Italian blood ... and Wesley told him he didn’t know who his mother was, the old man’s eyes filled with tears and he awkwardly put his arm around Wesley’s shoulder. A passing con looked at this like he knew something, but the younger man just wrote the con’s name on the blackboard in his mind and suffered through the embrace without moving.
“You never underestimate,” Carmine told him. “Only buffoons underestimate!”
“What do you mean?”
“That nigger you killed in the House. He never looked in your eyes or he would’ve looked for another girlfriend. He took it easy, and he paid hard, right?”
“Right. Why you call him a nigger?”
“He
“Why?”
“Because we want what they got and they don’t want to share. Period. That’s why you went to Korea, right? To fight their fucking wars.”
“Would Lee get hot if he heard you call another guy a nigger?”
“No ... or if he did he wouldn’t show it. A man who shows his anger is a fool and fools don’t live long. Revenge is dessert. First you eat the meal, no matter how fucking bad it tastes. Always,
“What are you waiting for now?” Wesley asked.
“Just to die, kid. There’s nothing out there for me. In here, those people take care of my family, and after I go they’ll keep doing it. I’m going to die the way I lived: with a closed mouth. Those people appreciate that—they
“Like what?”
“To respect them.”
“You don’t...”
“Not no more. Our thing is dead, Wes—it’s dead and fucking buried. There’s no organization, no mob, no fucking
“
“Kid, they was the
“Who’s next?”
“The Blacks, the Latins ... who knows? Maybe the fucking Chinese. But it’ll all end the same. Greedy, stupid bastards.”
“Then I couldn’t...”
“No, kid, there’s no place for you. Even if I recommended you, you’d just be a soldier in someone’s fucked-up army. But I’ve been thinking a long time. And before I check out of here, I’ll tell you what you can do.”
17/
The next two years went by the same way. Carmine ran the Book as he always did—fairly—and his customers were never lured away by promises of bigger payoffs elsewhere. Too often, those bigger payoffs were a shank planted in some sucker’s chest. Besides, Carmine was the old, established firm and prisoners are a conservative lot.
Dayton was big trouble from the day he hit the Yard. A tall, over-muscled motorcycle freak, he gorilla’ed off a couple of young kids easily enough. This immediately gave him some highly inflated ideas about prison reality. The older cons just shook their heads and predicted a quick death for him, but Dayton stayed alive through a strange combination of strength, skill, and stupidity.
Dayton bet fifty packs with Carmine on the Yankees in the 1960 Series and lost. He passed Carmine and Wesley on the Yard the next day and strolled over to them. “You looking for your fifty packs, old man?”
“Do I
“Nah ... don’t look for them, because I’ll cut your throat first.”
Wesley stayed relaxed—he heard this kind of bullshit threat every day on the Yard and Carmine could handle the ticket-sellers in his sleep. But before he turned his head away, Dayton leaned over Carmine, whispered: “And just so you’ll know...” and slapped him viciously across the face.
The next thing Wesley remembered was the hack’s club smashing into the back of his head for the third time—he woke up in the hospital. He opened his eyes and saw Carmine staring down at him.
“You okay, kid?” the old man asked.
“Yeah. Is he dead?”
“He will be in about an hour.”
“I didn’t kill him?”
“No, thank the Devil, you didn’t.”
“I will as soon as I get out of here.”
