"It’s your story, Benny. You tell it." Sal Cucci scanned the tables in the Italian restaurant on 114th Street for unfamiliar faces and nodded to the squat forty-year old whose face was bracketed by coke-bottle glasses. Benny Bottles bowed in deference to his Gucci-dressed capo. "Two years ago I'm in Hell's Kitchen, puttin' muscle on a Jew pimp shortin’ us protection on a couple of skank parlors. The Yid forks over a G, sayin’ there’s ‘nother envelope at a massage parlor. I left thinkin’ that was too easy, and on 43rd Street four Westie bastards ask fer a light." Bilingual profanities circled the table and Benny Bottles emptied his glass of Chianti. "I tell the potato-eaters to get out of my way. Their steppin’ away shoulda warned they wuz trouble, cuz them stunata Mick bastards ain’t scared of shit. Anyway I hear a hammer bein’ cocked and sez, "Benny, you’re dead."
Benny’s eyes floated behind his smudged glasses like hard-boiled eggs in a jar. “Four shots. Pop, pop, pop, pop. I fall to the ground and one aims the .22 at my head. I shut my eyes, hear another pop, and they walk away laughin'. Only I wuzn't dead, cuz not one of the five shots penetrated my thick skull."
"No fuckin’ way.” The man to the right had heard the story a dozen times and loved Benny’s lifting his sweep-over to reveal several scars puckering his scalp.
“Would I be here, if I wuz lyin’?” The massive shylock knocked on his skull to produce a hollow thud. “Naw, the sciafozas musta been usin' old bullets, cuz they skipped around my head. At the hospital the doctors wanna study me. I ain’t no freak show and left with my head wrapped in a turban. You shoulda seen them Mick bastards' faces in the Shamrock Bar. I stick my biscuit in the shooter’s face and say, "Shoulda used a .45. Catch."
The four men pounded the table laughing and one asked, "And the others?"
"They're Irish, right?"
"Yeah, so?"
"So I kneecapped the IRA fuckin' leprechauns and the Yid, well, he’s sleepin’ good these days.” Benny jiggled a dance in his chair and the other three men saluted his deadly wit with raised glasses.
Their boss caught an unperceivable movement of the restaurant owner’s head and it wasn’t to the time of George Benson’s MASQUERADE on the stereo. Sal Cucci stood silently and the others partially rose to their feet. He motioned them to sit. "Order another bottle of wine. I'll be right back"
Sal Cucci joined the owner at the front door. The dapper restaurateur had dealt with gangsters throughout his adult life and understood the less said the better. "A young man is waiting to speak with you. Should I tell him to leave?"
"Naw, it's okay" Sal thanked the restaurant owner, who led a party of Queens politicians to a corner table. The thickset gangster signaled for Benny. The legbreaker shambled to the front and Sal drew back the curtain.
“Bet the little shit gonna beg for his lamest friend’s life.” Benny pointed to the young man leaning against the Lincoln.
“Yeah.” Sal kept it simple with Benny Bottles. “Watch my back.”
The gangster stepped onto the sidewalk. A trio of young Negroes rounded the corner, their eyes gleaming with hatred. Harlem had enough problems without pissing off the Mob and they disappeared into the night. Sal cautiously approached Bobby Vacca and asked, "How you find me?"
"You eat here every Tuesday nights.”
"Don’t pay so much attention to other people’s doin'. Where's the fagala?"
"He's home." 250 mm of Seconal had buried Charles Ames III under silk covers.
“Sleeping.”
"You’re supposed to stay with him." Sal yanked up his pants, wishing Gucci had designed them with a belt.
"I watch ‘Chuckie’ wake at noon, read the paper, have his therapy, and everything else, but shit. I drive him around the city. Here, there, and everywhere. And he stays in the car. He never gets out. Well, once at this sex club with his sister for a half-hour and another time to have dinner with his father at a hotel.” Bobby surveyed the overhang of the gangster's belly. Sal Cucci was soft. Vulnerable. “In three months nothing's happened."
“You gonna stay at that job, till I say ‘quit’ and why?” Sal Cucci poked the younger man’s chest. “You clipped a bunch of banks widout my say-so.”
“I didn’t see your name on them.” Each of the fourteen robberies had been trouble-free; no partners, no snitches, and no one dipping into his score.
“Funny gets even funnier when I see you pull a job. Funny why? Because I wouldn’t have seen you, if I didn’t stop for a slice of pizza.”
“Secrets don’t stay secrets too long in Brooklyn.”
“So I sez what am I gonna do with you? Benny wanted to put an X on you, I said no. I admired you goin’ into a bank with a piece of tape to your nose and a note sayin’
"Gimme money or I kill you." Plus you had the balls to hit three banks on the 7th Avenue within an hour.”
"Once the cops responded to the first robbery call, the next two were mine for the taking."
“And that’s why I let you live. Cuz you were smart. Now you’re stupid to leave Chuckie Ames III alone."
The kid was too smart for his tastes and Sal swung an open palm at Bobby’s head to teach him some respect, except the young man blocked the disciplinary blow. The young man backed away with raised hands.
“I left him because I had something to tell you.” Driving Charles Ames III had cured any fears outside of boredom. "Chuckie met this hustler.”
“Who?” No one had stopped Sal’s punch in years.
"Two weeks ago he starts watching this arichone in Times Square.” Bobby had been amused by the hustler’s screwing with the police and taking off the public with a combination of cunning, luck, and timing. “Tonight after the punk rolls a drunk, Charles invites him into the car."
"You expect less from an iarrusu?"
"His walking funny don’t make him a fag." Bobby defended the millionaire. "Anyway this hustler closes the window between the front and back seats. It doesn’t matter, because I had bored several holes through the glass. I heard every word of their conversation."
"And?" As much as he hated Bobby Vacca for stopping his slap, Sal listened with peaked
interest, because the wannabe had ambition and ambition led to money.
"They're forming a rock band."
"You mean like the BeeGees?" Sal liked light rock. So did his goumada, when they were making love. His wife on the other hand only appreciated Dean Martin and thought Frank Sinatra was a gavone. He didn’t know nothing.
“No, a little more rock.”
“Peter Frampton?” He had fenced a hot truckload of his LPs to a midtown chain.
“Music you and I have never heard about before. Punk.”
“Punk?” The word had a special meaning in prison. Someone who took it from another man. On the street the word meant someone who was nothing. Sal would have killed anyone calling him a punk. "You seen this fag before?"
"He’s a grifter." Bobby snatched at a snowflake and it melted in his hand. “No threat, but he gave me an idea how to scam Chuckie.
"Yeah, how?" The Ames fortune was real money. Seven-figure plus. Sal wanted it all, but would settle for a piece.
“A kidnapping.”
“Kidnappin’ is a mug’s game.”
"It’s a mug's game been in my family for generations." His grandfather had eloped with his grandmother. She was only sixteen. After three weeks her family had consented to their marriage and they had lived happily ever after. “We nab the victim. I act the hero. Our crew the villain. Comes time for the pay-off, they give me the money and I switch it for a bag filled with newspapers. I whack the fall guy and the cops connect his disappearance to the kidnapping. End of story.”
“Who’s the fall guy?”
“The hustler.”
"And why would they give you the money?"
"Cause the rich kid trusts me."
“Why would he trust you?”
“Because he doesn’t have a choice. It’s me or no one. He doesn’t know anyone else.”
"If you grab him, how can he give you the cash?" ‘Gucci Cucci’ picked at the obvious hole in the plan.
"We're grabbing his sister." The simplicity of this switch was its beauty.
"The nympho sister?”
"She's no nympho only a little loose," Bobby’s own embellishments on Caroline Ames' trysts at the Flamingo or Sahara clubs were to blame for ‘Gucci’ Cucci's claim.
"Goin' home with two girls one night and two guys the next.” Sal Cucci believed the sanctity of marriage. His monthly tithes to the Church helped smooth over his more grievous acts with God. “That's more than a little loose."
"Her sexual habits are unimportant. Blood is blood even for the rich."
"How much you talkin’?"
"I've seen his bank statements. Read what the money other kidnappings net in Italy and the States; Frank Sinatra for his son and that Getty kid with the chopped-off ear. I figure Chuckie is good for $500,000 no sweat."
"Anyone else approaches me with this, I give it a miss.” Kidnapping was a major gamble for a twenty-three year-old, although a life prison sentence was a much better fate than Sal had in store for Bobby Vacca. “Money aside, why you doin’ this?”
“To get Benny Bottles off Louie Zip.”
“Your best buddy is into us ten large. Doesn’t pay the vig. Doesn’t call. Stays in that bunker under his mother’s house.” Sal Cucci hated men hiding behind a woman’s skirt. “He’s a dead man.”
Spring of 1966 Louie and Bobby had skipped school and ridden the A train to Rockaway Beach. The weather was warm and they swam in their underwear. The waves were huge and a shore breaker smashed Bobby to the sand. The undertow sucked him over his head. Louie rescued him with an inner tube stolen from a fat kid. Johnny owed him his life and more. It was all for them and screw anyone else, however there was only one problem.
Louie Zip was a gambling fiend and his was unlucky with sports, horses, and cards. Sure things went bust if he bet them. People actually asked his bet on the Super Bowl to bet the other way. Everyone in Bensonhurst loved him for that gift. Walking away from Louie Zip was the smart move, but they were brothers from another mother and he asked Sal, “What if I eat his marker?”
“You have $10,000?”
“No, I’ll cut you in for 30% of the kidnapping.”
“Make it 50%.”
“And Louie’s off the hook?”
“If you come up with the money from the kidnapping.” Louie Zip wasn’t leaving that basement to give them a shot at him. “No money and he’s lookin’ at serious trouble.”
“I understand.” Bobby spotted Benny Bottles’ head in the window. Favors for friends were fatal sometimes. “I could use money for a safe house and supplies.”
“How much?”
“Two thou for now.”
“Keep it away from your degenerate friend.” Sal peeled off $2000 from a fat roll.
"Thanks, Mr. Cucci, I won't let you down." Bobby had initially considered keeping ‘Gucci’ Cucci in the high weeds about this opportunity, however while the police might accuse the hustler of the crime, the veteran mobster would definitely finger him as suspect number one and extract his cut in flesh and bones.
"Thank me, when the money is in my pocket." Sal punched the young man's arm and Bobby recoiled a couple of feet. He still had his touch. "Now get to work."
"I’m on my way." Bobby acknowledged the threat by submissively hunching his shoulders.
It was a good act. His arm was aching, but he had been hit harder in his life. In his mind Sal was getting soft. Bobby sat behind the wheel of the Lincoln and nodded his head to the gangster.
Sal didn't acknowledge Bobby and remained in the street, as the black car drove south into the city. Benny Bottles exited from the restaurant. His right hand was in his pocket. He kept a Beretta there. His 45 was in the car. He stood next to Sal and pick at a tooth. It was rotten. His wife kept asking him to go to the dentist. He wasn't getting it fixed until he capped Louie Zip.
"So did the punk beg for his asshole buddy’s life?”
“He’s suckin’ up Louie’s marker.” Bobby's proposal presented no danger to him. $500,000 was a good payday. They’d kill the wannabes afterwards. It was foolproof.
“If I give Louie Zip a free-be, every stiff in Brooklyn welshes on their juice and I can’t whack a couple of thousand losers, can I?”
Sal Cucci ignored his henchman’s griping.
"You ever kidnap anyone before?"
"Naw, they always botch the pay-off.” His boss wasn’t in the habit of referring to a subject without a cash payback and Benny Bottles squinted behind the thick glasses.
“Why you ask?"
"I'll explain later.” A secret was best protected by not telling it. “Jest call off your dogs.”
“That fuck.” He had been looking forward to killing Louie Zip as a Christmas gift.
Sal Cucci chopped his hand in the air for a time-out. “No one said nothin’ about you not gettin’ square with him and his asshole buddy.”
“That’s different then.”
“You bet it is.”
The promise of a postponed two-fer-one killing calmed Benny. A bullet to the head might be an unfair reward for Louie Zip and Bobby Vacca, unless you considered each pie had a limited number of slices and Sal Cucci’s appetite was just another person’s tough luck. It was simple math, if you didn’t believe in fractions.
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