The trouble was, that day looked further and further distant.
No matter how hard he worked, helping build LCN into a moneymaking operation, his own vig kept going up. At first it was because Don Carmine kept remembering new losses that had been logged on the stolen hard disk. Then it was for rent in the condo in which Don Carmine and his men had installed themselves.
It was the Windbreak condominium complex, on Quincy Shore Drive, barely a stone's throw from LCN headquarters. It had been deserted when they had all moved in. There were no other tenants. Tony had the impression that Don Carmine was not exactly paying rent to the owners, yet he insisted or adding a thousand dollars a week to Tony's mounting debt. And food. Don Carmine had it sent over every week. More than Tony could eat, much of it spoiled or out of code. That was four hundred a week.
"I'm never going to get out from under," moaned Tony Tollini one day as he was walking along Wollaston Beach. "I'm never going to see Mamaroneck again." Even the dimming memory of the IDC south wing made him nostalgic for his old life. He would cheerfully eat mashed-potato sandwiches from the comfort of his old desk if only he could somehow be transported back there, free of debt, free of LCN, and most of all, free of the knowledge that if he attempted to run for it, he would have not only Don Carmine after him but also his own Uncle Fiavorante.
Hands in his pockets, Tony Tollini trudged back to his condo apartment.
He got as far as the Dunkin Donut shop on the corner of Quincy Shore Drive and East Squantum Street when a long black Cadillac rolled up onto the sidewalk to cut him off.
Doors were flung open. Tony's hands came out of his pockets in surprise. Familiar chisellike fingers grabbed his elbows and threw him into the waiting trunk. The lid slammed down and the car backed off the sidewalk, jouncing, to rejoin the hum of traffic moving toward the Neponset River Bridge and Boston.
In the darkness of the trunk Tony Tollini could only moan two words over and over again: "What now?"
The first thing that Tony Tollini saw when he was hauled out of the trunk was a rusty white sign affixed to a chain-link fence. It said "BARTILUCCI CONSTRUCTION COMPANY."
They walked him around to the back of a long shedlike building of rust-scabbed corrugated sheet steel.
Don Carmine Imbruglia was waiting for him. He sat up in the cab of a piece of construction equipment that Tony had never seen before. It resembled a backhoe, except that instead of a plow, a kind of articulated steel limb ending in a blunt square chisel hung in front of the cab like a praying-mantis foreleg.
"What did I do?" asked Tony, eyes widening into half-dollars.
"Lay him out for me," ordered Don Carmine harshly.
They laid Tony Tollini on the cold concrete amid rusty discarded gears and other machinery parts, which bit into his back and spine. His face looked up into the dimming sky, which was the color of burnished cobalt. A single star peeped out like a cold accusing eye.
Machinery whined and the articulated limb jerked and jiggled until the blunt hard chisel was poised over Tony Tollini's sweating face like a single spider's fang.
Don Carmine's raspy voice called over, "Hey, Tollini. You ever heard the expression 'nibbled to death by fuggin' baby ducks'?"
Tony Tollini didn't trust his voice. He nodded furiously.
"This baby here's a nibbler. They use 'em to bust up concrete. You know how hard concrete is?"
Tony kept nodding.
"You wanna bust up concrete," Don Carmine went on, "you need brute force. This baby has it. Watch."
Machinery toiled and the nibbler's blunt implement jerked leftward. It dropped, almost touching Tony's left ear. The Maggot was holding down Tony's head so he could not move.
Then a stuttering noise like a super jackhammer filled Tony Tollini's left ear. The hard ground under his head vibrated. The lone star in the cobalt sky above vibrated too.
When the noise stopped, Tony's left ear rang.
Don Carmine Imbruglia's voice penetrated the ringing like a sword slicing through a brass gong.
"You been holding out on me, Tollini!"
"No, honest. You have all my money. What more do you want?"
"I ain't talkin' money. I'm talkin' the hard-on disk."
"Which one?"
"The one the Jap stole, what do you think? You told me you hired him right off the fuggin' street. Never saw him before. Right?"
"It's the truth, I swear!"
The nibbler jerked up. It moved right, like a mechanical claw in a grab-the-prize carnival concession.
"I'm from Brooklyn, right?" Don Carmine was screaming. "I don't know my fuggin' ass from yesterday's paper."
"You do! You do! I know you do!"
The nibbler slashed to the right.
Tony screamed and tried to avert his face.
The hard nibbler point only brushed the tip of his nose, but it felt like the cartilage had been yanked off.
The point dropped. It started hammering again, this time in Tony Tollini's right ear. He was crying now, loud and without shame. He was asking for his mother.
When the sound stopped and Tony could hear a resonant ringing in both eardrums Don Carmine was saying, "Tell me about the guy Remo. You hire him off the street too?"
"It's true!" Tony swore, blubbering. "On my mother. It's true."
"Then how come he breaks my computer and three of my best guys end up dead? That's a fuggin' coincidence, right?"
"I don't know."
"So how come the Jap is trying to con me into buyin' my own hard-on disk back?"
"I don't know what you're talking about!"
The nibbler jumped up. It moved leftward again. Tony tracked it with his eyes. The concrete on either side of his head was shattered. The only place left for it to go was his head, which suddenly felt as fragile as an eggshell.
When the point was poised over Tony's mouth, he shut it. The nibbler's engine started up. He could smell the diesel-exhaust stink.
The nibbler point retreated a few inches until it was over Tony's sternum.
Then it dropped.
The weight was like the Washington Monument on Tony Tollini's fragile chest. He couldn't breathe. But he could yell.
"I didn't do nothing! Ask Uncle Fiavorante. I didn't do nothing. On my mother, Don Carmine."