The Mezzogiorno Social Club Read online

  She looked to tables where women, unlike any she knew, but American women of sophistication, sat, some with long gloves and flowing gowns trimmed with fine lace. Lively women, some young, some older, accustomed to themselves and to this restaurant. One woman with a cigarette and painted lips wore a gown that Lucia admired, though a chiffon scarf hid much of it. A woman with rings on both hands wore a cascade of pearls over her shoulders. She was speaking with a woman with pale skin and the trousers and shirt of a man.

  Strachi well knew his way around the menu, then set it down as if it were yesterday’s newspaper. His fingers were manicured, Lucia saw, and each pinky wore a ring.

  “Bring what you will,” he told a waiter, “but include the veal.”

  The waiter left, Don Strachi turned to Lucia. “We are here for business, but more importantly, all is well with the child?”

  “Yes.”

  “If I may ask, you have chosen a midwife or a doctor?”

  “I have arranged for both.”

  “As I would have suggested.”

  The waiter returned with a bottle of wine and a basket of bread. Another waiter delivered a bowl thick with minestrone and another of pasta e fagiol’. Then plates of risotto, of veal cutlets with mushrooms and peas, a beef pizzaiol’, then a salad and, finally, a plate mounded with a zambaglione custard littered with figs.

  They discussed business. She would look after the needs of Don Cesare’s building and shop — “our building” and “our shop,” he’d said. She would collect rents and do little else. She would pay no rent, and no gas, electric or telephone bill.

  “We have no telephone,” she’d said.

  “Soon you will.”

  Lucia was smiling now, letting Don Cesare play with empty talk. She had barely finished a glass of wine, though the bottle was at its bottom. He smiled and she avoided the space in his teeth.

  “Consider what I have chosen for you,” he said.

  “Chosen for me?”

  “A shop.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You soon will.”

  A blush in his face, Strachi held his glass as if studying the rays of light spearing the red wine.

  “In the grapes there is truth,” he said, setting his eyes on hers. At first soft, they hardened and sparked. He inched his chair closer, shifted and set his hand on the back of her chair. “But I need no wine to assure you that should you give me the honor, in time, of course, you and your child will have my name.”

  Lucia surprised herself with a near tear. Taking the handkerchief he offered, she promised to consider the unlikely, though despite his looks and grating self importance, he did not frighten her.

  He set down his wine and covered her hand with his. The red stone of a pinky ring flared as she took back her hand.

  “I have only begun to wear black.” She gave back his handkerchief.

  He took it with no damage to his smile. “I ask only the chance that your feelings — ”

  “Please let this be a meeting of business.”

  “All right, then. To business.”

  ***

  The night had turned chilly. The Ox drove up an avenue flanked by brownstones and apartment houses, crossed streets lined with young elms, and lamps lighted with electricity; a neighborhood wrapped in slumber that Lucia knew existed in this city, but had never seen.

  The Ox turned into the 24th Street and stopped at a brownstone set behind saplings, squat bushes and iron pickets. He shut the engine and the quiet deepened.

  With the soft tones he’d spoken in the restaurant, Strachi said: “This building I have purchased, Lucia. It will make for a comfortable home. Please look.”

  They faced the house, Strachi saying: “There is an office of real estate suitable for the shop of a tailor. Or a dress shop, as you likely prefer.”

  “Don Cesare, I don’t understand. There is no need. I have a shop. We have discussed arrangements of rent and responsibility, and there is no purpose in discussing another.”

  “The shop you now have is for your past. This place is your future. A shop, yes, but with a home to accommodate your sister and your baby.” He turned to face her and put a hand on her shoulder. “And more babies perhaps.”

  ***

  They climbed the dark stairs to her flat and she put her key in the lock. He pulled her to him, she felt power in his arms. She pushed away and he let her, but he grasped her again, firmly but gently.

  He locked her face between his palms and put his lips on hers. She responded with curiosity, found warmth and tenderness, but pulled away, leaving his arms angled as if he still held her face.

  He turned to the stairs, turned again, a hand on the bannister. He said nothing, but she felt his anger, and if his hat had not tilted comically, she would have been frightened. He turned again and, as the zuccon’ dropped into his shoulders, stomped down to the darkness.

  Though angered, the man had offered no force, no unkindness at her rejections. She found sympathy in the footsteps of his laughable retreat, and certain gratitude to the gentle gangster who had rescued her from the clutches of a less gentle man. And, finally, she found herself smiling at the flowered cross that had lost its duplicity while in the peace of the streets around Madison Square.

  Petrosino Does the Right Thing

  Aknock at Benny’s door. “Come down.”

  “Be right there.”

  From his window, Benny looked out on the November day, dry and cool, dust climbing from a street sweeper’s broom into the morning slants of sun. A two-horse truck sat at the curb, cases of olive oil on its open bed, and two guys chuting the cases down the sidewalk door into the cellar.

  Down the back stairs, Benny went into the rooms behind the grocery, and in the kitchen found the grocer with the Corsican who was with the oil and the horses, a short man with oily hair and moustache. He gabbed some dog Latin that Benny couldn’t understand.

  The grocer, also a short man, with a clean shirt and apron, handed Benny a paper bag. “Go with him,” he said, and dropped a can opener and counter rag into the bag.

  Down to the cellar, the sharp smell of old oil climbed from the hard dirt floor to Benny’s nose and kept his breath shallow. A bare bulb swinging in a short arc from the ceiling moved shadows along shelves of cans, jars and boxes, and on cases of olive oil stacked four and five high.

  The Corsican took Benny to a box that looked like all the others, set it on the floor and stepped back. Benny cut open the box, pulled out the gallon cans, with pictures on them of farms, flowers and maidens.

  “Which one?” he asked.

  The Corsican shrugged.

  Benny opened three of the four cans before he lifted the homemade plates from the olive oil, wrapped them in the counter rag, and set them in the grocery bag. He climbed two and three steps at a time to the hallway phone near his room. He dialed.

  “Yeah.”

  “Ox?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay,” Benny said.

  “They look good? They all there?”

  “They’re all here. How good, I don’t know.”

  “Stay there.”

  “When you coming?”

  “Now.”

  “He’s with you?”

  “Yeah.”

  Benny called the Squad. “Petrosino there?”

  “No. What you got?”

  “Plates for twos, fives and tens. US and Canada. They told me wait, they’re coming for them. Where’s Joe?”

  “Near you.”

  ***

  When the soles of Georgie Nuts’ shoes grew holes, he used to slip cuts of linoleum into them to keep out the sidewalk. But since hooking up with Benny, he wore new shoes. His wife and his kids wore new shoes too. But he kept on the old greenhorn jacket because Benny figured it smart for him to look like a guy who sells peanuts. “You know, a mush, a guy nobody sees.”

  So Georgie Nuts was in. He kept from getting cocky and stayed calm and sharp when the Black Maria backed
into Orchard Street, and Petrosino and his detectives stood in doorways up and down the street. He figured he was getting pinched, tossed betting slips onto the hot coals of the roaster, and turned away players with coins in their fingers, handing them bags of peanuts, saying not now.

  Across the street the green Cadillac with The Ox at the wheel pulled to the curb, the grocery’s sidewalk door still angled open. Strachi, on the passenger side, lit a stogie. The Ox got out, walked to where a harness maker’s sign pointed into an alley, and stood there. When Benny came up from the cellar with the shopping bag, The Ox grabbed it.

  Petrosino gave the nod, the Maria rolled out of Orchard Street, detectives cuffed The Ox, cuffed Benny, and threw them in the wagon. Joe, Corrao and the counterfeit plates went for Strachi.

  Joe said: “Here, don’t lose this,” and set the shopping bag on the floor at Strachi’s feet.

  Strachi’s face went white, then pink. His jaws tightened. A hollow growl came from his chest. “Turn to blood, Petrosino.”

  “You know me, strunz?”

  “Better than you like.”

  Joe opened the Cadillac’s door, grabbed Strachi by the lapels, yanked him out. First the frisk, then jabs and hooks, fists in a blur, arms like pistons. Strachi took it, but buckled.

  “Now you know me better, street shit.” Joe picked him up, threw him a few more raps, cuffed him. “Anything else you need to say?”

  Joe shoved him into the wagon.

  Holding open the wagon’s door, Joe said: “This automobile, who drives it?” He looked to Benny. “You, what’s your name?”

  “Benny Carlucco.”

  “You drive this?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Come on, then.”

  Benny climbed down, the wagon took off.

  “You clobbered the shit out of that fucking scrub, Joe,” he said. “What a beating the son of a bitch caught. Like a machine, you did. I heard, but I never believed.”

  “You could drive this, or what?”

  “And no blood. How the fuck ...”

  “You could drive this, or no?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Let’s go.”

  “I’m handcuffed, Joe.”

  They got in the Cadillac, Joe took the cuffs off Benny.

  “Where now?” Benny asked. “We wait for night court, right?”

  “Court tomorrow morning. The judge is good for us.”

  “We stay in those fucking Tombs tonight?”

  “Where you wanna stay, the Monterey?”

  “What I do for you, Joe.”

  “You do for you, Benny.”

  “How long we gotta stay in?”

  “You and The Ox walk in the morning.”

  “The Ox walks too?”

  “He walks and they think maybe he did the set up.”

  “And me?”

  “They worry about you too. You knew that.”

  “And Strachi?”

  “There’s a warrant on the other side for him.”

  “How the hell did that happen?”

  “An election coming up, the Camorra wants their people back in. The paperwork that got buried on the kidnaping that he got sprung for, popped up and they need him back for show.”

  “Why the hell didn’t you just put him on the boat, Joe? Che cazz’? Now I gotta worry he’s gonna see my two faces.”

  “Do I tell you don’t worry?”

  “You do what I do, see if you don’t worry. Why the hell did he even show here?”

  “You know why. He trusts nobody. That’s why he lets nobody know everything. The plates were here for a buyer; he needed to talk about more plates and more money.”

  “And the buyer was a cop, and that’s why you were here before I even called.”

  “Not a cop. The Secret Service. Their case, we only helped. Unless you testify, they couldn’t charge him. I told them you will not testify, so their undercover talked about buying more plates and paper, and that’s why the greedy bastard showed.”

  “You really look out for me, huh?”

  “Like you don’t know.”

  “I know Joe, I know. That greaseball Corsican getting locked up?”

  “The Secret Service is holding off. And that’s good for you. Strachi will think he was the set up. Or the grocer, or the wife. By the time he talks to his lawyer his head will spin so much his mug shot will be a blur.”

  “And your mug gets in the paper again, yeah?”

  “Not your business.”

  “I got something, but maybe it ain’t my business.”

  “Say what you want.”

  “Look in Strachi’s pockets, maybe there’s a picture of you from the newspaper. He keeps it because he’s gonna kill you. Not have somebody else do it. Himself, he says. Okay? I should stay quiet?”

  “How long you know this?”

  “Yesterday. Got it from The Ox.”

  “I know it longer than you.”

  The New Boss

  No one made book on who the acting boss would be. All knew that Strachi, cruel and reckless, and Happy Carmine Tonno, cruel and slippery, had grown up on the side of a mountain claimed by generations of Camorra clans that sold muscle, broken knees and murder, and staked the heads of enemies along any piece of road that crossed another.

  With a mushroom nose, Carmine Tonno looked like a Sicilian, talked like one when he had to, but his blue eyes from conquering ancestry said other things.

  The man’s head stayed square no matter what hat sat on it, and usually he wore none. Thick, wavy hair, white since early on. A short stogie in his mouth all the time had tinted his teeth the color of cork. With four or more of his teeth gold, and a few more gone, he rarely smiled, but when he did, the gold glittered like treasure, and made for him the Happy moniker.

  The little talk that made it out of his mouth was smart because he was smart — and wise to have a Sicilian wife who had given him four plump daughters and two sons. The younger son was Carmine, Jr., called Mootzi by his sisters when they weren’t calling him piscazot’ — pees his pants — since he’d been in the crib. His brother, Dominic, was another story. From ten years old he held the same blue gaze in his eyes as did his father.

  The neighborhood had been home for Carmine since before Strachi got sent there. He never beefed about it, felt that Strachi’s operations should have been his, but doing the right thing for the Naples men of respect had paid off for Strachi, so smart soldier Carmine did the right thing too, and stayed patient.

  Strachi had made few moves without Happy Carmine’s counsel. With the latest bogus money thing, Carmine had warned him. “It feels wrong. Send somebody else, or forget it.”

  “He’s a spender, this guy. He wants to do more things.”

  “He can’t talk to nobody but you? This Benny Bats that you brag about. What about him?”

  “All the time you say keep secrets, I don’t want nobody knowing too much.”

  ***

  That talk with Carmine had been nagging at Strachi since Petrosino kicked him around the street and slammed him in the Tombs. In a damp cell, no blanket, no sunlight, he needed a bath and a shave and his face drooped like a tired sack.

  Lying on the iron shelf that was his bed, watching a roach stroll the ceiling, he heard Carmine’s napulitan’ before he saw him. “They’re sending you back.”

  Strachi bounced to his feet, and Carmine almost smiled. “You saw the lawyer?” Strachi asked.

  Carmine nodded.

  Strachi sensed a look behind Carmine’s face, a look of satisfaction for ignoring his counsel, a look of spite with ideas of making a run at boss.

  Strachi gripped the bars of the cell.

  “The widow,” he said, his voice soft, “she’s in the house?”

  “Her and the sister, yeah.”

  “I wrote letters, but nothing came back. She asks for me?”

  “She asks if you will return. Asks Benny.”

  “What do our friends say to that?”

  “They
are unhappy with your judgment.”

  “They fault me for being arrested.”

  “Yes.”

  “They getting me out?”

  “They are not moved to hurry.”

  “What I do, I do right away. Now I wait. Till when?”

  “First the election.”

  “And if we lose?”

  “We do not lose.”

  Vito Red

  The Italian Navy delivered Don Strachi to the Island of San Stefano, a pile of lava just big enough to fit the rock walls of its ancient prison. But lawyers and court tricks got him placed across half of a mile of the Tyrrhenian Sea, to Ventotene, the small, pastel-colored island filled with the scents of caper and rosemary shrubs, where daughters and wives of Roman emperors had been exiled for political misbehavior, to villas of comfort and mystery.

  Not too different for the Camorrista. In a terraced room that was never locked, he looked to the sea, saw sunrises and sunsets. He slept between clean sheets, and freely visited the island’s homes for a drink or a meal. Or he strolled to the pier, to the boats and ferries and, on a windy morning watched the mail boat deliver Vittorio San Martino.

  Strachi watched him walk up the hill. Tall as a jockey, the face of a turtle, eyes bulbous behind glasses too wide for his face. When in his twenties, Vito had organized farm workers in strikes that hurt the owners of estates in napuli and calabria. On a chase through woods, a half dozen hounds brought him down.

  He evaded the horsemen who followed, and caught a merciful but memorable beating before they turned him over to the red-headed strike breaker, Cesare Strachi.

  Not much older than Vito, Strachi had laughed at the youngfaced communist, pinching his cheek or tugging his hair and saying: “Still you pee your pants, Bolshevik,” and delivered him, muddy and bloody, to the padron’ who had pay-rolled the capture.

  Jailed in a shack guarded by dogs, Vito waited for more beatings, or to be killed, but the wife of the padron’ had him fed, scrubbed, and sent back to Strachi, a rescue that turned him easy on the aristocracy he’d tried to sack. He invented Strachi into a dime novel swashbuckler and won his hero’s trust by giving up other organizers and breaking their strikes.