I stayed seated where I was, at the end of the bar. My father went over to Edward and Todd, spoke briefly, then came back to me.
“I won’t be long,” he said. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” I said, though in fact I was feeling very shaky. “Ah...I’m sorry about all this.”
“Stop it,” he said. “Give them nothing.” I nodded.
When he left, I stood at the window and watched until he was out of sight, then felt embarrassed, like a puppy with its nose pressed to the glass in a pet store window. I decided to remain where I was, seeing no reason to join Todd and Edward. What would we do, I asked myself: talk about politics, the environment, how you could never really hope to understand women? We were already engaged in a fairly high stakes round of liar’s poker. Truth was, I was so scared that I didn’t know if I could hold it together in their company without my father.
It was a ten-minute walk from the bar back to our apartment, so I figured it would be about a half hour before my old man returned. He’d been gone almost a full minute, and I was making a conscious effort not to look at my watch.
I stared out the window at the street. It was pretty much deserted that time of day. A couple of old ladies and young mothers with infants. A kid skipping school. Every so often the sound of the B pulling in above, and a moment or two later a small group of foreigners coming off whatever third-world swing shift would have them getting home now. They would barely hit the sidewalk before scattering in all directions and disappearing.
It was mostly Russians and Chinese, the wave of immigrants du jour in the neighborhood. When I was about ten it was Greeks. My father said that when he was a kid it was Jews from eastern Europe. Of course whenever more than twenty people from the same country wound up in the area everybody would scream that the place was shot to shit, and half of them would run over the Verrazano to Staten Island. But the funny thing was that most of the foreigners only stayed for ten years or so before they made the jump to the suburbs. When I was thirteen, it seemed like half the stores in the area had been bought by Greeks, but six years later I doubted if you could find more than two or three. And the ones who did hang around, their kids grew up—whether they were Greek or Chinese or whatever—acting as Italian as everybody else. All my life I’d been hearing that the neighborhood was changing, but it was still as guinea as the day I was born.
I thought about Lou. It didn’t seem possible that he would have set me up this way, but Todd and Edward had no reason that I could see to lie about it. It was virtually the only explanation for Tony backing out, and besides, my father appeared to have accepted it.
I didn’t know that I would have called Lou a friend, but I might have. We’d hung together more than a few times, gotten drunk, gone to the track, that sort of thing. It had always been with a group, but what difference did that make? I wondered who I could really trust. Who among my friends would go to the wall for me? I wasn’t sure, and felt like that had to say a lot more about me than it did about any of them.
Edward struck a match down at his end of the bar. He lit a cigarette and coughed softly. Todd muttered something, and they both laughed. I was getting more uncomfortable by the second. I didn’t want them to start talking to me, or worse, move down to where I was sitting. I made myself face front at first, keeping my back to them, but it wasn’t working. I felt too vulnerable. I swiveled the stool until it was at an angle where I looked out the window and at the door, but could keep them peripherally in sight.
The next few minutes ticked off in that same tense sort of stasis; me not saying anything, and only low murmurs from the other end of the bar. I forced myself to try to remain rational, if not calm. I knew for a fact that my father would take a bullet for me without blinking, but it did little to stem my paranoid fantasies of him boarding a plane to some South Seas isle with whatever valuable cargo was in the bag. I thought about what Edward would do to me if he didn’t return. Even if it wasn’t his fault. What if he got sick or had an accident or if the bag wasn’t there because someone else had found it? Then my father wouldn’t return right away, because he couldn’t come back empty-handed. He’d have to figure some contingency plan, and that would take time. I thought about the crew that jumped me and what had probably happened to them. It was doubtful that any of them were alive. And Dar, one of Todd’s own people.
The gentle pop of cracking ice broke the silence when Edward refilled his drink. I dug little canals out of the grime in the copper bar with the fingernails of my left hand as I tried not to scream. This was crazy. There was no reason to believe that they’d let us off even if we delivered the package. In fact, producing it was nothing but an admission of guilt. My father surely would have seen that if he’d had enough time to dope out the situation. If I’d told him the truth. If I hadn’t fucked up. I slid off the barstool, slowly, inching forward. I risked a sidelong glance down the bar and saw Edward already moving toward me. That sent me into full panic, and I threw myself at the door. I wrenched it open with Edward at my heels and was confronted by my father’s frame blocking the doorway.
He’d changed into a long winter coat, and he was carrying a duffel bag that I assumed contained the knapsack. His hair was uncharacteristically mussed up by the wind, and his expression was that of someone just discovering their hood ornament has been stolen.
“The fuck is going on?” he said, looking at me and Edward in the doorway. “Ringalevio? Hide-an’-seek?” He glanced at Edward’s hand, flat against the inside of the door. “Some service. I expected more of you. You takin’ lessons from that asshole outside?” He walked in.
Edward closed the door. I followed my father back along the bar toward Todd, Edward trailing the two of us. I hadn’t said anything and neither had Edward, but I was feeling like I’d really fucked up. Our chances of this working out seemed slim, and I had punted whatever guise of professional demeanor my father had managed to put on. His stance seemed to have changed, though. Before he left, he’d watched Edward like a hawk. Now, he seemed to be ignoring him entirely. He walked straight to Todd, and laid the duffel across the barstool in front of him.
“Shall we conduct a little business?” he said.
“By all means,” Todd replied. “Another cocktail?”
“Please.” My father’s grin was so wide that it gave his features an almost Oriental cast. I knew that look. It wasn’t really pleasure. It was the intensity of the play. I’d seen it at the track half a hundred times. I’d seen it at the crap games in the back of the candy store, and I’d seen it when he played poker at Tony’s club. It was the look that said the stakes were going up, things were getting serious.
Todd moved back around the bar and got four fresh glasses out. He added ice and poured Chivas in all of them. Edward had moved to Todd’s barstool, across from my father. The bag sat on the empty stool between them. Todd remained behind the bar. I stood as close to my old man as I could without actually hiding under his coat. He picked up his glass, nodded to Todd, and drained about half of it. Edward was covering my father as intensely as before. If being ignored bothered Edward, he didn’t show it. I wondered if he ever displayed any emotions. If he had any.
My father put his glass down and leaned over the bag. He pulled the top open and removed the black knapsack, setting it down on the bar next to his drink.
“Who wants the honor?”
“You’ve brought it this far,” Edward said. “Open it.”
My father looked over at him for a second, then back to Todd. “Your call,” he said.
“Open it,” Todd echoed. There was no fucking around in his voice now, no fake aristocracy. He sounded more tired than annoyed.
My father turned it around there on the bar once or twice, then opened the clasps that had nearly caused me a breakdown. I held my breath, half-expecting an explosion. He threw the flap open and looked inside.
“It’s empty,” he said flatly, staring into the bag. No one moved. Todd and Edward and I continued staring at the knapsack. “Kidding,” he said. “Just kidding.”
I started to shudder, and looked over at Edward, afraid he’d attack my father. It was what I would have done in his position. I felt like doing it anyway. As smart as he was, even I knew his timing was off now. I wondered just how nervous he might be.
He reached into the knapsack and removed a blue canvas drawstring bag pulled closed and sealed with a small padlock. It was about the size of a football. He laid it on the bar and sat back.
“Well,” he said. “Who wants to try on the glass slipper?”
“Have you opened it?” Todd asked.
“I didn’t know for sure I had it until about twenty minutes ago. No, I didn’t open it.”
Todd looked at Edward, who shrugged. He stood and reached under his coat, into his pants pocket, coming out with something that looked like a Swiss Army knife. He looked ridiculous holding the small tool, like a yeti with a salad fork. He cut the bag open across the top, clean, about an inch below the lock. He was slow and precise, and when he finished he gently laid the fabric on the bar. Then he pulled the bag open, blew into it, and turned it upside down. After shaking it carefully, a pile of what seemed to be straw spilled onto the copper surface. A small rock rolled free of the mess and came to rest in front of me. I picked it up and placed it on top of the pile. It looked like a tiny egg in a nest. I had always suspected that it was drugs, my father’s opinion notwithstanding. I figured there was a small brick of coke, or a bag of heroin in the middle of the hay.
Todd leaned forward and picked up the stone I had set down. He placed it back on the bar. Then he began probing the straw with his incredibly long fingers, pulling it apart and gracefully plucking out more rocks and putting them near the first. This went on in silence for about ten minutes, until the straw was reduced to a long thin mat, and there were about twenty small stones in a pile, ranging in size from a pea to a cat’s-eye shooter.
“My, my,” Todd said finally.
I couldn’t have put a finger on the moment it happened, but it seemed that the tension in the room had broken. Todd and my father looked relaxed, even Edward appeared almost human. He had picked up his glass and was sipping his drink. Idiot that I was, I was scanning the flattened straw for a sign of drugs.
My father picked up a stone, held it close in front of his face, and replaced it. “Uncut they really look like shit, don’t they?”
“That is why we deal with our Hebrew friends,” Todd replied. “It’s like spinning straw into gold.”
I looked at the pile of stones. Most were just gray rocks, smoother and rounder than gravel. The kind you’d find at the beach. One or two might have been just slightly opaque in spots, like ice cubes made with dirty water. “They’re diamonds?” I asked.
My father looked at me like I’d farted.
“Very good,” Edward said. “You get Rookie-of-the-Year.”
I started to reach for one, but stopped. There was something about them that made them seem dangerous in and of themselves. It felt like opening the knapsack. I was afraid they’d burn through my hands.
The deal was done, I realized. We’d find out if we could walk away.
“What’s it all worth?” my father asked.
“I couldn’t say,” Todd replied. “It depends on how they are cut.”
“It looks like a helluva lot of money.”
“I’m sure it is.”
My father picked up two of the stones. “I think we should get a little something for our trouble,” he said. “I’m not talking greed, just basic compensation. A souvenir.” He hefted the diamonds in his open palm, as though their weight would tell him something.
“No,” Todd said.
“That doesn’t seem quite fair.” My father closed his hand around the stones.
“For your trouble, as you put it, you get your life. You will not profit from your son’s impetuosity and disloyalty.”
“Let’s call a spade a spade then,” my father said, staring at Todd with his gambler’s grin. “We get our lives because our deaths would raise too many questions. My son’s impetuosity is making you two wealthy. And as for disloyalty, I’d ask the guys you set up to get this far.”
“All true. Now return them.”
“I think there’s some room for negotiation here.”
“You are a fool. I’ve already treated you with more respect than you deserve. Your position is untenable. This has little to do with money. You are a man whose existence is defined by an area no more than five hundred meters square from where we stand. I would be more stupid than you to permit you to leave here with them.” Todd’s voice had risen with impatience. I wished my old man would back down. “These things are virtually useless to you anyway,” he continued. “The only avenue of commerce available to you is the source from which they’ve been stolen. Sooner or later you would approach his confederates or his enemies. Either way he would find out. Or you will simply get drunk and attempt to use them to purchase a hamburger,” he sneered.
“Well,” my father leaned a little forward as he spoke. “If you...”
Edward backhanded him so fast that I didn’t really see it. His left arm became a blur below the shoulder, and my father went off his barstool as though he were made of styrofoam. The stool hit the floor, and my father came down on a formica-topped table that gave way under his weight and landed between the two red vinyl benches of the last booth. The stones he’d been holding flew across the room and landed somewhere beyond the area lighted by the bar lamps. Edward looked like he’d never moved.
I got to his side almost instantly, but my father was already trying to push himself up. I hooked my elbow around his, and managed to hoist him onto the seat of a booth so criss-crossed with gray electrical tape that it resembled the union jack. He stared at Edward as though he’d seen him spit fire. I didn’t sense fear, more a look of absolute disbelief. “You fuck,” he said slowly.
“It is time for you to leave,” Todd said. “The meeting is over.”
“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” I said, not quite whispering, but low, and only to him. Edward’s shot had been so sudden and unexpected that I hadn’t reacted to it for what it was at first. I went to my father’s aid as if he’d been hit by lightning, or, more to the point, a truck. The casual savagery of it settled on me as I watched my old man trying to focus, shaking his head sporadically, like a wet dog. I remembered the businesslike calm Edward displayed when he torched Nicky, and I began to get claustrophobic in the dark, narrow bar. My father was still sitting, and I didn’t like being so much taller. It made me feel like I was in charge.
“Take him and go,” Todd said to me. He and Edward were staring at us as if we were tropical fish.
As soon as they had what they wanted their interest in us had seemed to evaporate. Even I had figured that was the best we could hope for. I didn’t know what angle my father thought he was playing, but it looked like a miscalculation. I felt like we had to get away from there that minute. If we didn’t, they would change their minds and kill us, either because it made more sense, or because they were bored. I pulled at my father’s arm, gently but firmly, until he got to his feet. He took a step back toward Edward then stopped.
“You throw one hell of a party,” he said. “I hope one day to return the favor.”
Edward didn’t acknowledge him. I tugged at his arm, feeling like a little kid dragging a grown-up over to see something of great importance, like a turtle or a go-cart. I knew it looked at least that bad, but I was afraid past the point of humiliation. Nobody tried to stop us, and my father let me more or less lead him out.
“And you,” Edward said to my father’s back as we reached the door, “expected more of me.”
Twice I tried to say something during the walk home, but both times my father waved me off. He was moving slowly, and he wouldn’t let me help him. A block away from the bar he leaned over the trunk of a parked car and spat some blood into the gutter. The left side of his face was starting to puff out. I tried again as we were turning onto our street.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m really sorry. I know you don’t want to talk about it right now, but I just want to tell you that much.”
“Nothing to be sorry about,” he said.
“This whole mess. What they did to you. I’m sorry I put you in that spot.”
“What? I never got hit before? I never fell down?”
“You never had to take a shot like that. You never had to back off that way.” We climbed the stoop and I opened the inside hall door.
“How the hell do you know so much about what I didn’t have to do?”
“I never heard about it.”
“Oh yeah,” he said as we entered the apartment. “That would be the shit that you’d hear about. I talk about that all the time. What do you think, I brag about the fights I lost, or the times I been embarrassed? That’s right, I tell you everything. Just like you tell me.” He turned down the hall. “I’m tired,” he said. “I think I’m gonna lie down a while.”
“You want some ice for that?” I asked. If he heard me, he didn’t answer.