CHAPTER FIFTEEN

 

 

Tommy was superstitious, partly from his religious beliefs, but more from his own paranoia. He would see a black cat, then look for something bad to happen. When it did, it would confirm his belief in curses and bad luck. He combated his fear of bad luck by sticking to routines which didn't seem to bring it about. Of course, being a creature of habit wasn't a good thing for a gangster or anyone who made a lot of enemies. Every other Tuesday, he would go to Joe's Barbershop on 12th Avenue. Today, he had sat in the chair, his face covered in a warm towel.

The man with the Tommy gun got out of a black sedan and looked around for the barbershop. It would have been easy to walk in and kill Tommy and his two men had he not been driven to a pet shop with the same address but on 12th Street. The shooter would have liked to pop the driver for getting it wrong, but he had a job to do. Twenty minutes later, they had the correct address, but, by the time they got there, an old man was sitting in the chair.

One might say it was Tommy's lucky day were it not for the fact that he was known to have lunch at a small Italian restaurant after every hair cut. Tommy, clean-shaven, with perfect hair, sat with a couple of men and a friend who owned a car dealership. A bottle of red and a bottle of white wine were brought to the table just as the shooting started.

Jake Holcomb, of Holcomb Cadillac, took three bullets with Tommy's name on them. It took but a second for Tommy to flip the table and find cover. He fired back, but it was too late. This was life in the jungle. As soon as there was a perceived weakness, predators would strike. He was lucky to have his big friend dining with him. Tommy would have liked to blame a black cat or a broken mirror, but he knew it was the journal that was the source of his curse.

***

Sal would think about the kid now and again. Kid was his first friend and, thus far, the only one. It had been a few years, but he remembered the sound of Tommy guns cracking in harmony with the crescendo of breaking glass and two soprano waitresses hitting the high note called terror. The kid was hit five times and likely died before he hit the floor. "A cost of doing business," Tommy had said. It left a bad taste in Sal's mouth.

He sat finishing his lunch. Three degenerate gamblers stopped in to drop off envelopes. The advertising had worked. Sal counted each envelope, carefully made a coded note on a piece of paper, and dismissed them. When he finished lunch, his current driver took him to drop off the cash.

Sal walked into the office to hear Tommy screaming. The blonde secretary, wearing a tight pink sweater that accented her considerable secretarial skills, looked mortified. Tommy was prone to screaming, and she usually took it in stride. She could normally be found reading a magazine or doing her nails, but today she just sat stone-cold still. Sal saw her open her mouth, presumably to let him in on what was going on but then thought better of it. The sound of a bottle smashing against the wall said it all.

Sal had, quite on his own, started using a specific knock: long, short, short. Then he would wait until Tommy told him to enter. It hadn't taken long before Tommy had started to recognize him and to call him by name. Sal was a thinker, and he imagined there might come a day, when Tommy, in a rage, would shoot somebody through the door expecting someone else. He was volatile like that. This was how Sal's brain worked, always planning, always asking 'what if.'