‘I will be around for some years yet,’ I said. ‘There is no question about that. But with him beside me there is no way I can once again become part of this life.’
Don Calligaris leaned back in his chair. He looked at me directly, and though there was warmth and friendship in his eyes there was also the cold determination for which he was renowned. ‘This life . . . this thing of ours, it is not something that you leave behind, Ernesto. You make your choices, you make your mark, and that mark will always be your signature. You have lived the life you chose to live and, though there will always be things that a man regrets, it is nevertheless a stupid man who believes he can undo what he is, what he has become as a result of his actions. I watch the TV now, I see movies about the kind of people we are.’ He laughed. ‘We are portrayed as a gang of thugs, mindless hooligans in silk suits who kill for no purpose. We are seen as vicious and unreasonable men, without hearts, but nothing could be further from the truth. More often than not people have died because it was a matter of life and death. It was a matter of you or them. And then there is the matter of honor and agreement. Men make promises on the lives of their families, and then they betray not only those they promised but also themselves. These are the kind of men that die, and these men deserve nothing better.’
I listened to what Don Calligaris was saying, and I knew in my heart of hearts that it was true. Even as I had seen my own son drifting away from me and had contemplated the possibility of returning to America, I had known that if I returned it would not be because of his need alone. It would also be because of me. I was a man who had made choices which had involved the lives and deaths of so many people over the years. I knew that if I returned to New York, if I once again re-established my old friendships and bonds, then it would also mean once again wearing a coat cut from the same cloth. The man I was had been the result of what I had done, and what I had done could not now be undone. I was, and perhaps would always be, a part of this greater family. Just because I had a son did not change that fact.
I believed then that the difficulty I’d had in deciding to come back was not for fear of what Victor might find out, what he would see or hear, but my own unwillingness to resume my position in the grand scheme of things. I had a place, and in leaving I had left that place vacant. No-one had come forward to take my mantle and assume my responsibilities, and no-one ever would. No-one but me. And now I was here, sitting by the window in the Mulberry Street house; my son in the kitchen; Ten Cent in the back room watching a ball game on the TV; Don Fabio Calligaris, old and gray and wrinkled, opposite me in his chair, and I realized that whatever I had left behind possessed the patience of Job. My clothes had been cut. I had worn them. I believed I could take them off and store them away somewhere in perpetuity. This was not the case. They were the only clothes that had ever really fitted me.
‘So you see,’ Don Calligaris said. ‘We are who we are, no matter what the world and all its voices might say about us. These things we have done are as much a part of us as our fingerprints, and they cannot be removed, they cannot be exchanged for something else. I know you well enough, Ernesto—’ He smiled. He leaned forward and took my hand. I looked down at his liver-spotted skin and saw that his hand and mine were almost identical in their appearance. ‘I know you well enough to realize that you would never be happy crawling into some hole in Cuba and dying like some insignificant and inconsequential nobody. You are here. You have come home. The house where you once lived with Ten Cent is still there. The rooms are not the same—’ He laughed. ‘At least we took the trouble to have the walls painted! But those rooms are there for you and your son, and while he goes to school, while he learns to be a good American citizen, you can be here by my side and help me straighten out the mess these kids have made of our city. The five families were here. They may be quieter now, they may have less influence than they did thirty years ago, but they are still alive and well and living in America. America was our country, and with the last breath in my body it will stay our country if it has anything to do with me.’
He gripped my hand tighter. He was asking me to stay, to be one of the family again. I would return to a life I believed I had left behind. This time it would be different. This time I had a son of fourteen years old, and he would have to be protected from the truth of what I had done – and might yet do. This, of all things, would be the greatest challenge. And what was my other option? To visit New York, to see America for a handful of weeks, and then to return to Cuba, my son perhaps unhappy, homesick for the wide and awe-inspiring world he had glimpsed, and wait until I died?
I looked down at the floor. I closed my eyes.
I believed I had already made my decision as I sat on the edge of Victor’s bed that night and told him we would come.
‘Yes,’ I said, my voice barely audible. I looked up and cleared my throat. ‘Yes, Don Calligaris. I will stay here. This is my home, and I have returned.’
Don Calligaris clapped his hands together. ‘Ha!’ he exclaimed, his smile wide. He rose from the chair. I rose also. He reached out and placed his hands on my shoulders. He pulled me close and hugged me. ‘My brother,’ he said. ‘Ernesto Perez, my crazy Cuban brother . . . welcome home!’
It began with the little things; always the little things.
We made arrangements to keep my life with Victor separate from my life with Ten Cent and Don Calligaris. He was enrolled in a good school, a Catholic school with family connections. Money changed hands and Victor did not need to provide identification or a Social Security number. He arrived on time, he worked hard, he showed great promise in his studies, and he seemed happy. After school he would return to the house where we lived, back a half a block or so from Mulberry on Baxter, and here he would watch TV and occupy himself as he wished when I was not there. Ten Cent lived there too, and I employed a woman much as we had employed Claudia Vivó in Havana. Her name was Rosa Martinelli, a middle-aged Italian widow with teenage sons of her own, and Victor fell in with them, good boys, honest and studious, and often he would stay over at their house or visit the movies with them. I did not worry for Victor, he was in good company, and for this I was happy.
So the little things began.
‘Go and see Bracco,’ Don Calligaris would say. ‘Tell him we need the track money tonight. Tell him he has been late three weeks in a row and it will not be tolerated again.’
And Ten Cent and I would go and see Bracco, the two of us – old men in our fifties – and we would scare up the neighborhood and remind people who we were.
‘You’re the one,’ they would say. ‘You’re the one who clipped Jimmy Hoffa,’ and I would smile and say nothing, and they would read everything they wanted to read in that expression.
Sometimes we would meet at Salvatore’s and discuss business, and in such moments I could have been twenty years younger and feeling that rush of anticipation knowing that I would be out in a couple of hours, out and down the street to call on Angelina Maria Tiacoli.
You’re back again?
Yes.
You’re not gonna give up, are you? How was the music show? I didn’t go.
You want me to pay for the tickets, is that it?
No, I don’t want you to pay for the tickets.
So what do you want?
I want to take you out someplace nice, maybe see a movie—
And then the moment would pass, and I would look away towards the street and realize that, regardless of whether the past had waited here for me, there was no way I could find it again.
And then the little things became bigger things.
‘That Bracco, he’s got some kid called Giacomo something-or-other. He’s making some noise downtown about how he does this and that for the family. Go with Ten Cent, go find the kid, bust his fingers or something and tell him he better keep his freakin’ mouth shut or next time you’re gonna put some vents in his cranium.’
And me and Ten Cent would go down there, to some broken-down warehouse on the
south end of Bowery, and I would hold Giacomo in a chair while Ten Cent broke three or four of the fingers on his right hand with a monkey wrench. Stuffed an oily rag in the kid’s mouth to keep him quiet, heard later that he got sick as a dog from whatever the fuck he might have swallowed, but sure as shit he kept his mouth shut from that point forward and we didn’t hear another word.
I didn’t kill anyone until the winter of 1998. A few weeks before Christmas it was, and the snow was thick and heavy along the sidewalks. I remember how much I felt the cold, something that had never bothered me before, and it came home to me that perhaps I should have been lying on a sunlounger near a pool outside of a rest-home in Tampa Bay. I had smiled at that thought as I left the house on Baxter, as I walked half a block down and climbed into the car where Ten Cent was waiting for me.
‘This is a fucking mess and then some,’ he said, and he clapped his gloved hands together and exhaled white mist towards the windscreen. ‘You ready for this?’
‘As I’ll ever be,’ I replied, and yet in my gut there was a cool sense of something unraveling. It was late evening, a little after nine. Victor was having a sleep-over at Mrs Martinelli’s house, believing perhaps that his old father had already gone to bed with a mug of cocoa, but no – here I was, in a car on the corner of Canal Street with his Uncle Sammy, and me and Uncle Sammy were going to drive across to the Lower East Side and clip some asshole called Benny Wheland. Benny was a smalltime loan-shark, one of those assholes who charged a quarter on the dollar per week. Hit him for a thousand bucks and three weeks later he’d come looking for seventeen hundred and fifty and expect you to be real polite and grateful when you gave it him back. He didn’t carry any muscle to speak of, just a couple of Irish fistfighters who fought bouts in the clubs around Water Street and Vladek Park. Meatpackers they were, nothing much more than that, but they were big enough to intimidate the kind of people Benny Wheland lent money to. The problem with Benny – sweetheart though he was – was a mouth the width of the Williamsburg Bridge, and when he opened it you could have ferried three cars and a tow truck right down his throat. He had laid up a deal with a fight arranger called Mordi Metz, a decidedly dishonest Jewish businessman who was known as Momo. Momo governed the financial matters relating to all fights on the Lower East Side. He had a strong working relationship with our people, and when he needed a little heavy-handing on paybacks we were always happy to oblige. We took a ten percent cut, we handed the cash clean and simple to Momo, and everyone was happy. Benny Wheland had welched on a pay-out to Momo, something in the region of thirty grand, and Momo called in a marker he was owed by the Lucheses. The Lucheses gave the job to Don Calligaris, and Don Calligaris gave it to us.
‘Simple thing really,’ he told me. ‘He’ll have the money, no question about it, and the deal is that whatever we get we keep all but a one-dollar token we give to Momo.’
‘One dollar?’ I asked. ‘What the hell we gotta give him one dollar for?’
Don Calligaris smiled. ‘It’s traditional. It’s a Jewish thing. They gotta get their pound of flesh, you know?’ He laughed, waved my question aside, and went back to business.
‘It’s worth it to us to keep Momo sweet,’ he said. ‘This guy Wheland is a fly in the fucking ointment as far as he’s concerned, about as significant in the grand scheme of things as a heap of dog crap on the sidewalk. It means nothing to us to clip him, and this is what Momo wants. Besides, Benny Wheland has been known to open his mouth a few too many times, and things would be altogether quieter if he was out of the way.’
I sat quiet for some moments.
‘Hell, Ernesto, if I had someone else to send, someone I could trust, I would send them. You know that. This may not seem like a big deal, thirty grand owed to some Jewish guy running the fight circuit, but I got my orders, and orders is orders as you well know. Now, you gonna do this thing or do I gotta get some pimple-faced teenager with an attitude to go fuck it up for me?’
I smiled. ‘Of course I’ll go,’ I said. I would not have questioned Don Calligaris’s request. It was not in my nature to go up against him. He was in a tight spot. He needed someone to do the work. I agreed to take care of it.
And so we sat in that car as New York went on snowing down on us, me and Ten Cent in our overcoats and gloves, and when Ten Cent started the car and I looked at him I realized that he would do these things for ever. Ten Cent was a soldier, he was not a thinker. He was a smart man, no question about it, but he had accepted the fact that he was not a leader. He was a man who made kings, not a king himself, whereas I had always questioned everything. I did not want to be a king, I did not want to sit in a chair someplace and give the orders to have men’s lives ended, but at that point in my life I didn’t want to be the emissary either. What I wanted I didn’t know, but in that moment I had agreed, and once I had agreed there was no going back. That unwillingness to compromise my word had perhaps been the only thing to keep me alive that long.
We drove south towards Chinatown and then headed into the Lower East Side along Broadway. We had been given Benny Wheland’s address, and we knew he lived alone. Apparently Benny had never trusted a woman enough to marry her, and the money that he had he kept beneath the floorboards.
‘You gonna do this?’ Ten Cent asked me as he pulled over to the side of the road and stopped the car. ‘I don’t mind if you don’t wanna do this, you know? You got a kid an’ all, and I know that must change the way you think about things. I’m easy come, easy go on this if you don’t actually wanna clip the guy.’
I shrugged my shoulders. ‘We’ll take it as it comes,’ I said. ‘Let’s go talk to Benny and see what he has to say for himself, eh?’
Ten Cent nodded and opened the door. A freezing gust of wind and snow rushed in to greet us, and Ten Cent swore. He stepped out and slammed the car door shut.
I climbed out on the other side and walked around to where he stood. We looked up and down the street both ways. Smart folks were inside bundled up in blankets watching the tube. Only us – two old men in topcoats and scarves – were dumb enough to be out on a night like this.
Benny opened the door but it was held by two security chains. He peered out at us through the four-inch gap, his face screwed up against the cold wind that hurried in to piss him off.
‘Benny,’ Ten Cent said. ‘How ya doin’ there? You gonna open the freakin’ door and let us in or we gotta stand out here like a coupla schmucks freezin’ our fucking balls off?’
Benny hesitated for a second. It amazed me, never ceased to amaze me, that in situations like this people didn’t realize what was going to happen. Or perhaps they did, and they knew there was an inevitability to it, and thus they consigned themselves to fate. Perhaps they would survive. Perhaps they believed that God might be on their side and see them through. I knew for a fact that God was the greatest welch-artist that ever existed.
‘Whaddya want?’ Benny growled through the narrowing gap between the door and the frame.
‘Aah, come on for Christ’s sake, Benny. We got to talk money with you. We got a means to work out this thing with Momo and it won’t take more than a coupla minutes and then we’ll be on our way.’
I didn’t know what Benny Wheland thought then, but his expression changed. Perhaps he believed that Momo, and whoever else Momo might have been connected with, wouldn’t have sent two old men over to sort him out. Maybe he believed that if he was gonna get clipped it would be some wiseass kids who just muscled their way in and shot him in the face.
He hesitated a moment longer, and then he slammed the door.
I heard the chains releasing, both of them, and then the door opened wide. Ten Cent and I went into Benny Wheland’s house with gratitude and .38s.
There was a lot of talk, much of it from Benny, a little from Ten Cent, and after a while I got real tired of listening and shot Benny in the face.
When I walked over and took a look at him it was difficult to see anything but a whole handful of shit around his eyes
and nose.
Ten Cent stood there with his jaw on the floor.
‘Fuck, Ernesto . . . what the fuck?’
I frowned. ‘Whaddya mean, what the fuck?’
‘Shit, man, you coulda told me you was gonna do that.’
‘What the hell d’you mean I coulda told you? What the hell did we come over here for? A cup of fuckin’ tea and a chat with the asshole?’
Ten Cent shook his head. He lifted his right hand and massaged his ear. ‘No, I don’t mean that. You know I don’t mean that. I mean you coulda told me you was gonna just shoot the guy. I coulda put my fucking hands over my ears or something. Jesus, feels like I ain’t gonna hear right for a fucking week.’
I smiled and Ten Cent started laughing.
‘You didn’t wanna listen to any more of that horseshit, did you?’
Ten Cent shook his head. ‘Guy was a fucking radio station all by himself. Now, let’s find this fucking money, right?’
We went through every room in the house. We prised up the floorboards, ripped open the backs of chairs and sofas. We found food cartons and dirty washing pretty much everywhere we went. We even found the remains of something that had been cooked black in the oven and then just left there because Benny hadn’t been bothered to clean up after himself. The guy had lived like an animal. That said, regardless of his personal hygiene and housecare skills, we collected together something close to a hundred and ten thousand dollars, much of it in fifties and hundreds. It was a good take, better than Don Calligaris had expected, and as a show of good faith he sent a single dollar over to Momo in an envelope, and a further thirty grand in a jiffy bag.
‘Straightforward enough?’ he’d asked me when we’d returned to Mulberry Street.
‘Straight as ever,’ I’d told him.
‘Good job, Ernesto. Good to get the old juices flowing again, eh?’
R. J. Ellory Page 50