Sons and Princes (22 page)

She had been caressing the faded vertical scar on his right leg where the surgeon had entered to recompose his shattered tibia.

“Is the other leg the same?”

“No, that was a simple fracture. It was the right leg that did me in. The engine crushed it.”

“Did you have a lawsuit?”

“My father didn’t believe in lawsuits. He thought they were a form of charity.”

“Did you ever run again?”

“I tried to run the following year, but I re-broke the right leg. That’s why there’s a permanent pin in it.”

“My son’s name was Christopher.”

Chris had sat up and reorganized himself into a semilotus position facing Michele, whose hand he now took and studied, gathering his thoughts for the turn their conversation had taken.

“Named after whom?”

“No one. I just liked the name.”

In the Southern Italian culture, the first son is named after the paternal grandfather. Chris, still staring at Michele’s small, lovely, almost childlike hand, caressing it gently, recalled the day in June of 1989 when he told his parents he was naming his new son Matthew. Rose had put her hand to her brow and gone to the kitchen sink. Joe Black, flinty, absorbed this blow with dignity, but Chris could see the briefest flicker of sadness, and even pain, appear and disappear in his father’s dark eyes. It was a day he wished he had back again. Lifting his eyes to meet Michele’s, he said, “Where is he buried?”

“In Queens, near my parents.”

“And your daughter?”

“She’s alive, Chris.”

“No, I mean what’s her name?”

“Grace.”

Christopher and Grace
, he thought, simple, lovely, symbolic names. “That’s a pretty name,” he said out loud. “Have you thought about visiting her?”

“That’s not possible.”

“I think you’re wrong.”

“I don’t want to see her.”

“Why didn’t your parents take her?”

“They’re old. My father has MS.”

Michele’s cigarette had burned down to the filter. Removing her hand from Chris’, she crushed it out and lit another one.

“I could help you,” he said.

“Help me do what?”

“Get a lawyer, find her, start the process. I doubt they terminated your parental rights.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you’re still her mother. You could see her, get her back eventually. You’d have to stay clean, and you probably only have this one shot.”

“I plan on staying clean.”

“Then you have to do it. She needs you.”

Chris could see by the stricken look on Michele’s face that, though she had raised the subject of her children, she had not expected it to lead so quickly and so directly to the issue of choice and personal responsibility. He had not planned on this unhappy coda to their love making, but momentum and timing were everything when it came to taking action in life, and the longer Michele waited to confront this issue the more likely it was that she never would.

“She needs to forget me.”

“That’s the point,” Chris replied. “She’ll never forget you. She’ll long for her real mom for the rest of her life. Think about it. How can you go forward and leave her behind?”

“What if they won’t let me see her?”

“Then at least you know you tried.”

Michele threw her head back, and sucked on her cigarette, reminding Chris of the day they first met on the front steps of the building, a lifetime ago. She blew the smoke out and said, “I was happy for a few minutes.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“Will you think about it?”

“Yes, I’ll think about it. What else would I think about?”

“How much you love making love with me.”

Michele smiled at this and, putting out her cigarette, crept into Chris’ arms.

“How much time do we have?” she said, her head on his chest.

Chris knew what she meant. To her, it was not possible that their time as lovers would be anything more than a brief interlude. Defeat was the leitmotif of her life, in the very air she breathed. And him? Why had he closed his heart to love? Why always so cool and distant? Because his legs were broken as a boy? Because Teresa loved power and prestige more than she loved him? His had not been the first unhappy childhood, the first disillusioned heart. Had his pride been a false refuge after all? Surprised and confused at the surge of feeling in his heart he was unaware at the moment that these questions were also answers.

“Enough, I hope,” he replied.

“I don’t think it will ever be enough,” Michele replied, raising her head and pressing her lips to Chris’, and then, while kissing him, she said softly, “but let’s not waste any of it.”

10.

Two days later, Chris was standing on the concrete esplanade that overlooks the east end of Bryant Park. On the sunken lawn below and on the park’s perimeter walkway, people in ones and twos and small groups were everywhere enjoying the temperate early July day, walking, reading, playing chess, eating an early lunch, sitting quietly on the numerous slatted folding chairs that dotted the green landscape. The tall plane trees that surround the lawn, with their handsome, dappled trunks, were reaching for the sunlight that was just now breaking through clouds that had brought a brief morning shower.

Among those sitting quietly, his hands in the pockets of his baggy shorts, his black hair falling with studied casualness across his forehead, was Matt Massi, in the precise location near the Forty-Second Street entrance that Chris had designated as their meeting spot. As Chris watched, his son reached into one of the cargo pockets of his shorts and took out a pair sunglasses – silver-rimmed with cobalt blue lenses – and slipped them on. He had showed up at the African Queen at ten o’clock asking for his father. Vinnie had called Chris, and the meeting had been arranged.

Chris studied Matt for a second before heading over to him, trying to read his body language. His slouching posture was more subdued than relaxed, and the disdainful curl usually to be seen on his beautiful lips was for once missing. Chris knew his son. Before he turned into a sneering princeling, he had been an unpretentious, happy boy, but one who took pains, like many boys – sometimes successfully, sometimes not – to conceal his emotions. What Matt was feeling, he did his best to prevent the world from seeing. Watching him, it struck Chris that the cool facade his son had affected of late served more than one purpose. In the last two years, their relationship had been a one-way affair, with Chris doing all of the reaching out. Now here they were at Matt’s request. Whatever the reason – and Chris was fairly certain that the boy would not have gone to all this trouble unless something important was on his mind – it was good to see his mask down and some of the raw stuff of the old Matt on display.

“Hello,” Chris said, sitting in a folding chair across from and at a slight angle to Matt, who had sat up straight and taken his hands out of his pockets when he saw his father approaching. “Those are nice glasses.”

“Thanks.”

“Can I see them?”

Matt slid the sunglasses off of his face and handed them to Chris, who studied them for a second before slipping them into the front pocket of his shirt.

“Are they too cool or something?” Matt asked.

“We’re in the shade here,” Chris replied. “What’s up?”

“What’s up? What’s up with you?” said Matt. “We haven’t seen you in a month.”

“I’ve been working. I told your mother that, and Tess.”

“Working on what?”

“Research, private investigating.”

“Did you move from Vinnie’s?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“Why?”

“It’s the case I’m working on. The client doesn’t want anyone to be able to find me.”

“Do you have a new cell phone number?”

“Yes, but I can’t give it to you.”

“When were you planning on seeing us?”

“When the case is over. In a few weeks.”

In the more than ten years since his divorce, Chris had not gone more than two weeks without seeing Tess and Matt. In the last two years, his record had been spotty, but Matt, preoccupied with his illusions of gangster grandeur, seemed hardly to notice. Suddenly he was asking questions, demanding, in effect, Chris’ attention. What the genesis of this change was Chris could not fathom, but he was sure it wasn’t because he missed his father. Why would he miss the one adult in his life who derided his Mafia conceit?

“Do you like it? The stuff you’re doing?” the boy asked.

“No, I don’t,” Chris answered, “I’ve got one last thing to do, then I’m done with it.”

“Then what will you do?”

“I don’t know. Something will come to me.”

“Ed Dolan died.”

“I know. I saw it in the paper.”

Chris looked into his son’s eyes as he said this. In them, he saw not just the boy’s simple satisfaction that the man who had tried to ruin his father’s life was dead, but something else as well, something that spoke of calculation, of counting up a series of facts.

“I’m taking the exam for LaSalle next week,” Matt said.

“Good.”

“You’re not surprised?”

“No.”

“Do you still want me to?”

“Of course.”

“Mommy took me to see LaSalle.”

“What did you think?”

“It’s okay.”

“Real kids go there. It’s not Upper Montclair.”

“No, but that’s okay.”

“How is your mother taking this?”

“Not well. How are you taking it?”

“Is that what this is about?” Chris said. “I’ve been busy. You guys were supposed to be going to the shore. I’m getting the apartment back soon. I fully expect you to go to LaSalle in September and live with me there.”

Matt looked down at the ground, then up at Chris, who knew that some kind of moment of truth had arrived, but he could not guess what it might be.

“What is it, Matt?”

“Where’s Uncle Joseph?”

“Uncle Joseph?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know.”

“He was at my party.”

“I know.”

“He said he’d call me to go to a Yankee game.”

“You know the story with him, Matt.”

“I saw him leave the party. I was having a smoke in the back room of the garage. There’s a small window there. He came down the stairs from Grandpa’s study with Uncle Aldo and Nicky Spags. Nicky had Uncle Joseph’s arm behind his back and a gun to his head.”

Chris took this in, gazing as he did, into Matt’s fine, dark eyes.

“Did anyone else see this?” he asked.

“No. I was alone.”

In Matt’s eyes, there was both fear and determination, neither a facade, both starkly real, the same mix of emotions Chris remembered feeling on the day he said to Joe Black,
what happened with Ed’s father
? The message that Chris’ eyes conveyed to his father was the same as the one Matt’s were conveying to him today:
Tell me the truth. Don’t lie to me. I can cross this threshold and survive, but I need to know the truth.
It was this sudden willingness to accept the hard things of life that had set Chris on the road to manhood, and now the same thing was happening to – and inside of – his son.

“He was wearing a hidden tape recorder,” Chris said, “a wire. They found it on him. He’s dead.”

“So grandpa...?”

“Yes. He ordered it.”

“Uncle Joseph?”

“Yes.”

Matt’s hands were resting on his thighs. He lifted one toward his face, but abruptly brought it down. He was crying. Chris let him cry for a few seconds, then took the sunglasses out of his pocket and handed them to his son. Matt wiped his eyes with his knuckles, then put them on.

“He loved you, Matt.”

At this Matt broke down, and Chris moved his chair next to him and put his arm around his shoulder.

“Cry,” he said, feeling the boyness in Matt’s bony arm as he pulled him closer. He sat there and held his son, listening to his crying, until it slowed and stopped.

“I hate grandpa. I hate his fucking guts.”

“In his world, he did what was right.”

“How could that be?”

“Nicky Spags found the wire. He was doing his job. It was either kill him or kill Joseph.”

“Kill Nicky?”

“If he let Joseph live, then he would have exposed a weakness to an underling. He could not let Nick live under those circumstances. But if he killed Nick, it would be for no good reason, it would violate your grandfather’s rule against senseless violence. There was a good reason for killing Joseph. I would have done the same thing.”

“You don’t want me to hate grandpa, yet he killed your brother.”

“I don’t want you to let your emotions rule you.”

“Why not? I do hate him.”

“Think about the danger. If you let him know how you feel, he’d want to know why. You don’t want him to know what you know.”

“He wouldn’t hurt me.”

“What if Aldo found out? Can you trust him? He wants one of his sons to be the don.”

“I won’t let them know.”

“I think that’s a good idea.”

“How do you know about Uncle Joseph?” Matt asked. “Were you in on it together?”

“No, he left me a letter.”

“Why did he do it?”

“He thought he was helping me.”

“How?”

“You don’t need to know that now. Someday, maybe, but not now.”

Matt took the sunglasses off and again wiped his eyes with his hands. There would be no challenge to this last answer, no desire to see and hear more of the new and intense world his father had so bluntly and graphically put on display. The opportunity had arisen to show the boy the true face of the Mafia and Chris had taken it.
That face, Matt, is hard and remorseless. It will kill your beloved uncle, your best friend’s father, it will kill you if you break the rules. Once you commit to it, you either live by those rules or die by them.

“What now?” Matt said, putting the glasses into his cargo pocket, his eyes red but dry.

“What do you mean
what now
?”

“I don’t know. It just seems like...like it can’t be left at this.”

Matt’s reaction thus far to Joseph’s execution had been typical of any young boy thrust into the same position, but this answer, loaded as it was with the notions of revenge and honor, was not so typical. If Joe Black’s blood was coursing through his son’s veins, Chris needed to know it, because it was blood that was proud and strong and not afraid to kill, blood – as Chris had recently learned – that could not be denied, only disciplined.

“There’s nothing to be done,” Chris said. “Try to put it out of your mind.”

Matt shook his head and said, “That won’t be easy, Dad. The look on his face...”

The look on his face, Chris thought. I guess it was a look you were meant to see, Matt, and I wasn’t.

“Does your mother know about Joseph?” Chris asked out loud.

“No, but she’s worried.”

“Why do you say that?”

“She and Uncle Joseph are always talking on the phone. She couldn’t reach him. I think she went into the city to the apartment where he was living. When she came home, she locked herself in her bedroom. Since then, she’s been different, moody.”

“What about Tess? Does she know?”

“I didn’t tell her, but she knows something’s up. She’s worried about Mom, and you.”

“She’s not to know.”

“I know.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why isn’t she to know?”

“Because you say so.”

“Because she would be in danger if she did. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Matt sat up straighter in his chair, as if physically shouldering the responsibility of protecting his sister. This small gesture was both gratifying and painful for Chris to watch, so much did it signal of his son’s new state: his prior foolishness acknowledged, his childhood over, his place in a Mafia family weighted with secrets and hidden dangers.

“Yes,” the boy answered.

“Where is she now?”

“She’s home. She said she’d take the train in if you wanted her to.”

“Good. Call her. We’ll go up to Josie’s for lunch. She loves that place.”

“Where should I tell her to meet us?”

“At the fountain in front of the Plaza. When you see her, just act normal. I don’t want her to have the faintest clue as to what’s happened. If she asks about Joseph, I’ll tell her he took a trip someplace. Do you understand?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Good. Make the call, then we’ll take a walk. I have to see a lawyer over on Fifth Avenue. Tess won’t be here for an hour at least.”