Tragic by Robert K. Tanenbaum Read Free Book Online Page B

street, having heard the shots.
    The two men ran across the street and jumped into the Delta 88, which peeled away from the curb and tore around a corner, away from the crowd.
    Charlie knelt next to Vince Carlotta, placing his hands on the dead man’s chest as if to administer CPR. “Help!” he yelled. “Somebody call 911. My friend’s been shot!”
    Jackie Corcione, who had been staring at Vince and the growing pool of blood around his body, suddenly jerked as if he’d been awakened. He ran toward the crowd that was approaching. “Help! Somebody shot Vince Carlotta, call an ambulance!”
    An ambulance showed up a few minutes later, the paramedics taking over from where Charlie Vitteli had been pushing on his dead rival’s chest. One of the rescuers looked up at where Charlie stood, his hands dripping with blood, and shook his head. “He’s gone,” the paramedic said.
    Charlie slumped against the wall and took out his silk monogrammed handkerchief to try to clean the blood off his hands as Joey and Jackie gathered around as if to comfort him. A flash went off and then another. The press had arrived. “It will look good for the papers, but goddamn it, the shit doesn’t want to come off,” he complained, just as he glanced over Barros’s shoulder in the direction of the alley and stepped back as if he’d seen a ghost. Standing just inside the shadows were the homeless women who’d been around the oil drum several nights before.
    Anne Devulder was staring right at him, damnation in her eyes. The second woman cackled and pointed at him as the third, the large black woman, mouthed the words, “ ’Tis time! ’Tis time!”
    Wild-eyed, Charlie turned to Barros. “Those bitches are back!” He ducked to hide behind his man.
    Corcione and Barros both turned to look in the direction indicated, but then turned back around with confused looks on their faces.
    “What bitches?” Barros asked.
    “There’s nobody there, Charlie,” Corcione added.
    Charlie straightened and peered around Barros. It was true, there was no one standing in the shadows of the alley. “They vanished!” he swore. “They were there but now they’re gone . . . like a breath in the wind.”
    Barros’s mouth twisted. “Jesus, boss, you’re giving me the willies,” he said. “There’s no one there, and Vince Carlotta’s not going to give us any more problems. Here, give me that.” He reached down and took the bloody handkerchief from Charlie, then walked over and threw it in the oil drum. “It will be gone the next time some bum lights a fire,” he said. “Now, let’s get you home.”
    Charlie nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “Must have just been my imagination. The mind can play funny tricks on you. But let’s go back to Marlon’s first. I need another drink.”

4
    “H EY , B UTCH, WHO . . . CRAP SON of a bitch . . . am I?” the little news vendor with the pointed and perpetually dripping nose and thick, smudged glasses said to the tall man in the navy blue suit standing in front of his newsstand. He puffed out his chest, and threw back his head pugnaciously.
    “Here goes, here goes, take a guess,” he said, pulling his old down coat patched with duct tape around him as he hopped from foot to foot. “You ready? ‘You don’t understand. I coulda had class. I coulda been a . . . balls tits oh boy whoop . . . contender. I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am, let’s face it.’ ”
    “Um, let’s see . . . a very poor Marlon Brando as Terry in On the Waterfront ,” Roger “Butch” Karp replied with a laugh. “And please, don’t ever do that again; you’ll ruin one of my all-time favorite movies for me. That was even below your standards, such as they are, as a trivia question. However, I take it your ‘impersonation’ was motivated by last night’s events and meant to make a point.”
    As they spoke, the morning crowd swept past on the sidewalk in front of the Criminal