by Peter Watson
Once outside, Silvio made for St. Louis’s Cathedral, on Chartres, between St. Peter’s and St. Ann. He was to meet Anna-Maria and the Archbishop of New Orleans, to discuss the wedding. At first, he had refused to believe what Angelo Priola was saying. Marry Anna-Maria? It seemed incredible. Yes, the old man had a temper, and it had exploded that night in Madge Leigh’s, un impieta di collera, as they say in Sicily. But he had assumed Angelo would get over it. It had taken him a day or so to grasp the underlying truth—that Anna-Maria herself had told her father that she and Silvio had slept together. She had done it because, Silvio realized, she really did want to marry him. She had threatened to fight dirty and this was about as dirty as you could get.
After Angelo had stormed home, Nino had quieted Silvio down. Priola had been genuinely mad that night, Nino said, but only because he had hopes of Anna-Maria marrying into one of the grand old American families, the heir to a cotton plantation, say, or the son of a Civil War general. But that was cock’s blood. No more likely than that Sicilians should love Rome. None of the grand families would want an alliance with a dago fruit importer. At the same time Nino pointed out that Angelo secretly had a soft spot for Silvio. Listen to an older man, he had said: “Angelo has no sons of his own. Think how powerful you will be as his son-in-law. If he gets his man in at the next election, the sky’s the limit, and you’ll be next in line to take over.”
“But—”
Nino saw Silvio’s objection a mile off. “Fuck her for six months. Give her a kid. Ain’t hard. You don’t have to pull out every time, once you’re married. That will give her something to do, think about. Then go back to Madge Leigh’s, like you always did. The main thing is to become part of Angelo’s family. That’s where the money is.”
When Silvio eventually calmed down, he began to see that Nino spoke sense. For one thing, Angelo had promised to get proper immigration papers for Silvio and Nino once the wedding took place. For another, Silvio and Anna-Maria would live with Angelo, to begin with, in his house. That meant servants. Silvio couldn’t help but relish that possibility. And he would surely be given an even better job. His English was good enough now for him to try his hand at anything. He still wrote with difficulty but he could write, and reading was getting easier all the time. There was no end to the things he could do for Angelo. And if the news got back to Annunziata … so much the better.
Anna-Maria was more of a problem. It had not occurred to him before that she might actually love him; but he was coming around to that view. All that fuss over Madeleine marked real feeling on Anna-Maria’s part.
He had to admit that it would be good to be part of the Priola family, to enjoy the respect that such a marriage would bring. Silvio also observed that Angelo Priola himself paid little attention to his wife. He had all the women he wanted, as well as the comforts of a home life. After six months as the dutiful husband, Silvio could do the same.
Therefore, as he walked to the cathedral, he did not think it at all odd that he had just been to jail to see Madeleine. He wasn’t giving up that life, just interrupting it for a few months. There was no need to tell Madeleine he was getting married: she would understand.
St. Louis’s was a squat building for a cathedral, certainly by Sicilian standards. It was made of a creamy stone and was wide rather than high, with three black slate spires, narrow, again on the short side. Anna-Maria was already there. She was talking with the archbishop and a young priest about where the flowers would go. She kissed Silvio on both cheeks and called him “darling,” as if they were married already. Silvio was bored by the talk of which hymns would be sung, of how strong the choir would be, and what sort of address the archbishop would make. But he suddenly paid attention when the archbishop said that, in honor of the occasion, and since Anna-Maria’s father was such a prominent citizen, with many city notables attending the wedding, he was having a new surplice crafted.
“Oh yes?” said Silvio. “In that case, do you know someone called James Cooney?”
“Of course. I’ve known him for years.”
“Where’s he working these days?”
“At Brodick’s. In Perdido Street, where he’s always worked.”
Silvio lost interest in the rest of the conversation, registering only that they were all to meet again on the day before the wedding, for a rehearsal. Then Anna-Maria and he walked out into the square in front of the cathedral.
“All that talk of weddings has made me feel sexy, Silvio. Take me back to the lugger and fuck me.”
Sono schiavo? Silvio thought. Am I a slave? He shook his head. “I’m not interested, now that it’s legal, Anna-Maria. I’ve got some business to attend to.”
As she went to protest he interrupted her. “Look, you got me to many you. Be satisfied with that. Haven’t you got a lover for the afternoons? You’re going to need one.” And he was gone.
He stopped by Madge Leigh’s, to pick up Nino. In readiness for taking on Vito Liotta, they had placed an order for some new hardware. Big Smith & Wessons, which made a lot of noise and frightened bystanders. The weapons had been brought secretly to the city, by boat, across Lake Pontchartrain, then down the canal to the Basin. Nino and he were due to go to see them.
But when he walked into Madge Leigh’s it was as though Mount Etna had erupted. He knew immediately what was happening. Nino and Stella were having one of their periodic—and increasingly violent—fights. Silvio didn’t know what got into them both, why these fights broke out, but once they started, they sure went at it. Una zuffa zaffe.
A bottle was actually in the air as Silvio entered the bar, on its way to Nino’s head. He ducked, and it exploded on the wall behind him.
“You dago bandit!” screamed Stella. “All I ask is one lousy gift, something because it’s my goddamn birthday!”
“I’m sorry,” shouted Nino, ducking behind the bar. “I forgot.”
“Forgot? Forgot? How could you forget? I told you last week, and again on Sunday.” Now she threw a plant pot at him. “Find someone else to play your pipe, you wop, dago, vermin bandit. Don’t come near me.” Then she started to cry.
The danger was over. The barman, a man called Villardi, started to clean up. The other people in the bar stopped hiding, and Nino made promptly for the door, where Silvio was standing. They went out together.
The two men walked up CustomHouse Street to Basin Street.
“Some fight,” said Silvio.
“My fault this time—no mistake.” Nino slapped his forehead. “How could I forget her goddamn birthday. Stupid!”
Silvio stopped in the street. He turned to the other man. “She called you a bandit, Nino. How much does she know?”
Nino shrugged. “After-sex talk, nephew. Don’t worry. She won’t say anything, she’s terrified of me.” He grinned. “Can you say that of your new wife?”
He dodged as Silvio attempted to swipe him, but he turned back and grabbed the younger man’s arm. “Listen! Listen! Cut it out. I got something to tell you.” His tone immediately had Silvio’s attention.
“Yeah, what is it?”
“Liotta wants a meeting.”
“What?”
“Straight up. Got word to Angelo this morning.”
“Why? And where?”
“To discuss business, he says. Our mutual interests. Where? Get this: at Toussaint House. A private room.”
Silvio whistled. Toussaint House was a big old plantation on the river, some distance north of New Orleans. It was now a hotel with a restaurant, and boasted a fine garden with an alley of enormous oak trees. A meeting there would cost Liotta plenty.
“Is Toussaint safe?”
Nino shrugged. “Ain’t no Buscettas here, like in Sicily. We’ll use hostages.”
Silvio nodded. “You met Liotta before, Nino?”
“Not this one, no. I met the father once. Mean bastard. They’re a mean bunch all around, Silvio. Listen to an older man. I tell you, the only safe Liotta is a dead one.”
Sil
vio found Perdido Street easily enough, and Brodick’s, which was up one flight of stairs, above a shop selling boots. James Cooney turned out to be a small, wiry man, with cunning eyes and black hair swept straight back. He was making lace.
Silvio introduced himself and asked Cooney if they might have a word in private.
“What about?” said Cooney aggressively.
“A girl named Madeleine.”
“I don’t know anyone of that name.”
“She stole your watch.”
Cooney sneered. “I know who you mean. The whore. So?”
“I want you to drop charges.”
Cooney sneered again. “Not a chance. She was—”
“Are you married?”
The tailor was surprised by the question. “Yes.”
“Children?”
“Ye-e-s. Two. Boy and a girl.”
Silvio spoke in a matter-of-fact voice. “Now, listen to me. If you don’t drop charges, and drop them by the end of the day, I shall break all your fingers, one by one, so you can never make lace again. If Madeleine gets six months in jail—and she will if the charges aren’t dropped—you better start counting your children every day.”
Cooney looked at him in horror. The fact that these threats were delivered without shouting, without emphasis, made them all the more menacing.
The tailor tried to bluster. He couldn’t believe this was happening to him. “Who do you think you are? You scum! You can’t just come in here and—”
“Mr. Cooney, you can call me all the names you like. I don’t mind. But if Madeleine is not released from prison by the end of today, I’ll come back tomorrow and begin to do what I told you. The archbishop will have to go elsewhere for his lace. He gave me your address, by the way.”
It was dawning on Cooney that Silvio’s threats were not idle bravado. “Who are you?” he asked. “How does scum like you know the archbishop?”
Silvio smiled. “He’s going to marry me.”
At that moment Cooney understood who he was dealing with. “You’re marrying the Priola woman?”
Silvio nodded.
Cooney suddenly stood up. “You oughta have said that before.” He put down his lace and his needles. “I’ll go to the jail right now. Don’t worry, I’ll see to it.” And he ran out.
Silvio picked up the strip of lace. He had a feeling he’d be seeing it again soon.
“Silvio? Silvio! Sorry to wake you, but there’s someone to see you.” Stella had stuck her head around the door and was whispering.
Silvio, in his back office at Madge Leigh’s, often tried to doze in the afternoons, since most nights he was out late. He opened one eye and said, “Who is it?”
“A nigger woman.”
He frowned. This was unusual. “Check her for weapons and show her in.” He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and shuffled on his shoes.
A minute later the woman came through the door. She was very black, about fifty he judged, and wore a dark coat over a purple dress and a matching hat. She seemed vaguely familiar.
“Don’t you recognize me?” she said.
He stared at her.
Suddenly she changed her voice and said, “Yo’ wanna gris-gris?”
“Widow Milan!”
Without her voodoo outfit she was certainly very different.
“Come in,” he said. “Sit down.”
She did as she was told, unbuttoning her coat.
“Drink?”
She shook her head. “You said to come if I had an idea. Well, I got me one.”
“Okay. Try me.”
“Man comes to me, says he wants to put the curse on a big gambler, man called Ezra Bell. My man says Bell cheats at cards. My man is nigger leader in railroad construction. Well known and powerful. I figure if you can do somethin’ about Bell, somethin’ public and real nasty, word will get ’round. That’s mah idea.”
“And who is Bell?”
“I understand he’s a captain of one of them steamboats.”
“And where does he play?”
“All along CustomHouse Street. But mainly, I hear, in the back room at Bryce’s, for the mixed-race game, and Mattie Marshall’s, for the white game.”
Silvio smiled. “Mattie’s? Ah well. Widow Milan … how much you charge for gris-gris?”
“Fifty cents. A dollar maybe.”
“I think the price just went up.”
Silvio had never seen the lugger made ready for the river before. He thought of her as a shore craft; but to his untutored eye she seemed shipshape enough. She was to be captained by Cesare Cagliari, one of the head roustabouts on Picayune Pier, and had a crew of four, each of whom was an experienced sailor. Silvio’s job was to make sure they were ready for ten A.M. He had his own pocket watch now, and it showed nine-fifty. All five of them were standing on the levee by the gangplank that led to the lugger, waiting for Angelo to bring the Liotta hostage.
It was the day of the meeting with Vito Liotta. In Sicily, when a meeting had to be arranged between two Mafia Dons, the Buscetta family was called upon. They were an extremely tough Caltanisetta outfit who specialized in security, for which they charged a hefty fee. During high-level meetings, each side would take one member of the Buscettas as hostage. He remained a hostage until both sides returned safely. If anything went wrong, two things happened. First, the Buscettas let it be known that such and such a family was not honorable. Second, they were free to seek revenge. But no one wanted a vendetta with the Buscettas. So usually, little went wrong.
In New Orleans, however, there was no Buscetta family. So, for their meeting, the Priolas and the Liottas had agreed to provide their own hostages. Each hostage would be kept in a secret hideaway—on the lugger in the case of the Priolas. Angelo had agreed that Nino would be the hostage held by the Liotta/Cataldo group. Vincenzo Liotta, Vito’s twenty-one-year-old nephew, who had come to America with him, was to be turned over to Angelo. They were waiting for him now.
The exchange should have taken place at nine-thirty, outside the cathedral. Vincenzo was being brought to the lugger in a curtained carriage driven by Angelo’s driver while Nino was taken to wherever the Liottas had decided to hide him. This was new territory and it was nerve-racking.
Silvio looked at his watch. Nine-fifty-five. They were running late.
Then, suddenly, three men appeared at the top of the levee—Angelo, his driver, and a thin, sallow-skinned man with a purple birthmark on his face. This must be Vincenzo Liotta.
The three men scrambled down the levee. Silvio and Vincenzo exchanged nods, but that was all. Angelo, his driver, and Silvio together looked on in silence as the other men boarded the lugger, and Vincenzo was led inside and locked in the saloon with two bodyguards. Soon the lugger was moving slowly out into the middle of the river. She would sail up and down the Mississippi all day until her crew was given the signal to return. The sign was when the Italian tricolor was raised above the American flag on Picayune Pier.
Angelo and Silvio went back to the carriage. It took them just over an hour to reach Toussaint House, traveling alongside the Carrollton railroad, and via the Pontchartrain Causeway and the Great River Road. Here the levee ran the entire length of the Mississippi to their left, obscuring their view of the river. They saw fields planted with sugar, cotton, tobacco, indigo, sorghum, and hemp, and punctuated with shacks belonging to newly freed black slaves, as well as a few small, rickety, wooden chapels. It reminded Silvio of the poorer areas of Uditore, on the outskirts of Palermo.
At a quarter after eleven they turned off the Great River Road into the avenue of oak trees that led to a large, two-story house with a row of white columns along its façade. Angelo looked out between the curtains of the carriage. “This is Toussaint,” he growled.
As the carriage approached the house an Italian-looking man stepped forward and held up his hand for them to stop, then opened the curtains of the carriage and peered inside. He appeared satisfied. “Mr. Liotta’s in the gar … garçonni�
�re,” he stammered.
Angelo grinned grimly and turned to Silvio. “That’s the side house. Before the Civil War, when the house belonged to one family, if they had guests all the single men stayed in the side house. Good idea, if you ask me. Out of harm’s way. Garçon is French for young man.”
“Sono ragazzo?” Silvio said under his breath. “Am I a child?” A fucking French lesson, at a time like this?
They rode round to the side of the house. Next to a small building stood another carriage. They all got down. “Wait here,” Angelo said to his driver. He led Silvio inside.
The door opened onto a hall, with a polished wooden floor and lush plants growing in pots. Long lace curtains covered the windows and fell in swathes to the ground. Off the hall was a large room, the door to which was open. Angelo went in and Silvio followed. The room inside was long and low, with a large fireplace at one end. Leaning against the fireplace and smoking were two men. As they saw Angelo and Silvio they straightened up, threw their cigarettes into the fireplace, and came forward.
There were no handshakes.
“I’m Vittorio Liotta,” said the smaller of the two men. He was very thin, with fine bones, like a bird, the skin stretched tightly over his skull and jaw, shiny and sleek looking. He had gray eyes set close together, thin eyebrows, thin lips, gray hair. His jaw jutted out slightly. Silvio thought he looked like a cardinal. Vito Liotta’s clothes fitted beautifully, like his skin. Silvio guessed he was about fifty.
“This is Natale Pianello.” The other man was taller, fatter, darker-haired, but with a pale skin, unusual in a Sicilian. He didn’t look nearly as fit, physically or mentally, as Liotta, but his eyes were brown, like the Mississippi, and just as deep. He had a gold ring on the little finger of his left hand. He nodded his head in acknowledgment.
“You know who I am,” said Angelo. “This is Silvio Razzini.”
“Hello, Silvio.” Liotta smiled slightly. The change of surname didn’t fool him.
Liotta pointed past them. They turned. There was a table with four chairs, a jug of water, some fruit. “Shall we?”