Bloodline: A Novel

by Warren Murphy

  Trying to work without sound, Tommy pried the taped piece of cardboard loose from the broken shards of glass still left inside the window frame. He was able then to snake his arm through the hole and unlock the inside latch.

  Carefully, so he did not rip himself on the glass, he pulled his arm back out.

  “I’ll try to open this,” he said. “If it squeaks or sounds an alarm, run like the devil himself is after you,” Tommy said.

  Tommy held his breath, but the window, hinged on pins at its center, swung open quietly, and both men had room to clamber inside the warehouse. It was still dark.

  “There are stairs over there,” Mario said, pointing. “There’s rooms upstairs.”

  “How do you know that?” Tommy asked.

  “Don’t ask.”

  Tommy flicked on a small pocket flashlight, just long enough to make sure there was nothing on the floor between them and the stairs, which were barely visible in some reflected moonlight from outside. It was a little better now; his eyes were becoming accustomed to the dark.

  When he reached the steps, Mario started to go up first, but Tommy brushed him back and led the way himself. The top of the stairs opened into a large area, big enough for a meeting hall, with doors on the far side that apparently led to rooms. Here it was lighter. The moonlight shone through the windows, which had not been painted over as they had been on the ground floor.

  From under one of the doors across the way, a thin strip of light was visible.

  “There,” Tommy said.

  He started toward the door, unsure how he would enter the room. He had been a policeman for more years than he had wanted to be, but nothing in his experience had prepared him for this.

  He could not just knock because then somebody might say, “Who’s there?” and what would he reply? Nor could he just grab the door and yank it open. There might be somebody on the other side with a gun, ready to shoot at anything that moved.

  He had no chance to figure out a strategy, because a voice suddenly snapped out in the dark.

  “Hold it. Don’t move.”

  Tommy turned toward the sound of the voice, trying to move his body between the sound and Mario behind him. But he couldn’t sense where Mario was.

  “Who are you? What do you want?” the voice demanded.

  “Nilo?” Tommy said.

  “Tommy, what are you doing here?”

  “I’ve come to bring you in.”

  Still invisible, hidden in the darkness, in a corner somewhere, the other man groaned.

  “Oh, no, it’s not going to be that way.”

  “You come with me peaceably now or there’ll be a gang of cops here, and you know they want to bring you in feetfirst.”

  It felt curious, Tommy thought, to be talking into the dark, as if the dark had an identity, had a soul of its own.

  “Dammit, nobody’s supposed to bring me in. The whole thing is being taken care of. Why do you have to be sticking your nose in here for anyway?”

  “Because it’s my job. Because they want to talk to you about two killings.”

  There was a long silence. Tommy thought he should reach for his gun, and then the chilling thought came to him that if he did, Nilo—if he was armed—might fire without warning.

  Of course he was armed. Nilo was a killer and had nothing more to lose.

  “I’m sorry, Tommy. I won’t go with you.”

  “There’s only one way to stop me.”

  “Then that’ll have to be the way.”

  For a moment, there was only silence in the loft, and then Tommy heard a grunt. He heard the sound of a pistol dropping to the floor. And then a voice.

  “Come on, lump, you going to help me or not?”

  Mario!

  Tommy ran across the floor and saw a pileup of bodies on the floor. He flicked on his flashlight and found Mario sitting astride Nilo’s back. The gun was a few feet away and Nilo was trying to stretch to reach it.

  Tommy picked it up and stuck it into his pocket. Then he came behind Nilo and, with Mario’s help, handcuffed the suspect’s hands behind his back.

  “Sorry, Nilo, but it has to be this way,” Tommy said. “Get up.”

  “Damn you,” Nilo snarled. “You two. All you Falcones. Damn all your souls to hell.”

  Tommy pulled Nilo to his feet, grabbed the handcuffs, and pushed him toward the stairs.

  On the first floor, Tommy walked toward the front door.

  “Shouldn’t we go back out the window?” Mario asked.

  “No need. Nobody’s here. Let’s just get our cab and beat it.”

  Tommy looked up and down the street. The cab was still in the next block; he could hear its motor running. But something was different. Not wrong exactly, but different.

  It took a moment to figure out what it was. Before, most of the parking places had been vacant; now, many more were filled with cars.

  “Let’s go,” Tommy barked.

  Mario and Nilo stepped out into the street. Tommy kept between the two of them and the curb. Something felt very wrong. He saw a worried look on Nilo’s face as the young man looked up and down the street.

  He sees it, too. Something’s going to happen.

  His hand tightened around the gun in his pocket; then he caught a glimpse of some movement out of the corner of his eye.

  “Hey, baby-killer,” somebody shouted.

  “Run,” Tommy called.

  Mario started to pull Nilo along; the prisoner hesitated for just a second and then the night exploded into blinding whiteness. The world stopped for a second. Tommy tried to blink the purple and orange spots out of his eyes. They had almost gone when another white light burst in the night and then a second and a third and a fourth. After that, Tommy lost count. He heard the sound of men running. Photographers: the exploding lights were flashbulbs.

  Somebody’s gone and told the damned press where we were going to be. They had the place staked out.

  A pack of reporters surrounded them, baying questions, acting like a pack of wolves trying to down a wounded deer.

  “Keep moving,” Tommy said to Mario and Nilo, and turned back to keep the crowd from them. Something new had been added; he was not sure what, but it was bad. Newsmen began making way for someone else, parting like a sea. Tommy glanced ahead at Nilo and Mario and saw them go down in a heap, Mario’s foot sweeping Nilo’s legs out from under him and then Mario jumping on top of him.

  When Tommy glanced back at the reporters, two simultaneous explosions went off in front of him and to one side. These were different from flashbulbs. Behind him, Tommy could hear a metal hailstorm on the wall of a building. Somebody was blasting them with shotguns. By dragging Nilo to the ground, Mario had probably saved his life.

  Tommy did not even try to get his gun out of his pocket. He twisted the jacket up and fired right through the cloth. One, two, three, four times.

  His shots missed, but he saw two men turn and run from the scene. The sawed-off shotguns they had been carrying clattered onto the pavement.

  Tommy waited a moment to make sure they had gone, that there were no more of them, then turned to hustle Mario and Nilo back toward the taxicab. Already flashbulbs were lighting the night again.

  Inside the cab, Nilo vowed softly, “You’re dead. You two … every one of you Falcones. I will dance on your graves.”

  • When the young immigrant thug named Albert Anastasia was released from Sing Sing after a short term for murdering another longshoreman, he went back to the seedy little Brooklyn candy store, just down the block from the real estate office, and set up a loan-sharking operation. He was disappointed that Nilo Sesta, whom he had liked, no longer came around. But he made new friends. Eventually the store changed ownership and became known as Midnight Rose’s. Anastasia’s gang, with the encouragement and help of Meyer Lansky, would also change their name. They would call themselves Murder Incorporated. Anastasia’s idol was Charlie Luciano.

  • In Chicago, Al Capone was cheered by the
crowd when he showed up for a baseball game at Cubs Park, later named Wrigley Field. He told reporters, “I only give people what they want.” Then he went back to his fortress apartment and decided he had had enough of Dion O’Banion, who headed the city’s Irish mob.

  • On November 10, Frankie Yale, Albert Anselmi, and John Scalise entered O’Banion’s flower shop on North State Street, across from the cathedral where O’Banion had once been an altar boy, and when Yale shook O’Banion’s hand the other men shot him, twice in the chest, twice through the throat, then in the right side of the face and again in the left side of the face. Al Capone sent a wreath to the funeral.

  • In New York, Luciano showed the story of O’Banion’s murder to his latest girlfriend, Russian showgirl Gay Orlova. “Capone is an asshole,” he said. “He just can’t learn to get along.”

  • Luciano was prophetic. In Chicago, the Irish mob declared war on Capone. Five hundred gangsters would die in the next four years. Capone retreated behind a phalanx of bodyguards and stayed away from Cubs Park.

  • In New York, Luciano went to Mass at Mount Carmel Church and heard Father Mario Falcone deliver the homily on how in this new land of America all people of all backgrounds were now Americans and had to learn to live and work together. When he was finished preaching in English, he repeated the sermon in Italian.

  • At the Manhattan courthouse, as it did before every election, Tammany Hall had arranged for the mass swearing-in of thousands of new naturalized citizens. They stood by the hundreds in drafty courtrooms, raised their hands, and were pronounced by a judge to be citizens of the United States. Hidden on the list of names was that of Danilo Sesta, late of Castellammare del Golfo, Sicily. The citizenship papers were dated three months earlier. Nilo was in The Tombs, awaiting trial for murder, and did not attend the happy ceremony.

  • King Tut was America’s newest fad. No girl considered herself fully dressed unless she was wearing a scarab ring or a turquoise Tut bracelet. The hot new dresses had hieroglyphics printed on them. Newborn children were named Tutter or Tuttie.

  • George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue debuted at New York’s Aeolian Hall. The critics were lukewarm.

  PART TWO

  Tommy

  CHAPTER 6

  Fall and Winter 1924–1925

  Wretchedly sick, Sofia Mangini bent over the toilet bowl and vomited her breakfast. Then she sat down on the floor and held her stomach.

  It’ll pass. In a few hours, I’ll feel fine.

  But then … tomorrow morning … all over again.

  “Sofia, Sofia, where are you? Are you all right?”

  “In here, Mama. In the bathroom.”

  She had been living at home. If she had ever entertained any idea of living again with the Falcones, that had become impossible when she said that she had spent the day of the child’s murder with Nilo, in bed with him in his apartment.

  They were all on different sides now. Tommy and his father were policemen, with the law. And she, Sofia …

  I am now one of the criminal class. Ready to perjure myself to save a murderer from punishment.

  And why? Because there is no one in this world to love me but me, and I will take care of myself, whatever it takes.

  Father Mario had been another reason she lived at home. Alone, among everyone involved, he knew the truth. She had told him under the seal of the confessional about the mob’s threats to tell about her and her father, and while she trusted that Mario would never break that confidence, having him close by while she was living out the lie would have been intolerable.

  Maranzano sent a lawyer to accompany Sofia to the precinct building on the chilly September morning she was to give police her statement that she had been with Nilo all day on the day of the twin murders.

  As she came out of her apartment building and walked toward the waiting car, Tommy came quickly across the street, his face set in a scowl.

  “You don’t have to do this, you know,” he said.

  “Do what?”

  “Don’t play games with me, Sofia. I know you weren’t with Nilo that day. He was off somewhere else killing people.” His tone was sharp and hectoring.

  It is so easy for you to be moral, she thought. You have never lived with a pervert and been a partner in his perversions. You, Mario, Tina, have all been raised with love, with people who love you, and I have been loved by no one. At least now people will know my name. And some will respect me and I will use them. And that is how it should be because only I care about me.

  She snapped back at him. “You know nothing. Less than nothing. I was with Nilo and I will tell the truth. Does his life mean so little to you?”

  “Not as much as yours,” Tommy said. “I thought…”

  He thinks what? That because we had sex once it would mean something in this vile thing I call my life? Tommy, you are a child.…

  “You thought wrong,” she answered angrily.

  “I guess I did. But if you ever need a friend…”

  The lawyer got out of the backseat of Maranzano’s car and walked up to them.

  “Sofia,” he asked, “is everything all right?”

  She smiled at Tommy. “You see, I have all the friends I need,” she said, and walked with the lawyer to the car.

  The police interview with a young lieutenant and a lawyer from the district attorney’s office lasted only fifteen minutes. In a dull voice she stated that she and Nilo had spent the day in his apartment, often in bed together. She cooked dinner for him, veal parmigiana, which was one of his favorite dishes. They ate together, and she had not left him until nine o’clock that evening.

  “At that same time,” the district attorney said, “Lieutenant Falcone reports he saw Mr. Sesta leaving the theater where Enzo Selvini was killed. What do you say to that?”

  “Lieutenant Falcone is mistaken,” Sofia answered. Then her lawyer told the two investigators that they had her statement and she would answer no more questions.

  An hour after leaving her apartment, Sofia was back home, where she went into the bathroom and threw up.

  * * *

  “WHY WOULD SHE DO IT? Why would she tell that obvious lie?”

  Tony looked around the Falcones’ dinner table for an answer.

  Tommy shrugged. “She told me it was the truth,” he said.

  “But it’s not the truth. Dammit, I saw him myself.”

  “Tony, please,” his wife said as she placed a platter of food onto the table. “Don’t get upset.”

  “I’m not upset.”

  “Maybe she’s in love with him,” Tommy suggested, and Mario nodded. Sofia had told him just that, but it was a private conversation and he did not feel comfortable repeating it to his family, especially since he was not sure that she had been telling him the truth.

  “She is going to ruin her life,” Tony said.

  “It’s her life,” Tommy answered. “Has anyone asked Tina? She would know.”

  Tony sniffed. “Who can ask her anything when we never see her?”

  “Mama, sit down. Let’s say grace,” Mario said. “For Nilo too.”

  Tony glared at his son, then stubbornly folded his arms across his chest. “Forget Nilo. He made his bed. Let him lie in it.”

  Mario said the prayer anyway.

  * * *

  FOR A MONTH AFTER giving her statement to the police, Sofia confined herself to the family apartment. The story of what she had done was all over the neighborhood now, and she knew if she worked downstairs in the restaurant she would be the object of scorn. Or, even worse, of pity.

  The whole matter had clearly affected her nerves, too. She found herself throwing up most mornings, and early in November she was sitting on the floor in front of the toilet when Rosalia Mangini came into the bathroom, wet a washcloth, and began to wipe her daughter’s face.

  “I don’t know why I’m so sick,” Sofia said.

  “I think you can guess.” When Sofia did not answer, the woman said, “You are pregnant. W
hose baby is it?”

  “It is … Nilo’s, of course.”

  “Does he know?”

  Sofia shook her head. “We have not talked since they arrested him.”

  “He will have to be told,” her mother said, then added almost as an afterthought, “Mr. Maranzano is downstairs. He wants to talk to you.”

  “Maranzano?” Sofia had not spoken to the man since she had gone to his office and offered to be Nilo’s alibi. “I don’t want to see him, looking like this,” she said.

  “Nevertheless, he is waiting.”

  “Let me put on clean clothes, at least, and then I will come. These are all covered with vomit.”

  “I will tell him.”

  Sofia hurried to get herself ready. She wondered what this man would have to say to her. Probably he wanted to coach her how to lie in court about being with Nilo.

  When Maranzano rose from the table in the private back room to greet her, Sofia was again impressed at how different he seemed from the other gangsters she saw, most of them in the family restaurant. He was impeccably dressed; his long hair groomed and oiled, his fingernails clean and polished. Maranzano looked first at Sofia, then at her parents, who also sat at the table.

  “Nilo Sesta is like a son to me,” he said. “I want only what is best for him. I know that, as friends of his, you wish that, too.”

  Sofia nodded dutifully, even though she knew that Maranzano did not give a damn about Nilo.

  Maranzano reached across the table and patted Sofia’s hand. “You were very brave in coming forward to try to help Nilo. But now there is a problem.”

  “What?” Sofia asked.

  “Someone has reached into his pocket and bribed several men to lie. They will swear they saw Nilo shoot the child and kill Selvini in the theater.”

  In the pit of her stomach, Sofia felt a sinking feeling of despair. Did this mean she was going to go to jail, too?

  Something bad is going to come of this. This is going to be a very bad day in my life.

  “I have thought this through carefully,” Maranzano said. “It seems to me to be best that Sofia and Nilo are married, as soon as possible.”