Steven R. Schirripa and Charles Fleming. Nicky Deuce: Welcome to the Family. Perf. Joe Grifasi. New York: Random, 2005. Audio CD.
Twelve-year-old Nicholas Borelli, Jr., was supposed to go to a posh summer camp for three weeks while his parents went on a cruise. A sudden health emergency closed the camp right before Nicholas’s session was to begin. His parents asked Nicholas Sr.’s widowed mother if she would be willing to take her only grandson for that time. Of course, she would.
What she did not tell Nicholas’s parents was that her other son Francis (Frankie) was living with her after his divorce. Frankie and Nicholas, Sr., had not spoken in years.
For the first time in his life, Nicholas discovers his father’s roots—roots his father never mentioned and seems to want to avoid. His grandmother still lives in the same Brooklyn apartment where she and Nicholas’s grandfather raised his father and his uncle.
When Nicholas pulls up in a chauffeured Lincoln and kids in the neighborhood start pounding on the car, he knows it is going to be a lot different from the tony New Jersey suburb where he lives. “Open up!” “Hey, Richie Rich!”
Immediately, Nicholas’s Uncle Frankie tries to educate him in the ways of urban Italian-Americans. No one is going to respect an Italian who goes by the name of Nicholas. He’s got to be Nick or Nicky. His father was already Nicky, so he’ll be Nicky the Second or, better yet, Nicky Deuce.
So that is how Nicky (formerly Nicholas) is introduced to the goombas at Frankie’s social club. The guys all have nicknames like Sallie the Butcher, Jimmy the Iceman, and Oscar the Undertaker. When Nicky sneaks a look into the gym bag Frankie always carries to work, he finds a Kevlar vest and some pistols. As they say, welcome to the family.
It seems that Nicky’s parents still want his life structured, so they tell his grandmother to send him to summer school. Nicky is an A student at an exclusive prep school. He does not need summer school. That is for kids who flunk. But he goes.
Yes, he does get picked on some, but he also learns to hold his own. He bails out a classmate named Tommy on what is to Tommy a tricky math question. Still, Nicky learns that while Tommy claims that he cannot do math formulas, he has discovered cheats for the great Dark Planet video game on his own. In other words, he is not stupid.
Nicky also develops a crush on a girl in that math class. He thinks Donna is the most beautiful girl he has ever seen. Tommy warns him, though, that her ex-boyfriend Conrad is a bully whom Nicky has already met. He just might be looking for an excuse to cause “Richie Rich” more pain.
He goes to the movies with Tommy (short for Tomasino), and Tommy includes Nicky in on a deal to make some easy money. A man who has a makeshift office in the back of a dry cleaner’s gives the boys $100 in twenties and tells them to spend as much as they want and bring back $50.00 to him in tens or smaller bills. Is this counterfeit? Traceable serial numbers from a robbery? Who makes money in such an easy way? It reminded this reader of the way Jay Gatsby may have made money off stolen bonds.
The bully Conrad becomes the least of Nicky’s worries when another of Tommy’s contacts—Frankie would call him a real wiseguy or goodfella—offers the boys $80.00 each to deliver two small packages wrapped like shirts from a cleaner. Nicky can’t sleep that night. Why hasn’t Frankie returned in three days? Why can’t the guy deliver the packages himself? Why was his uncle’s name in a newspaper article about a building blown up in a gang war that is on the same block as the warehouse where they are to deliver the packages?
Two men are missing and presumed dead from that explosion. Is Frankie one of them? Or is he responsible for their deaths? None of the other men in the social club have been around either. How did those guys get nicknames like Butcher and Undertaker anyhow?
Welcome to the family, Nicky. And keep smiling.
P.S. The recorded audio version of this story is great. Mr. Grifasi is an effective story teller and does the voices in authentic Brooklynese. He must be a goomba himself.