Chapter 15
Sal bursts into a fit of laughter that seems to last minutes. With each laugh, his apparent stress and consternation melt away. His rotund belly quakes softly and then more heavily. It’s almost hypnotic.
“Kill him? Oh, hell no. He’s on the payroll. I thought you were here because of that.”
“I’m sorry…I don’t follow,” Amaya responds, her nose crinkling in confusion. “Payroll? He worked for you? But he wrote terrible reviews about your pizza place.”
“Oh yeah…well…he did…” Sal has a defense up once again.
“And?” Amaya demands.
“Well, I don’t want this getting out. Can I trust you?”
Amaya stares at him for a second as if mulling over her answer.
“Can I trust you?” Sal asks again, guarded like a typical New Yorker.
“Yes,” I interject before Amaya can respond. “I love your pizza, and we’d never want to ruin your business.” I must say it with enough sincerity, because Sal continues.
“He wrote the first Yelp review ’cause he and his girlfriend hated our pizza, but it riled up so many of our customers that they started coming back just to support us. He had the opposite effect; he drove business here.”
“So you paid him to write those bad Yelp reviews?” I say. This isn’t one of my true crime podcasts, but I can’t help trying to play detective. True crime rule number six: Always keep the suspect or witness talking.
“Yep. I mean, it got press. The review was featured on some millennial website, BuzzFill or BuzzKill or BuzzMill or something, and even more people were interested, which was wonderful, because as you can tell, business hasn’t been great.
” Sal gestures vaguely to the rest of the restaurant through the window.
“People loved our banter back and forth, and they expected me, Sal Lutrino, to have a bit of that Italian mobster break-your-kneecaps effect. I played it up, but I assure you, I’m just a man who makes pizza. ”
Sal continues, much more relaxed this time.
“Eventually, after all the laughs about the Yelp reviews were over, people stopped coming again. It’s too far for those Manhattan tourists and everybody else apparently.
Some of the neighborhood boys that used to come here all the time, they sold their houses to fancy developers and moved to fucking New Jersey.
The burbs!” Sal shouts like they committed the ultimate sin.
“So, I got the idea to get that guy to keep writing. For us to get into a real fight on Yelp. Maybe even get some press and get him and his girlfriend to come to the pizza shop—we hadn’t actually worked that part out yet.” Sal pauses as if just struck with a thought.
“Girlfriend?” I ask.
“Oh yeah, she was some woman. Black hair, slim, in her twenties. They seemed really in love…they were necking all over the place. Actually, why are you here? You said that you’re here because you thought that I had murdered…Wait a second, is James okay?”
Observing Sal’s happy demeanor dissipate almost immediately upon the realization that bad news is coming makes me feel sick.
Sal would not be one of the close friends and family that police would notify.
Most people probably didn’t even know they were friends.
I don’t want the awful news to come from us, virtual strangers.
“I—” Amaya begins.
“I’m so sorry to be the one who has to tell you this,” I respond quickly and solemnly. “He’s dead.” Given that I am the one who met the man, I feel it is my duty to be the one to tell him and not Amaya.
“Damn. That’s a shame. A pure shame. Although I thought that guy was an asshole, he really did agree to help us out in the end.” Sal’s lip quivers, and I wonder if he will break down in tears. I want to put my arm around him and comfort him. “What happened?”
“He was murdered. And we’re trying to find the person who did it,” I say with trepidation.
I wait with bated breath for the man to point an accusatory finger at me. I am, after all, the accused murderer. Instead, Sal seems absorbed in his own sadness.
“Is there anything I can do to help?” The stoic-seeming Sal Lutrino almost looks childlike as he sits at his desk, shock covering his face. The veneer of the Italian mobster character has disappeared, and I wish I wasn’t here for this private moment.
“We weren’t good friends, but he was a decent guy.
The months he wrote those reviews, and even tweeted some of ’em out for free, were the best revenue months in years.
He could have just told me to fuck off when I asked him to keep writing.
You know what he said to me? ‘If the pizza continues to be shitty, I’m happy to keep writing the truth. ’ ”
—
The pizza is not shitty. It is as delicious as it smells, and I feel sad that a business that has been around for decades with pizza this good is struggling to pay astronomical rent.
Some days it feels like the very things that make New York great, like local neighborhood restaurants and small bars, are being forced out, unable to compete in a city that’s become prohibitively expensive.
Sal turned over records demonstrating his payments to James at Amaya’s request, and with her promise that she’d not show them to anyone without his permission. He then invited us to have some pizza on the house.
“Did you know that Americans eat on average three hundred and fifty slices of pizza per second?” I tell Amaya.
“Let me guess, you got that from a podcast?”
“Nope, a Food Network show I watched with my parents,” I say, almost pointing finger guns at her but realizing I’ve already embarrassed myself enough at this point. I think I’m delirious from exhaustion, or at least I hope that’s why I’m acting like this.
Podcasts are the easiest medium for me to consume in my taxicab, where I spend the majority of my time. I also love to read and to watch television. Maybe because school is no longer an option for me, learning on my own has become even more important.
“What podcasts do you listen to the most?” Amaya asks as she bites into a pepperoni slice. I’m already into my second, my first proper food in days.
“Uh…” I have half a mind to say something sophisticated and cool, but I can’t think of anything, so instead I say the truth. “I love true crime.”
“True crime?! The closest you can get to it other than being a murderer is…” Amaya pauses “Er…sorry, I was just trying to say that criminal defense attorneys have a front-row seat to true crime cases. Ever consider law school? I mean, I know so many of us are assholes,” she says with a laugh. I don’t think she’s joking.
My eyes narrow like she’s decided to eat her pizza with a knife and fork. I don’t want to talk about this. There are two reasons I didn’t go to law school, but I only share one.
“I have a fear of public speaking,” I say.
It’s a generic but true answer and one that I hope will end the conversation.
One-on-one, I can tell people off like the best of them, but give me a crowd, and suddenly I’m paralyzed with fear.
It can all be pinpointed to a specific moment in my life.
I may have been eight or nine, and I had to recite a poem to my whole class as part of an English-as-a-second-language class graduation.
With sweaty palms and clenched fists, I recited the poem perfectly, my confidence growing, until I mispronounced a word, which resulted in rolling laughter from my classmates.
I’m pretty sure I’ll hold a lifelong grudge against the word colonel, and I’m grateful it never comes up in everyday conversation, despite the fact that my English is nearly perfect now.
I still worry about my accent, which has faded significantly but still lingers.
It’s why I’m careful to always speak slowly and pronounce each syllable.
I can’t speak in front of a judge, in a courtroom, or probably even to an imposing boss with any authority.
“You can get over that! And you don’t have to speak in public to be a lawyer, plenty of them just sit behind their desks.”
“I didn’t want to be one of those types of lawyers; not that there’s anything wrong with that work. I just always wanted to be in court.” Like you, I don’t say.
“It’s not too late.” When I don’t reply she says, “Lawyers are always trying to recruit more people to the dark side.” She’s inviting me to laugh to ease the tension. I can’t.
“It doesn’t feel important now. I didn’t go to law school.” I can feel the lump in my throat grow. I know she is well-meaning, one of those “you can do anything you set your mind to” people in this moment. She just doesn’t understand my situation.
I’m hoping to eat the rest of my pizza in silence when Amaya comes in hot with another question I don’t want to answer. I’m not enjoying the difficult conversation part of this pizza lunch…Dinner? Linner?
“How are your parents handling this?” she asks.
“I’d imagine not great.” I think of my parents with a pang of regret.
I should have gone straight home to them.
But I just can’t face them right now. Maybe if I go to them with some other leads, they will be less worried that I’ve screwed up my whole life—which thus far seems to just be one mistake after another.
All this stress won’t be good for my dad, either, probably accelerating his heart condition—making me responsible for that too.
“I can’t imagine. I mean, my parents wouldn’t be doing great either.”
Amaya must understand better than anyone else what it’s like growing up with Sri Lankan immigrant parents with high expectations, who want their children to do well and be good in the world.
At the same time, does she really understand?
My parents are still reeling from the death of my brother, the prized perfect eldest child, and now maybe I’ll be locked away forever.
I’ve always been a consolation prize, and now even that is gonna be taken away.
On top of it all, we’re probably bound to lose the house any day as the bills continue to mount and I’ve not worked for the past few days.
Anger hits me suddenly. I know better than to direct it outward toward Amaya, so I bite down on it and swallow it like a slice of my pizza.
She’s just trying to help. It isn’t her fault that I was arrested and that my life has turned out like this.
“Thanks,” I say, avoiding Amaya’s eye.
There’s an uncomfortable silence before Amaya starts typing away at her phone. I assume it’s more emails.
“I found James’s LinkedIn. Seems that he worked at a tech company. New Frontier. Have you heard of it?”
I’m grateful that we’re back to discussing the investigation.
“I haven’t,” I respond, knowing my brief answers are bordering on rude, but the exhaustion is catching up with me, and today feels like a total bust. I’m waiting for the case to be cracked wide open like on my podcasts.
I guess binge listening to podcasts created for maximum dramatic effect makes me want instant gratification.
All we’ve found out is that James wasn’t a terrible person, even if he left the occasional gruff review.
“Looks like they have an office in Midtown Manhattan. I may be able to get some leads there.”
“That’s wonderful. Should I meet you there tomorrow?” I ask cautiously, remembering the onetime-only invitation to the investigation.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea…It’s really not protocol.”
There’s a hesitation in her voice that makes me think she isn’t asking me, not because my presence offends her or that I’m shit at investigating, but simply because it’s not the way things have been done before.
There are probably also some ethically complicated elements.
Though if people can represent themselves in court, how bad could it be if I helped in investigating my own case?
By her own admission, her office is understaffed.
“I’d really like to be there. This case is literally everything to me.
It’s my life. I promise to be quiet, to stay out of the way, and simply give you excellent directions.
Or maybe a funny story from my taxi driving.
I promise brilliant random facts. And maybe, just maybe, I can add something.
” I stop and realize this is the clearest and most authoritative I’ve probably ever sounded.
I am asking for what I want, for maybe the first time in my life.
I won’t push her more than this though. She is the attorney, and she knows best.
“Convincing argument, counsel. See you there tomorrow at eight a.m.,” she replies with a smile.