Son of the Mob (3 page)

Ray Francione used to be in charge of loan-sharking on Long Island's North Shore. If he's upset about being reassigned as nursemaid to a hothead, it doesn't show.

He isn't one of the uncles. I guess he technically counts as a cousin, although we're not related. I kind of wish we were. Of all the guys who work for my dad, I like Ray the best. He's such an awesome person that every now and then I have to stop and remind myself that he's a criminal.

When I get arrested because my sixteenth-birthday present turns out to be hot, the uncles think it's the funniest thing that ever happened. Tommy's all for letting me spend the night in jail. Wiseguys can't seem to understand that there's a whole world out there that has nothing to do with The Life. But not Ray. When the uncles look at me like some exotic species of Gila monster because I'm passing up the chance to work with my father, Ray never judges me.

Who do you think bails me out and takes me home that awful night? And while Tommy and the uncles act like being hauled away in handcuffs is all in a day's work, Ray really understands what a terrible experience it is for me.

Even Dad doesn't think it's such a disaster. “Don't worry, Vince. We'll get you another car.”

I lay down the law. No more stolen cars. I'll buy my own car and pay for it with my own money. They don't yell at me, exactly. But they look as if I'm suggesting that we barbecue Mom on a rotating spit.

“But, Vince!” Tommy protests. “Do you have any idea the kind of lousy piece of crap you can afford?”

“Maybe. But it'll be mine. And nobody's going to take it away from me and use words like
grand theft auto.
”

Ray sticks up for me, even with Dad there. Not a lot of people have the guts to do that. And a week later, he finds a friend of a friend of a friend, who just so happens to have a nice little Mazda Protegé with only forty thousand miles on it.

I'm so proud of myself. “I can't believe I'm getting it for three thousand bucks!”

“You're not,” says Ray. “Listen, you didn't hear it from me, but your father slipped me a few grand to make sure you get something decent.”

I blow up. Poor Ray. Bad enough he has Tommy to deal with; now Anthony Luca's other son is going crazy on him.

But he's patient. “Take the money. He's your father. Let him help you out.”

“I don't want to touch anything from my father's business.”

He looks me squarely in the eye. “Your whole life is paid for by your father's business. The clothes on your back, the bed you sleep in at night, your mother's great cooking. Your father's business is the reason you can afford to stand here and be so high and mighty about your father's business. So, as we say in your father's business, forget about it.”

Obviously, I buy the car.

My father always has a special smile when he sees my Mazda, even though it looks pretty lame next to the parade of limos and Beamers and Mercedes that are always coming and going at our place. Ray says Dad still disapproves of the way I got it—you know, legitimately.

But maybe that's what he likes about it—that his younger son did something he disapproves of.

 

CHAPTER THREE

W
HEN ALEX STARTS
nagging for something, it's usually a good idea to just suck it up and do what he wants. You'll save yourself a lot of grief. Because eventually, you're going to end up doing it anyway, just to shut him up.

That's why we go out for football that September—not for the competition or the glory, not for the exercise, not for the love of the game, but because “Chicks can't resist shoulder pads.”

Of all the cockamamie schemes in pursuit of Alex's Holy Grail, this is by far the cockamamiest.

Football tryouts are like marines training. Why countless hours of jumping jacks are required to prepare for a game that takes place in five-second bursts of activity, I'll never know. But when the dust clears after three rounds of cuts, we're still there. I manage to win a spot as the fourth-string halfback. And skinny Alex turns out to be a pretty fair kicker. We're proud shoulder-pad-wearing members of the Jefferson Jaguars.

“I hear those football parties are
wild
!” cheers Alex.

Either there are no football parties, or bench-warmers aren't invited. Our social lives still consist of each other.

Practice lasts a hundred hours a day. We have double workouts until our first game—an hour in the morning, just to get the blood pumping, and a ninety-minute marathon after school.

“Hang in there,” Alex promises. “The rewards'll come. I know it. I can taste it.”

“All I taste is sweat,” I say sourly. “We're up at the crack of dawn; we don't get home till dinner, which is a two-hour stuffing festival at my house. Then I've got homework to worry about. Every girl in Nassau County could be after my aching bod, and I wouldn't have time to do anything about it.”

Alex shrugs. “The other guys manage it.”

“The other guys are signed up for Basket Weaving 101. We've got real courses, SATs to get ready for. That New Media class—I took it because I thought it was watching television. It's all about the Internet! We're going to have to design Web sites!”

“Yeah, I'm a little worried about that one too,” Alex agrees. “Have you seen what a bunch of dweebs are in there? Girls could get the wrong idea about us.”

“We'll wear our shoulder pads,” I say sarcastically. “That'll fool them.”

Our home opener is on Saturday. It's Alex's first chance to check out the cheerleaders, so he misses the whole warm-up and gets benched by Coach Bronski. With me being on the bench anyway, we sit together, watching other guys living the quintessential American high-school experience. Boy, going out for football has really changed our lives.

Our opponents are the Lions from Central High in Valley Stream. Neither team is very good, and it shows. The game is a huge yawn, destined to go into halftime at 0–0. I mean, even the cheerleaders are pretty listless. I see newspapers opened up in the stands. It's pathetic.

Coach Bronski is trying everything to get a little offense going. Eventually, he scrapes the bottom of the barrel, because I get a tap on one of the shoulder pads that make me so irresistible to women.

It's a run off the right tackle, and the second I touch the ball, I know the play is going nowhere. My blockers haven't cleared me an inch of space. All I can do is run into a bunch of fat behinds, theirs and ours. So there I am, surrounded by five defenders, and I brace myself for the big hit. It doesn't come. Maybe they don't realize I've got the ball. I push through and still nobody lays a hand on me. Finally, someone grabs the back of my jersey and gives a gentle pull. It's not much of a tackle, but I trip anyway, and down I go. I gain eight yards, which is the biggest offensive play by either team all day.

Coach leaves me in. I take a little pass. When I catch it, there's a linebacker right there to hammer me. The face looks kind of familiar, but I can't place it. And when I turn back again, he's gone! I start downfield. I don't know where the other team went, but they're sure not in front of me. Every inch of my forty-yard scamper to pay dirt, I'm expecting to get viciously hauled down from behind. It never happens.

Suddenly, our comatose fans are going nuts. The cheerleaders are craning their necks, trying to read the name on my shirt so they can come up with a cheer for me. Somebody obviously needs glasses, because the cheer comes out, “Here we go, Lucy! Here we go!”
Stomp! Stomp!

As I'm jogging back to the bench, I get a congratulatory slap on the butt. It's that linebacker from the other team, the one who didn't make the tackle.

He says, “Hey, Vince, remember me from Enza's wedding?”

That's
how I know the guy! Johnny Somebody. His dad is Rafael, a member of Uncle Uncle's crew, out by JFK Airport. Sure we were at his cousin's wedding. Being the top dog, my father gets invited to every baptism, sweet sixteen, and yes, bar mitzvah. These days the vending-machine business crosses all ethnic boundaries.

On the bench, Alex looks almost resentful. “You didn't tell me you were
good.
”

I defend myself. “It was a fluke. Honest.”

Pretty soon we get the ball back, and guess who gets sent in to rack up some more yardage? As I take my place in the backfield, the Lions' defense is looking at me with fear in their eyes. I'm a little confused, but it feels good. This is what it's like to be a star athlete. And I'm just getting started. Maybe I'm a natural.

Then I hear it, just a whisper from somewhere behind the line:
“That's him. Luca's kid.”

The wind comes out of my sails so fast that I'm dead in the water. Superstar. Natural. Yeah, right. These guys won't lay a hand on me because Johnny blabbed about who my dad is. They think if they tackle me, and somehow I get hurt, Dad'll send Uncle Pampers over to pay them a visit.

I get the ball on every snap. A lot of arms reach for me, but nobody makes much contact. It's embarrassing! Eventually, I start falling down when I think someone
should
have made a tackle. But I can't play offense and defense at the same time. Pretty soon I've got another touchdown.

Back on the bench, I'm fuming. Of all the ways my dad's business screws up my life, this is the most insidious. I mean, Dad's not here. I made it a point to tell no one at home about the game. But he's here as surely as if he was sitting in the front row, threatening everybody.

It's crazy! Dad wouldn't care if someone tackled me. If I got hurt, he wouldn't blame it on anybody. It's like his absence speaks even louder than his presence. It's not his fault, but in a way it is. If he was a lawyer, or a cop, or a teacher, like other fathers—I'll bet
their
kids get tackled.

I can't even play football because of who I am. I set aside the fact that I don't really want to play football anyway, and decide to be mad about it.

I turn to Coach Bronski when we take possession again. “I don't want to go in on the next series.”

He gapes at me, astonished. “You're eatin' them alive, Luca!”

“I can't explain right now, Coach,” I plead, “but you've got to bench me!”

“Fat chance!” he roars. “Get out there!”

What can I do? I quit the team.

Alex shoots me a look, as if I just folded a royal flush in the World Poker Championships.

“I'll tell you about it later,” I mutter, and head for the locker room.

“Hey, wait up! Hey, Vincent!”

I turn around. “It's Vince.”

I've seen this girl at school. Honey-blond, petite. Pretty cute.

“I'm Kendra. Kendra Bightly. I'm covering the game for the
Jefferson Journal.
”

You can guess that, in my house, reporters are almost as popular as cops. Secrecy is very important in the vending-machine business. On the other hand, I'm not sure that extends to our school newspaper because nobody actually reads it.

“You're
missing
the game,” I point out.

“I'm gambling that you quitting the team is the real story,” she says seriously. “Want to talk about it?”

“God, no.”

She doesn't go away. “You had a fight with Coach Bronski.”

“Not really.”

“Well, that's what I saw, so that's what I have to print. Unless,” she adds, “you want to tell your side of the story.”

I trudge into the locker room. She doesn't stop at the door. “Who wants to read about a fourth-string halfback?” I ask her.

Her face is so completely clueless that I realize she doesn't know what a fourth-string halfback is. She probably doesn't know a football from third base. Back in sophomore year, Alex tried to write for the
Journal.
His first assignment was to cover a dog show—the guy's so allergic he couldn't even breathe in the building. It must be some kind of hazing thing they do for the new reporters—sending them on a story they don't have a prayer of pulling off.

“You don't know anything about football,” I accuse her. “So you've decided to write about the guy who quit the team.”

Her expression remains tough, but a slight flush starts from under her collar and works its way up her neck to her cheeks. I'm not sure why, but something my mother told me pops into my head:
The problem with the young girls these
days
—
they don't blush anymore.
I make a mental note to tell her she's wrong.

Then I say, “I'm supposed to get changed now.”

Part of me just wants to watch her face turn from pink to crimson. But she's out of there before I get a chance to see it.

 

CHAPTER FOUR

M
Y TEACHERS DON'T
have very much in common with my father, but there is one thing they all share: everybody agrees that I don't work hard enough.
Vincent has the potential to be an excellent student if only he'd apply himself
: it's on every report card I've gotten since kindergarten. So when Dad gave me that whole lecture about getting motivated, he was just the latest singer of an old song I'd been hearing for most of my life. Teachers:
Get motivated about school
; Dad:
Get motivated about the future
; Mom:
Get motivated about family
; Alex:
Get motivated about girls.

What can I say? It's not me. While a lot of seniors spend their weekends filling out college applications, strategizing about Ivy League schools, and second-choice schools, and fallback schools, I've been letting all that slide. It's not that I've got better things to do—God knows I've hung up my shoulder pads. I just don't care that much.

Dad goes ballistic over this. “You could be the first Luca to go to university!”

Never
college
; college is where Mira went. Harvard, Yale—
that's
university. Privately, I think he shouldn't hold his breath. The only way I'm getting into Harvard is if Dad sends one of the uncles to have a little talk with the dean of admissions. I'm not a straight-A student—at least not since fourth grade, when the Calabrese hit was big news. Back then some of my teachers put two and two together and figured out that I was related to the prime suspect. There was this one art teacher—when my dad showed up to take me to a dentist's appointment, she
ate
a piece of clay. She had been demonstrating how to make handles for ceramic pottery and she got so rattled that she just popped the clay into her mouth like chocolate. She wouldn't spit it out in front of Dad either. She swallowed it. Missed two days of school due to a “stomach virus.”

But no one remembers the Calabrese murder anymore. And even if they do, they've certainly forgotten the guy the cops couldn't pin it on. Thank God. Life in the Luca house is tough enough without CNN camping on the front curb.

Actually, I wouldn't mind a little of that old notoriety for New Media class. Mr. Mullinicks is the toughest teacher in school. I'm not sure if he knows about my family, but I doubt that would change anything. He'd flunk me. He'd flunk Al Capone, and pack him off to summer school to make up the credits. And if Big Al put up a stink, Mr. Mullinicks would use his trademark line, “That's
your
problem.”

“What should our Web sites be about?” asks a girl in the front row.

“That's your problem,” Mr. Mullinicks informs her. “So long as it's not obscene and nobody is trying to overthrow the government. And it's your problem to register your site with all the different search engines so you'll attract as much traffic as possible. Your grade will be based on one thing and one thing only—how many hits you can generate by the end of the semester.”

Alex raises his hand. “What if you put together a great site, but not that many people find out about it?”

“That's your problem,” the teacher tells him. “If a tree falls in the forest and nobody's there to hear it, does it make a noise? This class isn't about having a magnificent tree; it's about making a big noise. The challenge of the Internet is to reach customers in an increasingly crowded marketplace.” He scowls at us. “And don't think you can have your grandmother logging on day and night. I expect to see hundreds of hits. How you accomplish that,” he finishes, “is your problem.”

“It must be nice to be Mr. Mullinicks,” I say to Alex after class. “Everything is someone else's problem. I'd love to farm out all my problems and lead a trouble-free life.”

Alex is distracted. “What are you wearing tonight?”

He's talking about Alfie Heller's party in the city. Alfie was at Jefferson last year. Now he's a freshman at NYU, and he's gotten the whole senior class invited to his fraternity's big bash—at least Alfie's friends, which means pretty much everybody.

There's a lot of buzz about it in the school halls. Going to a college party is every high-school kid's dream. A normal person would be psyched. A superconcentrated mass of hormones like Alex is vibrating like a guitar string.

“I'll wear
clothes
,” I say. “Whatever I grab out of my closet. Come on, man, this party's supposed to be fun. Don't turn it into a chess match.”

“There are going to be
college
girls there, Vince,” he insists. “We can't get cocky about this.”

“Oh, yeah, we don't want all the success we've had with high-school girls to go to our heads.”

He's testy. “I can't think with all your negativity bouncing around my skull. Now, what do college girls like?”

“I'm guessing they're not too fond of an idiot who plans his wardrobe like D-day. When I get there, I'd better not see you stressing out.”

“When you get there?” He's horrified. “You mean we're not going together?”

“I promised Tommy I'd drop by his apartment before the party.” Tommy has a place in Greenwich Village, not far from NYU, although Mom keeps his room as if he never moved away. Part of her will never accept that he has.

“A single boy should live with his family until he gets married,” she always says. It's not really that she misses Tommy, because he's home practically every day for business. She just has this fifties TV view of what a family should be. Mira married her high-school sweetheart, and Tommy and I are required to be Wally and the Beaver. This casts Anthony Luca as Ward Cleaver. The mind boggles. I could never get a handle on why this is so important to her until I first read
Hamlet
my junior year: “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”

Alex is distraught. “Why does it have to be
tonight
?”

I shrug. “He feels bad about the Angela O'Bannon disaster, and he wants to make it up to me. I think he's taking me out to dinner or something. We have to do that in secret or Mom thinks we're dissing her cooking. Anyway, I figured since I'm going to be in the city for this party—”

“You decided to blow me off at the most crucial moment of our love lives,” he finishes.

“We don't have love lives,” I remind him. “Don't worry, I'll be right by your side for every humiliating strikeout. Just try to hold off on embarrassing yourself until I get there, okay?”

No one in my father's business pays for parking. Ever. They just leave their cars any old place—expired meters, school crossings, next to hydrants. They get piles of tickets, and they don't pay those either. Tommy is
proud
of his. It's like the organized-crime version of collecting stamps—
Hey, I'll trade you an expired meter in Brooklyn for a Port Authority bus-loading violation.

The amazing thing is I can't ever remember anybody getting in trouble for it. It's hard to explain, but look at it this way. When normal, law-abiding Joe Shmoe does something illegal, he gets caught. But people who live entire lives
outside
the law are somehow immune, as if the criminal code doesn't even apply to them. How could you get tripped up by something that's as alien and irrelevant to you as the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead?

Moral of the story: If you're considering breaking a law, break all of them.

Great lesson, huh? Mobsters, like Charles Barkley, are not role models.

Since I'm a civilian, I aim the Mazda straight for the garage. Thirty bucks for the privilege of parking under Tommy's high-rise. Expensive, sure, but it seems appropriate for the only Luca who paid for his car using actual money.

Tommy's astronomical rent leases a smallish one-bedroom apartment on the twenty-third floor of a luxury doorman building. In the elevator I'm hoping he doesn't have anything too fancy planned. I'm wearing jeans and a short-sleeved button-down shirt. It's late September, and the days are still hitting seventy-plus.

I ring the bell of suite 23B.

“Hang on,” calls a voice. Definitely not Tommy's.

How do I describe the individual who answers the door? Not stunning exactly, but
hot.
You know how supermodels are gorgeous, but there's an unnatural perfection to them? Well, this girl is about as good-looking as you can get and still be a real person. She's a little younger than Tommy—early twenties, I'd guess. She's dressed casually, but her sexiness packs an atmospheric wallop like walking from air-conditioning into a hundred-degree day. Her sweater almost but not quite reaches the waistline of her low-rise jeans, revealing infinity sit-ups' worth of rock-hard abs. Words fail me, except these two:
Oh, my.

She holds out her hand. “I'm Cece. You must be Vince.”

I shake it, surprised but not blown away. Tommy runs with a fast crowd—okay, Tommy
is
a fast crowd. He has been known to date some pretty impressive women.

“Where's Tommy?” I manage.

“He told me to look after you till he gets back,” she says airily. “Want a beer?”

“Coke's fine,” I reply. “Driving.”

“Coming up.”

I can't help but watch her as she heads for the galley kitchen. I don't even try to look away. It's that kind of attraction.

I sit. She stands behind my chair, asking politely interested questions about me. If she doesn't care—and, let's face it, why should a twenty-something knockout want to hear about what courses I'm taking?—she doesn't show it. That's class. Tommy has latched onto a real keeper here.

That thought has barely crossed my mind when she starts massaging my shoulders. She's so smooth that it takes a second to realize that this isn't the most natural thing in the world.

“Where did you say Tommy was?”

She doesn't stop. “Oh, just taking care of a few things.”

The last time Tommy took care of a few things, I ended up with Jimmy Rat in the trunk of my car. I start to tell Cece this, but now her hands are off my shoulders and she's rubbing my
chest
!

This is not good! I mean, it's
good
—it's
great
, actually. But not with Tommy's girlfriend. What the
hell
is she thinking?

“Uh—uh—miss?”

“Cece.”

Exactly when did her mouth get so close to my ear? I can feel the vibrations of her reedy voice in my pancreas, not to mention other places. Oh, this is
so
not good!

“Well—it's just that—uh—” Forget it. I'm jelly. No, worse. I'm a puddle of low-fat milk. “You know—uh—Tommy could walk in here any minute.”

“Relax,” she soothes, expertly springing the buttons of my shirt. “We've got a couple of hours.”

“But—aren't you afraid he'll find out?”

“Silly,” she laughs. “He already knows.”

“He
does
?”

“Of course! Who do you think set this up?”

I have these moments—vending-machine moments. It's at these times when I come to understand that something I assumed was relatively innocent is actually part of Dad's world. Cece isn't Tommy's latest squeeze; she's a call girl! My brother brought me to his apartment so he could set me up with a
hooker
!
That's
his little gift to make up for the Jimmy Rat thing!

The realization is like a jolt of electricity applied simultaneously to every single cell in my body. I leap out of the chair, shirttails flapping like a flag. She's got her sweater half off, an image that will forever remain burned onto the back of my retinas. But I'm already running for the door.

Cece twigs to what's going on. “Hey,” she says softly, the yellow cotton knit bunched around her shoulders. “It's okay to be scared if it's your first time.”

“That's not it—” I babble.

But how could I ever explain it? The problem is where this little gift is coming from. I mean, your first time is pretty important, right? You carry it with you forever. I refuse to put the permanent stamp of organized crime on my love life. On my wedding night, I shouldn't be thinking…
and it all started back in 2002 when Tommy used his Mob connections to hire me a call girl…

The sweater comes off the rest of the way. If I was a pinball machine, my response would be:
Tilt.
Cece speaks just one more word: “Stay.”

There are encyclopedias that say less. In that single syllable, I can envision the next couple of hours, and they're rated NC-17.

I can't take my eyes off her, and I'm equally entranced and bewildered by the fact that in a few minutes, I'll be seeing a whole lot more.
Going all the way.
It sinks in that there's a set limit to how far you can go. It's not like long jump where you can train really hard and squeeze out another centimeter next time. This is the end. The max. The finish line. Will it be here and now for me?

Sensing the kill, Cece reaches for the clasp of her bra.

It's the toughest decision I've ever had to make, but I make it.

I'm out of there.