Mile High

by Richard Condon

  She was beautiful, strikingly Italianate, with a fulfilling loveliness of full body and an ivory-cast, haughty face. Her hair and eyes were very black. She was aware of dignity. He longed to see her smile, to see a burst of white teeth beneath those soft-seeming lips. But she did not smile. She seemed altogether remarkable to him, perhaps because of some quirk of digestion or twist of light or canting of sound and time. He felt himself breathing differently. He tried to understand it. He was fifty-five years old and these rushing feelings were neither pleasant nor welcome. It must be the light that made him see her this way. But everyone else looked as they always had, the beauties and the deformed. It is always the approaches of light that show beauty to the mind and the memory, then seal it there irrevocably, to be recalled whenever the present is too much to bear.

  He rummaged through his mind and tossed what had passed for emotions out of the neatly kept portmanteau of his feelings, all folded neatly, but he could find nothing to match what he was feeling now as he conjured the sounds of her voice and the smells of her body. She was unique to him because no one or anything had ever gripped and twisted him into such a strange and frightening shape before, like some dopey swain with iron balls and a bleat built-in to voice and glance—a thing that brought laughter to the world. By dancing past him she had removed him unfairly from his husk as a powerful chief, a man who walked anywhere with plopping heavy feet if he chose to do so, but toward whom all others stepped lightly and with deference. She had risen from beneath the surface of time—which he had always controlled, beyond (perhaps) growing a bit older each year, but never seriously so—summoning his wistful lust and confounding his plans. She had frozen him in time: he was wearing the head of a much older man like a mask covering the face of a boy her age. She was too young, she was too beautiful, or whatever it was she was that was doing all this to him. He could not discern who and what might be mocking him.

  Paddy West had set world’s records for caution in his time. With him it had never been a matter of moving when the road ahead had been cleared. It was his fixed policy to refuse to move until the road ahead had been paved, brilliantly lighted, and a golden city settled at the other end of it. Then, with an armed police escort before him and behind him, he would be on his way. But this girl was beyond these rules. He spoke in a choked voice to Vincent Stoppaglieri, a Brooklyn contractor, seated at his right. “Who’s that girl?” He kept his voice bored. It was a polite inquiry, as though he had decided he must show some interest in the events of the evening.

  “Whicha one?”

  But she was gone. “Oh. Ah. She’s gone now. She was dancin’ wit’ Joe Corrente.”

  “Ah. The daughter. Please.”

  “Why?”

  “She’sa go onna terlet, she’sa think she makes candy.”

  “I don’t get your drift, Vinnie.”

  “She’sa too good for thisa kinda place. She’sa gung to be big balleto dance.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Balleto is how they dance inna opera.”

  “They dance in the opera? All this time I thought the opera was singin’.”

  “Mosta they sing. Some-a time they dance. Whenna they dance, they dance balleto. It’sa nice.”

  The daughter came haughtily past again. It wasn’t a big ballroom. Each time she passed the large mirrors at each end of the room she seemed to renew herself by drinking in deeply of her image as it floated past, and Paddy put it down to filial excellence that a girl should so savor a dance with her unbeautiful father. Young men attempted to cut in, but she froze them more rigidly than if she had asked them to wait just one moment until she could get the head of Medusa out of her purse. Her father sweated and looked miserable. Neither he nor the girl smiled or spoke to each other. Helpless, Paddy watched her leave just before half-past ten, and beyond the one casual inquiry to Vincent Stoppaglieri he didn’t ask about her again and let the evening go on as though he had (properly) forgotten her.

  He led the grand march with Mrs. Carlo Fratelli, wearing the old, reliable blank expression on his fifteen-inch-long face. After that he made the speech he always made, a paean to all Italians in America, the greatest Americans of them all. Then he went home to his house in Oliver Street and sat up until dawn to think things through in his methodical way. He reached the conclusion after some hours that the only thing in his favor was that the girl was Sicilian and might therefore carry enormous family feelings and do whatever her father asked her to do. Jesus, the girl looked like she was about twenty-two years old, for Christ’s sake.

  He did not have time for mooning. Dick Croker was the new Leader, and it was the year the Hall had to recapture the mayor’s office and deliver the patronage. It wouldn’t be easy. Henry George had the labor backing. Teddy Roosevelt at twenty-eight had all the strength to make a lot of noise. Whoever Squire Croker chose to run against those two would need total support in every district. All that work plus Monk Eastman’s gang tearing up the district night after night, which kept Paddy in judge’s chambers and filled his head. However, he had some time. And he had his own competent information service. Over the next few weeks he was able to put together a dimensional picture of the girl. Her father had sent her to the old country, then to Paris to study dancing. In the fall she’d start as a dancer with the Metropolitan Opera Company. What she did was a mystery to him until he found out it was only “toedancin’,” then he knew all about it. For whatever ideas a young girl gets, she used the name Mary Courance instead of Maria Corrente. Her father was opposed to her becoming a professional dancer and offended that she had decided to change her name, even though one canceled out the other. That part of it, the father’s opposition and the girl’s rebellion, gave Paddy pause as to the Sicilian upbringing being in his favor, but he reasoned that this was America and God knew everything was different in America.

  He moved automatically through his work, never once able to concentrate on it. She was in his mind all the time. The need for her intensified even after prayer. He clung to his patience and waited for a sign, but he would not make an overt move because risk to Paddy was what bubonic plague is to a public health officer—something to be stamped out forever.

  Then the sign came. It was in the form of an urgent message from Don Carmelo “the Wolf” Lumia, president of the Unione Siciliane, asking him to meet with his consigliere, Don Salvatore Purpi, in a Broome Street restaurant. There was no doubt about the unusual urgency of the summons, all the more extraordinary because Don Carmelo was very much the “man of respect,” never exigent or ruffled. Paddy went to the meeting with the hope that Lumia or the Unione faced total disaster or at least big enough trouble to obligate them to him far beyond any payment with money.

  He was shown to a table at the back of the restaurant, which smelled gloriously of cheeses, salamis, garlic, and cooking sauces, looking as out of place among the other diners as a hod carrier singing tenor at La Scala. Purpi and two of Don Carmelo’s caporegimi stood up as he approached the table. Paddy was the personification of political power, and nothing took precedence over that among mafiosi. Don Salvatore was a dear little old man with murderer’s eyes, not as cold as Paddy’s but perhaps cold enough to chill a magnum of champagne with a glance. He had never worked a day in his long life, and all the rich experience he had acquired along the way had made him counselor to the boss.

  Paddy insisted on shaking hands ponderously, calling each man by name, asking for their children. He accepted a cup of coffee. Don Salvatore asked, equally politely, how the election would go.

  “Croker will run Congressman Hewitt, Sal,” Paddy said. “We’ll be all right. He’s rich enough to hurl charges of nihilism and socialist peril at Henry George, and that kid Roosevelt don’t mean nothin’.” He sipped the coffee. “What’s this trouble in Don Carmelo’s letter, Sal?”

  “It’s no good, Paddy. Two cops is dead and a kid. She’s Italian, so we can handle it, but the cops are Polacks and Judge Gant won’t lift a finger because he says t
he Polacks vote like they was one man.”

  Paddy whistled.

  “They have three of our soldiers, and the lawyers can’t even find out where they have them, so we can’t do nothing.”

  “How did they get picked up?”

  Don Salvatore shrugged. “They was like standin’ there when the cops got it.”

  Paddy considered the information. “Well, Sal,” he said, “there’s always more button men, ain’t there?”

  “These are Don Carmelo’s sisters’ kids. Two of them. We got to get them loose.”

  Paddy’s heart sang. He thought of the girl and his nether parts became ascendant, his lust like the taste of good wine. “Well!” he said cheerfully. “This is the toughest one yet, ain’t it? Where’s a telephone?”

  Don Salvatore led him out of the restaurant with the two troop commanders bringing up the rear. The procession went down the street to a horse room that had been paying Paddy tribute for many years but that he had never set foot in before. He made a call to Rollo Gant, asked a few questions and listened with care. He hung up, did not speak but led the way back along the street to the restaurant. When they were seated at the table again he said, almost tasting Maria Corrente’s mouth, almost feeling her legs wrapped around him, “No wonder Judge Gant won’t move. Yiz may all be cooked.”

  “Whassamatta?”

  “Sweet Jesus, Sal, it’s only less than a month ago when the Fratellanza killed Chief Hennessey in New Oreleens.”

  “What the hell?”

  “I know. I know. He butted in. But he was chiefa police and every cop in this country was hot about it, and now, Sweet Saint Joseph, Sal, yiz have killed two more cops and shoot a little kid to make it all the worse.” He mopped his brow with a silk handkerchief to indicate that he was enormously agitated. “I’ll tell you this. You can’t blame Rollo Gant for going to sleep on this one.”

  Don Salvatore was grim. He did not look endearing any more. “Tell me somet’ing, Paddy. You not gunna do nuttin’?”

  Paddy drummed on the tabletop with his fingertips. “If I do something, Sal, it’s not because we need yiz in the election. Make sure Carmelo understands that. This is between you and me only.”

  “You mean if you fix it, that’s between us and you?”

  “Right.”

  “I unnerstan’.”

  “I better talk to Carmelo and whoever else he wants to have there.”

  “When?”

  “The quicker.”

  “We get back to you, Paddy.”

  Don Salvatore got up. They shook hands, then Paddy shook hands with the others. The three men left the restaurant and Paddy sat on at the table feeling spiritual now about the girl. The carnality had passed. He lit a cigar two nuns had given him the Saturday before, and since he didn’t smoke, he let it burn like incense in the thick, white soup plate in the center of the table. He took to dreaming of sons, then of a beautiful old age when that would come, as it probably must. The spiritual feeling about the girl didn’t last. The other came back to him with rush of blood and he had to adjust his clothing surreptitiously. He decided at that moment that he would undress her instead of letting her undress herself. If she went off to undress in some room away from the bed it could be forever before she came out again, and he knew he couldn’t stand up to the waiting. He changed the subject in his mind abruptly; otherwise he felt he’d be out raping milk-wagon horses. He thought about buying her a fur coat. The restaurant proprietor approached, rubbing his hands almost to shreds and asking if Paddy would like some prosciutto or maybe one or two little artichokes?

  “Very good of you, I’m sure,” Paddy said. “Perhaps you’d send out for a small bottle of just plain grape juice?” The proprietor was off like a racing dog. Paddy watched the blue cigar smoke rise and curl, swaying in the air before him like a beautiful ballerina bending herself toward him. He enjoyed the grape juice and formulated his campaign. He left a dollar on the table and the proprietor snatched it up and followed him, pleading with him to take it back, throwing it from hand to hand like a hot chestnut. Paddy stopped his forward course long enough to acknowledge that the man was registering that he couldn’t take Paddy’s money. “Give it to the Little Sisters of the Poor,” Paddy said. There was more than one way to pay for a cigar.

  The meeting with Don Carmelo was held at 10:15 that night in a railroad flat on East 116th Street. Muro Scarlata had come up from downtown. Concetto Canapa was there from Brooklyn. Salvatore Purpi ran the meeting for Don Carmelo. Everyone but Paddy smoked black rope and they all wore hats from the wardrobe of Tosca.

  “This here is the best part of the indictment handed down by the New Oreleens grand jury,” Paddy was saying as he took a piece of foolscap out of his pocket. “Last month that was, remember.” He began to read from the paper. “‘The extended range of our researches has developed the existence of a secret organization styled “Mafia.” The evidence comes from several sources fully competent in themselves to attest its truth, while the fact is supported by the long record of blood-curdling crimes, it bein’ almost impossible to discover the perpetrators or to secure witnesses.’”

  “What we need to hear that for, Paddy?” Don Carmelo asked. Muro Scarlata spat, ringing the brass cuspidor. Paddy continued to read as though he had not been interrupted. “‘The larger number of the society is composed of Sicilians who have left their native land, in most instances under assumed names to avoid—’”

  “What is this got to do wit’ us?” Scarlata asked. “You t’ink we got all night here?”

  Paddy looked at him with all his impressive coldness and kept staring. When he was ready to talk he said, “I don’t want any horse shit from any little dago. I run the show, you guinea bastard, an’ if anny of you get away with skin it’ll be my doin’, so shut your mout’.”

  No one protested.

  “All right,” he continued. “This is what it’s got to do wit’ you. Last month the people of the city of New Oreleens rioted after the Fratellanza killed the Chief. They took eleven of your people out of the city jail and lynched them, and when a ship wit’ eighteen hundred Sicilians came into the port it was turned away. Then they started wit’ legal proceedings to deport all Sicilians, and now you’ve killed two cops and a kid and maybe you’ll have the same thing on your hands. You can be lynched on lamp posts and the rest can be sent back to the old country—that’s what the hell its got to do wit’ you.”

  “Listen, Paddy,” Don Carmelo said gently. “What you gunna do?”

  Paddy stood up. “You better find me three guys who look something like the guys they pinched and tell them they’ll have to take the fall. I’ll be back here tumorra night at six.” He insisted on shaking hands with each one before he left, including Muro Scarlata, and asking after their wives and kids.

  When they met the next evening he told them he thought it all could be worked out. There would be two blocks of money needed for the payoff. He said, after all, Judge Gant had to be handled because it was his assembly district, but the cops wanted their payoff to be indirect because it was two of their own people who were killed. “I got them to agree to accept a reward and some department medals and citations. It’ll be a nine-way split, and what we want now will be the best thing both for the neighborhoods and the newspapers. You people will have to stay way in the background, but I want yiz to call on the Sicilian business people and make them form a Sicilian-American citizens’ committee to tell the Polacks how bad they feel that this here thing happened. Make it look like every little kid and every grocery store all chipped in wit’ the reward money—and it’s got to come to thirty grand. That’s three thousand for each of the nine cops and three for Rollo Gant. The city’ll pay for the medals. Now, we want a real respectable business fella to head the committee. Someone like Joe Corrente, he’s in olive oil.”

  “You want him, you got him,” Don Salvatore said.

  “I think you ought to allow five hundred bucks each for the families of the two dead cops,”
Paddy said. “And get eight or ten little kids in their first communion dresses to lay flowers on the grave of the kid who was shot, God rest her soul, and have the three fall guys ready to give theirselves up to my cops Tuesday morning. We’ll do it in Prospect Park because there has to be a little gun play, but we want it safer this time. I think I should tell you, Carmelo, that the cops is gonna kill one of the three guys, then the other two will stand trial.”

  “Perfectly all right,” Don Carmelo assured him.

  “And I’ll tell you this. Now that I got it all organized it sounds easy as pie, but it took one helluva lot of doin’ all the same.”

  “What about my three button men?”

  “Oh, them. They’re sprung by now. They let them out at five-thirty. Insufficient evidence.”

  Paddy went to Atlantic City for the sea air and stayed there until “brilliant police work” apprehended the killers of the two policemen after a running gun battle in Prospect Park that resulted in the killing of one of the men, Gaspare Minasola, forty-nine. His companions confessed to the killing of the two officers and the child and would be brought to trial without delay. The trial was delayed, as it turned out, for twenty-two months, but the men were ultimately sentenced to two and a half years in the state prison with time off for good behavior.

  Paddy was alone in his Oliver Street house one evening about a month later, listening to “County Kerry Airs” sung by Dame Elizabeth Blue on the Gramophone when Don Salvatore Purpi came to call. Out of deference to his visitor’s nationality as well as his sanity Paddy turned the music machine off. He found a bottle of red wine given him by the Carmelite nuns of New Jersey and they sat down to talk.

  It developed that, first of all, Don Salvatore had come representing all Sicilians in New York to thank Paddy for what he had done for them and to get an idea of just what it was going to cost for his indispensable services. Paddy shrugged it off. He didn’t want anything, he said. That seemed to startle, even frighten Purpi, who began to talk rapidly about how he was an old man who had seen much of life and that he knew it was not right for anyone to be allowed to serve yet refuse money, because the world could not get on that way. If a man worked, if a man delivered just as he had said he would, then it would be unworthy of everyone concerned if that man did not receive his just due—and besides, every transaction should be separate.