissed her on the cheek.

  He bolted from the door, down the front steps, and ran toward the limo parked at the curb. Tony Mac rolled down the window as Michael ran across the lawn.

  “We gonna be late,” he warned, opening the door.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” he said, swinging himself into the front seat.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of his mother, running across the lawn, waving the umbrella at him.

  “Start the car,” he ordered Tony as he slammed the door.

  “Michael! Michael Antonio! You forgot!” she yelled, almost there. Her frame, smaller now since the death of her husband, still bounced up and down. For a sixty-six-year-old, she could run like the wind. He held his hand out for the umbrella as she got to the car.

  Her dark blue eyes shone down at him softly. Her bluish white hair was coiffed high, in the same way she’d worn it for the last twenty years, and added to her height. The blackness of her dress, stockings, and shoes was broken only by the floral apron tied around her.

  “Okay, Mom, thanks.”

  “Don’t be late. I’m making trota and it gets dry. You bring him home early, Anthony?”

  “Yes, Aunt Sophia,” Tony Mac said, smiling up at her.

  “You’re a good boy,” she said to him, and stepped back.

  Tony pulled the car away from the curb so fast, it squealed. He drove to the corner and made a stop at the sign as Mike rested his head on the back of the seat and exhaled loudly.

  “I gotta get a place. She drives me crazy.” He stared at the dark blue roof. “She means well, but since Pop died…” He lifted his head up and looked at Tony.

  “Make a right.”

  Tony grimaced at him.

  “She got the bullets again, uh?”

  * * *

  Sophia watched the car turn right at the corner and then roll out of sight. She felt herself sigh and shook her head as she turned to walk back to the house. What could she do? Gina’s words kept coming back to her and back to her.

  “He’s making his bones. Solly’s taking care of him.…” It had echoed slightly as they left church that morning. It had echoed through her brain as they stopped for pastry and espressos, although Gina would never mention anything that sensitive in a restaurant. All Sophia had heard was that terrible news. And she couldn’t even say anything to Gina about it. It would insult her, that her son was giving such a big honor to Michael and Sophia didn’t want this at all.

  Sophia had planned to talk to him this morning, just as she placed his plate of eggs down, but she had looked into his face and stopped suddenly, shocked by what she saw.

  She had seen the fine creases beginning near his eyes, just like Vincent’s. She had seen the strands of silver on top of his head, breaking up the blackness of his hair, and she’d felt herself freeze for a moment.

  When had this happened? She hadn’t noticed it. She stopped to pick a leaf off the lawn and looked at the trees. The tips of all the leaves were beginning to brown. The summer was ending. She continued walking back to the house, staring at the leaf.

  It must have happened recently to Michael, the age. It wasn’t that growing older shocked her. What shocked her and bothered her was that she hadn’t noticed it. She stopped suddenly at the front steps.

  She hadn’t noticed it. She hadn’t noticed anything for two years, since Vincent had died. She breathed out, wondering how many other things she had missed.

  * * *

  Michael felt numb as Tony stopped the car.

  “Eh, you come in with me.” Tony’s voice ordered. Michael nodded and slid outside.

  He didn’t even bother to look up at the building. Who cared? It was one of the many little errands he and Tony went on that Michael never asked about. Why bother? He sure as hell didn’t actually want to know about this stuff.

  A creaky elevator took them up to the seventh floor of an old office building. Ancient gold paint on frosted glass formed hand-painted letters in an arc, which read, DYNAMITERS LOCAL 391.

  Tony walked inside and Michael quietly followed. He felt himself hanging back near the door as Tony walked up to the reception desk. Tony turned around.

  “You coming?”

  “Maybe I’ll just wait here.”

  Tony shrugged and leaned over the receptionist’s desk. In a minute, he was ushered through a small swinging gate. Tony’s large torso obscured the woman from view. Michael heard a knock and watched Tony disappear into an office.

  He exhaled. His eyes focused on the door Tony had gone through. Black hand-painted letters on the wood, in the same style as those on the outer door, formed the name G. GEDDONE.

  A phone rang and Michael listened to a woman answer.

  G. Geddone. Now that name was familiar.

  The door to the office reopened and Michael saw a flash of G. Geddone as he quickly shut the door behind Tony.

  A dim montage of memory went through Michael’s mind, memories of a round, bald man, the kind of person you grow up with as a kid, who shakes your hand too vigorously at weddings and funerals, anniversary parties and retirement banquets. The kind of person you call “uncle” but are never sure if they are actually related to you, but there they are, year after year, telling you, “Look at how big you got!”

  Michael felt himself breathe in sharply as Tony walked quickly toward him, slipping an envelope into his breast pocket.

  His stomach flip-flopped as he opened the door for Tony. This was it—zero hour. He silently followed Tony out into the hallway.

  Now they were going to see Solly. Michael would finally find out just what this lunatic was going to give him to do to make his bones.

  His mind began assembling a list of the terrible things Solly could come with: breaking parts of guys off, torture …

  If he just knew what it was.

  * * *

  Giuseppe Geddone found himself wiping sweat from his forehead the same way he did every time Tony left his office. Only this morning, his whole suit was soaked. With Tony being so late, he thought something had gone really, really wrong. But Tony didn’t seem any different, and he breathed out and stared at the ledger on the desk in front of him.

  Giuseppe Geddone carefully entered the pension-interest amount in one ledger and then “adjusted” it in another. He could hear the sounds of the traffic and the city from the open window.

  He looked back down at the books, closed one, and stuck it quickly in the safe behind his desk, then took out the big union checkbook ledger.

  He opened it up and filled out the deposit stub for the day. Underneath that figure, he placed a withdrawal to the Metropolitan Office Maintenance Company in the amount of the interest in the second ledger, to cover the check he’d just given Tony.

  That was for Solly. There had been forty new members in the union this quarter, and the Metropolitan Office Maintenance Company was supposed to get a percentage of all the pension dues, balance, and interest, just as it had done every quarter since 1951.

  Only, since Giuseppe had figured out his plan, they’d been short. It had taken him a period of time to see that nobody from Solly’s side had even ever asked or was ever going to ask to look at the pay rosters and line them up with the payoffs—not so long as he kept the union rosters looking consistent and kept neither a huge rise in union membership nor a consistent drop.

  So it was one for him, one for the Soltanos.

  Giuseppe licked his lips and began writing out another check.

  That was his. It had taken him the last ten years to make it into this position. He had a nice fat bank account in Zurich. When it was time for him to leave, he was going to take the clothes on his back, drive to the airport, get on a plane, and leave behind the boring, fat
, married-for-thirty-years person, known as Giuseppe Geddone, and begin living the way God had intended.

  * * *

  Lisa got to work a little before nine, sweating from the August humidity and wet from the rain that had begun falling.

  She shivered as she sat down at her desk. The air-conditioning vent right above her was going full blast. She bent down and pulled off her sneakers and socks, then readjusted her panty hose on her feet. She opened up her bottom drawer and wiggled her feet into a pair of heels.

  Back to grim reality, she thought.

  Tom appeared by her desk with an armful of galleys from the previous day’s work. He dropped them down.

  “Ready for the pit beast from hell today?” he quipped, and then leaned down, his voice low. “He wants to see these right away. He’s been in since eight-thirty.”

  “Thanks,” she said, as though he had just thrown a sack of snakes down on her desk.

  “You should have come out with Lynn and me last night; at least it takes the edge off.” She watched him shrug sympathetically and take a step away from her desk. He turned around.

  “Oh yeah, Mrs. Morelli in Accounting needs to see you about something,” he said, and walked back off down the hall.

  That would be an excuse to get out of his office fast. She got up, armed with the pile, and began walking down the hall to his office.

  A cold shiver always went through her as she got to his door. But this morning, she felt her teeth begin to grind together angrily. She should—no, she was going to say something. She gave two gentle knocks.

  “What?” Henry Foster Morgan’s deep voice boomed, annoyed.

  Her resolve faded into her usual reaction—fear, which was followed by the thought that she just had to make it through until February.

  He was sitting at his desk with the Post opened to Page Six. A fuzzy photo of him and several “unidentified blondes” was splashed across it. He was on the phone. In front of him sat a glass of tomato juice. He usually poured into it a good dose of vodka from the bottle he kept in his lower drawer. Lisa would sit as he screamed, holding her nose from his breath.

  She looked at the other things on the desk. Next to the glass was a half-empty bottle of aspirin and a pack of French cigarettes.

  She was going to have to definitely block out any smell coming from him.

  “Here are the gal—”

  “One moment,” he said into the phone, then placed his hand over the receiver. “Where have you been?”

  “I just got in.”

  “When I say I want these on my desk first thing, I mean it. What the hell do we pay you for? Playing around all morning?”

  “I’m not due in till nine—”

  “Have you proofread these?” He cut her off.

  “But I thought you wanted to see them.”

  “Not if you haven’t even proofed them! What the fuck do I want with unproofed text? It’s bad enough I have to read this shit at all—now I’m supposed to do your idiot work? What the hell is wrong with you? Sit,” he ordered.

  She sank down into a chair as he hung up.

  He was going to scream for the next five minutes. She stared into his bloodshot left eye, his right being hidden behind a cascade of long hair. Several strands were stuck in a ridiculous pair of glasses he wore.

  The odd thing, she thought, was that he didn’t need to wear them. She’d looked through them once and there was just plain glass in there.

  It was funny—the first time she’d seen him, she thought he was going to be totally different.

  He was mouth-dropping gorgeous. Tall, trim, with dark wavy hair, big brown eyes, and golden tanned skin. His face was rectangular, with a strong chin that was gently cleft, and the suit he wore didn’t make him look like, well, a suit. He looked like a man with style and grace and charm who knew who he was and where he was going. He had walked past her with what looked like the board of directors, silver-gray-haired men who were all laughing at a joke he’d made.

  And he was handsome and charming and gracious—to anyone who could either do something for him or make his life better in some way.

  Boy, do some appearances lie, she thought as the sound of him screaming at her began to intrude.

  To the board of directors of the company, Henry was a money-making dream. To the people he worked with and over, Henry was a nightmare.

  Her eyes glanced down at the photo in the paper. He always photographed well, more distinguished and intelligent-looking, probably because thirty-one on him looked more like forty-eight on the rest of the world. In the four years she’d worked for him, Henry had begun to fade. He was in the same rumpled pink linen designer suit he’d had on yesterday.

  “And when I tell you to do something…” She zoned out, staring intently at a crack in the wall and concentrating on the coming weekend.

  “I’m going to make your life so miserable, you’ll—”

  She stared at him. He’d obviously been out all night. That was the only way he ever made it in this early.

  “I’m sorry, I thought—”

  “I don’t pay you to think!” His voice screeched and she felt her face get warm. A lump formed in her throat.

  “Get out!”

  She stood up abruptly. She made it to the door as the galleys she had dropped on his desk flew over her head. As she bent down to collect the papers, the door was slammed quickly behind her.

  She walked down the hall stiffly, trying to hold herself together till she got to the bathroom. She wasn’t stupid. She wasn’t dumb. She was trying so hard at this. She made it to the first stall as the tears began to flow. She locked the metal swinging door and sat down on the toilet, wishing she was back in bed with Andrew.

  It wasn’t fair. She’d been so happy when she’d gotten this job as an assistant to the publisher on a big new magazine. She was not going to be sitting outside of someone else’s office the rest of her life. She was going to have the office and the secretary and a good career.

  All she did here was type and file for Mr. Henry Foster Morgan, keep his social calendar straight, and get yelled at and humiliated.

  And that was the reality, to have to sit at that desk day after day pretending that this was some great thing. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.

  She should quit her job. That’s what. To hell with waiting until February. She really didn’t want to settle in this city for life, anyway. She should stop being so afraid of it and just do it.

  She started to feel as if she couldn’t breathe in the stall, as if all the oxygen had been sucked from the room while she sat there.

  She’d go home tonight and try again to work on her resume. She’d put down anything this time. Another wave of tears drizzled hotly out of her eyes. She knew what would happen the second she’d sit down to do it. Her mind would go blank and she would get all shaky as she’d try to come up with some basic office skills. Stupid skills. Skills she used every day, which she could do in her sleep. But sitting at home, trying to put them down, they seemed to vanish, until it seemed like a miracle that she could walk and talk at the same time.

  No. She had to be strong and just put up with it until the stupid loan was paid off. This was just so humiliating.

  This weekend, she could think about this weekend. She should spend the rest of the day concentrating on Connecticut and the engagement party.

  Engagement party. Her insides went somewhat cool at the thought of having to go to one of those.

  The bathroom rematerialized before her as she heard the door open, and she stood up, wiping her face. She flushed the toilet as she blew her nose to cover up the sound.

  She’d feel worse if someone saw her.

  She’d just have to get by till 11:30. Maybe he’d go for one of his long lunches today. No, she could bet on it. Half the time, it was when he did his sleeping.

  She stared at the tiled wall. Labor Day. That’s right. It was next weekend. God, if she was really lucky, he wouldn’t come back at all a
fter this weekend, what with some big wedding out in the Hamptons. She was going to stop letting everything get to her, like she had resolved last night. She was going to be strong. All she had to do was make it through the rest of the day.

  She ducked into the hallway, avoided looking at anyone directly, and quickly made her way back to Accounting.

  She could hear the click of Mrs. Morelli’s old adding machine as she approached her desk. Lisa looked at the newer calculator, which the woman had placed on a pile of invoices.

  “Mrs. Morelli, why don’t you use the calculator?”

  “I been using this adding machine thirty-one years, and I ain’t gonna change now.” Her voice was deep and husky and she spoke with a heavy New York accent. She didn’t take her eyes off the machine.

  “Be wid youse in a minute,” she added.

  Lisa shrugged and looked at her as she worked. She had dyed reddish hair, coiffed in a style that hadn’t been popular since the early sixties. Her old faded print dress was frayed and sleeveless. The flesh on her upper arms sagged and flapped as her fingers danced across the keys. The fake pearl and bead string that was attached to a thick pair of glasses swung in tandem with her arms. Smoke from a cigarette, hanging out of one side of her mouth, curled above her. She pulled the handle on the adding machine and looked up at Lisa, smiling.

  “Sorry, if I lose my place…” she began, then frowned at Lisa. “What’s a matter wid youse? You look like shit.”

  “I just … have a cold.”

  “That bastard’s started wid you already?”

  “How—”

  “Aw, Tom come by here. He said he had bug up his ass from eight-thirty.”

  She felt the lump returning. As she looked away, Mrs. Morelli placed her hand under her chin and turned her back. Lisa looked down at her lined face, staring at the long ash hanging off her cigarette.

  “You don’t gotta take shit from nobody, you hear? You shouldn’t let him talk to you like he does, you know? You should stick up for yourself.”

  “I just … don’t … How would you handle it?”

  “Me?” She took her hand away, and Lisa watched the cigarette ash fall onto the desk. “You got a husband?”