FIGHT (10 page)

Gabe remembered his trial.  Police had been paid to tamper with evidence, jurors had been threatened, and the judge had been on the receiving end of both the carrot and the stick at various times.  Gabe sipped his coffee, and he was relieved August slept.  He didn’t want to look into August’s deep, wondering eyes.  They bothered him.  August had eyes that asked questions just by looking at you.  Eyes that asked
Can I trust you? 
Eyes that wondered
What are you really like
?
 
Gabe didn’t like the power behind August’s eyes.  There was too much God in them. 

Gabe got up to make more coffee, and he remembered life before his trial.  He remembered the look of fear on Mulberry’s face the first time they’d met, the gun he’d held to Mulberry’s throat, and his associates clipping the landline at Mulberry’s dry cleaning.  He recalled bragging to his uncles about how easily he’d convinced Mulberry to pay for mob protection.  Pouring more coffee, he also remembered hitting up Bronston’s Chinese dig for cash, by literally hitting Bronston.  With an aluminum bat.  Bronston had made an ungodly wail that could still be heard through the duct tape wrapped around his face, as Gabe had struck his right knee hard enough to shatter its cap.  Bronston immediately paid for protection after that, and Gabe had once more bragged about his increased clientele. 

August shifted his weight on the couch as he slept, and Gabe, once more sipping coffee in a nearby recliner, then thought about Victor’s effort at getting him off the hook.  One juror, a working class soccer mom in her mid-thirties, had received an envelope under her door with a picture of her husband.  Her husband’s equally aged and flabby body was naked, handcuffed to a bed like a kinky fetishist, and his face was splotched with dark, dried blood.  She voted to acquit.  Victor had sent other jurors similar photos of their loved ones.  They voted to acquit, too.  Gabe supposed that he should be grateful to Victor for his acquittal.  But Victor had been an asshole of a father.  To toughen him.  To harden him.  To make a man out of him, and, eventually, to make a made man out of him.  Near the bottom of his cup, Gabe looked into the last of his coffee and remembered being close to August’s age.  He’d just been grabbed from his mom the week before.  Victor, who’d already insisted on being called “Father,” had promised to teach him to play baseball.  Victor put a bat in Gabe’s small hands and wrapped his larger, older hands around Gabe’s to steady the swing.  Gabe cried.  He didn’t want to play baseball with this strange man, and he didn’t want to call him father.  He wanted to go home.  He wanted his mom.  “Bend your knees,” Gabe remembered Victor telling him.  Gabe sipped more coffee and recalled getting into proper batting stance for the first time, after Victor had slapped him hard enough to give his young neck a sample of whiplash.  “Bend your knees,” Victor repeated, and then added, “stop crying, and keep your eye on the ball.”  The ball was a crudely drawn lopsided circle on a middle-aged black man’s forehead, a tire shop owner who owed Victor protection premiums that he couldn’t pay, a man who was now tied to a chair and begging Gabe and Victor not to take aim at the sharpie drawn target on him.   Gabe had screamed when the swinging began.  He wanted to let go of the bat.  He didn’t want to feel the contact it made with the man’s head, the subsequent thudding and cracking sensations as cranial bone gave way to blow after blow, but Victor’s hands held his young hands in place on the bat’s grip.  “There.  Did you like that?  Did you like baseball?” Victor laughed.  The tire shop owner’s open head oozed wet, meaty wads of gray matter as the guy lay on the floor unmoving, still tied to the overturned chair.  It was an image that Gabe would never forget. 

Finished with his coffee and still watching August sleep, Gabe no longer wanted to remember being seven, but he didn’t want to remember his adult life either (which had tragically begun too soon when, in his teens, he’d killed the gas station clerk to be initiated).  These many years later, Victor was still an asshole who cared nothing for him, and he knew that Victor had only worked for his acquittal because the Family needed a son, a future Kingpin to convince the Family’s current employees that their jobs were secure for the long haul and keep them loyal in the present.  Victor knew that Gabe hated him: he’d always known that Gabe hated him.  When Gabe was grown, Victor (fearing Gabe would do something stupid, though
what
he didn’t know) had tried to compensate, but the Mercedes GL, the four Rolexes, the three apartments, the two townhouses, and one restored stately four-story Victorian dig in Back Bay couldn’t propel the stars in Gabe’s universe into orbiting Victor’s paternal mass.  Not after baseball.   No, Gabe decided, setting his empty coffee mug down.  No, he wasn’t grateful that Victor had pulled strings to get him off the hook for racketeering charges.

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Bruce was in his office, still fuming over the Adelaide case, even though the verdict was two weeks old at this point (ancient history in the minds of the minute-by-minute coverage of the 24-hour news cycle).  He’d spent the past five years toiling away to lock Gabe up, only to fall short for reasons he couldn’t explain.  Now, he had to face the disturbing possibility that Gabe, a free man, was seeking some sort of revenge.  And taking it out on a kid that Bruce cared about no less
.  I’ll get you your boy?

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Gabe wasn’t taking anything out on August, but he was taking August out.  Particularly, to the zoo.  He’d noticed that August had an interest in animals, since he’d seen how attached the kid was to his zebra, and Luke had told him that he’d wanted a stuffed lion.  Gabe thought August might enjoy seeing a real zebra and a real lion up close, so he drove them to the New England Zoo in upstate Massachusetts.

Gabe walked towards the zoo’s entrance with the confidence of a real estate agent who was about to show a discriminating client a home with both style and location.  He was going to wow August. 
If he thinks stuffed animals are cool, wait until he sees the real deal
.  He was so pleased with his idea to show the real world to August that he forgot to pace his stride so that the boy could keep up.  Eventually, he heard a voice that seemed to be directed at him.

“Hey, man!  Hey!”

Turning around, Gabe surprised a prematurely balding young guy who instantly recognized the mobster.  The guy stopped shouting and looked apologetic for interrupting him, saying nothing.

“Well, what did you want?” Gabe asked.

“I was just going to say that you were walking so quickly that your son was falling behind,” the guy said in a pleading tone.

Gabe, looking away from the man, saw August hustling to catching up, some thirty feet behind him.  They’d both heard the guy mistake them for father and son, and a strange kind of eye contact passed between them at that moment.  Neither corrected the guy.  Gabe just stood looking at August, indicating that he was willing to wait for August to catch up and then walk slower. 

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“Found in the Saharan region of Africa and parts of Asia, lions are now listed as an endangered species.  With weight averaging between 350 to 500 pounds,” Gabe read, “the lion is a fierce carnivore, eating up to 15 pounds of meat a day.” 

Gabe didn’t know what to say once they arrived at the lion exhibit. At first, he and August stood there silently, watching three lions sleep in the sunny afternoon.  Gabe wasn’t sure what kind of reaction he’d expected from August, but the kid’s shyness made Gabe feel like he’d taken them on a field trip rather than on an adventure.  He felt the need to say something, to discuss the lions that they were looking at.  So, he read the elevated plaque hanging on the lions’ cage: 

“The lion is categorized in the genus
Panthera
and is considered one of the world’s four big cats.”

“You must have a prodigy on your hands, if your son understands a single word of that!” laughed a mom of two, holding hands with each of her kids.  A tourist, she didn’t recognize Gabe from the local news.

“My kids just call them big kitty cats!” she said with a wide grin.  “See the big kitty cats, guys!”  Her kids, one picking his nose and the other holding her mom’s hand with both of her own to swing it back and forth, looked on in childish astonishment.  The lions were bigger kitty cats then they’d ever seen.

“Do you like the kitty cats?” the inquisitive girl asked August.

“Yes.”

“You should get your dad to buy you one!” the girl suggested.

“Katie!  You can’t buy lions,” her mom laughed. 

The three left to look at other animals, leaving Gabe to continue reading:

“Nearly 10,000 years ago, in a period known as Pleistocene, lions inhabited… You know, kid, I’d buy you a lion if I could,” he said, still staring at the sign with arms folded business style across his chest.

August kept looking at the lions.  Neither faced each other.

“Really?” August asked.

“Yeah, sure, kid. If I could, I’d buy you a lion.  Shame zoos don’t sell them.”

“Yeah.  They’re cool.  I have a lion.”

“I know.  I saw him.”

“But he’s not a real lion.”

“That’s okay, kid.  He’s real to you, right?  That’s all that matters.  When I was your age, I had a swing set, and to me it was a rocket.  No one else knew about it, but that was cool.  It was my rocket, and it was real to me. It’s okay if your lion’s real to you.  I know where you’re coming from.”

“His name is China.”

“Huh?”

“My lion’s name is China.  Cause that’s what the white tag on him says.”

“Gotcha.  Since you have a zebra, we should go look at them too.”

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Larry Buntmore had spent the better part of the past two days researching Boston Monetary Management and was thoroughly confused.  The name suggested a connection to monetary policy, but neither the Federal Reserve nor the FDIC counted it as a partner or subsidiary.  He’d also learned that Boston Monetary Management wasn’t listed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, so the firm didn’t deal in stock.  The Better Business Bureau had nothing on file for it, and the Massachusetts Attorney General’s office knew nothing about it.  A quick search online found no website with anything close to the name. 
Boston Monetary Management my ass,
he thought.  He called Dr. Cathy Sandefur.    

“This is Cathy.”

“Hey, Cathy, Lar.  Got some bad news for you.  That huge check smells like a fraud.  There’s no Boston Monetary Management that I can find.  I think you’re being taken.”

“Jesus, I hate some people!  Why do people do this?  What psycho gets his jollies out of this?  And to think I wanted to call my patient and tell him the operation’s a go-ahead.”

“If I were you, Cathy, I’d turn it over to the police.  Maybe they can hunt these bastards down and give ‘em hell for this.  God knows they deserve it.”

“That they do,” she sighed.  “Well, thanks for your time, Lar.”

She hung up in a mood sullen enough to make a funeral procession seem happier by comparison.  Had the decision been hers, she would’ve performed Bruce’s colectomy on the house.  She knew how badly he needed to get rid of his colon, and she would’ve gladly removed it at no cost.  But she couldn’t do that sort of thing in her basement.  No, by law, she had to do it here.  At the hospital.  At St. Knox’s.  And while she was willing to write off the money owed to her, the hospital wasn’t as generous.  The hospital’s policy was clear: No payment, No surgery.  Bruce would need every penny of the $44,000 to pay for the procedure, because not even a Catholic nonprofit could operate at such a steep loss and stay in business.  The hospital’s financial aid department had offered to help the Hudsons learn about refinancing their home and had also offered to teach them about reverse mortgages to pay for the surgery.  The hospital had even tried to set up payment plans, but the hospital had encountered the same problem that other lenders had faced.  At Bruce’s age, timing was of the essence, and it just wasn’t good business to fork out a five digit loan to a sick man who might suffer surgical complications.  Fearing he’d die before he covered his medical expenses, no one would offer Bruce monthly payments that he could afford.

Dr. Sandefur placed two flat palms on her desk and mindlessly beat them to the rhythm of the office radio’s broadcast of “You’re So Vain.”  Humming along without realizing it, she strategized.  First, she’d call the police and report the fake check.  Second, she’d write another letter asking for Bruce’s surgery to be paid for.  Even though she now considered such letters to be exercises in futility, she hoped her good intentions might bring her some good karma.  Third, she’d call Bruce and ask how he was doing.  This, also, wouldn’t improve Bruce’s health, but it might brighten his spirits to know someone was thinking of him. 
No, I won’t mention the check.  He’s got enough on his mind as it is.  I’ll let Boston’s Finest take care of the check.

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Sitting in the plush end of his late model Bentley limousine and cruising down Interstate 495, Victor Adelaide stared at his failing consigliere, Philip Astronza, who was seated next to him.  Victor didn’t know about the $120 thousand Gabe had paid to Sara, but he’d discovered the $44 thousand Gabe had spent on the D.A.’s surgery in the check from Boston Monetary Management, and he was royally steamed.  As the Adelaides' consigliere, Astronza was charged with advising the Family in all its affairs… and taking care of its finances.  A third generation American with Italian born grandparents on both sides, Astronza had inherited his position of consligiere (or “counselor”) to the Adelaides from his father, just as Victor had inherited his position of capofamiglia (or “Family boss”) from his father.  The relationship between the Adelaides and the Astronzas stretched back some forty years, and, like all things Mafia related, the history shared between them counted as a major asset. Calling on their shared history had pulled Astronza out of many jams, when his work didn’t measure up to Victor’s expectations.  Astronza barely survived the first failure of his service to the Family many years ago, when he couldn’t find Victor a fertility specialist who could wave a magic wand and fix sperm counts.  Astronza had fallen on his sword for not being able to “correct” Victor’s sperm count problem, even apologizing to Victor for his inability to breed.  Apologizing to your boss because he couldn’t fuck right, of course, made no damn sense to him, but being the whipping boy was just part of the territory of being consigliere when things went wrong. And, in all likelihood, the stupid apology probably saved his life, as Victor was seeing red about not having a son on the way.