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Chapter One
1989
Vinnie Callabrese stood on the southeast corner of Second Avenue and St. Marks Place in New York City and watched the candy store across the street. The fat man was due any minute.
Vinnie felt neither guilt nor anxiety about what he was going to do. In fact, the only emotion he felt at that moment was impatience, because he could see the marquee of the St. Mark's Theater 80 in the next block, and he knew that Touch of Evil started in eight minutes. Vinnie didn't like to be late for a movie.
Vinnie's nose was Roman, his hair and beard thick and black, his eyes dark. He knew how to concentrate those eyes on another man and induce fear. Vinnie wasn't the heaviest muscle who worked for Benedetto, but he stood six-two and weighed a tightly packed one hundred and ninety pounds.
The fat man weighed more than three hundred pounds, but he was soft to the bone. Vinnie wasn't worried, except about the time.
With six minutes left before the movie, the fat man double-parked his Cadillac Sedan De Ville at the opposite corner, struggled out of the big car, and waddled into the candy store. Vinnie gave him long enough to reach his office, then crossed the street. The place was empty, except for the old man who made the egg creams and sold the cigarettes. Vinnie closed the door, worked the latch, and flipped the OPEN sign around. He looked at the old man and gave him a little smile. "You're closed," he said, "for five minutes."
The old man nodded resignedly and picked up the Daily News.
Vinnie strode past the magazine racks, his leather heels echoing off the cracked marble floor,and put his hand on the doorknob of the back room. He opened it very gently and peeked into the little office. The fat man sat, his gut resting on the battered desk. With one hand he was flipping quickly through a stack of small bills, and the fingers of his other hand flew over a calculator in a blur. Vinnie was momentarily transfixed. He had never seen anything quite like it, the fat man was a virtuoso on the calculator.
The man looked up and stopped calculating. "Who the fuck are you?" he asked.
Vinnie stepped into the office and dosed the door behind him. "I'm a friend of the guy who loaned you five thousand dollars nine weeks ago," he said. His accent was heavy -- New York and Little Italy.
The fat man managed a sour grin. "And you've just come to make a polite call, huh?"
Vinnie shook his head slowly. "No. The polite guy was here last week, and the week before that, and the month before that."
"So you're the muscle, huh?" the fat man said, grinning more widely and leaning back in his chair. His right hand remained on the edge of the desk. It was a long reach over his gut, and it didn't look natural. "You ever heard of the law, guinea? You ever heard that what your friend does is against the law? That he has no legal claim on me, not even a piece of paper?"
"You gave my friend your word," Vinnie said slowly. "That was good enough for him. Now you've disappointed him." The fat man's fingers curled over the top of the desk drawer and yanked it open, but Vinnie moved faster. He caught the fat man by the wrist, then turned and drove an elbow into his face. The fat man grunted and made a gurgling sound but didn't let go of the desk drawer. Without a pause, Vinnie lifted a foot and kicked the drawer shut. A cracking sound was heard in the room.
The fat man screamed. He snatched his hand from Vinnie's grasp and held it close to his bleeding face. "You broke my fingers!" he whimpered. He wouldn't be doing any calculating for a while.
Vinnie bent over, grabbed a leg of the chair in which the fat man sat, and yanked. The fat man fell backwards into a quivering heap. Vinnie opened the desk drawer and found a short-barrelled .32 revolver. He lifted his shirttail and tucked it into his belt. "This is a dangerous weapon," he said. "You shouldn't have it; you'll end up hurting yourself." Vinnie reached for the stack of bills on the desk and started counting. The fat man watched with an expression of pain that had nothing to do with his bleeding face or his broken fingers. Vinnie stopped counting. "Five hundred," he said, sticking the wad into his pocket and returning a few ones to the desktop. "My friend will apply this to the interest on your loan. On Friday, he'll want all the back interest. A week from Friday, he'll want the five grand."
"I can't raise five thousand by then," the fat man whined.
"Sell the Cadillac," Vinnie suggested.
"I can't; it's got a loan on it."
"Maybe my friend will take the Cadillac in payment," Vinnie said. "I'll ask him. You could go on making the payments."
"Are you nuts? That car is new -- it cost me thirty-five thousand."
"Just a suggestion," Vinnie said. "It would be cheaper just to come up with the five grand."
"I can't," the fat man whimpered. "I just can't do it."
"I'II tell my friend you promised," Vinnie said. He left the office and closed the door behind him.
Vinnie was in his seat, eating buttered popcorn, in time to raptly watch Orson Welles's incredibly long, one-take opening shot of Charlton Heston and Janet Leigh crossing the border into Mexico. He'd seen it at least a dozen times, and it never failed to amaze him. So much happening all at once, and yet the...
L.A. Times. Copyright © by Stuart Woods. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.
