Gangster (46 page)

Summer, 1980

I WAS STANDING in the middle of the conference room, listening to my coworkers laugh about their weekend, when she walked in. She wore a gray suit with the skirt cut several inches above the knee, a white ruffled blouse and brown shoes with three-inch heels. Her hair was light brown and curled and she had a pretty teenage face on a shapely woman's body. She had a brown leather carrying case in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other, some of it spilling out from the bottom of a white paper bag. She walked with a slight swagger as she headed directly toward me.

    I'm Janet Wallace, she said, putting out a hand for me to shake.

    I held her hand and pointed to one of the leather chairs surrounding the table. Grab a seat. We were just about to get started. I'll introduce you as we go along. We're not the best-looking group in town, but we pay the rent, have some laughs and, every once in a while, come up with a campaign that people like and remember.

    Jeff Magnuson, my thirty-one-year-old creative director, sat to her right and reached for her coffee. How about we share that? he asked.

    How about we don't, Janet said, pulling the cup back. It's my first cup of the day.

    I sat across from the two and introduced the rest of my team. Jack Sampson is my art director, I said, nodding toward a bald, overweight man in his mid-forties eating a bagel with scallion cream cheese. He's starting a new diet ... tomorrow.

    I'd offer you half my bagel, Jack said. But it doesn't sound like you're the type who shares.

    I'm not. Janet smiled.

    And this muscle-bound gym rat pacing behind me is Tim Carlin, I continued. He writes most of our copy, usually while he's bench pressing over at the West Side Gym.

    Tim lifted a large plastic bottle of papaya juice in her direction and Janet nodded in return. And you've talked with me on the phone, I went on. I'm Gabe and they're all nice enough to let me run the place.

    Two more weeks and there'll be a takeover, Jeff said to her. I'll probably end up running the agency. Which still leaves you time to rethink that coffee.

    I'll take my chances, Janet said, holding the cup close to her lips.

    I must have missed a memo, Tim chimed in. What is she doing here?

    You never read the memos, Jack said. If you did, you'd know this young lady is the new hatchet that Gabe's been nice enough to bring in to threaten our job security.

    They're always a little surly before lunch, I explained, looking over at Janet. We're a little behind on the Bradshaw account. On top of that we've got a GM deadline that's less than two months away and we could use a boost on the Compaq print ads.

    And you're the one who's going to give us all that? Jeff asked.

    As much of it as you can handle, Janet told him.

    I sat back and watched as the banter between my group and Janet moved along at an accelerated pace. It was their way of welcoming her to the team. I had offered her a full-time job and been turned down. She liked the life of a freelancer, content on going from place to place, deciding when and where she wanted to work. She signed on for a three-month stay, enough to help get us past our overloaded schedule. She was smart, had a first-class portfolio and seemed suited to the tight quarters of a busy agency.

    Why am I always the last to know about hires? Henry Jacobs, the company business manager stood over me, hands on his hips, demanding an answer.

    Because you always tell me we can't afford another hire, 1 said.

    That's because we can't. Henry shook his head in frustration. But you go ahead and hire them anyway. Why even bother having a business manager if you're going to do that?

    You're the only one who knows what the soup of the day is at Bun 'n' Burger, I said. And that's a skill I can't run this company without.

     *     *     *

ANGELO HAD KEPT his word. He had given me back my life. I moved out of my room above the bar and was quickly taught the lessons that came with living in the real world--college loans, part-time jobs, small apartments with large rents, cheap cars and even cheaper meals. I had not chosen the best time to embark on a life of my own. The country was in the midst of a recession. Interest rates would soon hit an eye-blinding 21.5 percent, with inflation topping out at 12.4 percent, and President Jimmy Carter was seemingly unable to bring a halt to either one. It was a struggle, but one I enjoyed. While I still, on occasion, longed for the excitement and the sense of power my previous existence held out, I was now able to spend my days and nights free of that world's dark shadows. I had been taught since an early age to hate the civilian world. I was told it was a treacherous environment whose rules were not meant to be followed, and that the only route to success in such a place was by using methods and means that would make the most hardened of criminals take a step back. You have to watch your every move, Angelo had told me over and over. The guy you think is a friend is the one that's making the jump to screw you out of a promotion. Then you go and bust your back on a job and some plodding ass-kiss makes nice with the boss and walks away with the credit.

    Sounds a lot like what you do, I said. I don't see much of a difference.

    The difference is that with us, you're always on the lookout for that. That's what we're supposed to do. But out there, with the diplomas on the wall and the nice offices, the game's written to be played different. Only it's not. Believe me, they're no better than any hood. I don't care who comes up and tries to tell you otherwise.

    As happy as I was being on my own, I did miss Angelo. I longed for his company and his words of advice, but he had shut all doors leading to that path. During my time away, I tried to see him on several different occasions, but was always turned back by one of his crew. Treated just like any other civilian.

    But I also knew I wasn't totally free. Not as long as Angelo was still alive. I had lived in his company long enough to know there was still one more move left. I didn't know when it would come or from what direction, but I knew to be ready for its arrival. I could not allow myself to be lulled by his decline into old age or be blinded by his silence. I could never lose sight of one of the most important lessons I had been taught in all our years together: Watch out for the gangster who wants you to think he's weak. That's when he's at his most dangerous.

     *     *     *

I HAD WORKED my way up the agency ranks and now, four years after college, I was in control of a growing ten-member firm. The start-up money was not much of an issue. While Angelo's financial door was sealed shut, Pudge had left me a sizable active trust fund that I was allowed to borrow against, providing I could show cause. I found it satisfying that it was Pudge, from the silence of his grave, who provided me with the cash that helped me keep clear of Angelo's reach. The rest of the money was put together through a loan, secured from a bank that had a long-standing history of working with startup companies. I relished the idea of building a team, pursuing an idea, conceptualizing it and bringing it to life, be it a thirty-second spot or a full-color spread in a high-end magazine. I hired men and women who not only were good at the work they did but took pleasure from it. I wanted my workers to be sincere in their efforts and I sought to keep office politics and company rumors to a minimum. I was proud of my group and we moved quickly from small accounts with local merchants to six-figure deals with large corporations. It was a good working environment and a safe refuge from Angelo's haunting glare.

    Yet I always felt his presence. It had been years since I had seen him and I had grown from boy to man in that time, but still I felt his power, his eyes on my every move. I told no one at work of our relationship. If anything, his name would awaken a vague memory at best, someone who they had read about in a newspaper or seen on some old newsreel footage. He was not a threat to them, but he was to me. I could never shake the feeling that my actions were being monitored, my activities recorded, my every move documented and brought back to his attention. I knew it was probably more paranoia than reality, but I had been raised to be careful. I always took note of who was near me in a restaurant or crowded theater. I checked the sidewalk traffic around me, kept my phone number unlisted and never said anything in public that I wouldn't want heard in private. These were my only concessions to the world I had left behind.

    I was twenty-six years old and had brought a secure structure to my life. I read constantly, filling the gaps in my education with books I should have gone through in my younger years. I went to the theater once a month and saw a new movie every week, usually with one of the guys from work. I began to haunt art galleries and openings, buying paintings and hanging them on the walls of my apartment. I had season tickets to the Mets and, on rare occasions, would even venture out to the opera and the ballet. It was a full life and, more important, an honest one.

    I did keep up with the business of organized crime, a fascination, I feared, that would never fade. I read as much about the life as I could, always able to separate fact from the gritty sales pitch of a tabloid headline. The rackets had changed in the decades since Angelo and Pudge first shoved a gun in a victim's face. If possible, there was now even more money to be made, more action to cover. The smartest of the young gangsters were busy working on plans to lay down their guns and pick up their computers. They were leaving the murder game to the new ethnic gangs that had invaded their universe, from the Russian hoods to the urban street thugs, neither of whom understood the complexities of modern business. These young crew chiefs knew that a brokerage house could be run in the same manner as a loan-sharking operation. They attempted a quiet takeover, had others front the business for them, while they pulled in all the profits on commissions and investments. It was a much cleaner way to do business without the specter of having to do thirty years behind bars.

    The new formula also embraced Angelo's theory that a stretch in prison was not crucial to a gangster's education. There were people who believed that doing time made you a better criminal, he once told me. I never bought into that thinking. Me and Pudge were high-profile hoods but we made sure we never rubbed the cops' faces in it, didn't burn them with what we did. We worked under the radar as best we could. In my business, better to be a submarine than a destroyer. Let the other guy make the noise, get the attention, talk to the papers and the TV cameras. That way only leads to indictments. I only cared about profits and growing the business.

    There were many days when I wondered how well I would have done, how successful I would have been in taking Angelo's solid criminal foundation and expanding it onto modern turf. But then, I would just as quickly shift my focus back to the ad campaign that needed my attention, knowing that all I had to fear from where I sat was my business losing its edge and failing or a large corporation moving in and attempting a takeover. I found it comforting to know that neither one of those moves would end up costing me my life.

     *     *     *

JANET WALLACE WAS thirty years old and had been raised in upper-class comfort in a Michigan suburb. She had graduated from Brown University, excelled in every class she took and got her first advertising job in Pittsburgh, with a firm that still fanned work out her way. She had a shy manner that could be perceived as cold by those who didn't know her well and she carried herself with a distant air. She was quick to dismiss any notions of an office fling, making it clear to all parties that she was there only to do a job. I didn't know much about her personal life other than what was in her resume and cover letter and I didn't care to ask. She mixed in well with my team and was a tenacious worker, clever with words and creative in her concepts. She held her own in the meetings, spoke her mind and demonstrated a sharp sense of humor.

    I did get a sense from what she said and, more important, didn't say, that there was a part of her she preferred to keep hidden and out of public view. It helped give her a sense of mystery, one that balanced out the shyness. I hadn't said more than a handful of words to her in the time she worked at my agency, but I felt as if I knew her as well as I did some of the workers who had been with me from the company's first day. The more I saw of her, the more I liked, moving me closer to a place I'd never thought I'd find.

     *     *     *

I KNOCKED ON her cubicle wall, half-startling her. She looked at me and checked her watch. The meeting's not for another ten minutes, she said. I was hoping to finish this design before it started. See what the guys thought of it.

    I like grilled fish, I said to her. I'm not that big on sushi. How about you?

    I hate anything that's not cooked, she said.

    Do you know which restaurant makes the best grilled fish in the city?

    No, she said.

    Good, I said. Because I do. We'll have lunch there. I'll meet you at one over by the elevator.

    I already packed my lunch, she said. I was planning to eat at my desk and work straight through.

    Give it to Jeff I said. He'll eat it, no matter what it is.

    Do I get a chance to say yes or no? she asked.

    Is there a chance you might say no?

    Yes, she said.

    Then no, I said and turned away.

     *     *     *

I SPENT THE next three weeks working alongside Janet, helping her and my team bring to life the three campaigns we needed to rush through. We began work while others still slept, sipping coffee and eating buttered rolls under the lights of her desk. We ate our lunch together, the offices cluttered with folders filled with designs and ad copy. We left the office after midnight and stopped for a drink at any open bar we could find, talking strategy and seeking the right words that would help us sell an old product to new customers. The job consumed us both.