A Perfect Shot

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Fiction
Bad marriage, bad company

A PERFECT SHOT

By Robin Yocum

315 pp. Seventh Street Books

Reviewed by Eric Petersen

Robin Yocum is back with his third novel set in the same Rust Belt universe as his previous novels, which are also reviewed on this site. The story begins in the early 1990s, with a prologue introducing us to one of the main characters, who has mysteriously vanished.

It’s the haunting, operatic tale of two men who are polar opposites, yet share the same deeply held desire – the desire for respect. The desire to be somebody in a dead end town of nobodies that’s on the decline – though it was never much to begin with.

Nicholas “Duke” Ducheski is the hometown hero of Mingo Junction, Ohio, a distinction he earned over twenty years earlier in 1971 as a star high school basketball player. In the last ten seconds of the game, Duke made the perfect shot, winning the state championship for his team and his town, and earning himself the nickname “the Duke of Mingo Junction.”

That perfect shot was supposed to be Duke’s ticket out of town. He was about to accept a basketball scholarship offer when he learned that his cheerleader girlfriend Nina was pregnant, the result of their passionate prom night encounter. She demanded that he marry her.

So, instead of going to college, Duke ended up in the last place he wanted to be, sweating in the steel mill alongside his father in order to support a family. His only child, Timmy, was born with severe mental and physical handicaps resulting from complications when Nina was given a drug to induce labor.

Now it’s 1993, and Duke is trapped in a loveless marriage while his son lies trapped in a nursing home, in a useless body that’s failing. His bitter, jealous, hateful, and abusive wife won’t give him a divorce because it’s against her precious Catholic faith and she doesn’t want him to marry his longtime mistress, a kindhearted nurse.

Obtaining a divorce without Nina’s consent is a dangerous proposition; her brother Tony is a vicious gangster – the top enforcer of the Antonelli crime family, which controls all the vice in Mingo Junction. Tony DeMarco is the other main character of this dark morality play.

Unlike his father, Tony never had any intention of being “just another Dago living in one of the shabby houses that lined the flood-plain side of the Pennsylvania Railroad tracks that dissected Mingo Junction.” He soon caught the eye of Don Salvatore Antonelli, who hired him to work for the family.

Tony proved his worth to the organization, going from collecting debts to running the rackets to carrying out hits. Don Salvatore loved him like a son. His own son, Joey, was a great disappointment to him: an undisciplined, entitled spoiled brat only interested in spending his father’s money. Meanwhile, Tony DeMarco has become the most respected man in town.

People respect him purely out of fear, but to him, respect is respect, and respect is what separates the somebodies from the nobodies. It’s all that matters. Money doesn’t mean much to him, and as a deeply closeted, self-loathing gay man, women don’t interest him, either.

Since he can’t get out of his rotten marriage, Duke Ducheski escapes his nasty wife in a different way – taking advantage of his celebrity, he invests his savings and opens his own business, a restaurant called Duke’s Place. He brings his best friend Theodore “Moonie” Collier in as a partner, and the place becomes a big success.

Unfortunately, this gives Tony the idea to use the restaurant as a front for the mob’s bookmaking operation. It’ll require only a little extra work from Duke, for which he’ll be paid a nice commission. Duke wants no part of it, but Tony makes him an offer that he can’t refuse. He has much more to worry about.

Duke’s best friend Moonie, for all his kindness, loyalty, companionship, and help with the restaurant, is a compulsive gambler who’s always betting money he doesn’t have on long shots that never win. Desperate, he comes up with an insane way to pay off his gambling debts – he robs Antonelli family bagman Frankie “The Troll” Silvestri of fifty grand, killing and beheading the foul-smelling gangster in the process.

It doesn’t take long for Tony DeMarco to figure out that Moonie killed the Troll and paid off the mob with its own money. After Tony brutally murders his best friend, Duke can stand no more. He has a perfect shot at revenge – a plan that Tony unknowingly gave him while griping about Joey Antonelli.

After the sudden death of Don Salvatore from a stroke, Joey became the new don. Seething with resentment because the old man loved Tony more than him, the first thing Joey did was demote his top enforcer. To protect himself from an even worse fate, Tony has been secretly tape recording his conversations with his new boss.

If Duke can get his hands on those tapes and give them to the FBI, he can put both men away for life. But doing so would force him to enter the witness protection program and lose what he values the most – his celebrity. If he doesn’t lose his life first…

A Perfect Shot is Robin Yocum at his best as a storyteller – a moving, dark, and harrowing morality play featuring a cast of memorable, complex, and unforgettable characters that make for a riveting page turner of a novel. Highly recommended!

Eric Petersen is an administrator and blogmaster for the Internet Writing Workshop, an international, online writer’s group run out of Penn State University. You can reach him by e-mail at EricPetersen1970@hotmail.com