After the two Marine therapists arrived for the morning massage, Bobby Vacca asked Charles for the afternoon off. The millionaire told him to come back in time for the 5 o’clock rehearsal. Bobby informed Charles that he would be return in three hours. His business across the river wouldn't take that long.
The drive down the FDR through the Brooklyn Tunnel down the BQE into Bensonhurst took less than twenty minutes. He had a lot of business on hand, but none more important than a visit to his mother’s house. She hadn’t seen her son in months and cried about thirty seconds before berating him for missing Thanksgiving. "Everything I hear about you, I hear from strangers."
"Who's been talking about me?" Bobby piled provolone on a loaf of Italian bread.
"Your ‘friends’ at the pizza stand said you were on the run?"
Bobby Vacca had been in trouble most his life and he told his mother a bit of truth.
"Ma, would I come, if I was on the run?”
“It’d be stupid.” His mother understood the game.
“So I’m not on the run.”
“Then where you been?”
“I have a job as a chauffeur for a rich kid."
"A job?" His mother expressed her doubts by placing her hands on her ample hips.
Her son gave his mother a paycheck written to Robert Vacca. "It ain’t much, but you can cash it.”
“It’s a step in the right direction.” She hugged him with delight and called friends and family to brag about her son's job. After a half-hour of maternal attention he stood and said, "Ma, I have to go.”
“You barely got here.”
“Ma, I have to meet people.” Not many either. “Louie Zip tell you about me?"
“You should stay away from that bum." She had pegged Louie Zipponi as a troublemaker and his friend’s mother had conversely accused Bobby of leading her son astray. This maternal shift of blame worked well for the friends. “Mom, I’m straight now.”
"You make me proud." His mother blessed him with a rosary. "You be careful over in Manhattan. Those people believe in different things than us. And I expect you to call me. It’s not long-distance, plus church wouldn’t hurt you___"
“I go, if I can.” He hadn’t been to Mass in years.
The motherly advice followed him to the car. "And I want you home for Christmas."
"I haven't missed one yet, have I?" He blew the horn and drove to Avenue U.
The gang in front of Mario's Pizzeria asked his whereabouts for the past four months.
“I been busy.”
Explaining about the punks at CBGBs, the queers on the Strip or the twins in the penthouse might incur their instinctive xenophobia about people outside the neighborhood and he ended the re-union by asking, “Who’s been speaking to my mother?"
"Not me.” This answer in unison attested to their lies. "I hear anyone talking about me and they will be celebrating a black and blue Christmas. Understand?”
“Sure, Bobby.” They nodded nervously and Bobby approached to the biggest guy on the sidewalk. “What’s with the face?”
“No one sees you for a couple of months and now you’re orderin’ us.” Joey Catano’s inheriting this crew of half-assed wise guys meant nothing, because these malooks owed no one any loyalty. They were nobodies and deserved a lesson. Bobby fingered the taller boy’s new leather jacket. “You have the two hundred dollars you owe me?”
“And if I don’t?”
A vicious slap echoed down the street. "Give me your jacket."
"It's friggin’ freezin’ here." His chastened debtor handed over the jacket.
"This covers the vig. You owe me the two hundred. You seen Louie?"
“Not for weeks.”
He tapped his cheek. "Keep saying nothing about nothing and you’ll run this corner.”
Bobby drove off laughing. Six months ago he held no aspirations greater than staying out of jail. Now he was planning a job as big as the Lufthansa heist. This job with Charles hadn't been so bad after all.
He stopped on Avenue V and glanced at the two-story brick house. It was identical to several thousand others in the neighborhood. Each had a shrine on the front lawn and a garden in the back. They all seemed impoverished after Charles Ames III’s penthouse.
Carrying the leather jacket under his arm, Bobby walked to the side of the house and kicked the basement door. Four generations of the Zipponi family resided on separate floors and Louie Zip had taken the bottom to farther his distance from God. An eye appeared at the spy hole and the latches were thrown. The thick steel door swung open and Louie peered suspiciously over Bobby’s shoulder. “Long time no see.”
"You too. Happy birthday." Bobby gave his friend the jacket.
Louie took a whiff of the leather. “Smells new.”
“Been worn once by Joey Catano.”
“Joey don’t deserve this jacket.”
“Which is why he donated to the cause of you and me.”
Louie slipped into the leather and flexed his biceps. The stitching gave a little.
Another couple of weeks exercise and he’d burst its seams. “Thanks, c’mon in.”
Louie threw the locks and latches to secure the door. The basement room was crowded with unpacked TVs, cigarette cartons, and weights. Louie was in training for the fight of his life and he had corner help. A young fat man in the wife-beater t-shirt sat on the sofa bed. He cracked open a shotgun. It was loaded. The gesture was disrespectful at best and Louie held back his friend. “Bobby, meet Richie?”
“Manucci?”
Two years ago Richie Manucci had been the most prolific car thief in Brooklyn. A jealous girlfriend had ratted him out. The DA had him plea-bargain a three-year bid. He must have been paroled after half and Bobby offered, "Welcome back."
"Yeah," Richie snapped shut the double-barreled shotgun. “Louie’s been good enough to
let me stay here.”
“I get shot at, I can hide behind you,” Louie ducked to demonstrate how Richie’s bulk could block any bullet hitting him.
“Guess Louie likes having the Hulk around.”
“More the ‘Bulk’.” Louie joked and Bobby laughed, putting his arm around his friend.
The parolee seethed with the humorless anger of prison. “The important parts are muscle.”
“Sure, they are.” Felons were always angry their first months out of prison. “Richie, you mind us stepping outside? Louie and I have to talk.”
Richie stood alertly and Louie waved him down. “Nothin’s gonna happen with Bobby watchin’ my back, right?”
“Same as in kindergarten,” Bobby replied and they exited from the basement together. Louie clung to the wall and Bobby said, “Three years ago your Uncle Carmine was sick before the San Gennaro Feast and you had to run his stupid booth.”
“Throw a quarter on the dot. Win a prize.”
“And you borrowed your mother’s toy poodle for the prize? And a hick from Iowa landed a quarter on the slot and you gave him the poodle? Who stole the poodle and had half the cops in Little Italy chasing him?”
“You.”
A hick from Kansas unbelievably dropped a quarter on that spot to win the dog. Bobby had whacked the out-of-towner in the back of the knees and run into a restaurant to hide the dog in a freezer. The poodle had nearly died of a cold, which was better than living in a corn state. “So why you acting like I’m here to whack you?”
“They always send a friend.”
“You been watching THE GODFATHER too many times.”
“You gotta love that movie.” Louie demonstrated his trust by stepping away from the house and hunched his shoulders like a rifle was aimed at his back. No bullets struck him and Louie Zip blinked in the autumn sunlight. “So I’m not a dead man.”
“No, but you’ve been skating on broken ice with Benny Bottles.”
“I was unlucky.”
“You bet on banana games and lost.” Nobody lost fixed wagers.
“No one figured the BC guards to go on a shooting spree.”
“Then you can thank me for getting you a little reprieve.”
“You ate my marker?” Louie asked on several puffs of visible breath.
“Yeah, and I’ll explain why.”
“I’m listenin’,” Louie’s eyes scanned the street and backyards for Benny Bottles.
“Gucci Cucci hire me as a chauffeur in Manhattan."
"A job?" Neither of them had worked an honest day in their lives.
“For a rich kid.”
“So you been rippin’ him off blind?" Louie viewed a job as an opportunity for crime, though the grass was only greener, because the shit in the other yard was a foot higher
"The bastard doesn’t do drugs. Doesn’t date girls. I ain’t made a penny off him other than my salary."
"So Gucci stuck it to you. I hate him. The other day he____"
“Gucci Cucci can kiss my ass in Macy’s window. You and me have done a little of this and a little of that and anytime we earned good, the fat boys took the bigger share.”
"Sayin’ it's part of the learnin’ process." Bobby’s absence had starved Louie of any money and he asked hungrily, "So where this headin'?"
"To the biggest Christmas either of us had."
"How big?"
I'm talking six-figures."
"Six?" His take solved most of his problems.
"If it goes bad, we’ll take heat. Cops, newspapers, big time.”
"Oh, shit." Getting press was seldom good.
"You scared?"
"I ain't scared of nothin’, except gettin’ old."
"And kidnappings?”
“Kidnappings go wrong at the pay-off."
"Except if the kidnappers never bring the money to the kidnappers."
“I’m not followin’ you.”
“Just this.” Bobby lowered his voice. "Say we kidnap a rich person.”
“It makes no sense to grab a poor one.”
“Right. Anyway you hold them. The payees trust me and no one else. They call no cops and give me the money to deliver. I stash it. The kidnappers let the victim go. We have the money. I'm a hero.”
“Sounds sweet, what the catch?”
“I had to cut Gucci Cucci in for half.”
“Greedy fuck.” Louie smacked his fist into his palm with the compact power of a cruiserweight fighter.
“Yeah, only his half won’t be so big after I do my math.” Bobby studied his friends' eyes, visually confirmed this crime involved more serious trouble than a truck hijacking in Hunt’s Point. “It might mean killing him and leaving Brooklyn."
“Screw Gucci Cucci." Louie stretched the cramps in his muscles.
"So we're a team. Batman and Robin."
"I ain't workin’ with no queers." Louie suspected that the Caped Crusader were fagala.
"Okay, make it Starsky and Hutch. Who can you trust?"
"Richie will keep his mouth shut, I don't tell him nothin’.”
"He's good with this.”
“I’m his landlord and he ain’t payin’ rent. You got a date yet?”
“Around Christmas."
"That’s Jingle fuckin’ Bells to me." Louie shook the coins in his pocket, until Gucci Cucci's Cadillac parked in front of the house. He regarded his friend with a fatal acceptance. A nod from Bobby calmed Louie. “He’s here for me.”
"You need back-up?”
"Get in the bunker, I can handle Gucci." He walked across the withered grass to the Cadillac. No one was in the back. Bobby sat in the front. Sal Cucci increased the volume of Barry Manilow’s I WRITE THE SONGS. “I say come back to Brooklyn?”
"I had to pick my crew,” Bobby coolly replied and Sal glared at the house. “Like your welcher friend?"
"
Him and Richie Manucci, but no one says you have to like with my choices."
Normally Sal had slapped lesser punks for mouthing off, but he also used people he trusted no matter how uncontrollable they might be in other situations. “I’ll let you cut in Louie, if I put in my man too.”
"The three of us are enough," Bobby complained and Sal Cucci waved his hand. "It ain't a question of you needin’ or wantin’. I don’t trust little shits widout havin’ a headcrusher watchin’ my interests. Which is why Benny Bottles’ gonna be the wheelman."
"Benny Bottles?" The myopic maniac was encyclopedia of ghastly endings. "Kidnappings require restraint. Like the body is supposed to be breathing in the end."
"Benny can be subtle." As an icepick and Sal Cucci imagined about sticking one in Bobby Vacca’s ear. “Benny’s out, he goes for a walk with your friend in the Meadowlands. It's my way or Benny's way."
If he pulled out, Benny was finishing Louie and putting him on the crew erased 'nobody gets hurt' from the plan. There was only one answer. "I don't like it.”
“Don’t matter.”
“Okay, Benny's in."
"Hey, we all hafta do what we gotta do. You lock in your ‘fall guy’?”
“He’s doing his part.”
“Meaning?”
“He’s a lowlife.” The guitarist was too smart for a fall guy and too dangerous for active participation. He’d have to be cut in, but not till much later and his alteration to the original plan was none of Gucci Cucci’s business.
“So when then?”
"Mr. Cucci, the less people knowing the when and where, the more probable the how much gets paid by who." Bobby lifted the door handle. "And I could use some more operating capital."
Sal Cucci had heard of balls before and this wannabe was begging his to be cut off with a butcher’s knife. “I gave you two Gs.”
“Had to rent a garage to hold the girl afterwards.” The cheapskate was on the verge of getting $250,000 and complained about having to pony up the expenses. “I need more for telephone calls, gas, and chloroform. All kinds of shit. You can take it from my cut.”
"I better not hear about Louie Zip bettin’ my money.” The gangster peeled off two thousand dollars in hundreds. “Now get your ass back to Manhattan."
"I'm on my way, Mr. Cucci." Bobby stuck the money in his jacket and left the Cadillac. As Sal Cucci drove away, Louie Zip joined his friend. "Let’s hear the bad news?"
"He’s picked Benny Bottles for the wheelman.”
“The fuck’s blind as a bat.”
“Exactly.”
“You thinkin’ same I’m thinkin’?”
“Yeah.” Bobby and his friend loved the scene from THE GODFATHER in which Paulie is strangled off the Belt Parkway. “He sits in front, right?"
"I have no problem with the blind bastard drivin’." Louie fingered the new jacket. It was soft as a baby’s bottom and he fantasized about spending his share of the ransom; a trip to Vegas, shooting craps, busting the bank, a couple of hookers at a chicken ranch. A slap to his arm snapped him out of this reverie and Bobby peeled $500 off the wad of bills. "Don’t bet it on the Giants. Hometown bets are for suckers.”
"I'm pickin’ the Jets from now on." Louie yelled from his cellar. “They have to win a game sooner than later.”
“Same as you and me.” Bobby shouted from the Lincoln and stepped on the gas.
Driving to Manhattan he calculated the pluses and minuses of this kidnapping.
In a perfect world Caroline Ames doesn’t get a scratch, if her brother pays off quickly, leaving Louie and him to spilt $250,000 and Benny Bottles commuting his friend’s death sentence. Sal Cucci promotes him a valued asset for bigger jobs in the future. It all looked good, but getting onto the Brooklyn Bridge at Cadman Plaza, Bobby was haunted by the possibility of failures, each one weighing him to one fate.
Charles rejects the ransom and Benny Bottles kills Caroline and whacks Louie. The police arrest him for murder and he spends the rest of his life in jail. His prison sentence is shortened by Gucci Cucci’s contract.
Messy.
Very messy.
The actual kidnapping would entail an unpredictable combination of the good and the bad. The resulting chaos would create enough distraction to pull this crime, so he could possibly call next year a success. Unfortunately not everyone involved would be that lucky, but then he wasn’t in this for everyone.
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