by Justin Scott
He fell to the dirt, rolled a short distance, and reached toward Chris, who was running full tilt. Chris seized his outstretched hand. They locked fingers, as he reversed his headlong plunge, dug his heels in, and pulled. He felt the shocks reverberate through their straining arms as the truck ground his father’s body beneath its wheels.
2
CHAPTER
Through the long burial Mass, Christopher Taglione fixed his eye on a stained-glass window his mother had contributed to her church. It was fashioned after Giotto’s “Lamentation Over Christ”; weeping disciples and angels hovering in a stone-blue sky mourned a naked, bleeding Jesus. Before his father’s murder, Chris thought the window looked a little silly with its gaudy stigma. Now, it seemed false. None of the haloed mourners looked angry. Where was their rage? His own fury was gorging his throat.
The sun came out as the priest droned on, streamed through the window, and laid a cold blue shroud over their father’s casket. The two halves of the family sat separately, as at a wedding—Italian construction workers and Irish cops. All the Tagliones were on the left. On the right were the Taggarts, led by Uncle Eamon in the dress uniform of a police captain.
Chris could hardly breathe. His anger burned like a hungry fire, shooting jagged heat-bolts that attacked the air itself in a ruthless search for fuel. He hated this church. His anger struck during the homily. When the Irish priest mispronounced their name Taglionee, Chris felt Tony stir beside him. Then he compounded the insult by remarking that Mike Taglionee had died cruelly in his prime.
“Mike Taglione didn’t die,” Chris retorted in the front pew. “He didn’t die. He was murdered.”
A woman screamed, their Aunt Marie, who heaved her grief like something palpable caught in her body. Her cry unleashed a storm of bereavement as Mike’s sisters shrieked the family’s loss, for death to these women was a thief. Their men sat silent, as they had been expected to sit for centuries, their faces like dark stone, and hearts bound against the whims of a capricious Nature.
An old man glanced curiously at Chris and Tony, for in his vanished world the sons sought vengeance. He hardly expected a vendetta in America in 1976, and certainly not from college students, but old ideas lived in his memory as the ancient perfume of Sicily’s dry soil and hot sun lingered in his nostrils.
Chris looked across the aisle at Eamon Taggart, his mother’s brother. He was a broad-shouldered, handsome Irishman with salt-and-pepper hair, pale blue eyes, and the noncommittal gaze of a man who knew how to get along. Uncle Eamon nodded back, which Chris interpreted as Eamon’s promise that Mike Taglione had friends among the cops who would not take his murder lightly.
They carried Mike’s casket—Chris, Tony, Uncle Eamon, Uncle Vinnie, Arnie Markowitz, and Mike’s brothers, Uncle Pete, Uncle Johnny, Uncle Tom—to a grave beside his wife’s in the churchyard. Only a block from Queens Boulevard, the cemetery was sheltered by the church, a brick rectory, and a high wall of reddish stone—a quiet place that seemed to be miles away from the city. Chris took Tony’s hand and felt him trembling. Except for a clear report to the police, his brother had been virtually silent since the killing. Yet he joined the Hail Marys and Our Fathers with a strong voice as they lowered Mike’s casket into the ground.
Uncle Vinnie, Mike’s favorite brother-in-law, rode home with Chris and Tony in the lead car. At times Mike’s rival, often his partner, he was a prosperously fat man and the most “Italian-Italian” of the family. He had stayed the longest in his old neighborhood, in a Little Italy railroad flat, years after the others had left Brooklyn and lower Manhattan for the comforts of detached houses in Queens and nearby Long Island. Chris had always looked to him for a tenuous link with an ethnic past which was more vivid in the movies than in his parents’ house. His jowly face looked doughy.
Outside the house the street was filling up with the businessmen’s late-model Lincolns and Cadillacs, and the civil servants’ old Chevies and Plymouths. The feast would be a huge gathering and Chris didn’t think he could handle it yet. “Tony, cover for me, okay?”
“Where you going?”
“The job.”
Uncle Vinnie said, “You shouldn’t, Chris. Everybody’s coming”
“It’s okay, Uncle Vinnie,” Tony said. “We’ll cover.”
He thought that the rock drills, the dozers and backhoes in action, and the endless line of churning mixers might make his father seem less dead, and his departure, as Father Frye had euphemized it, less final. But when he arrived at the job he realized why Uncle Vinnie had tried to stop him. The hole was deserted.
Chris ran from the limousine. Inside the ramp gate he found a guard and Arnie Markowitz, his father’s long-time project manager, who had come directly from the funeral and stood now on the ramp, gazing sadly at the raw mud where Chris’s father had choked out his life. There was a deathly stillness about the excavation which even the drone of mid-Manhattan could not penetrate.
“What happened?”
“The bank pulled out.”
“What the hell for?”
“Your pop ran a one-man show. What’s Taglione Concrete and Construction without Mike Taglione?”
“Me. I’m here. Me and Tony.”
“Tony’s going back to school. And you should too. Hey! Where you going?”
Chris spun on his heel, his barely controlled rage suddenly directed at a specific target. “To the goddamned bank. I’m going to finish my father’s building.”
“Forget it. The bank doesn’t know you. They’ll make you fill out forms.” Arnie seized his arm. “Why don’t you talk to your Pop’s friends? He’s owed a lot of favors. Come on, we’ll go to your house and eat.”
Chris stood stiffly atop the ramp.
“Come on, Chris.”
“Get in the car. I’ll be with you in a minute. I want to be alone a second.” Arnie walked toward the car and Chris looked at the silent machines. A man in a business suit approached from the sidewalk. “I just want to say I’m sorry about your father, Chris. We talked when he was trying to get his building started. If you have any problems give me a ring. Maybe I can help.” He handed him his card.
“Like what?”
“I heard about the bank. I can set you up with a short-term bridge loan till you wrap up your regular financing.”
“How much?”
“Short term runs about twenty-four percent. But I’d need a fella to sit in and keep an eye on things.”
“Fuck you.”
He turned his back—it was that or hit the guy—and slammed the door of the limousine with an eerie sensation of reliving his father’s early days when Mike Taglione had forged his iron rules of survival. No loan sharks. No silent partners. “You believe that guy?” he asked Arnie. “Fucking shylock hits on me the day of the funeral?”
“He’s a criminal. You want nice manners?”
Lambs’ heads made the funeral feast. In the morning Uncle Vinnie had brought the cloven skulls from the Manhattan markets, wrapped in newspaper; now, hot and savory, they steamed on the sideboard with bowls of tripe and macaroni. So many leaves had been inserted in the dining table to accommodate the mourners that the lower end thrust into the living room, where a second crowd were balancing plates on their laps. The house was hot and alive with the babble of talk his father had loved.
Chris’s Uncle Pete, a teacher, greeted him tearfully. “There are some guys make you feel you’re part of something big. When they go, you wonder what it’s all about.”
Chris wondered which of the men hunched over their plates could help get credit for the job. Their bond with Mike was strong. Other uncles spied him, kissed his cheeks, and led him to the head of the table. Tony, ignoring a full plate and deaf to the blandishments of his aunts, was deep in conversation with Uncle Eamon. The police captain jumped up as if relieved by the interruption and said, “There you are, boy. Take my chair.”
The women brought Chris a plate. Uncle Eamon flinched from the contadino food and retreated to
the bar, a table of bottles in the living room, leaving Chris and Tony in the care of Uncle Vinnie, who squeezed between the brothers with a refill.
“Eat.”
Chris took a bite, couldn’t swallow, and pushed his plate away. “The fucking bank shut us down.”
“It figures.”
“What should I do?”
“That’s a tough one, Chris.”
“Can you help me get money?”
“Black money.”
“Pop always said no shylocks. I already told this one to get lost.” He showed Vinnie the loan shark’s business card. “Know him?”
“Shit, yes. He’s a Cirillo shylock.”
“He said he knew Pop.”
“He knew Pop?” asked Tony.
Uncle Vinnie said, “You know how it is. Mob guys cozy up to legit businessmen.” He glanced around and lowered his voice. “They know they’re shit; they want someone important to tell ’em they’re not. But don’t forget, they also want a piece of your action. A couple of years ago, when your father was putting the Manhattan building together, everywhere he went this guy showed up with a big smile.”
“What did Pop do?” Tony asked.
“What could he do? As nice as he could, he ignored him. You don’t want a guy like that thinking you insulted him. He probably bought your father a drink and now he goes around saying they’re buddies. You were right to stay away from him.”
“I guess so, but I still have to raise the money.”
“You sure you want to get involved at all? You’re going to have your hands full with the cement, unless you want to consolidate the cement. Why don’t you come in with me?”
Chris caught the flash in Tony’s eyes. His brother knew shit about the business, but he was sharp enough to warn him that Uncle Vinnie’s offer, part famiglia—looking out for family interests—was also the sort of sharp, cold act practiced by survivors in the New York cement business.
“If I don’t finish Pop’s building,” Chris said, “the grease-balls win.”
“There will always be wiseguys,” said Uncle Vinnie.
“Not always,” said Tony.
“The rackets have been around a long time,” Uncle Vinnie retorted sternly. He chewed a forkful of tripe and said to Chris, “Aren’t you going to finish college?”
“Fuck college. You think I’m going to study business so I can get a job working for somebody else? We already got a business. I’m a lucky guy. My pop built a business.” His eyes filled and Uncle Vinnie looked away.
“Let me talk to some guys.”
Later he led Chris into the living room, where a gray-haired patrician banker was waiting with Arnie. Both the banker and the Taglione project manager looked uncomfortable. “This is Pete Stock, Chris. He’s a real estate officer at the bank.”
“We’ve met. Thanks for coming today, Mr. Stock.”
“Of course I came. I’ve dealt for years with your father on his Queens projects. I’m sorry that the bank had to withdraw credit on the big building.”
“I want to finish my father’s building.”
Stock shook his head. “Chris, you’re plunging head first into a deeply troubled market. Manhattan’s getting overbuilt.”
“We’re preleased. And Aetna’s pledged to buy it in two years.”
“That’s fine for Aetna. They don’t risk a dime until you’ve finished the building and actually filled it with tenants.”
“But we’re preleased. We’ve got tenants.”
“You’ve got tenants signed, which is how your father got Aetna. But you still have to get them in. So, in other words, the bank is taking the risk on your performance—your ability, now that your father is gone, to meet schedules and contain costs and control labor. It’s a big job for a college student.”
“I can do it. I’ve worked with my father since I was fourteen. We had big plans to move Taglione Construction into Manhattan development.”
Stock swished the ice in his drink. “Chris, Manhattan real estate is even tighter than the cement business. It’s been controlled by a handful of developers for decades. Men who can walk down Fifth Avenue, or Second Avenue, or Eighth Avenue, and tell you the history of every building on the street, from the day the land was assembled to who built it, financed it, bought and sold it, leased it, renovated it, and tore it down and built a new one... I hope you understand that I’m trying every way I know to discourage you.”
“We were going to be guys like that... Can you give me credit?”
“We’ll bring in a man to run the job.”
“No. Then it’s not our job. No way. I can do it. My father must have told you he was going to make me a partner.”
“At least fifty times.” Stock looked pained. “Listen, your father’s friends are leaning hard on me, very hard. But if you insist on going alone—”
“I do.”
“Then the best I can do is persuade the bank to extend interim financing for two months. If you haven’t performed by then, it’s all over.”
“I can do it.”
“But you have to agree to put the trucks up as collateral—”
“The trucks?” Chris echoed, dismayed. “We’ve already put up all our property.”
Stock sighed, clearly uncomfortable with his own terms. “That’s what my superiors will demand. I’m sorry. If you still feel this way Monday, come by the office and we’ll do the paperwork. But at this point I want you to listen to your father’s project manager.”
“Don’t do it,” said Arnie. “Without the trucks you got nothing.”
“Yeah, I know, but—”
“Your father’s trucks. That’s all you got.”
In his mind Chris saw them parked in rows at their East River plant, astonishing in their number. By the time he had been old enough to count there had been enough to be called the fleet. “I have to think, Mr. Stock.”
“That’s precisely what I want you to do. Goodbye. Good luck. And again, I’m so sorry we’ve lost your father.”
“I’ll walk you out,” said Arnie.
Chris stood where he was, his mind reeling.
A tiny old man tugged his sleeve. He looked down at Alphonse Castellone, who gave him a toothless grin. “Leesa trucks.”
Alphonse Castellone was unbelievably old, totally uneducated, and as primitive as a Sicilian cowherd. But he had pioneered heavy-equipment rental in New York and was very rich because of it, which Chris and everyone else in the room respected mightily. Already his aunts and uncles were watching with relief and pleasure the private conversation of the grieving son and the wise elder.
“They’re my father’s trucks, Alphonse.”
Alphonse replied with the bluntness of age, “Your pop was the last dummy in the city to own equipment. So what you lose your trucks? I buy ’em from the bank and leesa back. I leesa ya anything. I leesa shovel, I leesa grader. I leesa whole goddam tower crane. But I canna leesa contacts. I canna leesa smarts.
“Sellin’ cement is knowin’ who’s who and what’s what. You already got that from your pop.” He looked around the living room, nodded at the people watching respectfully, and said, “Fuck the trucks.”
Chris felt his lips part in his first smile in three days. The old man was right. Arnie had utterly no understanding that his father’s contacts were the real value of Taglione Concrete. Alphonse patted his arm. “You did a good funeral. Your father woulda liked it. It’s over now. Go do some business.”
Chris tore after Stock and cornered him in the foyer. They talked over the details for a few minutes and the banker reluctantly honored his offer. Then Stock left amid a general exodus of business associates and friends. Shortly, the family too began to trickle away, the few Irish first, Italian cousins next, and finally teary aunts and sad-faced uncles. The women instructed Chris how to heat up the food they had left in the refrigerator, and the men clasped the young brothers in their arms.
Uncle Vinnie was the last to leave. He sent Aunt Marie ahead to the car, which
was parked down the short front walk at the curb. “You need anything, anything at all, you telephone. I’ll stop by the job Monday, Chris.”
“I’ll be at the bank.”
“So I’ll walk you over. See you early. Hey, Tony. You call if you need me, right?”
“Thanks, Uncle Vinnie.”
Chris stood with Tony in the front door, holding each moment like a heartbeat. Uncle Vinnie gripped the iron railing as he climbed down the front step. His shoes clicked on the walk. The street was quiet but for night bugs humming in the trees; the sidewalk was softly lit by street lamps which cast dull pools of light filtered by the leaves. Far off a highway murmured like a river.
Uncle Vinnie’s Cadillac settled deeply on its springs. His door thunked shut, blacking the courtesy lights which had shined briefly on Aunt Marie’s unhappy face. He started the engine and turned on the headlights. The power steering whined as he slowly pulled away and around the corner, the taillights blinking through the neighbor’s privet hedge. Tony turned into the house and Chris followed, holding the door open a moment longer before he closed it.
They were alone.
“Look how they cleaned up. Like nobody was here.”
“Aunt Marie had the vacuum going.”
They stood looking around the empty living room, then at each other. “Want a drink?”
“Yeah.”
Tony poured Johnny Walker Black at the table set up as a bar. The ice bucket, a gold plastic container made to look like a barrel, was empty. They headed for the kitchen. The big refrigerator icemaker was empty, and the crushed-ice dispenser in the door was out of ice as well. Chris found an old tray in the freezer. He smacked the shrunken cubes out in the sink, filled their glasses with a handful, and headed for the living room.