by Jim Fusilli
Esposito nodded hello, both confident and shy.
Imogene put a finger against her neck right under those earrings Bell gave her last Christmas. “Sal. Here.”
Benno came in and took a whiff. “Mmm. Nice, right?”
“I told Nina you bought it in Cuba.” Imogene looked good in blue. Smart and happy, like always when Bell was nearby.
“Do you travel often, Sal?” Nina asked.
“Sure. Cuba. All over. Champagne, first class, free magazines. Me and Bebe.”
They proceeded through the Lincoln Tunnel, the heat in Tyler’s old car working good, the girls yapping nursing school, Benno watching the city say hello. Soon they took their seats at Porter’s Chophouse off Fifth Avenue, a short stroll from the Hampshire House. The maître d’ said, “Good evening, Mr. Benno. It’s good to see you again.”
Benno said, “Ernie, let me introduce you to my friends. This is Leo Bell and his girl, Imogene. And this is Nina Esposito.”
Ernie nodded gracefully and after directing them to the coat-check room, he led Benno and his guests through the crowded clubby restaurant with its leather banquettes and round tables with little lamps in the center. The place was alive with chatter, a bustling staff and a roving violinist. Clouds of cigarette smoke hung near the ceiling.
The waiter appeared. “Mr. Benno.”
“Hay.” Then he said, “Four rum coolers, OK, pal?”
Bell said, “Rum cooler?”
“We drink them in Havana. Me and Bebe.”
“Sal knows Bill Marsala,” Imogene said dryly, an eyebrow arched.
“He’s from Narrows Gate, eh?” Nina asked.
“Yeah, but I know him better from Havana and also here in the city. He brought me here twice. Yeah, we get along pretty good.”
Some other guy showed up with the menu. Of course, the ones he gave the girls didn’t have prices on them, but Bell’s did and his dimple liked to leap off his chin, the Famous Porterhouse going for more than he earned in a week at the A&P.
Imogene leaned over and looked at Bell’s menu like they were already married. She whistled.
“This is on me,” Benno said. “Bebe—”
“OK, that’s enough with Bebe.” Bell turned to Nina. “He used to hate the guy. Now they’re amici.”
“Is that true?”
“What? That I used to hate him?”
“No, that you’re friends.”
“Well…” He glowed with false modesty.
“Listen, Rockefeller, you’re not picking up the check,” Bell said.
“With Bebe, there is no check.”
Imogene said, “Sal, don’t be a jerk. Nina, he’s usually not like this.”
“Like what?” Benno said, his humor still in place. “I had a good week, babe. I like to share good times with good friends.”
“Babe?”
“Let him be,” Bell said, tapping Imogene’s arm. “They sprinkled him with stardust.”
“Bebe wants me to come to Hollywood with him.”
Bell put down the menu. “What?”
“Hollywood, California. For which you don’t need a passport.”
The rum coolers arrived. As Benno and Bell parried, Imogene and Nina took sips. Immediately, they wanted six more. The thing was magic, like soda that dizzied your head and made your belly warm.
“When were you going to tell me this?” Bell asked.
“Bebe said don’t say.”
“So who gives a damn what Bebe says?”
“It’s not a done deal. There’s steps, Leo. First good-bye Ziggy, which you know, and then Frankie moves in, and then Bebe gets on the road and then he settles in at the Sandpiper and Frankie gets bored and Corini needs somebody he can trust so…” Benno snapped his thumbs toward his lapels.
Bell looked at the adjoining tables. No one seemed to be eavesdropping, though the way Tyler told it, maybe there was a microphone in the salt shaker.
“Plus Eleanor Ree approves.” He turned to the dark-haired beauty at his side. Leaning in, he whispered, “Believe me, honey, she’s got nothing on you.”
“You’d better think about this,” Bell warned.
He laughed. “Like I’m going to start doing that now.”
Imogene said, “Leo, if you’re not going to drink that…”
“This is delicious, Sal,” Nina said, hinting for more of Benno’s attention. He was a boy, showing off and all, but he was awfully cute with those glasses and the way his face shined when he smiled. The Espositos were big believers in potential.
“The drink. It’s not too sweet?” Benno asked.
She said, “How can something be too sweet?”
“What are you going to have, Leo?” Imogene asked.
“I’m thinking a bowl of air.”
“Don’t be stingy,” Benno said. “Nina?”
“You order for me, Sal.”
Benno thought he detected an odd accent when she spoke. Not that he was an expert, seeing as how everybody he knew talked like him. Except Bebe, who took lessons, but there’s no sense in bringing that up, Leo brooding over there.
“Nina, I heard you knew amici was friends. Parla Italiano?”
“Sì,” she replied, drink poised beneath her lips. “Parlo Italiano.”
“What are you, Sicilian or Italian?”
Imogene said, “Sal, how can that matter?”
“It matters, hon. Believe me.”
Imogene looked at Leo. “There’s a difference?”
“Ooh. Don’t get him started. He was going human there for a minute.”
“No, really,” Benno said. “Italian or Sicilian?”
“Which do you prefer?” Nina Esposito asked.
“Hey, doll, I like you either way. I’m asking—Italian or Sicilian?”
“I’m Canadian,” she said.
Benno blinked in confusion. “What does that mean?”
“That I’m from Canada.”
“No, no. I—I mean, what about Italian or Sicilian?”
“Gosh, I don’t know. I was born in Toronto.”
“Toronto. Sounds Sicilian and Italian.” He turned to Bell. “We’re everywhere, see?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
The Beverly Hills Hotel was rich with memories for Ree: While they were dating, her first husband gave an impromptu performance here, dancing on the soda fountain counter as he belted out a song. Her billionaire boyfriend kept a bungalow on call where he insisted she let him bathe her in buttermilk at a time when she was impressionable enough to believe it meant he thought her special. As her second marriage dribbled to its end, she met Simon’s ex three times a week in a bungalow Marlene Dietrich had refitted for the type of affair they enjoyed.
But from now on, the hotel would have a different connotation: It would be the place where she learned Bill Marsala was owned by gangsters. The rumors he said were rubbish and nasty anti-Italian slurs were true. The investors he spoke of were the likes of Frankie Fortune, who told Marsala, not long ago the biggest star in the country, to go fuck himself and like it. She was frightened. She loved Marsala but there was no way to win. She had to get out and had no idea how.
“Sorry,” Marsala said when he joined her at the hotel’s café. “That was rough.”
“Are you all right?” she asked. She could see he was shaken.
“They oversold it, didn’t they?”
No, she thought. It seemed right. He’d walked out on them. He abandoned his wife, the tour, the radio program and its sponsors. He was risking the open-ended engagement in Las Vegas. Fortune was furious and since he represented the people who owned Bill, he had a right to be.
“They want what’s best for me,” he explained as he lit another cigarette. “But subtle they are not.”
“Oh, Bill,” she said tenderly, touching his cheek.
He kissed her and didn’t care who saw. “Let’s drive,” he said. “Fuck it all.”
They stopped at her place in Bel Air for a sobering dip in the pool, a session on a lounge chair, R
ee straddling him slow and easy as he lay on his back, and then a second round in the living room, Marsala entering her from behind. A shower, a friendly dispute over what to wear and they threw a suitcase in the trunk. By late afternoon, they were headed east, picking up Route 60, the San Gabriel Mountains to the north. They felt damned good, the desert ahead but the sun behind them. The pint of scotch was going down like nectar. Marsala sang tunes he said he’d fight to work into the new show. “This one’s from Lady Day,” he told her. “You know this number from Nat Cole.” His baritone flowed smooth and gentle. Notes floated tenderly. It was wonderful.
Everything she loved about him was here now—“fuck it all,” memories of starbursts as he slid inside her and they worked their hips in unison, laughing when it was over, the love still there. Just two damaged souls, puzzle pieces made to fit together, the world far away. And now the road, dusk, his voice. They were alone, nothing mattered and life was as uncluttered as the empty horizon.
She nestled next to him, and she thought, OK. Maybe it’ll be all right. Maybe if he gives them what they want and just sings. He could buy us both a little time…
She took off her sunglasses, put her head on his thigh, kicked off her shoes and fell asleep.
She woke to the sound of gunfire.
It was nighttime in a small town. Sitting up in the car, she saw a café, a general store and on the other side of the street, a post office. They were all closed. Neon sizzled in the window of a bar slung out of adobe. Houses were behind them in the distance, but nothing lay ahead.
Standing in the high beams’ glare, Marsala was shooting at the town’s lone streetlight.
A few men in work shirts and denim dribbled out of the bar. Country and western music followed.
Marsala shot at the light again and missed. “Va fungule,” he spit.
Ree struggled into her shoes and skittered toward him.
“Want a shot?” he said. He pressed the gun into her hand. “Go ahead, El. You’ll feel great.”
She looked up. Stars were scattered overhead.
“Don’t worry,” he insisted. “You miss, you’ll hit the moon.”
Still groggy from her boozy nap, she closed an eye, lifted the barrel and to make him happy, squeezed off a round.
“Damn close, doll,” Marsala said. “Damn close.”
The gruff men outside the bar, who looked at the couple with bemused disregard, parted to let the sheriff through. He wore a beige cowboy hat, beige shirt with a gold star, beige slacks with a prominent buckle and pointy boots. He had his hand on the butt of his pistol.
Marsala shot. He missed the light but hit the lamppost.
“Say, buddy,” the sheriff said. “What did that light up there ever do to you?”
“You say something to me, Hopalong?”
“Said you might want to think about putting down that weapon you got there, Mr. Marsala.”
“And suppose I don’t.”
“Bill…” She couldn’t figure him. He was sober but he wobbled, playing drunk.
The sheriff flexed his fingers slowly. “Then this will get ugly real quick.”
“Give me the gun, Bill,” Ree whispered.
“Think he can outdraw me?”
She looked at the sheriff, who stood with his legs wide, his hand coiled and ready. “Bill, he’s not fucking around.”
“She’s right, Mr. Marsala. Be a damned fool way to die. For either of us.”
Marsala eyed the sheriff. “Fair enough,” he said as he let the gun fall to the dust.
Ree kicked it toward the law.
Shaking their heads, the crowd dispersed.
Rico Enna arrived four hours later by crop duster and the lone taxi out of Cabazon. The sheriff got $2,000 and Ree’s pistol: The drunk and disorderly charge disappeared.
“Any reporters in the bar?” Enna asked.
“There’s no call for that kind of talk, Mister,” the sheriff replied. He said his town was the first piss stop before the next service station on Route 60, meaning Marsala wasn’t the only Hollywood star to drop by and make an ass of himself.
The door to the jail’s lone cell was open. Marsala sat on the cold floor while Ree rested on the seedy mattress. “You’re free to go,” the sheriff said.
Ree stood and tamped her slacks. “Are there photographers?”
“No, ma’am,” the sheriff told her. He had seen Ree’s debut in that hard-boiled Hemingway picture and thought she was hotter than July. He would’ve spent time pondering what she was doing with a dipshit swizzle stick like Marsala, but he learned long ago that opposites did not attract. “Mr. Enna will fill you in.”
Enna was behind the wheel. Ree climbed in back, kissing her fingertips and tapping the agent’s cheek. Marsala got in back, too. “Grazie tanto, Enrico,” he said. He pointed to the bottle in the glove compartment. The desert air had dried out his throat.
“What were you thinking, Bill?” Enna said finally as they headed west.
“Don’t put me in a box,” he replied. “I’ll sing for you but don’t put me in a box.”
Ree held the bottle now, debating whether to finish it or save Bill a final pull.
“You put me in a box and I fly. Baby, I fly.”
“Let me ask you something.” Enna looked into the rearview. “What do you think Frankie will say if he hears about this?”
“Is he going to hear about it?”
Enna didn’t reply.
Marsala smiled triumphantly as he drew Ree to his side.
There wasn’t a chance in hell Mimmo could drive through the maze of downtown New York City, the random intersections, narrow lanes, shadows even at noon. You make a wrong turn and you’re over by City Hall and the courthouses when all you wanted to do was find Mulberry Street. Once he could’ve freed up a driver but not now. His boys knew he’d been slapped down. Everybody knew.
So he took the tubes, got off at the wrong stop and wound up by Macy’s. He humped up the stairs, his hands in his pocket, the sling off, his shoulder tender. He told a taxi driver to bring him where he wanted to go but drop him off on the other side of the snow-coated bocce courts.
“Stay away from Bebe,” Corini had told him, Don Carlo sitting right there, not a drop of compassion in his eyes. No link to Bebe, that brat fuck, meant he’d never have a say in the plan to move the crew over to entertainment. Never. And maybe Corini didn’t remember and maybe Frankie Fortune forgot on purpose, but the Blue Onyx was the first club they owned that pulled in a couple large every week even though it was in downtown Narrows Gate, not up on the Palisades or in Newark where Jersey people usually went for a good time. Also, he had the Saint Tropez until Fortune burned it down, he still didn’t know why—just to put Bebe on the radio?
Surely, Don Carlo would remember his contribution and one day Cy Geller would come to him and say, in his phony, hoi polloi, Miami Beach Jew way, “Domenico, would you be interested in moving to Las Vegas and show us how to run the operation proper?” Mimmo understood why Farcolini wanted Baum out West first: Ziggy had the kind of bullshit style that the slats out there could swallow. Mimmo figured Corini and Fortune kept him back in the candy store like he was warming up in the bull-pen. As soon as the walls were in place in Vegas, the lights turned on and the slots plugged in, he’d get his due. Bebe in a tux, spotlight around him, announcing, “I’d like to dedicate this next number to my uncle. Folks, he’s been like a father to me and well, you know him as the man who gets things done out here in Las Vegas. Ladies, gents, how about a big hand for Mr. Domenico Mistretta. Come on, Mimmo! Take a bow!”
Fuckin’ Bebe.
Mulberry Street was swarming with families coming from Mass at the Transfiguration, the kids bundled and wearing galoshes, old gray couples trailing their sons and daughters who were dressed up good. For a moment, looking at them nice and content, Mimmo forgot the rage that boiled his brain, but it came back like a fuckin’ volcano blowing.
Gigenti had muscle men at the door who looked like th
ey were carved from steel. They studied Mimmo and he could tell by their eyes they didn’t make him a threat, just a guy in sunglasses past his prime, the clock winding down.
Mimmo kept coming, even as the kids ran around him like he wasn’t there and their parents parading their youth, smiling and talking sweet, everybody fresh from Communion, the winter air putting color on their cheeks.
“Tell Bruno that Mimmo wants to see him,” he said.
Green-eyed Superman in the brown suit said, “Keep moving, old-timer.”
And then Superman found a gun pressed against his stomach.
“Tell your friend he moves, I make you dead.”
“Tommy…” the guy said.
Tommy showed his palms.
“Hands in your pants pockets deep. Both of you,” Mimmo instructed.
They did like they were told.
“I know Bruno since he was younger than you and he knows me, too.” To Tommy, he said, “Go tell him the guy who put two in the Franklin stove is here.”
For a moment, Mimmo forgot Gigenti wasn’t in on the Uccello hit.
Tommy looked to his associate. “Do it,” he said.
When Tommy shuffled toward the door, Mimmo stepped back and returned the gun to his jacket. As the happy parade passed, he said to Superman, “Was a day I shoot you first and then we talk.”
The guy produced a handkerchief and mopped his brow. “You got style, old man. I’ll say that.”
“I used to,” Mimmo replied as he adjusted his sunglasses.
Bruno Gigenti was at a round table across from the bar, pale and in pain and angry like a beat-down boxer who had some fight left in him and was biding his time. He had a cup of espresso in hand and a bottle of sambuca stood nearby, but neither dulled the throbbing from his broken ribs. Every breath reminded him he wanted Corini dead, like it was Corini who took an arm from a chair to him, driving him to his knees in front of the Gellers. He wore a sweater vest to hide the bandages under his shirt, but it only served to add to the bulk. They had given him a cane, but it made him look weak, so he bit his tongue, took the pain and concentrated on his revenge.