Princes of the Lower East Side: A 1920s Mafia Thriller (A Scalisi Family Novel)

by Meredith Allison

  “You eat more,” Aunt Connie insisted. “You fill out the dresses. He got nothing to say about that. Then maybe you get a husband.”

  “If that Charlie keeps sniffing around, she just might,” Gloria teased. “She had a date with him last night, Aunt Connie. One she didn’t return from until well into the wee hours of the morning.”

  Mia shook her head, determined not to let the weight of the discussion she’d had on that date drag her down. “Come on, Glo.”

  “Ah, well.” Aunt Connie reached out and patted Mia’s middle. “Then you eat. Soon you might be eating for two.” She cackled as she stirred the gravy.

  Mia burst out laughing. “You’ll have better luck with Raquel, Aunt Connie. Maybe—she’s a girl after my own heart.”

  “Isabella wants her to be married,” Gloria pointed out.

  “I want her to follow her own mind,” Mia said.

  “Okay, so between you or her, one of you gettin’ married.” Aunt Connie lightly banged her fist on the counter.

  “Mia with a husband and a child, like a proper woman,” Gloria said, and Mia wasn’t sure if the wonder in her sister-in-law’s voice was real or teasing.

  “I would rather die,” she said scornfully.

  Gloria’s face fell, and a hush dropped over the kitchen.

  Damn my mouth! Shame dropped over her like a net. It had always been her reply whenever Nick frequently suggested the same—mostly, he’d teased, because it’d get her out of his hair and she’d be some other coglione’s problem.

  But Gloria would never have her husband again.

  “Glo, I’m sorry,” Mia said quickly. “I meant—I meant nothing by it.”

  “You think marriage is so terrible,” she said softly. “Just wait until you finally fall in love with someone. Start a family. The thought of being without them will be pure agony. And then being without them is pure agony. When you find yourself in that predicament.”

  Mia didn’t know quite what to say. She glanced at Aunt Connie, who gave her a brief, understanding smile before crossing the small room to stand at Gloria’s side.

  “Go get Uncle Joe and Signor Scarpa,” she said softly. “Tell them time to eat.”

  Gloria nodded and walked from the kitchen without a word.

  “I didn’t mean—” Mia began, but Aunt Connie reached out to cup her face and pat her cheeks.

  “Don’t fret,” she said. “She still mourn.”

  “We all do. I do. He was my brother.”

  “Different when it’s a husband,” Aunt Connie said. “I want you to get a husband, but I don’t want you to know what it’s like to lose him.”

  Mia tilted her head. “Do you—do you know what it’s like?”

  “I marry a young man long before Uncle Joe, when I was young girl in Sicily.” Aunt Connie’s eyes took on a wistful look. “He handsome. Treat me good. I was pregnant with our first baby when he get killed over money. He loaned a man, the man never pay him back. When I find out whata happened, I lose the baby, too.”

  Mia reached up and placed her hand on top of Aunt Connie’s. “I’m sorry.”

  The older woman gave her cheek another gentle pat. “It’s a long time ago,” she repeated. “Then I meet Joe. He good man, strong, hardworking man. He bring me to America, and we have a happy life. Now, get the bread and put it on the table.”

  Mia obeyed, setting the basket of sliced loaf on the table. She’d never known Aunt Connie had ever been married before Uncle Joe. Had ever had a life before Uncle Joe. Had ever loved and lost before Uncle Joe. The older woman seemed perfectly content with her life, despite the fact that she and Uncle Joe had never had children of their own. That forgotten realization made Mia bite the inside of her cheek. Perhaps she’d also hurt Aunt Connie with her careless remark.

  Perhaps I should just keep my big mouth shut, she thought.

  Would Gloria ever find another love? She deserved it—at twenty-five, she was still young. She wouldn’t remain a widow forever. It would be strange seeing Gloria with another man. It would feel like a betrayal to her brother, as unfair as that was. Mia tried to envision the sort of man Gloria might prefer now—someone not in the life, that was certain. On the other hand, she was used to a certain way of living. Could she be content to trade in the luxury for a simpler, more modest life?

  It was hard for Mia to picture Gloria as anyone but Nick’s wife. Her brother’s wife. Her sister-in-law. If Gloria married someone else, would she stop being Mia’s sister-in-law? Would she even be considered family anymore? She’d have another family instead. So would Aunt Connie and Uncle Joe. Would that kind couple stop belonging to Mia, as well? She didn’t share blood with them. They were only in her life because their niece had once been married to her brother. But that commonality was dead. Was the string that tied them to one another unraveling, even now?

  Gloria and Uncle Joe came into the room, Paolo behind them. Uncle Joe had an arm around her shoulder, and she leaned into him. She lifted her gaze to Mia and gave her a slight nod before taking her seat at the table. Uncle Joe sat at the head of the table. Aunt Connie had inserted an extra, mismatched chair beside Mia’s for Paolo, and he seemed to know without being told that it was his seat. It touched Mia that Aunt Connie and Uncle Joe were so accepting of Paolo. When Mia had explained to her uncle that he was with her for protection, he asked no questions and treated the silent man with all courtesy and respect.

  Mia finished helping Aunt Connie carry the rest of the dishes to the table, the delicious aromas making her mouth water. Gloria got Emilia settled nicely in her chair, Uncle Joe rattled off a fast blessing, Aunt Connie served them, and they all tucked into the meal.

  After a few minutes of silence punctuated only by the clink of silverware on china, Gloria looked up. “Who was that man at church this morning? The one that came up to you before the Mass began.”

  “Signor Bruno?” Uncle Joe asked. “He’s a good man. Having a hard time right now, trying to care for his family. His wife died last year, and his oldest daughter, who should be helping him run the house…” He met Aunt Connie’s disapproving stare across the table.

  “It’s not good for dinner talk, Joe,” she said.

  “What is it?” Mia asked. “What’s wrong with his daughter?”

  Aunt Connie made an impatient gesture with her hand and reached for her wine. “What is wrong with most young people in this neighborhood nowadays. The drug.”

  “Drugs?” Mia looked across the table at Uncle Joe.

  He sighed and nodded. “Heroin. So many good families losing their children to the substance.”

  She frowned, then stabbed her fork into a meatball. “I spoke to Mr. Masseria at your store the other day. He said he’ll make sure the neighborhood gets cleaned up.”

  “Don’ta hold your breath,” Aunt Connie said with displeasure.

  “Does he know who the dealers are? Who they’re working for?” Gloria asked, placing her hands over Emilia’s ears. “Not that this is a suitable topic of conversation in front of a child.”

  “I doubt she understands what we’re talking about,” Mia said gently.

  “Just the same,” Gloria replied, an edge to her voice, “I don’t want her repeating anything to the other children she meets. What would their parents think?”

  “You mean those rich little brats at the outlandishly expensive hotel we live in?” Mia said, not entirely sure where the surge of irritation she felt came from. “God forbid their parents—who are probably worse than the addicts in this neighborhood—should know we’re of an unsavory stripe, is that it?”

  Gloria looked at her, shock written all over her face, eyes filling with tears. “Why would you be cruel to me? What have I done to you?”

  “Mia,” Uncle Joe said, his brow furrowed deeply.

  Paolo placed a light hand on her forearm, the corners of his eyes tight. He shook his head. Strangely, it was his silent reprimand that stung the most.

  “You apologize,” Aunt Connie insis
ted, as though they were children.

  “Sorry,” Mia muttered.

  Gloria sniffed and looked down at her plate.

  After a pause, Uncle Joe went on. “Signor Bruno’s daughter, she in a bad way. She steals the grocery money for the dr—the powder. She leaves the younger children by themselves. She has nearly died from overdoses several times now.” He shook his head. “Poor man.”

  “I heard from Signora Ricci after Mass there was a fire that took the tailor’s shop only last week,” Gloria said. “She said the dealers did that to send a message. Can you believe it?”

  Mia pushed her pasta around on her plate with her fork, growing angrier with each word. Angry—and helpless. Ten years ago, she’d run the streets of this neighborhood with her brother. There had been bad men around then, but this section of the Lower East Side had been made up largely of hardworking immigrants who simply wanted to claim their tiny piece of the American dream, and nothing more. They came from oppression, violence, and dire poverty, and despite knowing they’d never be filthy rich in this new land, they were safe. They had small but tidy homes, food to eat, friends with whom to fellowship.

  The idea that criminal greed could ruin this little, dirt-smudged, peaceful community hurt her. Is there nothing I can do to change this?

  When the meal was finished, Gloria cleared the table while Aunt Connie put on a pot of strong coffee. Uncle Joe lit up a hand-rolled cigar.

  Mia glanced at Paolo, then addressed her family. “I think I’d like to take a little walk before dessert, if that’s all right.” She patted her stomach. “Ate too much.”

  “Yes, yes,” Aunt Connie said absently from the stove. “Go. Don’t be gone long.”

  Gloria gazed at her, her dark eyes gleaming with suspicion.

  Before anyone could make a comment, Mia donned her light coat and cloche and stepped out the door. At the light touch on her elbow, she turned. Paolo frowned at her, his question plain in his eyes.

  “Mr. Masseria made me a promise,” she said quietly as they strode down the stairs of the apartment. “I want to see how things are coming along.”

  Paolo held up two fingers. It’s been two days.

  “I know it’s been two days since I talked to him,” she said, pushing open the door to the grocery and holding it open for Paolo. “But he’s a powerful man. He should be able to work fast.”

  Twilight was passing into the full dark of night when they exited the grocery. The shops were quiet, the street vendors and their carts full of goods and wares gone so they could enjoy Sunday with their own families. She heard the distant strains of Italian folk music being played from apartments, smelled the faint scents of cooking food wafting from several open apartment windows.

  They strolled down the sidewalk, Paolo letting her lead the way, but instead of trailing behind her a few paces as he normally did, he walked firmly at her side, not touching her, but well within arm’s reach just in case. If he were truly a bulldog, she imagined him padding at her side, hackles up, teeth bared, a low growl of warning rumbling low and quiet in his chest. After a moment, she linked her arm through his.

  The deeper into the neighborhood they walked, the seedier things became. They passed the burned ruins of the tailor’s shop Gloria had mentioned. Mia paused in front of it. The windows were broken out, the façade blackened with one side collapsed inward. To know drug dealers were responsible for it filled her with an incandescent fury that surprised even her. The tailor and his wife were good people. They had opened this shop shortly after landing in America fifteen years ago. The tailor was a talented man who undercut himself in order to serve the Italian people of the neighborhood to pay forward the kindness other established immigrants had shown him and his wife.

  This was a neighborhood where everyone looked after everyone else. When she had still been a girl and Nick not yet a man, the other families in her building had done what they could to make sure she and Nick never went hungry or cold. They gave what food or scraps of clothing they could. When Nick had been drafted, the tenement families and the other people in the neighborhood redoubled their efforts to make sure she survived. They had all been struggling to make ends meet, but always, always made room for one more.

  And the despicable bastards who pushed their white poison had landed like locusts here and sought to destroy the steely backbone that made up the Lower East Side, Mia thought, her fists clenching at her sides. She wondered if Mr. Masseria was aware what had befallen the tailor’s shop.

  “Aiuto! Aiuto!”

  A boy’s cry for help—a young boy. Mia whirled around to see where it was coming from. Paolo, already scanning the area, pointed to an alleyway half a block down the street. She took off at a trot, Paolo surpassing.

  The boy’s pleas for help broke off into a single, high-pitched wail of pain.

  Mia and Paolo reached the alley. Breathless, Mia shouted, “Smettila!”

  Four faces turned toward her. Three of them belonged to older boys on the cusp of manhood—old enough to know better. But though they all looked different, their haggard faces and the burning desperation in their eyes could have made them brothers.

  The fourth boy was young—perhaps no older than ten years. He lay on the ground, where one boy held him down, a fist cocked back. The young boy had a bloody nose and an already-swelling eye. His clothes were a rumpled mess. One of the other assailants held a fistful of bills in his hand, no doubt what he’d stolen from the child.

  The boy closest to her began taking menacing steps toward her, demanding of her in Italian, “Mind your own business, lady!”

  “Leave him alone,” she snapped. His accent told her he wasn’t Sicilian, but Southern Italian, likely from Calabria. “Where are your parents?”

  He gave her a rude response that shocked her, then his gaze went over her boldly, impertinently, before he switched to English that carried no trace of Italian accent. “You got any money?”

  “She looks rich,” one of the other boys chimed in, then kicked the young boy on the ground, who whimpered like a dog in pain. “Of course she’s got money.”

  “Let’s take it from her,” the third boy said, joining the first, who continued to walk slowly toward her. “This little shit barely had anything, anyway.”

  “That’s my mother’s grocery money!” the child cried. The third boy doubled back to strike him in the mouth.

  “Leave him alone!” Mia commanded.

  Paolo stepped around her. He flicked out a knife.

  The first two boys paused in their steps, then glanced at each other.

  “You Sicilians are always so small,” the Calabrese boy jeered. “He’s old enough to be my father, yet I’m twice his size.”

  It was true; despite the tattered appearances of the boys, their ripped and dirty clothing showcased stocky, well-muscled bodies, vastly different from Paolo’s wiry build.

  “Take their money and slit their throats,” the boy instructed his friends. “I’ll show you what a real knife looks like, old man.”

  “Paolo,” she murmured.

  Paolo pushed Mia behind him and fell upon the boys. Soon, the alley was filled with shouts that quickly devolved into shrieks of pain. For all their bluster, the only blade in the alley that was being put to use was Paolo’s. Mia watched him with a mixture of terror and awe. She’d known he was a brutal man, had witnessed it herself in Sicily, but the ferocity he displayed now mixed with deftness and a blurring speed was unlike anything she had ever witnessed before.

  In a matter of minutes, the three older boys lay bloody and beaten against the stone alley floor, moaning. Paolo met her steady stare, and gradually the lines of terrible savagery faded. He nodded at her.

  She slid her gloved hands into the deep, slanted pockets of her coat as she walked into the alley. Her heels clacked on the stone as she walked from boy to boy. None of the older boys had life-threatening injuries. They’d been just nicked and scratched with Paolo’s knife, and it was clearly intentional. He could ha
ve gutted them like a fisherman had he wished.

  Mia flicked her head at the little boy, staring wide-eyed at first his beaten attackers, then his saviors.

  “Take back your money,” she said, pointing at the bills strewn across the ground. To her surprise, the boy took only a few of the bills and left the rest.

  “What, are you leaving us a tip?” Mia said.

  He swallowed. “They stole from others before me. This is all my mother gave me. To take any more would mean I was stealing, too.”

  Mia smiled at him, then reached into her pocket and counted off ten dollars. She held it out to him. His eyes went wider.

  “Take it,” she urged softly. “Give it to your mother. Tell her it’s from Mia Scalisi, and that she should come see me at d’Abbruzzo’s when she needs more. Got that?”

  He nodded, taking the money carefully as though it had teeth. He turned to go.

  “Hey, sport.”

  The boy stopped and whirled around, then froze at the sight of the five-dollar bill Mia held out to him.

  “That’s for you. Only you.”

  He reached for the money more hesitantly than before, then gave her a tentative smile. “Grazie, Signorina Scalisi.”

  “No one will bother you again,” she told him, glancing at Paolo.

  “Grazie.”

  She flicked her head. “Off you go.”

  With one more astonished, backwards stare, he took off running.

  The two other boys scrambled to their feet and followed suit. Mia lifted a hand to Paolo, signaling him to let them go. The third boy, the Calabrese, struggled into a sitting position, hissing with pain.

  Mia tilted her head as she studied him. He’d seemed to be the leader of the pack before.

  “Why were you stealing some kid’s money?” she asked quietly. “Don’t you know where you are?”

  “I needed it,” he ground out, clutching his side. Blood seeped over his fingers, but Mia knew it was just a flesh wound—a warning to these young fools that next time, Paolo would not be so merciful.