The Friends of Cousin Vinny

Cousin Vinny. There’s always one. In every Italian family, there’s always one. He leans back on the sun deck, breeze comin’ off the Atlantic. He’s almost finished with The Friends of Eddie Coyle, on the last couple pages, when Aunt Ada calls us in for the meet.

Vinny, disrespectful little shit, takes his seat at the table in his trunks. Fuckin’ Jersey wap, glowin’ tan, a shade above Donald Trump.

Uncle Vinny, Vinny’s dad – an’ I know how this all sounds, an’ if it soun’s like Jackie Collins tryin’ her hand at writin’ a dime-store pastiche, so be it – smacks him upside the head.

“Get dressed.”

“Aw, pa-”

“Fuck’s sake, at least put on a dress shirt.”

Cousin Vinny slips away.

The rest shuffle into the room.

Coughs. Smoke. Uncle Vinny paws through the paperback his kid left on the table.

Cousin Vinny comes back, silk dress shirt, buttons all fucked up, tucked into his trunks.

“You know, I was almost done with the book. I’d just gotten pas’ the part where they whack Eddie Coyle-”

“Eddie gets whacked at the end?!”

Uncle Tony turns to Uncle Sonny, “You believe that shit?”

“Eh, I saw the movie with Robert Mitchum.”

All heads turn to Uncle Vinny.

He stan’s up. Gives his spiel about gettin’ too old for this shit, how he’s gonna pass it onto his ungrateful mug of a son.

“Ay, yo, dad, I wanna be like Gianni Versace, only, you know, without the queer stuff. Pass it onto ’Tino here, he’s got the brains.”

Uncle turns his whole body, stiff like how Michael Keaton would turn his whole body in that Batman suit.

“You’re the oldest, ya fuggin’ mook! Act accordin’! You’re in fronna your family! At least act like ya give a shit!”

Ah. The mother tongue of the old country. Beautiful language.

“Christ, this is worse than The Godfather III, when Michael’s son becomes a limp-dick opera singer!”

He spits.

He slumps down inta his seat.

“So tha’s it?”

Vinny shrugs, like yeah, what of it?

Uncle Vin turns to me. Hush. There’s a framed photo behin’ me of Albert Anastasia in the barber shop where he got whacked. We keep it up there to remember how quick it can all be over.

Uncle Tony leans over my shoulder.

“Eh ’Tino, wa’s this you writt’n abou’ us? You a make us look like cartoons. You know, this is exactly the shit Joe Colombo was thinkin’ of when he started the anti-defamation league-”

“To hide that he was a mob boss!”

“He did good for the community!”

“Joe Colombo was shot at one of the league rallies!”

“Yeah, by one a them black boys! They tried to pin it on Gallo, some tried to pin it on Gambino, but ’s far as they could tell, the blackie was actin’ alone! Hell, if ya told me it was that Nicky Barnes put the piece into the boy’s hand, I’d believe it.”

“I doubt a pack of black-tar pushers outta Harlem would wanna start shit with-”

“I dunno, maybe Nicky felt Halrem was getting’ a li’l small for’im.”

This is what it’s like.

“…an’ now that Carmine Persico’s croaked, God rest his ass, an’ in the pen no less, can ya believe it? Dyin’ ol’ man an’ they wouldn’ le’ him out, the fuckin’ swine…”

Aunt Ada ushers me into the room. Through the window I see the front yard. I fidget.

“Relax. He’s back on the patio.”

He taps an unlit Cuban.

“There’s this guy. He’s out in a field one day; gets into an argument with another man. Bashes the man’s skull in and buries him. Goes to a priest and confesses. Tells’im everything. The priest is real quiet. Hears’im out.

“I see”, he sez through the dark mesh of the booth. The man grips his hands and waits. Priest finally sez “Hundred and fifty Hail Mary’s”.

“Tha’s it?”

“Are you truly penetant?”

“Yes sir. I am.”

“Well, tha’s the most I can ask of you.”

Thanks the priest. Goes on his way. Gets on with his life. He really did feel bad. Over time, it fades.

Decades go past. Now he’s old. Grandkids. Great grandkids. Meets the priest in the village one day. Greets him warmly. Buys him a drink.

Finally, jus’ as they’re about to part, he thanks the priest again.

“For what, my son?”

He recounts the conversation they had all those years ago.

“I see.”

Man goes on home. Priest goes to the cop station. They dig up the bones of the man in the field. Then they go and arrest the old man in his home.

…can’t rem’mber if they hanged him or he hanged himself in his cell.”

“…What happened to the priest?”

“I like to think he got his.”

I stand at the glass sliding doors, watchin’ Vinny watch the ships go by. 

We liquor him up in front of a bowling alley. Phil reaches down the front of his pants, adjustin’ the slim piece with a silencer. Vin sloshes aroun’ a bottle a Jaeger; drops stain Phil’s dress pants. Leon eyes me. My hands grip the wheel. I stare ahead. Both small time. Phil’s one a ours. Leon runs this or that for the Jews in Brooklyn. The Kosher Nostra. The fuggin’ kids from Once Upon a Time in America assimilated into Murder, Inc. in the ’30’s, an’ we been runnin’ wi’ them ever since. Tha’s the thing abou’ New York. Makes you tight with people you don’ wanna be tight with. Races no better’n Mulignans. But fuggit. Leon’s good people. Good enough.

“Hey. Trotsky. Yo Trotsky!” Vinny flicks the back of Leon’s curly head.

The rest plays like a gangster flick. A scene straight outta one.

We pull into a dark corner of a lot across from a construction site, in front of a small urban patch of trees. Vinny leans over an’ switches the radio dial. Stops it on Springsteen. Drunkenly hums along to “Thunder Road”. The three of us keep lookin’ back’n forth, who’s gonna do it. Leon pulls his out too quick; it clatters under his seat. Vin doesn’ notice. Phil, quick as a gunslinger, plugs him from the side – the slug goes through Vin’s cheek. I swear, I could see some yellow light from a distant streetlamp pour right through the gap. He just sits there. Gaping. Phil puts a second round somewhere above the right eye. For a sec, I’m scared shitless, thinkin’ the bullet simply severed an optic nerve an’ the poor bastard was still alive. Then he pitches forward. I choke and pound the wheel a few times. A split-second honk and I quickly look aroun’ the lot through the windows. All quiet.

I stomp the pavement and burn through half a pack of cigs.  

On the Pulaski Skyway above Kearney Point, the dented trunk of our Lincoln pops open. We pull off and skid into a truckstop cornered between Hackensack and 3rd; slam the lid shut before anyone spots Vinny. Merge back onto expressway.

The elevated concrete’s an endless series of loops. The city doesn’t fuggin’ end. We finally give up and dump him in a lake in some park with an Indian name I can’t pronounce.