One of the guards had told him that his pardon had come from an acting governor. The full-time governor was off somewhere, talking about running for president, and in his absence an acting governor had signed the pardon.
He thought two men were approaching him, but he could not be sure. He had forgotten how to see things at a distance; in prison there was nothing far away to look at; everything was up close. These two might be walking to him or they might just be planning to walk by.
The two figures resolved themselves out of the morning fog as the lawyer Koehler and Salvatore Maranzano.
“Ah, Danilo,” Maranzano said. “It is good to see you. You look fit.”
“Thank you, Don Salvatore,” Nilo said. He started to shake the man’s hand and then stopped and instead bent forward and kissed it, as he would the hand of a pope.
But Maranzano pulled him up and wrapped the young man in a bear hug. “It is nothing. My only regret is that it took so long. Even politicians and judges who are bought and paid for sometimes take longer than they should to do what they know they are eventually going to do.”
“My life is yours, Don Salvatore. Use it as you wish.”
Maranzano seemed slightly embarrassed. “Come, this is America,” Maranzano said. “We do not say such things here. I have brought you new clothes and we will stop at the hotel for you to change them. There is still more than an hour for the train to take us home. There is a restaurant there, too. You might like to have breakfast before we get under way.”
“It might be wise,” the lawyer said, looking around, “if we moved on. The press might yet be here to badger us.”
“Good thought,” Maranzano said, and smiled at Nilo. “You see, this is what I pay this big legal genius for. To protect me against the complications of life.” He took Nilo’s arm and led him toward a taxicab waiting in the fog down the street. Nilo saw the bodyguard known as Rock leaning against the fender of the cab, his arms crossed, carefully looking in all directions.
At the hotel, Nilo soaked and scrubbed himself in a hot bath until he felt he had rubbed off the last trace of prison dirt. He dressed hurriedly and then, with the other two men watching him and encouraging him, gorged himself at the hotel’s restaurant. He spent the rest of the trip fighting off violent indigestion.
They sat in a private compartment in the train, and Rock took up a position in the corridor outside, guarding the door. The lawyer excused himself and said he was going to walk to the bar car. When he and Nilo were alone, Maranzano opened a bottle of red wine and they drank a toast to each other as the don explained the deathbed confession of Romeo LaRocca.
Nilo raised his glass again. “To his immortal soul. May he rest in peace.”
“I’m afraid that will be up to a power greater than ours,” Maranzano said.
It was the first time Nilo had tasted wine in many years. He had forgotten just how good it was. That was one of the great evils of prison. It made you a lower form of life and, after a while, you forgot that the pleasures you once cherished even existed.
“You will have work for me?” Nilo asked Maranzano eventually.
“Ah, yes, the family man. With a wife and child to support. Yes, Nilo, I have work for everybody. And I need you at my side.”
“Things then are going well?”
“Exceeding well. It began with your plan to pump in whiskey past the Coast Guard boats. That gave us money. Then this Mussolini decided to assault our people on Sicily, and they have flocked to the United States to escape him. That gave us manpower. They come by the dozens, by the scores, and they are all in our organization now. We were big and powerful. Now we are gigantic and powerful beyond measuring.”
“And people like Masseria? They accept this?” Nilo asked.
Maranzano waved his hand, dismissing Masseria as if he were only an annoying insect.
“Joe the Stupid who would be Joe the Boss, he just goes on doing things the same old way, as big a fool as ever he was,” Maranzano said. “Without his even knowing, our organization grew to rival his. Now we are probably larger. His day has ended. For we sons of Castellammare del Golfo, the day has just begun.”
“And there will be no fight over this?”
“Oh, he makes noises about the pain he will inflict upon us Castellammarese, but it is too late. No one cares what he will accept or what he thinks.” Maranzano smiled. “Still, I keep a guard on the door.” He nodded to the door of the compartment, beyond which Rock waited.
“There is a place of honor for you in our new organization,” Maranzano said. “You will be at my right hand. All know that you have my trust.”
“It is a great honor,” Nilo said.
He found his mind, though, wandering from business and thinking about Sofia. As the distance of time and temperament had widened between them into an irrevocable gulf, he had begun to think of her more and more as his wife. Of her child as his child. In some curious turn of mind, he had started to regard himself as a husband who had been away, through no fault of his own, and would be now returning to the bosom of his family.
He had understood it for the survival mechanism it was. The thought of some sort of life beyond prison had sustained him, especially during those times when he had come close to ending it all, to killing himself. Often he had thought of diving headfirst off the topmost gallery of the cells, down seventy feet to the waiting concrete floor and oblivion. But he never acted on the impulse, and one of the things that had helped him through was his growing dream of Sofia as his wife. Mrs. Sesta.
“Sofia,” he began.
“I am sure she waits for you in great anticipation. She has been a faithful wife for all these years,” Maranzano said. “She has attended college and studied accounting. She now does the books of businesses you will help run. Your son is healthy and happy. Your wife does not go out at night and has no undesirable friends. The only person she sees with regularity is the one named Justina Falcone, who visits her frequently.”
“Tina.”
“The policeman’s daughter,” Maranzano said with a nod. “Sofia has been true to you in every way.”
“If I could believe it,” Nilo said.
“You can. I have been in charge of this,” Maranzano said officiously. “It is only wrong to believe with a whole heart in things which are empty of truth. ‘Quae volumus et credimus libenter, et quae sentimus ipsi, reliquos sentire speramus,’” Maranzano quoted. “Caesar, of course.”
Nilo thought and remembered the passage. “‘We believe to be true what we want to be true … and we expect everybody else to believe the same as we ourselves do.’ That’s it, isn’t it?”
Maranzano nodded and refilled their wineglasses. “Well done,” he said. “It is a good quotation and useful to check yourself against it and remember that your enemies can always delude themselves. When they do, they are vulnerable.”
Not just enemies, Nilo thought, anger creeping back into his thoughts. Even friends can delude themselves. Like you, Don Salvatore, in believing that my wife is my wife in anything but name, at least for now. Still, he said, “I will remember that, Don Salvatore. I will remember.”
After that, Nilo dozed off and woke only when the train pulled into Grand Central Station. Twilight had just settled in and a limousine was waiting to take Nilo home to the apartment that Maranzano had rented for Sofia and the baby.
As Nilo got out of the limousine, Maranzano handed him a set of keys.
“These are for your place,” he said. “A man should be able to open his own door.”
It was a simple comment, but Nilo had to fight back tears. Maranzano reached into his pocket and brought an envelope from it and handed it to Nilo.
“Take this. It will help you get started. Take your wife out. Become a free man again. Sleep late. In a few days, when you are ready, come to see me. There will be time enough for work then. Now, go surprise your wife.”
Nilo nodded briskly and turned away.
He took a moment to find their apa
rtment number on the mailbox and walked up the two flights of stairs. He unlocked the door of the unfamiliar apartment and went inside.
The place was quiet. For a moment, he thought of calling out Sofia’s name, of telling her that he was home, but he did not. Instead, he stood in the entrance to the living room and admired the vastness of it. He relished the unbarred windows, the clean smell, the quietness.
And then he realized the apartment was not quiet. There were sounds coming from the bedroom. Unmistakable sounds. Sofia was laughing; in a way he had never heard her laugh before.
Nilo stood quietly clenching his fist. He considered turning around and leaving.
Caesar was right. We believe what we want to believe.
He thought of that calmly and then everything inside his brain went red. Nilo went quietly into the kitchen and, using the dim light coming through the window, carefully selected a butcher knife, the biggest, sharpest one there.
He crossed back to the bedroom door, which was ajar, and eased it open. Sofia was in bed on her stomach and someone was over her, but it was not a man; it was a woman. Both women were wearing bras and panties. The woman’s hands were all over Sofia, all over her back and her buttocks, and Nilo stood watching them. They were oblivious to everything except each other.
He undid the fly of his pants and took himself in his hand as he watched. The two naked women—and now he recognized the other as Tina Falcone—were twisting and moving as though they were being jolted with electric shocks. Nilo stepped back, shook off his jacket, and dropped it on the floor. He stepped out of his shoes and stood transfixed, breathing quickly. They were beautiful. He wanted them both. He stepped out of his pants and started across the soft carpeted floor, toward the bed.
Then Tina, who was on top, made a half turn and saw him, saw the knife in his hand.
She looked at him with slowly mounting terror; he smiled back at her and her face calmed. She made no effort to move off Sofia, whom she was straddling. Nilo smelled the aroma of liquor in the room and saw two brandy glasses on the end table.
He had been too long without a woman. He could not help it. He moved forward and then Sofia saw him and screamed.
The world went blank for just an instant, and when he knew what he was doing he had Tina by the hair, pulling her from the bed, fighting off Sofia, cursing and shouting at both of them.
Nilo dragged Tina from the bedroom, shoved her out into the living room, and slammed the door behind her. Back in the bedroom, Sofia was huddled in the far corner of the bed, looking like a small frightened, very beautiful animal. Nilo grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her to him. There was no fight in her, just a strange heaviness, almost a sort of passive lethargy.
Nilo carefully opened her legs. She made no effort to fight him off. Slowly he took off the rest of his clothing, then sat on the edge of the bed and began caressing her breasts and her belly. She shuddered under his touch but made no effort to escape. He climbed on top of her and began working on her as hard as he could, hoping not to satisfy but to punish, not to give pleasure but to inflict hurt.
She lay with her eyes closed and merely accepted him. When he was done, he laid his face next to her throat and said, “Your husband’s home.”
“I prayed every night that you would die in prison,” she said.
Nilo laughed aloud.
He went into the bathroom to wash. When he came back out, Sofia was in the kitchen making coffee.
“Do you want coffee?” she asked him.
“I want you,” Nilo said.
She followed him back into their bedroom, the same half-dead expression on her face.
* * *
TOMMY CAME UP the steps three at a time. Just a small whisper in the back of his mind told him to be careful, but there was no shelter, no place to hide, and the stairway was too well lighted for stealth.
All he could do was pray that Nilo was not waiting at the top with a gun, ready to blow his brains out.
He put his hand on his revolver in his jacket pocket, then listened at Sofia’s apartment door. It was quiet inside. He thought of knocking, then decided not to. He tried the door, and as the knob turned under his hand the door was flung open and Nilo was standing there, dressed in slacks and an expensive-looking white dress shirt. He seemed as surprised to see Tommy as Tommy was to see him.
“Tommy.”
“Is everything all right?”
“That’s not much of a welcome-home greeting,” Nilo said.
“Welcome home. Where’s Sofia?”
“She’s inside. Could I get you a drink or something?” Nilo asked. “I’m not sure what we’ve got. I’ve been away, you know.”
Tommy shook his head. “I just came to see if Sofia was all right.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. Tina called me and sounded upset. She seemed to think you were about to hurt Sofia.”
Nilo did not answer immediately. Instead, he poured himself a drink from the small bar in the corner of the living room, then sat in a soft armchair.
“I suppose you’d like to see Sofia to be sure she’s not hurt?”
“Yes. I suppose I would.”
“You’re asking as a policeman?”
“Call me a friend of the family.”
“I used to call you brother,” Nilo said. When Tommy did not answer, Nilo walked to the bedroom door, opened it, and stuck his head inside.
“Tommy’s here. He’s worried that you might have been hurt. Come out here.”
Tommy could hear some sounds from inside the bedroom. It seemed to be an objection to Nilo’s request. It was all sort of awkward, and the longer he was in this place, the sillier he was beginning to feel.
He heard Nilo snap, “I don’t give a damn. I want you out here. Now.”
Tommy bridled at the words. It was not that he cared particularly for Sofia; it was just that he had always been taught that men did not talk that way to women. He started to say something, then checked himself. It was none of his business. None of this was, and he shouldn’t even have been here.
Sofia came reluctantly into the room. She was wearing a sheer nightgown with a silk wrap over it. Tommy thought the white gown was very like the one she had been wearing that day, so long ago. She looked as beautiful as ever, Tommy thought, then realized he was staring.
“Hello, Sofia,” he said.
“Hello, Tommy.” Her voice was cool, totally without inflection.
“Tina was worried about you. Asked me to come and check in on you.”
“I’m fine,” Sofia said. “Tell Tina not to worry. There’s nothing wrong. My husband’s just come home and I want to spend some time with him.”
Tommy looked around the room. “Where’s the baby?”
“He’s fine, too. With my mother,” Sofia said.
“Oh. Okay.” Tommy felt awkward and out of place and was not made more comfortable when Nilo started to laugh.
“Now you can go, Tommy,” Nilo said.
“I’m going.”
“All these years in the can, I thought you were bopping my wife,” Nilo said.
Tommy saw Sofia shaking her head.
“I come home today,” Nilo said, “and I find my wife and your sister in bed.”
“She was giving me a massage. My back is hurt,” Sofia said.
“Sure,” Nilo answered.
Tommy walked over to Nilo’s chair and loomed over him. “I don’t believe you,” he said.
“You’ve got no business here,” Nilo said casually. “I’ll invite you back if I decide that the four of us should have a party.”
Tommy looked down at him. “Don’t ever go near Tina.”
“Why not?”
“Because if you do, I’ll kill you,” Tommy said.
Nilo’s face was impassive. “I’m sorry, Tommy. I don’t think you have it in you.”
“I should have let them fry you. Before that liar got you turned loose.”
“You didn’t do it for me. You did it for that
big stupid thing you call justice. Well, I’ve been three years in the big house and I’ve made my own plans for justice.”
“Touch my family and you’ll get more justice than you’re counting on,” Tommy said coldly.
“It’s funny,” Nilo said. “You saved me once and I saved you once. I guess that makes us even,” Nilo said. “No more debts to repay.”
“No. No more debts,” Tommy said, and felt a wave of revulsion sweep over him. He walked from the apartment, slamming the door behind him as he left. By the time he got back to his apartment, his teeth were chattering, even though it was a warm day. He poured himself a glass of red wine to try to chase the shivers and downed it in three quick gulps.
* * *
BACK IN NILO’S APARTMENT, Sofia said again, “Tina was only giving me a massage. She’s been doing that. My back hurts since having the baby.”
“We will not talk about it anymore. No matter what kind of perverted slut you are, you are my wife. You are the mother of my son. We will go on. You will do what I say, act as I tell you, perform when I order you.”
He poured himself another glass of wine. “You are garbage, but you are my garbage. Don’t ever forget it.”
* * *
TOMMY THINKS ALL THE DEBTS ARE PAID, but he’s wrong. A lot of people have to pay me back for those three years I lost. Tommy. His family. All the rest. And they’re going to start paying up soon.
That thought was on Nilo’s mind as he strolled into Mangini’s Restaurant. Nothing had changed. He had been away for three years, but the restaurant seemed to him to have been frozen in time.
The tables were in the same location they had been years before and still bore identical red-and-white-checked tablecloths. The lights were still small hanging chandeliers over the center of each table.
Sofia’s mother still stood anxious guard over the cash register; her father still greeted guests. Rosalia Mangini looked no older than she had when he had last been there, but then she had always looked like an ancient gnome. Matteo was still the same archetypically handsome Sicilian peasant, only now there were white blazes along the sides of his black hair. He seemed also to be stooped, not standing as erect as he once had been.
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