Bloodline: A Novel

by Warren Murphy

  Nilo glanced sharply at her as she spoke. Tony shook his head. “I’ll have to convince myself of that.”

  “But you can’t—” Sofia started.

  “I can,” Tony said. “Until I find out what happened.” He turned back to Nilo. “How’d you feel when Mishkin had you thrown down the stairs?” he asked.

  “I wanted to kill the bastard,” Nilo said. “But I didn’t. And I certainly wouldn’t hurt Tommy or his wife.”

  “For now, I’ll believe you. But whoever did it knew a lot about Tommy. It was somebody family-close,” Tony said. He walked toward the door.

  “How is Tommy?” Nilo asked.

  “He’ll live,” Tony said as he left.

  When he had gone, Nilo went and stood before Sofia, who sat on the couch.

  “‘Harry’?” he said. “What do you know about Harry Birchevsky?”

  She shrugged. “I was only trying to help you.”

  “Harry’s ‘not that kind of man’? How do you know that?”

  “I don’t know anything,” Sofia said airily. “I was just talking.”

  “You heard what Tony said. Whoever did this knew a lot about Tommy. Who knows more about him than you?”

  “You’re not serious,” Sofia said, but she was unable to meet his eyes and looked down at the coffee table.

  “I’m gonna find Harry myself. You better just hope that he doesn’t say you—”

  “I what?” Sofia snapped. “Tried to protect my husband? Tried to protect my children’s future? I’ve worked hard for what we’ve got, as hard as you have. I’m not letting anybody take it away. Certainly not any of the Falcones. Not even you.”

  “Jesus Christ, you did it, didn’t you? You got Tommy’s wife killed,” Nilo said. Sofia stared at him stolidly, then walked from the room.

  • The war rolled on. Buster from Chicago continued his brutally efficient work. On February 26, in the Bronx, Gaetano “Tom” Reina, a Masseria boss, got frightened by all the violence and telephoned Nilo.

  “I want to come over,” he said.

  “Don Salvatore will be glad to have you on our side,” Nilo said politely.

  “It has to be quiet until it’s done,” Reina cautioned.

  “It will be,” Nilo promised.

  Nilo waited until he was alone in the car with Maranzano and only his driver to let Salvatore know that Reina was ready to defect from the Masseria gang.

  “Should I go talk to him?” Nilo asked.

  “No. Remember, you are Danny Neill and no part of this. Just tell him to call me to set up a meeting. Tell him his deal will be better with me than it ever was with Joe the Stupid.”

  Nilo nodded. Maranzano’s chauffeur just listened. Two hours later, Luciano got word and sent Vito Genovese to reason with Reina not to leave the side of Joe the Boss.

  When Nilo tried to reach the Bronx boss later that night, the operator told him the telephone had been left off the hook. Reina’s body was found the next morning, clutching the telephone, three bullets in his head.

  Genovese reported the results of his meeting to Luciano, before returning to his own club in Little Italy. After he left, Luciano told Lansky, “I hate that son of a bitch, but Vito Genovese is a good dog to have in a fight.”

  • After the body of Lev Mishkin was found, Mario broke the news to Tommy. While Tommy’s body had healed and he was working at the convent as a handyman, his mind seemed, to Mario, to be damaged beyond repair. He took the news of Mishkin’s death with no emotion at all, as if he had never heard of the man. When Mario talked to him, Tommy was silent. It was not even clear that he knew Mario was his brother. He said few words, commenting mostly on the weather. He never questioned who Mario was or why he was there talking to him. It was as if he had lost his critical faculties, and Mario there and Mario not there were exactly the same to him. One of the priests who served Mass at the convent said that Tommy came to church every morning but seemed not to know the ritual, instead he sat awkwardly in a back pew, just watching.

  • After the death of Gaetano Reina, Joe Valachi took Buster from Chicago across the river to Fort Lee, New Jersey, and pointed out to him a Masseria lieutenant named Peter Morello. Even in a business built on greed, Morello was exceptional, earning the nickname of “the Clutching Hand.” No one could rush Buster. He waited until the summer, until he was sure, and one evening went into Morello’s office, where he found the gangster and a visitor. Buster put two revolver rounds into Morello, but the Masseria man refused to fall. He staggered wildly about the room, and Buster, laughing aloud, began to practice fast draws with his gun, pegging occasional shots at Morello. Buster stopped to reload, and only after Morello had been hit six times did he drop to the floor. Buster walked to his body, fired another round into his head, then turned and wordlessly shot the office visitor, one Joe Pariano, who had only stopped by to return Morello’s car keys.

  • The shooting of Morello brought even more of the Masseria gang into Maranzano’s tent. From Chicago came a pledge of five thousand dollars a week to Maranzano to finance the war. The money came from Joseph Aiello, who had taken advantage of Al Capone’s jail sentence to try to install himself as a leader of the Chicago mob. Capone, freshly released from jail after the Philadelphia gun charge, called Luciano to complain. “I done my time, Lucky, and you promised you was going to quiet things down, and I come out and everybody’s shooting everybody up again and I don’t know what’s going on.” Luciano replied, “I’m taking care of it, Alphonse.” Capone answered, “You do that, but I’m gonna take care of myself, too.”

  * * *

  IN EARLY AUGUST, Mario took a train upstate to visit his brother, Tommy. They went for a long walk in the green rolling Adirondack hills. Tommy had said nothing, and while they sat on a rock atop a hill overlooking a small valley, Mario wondered if the life Tommy faced was even worth living. Would he be better dead? he asked himself. He looked down at the forest floor teeming with life and death and wondered if Tommy would not be happier if he were lying there at the bottom of the hill, ready for the journey to meet God. He thought for a long time about it before he realized, God will have to decide that. I can’t.

  “Mario,” his brother said.

  Startled to hear his brother call his name, Mario gasped, “Tommy?”

  “Birchevsky.”

  “Who?”

  “Harry Birchevsky. Nilo’s friend. It was his voice I heard. He killed Rachel.”

  “You have to tell the police,” Mario said.

  Tommy had already started to his feet. “Sure,” he said.

  * * *

  “IT WILL NOT BE LONG,” Maranzano said. “Every day, we hear from more of Masseria’s men, anxious to join. The war will soon be over. I think it is time to tell our friend from Chicago to hunt even bigger game.”

  “I will talk to him,” Nilo said. He started to his feet, but Maranzano waved him back down.

  “Don’t be in such a hurry,” he said. “We never have time to speak anymore. How is your family? The children?”

  “The children are fine. Sofia is well.” Nilo wondered what Maranzano would say if he told him the truth: Sofia wants you and Masseria both dead so that Luciano and I can control New York between us. And maybe she is right.

  “And no more bambinos are on the way?”

  “Not now. Maybe at a later time.”

  “Family is the most important thing of all. It is the reason for our success. Because we are, at heart, a great family of Castellammarese. In the future, because of what we have come to learn, our families will never suffer want or prejudice or despair. It is the greatest legacy a proud father can give his children.”

  That and the gift of treachery, Nilo thought.

  * * *

  THE WORLD SEEMED to have swallowed up Harry Birchevsky, but all it meant to Tony was that he would have to dig harder. He’s either dead or hiding. Nobody covers his tracks this well just by accident, Tony thought.

  His search had continued through the summer. P
olice records, which he sneaked into headquarters to inspect, shed no light. No one had seen Birchevsky at his old addresses. Tony even questioned other people who had been in jail with the union man, but no one had seen or heard from him.

  In early August, when Mario brought the apparently recovering Tommy home from the convent with his recollection that Birchevsky had been Rachel’s killer, Tony felt vindicated. He had settled on the right man; now he merely had to find him.

  Tommy offered no help. No, he didn’t know any of Birchevsky’s friends. No, he didn’t know where he hung out or where he might be likely to hide. No, he didn’t have any idea where the man might be. He answered Tony’s questions in a dull voice, almost grudgingly, and Tony felt that the pain of Rachel’s loss was still too much for Tommy to deal with, so he stopped asking.

  There is time, Tony thought, because I will never forget and I will never give up. Birchevsky belongs to me.

  Anna cooked a welcome-home dinner for Tommy, and even Tina showed up. Tommy was glad to see that she was making a special effort to heal the wounds between her and Tony. Tony, though, seemed distant; at odd moments, he seemed to be watching Tina, as if judging her performance. Tommy wished he knew what his father was thinking.

  Is she my daughter, the little girl I raised, or is she the harlot of those photographs? Which is the real Tina? Did she do those things willingly or was she forced? Or drugged? Will she ever know how close I came to killing Luciano because of those pictures? How can I ever look at my daughter again without seeing those images in my mind? I have to believe she was a victim. We have all been victims of crime somehow. Tina, Tommy, Rachel, me. It would be so easy to give up. But we never will. Never surrender. Never surrender.

  “Papa?”

  “Sorry, Mario, I was daydreaming.”

  “We were hoping that you would play the phonograph. Some of the new tenors, maybe.”

  “Aaaah, the new tenors sound like fishwives. Caruso, only Caruso.”

  “Fishwives? Gigli? A fishwife?” Tina demanded.

  “The worst,” Tony said. “Just you listen.” He marched off to the phonograph.

  They listened to the music as they had many times before, arguing as they always did. As if by design, although none had planned it so, no reference was made to Tommy’s tragedy or his plans for the future. There would be plenty of time for that later on.

  For his part, Tommy offered nothing, just sat quietly in the living room, listening, watching. If there was anything on his mind, Tony could not tell it from his son’s impassive face.

  The party broke up early. It was only the next morning that Tony found that Tommy’s police revolver was missing from the dresser drawer where Tony had hidden it for safekeeping.

  • In Chicago, rival mobster and Maranzano ally Joe Aiello offered a restaurant chef ten thousand dollars to put prussic acid in Al Capone’s soup. The cook refused and told Capone about the offer. At 8:30 P.M., October 23, Aiello left the home of Pasquale Prestigiacomo at 205 North Kolmar Avenue to step into a waiting taxicab. As he opened the cab’s rear door, the taxi sped away. At the same time, a window opened in an apartment across the street and a machine gun sprayed bullets at Aiello. Aiello was hit but struggled to his feet and ran into an alley. But another machine gunner waited at the end of the alley and ripped into Aiello as he tried to take cover. Doctors pried nearly sixty slugs from the gangster’s body. Police said the lead weighed more than a pound. Capone told Luciano that he had Aiello hit because he was backing Maranzano while Capone was a loyal Masseria-Luciano man. Meyer Lansky told Luciano, “That guinea’s nuts and is gonna get us all killed.”

  • Less than two weeks later, Maranzano struck back. Two of Masseria’s top gunmen, Al Mineo and Steve Ferrigno, were struck by shotgun blasts at noon on November 5, while leaving a bookmaker’s office in the Bronx. After carrying out the killings, Buster from Chicago replaced his sawed-off shotgun in his violin case and ran down the street but was stopped by a policeman. Buster said there had been a shooting down the block and he was trying to escape. The policeman went to investigate the shooting and Buster went back to his hotel.

  • Luciano carried the news of Mineo’s and Ferrigno’s deaths to Masseria in his new penthouse apartment at Eighty-first Street and Central Park West where Joe the Boss had moved because it was safer than his old downtown apartment. Masseria was eating dinner with his best friend, Joe Catania, and was clearly annoyed at being disturbed. He waved off the two deaths as inconsequential. “People get killed in wars,” he said.

  • He was less sanguine two weeks later when he strolled, with his two bodyguards, out the front door of his apartment building. Two Maranzano gunmen jumped from a nearby doorway and opened fire. The bodyguards were dropped instantly, but Masseria fled down Eighty-first Street and escaped. His bullet-riddled overcoat was left lying on the sidewalk. Later that night, he met with Luciano. “We’ve put up with this Castellammarese bastard for too long,” the frightened Masseria said. “Now he is getting too brazen. I want him hit. I want everybody with him hit. I want everybody on our side to carry guns all the time and shoot them whenever they see them. I want them all dead, and I want them all dead right away. Start with Maranzano and go down the list and get everybody. And do it right away.” Masseria left the city the next day for a winter vacation at an undisclosed location.

  • Reelected governor for a second term, Franklin D. Roosevelt announced he was appointing a commission, headed by former judge Samuel Seabury, to investigate municipal corruption in New York.

  • A new radio show swept America by storm. It began with a deep-voiced announcer intoning: “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows. Ha-ha-ha.” And it ended with the same announcer’s: “The weed of crime bears bitter fruit. Crime does not pay. The Shadow knows. Ha-ha-ha.”

  * * *

  IN EARLY OCTOBER, Tommy asked Captain Cochran for his job back.

  Cochran greeted him warmly in his offices at the Italian Squad, but Tommy seemed to resist all his efforts to make pleasant conversation.

  “I want to come back to work, Captain.”

  Cochran sighed. “Your job’s been filled by a lieutenant from Midtown. We don’t have an opening right now for you.”

  “I don’t have to come back as a sergeant. Just a detective. Hell, I’ll even come back undercover as Vito. Just let me work.”

  “Tommy, I looked at your records. You’ve still got a few months of sick time coming to you. Why don’t you take the time now until you’re feeling better?”

  “I look that bad?”

  “Worse,” Cochran said.

  Tommy rose to his feet. “I’ll try you again in a few weeks,” he said.

  Cochran stood facing him. “Tommy, I know how awful this has all been for you. But I don’t believe in vendetta.”

  “I do,” Tommy said. “It’s all I’ve got left to believe in.”

  * * *

  AT THE END OF NOVEMBER, Tommy found Harry Birchevsky.

  Since leaving the convent in August, he had gone over the same ground his father had, quizzing Birchevsky’s friends, associates, and neighbors, and with the same lack of success.

  But one night, lying on the couch in the apartment where Rachel was killed, Tommy recalled the image of Birchevsky, sitting at a table in a coffee shop, reading the Daily Racing Form. And he remembered overhearing Birchevsky remarking how his married sister lived near the Yonkers racetrack which he said was his favorite “’cause all their races are fixed and you just gotta watch where the smart money goes.”

  Tommy took to riding the train to Yonkers every day for the races, walking through the grandstand and clubhouse, looking for the union man. Some nights he stayed over at a cheap hotel so he could wander the streets the next day, trying to find Birchevsky’s sister, whose married name he did not know.

  Tommy was seedy-looking now, usually unshaven, often unwashed, and he appeared no different from the other gambling degenerates who hung around the small, dirty t
rack. At first, he lived off his meager savings. When that was gone, he shamelessly borrowed money from Mario.

  “I wish I knew what you needed this for,” Mario said one day. “It’s sure not for a shave and a haircut.”

  “It’s to live, Mario.”

  “Can’t I help, Tommy?”

  “Only by giving me the money.”

  When he found that Tommy had never told the police that Birchevsky had killed Rachel, Mario told Tony. To his amazement, Tony would not tell the police, either.

  Tony said, “I’ll tell them about it after I get him. If we tell the cops now, they’re not even going to look for him. All they’ll do is blab about it, send out an alarm, spook him, and make him run. I don’t want him to run. You stick to running the church. Leave the police work to me.”

  Tommy was hanging out in the racetrack grandstand when he saw a man step up to the ten-dollar window to place a bet on the final race. The man had a beard and wore a cap pulled down tightly over his forehead, but there was no mistaking his curious duckfooted walk. Tommy shielded his face with a newspaper when the man turned away from the cashier’s booth. It was Birchevsky.

  Tommy patted the gun he wore in a holster under his heavy jacket, then walked after his prey. He felt his heart pounding; the image of poor dead Rachel jumped into his mind, and he had to use all his willpower to stop himself from walking up and shooting the man where he stood at the rail, overlooking the track.

  Too many people here. I want him alone.

  Birchevsky seemed nervous at the track, often checking his wristwatch, and he left the track before the last race. He walked west on foot through a run-down industrial section of the town. Tommy followed a half block behind. It was already dark and a chill rain had begun to fall, but Tommy hardly noticed it. For the first time in almost a year, he felt alive.

  As Birchevsky passed a big darkened warehouse, he turned and darted through the front door of the building. Tommy hurried across the street and tried the door, but it was locked.