At his side, Mirabella snorted in a decidedly unladylike fashion. She offered her hand to Dario, accompanied by a beaming, perfect smile. “No one more than I. Hello, Dario.”
His brother-in-law grinned. “I am very glad to meet you, Miss Montanari.”
“Call me Mirabella, please. We are to be family.”
Dario gave Paolo a sidelong look. Paolo answered it with a slight nod. He understood he’d been in the wrong at every turn in the road with Dario, and with Caterina as well, but there was a limit to the penance he’d do. He wouldn’t grovel. Mirabella was the only one for whom he’d go to his knees.
“Mirabella, then,” Dario replied. “Please, both of you, come into the shop. I’ve got fresh coffee and sweet rolls right from the oven.”
Dario did invite them to dinner. When Mirabella said they were staying in Long Island for the weekend, he offered their house for the night, but Paolo had booked a room in a seaside inn, and he wasn’t quite ready to be comfortable as overnight guests with people from whom he’d been so long estranged, so they declined.
Now they were walking up through a small, lush green yard to a pretty clapboard house with boxes at the windows full of bright red flowers. On the wide front porch, toys were scattered—wooden animals and wagons, balls, ropes, and rolling skates. Seashells lined the railing all the way around.
Paolo could smell a dinner cooking and hear a family clamoring before Dario opened the door, and said, “I’m home! Where are my monsters?”
“Pappa, Pappa!” voices cheered, and then there was a thundering rush as the children ran to the door to greet him—only two children making so much noise: Lena, the oldest, nearly seven years of age, and Alessio, who was four. The baby—Paolo hadn’t been able to remember his name before Dario had said, in the shop, that it was Matteo—was crying somewhere at the back of the house.
Dario crouched to greet Lena and Alessio and grabbed them both into his arms, lifting them as they stood. “Hello, little monsters. Were you good today?”
“Yes, Pappa,” Lena said—and then noticed Paolo and Mirabella standing behind her father. Her bright eyes—the same color of Caterina’s, and Paolo’s own—widened at the sight of him. She was named Maddalena, for their mother, but she looked exactly like her own mother. No sign at all in her of the monster who’d forced her into Caterina’s belly.
A monster Paolo had killed.
Alessio had noticed them right away and buried his face against his father’s shoulder.
“Pappa, there are strangers,” Lena whispered loudly.
“No, little mouse. Not strangers. That man is Mamma’s brother. Your uncle. Do you not remember him?”
There was no reason she should; Paolo hadn’t set eyes on her in nearly four years.
She shook her head.
“That’s all right,” Dario said, “You can meet him again. Come.” He turned and set his children on the floor. “Lena, Alessio, this is your Uncle Paolo, and this lady will be your Aunt Mirabella.” He dashed a look to Mirabella, who nodded with a sweet smile.
She crouched at once to their level and offered her hand. “Hello, Lena and Alessio. I am happy to meet you.”
With an air of someone remembering her manners, Lena shook her hand. Alessio twisted and buried his face again against his father.
“Son, come now.” Dario urged, and Alessio turned and gave Mirabella’s hand a shy touch.
The baby had stopped crying, but his hitching gasps were louder now—because Caterina had come to the front. She stood at the end of a hallway, holding Matteo to her shoulder. Her eyes were wide with shock.
Paolo’s heart seemed to collapse in on itself. Every failure of his life was rooted in his sister, because he had failed her constantly. When she’d needed him, he’d failed her. When she’d no longer needed him, she’d judged him.
No. Stop. He gave his head a brisk shake.
She had always loved him. He had judged himself and found himself wanting, but blamed her. If they were ever to find their way to each other again, it had to be him to make the move.
And here he was, at her front door, standing in her home. “Hello, Rina.”
“Paolo,” she gasped. Then, heedless of the babe in her arms or the family standing between them, she rushed to him.
As she came, he opened his arms, and she fell into them.
He held her fast, trying not to crush the child, and said, “I’m sorry. I love you. I’ve always loved you.”
She began to sob.
Quietly, Dario came and took the baby from her arms, and then, still sobbing, Caterina hugged Paolo as if she meant to embed him in her skin.
He had been the Beast, that was obvious. To no one as much as to his sister, whom he’d loved longer than anyone alive.
That evening, after a boisterous and rather scattered meal that included Dario’s mother and uncle, and after the parents had put the children to bed and the oldsters had retired as well, Mirabella and Caterina went out to the back yard, where Paolo’s sister and her mother-in-law had a resplendent kitchen garden.
Dario poured two mugs of coffee—they didn’t keep liquor in their house—and invited Paolo to sit on the front porch with him.
Their little street was not on the beach, but not far from it. In some ways, it was perfect—tidy homes with tidy lawns lined up on a narrow dirt lane. Few motorcars or buggies, but they’d made a community where people could walk nearly everywhere. This little town would always, he thought, be a little town. He had grander ideas for his own project. But this was, quite clearly, a home. One of peace and contentment.
As good as Paolo’s life had become, he hadn’t yet achieved so much peace and contentment. He felt it sporadically, when he was alone with Mirabella. When he was away from her, engaged in his work, troubles clamored.
He’d pulled Dario into his work once, as part of a deal they’d struck. He’d helped Dario get his family out of Little Italy and provided a substantial sum toward the cost of building this house and the bakery. In return, he’d asked Dario—no, he’d made him—do something foul.
Dario had been instrumental in helping Paolo get the evidence he’d needed to blackmail Martin Deller. For years, he’d been the sole deliverer of Deller’s illicit delicacies, and Paolo had forced him to know exactly what it was he was delivering and where those morsels had come from. With Dario’s help, he’d gotten photographic evidence of Deller’s cannibalism—evidence he likely would not have been able to secure in any other way.
Dario had made such deliveries for Don Fausto before his deal with Paolo, but he hadn’t known what he was delivering. Paolo had made him know, so he could use his rear-door access to get evidence.
He had also compelled Dario to push at his friendships with the men who worked at the backs of grand 5th Avenue houses to make a way to get irrefutable incriminating evidence of Deller’s other vice: the boys, and the young men he thought were boys.
Dario had done it all, because he wanted to protect his family, and Paolo had made it so he had no other option. But it had chafed at his soul, to know of such horrors and do little, Paolo knew that. At the time, he hadn’t cared. It was a deal, a transaction, in which both parties got what they wanted.
Recently, Paolo was learning about the limits of negotiation where emotion and conscience were concerned.
He considered the man at his side now. For years, he’d held Dario in contempt—too weak, too soft, too easy a mark. But that was wrong. He was strong enough to take care of his family, to do whatever he had to do. He was strong enough to be kind in a cruel world, to be good in the midst of evil. Perhaps he was stronger than Paolo had ever been.
He owed the man an apology. But those remained difficult, and he was still raw from his reunion with his sister.
Instead, he said, “Your family is good.”
Dario smiled. “It is, thank you.”
“Rina—she’s happy?”
“Could you not see?”
“I saw. She seems very ha
ppy.”
“I live to make her and our children happy. But there has always been a dark place in her heart I couldn’t touch, a little corner of sorrow she carried with her. Today, you pulled that place into the light.”
As that softly spoken claim punched him in the chest, Paolo let out a shaky breath.
Seeming unaware of the blow he’d dealt, Dario sipped his coffee and cocked his head. “Your sister is the sun in my sky, Paolo. Whatever the circumstances that brought us together, we were meant to be. Is that how it is with you and Mirabella?”
When Paolo nodded, he felt as if there were more in the gesture than an agreement. With that nod, and its tiny insight into his feelings for Mirabella, he’d given something of himself to Dario. Shared something with him. It was as close to an apology as he thought he could manage.
And Dario smiled as if he understood it, too. “I like her. Very much. She has …”
Paolo chuckled. “Audacia.”
“Yes. Exactly. You look at her the way I feel when I look at Cati.”
Paolo took a drink of his coffee. “She is special to me.”
Dario didn’t reply. They sat together and watched the quiet street.
Paolo wanted a life like this—peaceful and whole. He wanted more than that, he wanted power and wealth, enough of both to make New York forget the noisy vowels at the ends of his names, but he wanted this, too. A place to set down the mantle of Don Romano, Il Giovane, Il Bestione, and simply be a man, who loved a woman and made a family with her. A man who relaxed on a porch on a darkening spring evening, with the sea making music in the background.
Where he could have peace, and didn’t have to fight to prove he had worth.
“I’m glad you’re here, Paolo,” Dario said quietly.
“So am I.”
XXII
Paolo and Aldo went down into the basement of a building not far south of Washington Square Park. It wasn’t his territory, per se, but the owner of the building was in his debt, and the work he was doing late on this Sunday afternoon was better done at some distance from his own properties.
The building housed several offices, businesses that were closed on weekends. The basement was a crowded labyrinth of fenced-off storage for each of the businesses above. Those storage areas resembled nothing so much as jail cells with wooden bars, though they were packed with crates and boxes, and the basement reeked of papers going to rot.
With Aldo in the lead, they wended their way into the deepest part of that maze, to a cell that was, but for the work Paolo had sent to it, empty.
The work was a man, stripped to his drawers and bound to a sturdy chair. As Aldo and Paolo stepped into the cell, Nello stood straight and wiped his sweat-soaked brow.
No man took any precaution against identification; the man on the chair wouldn’t have the chance to identify them. Paolo studied him: bound to the chair at wrists and ankles, gagged with a cloth stuffed into his mouth, wearing nothing but soiled drawers, bathed in sweat and blood, and other assorted bodily fluids.
His face was a misshapen blob. His knees were obviously broken, both swelled up like craggy purple boulders. Abstract patterns had been carved into his chest. Several of his toes were missing, and blood pooled under the chair legs. He was obviously conscious, and obviously suffering. When he realized Paolo was in the cell with him, he began to weep.
Though Paolo had a well-earned reputation for brutality, these days it was Nello who did the messiest work, unless Paolo had some particular interest in doing it himself.
“Don,” Nello greeted with a nod.
“Nello,” Paolo replied. “Do you have anything?”
Nello grinned nastily. “Everything you wanted and more. He’d’ve given up his mother if she was still alive.”
“Who hired him?” Paolo could make a guess among a handful of names.
The bound man was a Pinkerton detective. A few weeks earlier, Paolo’s mice had brought back word of a man nosing into his business, asking questions and offering cash for answers. Paolo had let the man work for a while, watching him, seeking to understand the patterns of his inquiries. It had become clear that someone with deep pockets had hired him.
The uptown men he’d blackmailed were looking to stop him.
When he’d had enough to understand that, he’d sent his men to move on him and get the rest. Pinkertons were known for their fierce toughness and loose relationship with the rule of law. They were no different from Paolo and his men, except that they could work in the daylight.
But Nello had made this tough detective weep and beg.
“Deller,” Nello said.
That had been Paolo’s first guess. But he wouldn’t have acted without proof.
Now he had it.
He turned to Aldo. “Get word to Joey. It’s time for him to move.”
Aldo nodded, but he gave Paolo a measured look. Paolo knew the argument that look meant to convey without re-opening the discussion. Aldo was concerned about the Pinkertons. Any Pinkerton was as thuggish as any man in Paolo’s employ, and they would likely seek revenge for one of their own.
Paolo understood. But they’d seek proof first, just as he had. He meant to make sure there was none.
He and his second had had this discussion more than once. So Paolo met Aldo’s measured look with a steady one of his own.
Aldo nodded and turned to leave the cell.
Paolo called after him, “And find the bricklayer—Serafini. He owes me a service. It’s time to collect.”
Not much more than an hour later, the Pinkerton was dead, and Martin Deller had his seat. He hadn’t yet been touched, except to be stripped bare, bound, and gagged. He wasn’t a physically imposing man, especially with the armor of fine clothing removed. Pasty-white, with a spindly, flaccid red cock and a sad flabby belly that sagged under a concave chest. Stripped of his finery, he was small and pathetic.
“This is the boldest thing you’ve ever done, Paolo,” Aldo said.
“No, it’s not. Long Island is the boldest thing I’ve ever done, because no one believed I could do it. This—this is what they all expect of me.”
“Okay, agreed. But Deller will be missed. He’s a huge player.”
Paolo nodded. “He is. But most of them owe him in some way, and they all know what he is—his depravity. They bow to him for his wealth and power, but they know the things he does in the dark. My gamble is that all of New York society will be relieved to be free of him.”
Deller, listening to their exchange, stared with wide eyes. In that look, Paolo saw that Deller believed he was right. The people of Deller’s set would let him disappear without pursuing the reason. They would erase their debts to him, take his power for their own, and move on without him. They would sing a grateful chorus to the one who’d excised this tumor from their world.
And in that, he saw a way to nullify the Pinkertons as well.
“Do you want me to do him, or is this one yours?” Nello asked.
Paolo shook his head. “I don’t need to dirty my hands. I have no more use for him. But he should suffer. In the ways he’s made others suffer.”
Behind the gag, Deller tried to speak. As Nello turned to him, his utterings became screams.
He suffered.
When it was over, Nello, Joey, and George, one of Paolo’s young soldiers, wrapped the bodies up tightly in waxed-canvas tarps and rolled them into old rugs. Then Abramo Serafini, who’d come to Paolo months ago for a loan to help him care for his dying wife, was brought down to this basement. His wife had passed shortly after Christmas. The man, a father with six now motherless children, looked weary and frightened. When he saw the two rolled rugs, he understood at once, and his lip trembled as he turned to Paolo.
Paolo set a calming hand on his slumped shoulder. “Hello, Abe. How are you and the children faring?”
“A little better every day, don. My sister is here now, thanks to your help.”
“You’ve been making good payments. I respect that. Now it�
��s time for you to give me a service. You’re working on that new building a block over, yes?”
“Yes, don, I am.”
“Good. I need these bundles buried deep, Abe. Under that building, so they’re never discovered. Tonight, at full dark. George and Joey will help you. Will you do me this service and never speak of it to anyone, never in your life?”
Serafini looked over at the stacked rugs. He swallowed hard and twisted his flat cap in his hands. But when he faced Paolo again, he straightened his back.
“Yes, don. I will do this for you.”
Paolo squeezed his shoulder. “It’s an honorable man who keeps his promises. Thank you.”
It was a good spring evening, with a pleasant warmth that lingered as twilight approached. After his time in that basement, Paolo needed some fresh air. He set out to walk back to the Five Points. Cosimo followed in the brougham, near enough to be there in the event of trouble, but back well enough that Paolo didn’t feel crowded.
A walk south from Washington Square Park exposed the stratification of the city in glaring detail. From the genteel homes and offices near the park—not quite the grandeur of Central Park, but visibly affluent—there was a steady decline, block by block, in the circumstances of the people who lived and worked there, until tall, rickety tenements hunched together along each street, looming in shadow like decaying gargoyles, and tattered laundry sagged over the cobblestones.
Paolo hadn’t reached Little Italy yet on his walk, but he was close, on a block that clung to a shred of so-called respectability, with shops offering inexpensive but stylish clothes and hats, a confectionary, a bookseller, and a toy shop, as well as a small tea room and a few first floor offices. The apartments above had a few rooms each. At the southeastern corner was a rooming house for women. Two of the girls who’d gone on to secretarial school from his care had taken rooms there.
He was approaching that rooming house, thinking he might stop in to talk with the matron there, when a woman stepped out from the druggist shop he was about to pass. He pulled up short so they wouldn’t collide, but the woman had her head down, tucking something into a small handbag, and didn’t notice him.
Il Bestione (The Golden Door Duet Book 2) Page 27