Vengeance. Mystery Writers of America Presents B00A25NLU4

linguine, and here comes Turnip. Alone and more or less right after Big Muzz said. A good sign, he thought as he watched Pinhead frisk him, concluding by giving his nuts a threatening tug.
    Turnip shivered as he shook off the September chill.
    “Mr. Rapa,” Soldato began. “How’s the Camaro? And Angie?”

    “T WO QUESTIONS, AND there was the entire plan,” Turnip said.
    “The shit heap gave it up before I had my ass in the seat. What a fuckin’
babbo.
”
    “So he said that? Just like that?” Angie asked.
    “Not in so many words, no. Different words.”
    “What words?”
    “Ang, how the fuck do I know? I got the gist of it, all right?”
    They decided to play it safe, leaving the Camaro in Turnip’s garage. Angie had a beat-up burgundy Impala, one of about three thousand in Hudson County. He drove it north on Boulevard East while Turnip took the 22 bus up to Cliffside. Now they were in the Bagel Nosh in Fort Lee, figuring nobody was eyeing the joint.
    “The one sentence,” Angie insisted. “Repeat that one —”
    “He said, ‘I don’t want to see him no more.’ ”
    “Meaning what?”
    “Well, I don’t think he wants you to move, Ang,” Turnip chuckled.
    “And you don’t take me out, he’ll blow up the Camaro. What’s wrong with this guy? Did you tell him they made a lot of Camaros?”
    You had to be half a fag to drink Tab, but Turnip liked the taste. “In fact, Ang, they ain’t made that many Super Yenkos.”
    Angie narrowed his eyes and sat back in the orange booth.
    Silence hung heavy. Soon Turnip wondered if his friend could kill him with a plastic spoon covered with chicken liver.
    “I’m saying, that’s all.”
    Angie tapped his fingers, one after the next, and Turnip began to squirm.
    “Ang,” he said finally, palms up. “What the fuck . . .”
    Angie adjusted his eyeglasses. The color began to return to his face.
    “Let me guess your plan,” Turnip said. “You let me guess?”
    “Yeah. Go guess,” he replied, dabbing at the corners of his mouth with his thumb and forefinger. He’d noticed the knockout behind the counter. A schnoz on her, but those dark curls and like an hourglass under the Bagel Nosh uniform. A streak of mischief too: He could tell she liked that he wouldn’t return when they were done.
    He had to ask if she had a friend. A friend with a car didn’t mind driving Turnip down to Narrows Gate after.
    “You want to find out where they got another ’69 Camaro,” Turnip said, sucking on a lemon slice.
    Angie stood. “No. Jesus . . .”
    Looking up, Turnip frowned. “What then?”
    “When I come back, you tell me how Soldato’s connected,” he said. “Let me know if there’s somebody maybe who wouldn’t want to, you know, make a move, given his misstep.”

    T HOUGH IT WAS a short ride under the Hudson from Little Italy, Narrows Gate no longer drew much attention from the Five Families. The Gigentis still had a slice via the creaking waterfront, but the shipyards had closed, the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company moved, Venus Pencil too, and now the city’s population, once as high as sixty thousand, was down to less than half that. And half of those left were
melanzane
who’d turned the projects into Little Harlem.
    Seeing the Mob now thought the place an ass pimple, Soldato had moved in and set up his own operation, running a numbers racket that catered to the old-time Italians, the coloreds, and the
Irlandese
. Soon, come eight thirty at night and almost everybody left in Narrows Gate was throwing elbows, grabbing the bulldog edition of the
Daily News
for the total mutual handle at the track to see if the last three numbers matched their bet.
    Given it’s a thousand-to-one shot to hit on the nose, Soldato needed a rake to collect, taking in maybe two large a week in small change and paying out less than 7 percent. Most of that went to his army of bookies, all blue-haired grandmothers who knew everybody on the block who wanted in. Somebody gave him shit he’d send Pinhead to bruise her sensible. Grandma in ShopRite with a fat lip and a shiner, and soon everybody’s back in line, the thing almost running itself.
    Angie knew the
donnaccia
with the Ping-Pong ball at Muzzie’s was a sign that Soldato wanted to expand. But the Gigentis sent hookers through the Lincoln Tunnel for action all over the county: One Saturday 4:15 a.m., Angie and Turnip counted sixteen
zoccolas
waiting for a New York–bound bus outside a motel only a mile