Bloodline (16 page)

“Of course you are. But you’re not family, Tina. Having anybody but family deal with this would disgrace my parents. What kind of Sicilian are you, anyway? You should know that.”

“Don’t you ever listen to my papa? This isn’t Sicily and we’re not Sicilians. We’re Americans. You too.”

“Just tell that to the English. Tell that to all those rich pigs who live uptown and look down on us. Or, worse yet, who want to help us with their settlement houses and their little youth programs to teach us to be just like them. But who won’t give us any money, except what we grab from them with our hands and our brains.”

Tina was surprised by her friend’s ferocity. She did not answer and was silent for a long time before she asked, “How do you know he can help us? Or that he will want to?”

Sofia led the way across a busy street.

“Salvatore will help because he is family. My mother’s cousin. And Sicilian too. Not like some Americans I can name.”

“All right,” Tina conceded. “Let’s go and meet this cousin of yours. But I still think you should have talked to Mario first.”

“These kinds of problems Mario can’t help,” Sofia said. “All he can do is pray, and my father needs more than prayers said over him.”

“And Cousin Salvatore will do more than pray?”

“If he wants to,” Sofia said. “Papa listens to him and is afraid of him. He is in the restaurant a lot, and he supplies Papa with all the illegal wine that he keeps for his regular customers.”

“He’s a bootlegger?” Tina asked.

Sofia snorted derisively, as if it were stupid to even ask such a question. “He’s very tough,” she said. “They say he’s already killed two or three men. He works for Joe Masseria.”

“That fat old man with the long mustache who walks around wearing a great big cape, like he’s God or a movie star or something like that?”

“He is Mafia,” Sofia said. At the corner of Kenmare and Mulberry, she pointed to an old two-story garage and warehouse. “That’s where Salvatore works.”

“In a warehouse?” Tina laughed. “I can see he’s really an important man. Maybe he’ll give us a free bottle of olive oil.”

But she was pulled along by Sofia, who grabbed her sleeve and walked up to the door and knocked on it loudly. After a few seconds, it was opened by a good-looking very young man with sharp features and a highly creased suit that Tina thought was more whorehouse than warehouse.

“What do you want?” he asked, boldly appraising the two pretty young women.

“I’m Mr. Lucania’s cousin,” Sofia said. “I’d like to see him.”

“If you were really his cousin, you’d know that his name isn’t Lucania anymore. So why don’t you go away?”

Sofia looked startled by the man’s rudeness, but Tina snapped, “Just tell him that Sofia Mangini wants to see him. Do it quickly and we won’t tell him what a rude baboon he has working for him.”

Anger flashed across the young man’s face. He swallowed hard, then nodded toward two hard chairs. “Sit down and wait,” he said. “Maybe he’ll talk to you. Maybe he won’t.”

He walked back into the dark confines of the warehouse, where Tina could see a half-dozen large trucks parked. They heard his footsteps clacking as he walked up metal steps to the second floor.

“Where’d you learn to talk like that?” Sofia whispered to Tina.

“Grow up in a house with two brothers and you learn fast. Jump on them before they jump on you. Besides, he’s not even a man. He’s a boy. He’s younger than we are.”

After only a few minutes, the handsome young man returned, followed by another man. He too was well dressed. He was stocky and olive-skinned, and his right eyelid drooped slightly so it looked as if he were winking. When he saw Sofia he brushed past the other man and hurried to them. Both girls stood up, and Tina saw that the man was also young, only a few years older than they were. And he was barely as tall as Tina herself

“Sofia,” the man said. “I’m very sorry to keep you waiting. If I had known you were coming…”

“That’s all right, Salvatore,” Sofia said. “This is my friend, Tina Falcone. She lives across the street from me.”

Lucania looked at Tina and smiled. “First of all, everybody calls me Charlie now. Charlie Luciano.” His eyes were coldly appraising as he looked over Tina’s face. “Falcone. You have a father who’s a cop, haven’t you?”

Tina was surprised that he would know that.

“Yes,” she said. “And two brothers. Another policeman and a priest.”

“A busy family,” he said. “It’s good to meet you.” He looked back to Sofia. “Now what can I do for you, little cousin?”

“I … I…” Sofia began, and then tears began to gush from her eyes. Tina put an arm around her and wiped her eyes with a handkerchief she took from her dress pocket.

“She is having family problems,” Tina told Luciano, as Sofia sobbed in her arms. The swarthy young man nodded as if he had heard that story before.

“A lot of people still think they’re in the old country,” he said noncommittally. “Maybe we should go inside the office here.”

He turned to lead them into a small office near the front door. As he did, the other young man who had been waiting about twenty feet away started forward, but Luciano waved him off with his hand.

“It’s all right, Ben,” he said. “A family matter.”

The handsome youngster nodded and walked away.

“I guess Benny was rude to you when you arrived,” Luciano said to the women as he escorted them to a threadbare sofa inside the sparsely furnished office.

“Did he tell you that?” Tina asked.

“No. But Benny is too young to have learned any manners yet, so he is rude to everyone.”

Sofia had stopped crying, and when the man asked her again to explain her problem she told of the beatings and how her mother had once stabbed her father. She told him everything … except the part that she could not even bring herself to tell her friend, Tina.

“I’m scared,” Sofia said. “I ran away last night … just across the street … but I’m afraid to go back. And I’m afraid to stay there. I know it’s just a matter of time before somebody kills somebody else.”

“And he did this to you?”

Luciano reached out and gently touched the girl’s mouth where the small cut from Mangini’s ring had already scabbed over. He let his fingers linger on her face.

Sofia looked up from the sofa and nodded. Tina noticed that Luciano had taken a position in front of them so that his crotch was right in line with their faces. She was sure that was not just an accident and thought to herself that this Charlie Luciano cousin of Sofia’s was just another posing lowlife.

“Oh, Salvatore, I’m so scared.”

She began crying again, and Luciano patted her shoulder but almost absentmindedly. His eyes remained on Tina.

“It’s Charlie, please. And what would you have me do?” he finally asked, when Sofia’s sobbing stopped.

“She doesn’t need sympathy,” Tina said sharply. “And if she listened to me, her father would be in a jail cell right now for what he’s done.”

“But you don’t want that?” he asked Sofia.

“Maybe if you talk to him. I want you to stop him before he does something terrible. Before … before…”

Luciano helped Sofia raise herself from the couch, then put his arms around her.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll take care of it.” His words were meant to comfort, but Tina saw his face take on a sour, almost-nasty look. She knew he had figured out what had happened the night before, just as Tina herself had figured it out.

He said again, “I’ll take care of everything,” and Tina asked abruptly, “When?” fully expecting a “these-things-take-time” excuse from the man.

“Tonight,” he said. “This will all be taken care of by tonight.” As Sofia continued to sob in his arms, he looked past her shoulder at Tina. “Will that be quick enough for you?” he asked.

There was a smile on his face—as if the two of them shared a secret—but the smile never reached his intense dark eyes. He knew. Tina was sure. He knew.

*   *   *

“Sempre libera degg’io

Follegiare di gioia in gioia…”

Tommy laced his fingers behind his head and lay in bed, listening as Tina’s light lyrical voice rang through the apartment. The sun was streaming through the window and made the room seem cheerful, almost gay, despite the nightstick and handcuffs dropped onto the seat of the easy chair in the corner.

He felt good, much better than he had ever hoped. A year ago, he would have thought that every single day would be a battlefield on which he had to fight back his addiction to morphine, but it had not worked that way. There had been no problem at all: no craving, no temptation. It was almost as if he had never been addicted at all. It seemed much too easy.

“Vissi d’arte, vissi d’amore, non feci mai

Male ad anima viva!…”

He translated the lyrics in his mind.
Love and music, that’s what I live for, and have never harmed a living being.
Just like Tina herself, he thought.

Tina, he knew, really did have an exceptional voice, although whether or not it was as good as the sopranos he heard on the family’s record player would have to be left to someone else’s judgment. Tommy was pleased at how well she accompanied herself on the piano. When Tommy had bought her the old relic of a piano for her graduation, she played as if she had never seen such an instrument, but her playing now was certainly serviceable enough to accompany her voice.

Tommy began to itch, then started scratching his belly. It was the damned heat. He hated it. He hated sweating and always feeling damp.

Maybe he wasn’t really a Sicilian, he thought idly. Maybe not even an Italian. Maybe his parents had found him in a basket on the street and just given him a home.

“And maybe I’m a teapot,” he mumbled to himself, as he stretched and swung his feet over the side of the bed and sat up. He put on his robe and padded out into the living room.

“Morning,” he said to his sister, who stopped playing and smiled at him.

“Sleep well?” she asked.

“Nahhh. There was this cat screeching out in the yard. Woke me up. At least, I think it was a cat.”

Tina threw a music book at him. “You are vile,” she said.

They both laughed, and Tina started playing again as Tommy went into the bathroom and took a bath as cold as he could stand. The precinct house where he worked was a cesspool, but it had a large bathroom with a pair of shower stalls, and Tommy often stopped in there after his tour, just to wash off the sweat and get comfortable. The Falcones’ apartment had no such luxury as a shower. The only alternatives at home were to sit in the bathtub or to wash at the sink with a facecloth. Someday, Tommy thought, he would have his own home and it would have a shower. Definitely a shower.

As he dried himself he felt clean, but he was already sweating again as he went into the kitchen. Tina had poured coffee for him and was making him toast over the gas flame on the stove.

“You missed all the excitement last night,” Tina said.

“Oh?”

“Sofia came running over in the middle of the night. Before you got home. She was pretty upset.”

“Why?”

“Her father’s been beating up her mother. Her too. Her mouth was even cut.”

“Jesus Christ,” Tommy snapped.

Tina shook her head as she was buttering the thick slices of Italian bread. “If you ask me, it might be even worse.”

“How worse?”

“I think her father…” She hesitated as she put the toast in front of Tommy. She would not meet his eyes. “I think her father is trying to … you know … sleep with her.”

Tommy put down his coffee cup. “I don’t want to hear about this,” he said. “Did she say that?”

Tina shook her head. “No. But I just get that feeling.” She busied herself rinsing dishes at the sink. “I went with her this morning to see a cousin of hers. She asked him for help.”

“What’d he say?”

“He said he’d help, but I don’t believe him. He’s just a dumb thug.”

“Who is this cousin?”

“His name used to be Salvatore something, but now he calls himself Charlie Luciano.”

“Never heard of him,” Tommy said.

“He’s one of the gees that hang around in Mr. Mangini’s restaurant,” Tina said, using the neighborhood’s slang term for gangsters.

“I don’t want you hanging out with people like that.”

“It wasn’t exactly hanging out, Tommy. I just walked with her to this jerk’s office.”

“It’s a good office to stay away from. What would Papa say?”

“Papa won’t know. And you won’t tell him,” she said confidently. Now she turned to him and stared him down. Finally, reluctantly, Tommy nodded.

*   *   *

N
ILO WOKE UP COUGHING.
His tongue felt thick and the back of his mouth was dry. He had spent much of the last night at the luncheonette in Brooklyn, drinking bad whiskey with the other young men, and he had trouble remembering how he got home.

I will not drink that much again,
he promised himself.
Drunkenness is for the Irishers. I do not know what I will become, but it will not be a drunk.

In the apartment outside his room, he heard his landlady bustling around, and he knew he could not put up this morning with her nosy questions about his work, his salary, even his love life, so he dressed quickly and sneaked downstairs.

Outside, he saw Tommy sitting on his front steps. He was looking away, down the block. Nilo followed his eyes and saw Sofia, carrying a market basket on her arm, walking rapidly away on her morning trip to the bakery. He remembered then meeting her in the hallway last night.

As Tommy got up to cross the street, Nilo intercepted him.

“Morning, brother,” he said.

Tommy seemed startled for a moment, then nodded to him.

“Where are you going in such a hurry?” Nilo asked, walking along with him.

“I’ve got to talk to old man Mangini.”

“About Sofia?”

Tommy stopped. “What about her?”

“I saw her last night. She was crying and her mouth was cut. Did her father do that?”

“Yeah.”

“And what are you going to do?”

“Tell him to stop.”

“I’ll go with you,” Nilo said.

“No need. It’s no business of yours.”