Il Bestione (The Golden Door Duet Book 2)

by Susan Fanetti

  Finally, Deller reclaimed his composure and asked, “What does this have to do with me?”

  “You are going to present me as your trusted friend to the owner of these parcels, and you are going to make sure I get the deal I want.”

  “A mortgage?”

  “No,” Paolo answered. “I am in debt to no man. The cash deal I want. I say what I will pay, and you make sure it happens.”

  For a moment, the uptown capitalist only sat, staring. Then he asked, in a voice clearly intended to be firm but with a slight tremor that gave the truth away, “What makes you think I would do this?”

  “We both know why you will.”

  The truth was that Deller hadn’t been brought an actual boy since Paolo had charge. But he didn’t know that. Paolo had worked with Carmela to find several young men who passed for younger and were willing to do that job.

  Paolo had, however, been feeding him human flesh—that of those who had died or been killed in the usual Five Points ways. About a week ago, Deller had bought a man’s right hand.

  For all these years, Paolo been collecting, sometimes planting, evidence and forging a trail, waiting for the time when Deller would need to be persuaded to do him a service.

  Now was that time.

  “No, I won’t. You have nothing you can use against me,” Deller protested. “And you don’t dare kill me.”

  Paolo looked to Aldo, who produced a leather portfolio. He opened it and began slowly laying its contents across the desk—assorted papers and a few photographs—letting Deller examine each piece before the next was presented. Deller watched, his eyes growing rounder, his skin paler, his brow damper.

  “You filthy guinea,” he finally snarled.

  Paolo did not react to the slur. Calmly, he said, “A man with tastes such as yours should be careful where he casts stones, Martin. You cannot imagine what I might dare to do. But I have no wish to kill you. You’re much more useful to me alive.”

  Again, he looked to Aldo, who drew a smaller folder from the portfolio and handed it to Deller.

  “Those are the terms I want,” Paolo said. “You have two weeks to make the arrangements, or all of this”—he swept his hand over the evidence scattered on his desk—“goes to your family, your business associates, and the Times.”

  While Deller examined the folder, Aldo began collecting the evidence back into the portfolio. Paolo stopped him when there was one last photograph on the desk.

  “This … this is an outrageously low bid for that much property,” Deller said. “Even I don’t have the influence to make something like this happen.”

  Paolo tapped the photograph. Deller tried not to look, but his eyes were drawn despite his obvious effort, and he grew paler and swallowed shakily.

  “I’ve laid out the terms,” Paolo said. “You have two weeks.”

  Deller’s eyes came up and met his. “You are a bastard.”

  Paolo gazed calmly at the man. “No, I am not. I am a businessman.”

  Later that afternoon, Paolo sat in the parlor with Aldo, Nello, and others of his top-ranking men. The men were engaged in a lively discussion of politics, ranging from their estimations of the new president, who’d been inaugurated in the spring, to the expensive preparations for the upcoming Hudson-Fulton Celebration, a lengthy commemoration of the three-hundredth anniversary of the discovery of the Hudson River and the one-hundredth anniversary of the invention of the paddle steamer.

  Paolo didn’t pay much attention; he wasn’t a citizen and had no intention to become one. Though he had no home in Sicily any longer, he didn’t consider this place his home, either. How could he when his welcome had been so cold? His allegiance was to himself.

  He paid attention to politics, because politics was power and he wanted to know the ways it moved. But he had no stake in deciding who had it. As in Sicily, politicians here were flagrantly corrupt, and he had learned how to shape men like that to his will.

  Most of the men in the room arguing weren’t citizens, either, but they enjoyed arguing about anything. Paolo was content enough to sit and observe. He learned a great deal about the men who worked for him in the ideas they declared and the way they contended with each other.

  It was not much different from fighting in the ring. You could understand the way a man knew his own body, his own physical strengths and weaknesses, you could make your own judgment about those strengths and weaknesses, when you fought a man in the ring—and when you watched other men fight. The same went for their mental acuity and worldview when they argued.

  Paolo watched and learned and made judgments about which men he could trust with what, and how far the tether of their loyalty might extend. And he kept his own opinions to himself.

  Teresa came into the room, and the noise level dropped at once. Teresa was a plain woman of middle age, the kind of woman who had chosen work over family—in other words, a kind of woman who was a mystery to most men. She dressed simply, severely, without adornment or any overt indication that she cared to be attractive.

  She was as plain in her speaking as she was in her dress, and she cared little for the propriety of the work she did, but Paolo kept her work legitimate.

  Fausto had not kept a secretary. But Paolo meant to be a businessman, and businessmen had secretaries.

  Understanding that things got discussed in the parlor she didn’t wish to be privy to, Teresa rarely came into this room. Her presence had the effect of a schoolmarm entering her classroom and the pupils suddenly remembering their manners.

  “Pardon me. Don Romano,” she said “There is a man to see you. Luciano Montanari.”

  Recognizing the last name but not the first, Paolo looked to Joey.

  “Yeah, that’s the brother,” Joey said when he met Paolo’s gaze. “I don’t know why he’s here, though.”

  Though the man himself had spent three days in Dr. Goldman’s clinic and was, as far as Paolo had heard, still recuperating at home, Fredo Montanari’s debt had been cleared—both the gambling debt and the loan he’d taken to open his business—with scant moments to spare in the week deadline he’d been given. He’d sold most of the contents of the trattoria to do it.

  Paolo checked his pocket watch. The afternoon was aging into evening. “Show him in here,” he said to Teresa.

  With a brisk nod, she turned from the room. In a matter of seconds, she was back, leading in a man Paolo would not have recognized as Fredo’s brother. Where Fredo was fat, this man was strong. He was about forty-five or fifty, with a thick wave of black hair and a heavy beard. He could see where Mirabella got her wild hair.

  Paolo held back a flinch at the thought of her. Since that first night he’d seen her, he’d struggled to keep her from his thoughts. He didn’t think it was desire for her he felt, but there was something. Deep and unpleasant, like a toothache. Once a thought of her rose up, he struggled to set it aside. And now her father stood in his parlor.

  Though there was a familiar aspect of poverty about him, his suit was impeccable, and Paolo remembered that he was a tailor.

  Holding his hat by the brim with both hands, Montanari glanced timidly around the room, took in the sight of half a dozen men and the don himself, and swallowed so hard it was visible, though Paolo was across the room.

  Paolo said, “You are Luciano Montanari?”

  The man nodded. “Sì. Ho … Have … Have little English, perdonami.”

  His accent was Tuscan, like his daughter’s. Paolo wondered what the story was that made one brother Sicilian and the other Tuscan.

  He switched to Italian. “You’ve come to me for a reason.” With a gesture at an empty chair near him he added, “Come and tell me.”

  “Thank you, don, thank you,” Montanari said in a relieved Italian rush. He moved stiffly through the room and perched at the edge of the chair Paolo had indicated. His posture was so reluctant and fearful it was prim. “I come to seek your compassion.”

  Paolo studied him without speaking, long enough to ma
ke the man’s hands clench around the brim of his hat. Around them, Paolo’s men watched, none of them making a sound.

  “I don’t trade in compassion, Luciano.”

  “Then … then I come with an offer. A humble one, I know. But all I have.”

  With a lift of his brows and a tilt of his head, Paolo indicated his desire for the man to continue.

  Montanari cast a worried glance at the audience, cleared his throat, and proceeded. “My brother. I know … I know he has vices and did wrong. I don’t question what you did, or that he deserved it. But … he has nothing now. There’s not enough left to reopen the restaurant, and he’ll lose the space. I would help him, but I’ve only just arrived in the city. I have a position at Campanelli’s, the clothier on Leonard Street, but it’s not enough. I don’t have much, but I could offer …”

  He paused; Paolo understood that he hadn’t come here with the offer, he’d come only with his hand out, and now he was trying to conjure a worthwhile offer.

  “I offer my services to you. I am an excellent tailor, don. In Firenze, I had my own shop, very successful. I can make you suits, a whole wardrobe of suits—or, if you have a lady, I can dress her beautifully. She would be the envy of all Manhattan.”

  Paolo ignored that hubris. “If you were so successful in Italy, why have you come here to work in someone else’s shop?”

  Montanari dropped his eyes and spoke to his hat as he answered. “It was not safe to stay.”

  A familiar story. One Paolo himself knew intimately well.

  “You’ve told me what you have to offer. What do you seek in exchange?”

  “Enough money for my brother to open his doors again. I think he could do it with two hundred dollars.”

  It was a significant amount, especially for a man who had few resources. He’d made an offer that could be fair, and in Paolo’s favor, but Paolo didn’t make loans, or deals, unless he had a solid confidence the terms could be met. A man who could pay his loans, even at great pain, was a man who might borrow again. A man who could not was a victim.

  He was willing to ruin a gambler, but not a tailor with no known vices.

  “Why would you take on that burden, when you are already burdened with your own problems?”

  The question surprised Montanari enough that he momentarily forgot his fear. He looked at Paolo like he couldn’t believe he’d had to ask. “He is family.”

  The look and the tone irritated Paolo and killed his interest in the conversation. “I have a tailor, Luciano. And no woman to dress. I’m not interested in your offer. But I will give you a piece of advice. If your brother is ruined, his vices drove him there, nothing else. I suggest you not tie your fortunes to his.”

  He nodded to Nello, who stood at once and glared down at Fredo Montanari’s better brother. “Okay, buddy. Time to go.”

  V

  A week later, Joey came into the parlor and asked to speak with Paolo in his office. With a nod, Paolo stood and summoned Aldo to follow. The three men crossed the first floor and went into the office.

  “What is it?” Paolo asked before he’d sat behind his desk.

  “Montanari’s dead.”

  Still standing, Paolo stopped and faced Joey. “Which one?”

  “Fredo,” Joey answered. “Killed himself. In what was left of the restaurant. Opened his own throat.”

  “How do you know it’s a suicide?”

  Reaching into a pocket of his trousers, Joey held out a folded piece of paper. The corner was stained with blood, and the rusty mark had leached deeply into the paper.

  He didn’t expect Paolo to touch it. Instead, he unfolded it and set it on the desk.

  Paolo and Aldo both read it. A suicide note, in Italian.

  To my family, please forgive me. I know God will not.

  Beware the Beast.

  With a flick of his finger, Paolo sent the page back to Joey. “Who knows? The police?”

  Joey shook his head. “Benito Costa has the wine shop next door. He saw Fredo go in and was curious, since the restaurant is empty. He thought maybe Fredo was gonna try to get the business running again, so he went over to talk and found the body. He sent for me.”

  Fredo’s debts had been cleared, so his death wasn’t a loss to their books. But Paolo was disconcerted nonetheless. He pushed that aside and addressed the problem at hand. “Did you disturb anything at the scene?”

  “Just took the note, since …” Joey let the rest of the sentence drop off, but all three men in the room knew what he would have said: since the note referenced Paolo. The Beast. Il Bestione. “Left everything else like it was. Don, he … he used the cleaver to do it.”

  So the man had been a poet at heart.

  Paolo sat down. “All right. Leave the note here. I’ll send word to the precinct and make sure the right policemen claim the scene. What of his brother and niece?” Why had he asked that?

  Joey frowned. “I don’t know. You want me to check on ‘em?”

  “No. If they don’t know, let the police tell them. You just make sure nobody else comes upon that scene.”

  His news shared and his orders received, Joey nodded and took his leave. When he was alone in the office with Paolo, Aldo said, “Is there something else going on, Paolo?”

  “No. Why do you ask?”

  “I don’t know. Just … a sense I’m getting.”

  “Leave the fortune telling to the carnival, Aldo.”

  Two days before the deadline Paolo had set for Martin Deller to deliver, Cosimo drove him and Aldo uptown to close the deal.

  He would have preferred to hold the meeting in his own office, and force those arrogant ‘old money’ sons of bitches to dirty their shoes on the streets of the Five Points, but on the other hand, he found it deeply satisfying to walk into one of the bastions of that old money and be treated with respect. He wore his best suit and his diamond cufflinks and tie pin. Aldo was packed into an excellent suit as well.

  As they climbed from the Mercedes and stood before the large, gleaming uptown building, Paolo looked around at the men on the street and knew he fit in with them perfectly well.

  He walked in with his head high.

  Even in the elevator, he remained calm, though he despised the contraptions. They were dark and close and reminded him too much of a night he’d spent at the bottom of a dry well.

  When they were seated in Martin Deller’s office high above the city, Paolo studied the man who was selling him a great deal of property on Long Island. Frederick March.

  He was a tall, lean man, with a hooked nose and suspicious eyes. Paolo preferred to deal with men whose contempt showed so obviously. As Deller explained the terms set forth in the contract, Paolo handed his copy to Aldo and kept his own eyes on March.

  He could read English, of course, and he was savvy about business, but after one early mistake when he’d been unable to untangle the complicated verbiage of a contract and had signed something that stated the terms differently from the agreement he’d made, he entrusted Aldo, more fully fluent in English and more experienced in the New York world of business, to read and confirm any contracts.

  Each item Deller described made March’s eyes narrow more. It was quite obvious that Deller had brokered a deal that would hurt March. Paolo wondered what Deller had on the man. He didn’t much care, as long as it resulted in him getting what he wanted.

  Aldo handed the contract back to Paolo. “It’s clean. No tricks.”

  March scoffed bitterly. “I wouldn’t say that.”

  Paolo looked up from the paper and locked eyes with the man. “What do you mean?”

  “I think you’re full of dirty tricks, just like all you people. This deal is filthy, just not for you. What you’re getting for what you’re paying? It’s like getting all of Manhattan for a handful of beads.”

  Paolo got the sense there was a reference in March’s words, but he didn’t know it. He did, however, understand very clearly the tone of disdain. He looked over at Aldo again
. “The contract is sound?”

  Aldo nodded. “Yeah.”

  Paolo turned back to March. “Sign it.”

  His face bunched up tight, March picked up the elegant fountain pen on the table between them and signed his name with a grand, furious flourish to every copy of the contract.

  When he was finished, Paolo signed his name as well. With a nod, he signaled to Aldo to hand over the case with his payment for the property.

  Paolo felt a single flutter of apprehension as March took the case and opened its fastenings. Though the price was low for the property in the deal, it was a significant portion of Paolo’s worth. There was enough left to keep his businesses running and not show any obvious deficiency in his wealth, but this deal would dramatically deplete his reserves. Only Aldo knew how dramatically. Not even Joey, who handled their books, was privy to this.

  But it was a good deal, and it would mean, when his plans were implemented, a great increase of his business holdings, his influence, and, eventually, his wealth.

  Long Island was ripe for development—especially his kind. More immigrants were coming into Ellis Island than ever before, and they were spreading out farther than ‘Poverty Hollow.’ Long Island was heavily populated with Italians who’d fled the city, but the area had not yet been sufficiently built up to support that increasing population.

  Paolo would do it. He would shape that slice of the world in his way.

  It was a good deal. But his heart still skipped a beat when March took that case and counted the stacks of bills that were now his.

  Traveling through Manhattan by motorcar was a complicated endeavor, and sometimes not a great deal faster than walking. Pedestrians and carriages, carts and horsecars clogged the streets. Making matters worse on this day, the sun had been swallowed up by storm clouds, and now the streets were muddy and visibility poor.

  Finding Mulberry Street wholly blocked by an overturned cart, Cosimo turned and sought a different route. Eventually, several impediments and turns to avoid them later, Paolo noticed they were on Leonard Street.