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“So this chick she walks into a bar and asks for a double entendre,” said Johnny, “and then, so the bartender, he gives it to her!” He leaned in with the punchline and Carl and Tony start laughing their fat, red, greasy faces off.
Carl is gasping for air: “So then what happens next Uncle Johnny?”
“Nothing happens next you dummy! That’s it.” Johnny slapped him on the back of his head, “It’s a double entendre!” Fat Tony and Carlito, the poor bastards, they searched each other’s faces for the answer to this riddle.
“But what’s a double won tonja Uncle Johnny?” I was at the door to this patio that had a metal fence 8 feet tall locking us in. I was supposed to be trying to plan my mom’s escape, but I couldn’t even seem to mastermind my own. One for my own brain. One where I escape the useless blabbering of these useless pricks. One where it’s not getting dark out, and the music’s not getting louder. And time is not running out.
But my captors, the good guys, were following me.
Johnny pulled Fat Tony’s ear down toward his mouth and shouted into it. “Entendre stupid.” Another thwap on the back of another fat head, “It’s something that has two meanings.”
The four of us stood out on the patio looking out on happy town. Look left, look right, one big playground full of happy kids chasing each other around. Some of them with big bags of books. Kids with futures. Kids chasing dreams. Kids my own age. I looked at them and I felt so much older but yet I knew I was so much less prepared. No matter. My own dream was standing right next to me. Not so much the man himself, but the spine inside him. If I can’t have the books, maybe I can have the backbone.
But instead I’d been sitting here studying my shoes. I’d been studying them ever since Rosso gave me that twenty and told me to go play with my friends. My “friends” grabbed the twenty and pushed me into this big wooden sports bar that’s a dance club, went straight up to the bar and started ordering shots.
I was studying my shoes and I was studying the shiny, polished black shoes on the guys named Rosso. My name is not Rosso. My shoes are not shiny. Any minute now one of them might say “Hey fruitcake, on your knees,” and I’d be shining them. Spit-polishing them until I could see my reflection in them. Just like my mother does to all their plates and all their silver spoons. When Johnny entered I smelled his cologne before I saw him and, for a second, I hated him.
Trusting Rosso. Trusting Rosso. Trusting Rosso. Seems like we’ve been doing it our whole lives. Was I trusting him because I always had, or because my only other choice was the mad dentist currently holding my mother hostage?
That’s right: hostage. Meanwhile these three meatheads are crowding in around me on this fenced in patio, yucking it up, not even letting me think. Sure not doing any thinking themselves.
It doesn’t surprise me they don’t care about my mother. But, if she really was kidnapped out from under their noses at that gas station, why aren’t they even the least bit worried who’s next? Why are they out hitting the town sitting around on a patio about to light up cigars, telling jokes?
“Hey Johnny, if they got my mom, how you know they aren’t watching us right now?”
“Dinner time, pal, Eddie always sets the table and sits down to eat at 5:30. He’s very traditional. He ain’t out working right now, even for this. Ritual shit. Same with the running.” He finished his drink. “Ritualistic creep.”
“So what’s the plan then.”
“We wait. Lenny knows the house, better he do this on his own,” he shook his ice around in his glass. “Quietly.”
He furrowed his brow at me, which said “What? You don’t trust me?” and he held his eyes open wide, waiting for me to nod back.
“Yeah.” he said as he put his hands inside his pockets, pulled out a smoke and lit it up as only Johnny Rosso can. He exhaled as he turned his eyes upward, onto the pedestrian mall, and up to where they settled on the dark sky above us. Suddenly I was sure my mom’s kidnapping hadn’t been a surpise at all. Rosso sent her in, but for what? And was he going to be able to get her out? Is Lenny our only plan? Poor Lenny.
The only thing I trusted Rosso to do was be himself. I might love Johnny Rosso but I’ve seen him do some cold hearted shit to people I knew for a fact he really loved. If it turns out my mother is just one of his soldiers, I’m sure she’s a good one. She was this morning, when he served her up cold to Edward. She didn’t even say goodbye.
Just then Rosso’s pager went off. He doesn’t carry a cell phone. He decides who he calls back and when.
“Alright let’s move.” We all filed in behind Johnny as he led us back by the playground, down an alley for a couple blocks, across a little grassy area and into a parking garage. We got in the elevator on the ground floor and Johnny started hitting the numbers. Must have been some sort of password because the elevator closes and even though we’re on the lowest level, it starts going down.
