“What does that mean? Bootlegging?”
“I don’t know. Maybe cowboys used to hide whiskey in a boot or something. Anyway, it’s happening out there, Tommy. Every day it’s getting worse. This place is going to be the Wild West before too long. You know they’ve started an Italian Squad in the department?”
“You didn’t mention it.”
“They asked me to take one of the top jobs. I turned them down.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want to be an ‘Italian’ cop. I want to be a cop. I don’t want to think about there being so many Italian gangsters in this city that they need their own squad to deal with them. Our hope for the future is to be more American than Americans. How are we ever going to do that if we’re separated from everybody else, behind a sign that says ‘These are the Italian gangsters and these are the Italian cops who keep them in their cages.’ I don’t want to be an Italian. I want to be an American.”
Tommy stared at him for a long moment. “I’ll think about it, Papa.”
“You are the most stubborn son a man could have.”
“It must run in the family.”
“All right. If you want to join, let me know. I’ll help you walk the application through. And you don’t have to worry about that stuff in the hospital. It was damned near impossible for me to run down and I worked hard at it. The department wouldn’t have any reason to check that so thoroughly. You can waltz onto the force if you want to.”
Tommy reached out and placed his hand on his father’s shoulder. “I want to think about it some before I make a decision. But I don’t want you worrying about it, and I sure don’t want you worrying about money for me. You’ve got enough now, with Tina wanting singing lessons and a piano and God knows what else. So drop it. It’s my problem.”
They were interrupted by a loud knocking at the door. Tommy got up to answer it and Nilo came into the room, soaked to the skin.
“Hey, the stranger from across the street,” Tommy said. “How are you doing, Nilo?”
“Hello, Uncle Tony,” Nilo said, before answering Tommy. “I am fine,” he said. “But I am freezing and I came over for a cup of coffee.”
“Help yourself. It’s on the stove.”
As Nilo poured a cup, Tony called out from the parlor: “How’s your new room?”
“Fine, Uncle Tony. The Widow Annacharico does not meddle or pry. She leaves me alone as long as I pay the rent on time. I like it that way.”
“Speaking of rent,” Tony said. “No work today?”
“I quit,” Nilo said. He came back into the living room sipping at the steaming coffee, looking at his uncle over the rim of the cup.
God, he has eyes like a woman, Tony thought. He is just too pretty.
“Why’d you quit?” Tommy asked.
Nilo shrugged. “The boss, that Chambers. He insulted me.”
“What did he say?”
“He called me a dumb guinea.”
Tommy laughed. In New York City, anyone with an Italian name learned early on not to let such things bother him. But Nilo was not really a New Yorker … not yet.
“And?”
“And I hit him and left,” Nilo said.
“Maybe I’ll have a talk with that big mick,” Tony said ominously.
“No, Uncle Tony. It was nice of you to get me that job, but I don’t want you involved anymore. I have had enough of ditchdigging and will now find other work.”
His two relatives looked at him silently, and Nilo knew what they were thinking.
Yes, it is true I am young and illiterate and do not yet know the ways of this city. But, in my brief life, I have already killed three men. I will find something to do in America besides carry a shovel.
There was another rapping on the door. When Tony answered it, a uniformed policeman stood outside the doorway. Tony walked into the hallway to talk to him, then came back and got his jacket from a coatrack.
“Damn,” he said. “I was looking forward to hanging around this afternoon, but duty calls.”
“What’s happening?” Tommy asked.
“There’s some gang trouble,” his father answered. “One of Masseria’s men got himself shot, and he had to pick our precinct to get himself killed in.”
“Joe the Boss? Who’d shoot one of his men?”
“This is just the start,” Tony said darkly. “There’s a new guy in town and he’s moving in on Joe’s rackets. I think before too long we’re going to see a big war between Masseria and this Maranzano. I’m glad I’m not working that Italian Squad.”
“What is his name?” Nilo asked quickly. “This new man?”
“Salvatore Maranzano,” Tony said as he struggled into his heavy raincoat. “Another fun-loving Sicilian.” He walked to the door. The uniformed officer was still waiting in the hall.
Tony turned back. “Tell Mama I will try to sneak home for some dinner but not to wait for me.”
“Take care of yourself, Papa,” Tommy said, and Nilo nodded agreement. The policeman left without acknowledging the warning.
When he had gone, Nilo asked Tommy “Who is this Masseria?”
“Joe the Boss, they call him,” Tommy said. “Mafia. He was some kind of a thug, but now he runs most of the rackets in town.”
“He is very rich?”
Tommy laughed. “I never heard of a poor gangster,” he said, adding glumly, “only cops are poor.”
“And ditchdiggers,” Nilo said. “Now this Salvatore Maranzano will challenge Joe the Boss?”
“He’ll try to. If he lives long enough,” Tommy said. “There are always challenges. And there are always people getting killed.” He waved his hands, dismissing the whole matter as unimportant.
“But he has killed one of Masseria’s men?” Nilo pressed.
“Well, no one’s sure of that yet,” Tommy said. “Papa is just going over to start the investigation now.”
Nilo nodded. He thought of standing outside Maranzano’s office and then seeing the two burly men in pin-striped suits brush by him. They had seemed as if they were in a hurry to get somewhere.
And maybe their appointment was with the henchman, now deceased, of Joe the Boss.
He smiled at Tommy. “Would you do me a favor?” he said.
“Hey, we’re family. Of course,” Tommy answered.
“Thank you. I wish to borrow your suit. For tomorrow. We are the same size and it should fit.”
“Absolutely,” Tommy said. “Do you have a big date?”
Nilo shook his head. “No. I am going to apply for a job and I want to look…” His English failed him and he looked at Tommy helplessly.
“Professional,” Tommy offered.
Nilo nodded. “Professional. I want to look professional.” He smiled. “I have my own shirt and tie.”
* * *
WEARING TOMMY FALCONE’S DARK BLUE SUIT and his own Christmas-gift white shirt and tie—badly knotted because it was the first tie he had ever worn—Nilo Sesta walked bravely through the front doors of the Maranzano Real Estate Office at nine o’clock the next morning. squeezing the small sweat-stained business card tightly in his hand, as if it were the key to the exit door from hell.
He knew immediately that this was the kind of place he wanted to spend his life in. The walls and floors were of highly polished pink marble with real oil paintings, and sitting at the end of the reception room behind a big wooden desk was a beautiful young red-haired woman who wore a crimson dress with the top buttons open, and Nilo could see the crease where her breasts were pushed together.
She could not have been much older than he was, but she seemed cool and confident, and she smiled at him as he walked across the lobby toward her desk.
He was sweating already.
“Yes, sir. Can I help you?” the young woman said.
Awkwardly, Nilo stuck out his hand, holding Maranzano’s business card. The woman took it, looked at it, and smiled again.
“Yes?” she said.
Ni
lo was confused for a moment. He had not expected that he would have to do a lot of talking.
“I would like to see Don Salvatore,” he said.
The redhead nodded. Nilo found it hard not to look down into her cleavage. He was nervous about it, but he knew he must tell her that her dress had come undone.
“What is your name, please?” she asked.
“I am Nilo Sesta,” he said. Without realizing he was doing it, he stuck a forefinger inside the collar of his shirt and pulled it from side to side, trying to loosen the stranglehold the shirt had on his throat. He quickly added, “I am from the don’s home village in Sicily.”
“Well, Mr. Maranzano is not in yet,” she answered, stressing the “Mr.” as if to let the yokel know that in New York men were called “Mr.” and not “Don.” “If you wish to wait, you could sit over there,” she said, nodding to a row of chairs on the side of the room.
Nilo started to turn away, then looked back at the girl.
“Miss, I don’t want to be…”—he struggled for the word—“… rude.…”
“Yes?”
“Your dress … the buttons…” Nilo looked down helplessly at the woman’s cleavage. So did she.
She nodded, then opened another button and spread wider the two halves of the top of her dress. Nilo’s mouth dropped open; he beat a hasty retreat to the other side of the room, and he heard the young woman giggling derisively behind him. He sat and waited for Don Salvatore, casting occasional sideways glances at the young woman’s bosom, trying not to be noticed.
He had not slept with any American women. Tina had seemed to lose interest in him, and there was something wrong with her best friend, Sofia, who, although she was very beautiful, was cold and unapproachable. In truth, Nilo stood a little in awe of American women. They seemed always to be well dressed and highly perfumed, and their hair was always carefully combed—even the girls he saw on the street down in Little Italy—all of them so different from the girls and women of the little towns of his native Sicily.
But this one, he thought, is very different. She is a puttana, a whore, and if Don Salvatore favors me with a job I will climb between her legs and she will never again mock me. Unless of course, Don Salvatore himself is already crawling between her legs. In which case, of course, I will protect her virtue against all other assailants, as if she were the Blessed Virgin herself.
The thought must have brought a smile to his face, because the young woman caught his eye and asked, “Something’s funny?”
His months on a sailing ship had taught Nilo how to deal with whores. “Someday, when I think you’re ready, I will show you,” he said solemnly.
She smiled at him, a little more than was necessary. The young man was really cute, she thought, all nervous and sweating, but despite that, pretty to look at, a big improvement from the goons who hung around most of the day, trying to make time with her. She was sure he was looking for a job, and she hoped Maranzano would hire him.
* * *
SALVATORE MARANZANO ARRIVED at 10:30 A.M. He moved into the lobby like an ocean liner flanked by two tugboats, they being the pin-striped men Nilo had seen the day before.
Nilo jumped to his feet and moved forward toward Maranzano, a smile set on his face, but one of the men blocked his way, and without even noticing Nilo, Maranzano walked quickly past him, the receptionist, and vanished through one of the rear office doors. The two men followed him in.
Nilo was confused, unhappy, and he looked toward the secretary, who said reassuringly, “In a minute or two, I’ll let him know you’re here.” She looked down at the appointment pad on her desk. “It’s Nilo Sesta?”
Nilo nodded, then added quickly, “Danilo. Maybe he remembers that name better.”
It was a full ten minutes—ten painful minutes that seemed an eternity to Nilo—before the buzzer rang at the receptionist’s desk. She stood, nodded toward Nilo, smoothed her dress out over her lush hips, moistened her lips with her tongue, and walked through the same door Maranzano had used.
Another ten minutes. Another eternity. He will not remember me. He gives his business card to everyone he meets. I am just a peasant from the old country. Why should he care what happens to me? I will speak to him, and he will laugh in my face and throw me out into the street.
He was on the verge of running away, walking out onto the sidewalk and never looking back, when the woman returned.
“Will you follow me, please?” she said politely, and smiled at him again.
Nilo followed her through Maranzano’s office door, but it led just to another large office. It was simply furnished except for a large number of oil paintings on the wall. They all seemed to be landscapes or other pictures of places and things in America, and almost all of them seemed to be distorted, twisted. Nilo had never seen such paintings. At the end of the room, the two pinstripes, like bookends, sat on hard wooden chairs on either side of another doorway. They looked at Nilo as if he were a particularly uninviting bug that had wandered onto their dinner plates.
He followed the receptionist through the heavy oak door. Behind a gigantic wooden desk, pouring steaming tea from a delicate china pot, sat Salvatore Maranzano.
When Nilo entered, Maranzano rose, and with a large smile he came from behind the desk to greet the young man.
“My young friend. At last we meet again.”
He embraced Nilo, startling him with his vigor, and said over the other man’s shoulder, “That will be all, Betty. I’ll ring if I want you.”
“Yes, Mr. Maranzano,” the secretary said. Behind him, Nilo heard the door close as she left the office.
Maranzano looked different from the last time Nilo had seen him, dressed in a black cassock, at the palazzo near Castellammare del Golfo. Now he wore a sleek silk suit and looked like a prosperous banker. His voice was still soft, sweetly resonant, but his eyes remained wary and cautious.
Clothing changes, Nilo thought. But underneath, the man is always the same.
When he finally released Nilo from his embrace, the young man bowed to him, formally from the waist, and Maranzano waited patiently, accepting it as his due, until Nilo met his eyes again.
“Don Salvatore, I have come looking for work.”
Maranzano laughed. “Only in New York a few months and already you have learned the American lack of patience. No time for pleasantries. No time wasted on friendship.”
Nilo blushed and murmured an apology.
“Oh, I joke. Come, sit here by the desk. Have tea. Tell me what you have been doing since last we met.”
Maranzano poured tea for both of them. Nilo looked around for cream and sugar, saw none, and followed the older man’s lead in sipping the tea straight, unsweetened, from the cup.
It tastes like horsepiss, he thought. When I am rich, I will drink only cappuccino.
He smiled at Maranzano.
“Do you like the tea?” Maranzano asked.
“Very much.”
“I think it tastes like horse urine,” Maranzano said. “But rich Americans drink it and therefore we must learn to tolerate it. To make one’s way in a society, we must learn the ways of that society.”
Nilo nodded.
“Tell me, Nilo. Have you learned to read yet?”
“I am trying, sir. But no, not yet. Not well.”
“Good. I admire your honesty. A Roman virtue that seems lost in much of contemporary youth. What have you been doing?”
Glad for the opportunity to put down the teacup, Nilo told of his arrival in New York, his brief stay with his aunt and uncle, his job as a ditchdigger, and how he had quit when the foreman had insulted him. He thought it best, for the moment, not to tell Maranzano that his uncle Tony was a New York City police officer.
“A typical story,” Maranzano said. “I have heard it many times before.” He set down his own teacup. “And so now you want to work for me?”
Nilo nodded. “Yes, Don Salvatore.”
“You must learn to read. If you are to work f
or me. If you are to be a success in life.”
“I will do whatever you say, Don Salvatore.”
The old man nodded. “Perhaps you wonder why I should give you a job. What do you have to offer me?”
He looked at Nilo and waited, as if expecting an answer, and finally Nilo said, “Loyalty. I have nothing else.”
“You need nothing else,” Maranzano said exuberantly. “America is a powerful and growing country. By providing services that people want, we can become powerful, too. But when one becomes powerful, he finds he has many enemies—even people he has never met. It is in times like those that loyalty is in great demand. Trust me, Nilo. In life, surround yourself with family. All wise men know that.”
Nilo nodded, then said, “I am not of your family.” He was surprised to see Maranzano reflect for a moment before smiling broadly.
“Time will tell,” he said. “Do you have skills? Talents?”
Emboldened, Nilo said, “I am young and untrained.” He paused. “I know how to kill, however.”
“Ah, yes. Those evil fishermen. You have killed. And you think this interests me?” Maranzano said.
Nilo swallowed hard, then decided to risk it all. What had he to lose? He said crisply, “I had heard talk that an enemy of yours was killed yesterday. It happened soon after I saw those two men out there leave this office, carrying weapons.”
“Very good, Nilo. You keep your eyes open. That is also a virtue. And I presume you keep your mouth closed as well?”
“See all, speak nothing,” Nilo said. “My father taught me that.”
“Your father,” Maranzano repeated softly. “He has shown you the path to wisdom. And to long life.” He rose from behind his desk.
“Danilo,” he said, “I like you. You are just the kind of young man I want in this new organization. One day, you could even be its leader.”
“You will lead forever, Don Salvatore,” Nilo said.
“No man lives forever,” was the sad answer, “except in memory.” He came around the desk to stand in front of the young man. “As a fellow Castellammarese, are you willing to join with me?”
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