A Quiet Vendetta (41 page)

Don Calligaris lived in a tall narrow house on Mulberry Street. Back a half block and over the street was a second house, a small place, and it was here that he brought me after we left the diner. He introduced me to two people, a young man called Joe Giacalone, the son of someone Don Calligaris referred to as ‘Tony Jacks’, and a second man, a little older.

‘Ten Cent Sammy,’ Don Calligaris said, ‘but people just call him Ten Cent. Comes from his calling card, see? Leaves a dime behind whenever someone gets clipped, like that was all their life was worth.’

Ten Cent rose from his chair in the small room at the front of the house. He was a big man, bigger than me by a head, and when he reached out his hand and shook mine I could feel sufficient tension in his grip to relieve my arm of its socket with one swift tug.

‘Joe’s just here hangin’ out,’ Ten Cent said. ‘He comes down here when his girl is bustin’ his balls, right Joey?’

‘Screw you, Ten Cent.’ Joe said. ‘I come down here to remind myself how fuckin’ smart I am in comparison to a dumb fuck like you.’

Ten Cent laughed and sat down again.

‘You’ll stay here with Ten Cent,’ Don Calligaris said. ‘He’ll give you the straight shoot on what goes down and when. Don’t deal with anyone but him an’ me, you understand?’

I nodded.

‘You got a room upstairs and Ten Cent will help bring your stuff in. Take a rest, have a siesta, eh? We got a party tonight at the Blue Flame and you can meet some of the guys. I gotta go take care of somethin’ but I’ll be around if you need me. Just tell Ten Cent, and if he can’t figure somethin’ out he can call me.’

Don Calligaris turned and gripped my shoulders. He pulled me close, and kissed my cheeks in turn. ‘Welcome, Ernesto Perez, and whether you whacked Ricki Dvore and cut his freakin’ heart out or not you still gonna come in useful up here in Manhattan. You enjoy yourself while you can, ’cause you never know what shit might be waitin’ for you around the corner, right Ten Cent?’

‘Right as fuckin’ rain, boss.’

Don Calligaris left, and for a minute I stood there in the front room of that house feeling like the world had closed a chapter on me and started another.

‘You gonna take a weight off or what?’ Joe Giacalone said.

I nodded and sat down.

‘Hey, don’t be so uptight, kid,’ Ten Cent said. ‘You got a new family now, and if there’s one thing about this family they sure as shit know how to take care of their own, right Joey?’

‘Sure as shit.’

I leaned back in the chair. Ten Cent offered me a cigarette and I lit it. Joey put the TV on, surfed channels until he found a game, and within a few minutes I had stopped questioning why I was there and what would happen. It was what it was. I had made my choice in a split second in Don Ceriano’s car. Ceriano was dead. I was not. That was the way of this world.

The Blue Flame was a strip joint and nightclub on Kenmare Street. First thing I was aware of was how dark it was inside. A wide stage ran the length of the building on the right hand side, and across this stage three or four girls in tasselled bras and panties no bigger than dental floss gyrated and ground their hips to a bass-heavy music that came from speakers along the floor beneath them. Over to the left three or four long tables had been pulled together, and seated around them were perhaps fifteen or twenty men, all of them dressed in suits and ties, all of them drinking and laughing, all of them red-faced and loud and trying to outdo one another.

Ten Cent took me down there. Don Calligaris rose as we approached and with a flourish of his hand he silenced the gathered crew.

‘Ladies, ladies, ladies . . . we have a new guy in town.’

The gathering cheered.

‘This is Ernesto Perez, one of Don Ceriano’s boys, and though Don Ceriano cannot be with us this evening of course, I’m sure he would appreciate the fact that one of his people got wised up and came to Manhattan to work for us.’

There was a round of applause. I smiled. I reached out and shook hands. I took a glass of beer that someone handed me. I felt good. I felt welcome.

‘Ernesto . . . shit, we gotta do something about your freakin’ name!’ Don Calligaris said. ‘Anyways, this is Matteo Rossi, and here we have Michael Luciano, no relation, and Joey Giacalone, you know, and this is his father Tony Jacks, and over there is Tony Provenzano, Tony Pro to you and me, and to his right you got Stefano Cagnotto, and next to him you got Angelo Cova, and the skinny fuck down the bottom is Don Alessandro’s kid, Giovanni. This crowd over here,’ he said, indicating the other side of the table. ‘Well, this sorry shower of saps and wasters is just some bunch of homeless fucks we picked up in the street.’

Don Calligaris laughed. He raised his hands and clenched his fists. ‘This is your family, legitimate in some cases, the rest of them a bunch of bastards!’

Calligaris sat down. He indicated a chair beside his and I took it. Someone passed me a bowl of bread slices, and before I knew it I was surrounded by plates of meatballs and salami, and other things I didn’t recognize.

They talked, these people, and their words were like one vast rush of noise in my ears. They spoke of ‘things’ they were taking care of, ‘things’ that needed taking care of, and at some point the girls were gone, the music went down low, and Tony Pro was leaning forward with everyone’s attention rapt and he was talking about someone I had heard of once before.

‘Cocksucker,’ he was saying. ‘Guy’s a freakin’ cocksucker. Hard bastard, I’ll give him that, but we don’t need him back now we got Fitzsimmons. Frank Fitzsimmons toes the line an awful lot more than Hoffa ever did, and seems to me we should keep it that way.’

Don Calligaris was shaking his head. ‘Sure, sure, sure, but what the fuck’re we gonna do, eh? Guy’s a name, a big fucking name. You can’t just whack someone like Jimmy Hoffa and expect to walk away with nothin’ more than dust on your shoes.’

‘Anyone can get whacked,’ Joey Giacalone said. ‘Kennedy said that . . . that anyone could whack the fucking president if he was determined enough.’

‘Sure, anyone can get whacked,’ Don Calligaris said, ‘but there’s whacking someone and whacking someone, and they ain’t necessarily the same fucking thing, are they?’

Another man further down the table, Stefano Cagnotto if I remember rightly, said, ‘So what’s the fucking difference . . . someone gets whacked, someone else gets whacked. You do it right, who gives a fuck who it is? It’s not who it is but how it’s done that matters.’

Tony Pro nodded his head. ‘He’s right, Fabio. It’s not who it is but who does it and how it’s done that matters . . . hey, Ernesto, whaddya reckon?’

I shook my head. ‘I don’t know who you’re talkin’ about,’ I said. I had heard the name Jimmy Hoffa before, but I was ignorant of his significance in this game.

Tony Pro laughed. ‘Hey, Fabio, where d’you get this kid? You go collect him from the farm?’

Calligaris laughed. He turned to me. ‘You heard of the Teamsters?’

I shook my head.

‘Labor organization sorta thing . . . unions and truckers and construction crews an’ all that sorta stuff. Hell, I heard the Teamsters even got a union for the hookers and the strippers.’

‘No shit?’ Tony Pro said. ‘Hell, ain’t we movin’ with the times.’

‘Anyways,’ Calligaris went on. ‘Teamsters, International Brotherhood of Teamsters, they’re a big fucking organization, handle all the unions and the pension funds and all manner of shit.’ He turned to his left. ‘Hey, Matteo, you deal with this thing enough, what’s the word on the Teamsters?’

Matteo Rossi cleared his throat. ‘Organizes the unorganized, makes workers’ voices heard in the corridors of power, negotiates contracts that make the American dream a reality for millions, protects workers’ health and safety, and fights to keep jobs in North America.’

There was a ripple of applause amongst the crowd.

‘Seems to me,’ Tony Pro said, ‘that someone should look out for Jimmy fuckin’ Hoffa’s health and fuckin’ safety.’

The crew laughed. They talked some more, and then there was more food coming and the music got louder, and a girl with breasts the size of basketballs came out and showed the family how she could make the tassels on her nipples spin in two different directions at the same time.

We ate, we drank, and the name of Jimmy Hoffa was not mentioned again that night. Had I been aware of what would happen I would have asked questions, but I was new, it was not my place, and I didn’t wish to alienate myself from these people before I even got to know them.

It was three days later that I saw her.

Her name was Angelina Maria Tiacoli.

I saw her in a fruit market on Mott Street, a block over from Mulberry. She had on a summer print dress, over it a camelcolored overcoat and in her hand she carried a brown paper grocery bag loaded with oranges and lemons.

Her hair was rich and dark, her complexion olive and smooth, and her eyes, hell, her eyes were the color of warm creamy coffee. I held my breath when she looked at me and I looked away quickly. Ten Cent was with me and he told her ‘Hi Angel’, and the girl smiled and blushed a little and mouthed ‘Hi’ back.

I watched her go, watched her intently, and Ten Cent nudged me and told me to put my eyes back in my head.

‘Who is she?’ I asked.

‘Angel,’ he said. ‘Angelina Tiacoli. Sweet girl, sad story.’

I looked at Ten Cent. He shook his head. ‘Don’t be getting any fucked-up ideas, ya Cuban fruitcake. She’s strictly out of bounds.’

‘Out of bounds?’

Ten Cent shook his head. ‘Jesus, you ain’t fuckin’ listenin’ to me . . . I say she’s no go then she’s no go, okay?’

‘Okay,’ I said, ‘but just tell me who she is.’

‘You remember the other night at the Blue Flame?’

I nodded.

‘Guy down at the end, guy called Giovanni Alessandro?’

I didn’t remember, but then there had been so many people, so many names.

‘His father is Don Alessandro. Big boss. No fucking about. Don Alessandro has a brother . . . well, he
had
a brother called Louis. Louis was a mad fuck, a real mad fuck at the best of times, little left of center if you know what I mean. Anyways, he was married to some girl, a good Italian girl, and he went out on her, you know?’

‘Went out?’ I asked.

‘Christ, kid, you really is from the farm, ain’tcha? He went out . . . you know, he went and fucked some other broad. You know what that means?’

‘Yes, I know what that means.’

‘Lord God, the kid’s a fucking genius! Anyways, Don Alessandro’s brother goes and fucks some other broad and this broad has a kid . . . and the kid is Angelina. Everyone knows she ain’t exactly blood, but hell she’s a good kid and she’s sure as hell pretty, so Don Alessandro keeps her here around the family.’

‘And her mother?’

‘That’s the sad part. Her mother was some hooker or stripper from someplace, crazy junkie bitch, and she and Don Alessandro’s brother got to fighting one night when Angelina was about eight or nine years old, and they ended up shooting each other.

Don Alessandro had already told his brother not to see her any more, that he would make sure everything was taken care of for the kid if he just promised to stop fucking the hooker, but Louis Alessandro was a crazy bastard, and he went on seeing this junkie bitch for years, and then all hell broke loose and this pair of fruitcakes ended up whacking each other, and Angelina ends up losing her father and her birth mother, and she ain’t got nothin’ left but her dad’s wife who ain’t her real mother, you follow me?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Anyway, her father’s wife, the woman who shoulda been her mother but wasn’t, she don’t want anything to do with Angelina, and so she tells Don Alessandro that he better take care of the girl seein’ as how the girl is his niece, and she’s gonna go someplace upstate and start her life over again away from her dead husband’s crazy good-for-nothin’ family. So Don Alessandro gave her some money, and then he made sure Angelina was looked after until she was all growed up, and then he bought her a place. That’s where she lives now, all by herself.’

‘And how come she’s out of bounds?’ I asked.

‘Because it just ain’t done, you know? The girl’s mother wasn’t Italian, she wasn’t part of the family . . . the poor kid’s mother was some half-crazy fucked-up junkie bitch from no place special who put her pussy where it shouldn’t have been. Now get the fucking oranges would ya for Christ’s sake . . . what the fuck is this with the third fuckin’ degree anyway?’

I saw her again a week later. Same store. Was down there by myself collecting groceries for Ten Cent. I made a point of saying ‘Hi’ to her, and though she said nothing in response she did look at me for a heartbeat, and in that heartbeat there was the ghost of a smile, and in that smile I saw the promise of everything else that might lie behind it.

The day after I saw her in the street. She was leaving a hairstyling salon on Hester. She wore the same summer print dress and camel-colored overcoat. She carried her purse tight in both her hands as if afraid someone would snatch it from her. I approached her, and ten or twelve feet away I sensed that she was aware of my presence. I slowed down and stopped on the sidewalk. She slowed down also. She glanced to her right as if wondering whether to cross the street to avoid me, but she hesitated, hesitated long enough for me to raise my hand and smile at her.

She tried to smile back, but it was as if the muscles of her face were denying her the right. Her hands did not move; they clutched the purse tightly, as if the purse was the only thing she could be sure of in that moment.

‘Miss Tiacoli,’ I said quietly, because I knew her name from Ten Cent, and would not have forgotten that name even if forgetting had been a life-and-death matter.

She tried to smile again but could not. She opened her mouth as if she planned to say something, but not a word came forth. She looked to her right again, and then once back at me, and then she stepped suddenly from the sidewalk to the street and hurried across Hester.

I watched her go. I followed her a good fifteen yards on the other side of the road.

She stopped suddenly. She turned towards me. Cars went by unnoticed between us. She let go of the purse with her right hand and raised it, palm facing me as if to stop me coming any further, and then as quickly as she had stopped she started walking again, faster this time. I let her go. I wanted to follow her but I let her go. At the corner of Hester and Elizabeth she glanced back once, just for a split second, and then she turned and was gone.