Bloodline (44 page)

“You really believe in that stuff, don’t you?”

“Of course. What else is there?”

“Well, you can worry about her soul in the hereafter, but I’d say she’s got things going pretty well in the here and now. She’s going to be a star again, Mario. After coming back from the grave.”

“And in the process, she’s become the mistress of a gangster and she’s broken with her family. She and my father haven’t spoken for months. It’s tearing him apart.”

“Italian fathers are too close to their daughters, anyway,” Sofia said. The baby started to whimper, so Sofia took a cookie from a plate that she had put in front of Mario and handed it to him. For a moment, both the priest and the young mother watched the child laughably gumming the confection.

“Is there ever a chance you could talk to her?”

“Sure,” Sofia said bitterly. “I’m a great example. Tina’s going out with a gangster and I’m married to one who’s doing life at Dannemora. I’m sure she’ll love a lecture from me.”

When Mario was silent, Sofia asked him, “How’s Tommy? Does he have a girlfriend?”

“I don’t know,” Mario said. “There was that waitress who went off to try to become an actress, but I haven’t seen him with any other girls since then. Tommy’s got all those law-school classes and he’s still walking a beat, so I don’t know how much time he’s got for a girlfriend.”

“Yeah, college can take your time,” Sofia said. “You know I’m going to NYU, don’t you.”

“No, I didn’t know that.”

“A couple of days a week. Nilo’s friends pay for me. They’re paying for this place too. I’m studying accounting.”

“Was that Nilo’s idea?” Mario asked.

“His idea? That’s a laugh. Nilo’s never thought about anybody in his life except himself. No, Nilo’s boss, Mr. Maranzano, told me I had to go to college. He arranges for somebody to come and take care of Stephen on the days I’m in school.”

Mario smiled. “Good for you,” he said. “You’re young. You should get out and be with people.”

“I’m young and I’m married to a man I hope I’ll never see again. I think that would just about make my life finished, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Of course I don’t agree.”

“Then you’ve been inside the church too long.” They were silent for a moment; then Sofia scooped up the baby and carted him off to the bedroom. She was gone long enough to change him and put him to bed. When she returned to the kitchen, Mario was reading the morning paper.

“It says here that many Sicilians are still fleeing the island because this fellow Mussolini is arresting so many people.”

“Yeah. And they’re all coming here, and Maranzano is hiring every one of them.”

“Are you serious?” Mario asked.

“Of course I am. Mr. Maranzano, for some reason, thinks of Nilo as a son, and he comes here sometimes in the evenings to sit and talk with me. He told me all these people are coming to New York without money or prospects and he feels obligated to try to give them jobs.”

“See how it’s easy to be wrong,” Mario said. “All I ever heard about Maranzano was that he was a gangster, and it turns out that he’s a philanthropist.”

“Oh, Mario, don’t be a fool.”

When the priest looked at her quizzically, she said, “All the people fleeing Sicily are Mafia people. That’s who Mussolini is trying to eliminate. So these criminals are coming here and Maranzano is hiring them for his mob as soon as they step ashore. Just the way he did with Nilo.”

“Is it that bad, Sofia?”

“It’s worse. I hate my husband; I hate my life.” She looked at the baby. “But my son … his life will be different.”

“Did you ever think of an annulment?” Mario asked.

Sofia laughed. “Forget it. Mr. Maranzano would never stand for it. I’m trapped.”

“Nobody’s trapped,” Mario said.

“We’re all trapped.”

*   *   *

T
HEY HAD BEEN LATE COMING OUT
of the waiting area, and Fatso, the guard, had been waiting for them, to put them through their paces and teach them the respect that must be shown for each and every guard at Dannemora, demonstrating on all of them the effectiveness of the steel-headed wooden clubs all guards carried, and so Nilo had missed his supper. He did not give a damn. He was tired to the point of exhaustion and he only wanted to sleep.

Fatso led them up the four flights of stairs to the narrow walkway that ran along 25 Gallery, South Hall. He roughly shoved them one by one into their cells. Nilo’s was number 24. He stumbled inside and stopped.

He had heard talk on the way up about how bad Dannemora was, but nothing had prepared him for this. The cell at Sing Sing was small, crowded, almost inhuman, but this one was even worse. It had no toilet. It was filthy and smelled bad and water trickled down its cold walls. Already, Nilo’s teeth were chattering.

Fatso was barking orders out on the walkway. Lights were to be out at 10:00 and each man was to be in his bunk from then until wake-up call at 6:30 the next morning. There would be bed checks every hour, even during the night. There would be no talking anytime a prisoner was in his cell.

Nilo stretched out his arms on either side; both sets of fingers touched the side walls. He extended them overhead and he touched the ceiling. He walked the cell from front to back: three and a half steps.

It is too small,
he thought.
Too damned small. They would not keep even animals in a place like this.

He could not imagine spending the next forty or fifty years of his life in such a place. And yet it was destined to be, he thought. Maybe the old cons back on Sing Sing’s death row had not been so wrong when they had said they would rather be where they were than where Nilo was heading.

What have I done, God, for you to visit this upon me? That
stronzo
Selvini shot that boy, not me. It is only an accident that I was even there. Do mere accidents now condemn one to hell on earth?

He unmade the bedding packet on his cot. It was still hours before lights-out would be called, but sleep would not wait. He took off his clothes and stacked them neatly on the floor, as far away from the toilet bucket as he could place them.

He had almost dozed off when he awoke with a start, leaping from his bed. Somebody had shot him or stabbed him or burned him with a hot poker. But of course that could not have happened. His cell was empty, and no one could get into his cell any more than he could get out. He must have been dreaming.

Nilo lay back down again and a moment later was back on his feet. Something was crawling all over him.

It was dark in the cell now, all the lights in all the cells in all the galleries having been doused. He had to know what it was that was attacking him. Cautiously, Nilo lit a match, expecting any moment for Fatso or one of the other guards to descend on his cell and inflict some sort of punishment on him.

At first he could see nothing. Then he noticed, in the flickering light, that his sheet was moving. He stepped closer to it and saw that the sheet itself was not moving; instead, it was covered with hundreds upon hundreds of tiny crawling insects, each roughly oval in shape and more or less a rusty brown in color. Nilo looked in horror at the insects covering the very place where moments before he had been sleeping. He could feel his belly tighten and a sort of panic rise in his throat; he had to fight hard to keep down a shriek.

He dropped the match and grabbed his sheet and flailed it madly up and down, shaking the insects to the floor and then taking his shoes and, in the dark, trying to smash the creatures into bloody pulp.

He had almost convinced himself that he had completed the job when he heard the hard leather heels of the guard thumping down the hallway as the man made his rounds. He hurriedly threw the sheet back on his mattress and jumped back on it. No sooner had he done so than he was attacked again, although this time it seemed as if the insects had discovered his butchery of their brethren and had decided to redouble their attack in some sort of retributory vengeance.

The battle went on all night, and by morning’s light Nilo looked at the crushed blood-filled carcasses of the hordes of bedbugs littering his cell floor. He felt a fresh wave of nausea pass over him at the sight. He could not leave his cell floor like that. Shuddering, barely able to make himself do it, Nilo began picking up the dead insects—using one hand to brush them into his other—and depositing them in his toilet bucket.

After a rushed breakfast, eaten under the standing rules of silence, it was time to clean out their buckets. Nilo, along with all the other prisoners, grabbed his bucket by its long wire handle and started the march through the corridors and out into the exercise yard, where against a far wall a small, badly stinking shed had been set up. The courtyard surface had frozen over months before and was now a slick surface, partly of snow and ice, partly of human waste deposited there by prisoners unable to keep their feet under them.

Nilo waited in line. He could see the convicts ahead of him emptying their smaller buckets into one massive container and then dipping them into successive baths of disinfectant and reasonably clean water. He watched carefully, walked carefully, and when he had almost reached the shed he slipped and covered himself from head to foot with a foul combination of his own wastes and the bodies of dead insects. No one laughed. No one offered to help. He got himself to his feet and trudged on, cleaning his bucket as he had seen others do. There was nothing else to be done; there were to be no clean uniforms issued for another three days; he would have to make do with what he had.

Later that morning, a laughing guard who seemed to regard Nilo’s aroma as an occasion for hilarity, assigned him a job in the weaving plant. For his first hour inside the plant, no one came near him. Finally, just before time to be marched to lunch, a paunchy prisoner with graying hair, eyeglasses, and oversize fleshy features walked toward him, his feet shuffling along in a peculiar ducklike gait.

“You’re Nilo Sesta,” he said. It was not exactly a question.

“Yes.”

“You smell like hell. You can’t work in here smelling like that.”

Nilo bridled, ready to attack if attacked.

“Tell you what I’m going to do,” the big man said.

“You tell me.”

“I’m going to get you a fresh set of clothes.”

Nilo eyed him suspiciously.

“And what’s the price?”

“No price,” the other man said. “I’m a friend of a friend of a friend. They asked me to look out for you while you’re in here. That’s why you got a job in this shop. It’s the best in the whole joint. And tonight you’ll get a new cell, one with no bedbugs. I’m sorry; I would’ve done better by you yesterday, but you people weren’t supposed to get here until today.”

Nilo stared at the man in disbelief. He was still young, but he had learned a long time ago to be distrustful of people who freely offered favors.

“Oh, and another thing,” the man said, reaching into his pocket. “Here’s fifty dollars that your friends outside sent in. You’ll need it if you want to eat decent in here. You’ll have to buy all your food through the commissary. You can’t eat the crap they call meals here.”

He grinned and held out his hand.

“My name’s Harry. Harry Birchevsky.”

*   *   *

O
N
M
ONDAY,
Tommy showed up for work at his police precinct and bumped into his father.

“When are you going to resign?” Tony asked him.

“Are you that anxious to get me off the force?”

Tony drew his son into a vacant office, where they sat facing each other across a bare wooden table.

“I never expected you to stay on the job this long,” Tony said.

“But why quit? The work’s easy and it’s a paycheck, and that comes in handy when the tuition’s due.”

“Yeah, but … dammit, if you’ve got to work, you should be doing some other kind of work, something important, something with lawyers.”

“Police work’s not important?” Tommy said.

“Not to you. It’s important to me, but not to you. I’m a cop at heart. You’re not.”

“Papa, let’s stop beating around the bush. You’re just worried that some night I’m going to walk into a stray bullet.”

“Okay, what’s wrong with that?”

“What’s wrong is that I’ve been a cop long enough to know how to be careful. I’m just going to hang around until law school’s done, and then I’m finished. I’m no hero.” He paused. “So what are you doing here anyway?”

“They hired some new patrolmen. I’ve got to give them a rundown on who the gang guys are that they should watch out for.”

“That’s a week’s work,” Tommy said lightly.

“More like ten minutes. All I got to do is show them a picture of Charlie Luciano. He’s running everything now. If it’s women, it’s his. Booze is his. Gambling’s his. Drugs are his. It’s all his. You know, it’s funny. I looked up his record and I probably gave him his first collar as an adult.”

“Yeah?”

“And I don’t even remember him,” Tony said. “Of course, I know him now.”

There was nothing to say to that, as Tommy realized again how deeply hurt his father was by Tina’s taking up with Luciano.

“Well, I’ve got to move on,” he said, getting to his feet. He clapped his father on the shoulder and moved toward the door.

“Tommy, if you see Tina anytime, have her come home and visit Mama. If I know she’s coming, I’ll make sure to stay away.”

Tommy again tried to think of something to say and again could not. He nodded and left.

*   *   *

W
HEN SHE SAW THE DISMAL
slushy slop that packed the city’s gutters, Tina was happy that she traveled these days only by chauffeured car.

Charlie had told her, “You’re a star now. No more trolleys and buses for you. When you wanna go someplace, you just call up and we’ll have a car take you there.”

It sounded very generous, but Tina knew that it also reflected a little of Luciano’s personality, his need to control everyone around him. In his not-so-subtle way, he was telling her that she was his woman and she could go no place without his knowing, no place that he did not approve of.