The Good Lawyer: A Novel (19 page)

Dorothy lived in an apartment in Astoria, Queens, and taught first grade at the very private Bennington School on the north shore of Long Island. Her mother and father lived in Brooklyn just a few blocks from the Parkside Avenue pizzeria run by Rocco and his men. She was visiting her parents when, along with her younger sister, she came into the pizzeria.

Seconds after they left they were mugged by two teenage boys, and their purses stolen.

Rocco ran out when he heard their screams and ordered Sallie and three of his men to give chase.

Dorothy’s fifteen-year old sister lay on the ground crying, her knees badly scraped, their pizza pie upside down on the sidewalk. The faces of both girls were wet with tears. Rocco escorted them back into the pizzeria then gently washed the fifteen-year olds’ knees and bandaged her cuts.

Within minutes Sallie returned with his men, and handed the two purses back to the girls.

Rocco insisted on walking them home. The next night Rocco and Dorothy had dinner in Sheepshead Bay then strolled along the dock filled with moored fishing boats. When he brought her home he asked permission for a good night kiss. Afterward, she accepted another date for the following evening.

Dorothy’s parents, both of whom had some college education, did not approve of the match. Her father was half English, half Scottish; her mother, first generation Italian.

Besides regularly sending her parents food from the pizzeria, Rocco bought flowers for Dorothy, her sister and her mother each time he visited. When they announced their engagement her parents were reluctantly resigned to the pairing—Columbia University and their daughter ends up with a pizza man and mobster.

Mom had pinched her nose and winced, a sign the story was about to turn and to a part only Mom could tell. There was no way Rocco would talk about, no less utter, the name of Ernest Leskey.

How much Mom had embellished I will never know, but with what Rocco had later told me, and from that which I came to learn from other sources, it seems that she filled in the blanks quite well.

Ernest Leskey was a champion swimmer and the picture (as Mom had described) of Ivy League handsomeness. He was also rich—old money rich. By 1953 the family had a chain of department stores across the entire East Coast that bore the Leskey name.

It was in his senior year at Columbia that he fixed his sights on the beautiful Dorothy.

At first, he was a gentleman. But on their third date, in the back of his father’s chauffeured limousine, Dorothy barely escaped with her virtue by the mere strength of the elastic on her garter strap. Her parents were devastated when she broke it off.

Leskey was furious.

Though Dorothy and her parents were forced to change their telephone numbers, the letters and telegrams kept coming. Campus security was put on notice.

Finally, after grabbing his crotch and threatening Dorothy with penile impalement in full view of several dozen students, Leskey was suspended from Columbia. He never returned.

A few months after Dorothy graduated she began dating Rocco. But unbeknownst to her, Leskey had taken an apartment in Astoria just two blocks from her own. And he was watching her every move, and planning.

After their engagement Rocco and Dorothy were inseparable. And although Rocco became increasingly desirous of her, and she of him, Dorothy wanted to marry a virgin. And Rocco respected her wish. It was 1955.

Brooklyn’s 4th of July celebration that year was especially raucous. The inordinate amount of exploding fireworks caused Rocco to be especially mindful of his surroundings, and he soon discovered that he was being followed.

The following Friday night, when Rocco left Dorothy’s building, Rocco noticed a man standing in almost complete darkness against a telephone pole. Rocco cued Sallie who was waiting nearby with two button men in and old Chevy. In an instant all four tackled the man then threw him in the trunk of the car. Surprisingly, the man gave little resistance. Rocco jumped in the front passenger seat as they sped away.

Under a nearby train bridge about a hundred feet from the rat-infested rocks that lined the shore of the East River they stopped. Several dark figures, drunk and tired hobos that made their home near the water’s edge, scurried off in the darkness.

The two button men opened the trunk and pulled the man out. He was tall and thin, with chiseled good looks. They pinned him against car.

Rocco grabbed the man’s head and slammed it into the car’s chrome bumper. The man’s body stiffened, then collapsed, and a wig he was wearing fell to the ground. His true hair was short and blonde. Rocco demanded his name.

“Go fuck yourself,” the man responded. “You’re nothing but garbage!”

To a trumpeted groan that echoed between the concrete bridge pilings, Rocco buried his fist in the man’s testicles.

Yanking him back by his hair, Rocco gripped the man’s Adam’s apple, squeezed it and demanded, once again, the man’s name.

“Ernest Leskey,” the blonde man grumbled, “and if I’m found dead, my father will see you all fry.”

“Why are you following me?” Rocco leveled a smack across Leskey’s face.

“Because she’s mine,” Leskey looked Rocco dead in the eye. “I should have fucked her back at Columbia when I had the chance.”

Rocco wrenched Sallie’s pistol from its shoulder holster and put it to Leskey’s temple.

“Roc, no!” Sallie yelled.

Rocco kicked Leskey in the groin, and the underbelly of the bridge was consumed by a deafening howl.

Rocco ordered the men back into the car, and they drove off, leaving Leskey rolling in the dirt, the rusted girders of the train bridge that connected Astoria with Randall’s Island and the Bronx looming overhead. Beyond the water’s edge treacherous whirlpools created by the intersection of the East River, Harlem River and Little Neck Bay spun incessantly. Many a ship that had passed there during and before the great wars had been swallowed and sunk in its wake. As a result the bridge had been given a haunting nickname that stuck for all time.

Sallie asked whether Rocco planned to tell Capezzi about Leskey. Rocco waved him off.

Charlie the driver then confirmed Leskey’s identity. He’d been in the Leskey stores where a portrait of the whole family hung over every exit.

Rocco panicked and ordered the men to rush back to the bridge.

In less than a minute the car skidded to a stop between the two towering concrete buttresses of the train-bridge. Sallie snapped off the headlights. All four men jumped out of the car as dark human figures disappeared into the descending blackness of the water’s edge.

Rocco, Sallie and the two men rushed to the spot where Leskey had been left curled and howling. But he was gone. Rocco looked around for the wig that fell off Leskey’s head. It too was gone. Rocco ordered the men to spread out.

Sallie had searched Leskey and come up empty. No weapons. No ID. The men drew their guns anyway. Rocco had taken Sallie’s revolver, but knew his friend had another. Sallie always kept a small pistol taped to one ankle, and a thin serrated hunting knife to the other.

Rocco walked toward the water and behind the bridge’s monstrous concrete foundation. More dark figures sped away and lost themselves in the dirt and slime that crested down toward the rocks and the river where rats could be heard scattering and squealing.

Beyond the treacherous whirlpools lay Randall’s Island. Beyond Randall’s Island, on the other side of the river, was the
Bronx
.

Rocco raced back to the car yelling for Sallie and the others.

With the doors still open, and everyone barely inside, Rocco floored the accelerator. Running every red light in his path, he reached Astoria Boulevard.

When they arrived at Dorothy’s building, the sidewalk, covered by a long green canopy extending from the building’s doors to the curb, was blocked with two black and white police cars. Rocco lunged out the van and vaulted over the hood of one of the cars. Sallie ran after him. The two button men followed.

Rocco scaled the steps until he reached the third floor. Two uniformed officers were standing in the hall outside Dorothy’s door. Rocco was dripping sweat. One officer reached for his gun. Another was from Flatbush, recognized Rocco, and pleaded with him to remain in the hall.

Rocco howled Dorothy’s name then charged the door. Sallie vaulted onto Rocco’s back and hung there until the button men and officers wrestled Rocco to the floor. Rocco kicked and punched wildly until pinned into submission. The officer who had reached for his gun, now reached for his cuffs. The cop from Flatbush told him to put them away.

Rocco sat pressed against a wall across from Dorothy’s door, his head between his legs, wailing like a tormented child while Sallie held him.

Sallie got up and ordered the two button men to stay with Rocco.

The cop from Flatbush whispered something to Sallie then let him pass. An ambulance crew appeared with a stretcher and cautiously followed.

Rocco watched them all go in and yelled, “Bring her to me Sallie! Let me see her!”

In less than a minute Sallie came out and walked over to Rocco. More police officers materialized at the top of the stairs. Some went into the apartment. Some didn’t. A voice came from inside that cautioned others not to touch anything.

Sallie pulled Rocco to his feet. Rocco stared at Sallie like a lost child. With Rocco’s arm over his shoulders, Sallie walked him down the narrow stairwell. Outside, the two button men helped Rocco into the car.

Sallie drove to Capezzi’s place in Bay Ridge.

When they arrived Capezzi and his men thought Rocco had been shot. One of Capezzi’s bodyguards unlocked a heavy industrial door next to the storefront entrance of the ravioli shop. Rocco was taken upstairs to a fortified apartment whose walls were armed with steel sheeting. He was taken into a rear bedroom.

His shoes removed, he was laid on a bare mattress, and covered with blankets.

After Sallie briefed the Brooklyn
capo,
Capezzi asked, “Why this? She was just a woman.”

Sallie just replied, “To him, she was a dream.”

Capezzi called his personal physician.

The doctor arrived and injected Rocco with a sedative. He did this every morning for three days. Mom visited each of those days, fed Rocco vitamins, and held his hand for hours as he slept. Rocco would have no memory of any of this, or so Mom thought.

On the fourth day Rocco began to come around. Before Capezzi sent a car to Flushing to pick Mom up, he telephoned, and told her to “bring the baby.” Reluctantly, she complied.

At first (as Mom would tell it) I was a little frightened of the strange surroundings, but laughed and giggled when I saw my Uncle Rocco. I was only a year old and walked like a tiny Frankenstein toward his bed.

“Roc, Roc, Roc,” I said over and over until I reached him and slapped my hands on the bedcovers. Rocco looked down at me. Mom jumped nervously. Capezzi stood next to her and patted her arm as instruction not to worry.

Rocco picked me up and placed my face against his, and smiled, his eyes shut tight, a look of serene acceptance on his face. My tiny hands patted his head and nose and his smile widened. He placed me on the blanket next to him and handed me a tablespoon, which I promptly stuck in my mouth.

Mom ran and embraced him, then cried in his arms.

The next morning, for the first time in over a week, Rocco shaved and showered, and put on new clothes Capezzi had bought for him. Sallie had burned everything Rocco was wearing that night. The car was destroyed too. Since Leskey had been inside it, Capezzi wanted no links to Dorothy’s murder.

Leskey had left his prints all over the apartment, and from the way he killed Dorothy, the police believed him to be insane and extremely dangerous. He was at the top of the City’s most wanted list. Yet the newspapers seemed to ignore the story.

Leskey’s family had big hooks in the press, not the least of which was the millions every year their chain of department stores spent on advertising.

Ten days had past and no sign of Leskey. Sallie had put a twenty thousand dollar price on Leskey’s head, and had every shield on Capezzi’s payroll reporting directly to him on the progress of the investigation. Rocco grew increasingly angry and despondent. Sallie consulted with Capezzi’s physician and stayed close to Rocco at all times.

Although Capezzi was as fond of Rocco as he was of any loyal friend and soldier, if Rocco wasn’t back in the swing of things and soon, he wanted Sallie to take over. Sallie assured Capezzi that this would not be necessary.

He falied to mention that Rocco had begun his own search for Leskey.

In the end, though he never referred to Leskey by name, Rocco told me exactly what happened the day his search ended. And I knew then I was listening to a Rocco I had never known. He had kept so much bottled up for so long, it must have been a waterfall of sensory relief to simply, and finally, tell it all…

Darkness was about to fall. A light drizzle hit the windshield. It was a cool night. The wipers strummed rhythmically across the glass. Rocco parked a block from the bridge near a construction site.

He got out of the car and looked across the river to the Throgs Neck section of the Bronx. Houses were being constructed on the water’s edge. That would be a fine neighborhood someday, he thought to himself. He and Dorothy could make a home there. Have a pool built in the backyard. She would teach the kids how to swim. Rocco had never in his life gone swimming.