Doppelgangster - Laura Resnick [9]
Chubby Charlie Chiccante, a three-hundred-pound capo in the Gambello family, squinted at me as he reached for his wallet. “I’ll show you a good time,” he promised. “Let me tell you something. In the sack, I’m fuckin’ spectacular. Ask anyone.”
I said loudly over my shoulder to Lucky Battistuzzi, who ate here at Bella Stella almost every night, “Lucky, is Charlie spectacular in bed?”
Lucky nodded his grizzled head. “The earth moved for me.”
Four male acquaintances of Charlie’s sitting at a nearby table heard this and guffawed. A predictable round of jokes ensued. I knew from staff gossip that those four guys weren’t Gambellos, they were soldiers in the Buonarotti family. It would be exaggerating to say the Buonarottis were on cordial terms with the Gambellos, but there was enough absence of animosity between the families that Buonarotti wiseguys could dine at Bella Stella, a stronghold of the Gambellos, without bloodshed. Well, as long as they didn’t irritate any Gambello soldiers.
Whereas Corvino wiseguys knew better than to come near Stella’s. As Lopez had pointed out to me, there was a lot of bad blood between those two families.
Chubby Charlie rolled his small eyes at the crude jokes the Buonarottis were making, then pulled a red silk handkerchief out of the breast pocket of his suit and patted his shiny face with it. Like Lucky, he was a regular at Stella’s. And Charlie, who was in his late fifties, was notorious among the staff; he always ate two full entrees, sweated while he ate, and propositioned his waitress.
Whether Charlie tipped well depended on whether he liked your voice. He always wanted a song with his dinner. If he enjoyed the performance, he left a generous tip. If he didn’t, he stiffed you. And no server at Stella’s chose to argue about this with a man who was rumored to have killed at least seven people (mostly members of the Corvino crime family). Tonight, he had demanded to be seated in my section, and he’d requested a rendition of “That’s Amore.” As always, I’d sung to the accompaniment of our accordion-playing bartender.
Now, as Charlie stuffed his red handkerchief back into his breast pocket, he said to me, “So why won’t you go out with me? You got a fuckin’ boyfriend?”
Lucky put down the newspaper he’d been reading after finishing his dinner and said to Charlie, “Hey, watch your language, paesano. You’re speaking to a lady.”
I smiled at him. Alberto “Lucky Bastard” Battistuzzi had acquired his nickname due to surviving two attempts on his life as a young man, both times because an attacker’s gun jammed. He had spent almost forty years as a hit man for the Gambellos, but he was reputedly retired now. Or semiretired. He’d once quoted another “Lucky” wiseguy to me, the famous Charles Luciano, saying the only way out of his business was “in a box.” According to kitchen gossip, he had probably killed more people than anyone else who ate at Stella’s. But despite his profession, he always behaved like a gentleman toward me.
“Hey, I’m just askin’ her out,” Chubby Charlie protested. “What’s your fuckin’ problem?”
“You know want to know what my problem is?” Lucky retorted.
“Yeah, I want to know what your fuckin’ problem is,” Charlie riposted.
“You’re asking what my problem is?”
“Yeah, I’m askin’ your fuckin’ problem.”
“I ain’t the one with the problem,” Lucky said.
“No?”
“No!”
“So who’s the one with the fuckin’ problem?” Charlie bristled. “Huh? Come on, wise ass! Tell me!”
I’d worked long enough at Bella Stella to know that this was typical dinner-table talk among wiseguys, so I just accepted the cash that Charlie handed me for his dinner while he was arguing with Lucky, and I interrupted only to ask him if he wanted change. When he said no, I gave him a big smile and tucked a flapping edge of his bright red handkerchief more securely into his breast pocket; he had tipped me very well. I must have been in good voice that evening.
“You’ll be the one with the problem,” Lucky advised him, “if you don’t show some respect. Esther’s dating a