Reply Hazy, Try Again.
by Bill Prindle
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Table of Contents parts: 1, 2, 3, 4 |
conclusion
In the weeks prior to the race, Paulie had not only laid off all his winnings with bookies in New York, New Jersey, and even Las Vegas but had also borrowed and bet another fifteen thousand. Carmine and his pals had pooled their money and spread it around as well. The odds had narrowed but were still favorable.
The Saturday of the race, Teresa was at work, and Paulie went to Lucky’s to watch the race with some friends. Carmine and his crew were thirty minutes away at Aqueduct. By post time, Billy had already delivered groceries to six elderly neighborhood widows.
He went to his room and practiced a coin trick which involved holding two coins in one hand, closing his hand, removing one of them, putting it in his pocket, and then revealing both coins were still in his hand. This repeated with coins disappearing but not disappearing until, with a “Bibbidi Bobbidi Boo!” he opened both hands to show both coins had vanished. It was an easy trick but always got a great reaction in the classroom.
He flopped down on his bed and resumed reading about the adventures of Jim Hawkins and Long John Silver. He thought briefly about how much money Paulie would make today but didn’t look forward to whatever Paulie had planned. He wished Paulie would just take his money and disappear for good.
Billy read for a while and then put the book aside, wanting to prolong his time on Treasure Island for as long as he could. Out of boredom, he picked up the 8-Ball to confirm that Squared Away had won the Carter Handicap.
“Did Squared Away win the race?”
The reply floated into view. “Tom Fool won.”
Billy stared at the answer. He shook the 8-Ball, asked again, and got the same answer.
He asked how Squared Away did. The 8-Ball replied, “Fourth.” For the first time ever, the 8-Ball had chosen a loser.
Billy felt dizzy. He shook the 8-Ball and asked, “Did you lie to me?”
The 8-Ball replied, “Hide. Now.”
A car screeched to a halt in front of the house. Billy looked out the window and saw Paulie’s DeSoto. He ran downstairs and crawled behind the living room couch, the best hiding place in the house. He flattened himself against the floor, months of accumulated dust tickling his nose.
The kitchen door banged open. Billy saw Paulie’s feet flash by and heard him taking the stairs two at a time. Along with the stream of curses in English and Italian came the sounds of bureau drawers being dumped onto the floor, coat hangers jangling, and more crashing and thumping. Paulie clattered downstairs and stood in the middle of the living room, a few feet from where Billy was hiding. Billy held his nose to stifle a sneeze and felt certain Paulie could hear his heart pounding against his ribs.
Paulie dropped his suitcase and paced back and forth and then stopped. “Billy!” he shouted. He waited, as if listening for the slightest sound Billy might make to reveal his location. “You’d better hide, you little strunz!” He paused. “I know you can hear me, so get this straight. I lost every goddamned cent and got a target on my back thanks to you. You better pray you never see me again!”
Paulie stamped his foot, cursed, picked up the suitcase, and ran from the room. His footsteps receded down the driveway, the car started, and peeled out.
Billy stayed put for another ten minutes. Then he crawled out, sneezed, and ran upstairs to see what Paulie had done.
Another car braked hard out front. He looked out the window and saw a black Lincoln Continental. Three big men got out and walked toward the house. Billy didn’t have time to get behind the sofa, so he raced up the attic stairs and hid in the farthest, darkest corner, amid spider webs and a few cardboard boxes filled with broken china and old magazines.
The men moved through the house, occasionally calling to each other. One climbed the attic stairs and shone a flashlight around. The loose floorboards creaked as he walked toward an old steamer trunk. Billy heard him open it, laugh to himself, and drop the lid with a muffled thump. The man descended the stairs and encountered one of the others.
“Anything?”
“A two-dollar bill. It was in an old trunk.”
“Ditch it. È sfortuna.”
As the men continued searching the house, Billy heard the crash of overturned furniture, breaking glass, and pots and pans hitting the kitchen floor.
After a long while, he heard one man call to the others and heard the thunk of three car doors closing and the rumble of their car pulling away. Again he waited a long while before leaving his hiding place.
Billy picked up the discarded two-dollar bill at the foot of the attic stairs and inspected the upstairs bedrooms. His parents’ room was a shambles of dresses, underwear, ties, Teresa’s jewelry, spare change, shoes, and clots of mattress stuffing and pillow feathers. The bed had been overturned, a mirror smashed on the floor.
His bedroom looked much the same. The mattress had been slashed, the contents of his bureau drawers and closet had been thrown everywhere, and his bookcase had been tipped over, spilling books across the room. His three hollowed-out books where he’d hidden his winnings were empty. Overwhelmed, he sat on his ripped mattress, sobbed for a few minutes, and then knew what he should do next.
He went out to the garage and checked the places where Paulie had hidden his cash. All of it was gone, probably bet on Squared Away. But in a musty corner, among old flower pots, a bald tire, a leaky garden hose, and other junk left behind over the years by dozens of renters, was an old, deflated basketball.
Billy picked it up, blew the dust off it, and shook it. Sixty one-hundred dollar bills rattled around inside, money Billy had skimmed, bit by bit, from the wads of money Paulie hid between the joists in the ceiling and in a set of discarded tires stacked in the corner. Billy had cut a slit in the basketball and deposited a few hundreds in it whenever Paulie wasn’t around. He knew Paulie would never miss it.
Billy returned to the house and cleaned up his room as best he could and then Teresa’s bedroom. He hung up the clothes, swept up the broken glass, and carefully replaced Teresa’s earrings and necklaces back in her jewelry box. There was nothing he could do about the slashed mattresses and broken furniture.
While he finished sweeping up in the kitchen, he rehearsed what he would tell his mother. When he was done, he breathed a sigh of relief when it dawned on him there was a chance Paulie might be gone for good.
He called his mother and told her what had happened. He said nothing of Paulie’s betting on the 8-Ball’s tips.
“Don’t call the police,” she said. “Go to Biagio’s. I’ll pick you up there.”
* * *
The following day, two cars pulled up in front of their house. One was a brand-new black 1957 Cadillac Series 75 Fleetwood. It looked as long as a city block. The other car was a Chevy. A man with shiny Brylcreamed hair and wearing an ill-fitting double-breasted sports jacket came to the door.
“Good morning, Mrs. Rossi. I’m Carl Harding from Harding Cadillac. You are now the owner of a brand new, top-of-the-line 1957 Caddy!” He paused to await her reaction. She stared at him blankly.
Harding reassured her he wasn’t kidding.
“Your husband specified I should deliver the car to you today as a surprise to celebrate starting your new lives. Is Mr. Rossi here?”
Teresa said he wasn’t.
“Well, it’s your car, your name on the title, all paid for — in cash I might add — insured, and ready to go. You’re going to love it, Mrs. Rossi. Power steering, Hydra-Matic drive, Autronic Eye headlight beam control, power windows, white sidewalls, dual exhausts, fog lamps, pushbutton signal-seeking radio and rear speaker, and a chrome wraparound front bumper that says, ‘Get the hell out of my way!’ if you’ll pardon my French.”
He handed her the keys and the title. “You’re a lucky woman, Mrs. Rossi.”
“You have no idea,” she replied.
Unsettled by her muted reaction, Harding congratulated her again and scurried out to the waiting Chevy and drove away.
Billy looked up at his mother. She put her hand on his shoulder and pulled him close. She smiled and shook her head. “Looks like a hearse, doesn’t it?” she said.
Billy agreed that it did.
“We’ll trade it for something sensible, but before we do, let’s take it into the city. Drive down Park Avenue and pretend we’re big shots. Have dinner at Mama Leone’s. What do you say?”
* * *
A week later, there’d been no sign of Paulie. One evening Scalise dropped by while Billy and Teresa were having supper. Looking at Billy, he said he had something private he needed to discuss with his mother, but Teresa said anything Rico was going to say to her he could say in front of her son. Billy sat up a little straighter.
Rico asked Teresa if she had seen or heard from her husband. She asked Billy to tell Scalise what he’d witnessed: Paulie came home, packed in a rush, and drove off without saying where he was going. Then some guys showed up and tore the house apart.
“He didn’t leave a forwarding address, if that’s what you’re asking,” she said.
Scalise said Paulie was in a lot of trouble.
“No kidding,” Teresa said with no change of expression.
“I’m serious, Teri. I’m trying to talk reason to these guys, but they want their money. I mean they are out for blood.”
“Rico, he left us without a penny. All I got is my business. If they want it, they can buy it.”
“No, Teri, that’s not it. Look, if Paulie calls you, you call me. They want to work something out with him.”
Teresa thanked him, allowed him to hug her, and shut the door. She sat down and said, “I never want to see that mook Rico again. Not ever.”
* * *
A few nights later, when Teresa and Billy drove to Trattoria Bianca in her new Dodge Two-door Deluxe Coupe, Billy’s guilty conscience got the better of him. He told her the whole story — the 8-Ball, the gambling, the piles of money, and the disastrous Carter Handicap.
“The 8-Ball gave you tips on the races?” She wasn’t sure what to think. “You sure you’re not imagining it did?”
He swore it had and that it gave him a bum tip on the last race.
“Well, wherever you got the tips, Paulie was the one placing the bets,” she said. “And you think it’s all your fault?”
He said he wasn’t sure, but he felt bad.
She took his hand. “Billy, it’s not your fault, no way is it your fault. I don’t care if he got his tips from the Archangel Gabriel, I told him if he gambled again, it was over. He wanted to ruin his life, fine, but I wasn’t gonna let him take us down too.
“He’s gone, and we have to take care of ourselves, okay? First of all, no more tips from the 8-Ball. Second, I’m selling the business to Scalise, and we’re leaving Bensonhurst behind. You’re going to be a seventh grader at a new school in Boston. I got in touch with my Zia Sylvana and she’s expecting us. We’re gonna be fine, Billy.”
On the drive home, Billy was so relaxed and happy, he started singing along with the novelty song on the radio and Teresa joined in.
“Aba, daba, daba, daba, daba, daba, dab, Said the Monkey to the Chimp,” they sang tripping over the words.
* * *
Sunday, Teresa was reading the Daily News with her second cup of coffee when she heard Billy calling for her to come up to the attic. She went to the foot of the stairs.
“I just sat down with my second cup and the crossword. What is it?”
“Come see what I found.”
Billy had moved the six thousand from the basketball to the trunk in the attic. The two of them stared down at the bundles of money.
“Well, this’ll come in handy, caro,” she said. “You found that hidden treasure after all.”
* * *
Their small second-floor apartment in Boston’s North End Italian neighborhood overlooked a park and caught the late afternoon sun. Billy enjoyed sitting in the window seat while he did his homework. Teresa got a job keeping the books for a restaurant and hardware store and was taking night classes to become a CPA.
When school started that fall, Billy no longer bit his fingernails or felt much need to consult the 8-Ball. The few times he did, it gave him standard 8-Ball answers. Not having to beat out Frankie Pistone for the lead in the school play, Billy easily won the lead role in the Columbus Day Pageant. He also worked up his courage to perform a few of his best magic tricks for his school’s talent show and was startled by the applause and even a few cheers.
But as the days grew shorter and Thanksgiving approached, Billy became anxious that Paulie might track them down and ruin their new lives.
One night at 10:30, just before turning out his bedside lamp, he picked up the 8-Ball and asked, “Is Paulie gone for good?”
The 8-Ball replied, “It is decidedly so.”
“Do you know what’s happened to him?”
“Bibbidi Bobbidi Boo!” was the answer.
Copyright © 2021 by Bill Prindle
