A Piece of the Action

“Keep goin’, Angie. I’m gonna give ya what ya deserve.”

He watched her step out of her shoes. Watched her wriggle out of her skirt, then slide her panties down over her hips.

“Open ya legs. Open ’em wide. That’s a good girl. That’s a very good girl. See how nice I am when ya give me what I want? Now, turn around, Angie. Show me that sweet brown ass.”

He stepped forward, pushing his crotch into her buttocks, then slammed her down against the tabletop.

“Reach behind ya, Angie,” he hissed. “Reach behind and take it out for me. I’m feelin’ lazy at the moment.”

Thirty minutes later, when Joe Faci and Santo Silesi finally arrived, Steppy Accacio’s mood had gone from bad to good to bad again. The way Accacio saw it, the small, fragile niche he’d managed to carve for himself on New York’s Lower East Side, his stepping stone to bigger and better things, was being threatened by forces he’d thought were under control. True, he didn’t have all the facts yet. Maybe, just maybe, his young nephew had misjudged the situation. Maybe Sandy had simply panicked. But one thing for sure, the bosses who’d given him permission to occupy his little niche would yank that permission the minute they felt he couldn’t control his territory. There was no shortage of aspiring businessmen looking for the same chance he’d been given.

Accacio didn’t bother showing Faci and his nephew into the den. With Angie naked in their bedroom, there was little chance of being overheard. He didn’t bother with espresso and pastries, either. What Accacio felt as he led the two men into the living room was cold hard fear. It was like being nineteen years old and back in the army again, back in that minefield in France. The lieutenant had led them into that field as if they were taking a stroll through Central Park. It wasn’t until the first mine exploded, showering the platoon with bloody chunks of PFC Trevor Jones, that the dumb bastard figured it out. The following hour had been the longest in Steppy Accacio’s life. He still dreamed about it.

“Awright, Sandy,” Accacio said, his voice surprisingly quiet, even to himself, “let’s hear it.”

“There’s not much to tell. I’m supposed to go into O’Neill’s twice a week to drop off forty bags of dope. If he needs anything extra, he sends one of the whores out to pick it up. Yesterday, I’m making my regular delivery and I find the front door wide open. I knock and call out, but O’Neill doesn’t answer, which is very unusual because he mostly stays by that door. Now I don’t like the situation, but I still wanna deliver the dope because I’m finished for the morning and if O’Neill doesn’t take it, I’m gonna have to hold onto the forty bags all day. So, I’m walking back to the office, still calling O’Neill’s name, when someone says, ‘C’mon in.’ Me, I think it’s O’Neill, but when I go inside, I find this cop sitting on O’Neill’s desk. My first instinct is to get the hell out of there, but I manage to hold together and make the delivery. I figured the cop would be more suspicious if I ran.”

“But you didn’t actually hear what they were talkin’ about,” Accacio said. “For all ya know, they coulda been talkin’ about the weather. I mean it coulda been the cop was tryin’ to shake the pimp down. Happens all the time.”

“I thought about that and I guess it’s possible. But what keeps bothering me is the look on O’Neill’s face when I walked into the office. I thought the pimp was gonna have a heart attack. I’m telling you, Steppy, his face was dead white, like he was looking into his own coffin. Then the cop tells me that him and O’Neill are having a private conversation.”

“Did O’Neill say anything? Anything at all.”

“Not a word. But his hands were shaking so bad, he could hardly count out the two hundred.”

“If the situation was so fucking serious, how come you waited this long to tell me?” Accacio’s voice rose as he asked the question. He could feel his anger returning.!

“The kid didn’t do nothin’ wrong,” Joe Faci interrupted. “Him and the hebes had to go to Jersey in the afternoon. Then he had to go back in the projects at night. He called me as soon as he was finished, but you was already outta touch by then.”

“Yeah,” Sandy said quickly. “The thing was I didn’t wanna tell Jake before I spoke to you. The job we had to do in Jersey with SpeediFreight? If I didn’t show up for that, Jake would’ve known something was wrong. He’s not a dope, Steppy. He’s smart, like all the Jews. What I did was go through the day like nothing happened. Then, after I got finished in the projects, I found Joe and told him exactly what I’m telling you.”

Steppy Accacio leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes. His nephew’s story was based on nothing more than instinct. Instinct, Steppy knew, was important. You couldn’t really make your way in this business without it, but you could also let it get away from you. Facts were a lot better, but sometimes facts were hard to come by. You might spend weeks digging out the facts and, meanwhile, your whole life was going down the drain.

“Could you describe this cop? Would you know him again if you saw him?”

“That’s easy,” Santo Silesi replied. “He was a fucking giant. Six-five, at least, and built like a refrigerator. Plus, he had a scar in his eyebrow. The scar was still red, so he must’ve gotten it recently. I could make out the stitch marks.”

“I seen this cop before,” Joe Faci said quietly.

“You know him?” Accacio asked. “You know who the fuck he is?”

“I didn’t say that, Steppy. I didn’t say I actually knew him. I only said I seen him.”

“You wanna tell me where you seen him? Or do you wanna make it a goddamned mystery.”

“The last time Patero came in for his piece, the big cop was with him. The reason I remember it so clear is because the cop still had the stitches in his eye.”

“Holy shit,” Accacio shouted, jumping out of the chair. “Holy shit. Holy shit. Did Patero bring him into the office?”

“Nope. Left him outside at a table. They had lunch after you and Patero finished ya business.”

Accacio sat back down. “Maybe it’s not so bad. Maybe O’Neill got behind on his payments to Patero, like he did with us. Maybe the cop was there to teach him a lesson. Jesus, if the sheeny didn’t shoot that spic, we wouldn’t be worried about this bullshit. Sandy, you didn’t say nothin’ to the Jew, right?”

“Right.”

“Okay, we gotta move fast. And it ain’t the cops I’m mostly worried about. We’re just startin’ out, just gettin’ established. If we look like a bunch of fuck-ups, Tommy Rosario’s gonna cut us out like he was pullin’ a used rubber off his dick. Sandy, you go back to Leibowitz and tell him Joe Faci wants to see him. Joe, you tell Leibowitz that O’Neill and his old lady gotta go. What I’m thinkin’ here is that even if this bullshit with the cop ain’t directed at us, O’Neill’s junkie wife is a liability. They seen the spic go down. It’s like a sword hangin’ over my head and I want it outta there. You tell the sheeny to do it quiet, Joe. Like he done his buddy. I want them two pimps should disappear like they never been born. Meanwhile, I’m gonna personally call Lieutenant Patero. I’m gonna tell him that if he can’t control what goes down in his own precinct, he can take his protection and shove it up his fuckin’ ass.”

Pat Cohan was so pissed off he couldn’t believe it. He hadn’t felt this way in years, not in years. What he wanted to do was fire his long-unfired.38 into Stanley Moodrow’s chest. Except that Stanley Moodrow wasn’t there and Sal Patero was. Sal Patero was sitting in a chair with his legs crossed like nothing was happening.

“You know what’s buggin’ you, Pat?” Patero said. “What’s buggin’ you is that you totally fucked up when you picked this kid out to marry your daughter. You misjudged his character and you put him in a position he couldn’t handle. Now you got your family mixed up in it and you don’t know what to do.”

“Listen, you little wop,” Cohan screeched, “don’t tell me what I shouldn’t have done. You’re the one who put me onto Steppy Accacio. I was clean before that. You hear me? Clean.”

“You never been clean a day in your life. And what you’re doin’ right now leads me to believe it’s time you got out of the game. You’re not being objective. You oughta be thinking about what you’re gonna do. Instead, all you can think about is what you’ve already done.”

“What I wanna do is kill the bastard.” Cohan, once he’d gotten it out, began to calm down. Patero was right, of course. The important thing was to stop Moodrow before he did any damage.

“You wanna go out and kill a cop, Pat? Is that what you wanna do?”

Cohan sat in a chair behind his carved mahogany desk. He lit the stub of a Cuban cigar and blew out a cloud of gray smoke. “I’m not sayin’ we should actually kill him.”