Sons and Princes

by James Lepore

  “So?” Aldo said, once they were seated. “What?”

  “The FBI just questioned me about Scarpa and the girl,” Anthony replied.

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No, I’m not kidding,” he said, softly, “and they claim Chris Massi was involved.”

  “Your son-in-law?” said Aldo.

  “Ex-son-in-law,” said Frank.

  “Yes,” said Junior Boy. “Scarpa’s wife said Nick picked Chris up yesterday morning for a meeting in Jersey.”

  “Maybe he dropped him off somewhere.”

  “Maybe. Tell Labrutto to come to my house on Sunday. It’s Matt’s birthday. Make sure he doesn’t leave without talking to me. I want to know why he thought he could kill Scarpa – or anybody – without my permission, and whether Massi was involved. Tell him what will happen if he lies to me.”

  This was addressed to Aldo, who was Guy Labrutto’s uncle via his wife’s sister. The tone of Junior Boy’s voice – soft, matter of fact, precise – raised the hackles on Aldo’s neck. He would hate to see his wife’s nephew killed, but there would be no stopping it, once ordered by the don.

  “Why you?” Frank asked Junior Boy.

  “It’s the surveillance. I was at Teresa’s Saturday night when Chris dropped off the kids. He stayed a few minutes. They found Labrutto’s address in Scarpa’s wallet. They know Labrutto and I talk.”

  “Have they talked to Labrutto?”

  “They didn’t say, but if they did, he didn’t mention it to Rocco.”

  “Why hold that back?” Aldo said.

  “Why not tell us about Massi? Why the hit in the first place?” Junior Boy replied.

  “You don’t believe his story?”

  “Do you?”

  “The only thing I can say is that it’s such an incredibly stupid thing to do that maybe it’s true.”

  “Maybe. But Aldo, make sure you tell him how close he is to being dead. Just for fun, I’ll have Nicky Spags throw him and that freak sidekick of his off the same cliff. Make sure you mention that.”

  “If it’s the helper you’re worried about, he’ll be dead soon. You know Rocco.”

  “As soon as he’s dead, I want to know.”

  “What about Massi?” Aldo asked.

  “Find him,” Junior Boy replied. “I want to talk to him. He’s living in the Village someplace.”

  “There’s nothing to worry about here,” Frank said. “Unless there’s something we don’t know.”

  Both men looked at the don.

  “Ed Dolan interviewed me. By himself. Before Tom Stabile got there.”

  “So?” Aldo said. “You gave him nothing, right?”

  “Right, but here’s what he said: ‘I’m putting this double murder on your head, Junior Boy, yours and Chris Massi’s. Whatever I have to do to prove the two of you did it, I’ll do. In the federal system, we execute by lethal injection. I’ll be there looking you in the eye as you take your last fucking guinea breath.”

  “The fucking Irish cocksucker,” said Aldo.

  Frank just shook his head.

  All three knew the story of Dolan Sr., Johnny Logan and Joe Black Massi; of Dolan Jr.’s vengeful prosecution of Chris Massi and the role he played in Chris’ disbarment. Frank and Aldo especially had watched with keen interest as this drama played itself out. Chris’ refusal to officially join the family and his divorce of Teresa were insults that still rankled ten years later. Junior Boy’s attitude was different. At the time of the divorce, it grieved him to see his daughter’s heart broken, but, although he was hurt as well, he was never angry at Chris. Joe Black Massi’s son had acted honorably both during and after the marriage. Junior boy was a busy man, and not one to dwell on what might have been, but recently, Chris had been much on his mind. He had asked for time to consider the offer concerning Jimmy Barson, and that was sensible. There was no re-crossing that Rubicon. It had certainly occurred to DiGiglio that his only grandson might one day succeed him as don. He considered Chris’ attempt at intervention a masterful stroke, motivated simply by love of his son.

  As to the problem at hand, it was extremely unlikely that Chris was involved in the killing of Nick Scarpa and the girl, but whether he was or was not was irrelevant, given Ed Dolan’s blood lust. Of the two links between the don and the double murder – Labrutto and Massi – Labrutto was by far the weakest. But that did not mean that Chris could be ignored, or left to his own devices. He would have to be talked to, and warned. Implicit in this line of thinking were the consequences to Chris, the very harsh consequences, should he turn out for some reason to pose a threat to Junior Boy. The don stopped short at this thought, unwilling to envision either the scenario or its aftermath, in which a young man who he at one time had loved like a son – the father of his grandchildren – was killed or hurt badly on his orders. That he would leave for another day.

  The rest of the game board lent itself to an easy analysis. Labrutto’s attempt at an “accident,” in which two people associated with him died, had failed. A coward, but a fairly intelligent one, he would never have made such an attempt without the don’s permission unless there was a countervailing force, which most likely was a betrayal to another family. He would keep Labrutto alive until he discovered who this other family was and what precisely was the nature of the betrayal. Then Labrutto would be killed and the family that had seduced him dealt with.

  Then there was the execution of Jimmy Barsonetti to consider. It could not be put off indefinitely. Barson, as he was sometimes called, had taken recently to visiting a woman in Queens in the early morning hours before her husband, a cop, got home from his midnight to eight a.m. shift. The row house next door was empty. Its elderly owner had died and left it to the wife of a young DiGiglio soldier. It made for easy access to the cop’s back door, which, with no access from the street, was never guarded by Barsonetti’s people. But this situation would not last long. Barsonetti would tire of cuckolding the cop, or the woman would leave her husband. Frank and Aldo knew of Junior Boy’s plans, but they had not been told that Chris Massi had been offered the chance to pull the trigger. The don had made more than a few such important decisions without consulting his brothers, and he fully expected them, as they had in the past, to accept this one when it was revealed to them. He had given Chris a week to make a decision. The don would use that week to determine if his former son-in-law was really a threat to the family. If he was, then, of course, things would change dramatically. Lunch consisted of a garden salad, penne with marinara sauce, fresh baked semolina bread, and a two hundred dollar bottle of Chianti. As the waiter was clearing the table, there was a knock on the door, and Rocco Stabile entered the room.

  “Clean up later,” Junior Boy said to the waiter, who immediately placed the dishes he had in his hands on a side table and left the room.

  “Sit,” the don said to Rocco, who, nodding, sat heavily in the empty chair, facing Junior Boy.

  The three DiGiglios looked at Rocco, who had placed his thick, hairy forearms on the table and was waiting to be spoken to. In his middle forties, a “made man,” Rocco, with his mashed nose, retro eyeglasses and earnestly knitted brow, had the look of a middle linebacker who had waited a year or two too long to retire. It would be a mistake, however, to take him lightly, as many had learned to their dismay.

  “Talk,” Aldo said, impatient.

  “The Brooklyn thing is done.”

  “What took you so long?”

  “He was out all night. He came home this morning.”

  “And the car?”

  “It’s in Queens being fixed.”

  Aldo was doing the questioning. Rocco reported directly to him.

  “Anything else?”

  “I stopped by the house in Alpine. The FBI was there, dusting for fingerprints, going through Guy’s records.”

  “Did they take anything?”

  “They wanted copies of all of the videos Guy made. He didn’t have any, but he did have production records, which t
hey took.”

  “So they’ll eventually see the girl.”

  Rocco remained silent.

  “Anything else?” Aldo asked.

  “They took a water bottle and a glass that were on the coffee table. For prints.”

  “Whose prints were on them?”

  “Guy didn’t say. I didn’t ask.”

  “Go get Guy, Rocco. Bring him to the Tick-Tock. I’ll meet you there. Tell the freak to stay put. If he so much as makes a phone call, he’s dead.”

  “He wasn’t there.”

  “Where’d he go?”

  “Guy said he sent him into the city for something.”

  “I told him not to make a move until I spoke to him.”

  This was not a question, so Rocco did not answer. His deceivingly innocent face was blank, but in his heart, he was glad that Aldo’s tongue had slipped. He hated Guy Labrutto, whose pornography business, lucrative or not, was a blot on the family’s honor. An order to execute Labrutto, and his albino “assistant,” would be music to Rocco’s battered ears. He looked over at Junior Boy, who had remained silent, waiting for a question, or his cue to leave.

  “Who did the Brooklyn job?” the don asked.

  “Phil Purcell.”

  “Who was this guy?”

  “A junkie, I think. A street punk.”

  “Where was he all night?”

  “I don’t know. Philly waited outside his house. You want me to see if Philly talked to him at all?”

  “I want you to find out where he spent the night. Who he talked to.”

  “Okay,” Rocco answered, nodding once.

  “You can go, Rocco,” Junior Boy said. “You did good.”

  5.

  On Tuesday morning, Chris shaved and showered in Lou’s apartment. Over breakfast, Lou told him of Joseph’s calls earlier and of Mickey Rodriguez’ ransacking of his apartment. Chris kept his thoughts to himself, not wanting to endanger Lou by giving him information that could get him killed. While changing after his shower, Chris had come across the slip of paper he had taken from Rodriguez’ wallet with “Michele” scrawled on it along with a Manhattan telephone number. He promised Lou he would not wander, but instead of returning to La Luna’s back room after breakfast, he headed for Suffolk Street.

  He took the same route he had taken Sunday. The weather was again good, but there was no way he could enjoy it, not with the words double murder, snuff film and federal prosecution mixing in his head with the images of Mickey Rodriguez’ sickening orgasm, Heather Jansen’s puzzled, then terrified, face as a gun was placed against the side of her head and Ed Dolan’s revenge-mad eyes. As if this were not enough, the idea of killing Jimmy Barsonetti, solidifying slowly in his mind over the past ten days, kept forcing itself into this turbulent mix.

  As he approached LaSalle Academy, he noticed a man dressed in black, wearing a clerical collar, directing a group of boys as they unloaded cardboard boxes from a truck parked at the curb on Second Street. Drawing nearer, he saw that the cleric was Brother John Farrell, the driver of the car that had, in February of 1977, gone off of the Grand Central Parkway into a tree, putting Chris in the hospital for a month and changing the course of his life. Seeing Brother Farrell, whose shock of wavy, once chestnut brown hair had turned pure white, and who must by now be seventy-five or more, snapped Chris back to that winter night, and to the memory of the boy who definitely had other plans, other dreams. John Farrell’s face, red and etched with age and sadness, reminded him of Hemingway’s famous line about the world breaking all of us, and he wondered if either he or Farrell were among the lucky ones who were stronger in the broken parts.

  “Mr. Massi.”

  “Brother Farrell.”

  “It’s been a long time.”

  Chris did not answer. John Farrell, a drinker at the time, had visited him in the hospital once and then been transferred to a high school in Chicago, his home town. He and Chris had not laid eyes on each other since.

  “I’ve kept tabs on you,” Farrell said. “I don’t suppose you can say the same.”

  “No.”

  “Are you holding a grudge?”

  “You weren’t drunk. I thought we cleared that up?”

  “A fifteen-year-old boy,” Farrell replied, “will say anything to a superior in a black robe and a collar.”

  Chris had set a two-mile New York state high school record that night at the Nassau Coliseum. It had rained that day and then turned very cold, but the roads did not seem bad as they headed back to the city, Chris the only boy on the team that night who did not have a ride home from his parents or someone else he knew in attendance. One moment they were going along at speed, the next they were flying, literally, off the road.

  “You had your usual two or three shooters,” Chris said.

  “Did I tell you that?”

  “You didn’t have to.”

  John Farrell, no athlete, and not a sports groupie – the boys called them jock sucks – offered his assistance to every LaSalle coach, running team members to and from games and meets, tending to the movement of equipment and other logistics; giving him, on road trips, an excuse to be out of the Brothers’ dorm, to have a few quiet beers until he was needed at the end of whatever game was being played. His routine was known to Chris and most of the the boys on the various teams but held no special interest for them. To them, he was a decent guy who taught Latin and geometry with an uncondescending wryness, and who was not keen on the infamous paddle used by some other teachers a little too quickly and with a little too much relish.

  “I’m sorry,” the cleric said, “nevertheless.”

  Farrell, not especially big, but exuding a casual strength and a charming cockiness as a young man, seemed to Chris to have shrunk with the years, in spirit as well as in body. He stood as tall as he could now, as if he were seizing some chance the universe had offered him. He had been driving carefully that winter night, at, or a little over, the speed limit. He had had his usual two or three beers, but he was not drunk. He had probably hit a patch of ice. Looking at him, blinking in the morning sun, Chris realized that the lives of two people had been bent to fate’s white heat that night twenty-seven years ago. Nodding slightly, he said, “It was just bad luck, Brother, for both of us, but I accept your apology. What have you been up to?”

  “I got sober – I actually was a drunk. Then I taught school on the south side of Chicago for twenty years. I worked at a drug rehab clinic part time.”

  “It took seven years to get sober?”

  “I can’t remember most of them, thank God. How about you? I hear you’ve had some trouble lately.”

  “Don’t tell me I made the Chicago papers.”

  “I’ve followed your career via one source and another.”

  “Are you back at LaSalle?”

  “They’ve made me an assistant principal. I’ll teach a class or two. I can’t stand the thought of retiring, and we’re very short of brothers. You haven’t answered my question.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Are you living in the city?”

  “I’m back in the old neighborhood, actually.”

  “The legs?”

  “They’re okay.”

  “Can you still conjugate the verb, cambio?”

  “Is there a message in there someplace?” Chris said, smiling for the first time in forty-eight hours.

  “Maybe. It’s the first verb that came to mind.”

  “Cambio, cambias, cambiat, cambiamus, cambiatus, cambiant.”

  “I’m a hell of a teacher.”

  The boys, three of them, had finished carrying Brother Farrell’s things inside, and were now sitting against the wrought iron fence of the small cemetery next door, talking and striking the various awkward poses of early teenage males everywhere.

  “It looks like they’re anxious to be free,” Farrell said, noticing them.

  “I’ll leave you,” Chris said, extending his hand.

  “I’m an old man,” Farrell rep
lied, gripping Chris’ hand with surprising strength, “but I still have my legs under me. Call me if you need anything in the way of help.”

  The oddness of meeting Brother Farrell at this moment in his life did not escape Chris, nor did the look in the old man’s pale eyes. They were smiling and sad at the same time, and there was something else in them that Chris could not place. Thoughts of Farrell receded quickly, however, as Chris turned from Delancey onto Suffolk Street, where he saw Mickey Rodriguez standing at the top of the steps of number one-twelve, looking up and down the block through a pair of near-black sunglasses. The shadow cast by the fire escape directly above him could not obscure the rest of the albino’s face, which shone translucently with its own strange, inner light.

  Spotting Chris, Rodriguez reached inside his black sport coat. Chris slowed to see if the killer of Nick Scarpa and Allison McRae was going to draw a gun. Their eyes locked for a long second, during which, as if on a separate screen in his mind, Chris saw himself killing Rodriguez, executing him in the unadorned, point-blank way in which he always imagined Joe Black dispatched his victims. He had, without thinking, picked up his pace, but this thought slowed him down, as he realized he would need a gun to do this, and a better venue.