With one hand Lenny held Big Vinny’s crumbled note; with the other, he lifted the cardboard-framed photograph from his dresser. A few golden ditalini and tubetti clung to dry patches of paste like remnants of gilded rococo plaster. Frankie had been such an easygoing little boy, unlike his Uncle Tony, who played hooky more often than he went to school, started smoking at 12 years old, experimented with alcohol and drugs, and finished high school and college by the skin of his teeth with constant bribes and threats from Lenny. Lenny’s sisters were no easier. They questioned his authority on everything: clothes, makeup, boys, curfews. In vain, they attempted to circumvent his rules by appealing to Filomena, who never contradicted Lenny in front of his siblings, at least not when they were little. But Frankie had been a piece of cake compared to his uncle and aunts, at least when he was young enough and small enough for Lenny to lift onto his shoulders. Angie had taken the photograph as she followed them onto the beach after a day of Coney Island rides, Nathan’s hotdogs, knishes, and chocolate egg creams. The photo had been placed in a family album with hundreds of other photographs and soon forgotten until Frankie was in kindergarten and made a Mother’s Day frame in school with an assortment of miniature macaroni pasted on cardboard and sprayed gold. After Filomena unwrapped Frankie’s gift to her — a bottle of Jean Nate — he handed Lenny the gilded macaroni frame containing the Coney Island picture. At first Lenny didn’t recognize the photograph, but then he remembered. They had just eaten hotdogs, and the fronts of their t-shirts were covered with mustard. “Good thing your aunt took the picture from behind. I’m told it’s my better side anyway,” Lenny said as he gave Frankie a hug. “This is the best Mother’s Day gift a dad could ask for.”
When he asked Frankie why he had selected this photo, kindergartner Frankie answered simply: “Daddy is strong.”
Lenny placed the picture back on the dresser not feeling very strong and hating himself for having agreed to keep Big Vinny’s money for him. He sat at the edge of his bed. The money was supposed to be for Marie to pay bills in an emergency, not Next Sunday night at 9:00 pm, last stop, Lefferts Blvd. Lenny would have never agreed to be a courier for Big Vinny’s bagman. His chest tightened. It’s not that kind of pain, he thought. Nothing sharp. Not like his father’s pain. Just another panic attack.
Lenny took the bottle of Valium from his pocket, swallowed a pill without water, and lay back on his bed. With the shades drawn and his room dark, it was easy for him to imagine the warehouse behind the store on a warm evening over 18 years ago, and his anxiety turned to longing for Vi. So many years had passed, and yet she was still his Carmen. Even when he made love to other women, he imagined Vi. Had she stayed, maybe time would have eased his passion for her. Maybe he would have imagined others when their lovemaking became routine. But she left, and to Lenny she remained the young, impulsive, and exciting woman he made love to in the warehouse behind the store. In the dark of his bedroom, though at first it was easy for Lenny to rise to memories of Vi, they were only memories and couldn’t compete with his angst over being trapped in one of Big Vinny’s schemes. Only a real woman, not a memory, might have provided some respite. Lenny thought of Angelina Zeppole, but the Feast of the Assumption was long over.
The following week dragged. Lunches with Doug felt burdensome, and Frankie spent far too much time at the DiCicos. Lenny lived on Valium until the following Sunday came, and again he closed the store at the usual time, allowing customers who attended noon Mass enough time for last-minute dinner shopping, but, more importantly, to avoid the questions that closing early would have invited.
Having left the smell of the store at the bottom of the clothes hamper, Lenny showered, shaved, splashed on Old Spice, and dressed in clean clothes. He shut himself in his office and opened the safe where Big Vinny’s money hid beneath three generations of Lasante archives — certificates of citizenship, births, baptisms, communion, confirmation, marriages and deaths, deeds, wills, and a stack of photographs. He removed two brown envelopes from the safe and tossed them on his desk. Under the desk light he could see that one envelope was old and worn. The other was new. He lifted the newer one, opened the flap and saw that it contained cash. He didn’t remember it being so heavy. Big Vinny must have been thinking more hurricane than rainy day. And of course he was correct.
The flap of the older envelope was torn, exposing the top of a photograph, which caught Lenny’s eye. There were several photographs in it — all had been taken in Sicily — and letters that he hadn’t seen since years earlier when Leonardo had told him the names of the people in the pictures and had explained that the letters were correspondence between himself and Big Vinny’s Grandfather Salvatore about Big Vinny’s father, Giacomo, coming to live in America.
The Lasante-DiCico connection went back to a small town outside of Taormina, Sicily, where Leonardo Lasante and Salvatore DiCico had been childhood friends. After Mussolini gained power in Italy, Salvatore’s older son went underground to join the anti-fascist resistance, and though Giacomo was only 13 at the time, he was also strongly anti-fascist like his older brother. Lenny’s family had already been established in America, and after Leonardo learned that Giacomo had been found in a pigsty, beaten and bloodied, he not only paid for the boy’s passage to America, but also raised him as a second son. From their early teens, Vincenzo and Giacomo grew up under the same roof as brothers.
Lenny long felt it was ironic that the once highly moralistic, anti-fascist Giacomo fathered a son like Big Vinny, but he also thought it ironic that Leonardo’s generosity had the unforeseen, dangerous consequences of putting Lenny in the position he now found himself.
Behind the letters were more pictures that Lenny didn’t recognize — very stylized professional photographs, some were of nude teenage boys taken by the photographer Wilhelm von Gloeden. Curious photos, but at the time Lenny had more pressing matters on his mind, and he tossed the older envelope including the photos and letters back into the safe.
He didn’t know the specifics, but he surmised that there was a link between the money and Big Vinny getting out of jail. If there were crooked politicians or judges to be bought, Big Vinny would sniff them out, and Lenny wondered if Big Vinny had money stashed elsewhere and how many stooges he was dragging into his scheme.
The faces on the old family portraits surrounding Lenny appeared more disapproving than usual, especially his parents’ wedding portrait. Vincenzo, much younger than Lenny remembered him, but with the same determined eyes, and Filomena slimmer and with black hair, but even as a bride, dressed in satin and lace, she looked as if she could smell bullshit a mile away.
“You think I don’t know that something can go wrong,” Lenny mumbled. “I’m not doing this for Vinny. He can rot in jail for all I care, but there’s his family to think of and Frankie. Whether we like it or not, what affects Gennaro affects Frankie.”
“Enough!” Lenny shouted and stood, wedged the envelope with money in the inside pocket of his sports jacket and babbled: “I’m sitting here arguing with dead people? You’re dead. Stay dead. This is my decision.”
Frankie’s voice came from the dining room. “Who are you talking to?”
“Myself,” Lenny snapped. “When did you get home?”
Frankie stepped into the office. “It sounded like you were arguing.”
“Yeah, well sometimes I don’t get along with me. You think that you’re the only one I give a hard time? I’m fine. In fact, I’m so fine that I’m going out today. I think I’ll take in a movie. Maybe I’ll take the subway into Manhattan and see a play. You’re on your own for supper. Okay?”
Lenny grabbed Frankie’s arm and directed him from the office back into the house.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Frankie said. “Maybe I should go with you.”
“I’m fine.”
Frankie, looking unconvinced, followed Lenny to the front door. Lenny gave Frankie a hug, pulled the front door closed behind him, and walked to the train station.
> 13
They sat cross-legged on the threadbare oriental carpet and shone flashlights into the open safe while Frankie removed jars of silver dollars and Indian-head pennies, and Gennaro said: “I hope my old man’s not planning to buy his way out of prison with that.” Earlier Gennaro had let himself into the Lasante’s house after he knocked and no one answered the door.
“That’s what you get for leaving the front door unlocked. You never know what kind of pervert will sneak up on you,” Gennaro said when he startled Frankie. He leaned over Frankie’s shoulder. “What are you doing?”
“College stuff. My father won’t leave me alone until all these applications are in.”
Listening was not Gennaro’s strength, but he seemed even more distracted than usual. He slipped a wet finger in Frankie’s ear, then flopped back on Frankie’s bed. “So where did your old man go?”
“Who said he went anywhere?”
“Come on, Francesco ... you know that you can’t fart on this block without someone smelling it.”
“Meaning the DiCicos know everything,” Frankie said.
“Now you sound like your old man.” Gennaro got up and walked to Frankie’s bedroom window, which overlooked Big Vinny’s club. His jaw pulsed. “Those pricks are snooping around again,” he said. “They’ve been asking neighbors about that fucking cabbie.”
Frankie joined Gennaro at the window. Across 91st Avenue, one plain-clothes officer sat in a parked black sedan while two others unlocked the padlocks and entered the club.
“They weren’t there when my father left for Manhattan,” Frankie said.
“So your old man did go out.”
Less than an hour passed since Frankie had come upon Lenny arguing with himself in the office. He had sensed something was up, but now he was convinced of it.
“Since when do you care about where my father goes?”
“Look, I didn’t come here to argue with you.” Gennaro gave Frankie’s crotch a squeeze, but Frankie pushed his hand away.
“Guess all this college stuff is making you cranky.” Then Gennaro threw his arm around Frankie’s shoulder and asked real sweet if Frankie happened to know the combination to the safe in Lenny’s office.
Again, Frankie pushed him away, but this time he told Gennaro to either tell him what’s going on or go home and squeeze his own damn crotch.
“I promised your old man that I wouldn’t say anything to you, but I don’t have time for games. My old man gave Lenny an envelope some time ago. I don’t know when. He said that Lenny put it in the safe. I have to make sure that it’s not there.”
“Why don’t you want it to be where he put it?” This made no sense to Frankie. He went back to his laptop and pressed save.
Gennaro tightened his lips and rolled his eyes as if Frankie were a complete idiot. He yanked the shade down on Frankie’s window, but instead it snapped and rolled back up to the top. “Because Lenny is supposed to give it to someone tonight. That’s why.”
“That’s crazy,” Frankie said. “You know my father would never do anything like that.”
“Exactly.” This time Gennaro lowered the shade carefully. “That’s what’s been eating at me. That’s why I need to see if he took the envelope with him.”
“Why do you keep messing with that damn shade?”
“Because I don’t want to see those fuckers going in and out of my old man’s club?”
“Then stop looking out of the damn window.”
“I’m not looking out the window. Do you know the combination to the safe or not?”
Frankie sighed. “When is my father supposed to make this drop?”
Gennaro rolled his eyes again. “No one said anything about a drop. If you don’t want to be treated like a fucking kid, then stop asking silly questions. I just want to see if he took the envelope with him. That’s all.” Gennaro went from the window to the door and stepped out into the hallway.
Frankie grabbed a hoodie from the pile of dirty laundry spilling out of his closet, pulled it over his head, and brushed past Gennaro.
“Come on. I think I can remember it.”
Now as they sat on the floor in the office and sorted through stacks of papers under flashlights, the only envelopes they came across were relics held together with yellow tape and rubber bands. “My father must have taken it with him,” Frankie said.
“I should have trusted that your old man would come through for us. Our families got a lot of history. Your old man can get all uppity, but when it comes down to it we’re like blood, better than blood.” This time when Gennaro reached for Frankie’s crotch and slipped his other hand under his hoodie, Frankie not only let him, but reciprocated, and right there atop Lasante archives, with the old safe agape, and under the disapproving stares of ancestors, Frankie and Gennaro made love.
Afterwards they gathered papers strewn across the rug. Gennaro picked up a marriage certificate stained with a drop of seamen. “Well I guess our marriage has been consummated,” Gennaro said.
“Give me that, you jackass,” Frankie said, and he wiped the certificate with a tissue and added it to the pile of documents he was about to return to the safe. He picked up some photographs that had spilled from an old torn brown envelope. Some were caught in the folds of Frankie and Gennaro’s clothes, which were also strewn across the carpet.
“Must be relatives from Sicily,” Frankie said, while Gennaro stood naked in the glow of his cell phone. “Johnny Pickle texted me. He wants to know where we are. Should I tell him we’re butt naked rolling around in your old man’s office?”
Frankie ignored Gennaro’s comment and kept skimming through the photographs. “Probably some DiCicos too,” Frankie said.
Gennaro looked up from his phone.
“Some of the photographs are printed on cardboard. This one is of a young girl with big eyes like those Keane paintings we studied in art.”
“You mean, you studied,” Gennaro said.
The girl sat on stone steps against a stone building. Her bare toes peeked out beneath the frayed edge of her checkered skirt, and her fingertips rested along the neck of a water vessel. Frankie handed the postcard to Gennaro. “Beautiful, isn’t she?”
“Pretty enough to be a DiCico,” Gennaro said. “Although she probably borrowed those raggedy clothes from a Lasante.”
Frankie examined another photograph under the flashlight, a close up of a girl whose black eyes were even larger and more enigmatic than the girl’s in the previous picture. She held a basket of figs, and a translucent shawl was draped over her shoulders. “These pictures must have been taken by a professional photographer, probably an artist. They look like something from a museum,” Frankie said.
“Like you. A regular David, except better hung,” Gennaro said as he reached for Frankie’s crotch, but Frankie pulled away.
“David is a sculpture not a picture,” Frankie answered, and continued to thumb through the photos, but slowed down when he came to the photographs of boys no older than Gennaro and he — several looked younger. Some wore togas, some wore wreaths in their hair, some had leaves covering their private parts, but some were completely nude. All of the photographs were sepia and seductive.
“Holy crap,” Frankie said. “This photographer must have been some kind of a porn artist ... or pervert ... or both.”
Several scenes were distant, the subjects’ features unclear, but there were also close-ups of solitary subjects or pairs or threesomes. In one picture, a boy stared dreamily, his head slightly askew, while a blossom dangled from his pouted lips. An open robe fell from his lightly muscled shoulders. In another, a boy sat on a rock outcropping bracketed with cacti. Two diminutive horns poked out from his thick curly mane. Frankie shifted the flashlight back and forth between the two photographs.
“Look at these,” he said, and shoved the pictures into Gennaro’s hands. Frankie stood and pulled the chain hanging from the bare light bulb above them, and the harsh light from the bare bulb turned what had be
en their soft and shadowy nakedness into patches of pimples, blemishes, and rug burns, not to mention Gennaro’s scars from the explosion. “Who do these guys look like?”
“Like two wops, one with horns and one with ... hey the guy eating the flower looks like you.”
“And look a little closer at the guy with the horns,” Frankie said.
“Holy crap!”
“Exactly, these guys could be our twins.”
Frankie took the photo of the dreamy-eyed boy from out of Gennaro’s hand and held it up next to a portrait of his great-grandparents, Leonardo and Lucia, taken upon their arrival to Ellis Island. “This kid must be my great-grandfather when he was a teenager, and I bet the guy with the horns is your great-grandfather.”
“Makes sense that my great-grandfather was the horny guy,” Gennaro said and he squeezed Frankie’s butt. “But I look like my mother’s side of the family.”
“Maybe just your coloring, lighter hair and eyes.” Frankie scanned the still shadowy walls with his searchlight. “There. There’s a picture of our great-grandfathers in Taormina. Probably taken just before my great-grandparents came to America.”
The men in the photographs were slightly older than the boys in the picture and their pose was sterner, like so many old photographs. They stood beneath what looked like a lemon tree.
Gennaro placed the photo of the boy with the diminutive horns next to the great grandfathers’ picture. Frankie shined the flashlight on both of them.
Most Precious Blood Page 9