“Johanna’s brother,” Scully said. “Christ have mercy on us!”
25
“JO! TELEPHONE CALL FOR you.” The postmaster came out of his office. “Take it in there if you want to.”
Johanna finished making change, a penny from a nickel, and said “Excuse me,” to the customer.
“My stamp!” the man called after her. “You forgot my stamp.”
“Take it easy,” the postmaster said. “I know where they are.”
Johanna prayed her way to the telephone.
“Johanna?” It was her mother’s voice.
“Yes, mama.” She tried to hold back her tears. “Are you all right, mama?”
“Do you want me to come home, Johanna?”
“Yes! Please, mama, soon. Right now. I have a place, an apartment. It’s small but it’s nice …” She was afraid to say that it was Martin’s place. She could never tell how her mother would react to anything about Martin.
“I am so tired, Jo.”
“I know, mama.”
“And I’m sorry … I made a big mistake.”
“It’s all right. You don’t have to say anything. Just come home. Have you any money? I could get somebody with a car maybe …”
“Father Walsh will come for me this afternoon.”
“Oh, mama, I’m so glad.”
Only a sound like a great sigh came from the other end of the line.
“Mama, don’t cry!” She could no longer keep from crying herself. “Everybody will be glad to see you.”
“Everybody,” the woman repeated and her voice broke on the word. “Thank you, Johanna,” she managed and hung up.
Johanna tried to compose herself, putting the phone in its cradle. But she did not care. Really, she did not care. She walked proudly from the office and announced to the postmaster and the other clerk on duty: “My mother’s coming home today.”
“That’s swell, Jo,” her boss said. “That’s just swell.” And he meant it.
When Mrs. Mancuso came in, Johanna told her. The woman’s eyes welled up with tears. “I’m so glad,” she said and caught the girl’s hand. “I’m so glad.”
Johanna worked until noon. When Martin came in, as he did regularly for his mail and a word with her, she told him of her mother’s call. The quickness of her joy very nearly lifted his own sense of foreboding in the matter.
“Want me to tell my grandmother?”
“No, I want to tell her myself. She’s been very kind to Georgie and me.”
The old lady took the news without a word. The girl’s eyes were sparkling, and it made her sad to think how long it had been since she had reached that deeply into the soul of anyone.
“You understand, don’t you, Mrs. Tonelli?”
“Too well,” the old lady said. “Too well.”
The doorbell rang. Johanna reached it before Mrs. Grey could come from the kitchen. It was Mrs. Lodini. “Is it true, Johanna?” Behind her were Mrs. Gerosa and Mrs. Mancuso.
“Yes! My mother’s coming home. We’re going to live at Martin’s for a while …”
“When is she coming?”
“This afternoon. Father Walsh says four o’clock maybe.”
“You will come to supper at our house,” Mrs. Lodini said. “It is big and everyone can come. She must know her friends welcome her home.”
The other women nodded. Mrs. Mancuso plunged her hand within her ample bosom and drew to the surface a small fold of dollar bills just far enough to show their presence. She tucked them out of sight again: found money to celebrate the return of one they had thought lost.
Johanna laughed and hugged their spokeswoman.
“So,” Mrs. Mancuso said, “In this game everybody wins. Every hand a winner!”
Georgie, arriving home from school, was met at the door by his sister. “Mama’s coming home today. We’re going to move into Martin’s.”
“Who says?”
Johanna retreated a few steps into the house, for he pushed in and stood over her, a glowering hulk.
“Georgie!” The girl was shocked by the sullen rage in his eyes.
“What’s she coming back here for?”
Johanna stood her ground, from where she would move no more. “I asked her to. I begged her.”
“I ain’t moving into that dump of Martin’s. Not me, sis. You asked her. You live with her. Down there with all them whores? Big Molly’s down the street just. What’ll people say, ma living there after what she’s did? Christ, sis, not me. I got a future and it ain’t going to be like that. No, man!”
Johanna brought her full strength into one vicious slash of her hand across his face. Georgie shook it off; he wiped his nose with the back of his hand, in the manner of a boxer. “Okay, Jo. If that’s how you want it, have it your way.”
“Georgie, you don’t have to come with us. Sometimes I don’t even think you’re my brother.”
“That’s something you better ask ma. Maybe you’re right,” he said, trying to hurt her.
But Johanna turned her back on him and went into the kitchen. Mrs. Grey was baking a cake for the party at Lodinis’.
Georgie went to the living room door, knocked and opened it. The old lady was nodding in her chair. She came suddenly awake to see him standing, his feet spread, in front of her.
“I’m going to stay with you, Mrs. T. Okay?”
She clacked her tongue around her teeth, sucking moisture into her mouth where it had gone dry while she slept.
“I want to go to the party,” she said.
“I’ll take you,” he said although he didn’t know what party she was talking about.
She began to grope for her cane which had fallen to the floor. Georgie bent down to pick it up for her. She stretched out her bony hand and raked it through his hair. “Then get a haircut,” she said.
He jerked his head away, but smiled. “Okay. For you I’ll do that. For you, anything.”
“For me,” she said, and her voice dropped to a whisper, “nothing.”
26
BASSETT WATCHED THE HOMECOMING, or such as he could see of it from the police station window, Kearns beside him. Theirs were not the only faces crowding windows on the street. And Billy Skillet did not bother disguising his curiosity. He rolled himself along the sidewalk from his usual station at the corner as soon as he saw the flutter of curtains at the second-floor windows.
Father Walsh got out of the car and went around to help his passenger out. Martin and Johanna came down the steps. As the woman got slowly from the car it occurred to Bassett that her lover, whoever, wherever he was, might well be enjoying relief instead of grief at the moment: an ailing mistress sobered many a cavalier. He turned away from the window at the meeting of mother and daughter.
“No Georgie,” Kearns said.
Bassett looked back in time to see Martin Scully shyly kiss the cheek Johanna’s mother turned to him. She took his face in her hands then and kissed his cheek in turn.
“She ain’t the looker she used to be,” Kearns said.
“Who of us is?”
Slowly the family moved indoors, all of them having thanked the priest profusely.
“There’s going to be a big shindig tonight at the Lodinis’,” Kearns said. “The gals are doing some free-spending.”
Bassett grinned. “Enjoy, enjoy.”
Kearns looked at him and allowed himself a sour smile. Then he said, “I’m not in that crowd. They’re kind of on their own up there on the hill. I don’t mean if I showed up I wouldn’t be welcome. Even you’d be welcome tonight. That’s how they are. Italians, you know.”
“I think we’d better keep a watch up there tonight, you and I,” Bassett said. “Will Tagliaferro be there?”
“I wouldn’t think so. He got a bad scare last night. He’ll watch himself for a while, but hell, the town needs him. He’s the only doctor we got.”
“Do you think he’d perform an illegal operation if it came right down to it?”
Kearns went back to his desk for a
cigar.
“That’s a question just as well unanswered,” Bassett said. “Forget I asked it.”
“I’d just as soon,” the police chief said.
“What time’s the party?”
“It’ll start rolling early,” Kearns said. “The men’ll be wanting to get their money’s worth.”
Georgie could understand a party to which they’d invite his mother maybe as long as she was around. But even that, he couldn’t really understand. And a party made especially for her … Man, this town was sick. They really needed a Mafia. He wondered how many of the guys would be there. Daley would. His mother had been Italian, Rosie’s mother’s sister. His old man used to work for the railroad. When he was laid off in Hillside he just stayed there. Man, come to Hillside and die. If ever he’d seen a walking corpse it was old man Daley. Georgie put on the clean shirt Mrs. Tonelli had bought him, then the corduroy jacket. She’d sent Mrs. Grey up on the bus to buy them. They weren’t bad, he had to admit. And the tie was way out. He brushed his hair, pomaded it, and built up the folds to crests on either side of his head. Tomorrow he’d promised to have his hair cut. The old bag would hold him to it, too. Greater love hath no man, Georgie thought.
Mrs. Tonelli called up the stairs for him. When he went down she said, “I have never had to wait for a man before in my life.”
Georgie grinned. “Look at me, Mrs. T.”
“I don’t have to. I can smell you.”
“You look swell,” he said. What she was wearing looked swell, anyway: the crown jewels. It made his eyes blink, just trying to look at her.
As soon as Georgie reached the Lodini house he was faced with a dilemma: everybody would be watching to see how he acted toward his mother. Christ! He didn’t recognize her at first. She looked all sunk in, eyes, chest. He crossed the room, self-conscious. It was like getting up in front of class when you didn’t even know what the assignment was.
“Hello, mother.”
“Mother,” she repeated, a funny look in her eyes.
Georgie’s face reddened. He’d never called her mother before.
“I thought maybe you’d say Mrs. Rocco,” she derided.
“Hi, sis,” Georgie said to Johanna.
She did not even answer him. He looked at her as hard as he could, trying to warn her he wasn’t going to take anything from her—or her mother. Who the hell did they think they were?
“If looks could kill, Georgie.” His mother made a deprecating gesture with the back of her hand to him. “Go away.”
Mrs. Tonelli made her way carefully across the glossy floor. Mrs. Lodini had waxed it to mirror brightness. “Well, Catherine, it did not work out the way we thought.” She gave a dry laugh and glanced at Johanna. “A split decision, as they say on the radio.” She drew in a deep breath and let it out. “I thought it was for everybody’s good … But mostly for my own.”
The latter admission made Johanna and her mother smile.
“I want some wine,” the old lady said. “I want quite a lot of wine.”
“I’ll bring you some, Mrs. T.,” Georgie said.
“Bring us all some wine.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Her glass in hand a few minutes later, the old lady toasted: “To the prodigal returned.”
It was the signal for the night’s revelry to start. Everyone drank and laughed and talked, and soon forgot the occasion in its bounty. There were antipastos of every sort, roasted meats, lasagna, fruits, salads. And there was music. The trio that played at the Halfway Inn on Saturday nights had been hired by the Ladies’ Auxiliary of the fire department. As Mayor Covello said, they ought to do this every night this week, as long as the men were off work and the women loaded with money. There were men making love to their own wives where most of them had hardly spoken since Saturday night.
Georgie finally made himself speak to Rosie. She’d been hanging round Phil Daley and Tom Lodini all night. To hell with her. But he finally spoke to her: “Hi.”
Rosie stuck her nose in the air.
“What’s eating you?”
“Leave her alone,” Daley said.
He’d been drinking, Georgie noticed. Man, what a Mafia he made.
“You all make me sick,” Georgie said, and turned his back.
Rosie giggled. That goddamned giggle of hers. Georgie didn’t know what to do with himself. Nobody was paying any attention to him. There wouldn’t have been any party if it wasn’t for him. He knew where the money for it came from, and it was his idea to give it to the women! What he’d give a woman from now on you could count on Billy Skillet’s legs. Christ! He had to talk to someone. He went in search of Mrs. Tonelli. She’d got herself an audience, a circle of the people he’d like never to see again in his life: Papa Gerosa, his mother and Jo, coweyed Martin, the padre. He’d even taken off his Roman collar. And the old lady had him by the hand. And wasn’t it typical, Georgie thought, the old parish priest, Father de Gasso, had fallen asleep in his chair.
“How I like to tease him,” Mrs. Tonelli said of the young priest. “He has an Italian heart, but an Irish conscience.” Suddenly she cocked her head around and looked up at the glowering Georgie. “Ho! Look who’s jealous!”
“Of him?” The words were out before Georgie knew it.
The priest slowly withdrew his hand from the old lady’s. Johanna half-rose from her chair.
“What I know,” Georgie said, “God ought to send a thunderbolt and burn up this whole damn town.”
The laughter and the music subsided even in other parts of the house.
“That’s enough, George,” the priest said. “You’re not God’s messenger.”
“Somebody’s got to be,” Georgie shouted. He looked around at all the gawking, dumbstruck faces. “No wonder our house burned down, what was going on in there Friday night. If I was to tell …”
Georgie paused and moistened his lips. The priest and Johanna exchanged one long look, their heads up in the air, just waiting. But what got Georgie was the looks on the faces of the rest of the people: like he’d done something dirty. Him! the innocent bystander who’d just been trying to sneak into his own house. He brushed his nose with the back of his hand, again the gesture of the wary boxer. “All right,” he said. “All right. When I got home that night the two of them, my sister and him,” he pointed at Father Walsh, “they were standing together in the hall hugging one another. I mean, I thought at first it was Martin and her. But the priest! Man, I didn’t know what to do, seeing them in a clinch like that.”
Georgie looked from one shocked face to another. Some of the women looked as though they were going to throw up. He went on desperately, “I mean, that’s what Jo and I was fighting about afterwards. Ask her. Go on, somebody, ask her if you don’t believe me.”
Only silence.
Then Mr. Lodini said quietly, disdainfully, “Get out of here, Georgie. Get out of my house and don’t come here any more.”
Georgie wanted to go, but he didn’t seem to be able to lift his feet.
Mr. Gerosa was moving in on him, crossing the room like he was walking on tiptoes. “You, you rotten kid!” he said, and shook his fist in the boy’s face. Georgie fended him off with his elbow. “Liar!” Gerosa addressed himself to the entire company: “He lies about everybody. Even when he tells the truth it is half a lie when he tells it!”
Mrs. Tonelli got to her feet. “Come, my young gallant,” she said. “You can take me home now.”
The way she said it, Georgie wondered if she, too, hated him like the rest of them did. He was watching his sister and Martin Scully move toward one another, slowly at first, then in a rush, colliding in each other’s arms as though they weren’t ever going to break apart again. He glanced at the priest: just putting on his Roman collar. In public.
“Are you coming?” Mrs. Tonelli demanded.
“Man, am I!” Georgie cried.
The crowd opened for them to leave and closed behind them as though they had not been in it at all.<
br />
“It was the truth, Mrs. T.,” Georgie said on the walk. “I seen it with my own eyes.”
“I believed you,” she said.
27
BASSETT WATCHED GEORGIE AND Mrs. Tonelli leave the party: he had himself, by Lodini’s permission, been an unobtrusive witness to Rocco’s ultimate attempt at smear: of the priest and his sister. He did not doubt that there was at least a moment’s truth in the incident. It explained how Rocco had built himself an alibi the night of MacAndrews’ murder, calling on his sister to bear witness for him—lest he bear witness against her.
Was he aware, Bassett wondered, that tonight he had destroyed his own alibi?
But did he need it after all?
That was the hard core of the detective’s problem. He might now gather testimony that the boy was not where he said he was. But could he prove where he was? No witnesses, no weapon. No wonder he had been willing to shoot his final bolt!
Bassett watched from the shadows of the back porch as Mrs. Tonelli poked her way slowly up the walk, the great, awkward lug bumbling alongside her. Where would their relationship go from here, left to devices of their own? The ersatz quarterback and his canny keeper? What did she think she was getting, buying him away from his own family?
My young gallant: he could still hear her crackling out that ironic epithet. She knew his worth. Did she know more? The spider and the wasp? Was that it? Every fiber in his body tensed as he contemplated that possibility. She had been watching that night—and perhaps from the moment the priest had left his car at her door and gone down to the Rocco house. The Italian heart but an Irish conscience, that of the priest. She would have watched him from her door, having said God knows what to him … and she would have seen Georgie Rocco’s arrival home—hard upon having committed murder? A cold chill ran over the detective as he saw the old woman reach out and clutch the boy’s arm.
“Kind of chilly out here.”
Bassett swung around, not having heard anyone come from the house. It was Phil Daley.
“Not when you get used to it,” Bassett said.
The tall, hard youngster lit a cigaret. “Why don’t you come in and join the party?”
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