sixteen. Now, thanks to the snow-induced parking ban, I found a spot for Secretariat right out front.
“Pictures?” Zerilli said. “You want me to look at fuckin’ pictures?”
“That’s right.”
“Ah, shit. I thought you was gonna ask me about the DiMaggios.”
We were sitting in Zerilli’s inner sanctum, only one of us wearing pants, the photographs fanned out on his keyhole desk. We had already gone through our ritual: him presenting me with a new box of illegal Cubans and asking me to swear on my mother that I wouldn’t write about anything I saw in there; me swearing, opening the box, getting a cigar going, and not mentioning there was nothing to write about because everybody already knew what went on in there. Except for the part about the pants.
I said, “What’s the DiMaggios?”
And he said, “Watch where you flick them fuckin’ ashes.”
“A new way to bet baseball or something?”
“Nah! Ain’t no new way to bet nothin’. S’all been done.”
“So?”
“So last week I started in thinkin’. Do I sit around waitin’ for some asshole to torch my store, or do I do somethin’ about it? Cops been tellin’ me not to worry, said they put on an extra patrol. Big fuckin’ deal. Prowl car makes a few extra passes through the neighborhood, like that’s gonna do any fuckin’ good. Last Thursday night I got two dozen of the guys together. Guys what come in the store regular, live in the neighborhood. You ain’t heard about this? You must be slippin’. I figured you woulda heard about this. I broke ’em up into two-man teams, give each of ’em four-hour shifts, overlapping, you know, so they’s always at least four guys on the streets. Some of the guys ain’t workin’, so we can cover the whole day no problem. They’re all good guys, mostly micks and wops, coupla spics.”
“The DiMaggios?” I said.
“Yeah, well, they needed somethin’ to carry, you know, in case they run into trouble. Don’t need no more fuckin’ guns on the street. Got enough headache, pukes strollin’ in here with UZIs they buy in schoolyards, scarin’ the help half to death. So I got the guys twenty-four brand-new Louisville Sluggers. Woulda set me back a few hundred bucks if Carmine Grasso hadn’t had ’em sittin’ around, you know, from the time he … ah … acquired a truckload of sporting goods. Charged me two bucks apiece. Ended up buyin’ eighty of ’em. Gonna stick the rest out front the store this spring, sell ’em to the kids. If spring ever comes—this fuckin’ snow—Jesus!”
“And since they’re carrying bats,” I said, “why not name them after the best wop baseball player who ever lived.”
“Fuckin’ A! The two spics are callin’ themselves the ‘A-Rods’ just to piss me off, but they’re okay, those guys. Good they got some pride.”
When we finally got to the pictures, Zerilli’s reputation for knowing everyone in the neighborhood turned out to be a mite exaggerated. Of the nine faces, he put names to six.
“Lemme keep these awhile, show ’em to the DiMaggios,” he said. “Maybe get some more names to go with the faces.”
“Fine,” I said.
“We got a meeting here at nine tonight, ’fore the night shift hits the streets. Probably do it then.”
“Maybe I’ll drop by,” I said, “bring a photographer, do a little story on the DiMaggios, if it’s okay.”
“Get some pictures of the guys holdin’ the bats,” he said. “Scare the piss outta the asshole settin’ the fires. Maybe convince him to pick on some other neighborhood.”
I’d been neglecting my cigar, and it had gone out. As I fished in my pockets for my Zippo, Zerilli handed me his Colibri, the Trifecta model with three compact flames, designed to fit perfectly in your palm.
“Keep it,” he said.
“I can’t do that, Whoosh. You know what these things cost?”
“Grasso gets ’em for me cheap, as many as I can move,” Zerilli said, “long as I keep my mouth shut about where they come from. ’Sides, you take the Cubans, and you know damn well what they cost.”
“I see your point,” I said. I stuck the lighter in my shirt pocket and got up to go.
“Aaay, just a fuckin’ minute,” he said. “Did you say ‘best wop baseball player’? Is that what you fuckin’ said? Fuck you! Best baseball player that ever lived, period, you fuckin’ harp.”
When I got back to the office, I logged on to check my messages and found this from Lomax:
THE DOG PEOPLE SAY THEY’RE CALLING CHANNEL 10 IF YOU DON’T TALK TO THEM TONIGHT. IF THAT HAPPENS, I WOULDN’T WANT TO BE YOU.
10
The dog people turned out to be Ralph and Gladys Fleming. They lived in one of those one-story boxes thrown together on concrete slabs in the seventies under a program designed to give folks with modest incomes a chance to get into the housing market.
The police radio had honked like a goose all the way to Silver Lake. Holdup in progress at the Cumberland Farms on Elmwood Avenue. Trash fire on Gano Street. Domestic dispute on Chalkstone Avenue. Some chatter about proceeding to locations and apprehending suspects. But no fire alarm in Mount Hope.
Fourteen inches of snow had fallen overnight, and the Providence Highway Department had done its customary crackerjack job of snow removal. The Flemings’ street was a glacier. Ralph and Gladys must have been watching me negotiate their unshoveled walk, because as soon as I raised my hand to knock, the door swung open. I was about to introduce myself when something big and hairy forced its way between Ralph and Gladys and slammed into my groin. I toppled off the porch and crash-landed in the snow.
“Sassy, no!” Gladys piped, a bit tardily I thought.
Ignoring her, Sassy pinned me to the snow and sandpapered my face with her tongue. One of us seemed pretty happy.
Ralph helped me up, Gladys asked me six times if I was all right, four hands brushed snow from my clothes, apologies and “bad dog” were spoken in multiples of ten, and we were all seated cozily now on Gladys’s floral seat covers. I in a rocking chair with a cup of coffee steaming beside me on a rock-maple end table. Ralph and Gladys on the sofa. Sassy at my feet, nibbling a Beggin’ Strip. She looked like a cross between a German shepherd and a Humvee.
We quickly established that Ralph and Gladys were both fifty-six, had two grown daughters, and had moved here from the state of Oregon nine months before to work nights in a tool-and-die factory. They liked Oregon all right, but the move became necessary when the Sierra Club, the Environmental Protection Agency, and a couple of spotted owls conspired to abolish Ralph’s job at a sawmill near the Willamette National Forest.
“Funny thing,” Ralph said. “When I went to the bank to open an account, the clerk looked at me strange and asked me why in heaven’s name I had moved to Rhode Island. Same thing happened when I went to the registry to get a Rhode Island driver’s license.”
“And the cable man,” Gladys said. “Don’t forget the cable man.”
They both looked at me now like I was supposed to explain it. The littlest state’s inferiority complex is as big as the chip on its shoulder. I imagined Ralph and Gladys would figure it out for themselves if they stuck around long enough.
“Well,” Ralph said after a moment, “I sure did hate to leave Sassy behind in Oregon. Didn’t seem there was much choice, though. No way to know where we’d be staying once we got here.”
“Turns out we could have brought her,” Gladys said—a bit huffily, I thought.
“So we had to leave her,” Ralph continued. “Neighbors name of Stinson, John and Edna their Christian names, were kind enough to take her in.”
“Couldn’t even call to ask about her when we got out here,” Gladys said, “ ’cause the Stinsons got no phone.”
“Weekend ’fore last,” Ralph said, “on Sunday, wasn’t it, Glady?”
“Saturday,” Gladys said.
“Well, Saturday then. We got up the usual time. ’Round eight, I’d say it was. I was reading the paper while Glady made breakfast. Eggs, wasn’t it, Glady?”
