Big Nick's Phone
With all the legal wrangling of our esteemed leaders these days, it made me think of this piece from a few years ago.
I kept Big Nick’s phone. His son gave it to me for safe keeping. Actually, that’s not true, the son, Little Nicky, a three-hundred-pound slime-ball, told me to destroy the phone. It wasn’t a request made to a trusted family friend; it was a directive to an underling. I never liked Little Nicky. I tolerated him because his father was my friend.
I charged the phone this morning for the first time in nine years. I knew all of his passwords. Nick, never a high-tech guy, once gave them to me written in pencil on a napkin stained with blueberry pie. It wasn’t much to memorize, three variations on Mickey Mantle and the number seven.
Nick was forever going to Jersey for breakfast. He said eggs always tasted better down in Jersey. That never made any sense to me, but he’d say it all the time, Then one day I went with him to that diner down in Sea Bright and I understood. Sitting there, the autumn sunshine filling the room, glaring brightly and reflecting off stainless steel and glass he said he lied about the eggs. It was the pie he came for, the pie and the work, the work was better in Jersey. I knew his work; I wanted no details. Part of me thinks the waitress in the tight jeans and little top could very well have been a close second to the work or the pie. Big Nick would talk, and I’d look out the windows at the vast New York harbor, the boats, bikinis and the surf, never hearing a thing.
Nick said to me one time that he lied about everything. He lied so much even he forgot what was true. “It’s a cost of doing business,” he’d tell me. The money was good, but it cost him. In the end, the life cost him everything.
Today I walked slowly to the meet up, Big Nick’s phone in my hand, inside my coat pocket. The cops were hot for his phone and his phone records, at one time. That made me laugh. Nick was not a digital kind of guy. Other than some porn and some pretty cryptic notes the phone is clean. But in one of those cryptic notes could be my salvation, but I didn't need any salvation, that’s what the lawyers were for. Very well-paid lawyers, I have to add.
At the meet we sat. Tough guys in a tight circle of park benches, under a maple tree outside a courthouse in Newark, NJ. A warm and breezy autumn afternoon. The persistent wind shook a maple’s dead leaves and made it sound like a bag of angry snakes.
Eddie G. pulled a pint of brandy from the paper bag he had stuffed in the pocket of his beige Harrington jacket. Eddie was getting fat; he couldn't even zip up the front. Our lawyer, for the four of us, was inside beating out a deal and deciding our fate. A couple of guys took long slugs from the bottle, some talked nervously. I sat quietly trying to be alone in this circus of confederates.
Styrofoam cups of coffee and hard rolls with butter arrived in a bag with Sammy. He handed it to me. I took mine and passed it down the line. Sam put down his coffee and placed his hands in his pockets and jumped up and down, rocking on his heels and toes, looking side to side, like his body was charged with nervous electricity.
Three weeks ago, the same group and a different scene; a bar at night. Drinks flowed like from a fountain, strippers and VIP rooms. We took over the place and everyone else left. Probably a good move. The party was to celebrate some grapevine news that the case was going to be settled without a trial, maybe thrown out entirely. We could all breathe again. The state had some heavy evidence, but it all somehow went away. The magic of money and high dollar lawyers.
A tight-fitting story, carved carefully around some versions of fact and truth. Like carefully cut jigsaw pieces, every story had at least some elements of the truth and how things actually transpired. A tenuous relationship between what went down and the story we are all desperately selling.
There was a girl and there was sex and a lot of money and a handful of politicians and police, and even more money. Hidden money, lucky money, and dirty money. Alliances formed and failed. Somehow, the sex and money always muddied up the story and broke the bonds of loyalty. Blood may be thicker than water, but like that song said, ‘Money changes everything…’ Now, the same high dollar lawyer who told us we could relax had called us all here to this chilly park. We expected good news. We planned to hear that it was over, and that we were no longer under any kind of threat of indictment.
We all know alliances crumble in the face of fear and defending number one. Loyalty falls hard in the company of insincerity and lies. Who actually is fucking who? The guys who always had your back, you find, are now too busy watching their own asses.
Off in the distance, the first thing I saw was the suit. Eddie G. noticed it too. He walked like a man who wished that he had a big dick, but he ain’t got a big dick. The suit was shiny; it fit perfectly. Before the suit could speak, Eddie yelled out, “Look at that fucking thing, it must have cost five hundred dollars!” Sammy jumped in. “No way man, that’s a thousand-dollar suit.”
The fancy shiny suit arrived at our little coven in the park. Sammy half-heartedly apologized for not getting him a coffee, and Eddie offered him a little of the brandy. The suit finally spoke and declined the offers. At five hundred an hour, I hoped he would make this quick. He held up his hands like he was pushing back a wall that was closing in. The words were almost surreal and hard to swallow. It was like, I heard the words, but my brain couldn't place them or what they meant. Words about how he could no longer represent us and was giving us notice of his resignation and the trial was delayed and rescheduled and we'd be informed of the date. The newly discovered evidence, just revealed, was damaging and damning.
A There was a flurry of noise like chickens in a coop chasing a handful of tossed corn. Someone called the lawyer a rat as he turned and walked away. Rat was not a term to use lightly. Life as a rat was living a dangerous life. I didn't think the lawyer was a rat, not at all. He was a coward. The rat was somewhere near me on those benches.
A pall of mistrust fell over the scene. The unspoken and often repeated oaths of loyalty and brotherhood vanished in a flood of fear-fueled suspicion. Faces and conversational tones turned hard.
The shiny thousand-dollar suit said he believed that one of us, one of this crew of undying loyalty, had talked to the prosecuting attorney. That was it, really. He said little more. He didn’t need to, truthfully. It was like throwing blood in a pool of sharks. We all got up to leave in silence. A covenant broken. We separated and walked away from each other, like the five points of a star.
I trudged away feeling that I had misplaced my faith and trust. Putting my faith in people exactly like me, that was a stupid place to put it.
I’ll go home alone and wait for the news and fall asleep in a chair, cigarette burning in the tray, ice melting and diluting the Clan MacGregor in the sweaty glass. A dream I’m already in prison, some big ugly thug mouth breathing and sweating down my back. Life inside a Hell of my own making and no exit door I can see. The terror of the moment when everyone I know and care about sees me for exactly who I am and who is known only to me. Eyes open in the darkness, I stare into the mirror of my sins and Big Nick’s phone.
All the bravado I can muster leaves me at 3am. I wait now for the news and the knock at the door. My amigos are now my enemies
That’s about it for me this week. Here are some books to browse. Have a good week!
Stay safe! It’s getting weird out there!
Bill