Sweeney on the Rocks Read online

  Sweeney was thirteen, Eddie four years older. They were a rare thing these days (though they didn’t know it)—the next generation. Italianos with a mean streak, a love for money and their own stereotyped narratives; no concern for repercussions, for parents or cops or the feds with their cold gray monolith of the Manhattan Penitentiary on south 18th. Fuck em, was their attitude. They didn’t fear nothing.

  You want to make a hood? Give him a few early successes. For six months, and initially under Eddie’s direction, Sweeney slimjimmed game rooms up and down Brooklyn. Twenty-seconds at a machine and a cloth coin bag held under a cascade of coins. Like hitting cherries in Atlantic City. Then out the door. If you were fast on your feet and kept your eyes peeled, it was free money. The world rewards quick feet and sharp eyes, was Eddie’s philosophy.

  In August of Sweeney’s thirteenth year, Eddie had been working at a tire shop on New Ultrecht and 84th, under the ell. A job of some suspicion among the aunts and uncles. There were rumors, ominous overtones of unruly dealings. Aunt Florence had used those very words. Legs crossed, varicose veins bulging, she blew a thread of smoke, said, “Eddie? I just pray, god save him from all those unruly dealings over there.” But for the younger cousins, their admiration was undiluted. Eddie knew things. How to fake a fall on the subway, pull a wallet. The best bolt cutters to snip free a bike. Knew who said what to who and why. Who profited, who paid. Debts owed, debts received. Eddie knew it all, and doled out the knowledge like dimes. Just last week, he’d shown Sweeney a small silver key from his hip pocket. “Know what this is? Universal handcuff key. I ever get arrested? It’s always right there where I can get at it. Don’t leave home without it, right? You see what I’m saying?”

  Coming home three-thirty in the afternoon, Sweeney was sweating through his shirt, laboring under a twenty-pound school backpack. Here’s Eddie, cool at the bus stop. One foot cocked up on the glass, smoking a Camel. Back then, Camels were an old man’s cigarette. Even his choice of smokes felt daring, unpredictable. The acne that would give him his scars, the pockmarks along his cheekbones, it was all in full bloom. An angry, painful pox of whiteheads and blackheads and half-squeezed sores. Sweeney envied even the zits. Wished he had a few of his own.

  “Yo Cosmo. Little brother under a backpack. You’re like a turtle with that fucking thing.”

  Sweeney’s name, to pull the tooth early, was Cosimo Aniello. And while the Aniellos were, by and large, respectable people (longshoreman, cab drivers, pavers, an orthodontist, circuit court judges, a priest or two) Cosimo was a throwback name, an anachronism, a nod to his father’s sense of history. “You could do worse, kid, than be named after the first Medici.”

  “Bum a smoke?” Thirteen years old.

  “Sure.” Eddie was nonchalant handing over the pack and lighter. The movement pulled up his shirt sleeve.

  “New tattoo?”

  “Yin yang in barbed wire. What do you think.”

  “The fuck?” A turquoise circle the size of a fist, bifurcated with a faint S. The skin around it still red and irritated.

  “Look it up.” Eddie stepped on his cigarette. “Come on. Got somebody I want you to meet.”

  “I know what it means. I just never pegged you for no kind of finoochiu.”

  “It’s finocchiu, and go fuck yourself. Let’s go before I change my mind.”

  Friday afternoon, the city was out on stoops with coolers, electric fans blowing across blocks of ice, quart bottles of beer in paper bags, elbows on concrete and leisurely, the world-is-fine laughter. Maybe it was the cigarette, the pleasant dizziness, or maybe the proximity to his cousin, but Sweeney felt fine. Strolling through the vast acreage of Brooklyn’s humanity, the rich stew of swirling city odors: Unwashed bodies, frying meats, garbage, melting asphalt. It was all so good.

  “Little brother,” Eddie said, putting his hand on Sweeney’s shoulder, “you have a gold-plated invite to meet one Mister Jimmy Greco. Courtesy of your good cousin.”

  “The Nose?”

  “Yeah, but you don’t get to call him that. Nobody gets to call him that.”

  Sweeney was only briefly subdued. And sure, it might be true that in the larger ocean of the five families, the Nose was a small fish—a midlist soldier with a smallish crew of associates; a good, if unextravagant, earner—inside Sweeney’s world, he was the equivalent of banker, mayor, newspaper editor. A man with power and occasional largesse. Fathers and uncles came to him for favors. Meeting him would be admittance to a certain kind of manhood.

  “He likes respect,” Eddie said as they walked. “Yessir, nosir. That kind of thing. Think you can handle it? Little smartass like you?”

  “Yessir.”

  “And don’t stare at his nose.”

  “Okay.”

  “He said he needs a new kid for the tire shop. A young kid, he said. Twelve years old. You’re twelve, right?”

  “Thirteen.”

  “Tell him you’re twelve.”

  Why did Eddie choose Sweeney? Among the various litters thrown by their shared aunts and uncles, the twenty or thirty other children to whom they were related by blood but alien by preoccupation, he reached into the box and pulled Sweeney out by the scruff. Because the kid was quiet, maybe. Knew how to keep a secret. Maybe it was because, a year earlier, Sweeney had tossed bricks through each of the four apartment windows of a despised math teacher, a guy who had first flunked Eddie then, a few years later, given Sweeney a B. (Sweeney did not get Bs.) Or maybe it was because out of all of the parents, only their two mothers had married other Italians.

  The tire shop sign, in flickering blue neon, read, “Tire Shop.” Sweeney knew about this place the way you knew which delis had blind spots under the curved mirrors, which stoops to avoid past nine o’clock at night, knew the ephemeral but real jurisdictions of Brooklyn Latinos and blacks and Italians. That is to say, he didn’t know how he knew but he knew.

  Housed in an inauspicious, three-story red-brick building, there were apartment windows on the second floor, and, facing the street, a pair of bulkheads and two scrolling metal doors. The first was always open, admitting legitimate traffic from the street. Tilted, teetering columns of retreads and a cave of pneumatic wrenches and water basins and oil spills. The second metal door was opened only three or four times a month, its bay separated from the legitimate business by half of a brick wall, open just above eye level.

  Most of the building, despite appearances from the street, was hollow. And the south end, the second floor, was the domain of Nose. From here, from his swivel chair with duct-taped arms, beside his smoldering coffeepot, between a pair of gray metal filing cabinets leaking forged receipts, he watched his blue-overalled kids pop beads and seal leaks and glue retread, touch up Goodyear lettering with white paint. And over the brick divider, he sometimes watched the offloading of untaxed cigarettes, cases of booze, stereo equipment meant for New Jersey.

  The Nose wasn’t a bad man. His ambitions were tempered by his pragmatism. His specialty was hijacking. Not especially bright, he knew enough to know his limitations. Liked to keep things simple. No numbers games or dope dealing for old Nose, no protection rackets or herds of whores. No, he liked the basic equation of shit coming in, shit going out. And because he paid up the ladder without complaint, and because he was careful with his kids (no rats, ever), he was respected. He got the good tables, sat with the capos, kissed the right cheeks, swung his admirable schnoz out across the constant trickle of cash, the tidal ebb and flow, without apparent envy or calculation.

  He also knew how to manage his employees. If he caught one of his kids with his dick in his hands, leaning on an elbow, taking more than a few minutes to smoke a cigarette, he’d rap hard on the glass with the ruby ring on his second finger. The sound penetrated even the echoing clatter of the tire shop. One rap, a warning. Two raps, think about looking for another job. Third rap, finger across his throat, pack your shit, get out.

  Eddie led Sweeney into the first concrete bay, into the odo
rs of rubber and oil, the hollow cacophony of ratchets, and up a rickety wooden staircase against the southern wall. He knocked on the wooden door.

  “Yeah, what is it?” A voice like nails in a rock tumbler.

  Eddie opened it a few inches. “Boss? I got my cousin.” Gone was the cocksure Eddie who strutted into church picnics with a six pack. In his place, an obsequious peon, a court jester already apologizing for bad jokes.

  “All right, all right. Jesus, don’t stand out there all day.”

  Jimmy the Nose sat with his feet up on his desk. Clipboard in his hands. Gnawed pencil in his hands. Smaller than you’d expect, slimmer. An old man gone ageless. He was Milton Berle, Dick Clark, George Burns with a rotten apple for a nose. And Jesus, what a nose. A robust, rosacean, bloom. It was J. P. Morgan, W. C. Fields, Bill Clinton on a bad day. Make matters worse, the Nose had the bad habit of compulsively sniffing at things, smelling the most random crap. He’d touch his desk then smell his hands. Sniff his tie, his shirt cuffs, sign a check then sniff the paper. Just try not to look at that thing.

  “What’s your name kid?” The pencil found a home behind his ear.

  Eddie said, “Cosmo Aniello.”

  “Was I talking to you?”

  Sweeney waited a beat, then said, “Cosmo. Sir.”

  “Aniello. You related to Pauly Aniello? Up in the Village?’

  “Down the line somewhere, I think. Yessir.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Twelve, sir.”

  “Don’t overdo the sirs, kid. You’re making me blush.” But he looked approving.

  “Okay.”

  “You got a bike kid?”

  “Had one, yessir. Got ripped off a couple weeks ago.”

  “Yeah?” He showed interest. “You catch the punk what did it?”

  “I got some ideas.”

  “Never let em get away with it. My advice to you? Never let nobody get away with it. You show weakness, they keep coming for you. People are jackals.”

  “Yessir.”

  “What’s in the bag.” A backpack by Cosmo’s ankles.

  “Books. Schoolbooks.”

  Eddie chimed in. “This kid’s smart, boss. Reading all the time. Always got a book. Regular Shakespeare, this kid.”

  “Shakespeare, huh.” The Nose said it with equal parts contempt and calculation. He rubbed his forefinger under his nose, sniffing. He touched an eyebrow, mentally rearranging a chessboard. “All right, kid. We need somebody to clean up the place, push a broom. Think your big brain’ll let you be a janitor for a while?”

  “Yessir. You bet.”

  “You bet. Okay. Shakespeare, broom pusher. Time to time, you’ll be running pick ups and drop offs. You’ll need a bike.” He leaned up on one hip for his money clip. Found a couple wrinkled bills and pushed them across the desk. “Here’s an advance. I’ll take it out of your first paycheck.”

  A twenty and a ten. What kind of a bike cost thirty bucks? “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” He sat back in his chair, turning his attention to his window overlooking the bays. The boys working down below. “Now getcher asses out of here.”

  ~

  Despite himself, Sweeney’s become attached to his old International. Every backfire and steering wheel wobble has the comfort of the familiar. Attachments are unavoidable, he supposes, if only because the alternative eats you alive.

  His long term plan? Keep the air moving in and out of his lungs.

  Short term? Take Aggie out to a nice dinner. Wring out his credit card for its last few hundred bucks. Maybe pay cash from the dead guy’s wad, though that feels like flirting with fate. Feed her a decent bottle of red wine and drop to a knee. Show her the ring.

  He’s already running late, though. And so opts for the scenic route.

  Five minutes out of downtown, he turns east, drives under the interstate on gravel toward the Absarokas. After a couple miles of washboard, he finds his favorite wide spot in the road. The town of Rockjaw distant behind him; ahead of him thataway, his cabin.

  From under the seat, Sweeney pulls out his binoculars. As the crow flies, the cabin’s less than ten miles away. Half-hidden in ponderosa, a brown metal roofline amidst the clutter of pine branches.

  The name of his handyman business, “Anything for Money,” tends to sometimes be taken literally. Harmless old Ted Sweeney, sure; neutered by circumstances, yes. But there must still be some last vestige of the old Cosmo, some lingering scent of past violence, because people keep coming to him with problems. “Anything for money? I might have some work for you.” The last few years, he’s once or twice done some strongarm stuff, jobs on the edge of ethically iffy. The guy who owns that cabin? A rancher, a millionaire, but seven-thousand scenic acres on the edge of National Forest couldn’t keep him from losing his only son to skinheads up by Troy, Montana. Some kids get hooked on dope, meth, but this kid, sixteen years old and jerking off to Sarah Palin, found a compound full of neo-Nazis.

  Sweeney followed the kid’s stolen credit cards up to a third world cul de sac of Airstreams on blocks, German Shepherds on heavy chains. Sapped the boy off a bar stool and drove him back to Rockjaw, sedated and handcuffed to the door handle. One day to drive up, half an hour to find the kid, one day to drive back. Three thousand dollars. But better than the money, the old man made Sweeney a promise. “That cabin up there? Soon as you can get me a decent down payment, it’s yours.”

  Next year Sweeney’ll be thirty-eight. Two orbits away from forty, which is a whole new ball of wax. And here’s what he’s got to show for it. A good dog and an old International. A ring in his pocket and the hope for a cabin in the woods. A place where he might finally shake the sad etch-o-sketch called Ted Sweeney and start twisting all knobs anew. And while he’s honest enough to know that the idealized vision could never survive the light of reality, he’s romantic enough to hang onto the vision by his ragged fingernails.

  Used to be, he’d walk down 86th street and cars would slow. Blonds would watch him in their makeup mirrors. The toughest men would pick at a spot on their lapels. His car (a sweet old Caddy, forget about it) was known from Dyker Heights to Coney Island.

  In Montana, though, the Feds found him a pressman’s job with the local paper. Rolls of newsprint, forklifts, electric dollies. He’d come home smelling like a house cat doused in diesel, his throat thick with the insults swallowed off his prissy little shift manager. Sweeney in blackface printer’s ink, yasser yasser, thinking, I’ll break your knees, cocksucker. He was going through a screwdriver phase, and when the orange juice ran out, he’d swig vodka straight from the bottle. He used to be somebody.

  Feds had encouraged Billings. But he’d taken one look at the oil refineries, the badlands rimrocks, the strip malls, and said no, uh uh, no way. Ugly little city. For once, his wife had backed him up. “Don’t you have anything, you know, pretty?” So they’d settled on Rockjaw. Where the mountains came down straight to the river and the river ran through the middle of town and geese swam in the park.

  Five years and a divorce later, him and Aggie became an item. His bad luck to fall for a woman who’s got all these unreasonable expectations about truth. Two divorces behind her, a pair of pre-Sweeneys each of whom kept saying, love you, love you, love you, right up to the point where they hit the road, she has said often that what she digs most about Sweeney is his honesty. Their first date, as the salad plates were being taken away, she said, “Nothing I hate worse in the world than a liar. What about you?”

  And Sweeney, no stranger to the Reid technique of criminal interrogation, kept non-aggressive eye contact, maintained even breathing and refrained from swallowing (a bobbing Adam’s apple is a dead giveaway). Said, “I couldn’t agree more.”

  Tony Castori’s always been vain. Even as a teenager, a dime bag schwag dealer in the South Brooklyns, Castori (AKA, Tony Castle, AKA, Tony the Trigger) dumped half his nut into clothes. His first collar? He was thirteen years old and walking out of Bloomingdale’s in
a jacket with tags tucked up under the cuffs. A security guard came out of nowhere, twisted up his collar. Sweet little silk number, that jacket. He still regrets the loss.

  Nowadays, working second to Donnie Moretti, five years away (tops) from capo, he’s got the scratch to indulge himself. Imagines that good clothes give him an extra, more fearsome edge. In any case, there’s nothing like standing in front of a three-way mirror, fitting a new pinstripe number while some spic kneels with chalk, marking the hem. Who’s short now, motherfucker. Who’s a dago now, asshole. He’s told his kid brother, his protégé, “First impressions, Fontana. I ever see you out the front door without a tie, I’m kicking your ass back upstairs.”

  But three days in pissant Montana? Damn if his world hasn’t gone completely upside down. The place is all felt shirts and baseball caps. Hiking boots. Yesterday, he sat on the edge of his motel bed, one foot up, putting a final shine on his loafer. Said to his brother, “Okay, I’m going over a that little town with the airport. Flash them photos around, see what I come up with. You keep doing what we been doing. Eddie’s wife shows up, keep an eye on her, gimme a call.”

  In Bozeman, he found a decent barber shop, which put him in a better mood, getting a nice wet trim. The barber said, “Brooklyn, huh?” Turns out the guy’s got cousins in Dyker Heights. “You ever eat at The Seven Hills?”

  “You kidding? They got my picture on the wall. They got a drink named after me. The Tonytini. Two olives, two onions, kicks you in the ass.”

  Back in his car, he called his wife. “Yeah, hey, how you doing. Yeah, still in Miami…no, it’s all right, we got a pool, hey listen…okay, you listening? What? Okay, well you tell that punk kid he ever gets his ears pierced…hey, chiudere il becco. Your fuckin mouth, okay? You listen. Tell our son he ever gets his ears pierced I’m cutting them off and nailing them to the fuckin wall, okay?” His next call went to his piece of ass on the side, an effeminate queen named Eric or sometimes Erica. Don’t ask, don’t tell. Tony’s voice went gentle, tender. “Heya bella, it’s me. Just you know wondering what I could do all the way from Montana to make you happy.” Those were personal calls. The next call, however, was business. Using a burner he’d just bought from Walmart. “Yeah, hey, it’s Tony. No, nothing yet. How long you want…Okay, okay, Donnie. Just asking here. Just asking. Okay. I’m just, Fontana and me, we’re just getting tired of, I mean, Montana. Like the Sahara only without the sand, you see what I’m saying?”