Sons and Princes (9 page)

10.

“I spoke to Teresa,” Junior Boy said.

“She told me,” Chris replied.

“What did she say?”

“She thinks we’re in collusion.”

“She’s a smart girl.”

“She’ll fight you.”

“I know,” the don answered, “but most battles are won before anyone takes the field.”

They were in the sunroom of Teresa’s house. The room, added after Chris left, with its sky lights and removable glass walls, was a screened porch in the summer and a solarium in the winter. The weather had been hot for late May, in the nineties, and the walls had been taken down. A ceiling fan spun some ten feet above them. The wicker chairs with floral print cushions that they sat in were tasteful and comfortable. On their return from the city, Tess and Matt had gone off to their rooms, and Teresa and Mildred were sitting in another part of the house. Outside, the night’s stillness was punctuated occasionally by the sound of an airplane overhead or the rustling of the tall trees that surrounded the property.

“What about the Velardo family?” Chris asked.

“You mean why aren’t they interested in avenging your father?”

“Right.”

On the wicker table between them was a tray containing a pitcher of lemonade, two tall glasses, a bottle of grappa and two short glasses. After pouring himself a half glass of lemonade, Chris gestured with the pitcher toward the other tall glass, an offer the don declined with a wave of his hand.

“The Velardos are no more,” DiGiglio said.

“What happened?”

“When the old man died, there was a lot of turmoil. His sons were old and sick. The grandsons fought each other for sole ownership. The nephews tried to form their own family. A small war started. Barsonetti helped the nephews kill the grandsons, then wiped out the nephews and took all the business.”

“Barsonetti again.”

“When the Boot was dying,” Junior Boy said, “I went to see him. He was from the old school. He lived quietly up on his hill. My father respected him, but he knew the sons were fools and the grandsons were greedy. He knew there would be trouble. He told me to do what I could for the old man. Velardo was ninety at the time. Barsonetti had been trying to ingratiate himself, especially with the grandsons, but the old don saw through him. He asked me to be watchful after he died, to use my judgment if I saw trouble for his family. When he died, it was Barsonetti who stirred things up.”

“Did you try to stop him?”

“No. There was nothing worth saving in the Velardo family. The grandsons and nephews were predisposed to kill each other, anyway. There wasn’t a man among them. But a promise is a promise, so Barsonetti will die.”

“When did all this happen?”

“Six months ago. I’ve been waiting for things to calm down.”

“Have they?”

“Yes. Jimmy Barson thinks he pulled a fast one.”

“And Joe Black’s death brings me into it.”

“Yes. Have you thought about it?”

“It’s only been a week.”

“Ten days.”

“How long do I have?”

“Another week, no more.”

“I’ll let you know.”

Junior Boy leaned forward and poured grappa into the two short glasses.

“Have you read any history, Chris?” he asked.

“You can’t get through Columbia without reading some history.”

“Do you know why some nations thrive, and others don’t?”

“Why?”

“The sword. They’re not afraid to kill, not afraid of the consequences of killing.”

“Indiscriminately?”

“Of course not. But deciding who’s an enemy and who’s not is not difficult. The effete and the fat and the cowardly claim that it is. Everything’s relative to them. They’ll eventually be killed by people – nations – who smell their weakness.”

“Enemies are to be killed.”

“Yes. Before they kill you.”

“And this applies,” Chris said, “to Mafia families, as well as nations?”

“To all groups of humans that band together,” the don replied. “Tribes, nations, Mafia families.”

“Weakness always sets in, doesn’t it?” Chris said. “Rome declined and fell.”

“The Romans believed that Romulus and Remus were born of a she-wolf. Six hundred years later, they lost their feral nature and were destroyed.”

“Six hundred years is a good run.”

“There was no United Nations then, or academic elite, or New York Times. In a democracy, people can choose a policy of appeasement and cowardice. They can commit national suicide. But my family is not a democracy, and I won’t let it be destroyed.”

“Do Aldo and Frank know about your proposal to me?”

“No, but if you accept, I’ll tell them.”

“Why not tell them now?”

The don, his face in the shadows of the dimly lit room, drank down his grappa and poured himself another glassful. As he did, he leaned forward, into the cone of light cast by a nearby lamp. Chris had asked his last question with some trepidation. It came close to being an insult, challenging DiGiglio’s judgment as it did for no apparent reason. But the don’s face was unreadable. If he were playing poker, he could be holding a royal flush or a bunch of garbage.

“Are you asking that question,” his former father-in-law said, “because you don’t trust me?”

“I’m trying to understand your motivation here.”

“I told you my motive. I’m giving you a chance to avenge your father’s death, personally.”

“And then I go back to being a disbarred lawyer?”

“You’ll find something to do, I have no doubt.”

I will, Chris thought. I don’t know what it will be, but it won’t be a hitman for the Mafia, if that’s what you’re thinking.

“To your decision,” the don said, raising his glass.

Chris picked up his glass, and, saying nothing, clinked it against Junior Boy’s. Then they both drank down the fiery liquid that the Italians have been making from the dregs of the grapevine since the days of empire.

11.

The next day, Sunday, Chris walked the thirty-odd blocks east to Allison McRae’s apartment on Suffolk Street. On the way, he passed LaSalle Academy, still in business, the Christian Brothers still plugging away at their largely unnoticed mission of educating the country’s urban poor. In 2001, Chris had donated ten thousand dollars to the school. Passing its grime-darkened, yellow brick building, unchanged from the years he was there in the mid-seventies – and probably since it was built in 1838 – he contemplated the pledge of another ten thousand he had made for 2002, which would have to come out of his share of the money from the sale of his parents’ house. Luckily, he had made no pledges beyond that. He also passed the section of elevated railway on Sixth Avenue, long abandoned even when he was a boy, under which he and Ed Dolan had battered each other on that grim winter afternoon in 1977.

On the Lower East Side in the summer, people are out in droves on the streets, their give and take generating an edgy, in-your-face energy that Chris knew from years of walking the city demanded a certain amount of respectful attention. As he approached Delancey Street, he turned his mind to the present and altered his gait from the steady, easy striding of the last thirty minutes to a sort of alert gliding as he drifted on the surface as it were of the crowds, the better to negotiate their various eddies and crosscurrents. These crowds, speaking many languages and in a wide range of decibels, thinned as he approached Suffolk Street near the entrance to the Williamsburg Bridge, where the traffic on the inbound side appeared to be backed up all the way to Brooklyn. The day was sunny and the air freshened by an early morning shower, giving the neighborhood a patina of pleasantness, which, looking around, Chris knew was an illusion. This was not the New York of postcards or even of romanticized starving artists. Starving artists may live here, among the drug addicts and prostitutes and the dirt poor – the rents were cheap for all – but they would not deceive themselves about the character of the neighborhood. It was seedy and dangerous and not even remotely romantic.

At the corner of Delancey and Suffolk, three black men, looking to be in their mid-thirties, were standing with their backs against a temporary construction wall passing around a bottle wrapped in a brown paper bag. Chris kept them in his peripheral field of vision as he turned the corner and headed down Suffolk Street to number one-twelve in the middle of the block. At the top of the building’s front steps, he saw a young woman, in her mid-twenties, searching through a large, woven bag that was slung over her shoulder. As he approached, she drew out a pack of cigarettes, extracted one and lit it with a plastic lighter. She sucked it down like it was marijuana, then turned her gaze to Chris, smoke streaming from her nostrils. They assessed each other for a second, aliens making random contact, Chris in his khakis, walking shoes and polo shirt, his attitude open but careful; the woman in low-cut jeans, a tight fitting, long-sleeved black cotton shirt with a pink lightning bolt on the front, darting between her small breasts, a leather cuff bracelet on one wrist and a look of challenge in her heavily made-up eyes.

“You can’t be a narc,” she said.

“No.”

“Or vice.”

“ No.”

“Or a john.”

“No.”

“Then what?”

“I’m looking for Allison McRae.”

The woman did not answer immediately. Instead, she took another drag on her Marlboro Light, then ran her free hand through her short, platinum blonde hair, exposing a quarter inch of brown roots, her demeanor and body language changing from confrontational to something else, something Chris could not quite read. She wasn’t hiding her drug habit or her prostitution, but she was no longer flaunting it.

“Are you a movie guy?” she asked.

“Movie guy?”

“Allison’s an actress.”

“No. I’m her cousin. Her mom asked me to stop by. She hasn’t heard from her in a while.”

“What’s your name?”

“Chris Massi. And you are?”

“Michele. I live across the hall from Allison.”

“What floor? I’d like to go up and see her.”

“The fourth, but she’s not home. She’s doing a movie in Los Angeles.”

“When did she leave?”

“About a month ago.”

“Why wouldn’t she tell her mother?”

“She never mentioned a mother. I’ve been putting her mail in her apartment.”

“Have you heard from her?”

“She called last week. She said she’d be back soon to pick up some things and close down the apartment. She’s staying out there.”

“Do you have her number?”

“No. Sorry.”

“Are you an actress?”

If Michele was an actress, then Chris was an astronaut, but his instincts told him that he should look around Allison’s apartment, and Michele was his easiest way in.

“No,” Michele answered.

“Would you like to be?”

“You want me to let you in? Is that it?”

“I’d appreciate it.”

“You want sex?”

“No,” Chris answered, taking out his wallet, “but I can loan you fifty bucks. You can pay me back when you’re working.”

“Fine,” she said, snatching the bill from his hand. Chris could see by the surprise and avarice that flashed in quick succession in Michele’s eyes that the fifty dollars was a godsend. It meant an easy score of dope and a few less hours of dealing with the perverts and desperados on the street.

Allison’s apartment consisted of a small living room with a kitchen alcove, a bathroom and a tiny windowless bedroom. There was a dirty plate and a glass coated with the remains of some dark liquid, probably soda, on the coffee table in the living room. The rest of the place was fairly neat, with a tired cotton rug under the coffee table, a rocking chair, a bookshelf and a hardwood floor worn thin but swept clean.

On the wall next to the kitchen alcove was a telephone, which emitted no dial tone when Chris picked it up. Next to the phone was a small cork bulletin board with two photographs pinned to it. One of them was of an attractive young blonde woman, presumably Allison, and a heavy set, swarthy man in his forties. They were standing in front of a palm tree in bright sunlight holding tropical drinks – the kind with parasols sticking out of them – smiling at the camera. They were in bathing suits and the man had his arm around the woman’s waist, his hand resting possessively on her hip. The other was of Allison and a dark-haired, pretty woman of the same age, both in bikinis, apparently taken at the same vacation spot.

As Chris was looking at these pictures, Michele’s cell phone rang, and she stepped into the hall to have her conversation. Chris unpinned both photographs, and turned them over. On the back of the one of the two women was written, in bright red ink, “Allie, What a great trip!!! I have lots more pictures. Call me when you get back. Heather XXXOOO.” Chris put both pictures in his shirt pocket, then sat on the sofa to go through Allison’s mail, which Michele had piled neatly between two faded corduroy cushions. It was a hundred percent bills and junk mail. Looking around, he saw that the only drawers in the apartment were in the kitchen alcove. These he went through but found nothing of any moment. The bookcase did not contain books but rather neat rows of photocopied screenplays with blue and red covers, the kind you can buy on the street in Soho and the East Village for ten dollars. He pulled one out at random and saw that it was Robert Towne’s
Chinatown
, heavily dog-eared and highlighted in the portions where Evelyn Mulray appears, played by Faye Dunaway in the movie, with scribbled notes covering the margins so densely that, at first, it looked like intricate art work.

He replaced the script and turned to see Michele standing in the doorway, leaning against the jamb with her right shoulder and hip.

“I told you there was nothing here,” she said.

“Where did she keep her clothes?”

“In cardboard boxes on the floor, but she took all her clothes with her.”

“Who are these people?” Chris asked, taking the pictures out of his pocket and walking over to hand them to her.

Michele took them and glanced quickly at them before replying: “This is Allison with a producer she was seeing. I never got his name. The girl is a friend from L.A.”

“Heather.”

“Right.”

“What’s her last name?”

“Johnson, Jansen, I’m not sure.”

“Do you know where she lives?”

“No, just L.A.”

“When did Allison move in here?”

“In the winter, January, February.”

“Why did she leave these pictures behind?”

“She didn’t. I found them in the sofa cushions when I started putting the mail there. She had a dozen like them up there, which she took. So I just stuck these back.”

Chris reached out and took the photographs back. He looked at both images, then said, “When did she take this trip?”

“A few weeks after she moved in. It was snowing like a bitch here.”

“Where is this place?”

“In Mexico. A place called Palmilla. Allison said it was beautiful.”

“Where did she go the second time?”

“The second time?”

“Heather says, ‘call me when you get back.’”

“Oh, right. She went with this guy again. I think to Florida for a week.”

“Was she doing heroin?”

Michele did not answer. She looked at Chris and held his gaze for the first time since they’d met. Behind her eyes, he saw, very briefly, another Michele, lost and almost forgotten, the one whose life heroin was trying to destroy. “You’d know,” he said.

“She thought it was cool at first.”

It was Chris’ turn to be silent.

“I didn’t turn her on, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“Who did?”

“Her producer boyfriend. He even gave her some to give to me. It was great smack, not like the shit on the street. Where do you think she is?”

“She’s probably getting high with him right now. I don’t think she’s making a movie. If you see her, will you tell her to call me?”

Chris handed her one of the last of his DeVoss & Kline cards, with their number crossed out and his apartment number written in.

“So you’re a lawyer,” Michele said looking up after reading the card.

“I used to be.”

“I’ll bet you were a good one. Did you do any custody cases?”

“Child custody?”

“Yes.”

“No. Nothing like that. Why?”

“No reason.”

“Get off the street, Michele, get clean. Go to Legal Aid. They’ll help you to see your kids.”

“My kids are dead.”

And soon you will be, too,
Chris thought. Then he turned and left.