Gangster. - Gangster. Part 26
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Gangster. Part 26

PUDGE SAT IN a thick red leather chair, a large mug of coffee on the side table to his right. He looked over at the slender black man sitting across from him, his arms stretched out along the back of the leather couch, and leaned forward to place a hand on his leg.

It's not something that can be avoided, Cootie, he said. None of us asked for this, but it's here now and now is when we have to deal with it.

Cootie Turnbill gazed out the large double windows to the left of the couch. There, four stories below his brownstone, he could see the streets of Harlem begin to show signs of early-morning life. These were the streets that Cootie Turnbill had controlled since the end of World War II, splitting all the profits from his numbers, booze, trucking and carting businesses fifty cents on the dollar with Angelo and Pudge. The arrangement had earned millions for all of them and, except for the occasional tussle, had kept the neighborhood free from any gangster wars. Little Ricky Carson and his KKK crew were eager to bring all that to a quick and vicious end.

What the hell kind of black gang boss names his crew after the Klan? Cootie asked Pudge. That supposed to be their idea of cute?

Cute or not, they got their eyes marked for your streets. They only know how to do that one way, and talking about it isn't it.

They're a big crew packing big guns. Cootie pulled a cigar from the front pocket of his velvet robe and held it gently in his hands. Shoot people they have no beef with, just to show that they can. They talk more about dying than they do about living. We've tussled with some crazy bastards in our time, Pudge, but I don't think any one of us has seen the likes of these.

They're no different than we were starting out, Pudge said with a shrug.

You and Angelo up for this? Cootie asked, resting the cigar on the coffee table separating him from Pudge. It's been a long time between dances for all of us. Won't take long for Ricky Carson to find that out, if he hasn't already.

It's been a while since we got our nails duty, Pudge said, leaning back in his chair. No doubt about it. But I don't see it as a question of choice. It needs to be handled. Now, will your crew be there for us, the ones up here as well as the ones you got stashed down in the Bahamas?

Coolie Turnbill smiled at Pudge and clapped his hands together. Even with the guns from down there, Carson's crew beats mine by at least two to one. Seems like every black kid with a gun and a driver's license is on his team.

They got the numbers but not the experience. We don't need to outgun them. We need to outthink them. If that happens, we might get lucky enough to sneak away with a win.

Before you came up here, I was thinking back to the first time the three of us teamed together in a war, Cootie said, his stylish short-trim Afro specked with puffs of gray, the bottom of his handmade slippers leaning against the sides of the coffee table. He was fifty-eight years old now, still with a handsome face and a relaxed manner. Hidden below the calm surface, buried by years of comfort, wealth and security, sat the first black gangster to be accepted into organized crime's ranks. He was also one of its most ruthless killers. He was a low-tier numbers runner on Pudge's payroll when he stepped between Angelo and the blade of an assailant's knife in an East Harlem bar on a humid summer night in 1942. The man reached out and slashed Cootie across the chest, slicing open his shirt and several layers of skin. Then he moved to finish off the dazed and wounded Angelo who was lying on the ground by his feet. Cootie pulled a handgun from his hip and pressed the nozzle firm against the man's throat. Staring into the man's eyes, he pressed on the trigger and put two bullets through his throat and out the back of his neck.

Skin Reynolds and his demented crew, Pudge said. It was as if they were talking about a favorite family picnic. They came at us out of nowhere, and if they were only as good as they thought they were, they would have handed us our ass in a glass jar. There's no way we take that war without you in it, Cootie.

We got them all but Skin, Cootie said, resting his head against the back of the couch. He ran a little too fast, even for us. Thought he was better off taking a ten-year stretch in Sing Sing than going up against our guns. But it didn't work out like he planned. Hadn't even finished doing six months before he was found dead in his cell block.

Some plans can do nothing but fail, Pudge said. Let's hope that the one we got isn't one of them.

What is the plan? Cootie asked, resting a hand on his old friend's shoulder.

Pudge looked at Cootie with a knowing nod. The same plan we've had since we started in this business. We're way too old to come up with something new.

No need to repeat it then, because I know it by heart, Cootie said. Live to kill. It's what we know and it's how we go.

PABLITO MUNESTRO STARED down at the two head shots lying on the center of his bed. He was wearing a denim shirt and snakeskin boots, his pants curled up in a corner of the large, airy room. He leaned back against two thick fluffy pillows and grabbed a half-empty vodka bottle off the night table. He took a long, throaty swig from the bottle, then tossed it to a man in a gray suit and black felt hat standing to his right.

Are these the two everyone is so afraid to piss off? he asked, pointing at the photos and looking at the faces of the four men standing in front of him around the bed. These two old men?

No one is afraid of them, Pablito, a young man in a zippered running suit said. But they are worried about who'll come in their place if anything should happen to them. The Italians don't figure to sit back and let us walk all over their turf.

That's too bad, Pablito said. Because unless they all want to die, that's their only choice.

If there's a way to move in on the Italian's action without a lot of guns, the young man said, then that's something we might want to look into.

The Italians ain't gonna hand over shit, Pablito said. They need to see bodies stack up before they start to think you're serious.

Pablito Munestro was thirty years old and a millionaire several times over, moving in a swift and lethal manner from the impoverished back streets of Cali, Colombia, to a duplex apartment in an Upper East Side condo. He had a solid build and was magazine handsome, with long dark hair falling to his shoulders, tender eyes and a smile that could warm the most indifferent of women. He was blind in one eye, the result of a childhood playground accident, and controlled a drug empire that earned in excess of $50 million a year. He was the first of the Colombian dealers to target entire families for death if any one member was tagged an enemy of his crew.

His mother pulled up stakes and took her family out of the slums of Cali and moved them to the promised land of Florida when Pablito was a toddler. It was there that he began his drug career as a ten-year-old boy, running money between pickup drops for a Miami-based drug boss named Diego Acuz. He killed his first man when he was twelve, and by the time he was fifteen had a full crew of a dozen dealers, most of them twice his age, dealing coke for him out of a burrito-and-beer stand in South Beach. On his eighteenth birthday, Pablito took over the Acuz crew by pumping three bullets into his boss's head and then piloting a twenty-three-foot sailboat forty miles off the Florida coast and dumping the body into the chilly, shark-infested waters. He had been in New York less than two years and had already wiped out four rival gangs. His sights were now set on Angelo and Pudge's powerful crew and their millions in yearly income. Pablito was ranked tenth on the FBI's Most Wanted list and wanted nothing more than to be the biggest gangster to run the table in America's largest city.

We'll be ready to move by Monday, the man in the suit, Pablito's older brother, Carlos, said. The Italians asked for a meeting at a restaurant in Queens across from the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge.

Ours or theirs? Pablito asked.

Neither, Carlos answered. We had it checked out. It's an independent. No ties to any crew.

Go in heavy, just in case, Pablito instructed.

It's only a first meeting, Carlos said. I don't expect them to try anything. The word we get on them is that they move only when they have to, and when they do, it's slow at its fastest.

That's the word they want you to hear, Pablito said, looking up at his older brother, the two photos gripped in his right hand. Forget all that and remember who it is you're going up against.

We outgun them, outnumber them and outrun them, Carlos said with a puffy confidence. There's no place for them to go that we can't reach.

Pablito grabbed a gold cigarette lighter off the end table and snapped it open, his eyes staring down at the thin line of fire. He picked up the two photos from the bedspread and ran the flame under them. He held them as they burned. All that will sound a lot better to me after I know that these two have both been buried, he said.

Then, Pablito dropped the burning pictures at his brother's feet, jumped from the bed and walked out of the room.

ANGELO AND PUDGE walked quietly in the wooded area, their heads down, the sun hidden from view by the thick tree coverage above. I followed close behind, watching as Ida sniffed her way through the rough, looking to surprise a squirrel and enjoy an early lunch. We had left the city in the middle of the night, Angelo doing a rare turn behind the wheel, Pudge up front next to him. I sat in the back with Ida's heavy head resting on my knee. Bobbie Gentry's throaty voice filled in the silent gaps as she sang I'll Never Fall in Love Again on the car's eight-track system. Outside, the city landscape quickly slipped past, replaced by the small-town feel of upstate New York. We stopped twice to gas the car and walk Ida and once to grab a quick coffee and buttered-roll breakfast. Angelo was clearly more at home navigating the eight-cylinder jet black Cadillac down the hard Manhattan side streets than he was winding his way through two-lane back-country roads.

Where are we going? I asked them at the halfway point of the trip.

Pudge turned around, resting one of his thick forearms across the dark brown leather upholstery. To pay our respects to an old friend. It's something we do whenever we can. And we thought now was a good time for you to join us.

I nodded, my hand gently rubbing the muscular rib cage of the sleeping pit bull next to me. That go for Ida, too? I asked.

We don't even get in the car without Ida, Pudge said. If those gangs out there only knew who really runs this crew it would go a long way toward saving them a lot of blood and bullets. A twenty-two-steak rack of beef would seal the deal in less than an hour's time.

How much longer? I asked. I was not enjoying the ride. The looming gang war circled us like an unwanted houseguest.

An hour, Pudge said with a shrug. Maybe less, if Angelo can kick the engine up past sixty.

Speed kills, Angelo said in his low voice.

THIS IS IT, PUDGE said to me, stopping in front of a small headstone in the center of a large clearing. This is where Ida lived out her last years. Had a cabin right about where we're standing.

I looked over at Angelo, watched him kneel in front of the headstone and bend down to kiss it, one hand gently stroking its side. The markings across the front bore only the words Ida the Goose and a chiseled rose. Pudge walked over and stood behind him, Ida following in his steps, her nose to the ground. Pudge reached into a side pocket of his jacket, pulled out a pint of Four Roses and rested it alongside the headstone. I stood off to the right, my hands in my pockets, respectful of their private moment with the woman who had raised them. The area around the grave had been allowed to grow wild in the years since Angelo and Pudge had burned the cabin to the ground, with Ida's body still inside.

We wound up sitting around Ida's headstone eating chicken cutlet sandwiches on fresh Italian bread. I shared one bottle of red wine and one of water with Pudge, while Angelo washed his sandwich down with a quart of milk. Ida the pit bull was content to munch out of a bowl filled with grilled beef and sliced provolone cheese. We didn't do much talking that afternoon. I understood that they had both chosen to say their good-byes to Ida the Goose before what could easily be their final battle.

Ida fought in the first gang war of this century, Pudge said with a hint of pride. It was for control of the Bowery. It went on for about two, three years. In those days, a war could last a lifetime.

She made her reputation during that war, Angelo said, staring at the headstone. She walked into a bar on Little West Twelfth Street, which was enemy turf to her, and went right up to the gang boss's table. Told him he had two choices. One was to back down, the other was to die. He looked up from his poker hand and laughed right in her face. She didn't even blink. Pulled a gun and put three slugs in him, killed him right where he sat. Turned around and walked out as easy as she had walked in.

She always said it was a damn shame he had to die that day, Pudge said. She had caught a look at his poker hand. He was sitting there holding three queens and a pair of sevens. I guess when you don't have the luck, you don't have a rat's chance.

It's really pretty here, I said, looking around at the massive trees and the hills and mountains that circled them. Quiet, too. Would you ever think of moving up here, like she did?

This is our cemetery, Gabe, Angelo said. Ida's buried here. So's Angus, over by that big oak tree facing the mountains. All the dogs we've ever had are scattered around here, too. And when the time comes, me and Pudge will be put here. That's the part that you'll take care of, making sure we're buried where we want to be.

I know it's not something you want to think about, little man, Pudge said, leaning closer and resting a hand on my shoulder. But it's something we want to make sure gets done. We need to be with our own kind.

That goes for the dog, too, Angelo said. All her relatives are here, she'll feel right at home.

I looked out across the clearing and saw Ida running wild in the high grass, switching speeds, resting on all fours when tired, free from the confines of the city streets. How about me? I asked, my eyes holding on the hard-charging dog.

There's a place for you. Angelo stood and walked past me, heading down the slope toward the parked Cadillac. If you want it.

You got a full life to live and plenty of other decisions that'll come along with it, Pudge said. But if the road you take leads you back here, you'd be more than welcome.

Thanks, I told him.

And at the time, I meant it.

THOSE WERE DANGEROUS days, I said. I was sitting on the edge of Angelo's bed, my hands resting on my legs, looking across the room at Mary. I was missing a lot of school, not because they needed me to do anything, but because I felt I should be around in case they did.

I wish you would have had a normal high school life, Mary said, leaning back in the chair and crossing her legs. A young man should be worried about pimples and dates, not a gang war planned out in his living room.

The double life never bothered me, I said. So I skipped a few dances and didn't get to go out for the football team. I don't think I missed all that much. They both wanted me to lead as normal a life as I could, but I found it all so boring when I wasn't with them.

Were your friends afraid of them? Mary stood and walked past me and toward the window.

A few were. They didn't say so in words, but you could tell from the way they acted. Then there were the ones who wanted to be my friends just so they could meet Angelo or Pudge. Wanna-bes, I guess. I pretty much steered clear of them.

What about girlfriends? Mary turned to look at me over her shoulder, her eyes arched. Were there any?

I was more like Angelo than Pudge in that department, I said with a shy shrug. There were girls I liked and wanted to ask out, but I never did. Maybe it was because of the one time I got burned and didn't want it to happen again. Or maybe I just wasn't any good at it.

Did you ever talk to either one of them about it? Mary said. Ask for some advice?

I leaned over and poured myself a cup of water. There were a lot of things we never talked about. Angelo's family, my life before I met them, other people in their lives. We only discussed what they felt was important for me to know. The rest of it was kept separate. It was as if all that mattered was the three of us being together.

Did either one of them ever mention me? Mary asked. She was standing above me now.

I shook my head. No, they never did. But you must have been around. You know too much about this gang war, things I had never even heard before, not to have been.

I was around. There was a new hardness in her voice. I was there for all of it.

Doing what? I asked.

Making sure you were safe, Mary said.

THE DARK BLUE Mercedes-Benz made a sharp turn around the corner of 111th Street and First Avenue, its four doors swinging open as soon as the car came to a hard stop in front of a crowded pizzeria. Three young black men in long rider coats stepped out, each with a gun in his hand, and stood next to the open doors, waiting for the final passenger to emerge. Little Ricky Carson, short and muscular, eased himself out of the backseat, lowered the collar of his long rider, shot his cuffs and, his head up, walking with a slight limp, stepped through the small entrance. He went in alone, his three men holding their guns at their sides, their backs against the pizzeria glass, staring at the passing faces on the street. He waited for the two burly men blocking his way to step aside, offering them nothing more menacing than a smile.

Let him in, said the owner, who stood next to a stainless-steel oven.

Little Ricky Carson nodded as the burly men reluctantly cleared a path and walked up to the man by the oven. The pizza chef was tall and overweight, but carried the extra girth well, dressed in catalog slacks and a black button-down shirt. His head was shaved bald and glowed off the overhead lights. Up close he smelled of imported cologne. His name was John Rumanelli and on the streets outside his pizzeria, he was a man to be feared. He was a ranking member of Angelo and Pudge's crew and controlled the East Harlem neighborhood where he was born forty-two years before and where he still made his home. He never carried a gun and, other than a short juvenile turn when he was seventeen, had a clean yellow sheet.

Rumanelli watched Carson walk up to him and stand alongside the counter. You come a long way for pizza Rumanelli said. The place in your end of town burn down?

We're hip to a lot of things, but, truth is, black people know close to nothing about making pizza, Carson said, locking eyes with Rumanelli. We think pepperoni plays first base for the Yankees.

It all has a way of evening out, Rumanelli said, his body language tense and on alert. I don't have any dancing trophies on my dining-room shelves, if you know what I mean.

Rumanelli nodded to a thin, balding man on the other side of the counter, who grabbed a plain slice from a tray next to a row of stacked boxes and tossed it into the top tier of the triple-deck oven. Have one ready for you in less than a minute, he said to Carson. You want a drink to wash it down with?

Not right now, Carson said, keeping his eyes on Rumanelli.

What about the boys on your crew? Rumanelli looked past Carson to the three gunmen in front of his shop. They might want to eat something before they start putting a finger to those triggers.

Carson ignored the question, lifted his hands as the bald man slid a hot slice of pizza on a paper plate across the countertop. I hear you're pulling down a little over ten large a week out of here, he said, and none of it comes from selling anything with sauce on it.

You and my accountant on a first-name basis now? Rumanelli asked.

How much of that do you kick back to Vestieri? Carson asked. He folded the slice of pie and took a large bite, small puffs of steam coming out of his mouth like cigar smoke.

Enjoy your slice. Rumanelli turned away from Carson. Have as many as you want. It's my treat. Then, when you're done, take your three paisans, get in your Benz and drive back to the minor leagues. Never show your face here again. If you do, your next slice of pizza will be delivered to the morgue.

Little Ricky Carson flashed a ghetto smile and let the slice of pizza fall from his hands. He pulled a revolver from the side pocket of his long rider leather coat and aimed it at Rumanelli's back. You might be right, Carson said. But it won't be any pie coming out of this shit hole.

Rumanelli turned his head back toward Carson and caught the first bullet in his right shoulder. The next two caught him in the chest and sent him sprawling on his back, two chairs and a table knocked aside as he fell. The three gunmen were now standing in the pizzeria doorway, each one aiming a gun at the crowd standing around Carson. Little Ricky stood above the fallen Rumanelli and barely bothering to glance down at him, pumped a final bullet into his chest. Carson then lifted his smoking gun and aimed it at the bald man standing frozen behind the counter. You know Bones Vestieri well enough to talk to him? Carson asked.

The bald man nodded. I can talk to him.

When you see him again, tell him I kicked off to get the game started, Carson said. It's his ball now.

Little Ricky Carson looked around at the faces staring at him and dropped a hundred-dollar bill on the countertop. See to it that anybody wants a slice gets one before they leave, he said. On me.

He lowered his head, gun resting at his side, and walked out of the pizzeria, his three gunmen moving backwards and following him out. They got into their car, the engine running in idle, slammed the open doors shut, put it in gear and drove away. The rear tires left smoke and rubber in their wake. Inside the car, sitting deep in the thick leather of his new Mercedes, Little Ricky Carson shook his head and laughed, a young gangster filled with a sense of power. That son of a bitch deserved to die just for having the balls to call that shit he served pizza, he said. The people in there, if they think about it for a while, they'll realize I did them a big favor. Saved them all from an ulcer.

The laughter of the four was drowned out by the music from a Sly and the Family Stone eight-track blasting out of the four speakers as the car disappeared into the heavy traffic heading onto the Willis Avenue Bridge.

I SAT IN an Italian restaurant on West Fifty-fourth Street, just a few blocks north of the hospital, waiting for Mary. The long nights by Angelo's bedside were starting to take their toll. I wasn't spending as many hours at my advertising firm as I should have been, leaving the bulk of the work in the hands of the young staff I had assembled. My family life was suffering as well. I would rush through a meal with my wife and kids, always with an eye on the dining-room clock, afraid that I wouldn't be there for Angelo's final moment. After so many long years, I was allowing him to once again consume my days and nights.