MURDER TAKES TIME

Chapter 35

Johnny Muck Takes an Apprentice

Brooklyn—3 Years Ago

Tony told me Tito wanted to see me on Wednesday. I had almost given up hope. “Did he tell you anything?”

“Nothing. Just said be there Wednesday at noon. I’ll drop you off.”

I got to the union hall early and waited for Tito. He came out thirty minutes later, walking fast. “Nicky. Sorry I’m late. Come with me.”

I followed him, climbing into a silver Lincoln parked by the front door. “What have you got for me?”

“There’s a guy named Johnny Muck who works for me. He needs an apprentice.”

“What’s he do?”

Tito took a left turn, drove maybe half a block, then looked over at me. “None of your business.”

My first reaction was to be pissed off, but that would likely get me killed. “Can I assume I won’t be needing my carpenter’s hammer or saw, or shit like that? Because I’m not too good with tools.”

The five seconds it took him to respond seemed like five minutes, but then he roared. “That’s good, Nicky. I like that.” He laughed all the way down the next block. He never told me what Johnny Muck did, but that was okay. I knew these people didn’t deliver flowers.

Johnny Muck was tall for an Italian, a hair over six feet—more if you counted his fedora, a slick looking black one with a silver band that he wore cocked toward the left, maybe to show the gray streak on the right side of his head. The first thing I noticed when I met him were his hands. They were huge, and covered with gloves so thin I could see the ridges in his knuckles. His real name was Gianni Mucchiatto. People said that Muck was a natural shortening of his last name. Lots of Southern Italians, Neopolitans, in particular, loved to shorten names. Salvatore became Toto; Giuseppe became Zeppe or Beppe. Other people said that Johnny was the guy you called when you got into a mucky situation. I looked it up in a dictionary. One of the definitions was “anything filthy or vile.” I preferred to think that that’s where his name came from. 

He wasn’t dirty or vile, as in unclean, not in that sense. But he was the meanest, coldest, most ruthless prick I’d ever seen. As far as I was concerned, “filthy and vile” fit Johnny Muck like the gloves he wore. 

When I first met him, he wasn’t about to tell me what he did. “You’ll be working for me” was all he said.

Johnny had me get his car. He climbed in, cautious. “Where to?” I asked.

“Queens.”

“You’re going to have to help me out. I don’t know my way around.”

He gave me directions a few turns at a time. Fortunately, traffic wasn’t bad this time of day, so I remembered where to go. He had me stop so we could get our windshield washed. Seemed odd, but I didn’t question it. And he watched me as I drove, but did it without trying to look like he was. We went over a bridge, took a few more turns, then parked in a garage on the third floor. 

Johnny Muck turned the car off but made no move to get out. I sat still. After a moment of silence, Johnny looked over. “Three guys in this investment firm owe Tito money.”

I thought I knew what that meant, but didn’t jump to conclusions. “Why send us?”

“Tito sent his regular guy a few weeks ago. These three guys beat Tito’s man half to death. One held a gun on him while the other two did the work. They dumped him in front of family.”