“Listen,” I said, fixing my cuffs and smoothing back my hair. “If I got a clean record, why would I wanna blow it for a nine-thousand-dollar marker?”
“The high roller,” said my father, grabbing my arm and punching it playfully.
I ignored him and went back to scratching the wax off the Chianti bottle. “All I’m saying is I don’t need the pressure. I got better things to do with my life.”
Teddy stopped chewing and just looked at me. It suddenly got very quiet. I could hear the busboy stacking dishes in the kitchen.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Teddy touched a spot just below his stomach.
No one was talking. Even the mural of Caesar on the wall looked tense.
“Nothing,” I said.
These were guys who’d just as soon blow the back of your head off as change a television channel. And since I’d seen what happened to Larry, I had a good idea of what that might feel like.
“No, go ahead,” Teddy said in a cold voice. “You were saying you’re better than us.”
“No, I wasn’t saying I was better, Ted. I was just saying I got other plans.”
Teddy sucked his teeth again and tugged his earlobe, the way Humphrey Bogart would. In his mind he was a dead ringer for Bogey, even though he weighed three hundred pounds.
“I give you all this money and get you started in your own business, and you’re making ‘other plans’?” he said.
I saw my father almost doubling over in his chair from discomfort. When he’d originally loaned me the money to go to college and start my own business, I had no idea how it would change my life. Now I had no way to pay it back. I’d tried everything. A couple of years before, I’d had a legit job managing some buildings on Atlantic Avenue. So Teddy muscled in on them, went partners with the owners, and burned them down for the insurance money. A few months later, I was running boat tours around the island Atlantic City is set on. What happened? Teddy got interested and all the boats sank. The same thing would happen with Elijah and the boxing match if I wasn’t careful.
“I’ll get it all back to you with interest,” I told Teddy. “Just be patient.”
“And what am I supposed to do in the meantime?” His eyes tightened. “Watch my favorite niece and her children starve because you can’t provide for them?”
“Hey, Teddy, I’m doing my best. I just haven’t gotten the right break yet.”
It was like trying to put out a fire with gasoline.
“The right break?!” His lip curled. “My own son, rest his soul, should’ve got the same breaks as you.”
His son Charlie hanged himself when we were in school together. He’d been a friend of mine. Skinny intense kid, who always listened to the rock group Kiss. Instead of saying “hello,” he’d say, “Love Gun!” I used to smoke pot with him under the Boardwalk. He couldn’t stand being part of his father’s life either. Every day he’d get teased by other kids at school: “Okay, Mr. Mafia’s son, let’s see how tough you really are.” And every day they’d kick the shit out of him. He didn’t have someone like Vin to protect him around the schoolyard. So he’d run home and have Ted ride him for being a weakling. As long as Charlie lived, his father’s enemies would be his enemies. He killed himself at the beginning of eleventh grade.
I took his suicide as an object lesson of what would happen to me if I didn’t get out one day. And judging from the look Teddy was giving me, I should’ve already been buried on the mainland.
“Charlie had problems,” I said, maybe a little too offhandedly. “He was, you know, like clinically depressed.”
Teddy looked at me like I’d just tried to bite his nose off. “Clin-ically de-pressed? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I’m just saying he had problems. He hanged himself.”
Teddy began stroking that spot below his stomach faster. “So what’re you saying, it’s my fault he’s dead?”
“No, Ted, I’m just saying he was depressed. You know, he was always talking about ‘Love Gun.’”
I heard Richie trying to say the word “clinical” in the background while Tommy Sick giggled and muttered, “That’s sick.”
“You little motherfucker, I’ll give you something to be depressed about.” Teddy stood up abruptly and reached into his pants.
You would’ve thought we were in the middle of a rodeo with the way all the other guys jumped up, trying to calm him down: “Whooa Ted! Down Ted! Chill Teddy!”
But Teddy was like the bull about to charge. “This little prick’s saying it’s my fault Charlie’s dead!”
He pushed them all away, snorting hard through his nose and staring me down with those beady red eyes. This was the way things started with them. You’d say you didn’t like the color of their car and wind up locked in the trunk.
My father reached up and put a hand on Teddy’s shoulder. “Hey, Ted, take it easy. Anthony didn’t mean nothing.”
But then Ted turned that same dead-eyed glare on my father. “You just watch it, Vin. You could die too.”
I started thinking maybe I’d try talking Vin into retiring to Florida if I managed to get out of this place alive.
“Hey, Ted,” my father repeated. “Sit down. We’re not done eating.”
“... trying to blame me for putting a rope around my boy’s neck,” mumbled Teddy, his lips turning white.
“Teddy?” My father cleared his throat. “Why don’t you just back off a little? Ha? Anthony did right by you the other night, didn’t he?”
Teddy grunted.
“So maybe you oughta cut him a break. Right?”
I didn’t know what he meant at the time, but it stopped Teddy in his tracks. He dropped the fork and slowly sat down. The other guys at the table lowered their eyes and exhaled in relief.
“Remember,” said my father, still keeping a hand on Ted’s shoulder. “Anthony’s had a lot of frustrations too. Like we talked about the other night. Maybe he thinks he’s owed something.”
I still didn’t know what he was talking about, but Teddy’s mood was cooling by the minute. He took an enormous slab of meat off my father’s plate, and comforted himself by chewing on it. As his face began to soften, I knew I’d probably live through dessert.
“Yeah, I guess,” said Teddy grudgingly.
“You wanna tell him something about that?” said my father, holding Teddy’s gaze the way a lover would. “What we talked about?”
Teddy wiped his mouth and looked over at me. “Thank you, Anthony,” he said, like a little kid who’d just been scolded for his bad manners.
I was going to ask for what, but my father cut me off.
“What about the other thing?” he prodded Teddy. “The thing you were going to see about.”
Teddy just looked at him, not prepared to give any more ground. “I can’t do it, Vin. I’m sorry.”
I realized there was a whole level of the conversation I was missing. Some of the old-timers at the other end of the table were getting it, though. They were whispering to each other and pointing at me.
“Look, Anthony,” said Teddy, his mood shifting for about the third time in five minutes. “I know you been under a lot of pressure. We all been under a lot of pressure. I hear from your father that things haven’t been going exactly the way you might’ve planned with getting made and all. But I just want you to understand we appreciate everything you already done for us.”
I must have given him a blank look. I hadn’t done anything for Teddy lately. But he coughed and went on.
“Larry and his son were becoming pains in the ass to all of us,” he said. “Thanks for helping us send a message.”
All of a sudden, everything was clear. When I saw my father folding and unfolding the napkin on his lap, I knew he’d told Teddy that I’d whacked Larry. And here was Teddy saying it out loud in front of a dozen potential witnesses. My mouth went dry.
I saw my father and Richie exchange a look down the length of the table and understood instantly they’d
