I proposed a toast to Claudia’ success, and we settled in for the next show. The five-man band came in hot and kept cooking, serving up one hard-driving bebopper after another. The night just kept getting better. Soon enough, the Prosecco was bottom’s up. I’d mixed several types of booze by then, and lots of it, but I was still riding skyward.
The band took a short respite to tune their instruments between pieces, the horn player delving into a story about Benny Golson, then riffing into a monologue about some cat who “was into the horses and very much against manual labor.”
Claudia took the moment to make a quick dash to the ladies’ room. As the door swung shut behind her, the drummer smacked his stick once and the piano player launched into a two-chord refrain. The bass kicked in next, then the saxophonist came in over the top with a smooth, familiar groove. I rolled right with the wave, feeling the music, riding the high.
Fishnets arrived at the table with a bright red smile, then placed another bottle on the table. I took one look at it and begged off.
“Thanks so much, hon, but tell Pauly I’m halfway to the stars already.”
She shook me off. “He didn’t send it.”
I felt my eyebrows arching. “Oh?”
“No. The gentleman over in Booth One—by the back door there—he sent it.”
She pointed across the room. I sat up high, my eyes following her hand through the murk to a half-moon banquette, my head still bouncing lightly to the killer vibe of the quintet as I sought out some generous fan or friend of Frank. At first, I could only make out a coven of steely-eyed men, tight faces blued by the stage lights and smoke pall. Then a man in the middle cocked his chin toward me and waved casually. I smiled as I squinted to see who it was, then sucked in my breath when I did.
Forty feet away, from the depths of Al Capone’s former roost, gunmetal eyes glared at me with an intensity that cut right through the indigo gloom, the teeth beneath them glinting like a scythe on Vinnie Bo’palazzo’s cold, hard face.
54
If ever there was a message in a bottle, Bo’palazzo had sent it. I knew his boss had a connection with Claudia, and his crew had tried to massage my temples for me earlier in the day, so it was unlikely a coincidence that the boys were present in numbers.
Then again, Frank was good with those people, and they weren’t going to make a move in a crowded club; that stuff went out with Capone and Bugs Moran. Maybe they were just there to watch the apple of Carpaccio’s eye for him. Mob guys get jobs like that.
I gave Vinnie the cement face while I sat there weighing the thing out in my head and sobering up quick. The odds for either scenario weren’t evenly matched, but there was a reasonable possibility for either case. In the end it was a push.
I decided to push back. Running wasn’t going to work, not with Claudia being booked for a week—and it wasn’t my style anyway. I was cruising on jet fuel by that time and feeling flinty, but it wasn’t the time or place for a fight either.
There was, however, nothing wrong with improving my hand. I snagged fishnets at the next table and asked her to pop into the restroom and tell Claudia to meet me by the bar. That got us out of the corner, and a lot closer to the front door if anything broke bad. The narrow space between the bar and the nearby wall booths, crowded with customers as it was, would whittle down Bo’palazzo’s operating room if he did try a muscle play.
When fishnets went into the restroom, I got up and walked to the front of the club without looking over. A nice-looking young couple at the bar eagerly agreed to take my booth in exchange for their seats along the rail. I parked myself on one of the brown vinyl chairs, leaned across the wood, and signaled with my hand. Pauly smiled when he saw me. The big Pole walked over, ignoring several drink requests as he came, stopping across from me and raising both hands, palms up.
“Table service not good enough for ya?”
I swiveled my head. “I might be in a spot. Got some unfriendlies in the club. I think it’ll be okay, but I’d feel a lot better with you watching my back. Whatsay?”
“Like you even had to ask,” he answered, leaning down to eyeball something beneath the bar.
“Thanks, pal.”
“Natch.”
Claudia arrived in short order, after stopping along the way to talk with several people offering congratulations. When she finally made it to the bar, her face betrayed no alarm. That was just as well as I had no interest in upsetting her where she worked. Best-case scenario we’d have a drink, chat a little, and slip out into a cab without interference from the Outfit. Who knew, maybe they were just there at Frank’s request too.
My plan worked.
For about five minutes.
I did my part, sitting quietly on my stool, nursing an ice water and killing a Lucky as we watched the musicians play another Jazztet standard, my hand on top of Claudia’s, both of them resting on her hip. Then one of Bo’palazzo’s heavies drifted over a few seats down the line, whispered into some guy’s ear, and took the seat that opened up. Pauly was watching. Our eyes met for half a second. Maybe the guy saw, maybe he didn’t.
I leaned over close to Claudia, whispered, “What do you say we get out of here, bellissima?” into her ear.
She turned, surprised, her large brown eyes interrogating me as she pleaded, “Can’t we stay until they are done?”
I chewed my lip, stole a glance toward the door, caught the bouncer eyeing me a little too closely. Clouds parted in my head as the adrenaline began to trickle somewhere inside me, the dull taste of iron crowding out the whiskey on my tongue. “I think we better go.”
She crossed me up then. “Bo’palazzo? You worry about him? He’s just here to watch me—like always.”
“Well, he doesn’t look like much of a music lover to me.”
She sipped her drink, smiled bitterly. “He watches me for Carpaccio.”
I gestured with both hands. “Would you mind telling me what the hell that guy has on you? There can’t be any way that you’d ever be interested in him, I know that.”
Her top lip flattened as those almond-shaped eyes curved into ovals. “Quel animale? Don’t make me laugh.”
I moved in close, squeezed her wrist. “So what is it then? What could there possibly be between you two?”
Claudia pulled her hand away, smacked it on the bar in frustration, her face screwed up tight. She turned toward me suddenly, spat out, “Un contratto, okay?” Then she looked away, pounding the bar softly with her fist several times.
“A contract? That’s what this is about—a singing contract? Can’t you break it?”
She shook her head with a short, violent twist. “No! Listen, my family didn’t have any money after the war—niente—and many mouths to feed. When I was fourteen, my father made a deal with a man in Naples to promote me. A powerful man, Joe, a very powerful man. Mi hai capito?”
“Camorra?” I asked, broaching the name of the fearsome Neapolitan mob outfit.
“Sì,” she replied ruefully. A shiny dab beaded up in the corner of her eye. “I work many years in shitty clubs, but the Camorra never gave me a chance, even though I begged them to help me or let me go to America. When they are finally convinced I won’t make it, they let me go, but they sell the contract to that pig Carpaccio. So now I am in the ‘beeg time’ in America, but still they own me, same as always.”
She palmed a tear before it could fall, gazed emptily into the mirror behind the bar. “Same as it will always be.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“Now you understand, ahh?” she said, the hard edge of recrimination plainly evident in her voice.
“Yeah. He takes half of what you make over here. You break the deal, they go after your family back home. But listen, baby, Frank went through that. He could—”
She chopped me cold. “Frank Sinatra has no control over these people whatsoever. His �
��great friend’ Giancana, do you think he pays Frank for these appearances he puts in? That is a laugh! Frank is a big shot, sure, but he’s just another puppet on a very long string. This I promise you. I know.”
She turned and faced the bar again, sitting perfectly still except for the very small shakes of her head she made as she silently cursed the Fates.
The quintet was still bopping in the background, the occasional clink of a glass or muffled chuckle rising above the low buzz of the crowd. Cigar smoke and good cheer were in the air, the Green Mill cooking as usual. It might have been a great night for everyone else in the house, but just then I couldn’t stop the floor from falling away beneath me as the weight of her words sank home.
We sat in silence for several minutes. Claudia asked me for a cigarette, the first one I’d seen her smoke since we’d met. I lit it for her and watched her pull on it several times as she stared vacantly at the band. She ordered a shot of Canadian Club from Pauly, hammered it, then backed it with another. I stuck to my ice water. There was nothing more to be said or done at the moment.
Finally, she turned to me, took my hand, kissed it. “Grazie, Giuseppe, I am sorry to be mean to you.”
“Stai calma, bella,” I chided gently, shushing her. “Frank’s a little more independent than you think—and he’s got a friend named Jack whose brother Bobby has some serious pull. We’re going to straighten this thing out with Mr. Carpaccio. This I promise you.”
I leaned over and kissed her lightly on the cheek, clasped her hand. She kissed me back. Once gently, and then again, like she did at the pier. If there’d been a check to pay, I’d have called for it right there.
Then a voice behind me sneered, “Oh, isn’t that sweet? Mr. Carpaccio’s gonna love this little romance.”
There was no need to turn around. It was Bo’palazzo, the roach in the punch bowl.
I turned my head the three inches it took to give him the knife edge of my eye. “Blow, Vinnie.”
His chortle rang like a Klaxon above the music. “You’re in no position to be handing out orders, Buonomo.”
Some unknowing guy in the crowd shushed him loudly.
I spun around and eyed the pin-striped Mafioso and the sharkskin duo behind him, one of them Leonardi of Four Deuces infamy. “You talk pretty big with those piano movers behind you, don’t ya, Vin?”
He jabbed a finger into my shoulder. “And you talk pretty big behind Frank Sinatra, flyboy.”
Things were unspooling fast. I was drunk, and he looked as if he’d been hitting the tiger’s milk pretty good too. The testosterone was flowing like the Old Style in there. It was only a matter of time.
In the mirror behind Bo’palazzo, I caught a flash of Pauly’s image moving in.
I slapped Vinnie’s hand away hard. “Listen, faccia di cazz’, I stand in front of Sinatra, not the other way around. Who stands in front of you when things go down, tough guy?”
Bo’palazzo’s sneer faded into a contemptuous smile. “We all stand together.”
He made a sweep of his arm. “The boys here stand with me, I stand with Carpaccio, Carpaccio stands with Giancana. And, just in case you forgot how things work in our world, a Giancana trumps a Sinatra any day—hands down.”
I gestured toward Leonardi. “You’re down a couple of cards already by my count. Your Giancana trump didn’t help them. Maybe you might wanna fold this time.”
“Don’t you worry,” he grinned. “Tonto will get his, too. You both will.”
Claudia tried to intercede then, but I was past that. I put a hand on her shoulder and gently pushed her back. People on either side of us had begun to move away as well, Vinnie’s simians stepping into the vacated spaces. I could hear my voice rising, feel my pulse pinging like sonar.
“We can talk about that tomorrow with Momo. But right now, I am trying to have a drink with a lady. Just leave me and Miss Cucciabella the hell alone and we can all go on our way tonight.”
Bo’palazzo sucked in his lower lip, exhaled hard, fixed me with a wicked stare. “For a guy with a playmate who belongs to us, you certainly have a lot to say, Buonomo. You might want to think about keeping that big mouth of yours shut and not saying anything at all about Mr. Giancana—for Miss Cucciabella’s sake and your family’s.”
That tore it. I shoved two fingers in his face. “You go anywhere near her or anyone in my family and I will air-drop chunks of you on Sam Giancana.”
The shock hit him like a slap to the face. He recoiled at my words, reaching reflexively into his jacket.
Vinnie shot a look toward his henchmen then back at me, charcoal eyes fully dilated, cold rage burning in them as he struggled to control himself. Though his lips barely moved, I heard his gravelly words as they ground slowly past his teeth, “Don’t be so sure Sam won’t take you down just because you’re Sinatra’s boy, ’cuz, brother, you just earned it right there.”
I glanced down at his chest, at the butt of the pistol in his hand peeking halfway out of his suit coat. Several nearby patrons were actively pushing away now, their eyes wide with concern.
Pauly whispered something to Claudia I couldn’t make out. I knew I should stop, but we were already so far beyond the line by that point.
I scoffed at Bo’palazzo’s bluff, laughed in his face. “You gonna use that thing? Here—in a room full of people?”
Vinnie fingered the gun in his hand, stole another glance at his backup. Then he relaxed his arm, still maintaining a loose hold on his piece.
I stepped in close, nose to nose, looking over his lavender dress shirt and polka-dot tie. “Then put it away,” I whispered, “you fucking clown.”
This is where everything went sideways.
55
Bo’palazzo went for his weapon. I popped him with a straight left before he broke leather, snapping him backward.
The other two came at me, guns up. I heard Claudia gasp, then Pauly yelling my name above the fray as what Thursday’s Daily News would dub the “Uproar in Uptown” broke free.
In the mirror, I saw rapid movement behind the bar. I ducked fast, catching a glimpse of Pauly sweeping down with a bat like old number 8 of the White Sox. He clocked Leonardi and the other guy with one clout, dark blood spraying out as they both buckled amid the roar of a pistol and the shower of splinters that erupted from the wooden light fixture an instant later.
The gunshot galvanized the house. What had been a grooving, buzzing throng exploded into a Chinese fire drill, the music cutting short like a jerked needle across a 78 as the musicians dove for cover, screaming people stampeding for exits, shoving everyone every which way, bodies tumbling down amid the chaos.
Pauly was up and over the bar, driving his war club down on one of the goons with a thud so profound you could feel it. I clawed my way upstream along the rail, reached for Claudia, took a hard overhand hook from the bouncer that staggered me. Pauly wheeled, buried the Louisville Slugger in Five by Five’s gut.
A hoarse rush escaped the bouncer’s lungs. He went purple, wavered a beat, and then just kind of hung there, his mouth making little gasping sounds. I drove one into the side of his fat head and he just folded down like a Murphy bed between us. He hit the floor and then he didn’t move.
Other pockets of fighting had broken out across the room. They might have been Frank’s guys, they might have been Vinnie’s, they could have been anyone’s really. Couples were darting between the pugilists, desperately trying to reach the exits. It was a Pier Nine brawl by that time.
Leonardi struggled to his feet, his nose in a new zip code. There was a crash of breaking glass and a spray of whiskey, then dark night veiled his eyes. Claudia emerged behind him as he fell, broken neck of the CC bottle in hand, her eyes blazing like Pallas Athene’s on the plains of Troy.
The hand to hand went on and on. Bo’palazzo was against the far wall, trading punches with some bohunk in a bowl
ing shirt. I kept trying to get a poke at him, but somebody would either crash into one of us or I’d have to grab Claudia to keep her out of harm’s way as she kicked and flailed at Carpaccio’s crew. Twice, I picked her up and tossed her on the bar. Each time, someone grabbed me from behind and tried to go Greco-Roman on me.
It might’ve gone that way all night, but then there was a wail of a siren, the screech of tires out on Broadway, and the shrill pitch of a beat cop’s whistle as he burst in the side door on Lawrence. Prohibition couldn’t have been any wilder.
Pauly and I froze, staring at each other like kids caught smoking in the bathroom. “Joe,” he yelled, “the trapdoor! Straight out at the bottom, you’ll come up in the Aragon. Take Claudia! Go now!”
I was over the woodwork in a heartbeat, signaling Claudia to follow me, scooping her up as she slid across the ancient bar top and into my arms.
Bluejackets were pouring in through the front door now, nightsticks high as they whacked at all comers, shoving fleeing bodies back inside, felons and citizens all one and alike to them. I gaped at the calamity for a second then grabbed the iron ring in the floorboards and yanked up hard. The light came on, revealing the stairway below.
I snatched Claudia’s hand, reached back up to the counter for a fifth of Four Roses, and then ducked down into the abyss, pulling the trapdoor down hard behind us as we descended from the mayhem into a netherworld of shadows and silence.
56
It was tomb quiet down there. Above us, there was muffled yelling and banging and the howl of sirens, but all was still below. Only our labored breathing broke the quiet of the dank air.
My Kind of Town Page 19