by Jim Fusilli
“Oh yeah. Sure,” she replied, smiling sly, something fluttering deep inside.
One Saturday in early June, Mimmo told the Hook & Ladder to turn on the fire hydrants. “Go ahead, Sal,” Leo Bell said, nodding toward the spray as they sat next to Benno’s. “Dive in.”
An Oldsmobile slowed down and took the cold water full blast, its wipers throwing off the cascade. Up the block, two sopping kids with a pail of soap, brushes and towels were poised to finish the job.
Benno and Bell took in the sun until Mimmo pointed and crooked a finger.
“Watch your ass,” Bell whispered as Benno left the stoop and jumped the little river running along the curb.
“Mimmo,” he said, fixing him with his good eye. “You did good over here.” He threw a thumb toward the hydrant.
“You free Monday afternoon?” Mimmo asked, the glare reflecting off his sunglasses. “You got a delivery to make.”
“No thanks.”
“Not like that.”
Benno shook his head.
“One, Bruno’s back,” Mimmo said. “Two, ain’t nobody that needs…What’s the word?”
“What word?”
“Persuasione.”
“Jesus, Mimmo. It’s the same thing—persuasion.”
“And three, I want you to do this. I been telling this guy about your aunt. The dish with the herring and the fennel, the rabbit with the pine nuts—”
“Yeah, but she makes that for you, Mimmo. Not some guy.”
“I can’t untell the guy, Sal. He likes it from the old country.”
Benno felt special for a moment, Mimmo greasing him rather than having Boo Chiasso put a .38 to his temple to make him do the thing.
“I’ll throw together a crate,” Benno said. “My pleasure.”
“Do it around three o’clock. I see you ain’t too busy at three o’clock.”
“Where to?”
“I’ll tell you Monday.” He pushed back his hat and mopped his brow. “Stop by the candy store.”
“You got it.”
Mimmo tapped him on the back of the head, a nice little smack. “Don’t say nothing to Ding.”
Nine seconds later, after jumping another stream from the hydrant, Benno said, “I’m up.”
Bell stood. “For what?”
“Bucatini. Herring. I’m delivering.”
“Who’s getting capped this time?”
“Nobody,” Benno said. “Mimmo gave his word.”
“Well, then…”
“Oh, and I ain’t told you.”
Bell nodded.
“Want to come?”
“Not yet,” Bell said.
Mimmo took a long time inspecting the goods, then Benno put the fish in the icebox and, whistling a tune, drove across 14th Street and into the Lincoln Tunnel, the address of his destination on the dash. Ten minutes later, he came around Columbus Circle and pushed past big apartment buildings like monuments to some kind of class, across the street Central Park, leafy branches hanging over the cobblestones, a woman out of a magazine on a bench fanning herself. Up ahead, museums and everything starched and folded.
Benno studied the address again—no name but an apartment number, 12C—then ducked to find a street sign. Guys dressed like ushers flagged cabs for serious men who didn’t swagger and then held the door, a little bow at the end. Yeah, Mimmo was onto something. Nobody living here was queuing up at the Washington Market at four in the morning looking for escarole.
There it is, Benno thought. He let his eye run up the glazed brick, adjusting his glasses to see what kind of crown they put on top. Some building. He double-parked, popped out and with customary efficiency, repacked the crate and hoisted it onto his shoulder. To his surprise, the uniformed doorman greeted him and let him rest in the air-conditioning, the lobby the size of St. Francis Church, while he called upstairs.
“Use the service elevator,” he was told.
“Will do,” Benno replied, saluting from the brim of his cap. “Say, buddy, what’s the guy’s name, you don’t mind? Polite helps the tip.”
“Corini,” the doorman said.
Benno retreated. “Anthony Corini?”
The doorman replied with a nod.
The produce unloaded, stacked and sprayed, Leo Bell went in back to help Vernon Buie, the only Negro employed by the A&P in Narrows Gate. Buie served in Cannon Company, 366th Infantry Regiment, 92nd Infantry Division and caught a round in the thigh in Sommocolonia, Italy, on Christmas Day, 1944. Now he hobbled down the viaduct from Jersey City to work under the butchers, which meant he swept, mopped and scooped out the chickens’ insides before they went on display. Bell wasn’t one of those phony pro-Negro liberals like Bebe, who demanded to be paid for his speeches on racial tolerance, but he figured no GI who took one ought to spend his days stained with chicken guts in order to have a job.
“Vernon,” Bell said, as he opened the freezer.
Buie had a cigarette on his lip and an ice-cream scoop in one hand, a headless chicken in the other. He sat surrounded by crates of fresh kill. Dripping blood had frozen into grisly icicles.
“Still hot outside?” he asked.
“Like July. And I know,” Bell said. “The faster we work, the sooner you’re out sweating.” Buie said the same thing whenever the temperature topped eighty.
As he went to retrieve the snow shovel, Bell heard the freezer door wheeze open.
“Sergeant Bell,” the man said.
Buie eyed the visitor cautiously. The man was in uniform, a captain. Crisp, spit-shined, poster-perfect. Blond hair, Bell’s height, maybe an inch or two taller.
Bell wiped his hands on his apron. “This is Corporal Buie,” he told Captain Tyler.
Buie reached for his crutch, but Charlie Tyler waved for him to remain seated. Then he stepped outside. Bell followed.
There was the door, 12C, a gold knocker even, but knowing who was inside the apartment made him hesitate. Mimmo had cooked up something, sending him here, but Benno couldn’t dope out the scheme. He cleared his throat. Before he could knock, a door opened behind him and there was Frankie Fortune. In gray sharkskin, he looked like two million bucks.
“In here,” he said.
Benno would’ve shifted the crate to his left shoulder so he was ready to shake hands. But Fortune didn’t offer.
Nice kitchen, airy, spick-and-span. Pots and frying pans hanging from the walls and ceiling like a restaurant. A butcher block.
“There,” Fortune said with a nod.
Benno eased the crate onto the counter.
Fortune pulled out sacks of assorted greens, the paper-wrapped fish, a Ball jar of Aunt Gemma’s gravy with hot peppers, a bunch of olives Sal packed himself, some fresh campanata. And a fat envelope Benno never saw before in his life.
Without checking it, Fortune nestled it in his jacket pocket.
Offered a Viceroy, Bell said no.
“Been thinking?” Tyler’s lighter had an Army insignia.
Bell felt the sun on his neck. “Of course.”
He waited. “So?”
“Tempting.”
“Yes. A full scholarship to Yale goes well beyond the GI Bill. You’d agree, I assume.”
Bell shrugged. “Yale isn’t in Warsaw. Or Berlin. Or Paris.”
“But you’ve already been accepted at City College.”
“Yeah. I have.” No longer was he impressed by how the intelligence community ferreted out information. “And New Jersey State Teachers College.”
“Think the diploma will hold you in high regard among prospective employers, Sergeant? Unless you’re following your father in the typewriter-repair business.” Tyler lowered his voice in deference to a passing shopper, list in her hand. “Major Landis sends his regards.”
Bell nodded. He respected Landis. Stored in the place he kept his hopes was the belief the old man would come through and secure an overseas assignment for him. “Tell him I said hello.”
“Heck, get on the plane with me and tell him
yourself,” Tyler said.
“I’ve got to work.” He tapped the breast of his red apron.
Tyler frowned. “Look, Sergeant—”
“Leo will do,” he said. “The war’s over.”
“Over? You know better than that.” Tyler snorted and tossed aside his cigarette.
“I’m thinking about the offer. I know what it could mean.”
“Yes. Four years in New Haven, or six, and then you come to Washington and work with us. It’s guaranteed.”
“Doing what?” Bell asked. “After I graduate, when I owe you two, three thousand dollars…Then you’ll tell me?”
“You work for us at State. There’s a place for a man like you. With your specialized knowledge.”
“My specialized knowledge. You never tell me what that’s supposed to be.”
“A measure of your experience.”
“And what the fuck does that mean?”
Tyler laughed. “Exactly. Priceless. Oh, and thanks for the guesswork on Pellizzari. But Zamarella’s got a witness who places him at Aqueduct.”
Tyler reached into his jacket and gave Bell a thin envelope. With his thumb, Bell felt tickets inside.
“Open it later,” Tyler said. “Also, I’d rather you not tell Miss O’Boyle where you got them. I like her, by the way. She’s plucky. I’m sure she knows there are quite a few hospitals in Washington. Many opportunities for her, too.”
Annoyed, Bell jammed the envelope under his apron. He’d never mentioned Imogene to Tyler or anyone else, not to Sal, not to his father.
“And Corporal Buie,” Tyler said. “Good man?”
“Cleans a fuckin’ chicken better than anybody I ever saw.”
“You’d have the power to get him out of there, Leo. You could do a great many things. Well beyond your dreams.”
With the tickets Tyler provided, Leo Bell invited Sal Benno to Yankee Stadium to see Joe Louis and Billy Conn fight for the heavyweight championship of the world. Before the war, Louis beat him, Conn choosing to slug after ducking and dodging for 11 rounds, ahead on points. Benno and Bell were kids back then, living in a simple world.
Now the truck rattled along the East River Drive toward the Bronx. Benno said, “I still can’t figure what could be the fuckin’ point of using me as the bagman.”
“They need a straight guy in the crew,” Bell replied.
“Though one delivery don’t make me a bagman.”
The cop at the gate told Benno to put the truck where it belonged. But Bell leaned across the steering wheel and handed over a pass. The cop looked at him and waved them on. Benno’s truck snuggled next to two good-looking Packards, one of which had a bow-tied driver standing guard by the back bumper.
Bell came around and gave Benno his $50 ticket.
“A fifty-dollar blow?” Benno said. “From the A&P?”
An hour later, the preliminaries done, Benno and Bell went down to their seats, which put them behind the Yankees’ dugout, maybe 20 rows of folding chairs between them and the ring. They were surrounded by men who didn’t know Louis from Conn, a championship fight no more than some kind of midweek diversion. Eavesdropping, Bell realized Tyler had dropped them among staff from the United Nations.
Peanut shells mounted near Benno’s shoes. Out in the bleachers, the crowd buzzed impatiently. To pass the time, Bell looked at the stadium’s architecture, the copper frieze against the indigo sky—
Benno smacked Bell on the thigh and pointed toward the infield, the rows of seats blurring in the twilight.
Bell saw Joe DiMaggio and the brunette on his right, a little firecracker.
To Joe D.’s left was that actress—
“Eleanor Ree,” Benno said.
And, next to her, on the aisle, Bebe.
“Fuckin’ Bebe,” Benno said. “A&P give him tickets, too?”
“What is wrong with that guy?” Bell replied in wonder.
Benno said, “Here comes Conn…”
Conn ran, Louis stalked, smoke gathered in the lights above the raised ring. The crowd booed.
“We should’ve sold the tickets,” Benno said after the fourth round. “We could’ve watched it on television.”
“You know somebody who has a television?” Bell asked.
After the fifth, Benno turned, excited. “Oh, get a load of this,” he said, pointing.
Bell looked over to Marsala, who was leaning across Ree to confer with DiMaggio.
Mimmo was standing right behind the singer.
When Marsala felt a tap on his shoulder, he spun pissed and cocky, ready to tell the intrusive son of a bitch to grow up and let a man watch a prize fight, for Christ’s sake. But he recovered quickly. “Mimmo,” he said cheerfully as he stood, jutting out his hand. “Come il suo va?”
Mimmo shook it, his expression empty, his anger boiling deep inside.
“Mimmo, say hello to Eleanor Ree,” Marsala continued. “Babe, this is my uncle and my childhood friend, Domenic Mistretta.”
Ree gave him a firm handshake and a warm smile. With his sunglasses on, Mimmo showed Ree nothing.
“Bebe, you and me, we gotta talk,” he said in Sicilian.
Surprised at the brush off, Ree shrugged and returned to her seat.
“Sure, but now? Here?”
“Bebe, don’t give me none of your bullshit—”
“Easy, Mimmo, easy, easy,” he replied, nodding toward DiMaggio, who was talking to his dame. The ballplayer understood Sicilian.
Marsala stepped into the aisle. “What’s up?”
“Yankee fuckin’ Stadium,” Mimmo said as he turned. Maybe 40,000 people sat behind them. “You, a married man.”
Marsala saw the veins on Mimmo’s neck. “Rosa tossed me out. You know that.”
“She should’ve cracked your skull with a rolling pin, Bebe.” He threw a hand toward Ree. “What do you call this shit?”
“I’m watching a fight with—”
“With a broad who ain’t Rosa. In front of everybody.”
Marsala smiled. “Hey, I’m with Joe and friends. It’s show business. It’s good for the career.”
“Running around on your wife is good for your career?”
“You don’t know Hollywood—”
He jabbed the singer’s lapel with a stiff finger. “I know you.”
“Mimmo—”
“You keep it up and you’re fucked. And me too.”
Marsala tilted his head, a quizzical expression on his face. “This is from Don Carlo?”
“This is from common fuckin’ sense. Ditch the broad and go home to your wife and baby.” Lights flashed above the ring, indicating 10 seconds until Louis started chasing Conn again. Mimmo gave Marsala a cold, crooked smile. Then he clapped his nephew-in-law on the cheek.
As the bell rang, Marsala watched Mimmo fade into the crowd. The rest of the fight, he couldn’t concentrate. DiMaggio spoke, but Marsala didn’t hear. Ree hooked his arm, but he pulled away. When blood flowed from a cut above Conn’s right eye, all of a sudden he remembered Eddie Moran, blood bubbling in his ear, Frankie Fortune and Mimmo putting him out of business and no one ever had to explain. “I love you more than life itself,” he’d told Ree in bed at her house in Bel Air. Now he was thinking Mimmo dropped him on a spot where he might have to prove it.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
She was born Margery Mays Reardon, the third daughter of a South Carolina tobacco farmer. Entering junior high school, she declared an ambition to move to Johnson City and get a job as a receptionist. She wasn’t yet the most startlingly beautiful woman most men, and a great many women, had ever seen.
When she was 16 years old, her photo appeared in her local newspaper after she’d won second prize in a baking contest. A professional photographer tracked her down, figuring he’d discovered a fresh modeling talent or a world-class piece of ass. Her mother allowed her to move north to model, sending her eldest sister as chaperone. They shared a one-bedroom apartment near New York City’s Theater District until her sist
er met, and almost immediately married, a subway motorman 12 years her senior.
At age 18, Margery tested at MGM. The studio saw her sun-baked skin, sturdy nose, prominent cheekbones, and robust body as developing along classical lines. Assuming she might turn matronly in her thirties, they changed her name to Eleanor Ree, which suggested the cultured daughter of an aging business tycoon or the loyal wife of a conflicted attorney.
Though Metro had sanded her rough edges, by the time she reached 20, the earthy, sensual aspects of her femininity emerged, as if they had been hiding until she could unleash them under a veil of sophistication. On screen, there was boldness in even her simplest movement. She seemed to command the viewer to stare at her body and remarkable face. When executives gathered for the daily rushes, they looked at each other in amazement. They’d seen nothing like it before.
But she hadn’t done a thing, at least not intentionally so. Hollywood was a lark, a castle in the sky. They paid her to take lessons in grooming, to have her dark hair styled, her makeup perfected. They taught her to walk, to sit, to speak without an accent, to improve her vocabulary. It took almost three weeks to fit her in a bra that would make it look like she wasn’t wearing one. It was ridiculous and she didn’t feel glamorous or any more special than a tobacco leaf would have on her father’s farm. She felt insufficient, a fraud. Sooner or later, everyone would find out and she’d be sent back to Johnson City and she hadn’t even learned to type.
Then she met the man who would become her first husband, an actor, famous since early childhood, fun, well-liked around town, his pictures still profitable. She was a virgin when they met and, after an intense courtship, a virgin when they married. Though they were the same age, he was an experienced lover and she learned fast. By day, he helped her with her lines and taught her how to play to the camera. He told her she was too beautiful for bit parts. Stardom was her only option in Hollywood.