Changed Man

“She had a room where she took her tricks and young Titus would stay in the bathroom while his mother worked. That went

on for years.”

Bobby shook his head. “That’s fucked up,” he said. “Little kid having to sit there and listen to that.”

“One night, when it got quiet,” Sonny continued. “He came out of the bathroom and found his mother dead. Her trick had strangled her with a pillowcase.”

“Now that’s fucked up,” I said.

“When she didn’t pay for the room the next day, the manager found the boy sitting by the bed next to her body. After that, he went into the system and that was the last I’d heard of him,” Sonny said.

It was a sad story and it made me feel sorry for him, but if he was at the spot that night, him and Montel must have hooked back up.

I thanked Sonny for his time and then me and Bobby rolled by Montel’s house. When we let ourselves in, it was obvious from the mess and stench of food containers, some of it only days old, that somebody had been staying there.

“He was a nasty mutha fucka,” Bobby said as we looked around the house. It was when we went into the basement that I got the answer to my question.

“Take a look at this, Mike,” Bobby called out from another room.

“What you got?”

“Big ass hole in the wall.”

“What?”

When I came in the room, Bobby was standing by a big ass hole in the wall. But it was the hole where Montel hid his money. “Titus probably just found the money and that’s why it took so long for him to come at us.”

I had heard rumors that Montel had money, jewelry, guns and drugs stashed all over that house, so we spent the next few hours tearing the place apart. And you know what? The rumors were true. When we left, we left with almost a hundred thousand in cash, enough ice to make you blind and a couple of pounds of quality weed, but no guns.

A good day’s work.

With that taken care of, there was one more thing that I had to do. I called Mirella to ask her when her father was having lunch at Beccofino’s Italian Restaurant.

“For this you can pick up the phone and call me, Mikey,” she said, and once she got finished busting my balls and I promised to come break her back, Mirella told me that he was having lunch there that next day.

When I got to the restaurant, his men stopped me at the door and were about to search me, but Big Tony called them off.

“Let him come, Mikey’s not gonna shoot me,” he said, and I went to his table, which was filled with big bowls of steamed mussels, stuffed eggplant and baked manicotti.

“How are you, Uncle Tony?”

“I’m good, Mikey. Now sit down.” He pointed his fork at me. “You know I don’t like nobody standing over me or my food for that matter.”

“Thank you, sir,” I said and sat down.

“I know why you’re here, Mikey.”

“I came to say thank you.”

“No, you didn’t. You came here to find out what I want for taking those two fucks off your back.”

“No, sir. I came here to say thank you, Uncle Tony. You didn’t have to do what you did. I don’t even know what you did, but I want you to know that I appreciate it, sir. That’s what I came to say.”

“Come on,” Uncle Tony laughed. “Get real, Mikey.”

“Okay, I do want to know what I can do for you for taking that fuckin’ psycho off my neck?”

Uncle Tony laughed. “I hate to sound like a cliché, Mikey, but one day, and that day may never come, but on that day …” Uncle Tony paused and then he waved his hand. “You know the rest.”