The Boy Who Granted Dreams

by Luca Di Fulvio

  And at that point Ruth spoke. Quickly, aggressively, “We can be friends, but that’s all,” she said in a hard, frightened voice. Unnaturally loud. She pulled her hand back again.

  In the adjacent room, old Saul sighed heavily.

  Christmas felt his stomach knot — an unpleasant feeling, like being cold and sweaty at the same time. He knew if he stood up his legs would buckle. “Sure,” he said. He looked down at his plate. The hell with it, he thought, and dipped a finger into the cream he hadn’t been able to get with his spoon. Then, in a gesture of defiance, he stuck it in his mouth and licked it, watching Ruth. “Sure,” he said, sounding aggressive too, "You’re a rich girl and I’m a raggedyass from the Lower East Side, did you think I don’t know that?”

  Ruth jumped up. She threw her napkin at him. “You’re an idiot!” she cried, her face red with anger. “That’s got nothing to do with it.”

  Christmas rolled the napkin into a ball, dipped it into the water pitcher, and pretended to throw it at Ruth.

  “Don’t you dare,” said Ruth backing away.

  Christmas smiled at her. Again he pretended to throw the napkin at her.

  Ruth gave a little shriek and backed further away.

  Christmas laughed. Then Ruth laughed too. Christmas put the napkin on the table. He looked gravely at Ruth.

  “We’ll see about that,” he said.

  “See what?”

  “We’ll see,” Christmas said again.

  Ruth looked at him, not speaking. Forcing herself not to see Bill’s face too. But it was impossible. She saw him everywhere, even when she looked at her father. Whenever her eyes met a man’s, she saw Bill. And she felt the humiliation and pain of being ripped open, and the stickiness of blood between her thighs. The crack — like a dry branch — of the shears that amputated her finger.

  “We aren’t going to see a thing,” she said forlornly.

  Christmas pounced on the napkin and threw it at her.

  “You idiot!” she cried. For an instant Bill’s face vanished, and she saw only Christmas’ dark eyes under the antique gold of his unruly hair. She laughed, a young girl’s laugh, and she picked up the napkin and hurled it at him. A young girl who, once in a while, managed to forget how brutally she had passed into womanhood one night.

  The old man stood up, his cigar clamped between his lips, and went outside. He told Fred, “It’s time to take that hurricane back to his house before he tears up mine.”

  Ruth and her grandfather stood on the steps of the villa, watching the Rolls pull away. The gravel crunched under the tires.

  “I’ve always wondered how a beautiful girl like grandma came to marry an ugly mug like you,” said Ruth, leaning her head on Saul’s shoulder.

  He laughed softly.

  At the end of the driveway the Rolls stopped at the iron gates.

  “When you were young, were you like Christmas?” Ruth asked.

  The gatekeeper began to open the gates.

  “Maybe so,” said the old man after a pause.

  The Rolls passed through the gateway, turned left, and went out of sight.

  “Am I as pretty as grandma?” Ruth asked.

  The old man turned to look at her. He stroked her hair and put an arm around her shoulders. “Come back inside, liebling, don’t catch cold,” he said.

  Far down the path, the gatekeeper was locking the gate.

  And Christmas, leaning back in the Rolls’ soft seat, clutched Ruth’s address in Manhattan tightly in his hand. The address of her school. And a telephone number.

  17

  Manhattan, 1911-1912

  “What I do when my body not pretty any more?” asked Cetta.

  “Hey, you’re seventeen years old. You got time to figure somethin’ out,” said Sal, lying back on the bed in his undershirt, distracted by Christmas who was sitting on the floor playing with the doll Sal had given him for his third birthday. “The little pisser’s growin’ fast, huh?” He smiled.

  “I grow fast, too,” Cetta said sullenly. “But I call it get old.”

  Sal glanced down at Christmas who, without stopping his chatter for a second, was making his new toy, a stuffed lion who’d already lost his tail, fight with the Yankees doll, even more gravely mutilated by time, and the child’s exuberance. Sal got off the bed and stood behind Cetta at the stove where the pasta sauce was simmering. “Why d'you want to spoil our Sunday?” he said in his deep voice, which he had learned to modulate. He put a hand on her shoulder.

  Cetta drew away from the contact.

  “If the pisser wasn’t here, I bet I’d know how to domesticate ya,” he said with a wink.

  “Die, pisser!” shouted Christmas, making the Yankee bite the lion’s neck.

  Sal laughed. Cetta turned to look at him. She had never expected to see Sal laugh. But Christmas made him laugh often. Sal looked at her and smiled. Cetta looked serious again.

  “Will I always stay in the life? Until I no good for anything and they throw me away? Until you get tired of taste me?” Cetta waved her wooden spoon.

  “Hey, hey, drop the weapon,” said Sal.

  “Drop it, pisser!” cried Christmas.

  Sal laughed again.

  “I mean it,” said Cetta.

  “You taste too good,” said Sal, coming closer. “I ain’t never gonna get tired of tastin’ you.”

  “Is serious!” and Cetta banged the spoon on the black stove.

  Sal laughed again. “Yeah, I know. ‘Scuse me.”

  “I want house, like Ma’am have,” she said darkly. “And many pretty girl to give … to make …” she interrupted herself, glancing at Christmas. “I want other girls do the work, not always me.”

  “Later, Cetta. Not now,” said Sal, frowning, and all the playfulness had disappeared from his voice. “We already talked about that stuff.”

  “Then you no care about me, Sal?”

  “O.K, that's it. Don’t start breakin’ my balls,” barked Sal. He got dressed and went out, slamming the door.

  “Sal!” Cetta called after him, but he kept going.

  Cetta sat on the bed and began to weep silently. Christmas toddled over to her and leaned against her thigh. “Play, mamma?” he said in his little voice, pushing the two toys into her lap.

  Cetta stroked his wheaten hair and pulled him close, not speaking.

  “I cried too, when Leo’s tail got broke. I was so sad,” said Christmas. “’Member that, mamma?”

  “Yes, sweetheart,” Cetta smiled. “I remember,” and she held him tighter.

  And then she saw the pistol in its holster. And the holster on the chair.

  Sal thought he’d go to the diner. At least he could find somebody there to spend Sunday with. Cetta was putting pressure on him. But that wasn’t what burned him up. He felt more and more at ease with that girl. He was even beginning to like the little pisser. The death of Tonia and Vito had left a hole in his life. On the one hand, they were all he’d had. On the other, they’d freed him from his constant feeling of guilt over their son’s murder. Sal had stopped blaming himself. And little by little, without even noticing, Cetta had filled that hole. But she was just one of the whores from the cathouse, he kept telling himself, trying to push away a thought that was so close to being an emotion.

  And this wasn’t the moment for him to be weak. It was no longer just the Irish cutthroats he had to keep in line. The leftovers from the Eastman gang — even if nobody ever called them that now that Monk Eastman was vacationing at Sing Sing — were out there, loose cannons. New names kept coming out, one after the other, new capi, who thought they could go back to the good old days, when unimaginable wars were waged against the cops or Paul Kelly’s wops. To muster your men all you needed to do was drop a word in the street, or at Glucknow’s Odessa Tea House in Broome Street; or Sam Boeske’s Hop Joint in Stanton Street, or maybe Dora Gold’s drugstore on First. It used to be enough to offer a couple of free bottles of coffin varnish, the cheapest rotgut around. Daylong gun b
attles, territorial fights, with bystanders dropping likes leaves from a tree; barricades, paving stones, fighting with clubs, truncheons, iron pipes, slingshots. This kind of stuff went on every day in recent years, with guys like Zweilbach, or Dopey, Big Yid, and Little Augie, and Kid Dropper, thinking they didn’t need to respect the rules.

  No, this was no time to be weak, Sal thought, driving towards the diner. And a woman made you weak. He parked half a block away, as he always did. Got out of the car and bought a cigar at Nora’s. When he stepped out on the curb he realized he’d left his gun at Cetta’s.

  Women. Feelings. They made you weak.

  And as he was shaking his head, cursing his carelessness, the cigar in his mouth, he didn’t notice the black car coming around the corner too fast. He only noticed the first shot. He heard the detonation and a sudden burning in his shoulder. It threw him against a lamppost. He hit his head and fell behind a parked car. No gun. Trapped. He began to sweat as he dragged himself under the car, with his shoulder making him roar with pain.

  I’m fucked, he thought.

  Immediately his friends from the diner burst out and started firing back. The black car skidded, went up the opposite sidewalk, hit two screaming women who were petrified with fear. Then it hit the wall; finally crashing through a barbershop window.

  Sal’s pals rushed the car. Silver, a pimp whose hair had gone white although he wasn’t yet thirty years old, got there first. One of the shooters was trying to cover his head with his arms. Silver yanked him out of the car and shot him. Meanwhile the others emptied their guns into the car.

  Sal stood up. He went towards the barbershop. He passed the two women hit by the car. The wall was splashed with blood. One of them didn't have a face any more. The other had a crushed knee, and her legs drawn up under her. She belched up a large blood clot and closed her eyes with a jerk. Inside the shop the barber was covered in blood. He was screaming, wounded by shattered glass from the window. There were two corpses inside the car. A third one on the ground.

  “Fuckin’ Jews,” Silver was saying. “They’re usin’ little kids now.”

  Sal saw the three dead weren’t even fifteen years old. The one Silver killed had a blood-spattered hole instead of a left eye. Cheeks streaked with tears that watered down the blood running out of the wound.

  Then everything went dark and Sal fainted.

  “It still hurt?” asked Cetta, six months later, watching Sal narrow his eyes and mouth as he reached out his arm for a glass.

  “It better keep on hurtin’ the resta my life. That way I won’t leave my gun at no whore’s place no more,” he answered, as always.

  Since the day of the shooting, two things had changed for Sal. First, the boss, Vince Salemme, who had come out a winner in the turf war, had promoted Sal and Silver. He’d put Sal in charge of not only running the brothel, but also a new speakeasy — pompously called a club — that he’d opened on the corner of Third and Fourth Streets where they run into Bowery. And now Silver was a shooter, promoted from pimp to killer.

  The second change was in Sal’s own nature. Ever since that day he’d been scared. Even paranoid. He kept constantly checking that his gun was loaded; he always looked around, turning suddenly to be sure of what was happening behind him. But most of all, the look in his eyes had changed. The bullet that had gone through his shoulder, nicking the humerus without crippling him, had opened a wound in his soul. Unlike the wound to his flesh, it was never going to mend. I let three kids hurt me, he thought angrily every night as he went to sleep, and every morning when he awakened.

  A part of him still blamed himself for the carelessness that could have cost him his life — and he kept blaming Cetta, too — another part of him let his new weakness bring him more and more often into Cetta’s arms. Running the club cut drastically into his free time. But Sal always managed to pick Cetta up every morning at home and take her to Ma’am’s, as if she too were in danger, from that day on. And every evening he left the club to fetch her. Sometimes he took her home, sometimes to the club with him. Every Sunday, he ate lunch with Christmas and Cetta at the table in the stifling room where Tonia and Vito had lived and died. Within a few months, they were living a kind of matrimony.

  Christmas was getting bigger and more exuberant. He was fond of Sal. And Sal himself, in his rough way, was affectionate with him. Cetta watched them together. She was moved at seeing the transformation of her man. He hadn’t become better or worse, but every day he was more hers.

  “Bang! You’re dead, pisser!” Christmas shouted one Sunday afternoon as Sal lay on the bed. Christmas waved a wooden pistol at him.

  Sal leaped up and ripped the gun out of Christmas’ hand. Cetta saw the fear and anger in Sal’s eyes. She was afraid for her child. She lay down between the two of them, and Sal said, “Better tell him not to do that no more.” He lay back and closed his eyes.

  Cetta thought that perhaps Sal was willing to belong to her now only because he was afraid. And since she loved him — and she knew that fear was making Sal suffer — she went into a church, knelt at the feet of the Virgin and prayed for her to make him become the man he used to be. To take his fear away. “He’s a gangster,” she explained to the Virgin, as she stood up.

  In 1912, another territorial war broke out, this time between Italian and Irish gangs. But it was a war that wasn’t waged on the streets or fought with guns. The army recruited by the Irish was the New York police force, the part of it that could be corrupted by generous payoffs.

  Clubs and brothels, warehouses full of “baptized” — watered-down — whiskey, slot machines, betting parlors, speakeasies. It was an attack on gang activities, but it was also a well-organized strategy of killing off the big fish by negotiating with little ones, trading jail time, and immunity.

  On the evening of May 13, Silver showed up at the club. He was wearing a spiffy suit, spruce as an actor. The silk jacket fit him perfectly, hardly bulging over his gun. He’d changed a lot since the last time Sal had seen him. Ever since he’d shot the Jew kid in the eye, people said he’d gotten a taste for it. “The boss is comin’ down here tonight,” he told Sal. “He said you better wash your hands. It makes him sick to drink anything you poured out with them black hands.”

  “The barkeep does the pourin’,” said Sal.

  Sal shrugged expansively. “He’ll end up tellin’ me to chop ’em off,” he laughed. He had a new gold tooth, the second incisor.

  Sal thought he might like to break another one for him. Probably Vince Salemme hadn’t said a word about his hands. It was just more of Silver’s bullshit. But what if the boss really had given an order? It wouldn’t be smart to have black hands when he showed up. “What time’s he comin’?” he asked Silver.

  “Why? How long does it take you to wash up?”

  Sal stared at him without speaking.

  “First he’s goin’ by Nate’s, in Livonia; after that he’s comin’ over here,” Silver finally said.

  Sal turned his back and went into the bathroom. He scrubbed his hands till they were red. He could feel the worry growing in his throat. Bad luck, he thought.

  The raids on the clubs on the Bowery and on Livonia Street in Brooklyn took place simultaneously. When the cops in the pay of the Irish gangs burst into the three establishments, they let many clients and their whores get away. It was obvious from the start that they were aiming for a precise target. They were looking for the big fish, Vince Salemme. They didn’t find him, so they settled for netting a smaller fish: Sal Tropea.

  Minutes later, the cops raided the brothel. Cetta, Ma’am and another ten prostitutes were loaded into a Black Maria. In the confusion, a member of the Mayor’s cabinet was killed after he reached into his inside pocket to show his papers to the arresting officer. But the cop thought he was about to pull a gun, so he shot him five times, wounding the whore with him in the leg. When they saw that the man had a wallet in his hand, they removed it. When the photographers arrived, the cadaver was magicall
y gripping a revolver. For a week the press attacked the mayor, accusing him of collusion with the criminal classes. Then it died down.

  As soon as she was forced into the police van Cetta, seeing Sal in handcuffs, flung herself against him, embracing him, weeping, desperate about Christmas.

  Once they arrived at the station, Sal and Cetta were separated. Cetta was in a common cell with Ma’am and the other whores. Sal was brutally beaten and isolated in a cage, inside a room where the cops came and went freely, insulting and threatening him, spitting on him.

  “I wanna make bail for somebody,” said Sal when the captain came in. The captain was unaware of the deal the Irish had made with his men.

  “You can’t get out on bail,” said the captain.

  “I ain’t talkin’ about me,” said Sal, blood running out of his nose. “It’s for one of the whores. Cetta Luminita.”

  The captain stared at him incredulously.

  “She’s got a right to it,” said Sal, thrusting his large clean fingers through the wire mesh of the cage.

  “We’ll see about it tomorrow,” said the captain.

  “Make it tonight. She’s got a little kid,” growled Sal, shaking the wire netting.

  The captain looked at him. His face was tough but human. “Tell me her name again,” he said.

  “Cetta Luminita.”

  The captain gave a slight nod and left the room.

  The next morning, Di Stefano, the lawyer, introduced himself to Sal. As he approached he wrinkled his nose. “Christ, did you have to piss your pants?”

  “They won’t let me go to the toilet.”

  The lawyer looked him over, nose still wrinkled.

  “Did they get the boss at Livonia?”

  “Why would you know about any moves the boss makes?” said the lawyer. He spoke softly, through the wire, so the cops wouldn’t hear.

  “Did they get him?”

  “No. At the last minute, he had a change of plan.”

  Sal looked at him and began to understand. “Who sang?”

  “Silver.”

  Sal spat on the ground.