Book of Virtue, page 2
Take a flying guess.
Was near the end of The Book of Virtue and read,
“What warehouse of the soul awaits me now?”
I muttered,
“As long as it’s hot as hell.”
Thought,
Scotty, where were you when I needed you?
Conscious of …
“Where was I when he went in the East River?”
And the days moved on until Brady began his dismantling of me.
With an awareness of unpaid tabs circulating in the club.
Brady had literally grabbed my arm, hissed,
“Get the tabs settled.”
I tried, adding as much steel as I dared.
“Scotty would have dealt discreetly with this.”
He gave me a sneer of such malevolence, like he was crowing, said,
“Pity he didn’t learn to swim.”
Dancing away, he threw,
“D’Agostino owes me, that’s what you need to get your focus with.”
Meaning, the old Mafiosi whose running bill was getting seriously out of hand. I asked,
“You really want to mess with him?”
He gave his crooked grin, all malice and spite, said,
“I won’t be.”
Pause.
“You will.”
Then added,
“Before Tuesday.”
My father’s cop buddies were like a vile extension of him. Save for one, Casey. Yeah, second generation of cop and Mick. Almost a caricature.
Boozy
Hard ass
Harp-ed
If Gene Hackman were Irish, he’d be Casey. But he treated me good.
Very.
After my father passed, he’d said,
“You ever need anything …”
So.
So met with him, in an Irish bar off Madison Square Garden. He was dressed in a thick off-white Aran Island sweater, heavy pea jacket, tweed cap, as if he were auditioning for a part in Mick Does New York. A shock of wiry white hair and hands that could cover Manhattan and you had the essence of the Irish NYPD legacy. It wasn’t that these guys took life as it came. Hell, no. They grabbed it by the throttle, kicked its ass, and, if that failed, they beat the living shit out it.
Casey had the end booth, shielded from prying eyes, though you’d need some cojones to stare at Casey. He welcomed,
“I got you a Jay, lad. Sit yer own self down.”
The Jay was at least a double, no ice, heaven forbid. Those Micks weren’t hot on blasphemy. He didn’t reach over and ruffle my hair but the vibe was there. Even if I reached eighty, I’d always be “the kid” to these dinosaurs.
I knew the drill: get some shots down, then approach the subject in a creep-up-on-it fashion. If you were in a hurry, park it elsewhere. Casey ordered a side of fries and a bunch of pickled eggs. He ordered, I swear, by pounding the table, just once. And, you guessed it, offered/commanded,
“Dig in.”
Those old timers, the book in their lives was,
“Book ’em, Danno.”
Once we had the ritual drinks in, eggs demolished, he leaned back, asked,
“How you holding up, kiddo?”
I lied, said okay, then asked,
“You know anything about Brady, my boss at Khe Shan?”
He sighed. The guy could have sighed for the entire U. S. Shook his huge head, said,
“Piece of shite, connected to the Russian mob. Animals.”
Paused.
Gave me the cool slow appraisal, fine-honed in nigh twenty years of staring down the enemy. Enemy covered just about the whole planet save cops and family.
He asked,
“This about the schmuck they pulled out of the East River?”
You might ridicule these throw-back nigh vigilante cops but Holy shit, they were on the ball. You didn’t trawl the five boroughs for two decades and be stupid.
I advised, if quietly,
“He was my buddy.”
Casey snorted and, when you have a Jameson shooter half way to your lips, it’s doubly effective, but he never spilled a drop. Drained it, crashed it down on the table with,
“Never had you down as a bollix, much less a stupid one.”
I did the smart thing: shut the hell up. Dense silence over us and … few things more lethal than a brooding silent Mick. He finally said,
“Lemme educate you, son. Scotty was well known to the Detroit PD, but a slick fook, so they never nailed him. He headed west, hooked up with Brady, another piece of work who’d adopted an Irish name to make him thug-friendly. They made a lot of cold cash and ploughed it into the club to make it seem legit. The past year, Scotty began to make inroads into his own crew to oust Brady.”
Paused.
“You get the picture?”
Yeah.
Then he added,
“Brady will let you run the club for a year, tops, then whack you and bring in some other naïve schmuck.”
I excused me own self, headed for the restroom, ordered up a fresh batch of the Jay, and punched the wall, hurt the living crap out of me hand. On my return, I changed tack, asked,
“You ever have my old man down for a reader?”
We clinked shots, downed them, and Casey answered,
“No way. You kidding?”
I told him about The Book of Virtue and he let a low whistle, said,
“Me, I never was much for no book learning.”
Sounding like he was in a bad Western.
We mulled it over, then he went,
“My mother, Lord rest her and all the bad Caseys, she used to sing a Yeats poem, yeah, sing it. All I got is,
“The world is more full of weeping than we can understand.”
God is good; he didn’t sing it. I hadn’t enough Jay to ever endure that. Then he leaned over, put his large hand on my shoulder, said,
“Frank had his faults but, deep down, he was a decent guy.”
I felt the bile rise, spat,
“Oh, like, he meant well?”
He sat back, stunned by my venom, tried,
“Jaysus, Tommy, c’mon, he loved you.”
I said,
“That weeping world … Frank caused his fair share.”
And that was the end of the chat.
He warned me to watch my back, and to call if I needed anything.
I got out of there, had a moment of vague regret that I’d busted his balls, then thought, “He was my Dad’s buddy, so the hell with him.”
My father’s book
Was diverted by a note on the binding. Read,
“Sewn binding, the strongest yet the most expensive. The pages are sewn into the book manually with a sewing machine.”
Followed by a note, in my father’s hand,
“Check out Moleskin diaries, used by Hemingway and Chatwin.”
Now I was seriously perplexed.
Too, the oddest thing, just holding the book, it gave me the strangest sensation of, hell, I’m slow to admit this,
Peace?
WTF?
I went online, put in,
www.realbooks.com
Trawled through a ton of sites until I found one dealing exclusively with the physical qualities of a book, not the contents.
Read long-winded boring passages about the creation of a book, the printing, art of binding, and muttered,
“Bibliophiles.”
Come the final Wednesday of the virtue saga.
The last page of my father’s book had passages of two poems, Francis Thompson’s The Hound of Heaven and Cafavvy’s Alexandria. The gist being, he’d been pursued all his life in dread and terror and, secondly, no matter what he did, he couldn’t escape his life, as if you fooked up in one place, so you would always do.
If cops were secretly reading this stuff in their leisure time, no wonder they ate their guns.
Cici had the day off and came to my apartment, the top floor of a brownstone that I lavished my savings on. She had a mouth on her, kidding I ain’t. She asked,
“How much are you ripping off from the club?”
A lot.
I said,
“As if I would.”
She let that slide.
Gave me the hot look.
It burned.
Followed with a blast of white radiance.
After, I had one of my rarest cigs and, God forgive me, one supplied by Cici.
Virginia Slims.
Not too macho. She pulled on one of my faded denim shirts. I had it longer than I had sense. Looked good, looked in heat. Trailing smoke, she went to mix up a batch of Vodka Spritzers.
Most appetites nigh sated, she picked up my dad’s book, asked,
“You read?”
What?
Like I was a dumb bastard?
Hello.
She flicked through it, said,
“Now there’s a word.”
I followed her to the main room, an XL Yankees T-shirt on, asked,
“What’s that?”
She read,
Schadenfreude.
I asked,
“The hell does that mean?”
She pulled a battered dictionary from my battered book collection, found the entry, intoned,
“A pleasure taken from another’s misfortune.”
Looked at me,
Added,
“Brady.”
Got my vote.
Handed me a glass of the freshly blended batch, it tasted,
Cold
Good and
Like
Hope.
As artificial as that.
And as long lasting.
I said,
“Or my old man.”
She sat lotus style on the sofa, looked at me for a long beat.
Then,
“We need to deal with Brady.”
Sure.
How?
I asked,
“How?”
She took a deep gulp of her drink, her eyes watching me over the rim of the glass. And,
“We need to cash his check.”
No dictionary needed for that.
“I wanted to develop a curiosity that was oceanic and insatiable as well as a desire to learn every word in the English language that didn’t sound pretentious or ditzy.”
Pat Conroy.
My Losing Season.
I was beginning to understand that my old man had used his book in a vain attempt at catching an education. Was that admirable? Weighed it against the terror he’d inflicted on me all his miserable life.
Time was running out on my supposed plea to the Mafioso to ask him to settle his tab. No doubt, if I did, he’d see it as the ultimate diss and, man, this was a guy who beat a busboy to pulp for standing too close while the psycho was getting up from a meal—a meal, of course, that he didn’t pay for.
Too, the schmuck, horror, never, like, not ever, left a tip.
Enough reason right there to whack his tight ass. I owned an illegal Browning Nine. You run my kind of club, you need to pack more than attitude.
Cici had it down.
Brady rented a fook pad on West 45th Street, between Madison and Fifth Avenues. Friday afternoons, he liked Cici to come by and … entertain him. She had a key and gave me a copy.
Oh, and a shit-load of coke. Said,
“Scatter it around the bedroom, make it look like a dope gig gone south.”
Cici would have a very high profile lunch with some friends, alibi ensuring. Me, I had none and that itself is its own defense.
The gun was untraceable. I’d literally found it a year ago, shoved down behind a seat in the VIP section.
Friday, coming up to noon, I felt calm. Removing Brady would be a downright freaking joy and, in some odd way, like a lash back at me old man. I dressed casual, not sure of the dress code for murder. Old jeans, a battered windbreaker, Converse sneakers that had always been a size too small. Walk in the blood and the cops, gee, they’d have a footprint.
It went like clockwork.
Brady had laughed when I let myself in. He was nose deep in candy, lolling on a sofa, rasped,
“Jesus, never thought you had the cojones to attempt a burglary.”
Why wasn’t he alarmed?
The coke had fried his brain … too out there to be alarmed.
Put one in his gut first, let him whine a bit, chalk up serious payback … but all fine things must end so added three to his dumb head.
All she wrote.
I then scattered the coke like fragile snow around his pad.
Found the money in a suitcase.
Yeah, believe it, a suitcase.
Enough cash to launch two new clubs.
Got the hell out of there.
Discreetly.
Next day, the cops arrived.
I kid thee not.
Two detectives, one surly and the other surlier. Bad cop by two.
The latter asked,
Pushing a book at me,
“This yours?”
“My dad’s book!”
Before I could protest, the first added,
“If it has your fingerprints?”
They had a warrant and found the suitcase in jig time.
Cici.
The bitch.
I did of course try to implicate her but her alibi was solid. More than.
My lawyer was very young, up to speed with the current kid jargon. Said, “You don’t have to worry.”
Looked at the cop’s book, of evidence, added
“Not.”
I sat back in the hard prison metal chair, looked at him, said slowly,
“What …
the …
fook …
ever.”
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 2011 by Ken Bruen
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Ken Bruen, Book of Virtue
