I know Charlie Matteo, the bouncer at the Club. He’d gone to Pius X High School at the same time I had. His name often appears in the French language tabloids, Allô Police and Montreal Matin. Quite a number of boys from my old high school have also made news in these papers, usually after an arrest.
Charlie turned out to be one of those. At school, older than the rest of the class by a couple of years, he had never fit into regular school life. These boys generally didn’t continue beyond high school, or they quit without graduating.
I occasionally run into these old acquaintances, and I’ve attended a number of their funerals, dead under circumstances not clearly explained, though the papers generally attribute it to a “settling of accounts.”
It has been heartbreaking seeing the rest of their families, hardworking people leading simple lives, in shock and dumbfounded by what had happened. They had either lost control of their son’s actions, been too busy working to notice any changes, or they simply chose to deny what they might have suspected—that their son’s new-found wealth could not possibly be the fruit of running a café, or some excuse of a small business that had no chance of being that lucrative.
Nicodemo, or Nico Demon, is something else. The many newspaper reports on Jack Russo and his underlings have painted a picture of ties to criminal families in the old world and of the intermarriages between them. If diagrams of family trees and all their interconnections could tell a bigger story it would be that centuries of illegality have rendered its members immune to any sense of guilt or of social or civic responsibility. The honoured Don is a myth perpetrated by Hollywood movies.
As I drive towards Park Avenue, I spot the three girls and a young man I’ve seen hanging around the class. I stop the car on the curb ahead of them.
“Eh, Miss, are you coming with us to Charlie’s?” Linda asks.
Angie doesn’t say anything, but looks annoyed at seeing me.
“I don’t think so. Angie you’re coming home with me. You were supposed to meet me in class, remember?”
“I waited for you outside, but you weren’t there,” Angie says.
“Really? You didn’t look very hard,” I reply.
“Miss, come to the club with us,” Linda says, approaching the car window. “Charlie is a lot of fun. We already told him you’re a cool teacher.”
“Sorry, girls, Angie really needs to come home with me.”
“You go ahead. I don’t even feel like going anymore,” Angie says, her voice gruff.
The young man next to her moves nervously but doesn’t say anything.
Angie gets in and I drive away. After a few minutes of silence, I reprimand Angie for hassling Franca.
“That stuck-up bitch!” Angie says.
“You can’t misbehave in class or at school, in any way. You remember Mr. Champagne’s conditions.”
“I can’t even say what I think?” Angie whines.
“You can’t start arguments and pick on people.”
“I wish you had minded your business this morning and left my hair alone,” Angie says.
“Why?” I said. “Your hair will look good once I trim it.”
“No fucking way. You’re never gonna touch it again!”
“Okay,” I say, after a while. “But there are school and class rules you can’t break and get away with because you live with me. Be reasonable. You do anything foolish and Mr. Champagne will send you back to the other school board.”
“They can’t send me back. I got kicked out of there already.”
“No, they didn’t kick you out. They referred you to a special program at the hospital, which is where you’ll have to go if this doesn’t work out. They’ll keep you there until you’re sixteen, and then they’ll kick you out. Do you see the importance of following all the school rules?”
“Why only me? The place is a zoo, anyway.”
“Worry only about yourself, Angie, not the others. I’m especially upset, though, at you taking off with Linda and Gina without telling me.”
“I can’t go out with my friends?”
“Not to a strip club! What would your mother say if she knew?”
“My mother doesn’t know a strip club from beans. She never gives a shit what I do.”
“Who’s the guy?”
“It’s Eddie. He was in my English class, but he just got kicked out of school,”
“What for?”
“Who knows? Drugs … prostitution … chewing gum in class. I don’t ask questions.”
“Stay away from him as long as you’re in my care, and you’re not allowed to go to Charlie’s either. Do you understand?” I raise my voice.
“Don’t scream at me. You’re not my mother.”
“You’re not to go to that nightclub,” I lower my voice as we near my apartment.
“Fuck. You Calabresi are all the same,” Angie snorts with disgust.
40. BRUCE
BRUCE AND I ARE STATIONED at the southeast door exit of the school. The doors are locked on the outside, but for fire-safety reasons the doors must open from the inside. Our task is to make sure that students don’t let anyone in during the lunch break, but hardly anyone passes by that corner of the building. “What a waste of time,” I say.
“It beats supervising the stinking locker rooms,” Bruce says, leaning against the closed door.
I notice how tall Bruce is next to me. His frame fills the space. I can hardly see his eyes, though. He wears black-rimmed glasses, and his dark, shaggy hair skims his forehead. He keeps an unlit pipe in his mouth. With his cords and a loose, plaid flannel shirt, he exudes comfort and ease—like the Hush Puppies shoes he wears. I wonder whether he owns a suit. I have never seen him in one.
“You always this laid back?” I ask.
“No point in getting uptight.” He keeps taking his pipe out of his mouth as though he were smoking it.
“That’s a good attitude,” I say.
I ask if he knows Eddie, the young nervous man I saw walking with Angie a few days earlier. He has called Angie at home a couple of times, and she told me he called to help her with her homework.
“Oh yes, I call him the snake. He’s a slippery one, that one. A smooth operator, a wheeler-dealer, real smart, though, a Park Ex inner-city kid.” Eddie is one of the first casualties of the principal’s policy to kick troublemakers out of the school as soon as they turned sixteen. But Bruce told me not to worry about Eddie calling Angie. He had been in the same English class as Angie and it was Bruce who had asked him to help Angie with her English work.
“He’s a rarity in this school, one of the few English kids,” he says. “He stutters, but writes unusually well for his age. I think Angie may have a crush on him.”
“Of course! She had to fall for a troublemaker,” I say, raising my hands and shaking my head.
“Angie is subdued these days,” he says. “It must be her new hairstyle. You did a job on her.”
“It still looks awful. She won’t let me cut it into shape,” I explain.
“Do you think I need a makeover?” he asks, touching his own wavy hair.
“Your bangs could use a trim,” I say, smiling.
“Only if you do it.”
I giggle. I remember the late sixties when I worked as a hairstylist. Mothers used to drag their long-haired teenage sons to the salon because they refused to go to their barbers for a full-fledged haircut. Bruce still maintains the scruffy look of those rebellious but gentle-mannered young men.
“Where you born in Montreal, Bruce?” I ask.
“No. I’m from the Abitibi region, Val D’Or.”
“Where’s that?”
“It’s up north, way up north, past La Vérendrye Park.”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t know where that is either.”
“I bet you’ve been to Europe a
number of times.”
“Three or four times,” I answer, not quite understanding the connection he is trying to make.
“But you don’t know where Abitibi is.”
“I’ve never had a reason to go there.”
“Shame on you, Cathy!” Bruce says. “You should get to know your own country. I crossed it with two buddies the year I graduated from teacher’s college—from shining sea to bone-chilling sea. It was a great experience.”
“It’s such a big country,” I say. “Where do you start?”
“Maybe your own province?” he offers.
He’s right, I think. I have lived in Montreal most of my life, and yet I know so little about the rest of the province—let alone the country.
“What was it like growing up in a place like Val D’Or?” I ask.
“Not many opportunities anymore up there for us Anglos. Left early to go to college … only went home in the summer to work in the mines.”
“I like the name Val d’Or,” I say. “It sounds romantic—valley of gold—like the gold can be picked off the ground, or from the trees. Is it really a valley, with mountains all around it?”
“No, actually it’s very flat. You might say the mountains are all hidden underground. That’s where the gold lies.”
“Extracting gold from rocks—how do they do it? It sounds as hard as extracting blood from a stone,” I ask.
“Actually, comparing gold to blood is not a stretch. The gold runs in yellow veins in the walls of the mines. When they find it—even minute traces—they blast the rocks off the wall, bring them up to mill, mix them with water, and then crush them until it all turns to muck. Somehow the liquid yellow gold gets separated from the dirty slush.”
“Interesting, and not at all how I had imagined it.”
“Angie tells me that her bedroom is surrounded by wall-to-wall books—not what I had imagined either.”
“I’ve always been an avid reader, and … I also like to write.”
“Your hairdressing experience must have given you lots of stories to draw from. Hairstylists make the cheapest psychiatrists, they say.”
“That’s true.” I confess my compulsion as a teen to set my memories down on paper before they dissolved into oblivion. “I’m trying to write a book of linked short stories.”
He strokes his chin with one hand, and holds his pipe in the other. “You’re wasting your time,” he says after a few seconds. I’m taken aback by the remark, until he continues, “I mean, it sounds as if you have a lot of material. Write a novel instead.”
“Oh, I couldn’t possibly write a novel. It seems a little too ambitious for me.” I feel my face flush as I speak.
“Bullshit,” he replies. “If you’re good at spinning yarns, you can write a novel.” Bruce moves closer, shaking his pipe at me as he speaks. “Here’s what I tell my students: just pretend you’re telling a story to someone from Mars, who knows nothing of the world you’re writing about.”
“I guess that could work if you’re starting from scratch. I already have a lot of different stories, and I would need material to connect them,” I say joining my two hands together. “I don’t know if I can be that creative.”
“Harvest your dreams. That’s also something I tell my students. They’re a real gold mine of material. Good writing is about unlocking our dreams and fears and presenting them to the world. Remember the nightmares as well as the happy dreams … a very scary proposition at times. It’s the creepy stuff that adds the spice.”
I look at him pensively as he continues. “It’s a challenging job, writing a novel. You have your work cut out for you. Give yourself at least five years.”
“Wow! That seems like a long time. I wouldn’t know where to start … or where to finish for that matter.”
“Well, endings are tricky, but not as difficult as beginnings. I’d say, start from where you are now—the middle—and radiate toward the beginning and the end.” He fills his pipe with tobacco as he speaks.
I’m sorry to hear the end-of-period bell ring. “See you next Wednesday,” I say.
“I’ll see you around before that.” He nudges me on the arm. “I’m going out for a smoke, but watch this first.” He opens the door, and steps out. He lights his pipe, inhales deeply, and then lets out perfectly formed smoke rings. He winks at me as I watch the Os float up into the air.
41. MODERN FURNITURE
A QUEEN-SIZE MATTRESS AND a dozen other boxes of different sizes fill the hallway, the kitchen, and the living room. Sean is on the phone in an animated conversation.
“What the hell?” Angie says, as we enter the apartment.
I gather from the telephone conversation that J.P. is coming into the city on the weekend as he had previously planned.
“Thanks for warning me,” Sean says when he hangs up with J.P.
“I told you I’d be ordering it.”
“Why this weekend? You knew about J.P. coming in.”
“I’m going to do my homework,” Angie says and shuts herself into her room. She spends most of her time in the den listening to the radio and working on her English and French assignments. Her uncle will be picking her up before dinner.
J.P. had called to announce that he would stay in town the rest of the week to finalize arrangements for the Halloween fundraising ball that is taking place the following Friday evening. I’m expected to attend. It has been a while since I have gone to a party with Sean, let alone a ball. At other times, I would have been in a frenzy to find the perfect outfit, but with all the goings-on of the past weeks, I had blotted out the event altogether. What preoccupies me most is having to put up with J.P. and Angie in the same house for a week. Sean thinks Angie should stay at my brother’s.
“I can’t do that,” I answer.
“Then Angie will have to sleep on the sofa when he comes in on Sunday. I can’t ask J.P. to give up his room.”
“When did the den become J.P.’s room?” I say, raising my voice.
Sean moves to the bedroom. “No need to have a temper tantrum. Calm down.”
“I’ll calm down when I feel like it. I can’t understand why he can’t sleep in the living room or in a hotel for a few days. He has an expense account. How will it seem to Angie’s family to have another man sleeping in the house?”
“I don’t give a damn about what her family thinks. This is one of your problems, not mine. I don’t conduct myself in relation to how other people think….”
“Except for public opinion polls,” I yell, and walk nervously back from the bedroom to the kitchen, kicking the boxes of furniture and mouthing, “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
“Cut the crap. You’re overreacting.” Sean takes a beer from the fridge. “I’m sure we can work this out. But it’s going to be a messy weekend. You could have waited before ordering new furniture. What was the big rush?”
“I was really fed up with the shabbiness of this place,” I say.
“Have you thought that maybe the furniture may not be the problem?” Sean asks, and takes a long sip of beer.
“Tell me what the problem is, and we’ll try to fix things.” I sit down and motion for him to sit too. “You’re the intellectual.”
He remains standing. “Please, not now … if a new bedroom set makes you happy, I’m fine with it. Just get it organized before the weekend. I have more important things on my mind.”
“Yes, of course, synchronicity and integration,” I say. Then in a whisper, I add, “The fact that we haven’t made love in over a month is irrelevant to you.”
“You’re the one who sleeps on the sofa at night, writing in your journal or whatever. You wouldn’t understand what’s on my mind, anyway.”
“Try me some time. I might surprise you.” We’re quiet for a few seconds and I reflect on how the initial good feeling of the marriage proposal lasted less than a fe
w days.
“Where will you put the old set?” Sean says
“I’ll call Gaetano to come with his truck. Maybe he’ll find some way of fitting the old furniture into my brother’s basement.”
“You better call him soon or the apartment will get pretty crowded.”
Gaetano comes promptly after dinner and, even without Sean’s help, quickly carts the furniture away.
“Where do we sleep tonight?” Sean says as he walks back into the empty bedroom.
I open one of the boxes in the kitchen. The new furniture needs to be assembled.
“We’ll just put the mattress on the floor for tonight. Luigi will give us a hand next week to assemble the rest of the furniture.”
“It’s going to be a fucking big job,” Sean says. “There must be thousands of pieces. I thought it would have come all set up.”
“So did I,” I reply. “But it’s modern furniture. It comes like this.”
“You could have called the Salvation Army and given the old furniture away, instead of hoarding it.” He shakes his head and says, “You can’t ever let go, can you?”
PART VII
OCTOBER 18-24, 1980
42. THE ETHNIC WIFE
THE FRONT PAGE OF THE Saturday morning Montreal Star is filled with a photograph of a slain man lying in a pool of blood on a sidewalk. The headline reads: “Jack Russo’s nephew gunned down while leaving his Saint-Michel home.” The police don’t have any leads, but say that the gunman must have been an expert marksman. The killing surprises the police. Pietro Russo, aged thirty, is not known to be active in the underworld.
In a second page article, the usual “expert” on organized crime includes an “underworld organizational chart,” which shows that Jack Russo heads a division that includes all of Quebec, and parts of Eastern Ontario, with tentacles that extend to Sicily and as far as South America. The division is said to have connections to the feared Mafia chieftain, Francesco Botti, of New York City. The expert further claims that Jack Russo is still the “real boss” of the Montreal Mafia, but in the last months, events suggest that his control is being threatened by a younger and ruthless Sicilian clan with more influence in the world of illegal drug trafficking.
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