The Boy Who Granted Dreams

by Luca Di Fulvio

  “Because then maybe a certain girl would hear my voice,” said Christmas, “even if she’s far away.”

  Rothstein brought a hand to the bridge of his nose, massaging it. Then slowly he spread his thumb and index finger apart, smoothing his eyebrows. He still liked this kid. “Yeah, the radio goes all over the place,” was all he said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Arnold,” said Rothstein. “Gamblers call each other by name, Christmas.”

  “Thanks … Arnold.”

  Rothstein stood up, returning to the pool table. “And quit bad-mouthing Dasher and Happy Maione.”

  Christmas looked at him without speaking. “You can go,” said Rothstein. “But tell that lowlife loser Sticky to look out. I don’t like him the way I like you. And you, keep off the street. Listen to what I’m telling you. It’s for you.”

  Christmas gave a long intense look at the most feared gangster in New York, then he turned and started towards the door.

  “Hold on,” said Rothstein. “That stuff about the radio — is that something you made up?”

  “No.”

  Rothstein opened his mouth to say something, then shook his head and blew across his lips. “Let me think about it,” he said. He lifted one hand in the air and then lowered it brusquely, as if he were swatting a fly. “Now scram. Get out while the going’s good, kid,” he said. “And don’t break my balls any more, either.”

  34

  Manhattan, 1926

  The word spread quickly. “They picked up Christmas Luminita,” said the witnesses from Cherry Street. “They took him for a ride.” And when news circulated about somebody being taken for a ride, not many people in the neighborhood ever expected to see him again. Least of all if those affecting the pickup were Lepke Buchalter and Gurrah Shapiro, two bosses, because if they bothered to do the pickup in person, that meant they were doing a job for The Man from Uptown. So the prospect of Christmas’ return was even further diminished. The word came back, expanded, to where it began: Christmas was dead by now.

  A neighbor lady, one of the ones who loves to bring bad news — and maybe they always wear black so they’ll never be caught unprepared — already had one foot on the steps of 320 Monroe Street, headed for Mrs. Luminita’s apartment, so she could be the first to enjoy the mother’s grief over her dead son. But now the very same black Cadillac Type V-63 that had carried Christmas away was pulling up to the curb a few steps away from her. The neighbor lady’s heart beat faster when the rear door opened and out of it came, staggering slightly, with his face bruised and bloody, the victim himself. Maybe I’ll get to see him die right there, she thought, right before her eyes. And in an instant she imagined how vividly she’d describe to Mrs. Luminita her son’s last few seconds of life; how she could season the telling with all the poisonous spices she’d kept stored in her mouth for years and years, refining her skills as a gossip. For an instant she felt young again, as if a new ichor were flowing through her fat varicosed legs. And she thought it was worthwhile having lived through her wretched life for fate to have offered her, almost at the end of her own road, a moment of such dramatic import. Even though she never smiled — and perhaps she never had — her lipless mouth, her serpent mouth, twisted into a grimace that made her eyes shine.

  “Hey, be good, Rabbit. See you around,” a man with a face like a spaniel was saying confidingly, without the slightest dramatic intonation, leaning out of the car’s side window.

  “Holy shit, that’s Lepke,” said one of the usual ruffians from the street. And the young men with him let their mouths hang open in wonderment.

  The neighbor lady heard him, and her mouth dropped open, too. She stood there stiffly. Then she saw another man, blond, with mad blue eyes and a mashed nose getting out of the car, clap a hand on the victim’s shoulder — and the victim didn’t look as though he was about to die on the sidewalk after all — and say, “So long, pal,” and then laugh. He laughed delightedly even when the victim said “Get fucked, Gurrah,” and from inside the car, Lepke joined in the laughter. The neighbor lady felt her legs go weak and buckle, and all the youthful vigor the excitement had evoked in her drain away. She had a bitter taste in her mouth, like bile, and hatred for that boy who was ruining her big moment. Perhaps it was the accumulation of mean-spiritedness that she had stored up over her whole miserable life that was suffocating her now; perhaps it was too much emotion, perhaps it was anger, or perhaps it was her heart, old and run-down as she was herself, but in any case she crumpled onto the steps of 320 Monroe. And before she died, two thoughts came to her. One was the terrible envy she felt for the black-clad neighbor trotting towards her: She was the one who’d get to tell her family the dreadful news. The other was the hatred she felt for the fortunate young victim who limped past her without even noticing that she was dying.

  “Hey, Rabbit! Don’t get too rough with that old dame, hear me?” shouted Lepke as the black Cadillac started up and the roar of its eight cylinders drowned out his laughter and that of Gurrah Shapiro.

  Christmas smiled, not understanding. His lip hurt. So did his head. He knew he looked too bad to go home like this. And so he dragged himself across the entryway and knocked softly at a door on the ground floor, where he hoped to find an old friend to give him a hand.

  “Jesus, boss, who did this to ya!?” cried Santo Filesi as he opened the door of the apartment where he lived with his mother and father.

  “If I tell you, are you gonna go rub ’em out?” Christmas tried to joke.

  Santo blushed. “I … no, all I meant was …”

  “Bless you, Santo …” said Christmas, falling heavily against him, spent.

  After a week, his wounds were healing. Cetta told him there’d be scars. His blond forelock would hide the one on his forehead, but the one on his lip would always show. A doctor — who looked more like an itinerant tailor, the ones who go around with a portable sewing machine, specializing in quick mends — had sewn him up. But the scab was almost an inch long, extending down towards his chin. Cetta had caressed it, looking sad, as though some perfect toy had been ruined. Then she told him about Mikey, the son of his adoptive grandparents Tonia and Vito Fraina. He’d been a boy who loved to laugh, she told him; he’d always worn flashy suits with pockets full of money. As she spoke Cetta’s voice was warm, soft, loving. Full of feeling. And she told Christmas that they’d stuck an icepick in that boy’s throat, his heart and his liver. Then they’d shot him in the ear, blowing half his brains out the other side, but since he was still twitching they twisted a wire around his neck and strangled him. At last they’d dumped him in a stolen car, Cetta continued — never taking her eyes off Christmas and never letting him look away — and they’d made his best friend, Sal, drive Mikey and the stolen car, and abandon them both at a construction site in Red Hook, over in Brooklyn.

  “I remember Nonna Tonia,” Cetta told him. “She always rub her finger on photo of her dead boy. She wear out his suit where she rub …” and then she laid her open hand on his chest and slowly, without saying anything, she began to move her thumb up and down, stroking the cloth. Her eyes were vague. She was thinking of the day her own mother had crippled her to keep her from being raped by the padrone. Twenty years had passed since that day and she’d never thought about it. It was another life, in another world. But in that moment, still rubbing her thumb against her son’s chest, she understood what her mother had felt. And after twenty years, she forgave her. “Listen to me, Christmas,” said Cetta, in the same hard voice her own mother had used, in the same words. “You big now, you understand what I say to you, just like you understand when you look in my eyes, you see I can do what I tell you now. If you no change way you live, then is better I kill you with my own hands,” she stopped rubbing her thumb on his shirt. She paused. “I never be like Nonna Tonia, wearing out my son’s picture,” her eyes filled with tears but her gaze stayed hard and resolute. She squeezed the fingers of the hand that still rested on Christmas’ chest, making a
fist; then suddenly, with all her strength, she punched him in the chest. Then she left the house.

  She came back ten minutes later with a package in her hand.

  Christmas was still sitting on the divan, with his head in his hands and his blond, wheat field hair tangled between his fingers.

  “Stand up,” Cetta told him.

  Christmas looked at her. He stood up.

  “Take off clothes. Now,” said Cetta.

  Christmas frowned, but then, under his mother’s fierce gaze, he began to take off his jacket, shirt and trousers, standing in his wool undershirt, baggy underpants and socks. Cetta gathered up his clothes, bundled them into a tight roll, went into the kitchen, and stuffed them into the oven on the hot coals.

  Christmas didn’t say a word.

  Then — as a dense smoke began to pour out of the oven — Cetta came back and threw the package at him clumsily. “You not dress like gangster no more,” she said in a tone that had not grown any more gentle. She sounded even more determined.

  Christmas tore the brown paper off the package. There was a brown suit, like the ones everyone in the neighborhood wore, and a white shirt. The kind of clothes Santo wore.

  “Now you comb you hair!” said Cetta, turning her back on him and going to shut herself up in her bedroom, slamming the door, because now she was overcome with fear.

  Christmas stood there, not moving, half-naked, holding the brown suit and white shirt, while the room filled up with a thick acrid smoke that made his eyes water, like the smoke from old Pep’s store. He coughed. Then he opened the window. He looked down at the street below him, heard people talking, saw some ragged little kids hovering around a drunk, waiting for the right moment to rob him. He shivered in the cold air that mingled with the smoke from his old clothes burning.

  Slowly he put on the white shirt and the brown suit.

  “Hey, Diamond, I hardly reckanized you in that get-up.” Joey laughed. “Ya look like a workin’ stiff. Who knew? Where’d you find the suit? The rag man?”

  “Two weeks ago you disappeared,” Christmas took hold of Joey’s lapel and jerked him closer. “Where the fuck have you been?”

  Joey stretched out his arms, gave a sly smile, tilted his head to one side. “Hey, hey, calm down. I had some business to take care of.”

  Christmas didn’t let go; shoved him against the wall. “What business?”

  “Calm down …” Joey kept smiling, but Christmas could see a growing uneasiness in his eyes. “The usual business, Diamond,” and he put his left hand into his pocket. “Don’t worry, I got your part right here, we’re partners, right? Why would I forget to take care of my partner …”

  “I want to know why you thought you needed t’ disappear!” Christmas’ voice echoed darkly in the alley. “Did you think I was done for? I bet you were scared shitless when you heard who picked me up …”

  “What’re you talkin’ about?” Joey laughed, a little stridently, still with his hand in his pocket. Again he shifted his gaze, looking at nothing.

  Christmas shoved him hard against the wall. “Look at me! Why’d you go hide?” he yelled.

  Joey’s eyes had sunken even more deeply into their dark sockets. Now he slitted them. The hand came out of his pocket, the switchblade clicked open and Christmas felt the point graze his side, where his liver was supposed to be. “Take your hands off of me, Diamond,” Joey said quietly.

  Christmas didn’t let go. He looked straight into Joey’s eyes and let a smile slowly bloom on his lips. A smile full of scorn. “Oh yeah, you must of crapped your pants,” he said.

  The blade dug into him harder. “Let go a me,” Joey said again. “Don’t mess everything up.”

  “Say it,” Christmas went on, scornfully, “Say you shat yourself.”

  The two boys confronted one another in silence. Looking into one another’s eyes: Christmas’ fierce gaze and Joey’s shifty one. Then Joey, crushed by what he saw in Christmas’ eyes, slowly pulled the knife away. “Know what you are? A loser,” he said. “Like Abe-the-Schmo. Yeah, you and him, two peas in a pod.”

  Christmas smiled and turned his back, walking away.

  “You ain’t nothin’! You ain’t nobody!” Joey went on, his voice filled with resentment. “I been leadin’ you around by the ass all this time. The Diamond Dogs? A big joke. You? You’re a walkin’ joke. Nobody but that sap Santo would ever believe the crap you dish out. You think it’s some kind of game … hey! Look at me! Right now! I want you should look at me!”

  Christmas shook his head and smiled at him. “Scram, Sticky,” he told him softly, unemotionally.

  “Whadja tell Rothstein to save you ass?” asked Joey. “Whadja tell him? You sold me out, huh?”

  “He already knows everything about you, I didn’t have to tell him a thing,” said Christmas. Then he stared at him a long time, silently. And sorrow took the place of the scorn he’d been feeling. “You’re nothin’ but a worm, Joey. Get lost.”

  Joey leaped on him. With blind fury. Christmas shook him off, grabbed his arm, made him pivot, using his own momentum, and flung him against the red brick wall. Joey got up and hurled himself at Christmas again, eyes blazing. Christmas was ready. He hit him in the throat with an elbow and then punched his stomach. Joey crumpled over, coughed, out of breath, sank to his knees and vomited a yellowish foam onto the pavement. Christmas was on top of him at once, to hit him again now that he was down. With the same rage he would have used on Bill if he’d found him. The way he always struck his opponents, thinking of Bill, always Bill. Almost hard enough to kill them. Because if he found Bill, he’d kill him. That’s why he’d grown strong. For Bill.

  Christmas raised a fist, ready to bring it down hard on Joey’s neck. He stopped. “I don’t like havin’ to kick your ass,” said Christmas.

  “Who the fuck do you think you are?” said Joey as soon as he was able to breathe again. “Huh? Who? You ain’t nobody …”

  “Look out for Rothstein,” Christmas pointed a finger at him. “He knows everything. And it gripes his ass. You’re right, it’s not a game. Keep away from his dope …”

  “What dope …?”

  “He knows everything, asshole!” Christmas shouted into his face. “He knows all the stuff I didn’t know!”

  Joey laughed and climbed to his feet. “Yeah, you really are Abe-the-Schmo’s little twin brother. So where did you think all the money was comin’ from? Go fuck yourself Diamond. Save the preachin’ for when you’re home alone. So now what are you gonna do? Lick Rothstein’s ass?”

  “You do whatever the fuck you want. But don’t ever say you got anything to do with the Diamond Dogs.” Christmas turned away and walked out of the alley.

  A BMT train came rattling down Canal Street. Christmas started walking through the crowded street. And he realized that he looked at every one of those people as if he might find Bill at any minute. To release the pain of his love for Ruth by spending his hate. He closed his eyes. Opened them. He didn’t know where to go. He didn’t know what to do. But the important thing right now was not to stay where he was.

  “Diamond, Diamond!” he heard someone calling behind him. He turned to look back.

  Joey was on the sidewalk, about ten paces back.

  Christmas stopped.

  As soon as Joey saw that Christmas was waiting for him, he slowed down, as if those final steps were the hardest. “Lissen … Diamond,” he said stumbling a little over his words as he drew near. “Why do we got to spoil everything? We’re pals …” And he looked at him with doubtful tired eyes.

  Christmas thought he looked thinner, paler, more drawn.

  “We’re still pals, ain’t we?” said Joey, trying to smile, and in his voice was the echo of a prayer.

  “Joey,” Christmas began, shaking his head.

  “No, hang on a minute, just wait,” Joey interrupted, nervously, again trying to laugh, but tension took his breath away. “Fuck, listen. I get what you’re sayin’. I know where you’re comin’ f
rom. Forget about it. It’s over. No more dope, the hopheads can fuck off, Rothstein can fuck off too. How ‘bout it?”

  Christmas sighed. “Joey …”

  Joey clung to his arm. He hung on. Like a drowning man. “Oh shit, Diamond …”

  “You and me, we’re partners,” said Joey, looking at him again with his sunken desperate eyes. “Us two, we’re the Diamond Dogs …” He reached urgently into his pocket with his other hand, pulling out money. He counted the bills and thrust some at Christmas. “Here’s your cut. Exackly half. We’re in business, right?”

  Christmas looked at the money. He didn’t move.

  “G’wan, take it,” said Joey his hand trembling in the air. “Take it.” He looked into Christmas’ eyes. “You’re the only pal I got.” In his eyes a fear he couldn’t contain. “Please …”

  “I have to change my life, Joey,” said Christmas, in a calm decisive voice.

  “Fine, okay, me too …” said Joey, not even thinking about it. Emphatically. With a gleam of fearful hope in his pupils. “Sure, fuck it, we both gotta clear our heads, right?” He slapped the hand with the money in it against Christmas’ shirt. “But a little at a time, huh? We got some business goin’ on that don’t bust nobody’s balls. Just so we can make a few bucks till we find a decent job … aw shit, Diamond … don’t ask me t’ sell shoestrings like Abe-the-Schmo. Not even you can ask me to do that. We gotta find the job we was meant to do. Whaddya say?” he gave Christmas a slap on the back. Then he took his arm and they started walking. “Where we goin’? We gotta celebrate. C’mon, Diamond, take the money.”

  “No, Joey,” said Christmas. “I told you, I’m gonna change my life.”

  Joey looked at the money, then stuffed it into his pocket. “Oh well then fuck, all right. I’ll put it aside in case you change your mind, okay? But it belongs to you.” And he laughed nervously, without ever stopping talking. “Yeah, where we gonna go t’ celebrate? I know, I heard a new speakeasy just opened up on Broome Street, who knew? Some shitty joint underneath a buildin’, but — so whaddya say? That way we can see if they got slots, maybe we can make a few bucks. They wouldn’t dare do no business without payin’ off the Diamond Dogs, right?”