Pizza Man

I Was Working at this grease pit on Broadway up near 110th, Leontonio's, basically a take-out joint, four tables, smoke-stained graphics of baseball players on the walls and a skinhead cleanup guy named Curt who had green teeth and once wore a T-shirt for two weeks straight that read Death to Mammals. Business, as you might suspect, was often slow, and it was dead slow in the afternoons after lunch. So whenever a woman, a girl, anything approximately female, came in during those slow times, it verged on a life event for Curt and me, and we would conference and make an evaluation.

This was in March, and the afternoon was even slower than usual, because it was the city's first taste of spring after a bitch of a winter, and the last thing on the minds of all the bicyclists and strollers and joggers was a slab of slimy dough and cheese from the fabulous carbon-encrusted ovens of Leontonio's. So it was something of a surprise when in walked this tall brunette with a ponytail and the knapsack--baggy shorts--T-shirt spring uniform of a Columbia undergrad. She ordered two slices pepperoni and mush and sat down primly at table four, out of the sun. Her face was just OK, but her body was a 70-yard burst up the middle by Emmitt Smith, a reverse jam in traffic by Penny, an end-to-end rush by Mario Lemieux . . . in other words, it made you want to stand up and fuck. Even Curt, generally a harsher judge of female flesh than I, was moved to superlatives.

"Yes, indeed," he said. "You can still kick the tires on that one."

When I failed to respond, Curt got testy and went back to his Slayer tapes and to the deep thoughts that attended them.

I served the lady her pizza and stood awhile watching her shift around on the chair as she shook Parmesan and red pepper onto the slices. I summoned up a brief fantasy, then considered making an approach, but I was batting zero with student types and figured it wasn't worth the effort. Since there were no other customers, I grabbed the book I was reading and took a chair at table one.

Now, I am not what you'd call intellectual, and my choice of reading material was to an extent job-related. The majority of our customers were Columbia students, and each time I tried my usual brand of small talk, like, You see the Knicks last night? Geez, that Mason got his head up his ass or what? they mostly said "Uh-huh" and walked away. I hoped by reading to come up with a conversational strategy to please these sports-hating jujubes to whom I was serving grease and cheese.

The book was Best American Short Stories, edited by Robert Stone, and it wasn't half bad. I'd read other years in the series edited by different writers. I didn't enjoy them as much, but they always had a few cool stories, and I got off on them, maybe because the characters were so unlike people I knew. But as raw material for over-the-counter chats, the books flat sucked. Until that March afternoon, when a sugary voice broke into my zone, saying, "You read a lot, don't you?"

Miss From the Neck Down America was standing by my table, looking all kinds of excellent, favoring me with a demure smile. I was caught short for a response, but I believe I made some sort of affirmative noise.

"Every time I walk by," she said, taking the chair opposite me, "I see you reading in the window."

"Yeah, well, I just read these things here, you know." I flapped the book at her. "It's like a series. Every year's a different editor."

This aw-shucks yokel delivery I was giving her was my typical response to social pressure.

"So do you want to be a writer?" she asked.

I didn't want to disappoint her, and I mumbled something like, Maybe, I don't know, I guess.

Her smile had stiffened: Oh, God! A real first-class geek!

"Guess you're not a typical pizza man," she said.

Yes, it was truly a gift from the gods of conversation.

"Not at all," I said. "Fact is, I'm the one and only, the ultimate Pizza Man."

"Really?" she said, not sure of me.

"Yeah, really," I told her. "When I was a kid, I worked in my mom and dad's place on Flatbush Ave., Direnzi's. Time I was nine, I could do this here. Watch!"

I went behind the counter and started throwing some dough I'd been working earlier, sailing it up in the air and catching it on the whirl, spreading it into a wheel.

The girl applauded. "That's terrific!"

"That's nothing," I said. "See, what happened was, we used to get all of these junkies coming in. Street people. Droolers of every description. And they were always giving my dad shit. So one night, I'm doing like you see here, and this guy's ranking on my dad about how our slices aren't big enough, and I had a breakthrough moment. I invented Pizza Man."

I gave the wheel an extra-high toss. "All I had to do was pronounce the magic word stromboli, and the dough became an extension of my flesh, and I could spin my butt up onto my thumbs and fingers, creating enough suction to draw streams of toppings from the bins. And then I'd spin myself faster and faster until the friction was cooking me into a red-hot pizza with this scowling face."

She was laughing, and I knew I was in, but I kept going, telling her about the fantasy that had saved me from boredom and frustration for nine years on Flatbush Avenue. How when my temperature and consistency were just right, I'd hurl my pizzoid self at the offending customer, unerring in both a moral and a physical sense, wrapping around his face, sheathing him in scalding globs of cheese and flaming sausage brands and salt-in-your-wounds anchovies, and send him yowling out into the street, ripping at the $16.99 house special that was cooking his cheeks and forehead, never to dick around with the good guys at Direnzi's again.

I gave the wheel another high toss, did a 360-degree spin beneath it, caught it, let it settle to the counter and began slapping on the sauce.

"Whenever trouble threatens," I said, "even if you're just being undertipped, all you need do is say stromboli, and Pizza Man will be there to save the day. Remember that and you'll be all right."

"I don't see how I could possibly forget," she said.

Her name was Shelley Tartaglia. Her mom owned a couple of jewelry shops on Staten Island, her dad had died when she was a kid, she was a junior majoring in Comparative Lit, she had ended a long relationship about six months ago and hadn't gone out with anyone since. From the outset, we had a good thing going. We couldn't keep our hands off each other, we rarely got any sleep; every afternoon Shelley would come to Leontonio's and keep me company until I got off. But a little more than a month after we started going out, something happened to throw our relationship off its natural course.

It was the usual slow afternoon, exceptional only in that winter seemed to have returned with a last blast, and Curt had taken the day off to testify in an assault case--some poor bastard must have been desperate for witnesses. I had a couple of pies cooking for slice customers, and I had just stepped behind the counter to check on them when these two guys wearing overcoats, young guys, 25, 26, around there, pushed in from the street. They were totally fucked up, giggling, both with bad nasal drips--you could see red splotches on their cheeks mapping their sinuses. The taller of them, this skull-faced, skinny guy, he spotted Shelley and went, "Whoa! Hey!" and started strutting around, pulling out the front of his coat at chest level, making like he had big pointy tits. The other guy, your basic Little Italy stud, was more solid, with long black hair falling down over a velvet collar and lapels, heavy beard shadow and a crop of acne following the line of his jaw. He thought Skullface's act was hilarious and went down in a crouch, pounding his thigh with a fist. Shelley sat with her back stiff, pretending not to notice.

"So what can I do for you guys?" I asked. "You want a pie or what?"

"Oh, yeah!" said Velvet Collar. "We can definitely use a pie." He essayed a laugh that turned into a wet sneeze; he wiped his nose. "How 'bout some hair pie, man?"

They both about bust their guts over that one.

"Yeah, yeah, real funny," I said. "Sorry, man. We're fresh out. How's about a couple slices pepperoni?"

"Fuck your pepperoni!" said Skullface, staring at Shelley. "And fuck you!"

"Yeah, fuck you, man," said Velvet Collar; he was zoning on the graphics (continued on page 82)Pizza Man(continued from page 74) of the baseball players, probably thinking about when he was a kid and loved Reggie Jackson, and didn't put much oomph into the words.

I had a bad feeling about how this was going to go, but there weren't many options open. "OK, guys," I said. "You're out having fun. That's cool. But don't be hassling the customers, all right? Why don't you let me set you up with a couple of slices and----"

"You piece of shit!" said Velvet Collar, and he whipped out this enormous chrome-plated revolver, the sight of which bred a cold weakness in my chest. "Don't be telling me what to do, you pussy! I'll fuck you up the ass with this motherfucker, you open your goddamn mouth!"

Behind him, Skullface had wrestled Shelley to her feet. She let out a shriek and he slung her forward, slammed her head into the wall. At the same time Velvet Collar stepped back of the counter and pounded on the register until the drawer popped open.

"How 'bout that shit, huh?" he said, fisting up the bills, waving them at me. "Cocksucker! How 'bout that?"

Skullface was dancing Shelley around from behind, working over her breasts with one hand, holding her up with the other and singing in her ear. Her eyes were partway open, but I didn't think she was fully conscious.

"Anybody in back?" Velvet Collar asked.

"There was a guy," I said. "But I heard him run out."

"You heard him run out, huh? Sure, with your supersensitive X-ray fuckin' ears, you heard him run out!"

He came a step toward me, jabbing at my chest with the gun, and said, "Well, looks like we got the place all to ourselves, don't we?" Then to his pal: "Lock the fuckin' door, Jerry!"

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Jerry dragging Shelley to the door; he locked it and flipped over the Closed sign.

"I don't know 'bout you," Velvet Collar said to me, his tone almost amiable, "but I'm in a kinda party mood, y'know?"

He held the gun barrel-up beside his cheek and glanced over at his buddy. "Feel like a party, Jerry?"

Jerry just grunted, his mouth muffled in Shelley's neck. Then he started singing again, the words all mushy and unintelligible.

I felt like throwing up, I was so angry and scared. It must have been in my face, because Velvet Collar's smile broadened as he stared at me.

"I'm gettin' a little hungry here," he said, and sniffed to clear his sinuses. "Didn't you mention something 'bout a coupla slices?"

My hands were shaking, my throat was tight. I knew the son of a bitch was going to whack me, I knew they were going to rape Shelley and I couldn't make a move.

"Go on," Velvet Collar said, gesturing at the ovens with the gun. "Grab us a couple. Little something for the inner man. Then a little entertainment. Whaddya say?"

I managed to get my legs working enough to turn around; I picked up the shovel and went over to the oven, facing away from the table area where Jerry was waltzing Shelley around. "Oh, man! Yeah!" he said. "Lookit them monsters!" I started to look back, but Velvet Collar screamed at me to get the slices, and I opened up the oven. The pizzas weren't quite done; they'd cheese fell off. I slipped the shovel under one of the pies, hauled it out and turned to the front of the store. Jerry had pulled Shelley's sweater up so it was bunched around her armpits. He'd unhooked her bra, letting her breasts spill out, and he was pinching her nipple hard. That was the first thing I saw. The second was that Velvet Collar had turned to watch the show, grinning like a dog; the gun was dangling from his hand, barrel down.

What happened next wasn't really an act of courage on my part, or if it was, it was courage on a cellular level, all those years of fantasy behind the counter at Direnzi's, years of imagining violent retribution against undertippers and rude bastards by the pizza shop people's own special superhero, a decade of pretend lightning reflexes burned into the patterns of my central nervous system, thousands of episodes in which I prefaced action with word balloon slogans such as . . .

Never take your eyes off Pizza Man!

I swung the shovel at Velvet Collar, twisting it sideways in midair as I swung, just as he turned back to me.

It was perfect.

The pie thwapped into his face, the undercooked dough wrapping around him like a big mitt, and he went down on his back, screaming, tearing at the gooey mass burning his skin, his eyes. The gun went flying under the counter. I dug out the second pie, and as he struggled to sit up, the mess dripping off his face like he was a melting zombie in some horror flick, protoplasm and chunks hanging from the bone, I hit him again. The Meateater's Deluxe this time. Pepperoni, sausage, Canadian bacon. Bolts of Pizza Man energy jolted through my arms, resulting in another perfect strike. I spanked his face with the sizzling shovel for good measure, patting the stuff into his skin, and let it stick there for a few seconds. Then I grabbed a knife from beside the bins and went for Jerry. He had let Shelley drop to the floor and was coming to help his pal, but now he sprinted for the door. Which he'd locked. His head cracked the glass and he flew backward, sprawling into one of the tables. I kicked him once, twice, maybe half a dozen times, and when he stopped moving, I ran back of the counter and started kicking Velvet Collar, who had managed to get to his hands and knees. I spat on him, screamed at him. He rolled onto his stomach. I straddled his back, grabbed him by the hair and went to beating his face against the floor. Finally I wore down, breathless and overwhelmed by adrenaline. I staggered to my feet to find Shelley staring at me with an expression that was maybe three parts My Hero, two parts shock. She had picked up the gun. I took it from her and hugged her sobbing against my chest. Jerry moaned. I eased away from Shelley, walked out to where he was lying and gave him a couple of whacks with the gun butt. Then I called the police.

Velvet Collar tried to chill me with a stare as the cops led him away in cuffs, but there was no fear in me. His face was scarlet, inflamed, with these scorched pepperoni marks on his cheeks and forehead, little indented circles such as might have been made by the suckers of a red-hot octopus, and there was a glaze of melted cheese on his skin, strings of it hanging from his nose, his jaw, all congealed with drips of blood. The face of a Pizza Man victim. It cracked me up.

"See ya around, pizza face!" I said.

•

The cops at the precinct where I went to give my statement glad-handed me and slapped me on the back. It weirded me out, them treating me this way, because I'd never been what you might call a big booster of New York's (continued on page 156) Pizza Man(continued from page 82) finest, what with half my friends in Brooklyn being petty criminals. After I'd finished my statement, they asked if I'd mind talking to another detective, Lieutenant David Silver of the Organized Crime Task Force.

Silver was a big, rugged-looking guy with curly hair going gray in the side-burn area, wearing the kind of suit that lots of the people he busted were fond of, a double-breasted gray pinstripe that had to retail for a grand. He looked as if he'd just come from a board meeting and had this ingratiating I-brake-for-the-ignorant attitude. The first question he asked me was had I ever met either Dominic Geraldo Antuofermo (Jerry) or Giancarlo Paolo Petronelli (Velvet Collar) prior to the afternoon of April 21, 1996.

"Fuck no!" I told him.

He arched an eyebrow like he didn't believe me, but went on, asking if I'd ever had contact with any of the following, then reading off a long list of Italian names. When he got to the name Giovanni Geraci, I said, "I heard of him. I mean, the guy's in the papers all the time. Giovanni the Judge. Everybody's heard of him."

"Have you ever had any contact with him?"

"No," I said, making the word sound dumb, as if I were talking to a retard. "You ever have any contact with Steven Spielberg?"

He stared at me flatly.

"Well, you and Steve are both Jewish, right? You must have met the guy. At least that's the logic I'm hearing. Seems like you figure because I'm Italian, I must know all these goombahs."

"Perhaps your analogy would hold more water if I had just finished beating the crap out of two of Mr. Spielberg's business associates. Or if I had your personal life. But that's not the case." Another arched eyebrow. He shuffled papers on his desktop. "If you're telling the truth, we'll do our best to protect you."

"Protect me," I said. I was only mulling over the concept, but Silver assumed it to be a question.

"I doubt Antuofermo will be a problem, but Petronelli is a made man with the Geraci family, and these are serious charges against him. Armed robbery, assault, attempted rape. I expect there'll be considerable pressure brought to bear on you. Of course, if you were to help us out with some of our other cases, we'd be able to arrange a spot in Witness Protection." He shuffled papers, glanced up at me. "Interested?"

"What the fuck you talking about? I don't know anything can help you."

"Very well, then." He stood, handed me a business card. "If you change your mind, give me a call. I'm sure the boys in blue will see to your well-being."

If stigmata and a big wound in the side had suddenly appeared on his body, he would have still seemed the soul of insincerity.

I have to admit the things Silver said worried me some, and I didn't understand what he had meant with the crack about my personal life, but all that went right out of my head when I got home and Shelley gave me her version of a hero's welcome. For the next week or so we were on a second honeymoon, even though we hadn't finished our first, and I began to think that everything was going to be fine. I told her about Petronelli being a made guy, and she said I shouldn't worry about it--this was the Nineties and the Mob didn't work that way anymore. Why I took her word on this, I'm not sure.

Saturday, a week after Pizza Man had saved the day, I'd just opened when this clean-cut, 30-something guy wearing a sports coat and jeans, Ivy League kind of guy with short sandy hair and a sunny smile, like Hey, how's it going? came in and asked for a veggie slice. He noticed my book lying atop the counter and said, "You reading this?"

"Uh-huh," I said, serving up the slice.

"Hmm!" The guy did his slice in a couple of big bites, worked the wad around in his mouth so he could talk. "Guess it's like they say, there's no accounting for taste."

He tossed a five on the counter, told me to keep the change and headed for the door. Then he stopped and turned back. "By the way," he said, "this is your first warning."

"What?"

"Your first warning. This is it."

"What the hell's that supposed to mean?"

"That means, this is your first warning. The one that comes before the second warning. Which in turn comes right before your last warning." Yet another boyish smile. "Got it?"

Oh yeah, I got it all right. My stomach was full of cold jelly.

"Hey, you get the fuck outta here!" I shouted. "You hear me? Just stay the fuck away from me!"

He walked to the door, holding up his forefinger, still smiling. "See you next time."

Curt poked his head out from the back. "What's the problem?"

I wanted to say, "See that guy walking away? Go frag his ass," but I couldn't quite work up the lack of conscience it would take to sign Curt's death warrant.

"Nothing."

I picked up the telephone, dialed my boss' wife, and when she answered I said, "Angie, I'm really sick, I got to go home."

"Oh, God," she said. "I can't get down there now. Can't you hang on?"

"I'm about to puke all over the place," I told her. "I'm really fucking sick."

"All right! Christ! Tell Curt to hold down the fort. I'll be there in an hour. And--hey, you still there?"

"I'm here."

"Tell him not to scare anybody, OK?"

I hung up and told Curt, "She says not to cornhole the customers. Killing 'em's all right, but no weird sex. I'm outta here."

For about six blocks I walked so fast I couldn't think. The first bar I hit, I ducked inside and ordered a shot and a beer. The bartender asked for ID and I flipped him off.

"Don't gimme no shit!" he said. "I'll throw your ass outta here."

"This is an emergency," I said. "I'm 22, I work at Leontonio's up near 110th. I left my ID in my other shirt. I'll bring it and show you tomorrow. Now for God's sake give me a fucking drink."

The first two shots calmed me down, the third steadied me enough to think, and I did my best to try to figure a way out of my troubles. But there was no way out. If I didn't drop the charges, Giancarlo Petronelli was going to have me hit. And if I did drop the charges, he was still going to have me hit because I had messed up his face. I could hustle over to Lieutenant Silver's office, but I knew absolutely nothing that would help him, so why would he help me? Guys like Silver are not disposed to charity. And if I dropped the charges, for sure the regular cops weren't going to work up a sweat on my behalf. I could run, of course. Judging by my latest bank statement, I could run approximately as far as the Jersey shore; and even if I'd had more money, leaving town was no guarantee of safety. I doubted that Petronelli was one to let a debt go unpaid.

But five whiskeys and a couple of beers gave me a drunk's confidence, and when I walked out of the bar I had the unsupported yet cocksure feeling that something would come along to save me. Then I heard somebody calling my name. Sitting in a black Lincoln across the street was the sandy-haired guy in the sports coat. He was holding up two fingers and smiling. His smile didn't seem in the least hostile or false or attached to irony. He just looked really happy to see me.

My first thought was to throw some clothes in a bag and catch the next bus out of town. But instead I made for Shelley's apartment, where all I did was sit on the edge of the bed and wish things were different. That I'd never met Shelley. That I hadn't left Brooklyn. That I'd never invented Pizza Man. When Shelley got home she came over to the bed for a hug, then stepped back and said in a surprised tone of voice, "You've been drinking."

"No, not so," I said. "A guy who's had a martini with lunch has been drinking. I'm drunk."

After I told her what had happened, she stood and went over to the window; she picked at the pattern on the curtains as if she were trying to peel off one of the blue flowers.

"This is my fault," she said. No emotion, just a reflective statement, as if it was something she'd known for some time and was only now admitting to.

"Don't give me that 'This is my fault' bullshit! It ain't anybody's fault. Or maybe it's bad chemicals in the air. Karma or some shit. Whatever. It doesn't matter whose fucking fault it is. Jesus Christ!"

"I'll be back," she said. "I need to talk to somebody."

She went into the other room; after a couple of seconds I heard her on the phone, and I vagued out, going off into a fog of beer, bourbon and self-pity.

When she returned I said, "Christ, Shelley. What am I going to do? This really sucks!"

"It's not a problem." She had a distant expression on her face, like she was thinking about something else entirely.

"Are you nuts? Of course it's a problem. It's a huge problem! Those cold-meat motherfuckers will blow my head off with a shotgun on their way to eat oysters." I bent my head to my knees; I was close to tears.

"I called someone," she said, "I called my uncle."

"Your uncle?" I lifted my head.

"What's that mean, you called your uncle? What's he going to do?"

"Fix things." It was like she was hearing voices, tuned to a signal coming from a long way off. The way she was acting sobered me a little.

"Who's your uncle?"

She didn't answer for a few beats. Then: "Giovanni Geraci."

I tried to absorb this. "The Mafia guy?"

She nodded.

"The Judge. Giovanni the Judge. That's your uncle.?"

"Uh-huh."

"That means the other guy, Mario, the fucking godfather, he's your uncle, too?"

A woeful nod.

I now understood the crack Silver had made about my personal life.

"Jesus, Shelley!" I said. "You didn't think I oughtta know this?"

"Maybe I should have told you. I don't know." Her chin started to quiver. "It's not something that I try to advertise. I'm sorry."

I couldn't get a handle on what I was feeling. The fact that Giovanni the Judge was going to "fix things" didn't inspire me to start planning for the future.

"He wants to see you tomorrow," Shelley said in a lifeless voice. "At this place in Newark. I'll drive you."

Her expression was impossible for me to read.

Giovanni "The Judge" Geraci's status as a media darling derived from his special standing in the universe of organized crime. He had started out as a lawyer but was mostly known for handling negotiations with other families over territorial disputes and such; it was in this arena that he gained a reputation for having the ability not only to be fair but also to do so in a way that soothed ruffled tempers, satisfied honor and brought opposing parties together in a spirit of mutual respect. He was often called upon by Mob families to settle interfamily and intrafamily disputes, and this was what the papers loved, this image of a Mafia Solomon--that and the Hollywoodish story of three brothers, one who had gone the Godfather route, one (Shelley's dad) who had opted out of the family business and Giovanni, with his silver-haired good looks and peculiar eminence.

Despite his reputation for fairness, I was terrified of having to stand before him. I was, after all, the guy who had been fucking his niece and who had hospitalized one of the Geracis' young lions--this seemed ample cause for bias on his part, and the idea that we were going to meet in an empty Newark office building didn't do much for my confidence, though I suppose it was more auspicious than getting together at a landfill somewhere. I must have decided to run a hundred times before Sunday morning rolled around, but my sense of helplessness prevailed. And so at ten o'clock, dressed in my only suit--which I'd worn once previously, to my grandfather's funeral, a portent whose inauspiciousness was not lost on me--I rode the elevator to the top floor of the Kleineman Building and, hand in hand with Shelley, walked into a conference room belonging to one of Mario Geraci's pet law firms.

The sandy-haired guy who'd delivered the warnings patted me down at the door--his good spirits undimmed, greeting me with a "Hi, guy!"--and ushered us inside. The drapes were closed, the light coming from little lamps ranged along the center of the big table; the lamps had lurid green plastic shades that put me in mind of this old science-fiction movie in which alien beams of green energy blew up buildings and fried people into shadows. It was dark in all the corners and along the walls, so you couldn't see how big the room was, but it felt enormous, as though the long wooden table floated in a void, with God--Giovanni the Judge--sitting at the head. If the smell of rug shampoo hadn't lent an accent of reality, I might have gone even further toward believing that I'd bungled into some mystical Mob dimension.

On Giovanni's right, a couple of chairs down, was Giancarlo Paolo Petronelli, his cheeks and forehead swathed in bandages, eyes aglitter with green reflection. Though I had assumed he would be in attendance, I didn't like it that he'd had a chance to talk privately with Giovanni and I had not.

Shelley led me up the opposite side of the table from Petronelli, and I sat facing him. Giovanni regarded me with mild curiosity, as if I were an interesting selection on a dessert cart.

"Uncle Giovanni," Shelley said, "I'd like to say something."

Giovanni held up a hand to stop her. "You trust me, don't you, Shelley? Do you trust me to do what's best for all concerned?"

"Yes," she said. "But I want to tell you--"

"I understand your point of view," Giovanni told her. "I'll call you back in if I need you." He nodded toward the door. "Please."

I expected her to touch my shoulder, the back of my neck, give some sign of encouragement or affection, but she just walked away, her footfalls muffled by the deep carpet. I didn't look after her, but when the door closed I turned toward it in an unhappy reflex, the way a prisoner would look to a cell door to see if the guard had made a mistake and left it open. The sandy-haired guy was standing in front of the door. I couldn't make out his expression, but I knew he must be smiling.

"Before we get started, Mr. Direnzi," Giovanni said, "is there anything you'd like to put forward?"

His voice was no longer soft, as it had been when he was talking to Shelley; it was steely, about half an octave lower, a real instrument of justice.

I considered asking for the sandy-haired guy to leave the room, or that a member of the Organized Crime Task Force be stationed beside him to balance out the menace, but I knew that wouldn't be wise. On the way up, I'd been afraid yet still able to think clearly; now I wasn't sure I could get my jaw muscles to work, let alone speak in a rational manner. Pizza Man wasn't going to save me this time. A little trickle of hilarity welled up from some crevice of my brain.

The expression on Giovanni's face hadn't changed, but I sensed he was amused by the fear that must have been radiating off me like stink off a fish market floor. With his patrician features and perfect hair and his pupils cored with eerie green glints from the lamps, he might have been the president of another planet.

"Yeah," I finally managed. "I don't have any problem with dropping the charges. And I'm not going to testify. But that's not what this is all about here."

It didn't come out half as smooth as I'd practiced it; in fact, it sounded weak and whiny, the usual Direnzi choke-up, and I knew that kind of act wasn't going to play with Giovanni.

"Then what, in your opinion, Mr. Direnzi," he asked, "is it all about?"

For some reason then I remembered this one story in the Stone's Best American Short Stories about this genius black kid trapped in the ghetto, and I imagined how he would respond.

"This," I said in a firm voice, "is about your deciding whether or not the guy who tried to rape your niece can ice me so he can feel he's all studly again and not look like some jamoke who gets beat up by a dough thrower in a pizza joint."

Petronelli essayed a suave laugh. But with all his bandages, the patches of reddened skin showing at their edges, it had a ludicrous effect, like a circus clown lifting his pinkie while drinking from an oversize teacup.

"It's like I told you, Giovanni," he said. "I never laid a finger on her."

"Damn straight!" I said. "I was all over your punk ass before you got the chance."

Petronelli tried another laugh, rolled his eyes.

I turned to Giovanni. "Go ask that other rapin', drug-takin' son of a bitch if I'm lying!"

"Mr. Antuofermo is unavailable for questioning," Giovanni said. "A condition that's unlikely to change. Correct, Paulie?"

Petronelli dropped his eyes to the tabletop and said, "Yeah."

"Unfortunately, Mr. Direnzi," Giovanni continued, "Shelley isn't able to support your story either. She cannot recall what happened after Mr. Antuofermo rendered her unconscious. So it all comes down to your word against the word of Mr. Petronelli."

Time, I decided, to give the black kid a rest--Giovanni had seemed taken aback by my profanity. It didn't matter. Hundreds of characters from stories I'd read 15, 20 times were lining up and clamoring to be heard, all more capable than I of rational discourse.

"Not so. Logic, too, has a voice in this," I said gleefully, dropping into the cadences of a preacher in an old John Gardner story. "The only voice without inflection. Two men, two friends, enter a place of business, both--to use the vernacular--coked to the gills. One proceeds to assault and degrade a female customer, while the other empties the cash register. Are we then to believe that the second man, engaged in a criminal act he's obviously committing on impulse, so out of touch with reality that he doesn't recognize the niece of his associate--"

"Not relevant, Mr. Direnzi," Giovanni said with an air of fruity satisfaction. "Mr. Petronelli had no way of knowing Shelley's identity. He had never met her."

"No pictures on a desk he might have seen?" I said. "No photos by the hearth? I'm willing to admit that Mr. Petronelli may be short on perceptual acuity. But my point stands. Given the circumstances, are we to believe that this man stops in the midst of his impulsive act to lecture his friend on the questionable morality of rape? Or is it more likely that he intends to participate? Or at the very least, to sanction his friend's actions?"

The Judge nodded thoughtfully and said, "Let's say for the sake of argument that I accept your scenario, Mr. Direnzi. That still begs one of the questions before us."

"I know where you're going with this, Mr. Geraci," I said, affecting the rapid-fire delivery of an advertising man from a long-ago Best Short Stories. "Believe me, I have a handle on what's at stake. You're telling me, OK, maybe the kid did the right thing, but we've still got a problem with respect. Mr. Petronelli here is on the fast track in your organization, an organization that's built on respect, and it would not benefit the organization for Mr. Petronelli to be perceived as weak by those in the ranks beneath him. That much is a given, OK?"

Giovanni signaled me to go on.

"OK. So what I'm asking is this--wouldn't it be more detrimental to the organization if Mr. Petronelli's superiors are perceived as caving in to him? I mean, here we have an instance of someone putting himself on the line for a young lady who happens to be the niece of the Geraci brothers. If you permit Mr. Petronelli to kill this person, what sort of message are you sending? Sure, you're saying that Mr. Petronelli is not a weakling. But doesn't the deeper message you're sending say that Mr. Petronelli can mess with Giovanni Geraci's niece and get away with it? And"--I held up my forefinger to emphasize the next point--"aren't you also sending the message that right actions on behalf of the Geracis may not be justly rewarded?"

I shook my head sadly, as if dismayed by the prospect of dishonor among thieves. "That's not the message I'd want to send if I were running things. On the contrary, I'd want my people to know that no one is immune to the Geraci code of honor. Not even a highly-thought-of individual like Mr. Petronelli. It would be a sign of strength on the organization's part to punish him, and it would ultimately be seen, I believe, as a sign of strength on his part if he submitted to a just punishment. Such a course of action would serve to reaffirm the enduring principles of the family. Of course"--I sighed ruefully--"if the incident in Leontonio's isn't a solitary event, if it's part of a pattern of screwups, you may wish to reevaluate your plans for Mr. Petronelli. But that's your call."

Petronelli burst out laughing. "Christ! What a fucking asshole!"

"I must admit that was an eloquent, albeit somewhat erratic, defense, Mr. Direnzi," Giovanni said, a smile nicking the corners of his mouth. "An impressive performance. But I'm afraid your points simply don't accord with the realities." He beckoned to the sandy-haired man. "Carver! If you please."

Carver came toward us, reaching inside his jacket.

"Gee, golly, I wonder what's going to happen now," Petronelli said, leaning toward me, his blistered lips stretched in a nasty grin. "It was up to me, I'd work your ass over for a couple weeks. See how you like fucking being burned."

All my strength had left me. I couldn't believe I hadn't made my case. I gaped at Giovanni, then turned to Carver, who was fitting a silencer on the barrel of a small-caliber automatic.

"Sorry, guy," he said, lifting the gun.

I was about to make a last plea with Giovanni for my life when I heard the soft vacuum puncture of the silencer and saw a black dot materialize in the center of Petronelli's forehead. He spasmed and twisted in the chair as if he'd gotten a cramp; then his head slumped. Black blood eeled from the bullet hole.

"Oh shit!" I said, pushing away from the table, staggering shakily to my feet. "Christ!"

"No, no!" Carver said. I thought he was talking to me, but he was aiming the gun at Giovanni, who had also come to his feet. He settled back into his chair, glaring at Carver, but his attitude was more than a touch shaky.

That's when I spotted a short, chubby guy in a baggy suit moving out from behind the drapes in back of Giovanni, from a door previously hidden by the drapes. Guy about 50, 55, with curly black hair receding from a bulging forehead and tiny features all grouped toward the center of his face, leaving a vast round area unexploited. He stepped up beside Giovanni, and when Giovanni turned to look at him, mouth open in surprise, he threw a solid right straight down on the bridge of Giovanni's nose. Giovanni screamed, high-pitched like a woman, and bent over the table, both hands covering his face.

"I heard shit," said the chubby guy. "I didn't buy it, but I'm hearing shit for months 'bout you and Paulie makin' plans. I figure Paulie's too smart for that, and you're too fucking stupid."

He grabbed Giovanni by his silver forelock and slammed his face into the table, eliciting another outcry.

"What'm I gonna do with you?" the chubby guy asked him. "I--" He glanced over at Carver and laughed. "I was 'bout to say I love him like a brother."

Carver let out an appreciative chuckle.

Giovanni was trying to act dignified, but it was tough with all the blood bubbling out of his nose. The way his eyebrows were twitching reminded me of how my old springer spaniel had looked after he crapped on the porch.

"Get outta here, Joe," the chubby guy said to him with surprising mildness. "Go wash your face or somethin'."

Giovanni got unsteadily to his feet. "Mario," he said. "Listen, I--"

"Go on, get outta here! We'll talk about this later."

After Giovanni had made his exit through the door behind the drapes, the chubby guy came around the head of the table, took a look at Petronelli and registered disgust; he then grabbed a chair and sat down, gesturing for me to sit beside him. "I'm Mario Geraci," he said, sticking out his hand.

I was close to being in shock, but I took the hand. It looked fat but felt like a bag full of rocks. His eyes were dark, set in thick folds, and from the way they shifted back and forth across the planes of my face, I had the idea he was cataloging every detail.

"Shelley told me you were smart," Mario said. "First off you didn't act so smart, but then you got goin' pretty good. I liked that stuff you said about sending messages. That was very good. Food for thought, y'know. But you seemed. . . ." He appeared to be searching for a term. "Y'know, like different people. What's the word I'm lookin' for, Carver?"

"Schizoid," said Carver, giving me a wink. "Schiz. O. Phrenic."

"Yeah, schizoid. That's it. You ain't a nut, are you?"

"I was nervous is all," I told him. "I'm still nervous."

"Yeah, well, that's understandable. Sorry to put you through all this here." He nodded at Petronelli, whose eyes, having filmed over, held even more reflected green light. "It was a kinda test, y'know. The only way my brother'd side with Paulie is if he and Paulie were hatchin' somethin'." He shook his head ruefully. "All my brother's good for is givin' the feds something to look at. And the fuckin' TV. Every time I hear 'em call him the Judge, I wanna fuckin' fall over."

Mario let out an explosive breath. "But he loves Shelley. He never woulda made the call he did if there wasn't something big in it for him." He cocked an eye toward me. "So what about you, kid? Guess you're not plannin' on being a pizza man forever."

The abrupt change of subject caught me off guard. I had no tricks left. "I don't guess so."

Mario made an approving noise.

"Whaddya thinkin' about, then?"

"You mean, for a career?"

"Yeah."

"I don't know. Something like with...." All I could think was how much I wanted to get away from the Geracis, and I pictured myself fleeing, grabbing on to the tail fin of a jet, cartoon-style, and flying off to freedom. "Travel," I said.

Mario looked blank for a second or two, then he said, "Hotels?"

"Uh-huh." He could have said nuclear waste disposal or reconditioning brake pads and I would have been more than happy to agree.

"We got hotels all over," said Mario, more to himself, it seemed, than to me, and stared pensively at Petronelli's corpse. Petronelli appeared to have settled a bit, as if he'd gotten comfortable with the idea of being dead, though his eyes still glowed a baleful green.

"Time I got Shelley away from all this here," Mario went on. "Maybe Miami. They got a good hotel school in Miami. That sound all right to you? Send you and Shelley down there to school, then set you up with a job? Maybe someplace out of the country?"

I said, "Sure, sounds great," with as much enthusiasm as I could muster, and Mario, after a moment's hesitation, said, "OK. That's what we'll do, then."

I could have sworn I felt some last ounce of tension drain from the room, and I suspected that I hadn't been out of the woods until that moment. Carver, after all, was still armed and eager to please. Tremors and tics were starting to manifest all over my body as the rush of adrenaline began to recede.

Mario got to his feet and I followed suit. As we walked toward the door, Carver fell into step beside us and gave me a cheerful thumbs-up. "Nice job, man," he said. "Really. I mean it."

Shelley stood as we came out of the room, relief on her face, but when Mario, the first thing out of his mouth, said, "So, Shelley, you wanna marry this guy?" she looked startled. What was she going to say? A no would have gotten me killed. She met my eyes a second, as if to let me know the conditional nature of her decision, then said, "Yes," and took my hand.

"You don't seem so sure," Mario said, squinting at me.

"It's just I wasn't expecting you'd be the one to ask me, Uncle Mario," she said.

"Well, sometimes you gotta push things along, right, kid?" He slapped me on the shoulder.

I said, "Uh-huh," but I was having trouble keeping my mental balance. This chubby little king of death who five minutes before had had one of his soldiers executed was now asking his niece to marry me, and we were going off to live happily ever after in Miami and God knows where else, Tahiti, Montevideo, never-never land, and I saw Petronelli's glazed green eyes and the freckle of life's blood on his lapel, and I could not understand how I'd come to arrive in this present from the past I had woken up in just that morning.

Shelley, perhaps sensing my predicament, gave my hand a squeeze and asked, "Where's Uncle Giovanni?" to which Mario replied, "He's dealing with another matter." He guided us into the elevator, saying we should celebrate, go over to Little Italy, get some wine, some good food, no pizza though, ha ha, and as we rode down he talked about how the two of us would be putting this mess behind us, he was going to fix us up with everything we needed, a flight to Vegas the next day, a nice wedding, no point in delaying, and we stood there staring straight ahead, seeing--both of us, I'm certain--strange visions in the gray metal of the elevator door.

"So, kid," Mario said to me as we stepped out into the lobby, "who you want for a best man?"

The notion of marriage itself seemed so irrational, I couldn't take the question of a best man seriously. Curt, I thought. Wearing one of those tuxedo T-shirts. Tying chain saws to our rear bumper. Throwing rice with the intent to injure. He'd fit right in.

"I doubt any of my friends can get off work tomorrow," I said.

Mario's expression clouded over; then he brightened again. "Maybe we do this thing twice. Once in Vegas just to get you kids squared away. And when you come back we'll do it up special. For the family. Make everybody feel good. Get Joe to give a little speech or somethin'. That will help smooth things over with him. Whaddya think, Carver?"

"Lovely idea," said Carver. "Have the reception at Tavern on the Green, maybe?"

"I like it, I like it!" Mario's step became a jaunty swagger. "We'll go the whole route. I'll get the freakin' cardinal to do the ceremony."

Carver seemed impressed. "Cardinal O'Connor?"

"Hey, I only got one niece. I gotta do right by her!"

Mario began prattling on with giddy intensity about catering and designer gowns, illuminating his wedding fantasy with florid gestures. I caught Shelley's eye for a moment, but we made no real connection; she looked dazed, completely out of it.

"Y'know, I think I'm gonna have Carver go with you tomorrow," Mario said as we moved out onto the street. "Just in case any of Paulie's friends get stupid." Then he stopped, slapped himself on the head, as if he'd had a bright thought. "Hey, he can be your best man in Vegas!"

"All right!" said Carver. "That means I get to throw the guy over here a bachelor party."

"Nothin' too wild, now," Mario cautioned. "Wouldn't want the kid sick on his wedding day!"

"I guarantee he'll be in good health," said Carver.

I understood the implicit threat, the true nature of Carver's assignment, but I was starting to feel the exhilaration of a survivor, and it didn't bother me. There was a white limo waiting at the curb, and as I slipped in next to Shelley, I felt the pulse in her leg racing like mine. The limo pulled out into traffic, and I heard Carver and Mario carrying on their obliquely menacing dialogue. But then something happened that caused me to think, if only for a moment, that Shelley and I might overcome this strange and terrible beginning, because maybe we hoped the same thing of the world. She leaned in close, her breath sweet and warm, and whispered in my ear, "Stromboli."

Velvet Collar turned to watch the show, grinning like a dog, the gun dangling from his hand.