IT WAS A January afternoon, but I had the rental-car windows wide open because the whipping breeze, salted by the Atlantic Ocean shimmering on my right, was mild and humid. The towns rolling by coalesced into sprawl: Port St. Lucie, Vero Beach, Palm Bay, Titusville. Exiting Route 95 at Daytona, I made a couple of quick left turns and pulled into the nursing-home parking lot.
“I’m here to see Erwin Slomanson. I believe he’s in Room 17C.”
The attendant, a Black male nurse, led me down the hall and opened a door. “Slow Motion! You got a visitor!”
A while back, I had brought the Panera guys what I thought was some news, telling them that my dad had heard that Rip had died. They surprised me by reacting skeptically. I think it was Chooch Boscola who said, “Rip did that before—put out a rumor that he died.” Toward what end, nobody knew. I decided I should devote some time to seeing if he was still around. None of the guys had been in contact with him for a long time. They agreed, though, that he had been in Florida for years.
Eventually I got the phone number of somebody named Debbie, who was either a niece of Rip’s or the daughter of an old friend of his. I called. She was happy to talk about Rip. Yes, as far as she knew he was alive. She gave me the name of the nursing home—and a heads-up. “I was down there in Florida with him a few years ago,” she said. “We were in a bar. This guy was hitting on me. He kept at it, the way some guys do. All of a sudden Rip sticks a gun up to his head and says, ‘She said no, OK?’ That’s Rip.”
The door opened into a pleasant room with two beds, a table between them, and a TV. Both beds were neatly made. Rip was sitting on one of them, dressed in a blue-and-white checked shirt, jeans, and sneakers. He was thin and, for a man in his late eighties, looked quite fit. He had white hair and a frothy white mustache. When I came in he was playing solitaire on the bed. A cartoon was on the TV.
I had called in advance. He didn’t seem to remember. He reacted to my introduction of myself as though he hadn’t heard it before. “You’re Tony Shorto’s son? Holy shit! Russ’s grandson! No kidding!”
He had a bright, friendly voice; he exuded cheery energy. I could see my dad, seventy years earlier, getting caught up in it. He had apparently been all over the country in his time, from Chicago to Miami, but Johnstown was his prime. He remembered. As I brought up names, he had stories. “George Sapolich was a boxer—I used to run around with him, but he had a different perspective on life than me. He just wanted to hold on to his territory. I wanted to expand, to get out of town. Mike Gulino! Mike was a flashy guy. He had control of certain areas. Russ Shorto … very quiet. Little Joe! Oh, man. Little Joe hired me to do jobs. He’d want me to go get money from whoever owed him.”
“How did you do that?”
“I had a gun! A .48. I’d stick it in the guy’s face. Go right up to him, in a bar or wherever, I didn’t care. I’d beat the shit out of them. I was pretty well known. They didn’t fuck with me. Jesus, you’re bringing back memories! Hey, what was your last name?”
I had to pause a second. “Shorto.”
“No shit! Are you related to Tony?”
“Yes. His son.”
“So you must be related to Russ!”
It went on like that. He would burrow down into some little moment from deep in the ’50s, recalling all the color and juice of it, then his brain would hit the Reset button.
“So my dad, Tony Shorto. You met in prison?”
“Yeah! I was the boss of the Cat Gang! We had DAs, twelve-inch pegs, three-inch rises. We were notorious! We robbed Penn Traffic! We’d go beat people up.”
“Tony did that?”
“Oh, yeah. Well, Tony didn’t like that much. He was a little different. Most of the guys in the gang, they were lonely, depressed, had nobody to talk to, so they hung out together. Tony wasn’t like that. He was … personable.”
“You went with my parents when they ran away to get married.”
“Yeah! We went to South Carolina, I think. Somewhere down South. Your mother was a sweetheart.”
“Tell me about Pippy.”
“Pippy! He and I had a big disagreement about a bet. I had a fight with him. I was pretty bad in those days. Six-foot, one-eighty-five and all muscle. I was notorious!”
I took a breath. I had never asked this question before. I tried to say it in a relaxed manner. “Did you kill him?”
“Me? Nooooo! Pippy was all right. We tolerated each other.”
“Did … do you have any ideas about what happened to him?”
“I remember exactly how it happened.”
“What? You were there?”
“Sure. He came into the cigar store, flashing money—two pocketfuls of hundreds. They had pool games for money. Christ, there was like two thousand bucks on the table. There was an after-hours club next door. Later I was up there and he was up there. I saw him being a big deal. He liked to be a big deal. There were these three guys up there. I don’t know who they were but I know they were from Greensburg. There was a lot of trouble with guys from Greensburg trying to get into Johnstown. Little Joe had to keep them out. Pippy interfered—got into their territory. That’s why he got killed.”
“And you think the guys from Greensburg did it?”
“Or Little Joe.”
“What?”
“Pippy went back and forth. He would work for Little Joe, but then go work for the guys in Pittsburgh. And that’s against the rules. I don’t know who killed him. But Little Joe could have had somebody come in and do it.”
“Why wouldn’t Little Joe get you to do it?”
“Me? I didn’t want to get involved in killing. I was too good-natured! I was mean … but I was good-natured.”
There was a little hiccup in his eyes. I thought a memory had surfaced, that the incongruity of “mean” and “good-natured” might have shaken something loose. He looked at me closely. I waited.
“What’d you say your name was?”