Bone in the Throat - Anthony Bourdain [87]
"I thought you double the tax. Twenty percent of this check, I could put my kid through college," complained Al.
"Twenty percent. That's what I do. Restaurant people, they go out to eat, they leave twenty percent. . . unless the waiter's a screamin' fuckin' asshole."
Al signed the credit card slip after adding in 15 percent. He waited for the waiter to return with the carbon, then made a notation in a small spiral-bound book. He put the carbon in his wallet, shook his head, and exhaled loudly.
"You gonna have a problem justifying this on the old expense account, there, Al?" said Tommy, visibly enjoying himself. "This wasn't exactly lunch at the Sizzler."
"No problem, Tommy," snapped Al, "I got you down as 'A Potential High Level Source with a Unique Perspective on the Inner Workings of a Major Organized Crime Family' "
"That's kinda an exaggeration, isn't it?" said Tommy.
"We'll see," said Al. "I'm an optimist."
Al retrieved an ancient Burburry trenchcoat from the coat-room, remembering to discreetly button up his pants again. They stepped out onto the sidewalk, and Al gestured toward the red Alfa, parked across the street.
"Lemme give you a lift," said Al. "There's some things I want to show you in the car."
Wobbly on his feet, Tommy agreed. Once inside the Alfa, Al reached under the driver's seat and removed a manila envelope. The words CONFIDENTIAL: NOT FOR DISSEM were stamped in red ink on the side.
"I just want to show you a few pictures," said Al. "You don't have to say anything. Just look at the pictures. Like Show and Tell. I'll show and I'll tell. Won't hurt a bit.
"This here's your uncle, Sally Wig," said Al, holding up a grainy black-and-white surveillance photo. "That's Charles Iannello, or Charlie Wagons, as we've come to know and love him, standing next to him there. I understand he knew your father. You must have seen him around. I love the bathrobe, don't you? Pretends to be nuts. Looks like he's kinda pissed off in this picture, doesn't it? Maybe he's mad at the Wig. There's not a lot of love there, I understand."
He held up another picture, "Here's another . . . Sally Wig and friend, out taking the air. The friend, I think maybe you've seen this gentleman around, too. A Mr. Gaetano "Skinny" di Milito. Not a very nice man, from what I can tell. You know he dragged a box cutter across his teacher's face a couple a' times in shop class a few years back. Course, he was a juvenile, back then. Nine months in Spofford for Skinny. A hundred sixty-eight stitches for teacher. I guess Skinny musta got frustrated tryin' to make a wallet or something."
He showed Tommy another picture, this one in color. It was a close-up of the teacher's face, a polaroid, taken in the hospital. The face was swollen and purple, bits of suture visible around the wounds; patches of oozing gauze covered the worst parts.
He held up another. "Oh, here's one. This is some of Sally's work. Some that we know about, that is. This guy was insensitive enough to take Sally's parking space. Foolishly thought he could park some where just 'cause it said Public Parking on the sign. Wrong . . . Sally was kind enough to show him the error of his ways. Broke his collarbone and both elbows with an axe handle. He looks kinda like a lobster in those casts, doesn't he?"
Tommy turned his head away. "I don't wanna see this shit," he said.
"Just a few more," said Al. "Here's a couple of new ones. You might be interested to know this happened just the other night in Brooklyn. Maybe you've seen these two gentlemen around the Dreadnaught. They were regular customers of yours, apparently. They musta been customers, right, 'cause they were sure in and out of there a lot in the past few weeks. It's hard to recognize them now, though." He held up a crime scene photo of the two men in the Brioni suits. They were lying in the street, two heaps of dark, wet rags on fields of black blood.
"We still don't know what they used on this guy," said Al, showing Tommy a close-up of a man's head, teeth showing through