by Mario Puzo
“Listen,” Donnie said, all the speech making vanished from him. “We’ve let Luca Brasi and Pete Clemenza and the rest of those dagos come into our neighborhoods and take over the policy business, the gamblin’, the women, the booze—everything. They did it by bustin’ heads and puttin’ a few guys in the ground, like Terry O’Banion and Digger McLean. And the rest of us stood for it. We didn’t want a bloodbath and we figured we could still make a good living—but I tell you, these guineas won’t be satisfied till they’re runnin’ every fuckin’ thing in the whole city. And what I’m sayin’ is, all we got to do to keep our piece of the action is quit lyin’ down and show ’em we’re willing to fight.” Donnie paused before he spoke again into the silence. “My brothers and I plan to take on Luca Brasi and his boys. We’re set on it,” he said, and he placed his beer mug down on the bar.
Corr Gibson tapped his shillelagh on the floor twice, and when everyone looked in his direction, he gestured toward Donnie. “It’s not just Brasi and Clemenza,” he said, “or even Vito Corleone. It’s Mariposa, and the Rosatos, and the Barzinis, all the way to that pig Al Capone in Chicago. There’s a veritable army of these wops, Donnie. That’s the heart of the thing.”
“I’m not saying we take on the whole syndicate,” Donnie answered. He leaned back and rested his elbows on the shelves of liquor, as if he were getting ready to have a long discussion. “At least not yet,” he said, “while we got no real organization. What I’m sayin’ is, my brothers and I want Luca Brasi. We want his policy business specifically. We want his runners workin’ for us, and we’re taking over his bank.”
“But the problem is,” Pete Murray said, looking up from his drink, “that Luca Brasi has Giuseppe Mariposa behind him. You tangle with Brasi, you have to tangle with Mariposa—and if you tangle with Mariposa, then, like Corr said, you have to deal with the Rosatos and the Barzinis and Cinquemani, and all the rest of them.”
“But Brasi don’t have Mariposa behind him!” Willie shouted, leaning over the bar toward Murray. “That’s the thing,” he said. “He doesn’t have a soul behind him.”
Donnie didn’t look at Willie. He waited until his brother was done, and then he spoke as if Willie hadn’t said a word. “We hear Brasi’s on his own,” he said. “He don’t have Mariposa or anybody else backin’ him.” He nodded to Little Stevie, and the others all turned to look at the kid, as if they were just noticing his presence.
Stevie said, “I was runnin’ with Sonny Corleone for a while and I heard a few things. From what I heard, Luca’s an independent. He’s got nobody behind him. In fact, what I hear, Mariposa wouldn’t mind seeing Brasi rubbed out.”
“And why’s that?” Pete Murray said, staring down at his drink.
“I don’t know the details,” Stevie said. He mumbled his words slightly.
“Ah, listen,” Rick Donnelly said in the silence that followed. “I’m with the O’Rourkes and so is my brother. These greaseballs are cowards. We blow the heads off a couple of them, they’ll back off quick.”
“They ain’t yellow,” Little Stevie said. “You can forget about that. But I’m with you. It’s a cryin’ shame the way we let these dagos push us around. I ain’t for puttin’ up with it anymore.”
Billy Donnelly, who’d been leaning back with his arms crossed as if he were in the theater and taking in a movie, finally spoke up. “Luca Brasi’s a formidable opponent all by himself,” he said. “The man’s a freak of nature, and we wouldn’t be the first ones tried to take care of him.”
“Let us worry about Luca Brasi,” Donnie said. “Listen, boys,” he went on, “let’s cut to the heart of the thing, what do you say? When we go after Brasi, it’s liable to get hot for all of us. If we stick together, if we show a little Irish moxie, we’ll kick these wops’ asses and show ’em what’s what. What do you say? Are me and my brothers in this alone? Or are you boys behind us?”
“I’m behind ya,” Little Stevie said without hesitation.
“We’re with you,” Rick Donnelly said for himself and his brother. He spoke clearly and evenly, if not with a lot of enthusiasm.
“Sure,” Corr Gibson said. “Hell if I ever backed down from a fight.”
Pete Murray was still looking down at his mug of beer, and the others all turned to him and waited. When the silence went on too long, Donnie said, “And what about you, Pete? Where do you stand?”
Pete lifted his eyes from his beer and looked first at Sean, and then Willie, and then finally to Donnie. “And what about your sister, Kelly, Donnie O’Rourke?” he asked. “Haven’t you had a talk with her about keeping company with the likes of Luca Brasi?”
The only sound in the room then was the loud clatter of the rain, which was pouring down again. It beat against the awning and rushed along the street.
Donnie said, “What sister would that be you’re talkin’ about, Pete? There’s no one named Kelly livin’ in my household.”
“Ah,” Pete said, and he seemed to think about that for a second before he lifted his mug to Donnie. “I’d rather go down fightin’ with my own than kissin’ some greaseball’s ass,” he said. He lifted his mug higher and proposed a toast. “To taking back our own neighborhoods.”
The men all lifted their glasses and drank with him, including Donnie. After that, there wasn’t anything more in the way of celebration. The men went on drinking and talking quietly among themselves.
7.
Donnie peered down over the edge of a flat tar-paper roof into a narrow alleyway that separated Luca Brasi’s building from the smaller warehouse behind it. Crates and boxes cluttered the warehouse roof, and a dozen men emerged and disappeared through a chained-open door carrying boxes on their shoulders. Behind Donnie, a train flew by on the Third Avenue El, and the clatter, squeal, and roar of tracks and engine and hurtling metal bounced off the buildings that surrounded it like a tunnel. “For Christ’s sake,” Donnie said as Willie came up behind him, “we got a bleedin’ convention going on next door.” He pushed Willie back toward the center of the roof and out of sight of the workers.
“What’s going on?” Willie asked.
“How should I know?” Donnie picked up the crowbar from where it lay next to a locked roof door. He slung it over his shoulder. “Where the hell is Sean?”
“Keeping lookout,” Willie said.
“Keeping lookout for what? Jesus Christ, Willie. Do I have to tell you everything? Go get him.”
“Shouldn’t we see if we can get through the lock first?”
Donnie wedged the crowbar between the lock and the frame and pried the door open. “Go get him,” he said. He watched Willie as he trotted to the black loops of the roof ladder that came up from the fire escape. Donnie never ceased to be surprised and maybe a little frightened by the frailty of his brother. Willie wasn’t weak at all, not in the ways that counted. In the ways that counted, maybe he was the toughest of the brothers. It wasn’t that nothing scared him. Maybe, Donnie thought, he scared even easier than Sean. He had a good Irish temper, though, one that was slow to ignite but fiery when it did. Willie wouldn’t back down from nothing or nobody, and he fought his own battles. How many times had Willie come home from school beaten up and doing everything to hide it so that Donnie wouldn’t find out and kick in the teeth of whoever had delivered the beating? Now Donnie watched his brother kneel on the roof and look down the ladder, and he worried a stiff wind might come up and blow him away.
When Sean’s head finally appeared over the roofline, Donnie gazed up at a string of high, thin clouds in a sky rapidly growing dark. He checked his wristwatch. “It’s after six,” he said as Sean and Willie joined him outside the roof door.
Sean said, “He never gets here before seven. Least not as long as I been following him.”
Willie said, “We’ve got plenty of time.”
“Jesus,” Sean said. He wrapped his arms around himself and patted his shoulders.
“You cold?” Willie asked.
“Scared,” Sean sa
id. “Scared shiteless. Aren’t you?”
Willie frowned at Sean and gave Donnie a look.
Donnie smacked Sean on the back of the head. “When are you gonna grow up?”
“I’m grown up,” Sean said, rubbing his head. “I’m just fuckin’ scared.”
Sean tugged on a black knit cap, pulling it lower over his forehead, and he turned up the collar on a leather jacket that was cracked and creased and zipped up to his neck. Framed by the leather jacket and dark cap, his face was as pink and smooth-skinned as a girl’s.
Donnie touched the butt of the pistol tucked under Sean’s belt. “Don’t be shootin’ that thing without taking aim, do you hear me, Sean?”
“Jesus, for the hundredth time,” Sean said. “I hear you.”
Donnie took Sean by the shoulders and shook him. “Don’t be closing your eyes and pulling the trigger and hopin’ you hit something, ’cause you’re as likely to put a bullet in me as Luca.”
Sean rolled his eyes and then seemed surprised when Willie grabbed him by the neck.
“Listen to what Donnie’s telling you,” Willie said. “If you shoot Donnie by accident, I’m gonna shoot you on purpose, and if you shoot me, you little twit, I’m gonna fuckin’ kill ya.”
Sean looked at his brothers worriedly for a moment, and then the three of them laughed when Sean finally figured out that Willie was kidding with him.
“Come on,” Donnie said. Over his shoulder, to Sean, he added, “Just do what we tell you.”
Inside the building, the stairway smelled like vinegar. The yellowing paint on the walls was peeling and the steps were carpeted with cracked and torn linoleum. The wooden handrail was broad and smooth and the banisters were round and unevenly spaced. When they closed the roof door behind them, they found themselves in a murky dark, the only light coming from someplace beneath them on the landing.
“What’s that smell?” Sean asked.
Willie said, “How should we know?”
“Smells like some kind of cleaning shite,” Donnie said. He led the way down two flights of stairs to a landing with two doors, one on each side of the hall.
“That’s his place,” Sean said, and he pointed to the first door on the left of the landing. “He gets here between seven and seven thirty. He goes in the front off Third; then a minute later I see the lights come on in the windows. He spends a couple of hours by himself, and then his boys start showing up around nine thirty, ten o’clock.”
“We’ve got forty-five minutes to kill,” Donnie said. “You sure you’ve never seen anyone in these other apartments?”
“Never seen another soul comin’ or goin’,” Sean said. “Never seen lights in any other windows.”
Willie took a step back, as if something surprising had just occurred to him. To Donnie he said, “You think he could own the whole place?”
“He’s got the warehouse off Park, a house on Long Island, and this place on Third? Jesus,” Donnie said. “He must be pullin’ in the dough.”
“Piece-of-shite building, with trains rattlin’ your brains out every fifteen minutes.”
“Better for us, though,” Sean said, “if no one else lives here. We don’t have to worry about some do-gooder calling the coppers.”
Donnie said, “Looks to me like his boys’ll show up and find a corpse in the doorway.” To Willie he said, “If we’ve got time maybe I’ll cut his dick off and shove it in his mouth.”
“Jesus H. Christ!” Sean took a step back. “Are you turnin’ into some sort of an animal now, Donnie?”
“Stop actin’ like a fuckin’ twist,” Willie said. “It’s just what that bastard deserves.” To Donnie he said, “That’d send a message to the rest of those dagos, don’t you think?”
Donnie left his brothers at the foot of the stairs and explored the hallway. Light came in through a frosted-glass window at the top of the steps leading up from the lower floors. The other end of the hall was dark and shadowy. He walked heavily back to his brothers, testing the sound of his tread on the yellowing linoleum. The place was a dump. Luca Brasi wasn’t no Al Capone, living in regal luxury. Still, he probably owned this building in addition to the house out on the Island and the warehouse off Park, and he probably paid Kelly’s rent, since the girl hadn’t worked an honest job a day in her life that Donnie knew of���and she was twenty-five now. So he was making money, even if he wasn’t no Al Capone. “You two,” he said, and he pointed up the stairs toward the roof. “You wait out of sight up there.” He pointed to the shadowy end of the hall. “I’ll wait over there,” he said. “When he gets to his door, I’ll fill him full of lead. Though I might,” he added, “take a moment to have a word with him before I send him on his way to hell.”
“I’d like to give him a piece of my mind, too,” Willie said.
Donnie said, “I’ll do the talkin’. You two are here in case something should go wrong. Then I want your coming down those stairs to be a bleedin’ surprise.”
Sean put the flat of his hand on his stomach and said, “Jesus, Donnie, I’m feelin’ sick.”
Donnie touched Sean’s forehead. “Look at you,” he said, “you’re all clammy.”
Willie said to Donny, “He’s scared is all it is.”
“Sure I’m scared,” Sean said to Willie. “I already told you that.” To Donnie he said, “I’m thinking about Kelly too. She’ll never forgive us if she finds out we’re the ones that did it, that killed Brasi. Sure he’s a miserable bastard, but he’s her guy.”
“Ah, for the love of God,” Willie said. “You’re worried about Kelly? Are you an idiot, Sean? We’re about to have every dago bastard in the city looking to shoot our mick asses, and you’re worried about Kelly? Lord have mercy on me, but the hell with Kelly. We’re doing this for her too. That guinea prick ruined her, and we’re supposed to stand by and take it?”
“Ah, don’t be sayin’ you’re doing this for Kelly,” Sean said. “You stopped caring a damn for Kelly years ago.”
Willie looked at Sean and shook his head in despair, as if his little brother was a fool.
Sean turned to Donnie. “You kicked her out on the street and told her she was dead to us. What was she supposed to do but take up with some guy?”
“How about get a job?” Willie said. “How about working for a living?”
“Ah, please,” Sean said in response to Willie, but he was still looking at Donnie. “You told her she was dead to us,” he repeated, “and now we’re dead to her. That’s how it turned out, Donnie.”
Donnie was quiet, looking past Sean at the daylight coming in through the frosted window as if he saw something terribly sad there. When he turned finally to meet Sean’s gaze, he did so with a question. “Didn’t I take care of you all?” he asked. When Sean didn’t answer, he added, “She went and took up with the very same dago bastard who put us out of business. You think that was an accident, Sean? You think she didn’t know what she was doing?” Donnie shook his head, answering his own question. “No,” he said. “She’s dead to me now.” He looked at Willie, and Willie said “Aye,” agreeing with him.
“Aye,” Sean said, mocking Willie. To Donnie he said, “One less sister, that’s what your Irish pride got you.”
Donnie checked his wristwatch and then glanced up the stairs toward the roof. Outside, another train roared by and the hallway was filled with the ruckus of it. “All right,” he said to Sean when the train passed. “Go on.” He cuffed the back of Sean’s neck. “Your heart’s not in this. I shouldn’t have dragged you along.”
“Are you serious?” Willie asked Donnie.
“I am,” Donnie said, and he shoved Sean up the stairs. “Go on,” he said. “We’ll meet you back home.”
Sean looked at Willie, and when Willie nodded, he ran up the stairs and disappeared out onto the roof.
When he was gone, Willie said, “What the hell are you doing, Donnie? The kid’s never gonna grow up you keep treatin’ him like a baby.”
“I’m not treatin�
� him like a baby,” Donnie said. He tapped a couple of cigarettes loose from his pack and offered one to Willie.
Willie took it and lit up. He watched Donnie, waiting for more.
“I was more worried about the kid puttin’ a bullet in me by accident than I was about Luca doing it on purpose.” He walked over to Luca’s doorway. “I’ll be standing about here,” he said, and he pointed to the stairs, where Sean would have been. “You see what I’m sayin’?”
“Chances are good he’d never take the heater out of his pocket,” Willie said.
“Chances are even better if he’s not here,” Donnie said. “Finish your cigarette,” he added, “and then let’s get in our places.”
Willie asked, “You think this will make things even worse with Kelly?”
“Kelly don’t give a damn about us, Willie. You know that’s the gospel truth. And I don’t give a damn about her. At least not right now, I don’t. She’s too screwed up for us to be worryin’ about. Between the drinkin’ and takin’ pills and who the hell knows what else… When she straightens out—if she straightens out—she’ll be thankin’ us for savin’ her from a life with this wop son of a bitch. Jesus,” he added. “Can you imagine havin’ Luca Brasi as a brother-in-law?”
“Lord save us,” Willie said.
“We’re gonna save us,” Donnie said, and he stubbed out his cigarette and kicked it into a corner. “Come on.” He pointed up the stairs and watched as Willie disappeared into the darkness. “It shouldn’t be too long,” he said, and he took his place in the shadows.
Sandra hadn’t said a dozen words during the entire hour-long course of the meal, which left Sonny to chatter on, holding forth about his family, his plans in life, his ambitions, and anything else that came to mind as Mrs. Columbo served him multiple helpings of chicken cacciatore. They were in the apartment of one of Mrs. Columbo’s cousins, in the old neighborhood, where they were staying for a few days while the landlord did some work on their Arthur Avenue apartment. The meal was served on a small round table covered with while linen and situated next to a tall window that looked out over Eleventh Avenue and one of the rickety pedestrian bridges that crossed the railroad tracks. When he was a kid, Sonny loved to sit on that bridge with his feet dangling in the air as the steam engines passed beneath him. He considered telling Sandra the story of his first heartbreak, when he sat on that very bridge with beautiful nine-year-old Diana Ciaffone and professed his love for her as the world disappeared in a cloud of steam and the clatter and roar of a passing train. He could still feel Diana’s silence and see the way she had avoided his gaze while the train passed and before the world reemerged as the steam dissipated. She had gotten up then without a word and walked away. He smiled as he remembered this at the dinner table and Sandra said, “What is it, Santino?”