Eightball at Grady's Palace East

By Basil Rosa

The first novel in Basil Rosa’s Lotion State Trilogy, Eightball At Grady’s Palace East blends 1970s drug mules, dealers and low-level mafia operatives with a story about friendship, love and survival among a variety of creative spirits and an immigrant who calls himself KJ. The K stands for Ken, as in the doll mated to Barbie, and the J stands for Jones, as in one of America’s most common family names.

Born Khosrow Hor, KJ is a Baha’i immigrant from Tehran whose student and tourist visas have expired. The year is 1979. His parents left the United States just prior to the Khomeini revolution in Iran and now that The Shah has been deposed and the Mullah’s have come to power, KJ cannot return to his homeland. He fears his parents have been murdered. He tries repeatedly, but he cannot contact them.

Anti-Iranian sentiment in the U.S. is at an all-time high. Finding gainful employment appears impossible. With Leland Sibley’s help, KJ is hired as a dishwasher, paid in cash. Scotty Greco helps too, introducing him to neighborhood friends such as the acting student Orbit, the low-level capo Little Nazo, and soldiers Vinnie Vee and Lucio DiPippo.

As a native to the city’s Federal Hill neighborhood, Scotty Greco has big ambitions to work as an actor and to rise from drug mule to capo under the tutelage of Little Nazo and Little Fig Triventi. Scotty’s proud to claim KJ as his first friend from the Middle-East.

So is Leland Sibley, a transplant from a small town north of the city. Leland tries to help KJ, just as he helps his ailing, widowed mother. Nearly each cent he earns goes to her. He and KJ need Scotty and his connections. They take orders from Little Nazo, who schools Leland in how to use a .38 and gives him one along with protected status as the go-to cocaine dealer at the Grady’s Palace East bar.

Though not an Italian-American, Leland can still get “made” if he proves his worth to Triventi. He works with Scotty and KJ running money and drugs throughout the city’s seedier neighborhoods. Their friendship transcends their cultural differences, but they live a dangerous existence. KJ decides he wants out. He’s met Bree, a waitress at the restaurant where he washes dishes. She loves theatre and has encouraged him to write a play about what it’s like to live as an exile. Orbit, too, encourages him. As does Serena, another waitress and Bree’s best friend.

Leland knows Serena. He used to date her. He cannot say no to KJ’s request that he talk to Little Nazo and arrange a way out for him. Leland talks first to Scotty, who says they’re in for life. Leland’s unaware that Scotty has been deceiving Little Nazo and giving information about drug pick-ups to Nazo’s rivals. This leads to Scotty getting murdered.

Now Leland wants out. There’s only one way. He must kill Nazo’s rival that Scotty was working for. After that, he must leave Providence. As Leland prepares in secret for his assassination attempt, KJ, with Bree’s help, completes writing his play. He proposes marriage to Bree and she accepts. Now he can get a green card. Orbit has helped too, finding a theatre to stage KJ’s play.

It’s the night KJ’s play opens. Leland has promised to come, but it’s also the night that he must make his first hit in order to get out from under Little Fig Triventi. Details have been worked out, but even if Leland succeeds, he won’t be able to stay in Providence. Nor will he ever never see his friends or his mother again.
What will Leland do?

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Michael Flynn
• Release date: May 31, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463202883

Basil Rosa

John Flynn (www.basilrosa.com), who also writes as Basil Rosa, has published chapbooks, as well as complete collections of poems, which include Moments Between Cities, and Restless Vanishings. He has also published three collections of short stories: Something Grand, Dreaming Rodin, and Off To The Next Wherever. He’s earned awards from the New England Poetry Club, and the U.S. Peace Corps.

Book preview

One

Window down, Leland Sibley waited. He slouched. He squirmed. He admired the dashboard of his chariot, his pride and joy and moneymaker – an aquamarine ’76 Impala with a trio of small space-age taillights at each end of a trunk large enough to store four dead bodies and a picnic basket. The car’s roomy interior was immaculate, the vinyl and upholstery original and smelling of the cleaners he’d used on them earlier that day.

Leland wrapped one hand around a starburst-speckle-blasted urethane knob, worn smooth, comforting to the touch, attached to a sea-green wheel. He liked the cold sure solidity of the knob that made the car easier to steer. He smiled at the shrunken rubber head with the yellow hair and bugged-out eyes that hung from his rearview mirror. A joint was lodged between its latex teeth. That joint would taste nice, some good weed there, but now wasn’t the time.

Patience, he told himself. Patience was all.

A breeze kicked up and brine mingled with a chilled fume that smelled of asphalt and felt gummy on Leland’s cheek. He’d parked in the spot Scotty had recommended, in the shadow of three massive oaks that fronted a Victorian manse once used as a supper club for the Sons of Italy. This allowed him a clear view of the white brick front of the Columbus Theatre across the street. Unlike his friend Scotty, Leland didn’t know that the Columbus dated back to 1926, when it was known as the Uptown Theatre, an opulent showcase for LORT Circuit actors and vaudevillians.

He reminded himself he was about to take part in a drug deal. He could get killed. Did he really want to earn money this way? Did he have any choice? The others, at least, had choices.

He didn’t mourn the fate of the Columbus or any of the other old theatres in the city. He’d seen The Elmwood once in South Providence, but he didn’t know it had since been boarded up. The Park in Cranston was empty. The Leroy in Pawtucket had featured rock concerts when he was a kid, but it was empty now most of the time. The Keith-Albee on Weybosset Avenue had been leveled, but there was hope for The Strand downtown. It might become a dance club.

Scotty, not Leland, was the expert and the one who cared about these theatres, and who wanted to be an actor. It was Scotty who lamented that whenever attempts were made to revive interest, the cry was always the same: no money, no investors. Live theatre couldn’t compete with suburban-based cineplexes and all the televisions in every living room.

Leland tried not to fidget as he watched a car pass by on Broadway. He thought about Scotty, who really wasn’t gangster material but liked to talk tough. He’d met KJ through Scotty. Those two both had ambitions to act. Leland knew little of that world. He was no actor. He was a live wire, a bruiser, just another knucklehead from Woonsocket. Vague unease clouded his eyes. A sensuous look of disgust etched lines into his bold features. Over six feet tall, lanky, with a long neck and dangling tresses of dirty-blond hair, his head grazed the Impala’s ceiling.

If any of the three should have been an actor, it was Leland. He had an arresting face but he didn’t like thinking about his looks. Not like Scotty did. The lines were chiseled in his face, his waist was small, his hips narrow hips, his shoulders broad. He never asked himself why Scotty and KJ wanted to act. That was their business. All he knew was that Scotty was counting on his attentiveness.

Providence. What a name for a city. What a pit. He remembered Scotty telling him that it was a place where old Quakers of modest means had intermarried with wealthier land-holding Yankees. Where Armenians had battled with a fading Irish syndicate and the ascending wise-guy sons of Italian immigrants with ties to Miami and New York. Not to mention the Dominicans, Cape Verdeans and the Portuguese who were still arriving in droves. According to Scotty, any upstanding young family craved a move out to the suburbs of Warwick or Barrington. Leland couldn’t say. He’d been raised north of the city in smaller once vibrant Woonsocket, where French Canadian immigrant millworkers had settled, chasing out the Irish who weren’t willing to work the mills at lower salaries.

All he knew was that if Boston felt like a runt in Manhattan’s long shadow, Providence was a sleazy little boil on the backside of southern New England, oozing the slime of mob violence, corruption and drug trafficking. It rained often and gainful waterfront work for longshoremen was over. The sea air at low tide smelled like a tuna fart laced with motor oil.

Yet down long, wide Broadway with its Victorians that harked back to another century, it appeared to Leland as if it were another city. Mist fell lightly adding to the quiet of this Monday night in late winter, Broadway lined on both sides with impressive old trees, their branches stripped of leaves and glowing in the soft rosy shine from high goose-necked sodium lamps.

That was the deal with Providence. A pit, yeah, but old and it had its moments, its history and like Scotty had told him: everywhere you looked you saw potential.

He had to admit the Columbus Theatre could really be something great, but it was a hangout for pervs. On the marquee, Carnal Highway was spelled out on a double-bill with Screwples. A crimson neon of a vixen with both hands on her head, her butt shaped like a W, filled the box-office window. Marquee chaser lights pumped the darkness in erratic surges, throwing silver into fine curtains of mist.

Even in winter, the air around the Columbus smelled of urine. Light under the marquee stained it yellow. Still a pit. A one-time jewel of a theatre left to rot. Leland studied its cupola and thought it looked like a sawed-off steeple. Maybe the hurricane of ‘38 had sheared off its tip. Everything in Rhode Island, it seemed, had been damaged by that hurricane. Death on. Death off. Waves beat the shore. Pervs beat…sex, sex, sex…that crimson vixen, arms raised, butt shaped like a W, neon hips blinking and shifting from side to side, mocked the man who was dead, for sure. His body lay face down, poaching in sickly light. Blood leaked from under his blue windbreaker and spread in pools that shined like the mist that dappled them.

Not a good sign. Not the plan. Where the hell was Scotty?

Leland turned on his radio, caught some of Blondie’s new song, Call Me. He liked the beat, any distraction, but shouldn’t call attention to himself.

Off went the radio.

Silence bloomed. Another breeze and another tidal whiff – clam broth battling a soggy diaper – blew in from the sea. Like the rude stench of his ambition.

Leland reached over and nudged his friend KJ rolled into a ball on the back seat.

It’s a job, man. Not nap-time.

KJ struggled to sit up. Do I have choice?

Leland nodded toward the dead man. You could end up like he did.

KJ’s eyes bloomed as he stared out his window at the body.

Here in KJ, thought Leland, was a friend with real problems. Look, you asked me to help you, but you gotta be prepared. This is serious stuff. They expect us to deliver.

I don’t like.

Join the club.

That man is not supposed to be there.

Neither are we, said Leland. So just stay alert.

KJ pointed. There is Scotty.

Perking up, Leland spotted Scotty under the marquee and began to watch him. Lean, with long arms, wavy black hair, Scotty wore a gold sweat suit and new sneakers. He paced back and forth, blowing into his fists.

Got Nikes on, said Leland. Look at him. Pretending that stiff ain’t even there. Why won’t he shave off that stupid mustache? Like he’s Burt Reynolds. Behind the times.

In Iran, many men have mustache. To Scotty maybe it means he gets women.

KJ, no offense, but last time. You sure you can handle this?

I think about Bree at the restaurant. She is very beautiful. If I marry, I get green card. She helps me. You don’t know what it’s like.

I thought I was helping you.

You help, too. It’s okay. Like Serena tells. No worries.

First Bree now Serena. Don’t mention Serena. No talking about women.

Sorry.

Jesus. Where’s the black van? What the hell’s going on?

I don’t like this waiting, said KJ.

Get used to it.

Maybe I find better job.

Leland punched the steering wheel. What a fuck-up.

• • •

Forty minutes had passed. The rain had slackened. Scotty was still pacing.

KJ, watching him, sounded sarcastic. He is going to be movie star. He and Orbit. They want to be famous.

So, do you, said Leland. Delusions of grandeur.

You have same feeling.

No, I don’t. Whatever that means.

I mean, you think you are bad guy, said KJ. But you’re not.

I need a cigarette.

I thought you want to quit.

It’s the stress. We’ve been here almost an hour. Maybe I should fire up this joint.

The police, they will find that body.

I bet he was a narc, said Leland. If not, then a perv. Makes me sick looking at him.

Then don’t, said KJ.

Leland, smirking, looked up and down Broadway. This street. It’s like an empty coffin.

I think maybe we make mistake.

Too late now.

Right, said KJ. The money.

Two-thirds of my take-home goes to Ma. She’s on fixed. Life is hard in the sticks.

Sticks people don’t like me.

Leland smirked. He turned and faced KJ. I like you. Look, the money ain’t chump change, and it beats waiting tables."

Maybe.

Things will get better. You’ll see.

It’s good you like your mother, said KJ.

You’ll have to meet her.

How is your father? asked KJ.

Dead.

Oh. I didn’t know.

Now you do.

I miss my father, said KJ. He is in Tehran now, I think.

You think?

I don’t know. It’s very bad there now.

I saw them on the news. Burning the American flag, said Leland. They still got those hostages. Your people hate us.

No. It’s not so simple. No calls go through, said KJ. All I want is to talk to my family. I miss them.

The thought silenced Leland. No matter how bad things got for him, KJ had it so much worse. Right.

Tell me, Leland. What did you do when your father died?

I’m still doing it. I don’t know. Mostly I got friendly with the court system.

I don’t understand.

I got priors, man. But I got a GED. My old man was in the military and I tried to join up, but they didn’t want me. Due to my priors.

What is priors?

Leland grinned. He’d forgotten for a moment who he was talking to. Prior offenses. Shit from your past. I did small time for assault and armed robbery. Used a crowbar to threaten a liquor-store clerk. It was stupid. They spared me a little because I was a minor, but it wasn’t my first offense, so they locked me up at the ACI. But not for long. And I ain’t going back there.

After a pause, KJ said, You like this city?

Do you?

A shrug from KJ. I am always outsider. I am Iranian. No money. No status. So, I like.

That makes no sense. You mean beggars can’t be choosey?

KJ scowled. I am not beggar.

Leland sighed. Sorry, man. Must suck right now for you. Just hang in. Scotty and me we’ll do what we can to help. One job leads to another. The money adds up.

Serena helps, too, said KJ. You should marry her.

Leland waved away the remark. Thinking about women at a time like this was not a good idea. He watched Scotty under the marquee rub his hands together. He was reminded of his father. After shaving, the old man would pour Aqua Velva into his hands, spank them twice and then dab behind each ear. Leland was 15 the last time he’d seen him do that.

Seven years ago, my old man died, said Leland. I should be over it by now.

Death is not easy.

Odd time for such an insight, but KJ had a knack for nailing the philosophical buttons. Didn’t make Leland feel any better. He jumped up, telling KJ, Quiet. They’re coming.

He saw the van approach in his rearview, its headlights clicking twice to high beam. He shot Scotty a thumbs-up. Scotty hurried into the alley next to the theatre and returned with a briefcase in one hand. He ran the briefcase east up Broadway toward the van and Service Road Eight.

Game on, Leland told KJ. He started to pull out on to Broadway. Keep out of sight.

Leland hit the brakes when he saw a middle-aged man, his nose pocked with gin-berries, exit the theatre. He was so fat that he hadn’t bothered to use the belt around his beige Mackintosh raincoat. Instead, he had tucked each belt-end into deep pockets. He carried a rolled newspaper under his arm and gnawed on a cigar. Unshaven, he looked as jowly as they come.

Raincoat jockey, said Leland. Probably works for the mayor.

Upon seeing the corpse, the man buckled and went pale. He waved his rolled newspaper to get Leland’s attention. His face red, he bore down on Leland. Sweat shined in tiny beads that spotted his chin.

Hey you. His voice carried. What’s going on here?

"He is the mayor," joked KJ.

Leland chuckled. The mist had jeweled the Impala’s windshield. He turned on wipers and kept them pumping as he rolled the car into a U-turn, its headlights pointing east from in front of the theatre. He stuck his head out the window. Just turning around. Why?

He looks dead, said the man. Like he’s been shot.

It’s a pretty rough area, said Leland pointing west, behind him, up Broadway to draw the man’s attention away from the van. Right over there I heard they found a hooker murdered a couple nights ago. Transvestite. Stabbed to death in drag. End of one of the alleys.

I’m calling the cops. You wait here.

Yeah sure, okay, said Leland. He stopped the car and watched the man charge into the theatre. He looked toward the van. Scotty had made it.

A gunshot went off. Leland dove to the seat. He waited. He heard footsteps approaching. Scotty, breathing hard, was banging on the rear door. Quit dickin’ around.

Let him in, cried Leland.

KJ pushed open one of the rear doors. A second shot went off. Scotty ducked, didn’t get in. Low to the ground, he angled across the sidewalk, scooting down an alley.

The van zoomed off.

KJ said, Doing good.

Right. Stick to the plan. Leland sat up. He put the car into motion, gunned the engine, pulling a second U-turn in the middle of Broadway heading west, tires squealing, the rear door, still open, swinging out.

We get shot, we die, cried KJ lunging for the door.

Just leave it open, shouted Leland.

He sped up Broadway to the Armenian Church that rose out of the sidewalk like a wall of glazed orange brick. He parked and turned off the ignition. KJ yanked shut the rear door, panting, asking, What should we do?

Leland heard a siren, looked at KJ. Wait for Scotty.

The siren grew louder.

Scotty appeared, veering as he sprinted toward them down the sidewalk, bent over, a gym bag under his arm. KJ opened the door. Scotty slammed it shut. Cologne reeked in his sweat. Hold on, said Scotty. Don’t panic. They’ll be here.

A blue Lincoln rolled up behind them.

Scotty told KJ Stay down. He leaped out the door, waving the gym bag as if sending a signal. The Lincoln’s horn sounded two notes.

Mouth dry, Leland watched Scotty duck into the Lincoln. The driver got out and stood sentry. Leland studied the driver. He wore a blue beret, a gold earring and a long leather coat. He looked up and down Broadway. The siren grew closer.

Scotty scuttled out of the Lincoln. He was empty-handed. Delivery made, thought Leland. He watched the driver return to his Lincoln.

That corpse, said Scotty. He slid in closer to Leland. Shut his door. Them shots. Jesus, how long did we wait there and then all of sudden kaboom!

Kaboom, said KJ. He grinned at Scotty. He slapped him on one knee.

Who was shooting? asked Leland.

How do I know? said Scotty. Just get outta here.

I need to wait.

Enough already. C’mon, let’s go.

Leland refused to argue. His orders were to wait until the Lincoln headed east.

C’mon, c’mon, pleaded Scotty. I’m pissing razor blades here.

The Lincoln turned and drove away. Leland threw the Impala into drive and floored it heading in the opposite direction, west toward Olneyville.

Now we are good, said KJ. He leaned back and sighed. Nobody hurt.

A pro hit, said Scotty.

Who was he? asked Leland.

Shut up and drive.

No idea? asked KJ.

Scotty said, Bad news, bad omen, bad everything.

No, it’s not, said Leland. Forget it. We did the job.

You forget it. We’re not done yet.

• • •

They made the drop inside of a trash dumpster in front of an empty brick warehouse in a once industrial section of industrial Olneyville that had become a city within a city of mostly empty mills covered with graffiti and vacant lots and storefronts and shabby three-decker apartment buildings crammed together on both sides of narrow hilly streets. After the drop, Scotty sparked up the joint Leland had removed from between the shrunken head’s crooked teeth. Leland drove them back into the city to Wickenden Street and a college neighborhood on the East Side. They elbowed up over beers at the scarred wooden bar of Babe’s on The Sunny Side. Nobody knew them there. More importantly, nobody cared who they were, how much they stunk of reefer, where they’d been, what they’d been doing or what they were talking about.

Scotty shared some vague assumptions and Leland thought maybe he was right and there’d be hell to pay from soldiers Vinnie Vee and Lucio. On the other hand, they’d followed orders. Little Nazo would be pleased. They’d pulled off the drop, collected the cash and delivered it to the right place, on time.

Leland asked again about the gunshots.

Scotty shrugged. For all we know, guys on our side thought we were trying to snuff them. Ain’t like we’re playing hopscotch and Tiddlywinks here.

Tiddlywinks? KJ had trouble pronouncing the word.

Scotty told KJ, They’re like them drinks you get at a Chinese restaurant. With tiny umbrellas in them.

Don’t listen to him, said Leland.

They each ordered a shot and a beer. Scotty offered to pay. He said, Right now, I’m feeling sorry for that stiff.

I think he was a narc, said Leland. Or maybe a mob guy that needed to get whacked.

Nah, just a perv, but we’ll never know, said Scotty. Maybe a grudge. Or an accident.

That blood made me want to puke just looking at it. I was sitting there in the Impala, said Leland. Waiting, you know. And I was thinking and looking up and down Broadway. Not one car drove by. What a pit, I was thinking. But then I thought California. I hear it’s great there. But then I thought no place like home.

That’s dangerous, said Scotty.

Home? asked Leland.

No. Thinking.

Leland dropped Scotty off first, then KJ, both of them looking pasty and strung out. All three lived on Federal Hill, not the worst of neighborhoods in Providence but a place few who weren’t Italian or bohemian rushed to live in. Rents there were cheap and apartments plentiful. Those who called it home shared at least one memory of a cannoli, a calzone and a stolen kiss at a spaghetti supper on a Wednesday night in a church basement. Maybe they had a Grandpa named Luigi who made Dago Red in his cold-water flat. Or they’d enjoyed a daylong drunk at the Saint George’s Day festival while church bells rang from a pair of Florentine brick steeples visible from the interstate. When Leland had first met KJ, he’d told him how much he loved those church bells. KJ loved them, too. They had this in common.

None were ringing that night.

Two

It was low tide at the northern tip of the Narragansett Bay, the worst time for the clammy muck, petroleum and sulfur fumes of the city’s waterfront. With all windows closed in his apartment, Leland could still smell brine mixing with old industry. The way Leland saw it, those who lived on Federal Hill did so because they had to, or because they’d been born there and lacked the wherewithal to get out. For many, Providence was a city of overfed capos in double-breasted suits, officials on the take, gelato in a cup, Chianti, the Columbus Day parade and a racist-driven agenda to keep the poor Haitian, Dominican and Liberian immigrants in South Providence where they allegedly belonged.

Those who ran the city – the friends, relatives and sidekicks of Buddy Cianci and the mob – perpetuated a Horatio Alger myth of up-by-the-bootstraps success. To a degree, this American myth was grounded in some truth, but Providence was showing him that riches and power didn’t come by honest means or to the smartest lights on the block. Few days passed without rumors of a strong-arm, a thug or a capo to one of the city’s powerbrokers found carved into pieces in a trashcan. There were racks of cement boots at the bottom of the bay.

There were also lucky, healthy achievers throughout the city. Some were the children of immigrants who’d come wave-by-wave and worked long hours in boring jobs. But these achievers weren’t choosing the city as home. As soon as possible, they got out. To make good meant owning a split-level ranch in outlying burbs such as Johnston, Cranston and Warwick. To really make it big meant you could afford seaside digs in Barrington, or East Greenwich.

Leland wasn’t sure he wanted any of that. Nor did he