by Charles Ayer
AKA Tommassino Fornaio, who, last time I looked, oversaw all mob-related activity in New York State north of The Bronx. I felt my testicles starting to retract like they were trying to find someplace to hide.
“Oh,” I said.
“Perhaps you’d like to speak to him personally about the matter,” said Anthony. “As I said, I really don’t want to be involved.”
“I understand, Anthony, but your uncle must be a busy man.”
“Yes, he is,” said Anthony, “but he’ll make time for you.”
“Are you sure Anthony? That would be great,” I said, thinking of how many ways this could turn out to be not so great.
“I’m sure,” said Anthony. He looked at the clock on the wall and said, “As a matter of fact, he is expecting you and your sister in an hour.”
“I don’t know what to say,” I said, because I really didn’t. “Thank you.”
“Your sister will take you there,” said Anthony. “Please don’t go without her. And Matt?”
“Yes, Anthony.”
“My uncle is a very kind man, but he is also not to be trifled with.”
“I understand,” I said.
“Good,” he said, looking at me with his kind eyes and giving me a warm smile. “Good.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“DON’T ASK, DO YOU HEAR ME? Just don’t ask,” said my sister as we drove up Route 9W toward Newburgh. “You know the rule.”
“I know, Lace,” I said. “No questions about your past. I understand. But, geez.”
“Geez, nothing. Now, make a left at the next light.”
We took another left and then a right. Before long we were in a nice, upper-middle class neighborhood on the outskirts of Newburgh. It was an older neighborhood, with houses built mostly of brick or stone. Too many of these neighborhoods had been allowed to deteriorate over the years, but this one had held up well. The houses and the small yards were all beautifully maintained, and late-model, upscale cars were parked in the short driveways.
We parked on the street, and Lacey walked ahead of me up to the front door of one of the nicest houses on the block. She rang the doorbell and I heard the sound of deep chimes emanate from inside the house. In just a few seconds the door opened and, to my utter astonishment, Tommassino Fornaio himself welcomed us into his home.
Perhaps it’s because I own the entire “Sopranos” collection on DVD, or that I’d read “The Godfather” from cover to cover a dozen times. Or perhaps not. Whatever the reason, Tommassino Fornaio was not what I expected.
He was a shorter than I was, a little under six feet, slender, with a full head of well-tended blond hair just going gray around the temples. I guessed he was an extremely well preserved sixty. He was wearing a yellow Izod golf shirt, khaki-colored Dockers, and a pair of tasseled loafers over yellow argyle socks. He was clean-shaven and smelled of expensive aftershave. He was the picture of a successful insurance executive headed out for an afternoon of golf with important clients. But he was thug, a big one, and I couldn’t allow myself to forget that.
“Uncle Tommy!” said Lacey, throwing her arms around him.
“Lacey dearest,” said Fornaio, in a soft voice, hugging her in return. Then he held her at arms length and said, “You’re looking marvelous, sweetheart. It’s wonderful to see you.”
“It’s been too long,” said Lacey, beaming, while I stood there feeling like an uninvited vacuum cleaner salesman who’d snuck in behind her.
Perhaps sensing my discomfort, Fornaio turned to me and said, “Hello, Matt. What a pleasure to meet you after all these years. I was a big fan.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, too, Sir,” I said.
“Ah, ‘Sir,’ nothing. Call me Tommy,” he said, leading us into a large, bright room decorated with comfortable but expensive looking furniture. “Come on in and make yourself at home. Can I get you some coffee?”
“Sure,” Lacey and I said in unison, although my nerves were jangling.
He picked up a phone and, without dialing, said, “We’d like some coffee in the living room. Thanks,” and hung up.
We were just getting settled when a stunning woman walked into the room. She was dressed casually in slacks, a blouse, and a scarf. A pair of sunglasses sat perched atop elegantly coiffed honey-colored hair.
“Lacey!” she said as she walked over to her and exchanged air kisses. “So lovely to see you. And you must be Lacey’s brother Matt,” she said, turning to me as I stood. She reached out and clasped my hand in a warm, firm grip. “I’m Christina, Tommy’s wife.”
“A pleasure to meet you, ma’am,” I said. The simple arithmetic told me that she, too, had to be at least sixty, but she didn’t look a day over forty-five, if that. I tried not to stare.
Tony and Carmela they were not.
Tommassino Fornaio, as I recalled reading somewhere, long ago, had arrived from Sicily as a stowaway at the age of six. He’d grown up hard on the Lower East Side, in a part of what was then Little Italy, but what was now part of the ever-expanding Chinatown. He’d been raised by a great-aunt and uncle whom his family in Sicily had told him lived in New York, but whom he had never met.
But Tommy, as he’d insisted on being called from the day he set foot on American soil, was as smart as he was tough. He taught himself to speak fluent English in six months, and refused to speak his native Sicilian to anyone except his great-aunt and uncle, out of respect, although he reputedly still spoke it perfectly.
He went to public schools, graduating near the top of his high school class, and then on to the City College of New York, where he’d majored in economics and again graduated near the top of his class.
He married his childhood sweetheart, Christina; they both became naturalized citizens and set out to live the American Dream.
But then Tommassino Fornaio hit the rock-hard wall of reality.
Even in the enlightened 1970’s, the banking and financial industries of New York were still bastions of the WASP elite, and Italian immigrants, whom the elite still called “wops” and “goombahs” in the quiet lounges of their private clubs, were not welcome. Door after door was slammed in young Tommy’s face before he could even get a foot inside. Letters and phone calls went unanswered.
So, Tommy Fornaio took what he had and ran with it. Using connections his family had back in the old country, and other connections that he’d made growing up in Little Italy, Tommy went into business the old-fashioned way, on the wrong side of the legal railroad tracks.
But he had one rule that he would never break: He would not ply his trade within the Five Boroughs of New York City. He lived by this rule for two reasons: The first was simply survival. The five boroughs were already controlled by long-established families, and he knew he wouldn’t last long on their turf. They liked the young man, but business was business, and Tommy knew they would kill him without hesitation if he became a problem. But they would leave him alone, and even subsidize him, north of the city limits, an area about which they knew little and in which they had no interest. For Tommy, that first reason was simply common sense, a practical matter.
But the second reason was personal.
Tommassino Fornaio would never forget the personal rejection, the snubs, and the slights that both he, and more importantly, his beautiful young wife had endured when they had tried to begin their life together respectably in Manhattan, and he would extract his revenge. But not revenge the old Sicilian way: the American way. He would return to Manhattan one day as a successful, legitimate businessman. His children would go to school with the children of the bankers who had closed their doors to him. He and his wife would share drinks with those same bankers and their wives at their cherished clubs; and they would attend the same gala fundraisers as those people, where their money would be as good as anybody else’s, and their generosity would be met with gratitude, not insults. Those people would smile their ingratiating smiles and gladly shake his hand, and gratefully kiss his wife on her lovely cheek.
Apparently, it had worked.
Christina Fornaio turned to Tommassino and said, “Okay, Tommy, I’m off. I hope you haven’t forgotten that I have that charity auction to attend tonight at the Waldorf, so I won’t be home until around eleven.”
“I haven’t forgotten, dear. Anyway, I’m having dinner with the Mayor tonight, so we’ll probably be getting home about the same time.”
“Good,” she said. “Perhaps we can have a cup of coffee and watch the news together when we get home.”
“Sounds lovely,” he said.
“So nice to see you, Lacey,” she said. “Please don’t be a stranger.” She turned her stunning green eyes on me and said, “It was a pleasure to meet you, Matt.”
“The pleasure was all mine,” I said.
She breezed out of the room just as a maid entered bearing a silver tray holding a coffee pot, cups, and cream and sugar. She deposited it on a mahogany table and quietly left in Christina’s wake.
“Who is the mayor of Newburgh, now?” I said.
Tommassino gave me a puzzled look, and after a brief pause, said, “The Mayor of Newburgh is Frank Harris. Why do you ask?”
“I’m sorry. I haven’t had a chance to catch up with local politics. It’s just that you said you were going out to dinner with him tonight.”
“With Frank?” he said. “Oh! I’m sorry. No, I’m not going to dinner with Frank; I’m going to dinner with the Mayor of New York City. We get together every couple of months to catch up, just the two of us. I own a little restaurant in the Bronx that’s about halfway between us. The Mayor loves the veal piccata there, and it’s always a pleasant evening.”
“I’m sure,” I said.
“Now, Matt,” he said as he poured coffee for all of us, “I’m told that you are concerned that one of your oldest friends may be getting himself into some trouble with gambling. An old teammate of yours named Kenneth Cooper.”
“That’s right.”
“And you are concerned not just for him personally, but also because you believe his gambling may somehow be related to the disappearance of another one of your old friends, David Chandler.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Please, it’s Tommy.”
“Yes, Tommy.”
“I remember the three of you fondly from your football days,” he said, sitting back and smiling. He took a sip of his coffee. “You guys used to put on quite a show.”
“I guess we did,” I said. “I just remember the fun of it.”
“Excellence is its own reward, isn’t it?” he said, looking directly at me. “And mediocrity is its own punishment.”
“I guess that’s about as well as I’ve ever heard it put,” I said, the words striking home hard.
“We must never accept mediocrity from ourselves,” he said, his remarkable blue eyes still on me, “especially when we have already proven ourselves to be capable of more.”
“No, we shouldn’t,” I said.
“Now,” he said, putting his coffee cup down. He sat forward and clasped his hands. “I generally don’t make it my business to meddle in other people’s affairs. People are free to do what they want with their hard-earned money. Some people want a nice car; some people perhaps want a vacation home, or a boat. Others like to eat at fancy restaurants and drink expensive wine. Everybody’s different, and that’s what makes the world an interesting place, right?”
I nodded.
“And,” he said, unclasping his hands and extending his arms out to his sides, “some people like to gamble, and they like to do it without the government nosing into their affairs. Who can blame them? It’s a private matter, and, frankly, it’s against the rules that I live by to discuss other people’s private matters. But in this case, I know you feel that there might possibly be a life at stake, and that’s a serious concern. So, in light of the seriousness of the issue, and in light of my high regard for your sister, I’ve decided to make an exception in this case.”
“I really appreciate that, Uncle Tommy,” said Lacey.
“It’s all right, my dear,” he said, waving off the comment. “I know you never would have asked me if it wasn’t important. Normally I wouldn’t get personally involved in transactions this small, but I made some calls. I inquired about any potential activity your friend may have engaged in in the local area, and I also made inquiries about any potential activities in the Greater New York and Tri-State areas. The people I spoke to were reliable people. And I can tell you that your friend Kenny Cooper is not a gambler. He doesn’t even buy lottery tickets.”
“Then why would Kenny’s wife have said that he was?” I said, stunned. It was the one answer I hadn’t been looking for.
“That’s a private matter between a husband and his wife,” said Fornaio. “You’ll have to talk to one of them.”
“Well,” I said, “I guess that raises more questions than it answers, but it’s very helpful, and I thank you.” I rose to leave, and so did Lacey. This was not a man whose time I felt I should waste.
“Please, sit back down,” said Fornaio. “Sadly, we have another matter to discuss.”
I sat back down. I thought back once again to all those “Godfather” movies. Was this going to be one of those, “Your Godfather is going to ask a favor of you in return” moments? Would this be the moment when I would be put on notice that I was to be at this man’s beck and call for the rest of my life? What had I gotten myself into?
“About a month ago,” he said, “I received a phone call from an acquaintance. He told me that a man had come to him requesting a private loan in the amount of $150,000. As I’ve said, I normally would never get involved personally in a transaction so trivial; but the man asking for the loan was a prominent member of his community, a local hero, a man with whom I had occasionally played golf at charity tournaments. It was a delicate situation, so this acquaintance did me the courtesy of requesting my advice and counsel.”
“Oh, no,” I said.
“I’m sorry to say that you are right, Matt. It was your friend, David Chandler.”
“If you don’t mind my asking, did he get the money?”
“No, he did not.”
“But why?”
“That is not your concern, Matt.”
“Did he tell you why he needed it?”
“Matt,” said Lacey. “Stop.”
“It’s okay,” said Fornaio, raising his hand. “It’s okay, this once.” He looked directly at me. “I’ve already broken some of my strictest rules of conduct, and I’ve gone as far as I’m willing to go, even for a friend. Now it’s up to you, Matt. It’s like football: You either take to the field and lead, or you are merely a spectator. You are either up to this task or you are not. If you are, you will find out what you need to know to help your friend. If you are not, then you will have to step aside and let someone else more capable do it. I hope it will be the former.”
“I understand,” I said. “Thank you for all you’ve done, and I hope you accept my apologies for my rudeness.”
“Think nothing of it,” said Tommassino, smiling. He rose. He shook my hand and gave Lacey an affectionate hug, and then he ushered us to the door.
Lacey and I drove back to my house in silence.
But as I drove, I couldn’t help asking myself why Tommassino Fornaio, a thug, had been able to awaken in me that long dormant will to win, that irresistible urge to be the best that I could be no matter what the endeavor, that had slumbered within me for so lo
ng.
I had a lot to think about.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I WAS SAVORING AN EGG MCMUFFIN and a large cup of coffee at McDonald’s the next morning when Lacey walked in. She grabbed herself a cup of coffee at the counter and took a seat opposite me.
“The classics never go out of style, do they?” she said, staring at my Egg McMuffin.
“I like to vary my diet, you know?” I said.
“Yeah, I know all about your varied diet.”
“That’s kind of the pot calling the kettle black, isn’t it, Lace?”
“It probably is. But, hey, as long as we both focus on health foods I guess it’s okay, right?”
“That’s how I see it,” I said, dead serious. Between pizza and Egg McMuffins, I figured I was getting a pretty balanced diet as long as I got green peppers on the pizza now and then. “So anyway, how did you find me here?”
“It’s not exactly hard, Matt. You weren’t home. Where else would you be?”
“You have a point. So what’s up?”
“Hang on a second,” she said, standing up. “That bad boy looks good. I’ve gotta have one.”
She came back in a few minutes with her sandwich and two fresh coffees.
“I’m assuming you didn’t come here for the sole purpose of critiquing my diet,” I said.
“No, I didn’t,” she said. “I came here because I feel stupid.”
“That must be a first for you,” I said.
“In my dreams,” she said. “I feel stupid because I missed something obvious, and it might be slowing down your case.”
“What’s that?” I said, putting down my sandwich. Lacey had already finished hers.
“Remember when I set up your website for you, how I told you that the search engine that you use will locate where you are so that it can narrow your searches to a specific region?”
“Yeah, I remember, “I said. “Like when I searched for “private investigators” it narrowed the search to the local area automatically.”