Sofia managed a smile. “Thank you, Mama.”
She took off her apron and hung it up. In a corner there, her father was seated at a desk, looking over the books. Sofia did not know why he bothered; he didn’t understand them anyway. It had always been Mrs. Mangini who had taken care of the bookkeeping, and now the job was slowly being passed to Sofia.
For which, she thought, she would get kernels of corn, handed out grudgingly, one a day for the million years remaining in her life.
She walked past her father to the stairs that led up to the apartment hallway, and as she did, Matteo grumbled, “What’s the matter with you?”
“I don’t feel good. Mama told me to rest.”
Matteo grunted something and went back to his records.
In her room, Sofia lay on the bed fully clothed but began to twist and turn. It was just too hot. The clothing bound too much. She slipped off her dress and her slip, then lay back down.
On a small table in the corner, she could see the half-dozen books of poetry she had bought when Tina insisted that she take some of the prize money from the carnival raffle. Sofia had protested but finally gave in and accepted one hundred dollars. She spent almost twenty dollars on books and hid the rest under her mattress.
She had not opened one of the books since buying them. Once she had lived for such books, lived for the chance to read of the freedom of the young poets who were making lives for themselves in Greenwich Village, just a few blocks away. Now it could just as well have been happening on the moon. Rats got no complaint and rats don’t read poetry.
She fell asleep.
It seemed like only a few minutes later when she woke up. Somebody was opening the door. For an instant Sofia was afraid; then she realized her mother was probably worried and just looking in on her.
“Papa,” she said, startled.
He closed the bedroom door softly behind him. “I have missed you.”
“No, Papa. No more. I don’t want to. You said you never would again.”
“To who I say this? To that snotty little policeman friend of yours who comes here to threaten me? Or his rat friend?”
She did not know what he was talking about. She said, “To cousin Charlie. You told him.”
Her father smiled. “But he will never know.”
She tried to get up, but he pushed her back on the bed. She fought him as hard as she could, but he was on top of her. She fought harder and he kept ramming himself at her. She cried out.
And then she stopped fighting.
Is there any other love I will ever know?
She heard singing far away and she thought of Tina Falcone. She would not scream.
Rats got no complaint, she thought.
* * *
IN THEIR APARTMENT across the street, the Falcones were holding a meeting around the kitchen table. It had started as a family dinner, brought about by the fact that both Falcone policemen were off duty that night and Father Mario also had the night off.
After dinner, everyone had gathered in the parlor and Tina sat at the piano, singing Sicilian folk songs, in which everyone joined loudly and often off-key. But during one difficult aria, while the rest were just listening to her silently, Tina had suddenly stopped singing, and then, with a sob, dropped her face down, slumped, her chin resting on her chest.
“What’s the matter, Tina?” Mario asked, and Tina looked at him with the sad, scared eyes of a lost child, and suddenly the whole story of Frau Schatte’s impossible teaching fees gushed out.
When she was done, Tina was in tears, and the tears of an Italian woman under the age of thirty were a fact that had to be discussed. As Mrs. Falcone rushed to bring in a fresh pot of espresso, Mario and Tommy tried to sort out Tina’s problem. Tony listened and sipped from a water tumbler of red wine that was made legally by one of their downstairs neighbors.
“How much money do you have?” Mario asked.
“I have four hundred and sixty-three dollars,” Tina said. “I’ve been saving.”
“And you need how much more?”
“Probably another eight hundred dollars. That will train me for a year. After that, I should be able to start getting singing work.”
“Your little job at the button factory? Can you save anything from there?”
“Of course she can’t,” Tommy told his brother. “She barely makes enough to keep herself in clothes.”
“Silence, soldier boy. I was asking Tina.”
Tina shrugged. “Eight hundred dollars. Maybe in three or four years I could save that much.”
“Well, you would still be young,” Mario said.
“But my voice would be old. Without good training now, I will start to lose what I have. In a year or two, it will be lost forever.”
“But—”
“Oh, I’ll be able to sing. I’ll be the best soprano in your congregation, Mario. But opera?” She shook her head. “It will be too late.”
“And this German woman? She can teach you?” Tommy asked.
“Tommy, she sang at Covent Garden. That’s one of the great opera houses of the world. She says I can get there, too.”
“Well, then we need eight hundred dollars,” Tommy said.
Mario looked sheepish. “I’ve got forty,” he said. “Maybe forty-five.”
“Ohhh,” Tommy groaned in mock sorrow. “Stealing from the poor box again. You should be ashamed.”
“What about you?” Mario asked.
“I don’t have any savings. I use it all for schoolbooks and trolley fare. But I can get it.”
Tina looked at him, her face brightened. “The whole eight hundred? How?”
“I can get it,” Tommy said lightly. “When you’re working, you can pay it back.”
“Who’d lend you eight hundred dollars?” Mario scoffed.
“I don’t spend all my time hiding in a church basement, teaching delinquents to beat each other up,” Tommy told the priest. “I’ve got friends.”
“All your friends rolled up together wouldn’t be worth eight hundred cents,” Mario said.
“You laugh all you want. But I have friends and they are not all poor church mice like you, Mario. Tina, you go tell this Frau Schatte that you’ll have the money. But be shrewd. Maybe you can negotiate her price down. Never pay the first price they ask,” Tommy said. He nodded to his sister. “Okay? Settled?”
Tina looked at him and Mario in bewilderment, then turned toward her father, who was still quietly sipping his wine.
“Papa?” she said.
“I’m glad somebody finally thought of me,” Tony said. “I was beginning to feel neglected.”
“What do you think, Papa?”
“I think, Justina, that we have wasted all the time we should on this petty problem of yours. I think we should talk about me. I think we should all raise a glass of wine to congratulate me, because I am being promoted to lieutenant.”
He looked around the room at his wife and children. Tina seemed bewildered at her father’s response.
“And,” Tony went on, “it just so happens that my promotion carries with it a large pay increase … say, in the neighborhood of eight hundred dollars. So while I think it’s very nice that your brother wants to imitate J. P. Morgan, I will provide the missing eight hundred dollars for this German yodeler of yours. And, by God, she’d better be a good teacher.”
“Papa…” Tommy started, but Tony silenced him by raising his open hand before his face.
“I am the father and it is my decision. And now it is settled. So? Will you please resume singing, Tina? And Mama, get out the rest of the wineglasses. We are celebrating my promotion.”
All three of his children came over and hugged Tony. Then Tina returned to the piano, and the apartment rang with the sound of happy music, sung by happy voices, punctuated by the clink of wineglasses.
Later, after Mario had returned to his parish and the two women had gone to bed, Tommy and his father sat alone in the kitchen.
“You’re
going to lecture me, Tommy, but don’t do it,” his father said.
“I really could have borrowed the money.”
“You know and I know there’s only one person you could borrow that kind of money from.” Tommy looked down at his hands on the table, holding the wineglass between them.
“You borrow from Nilo, Tommy, and while it is a loan, they own you. Never again are you a free man.”
“It’s only Nilo,” Tommy said defensively. “He’s family, for heaven’s sake.”
Tony shook his head. “Not anymore. He’s gone their way, not ours, and he’s walked away from this family. Borrowing from Kid Trouble would bring you more trouble than you could imagine. I know these people, Tommy. It’s in their blood.”
“‘Kid Trouble’?”
“That was Nilo’s name. The stories that said Kid Trouble was dead, they all got the wrong guy. And if you borrowed from him, it would be a payoff to you for not saying he was in that alley the night of the hijacking.”
“You’re sure he was there?” Tommy asked.
“As sure as I can be. Nothing happens without somebody knowing about it and somebody talking about it.”
“I never really saw him,” Tommy said defensively. “I heard somebody call somebody else ‘Kid’ and then I thought I heard his voice. But I never saw him.”
“You don’t have to explain,” his father said.
“I asked Nilo about it at the hospital. He wouldn’t admit anything.”
His father shrugged. “Switch places with him. What would you have done?”
Tommy thought for a long moment. “I should have told you, though.”
“You conducted your own investigation,” Tony said gently. “It didn’t pan out, so you didn’t spread any rumors about who was or wasn’t in that alley.”
Tommy looked down at his cup of espresso coffee, now cool. “It was Nilo,” he said dully, “and he saved my life.”
“Stop worrying. He’s not in jail, even if he does belong there.”
“You let him go? Because he saved me?”
“No,” Tony said, “because if I did that, I’d be no better than the rest of them. I asked him where he was that night, and he said he spent the night with some floozy secretary and she’d swear to it. So that was that. It didn’t check out.”
It didn’t check out, Tommy thought, because his father had let up on the case. Because Nilo had saved Tommy’s life, Tony had let him go. Tommy was stunned by the realization. The first time his father had ever played outside the rules, and it was Tommy’s fault.
“Never again, Papa,” he mumbled.
His father put his big hand over Tommy’s on the table. “You’ve got a long life ahead of you, Tommy. And you’re the only one who gets to decide what that life will be like. You can do it your own way, be your own man. Or you can sell off little pieces of yourself to the highest bidder. A lot of cops do. A lot more lawyers do. But once you start that, you’re bought and paid for. Someday, when you least expect it, someone will walk up to you and say, ‘I own you,’ and he’ll be right. I don’t want that to happen.”
“It won’t,” Tommy said. “I may be slow, but I do learn.”
“Good enough. Now I’m going to bed.”
As the senior Falcone rose from the table, Tommy said, “This promotion.”
“Yeah?”
“It’s the Italian Squad, isn’t it?”
“It doesn’t have to be so bad. Hell, maybe I can even educate some of those Irishers,” Tony said, and walked toward his bedroom in the back of the apartment.
* * *
AS TONY WAS RETIRING, Nilo arrived at Mangini’s Restaurant across the street. He had already eaten dinner, so he ordered just a cup of cappuccino from Mrs. Mangini, who seemed to be the only person working in the place. Nilo was glad he did not have to see old man Mangini. Since Nilo had put a knife to his face, there had not been even a pretense of friendship between them.
He sipped at his coffee, as a burly man with a thick swatch of jet-black hair and sharp features came from the back room, carrying a snap-brimmed fedora. He paused in the doorway, saw Nilo and nodded casually to him, then tossed his hat onto an empty table and went to the men’s room in the far corner.
Joe Doto, better known as “Joe Adonis,” was one of Luciano’s most-feared men. Whenever Joe the Boss Masseria came into the neighborhood, it was to Doto that Luciano assigned the protection of the Mafia boss. Doto was known to be a man who would kill first and ask questions later.
And someday I will surround myself with men just like that. Only crazy men are good bodyguards, because only crazy men will give up their own lives for someone else’s.
Doto came out of the men’s room and started for the front door.
“Joe,” Nilo called.
The bigger man turned. The expression on his face was always one of surly suspicion. Nilo knew that Doto was now staking out much of Midtown for himself, supplying speakeasies with Masseria’s liquor, and cutting himself in as part owner of many of the illegal nightspots.
America is wonderful, Nilo thought. Even a dumb thug like this one can climb high. There is no limit to how high I can reach.
“You forgot your hat,” Nilo said, pointing.
Doto nodded, grabbed the hat, and left the restaurant, without even a word to Mrs. Mangini, who was at the front desk, separating the night’s receipts into neat little piles.
Nilo walked up to her and said, “Mrs. Mangini, I need to use your telephone. I’ll pay for the call.”
She nodded and pointed to the instrument at the end of the desk.
Nilo picked it up. This was one of the new telephones that had its own dial and that you no longer needed to talk to an operator on. He carefully dialed a number. He let the phone ring precisely three times before he hung up.
“Nobody answered,” he told Mrs. Mangini. He smiled.
“No charge,” she said dourly, without looking up.
When he turned, Luciano was walking toward his table and sat down as Nilo came back.
“Nilo,” Luciano said with a nod. “Late to be making telephone calls.” He spoke in Sicilian dialect.
“Damned puta of a girlfriend,” Nilo answered in the same tongue, his face twisting into a scowl. “She likes to go out when I’m not around.” He sat and grinned at Luciano. “I think I might have to explain some things to her.”
“Women, like dogs, need training or they will crap all over you,” Luciano said, his dark hooded eyes impassive. “I saw you at Mount Carmel,” he said.
“And I you,” Nilo answered. “I was just watching our raffle stand,” Nilo said. “Did you buy any tickets?”
“For a fixed game?” Luciano smiled; it was not a pleasant smile. “I leave that foolishness to those rich enough to throw away money.”
“Just as well,” Nilo said. “I thought it would be a nice gift for Sofia and the Falcone girl to win some money.”
“It was well done,” Luciano said. “And of course it is a good thing to do favors for policemen’s families. You never know when a policeman might do you a favor.”
“The Falcones are family to me and have done me many favors. So a little favor to them now and then. But of course I can tell no one. The Falcones are proud; they would not accept such a gift.”
“Especially not the sergeant,” said Luciano.
“Especially not Uncle Tony,” Nilo agreed.
It is done, he thought. He will pass this story around and it will get to the Falcones. But by the time it does, Tina will already have spent the money and they will have no way to pay it back. The Falcones will owe me a large debt. Maranzano was correct.
“Perhaps someday Tina will repay your kindness,” Luciano said, with just the trace of a leer washing across his face.
Nilo grinned. “I never turn down a repayment,” he said. “I—
He stopped as the front door of the restaurant flew open. Joe Doto stood in the doorway, his clothing ripped, blood streaming down his face.
&n
bsp; Seeing Luciano, he called out, “Charlie. They…”
And then he stumbled forward onto his knees. Luciano and Nilo ran to his side. Luciano shouted and other men poured out of the back room to help. Nilo noticed that the young one, the one some called “Bugsy,” held a gun in his hand and was looking wildly about the room for someone to shoot.
Nilo grabbed a napkin from a table and squatted on the floor next to Doto. He blotted the blood from his head, then looked up and said, “I think somebody should take him to a doctor.” He kept wiping Doto’s face. The man’s blood spilled onto Nilo’s suit, but he pretended not to mind.
Is anything better than this? Nilo wondered. To set the trap, to snare the victim, and then to pretend to know nothing about it? Joe Adonis will think twice before robbing one of our men again. Life is sweet indeed.
And then he noticed that Luciano was staring at him.
* * *
SOFIA LEFT HER FATHER sleeping naked in her bed. She washed and dressed and went down to the street with no idea of where she planned to go, and bumped into Nilo as he was leaving the restaurant.
“Hello, Nilo,” she said. Then: “Are you all right? Is that blood on your suit?”
“Yes. But not mine. Joe Adonis got his ass kicked and bled all over me.”
“If you don’t get that blood out right away, that suit will be ruined.”
Nilo shrugged. “It’s just a suit. I’ve got a lot of suits.”
“But this is my favorite. I always like you in this suit.”
“Well, then, I guess I ought to get home and wash it out.”
“I’ll do it for you,” Sofia said. “There’s a way to do it.”
Nilo looked at her sharply. “Come on,” he said, and led her to a car parked on the corner.
“I didn’t know you had a car,” she said.
“It belongs to my boss. He’s got a lot of cars.”
She tried clumsily to make small talk as they drove uptown to Nilo’s apartment in the West Sixties.
“You said once you would take me to dinner. I kept waiting,” she said.
“I got busy. At my place, I’ll make you a sandwich. Will that count?”
“Why not?” she said.
“Yeah. Why not?” he answered.
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