I swallowed but it got stuck halfway down my gullet. “I’m fired?”
I was about to protest, “But I’m blood, Mikey,” when he stopped me.
“You ain’t fired. In fact,” he leaned forward on the desk. “I need you to do some firing for me.”
I couldn’t help a smile crossing my face. I felt the new sweat on my forehead start to cool as the blood flowed out of my face and back to normal. I’d been spared.
“Whatever you need, Mikey. You know that.”
Mikey smiled. Pained and weak, but it showed I was one of the last people he could trust. I wondered where the really top guys were. Mikey’s bosses, and their bosses. How bad did this get and how high did it go? Not for me to wonder, I guess.
“It’s gonna mean some gun work,” he said.
I nodded. “You know I’m good for it.”
“You’ve always done right by us, Cam. Always.”
“Hey,” I said. “I’m family.” Subtle reminders never hurt. Sometimes I wonder if Mikey remembered. Not like I was on his Christmas card list or anything.
And a hit? Yeah, I’d done that before. Twice, in fact. It had been a while and the others weren’t exactly my best work, but when the coffin lid closes nobody cares how a guy died, only that he did.
Mikey stood, international symbol for ‘this conversation is over.’ A guy like him is all about the subtleties of body language. This business is all about it. Who shakes hands with who, and who goes first. Who stands when you enter a room and who waits until it’s time for you to leave. How big is the pucker when you kiss somebody’s ass.
“I’ll send over your first assignment tonight, okay, Cam?”
“Okay, Mikey.”
He took my hand. For a minute we were old friends again. Lifting cases of booze off trucks, working a guy over for a missing payment, sweating our balls off to get with Marie Fitzano.
“You do this well for us, we got more,” Mikey said. “You help us clean up the mess, and there’s a spot for you here. On the inside. For keeps. You get it?”
I smiled. “I got it. I’m your man.”
“’Cause you’re family,” he said.
I never felt more like it.
Gave my whole goddamn life for this family. I grew up hearing my mother bitch and moan about no good shiftless bastard Uncle Rocco. Why was he walking around like the king of shit mountain while my dad is dead in some army helicopter crash off some Pacific island? She hated Rocco and everything he stood for on his whole side of the family.
This was a guy I had to meet.
I started riding my bike across town to sit with him and his pals outside of a sandwich shop that served meatball grinders Rocco said would, “Make your dick hard, your arteries harder and your stomach solid steel.”
I got him and the boys coffee. I bought him his paper. I’d go down to DeLuca’s and get him the cannoli he liked special.
How could he not bring me in?
So that was the first sacrifice. It wasn’t even my dignity and pride at running errands for him like a slave right off the ship, it was my mom. She said if I kept on working for the man I’d be dead to her. I called her bluff, but she was dead fucking serious.
I tried to call a few times, even stopped by on Christmas Eve, but she left me on the porch with snow falling down my collar while she turned up the volume on her favorite holiday record—the one of the dogs barking out Jingle Bells.
Never saw her again.
Then there was Tia. Lovely Tia. Two years younger than me, but smarter by a mile. Tight little body. Dark brown hair, dark eyes. Full lips and a smile that showed her crooked teeth and, man, did that slay me.
The minute I saw her I stopped chasing tail with Mikey. I had a purpose. I didn’t want to just get this girl in the sack. That’s how I knew it was different. I knew I’d fallen in love.
Say that word and you get your ass kicked by the guys I run with, but I didn’t care. I went to the bookstore and tore out pages of Shakespeare and copied it down for her. I swiped roses by the dozens off the carts those Korean guys run uptown.