Son of the Mob (2 page)

 

CHAPTER TWO

I
WAS ABOUT FOUR
when I first started to realize that my family wasn't like the families of some of my friends at preschool.

Mom is bundling me out of the house to catch the bus when I turn and ask, “Where's Daddy?”

“He's sleeping, Vincent. You'll see him when you come home for lunch.”

I point up and down the street. “But all the other daddies go to work. They drive in their cars, or they take the train to the city.”

Here's what she tells me: “Your father's in the vending-machine business. He works different hours because you never know when a vending machine is going to break.”

That's her explanation for why Dad has to run off at two o'clock in the morning on urgent business. I honestly used to believe that somewhere there was a jammed-up soda machine, and my dad had to rush off in the dead of night and fix it. Hey, I was four.

Brothers Vending Machines, Inc., is the name of the company. I always thought that was pretty strange considering Dad's an only child. But even though he has no brothers, there were always lots of uncles around. I made a list once. I was up to sixty before I gave up. And some of the names! I have an Uncle Fingers, Uncle Puke, Uncle Shank, Uncle Fin, Uncle Pampers, and Uncle Exit. I have two uncles named Nose—Big-Nose and No-Nose. I even have an uncle named Uncle. Everybody calls him that, except his real nephews, who call him T-Bird.

Seven years old: I wake up for a drink of water and find blood-spattered towels in the bathtub. Scared out of my mind, I run to my parents' room to find the light on and a little meatball surgery in progress. There's plastic sheeting over everything. My uncle Carmine lies facedown on the bed, crying and whimpering. My dad sits on him to hold him still, while my mother digs at him with a tweezers.

“Aha!” she exclaims, coming up with a tiny misshapen object covered in gore.

Uncle Carmine screams bloody murder.

“Shut up, Carmine!” orders my father. “If you wake the kids, the next one's going in your head.”

They tell me it's a kidney stone, but I'm not fooled.

My teacher, Mrs. Metzger, confirms my suspicion that kidney stones don't come out of your butt cheek.

The peculiarities begin to mount up. The sudden “school camping trip” where none of the other kids are from my class. And where one day, I open my Cracker Jacks at snack time and find a box full of cut diamonds. Everybody else has a ball while I sit in the cabin, guarding my cache of “snacks,” afraid to open anything else. I have to be evaluated by a psychologist after that, because I'm so obsessed with my food.

When I get back to my own school, none of the kids in my class have gone on any camping trip. They think I've been out with strep throat.

Dad says special cleaners were working in our house while I was away, so he had to get rid of the Cracker Jacks because it's so messy. Those guys must have been pretty lousy cleaners, because they cut open every teddy bear in my closet.

Stuff like that.

By this point, Tommy has already told me, “Dad's mobbed up.” But back then I assumed it just meant he had a lot of friends.

He's such a fun father. While all the uncles ignore their kids, Dad always finds time for Tommy and me, and our older sister, Mira. He teases us, and cracks great jokes, and we always get tons of presents. There are these fun little rituals, too. Every night before he shuts out the lights in the den, he'll look up and address the fixture: “And a special good night to you, Agent Numb-Nuts.” Or he'll call into the garage, “We're going out to dinner if it's all right with you, Agent Needledink. Should I bring you a doggie bag?”

As a kid, I thought it was a riot. It's only now, years later, that I realize Dad's talking to real people. FBI agents, to be specific. Our house was—and still is—always bugged.

I'll never forget the day it sank in that people are out there listening. Every burp, every trip to the can, and worse—all preserved on tape by federal agents. Home sweet home.

At least now I understand why Dad flips his lid the day I accidentally open up that suitcase full of bearer bonds.

“What's this, Dad? It looks like some kind of money.”

The father who never so much as smacked my behind clamps a death grip on my mouth with the strength of the jaws of a great white shark.

“It's play money, Vince. Like Monopoly.”

Uncle Cosimo, who's in charge of the suitcase, cuts our lawn for the next three summers.

Think what a terrible burden it is for a high-school kid: if you say the wrong thing in the privacy of your own home, you might end up sending your father to prison.

One day I corner Mom in the laundry room, where the roar of the washer covers our conversation. “I know what Dad does for a living.”

She nods. “He's an excellent provider. Thank God, vending machines are a profitable business.”

“Oh, Mom,” I complain. “Don't treat me like an idiot. I know he's in the Mob.”

She stares at me, shocked. “What on earth are you talking about?”

“Come on, Mom. I know you know!”

I've got to give her credit. She never retreats an inch. Either that or my poor mother is so dumb that, ten years ago, she really did believe that Uncle Carmine passed a kidney stone through a bloody hole in his left buttock. It's a mean thing to say about your mom, but I have to consider heredity. There must be an explanation for Tommy, after all. And Mira majored in media studies, not astrophysics, in community college.

My mother can serve a sit-down dinner for fifteen guys at four in the morning with ten minutes advance notice. Our basement is full of freezers packed with food just in case the Mormon Tabernacle Choir drops by in the state she prefers all her guests to be in—ravenous. And her cooking is great, if a little heavy. Not just in your stomach. Try
carrying
it. A Tupperware container of Mom's lasagna weighs twice as much as anybody else's.

That's not to say that Mom and her meatballs are all meat and no balls. I remember once there was this guy, Angelo, a real young Turk in Uncle Shank's crew, who had some kind of beef with Tommy. This is right after Tommy quit school to join the business, so he was about my age now, and nowhere near as tough as his current, put-Jimmy-Rat-in-the-trunk self.

Dad absolutely refuses to intervene on his son's behalf. “If I mix in, you'll never command any respect on your own,” he says. But Tommy keeps getting pushed around. A few weeks later, Uncle Shank and his guys are over at the house, and Mom asks Angelo to “help her” in the kitchen. They're alone in there together, and suddenly there's the most God-awful scream coming from Angelo. He leaves in a hurry, and we order Chinese food that night—an event so rare that it should come with skywriting and fireworks.

“I thought we were having chicken potpie,” I say.

“The potpie,” she tells me, “is totally out of commission.”

I don't push it.
Totally out of commission
is a phrase Mom uses to describe things that are gone, finished, and never to be seen again on this earth. Although, in this case, I do see the potpie again. There it is, in the garbage, dish and all. The crust is broken in a perfect handprint. Coincidentally, Angelo walks around with a bandaged hand for six weeks. First-degree burns.

The incident is never mentioned at our house, but from that day on I realize that Mom has a titanium backbone to go with her heart of gold. And if food is her medium, it can also be her message. Where family is concerned, nobody messes with Mom, not even her powerful husband.

Angelo never bugged Tommy again. A few months later, he stopped hanging around Uncle Shank and his crew. They say he moved out west.

Alex, who is turned to stone in the presence of Dad, Tommy, or any of the uncles, always has plenty to say when we're alone. “Don't you ever watch Mafia movies? Do you have any idea the kind of
chicks
these guys get? I defy you to show me one gangster with an ugly girlfriend.”

To say Alex has a one-track mind is an insult to one-track minds.

“You're practically a Mob prince,” he presses on. “There must be some way to use that to rustle us up a couple of dates!”

“That is
never
going to be a part of my life!” I vow. “I've had it out with my dad, and he knows exactly how I feel.”

He looks at me in awe. “Really? What did he say?”

It was less than a year ago. Dad doesn't say anything at first, and it isn't just because of our latest FBI eavesdropper, Agent Bite-Me. We're in my father's basement workshop, the one room in our house that's guaranteed safe. With unfinished concrete walls and floor, there's virtually nowhere to hide a listening device. It's Tommy's job as Dad's apprentice to sweep the tools and equipment for bugs twice a day. That includes the Universal gym, and the woodworking area. A lot of conferences take place there, and a lot of uncles make their way down the basement stairs.

He sits me in a rickety, lopsided wooden chair that rocks precariously on the concrete floor. Why do the well-to-do Lucas have such a piece of junk in their upscale home? Because it's an Anthony Luca handmade special. For years, Dad has been talking about not working so hard, scaling back his day-to-day involvement in the business, stopping to smell the roses, blah, blah, blah. Uncle Sal recently died (actually, I think he had help) and it reminded Dad that life is short.

So my father took up woodworking to relax him. He threw himself into his new hobby with the intense determination that characterizes everything else he does. And he has to be maybe the lousiest carpenter on the planet.

But he doesn't know that. He's Anthony Luca. Who's going to tell him? I've seen some of the toughest wiseguys in the tristate area oohing and aahing over a napkin holder that would languish on the shelf of the 99-cent shop.

“So,” he begins, “you're not interested in the vending-machine business.”

I start to argue, but decide, What's the point? We both know what we're talking about. “Yeah, vending machines,” I say. “It's a little tough for my tastes.”

Dad breathes a heavy sigh. He knows I don't approve of his line of work, but I think he always hoped I'd grow out of it. As if obeying the law is a silly phase some crazy kids experiment with, like smoking cigars or racing motorcycles. “A man has the right to choose his own destiny,” he acknowledges. “So now we know what you don't want. Tell me what you do want.”

My mind goes blank. He smiles, as if he's expecting that. “When I was your age, Vince, we had nothing. So I was the most motivated guy in the world to get out there and do better than my old man. With you it's different. You've got a great deal here—nice house, room service, new car….” I drove a Porsche back then (sixteenth-birthday present) until the cops came and took it away to give back to the guy who really owned it.

“I've got ambition,” I interrupt. “I just haven't figured out what I'm ambitious about yet.”

“The law's a nice career for a kid with the gift of gab,” he suggests. “You can never have too many lawyers.”

“You've got Mel,” I remind him. Mira's husband. He just started working for Dad.

My father shrugs. “Mel's my son-in-law. You're blood.”

“You don't get it,” I insist. “I don't want to be involved, period. I don't want ‘vending machines' touching my life in any way.”

He looks amused. “Too late. You think we'd live the way we do if I was in any other business? You're already in it, Vince. Right down to the clothes you wear, the food you eat, your allowance…” He pauses. “What you say makes sense. If you're not motivated by what I do, then fine. But you're seventeen years old now. It's time to get motivated about
something.
”

That's classic Dad—reasonable, sensible, supportive. People who meet him outside of business find it hard to believe that this classy, soft-spoken gentleman is who he is. It only becomes clear when you see how the uncles tiptoe around him, the fear in people's faces when they hear his name, the scrambling that goes on when he asks for something. It's only at those times that I realize the great guy I call Dad is a man who runs a criminal organization that operates by means of violence and intimidation. And I really, truly, honestly want nothing to do with it.

The funny thing is that, for a Mob boss, my dad is considered the most ethical and trustworthy man alive. He really is Honest Abe Luca—although I don't know if our sixteenth president would have appreciated the comparison.

Tommy says the word on the street is if you deal with Anthony Luca, you'll never get ripped off. Conversely, if you rip off Anthony Luca, you'll never deal again anywhere. Not in this life.

The word on the street is very important in that business, especially for a guy like my dad, who isn't famous at all outside his own circle. He keeps a pretty low profile. Most of the kids at school have no idea that my family is The Family. The only time Dad even made the papers was after the famous gangland assassination of Mario Calabrese in 1993. The cops are sure that my father ordered the hit, but they were never able to pin it on him. They just assumed he did it because, with Calabrese out of the picture, Dad was able to take over as the vending-machine king of New York. Dad won't say anything about it one way or the other, not even to Tommy, who joined him in the business shortly after that.

It didn't take very long for Tommy to develop a reputation just the opposite of my dad's. Tommy's loud, crude, and rough, with a temper like a cherry bomb. When the doorbell rings, he's the last guy you want to see standing there, except maybe Uncle Pampers.

Tommy has plenty of enthusiasm for his job. Maybe too much, as Jimmy Rat could tell you. So Dad brought over one of his top young guys and made him Tommy's partner.
Keeper
would be a better word.