by Jay Mackey
He was also feeling sorry for himself for the quandary he found himself in on his ancestry project. Later, when he found Noga reading and watching TV alone—Nini having gone to bed early—he decided to probe for information.
“How did you and Nini meet?” he asked, sliding into his usual half-reclining position on the old couch that faced the TV.
“Oh, geez, I don’t know,” replied Noga, picking up that morning’s newspaper to catch up on what he’d missed. “It was a long time ago. Why?”
“Oh, I was just curious. You know, about how people meet the person they marry.”
That sounded lame. He’ll think something is fishy. Because it is—I’m fishing for info on Nini’s ancestry.
He kept plowing ahead. “You guys were pretty young, weren’t you?”
“That we were,” Noga said, smiling. “That we were.”
“So did you meet Nini at school?”
Noga rubbed his hand across his chin, pulling down on his short beard, as white as his hair. “No. I don’t think we ever went to school together.”
“Where, then? She said she grew up in an orphanage.” Whoops! I blew it. Will he stop talking to me now?
“Could be.” Noga stopped smiling and looked at CJ. “I don’t know. She was on her own when I met her.”
He’s talking, but that doesn’t sound right. “She was a teenager on her own?”
“Things were different in those days. People didn’t just automatically graduate high school and go to college and get a good job. Things were tough, at least for some of us.” Noga picked up his newspaper again. “Talk to Nini. She’ll tell you.”
Change up. Quick.
“So then, you were . . . what, about twenty-four years old when my mom was born, right?”
Noga continued smiling, raised his head and seemed to look around the room, thinking. “I guess that’s right. Yep.” He shook his head.
“So that would make Nini about twenty-two, right?”
“That’s right. We thought we knew everything there was, thought we had the world by the ’nads. At least I did. Despite everything that was going on. Jesus. We were so young, so naïve.”
It was hard to think of them ever being young. Of course, to CJ, old was anything above about twenty-five. Actually, Noga was in his early seventies, but he had a full head of hair, mostly white now, and he’d thickened a bit in the belly over the years, but he still had spring in his step and enough energy to run a restaurant and bar, putting in seventy or eighty hours a week.
Nini was a couple years younger than Noga, but she looked younger than that. Her hair was blonde, (although CJ assumed it was dyed) and she was still trim and fit. In fact, with her pale blue eyes and fair skin that was still reasonably wrinkle-free, she was quite striking. Oval had once christened her “the world’s first G-MILF,” although not to her face.
CJ continued, “So when did you move here to Newport?”
Noga scratched his head. “Early eighties,” he said. After a minute, he said with more certainty, “It was ’82. Annette was eleven, I remember.” Annette was CJ’s mother.
“Why did you guys move? Didn’t you like it in Las Vegas?”
Noga’s expression changed quickly, his smile fading, his eyes more focused. “Some things happened. Just thought it’d be better to be someplace else. There was an opportunity here, so we took it.”
“You mean with York Street?”
“Yeah. The York Street Café. We didn’t know squat about running a joint. But we figured it out. Had some tough days, I’ll tell you. But goddamn it, we all get tough days. You’ll have tough days, just you see. But you got to face up to ’em, work your way through. We survived. You will too.”
No pep talk, please. Let’s get back on track.
“Did you know I found a copy of your marriage certificate?”
Noga brightened back up. “No. Really? How’d you do that?”
“For this project for school. You know, about our family tree. I found it online.”
“Well, I guess just about everything is on the internet anymore. I’d like to see that.”
“Here. I’ll show you.” CJ had the FamilyHeritage.com site open on his laptop, which he’d brought with him to the couch, so it took him just a few clicks to bring up the marriage certificate. “Look,” he said once he’d found it. He stood and handed the laptop to Noga, who squinted and tilted his head back, trying to find the sweet spot in his bifocals so he could read what was on the screen. When he got it, he smiled. “I’ll be damned. Look, it mentions my folks, and Little Bull and Donna.” He pointed to the certificate, where his parents were listed, Marcio and Marguerite Matzelini, and the witnesses were his brother, Marcio Matzelini Junior, and his wife Donna.
“When did you change your name?” asked CJ, noting that Noga’s name was Giuseppe Matzelini on the marriage certificate.
“Oh, back before we moved up here. Yeah, Jesus. Las Vegas. You could be anybody you wanted back in those days. Not like today; it’s just another town.” He shook his head as he handed the laptop back to CJ.
“And why did you change it?”
“Oh, you know. Things happen.” He picked up the newspaper, acting like he was no longer interested. “Easier to spell.”
CJ wasn’t so sure of that. He had to spell his name every time he gave it out: “Mazza. Two Zs.” He wasn’t ready to end the conversation though. “I see that Nini’s parents weren’t listed.”
Noga leafed through the paper, ignoring him for a minute. Finally, he said, “Nope. Didn’t know her folks.”
“Her maiden name was Violet Jones. Where did the Jones come from? Was that her parents’ name?” CJ thought he knew the answer, but asked anyway.
Noga looked up from the newspaper warily. “No. Like I said, in Vegas—”
“Yeah, I know. You could be anybody you wanted to be.”
Noga nodded. “Yep. So . . .Violet Jones.” He held the newspaper, but he wasn’t looking at it; his gaze was focused on something far away.
“But Noga, if I don’t know anything about Nini’s parents, I can’t write my paper about her.”
“No. I suppose not.” Noga shook his head as if to bring himself back to the present.
“She says I should write about you.”
“Jesus, no.” Noga put the paper down and stood up, alarmed. “People don’t need to read about no Guinea club owner. I’ve had enough of that crap.” CJ knew instantly what caused Noga’s reaction. He had been the subject of several newspaper articles over the years, many referencing the colorful history of the York Street Café, with some hinting that parts of the most colorful bits might not really be history, but still going on.
“This is just for school, Noga. I won’t write anything bad.”
Noga sat down. “Still.” He picked the paper up again, looked at the page. “Write about Little Bull. Nobody will know who he is, anyway.”
CJ shrugged off the idea of writing about Great-Uncle Marcio, Little Bull. Instead, he was more determined than ever to write about Nini. People searched to find their birth parents all the time. He’d seen it on TV a million times. How hard could it be? And then he’d have a surprise for Nini. The people on TV were always crying with joy when they found their real parents. Nini’s parents were dead, of course; they’d be ancient by now. But still. It would be so cool, he thought.
He returned to his room to look in earnest for clues about Nini and found the task much harder than it looked on TV. He already knew there was no record of her birth on the FamilyHeritage.com site. And FamilyHeritage.com had access to all, or nearly all, birth records in the US. That meant he’d be unlikely to find those records somewhere else. There were no census records either. Nothing about her until her marriage to Noga on May 23, 1970. He couldn’t even find an orphanage in Las Vegas. There had been one, Sunny Acres, but it had burned down in 1960.
The next morning, CJ asked Nini if Sunny Acres was the name of her orphanage, and if she remembered a big fire when she was about eleven ye
ars old. She’d responded by telling him that wasn’t the place, and to drop it.
CJ wasn’t positive that Nini was being truthful, but after school he continued to look, and found another lead, 4-Bar Ranch, a place for orphaned children located near Las Vegas, which said on its web page that it had been open for sixty-three years. But that meant that it hadn’t opened until 1965, five years after Sunny Acres burned. Nini had probably never lived there—she’d have been sixteen when it opened—but it was possible that they had the Sunny Acres records.
CJ called the 4-Bar Ranch but got little other than more frustration. The woman he talked to sounded like she was reading from a script that had only one response, no matter the question: “I’m sorry, but the 4-Bar Ranch doesn’t divulge any information about its residents, past or present.” She wouldn’t even tell him if they had the records from Sunny Acres. CJ persisted, and finally got her to tell him that if he were to submit a request in writing, it would be considered “in good time,” whatever that meant. Or he could come by in person and speak to the director, who wouldn’t speak to anyone on the phone about residents. CJ wanted to scream at the woman, but he held his temper and hung up quietly.
He also tried to reach his Great-Aunt Donna. She was the widow of Noga’s brother Marcio, and they had been the witnesses at Nini and Noga’s wedding. CJ figured that Donna might be able to help him with background on Nini, but she never answered her phone. He even left messages, but she didn’t return his calls.
CJ sat in a cloud, a black cloud, on Monday night. He felt like he’d hit a dead end with his project, and it had taken a position of importance in his mind that was weighing heavily. It was no longer just a school assignment; it was about his family, his missing family. He wanted, needed, to fill a hole that he hadn’t even known was there. Oh, he’d felt the pain of not having his actual parents in the past, but he had never felt it with such urgency.
But then he got a Facebook message that proved to be the catalyst for an idea that completely changed his outlook.
The message—What R U doing spring break? Come 2 Vegas! I promise U fun!!!—was from his cousin Penny Hancock, who lived in Las Vegas. CJ had met her a few times on family trips, mostly when he’d been just a kid. The most recent trip had been three years ago, when they’d all gone for Great-Aunt Donna’s 75th birthday. Aunt Donna (he never referred to her as “Great-Aunt” or Marcio as “Great-Uncle”) and Uncle Marcio, aka Little Bull, were Penny’s grandparents. In fact, it was Marcio who had given her the name “Penny.” Her real name was Nicole, but Marcio said she was too small to be a nickel, she was just a penny, and the nickname stuck.
At the time of this last meeting, CJ had been about to go into high school, and she was a year younger, still in middle school, and seemed too young to be of much interest to him. However, Penny followed him around that whole weekend, acting as if she really liked him. Before he knew what was happening, she’d friended him on Facebook and Snapchat, followed him on Twitter and Instagram, and was constantly sending him messages, commenting on his posts, and, in general, being a pest.
A message like the one he’d just received wasn’t unusual—Penny had sent others like it in the past. But this one just happened to hit at exactly the right time to give CJ the perfect solution to his search for family, and his spring break too.
7
Near Las Vegas, July 1964
Little Bull finally stopped the car, in the middle of the dirt road on a flat spot just below a rise in the dry, prickly desert mountains. “This’ll do,” he said as he turned the car off and turned to look back at Faccio. “Everybody out.” Pointing at Oaf, he said, “Get the shovel from the trunk.”
“You bet,” replied Oaf, a little too gleefully for Gus, and darted out the right side.
Little Bull climbed out, waving a flashlight, giving them some light in the desert night.
Gus shoved Faccio. “Get out, asshole,” he said, as Oaf pulled Faccio’s door open.
“Gus, goddamn,” said Faccio, whose face looked pale in the dim glow from the car’s dome light. “You ain’t really going to do this, are you?”
“Got to,” said Gus. Leaning, he yelled out at Oaf, “Hey, watch him, Oaf.”
Little Bull was taking a piss on the side of the road, and looked over as Gus climbed out of the back seat and stood beside him. “Damn, it’s a long ride out here,” he said. He looked at Gus, who was staring off into nothing. “You okay, kid?”
“Yeah, I guess,” replied Gus. He wasn’t scared—he would never back down from a fight or duck a challenge. If anything, he was too careless, too eager to rush into danger. But this thing, this was too cold, too calculated, premeditated, emotionless. Gus didn’t like Faccio, but he didn’t hate him, didn’t really feel much of anything about him. Maybe that’s why he was bothered by what he had to do. He didn’t care, and thought he ought to.
Little Bull looked at him like maybe he sensed what Gus was feeling. He turned and yelled across the car. “Damn, Oaf. I told you to get that shovel.”
Oaf yelled back. “Yeah, yeah. Just making sure this asshole doesn’t try to run off.”
“Where’s he going to run?” asked Little Bull, making his way around the back of the car to stand in front of Faccio. “You going to run into the desert? Think you can outrun me? Or the slug I’ll send after you?” He raised his gun and stuck it right in Faccio’s face.
Gus continued to look out at the desert. Not that he could actually see anything. It was so dark that that it was hard to see where the desert ended and the sky began. But Gus didn’t notice, didn’t really see the dark. He was only vaguely aware of what was being said on the other side of the car—something about digging holes, and Faccio saying he wasn’t going to do it.
Gus continued thinking about his job, his duty. Not the details, just the weight of it. Then he heard Little Bull. “Gus, you coming?”
Gus shook his head, kicked the dirt, muttered, “Fuck it,” to himself, and came around the car. “Let’s go. Let’s go. Come on.” He shoved Faccio toward the desert. “Go, go, go,” he said.
Leaving the road, which was little more than two tire tracks through the rocky ground, the men headed into the desert, with darkness closing in just where the light from Little Bull’s flashlight faded. They walked out 200 or 300 feet and stopped near the base of a large boulder, one of a number of big rocks that had either rolled down from the mountain above them or had been left there by some force of nature. There was just enough light to tell who was who, but not much else. Faccio was the one with his hands tied, and Gus was the one pushing him to go farther into the anonymity of the desert.
Faccio, turning to Gus, broke his tough guy façade. “What have I ever done to you? Huh? Tell me that!”
Gus had known Tony Faccio since junior high, where Faccio had been one of a group of kids one grade ahead of Gus who called themselves “The Outfit,” but were little more than the school bullies.
Gus hadn’t been immune to the bullying, but by the time he got to high school he had been treated with some deference. One reason was that his brother, Little Bull, three years older, was someone you didn’t want to mess with. Another reason was that his father was even scarier than his brother. When Gus had been in eighth grade, his father got some notoriety from an investigation of the casino business, conducted by the FBI and splashed across the front pages by the local newspaper. Reputed to be a high-ranking member of the group that ran several of the big casinos in town, including one of the mega-hotel/casinos being built in the new area known as the “Strip,” Bull had been one of seven who’d been charged with money laundering. He wasn’t convicted, but his reputation was forged as one of the tough guys in town.
Faccio had been trying to be a tough guy in a tough town since he dropped out of high school. The fact that he was out here in the desert on the wrong end of a gun was a direct result.
“It ain’t what you done to me,” said Gus.
“Nah,” added Little Bull. “You just picke
d the wrong friends, is all.”
Actually, what had sealed Faccio’s fate was his decision to work for the organization that was about to open the biggest hotel and casino in Vegas—the Mohave—out on the Strip. Operating out of Kansas City, this group had long been a minor player, holding interests in several small downtown casinos. When they decided to make a big play with the Mohave, Faccio had seen an opportunity to improve his station, and moved from Bull’s group, which was managed out of Cleveland and Los Angeles, to the Mohave. That was bad enough, but then Faccio decided to use his knowledge of Bull’s cash run, in which the proceeds of the previous night’s skim from the casinos were literally driven out of town to begin the laundering process. Faccio and several others hijacked the car carrying the cash, killing the two couriers in the process.
It was Little Bull who’d tracked the hijacking to Faccio, and Bull who’d passed the death sentence. That’s what got Gus to this point, ready to make his own step forward. Movies and books sometimes refer to such a step as becoming a “made man,” but that’s not how Gus thought about it. It was just another step along the path to being “in” the organization. You’re in, or you’re out. Gus was in. Faccio was out. Simple stuff, really.
Now Faccio started to whine, mumbling something about paying them. Gus was about to tell him to shut up when Oaf interrupted.
“Do you hear something?” he said, looking up the hill.
They all held their breath for a second, listening, and even Faccio turned to look up.
“Damn,” said Little Bull. “We’ve got company.” He pointed up the road. “Someone’s coming.” He squinted, as if that would help him hear better. “More than one someone.”
Gus could hear it too. A low rumble from somewhere over the crest of the hill. A truck, or trucks.
Little Bull looked at him. “Get the car. Move it off the road, behind the rocks.”
Gus stuck the gun back in his belt and took off at a dead run toward the car.
Christ. Who’d be out here in the desert now? Soldiers, maybe?
