Bloodline (24 page)

Tina nodded majestically, but when the man had left she asked Sofia, “Who’s Don Salvatore?”

“It must be this Maranzano crook. Nilo gave me the tickets.”

“God,” Tina said in mock astonishment. “We’re guests of the Mafia. Do you think they’ll sell us to the White Slavers if we eat too much?”

“You just wish,” Sofia said, and giggled.

After stuffing themselves with food, they sneaked out a side exit and found that the admiring herd of boys that had been following them had dispersed, probably because the carnival site was now packed with people and there were other, perhaps more-willing partners for their zealous lust.

After a few moments of strolling, Tina and Sofia were suddenly pushed aside by a large mass of people. Around them, they heard the sound level drop, as if people were suddenly afraid to talk. The two young women stood on tiptoe and saw a roundish looking man wearing a cape and a white hat, strolling down the center of the walkway, waving almost papally at the other carnival-goers. He was eating fried peppers from a grease-soaked paper bag.

“That’s Joe Masseria,” Sofia told Tina in hushed terms. “He comes into our restaurant once in a while. He’s a pig.”

“He acts like he’s the King of Sheba.”

“Around here, I guess he is,” Sofia said. When the crowd surrounding Masseria had moved on, Tina and Sofia wandered off in the other direction, Tina flirting shamelessly with everyone who looked at her. For a while, they amused themselves playing bingo and the spinning wheels, on which Tina won a stuffed elephant toy. Later in the evening, they bumped into Sofia’s cousin. He was dressed nattily in a white suit and was standing alongside a game-of-chance booth. He smiled when he saw the two young women. Tina nodded curtly, and Sofia said, “Hello, Charlie.”

Nearby Tina saw two of the young men who always seemed to be hovering around Luciano. One of them was the very young one Luciano called Benny, the one she had heard beat up prostitutes. He was baby-faced and handsome, Tina thought, and he still seemed too young to have such a reputation. The other was older, Luciano’s age, and handsome too in a darker Mediterranean way.

“Do you girls need anything? Money, tickets for anything?” Luciano asked.

Sofia hesitated, and Tina answered quickly, “No, Mr. Luciano, we’re fine. Except maybe some information.”

“Charlie. Please. I told you, Charlie.”

“Charlie,” Tina said.

“And this information?” he asked warily.

“Some people we talked to tonight told us this place is filled with gangsters.”

Sofia looked shocked. “Tina,” she said sharply.

“No, go ahead, girl,” Luciano said.

“I was just wondering why gangsters would care about a neighborhood carnival.”

“Well, I don’t know anything about that personally,” Luciano began.

“Of course,” Tina said with clear, if muted, sarcasm.

“But some of the proceeds from the carnival go to Mount Carmel Church. And there are different factions of … businessmen … who want to make sure that the people in the parish regard them highly. So they see that their own people come here and spread their names around and spend lots of money.”

“You’re talking about Masseria and Maranzano,” Tina said. Sofia stood silently to the side, aghast at the turn the conversation was taking.

“Ah, you have been listening while your father speaks,” Luciano said, with a patronizing smile on his face.

“And so tonight, this peacock contest of criminals, will there be a winner?”

“At the end each one hopes that the church will say the followers of so-and-so or the followers of so-and-so-other were the biggest supporters of our carnival. This will let the parishioners know they can deal with this man as a man of respect. The one who does not win will lose respect.”

“Who will win?” Tina pressed.

“For that you should have asked your other brother, the priest who is not a policeman, because that is the wonderful part of it,” Luciano said. “It is always the same. Neither of them wins. Your brother and the other good fathers at Mount Carmel wish to offend no one, so they always say it was a tie. That both won. There was no loser. I tell you, the church knows something about playing politics.” He paused. “But you would know that, I guess. Wouldn’t you, Miss Falcone?”

Before Tina could answer, Sofia said, “We have to be going. See you later, Cousin.”

Luciano nodded.

“Bye-bye, Mr. Luciano,” Tina said with a smile, and let Sofia lead her away. Luciano watched as the two young women sauntered off. The young boy, Benny, came to his side and looked appreciatively at the two beauties.

“Good-lookers, Charlie,” he said.

“Yeah, Benny, they are,” Luciano said softly. “And that Tina Falcone thinks she is very smart.”

“A lot of them think that way until they’re on their backs,” Benny said.

“That time will come.”

They both watched the girls walk away for a few moments longer, and Benny said, “I want seconds.”

*   *   *

“
W
HY DID YOU TALK
to Salvatore that way?” Sofia asked her friend. “You were taunting him.”

“‘Charlie. Please.’ He likes to be called Charlie,” Tina said mockingly. “And he started it. What does he think, we’re little girls and he can impress us by giving us lollipops?”

“He was just trying to be nice.”

“Come on, Fia, think. Do you really believe that these gees are around because they want to give a lot of money to the church? Did you watch your cousin’s eyes? He was watching the gambling game that was going on. Papa was right. These thugs run all these games, and first they steal the public’s money and then they give a little tiny piece of it back to the church and pretend they’re holy.”

A few minutes later, they passed a raffle booth that advertised with a large hand-painted sign:
50-50. TICKETS, 25 CENTS.

“Oh, look,” Sofia said. “We’ve got some tickets on the fifty-fifty.” She reached into her purse and brought out ten little tickets. “We should turn them in.” She separated them and let Tina pick out five of them.

They went to the long counter in the front of the booth, and the operator, a sweating hairy man wearing a peasant’s cap pulled down over his ears, carefully made them sign the back of each small ticket with their name and address.

He took the tickets from them, glanced at the names, then said, “Why don’t you hang around, girls? We’ll be drawing the winner in five minutes.”

Tina seemed reluctant, but Sofia convinced her. “Five minutes, Tina. Maybe we’ll be lucky.”

“It’ll be the first time ever,” Tina said sourly.

But they waited, and the crowd started to swell around them as the game’s operator put on a loud phonograph record of Italian music and began to shout loudly that the 50-50 drawing was ready to begin.

There was no skill to the drawing, of course. A 50-50 simply meant that the proprietors added up all the money that had been spent on tickets, picked a winning number out of a barrel, and the holder of that ticket won 50 percent of the money that had been collected. The other 50 percent went to those who ran the game, in this case, to Mount Carmel Parish.

Finally, after suffering through three badly scratched records of Neapolitan music, the crowd surged forward as the proprietor of the game, standing on a small platform at the back of his booth, stirred and shook a small beer keg that was filled with tickets. He called a little girl, not more than five years old, forward from the crowd, opened the top of the barrel, and told her to reach in and draw a ticket. He held on to her hand as she leaned over and reached into the barrel and he was still holding her hand when she withdrew it, with a ticket held between her thumb and index finger.

“Thank you, little girl,” the man said, taking the ticket from her. He reached into his pocket with the hand that held the ticket and brought out a fresh one-dollar bill. “This is for being my helper.”

He turned back to the crowd. “And now the big moment,” he said. “I can tell you, this is going to be the biggest cash prize in our history. Are you ready?”

The crowd roared.

“Let’s go,” somebody shouted.

“All right.” The man looked down at the ticket in his hands, stretching the moment out as long as he could. When the crowd started to grumble, he shouted aloud, “And the winner is … Justina Falcone … of Crosby Street. Is Miss Falcone here?”

The crowd groaned when each member realized he or she hadn’t won. But Sofia was jumping up and down.

“Tina, you won. You won!”

Tina shook her head. She was numb with shock.

“Here,” Sofia screamed. “Here’s the winner!”

All around them, people backed away and turned toward them to get a look at the lucky girl. Sofia grabbed a still-stunned Tina by the arm and pulled her forward to the concession stand.

“And you’re Miss Falcone?” the operator said.

Tina nodded dumbly.

“You’ve just won”—he looked at a paper in his hand—“five hundred and forty dollars.” The crowd cheered. A male voice called out, “Will you marry me?”

Tina turned to Sofia. “I’ve just won my future,” she said softly. Tears glistened in her eyes.

Neither of the girls noticed the proprietor glance off to the side of the booth. Standing there in the shadows was Nilo Sesta. He nodded once to the proprietor and walked away.

*   *   *

A
S HE HAD TOLD HER
to be, Maranzano’s secretary, Betty, was waiting for Nilo in the room at the Princess Hotel. She wore a blood-red dressing gown and she was lounging on a sofa in the barely lit room, listening to a phonograph record of a dance band.

When he closed the door behind him, he said, “Take that off.”

“The record?”

“What you’re wearing.”

“Go fly a kite.” She turned her face away, toward the window that overlooked the street.

Nilo strode across the room. He reached down, grabbed the top of her robe, and yanked it down off her body, then pulled her into the bedroom of the suite.

Later, Betty lay alongside him in the bed, her head on his chest, idly running her long nails up and down his smooth skin. It was hard for her sometimes to reconcile his almost-delicate good looks with his growing reputation as one of Maranzano’s deadliest soldiers.

In a rare moment of introspection, she thought that it was possibly that same reputation that made her find him so attractive. She often thought that, if Maranzano ordered him to, Nilo would kill her without even a second thought. There was something very sexy about danger.

“Does the moth like the flame?” she asked aloud.

“What kind of question is that?”

“A simple one. Does the moth like the flame? Why does it come so close that it gets burned?

“Because moths are stupid. They do not know that the flame burns. So they die. Are you a moth?”

“No,” she said after a moment’s hesitation. “Because I’m not stupid. But you
are
a flame.”

“You, I promise not to burn,” Nilo said. “Tonight I am a flame who is very satisfied with himself.”

“Why?”

“I arranged for a girl who needed it to get money for her education.”

“Some little tramp you’re sleeping with, I bet.”

“No.”

“Then why did you help her?”

“Because her brother could have caused me trouble a few months ago and he did not. I wanted to do something to repay that debt.”

“Are these those Falcones, those relatives of yours?”

“Yes.”

“You gave the priest money to buy toys for the kids. When do you stop paying them back?”

“I’m done now. I never want to owe anybody anything. If somebody does you a favor and you don’t pay it back, it is a way that people can control you. I will not be controlled.”

“You are a flame, Nilo,” she said.

He pulled her atop him. “I am a flame.”

*   *   *

T
INA
F
ALCONE HAD PROMISED
herself she would not be nervous, so she blamed her perspiration on the weather, even though the day was cool for July and lacking the chronic high humidity that made New York unbearable in midsummer. But she could feel the sweat leaking through her very best dress.

Being nervous only caused problems with her singing. Her teacher, Carlo Cravelli, had told her that nervousness made her voice breathy and, every now and then, shrill. That could not be allowed to happen, not today of all days. She told herself over and over not to be nervous. The reminder just made her nerves worse.

She took a deep breath and started up the stairs of the brownstone. The brass nameplate read:
UTA SCHATTE.
Tina rang the doorbell, and while she waited she looked across the street at the park, closed in by a wrought-iron fence. She recognized one of the buildings across the way as the Players Club, a private club started long ago in the home of the great actor Edwin Booth.

She had never before seen a private park, for rich people only, and she vowed that when she was herself rich and famous she would come back to Gramercy Park and buy one of these brownstones, and then she would invite all the poor kids she could find to come up and play in the park.

She heard the door open. A young black woman, dressed in a simple maid’s uniform, stood there, and she was one of the most exquisitely beautiful creatures Tina had ever seen: tall and lithe with café-au-lait skin and a wide generous mouth with perfect teeth; she had long delicate fingers and almond-shaped eyes.

“I can help you?” she said in a curious accent that Tina did not recognize.

“I am to see Frau Schatte,” Tina said. “I have an appointment. My name is Justina Falcone.”

The maid seemed to study her for a moment and then smiled, as if having found her worthy of this visit.

“She is expecting you,” she said, and stepped aside to let Tina through the doorway. She felt as if she were entering another world, a fantasy world. The house was a marvel. The furnishings were not new, but they were elegant, and Tina could see ahead into a large drawing room that seemed filled with brightness and air.

She followed the maid through half a dozen rooms and up a grand rear staircase before being shown into a large room, where a very blond woman, whose hair was cut as short as a man’s and marcelled into tight waves, sat at a piano at the far end. The maid walked away and left Tina there.