Mick Abruzzo Read online

  Figuring they’d made enough small talk, Mick leaned against Nicky’s desk and said, “You know anybody local who drives a vintage E-type Jaguar? 1972, racing green?”

  “Lotsa those on the Main Line. Rich guys love that car.”

  “Not a civilian. Guy named Sanchez.”

  Nicky flipped a button on the coffeemaker and shot Mick a frown. “Damian Sanchez? You serious?”

  “What can you tell me about him? Or the car?”

  Nicky folded his arms over his chest and scratched his ruined ear with one finger. “That particular car came out of Benny Battista’s garage, probably stolen in California and shipped here, on its way to Serbia, if I know Battista’s business. But Sanchez bought it—last July, I think.”

  “Anything special about the car?”

  Nicky shrugged. “You know those Jags from back then—no bells or whistles, but a lotta horsepower. Fast, but not good handlers like these new German cars. If your heart’s set, I can probably get you one just like it. Give me a month or two.”

  Mick shook his head. “I don’t need it. Just wondering. What about Sanchez? He’s new, right?”

  “New since you been out of the life, yeah. I heard a cartel sent him north to move money. He has good English, hardly any accent, and he can add without using his fingers, so he’s useful. Gotta mean streak, though. Word is, he was the one who capped Manny Broder’s boy, the football player.”

  “The kid with the dimples? I remember when he got shot. We thought it was some random thing. Jesus, why’d Sanchez do it?”

  Nicky shrugged. “Some drug business. Killing the kid was probably a job requirement—you know, the cartel makes him pop somebody before they’d hire him. Kid was selling on campus—strictly small time. But Sanchez’s people maybe didn’t like the competition. You know how those guys operate.”

  “Manny Broder has another kid, right? The graffiti one?”

  “Yeah, he’s still around.” In a grumble, Nicky added, “Making a hell of a mess, if you ask me. Painting crap all over the neighborhood.”

  “Sanchez, though,” Mick said. “I hear he’s seeing Liz Trillo.”

  Nicky had kept his curiosity under control until then. He hadn’t asked any why questions, either—smart, considering the people he associated with. But at the mention of Liz, his gaze sharpened. “Mick, you aren’t--? I mean, you and Liz…?”

  Maybe it would be a good idea to leave Nicky thinking all his questions were in reference to Liz, that he was a jealous lover hoping to deliver a beat down on a rival, but Mick respected Nicky. He was an old pro—a guy who’d survived a long time because he knew when to keep information to himself. So Mick shook his head. “Liz and I were over a long time ago.”

  “Well,” Nicky said, “if Sanchez is seeing Liz, he better be careful. That is one tough lady. After you, she was with Johnny Pizza and then crazy Tom Gelecki.”

  Johnny Pizza had died in the yard at Rockford, and Gelecki was found in an abandoned foundry with his fingers missing and all of his teeth pulled out. Whoever killed him hadn’t known he had his own name tattooed on his ass under a red-tailed Satan. Both men had been violent, but the world was definitely a better place without Gelecki.

  Mick said, “I doubt Liz had anything to do with what happened to those two. But she had a good arm for throwing dishes.”

  Nicky laughed and gave him coffee, asking nothing more. They talked cars for a while. Mick admitted he couldn’t pass a nice bike on the street without calculating how much it was worth broken down into parts. And according to Nicky, the average Third World despot still wanted to be driven around in a black Mercedes sedan, so the market for those remained strong.

  They shot the shit comfortably for a while and shook hands, friends.

  On his way out the door, Mick paused. “You hear anything about Little Frankie lately?”

  “Like what?” Nicky asked, face bland.

  “He’s gambling?”

  Nicky wagged his head. “I heard he’s into a friend of his for six figures.”

  “What friend? Somebody I should be worried about?”

  “Nah. Pete Berger’s his name. Stock broker, got into some trouble, so now he’s trying to make it as small time hood out of Atlantic City. Can’t find his ass with both hands.”

  But he had one hand in Frankie’s pocket. Mick said, “You hear anything more about Little Frankie and this Berger guy, you’ll give me a call maybe?”

  “Sure, Mick. Whatever you say.”

  Worrying about Frankie could wait. Liz was another story.

  Next day, after spending a couple of hours at his makeshift office to put out a few fires, Mick started making phone calls. One thing led to another, and later in the day he watched Sanchez come out of a suburban gym with a water bottle in his left hand and combing his hair with the fingers of his right. Sanchez had a satisfied smile on his face like he was happy with his workout or had just spent an hour watching girls on the ellipticals. Probably both.

  Mick put on a baseball cap and walked toward him across the parking lot, shoulders hunched, cap low. Going by, he deliberately bumped Sanchez with his shoulder, standard prison yard provocation. Sanchez cursed and spun around on his toes, ready to tussle right there—or so he shouted. Mick mumbled an apology and kept going. Sanchez did not follow. So he was a big man with a short fuse but maybe not much backbone.

  For the rest of the day and part of the next, Mick followed him on a series of pickups around town—nobody looking happy to see Sanchez coming. To Mick, Sanchez seemed to take pleasure in scaring people when he didn’t need to. All he was doing was trading one gym bag of money for another—standard laundering tactic so some of it could get deposited into a bank somewhere, nothing fancy. So why harass the business partners? It seemed like sure way to find himself knocked off the management ladder some day.

  Also, Sanchez had the observation skills of a gnat. In five minutes, Johnny Pizza would have noticed he had a tail, and Gelecki might have pulled a piece and put shots through the windshield of any car behind him, just because. By comparison, Sanchez was definitely easy pickings.

  On Tuesday night, Mick took along some backup—Bruno Falzone, who wore his usual pinstriped suit and a tie, but no doubt he had his brass knuckles in one pocket and a snub-nosed .38 tucked into his belt. They sat a block from Liz Trillo’s place and discovered a complication Little Frankie hadn’t noticed--a half-assed homeboy who was keeping an eye on Liz, too. The homeboy sat in a piece of shit Kia and played games on his phone. After Sanchez went into the house, carrying a plastic sack from Wawa, Homeboy got out of the Kia and took a walk. After twenty minutes, Sanchez came out, no sack. Sanchez made a call, and he waited until Homeboy came back to his car before waving and taking off.

  Unless she had changed a lot in the past couple of years, Mick knew twenty minutes was not enough to satisfy Liz.

  Mick caught up with Sanchez’s Jag on the bridge to Camden. A heavy fog had rolled in over New Jersey—a Chamber of Commerce blessing, maybe, considering how down and out the city looked--and Sanchez kept playing with his headlights. At first Mick assumed he was signaling somebody. But after a while they realized Sanchez was flashing his fog lights, high beams and low beams to figure out how to best see through the soup.

  In the passenger seat, Bruno said, “Sanchez ain’t long for this world. Leastwise, not in Camden.”

  The fog lifted a little. Along a stretch of ruined factories, they watched the Jag pull up to a warehouse with a high fence and expensive razor wire so new that Mick hit the brakes.

  Bruno said, “Nothing good could be behind a fence like that.”

  From a block away, they watched an electrified gate open, and a pair of thugs came out—one with a long automatic weapon casually held down alongside his leg. Sanchez got out of his car and tried to start a conversation. Without any small talk, the muscle removed a couple of duffels from the Jag’s trunk. Then one of them gave Sanchez a shove in the chest to send him back behind the wheel.
r />   Mick drove past the warehouse and kept going.

  A couple days later, he took a chance and phoned Liz. She didn’t recognize his number, and she picked up right away.

  “Liz? It’s Mick Abruzzo.”

  He heard her breathe—a long exhale.

  And then she hung up.

  Okay, so maybe she was committed to Sanchez and didn’t want any contact with old lovers. He understood that. He didn’t have the urge to see any women from his past either. But while he drained pasta for dinner that night and Nora was reading aloud from the newspaper, something hit him.

  Nora kept up on national politics the way gamblers followed league-leading football teams. She had her sweetheart players and a few despised ones. Any elected official who said demeaning things about women got her temper going. He liked the snap in her voice and the big words she used when a different kind of woman would have gotten crude. Her eyes flashed when she read some old coot’s latest violation.

  “Can you believe this man?” she demanded, rattling the newspaper. “How could a civilized electorate put such a Neanderthal in office? His father was a friend of my grandfather. I’m going to write him a letter of protest. He can’t get away with spouting such repulsive ideas.”

  Listening to Nora get worked up and imagining the tactful letter she’d compose to an asshole, he suddenly realized that Liz, of all the women he knew, would have the balls to say something before she hung up on him.

  He stood frozen at the sink with steam rising from the pot in his hands, suddenly sure that Liz was in trouble. The steam clouded the window over the sink, but his realization was crystal clear. She was in big, scary, bad trouble.

  It took a minute before he noticed Nora had been looking up at him from the newspaper, politics forgotten.

  She said, “Are you okay?”

  “Sure.”

  “You look as if you were just hit by lightning. Have you had a political epiphany?”

  “Me?” he said with a smile. “Nah. Just thinking over a problem.”

  “With Gas ‘n Grub?”

  Nora had been skeptical about the gas stations when he got started, but lately she had begun to see the same potential he did. Still, they didn’t discuss his business much. It was a mistake to lie to her, but she was smart and intuitive. If she knew too many details, she’d just worry. For the moment it was easier to let her think he was concerned about Gas ‘n Grub, though, so he said, “It’s no big deal.”

  She was sitting at the table with slippered feet tucked up under her, dark hair looking soft, pulled back in a clip that had come from Paris, pretty blue pajamas with a peep of matching lace bra showing. Without makeup, her face looked delicate. It was her night off, and she was relaxed--happy to let him do the cooking, happy to keep him company while he did it.

  She had fresh flowers on the table, in some kind of old glass vase of her grandmother’s. Even when she was broke, she always found a few dollars to spend on flowers. Those damn flowers were Nora all over. She had civility—a word he had to look up after she used it once talking about her grandmother. She was ladylike. Sexier than she knew, but always ladylike. Most of all, though, she had a tender heart.

  He must have said as much with his face because her crooked smile deepened. “Hurry up with dinner, will you? Or I may have to gnaw on your arm.”

  “Ready in a minute.” He turned back to the stove before she could see more. Nothing much got past Nora. She pretended not to be bothered by whatever he had going on, but she would call him on it sooner or later. He knew he had to clean things up fast.

  Next day, he couldn’t get rid of the nagging idea that Liz was in a jam. After dinner the night before, he had checked and her Facebook account was gone. She used to post selfies from bars and parties. The one friend of hers he could remember didn’t have the same phone number anymore. He called Liz’s old job and learned she’d quit a year ago. But her name was still on file on the tax assessment website, so she must still be paying the taxes on her condo.

  He spent a couple of hours at the garage, checking inventory with an employee who couldn’t organize his own two shoes without help, but then he drove into the city.

  He waited until Homeboy took a break. Then he walked up to Liz’s front door, plain as day.

  She still lived in the same Philly shotgun—not one of the historic townhouses or gleaming apartment buildings, but a place in an upscale block of condos not far from the river. A well-dressed neighbor walked a bouncing Labrador puppy on the shady sidewalk, but the grimier streets of South Philly weren’t far away. Her old Porsche was parked at the curb with a set of Mardi Gras beads hanging from the mirror. Judging by the dirt on the windshield and the dry leaves stuck around the tires, it hadn’t been driven in weeks.

  Mick rang the bell and waited. And waited some more. He showed his face to the camera and waited maybe three minutes. He stuck it out because she had to be in there.

  At last, she hit the intercom and said, “Go away, Mick.”

  “Hey, Liz.” He kept his voice easy. “Long time no see.”

  “Go away,” she said again.

  “Let me in. We’ll talk.”

  “Since when do you talk?” Her voice was acid.

  Maybe he deserved that once, but he tried again, “Whatever’s going on, I’m not going to make it worse.”

  She hesitated another minute or so.

  “Liz?”

  Finally, she hit the door lock. When it buzzed, he let himself in and went up a set of five carpeted stairs to her living room. Same white leather rental furniture on a black rug, glass-topped tables—modern stuff that suited her no-fuss, no-muss lifestyle. Not a homebody, Liz used to like being at the gym, or shopping for clothes or dressing up O’Toole’s where she had been a regular at the bar. Now her place was plenty lived-in—dishes in the sink, shoes all over the floor, unopened mail on the coffee table. The white leather looked a little grubby. Had it always been that way?

  She held her ground in the middle of the living room.

  Liz was a tall woman with a strong body. Long, straight blonde hair and big hoop earrings, wide-set hazel eyes and a long throat. She had a smirky shape to her mouth—a mouth that often got her into trouble.

  The only difference since he’d last seen her?

  She was pregnant.

  “Hey.” He gave her a kiss on the cheek. “You look great.”

  She didn’t—not really. Her face was thin and shadowed. The bulge of her belly looked low and uncomfortable on her otherwise skinny frame. She was defiant, though, and met his gaze straight on.

  He said. “Congratulations. Boy or girl?”

  Maybe his reaction threw her. Swiftly, she mustered her old nerve. “Mick,” she said, “you can’t stay.”

  “It’s okay,” he soothed. “The guy watching your house took a lunch break.”

  Her face stayed stiff, but fear bloomed in her eyes. “How do you know about him?”

  He shrugged. “I’ve been around. It’s all right. I’ll be out of here before he comes back.”

  Originally, he’d met Liz at the auto show—her working for a dealership selling Porsches, him only a couple of years out of the joint and strolling around with some other young guys, looking at the cars and the girls. They went for drinks, and after that it got hot fast. He’d been in and out of her bed, even lived in her home for a few months. She was a hard-ass, though. He hadn’t been one to cave in those days, and she never did, so they did a lot of yelling. Where was he when he wasn’t with her—that really bugged her. And all the damn shopping. Her wanting him to tag along while she tried on stuff was not the turn-on she thought it was. She was a straight shooter, though.

  He couldn’t remember which one of them cheated first, but it hadn’t made any difference. When Liz told him it was time to leave, they went to bed once more before he hit the road. It had gotten a little rough on both sides, maybe because neither one of them wanted to look weak.

  Today, he said, “Is the guy outsid
e protecting you? Or making sure you stay in here?”

  “Why should I tell you?”

  “You don’t trust me?” He tried to make a joke out of it. “Because of that time with the black two-door? I brought it back, remember? It was a test drive.”

  She started to tremble. “A three-day test drive. I was really pissed at you. They almost fired me for it.”

  “The makeup sex was good, though.”

  “Maybe for you.”

  “Yeah, you deserved better.”

  That surprised her, too, and suddenly she couldn’t make eye contact anymore. Her body language began to weaken, and in a couple more seconds, the tears started to spill.

  He took her gently by the elbow and guided her into one of the leather chairs in the living room. She put her face into her hands, shaking like a leaf. He brought her a glass of water from the kitchen and handed over his handkerchief. He sat on the footstool while she blushed and tried to get herself under control.

  She wiped her eyes. “I don’t know what’s happened to me.”

  “You didn’t pay attention to the birds and bees lesson in health class, huh?”

  “Shut up.” She tried to smile, but couldn’t quite make it happen.

  He said, “You never struck me as the motherly type, Liz.”

  “No,” she admitted. “I let him talk me into it.”

  “Him? Sanchez?”

  “Damian? Oh, hell, no. Why would you think--?” She sat up straighter, tears evaporating. “You really have been watching me! What for, you son of a bitch?”

  “You’ve still got an ego. I’ve been watching Sanchez.”

  She blinked and frowned. “Why?”

  “It’s better you don’t ask, Liz.”

  “You’re in over your head,” she snapped, turning her face away. “Trust me on that.”

  He shrugged again. “Hey, today I’m just checking on a friend. You. Tell me what’s going on. The guy outside sits and watches, and Sanchez comes and goes. What’s the story?”