I’m Anthony Provati. Please don’t call me Tony. That was my father’s name, and I’d rather not be reminded. My old man was everybody’s friend as long as he paid for the drinks. Drunk or sober, he required no excuse to strike at me like a rattler. The tinkle of ice was ominous. With a snoot full, he’d use his fists. Maybe it was because my mother so obviously favored me, or maybe he suspected I wasn’t his. My mother was his other option for abuse. She stuck it out for me, a realization I anguish over.

As a kid in Brooklyn, I hung around with older guys. On a dare, I stole four loaves of Italian bread from the bakery. The cops grabbed me and called my mother to the police station. My father was at a bar. I can still remember the pain in her eyes. She looked so small. The bull-like sergeant took pity on her pleas and released me into her custody.

She battled my predilection for bad company by plowing her hairdresser tips into alternate activities for me. She paid for piano lessons from a retired teacher. Thick glasses gave his eyes the look of an owl, but he mentored my potential by allowing me to use his upright Baldwin anytime without charge. I didn’t tell the guys I was leaving to practice piano. I just slipped away.

In Manhattan, I played a few evenings per week at local clubs. Leroy’s Bar and Restaurant in the West Village was cool darkness that smelled like an empty beer keg until the cooking started. Glossy photos of the owner posing with New York celebrities, politicians, and Leroy’s semi-crook cronies hung along the wall across from the rough-hewn wooden bar with stools and a large mirror that reflected shelves of bottled booze. In the back, the restaurant had an ivory baby grand piano surrounded by a thicket of small tables and chairs where patrons could order cocktails, Wagyu burgers, or munch porchetta sandwiches.

As I walked past the bar’s LCD television, CBS broadcast the arrest in Times Square of a New Yorker on conspiracy to build a dirty bomb. The former Towsend Gang member had taken the Islamic name of Khalid Osman. Inside his Bronx, Prospect Avenue apartment, the FBI found discarded thickness gauges containing cesium-137 and plans to assemble a radioactive dispersal device. They traced Osman’s travel to Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Syria reportedly to train with the ISIL terrorist leader named Al-Nasir.

Leroy slapped the bar. “Son of a Bitch. Wasn’t Al-Nasir the bastard in that horrible Angie Dekker video?”

Nodding in agreement, I said a bit ominously, “Not the guy you want to run across traveling in the Middle East.”

“At least, this time the Feds stopped him.”

I sighed. “Failure makes the heart grow fonder.”

“What do you mean?”

“The cockroach theory. If you nab one terrorist, there are dozens you’ve missed. ISIL is everywhere. 9/11 attacks somewhere in the world aren’t an ‘if’ but ‘when.’“

I shrugged and Leroy grimaced agreement.

The priority of the moment was my gig, so I continued to the piano. The first song I played was, “Take the A Train.”

When Gorgon Malakhov walked in with Sophia on his arm, I almost hit a sour chord. Sophia had an exotic face, curvy figure, and black hair down to her waist. She wore a plunging red dress that stopped at her thighs. I would’ve spotted her in a Yankee Stadium sized crowd. Malakhov was a hairless Buddha with oriental eyes, but he was no laughing Hotei. One of Leroy’s wall glossies pictured Malakhov with his shirt off displaying a blue star tattoo on each shoulder astride his albino chest. The Russian mob notoriously killed anyone who sported marks they hadn’t earned, so these were real. The stars denoted Malakhov was a vory v zakone gang leader, someone to be feared and respected. Rank in the Red Mafia was purchased with blood. Unlike my paisani in the Italian Mafia who tossed bocce balls for amusement, Russian mobsters played chess. Many an afternoon I walked past Malakhov in Washington Square Park at a chess table with a hulk standing guard. Competitors sat, caught on who they were dealing with, and quickly erred into defeat. Malakhov was no patzer. He achieved Grand Master rank before he was twenty-five.

Malakhov ignored me, but I locked eyes with Sophia as she walked to the table. The wide-shouldered gorilla I saw with him in Washington Square trailed the couple. Malakhov ordered a bottle of Kauffman vodka, and the ape threw ten dollars at a brown girl for a bunch of white flowers Malakhov gave Sophia. She smelled the flowers and brought her eyes up to meet mine.

I’ve always had more hormones than brains. I played “Sophisticated Lady” in Sophia’s direction, and Malakhov poked the bodyguard. The guy was well over six feet with fingers like sausages and a scar around his neck like someone had garroted him. Ape man came to the piano.

He said, “Zalupa, stop flirting with Mr. Malakhov’s girl. He doesn’t like dick heads hitting on Sophia.”

The gorilla’s insult indicated he thought I had piano-soft hands and wasn’t a threat. The heat of anger rose up my neck. I responded by playing, “You’d be So Nice to Come Home To,” and smiled at Sophia. She smiled back. Malakhov caught her reaction, and he exploded like Chernobyl. He whispered something into the gorilla’s ear. Malakhov glared at me – the look was as effective as him drawing a forefinger across his throat. He rose and pulled Sophia out of Leroy’s. The bodyguard smirked at me while he finished the bottle of vodka. He sat through most of my final set, then left the bar.

When my gig was finished, I retrieved a sawed-off boat hook I kept under the piano and hid it under my armpit. As I left Leroy’s, I spotted the bodyguard leaning on a Cadillac outside the entrance. He came at me with alarming speed for a man of his size. I surprised him with two sharp stabs in the gut with my stick. He went down, and I took off. I’d avoided a beating that would’ve put me into Bellevue Hospital, but the gorilla would have me gargling cement at the bottom of Sheepshead Bay at his next opportunity. This time, my libido threatened my life.

#

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Amazon.com: Appointment with ISIL (An Anthony Provati Thriller Book 1) eBook : Giordano, Joe: Books