The Mezzogiorno Social Club Page 6
“Like a dead dog he stinks,” one of the cops said.
One of Fausto’s sons, small, skinny and slow, brown curls on his head falling over his ears, held a young rabbit in his arms, kindness in one of his eyes, and zeroes in the other. He didn’t fight and he didn’t stink, just waved to his shackled father as detectives sat him and the rabbit on a milk can.
“What’s your name?” Joe asked.
“Apollo.”
“You have a last name?”
“Yes.”
“What is it?”
“You are Petrosino?”
“Yes.”
“I am stupid and I must not talk with you.” He curled his lips against his teeth.
“Where are your brothers?” Joe asked.
“I am stupid and I must not talk with Petrosino.”
“Who killed Occhi?”
“He is killed?”
“Yes.”
“He is stupid, too.”
“Why is he stupid?”
“He did not find the painting, but maybe he did.”
“You have seen the painting?”
“No.”
“Who wants it?”
“Everybody.”
“Where did he look for it?”
“The tailor.”
“Where is the tailor?”
Gaga looked away, put all of a thumb into his mouth.
“Who has the painting?”
“Nobody,” he mumbled, thumb still in his mouth.
“Did Occhi have it?”
Gaga shrugged.
“Does Carlo have it?” Gaga shrugged.
People climbed from flats onto the zigzag of fire escapes to look down on the stable. A crowd at the top of the driveway thickened when an ambulance and a morgue wagon parked on the street.
The uniform sergeant saw Arnie in the crowd and tapped a cop’s shoulder. “On the gate, and don’t be letting in no newspaper people. And tell that Swede fella up there we don’t need no pictures today and I’ll be pleased not to see him again.”
The detectives hauled shovels, picks and axes from the sanitation truck into the stable. Beneath skeletons of buggies and coaches, a floor of limestone rectangles squared itself against the earth that extended under to the stone and masonry wall with the door in it.
The dust of stable shit kicked up as the detectives walked to the stalls of horses and a mule, none badly tended. A nervous goat stood with the mule.
The men opened the stalls and the beasts, as if they’d been waiting for the moment, cantered into the yard, broke through the crowd at the gate, and scattered into the street. The mule wandered stupidly, a butcher in a bloody apron eyeing the goat at the mule’s haunches.
The first swings of a pick into the ground cut loose a stench. Somebody called the morgue’s wagon into the yard and the uniformed guys unloaded bottles of ammonia and chlorine. They poured gallons around the shallow grave, then another grave, and then others, but it did little to weaken the reek that grabbed onto the humidity and leeched to the street.
They dug into three graves, found seven bodies, one of them almost fresh.
Joe called to Gaga: “Come here to see.”
Gaga stood, moved the baby rabbit to one hand, covered his nose and mouth with the other, and shuffled to where Joe was pointing.
“He is the tailor,” Gaga said.
“From up the stairs?”
“Yes.”
“Did he have the painting?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who are the others?”
Gaga shrugged.
“How did they get here?”
“They died.”
“Who brought them?”
“I did not see.”
“Did you see Don Strachi?”
“I do not know who that is.”
“Or The Ox?”
“No ox.”
“Is the painting here?”
“I do not know.”
The morgue guys loaded their wagon with crates and sacks of what was left of seven victims.
The digs that had buried the bodies and the new dig sent an inside wall into tilt and ruptured a gas line, but the open doors and gabled windows kept the odorless vapors harmless.
The sun set, dark settled in, and the detectives scrambled into the wagons and trucks, taking with them two stilettos, a .30 caliber rifle, a 12 gauge, double barreled, sawed off shotgun, a box of buckshot, pieces of seven bodies, and no connection to Cesare Strachi.
Joe said to the uniform sergeant: “Tomorrow morning same time. That good?”
“Good by me, Joe.”
***
The search would resume in the morning, into closets, cabinets and desks on floors that sagged under paper-packed lockers and chests. There could be something in that mess — a phone number, an address, anything that connected Strachi to the stable. And maybe a painting stashed in a place too dark for Lina to see.
A fresh squad of reserves got to the stable to keep it secure. The stink, new to their noses, twisted their faces.
They’d been told to let no reporters past the stable’s gateway.
But Arnie the Swede, who seemed to get there for the first time that day, was not a reporter. So the cop at the sidewalk gate said sure Arnie, and the cop at the stable doors said the same.
Arnie mounted the camera on the tripod, set the lens, loaded flash powder, and fought gags as he quick-stepped into the stable. Holding his breath, he fixed the tripod’s legs, aimed the camera into the dark, opened the shutter and sparked the flash powder.
The blast singed off the fumes of death. The stone wall stood sturdy because the explosion tore at the roof and sent it climbing, tearing, then falling in rubbles of lumber and slate to the stable floor and on the smolder that used to be Arnie the Swede.
***
For years, Joe Petrosino had been going to the restaurant on Spring Street for Vincent Saulino’s good food, and for Adelina, Saulino’s widowed daughter. But at the end of this long day, with the stink of death lingering in his nose, the aches in his head, and any possible connection to Cesare Strachi burned up or blown through the stable’s roof, the attraction was the wine.
At his regular table, Joe sipped from the glass that Adelina had filled before she brought the fish and potatoes. With sleepy eyes Joe followed her move from table to table, wearing the dress he liked. A simple dress, a print with flowers and yellow stems, and a white apron, still new. She’d done some woman magic with her black hair, her lips, her cheeks. Or maybe he had never noticed.
There had been no thunderbolt with Adelina as there had been with Lucia. No dreams and no longings, and though thoughts of her pleased him as much as any woman who had ever caught his eye, thoughts for Lucia still triggered his fantasies.
Adelina filled his glass again, took off the apron, and sat across from him. Looking at his plate, she asked: “You are not so hungry, or you don’t like?”
“No, it’s good. I’m tired, that’s all.”
“You work too hard for the police.”
“Maybe.”
“Never I see you too tired to eat. There are troubles, I think.”
“You think so?” He grinned.
“There is danger and it is why you care to not have a wife.”
Joe chuckled, kept a smile. “I am too busy for a wife.”
“Papa says you soon will retire and rest.”
“I cannot allow malavita the joy of seeing me retire.”
“I too will have joy to worry no longer for you.”
Joe leaned forward, a hand on the table. “You worry for me?”
Adelina set both her palms on his hand. “You choose not to see that I do.”
“You worry for danger?”
“Yes, and that you are alone.”
“I am rarely alone, Adelina.” Joe took back his hand and forked a piece of fish from his plate. “My job does not allow loneliness.”
“Your job is not a home.”
“Only with a
wife will I have a home? Is that what you say?”
“It is what I say.”
“And a meal like this every night?” Through a smile he filled his mouth with a roasted potato.
“First you don’t eat, Giuseppe. Now you eat too fast.”
Heat Wave
The gift of Don Cesare’s roses without perfume had gone limp, but now a perky and fragrant bouquet, delivered from the florist next door, filled the vase and made Lucia smile as she stepped to the back room with the lunch of peppers and eggs she and Rosina had prepared that morning. She set the lunch in the ice box, opened the rear door, lifted the window over the sink, then switched on the ceiling fan.
With the fan’s breeze rustling pages of Mondo Nuovo on the small desk, she sat, worn with four months of baby in her belly, and cranky with heat that had arrived these early weeks of summer.
She opened the top of her dress and sponged her neck and shoulders as she read new Mondo Nuovo and Il Progresso columns of the stable fire, now two weeks old, the identified and unidentified bodies, and the indictment of Fausto Patarama.
News of the heat wave, on the same page of Il Progresso, seemed a related story. Ninety degrees and one hundred percent humidity. There had been sunstrokes. Horses collapsed in the streets. Crowds mobbed Coney Island for days, many sleeping on the beach through the night. Items about mattresses and pillows on tenement roofs and fire escapes she didn’t read. That was not news.
And she didn’t have to read that ice had become scarce. No delivery in two days. Fish rotted, complained the fish man. Butchers tossed decaying meat to roaming dogs before rot got to stink.
She heard the calabrese come into the shop and bark about his fruits and vegetables going to waste. She fixed her dress and stepped out to see a sack of peaches on the work table.
“Before these go bad, too,” the calabrese said, looking from Rosina to Lucia. Even with the heat, he kept a cap on his head, removing it almost rhythmically to dab a limp red handkerchief on his climbing forehead.
“The saints allow us to suffer,” he said, his voice angry, a finger pointing to the heavens, “and I forbid my wife the coins to light candles.”
“But we thank the saints because they have sent you to help us through the day,” Rosina said. “How worse it would be without them.”
“Yes, yes,” the man said through a sigh. “This heat will end.” He wiped his face, bunched the handkerchief into a hip pocket and turned to leave.
“Thank you for the peaches,” Rosina said.
Lucia rolled her eyes and yawned through a smile. She and Rosina had been up during recent nights in their airless flat, sponging themselves at the kitchen sink.
“It has never been like this,” Lucia said, moving a chair to the pattern table and sitting across from Rosina.
“Perhaps we should stay here tonight,” Rosina said. “The fans are a help.”
“I have thought the same and thought too to have the coffin here.” She gazed through thoughts that hardened her face. “I thought it was over, but he’s still a bother. Dead, and still a bother.”
“Sister, no more, please. It will be over soon.”
“Yes, yes, very well,” Lucia said.
Rosina took the peaches to the back, washed and sliced them, and tasted one. Stepping out, she said: “The calabrese has made a truly sweet gesture. We must be sure to — ”
She was interrupted by Benny Bats. He’d come into the shop with steps as snappy as his words. “Signora, I offer late condolences for your troubles. I did not know your husband well, but I believe he was a fine man.”
“My sister is the widow,” Rosina said, looking to Lucia.
Benny turned to Lucia as if first seeing her.
“Excuse me, I am confused.”
Lucia heard no American accent in his napulitan’. “Thank you for your kindness,” she said.
“I am Benito Carlucco, associate of Don Cesare Strachi, who wishes to inform you that the sale of this property is complete and he is pleased to be your landlord.”
“Yes, Giacalone has told us,” Lucia said. “Are we to expect changes?”
“I know only what Don Strachi has already told you, Signora. No need for worry.”
“Worry comes easily to my sister and me.”
Benny looked again at Rosina, caught her looking at him. He smiled, she smiled, and he said: “But perhaps you will interrupt doubt so that we can see to a suit.”
“For you?” Lucia asked.
“For me, yes.”
Lucia stepped back and scanned the suit he wore, the shirt, the collar. “Very well,” she said to Rosina, “we must fit a suit for Mr. Carlucco.”
“So pretty are ladies when they smile,” Benny said and both women smiled. “And I see you have received my flowers.”
“Yes, thank you, they are beautiful. There was no card, we did not know from who ...”
“I just wanted you to have them.”
“We thank you.”
“Now for the suit?”
“You wear a fine suit now,” Lucia said. “A good material for summer, an elegant cut, clean stitching.”
“It is wise to please Don Cesare, who is particular about the appearance of those who work for him.”
“Double breasted? Single?”
“One of each?”
“Dark colors? A summer flannel, worsted?”
“Worsted would make a fine figure for business.”
He looked to Rosina, Lucia watching her find Benny’s gaze.
“Rosina, please show Mr. Carlucco our patterns.”
Rosina plopped catalogs on the counter and flipped the pages to sketches of suits. Benny chose one, then another, and agreed with the fabrics and colors the sisters suggested.
Lucia’s worth in the business had been her hands, stitching so precise as to appear part of the fabric. Enzo had said that, praising her, but praising himself, because he had taught her. Taught her too, with unusual patience, how to measure each length and width, to always consider the figure of the customer and to insist that he or she wear the work and remain as still as the clothes dummy in the window while she pinned bodices and hems.
He had not allowed his wife to measure a man, but she’d watched and found no trouble imitating him. She could have asked this handsome man to supply her with a suit that fit him well. The suit he wore would have given her all the measurements she needed.
“Remove your jacket, please,” she said and glanced at Rosina, her face bright for Mr. Carlucco. Lucia handed the tape measure to her, and stepped back.
Rosina hesitated, but then handled the tape measure more certainly than being new at it, calling out numbers for Lucia to record. Neck size — his collar fresh, a scar on the side of his face she’d not noticed before — shoulders and chest, waist and hips — like an eel, but sturdy.
“Step on the fitting platform please,” Rosina said, then watching in the looking glass, had him turn and turn again. “Do you wear shoes like this always?”
“Yes.”
“Stand straight please.”
“This is straight as I get,” he said with a grin.
“Fine,” Rosina said and, with snaps of the tape, measured the arms, shoulders and waist, the legs from waist to cuff, then faltered at the in-seam measurement. But with Lucia watching, challenging, the younger sister set the tape and called out a number.
“It will be a minute to make a price,” Lucia said.
“That’s all right, whatever it is. You’ll be as honest as your husband.”
“You have been here?”
“Yes,” Benny said. “As I say, I knew him not well, but he corrected the lengths of my sleeves after a tailor on Hanover Square made the suit.”
Lucia looked to his jacket draped on a chair. “I do not recall ...”
“Not this suit, another,” he said.
“With so many tailors here, why go there?”
“He was a paesano of my father’s and was kind to me and mama when my Papa di
ed in the snow of ‘88.”
“We have heard of the snow. I am sorry.”
“As I am sorry for your loss. They say there was a knife letter, and that their real concern was for a work of art.”
“Work of art?”
“Yes, a valuable painting that had been stored here during negotiations of a sale.”
“Perhaps that is why the shop was in such upset. But no work of art has ever been in this shop.”
“Very well, Signora, but you should know that its return would result in a substantial reward.”
“Enzo never spoke of a painting. I hope that it causes no further problems for us.”
“That is doubtful. Don Cesare’s associates are not threatened by thieves or knife letters.”
“We are not associates. We are renters.”
“But renters of a Don Cesare property.”
Lucia helped Benny with his jacket.
“When may I return?” he asked.
“Tuesday would be good. For a fitting.”
“You’ll get to it that quickly?”
“My sister and I spend much time in the shop.”
“There are so many tailors,” Benny said, with a look of concern, “profit must be difficult.”
“As long as we have hands, there is profit enough.”
“Don Cesare is concerned for your troubles and it would please him to assist you with the expense of the funeral home.”
“Thank you, but our neighbors have suggested the shop for its room and cooler air.”
Rosina looked away from the lie.
“You have contacted an undertaker?” Benny asked.
“We have yet to hear from the morgue.”
“An unpleasant detail.”
“Please tell Mr. Strachi that I thank his gesture and will consider his offer of kindness.”
Benny dropped bills on the work table and stepped toward the door. “I look forward to seeing you ladies again.”
***
Benny walked out of the shop, letting go a hint of a limp that usually softened up women. This time it helped the lie that he knew nothing of what Strachi was up to, why he’d strong armed Giacalone’s building, or why he needed to buy the scorched lots of ground where the stable used to stand.