Sons and Princes

by James Lepore

  Two days later, it was reported in all three of the city’s major dailies that a search of Assistant U.S. Attorney Ed Dolan’s Upper East Side apartment was said by a reliable government source to have turned up a real snuff film, as opposed to the pretend versions found strewn around the shack. The same source also told reporters that a year ago the shack in the Meadowlands had been used as a lookout by FBI agents responding to a tip that a mob murder was about to go down. The tip had never materialized, but Dolan’s team had been notified of the operation, and it was believed that the career prosecutor had visited the site.

  The media frenzy that followed lasted several weeks and had Karen Pierce, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, recently transferred from Washington, on the defensive from her first day on the job. Articles recounting Dolan’s career were run, all of which mentioned the fact that he was said to be recently working on what he believed was a connection between the Scarpa/McRae murders and organized crime. One or two stories referred to the DiGiglio crime family as his target, although each noted that no evidence connecting the DiGiglios to the Palisades murders had ever been produced publicly.

  The consensus was that the deaths of Guy Labrutto – a known maker of pornographic videos – and his associate, Mickey Rodriguez, had made proving such a connection extremely difficult, if not impossible. No mention was made of Chris Massi. Yesterday, Pierce had issued a press release, carried in this morning’s papers, announcing that the Scarpa/McRae investigation had been closed on the theory that the likely killers – Labrutto and Rodriguez – were dead,; that Ed Dolan’s task force had been dissolved and would be reorganized in Washington, and that Dolan’s personal and professional activities going back at least five years would be thoroughly scrutinized by her office.

  When he finished drinking, Chris looked over at John Farrell, who was slumping in his chair but smiling. The temporary flush of excitement on his cheeks was a sad reminder of the old Brother Farrell, the one whose face was permanently pink, before cancer drew the shades on his eyes and turned his visage pallid and gray. The old man had made Chris promise not to tell anyone that he was dying, and Chris had thus far complied. He had held his breath while Vinnie was popping the champagne, hoping that his toast would not be to life or health, as it might logically have been, given that Michele had kicked her habit and Chris’ arm had healed well – and that they were both alive.

  “I feel cheated, in a way,” Farrell said.

  “Maybe you’ll get another chance,” Chris replied.

  “What does that mean?” Vinnie said.

  “I talked to Teresa this morning,” Chris said. “She says her father wants to talk to me.”

  “Does he know where you are?”

  “No, no one does.”

  “Maybe that’s all he wants to do, talk.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Why not?”

  “I can connect him to the snuff film, and to Joseph’s death. What would you do?”

  “You’re the father of his grandchildren,” Vinnie said. “You got Dolan off his back. He can’t be thinking of killing you.”

  “I can’t take the chance.”

  “What about Aldo and Frank? They’ll come after you.”

  “Let’s not talk about it tonight,” Chris said. “Tonight, let’s just eat and drink and be happy that we’re alive.”

  It had taken two weeks for Chris’ wounds to heal. Deep, but not to the bone, they had been cleansed and coated with silver nitrate solution on a regular basis. The silver nitrate, along with sterile dressings and anti-inflammatory medication, were spirited by John Farrell from the infirmary at LaSalle. Demerol for pain was provided by Vinnie, who also brought over and installed an air conditioner that provided Chris with much needed relief from the increasing summer heat.

  Michele did the nursing. While she did, Chris told her about his connection to the Scarpa and McRae murders, the story of Joseph’s life and death and the latest version of his own life story, including his misbegotten relationship with Ed Dolan, his brief running career and the car accident that ended it. By the middle of the third week, Chris was able to move his arm with a minimum of pain and discomfort. Michele’s AIDS and hepatitis tests had come back negative. To celebrate their health, and the welcome announcement from Karen Pierce’s office, they invited Farrell and Vinnie for dinner.

  “Yes, don Massi,” Vinnie said, with mock solemnity, raising his glass. “Tonight, the war stops for a few hours. Tonight, we celebrate your health and your victories.”

  “To the first gay consigliere,” Chris said, smiling and raising his glass as well.

  By ten o’clock, Farrell and Vinnie had gone, the dishes were done, and Chris and Michele were sitting in the living room sipping coffee. Michele was smoking. Her cigarettes, Marlboro reds, were on the coffee table between them. Chris, sitting Indian-style on the floor, facing Michele on the couch, picked up the pack, took one out and lit it.

  “I didn’t know you smoked,” Michele said.

  “I have one every ten years or so.”

  They smoked and listened to the sounds of the street below and the city beyond.

  “Would you like some music?” Michele asked.

  “Sure.”

  Michele rose and went into the kitchen, where she turned on the transistor radio that was on the counter. It was already tuned to a jazz station that Chris liked. As she returned to the sofa, the husky sound of Ben Webster’s saxophone came drifting after her.

  “There’s no danger now,” Chris said, when she was seated. “You can go back to your apartment whenever you’re ready.”

  “What brings that up?”

  “You’ve brought a lot of things over from your place. The radio, for instance.”

  “I thought you’d like the music while you were laid up.”

  “I did and everything else you did for me.”

  “Do you want me go?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I’ll stay. What are your plans?”

  Chris took a hit from his cigarette and laid it in the ceramic ashtray they were sharing. He had started smoking in law school, eventually enjoying most the unfiltered Camel and a drink that were his reward at the end of a long day of work. When Tess, then six, questioned the smell of his apartment, he quit. That had been ten years ago. Through the smoke rising in lazy spirals from the ashtray, he saw images of Michele: flung on her back by the kick of Joe Black’s Ruger, standing over the dead and bleeding body of Mickey Rodriguez, the gun still pointed at his crotch, the hot sun pounding down on them and searing the tableau forever onto his brain.

  “We might as well move to your apartment,” he replied. “I’m pretty sure I’m safe down here.”

  “Safe from what?”

  “From being bothered while I figure out what to do.”

  “I don’t think your ex-father-in-law plans on killing you.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “The way you described him. I think he’s a lot like you, and I don’t think it’s a killing you’d do.”

  Chris was not surprised at this insight from Michele. Once her head had cleared, she had proven to be intelligent and remarkably adept at getting beneath the surface of things. He did not respond immediately. He was planning on killing Junior Boy, whether Michele’s analogy was correct or not. He would kill Aldo and Frank, too, if he could get them all together. They would all know at once then that it was Joseph’s life they were paying for with theirs.

  “Look at it this way,” he said finally. “The don would avenge the death of a brother. Therefore, I would, too.”

  “But not tonight.”

  “No,” Chris answered, smiling. “Tonight, I’m staying right here.”

  Michele’s hair was now about an inch long, and she had done something to it. Parted and styled, it looked like the edgy kind of hairdo any hip young downtown babe might have. The bruises on he
r face had healed completely, and she was wearing lipstick and strategically applied makeup that accentuated her classic features. The effect of her dual struggles – to stay clean and to cope with the unforgiving memory of what she had done to her children – had stamped these features with a dignity that only such suffering can impart. The courage she had shown in firing Joe Black’s Ruger at Ed Dolan’s back was, Chris knew, nothing compared to the courage it would take for her to stay on her new path. Love was a mystery to Chris, as it is to all of us, but respect was not. Respect he understood.

  “Do you like me Chris?” Michele asked.

  “Yes, you know I do.”

  “I wish I could say I don’t remember my days on the street, but I do.”

  “Crime and punishment,” Chris answered.

  “What does that mean?”

  “You thought you were punishing yourself for what you did to your son, but you weren’t. You were avoiding it. Now that you’re clean, and able to feel again, you can start paying whatever price it is you really have to pay.”

  “Who decides that?”

  “You do.”

  Michele crushed out her cigarette and remained silent for a second. The shadow that was never far from her face crossed over it. Watching her in the lamplight, Chris admitted to himself that he had meddled in her life for reasons having to do with his own pain and frustration. He winced at the selfishness and the hubris of such behavior. Still, here she was, clean, healthy, alive to the sexy tips of her fingers and toes.

  “Do you like me enough to kiss me?” Michele asked.

  For his answer, Chris got up, went to the couch and sat next to Michele. Taking her face in his hands, he looked at her and saw that the shadow had passed from her eyes, in whose depths he could see the same mix of need and desire that were surely in his. He continued to hold her face as they kissed, and she kept her hands at her sides. Their lips touched gently at first, making it seem to Chris that they were suspended in space, that they could hang there, connected this way, forever. The pressure built, and then their tongues met, and with a gasp, Michele was in Chris’ arms, holding him tightly as her mouth found his neck and cheeks and eyes. Pulling apart for a second, they smiled dumbly at each other, having each had their first taste in a long time of life’s sweetest drug.

  They got out of their clothes, stopping to touch and kiss along the way, in no hurry at first to end their high. Soon, however, the blood was pounding in Chris’ head as forcefully as it was in his erect, rock-hard penis, and, laying Michele on her back, he entered her with a stabbing pleasure that – stopping, motionless for a long second or two – he allowed to flood his brain. Beginning slowly, as she raised her hips to draw him in deeper, Chris let his senses take over until they found the rhythm that is as old as the universe yet somehow unique to each couple, and that with surprising swiftness brought them both to orgasm. Stunned, they lay facing each other on the couch, the air conditioner humming steadily in the background, while from the radio came the voice of a DJ pitching a jazz cruise around Manhattan. Toward the end, Chris had opened his eyes to see Michele looking up at him and smiling. This memory stayed with him as he rolled them so that they were lying side by side, facing each other, still joined at hip and crotch. It was a smile that humbled him, such was its pure joy at being loved.

  “I’m having a smoke,” Michele said.

  “Go for it.”

  “Do you want one?”

  “No, I’ll have my next one in 2013.”

  Michele grabbed her cigarettes and went first into the bathroom, then the bedroom. When she came out, she was wearing one of Chris’ polo shirts, a white one with a blue collar. Chris had slipped on the khaki walking shorts he had been wearing, and was lying on the couch, his head propped on a pillow, listening to the radio. Michele lit a cigarette and sat at his feet, smoking, stroking his ankles with her free hand.

  “It must have been hard for you,” she said, “when you realized you couldn’t run anymore.”

  “It was a bad day.”

  “Or two.”

  “Or two.”

  “I feel something right here.”

  “There’s a plate in there with screws in it.”

  She had been caressing the faded vertical scar on his right leg where the surgeon had entered to recompose his shattered tibia.

  “Is the other leg the same?”

  “No, that was a simple fracture. It was the right leg that did me in. The engine crushed it.”

  “Did you have a lawsuit?”

  “My father didn’t believe in lawsuits. He thought they were a form of charity.”

  “Did you ever run again?”

  “I tried to run the following year, but I re-broke the right leg. That’s why there’s a permanent pin in it.”

  “My son’s name was Christopher.”

  Chris had sat up and reorganized himself into a semilotus position facing Michele, whose hand he now took and studied, gathering his thoughts for the turn their conversation had taken.

  “Named after whom?”

  “No one. I just liked the name.”

  In the Southern Italian culture, the first son is named after the paternal grandfather. Chris, still staring at Michele’s small, lovely, almost childlike hand, caressing it gently, recalled the day in June of 1989 when he told his parents he was naming his new son Matthew. Rose had put her hand to her brow and gone to the kitchen sink. Joe Black, flinty, absorbed this blow with dignity, but Chris could see the briefest flicker of sadness, and even pain, appear and disappear in his father’s dark eyes. It was a day he wished he had back again. Lifting his eyes to meet Michele’s, he said, “Where is he buried?”

  “In Queens, near my parents.”

  “And your daughter?”

  “She’s alive, Chris.”

  “No, I mean what’s her name?”

  “Grace.”

  Christopher and Grace, he thought, simple, lovely, symbolic names. “That’s a pretty name,” he said out loud. “Have you thought about visiting her?”

  “That’s not possible.”

  “I think you’re wrong.”

  “I don’t want to see her.”

  “Why didn’t your parents take her?”

  “They’re old. My father has MS.”

  Michele’s cigarette had burned down to the filter. Removing her hand from Chris’, she crushed it out and lit another one.

  “I could help you,” he said.

  “Help me do what?”

  “Get a lawyer, find her, start the process. I doubt they terminated your parental rights.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means you’re still her mother. You could see her, get her back eventually. You’d have to stay clean, and you probably only have this one shot.”

  “I plan on staying clean.”

  “Then you have to do it. She needs you.”

  Chris could see by the stricken look on Michele’s face that, though she had raised the subject of her children, she had not expected it to lead so quickly and so directly to the issue of choice and personal responsibility. He had not planned on this unhappy coda to their love making, but momentum and timing were everything when it came to taking action in life, and the longer Michele waited to confront this issue the more likely it was that she never would.

  “She needs to forget me.”

  “That’s the point,” Chris replied. “She’ll never forget you. She’ll long for her real mom for the rest of her life. Think about it. How can you go forward and leave her behind?”

  “What if they won’t let me see her?”

  “Then at least you know you tried.”

  Michele threw her head back, and sucked on her cigarette, reminding Chris of the day they first met on the front steps of the building, a lifetime ago. She blew the smoke out and said, “I was happy for a few minutes.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “Will you think about it?”

 
; “Yes, I’ll think about it. What else would I think about?”

  “How much you love making love with me.”

  Michele smiled at this and, putting out her cigarette, crept into Chris’ arms.

  “How much time do we have?” she said, her head on his chest.

  Chris knew what she meant. To her, it was not possible that their time as lovers would be anything more than a brief interlude. Defeat was the leitmotif of her life, in the very air she breathed. And him? Why had he closed his heart to love? Why always so cool and distant? Because his legs were broken as a boy? Because Teresa loved power and prestige more than she loved him? His had not been the first unhappy childhood, the first disillusioned heart. Had his pride been a false refuge after all? Surprised and confused at the surge of feeling in his heart he was unaware at the moment that these questions were also answers.

  “Enough, I hope,” he replied.

  “I don’t think it will ever be enough,” Michele replied, raising her head and pressing her lips to Chris’, and then, while kissing him, she said softly, “but let’s not waste any of it.”

  10.

  Two days later, Chris was standing on the concrete esplanade that overlooks the east end of Bryant Park. On the sunken lawn below and on the park’s perimeter walkway, people in ones and twos and small groups were everywhere enjoying the temperate early July day, walking, reading, playing chess, eating an early lunch, sitting quietly on the numerous slatted folding chairs that dotted the green landscape. The tall plane trees that surround the lawn, with their handsome, dappled trunks, were reaching for the sunlight that was just now breaking through clouds that had brought a brief morning shower.

  Among those sitting quietly, his hands in the pockets of his baggy shorts, his black hair falling with studied casualness across his forehead, was Matt Massi, in the precise location near the Forty-Second Street entrance that Chris had designated as their meeting spot. As Chris watched, his son reached into one of the cargo pockets of his shorts and took out a pair sunglasses – silver-rimmed with cobalt blue lenses – and slipped them on. He had showed up at the African Queen at ten o’clock asking for his father. Vinnie had called Chris, and the meeting had been arranged.