Street Fighter
1
putting on the finger
If you didn't know him better, you'd say Paulie Small was a condemned man eating his last meal.
And what a meal: antipasto for two, clams casino, oysters Rockefeller, mussels marinara, shrimp scampi, osso buco with broccoli rabe, spaghetti with sweet Italian sausage. Garlic bread like you wouldn't believe. A full carafe of the house chianti. Double espresso, amaretto cake, the cannoli plate, consisting of plain, vanilla, chocolate and, because this was the Villa Verdi, a green peppermint.
Paulie Small was a big man, tall and wide in a brown suede sport coat and a black turtleneck shirt rolling out over a gut you could ski down. He just about ate this meal himself, because the short, scrawny woman he was with, the one in a clinging pink sweater and the shiny black disco pants, spent more time moving the food around on her plate than putting it in her mouth. She'd lift up every one of the shrimp in the shrimp scampi, turn them over, put some of them on one side of the plate, some of them on the other. You could say she ate like a bird, except for the spaghetti and sausage. When that arrived she poked the sausage with her fork, and ate it slowly, giving Paulie Small these looks that would make him break out in a sweat and drink his wine a lot faster.
A man and a woman in their late fifties, spending serious money at the Villa Verdi, giving themselves little looks, you just know it's going to lead to a hot night. You had to hand it to Paulie Small: he only had eyes for Teal Cavaletta. You should've seen how she ate those cannoli in front of him.
She was wearing her wedding ring, but it was turned around, as if, with the diamonds not showing, nobody would be able to recognize her. Teal Cavaletta let her husband and daughter go off to the suburbs while she stayed in the city because her husband was one thing, but Paulie Small was the grand passion of her life and, if you're Italian in South Philadelphia, or just pretending, you don't argue with passion.
You might not even blame her, if you had seen Paulie Small back when he was younger and thinner, before he got in big with the politicians and became the man through which all this government development money ebbed, flowed, dripped and dropped into so many different pockets. When Paulie Small came back from Vietnam, and started getting his CPA on the GI bill, he had the charm, he had the smile, he had the ways to loosen up the local widows and get them to put their money into insurance policies, annuities, reverse mortgages, mutual funds that nobody ever heard of that sometimes went belly-up. When that happened, you would never hear those widows say a thing about him, other than they had to rush home because he was coming over for tea and they didn't want to be late.
And you never wanted to play against Paulie Small in the poker games he'd run at the firehouse, at the truck stop down by Essington, and at the veterans' social club that his war buddy, the cop Jack Ferko, set up. You'd play against Paulie, and it would seem that everybody else at the table was winning more than Paulie. And then, one by one, everybody would fold until, at the very end, it was just you and Paulie and you knew that, no matter what he was holding in his hand, Paulie Small was going to win the pot because Paulie liked his card games to resemble his life: you start small, you take a little, you let the other guys win some, but you make sure you go home with more than you came in with because that's the way it's got to be.
There was something terrific about a guy who lived that way. Maybe ten individuals in the city could do Paulie's kind of work, but Paulie got more business because he was a lone gun and unconnected to any of the big law firms. More than any accountant in the city, Paulie offered "deniability." If he had to, he could claim that he was "above it," "out of the loop" when it came to pay-to-play politics. Officials with reputations to protect could tell those who were expecting a major feed and didn't get a crumb: my hands are tied! You got a problem, talk to Paulie.
And Paulie would turn on the kind of charm that would make a sucker think he was anything but a sucker.
Teal Cavaletta was never a sucker for Paulie's charm. He never had to talk her into believing she was anything but what she was: his partner, his right hand, his "insurance policy," his best girl. They had known each other as children and she was always too smart for the little street-corner scams he used to work. When Paulie Small got kids that were even older than he was to bet on the outcome of a game of stickball, Teal would have none of it. She had a better head for numbers and details than he did. She could do things with computers that left him running his fingers through the thin strands of hair on his head that he dyed and brushed straight back. That's why Paulie trusted her, took her to the meetings that happened after the meetings, where she would take notes on her laptop computer and go back to her little row house and create the paperwork so the right people got what was coming to them, just as if it was the natural order of things.
Money is sexy, and so is power, but, for Paulie Small and Teal Cavaletta, the sexiest thing of all was to be the only two people in the city who knew "where the money was buried." They didn't consider themselves partners in crime. They weren't making kickbacks—even the ones that were legal, proper, aboveboard—for the money, at least Teal wasn't. To make Paulie's deals legal, or appear to be so, was, for her, a labor of love.
Still, Paulie paid her well enough, on a piece-by-piece basis, so that, with what she got from the tax returns, bookkeeping and putting her notary seal on documents, Teal could put her crazy daughter Lucia through four years at Ohio State. This, despite the fact that Lucia decided to move out with her father—Teal's ex-husband, Frank—who thought it was okay for their baby to learn all that karate stuff. And what was Lucia doing with a BA in Physical Education? Teaching women in Columbus health clubs how to beat up men! What kind of man is going to want to marry a girl that can beat him up, unless he's in for that sort of thing?
Let them both stay away. The three-story row house that she and her husband had moved into just after they got married was now set up the way she liked it: she had a television in the parlor and a television in the bedroom, a nice kitchen with a gas stove, an office next to the parlor where she would meet with clients and another office upstairs where she would do her accounting work for the neighborhood.
For Paulie, it had to do with keeping score. He paid himself rather grandly. Looking decent was part of the job, so he spent his money on clothes, but never on fashion. He ate food, preferably Italian, but nothing fancy. He bought big American cars that he could trade in after they were a year old. He had a top-floor apartment in the Pickle Factory, a Westyard luxury rehab whose government financing and bountiful city tax breaks he helped arrange. The Pickle Factory had set off a gentrification boom along Westyard's northern edge that Paulie was especially proud of. He'd drive through the gentrified sections and see his handiwork in the prim and pointed row houses, with their planter boxes out front and the fancy iron grates on the windows and the doors, the coffee bars, the cozy Italian BYOBs where it was arugula with this and polenta with that, and the empty-nesters come back from the suburbs, wearing their dark clothes and looking for their high-end, street-parked automobiles whose car alarms were always going off.
No question, Paulie Small was proud of how some of the government money coming into the city ended up in Westyard in particular, a fiercely insular, two-and-a-half-mile, cucumber-shaped swath of one-way streets, row houses and old factories just waiting to be turned into luxury lofts.
Whenever an especially large gush of funds came Paulie's way, he would pick up Teal Cavaletta in front of her row house in his newest black Lincoln and they would drive two blocks—that's right, two whole blocks—to the Villa Verdi, where, if it was a Friday and Saturday night, they'd listen to the owner, another Vietnam war vet named Angelo Delise, come out and sing his thing—tenor arias from Italian opera, mostly. They'd put on a huge feed and then Paulie would drive Teal back to her row house on Brixton Street and spend the night.
On weekday nights at the Villa Verdi, the music was a prerecorded South Philly mix of Sinatra, Dean Martin, Pavarotti and Mario Lanza, the South Philadelphia kid who will be canonized on the day that the cardinals in Rome convince themselves that having a voice can be a bona fide miracle.
On this Tuesday night in October, Paulie had things on his mind and Teal knew better than to ask him what they were, because Paulie told her everything, sooner or later, and you had to save some things for the night. She listened and put things together: ever since the mayor made his ridiculously arrogant "you gotta pay to play" speech, the Feds were dropping hints that people were talking to them, and, even though nobody important was talking to them at the moment, you couldn't be sure, anymore, who wasn't going to talk, if the Feds put on the pressure.
Paulie dabbed his mouth with a green cloth napkin that had seen hazardous duty. He said to Teal, "Some people in this city, you put your finger on them, and they just pop."
Teal said he could put his finger on her anytime, and he smiled at that, a little. One of the things he was doing this week was putting the finger on people. He wasn't actually touching anybody—putting the finger on was what Paulie called telling what wasn't a secret, to people who couldn't keep secrets, so that it seemed that those who had to know things a little bit ahead of everybody else would feel that they were on top of it, in the loop, connected, close to what was happening.
The finger of the week was huge: government funding was almost in place for a $350 million, mixed-use, three-phased development that was going to do for the south edge of Westyard what the Pickle Factory had done for the north edge, on the site of the Eisley Bros. Meatpacking Plant, right behind the Sisters of Zion Hospital. The development would be a public/private partnership, the same one that built the Pickle Factory.
The project would also "stop those Asians from taking over," Paulie said. "Stop 'em right in their tracks."
Paulie didn't like the Thais, Cambodians, Koreans and Vietnamese who had filled out the southern edge of Westyard since the end of the Vietnam war. He saw them as obstacles to the total gentrification of the neighborhood. "You got empty-nesters coming into the city, they're not going to drop a couple a' million on a condo, with Little Saigon going nutso on the street," Paulie told Teal as he finished the wine in his glass. "They're going to want trees on the street, good restaurants, places to park. They're going to want it decent."
"You really think so, Paulie?" she said. "You really think that they're that different from us?"
For all her life, Teal never said a word when Paulie went off about the Asians. This time, she saw the strain in his face. He was having problems with his health, his blood pressure was up, he needed to get more tests about his diabetes. She couldn't tell him to cut back on his eating: for Paulie, what he put in his mouth was his to put in his mouth. It was his right.
For once, she didn't want him to get mad, about anything. She wanted to see the tension go out of his face and see the gentleness return, as it did when he would fall asleep after making love.
She reminded him that the Asians could be decent, in their own way. When Frank Cavaletta, Teal's ex-husband, needed a loan to buy a new moving truck, he borrowed from one of the Asian community banks. And there was that time when Paulie had to come up with $2 million to save the Pickle Factory project. The Asians had been more than decent then.
But Paulie didn't see it that way. "Politics is all about what side you're on. Anybody that wants to keep a lid on things needs somebody he can point a finger at and say, ‘We're not that. That's not us.' Only decent thing about those Asians is they don't complain. They learned right: the ones that complained got deported."
"And how decent was that, Paulie?" Teal said. "What they're going through is what our parents and grandparents went through when they came to this country."
"Nobody gave them any breaks," Paulie said.
"You know that's not right, Paulie. Sure, there were lots of people that didn't like us, that put us down, said we were dirty and ugly and had no morals and didn't eat right. But we didn't get where we are on our own. We worked hard, but we got breaks. We found good people and they found us."
"Good people," Paulie said. He looked around the dining room. Twenty years ago, it had been staffed by Italian boys and girls. Now it was staffed entirely by Asians, and they weren't doing such a bad job.
He made more cell-phone calls: to the real estate columnist at the Philadelphia Standard, the gossip guy at the Philadelphia Press, a couple of the talk-show hosts. "You didn't get this from me," he would tell them, "but Veterans Plaza is going to be the biggest thing to happen to South Philadelphia. Bigger than big."
He put the phone down and looked at the Asians in the room again. "I had to work for those breaks. The stuff I did … There's a lot I'm not proud of."
"So why not do something you'd be proud of," Teal said. "Do something that's totally decent this time."
The concept shocked him. "I've done stuff I thought was decent," Paulie said. "But not totally. Somebody's always got to get screwed. You need losers if you're going to win. That's the way you play the game."
"So play it differently this time," Teal said. "We've won enough fights. We've taken our share. Now let's have it come out so it feels good."
He gave her a little wink. "Totally?"
"Totally."
He put food in his mouth and Teal could almost hear his brain working as he chewed. "I'd have to get some changes made. There'd be risks involved."
"There's no risk now?"
He chewed some more. And more. And more after that.
Then it happened: the tension, the concern just melted from his face. He gave Teal a little wink, which gave Teal the shivers. Paulie was the most charming man with everybody else. With her, he could be the big, crude, lovable oaf, and she would still love him. Her ex-husband, Frank, was a nicer guy, a friend to everyone and, without question, the absolute best-looking lifeguard on the Wildwood beach. The difference between them, as far as Teal could figure it, was that, while Frank Cavaletta looked good on the beach, Paulie Small looked like he owned it.
Paulie excused himself and said he had to "go into the back." This meant a call he couldn't make on his cell phone because he wouldn't want the call monitored or traced back to his number. She watched him put his big hands on his cane and push it down on the threadbare green carpet. He was using a cane these days because of gout and a knee that was never good and wasn't getting any better. The Villa Verdi had pay phones by the restroom but Paulie wouldn't use those, either, because it was a point of privilege for him to be able to go up to Angelo Delise, who stood in his custom-made green suit with gold piping at the cash register, and ask to go into the kitchen and use the office phone. Angelo Delise would give him a look, and Paulie would give back a different look, but he would always let Paulie use the phone.
This time Teal watched them say a few words. She couldn't hear the words, but Angelo Delise was surprised, then suspicious, as he went with Paulie into the kitchen.
When they came out, Paulie had a folded piece of paper in his hand—was that Teal's raised notary seal on the edge?—and Angelo seemed happy. Now it was Teal's turn to be shocked. She had never seen Angelo Delise happy. Not in the seven years since his daughter was killed and his wife left him.
Now she did and it was amazing.
By the time Paulie returned to the table, Teal had added up the bill, calculated the tip to the penny, entered the numbers on Paulie's credit card receipt and signed Paulie's signature. The waiter, an Asian fellow, brought their hats and coats.
"You're good people," Paulie said to the waiter. The waiter was shocked, because Paulie had been a pain to wait on, but now … he said that like he meant it.
The bracing October wind blew garbage and a few leaves this way and that. When you grow up in Philadelphia, you get used to garbage because garbage comes from people, and if you leave it where it is it'll blow somewhere else. But leaves come from trees and leaves get wet and they turn into this sticky, disgusting brown mess that doesn't go away until the city cleans the streets, and the city only cleaned Westyard streets once a year, right before Election Day, which was three weeks away.
Teal remembered that Westyard didn't have a single tree until the Pickle Factory opened seven years ago. Somebody had the idea to put trees on the sidewalk in front of the place, these gingkos which, every fall, would drop these walnut-sized berries that smelled like vomit. What could be more disgusting than walking around and stepping on those things?
Now, with all the gentrification going around on the north edge, trees had been planted in all these holes in the sidewalks, and leaves and the vomit-berries were making a mess out of the neighborhood.
But now, there was an energy in Paulie's step. She walked with him, arm in arm, and the leaves and garbage whirling around them seemed okay. Paulie stuck the hand that wasn't holding the cane into his pants pocket and pressed the button on his keychain so that the headlights on his big, black Lincoln blinked and the alarm whooped, like a dog grateful for its master's return. Paulie held the door for her, as he always did. Soon they were inside the car's soft, gray leather womb, the bright headlights making the familiar streets seem darker, more menacing.
Paulie parked a block away from Teal's house, and the walk back to her house seemed longer than it should have been. Once inside she kissed him, but he was distracted. She went upstairs to the second bedroom, now one large closet, where she changed, while he went to the third floor, where she had her office and the room with her files. There he put copies of documents from things he had been involved in, computer discs, and other items that he did not want to leave in his office or his apartment.
He sat on the edge of the bed, holding the phone in one hand and some folded papers in the other.
Teal came in and saw her notary stamp on those papers. She wanted to show him her new robe. He hung up when he saw her.
"Damn," he said. "That's indecent."
She rubbed the back of his neck and his shoulders but the tension did not go away. Finally he said, "I left the lights on."
"What lights?"
"In the car. There's a gadget in the car that turns them off automatically but I think I pressed the button that leaves them on."
"You'll turn them off later."
"It bugs me. I can't get it out of my mind."
She had read somewhere—it was in the Philadelphia Press, the "Mr. Action" column. Someone had written Mr. Action about people who leave on a trip and then come back an hour later because they're sure they forgot to lock a door, turn off an oven, water the plants, and they find out they did lock the doors, turn off the oven and water the plants. Mr. Action said that this was actually a neurological problem, a sign of aging, and that the best thing to do was let people go back and make sure that their memory was correct so that they learn to tell the feeling of forgetfulness from the real thing.
So Teal watched him bear down on his cane and slowly rise, this big, lumbering man made her feel like a schoolgirl when the lights were out. She stretched out on the bed and heard his steps recede on the stairs. She closed her eyes when she heard the front door close.
When she opened her eyes she realized she had fallen asleep and that someone was hitting the front door knocker, hard.
She pulled her robe around her. As she came down the stairs she heard a voice she knew too well. "Mrs. Cavaletta? It's Sergeant Ferko, Philadelphia Police. I need to speak to you right away."
She opened the door and felt the cold wind rake her skin. She saw the lights from the police cruisers and the ambulance flashing across his face, a face that told her that he needed to cry. He needed to run in and cry, the way he did when Vinnie's brother Errol would beat him up and Vinnie had no place to go, or when Vinnie's mother had finally died from the cancer.
Cops are supposed to get thick skins from all the terrible things they see on the job. Vinnie's father Jack Ferko had a thick skin before he retired and got in big with the war veterans. Vinnie's brother Errol had a thick skin—Paulie always admired Errol as the kid who had what it took, too much of what it took—"that punk wants to take over," Paulie told her. "He wants to move in on my turf, like it's his due. What a punk."
But Vinnie was still Vinnie, so she stepped back and began to think about putting the coffee on and looking for the most recent batch of pizzelles she had made.
She noticed that Vinnie was holding Paulie's hat in his hand, but it couldn't be Paulie's hat because it had one of those disgusting rotten leaves clinging to it, and Paulie was particular about dirt on his clothes. A few nights back, when they had been out on the street together and the wind had blown Paulie's hat off his head, Paulie had watched calmly where the hat went and pursued it slowly, not rushing, not moving fast, his cane making the steady beat on the sidewalk until the wind jammed the hat up against a car wheel in a gutter. Then Paulie had reached down with the grace of a big man who never has to be in a hurry, picked up that hat and smacked it against himself until there was not the slightest trace of dirt and grime.
So here was Vinnie with Paulie's hat, with a leaf on it. She wanted to snatch that hat out of Vinnie's hand and smack that leaf off, until she noticed the red feather along the side.
Paulie didn't put feathers in his hat. She took a closer look and was surprised. What looked like a feather was actually a dark red paint, shiny in places, crusting and dark in others where the wind had blown and dried it out.
Paint that looked exactly like blood.
STREET FIGHTER. Copyright © 2005 by Bill Kent. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.