Sins Of The Father
Tim Curran
When Salvatore Ricca finally did call Tommy into the back office of his social club after a good hour’s wait, Tommy was ready to come apart at the seams. He felt like a cheap house slapped together with balsa wood and mud and now a good wind was beginning to blow. His hands were shaking, he was sweating, his knees molded from rubber. He could’ve pissed ice cubes.
Yeah, he was nervous. Wired like a fuse box.
But it wasn’t because of Ricca.
Sure, Ricca was a heavy player. A top earner for the family, a captain in the organization, a made man. He controlled most of the loan sharking, car theft, gambling, and narcotics trafficking on the west side. It was rumored that he made his bones when he was barely seventeen, icing some wop who’d flipped for the feds. Yeah, Salvatore Ricca was a hitter. He walked the walk and talked the talk. He’d done enough guys to open his own cemetery.
But Tommy wasn’t afraid of him.
Not really.
No more than one rattlesnake is afraid of another. Ricca could’ve ordered his death like a man ordering another beer. But it wasn’t something a guy worried about. Besides, Tommy was a stand-up guy in the outfit. He was straightened out and he was going places.
The back office was nice. The rest of the social club was just an assemblage of card tables, chairs, and goodfellas telling old war stories. But here it was all dark oaks and plush carpeting. It was quiet, peaceful. A guy could think, scheme, plot here. Not the sort of place one associated with running a crime gang, but that’s exactly what went on here.
Ricca was waiting for him. "Tommy," he said, spreading his arms wide like Tommy was some long lost relative from the old country. "Ah, it’s good to see you. You know what, Tommy? You’re like good sex to me: young and infrequent."
Tommy feigned laughter. "I like that one. That’s good."
"We got business to discuss, am I right? But first, a drink." Ricca made a big show of taking a bottle of whiskey from a cabinet built into the wall. He blew dust off it. Shook his head. "Whiskey, Tommy. I know you like this stuff. And this—" he clicked his tongue wetly "—is good shit. So they tell me. But what do I know from whiskey, right? I’m a wop."
"Nobody knows good sauce better than you, Sally."
"Sure, sure. This was a gift from our Irish friends. They tell me it’s a hundred and fifty years old. See that writing on the label?" He brought it up close so Tommy could see. "Gaelic. That’s what those micks speak in the old country, I guess. Those Irish. They’re something, all right. Crazy bastards."
Ricca poured them both snifters.
Tommy sipped his. It was good, very good. Good like a beautiful woman in the dark. And nearly as satisfying. "Outstanding, Sally," he said. "Just outstanding."
"I’m glad you like it." Ricca threw back his own, winced. "Christ." He staggered back, clutched his belly.
"You okay, Sally?"
"Yeah." He exhaled. "Yeah. Stomach trouble, is all. Forget about it."
"You sure?"
Ricca waved him off, dug a bottle of Maalox out of the desk, pulled on it like a wino with a bottle of good juice. "Now," he said, licking his lips. "To business."
Tommy nodded. "I’m told, Sally, that you know about my father."
Ricca sighed, saddened by it all. "Yes. Yes, I do. And God strike me dead for not telling you sooner." Ricca crossed himself, threw back the rest of his drink. Winced again. "But…sometimes that’s how things work. You can’t do what you’d like to or want to. Not until the time is right."
"And the time is right?"
Ricca nodded briefly. "Yeah. Sure it is. And I’ll arrange for you to see your old man. But I’ll do it in my own way. See, Tommy, there’s a piece of work I need you to do. Then your father."
"Tell me," Tommy said.
Ricca massaged his belly, sat down.
Tommy sipped his drink, waited. He would have to wait. Inside, every fiber of his body was screaming, buzzing, demanding to know about his father. But wait he would. It was how things were done. "Tell me," he said, patiently, respectfully.
Ricca lit up a cigar, rolled it over his lips. He sat there, smoking, staring into Tommy’s eyes. Ricca was a big man. Had to go an easy 300 if he was a pound. There was muscle there, sure, but the majority was fat. Easy living. Rich foods. Zero exercise. Ricca was the poster child for excess, self-indulgence. His chins had chins. Even his wrists had bracelets of fat.
"Okay, Tommy," he said, taking those black, dead eyes off him. "There’s this guy, you see. Let me tell you about him. You want I should do that?"
"Sure, Sally. Do it in your own way."
Ricca set his cigar in an ashtray, rubbed his hands together. His jewelry jingled. "This guy. Name ain’t important. You’ll recognize him when you see him, but his name don’t count. Not anymore." Ricca paused, leaning back in his chair, interlocking his fingers behind his head. He didn’t look happy about any of this. "Well, this guy we’re talking about—we’ll call him Smith—once upon a time he was a stand up guy. Real La Cosa Nostra. Good as they come, way back when. Young, strong, smart, a real operator. Tough as a bull’s pecker. Yeah, back then he was going places in the organization…but the life corrupted him. Too much of a good thing. Too much money, too much time to spend it on the wrong things. He got soft and lazy and stupid. Abandoned his wife, his child. This Smith, he wasn’t using his bean. All of this, of course, pissed off the Old Man. You know how he is about family, Tommy."
The Old Man was Joe Zerilli, boss of the family. Godfather. An old school Sicilian, he was big on family, honor, respect. Nothing was more important to him. And when the Old Man didn’t like something, it had better get fixed or the body count was going to be high.
"But it gets worse," Ricca continued. "Smith…he started raking off too much, bleeding the combine. He got careless…"
Tommy listened and didn’t listen.
Ricca wanted him to do a hit, he knew that much. Ricca always talked about some guy in the past tense when he wanted the guy whacked. It was his way. For him, for the family, this guy was already dead cold. He just didn’t know it yet, was all.
"A real piece of shit," Tommy said. "I understand."
"No, you don’t understand." Ricca glared at him. "Not yet you don’t. But you will. In time."
Tommy just sat there, lost.
"Okay. This Smith, this fuck took it all for granted. He thought he was ten-fucking-feet tall and bulletproof. Nothing and no one could touch him, he thought," Ricca explained. "When a guy starts thinking like that…well, he starts thinking crazy, right? A guy like that could do just about anything and this one did. Smith, he starts contracting out with the Irish, the Russians, even the spics. He’d set up deals, work them through these outsiders. The payoff on these scams was sweet, Tommy. Problem is, the family didn’t get a dime out of any of them. Course, the Old Man got pissed. Understandably. So this Smith, he thought he really had her dicked. But in the process of all these dirty dealings, what happens?"
Tommy just stared.
Ricca flicked an inch-long ash into a marble tray. "I’ll tell you what happens. He loses honor. He loses respect. He screws the very organization that made him what he was. A man like this has no honor. He stinks, Tommy. Stinks like a bag of dog turds. And everyone around him stinks. And we can’t have that, can we?"
"No, we can’t."
"It’s a matter of family honor, am I right?"
"Sure, Sally. Right as fucking rain."
Ricca grinned. It was not a happy grin. "Guy had it all, too," he said, as if he were lamenting his own life. "What gets into a guy’s head? What makes him lose control?"
"I don’t know, Sally."
Ricca shook his head. "No matter. I want you to do this guy. For me. For yourself. For the Old Man. For the family…okay?"
Tommy thought it over carefully. It was also the way things were done. In the outfit, you didn’t take the life of a made man on a whim. Even when it was sanctioned, you considered it carefully. And if and when you whacked him, you did it quickly, painlessly. You showed him some respect.
"Okay," Tommy said finally. "I’ll do it."
"You’re beautiful," Ricca told him and almost seemed to mean it. "Now, your father."
"He left when I was a kid, Sally. I never knew him. Shit, I don’t even have a picture of him." Tommy folded his arms, looking wounded. "But, I guess, I always wanted the chance. My mother, God rest her soul, never got over him. She…"
But Tommy couldn’t bring himself to talk about it.
Ricca understood; he knew all about it.
Tommy cleared his throat. "I need to see him."
"And you will," Ricca assured him.
"When?"
"Tonight. You’re gonna whack him."
*
"You nervous, kid?"
Tommy lit a cigarette off the butt of the last. On the plate before him was a club sandwich, untouched. "Nah. I’m all right."
"Sure you are. Maybe you wanna tell me what happened in there?"
"Gimme time."
Carmine Florio studied the racing form spread out before him. A thin, jittery old man, he lived to gamble, to wager, to bet. He would take action on anything. College games. Pro games. Horses. Dogs. Who’d win what election. Which actor would get the Oscar. How many lasagna noodles in a pot. Which way a spider would run if you stomped your foot by it. He was obsessed.
Tommy studied the ash of his cigarette. "I’m in shit," he said.
Florio didn’t look up. Not yet. "You don’t say? Didn’t go so good?"
"Not so good at all." Tommy told him briefly about it all. "He wants me to do him tonight."
"Jesus." Florio kept shaking his head, studying the floor as if maybe he might find an answer there. He didn’t. "This is bullshit, Tommy. Let me talk to Sally. He can’t ask this of you."
"Too late. He already did."
Florio looked him in the eye. "And?"
"And tonight I’m gonna kill my old man."
The rest of the day did not pass easily.
Tommy sat around with the rest of Ricca’s crew. They ordered out Greek and played video poker, told stories about guys who were doing time. He sat and played and pretended to eat. He even listened, but he did not hear.
He was thinking about his father.
It had been hard on Tommy’s mother, all of it. By the time he was twelve she’d been in and out of the psych ward half a dozen times. She went totally over the edge when he was 15. The head doctors brought her back again, what was left of her. Two days before Tommy’s seventeenth birthday, she swallowed a bottle of valium and went to sleep for good. Tommy’s old man was the cause. Tommy remembered her talking endlessly of him and the sort of guy he was. When she got bad she started acting like he’d just gone off to work and would be back that night. More times than Tommy could count she’d set out a third place at dinner or had dolled herself up because the old man was coming to take her to a show or some imaginary party. Then she’d wait and wait and wait.
It was pathetic.
Thinking these things made Tommy hate him. Hate this father he’d never known. The very pigfuck Ricca said had not only turned his back on his family, but on the outfit as well.
Yet, killing him…killing his own father, that just didn’t wash. But what choice did he have? If Ricca said do it, then he had to do it. That’s also the way things were done. Tommy had taken the blood oath. He was a made man in the family. The luxury of refusing did not exist.
His father was also a made man just like him. He wondered how many times he’d tripped over him. How many times they’d pulled jobs together. The least Ricca could’ve done was given him a name.
For supper, the other players ordered in some Pakistani and then charged it all to a counterfeit credit card. They thought that was funny.
But not Tommy.
He checked his watch. Loaded the gun Ricca gave him.
And then it was time to go.
Tommy wasn’t sure who he hated worse: Ricca or his old man.
He thought of all the years he’d known Ricca. All the times they’d eaten together, drank, socialized, worked together. And all that time, he’d known. He’d known and he hadn’t said a fucking thing.
Where was the honor in that?
Friend was a word Tommy might have used once to describe Sally Ricca. Friend, confidant, ally. Sure, he was Tommy’s boss, but it had always seemed like so much more. Now the only thing that seemed to describe Ricca was cheap hood. Because, after all, wasn’t that the truth? The organization was an assemblage of cheap hoods and Ricca led the pack.
But his father? What of him?
All day long Tommy had wanted to ask some of the boys hanging around the club if they knew anything. But he hadn’t dared. Most probably were ignorant of it all and those that knew would be offended by such an inquiry. It was not how things were done. Once the combine sanctioned the murder of one of its own, that person no longer existed. He was already dead. When you talked to him, you were talking to a ghost. A forgotten man. Once he was whacked, his name would not come up again. He had never existed.
But was that enough?
I’m going to kill my father, Tommy thought acidly. And all I’ll ever know about him is what Ricca told me, what my mother remembered. That’s it. And if I ask questions later, it will be in bad taste.
And it would have been. Once somebody was clipped, that was it. If you asked questions it meant you had a big mouth and maybe you’d get done, too.
Way he saw it, he was fucked here. Completely.
Tommy pulled his El Dorado to a stop on Canfield. His nerves were jumping like he had a high tension wire shoved up his ass. He lit a cigarette and checked the address on the slip of paper Ricca had given him. It was not familiar.
This was it.
Across the street was some low-rent apartment building. According to Ricca it was one of the places Tommy’s father frequented. Had a girlfriend there apparently. Tonight, Ricca promised, he’d be alone.
Tommy got out of the car, tossed his cigarette.
He stood there in the wind, in the swimming darkness, feeling the weight of the Browning 9mm in his coat pocket. It felt very cold. Tommy felt very alone. A drowning man who was cutting the lifeline thrown him.
Inside, the place smelled like cat piss and vinegar. A thick, sour tang of animals and cooking. Somewhere, a TV droned on.
Swallowing, Tommy went up to 203.
Slipping on a pair of tight, form-fitting racing gloves, he tried the door. It wasn’t locked. He took out the Browning and threaded the silencer onto the barrel, stuck it in his coat.
Quiet, stealthy, he opened the door and gently closed it behind him.
A man was sitting in a recliner, facing forward. Tommy could only see the pink top of his balding head. It glistened like lake ice. Sweat. Hair oil. Tommy went to the chair, took the gun out.
With a sudden unexpected creak, the chair swiveled around.
He was expected.
Salvatore Ricca was sitting in the chair.
He looked very old, very used up. He had a rosary clutched in his white-knuckled fist. He just sat there, staring at Tommy.
Tommy took a step back. Felt like he’d been kicked in the balls. "You?" he managed, not sure whether it was a question or an accusation. "You?"
"Yeah, Tommy," Ricca said with genuine effort. "I’m your father."
Tommy lowered the gun. "All this time…"
Ricca looked away now. He was as Tommy had never seen him: vulnerable, empty, totally defenseless. "Yeah, all this time. I left your mother because I couldn’t deal with any of it. I was a wiseguy, Tommy, you know? An operator. I couldn’t handle the domestic stuff. I couldn’t handle any of it. All I wanted was the life."
Tommy licked his lips. "You…you’re…"
"A coward? Yeah, maybe I am."
"That other stuff. About Smith."
Ricca nodded. "I told you about myself. The Old Man has washed his hands of me, Tommy. I’ve disgraced it all. The family, the life. But worse…I’ve disgraced you."
It all came together in Tommy’s head like some convoluted, greasy stew. Everything suddenly fit. And it fitting, would never fit again.
"You could’ve told me."
"I didn’t have the balls," Ricca admitted. "I kept an eye on you always. I had Florio take care of you, help you. It was the best a guy like me could do."
Tommy sighed, shook his head. "So you put a contract on yourself?"
"Yeah. I knew you had balls. I wanted to die knowing what a real man you were. I wanted to die proud of you."
Ricca looked so terribly helpless, so pathetic that Tommy just couldn’t bring himself to hate the man. "Is the Old Man gonna have you whacked? Is that why you did this?"
"No. I did this because I wanted you to know the truth before I went. I wanted you to get it from my lips." Ricca hung his head. He looked very much like a man who needed to cry, but just didn’t know how. "The Old Man decided not to whack me. You know why? Because he found out I ain’t got long to live anyway."
Tommy did the staring now.
"Yeah, son, it’s true. I got a tumor in my belly. It’s eating me alive, day by fucking day."
Tommy remembered the incident with Ricca’s stomach, the pain.
"The Old Man don’t have the decency to kill me. He wants me to suffer, wants me to die like that. Let that cancer eat my guts out." A tear slid now from Ricca’s left eye. "I don’t want to die like that, Tommy. I can’t do it. I’m not strong enough. I want to die like a man. Can you understand that?"
Tommy himself wanted to cry. He hadn’t shed a tear since his mother’s death, but he needed to now. "I can’t, Sally. I just can’t."
"You have to."
"I don’t care what you did, Sally," Tommy told him. "You fucked up. You fucked up big. With the Old Man, with me. But I can try to forget, I can—"
"Bullshit." Ricca’s eyes went hard, went steel and sharp. "Don’t you disgrace me, Tommy. Be the man I never was." But that didn’t seem to move him, so he poured it on the way Tommy was more accustomed to: "You stupid no-good guinea fucking wop, I gave you a goddamn order and you better fucking carry it out or they’ll find your ass in the river come morning!"
Tommy thought about it all. The lies. His mother. Ricca’s cancer. Everything.
He brought the gun up.
Ricca’s eyes seemed to glisten with pride, with love. "Forgive me, son," he said. "Be a better man than me."
Tommy bit down on his lower lip and put two slugs in his father’s head.
Carmen Florio was sitting in his car when he got there, behind the steering wheel. "Did you do it?"
Tommy nodded. "I killed him. Just like he wanted."
"Give me the gun."
Tommy put it in his hand. "You knew, didn’t you?" he said. "You’re here, because you knew all along."
"Sure, I knew, kid. I knew what Sally’s secret was. I knew he was dying. Other than me, only the Old Man knew." Florio lit a cigarette, lit one for Tommy and made him take it, smoke it. "I love you, Tommy. You know that. But Sally was my boss. I had to do what he said. Whether I agreed or not."
Tommy took a long, slow drag. Exhaled. "When did you find out?"
"I knew you were Sally’s kid maybe a year before your mother passed on," Florio confessed. "Sally told me. Told me to keep an eye on you, watch over you. Spend time with you."
Tommy could remember it all now. Florio giving him the job at his restaurant when he was 16, carefully grooming him for the family, step by step, just a little at a time. But it was more than that. Florio hung out with him. Went to his baseball games. Took him to Lions games. The Tigers, Red Wings. He even went to Tommy’s school functions. And, sure, he taught him how to cheat at cards, how to rig dice, the fine art of sports handicapping. That was part of it; the education of the streets. It was what Florio knew. But, most importantly of all, he’d always been there. Made Tommy finish school. Kept him clean. Kept him away from the drug gangs. He’d even taken Tommy fishing, camping. And for a guy of the streets, that was really something. A street soldier out hiking.
Tommy wanted to smile, but he didn’t. "Those things. All the things you did for me. Did you do em because he told you to?"
"I did em because I wanted to. I liked to pretend you were my kid." Florio took out a hanky, wiped his nose, his eyes. "I loved you like you were my own."
Tommy couldn’t find his voice.
Florio started the car, drove away. They drove in silence for quite a time. The radio played softly in the background. Old jazz. Florio’s favorite.
"He was a coward," Tommy suddenly said.
"Who?"
"Sally."
"Don’t you dare say that, goddammit," Florio warned him. "You know what kind of balls it took to do what he did? To confess to you. To arrange his own murder and then sit in that apartment, in that damn chair and wait for his killer."
"Maybe you’re right."
"I am right. And that’s how we’ll remember him: a guy with balls. Not perfect, but a real man."
They found a Denny’s, a 24-hour joint. Went in and had some coffee, some pie. They talked for hours and hours and not once did they mention Sally Ricca.
Tim Curran has placed stories in The Edge, Darkness Within, 3-Lobed Burning Eye, Hardboiled, Burning Sky, Blue Murder, and Black Rose. As well as the anthologies Mad Love and More Fungi from Yuggoth. He writes mostly crime, horror, mystery and suspense because he watched too much TV as a kid. A father of three, he works in a factory where very little is asked of him since he is generally daydreaming or sleeping.
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