by Gene Mustain
“I love you.”
“I love you too.” His eyes were moist. “You make me so happy I cried. I can’t believe it. You wanna dance?”
“Whatever you want.”
On December 16, 1968, Dominick was honorably discharged, but emotionally he would never leave the Army. It dominated the self-portrait in his mind’s eye and made him confident of his own wit, luck, and strength. His sudden meltdown at Denise’s party was just an aberrant consequence of combat that would fade. Still, he began submerging some of his military identity because he also was attracted to the countercultural drumbeat of the time. He would never attend an antiwar rally, but did begin wearing long-sleeve shirts to conceal the paratrooper tattoo on his right forearm.
He was filled with optimism, but except for his relationship with Denise, he would not succeed at much. He enrolled at Dade County College in Miami, but rarely attended class. He and a few similarly minded veterans spent most of their days high on LSD and listening to music in the squalor of a ghetto dive they rented. One spring day, unexpectedly, Nino and Rose showed up. They were in Florida overseeing construction of their sumptuous winter home.
Dominick was embarrassed, and he was surprised that Nino spared him a harangue on his unkempt appearance and surroundings. “Why don’t you come home?” his uncle said instead, adding that he was about to buy a small Italian ices business in Brooklyn. “You can run it, as long as you cut your hair and straighten out.”
When Dominick telephoned his mother and mentioned the offer, she warned him away. She recalled reading somewhere that someone in that business had recently been shot dead at his desk.
“Only in Brooklyn can making ices get you killed,” he replied, too lightly for her.
“That’s your uncle’s life,” she snapped. “Don’t forget it.”
Tired of his mother’s worries, Dominick came up with a new idea. In a letter to Denise, he suggested they run away together and make a new life for themselves in San Francisco. He had visited there on one of his leaves home; it was where he first saw an exciting new breeze sweeping the country, where he first felt out of step. Musically, San Francisco was also a center of innovation, and he wanted to give that part of his nature one more chance. He described it as a fairytale land where dreams came true.
When Denise said maybe, he left Florida and rented a small apartment near her parents’ house in Brooklyn. Nino had filled the Italian ices job, but Dominick saw no harm in accepting another job his uncle offered: doorman and assistant “greeter” at the 21 Club in Manhattan, where Nino was influential because of his relationship with Chuck Anderson, the maître d’, who owed Nino money. Dominick had met Anderson, the “Mr. New York” of the city’s gossip columns, at parties at Nino’s house. Nino had described him as a war hero whose relatives grew up with Al Capone.
The 21 Club was a glittery restaurant patronized by celebrities, politicos, and old men with young women on their arms. Dominick hated it; he felt like a servant and quit after two months. “Too many assholes,” he told Nino.
Nino and Paul got him membership in the waiters’ union; he hired out as a bartender at banquets and weddings but felt like a servant again and quit after a few weekends even though he was trying to save money for a new start in San Francisco.
Nino got him another job with a small landscaping company owned by the brother of a Castellano soldier, but the work was irregular and mundane. In high school, Dominick had hustled at a McDonald’s to make a few bucks, but common labor was now below his Green Beret self-esteem. Being unemployed, rather than underemployed, was easier on his ego.
His ego kept the California fund from building too quickly and aggravated Denise’s parents’ opinion of him. When he indicated to them through Denise that he wished to discuss marrying her, they sent back a message: Don’t even bother.
“They say Michele has to get married first,” Denise reported, referring to an older sister, “before they even think about letting me get married.”
It was Denise who proposed a solution. One night soon, as they were parked in a lover’s lane along the Brooklyn shoreline, she said: “We don’t need anyone’s permission. Let’s elope!”
Dominick happily agreed and suggested they leave immediately and get married somewhere along the way to California.
“No, we have to do it before we leave. If we leave together, we’ll sleep together, and I want to be married first.”
“Let’s do it then! I’m dying to get out of Brooklyn.”
Eighteen-year-old Denise had been charmed by his depiction of San Francisco. She had more flower-child in her than he. She was ready to take a break from college. Her grades were superior; she could go back anytime. “California, here we come,” she cried.
The couple got a marriage license and confided their plans to Marie Montiglio, who was elated. She urged them to make her a grandmother right away and volunteered to speak on their behalf to Denise’s parents.
“Don’t bother, it won’t do any good,” Denise said.
Without Denise’s parents’ okay, the pastor at Saint Finbar’s in Bath Beach refused to officiate. So did the pastor of the Montiglio parish in Levittown. The couple randomly visited a Protestant church near Levittown. The minister married them the next day, January 19, 1971.
After the newlyweds broke the news to everyone else, Dominick’s mother hosted a reception in Levittown. All the Montiglios were in a gay mood. Denise’s parents appeared funereal. Nino refused to come because Dominick had not informed him beforehand.
Once in San Francisco, Dominick and Denise discovered they could not afford the city’s rents and had to settle for nearby Berkeley. Still, they quickly exhausted their meager funds, but just when they were thinking of coming home, the owner of their apartment building offered Dominick a job as the building’s superintendent. It came with free rent, and Dominick could do the work just about when he pleased. He and Denise made love, did drugs, went to concerts, explored northern California. For a year, they had their fairytale life.
Denise was an incredible partner—strong, loyal, and supportive to the point of selflessness. Deciding they could use more money than he made as a building super, she took a job as a supermarket checkout clerk, and continued to keep her own education on hold when he began attending Merritt College in Oakland as a full-time music student. His interest had turned to jazz, and she bought him a twelve-hundred-dollar saxophone.
He quickly became skilled on the sax, and he and four other students formed a group, the Brooklyn Back Street Blues Band. All became interested in a new sound, “fusion,” a marriage of jazz and rock. Frank Zappa came to one of their sessions at a school seminar and encouraged them to record a demo tape. The result was astounding. Their compositions roared and sailed in many directions, yet held onto unifying themes. It was intricately plotted music, but raucous and chaotic—like combat.
The Back Street Brooklyn Blues Band sent their tape to all the record companies, and waited, and waited. “These assholes say it’s too avant-garde,” Dominick bitterly complained to Denise. “We ain’t marketable. We ain’t Frankie Valli.”
Marie and Anthony Montiglio, and their children Steven and Michele, arrived for a visit in the summer of 1972. Marie used almost all her home movie camera film on landscapes along the way. Arriving in Berkeley, Anthony took over the camera. The movie, the last in the Montiglio family collection, ended with Marie, two fingers of her right hand crossed in a gesture of hope, knocking on the door of her son’s apartment.
Marie’s health had declined significantly, but nothing was said for fear of scaring the children. Dominick’s boss gave the visitors keys to a furnished apartment and they wound up staying six weeks. Between Marie’s illness and Dominick’s disappointment with another stalled music career, it was a bittersweet time.
After the Montiglios left, Dominick and Denise went to see the new hit film The Godfather. Inevitably, he identified with the character Michael Corleone, the Mafia don’s youngest son, a war he
ro who first appears in the movie wearing a military uniform. The character’s family and relationship dilemmas were instantly familiar. The heroic way he becomes like his father and takes command of what is portrayed as a dark but peculiarly noble world was an irresistibly appealing fantasy.
“It wasn’t about gangsters,” Dominick solemnly told Denise on the way home. “It was about family.”
Within days, the couple made two major decisions—to try and make a baby and to return to New York, where they found an apartment near his dying mother’s house. Dominick’s Brooklyn Back Street Blues Band tape and his saxophone went into storage with his Four Directions memorabilia and Vietnam medals. Later, he went to Saint Finbar’s in Bath Beach for the first time in a long while and became godfather to Nino’s youngest child—a boy named Michael.
* * *
In December 1972, Marie Montiglio entered a hospital. She hung on several weeks. “I will not die until my first grandchild is born,” she told Dominick before, at age 52, she slipped away.
That same day, too late to tell her mother-in-law, Denise learned from her doctor that she was pregnant. Having prepared for the bad news, Dominick tried concentrating on the good, but it was impossible; he had never felt life’s cycle of pain and beauty more profoundly.
Marie was laid out at the Cusimano & Russo Funeral Home in Bensonhurst. The first night of the wake, after everyone left, a gaunt man with drinker’s eyes came in by himself. Mortician Joseph Cusimano tried to shoo him away.
“Please,” the man said. “I used to be married to her.”
“What’s your name?”
“Santamaria. Anthony Santamaria.”
“Sorry, we’re closed, come back tomorrow night.”
Early the next night, Cusimano told Dominick a “bum” claiming to be Marie’s first husband had come by—“Says his name is Santamaria.”
“If he comes back, let him in,” said Dominick. Since coming home, he had extracted a few more details of his parents’ breakup from his mother. These made him want to hear his father’s side of the story, but he had put off looking him up. On the last night of his mother’s wake, he waited until everyone left, and then some more, but no more mourners came by, not until after he left too.
Former Army Air Corps boxing champ Anthony Santamaria came in a few minutes later, and Cusimano led him to the casket, where he stood silently for several minutes. “Thank you,” he said, then shuffled away, back to a sister’s house in North Brooklyn.
Hearing about it the next day, Dominick wondered if his father hid in the shadows until he left because he wanted to mourn in private, or because his son used to cross the street to avoid him. He was denied any answer because his father was soon found frozen to death next to a pile of cardboard in an empty lot. His sister buried him without telling his son. “He just decided to lay down and die of a broken heart,” she told her friends.
Marie Montiglio’s death created a wrinkle for the Gaggi family. The deed to the bunker had been placed in her name in 1943. No other owners were ever added. That meant her husband had the strongest legal claim on the property, but he never raised the issue. Officially, Marie died without any assets. Even so, the deed was a problem if the Gaggis ever wanted to sell the house.
As his sister lay dying, Nino had promised to look after her children Steven and Michele. Dominick, he said, was a big boy who would take care of himself. “Let him,” she said.
A few days after the funeral, however, Nino asked Dominick his plans. Dominick said he and Denise were returning to California to have their baby and another go at a music career. He said it without much conviction.
Nino said a father-to-be could not afford any more drift. “I’m buying a car service; you could run it for me,” he said.
Private car services were a booming business in New York, thanks to the declining state of subways and the practical unavailability of taxis in any borough but Manhattan. “It’s time to settle down,” Nino said. “You belong here in Brooklyn.”
Twenty-five-year-old Dominick asked for time to think; replaying the conversation in his mind, it was hard not to compare himself to Michael Corleone and Nino to Vito, Michael’s father. Fantasy aside, the car service was a legal business venture. It was a job with some dignity. On the other hand, California was a cloudy picture. His rent-free deal was gone; his band had broken up.
Once Dominick made all his rationalizations, only his dead mother’s wishes stood in the way, but he told Denise it was possible to work for Nino without getting too deep into “that life.” Denise had accepted the inevitability of this moment since his romantic assessment of The Godfather. Her parents had opposed marriage because he might turn out like his uncle, but she had married him and loved him deeply. In her twenty-one-year-old mind, Dominick could be a rogue, but not a criminal. A week later, he accepted Nino’s job. Miss Mu Gamma Delta accepted a full-time role as wife and mother and never returned to school.
Pleased, Nino asked, “Where you gonna live? You can’t stay in Levittown. Why don’t you move in here?”
The top floor of the Gaggi house was open. Denise liked the idea. It was a large apartment. She had spent many nights in it babysitting and had met her husband a few steps below. Early in 1973, they moved in. He had begun life on the bottom floor, moved to the middle when his father left and now, after his mother’s death, was on the top—back home in the bunker.
Nino gave him two hundred dollars a week to manage the car service, but deducted one hundred sixty-five a month as rent. Dominick was miffed—his mother had helped pay off the mortgage on the bunker—but accepted it as another example of Nino’s confounding ways: He gave with one hand and took with another. Nino also purchased the couple furniture worth two thousand dollars, but docked Dominick’s salary seventy-five a week to pay for it.
Denise delivered a baby girl on August 1, 1973. She and her husband wanted to honor his late mother, but thought it might be bad luck to name the infant Marie. They decided on Camarie, the “Ca” having no special meaning, but making for a pretty name.
Not then and not ever did Nino sit Dominick down and explain the outline of his world. He never gave a speech about Carlo Gambino controlling an empire through crews of soldiers led by captains and capos reporting to an underboss. He merely pulled back a curtain, a little at a time. Once in a while, however, he would quote lines from his favorite movie, The Godfather. His favorite was the ailing don’s speech as he passed the torch to son Michael, “I don’t regret my life. I refused to be a fool dancing on a string held by all those bigshots . . . I don’t apologize.”
“That’s me,” Nino would say. “I don’t apologize.”
CHAPTER 4
Swing of Things
Lingering in the amber light near the entrance to the Villa Borghese, the restaurant on the corner, Anthony Gaggi appeared to be waiting for dinner companions. Some passersby, neighborhood people in the know, might have speculated he was a gambler debating whether to return and chase his losses at the craps game underway in a house one door away. No one was aware how dangerous it was just being near him.
It was minutes before midnight, March 2, 1975, two years after Marie Montiglio’s death. Nino occupied the northwest corner of Twentieth and Bath Avenues in Bath Beach. A block west on Bath, the shift was changing at the New York Police Department’s 62d Precinct stationhouse, the “Six-Two.” Nino was two blocks from home, and close to settling an old score.
On Twentieth, at the corner, he saw a maroon Plymouth. Inside, a small dot of light snaked across the windshield; a man was barely visible on the front seat. Nino was pleased—the job was underway. Then he noticed the car was illegally parked by a hydrant, making it an easy mark for quota-filling shift-ending cops from the Six-Two. His pulse quickening with this overlooked wrinkle, he peered beyond the car, expecting to see his normally reliable partner, Roy DeMeo. But Roy was nowhere in sight.
Nino grew more agitated. Roy was the job’s rear sentry; if strangers came along that way,
he was to tap on the Plymouth’s trunk and warn the man inside to douse his penlight and duck down—the same as Nino’s role at the front. The man inside was placing an explosive device under the front seat and rigging it to the driver’s-side door.
The car belonged to a smalltime craps player, Vincent Governara, the teenage boxer who broke Nino’s nose after Nino tried to assault him and his friends with a hammer because they rudely admired a pretty woman, Nino’s sister-in-law—twelve years ago.
Tonight, Nino was tying up a loose end in his ordered life, making good on a vow: “I’ll get that fucking punk someday.” His embarrassment and defeat at the hands of a neighborhood teen were blemishes in his morning mirror; he never doubted he would remove them when the time came, and finally it had.
After the fight, Governara’s family had moved away. A few months ago, however, one of Nino’s men—aware of his leader’s grudge—saw Governara driving in the neighborhood; he tried following to find where he lived, but lost him in traffic. En route to Nino’s this night, the man had spotted the Plymouth again, parked two blocks away. Governara had come to Nino.
But where was Roy? Nino’s telltale neck vein bulged. Shaking down pornography distributor Paul Rothenberg, and then murdering him to protect Nino and himself from exposure, Roy had been effective and ruthless, a good partner to have. But lately, as the worst of his fears came true and the IRS began investigating his fairytale tax returns, Roy had grown jittery and started taking Valium. Nino, who shunned even aspirin, had scoffed that an IRS investigation was just a board game played by lawyers, but Roy refilled his prescription.
Nino now concluded that Roy was panicking again; worried the man in the car might make a mistake and blow them all up, he had wandered into the Villa Borghese on the pretense Governara might be inside, eating a late dinner. Roy was watching out for himself and exposing his partners to detection.