The Shrinking Nuts Case Read online

CHAPTER 9

  THE FOLKS

  Without a word to me, Papa 'The King’ Falconie and Big Ma Falconie walked through the door of my apartment like they owned the joint, which technically they did. Elaine had just informed me that they owned the whole damn apartment complex I lived in.

  Papa K looked to be in his late fifties and was about my size and build, but was big-boned, with the square jaw of a boxer, knife scars on his face and the big hands of a street fighter. He wore a dark mob-suit and red tie. When I opened the door he moved me aside with an icy stare, ignoring my extended hand, gave Elaine a quick hug, and then with shifty eyes began to take inventory of the place.

  Meanwhile Big Ma, after also giving Elaine a hug, stood eyeballing me up and down. She must have liked what she saw, because she got a little smile on her face. She was a much thinner, female version of Vinnie, and I realized that they had to actually be related somehow. Brother and sister, most likely, as that would explain that whole Uncle Vinnie business. Though probably in her fifties, she was big and strong looking for a woman, even in a black dress. Where Elaine got her good looks, I couldn't figure.

  "Not bad, Baby," Ma remarked, with a smile. "So this is your guy. He looks even better in person than in the surveillance shots. Even with clothes."

  Surveillance? Even with clothes? Shi-i-it.

  "He's a hunk, Ma," said Elaine. "Jake, say hi to Ma and Papa."

  "Hi folks, glad to meet you."

  "We’ll see," quipped Papa Falconie menacingly. He spun around towards me, light on his feet and in a boxer-like stance, to stare at my eyeballs. "Elaine says you only just figured out who the hell her Family is. That right?"

  "That's right."

  "So what did you think?"

  "I didn't think nothing. I fainted."

  The King laughed, and Big Ma almost smiled again. "Well, maybe you ain't quite as dumb as Vinnie says," proclaimed Papa K, and he finally shook my hand, though more to crush my fingers than to show we were suddenly buddies. "I ain't promising nothing Kid, but maybe, just maybe, you'll still be alive tomorrow." He laughed again, and gave me a too heavy slap on the back. But there was no knife in his hand. Yet. Things were going great so far, I figured.

  Prince came flying into the room and jumped up into the King’s arms. Papa K cradled the creature in one arm and stroked it gently. The damn thing started purring like crazy. What the hell!

  "Now Papa," said Big Ma, "don't worry the lad." She also reached out and started petting the damn cat.

  The King glanced around the room. "No offense Kid, but this place is a dump. You got plans to improve on this?"

  I decided not to remind him that he was my landlord. "No, I like it just fine. It’s a pretty good deal for the money. But Elaine can do whatever she wants with it, as long as she leaves me the recliner, a TV, and a couple dozen cold brews in the fridge. You folks want to sit down for a while before dinner?"

  "Sure Kid," said the King, picking my recliner to settle down in while Ma and Elaine picked the sofa. "Hey, this chair ain't half bad," he said, reclining. Prince leapt away from King and settled down on the sofa between the two women, purring. Ma put him on her lap. Meanwhile I sat in the remaining chair that the cat usually uses, getting another damn dose of cat hairs on my otherwise blue suit.

  I figured I'd sit there quietly while Elaine entertained them, but she suddenly escaped to the kitchen, leaving me alone with the most feared mobsters in the country. I tried to remember that they were here for dinner and not to kill me. Hopefully. Fortunately, with his recliner remark the King had just given me an opening for small talk. "I guess I’m a recliner freak. Keep my best one at the office, but that one's pretty good too. Oh, and you can call me Jake."

  "You can call us King and Ma," conceded Big Ma. "Everyone does.” Her smile suddenly melted away like last week's paycheck and her face turned to stone. “So Jake, what the hell are your intentions towards our daughter?"

  "The usual," I admitted, when my heart had started up again. "Hey, I’m a guy, right? I ain't going to try to sell you a line, but Elaine is very special to me."

  "She's very special to us too," said the King. "Is our little girl special enough for you to marry?"

  I shrugged. "If that's what she wants."

  "Is it what you want, Jake?" asked Ma.

  "I ain't complaining. I just never been married. Idea has me spooked a little, maybe."

  "An honest enough answer," said Ma, "but not a good enough one. Marriage is a big step, Jake. You have to jump in with both feet."

  King started laughing again. "Jump in with both feet, Ma? Ain't that what we told that guy just last month to get him into the East River? Of course he was wearing cement overshoes at the time, so he had to use both feet." He kept laughing as he looked down at my feet, like he was measuring them for a matching set of concrete spuds, then he said something in Italian as he made motions with his hands like he was slitting someone’s throat. Cute.

  His remarks sort of put things into perspective for me again. "Right, it's a big step," I agreed. “Marriage, that is. But I’m all for it, if that’s the right thing for everyone. Sure, marriage is a really great idea, now that I think more about it.”

  "Our psychiatrist report on you says that you're afraid of long term commitments," said Ma. "Your Mama and Papa were killed in a car accident, so they both left you alone. Your aunt raised you for eight years, and then she died when you were eighteen. Now you're afraid of anything that's long term. No long term career as a cop, and no long term women. You get some money and that scares you too, so you blow it on the horses. Your pitiful life is just short little detective cases that wrap up quick, and a bunch of one night stands with anything in a skirt. That sound about right?"

  Actually, maybe it did. It was like they knew me better than I did. Where the fuck did they get all this stuff? Psychiatrist report? I was pissed, but I took a deep breath and let it pass. "We're engaged, ain't we?"

  "So if she's engaged, where's her ring?" demanded the King.

  The thought of an engagement ring had never even entered my mind. Now it was like a slap across my face. "I just ain't gotten to it yet. I'm working on it though."

  "Using what for bread?"

  "Got some dough burning a hole in my pocket right now." I pulled out the stack of troll money and flashed it at them for about two seconds before replacing it in my pocket.

  The King shrugged. "Looks like only a couple of grand. You blew a hundred times that at the racetrack and on your new office just last week. You better get her a better ring than that."

  "Like I said, I'm working on it. I’m on a job right now." I didn’t tell them it was for only fifty bucks a day.

  "Do you like kids?" continued Ma, sounding all pleasant again. If this interrogation was a good-hood, bad-hood sort of grilling, then Ma must be the good hood I figured, even if she was asking the toughest questions.

  "I'm not sure; I ain't ever had one, that I know of." Kids? Shi-i-it! I thought of myself when I was a kid. I sure wouldn’t want to live with anybody like that!

  "Elaine wants several kids you know."

  It hit me then. Their weakness. The grandchildren angle. Oldsters looking for immortality. I decided to play the card. "Sure. Whatever she wants is OK by me, like I said. And kids are great; the more the merrier. I’m looking forward to them."

  Ma smiled.

  I smiled.

  The King sat up in my chair, not smiling. "Me, I always figured she'd get hitched to someone from another Family, you know? Someone with good connections; someone who could bring something to the table. You’re a deal breaker. Besides, I don't see how the hell you could raise kids in this dump."

  "We could move to a bigger place maybe."

  "Well, don't ever expect to move in with us," snarled the King. "And I still don't see how you could ever afford kids."

  "We'd get by," I said.

  "On your money or hers?" he demanded.

  "On our money, from our business," I replied, al
though it suddenly occurred to me for the first time that secretly Elaine was probably rich as hell. "We do have our own business, you know." That I could talk about OUR business like that was a sign of how quickly things were going to shit. A couple of weeks ago it was MY business, MY apartment, and MY car. As pitiful as it was, all that stuff was MINE. Now it was becoming OURS. Crap.

  The King snickered. "Your business is more like a fucking hobby. You don't even have a fucking accountant."

  "Elaine does the books," I pointed out. She was in fact, a certified accountant, and a fucking accountant at that, which I tactfully decided not to point out.

  "She has four college degrees," lamented Ma. "And she's a WOW, did you know that?"

  "Sure; that's the first word that entered my head the first time I saw her," I responded.

  "No, Kid!" interjected the King. "WOW as in W-O-W meaning Woman Of Wisdom."

  "It's a society that honors only very special women," explained Ma. "To be a WOW you have to be a member of Mensa and produce some heavy duty thinking of benefit to society. Elaine produces essays on everything and publishes them in magazines and posts them on-line.

  "She's a fucking genius," noted the King.

  I agreed with him on that. "Turn WOW upside down and you get MOM," I noted.

  Ma smiled. "That's right, Jake. Her parents are both publicly proclaimed M-O-Ms: Masters Of Mayhem. That's a dis-honorary society that we'd just as soon our daughter not ever be named to."

  Being a MOM inductee was a public badge of scorn. Most ex-presidents were members. The current president was a member. If you got named to it and you weren't a president, that was a special badge of dishonor. Apparently the Falconies weren't proud to be members.

  "She didn't want to get into our business," continued Ma, "so we figured maybe she's out to find herself a doctor or something. Someone to keep her out of trouble and help her raise a family; to stay a WOW and not ever be a MOM. But she found you instead. You're fifteen years older than her and a nobody. Why did you quit college, Jake, and go into being a cop, and then sink down to this? What could you have been thinking? Plus you're what used to be known as a male chauvinist pig. I don't see why any woman as smart as Elaine would put up with that nowadays."

  Damn, Ma was as annoying as Pa. More annoying, actually. At least Pa asked guy kinds of questions. She asked woman questions; the tough ones that guys don’t ever think about or talk about, even to themselves. I was pissed. I took another deep breath, and let it pass. "College wasn't for me. I'm a man of action with some street smarts. My Pop was a cop, so I figured I'd try that out, but I couldn’t take all the bullshit."

  King laughed. "Being a beat cop and then a detective wasn't even low enough for you, so you switched to this."

  I reminded myself again who it was I was talking to. If I were to take a swing at him, tempting as the idea was, I’d be a dead man. "I had my reasons. Say, you know, I think I better check on Elaine. I don't know about you guys, but I'm starving." I got up and moved towards the kitchen, while keeping an eye on them in case they were going to physically jump me too.

  The King shrugged. "Sure, Kid. You don't want to talk so much right now about all your fuck-ups, that's OK by us. We pretty much have things all figured out anyway."

  Great.

  I found Elaine in my little kitchen, working over a hot stove. She wasn't sweating nearly as much as I was. "How's it going?" she whispered.

  "I'm dying out there. They haven't killed me yet, but I think the King is sizing me up for cement overshoes. Ma will probably mix the cement, smiling."

  "Don’t be silly, they haven’t done that to my boyfriends since high school. Besides, Ma likes you, I can tell. Papa is a pussycat; just stick to small-talk. This stuff is almost ready; just give me a few more minutes." She gave me a kiss for encouragement and shoved me back into the living room. This must be that 'tough love' stuff they talk about I figured.

  "Nice weather we're having," I suggested with an amiable smile, as I returned to our esteemed MOM guests, hoping like hell to change the subject.

  "You're after our fucking money," replied the King with a snarl.

  "The hell with your money," I replied. Thinking fast about where to tell him he could shove his damn money, I decided not to give him the most obvious answer. "Give it all to charity," I blurted. I have no idea where the thought came from.

  "We want to leave it to Family, which you ain't," he countered.

  "So? Stipulate in your wills that I ain't ever to get one red cent of yours. Put all your dough into a trust for your grandchildren when they reach twenty-one. Leave me pennyless."

  Ma and Pa looked at each other. Ma shrugged, smiled, and nodded. "It's a thought. A start, anyway. In the meantime, hopefully Elaine will come to her senses and dump you long before that; and of course if you do her any wrong at all you're a fucking dead man." They looked at each other, then both nodded and smiled at me.

  "Sure thing," I said, smiling back. "Hope springs eternal, I always say. Yes, always look on the bright side, that’s my motto too."

  Elaine came out of the kitchen then, thank the gods, carrying a big tray of lasagna that smelled great. "Soup's on," she announced, as she put it on the little card table that occupied the far end of what passed for living room in my little dump of an apartment. "How are you guys getting along?"

  "They ain't killed me just yet," I observed, "but they've been working me over pretty damn good."

  The oldsters laughed. Elaine laughed. "That's encouraging news,” she said. “He could use some working over."

  "Oh, I don’t know. He’s not too bad in terms of raw material," judged Ma. “He seems to have balls and even some brains.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief. Momma mia, I was in!

  The cat meowed. “Jake bad,” said the little prick’s electronic voice.

  The King shrugged. "Prince recognizes his own kind. The cat ain't got money or ambition either," he stated. "But the main thing is how your guy treats you, Baby, and he damn well better treat you good. Have you thought about the wedding? You want a big one or just a few hundred close relatives and friends?"

  "Smallish, I should think," said Elaine.

  “Maybe we could elope,” I volunteered. "The smaller and quieter the better."

  The King glared at me, and then gave me a wicked smile. "Quiet like a funeral?"

  I swallowed. "OK, maybe not quite THAT small and quiet. But having one that’s on the small side would make it easier to set up, so we could get it done quicker," I explained, hardly believing what I heard myself saying.

  By then the food was circulating and conversation pretty much stopped, which was fine by me.

  In the end, I figure it was the lasagna that saved my ass, at least for the time being.

  ****