“I had my own horse when I was a boy in Catanzia,” Dominic Laviano said finally.
Mario could feel the money now. “The church doors of your sister are very beautiful,” he said.
“They saved her life,” Dominic said.
The two sat at the counter and talked about home for an hour. Across the street, Big Jelly twisted uncomfortably in the cold in his parked car. He and Tony the Indian had been there for two hours on the odd chance that Baccala might drop in to the club and see his friend Dominic. Every ten days or so, Baccala showed up at the Andrea Doria Club for coffee and messages.
“What’s the priest doin’ in there for so long?” Tony the Indian said.
“He’s robbing that old man Dominic, what do you think he’s doin’?” Big Jelly said. “Look at him. You could see he got more con in him than a legitimate thief.”
At nine o’clock the fencing ended. Dominic took one more look at the picture of the ragamuffin in the lot. Eyes misting, Dominic told Don Mario, as he called him now, that he would have a contribution for him at four o’clock the next afternoon. Mario blessed him and left.
He walked across the street and he was almost up to the car when he remembered the subway was the other way and he turned around.
Big Jelly looked at Mario closely. “Young priest. I didn’t think they hung out with old greaseballs like Dominic,” he said.
“He could have them,” Tony the Indian said.
“Let’s go home,” Big Jelly said.
Mario barely slept. He was back at 3:30 the next afternoon. Dominic came into the club with a stack of envelopes that were stamped and addressed to Father Marsalano. He showed the insides of the envelopes to Mario. In each, wrapped in paper, was a ten-dollar bill. “I mail them all,” Dominic said. “If a letter gets lost, then we don’t lose all the moneys.” He asked Mario for the picture. During the night Dominic had woken up with a sharp chest pain. He was afraid it was the Lord, not marinara sauce. On the back of the picture Dominic wrote Baccala’s name and the address of the trucking company. “I tell him you come to see him,” Dominic said. Dominic felt better about the chest pain now. He was sure he had just saved his soul.
“Grazie,” Mario said. He held out his hand. Dominic handed him the picture. Mario held out his hand for the envelopes. Dominic sniffed. He led Mario out of the club and up to a mailbox on the next corner. “You watch, I mail,” Dominic said. He stuffed the envelopes into the box. Mario smiled and shook hands good-by. Dominic went back to the fruit-and-vegetable store. Mario pretended to head for the subway. Dominic went into the store. Mario ducked into a doorway.
An hour and a half later the mail truck pulled up, and the driver was starting to shovel the letters into his bag when a hand came past his nose and started digging into the box.
“Scoose, please.”
“Hey!” the mailman said. He grabbed the hand. He let go when he saw it was a priest. “Oh, I’m sorry, Father. Can I help you?”
“I mail all the letters and I forget to put something in them,” Mario said. “I need back.”
“Father, I’m not supposed to …”
Mario’s hand kept digging. “Ah, here they are,” he said. He grabbed a stack of Dominic Laviano’s envelopes. “See, they addressed to my pastor, Don Giuseppe Marsalano,” Mario said. “I send, but I forget to put inside.”
“All right, Father,” the mailman said. “Just don’t say I let you do this. It’s a big violation.”
Mario counted the envelopes on the way home in the subway. There were fifty envelopes. He took forty of them, pulled out the ten-dollar bills, and ripped up the envelopes. At the Second Avenue stop he dropped the remaining ten into the mailbox. He walked with his hand over the $400 in his pocket. In the coffee shop he looked over Father Marsalano’s list. There were a number of women on it. Women are less suspicious than men, he knew. He wouldn’t even need his priest’s suit with the women. They would trust him to mail the envelopes himself. He ordered a meat-loaf dinner. The sign said it was $1.65, the most money Mario had spent for food. Soon he would spend much more, he told himself.
Kid Sally Palumbo was in the office. A cigarette was hanging from his mouth. The smoke ran up in front of his eyes.
Angela opened the door. “Well?” she said.
“Getoutahere, I thinkin’,” Kid Sally said.
“Just think of one person,” she said. She held up a finger. “One is all that it takes. Get Baccala, and the rest will fall in line.” She shut the door.
“She’s right,” Kid Sally said. “This is one-hit proposition. We can’t go after everybody. We just concentrate on the boss.”
“Whatever you say,” Big Jelly said. He picked up a paper bag of chopped meat from the butcher’s. He opened the door to the cellar. There was a low roar from the lion, which was at the foot of the stairs. Big Jelly threw the bag of chopped meat. At the bottom of the stairs two lion paws snatched it. Big Jelly started to close the door. The lion’s smell rolled up the stairs and hit him in the face. Big Jelly turned blue. Everybody in the office put a hand to his mouth and started to choke. Big Jelly just did get the door closed before the odor smothered them.
“Somebody got to train the lion,” Big Jelly said.
“I never dreamt of the lion goin’ to the bat’room,” Kid Sally said.
“He could kill you quicker than anything they got in the drugstore,” Big Jelly said.
“Look,” Kid Sally said, “somebody figure out about the bat’room. I got to try and think like Baccala.” He began hitting himself on the forehead to make his head think.
On the other side of Brooklyn, Baccala’s manicured fingernails tapped his desk. He looked down at the desk as if it were a sand table. He saw all the great maneuvers of war spread in front of him.
“We just go slow,” he said. “So far, it’s nice. The other punks, they run around. They think they cowboys. We just go slow and we get every one of them.” He leaned forward. “And I strangle Kid Sally personal!”
He got up to leave. Then he looked at the group of black suits standing around the office. “Somebody take a ride down-a their street. Be careful. Just look. You never know. They all craz’. Maybe one of them be standin’ right there for you. Go see.”
On Marshall Street the next afternoon, nobody was around. Who could get shot if he’s not around to get shot at? Kid Sally’s cousin Carmine Palumbo and Beppo the Dwarf were on guard in the office. Beppo had performed his duty. He had stolen two license plates in Staten Island. Carmine Palumbo was waiting around to kill somebody. They sat for an hour. Then Beppo the Dwarf’s nose crinkled like a rabbit’s. Carmine Palumbo’s nose looked like a saxophone. He took a deep breath. When the air finally got up to the top of Carmine’s nose, his eyes watered. The lion’s smell had come all the way up the cellar stairs and was all over the office now. Five hundred cats on a rainy day could not match the lion in Kid Sally Palumbo’s cellar.
“I can’t take this,” Carmine Palumbo said. He took a beach chair and set it up on the sidewalk in front of the office. Beppo the Dwarf came out and sat on the stoop.
“We better keep a eye open,” Beppo the Dwarf said. “Who could tell?”
“I keep a eye open,” Carmine Palumbo said. “I also want to keep my nose open. Jeez, that lion could put you on the critical list. Maybe the son-of-a-bitch don’t bite good, but he sure as hell knows how to go to the bat’room.”
Carmine Palumbo sat there with his eyes open, watching everything on the block, for about fifteen minutes. Because he could not concentrate on anything, even nothing, for any longer than this, Carmine Palumbo leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes.
Beppo the Dwarf was sitting on the stoop, looking at his fingernails, he was just looking at his fingernails, when the corner of his eye saw these two cars rushing down the street, rushing along close to the curb. The windshields showed both cars were filled with heads. Beppo let out a yell and threw himself back over a railing. Carmine Palumbo opened his eyes and he was
pulling himself upright in the beach chair when the cars slowed and the lead car came up even with Carmine Palumbo in the beach chair. Carmine Palumbo saw machine guns coming out the front and back windows. The scene was just about to register in his mind when the machine guns blew Carmine through the back of the beach chair.
PALUMBO—Carmine. Unexpectedly. Greatly loved son of the late Joseph Palumbo and Teresa Palumbo. Dearly beloved brother of Alphonse, Anthony, Nicholas, Michael, and Pasquale Palumbo and Mrs. Loretta DeSalvio. Mourned uncle of Danny DeSalvio. May St. Michael the Archangel recognize his great strength. Reposing CAMPION’S Funeral Home, Inc., 56 Lockman Street, Brooklyn. Interment Tuesday 10 a.m. Private.
On the second night of the wake, late in the going, when Toregressa’s wife had shrieked herself into laryngitis, Beppo the Dwarf stood in front of Carmine Palumbo in the casket.
“It’s all on account of the rat bastard lion,” Beppo the Dwarf wailed.
In the afternoon, after Carmine Palumbo’s funeral, Joe Mangoni was driving along Flatbush Avenue, humming and slapping his right hand against the steering wheel in time to the music on the car radio. Joe felt very bad about losing his good friend Carmine, but the music coming into the car was making him feel better. A great scream came out of the radio: James Brown singing. Joe Mangoni began slamming his hand hard against the steering wheel. He glanced at the clock. He was right on time. At four o’clock every day Joe Mangoni came into the College Diner, right down the block from Saint Joseph’s College, and he had coffee and a Danish and he collected money. Customers who owed shylock payments shuffled in, handed him the money, and walked out. Joe Mangoni always liked to collect money, even though it was just money he turned over to somebody else. But today Joe Mangoni had come up with a very terrific idea. Normally he collected the money and gave it to one of Baccala’s messengers. But now, being that he was with Kid Sally Palumbo and being that there was all this trouble, Joe Mangoni would not see any of Baccala’s messengers. This means, Joe Mangoni reasoned, that if there is no messenger to give the money to, and if you still collect the money, then the money is yours.
“Smart guys do good when there’s trouble,” Joe Mangoni said out loud in the car. He looked at himself in the mirror. “You look real smart, baby,” he said.
Joe parked his car on a side street and walked around to the diner, which was on the avenue. Only a couple of people were in the diner. “Hi, guys,” Joe said to the countermen when he walked in. The countermen stared at him. When Joe ordered coffee, the counterman was so nervous he nearly scalded himself.
“What’s the matter, you get nervous in the service?” Joe said. He laughed. This was one of Joe’s best jokes.
Two priests came walking across the avenue from the block the college was on. The priests wore black fedoras and sunglasses and carried prayer books. The priests came into the diner and came up to take seats at the counter next to Joe Mangoni. Then the priests both stopped and came out from under the coats with guns. Each held the prayer book in one hand and the gun in the other. It was blasphemous, but highly effective.
MANGONI—Joseph. Very suddenly. Beloved, dear son of the late, beloved Luigi and Rose Mangoni. Mourned brother of Dominic Mangoni. “An eye for an eye. A tooth for a tooth.” Reposing CAMPION’S Funeral Home, 56 Lockman Street, Brooklyn. Interment Saturday 11 a.m., private.
“We gotta do somethin’,” Kid Sally said when he got back from the funeral. “We got to get one back.”
“I said just get Baccala,” Angela said.
“We got no time for that today, we got to get one right away,” Kid Sally said.
“She’s-a right, just think of Baccala,” Big Mama said.
“No, somebody right now. Today. They got three of our guys and we got nothin’.” Trailing 3-0, Kid Sally was ready to bunt in order to get onto the scoreboard.
“You know who’s a good friend of mine?” Big Jelly said.
“Who?” Kid Sally said.
“Albie.”
“How good a friend?” Kid Sally said.
“He’d come and meet me,” Big Jelly said.
The two of them got in a car with Tony the Indian and Ezmo the Driver and went to Patrissy’s Lounge. The place was empty except for the porter. It was two in the afternoon, and Patrissy’s doesn’t open until nine p.m. The porter was told to get lost. The moment the porter left, Big Jelly reached inside his shirt and pulled out a coil of nylon rope. Sally began snapping the rope between his hands to make sure it wouldn’t split while they were garroting Albie.
Albie was home. He never gets out of bed before the six-o’clock news at night. Albie is an air inspector. He stands all night on a streetcorner next to the newsstand on Coney Island Avenue and he breathes the air in and out. Once in a while Baccala sends somebody around to get Albie for something at which Albie is good. What Albie does best is to swing a baseball bat in a crowded bar. Albie has one personal weakness, which accounts for his friendship with Big Jelly. Albie is helpless in the matter of girls. “I like you,” he told Big Jelly one night. “You are a real degenerate. Just like me.”
All night while he stands on the streetcorner and breathes the air in and out, Albie reads the magazines from the newsstand. Albie reads Sexology and Pervert and The American Orgasm. His favorite is Orgy Manual, but this publication appears only when its publisher is between Supreme Court appearances.
So Big Jelly knew exactly how to activate Albie when he called Albie up at his house on the telephone.
“I’m at Patrissy’s, where are you?” Big Jelly said.
“I’m home,” Albie said.
“Oh, you’re home,” Big Jelly said.
“You’re in some trouble,” Albie said.
“What of?” Big Jelly said.
“You know,” Albie said.
While Big Jelly talked, Kid Sally stood in front of the phone booth, pretending he was hanging himself with the rope. Big Jelly giggled while he talked.
“What’s goin’ on?” Albie said.
“I got a girl in the phone booth with me and she is doing all these things to me,” Big Jelly said. He giggled at the rope some more.
“She in the phone booth with you?” Albie said.
“Sure, the joint’s closed and I’m in here with her. What do I care about what’s goin’ on? That’s Sally’s business. My business is bein’ a degenerate with broads. You know that. Here, honey, stop it. You’re drivin’ me crazy here.” Big Jelly giggled.
“Stay there,” Albie said. “I’ll be right down.”
While they waited, Ezmo the Driver plugged in the jukebox and put the sound up very high so when it played it would drown out the noise of what they were going to do to Albie. Ezmo was proud of this move. “Sometimes I’m very shrewd,” he said.
Albie came a half-hour later. He came into the place with a sex sweat on his forehead. He was so busy looking for a girl in the bar that he never knew what hit him. Kid Sally Palumbo jumped on his head and Tony the Indian got a thumb in Albie’s eyes and Ezmo and Big Jelly fell on him and out came the rope and they looped it around Albie. They were going to garrote him, which is the best way in the world to murder somebody, particularly if the perpetrators are demented. Ezmo the Driver ran over to the jukebox with two quarters to play some loud music to drown out Albie’s screams. Ezmo’s eyes ran down the selections and he saw the Beatles. Rock-’n’-roll. The Beatles. Good and loud kid stuff. Ezmo dropped in the money and punched the Beatles’ record, number B-6. He punched it for six plays. He ran back to help them garrote Albie.
Albie was in the middle of the floor and the rope was all around his throat and body and he opened his mouth for his first scream when the record on the jukebox came on. The record was “Penny Lane” by the Beatles. It is a soft, lovely tune, the new kind of thing the Beatles do, and even with the jukebox turned up full force, you have to cup your ear to hear the words. Albie’s first scream drowned out the soft music.
“Change the music,” Kid Sally Palumbo yelled.
> Albie let out another shriek.
Here was Ezmo the Driver at the jukebox, kicking it with his foot to try and make the record reject so he could play something loud, and the Beatles kept singing “Penny Lane,” and here was Albie on the floor, yelping with the rope around him, yelping way louder than the music, and old ladies began looking out the window across the street.
Kid Sally Palumbo, thinking under intense pressure, thought of an idea so terrific he didn’t know why everybody hadn’t tried it before. He had Big Jelly take one end of the rope in his hands and face the rear door of the saloon. He and Tony the Indian took the other end and faced the front door. This left Albie in the middle with the rope looped around his neck.
“When I say go, run as fast as you can to the door with the rope,” Kid Sally said.
“Go!”
Big Jelly gripped the rope and started. Kid Sally Palumbo and Tony the Indian headed in the opposite direction. Each side in the tug of war had its back to the other. They did not see what was happening in the middle, where Albie, almost out of it, wobbled to his feet and hooked one leg over the rope, the end running to Kid Sally and Tony the Indian. Big Jelly barged ahead to the back door. Kid Sally and Tony started running to the front door. Albie’s leg hooked down on the rope, and the rope snapped out of Kid Sally and Tony's hands. When the line slackened suddenly on Big Jelly’s end, the fat man went into the door head first. Albie fell to the floor like a sack. Big Jelly stumbled out to the street knocked half dizzy. Kid Sally and Tony kept flying and they hit the car while Ezmo the Driver had it in motion. Big Jelly dove at the moving car, and they barely hauled him in.
“Boy, that was terrific,” Big Jelly said to Kid Sally in the car. “His whole head must of come off.”
“Wow! We got to do that again,” Tony the Indian said.
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