Read Online The Family Hightower by Brian Francis Slattery - Free Book Online Page A

wonders how much they’ve got on him, how much they know, how far back it goes, because he’s been involved for a long time. But he never doubts that the folder exists, along with hundreds of others, on him and his friends and acquaintances, all the little criminals. It’s like that for every organization in town, the Italians, the Irish, whoever else. A hundred tiny, squabbling families, too busy with their own problems to have very much to do with one another. They’re living side by side in the same city, but they’ve all got their heads down, working a million little hustles. It’s small-time stuff, Kosookyy thinks. It has to be. If it’s a bigger deal, then what’s he doing still living in Parma, right? There’s no great criminal conspiracy; the only time they ever come together is on paper, in the offices of the police and feds, the people trying to bring them in.
    But the new criminals are different. Kosookyy knows so little about them, has seen just glimpses of their operations. Enough to be worried, though. Enough to be scared. Which is why, when Curly calls to tell him that Petey’s met a guy, that he’s going to Kiev, and Curly’s going with him, Kosookyy tells him not to go, even though he knows it won’t make any difference.
    The deal is pretty simple. Petey’s got the money but can’t speak the language, and Curly’s the only person in the world Petey trusts to speak for him. Part of that trust involves blackmail: Each of them knows enough to put the other guy away for decades. But it’s more than that. For each of them, so much has come and gone—the parties, the jobs, the girls, the dealers, the times they’ve both almost been arrested but weren’t because they kept their mouths shut—but the truth is that their friendship sneaked up on them. Neither of them can remember when or how it was they got so tight. There was just some morning that they both knew. Each of them knows how the other likes his coffee, how stiff they like their cocktails. What brand of booze they drink. Curly knows that there’s no point in discussing anything serious with Petey before eleven in the morning and that he’s terrible at doing his laundry; he wears cologne to hide the fact that he’s wearing dirty clothes. Petey knows that Curly doesn’t sleep very well and has something close to a fetish about keeping his shoes polished. They’ve shared an apartment, three different apartments, for twenty-two months, have an easy silence between them you see in people who’ve been together longer than that. Why don’t you check with your wife to see if it’s okay, their other friends say when they ask one of them out. Petey hasn’t seen his parents for over a year, his siblings for longer than that. His extended family is a fading memory. Curly’s all he’s got. And while Curly’s still a family man, still goes to church on Sunday mornings and dinner on Sunday afternoons, he knows he wants more, and Petey’s his only way out. They know that an associate of the Wolf runs a restaurant on the East Side, a little dinner place that doesn’t look like much. The meeting is quick. They talk about how Petey’s interested in investing. Good, the restaurant owner says, in a halting Ukrainian. We are always looking for new sources of capital. He eyes them, waiting for them to speak. They don’t.
    â€œFine,” he says, as if they’d just agreed to something. “I can give you a good rate of return. Very high.”
    â€œWhat’s the nature of the investment?” Curly says.
    â€œWhat do you care?”
    Petey laughs. The restaurant owner doesn’t.
    â€œYou won’t know what you’re investing in, you understand?” the owner says. “None of us know.”
    â€œNone of you know? Someone must know.”
    â€œSomeone must,” the owner says, and lets that hang in the