The Mobster’s Lament

by Ray Celestin

  We drive out of Naples, into the hills, up looking for this village that Vizzini’s got on lock. We pass the A.M.G. check-points and we’re out in the middle of nowhere. Keep on driving up, and up, and up. Eventually, we reach this cliff, and I see there’s burnt-out U.S. Army trucks all dumped in a ravine underneath. We get to a village right on top of the cliff. We hop out. Marino goes to find Vizzini’s guys ’cos he’s the only one of us who speaks Italian.

  We see a little bar there. Bucek wants to go in while we wait for Marino to come back. I’m nervous about going in. The Italians liked us Negroes, ’cos we got kicked about by the Americans and the Germans, just like they did. But they hated us, too. I ain’t sure on the reception I’ll get. But Bucek tells me it’s cool. He’s been to this place before. Says there’s Americans that drink there. There’s a whorehouse out back. He says he’s desperate for a drink, but I’m wondering if he just wants to get laid. So we go in.

  There’s a few other GIs in there. None of ’em would talk to us ’cos I was there. We order drinks, sit in the corner. Bucek’s in a good mood. I’m sitting there hoping I don’t get thrown down that ravine.

  Then there’s a ruckus outside, shouts, women screaming. We all run out into the street. There’s an old Italian man out there shouting, banging on the doors of some house down the road. He’s got a shotgun. Some locals come out, heavies, drag him away. He’s screaming something in Italian. ‘Il demone.’ ‘Demonio.’ Something like that.

  There’s a crowd gathered. We all go over to the house, step in. Looked like a brothel. There’s old women wailing. The locals are having some kind of conference. All the buzz is happening at a room at the back. Corridor stinks of puke. We manage to squeeze through, look in the room. It’s a bloodbath. There’s a couple of dead girls. There’s Helms, naked, blood all over him. There’s another man in there, too. Helms is looking all dazed. Like he’s strung out on something, or maybe the locals got a few punches in. These dead girls are young. Teenagers. Maybe not even.

  Marino comes back and talks to the locals and we figure out what happened. The old man was selling his granddaughters. Happened a lot. Italians used to come up to us in the streets, offering us their wives, daughters, nieces. They even used to offer them to us Negroes, that’s how hungry they were. Like I said, I ain’t never seen a hell like Naples in ’44.

  The other man with Helms, he’s big. Man mountain big. Hayseed-looking. Brown hair. He’s arguing in Italian with the locals.

  IY: This other man was Faron?

  GC: Maybe. I didn’t know who Faron was at the time. Plus it was dark, they were bloody. It was hard to tell.

  IY: OK, go on.

  GC: Turns out the locals want to lynch Helms and this other man, but some of the other locals know this other man is in tight with Vizzini. That’s what they’re arguing about. We don’t stick around. We head back to the base. Weeks go by. And I keep seeing Helms around Naples, smiling, joking, getting on with things like he don’t have a care in the world. I press Bucek and Marino for information ’cos they’re going up to that village every week. Turns out Helms and the other man got set free ’cos Vizzini stepped in. The old man, the dead girls’ granddad, doesn’t give in, he’s gone crazy with guilt. He goes and files a statement with the local police, with the judges down in Naples. A few days later he ends up in the bottom of the ravine.

  A few days after that Marino sees a notice outside one of the courthouses, an appeal for witnesses. I’m all for making a statement. Marino says it’ll get us killed. Bucek had the deciding vote and he decided to do the right thing. We go and speak to the officers running the A.M.G. make statements. Days go by. Nothing happens.

  Marino takes us to the courthouse, sits there while we make statements and translates them into Italian. Nothing happens. The police issue a warrant for Helms and nothing happens. Months go by and nothing happens. I’m still seeing Helms around town. It was like that arrest warrant didn’t mean nothing. We figured he had pull. We figured something had got lost in the bureaucracy. It was like that over there. Chaos. That’s what we were fighting. Not fascism, not Italians, not the Mafia. Chaos.

  IY: What happened to Helms?

  GC: Nothing, that’s what I’m telling you. The A.M.G. moved him north and I never saw him again. Till years later I’m back in New York.

  IY: Tell me about that.

  GC: What happened after the war? I came back halfway through ’46. I thought that was it. Back to the grind. Back to the race hate. I went back to playing horn, shooting some horse. I had some Midtown customers. Entertainment industry types. It was at one of their parties I saw him. Lieutenant Paul Helms. ’Cept now he’s called Congressman Paul Helms and he’s getting slaps on the back from everyone for being such a swell guy and I’m thinking maybe I’m the only person in the world knows there’s an arrest warrant for multiple homicide with his name on it back in Italy. And here I am, living like a bum, slinging dope to my friends to get by.

  I figured I’d put the squeeze on. ’Cept I know someone like me ain’t got no pull. I’m gonna need some white boys to help. So I go and look up Bucek and Marino. And what do I see when I meet them? They’re just as down-and-out and broke as me. Bucek’s back living with his folks, and Marino’s getting screwed over by the Mob like every other sucker working on the docks. I go and tell them what I’ve seen and how we can put a quick squeeze on Helms and we figure out on doing it together. Bucek and Marino went to talk to him. He said he’d get the money together and pay it over, but it’d take him some time to do it, you know. We believed him. Shit.

  [PAUSE]

  IY: Gene?

  GC: What?

  IY: What happened next?

  [PAUSE]

  GC: A few days go past. A couple of weeks, I dunno. I don’t hear nothing. I get to thinking maybe Bucek and Marino collected the money and decided to cut me out of the deal. I start to get mad. But then Bucek’s knocking on my door, going crazy. Says Marino’s been murdered down at the docks and earlier that day some men were hanging about outside his house. He pegs them for mobsters, they spot him, they chase him, but he gets away. He reckons they’re going to be coming back. I say it’s cool and he can stay with me till things calm down or we can figure out what the hell to do. He stays with me, I pay the hotel manager to keep his mouth shut. Looked weird, you know – a white boy staying there, so he had to stay in the room most of the time and he was going stir-crazy. Talking about the demon from Naples was after him.

  IY: Bucek knew the man you’d seen in the village that day was Faron?

  GC: I guess. The men who were waiting outside Bucek’s house, the ones he’d run away from, one of them was big, like Faron. Bucek said he thought he was the one from the village. I didn’t believe him. Not at first. But he was saying how he’d asked around. Heard all these stories about Faron being some wild-man killer. Bucek was tearing himself up about it. He was going so crazy I had to give him some dope to keep him quiet. He stays with me for a month while I put the feelers out. I know people. I find out Helms is backed by Genovese and a lot of this shit Bucek was saying about Faron was true. And that’s when I put it all together — Genovese and Faron and Helms, maybe they all met somewhere in Italy during the war. And after we’d put the squeeze on Helms, Helms had gone to Genovese to get him out of the hole and now we got a whole Mafia family after us. So we figure we need to get the hell out of town. We start to put a plan together then one night the door crashes in. They kick in the door and they’re just standing right there, knives in their hands, both of ’em.

  IY: Who?

  GC: Faron and some other Genovese button.

  IY: How’d you know it was Faron? You recognize him from the village?

  GC: Nah. I didn’t know it was him. I don’t know if it was the same man from the village, but he was big like Faron’s supposed to be, so I figured it must be him.

  IY: OK, go on.

  GC: Bucek was closest to the door so he gets it first. I just dived for the window and,
you know, got the hell out of there. I keep on running and the other one tries to chase me down.

  IY: The intruder who wasn’t Faron?

  GC: Yeah. He runs after me on the street. But I lose him. I go and stay the night with a friend of mine.

  IY: O’Connell?

  [PAUSE]

  GC: Yeah, you know about that? Then I go see a friend of mine owns a bar downtown. I hide out in a cat-flat around the corner. Then my friend from the bar, he comes and sees me. Says there’s this other gangster who hates Genovese who’ll help me, and that’s how I meet Benny Siegel. He comes by the cat-flat, and he’s a real smooth-talker, expensive suit, jewelry. Charm, you know. He gives me some dope right there. Money, too.

  IY: When was this?

  GC: When?

  IY: Can you put a date on it? Your first meeting with Siegel.

  [INAUDIBLE]

  GC: Siegel says he’ll keep me safe and find me a place to hide out and when he’s back in town, we’ll put the squeeze on properly. He even says he knows a dry-out clinic he can take me to. The best one money can buy. Don’t mind colored folks. I buy it. Like I said, smooth-talker. He takes me up to an apartment in Italian Harlem, keeps me there a few days while he fixes everything up. Then he puts me in a cab to the clinic. Says he’ll be back. Says he has to go to LA for a week or two, but he’ll be back.

  IY: This was when you checked into the clinic?

  GC: Yeah. You want a date on that, too? I dunno. Check with them.

  IY: OK.

  GC: I nearly go out of my goddamn mind. I’m strung out on Dolophine and I don’t know where I am. It’s weeks before I can focus on anything. Then I hear on the radio about police still investigating Benjamin Siegel’s death, and that’s when I find out Siegel’s been dead for weeks. I ask the doctors about who’s paying for my treatment, ’cos I’m worried I’ll get landed with a bill and they tell me he paid for a full course upfront, that’s six months, and I start to thinking how, come December, I’m gonna get thrown out of here. Back on the street. And just as I’m planning my next move, you turn up.

  IY: OK.

  GC: I swear I didn’t know nothing about Talbot getting arrested. I didn’t know the hotel owner died. I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.

  [INAUDIBLE]

  DC: Your stupid plan got how many people killed.

  IY: Lieutenant, please—

  GC: Fuck you.

  DC: Watch your language. [SPEECH UNCLEAR]

  GC: You ever been in a war, Lieutenant?

  [INAUDIBLE]

  GC: I went over there to fight fascism, ’cept there weren’t no good versus evil when I got there. Our own troops were getting drunk and shooting at each other. Our top brass was more interested in turning a profit. People getting killed and raped. Ain’t no right or wrong no more. Just madness. Following us around like a shadow.

  I came back from that war and I was flat broke and there weren’t no jobs, no nothing. I got blue-slipped so none of that GI Bill shit was open for me. Everything they promised us would change after the war — race hate, jobs, ghettos. It’s all still there. They lied to us. You got a hundred thousand colored men come back from that war, fought for a country that betrayed ’em. What’s going to happen? All those highly trained veterans that got thrown on the shit-heap once they’d done defending America?

  DC: You don’t like society, you try and improve it. Instead of coming up with some hare-brained scheme—

  IY: Lieutenant –

  GC: What’s society done for us? All that civilization shit? Where’s it got us? Atomic bombs and death-camps. If that’s what civilization’s got to offer, I’m gonna try something different.

  [INAUDIBLE]

  IY: OK, let’s all take ten to calm down. Gene, you want me to get you a drink?

  [PAUSE]

  63

  Thursday 27th, 8.12 a.m.

  Costello flipped another set of cards from the pack. Nothing. He flipped again. He added a six of hearts to one of the lines on his desktop. Just a couple more good turns and he’d have completed the game. He flipped again. A five of diamonds. He placed it down, shifted lines about, change cascaded through the structure, sets broke and merged, the world rearranged itself, he took a moment to soak it in.

  There was a knock at the door and Bobbie popped her head in.

  ‘She’s here,’ she said.

  ‘Show her in.’

  Bobbie disappeared behind the door.

  Costello scooped up the cards, turned to look out of the window while he waited. Snow was lying thick on the park, weighing down its trees and bushes. The whiteness covering the grass had been scratched and gouged by the movement of people and things, revealing the green underneath in haphazard streaks, a reminder that spring was waiting, buried thinly under the dark season.

  The door opened and a slight woman stepped in. Middle-aged, dark-haired, attractive.

  Costello rose. ‘Mrs Young,’ he said. ‘Happy Thanksgiving.’

  ‘And to you, too.’

  ‘Please, take a seat.’

  She nodded, crossed the room, and sat at the desk opposite him. She met his eye, and he got the feeling he was ever so subtly being appraised.

  ‘Thank you for coming during the holiday,’ he said. ‘I hope I didn’t disturb any of your plans?’

  ‘No,’ she replied. ‘I’m meeting some friends, but not till later.’

  A lilting accent – Louisiana, maybe – to go along with a prim and proper manner. Costello thought about Dr Hoffman, about consorting with better types.

  ‘Where’s that accent from?’ he said. ‘If you don’t mind me asking.’

  ‘New Orleans.’

  ‘I know it well.’

  ‘Until last year you controlled all the city’s slot machines.’

  She didn’t say it in the sneering way a cop might, and she didn’t say it with a smirk, the way a gangster might, to show you how clued up he was. She said it innocently, as if she were simply making a statement. Costello wondered what she hoped to gain by saying it like that. It threw him off his stride. Maybe that was the point.

  ‘I couldn’t possibly comment,’ he replied. ‘Would you like some food or drink?’

  ‘I’m fine, but thanks for the offer.’

  He nodded, looked her over again. Prim and proper.

  ‘So, how’s your time in New York been?’ he asked.

  ‘I did what I came here to do.’

  ‘Get the boy out of Rikers? That’s a good thing you did.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I think one of my friends helped you out.’

  ‘Gabriel?’ she said. ‘Yes, he did.’

  ‘Such a shame what happened,’ he said.

  He’d heard from his friends in the Homicide Bureau that this woman had been there when Gabriel had died. He needed to ask her if Gabriel was definitely dead. He needed an eyewitness to placate Anastasia, who’d been in a more murderous mood than usual since he’d found out Gabriel had been stiffing him on the racetrack profits.

  ‘But, Albert, now you get to keep the whole racetrack for yourself,’ Costello had told him. But the man seemed unable to absorb the logic. Instead, he ranted about Gabriel having faked his own death. Hardly likely. If Gabriel was intending to fake his death he wouldn’t have done it on the ice of the Hudson, just a few hours after he’d dropped off two million dollars at Costello’s apartment in exchange for protection for his niece.

  The whole episode puzzled Costello. The return of the money, but, even more, Gabriel’s embezzlement from the racetrack. Costello had always thought of Gabriel as scrupulously honest. A man with a code of honor. It was out of character for him to have ripped off Anastasia, and suspiciously sloppy for him to have done it in a way an auditor could spot. Did Gabriel want out of the Mob as much as Costello did?

  ‘You were there when he died?’ Costello asked.

  She frowned at him, a delicate rumpling of the skin between her eyebrows. The question had surprised her. She must have a
ssumed she’d been asked here for another reason. Costello wondered what.

  ‘I was there,’ she said. ‘During the storm.’

  ‘Would you tell me what happened?’ he asked. ‘Gabriel was one of my closest friends.’

  She tried to suppress it, but for an instant Costello saw understanding on her face. She’d realized why she’d been asked there, because Costello wanted to know for sure that Gabriel was dead.

  She told him how she and Gabriel had ended up on the river, how there was a stand-off with Faron, how the ice had broken beneath Gabriel and Sarah.

  He stared into her eyes, evaluating, looking to see if she was telling the truth. Deep brown eyes to go with the black hair and dark complexion. He wondered if she had some Negro in her. She was from New Orleans after all.

  ‘There was a gust of wind,’ she said. ‘The ice they were on overturned.’

  Costello nodded solemnly. In the days since the blizzard, bodies had been popping up in rivers and docks every few days, some miles down the coast. But none of them had yet been identified as Gabriel’s or Sarah’s.

  ‘And Faron?’ he asked.

  She shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I lost track of him.’

  He noticed her manner had changed. She’d become subdued. Was her failure to catch Faron causing her grief?

  ‘A bad character,’ Costello said.

  ‘Quite.’

  ‘You’re heading back to Chicago now that your work is done?’ Costello asked.

  She nodded.

  ‘I know many fine people in your city,’ Costello said.

  ‘I know them, too.’

  Again she said it flatly, without emotion, like she wasn’t playing the game at all. She would have made an excellent mobster if she hadn’t been a woman. He realized again she’d caused his mind to wander.