The Secret (16 page)

She helped me out of my clothes, shedding the intimate Cheeks things at the same time. Then she grabbed my hand and led me into the bathroom.

I needed to use the toilet and turned toward it. “Just a minute,” I murmured.

“No, no!”

In a moment we were in the shower stall, under the stream of warm water. When we were wet she grabbed the soap, soaped her hands, and soaped my hard and rigid penis.

Then—“Pee on me, Lenny,” she whispered hoarsely. “Pee all over me.”

She stepped away from the stream and faced me. I accommodated her. I pissed on her belly, her cunt, and her hips, then on her legs—giving her a thick, hot, yellow stream. She laughed. She shoved me out of the shower water, tipped her hips back, and pissed on me.

“You got any left, honey?” she asked.

I nodded. I had a little. She dropped to her knees and offered her face. She held her eyes tightly closed while I pissed on her forehead and nose and cheeks and chin. Some of it went between her lips and into her mouth—and she was in no great hurry to open her mouth to the shower stream and rinse it out.

And that was just the beginning.

*   *   *

Before that night was over we had settled a great many things. I knew in the first place that this would be no ordinary relationship, that it was going to be a relationship with levels of complexity I don’t think my father had guessed.

In the intervals between the things we did, Vicky told me a lot about herself. She was forty-four years old, and knew that I was twenty-six. She told me her maiden name was Castellano—which meant that she was
connected.
She talked frankly about that:

“It’s not like
The Godfather.
It’s not like—People are family; people are friends. They try to take care of each other. Look. If we didn’t take care of each other, who would take care of us, in the face of other people who are taking care of
themselves?
That’s the way of it. It’s a
network.
It’s not just Italians. The Jews did it, the Irish, and now the blacks—everybody who’s scorned and put down.”

“The Boston Brahmins,” I said, “came to this country because they were scorned and put down in England.”

Vicky nodded. As I was to learn, she had given a great deal of attention to this topic. “Well … sometimes mutual-protection societies make wrong turns. Sometimes—I don’t have to name names. The most respectable of respectables do things they shouldn’t do. People get killed? How many people were killed by the Robber Barons a century or so ago? So Arnold Rothstein gets whacked out. Dutch Schultz. Bugsy Siegel. How many men and women were whacked out on the orders of Andrew Carnegie? John D. Rockefeller?”

We coupled again. I plunged into her as deep and hard as I could. Then she sucked me. She was as good as Sue Ellen or Mollie. I returned the favor. That I did that was a measure of how enthusiastic I had already become about Vicky. I pushed my tongue as deeply as I could where my cock had been. She guided me to her clit, and I licked that until she stiffened and moaned.

She was obsessed with me, which was staggering. I was bewitched by her, drawn to her, irresistibly. We were very different people, but the differences got submerged. This was no one-night thing. It was not just passion. I knew that Vicky Lucchese was going to be an important part of the rest of my life.

Before morning we settled it also that Gottsman, Scheck would represent Interboro Fruit.

30

Bringing Interboro Fruit to my firm as a client made me a rainmaker. A rainmaker is a lawyer who brings business to his firm, and is more valued than one who does competent work.
Getting
business is more important than
doing
business.

Most of Interboro’s work was assigned to other lawyers, specialists in the various legal problems such a company would have. We even assigned its problems with interstate truck licensing to another firm. Under Hugh Scheck’s supervision, I handled the company’s corporation problems. I should have spent another year toting briefcases, but having brought in a good client I got special consideration. Scheck took a liking to me and became my mentor.

Hugh Scheck was one hell of a lawyer. He was one hell of a man. He’d taken a spinal wound in Vietnam and lost 70 percent of the use of his legs. But the gutsy bastard would not sit in a wheelchair. He stumbled around on two canes, red-faced and huffing and determined. He took no crap from anybody and was a good enough lawyer that he didn’t have to. He was one of the few men I’ve ever seen who could simply stare someone down. The power of his personality, plus the power of his intellect, were formidable.

“Y’know what this fruit company is, don’t you?” he said to me one day within a month after I brought in the client. “I mean, I suppose you know its history.”

“I’ve got my suspicions. Suppose you tell me.”

“Okay. Selling high-quality fresh fruits and vegetables has been taken over by the Koreans. Oh, you can get the same in supermarkets but not like the quality the Koreans offer. Those bastards work their tails off to run their little stores. They drive downtown every morning before dawn to buy their kiwi and mangos and what all, plus the apples and tomatoes they get from New Jersey. They buy the very best. They buy the imported stuff from Interboro.”

“So?”

Hugh sighed, as if he supposed I should know what he was about to say. “Louie Lucchese was a Carlino. There was a time when most grocers didn’t buy from anybody else what they could buy from Louie. You can guess why. Then he got it through his head he didn’t have to use muscle. Interboro is a respectable business now. I wouldn’t have let it in here as a client if I didn’t think so. But watch out for the widow, Len. Vicky’s maiden name was Castellano—Vittoria Castellano. Do I have to introduce you to that name?”

I shook my head.

“One of the Five Families. Daughter of a capo. Vicky is connected like nobody is connected. Which … I don’t know if she uses it or not. But she’s
big,
man. Don’t cross her.”

I didn’t tell him I slept with her, and I don’t think he guessed.

*   *   *

I confronted my father. “What have you done to me? Vicky Castellano! Jesus Christ…!”

“The world has got two kinds of guys, Len,” he said calmly. “You and I ain’t Rockefellers or Vanderbilts. And we never will be, no matter what we do or don’t do. Or uptown Jews, either. You’re Uncle Harry’s great-nephew. Your mother was a … I guess you know by now. A nude dancer. Not a hooker, by God, not anything like, but a nude dancer. Me, I’m—”

“You’re not Mafia!”

He paused for a moment. “No. But I’m not holier than thou, either—like your father-in-law.”

He’d hit me there. I had a failing marriage, and one reason it was failing was that my wife’s family never ceased to look down on me. The son of Jerry Cooper would never be good enough—no matter what he achieved—to be Sue Ellen’s husband.

“Vicky can do a hell of a lot for you,” he went on. “Already has. Besides which … tell me she’s not the sweetest piece of ass you’ve ever had.”

“She’s Sicilian,” I grumbled sullenly.

“Hey! Whatsa matter with you? Arnold Rothstein was not Sicilian. Neither was Dutch Schultz. Neither was Bugsy Siegel. Neither was Meyer Lansky. And—ha!—neither is Sol Schwartz.”

“There’s a relationship,” I said. “I mean—”

“Of
trust,
” he interrupted me. “If I’d ever wanted to be connected, maybe I could have arranged it. I never wanted it. I
don’t
want it. But Vicky Lucchese is a
source.
Your law firm understands that. And if it doesn’t, fuck it. Vicky can do more for you than Gottsman, Scheck and Shapiro. And a hell of a lot more for you than Sue Ellen and her father.”

*   *   *

I don’t know how soon Sue Ellen began to suspect that I was seeing another woman. When I began to stay in town overnight three or four nights a week, I suppose. She called one night after midnight, checking up on me. I was in my father’s guest room, as I’d told her I would be. I talked to her for ten minutes that night, while Vicky went in the bathroom, sat on the closed toilet seat, and read.

“How many nights a week you have to stay in town?” Sue Ellen asked peevishly.

“It’s business, honey,” I said.

“What kind of business? I’ve started to think it’s funny business, lover. You don’t come home like a guy who hasn’t had any since night before last.”

“Law business,” I said. “I was with a client until just half an hour ago.”

Vicky smirked.

“Your voice sounds funny.”

“I was with people who smoked.”

What was funny was my struggle to speak in a normal voice, since Vicky had come out of the bathroom and stood nude, hands on her hips, grinning at me.

“You’ll come home some night and there won’t be any for you.” She hung up.

“We’re gonna have to come to a conclusion,” Vicky said as I put down the telephone.

“I know.”

“I’m too old to commit myself to a relationship with no future.”

“Yes.”

“Well … we have to think about it.”

Anyway, Sue Ellen was jealous without knowing why she should be. And I was playing with fire.

Sue Ellen continued to study Chinese and became fluent. So did Mollie. One day she announced that she and Mollie wanted to go to China for a month. Her father would put up part of the cost, and she wondered how much
we
could afford to pay. I was doing all right at the firm, but I was not doing well enough to fund an extended trip to China while meeting all the other obligations we had. Would
my
father contribute as her father was? He contributed enough, and one late-summer day Sue Ellen and Mollie boarded a plane at Kennedy and flew to Hong Kong, from where they would make excursions into China.

Vicky was pleased. She rented a love nest for us—complete with a telephone that would ring in my father’s apartment so that he or Melissa could switch the call as if only sending it to the extension in the guest bedroom.

It was an adventure to live with Vicky.

I was not an experienced lover. I had dated, but I had never had sex with any woman but Sue Ellen and Mollie until I met Vicky. Sue Ellen, still in her twenties, had gained a little weight. She was not heavy, but she was a little looser than she had been when I married her. Vicky, who was eighteen years older than Sue Ellen, had a perfect body. Vicky’s body was no longer youthful, but it was taut and flawlessly proportioned. Sue Ellen, though the daughter of Boston Brahmins, had a slightly dusky complexion. Her skin was smooth but not glossy. It was as if road dust had been used to powder her all over. Vicky’s skin was almost white, and her big, shiny, vivid-pink nipples were in distinct contrast to the white skin of her breasts. Because she shaved her crotch, the darker pink of her inner parts showed whenever her legs were more than a little apart.

Three words did not yet pass between Vicky and me. “I love you.” We didn’t say it. I wouldn’t have dared say it unless she said it first, though I did, in fact, love her. I still could not guess exactly what she felt for me. I know she didn’t want her sixteen-year-old son to meet her twenty-six-year-old lover. Beyond that … she was caring. She was generous. She was mysterious.

She was also the only woman I ever experienced who could suck my entire scrotum and testicles into her mouth—or ever wanted to.

31

JERRY

By early 1978 Giselle and I had to accept the fact that she was dying. Cancer. I had avoided the specific subject before because I was not sure I could handle it.

She was not afraid. Her chief worry was that I would not be able to rear Len properly, and she asked me for certain promises about that. I was to see to it that he got a fine education and entered a learned profession. He was not to become a street hustler. He was not to be like Buddy. What she meant, of course, was that he was not to be like me. We might have a fine, successful business, she and I, but I had started out a street hustler, and, whatever Len became, he was not to start that way.

The only question was, would we tell him she was dying? We agreed not to. The shock would be bad enough. Anticipation would be worse. It was worse for me. It nearly destroyed me. If not for the knowledge that I had a son to raise, I think it might have led me to suicide. I am honestly not at all sure I would be alive today if it had not been for my son. I couldn’t abandon him. I could readily have abandoned everything and everyone else.

I suppose most people think there is nothing worse than dying. There is something worse: having to watch someone you love die, knowing you are going to have to live on. That, believe me, is much, much worse.

When the end was near, I took her to France. She wanted to see her daughters, the ones she’d had by Jean Pierre Martin. She also wanted to see her sister.

Her daughter Jacqueline was married and the mother of a little girl. Her daughter Jeanne was not married but was the mother of a son. Her sister Therèse—the one who had collaborated with the Nazis and had been marched naked through the streets with a shaved head—lived quietly in Lyon in the family home, with a wine merchant her own age, and seemed to have been forgiven by the city. I suppose people remembered, but by then the whole French nation, not just its collaborators, knew it had something to be ashamed of.

Giselle died in Lyon. She was fifty-two years old.

*   *   *

Sometimes I called Sal by his real name, which was Sol. At first he didn’t like it, but when he saw he couldn’t bully me out of it, he accepted it.

He went through girlfriends like shit through a goose. Truda, the big fat girl who modeled for us, lasted a year or so. I remember a Jeannie and a Suzie. Most of the names I don’t recall. I didn’t even meet all of them.

He was very kind to me when I lost Giselle. He met me at the airport and drove me up to Lodge. He didn’t even go in. He waited for me in the parking lot. He knew Len didn’t like him and figured the boy was enduring enough pain without a visit from his Uncle Sal. I was touched by how sensitive Sal could be.