The Little Brothers

by Dorothy Salisbury Davis

  But they went away and his mother did not come. He was not sure, on the street, whether Mrs. Niccoli had seen him leave or not, but he went the long way around, and on Mott Street decided to go one more block to Mulberry in case Ric had gotten wise to the route by which Angie avoided him. He stepped into a doorway or ducked down between parked cars whenever a vehicle passed. He imagined Marks cruising the area looking for him.

  He did not know why the knife had become such a terror to him: he was afraid to have it and afraid not to have it. It didn’t have to do with the murder. Even if Ric told the police he had it … and he was sure Ric would if he got the chance. Whenever Ric said he wasn’t going to tell, it meant he was going to. The knife was part of Angie’s innocence, and yet he was afraid of it. It was also part of his strength, and that was what he was afraid of. That was why he had to put it somewhere where he could never find it again. He’d told his mother he had thrown it in the river, and that was where it belonged. He reached Canal Street and felt a little safer. But from what? As soon as he crossed the Bowery, and he had to do so, he would be in foreign territory. He found himself rubbing the sheath like the knife was a charm or even something alive he was taking care of … like a part of himself that was vulnerable. He started to run before he reached Elizabeth, just in case, and then wondered why he had come so close to home again when he’d wanted to go toward the East River all the time. It was the way he knew, that was all. He thought of going to Julie’s and asking her to come with him. He decided that he would go back to Julie’s when it was over. It was something to look forward to.

  “Hey, Angie. Wait up.”

  Running toward him on Elizabeth Street—so that they would have almost collided if Angie hadn’t started to run when he did—came Ric.

  Angie might have outrun him, but with the bridge traffic and the traffic lights on the Bowery, Ric might have caught up. Angie waited. It wasn’t a bad idea to have Ric with him. Since Ric knew he had the knife, why not let him see it disappear into the river?

  They did not speak at first, walking side by side, Ric panting for breath. Ric had on a white shirt and cuff-links that sparkled whenever they caught the light.

  “Where are you going this way?”

  “To the river.” He intended to give no advance information.

  They crossed the Bowery, dodging men who could hold their hands out but couldn’t keep their heads up.

  “I don’t like it over here,” Ric said.

  Angie didn’t answer him. They went down alongside the bridge where the arches rose like the inside of a church. Construction cranes were parked where the street was blocked off. There were sewage pipes you could almost walk through. Red warning lanterns blinked where rocks were piled. Abandoned cars scattered the street. People sneaked among them.

  “It’s spooky,” Ric said. “Tell me where you’re going.” He grabbed at Angie’s arm.

  “Keep your dirty hands off me!” Angie said it. He’d always wanted to and always wound up saying it to himself only. He knew it was because of the knife that he was brave. What was he going to do when he lost it? Start hiding again?

  “Don’t give me that,” Ric said, but he put his hands in his pockets and trudged along in silence.

  Angie kicked a beer can out of his way. It ricocheted among cement blocks and sent up a clattering echo into the hum of overhead traffic.

  “What are you sore at?”

  “A lot of things,” Angie said.

  “The cops know about the Killing Eye,” Ric said. “Did you tell them?”

  “No.”

  “Somebody did.”

  Which meant, Angie thought, that Ric had told them. “I don’t care.”

  “You better. They’re looking for you.”

  “Let ’em.”

  “Let’s go home. Come on, Angie.” But he didn’t touch him.

  “No.” He wanted to turn back himself, but he wasn’t going to, not until he’d done what he had to do. He had said No to his mother, too, and then he had lied, but it was not because he was afraid of her.

  “Pa ain’t come home and he was supposed to.”

  Angie tried to think how he could get rid of Ric afterwards so that he could go to Julie’s.

  “They could kill him,” Ric said.

  “Who?”

  “Angie, you know the guy, Ruggio, the cops think killed Grossman?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let’s sit down some place. I can’t talk and walk at the same time.”

  “Not till we get to the river,” Angie said.

  “But there’ll be people there.”

  “So what?”

  “You got the knife with you, don’t you?”

  “So what?” Angie said again.

  “Let me see it, Angie.”

  “In the gut if you touch me!”

  Ric gave him a shove.

  “Cut it out, Ric.”

  “Don’t smart-ass me then. I’m trying to tell you something.”

  “I don’t want to know!”

  “That ain’t going to help anything, not knowing!” and the words began to burst out of Ric like the flood from an open hydrant. “Years and years, Pa was pretending he didn’t know, going from the Jew to somebody in the Family, carrying them money, nigger money, dope money, blood money, do you know what I’m saying? They made him do it after he got hurt because he wanted to put my fucking brother through law school. And what happens? All of a sudden the Jew don’t want him anymore, and they put this guy Ruggio in Pa’s job. And Pa starts crying to me about the Jew, what he did to him. And you know what? The big-shot lawyer, my fucking brother Pa was always comparing me to, you know what? He’s in the Family. He’s Mafia, Angie. I could die laughing if it wasn’t for Pa. Let’s sit down. I’m going to be sick if we don’t. The rotten cops took all the sweat out of me. My mouth’s like it’s full of cotton.”

  So they sat down on a pile of cement blocks, and Angie thought he had been right: Ric had told the cops about the Killing Eye. He tried to think about what Ric had just said and what it meant to him, Angie, when the detective started going over him again.

  He could hear Ric’s heavy breathing with a wheeze at the end of each breath. A gang of kids bore down on one of the abandoned cars they had passed, bits of their talk coming through in waves, then fading out. Spanish. They were on Puerto Rican ground.

  “Let me see the knife, Angie. I won’t take it. I swear. Little Brother’s oath.”

  After he’d told about the Killing Eye.

  But Angie took the knife from its sheath. He held it fast, looping his index and forefinger round the hilt. The blade shone in the semi-darkness. He couldn’t tell if Ric was looking at it, his face in shadow.

  “I wish I was dead. You’d do me a favor,” Ric said.

  Angie stuck the knife away and started to get up. Ric pulled him down.

  “I killed Grossman and I don’t even know what for.”

  “Tell it to the cops!” Angie screamed. He wrenched free of Ric’s grip and started to run, but Ric tripped him and he fell headlong. Ric threw himself on top of Angie. Angie could turn only his head, and his mouth was full of dirt. “Goddamn you, Ric.”

  “You’re going to listen to me, Angie. Somebody’s going to listen to me, and you’re going to believe me.”

  Angie couldn’t feel the knife where it ought to have been. He’d lost it, falling. He squirmed and writhed, but he could not get out from under Ric who now sat astride him and pinned his shoulders to the ground.

  “You think I’m lying, but I’m not. I got the knife at home I stole from the plant a long time ago, and when Pa started on me that night—like he said I was a fat carcass you couldn’t tell from a hanging cow, I wanted to kill him. I got the knife and chased him with it. He banged the window out and started yelling for help. I had to get out of the house or I would have killed him …”

  Ric bent over him to where he was sobbing in Angie’s ear and slobbering on his cheek. Angie turned his face the oth
er way but Ric was there too. “I went looking for you like I always do, and when I got to Grossman’s and didn’t see you, I figured you could’ve been hiding up in the hall or in the can, waiting to scare him. I went up and looked. I even said, Angie, under my breath, on account of Ruggio upstairs. I was crazy, thinking of Pa. I never did nothing to him. I can’t help being like me …”

  Angie tried not to hear. He kept pumping his backside, trying to throw Ric off. Then he lay still because it hurt.

  “When the Jew came upstairs, I was by the window that’s boarded up. He couldn’t see me. He wasn’t even looking, and when he bent over to unlock the door—it was so easy, Angie. I just dug the knife in his back and kept doing it till he went down. When I got home and told Pa, he said, You crazy bastard, I should’ve drowned you when you were born. Why didn’t he?” Ric pounded his fists into Angie’s back.

  “Don’t, Ric. Please …”

  Ric stopped. “Say you believe me.”

  “I believe you.”

  Ric tumbled off him and rolled over on his back. Angie got to his knees. The white shirt made Ric look like half a person.

  Angie did not believe him. He wanted to, but he couldn’t. He saw the knife, the blade partly under Ric. The handle was within Angie’s reach.

  Ric said: “I didn’t see the fucking cat till it started growling. He was holding it in his arms when he fell down dead and let it go. It jumped at me like a tiger and I caught it on the blade of the knife. Clean through. It stuck there.”

  Angie believed him. He pulled his own knife from beneath Ric and held it over him. He was not afraid and he had the strength. But he also had the strength to open his hand and let the knife fall out of it. He got to his feet and with every step away his legs grew steadier until he was able to run.

  He told the story first to Father Phillips, and then to Marks when the priest called him and the detective came to the rectory. The two men agreed afterwards that Angie should remain with Phillips for the time being.

  He was given a small room and slept in a priest’s bed. On the wall over his head was a crucifix entwined with palms. The housekeeper brought him tea and cinnamon toast, and Father Phillips sat with him for a long time talking of many things, but mostly about the priest himself, and how he had become a priest, and the school where he taught in California. Finally, well past midnight, and because he had not yet said his office of the day, Phillips brought his breviary and read it aloud. Angie fell asleep before he had finished.

  26

  MARKS PICKED UP RIC Bonelli when he returned home and booked him for homicide at the stationhouse just down the street from where he lived.

  During the night, Federal, state, and city Narcotics agents moved on the Ruggio information. Nowhere, as the story developed in the days following and key underworld figures were indicted, was there mention of John Bonelli. Marks was going to have to wait to see if Ric involved his brother. To Marks’ own belief, the older Bonelli son had performed a dangerous liaison, acting with Special Agent Ruggio. Narcotics officials would, of course, protect their sources.

  The only heroin left on Grossman’s premises was in the statuette of St. Francis Marks had held in his own hand in the Ruggio apartment. The shipments to Grossman as they left Italy were perfectly clean, so many statues of St. Joseph, St. Francis, Virgins … as invoiced. But at a port of call, generally Marseilles, a seaman returning from shore leave would bring aboard a number—in the last instance—of St. Francises, each narcotics-filled. Somewhere on the high seas, the originals went overboard.

  When Marks was asked by a reporter what in his part of the investigation gave him the greatest satisfaction, he said off the top of his head, “That I never did catch up with Ruggio.” Then he added: “But if you print it, you’ll never make copy from me again.”

  About the Author

  Dorothy Salisbury Davis is a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America, and a recipient of lifetime achievement awards from Bouchercon and Malice Domestic. The author of seventeen crime novels, including the Mrs. Norris Series and the Julie Hayes Series; three historical novels; and numerous short stories; she has served as president of the Mystery Writers of America and is a founder of Sisters in Crime.

  Born in Chicago in 1916, she grew up on farms in Wisconsin and Illinois and graduated from college into the Great Depression. She found employment as a magic-show promoter, which took her to small towns all over the country, and subsequently worked on the WPA Writers Project in advertising and industrial relations. During World War II, she directed the benefits program of a major meatpacking company for its more than eighty thousand employees in military service. She was married for forty-seven years to the late Harry Davis, an actor, with whom she traveled abroad extensively. She currently lives in Palisades, New York.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1973 by Dorothy Salisbury Davis

  Cover design by Tracey Dunham

  978-1-4804-6091-1

  This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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  New York, NY 10014

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