Chapter 23
Frank was sitting at a table in the back area of the bar when Pasquale walked in, minutes after one o’clock. His cousin knew his penchant for punctuality and had made certain to come on time. He stood up and motioned to the back door. “Let’s talk outside.”
Pasquale frowned. “Are you crazy, Frankie Delano? It’s hotter than Jerusalem outside.”
“I’m not talking business in here, so the decision is yours. Out or in?”
“Okay. Outside.”
Frank walked to the rear door and opened it, heat hitting him in the face like a blast from a hot furnace.
However, he had no intention of talking to Pasquale in a place that could’ve been bugged by law enforcement, who believed every Italian business was a front for illegal activity.
There were several chairs positioned under beach umbrellas to shield them from the summer sun.
“I want you to unbutton your shirt before you sit down,” Frank ordered Pasquale.
“What the fuck!”
“Just do it, Patsy,” Frank said, calling his cousin by his boyhood name.
Pasquale slowly blinked. “You think I’m wearing a wire?”
“Just do it, or this meeting is over.” He watched as Pasquale undid the buttons on his shirt and pulled it up to display his chest and back.
“Satisfied?”
“Sit down,” Frank said, not answering him. He took a chair opposite his cousin, who hadn’t bothered to button his shirt. Looping a leg over the opposite knee, he laced his fingers together, bringing the forefinger of his left hand to his mouth. “I’m listening,” he said in a quiet voice.
Pasquale glanced down at the red-and-white-checkered plastic tablecloth. “I’ve been approached to ask you if you’re willing to move a couple of kilos for them.”
Frank glared at Pasquale as if he’d lost his mind. He closed his eyes, counting slowly to ten. “I can’t believe you’re asking me to become involved with narcotics. Have you forgotten that your cousin Donella overdosed on heroin?”
“That was a long time ago, Frankie,” Pasquale said.
“It’s fucking not long enough to forget the shit was responsible for taking my sister’s life.
And you can tell whoever sent you that he’s lucky it was you and not someone else asking me to become involved with drugs, because I would’ve put a bullet in their head, then cut it off and sent it back in a box. ”
“If Sal was still alive, he—”
“I’m not my father!” Frank said, cutting him off. “And you’re wrong about him, because even before Donella died, he swore the D’Allesandro name would never be linked to drugs.”
Pasquale leaned forward; his blue eye darkened until it was hard to tell it from the brown one. “Please don’t tell me that you forgot how my uncle made his money?”
“Those days are over, cugino,” Frank said softly.
“I’m a legitimate businessman, and that’s the way it will be from now on and for future D’Alessandros.
” He paused. “If you continue to fuck around with narcotics and get caught, you’ll be locked up so long that you won’t be around to see your grandchildren make you a great-grandfather. ”
“I should’ve known not to come to you with this, because you do more for your Black bitch’s son than—” Pasquale’s words died on his lips when Frank backhanded him across the face so hard that he fell over backwards in his chair.
Frank rose, stood over his cousin, and put his foot on his throat. “You’re lucky you are my mother’s nephew, because she would be devastated if I murdered her dead brother’s son.” He leaned down at the same time he removed his foot off Pasquale’s throat. “We’re done here.”
Pasquale got up and buttoned his shirt, then walked back into the bar, Frank staring at his retreating back.
It was as if he were reliving the scene five years before when recently paroled Pasquale Festa had stormed into his aunt’s home, spewing venom.
Gianna’s brother had done his eldest son a disservice when he never disciplined him whenever he did something wrong.
It had always been the other person’s fault.
When Pasquale had been picked up for robbing a drugstore, his father paid the owner for the merchandise and warned his son not to do it again.
But he did do it again. By the time he was twenty, he’d begun shaking down Black number runners at gunpoint, taking their money and policy slips.
Then it came to an abrupt stop when he assaulted a police officer who’d stopped him in a stolen car.
He was tried, convicted, and sentenced to serve ten years in the Sing Sing Correctional Facility.
Frank’s father would occasionally send Pasquale’s wife money to appease Gianna after her brother passed away, but once Sal was buried, the money stopped.
Frank refused to continue to take care of Pasquale’s family once it was verified that his cousin’s wife was sleeping with men to supplement her welfare check.
And when she wrote her husband to tell him Frankie Delano had stopped giving her money, Pasquale told her he would make him pay for going back on his promise to take care of his wife and children.
Frank flopped down on the chair, ignoring the heat, when he should’ve returned to the bar. Sighing, he closed his eyes. He didn’t know why, but he suddenly felt old. As if he’d lived two lifetimes in one, and that he was eighty-four rather than forty-two.
He needed a break. The last week in July, when he would go away with Justine, couldn’t come fast enough. He planned to spend more than a week with her on an island, where he could forget everything going on back on the mainland.
Frank realized Pasquale had become like his kidney that had become so painful and diseased, it had to be removed.
He opened his eyes to stare at the back of his right hand.
His knuckles were bruised from backhanding his cousin.
Pasquale didn’t know how lucky he was, because if any other man had said to him what he did, he wouldn’t have hesitated to crush his windpipe.
He got up and went inside the bar to order a cold beer.
He smiled at the barmaid when she asked if he was okay.
He reassured her that he was, but Frank wasn’t certain about Pasquale Festa, who’d decided to become involved in narcotics because he realized he could make a lot more money than working in the city’s Meatpacking District.
Not only were narcotics dirty; it was also a dangerous business.
It was inevitable that his cousin would soon find out.
Kenny opened his eyes and reached over to answer the telephone.
It seemed as if he’d just gotten into bed to get some sleep when the ringing of the phone jolted him awake.
If he’d thought about it, he would have turned off the ringer.
There were times when he loathed asking his mother to install an extension in his bedroom because he was tired of going into the kitchen to answer the wall phone.
“Hello,” he drawled.
“Kenny?”
“Yeah.” A girl had called him.
“Kenny, it’s me, Larissa. Did I wake you up?”
Going on an elbow, he stared at the clock on the bedside table. It was after eleven in the morning. “Yeah. I had to get up early this morning to drive my mother and her friend to the airport for a six o’clock flight to Puerto Rico.” Frank had given him permission to use his car during his absence.
“How long will be they be away?”
“A week. Why?”
“Do you want to come up to Riverdale today and hang out with me?”
Kenny fell back on the pillows. He liked Larissa, and thought of her as the three B’s: brilliant, beautiful, and brazen.
She achieved a near-perfect score on the SAT and earned scholarships to Brown, Spelman, and Yale.
She’d decided on Spelman, because her mother had graduated from Howard University, and she also wanted the experience of attending a Black college.
“Maybe another time, Larissa. I’m planning to stay in today.”
“Do you want company? You don’t have to answer that, because I’m coming.”
Before Kenny could tell her no, he heard the dial tone, indicating she’d hung up. He tried calling her back, but after counting off ten rings, he placed the receiver on the cradle and then swept back the sheet.
Today he wanted to sleep in late and spend the rest of the day listening to music.
Frank had given him two checks for graduation.
One to purchase a turntable and speakers he’d been talking about, and the second to purchase books and what he called “ancillary things” to ensure a smooth transition from high school to college.
Between his mother and Frank, Kenny had learned to budget his earnings, purchasing only what he deemed a necessity.
And that necessity was adding to his record collection.
Twice a month, after his shift ended at the restaurant, he’d walk across town from East to West Harlem to stop at the Record Shack on 100 Twenty-Fifth Street to purchase records.
His taste in music ranged from R&B, to soul, to pop.
He’d purchased a few jazz records featuring Nina Simone, John Coltrane, Herbie Hancock, Eddie Palmieri, and Vince Guaraldi.
His mother had teased him, saying he was too young to have cultivated a taste in jazz when he should’ve been listening to popular Motown artists like the Temptations, Four Tops, Martha and the Vandellas, the Supremes, Marvin Gaye, and Smokey Robinson and the Miracles.
There were a few times when he’d caught his mother dancing and finger-popping whenever he played Motown, and Kenny wondered if she had missed going to school dances and house parties because she’d married right after graduating high school.
That was something he vowed to avoid at all costs.
He planned to enjoy going to college while earning both baccalaureate and master’s degrees to become a certified social worker.