Bloodline (6 page)

• The Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution prohibiting the manufacture or sale of alcohol in the United States was approved.

• The best-selling book in America was
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

CHAPTER
2

Winter 1919–1920

Standing on the deck of the rusting old steamer, Nilo stared down at the fog-dappled pier below him and shivered. It was Christmas, but back home the holidays were mild and bright and sunny, and here in New York there was only cold and darkness. He shivered again. Despite the heavy Melton peacoat he wore, he was not used to the chill and doubted if he ever would be.

I’d better learn. This place is my home from now on.

He shivered again, this time not so much from the wild and bitter December wind as from excitement. Thirty feet below him the New World began—his new world, at least. He began pacing back and forth on the wooden deck, beating himself with his arms, trying to keep warm.

“Getting anxious?” a voice asked from the darkness behind him.

Nilo turned quickly. Despite all the thousands of miles he had come from Castellammare, he had not gotten the fear of reprisal out of his head. He still jumped at every shadow, winced at every unexpected noise.

He relaxed when he saw Rocco. Unlike most of the crew, who were Sicilian and therefore, in Nilo’s mind, potential allies of the devil, Rocco was an easygoing young man from Naples, slow to anger, quick to laugh.

“A little bit,” Nilo admitted. “I’ve been waiting up here for permission to go ashore.”

“And when you do, it’s good-bye to the ship, eh?”

Nilo shrugged.

“If you’re leaving anyway, why wait for permission?” Rocco asked. “Why not just leave and be done with it?”

Nilo shrugged again. He had told Don Salvatore Maranzano—he of the priest’s cassock and the magnificent palazzo—that he would work on one of his ships to pay his passage to New York and that he would obey the rules and keep his nose clean once he got there. Don Salvatore said he had helped many to go to America, many who might not be permitted to enter if they had had to pass through formal immigration control … even many who were on the run from the law in their own countries. And not one of them had been caught, Don Salvatore preached, just so long as they had followed his advice. As for those who had not followed his advice? Don Salvatore had just elaborately extended his hands, palms up, by way of explanation.

Not from fear but out of common sense, Nilo had decided he would wait for permission to leave the ship.

“I’ll wait,” he told the other man.

“You are a strange one, Nilo,” the other man said, and put an arm around Nilo’s shoulder. Nilo cringed and Rocco laughed.

“You see? Three nights we have made love, yes? And now? Now you do not even wish to speak to me, yes?”

Nilo did not answer immediately. His eyes were still cast down below toward the dock, toward New York City, toward his new world. He had boarded the ship in Naples, coasted along the Mediterranean, then east through Suez to India and Shanghai and Japan, then east across the Pacific and through the Panama Canal to Havana and now to New York. He had traveled farther and seen more than he would have thought possible a year before.

During the voyage, many men on the ship had looked at Nilo with lustful eyes, but Rocco had made it clear that Nilo was under his protection and the other men had left him alone. Nilo had expected that there would be a price to pay for this, and there was. He and Rocco had made love. He had thought he would never do that with a man, not after what had happened on the
tonnara.
But where there was no violence, it was not so bad. And when a man was shut away from women for weeks, months without end—then what other choice was there? Men needed sex. It was best with women, but if not—well, sometimes it was necessary. Especially when it provided Nilo with protection from those who would treat him like an animal.

He heard Rocco laugh again.

“Do not worry, my friend,” he said. “What happens between sailors does not count on shore. It has always been so. Besides, it was a very long voyage.”

Nilo had another reason for hoping to depart the ship soon. During the long months of the voyage, he had carefully watched at night to learn where the other sailors hid their money while they were on duty, and just an hour ago he had sneaked through the bunkroom, stealing a little bit from every sailor’s pile. All told, he had lifted almost $150, although none of it from Rocco. By the time the sailors found out about it, he wanted to be long gone.

Rocco said, “I have a message for you.”

Nilo raised his eyebrows quizzically.

“Mr. Maranzano—Don Salvatore to you—was impressed with your hard work during this voyage.” At Nilo’s expression of surprise, the older man laughed. “You wonder, how did he know about your hard work, and the answer is simple. Most simple. I told him. It was my job to keep him informed of your progress, and so I wrote him from every port and told him that you were doing very well.”

“Why should he care about me?” Nilo asked.

Rocco put his arm on Nilo’s shoulder once again; this time Nilo did not cringe.

“Maybe he’s just kind. Anyway, he said to give you this if you survived the voyage,” Rocco said, and handed Nilo a small folded piece of cardboard. “It is the address of his New York City office. I believe he sells real estate, among other things. He said that when you need work or advice or money to call him. He knows how hard it is to get started in New York. Especially if you’re Sicilian.”

Nilo jammed the cardboard into his pocket and murmured his thanks.

“Good. Now the news you’ve been waiting for. The captain says you are finished on this ship. Free to go. Welcome to America.”

Nilo stood uncertainly for a moment, not sure what to do next. Then he mumbled a quick thank-you and hurried below deck to gather up his seabag. But when he came back onto the deck, Rocco was still there.

“Do you know where you are going?” he asked.

“I have an address,” Nilo said.

“Ah, but you cannot read, can you? Not even a simple address. Is that not right?”

For a moment Nilo considered lying and then told the truth.

“No,” he said. “Not English. I cannot read. Or write.”

“You Sicilians are all alike,” Rocco said with a laugh. “Then how will you get where you are going?” Rocco demanded. “Have you ever been in New York before?”

“No. But I thought I would take a taxi. Taxi drivers can read. They know New York. They will take me where I want to go.”

“Of course they will. After they swindle you out of every penny you have somehow gathered up.”

“I wouldn’t let them do that,” Nilo said in a flat voice.

Rocco studied him for a moment. Nilo was just nineteen and still almost pretty, even though six months of hard work and regular eating at sea had packed meat and muscle onto his bones.

“No, I guess you wouldn’t,” Rocco said finally. He pulled a massive old pocket watch from his peacoat and looked at it.

“Listen, boy, I’ve got some time, so let me help. I’ll get you to your address. It will be my welcome-to-America Christmas present for you.”

Despite the freezing weather, Rocco insisted upon walking so Nilo could get a look at his new city, and it took more than an hour before they turned off Spring Street and down Crosby.

Nilo was amazed at how many people were out in the street. In Sicily, after dark, only criminals and ghosts could feel at home in the narrow streets.

Rocco watched the building numbers closely, and when they reached the corner of Broome Street he pointed at a redbrick building of four stories that housed a grocery and a barbershop on the ground floor.

“You are here,” Rocco said.

“Thank you,” Nilo answered. “I hope I see you again.”

“You never will,” Rocco answered. “I am just a simple sailor whose life is at sea. But I’m sure I will hear of you. Merry Christmas.”

As Rocco walked quickly away, Nilo went into the building, hoisted his seabag on his shoulder, and started up the stairs. The apartment he wanted was on the top floor. Throughout the building, he could hear people singing and instruments playing and the smell of food cooking and loud laughter. Women’s laughter. Nilo suddenly felt very homesick. He took a deep breath, then knocked, loud and long.

The door opened slowly, and a tired, happy-looking man who appeared to be in his mid-forties looked out. In the room behind him, Nilo could see an enormous Christmas tree, gaily decorated and lit with flickering live candles. He had never seen a Christmas tree before, and he stared at it until the man cleared his throat and Nilo looked back at him. The man’s eyes seemed familiar to Nilo, but the thick muscular shoulders, discernible under his heavily starched white shirt, gave the impression of a man not to be trifled with. The pleasant look on his face had also seemed to fade, as if he had been expecting someone else and did not bother to hide his disappointment at seeing Nilo.

“Excuse me for intruding,” the young man said quickly in his Sicilian dialect. “I am looking for Anthony Falcone.”

“And who wants him?” the man demanded. He seemed to reach behind the door for something. There was a mirror at the end of the long entryway to the apartment, and in it Nilo could see the man put his hand on a revolver that hung from a holster draped over a strange-looking piece of furniture. It did not surprise Nilo; in his hometown, doors were often answered gun in hand.

“I do,” he answered crisply.

“And who are you?”

“I am the son of his younger sister, Maria,” Nilo said.

The man at the door looked at Nilo hard for a few long seconds, then said softly, “I’ll be damned.” He shouted aloud over his shoulder, “Hey, it’s little Danilo, all grown up and come to America,” and then stepped forward to embrace his nephew.

*   *   *

I
T WAS AS IF THEY HAD BEEN EXPECTING
him and planned a party for his arrival, Nilo thought later. His uncle Tony ushered him into a large kitchen, where a big metal-topped table had been set with five places and platters were heaped with food.

He was introduced to his aunt Anna and then his cousin Justina. They both looked disappointed, too, although in the case of Justina it was harder to discern, since she was simply the most beautiful girl Nilo had ever seen and disappointment did not rest naturally on her face. She was probably a little younger than Nilo and dressed in a long skirt and white blouse that did nothing to hide her bosom. While his aunt Anna hugged and fussed over him, Nilo had trouble taking his eyes off Justina, who sat watching him. She had light skin and wide-set green eyes. She seemed to measure him with interest but glanced down shyly at the table whenever their eyes happened to meet.

“I am sorry,” Nilo told his aunt, gesturing around the kitchen. “I have interrupted you.”

“Nonsense,” his uncle said. “We’ve always got room at
this
inn,” then led him into a bedroom, showed him a closet where he could hang his clothes and a bathroom where he could wash up.

“Take your time,” Uncle Tony said. “We’ll hold supper for you.” Nilo felt better after he had washed up and changed into clean clothes, but he was taken aback when he reentered the kitchen and saw a priest sitting with the rest of the family at the table. The priest was a burly young man with large, meaty hands. His hair was already thinning, even though he could not yet be thirty years of age.

Nilo had grown up regarding priests as part of the official government and therefore not totally to be trusted.
Why is he here? Have they called him in to question me, to find out if I am really Danilo Sesta?

He nodded uncomfortably toward the man in the clerical collar, but the man bounded to his feet, came to Nilo, and threw his arm around him. Nilo’s discomfort must have been obvious, because he could see a broad smile cross Justina’s beautiful face.

The smile annoyed him.
She is looking at me as if I were not a man but a child. And I am clearly older than she is.

“Father, I…”

“Forget ‘Father.’ I am your cousin, Mario,” the priest answered. “And I am starved after serving Mass all day and all night. So sit down and let us eat before the food gets cold and Mama tells us it is all spoiled.”

After months of eating unappetizing shipboard gruel, Nilo found the meal a feast beyond imagining. At first he was uncomfortable, eating in the presence of a priest, but Father Mario, who waved a drumstick around in one hand to punctuate his conversation—which seemed oddly to concern itself mostly with professional prizefighting—put him quickly at ease. Especially when he pulled Nilo up from the table and helped him arrange his fists in a boxing position, then demonstrated for his father, Nilo’s uncle Tony, a devastating left-right combination to Nilo’s stomach, which had apparently decked some hapless pugilist somewhere. Even though the priest pulled his punches and did not really hit him, Nilo was surprised and a little shocked at the display. He learned only later in the dinner that Father Mario, before taking the vows of priesthood, had been a boxer of some local renown, even winning eight professional prizefights. Apparently, at the nearby church where he was assigned, he had begun a boxing team for local boys.

“Fighting? In church?” Nilo asked with surprise.

“See, Papa?” Mario said. “That’s what the monsignor thinks, too. But I think if I can get the kids to fight inside a ring, maybe I can cut down the amount they’ll be fighting in the streets.”

“Good luck,” the priest’s father said, with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Most of those mugs are Irishers. They’ll be fighting in the street anyway. Irishmen were born brawling in the streets.”

“That’s the trouble with you, Papa. You’re stuck in the old ways of thinking. Wake up. In a couple of days, this’ll be the 1920s.” He looked back toward Nilo. “I might get you over there to the church, too,” the priest said. “You look to me like you might be able to handle yourself pretty well.”

Nilo blushed. As he mumbled a response, Mario asked, “You ever fight?”