The Exceptions

EIGHT


Wouldn’t it seem the purpose of following Melody over and over again was to learn something about her, to gain some sort of intelligence into how she led her life? No matter where I went—she went—I really only learned of the things that affected her, but never how or why they affected her.

On my third trip to New Mexico, sometime in my twenty-seventh year and her twenty-third, I finally understood just how abandoned she was. Certainly, I was to blame for the absence of family in her life, but the spoon-fed circumstances that Justice delivered ensured it would always be that way. I watched her go back and forth from her small rambler on the north side of Farmington to a forgotten sixties-era office building on the south side of the city, and every day was the same: out the door at seven in the morning, coffee at the 7-Eleven, lunch at a picnic table behind the office building, back home by four-thirty, paying pizza/sandwich/Chinese food delivery guy at five-fifteen, lights-out at ten. Justice offered her safety through the guise of invisibility, days and nights so rote that no one might ever notice she had a routine worth noticing. It’s odd how one can find someone else’s ennui to be so fascinating.

I finally came to the disappointing conclusion that there was only one person who genuinely cared about her well-being.

Me.

All these trips, all the cycles of concern, were to try and ensure that she had not buried herself in alcohol or promiscuity or some other destructive behavior and to one day—what I hoped for most of all—find her in the arms of a man, safe and secure and satisfied. I longed for her to meet someone who would protect her. I thought that if I witnessed her being happy and healthy I could finally bring it all to a close. But through all the years, all the trips, there were no surprises: same scene, different town.



Then, in the dead of winter halfway through my twenty-eighth year, Melody was relocated once again. By that time, I’d modified my methodology of knowing where she lived; Gardner knew to check once a month and update me if her whereabouts ever changed. And one evening in February, while dropping off a wad of cash to cover his latest losses, Gardner also dropped off an address for me.

And with that relocation, Justice did something that altered the course of my life: They moved her only four hours south of New York.

Columbia, Maryland, a suburb south of Baltimore, became Melody’s new home, and this address transformed the rules of the game—mostly by eliminating an entire subset of rules. It meant I could watch her way too regularly; if I left New York at six in the morning, I could be in Columbia by ten, stay for a while, and still be back in Brooklyn by the dinner rush.

Her experiences in Columbia looked no different from Farmington or Lawrenceburg or Mineral Point. I rarely witnessed Melody interact with anyone or anything beyond a superficial level. No friends, no lovers. And with the dissatisfaction that stemmed from her not meeting that need for security, my mind began to shift its attention away from that hope; I had sort of given up. Without recognizing it, the way I started watching her, what I longed to comprehend, changed. I wanted to understand what made her who she was. I wanted to understand what made her who she wasn’t.

These became my darkest days, for my actions, with every recollection, were more fixated. During the period she lived in Lawrenceburg, I watched her three times before she was relocated. In Farmington, I visited her three more times. In Columbia, I watched her nineteen times.

The one thing that improved: I became a master of lurking. Gone were the poorly planned purchases of necessities (water, cigarettes). I became deft at staking her out, never again made the mistake of allowing her to see me as I did at the gas station in Kentucky. I learned to always watch the bathroom first. I learned the feds aren’t tailing her day after day. She existed more in a file on a computer than she did in Kentucky, in Wisconsin, in the vast rural unknown. I began slipping in and slipping out without leaving so much as a fingerprint.

I started to absorb everything about her, making mental notes of the food she ate (coffee over tea, espressos over lattes) and restaurants she frequented (unknown independents over the chains). The subtleties of her actions painted an impressionist image I could hang in the corridor of my mind, the colors and brushstrokes chosen from my observances: that while shopping for clothes, when she would hold a dress or blouse up to her body, the color was almost always blue or dark green or black, and that after she would leave the store I would step in a moment later and read the size on the tag to be a six or an eight or an occasional ten; that even though she lived closer to Baltimore than DC, she read the Washington Post instead of the Baltimore Sun; that she liked to spend time in card stores even though I never witnessed her purchase a single card; that she sped up at yellow lights instead of braking; that she always crossed her legs at the knees and not the ankles.

The closest I ever got to her in Columbia: We shared time together in a Best Buy; she was in CDs, I was in computers. She browsed the music for an hour before making her way to one of the registers with a half dozen CDs. I grabbed some wrapped wire from the rack in front of me—still have no idea what a CAT 5 cable is—and made my way toward the same register, timed it so I would be arriving as she was departing.

The teenaged clerk swiped my cable over the barcode reader. “Twenty-seven twenty-nine.”

I widened my eyes. “Really? For a few feet of wire?” He shrugged, noshed on a wad of gum, looked annoyed when I handed him cash instead of a credit card.

“Listen,” I said, “the girl who just went through here, you remember any of the discs she bought? She’s a friend of mine and her birthday’s coming up and I don’t want to get her something she just purchased.”

The clerk stared at me, slowed his chomping. “Aimee Mann. Iron and Wine. I don’t know, some others. Death Cab for Cutie, I think. That kind of stuff.”

I repeated the names as I watched her walk beyond the sliding door of the store. “Aimee Mann, Iron and Wine, Death Cab for Cutie. Thanks.”

I tailed her to the parking lot; I stayed behind the sliding doors, watched her get into a Toyota Camry. Her hair was longer and darker than I’d ever seen it, though still short by most standards, and it helped give dimension and shape to her face, a modest shift to a more defined beauty, like a girl exiting adolescence and embracing womanhood. Before she put the key in the ignition, she glanced at herself in the rearview and did that thing—the simultaneous tuck of hair behind her ears—then gently wiped the edge of her bottom lip with her thumb. And as she started her car, pulled out, and drove away, I let out a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding.

Once she was out of view, I tossed the useless computer cable into the trash and walked right back inside the store, proceeded to the music section, repeating the clerk’s list under my breath: Mann, Iron, Death, Mann, Iron, Death. I grabbed a copy of each available disc from those artists (two each) and proceeded to the same clerk.

“Thought you were trying to avoid getting her the same discs.”

I pulled out a wad of twenties from my pocket. “Change of approach.”

I left the store and walked through the parking lot with my new stash of music. At the time, my car had the best stereo system of any I’d ever owned. Six months prior, I’d traded in the trusty Mustang for a candy apple red Audi S4 convertible, a machine even faster and more luxurious than its predecessor, more in-your-face and un-Bovaroesque than any other car in its class; the status didn’t matter here, only the speed and comfort. When I first drove it back to Brooklyn, parked it in the reserved spot behind Sylvia, it brought mixed reviews:

POP, to a smattering of crew members: “Hey, my kid got class or what?”

GINO: “I’m sorry, Officer, all I remember is he was driving a bright red Audi.”

PETER, after three seconds of staring: “Seriously?”

I’d positioned myself in the corner of the lot at Best Buy, a perfect diagonal distance from where Melody had parked. I got in and turned the key, powered the cab without turning the ignition, emptied the in-dash CD changer. I started ripping open the new CDs, loading the changer one by one, then started the first disc. And I sat there, the cab growing dimmer from an increasingly cloudy sky, listening to Aimee Mann. The music was unfamiliar to me—quite mellow and gentle, like falling leaves or snow, the words and style both thoughtful and thought-provoking. I’d been exposed to a moderate variety of music in my life: the usual mix of Sinatra and Bennett and their kindred, the hair bands of the eighties of which Peter had fancied himself their chief emulator, and that frigging trance.

But these songs—the tunes and words—held me temporarily captive, seemed to be trying to explain something intended to stick with you beyond a meal in a restaurant, beyond a loud concert, beyond a single play.

I listened to the entire CD.

These were the first words I ever heard Melody say. She wasn’t speaking directly to me, but she was definitely speaking.

Within months my collection grew, the first real collection of music I could call mine, expanded into a diverse assortment all on its own; Aimee Mann introduced me to Neil Finn, who introduced me to Jack Johnson, who introduced me to Sufjan Stevens. A friendly, amiable bunch they were. And where I’d once had a drink at my side in those earlier days at Sylvia, I now had headphones affixed to my head almost permanently, drowning out the trance with music that many times threw me into a real trance, and with each and every note of the music, I felt I had a snapshot of Melody with me, like rereading a romantic note from a lost but not forgotten lover.



I found comfort in Melody’s proximity. It made it easy to get a fix, though I never got the one I was hoping for. Not even once could I rest in thinking she was safe. I always viewed her as a prisoner with a cell the size of whatever community Justice decided to make her home. I could have existed this way for some time, and did—until just after I turned thirty.

My thirtieth year held such promise: Sylvia’s reputation soared, and maintained a solid staff and outstanding kitchen personnel; our family was in the midst of a relatively peaceful and successful time, a period where Justice seemed to have lost interest and my father began relying on a greater circle of trusted and made men, reducing my personal requirement for involvement; Melody was within a morning’s journey, and even though she seemed wary, she also seemed stable.

And just as I let my guard down, everything changed.

Turned out Justice hadn’t lost interest; they’d been busy strategizing, quietly putting together a battle plan against my family intended to serve as the harbinger for all organized crime, Italian or Russian or Chinese, in New York or Chicago or Miami. We weren’t aware of it at the onset, but Justice’s Organized Crime and Racketeering Section had taken nearly two years’ worth of budget and dedicated it to making an example of one family: the Bovaros.

And to make this plan work, they’d assembled a group of players who were willing to testify against us, each serving up a specific chunk of data that when connected to the ends of the players on either side all looped together into a perfect circle. Their strategy had been this: Instead of nailing the one person with enough knowledge to bring down the entire organization and finding a way to force them to testify, grab all the little people with partial knowledge and weave a fabric of corruption. Instead of one key witness, bring on fifty to a hundred witnesses with something worth saying, anything.

This line of attack had a hidden benefit: In prior cases against us, as in the instance of the McCartneys, we had one unified target to eliminate. But here, how would we eliminate dozens of people? Even if we could, how would we ever know who they were? And how would we make them disappear without widening the potential circle of new witnesses?

This plan started to unfold once people we dealt with on a peripheral basis started mentioning to our crew that some guys came by asking questions. At first, it didn’t matter; that kind of stuff happened on a regular basis. But once Peter and Pop and the rest of us started comparing notes, it became evident the problem was epidemic.

At the same time, my father hinted that he was receiving nebulous information from someone inside Justice about the government’s general intentions, someone working with my father—and only my father—that the source, while not providing comprehensive data, would be kept strictly to him. My first thought was that it was not Gardner; we’d already pushed him for operational data year after year and every time he’d tell us the same thing: that his databases were not within that scope.

Based on the information we were getting from people on the street, coupled with the vague information supplied to us from my father’s inside source, it became apparent that a storm was on the horizon—a rain that would last for months, flood our homes, and destroy our land.

I met my father, brothers, and a few senior crew members at my parents’ house in Tenafly to discuss the list of potential problem witnesses—the obvious fruit that Justice had picked—and prioritize the ones to be immediately eliminated. Again, killing was never taken lightly in our home, and I could read the stress the event was causing in my father’s demeanor, his concentrated focus and near silence. Justice had played their hand well, for we were no longer going to kill individuals; we were going to kill witnesses, and the potential punishment would be all that more severe. This meant choosing wisely, eliminating only those we were certain would be testifying, the ones most likely to want to see us pay.

This team, possibly the largest group I’d ever seen assembled at one time, was spread evenly across my father’s den. The Bovaro men, the capos, and a few from my father’s growing circle of trusted associates shared our insights into those we knew best, those we could vouch for, those who seemed untrustworthy. I offered up as much as I could, but most of the people I associated with were semilegitimate guys serving Sylvia, though using their businesses for some other illegal and higher-profit endeavor. I trusted all of them as much as I trusted anyone outside of my bloodline, couldn’t recommend putting a bullet in a single one. My casual everyone-is-okay-on-my-end position came across as my not having put much thought into it all, and I got the most skeptical looks from the most recent additions to my father’s circle of trust: Donny Vingelli, a punk about my age and nephew of my father’s sister, whose primary interest lay in jacking cars; and Edoardo “Eddie” Gravina, an associate whose greatest accomplishment was his identical age to my father, a slender guy with snow white hair and a silver mustache who only spoke when he had something of value to offer, words so anticipated that when he spoke everyone froze to listen, the closest thing my father ever had to a consigliere.

As the meeting progressed, we spent less and less time discussing each individual, a consequence of there simply being too many choices. The group of us sat far from the wives and children of the family, the content of the entire conversation masked in double meanings. This is the life we led, where someone is usually listening.

My father rubbed his temples. “Sammy Meat Market.” Ted Simone, owner of Brooklyn Meats and Cheeses.

Peter slowly nodded. “Agreed. Always thought his meat was going bad.” Neither liked nor trusted the guy.

My brother Jimmy, wanting to bring more to the table than muscle, offered people up by the bushel, hoping the wheat and chaff would separate themselves. “Mickey Roughneck?” No. “Seventh Street Stevie?” No. “Biscuithead?” Confused stares, then no.

Peter offered up, “Maybe we should consider including our buddy in Alphabet City?” Should we take out Matthew McManus?

Pop squinted, returned to massaging his temples. “We invite him we gotta invite all his friends, too.” That opens up an entirely new list of people to consider, and everyone on that list carries approximately the same threat.

“Not to mention,” I said, “it would likely offend his friends back home.” We’d long suspected that McManus was serving the Irish mob at the same time, figuring he didn’t want all of his eggs in one frying pan, patiently waiting to see which family would emerge as the ultimate force in New York. If true, we wouldn’t want to take him out unless absolutely convinced he posed a problem.

In came a gap in the conversation, filled with nothing but sighs and audible swallowing. My father scanned the room slowly, moved from face to face as if mentally extracting a list of individuals out of their respective lifetime experiences, and when he finally turned my way, he stopped. We stared at each other for too long a time. I licked my lips a little, my hands slightly cupped and aimed skyward. I was thinking, What, why am I so interesting? He tilted his head down as if using it to point and said, “Johnny, you got to take that girl of yours on a date.” Stop screwing around and kill the McCartney girl.

I snapped to attention like I’d been asleep in class and called on for an answer. Suddenly, each and every nod was exaggerated, the entire den filled with bobbleheads.

Nodding the hardest, Peter added, “Really, Johnny. You got to know how to treat a gal or she’s gonna leave you for someone else.”

Then only my own swallowing could be heard. I surveyed the eyes of the room, looks of annoyance and impatience layered upon me like winter blankets, that of all the people who might need to have their hearts stopped, here was a witness who should have long been buried.

What had I been doing all this time? Where my family was concerned, I figured the best I could do was stall, make so much time pass that no one would care about her anymore. But the frigging feds had brought her right back into the limelight. The problem was this: For all I knew, Melody really was planning to use her waning testimony against us. Though what she’d witnessed was thrown out of court all those years ago, they might want to use her for some angle of evidence, something as innocuous as acknowledging that she saw my father in Vincent’s and nothing more, a piece of evidence that might be linked to someone else who would take the baton and dash forward to the next witness.

Give a paintbrush and a unique color to a hundred different people and ask them to paint an object on the same canvas. What you get in the end is a convoluted mess of different styles and strokes—but when the last painter is finished, there is no denying you’re staring at a completed work. You might not get it, but you’d probably nod your head and think, Yeah, I guess that’s a piece of art. Melody would be nothing more than a twenty-six-year-old woman holding a brush dabbed in blue. And the jury would be nodding our crew all the way to the Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary.

And then another realization arrived like a kidney punch: Most likely, the feds knew how aware we were of their operation—in fact, we figured it was probably part of their plan all along, that they hoped to catch us in the act of taking out one of their witnesses, a partial setup at the potential cost of a human life or two. If that were true, my staking out of Melody would have to come to an end, for I would have been perceived as a threat—hunting Melody instead of protecting her—and taken down on the spot.

If it were possible to taste pallor, I would’ve been swallowing down its sickly aftertaste. I cannot recall any other moment when I felt my anxiety surge as it did in those few seconds. What my family had seen as an annoying hobby of mine—feeble attempts on Melody’s life—now had a predetermined, absolute ending.

I smiled a little, wiped my brow; luckily, I wasn’t the only one sweating. “Consider it done,” I said. “I’ll make sure I give her what she needs.” The source of my sweat: If I didn’t give her what she needed, someone else in our crew was going to. No longer a tying-up-loose-ends issue, Melody didn’t stand much of a chance. My father bit the inside of his cheek as he focused on me. “You need a chaperone?”

I could see those words coming like a fly ball aimed directly at my glove. “Nah, this party is gonna be so big I’m assuming we need people cooking and cleaning elsewhere, right?”

Pop squeezed his bottom lip between his thumb and forefinger, his head tipped down further as he stared at me.

“Okay, Johnny,” he said finally. “Treat her right, okay?”

I looked down at my shoes, wiped the sweat from my forehead under the guise of a scratch. “I know, Pop.”

The conversation lasted another hour, but the last words I tried to interpret were Peter’s: “You got to know how to treat a gal or she’s gonna leave you for someone else.” Not a single thought or idea ran through my head that wasn’t an attempt at solving this problem, at finding a way to set that little six-year-old girl free once and for all.

My sisters-in-law prepared a table—a feast—filling the enormous gap my mother left when she passed away. We congregated to fill our plates, then evenly dispersed over the dining room, kitchen, dinette, and sunroom, consumed veal and sausage and pasta and salads and breads. The conversation turned unusually light, in both quantity and quality. No one noticed my lack of discussion; it had become the common denominator. The only perceptible voices came from the women; the men had a lot on their minds.

And on mine: “You got to know how to treat a gal or she’s gonna leave you for someone else.”

I sat in the corner of my parents’ dinette, my seat pushed back against a window that overlooked a crumbling brick patio, its devastation delivered by the roots of maples and oaks that predated the house by decades. I shoved my plate away, took a long pull off a Moretti, and stared at Peter, who sat in the dining room at a far and distant angle from me. He twisted his neck to get a kink out, and when he did he noticed me watching him. We stared at each other for a few seconds, his words still echoing through my head.

And suddenly my mind opened wide, exposing a gush of beauty, like a daylily receiving its initial blast of morning sunlight.

The first and only time I utterly adored my older brother, Peter: that very day—the moment he supplied me with an unintentional epiphany despite himself. “You got to know how to treat a gal or she’s gonna leave you for someone else.” The someone else quite obviously referenced the feds, that her allegiance would be given to them. But the intended resonance of his words did not reach my ears as an explosion, but as the sweeping crash of an ocean wave. I perverted his words to something beautiful and filled with hope, a line better used as a mantra than a reminder.

I wasn’t going to kill Melody. I was going to win her.