forty.
“Sorry, guy,” Tucci said. “Didn’t see your foot.”
The man’s face darkened. “Maybe you oughta watch where the fuck you’re walkin’, asshole,” he said.
Tucci paused and turned slightly toward the man. “Yeah?” he said. “And maybe
The man glanced to the rear of the pizzeria, noting Tucci’s companions, now turning in their booth toward the sound of voices.
“You a tough guy, with your two friends backin’ you?” the man said, shifting in his seat, beginning to stand.
“Hey, fellas,” the owner said from behind the counter. “Take it easy, it was just a little accident.”
“Bullshit,” the man in the booth said. “This prick kicked me. He saw my foot there, I don’t see no Seein’ Eye dog leadin’ him outta here. He fuckin’ kicked me.”
Now, with considerable speed, the man cleared the booth and stood up, shoving Tucci hard, forcing him onto the countertop. Tucci, despite his own drinking, caught the odor of alcohol coming from the man. He also saw the blind rage burning in his eyes.
“Yo, chill out, guy,” one of Tucci’s companions said, standing as he spoke.
“Sit down, Coke,” Tucci said. “I can handle this.” He then turned his gaze to the man. “You got a problem here, buddy, come outside and let’s do it,” he said, his voice low and tight.
The man’s face contorted with even greater rage. “Fuckin’ punk,” he said, throwing a looping right round house at Tucci’s head.
Leaning backward, Tucci raised a stiff left forearm to intercept the blow. Then, crouching slightly, he thrust forward, pumping a short, fast right uppercut. His balled fist caught the man squarely on the jaw, driving it upward, teeth smashing together and shattering with the impact. Pinkish, blood-tinged saliva sprayed about his upper lip and right cheek, and his legs buckled. Tucci bulled forward, shouldering the man backward, sprawling him into the bench seat of the booth.
“Stay down, asshole,” Tucci hissed, “or I’ll send you to the fuckin’ hospital.”
Andy Hermann, the second of Tucci’s companions, approached, a broad smile on his face.
“Don’t start shit with a Golden Glover, Jack,” he said to the dazed, bloodied man, using his best Frank Sinatra inflection. Then he turned to Tucci. “C’mon, let’s get out of here. Let’s pick up the paper and go home.”
Tucci, adrenaline pumping, considered it. Then the third young man, nicknamed Coke, grabbed him, pushing him toward the door. “C’mon, Gary,” Coke said. “Walk.”
Reluctantly, Tucci allowed himself to be shoved along. As the three reached the exit, the man in the booth pulled himself upright in his seat, his legs still too shaky to risk standing.
“I’m gonna kill you, motherfucker,” he called. “Kill you!”
Tucci’s face flushed with renewed anger. “Yeah? Well, when you decide to do it, you can find me at Ben’s candy store, over near Seventy-first Street. That’s where I hang out. Come kill me over there. I’ll be waitin’ for you.”
With that, they left. After a moment, the man stood, his face red, blood trickling from his mouth.
Nunzio, the owner of the pizzeria, shrugged from behind the counter. “I tried to warn you, buddy. Nobody fucks with that kid. Nobody.”
The man glared at Nunzio, then turned and reeled out the door, turning right and stumbling around the corner and down Seventieth Street.
The huge, white-faced clock on the pizzeria wall read eight fifty-six.
Ben’s candy store, one block south of Vinny’s, was an illuminated oasis on an otherwise darkened stretch of Thirteenth Avenue. The other stores, depending on their specialties, had either closed early for the traditional Italian-American Columbus Day observance or had been closed the entire day. The streets were empty, with only the occasional passing of a vehicle or a rumbling city bus. Periodically, a car would veer into the bus stop in front of Ben’s and someone would jump out and run in for the late edition of the
Gary Tucci, Jimmy “Coke” Cocca, and Andy Hermann made their way along the darkened avenue. As they had done since childhood, Coke and Andy shared by association in Tucci’s short, sweet, and devastating victory in a fight he had neither sought nor encouraged. Their youthful invincibility made them oblivious to the chilling wind, their laughter echoing through the concrete and glass, steel and asphalt canyon they knew so well.
It was easy enough, then, for the brooding man to surprise them, when, some brief moments later, they emerged from Ben’s, newspapers in hand, still high on the night’s adventure.
The man leapt from the shadows of the Majestic Gift and Lamp Shop, the storefront to the right of Ben’s, a rifle grasped tightly in his hands.
It was Coke who reacted first. The sight of the angry man sent Coke back in time, back to the darkened, narrow streets of the slums of Baghdad, and back further still to his training days at the Marine base on Parris Island.
Coke sprang forward, grabbing the rifle barrel, twisting it violently downward and to his left.
“Gun!” he shouted, then again, “Gun!”
But it wasn’t a trained, armed, and deadly Marine comrade who responded to his call, it was Gary Tucci, now frightened and confused, and driven not by training and experience but by instinct, terror, and an innate courage. Tucci stepped forward, also to Coke’s left, and reached out for the man.
They were all stunned by the flash. It appeared to come out of nowhere, illuminating the darkened street and turning the scene into a surreal, sharply shadowed false daylight. Then came the sound. A deafening, ear-ringing release of energy and black powder exploding. Then, almost simultaneously, a lesser bang sounded from across the broad avenue as the darkened fluorescent bakery sign shattered under the ricocheting bullet.
The scene froze for an instant before Tucci collapsed, falling to the pavement like a puppet with severed strings. Then, like a resumed video recording, the scene began to play itself out once again.
Startled by the shot, Coke had let his hold on the weapon’s barrel weaken, and the shooter pulled it from his grasp. All three men looked downward to the fallen Tucci. He looked up at them, one to the other, a calm, detached look on his face. Then they followed his dropping gaze.
Tucci’s right foot lay shoeless, his black Nike having been blown from it, landing in the gutter twenty feet away. The dark gray athletic sock he wore was pushed inward into a gaping, black hole rimmed with white froth, where his instep had once been. As they watched, the hole suddenly welled with thick, rich-looking blood. It was the color of dark burgundy wine and pulsated in rhythm with his increasing heartbeat. Then came Tucci’s scream, the gut- wrenching, ear-shattering howl of unbearable agony.
The sound shattered the brief stillness of the scene, once again seemingly freed from its eerie pause mode. The shooter, now trembling and panic-stricken, backed away. Andy Hermann dropped to his knees, reaching out to Tucci, watching the blood overflow and bubble out onto the dirty sidewalk. Jimmy Coke, rage now roaring in his brain, turned to the shooter.
The man backed farther away, his eyes wild, his finger jerking on the trigger of the rifle pointed at Coke’s chest. The weapon, a bolt action Winchester.30- 06, did not fire; the bolt had not been recharged.
The man then turned and ran diagonally across the avenue to the far sidewalk and back toward Seventieth Street. A moment later, a reanimated Coke took off after him, his mind whirling, his fingers twitching, searching for the reassuring feel of his Marine Corps M-16 1A automatic weapon.
Reaching the halfway point to Seventieth Street, the man, still running, pulled furiously on the bolt of the weapon, chambering a second round. He then spun to face his pursuer, raising the weapon.
Coke, now crashing back to the reality of the situation, suddenly confronted his danger. He threw himself to the left, behind a black Buick parked at the curb, waiting for the shot to sound.
But the shot never came. When, after a moment, he peered around the right quarter-panel of the Buick, he saw the man turning the corner of Seventieth Street, heading east toward Fourteenth Avenue. After another few seconds, a dark pickup truck roared out from Seventieth Street, turning right onto Thirteenth Avenue and disappearing into the night, its engine straining under full throttle.
Coke twisted around, pressing his back into the reassuring bulk of the Buick. Listening to his heart pound, his head fell forward, dangling on suddenly weakened neck muscles. As his body undertook the familiar, quaking reaction to the subsiding adrenaline rush, his eyes welled.
He sat there for a time, making no effort to stop the tears.
