“A lot of things point to him, but not enough. He’s not the type, for one thing, and he’s got no motive to kill either Uncle Leo or Sal Grazzi. It doesn’t add up.”
“Maybe Spolino will come up with another suspect,” Sonny answered. He freed himself from his inner tube and floundered over to the stairs, ready to come out of the water.
“Spolino doesn’t seem to be looking for another suspect, and we don’t have enough to do anything about this Owings guy now. We can’t afford to be wrong on something like this. We can’t afford to look like we don’t know what we’re doing.”
As Sonny climbed out of the pool, DeLucia offered him a towel the approximate size of a bedsheet.
“The madam at the whorehouse where Sal got it is coming out of the hospital in a day or two,” he went on. “We can’t talk to her until then because the cops are all over her, but she’s reliable. I’ll show her a picture of Owings and see what she says.”
“I’m going to have to pay my respects to Sal’s wife this afternoon,” Sonny murmured, as if he hadn’t been listening. Wrapped in his huge towel and seated on one of the deck chairs, he looked old and disillusioned. “I’ll tell her that Sal was in that place strictly on business, but she knows what kind of a prick she was married to. Jesus, what a way to die—even for Sal.”
Jimmy DeLucia, who understood that the Don was sometimes given to these sentimental asides, handed him a glass of lemonade from the tray on the table beside him and sat back to wait until Sonny had wound down.
“We have to be sure,” Sonny said, setting the lemonade down on the table without even tasting it. “But when we are sure, we give the guy the full treatment—we make sure his death is a warning that you don’t fuck with the Galatina Family. I think maybe I’ll just do this one myself.”
DeLucia felt a thrill of something like horror—the idea was not only dangerous, it was almost indecent.
“Boss, we have people for that kind of work,” he said. “Specialists. . .”
“This is Family, Jimmy,” the Don interrupted, holding up a finger in warning. “This is my Uncle Leo and a man my grandfather held in his arms at the baptismal font. It’s a matter of honor.”
Feeling suddenly as if something he ate hadn’t agreed with him, Jimmy DeLucia stared vacantly at the windows at the rear of the Don’s house, all of which seemed to be full length. In one of them, he noticed, Traci was standing perfectly nude, almost touching the glass with her body, framed like a picture in some dirty old man’s private gallery. Did Sonny know she did stuff like this behind his back?
When she was sure he had seen her, she put her hand down between her legs, right up against her little tow colored snatch.
“It’s a matter of honor, Jimmy.”
. . . . .
Sonny drove back in his limousine from comforting the grief-stricken family of Sal Grazzi. Sal’s wife Bea, a black haired, hard featured woman, had kissed his hand and listened to him with both respect and that dry eyed, hating stoicism which showed her to be a true Sicilian, whom three generations of American-born progenitors had left absolutely unaltered.
“He was there on Family business, Bea. That was part of his job, to collect the rents.”
“So how was it he died with his pants off, Patrono?”
“It was something this man, his murderer, made him do. It is something which will be avenged. This I promise.”
She had looked at him as if he didn’t believe him, as if vengeance were something that could safely be left to her. She was a scary woman, and it was little wonder if Sal found his comforts elsewhere.
The interview had left Sonny profoundly depressed. He knew what was expected of him—that he hunt the man down, inflict upon him a slow and painful death, and then present the widow with his severed trigger finger. He believed he would be able to deliver all this. What he could not believe was that it would be enough.
He would give Bea a pension. He would send her flowers on the anniversaries of Sal’s death. He would put her children through college. This also would not be enough.
Sal had been fucking whores and God knows who else, and his murderer had caught him at it. At bottom the source of Bea’s pain and anger was that she had not been the one who pulled the trigger. She was not interested in justice or a pension or flowers or the college tuition of her three brutish little children. She wanted her honor back. She wanted the refund of her virginity and to wear white and return to her father’s house as if Sal Grazzi had never existed. She wanted to murder the son-of-a-bitch all over again for being such a screw-up as to die like that and expose her shame to the whole world.
And these were things that even Don Galatina, capo di tutti capi, could not give her. So what good was he?
On its way home, the car slid past St. Mary’s cemetery, with its acres of marble tombstones, and Sonny stared glumly out through the smoked glass windows at an old woman with a kerchief over her head who laid a bouquet of flowers of a grave. He saw her kneel on the grass and cross herself, and he wondered who would put flowers on his grave one day.
The Don had two sons by his first wife, grown men now. One was an eternal political science major at NYU and the other played indifferent polo down in Florida, and both were slightly embarrassed by their father, if not by the wealth that allowed them to pursue their wasted lives. He had given them everything and he hardly ever saw them. A five-year-old daughter by his second wife he would not even have recognized. Thanks to him, they would all live lives of golden indolence, but none of them would mourn him or pray for his soul.
He was already within the town limits of New Canaan and five minutes from his front gate when the car phone buzzed faintly in its upholstered box. Only his housekeeper and his top lieutenants had the number, so he opened the box and picked up the receiver without curiosity.
“Yeah.”
“Is that all you can say, you dumb guinea fuck? You can’t even manage a ‘hello’?”
Sonny felt as if he had been hit with a cattle prod—nobody talked to him like that. Nobody.
“Who the fuck is this?” he shouted, loud enough to make his driver turn around to see what was the matter. Sonny waved his attention away with an impatient gesture and slid the glass partition closed between them.
“You know who this is, you limp-dick dago jerk. How was the new widow—she offer to suck you off yet?”
“Whoever this is, you’re fucking dead!” Sonny was so angry by now he could feel his shirt collar choking him. “You hear me, Shithead? You’re dog meat!”
“So far the score is 2-0 my favor, Sonny Boy, so I wouldn’t be too confident about that. You should’ve heard the way Sal screamed when I made a mess of his pathetic little wop goodies. You should’ve heard him—he sang like an opera star. He was glad when I finally shot his face off.”
“I’ll kill you, you fucking bastard! Dead! Morto!”
The only answer was a cold, terrible laughter. It was the laughter of one beyond fear, beyond even death.
And it faded away into silence.
“I have one more visit to make,” the voice said. “And then it’s your turn, Sonny Galatina.”
“Bastard—fucking bastard! I’ll fix you so. . .”
But the line had already gone dead.
“I’ll fix him myself,” Sonny murmured, as rage twisted in his bowels like a snake. “That settles it, I’ll blow the creep’s head off. Me, personally, I’ll stick his balls down his throat for him. I’ll . . .”
And then something occurred to him—something that made him feel sick with fear. How the hell did this guy know his car phone number?
And if he knew that, what else did he know?
Chapter 21
George’s little doll-faced wife left him in 1935 and moved back in with her mother. She said she didn’t want to be married to a gangster. She said she didn’t want their son visiting his father in Sing Sing. She said a lot of stupid things, but she was a pretty stupid broad. Three months after the divorce was final
she married a guy who sold bathroom fixtures in Darien. I think she’d been having it on with him for some time.
At first George was so upset he just about puked, but then he got this idea about buying the Moonlight and he settled down again. By the time he signed the lease he’d almost forgotten the bitch’s name.
If he ever took up with another woman I sure as hell never heard about it, and I don’t think he saw that son of his more than the one time a year he’d disappear for an afternoon to deliver the kid’s birthday present. I think he just lost interest.
“Charlie,” he would say, “business is great.” And it was.
We were still partners in a loose sort of way, although I didn’t buy into the Moonlight and George wasn’t much interested in the cocaine trade. But one kind of folded into the other, because Enrico Galatina was my supplier and George found a backer for his roadhouse in Enrico’s little brother Leo.
It’s a lot of horseshit that Leo provided the money for the buy, because George had plenty of money. What he needed was a liquor license and the protection of the Galatina Family, and Leo brought these to him in exchange for a share in the business. I don’t care what the paperwork says—that’s the way it went.
But I was still the backbone for George’s gambling operation. I took care of any good customer who wanted to get laid or felt the need of a snort, and I took care of the chiselers. The Moonlight hadn’t reopened its doors two months when I did a guy named Aaron Spieler who took a bad bath at roulette and then welched on his IOU. The little fuck was a bookie, so you would have thought he’d know better; but he didn’t, so I ventilated his face. After that nobody dropped an IOU at the Moonlight he couldn’t cover.
Still, as far as I was concerned the gambling was just a sideline. I put my heart and soul into the coke business because I knew from the beginning that this was going to earn me some serious money—it’s astonishing how when some people get going on that shit they just can’t leave it alone.
I couldn’t believe how easy it was. My customers from George’s poker games all had friends, and pretty soon the friends were coming around. Within a year I had ten or twelve dealers of my own, and things just kept multiplying. Pretty soon all I had to do was collect the money and keep everybody in line.
Then the Dagos started to get restless.
You see, the original deal was that the Galatina mob were just the messenger boys. Frank Marcello sold the stuff to them and they sold it to me. I was paying a few points more than I might have dealing direct, but that was okay because my customers had deep pockets and Marcello couldn’t ignore the claims of the Galatinas. It was understood by all parties that the western part of Fairfield County was mine, from the state line all the way to Norwalk.
Then I started seeing a guy named Mistretta around town—Rickie the Nose, if you can believe it, although his was just there in the middle of his face like everybody else’s. And the little fuck was dealing.
So one night in early summer I come in out of the rain to have a beer at Dink’s and I see this creep passing something around like it was chewing gum, and I decide I can’t let this pass. I wait until he disappears into the men’s room, and then I follow him.
So there he is, propped up against the urinal, a regular guinea dandy in his light gray suit, very busy hosing down the porcelain. I lock the door behind me and kick his legs out from under him.
So while he’d lying there on the tiles, still clutching his dick, I search him. And, sure enough, he’s got a whole bunch of little envelopes in his pocket, and the stuff doesn’t taste at all like tooth powder.
“You are out of line,” I tell him. “I did not sell you this shit and, if I did not sell it to you, what you doing with it?”
And then, just to emphasize my displeasure, I take the gun he’s got stuck in his belt—a great big heavy Army .45 automatic, if you please—and I break his cheekbone with it.
“If I see you in my territory again, I take your face off.”
But I guess Mistretta thought I was kidding, because pretty soon he was back.
You can’t make idle threats, so Rickie the Nose had to go.
It seemed that Rickie had a girlfriend, whom he visited twice a week, every Tuesday and Saturday. She had a couple of other friends like Rickie and she seemed to like her privacy, so she had her own apartment over a drugstore in old Greenley. One Saturday evening I walked her home.
“Now it happens like this,” I told her. “The Nose is going to be invited to leave town and I’m taking over everything that was his, you included.”
She liked this idea, partly because when Rickie had a bad day he sometimes consoled himself by putting a few bruises on her, but mainly because she had two hundred dollars of my money stuffed into her brassiere.
We waited in her bedroom. We had about two hours to kill before Rickie showed up for his regular pop, so she decided to convince me that I’d made a good investment. I was still shoving my shirttail back into my pants when I looked through the window and saw a ten-year-old Ford parking across the street. The man had no class at all.
“I’ll wait in the bathroom. We don’t want any bulletholes in your wallpaper, so I won’t put in an appearance until he’s out of his clothes. You think you can get him to take off his clothes, honey?”
She had beautiful jugs, that girl, and like a lot of girls with a nice pair she thought she could get any man to do anything. That’s why she wasn’t afraid.
I went into the bathroom, and I took my briefcase with me. God knows what she thought I had in that briefcase—maybe a collapsible baseball bat, maybe a farewell bouquet for Rickie. Women who think they can handle any guy who’s had his joint in her probably aren’t used to thinking about much else.
Rickie had his own key, and I heard when he let himself in. By then I had my twelve gauge put together. I’d come to be very fond of shotguns—with a shotgun, it’s over. Nobody comes back to get a round off before dying. Besides, people seem to be more afraid of getting torn to pieces than they are of being dead.
“I’m in here, Sugarplum,” she shouted.
Sugarplum, if you please. I mean, Jesus.
Rickie liked to tell a girl what a good time she was in for—you should have heard the line of patter he handed out while he was climbing out of his socks. I loved it. It was hysterical. I could have listened for hours, but life is short.
“That’s enough, Sugarplum.”
I stepped out of the bathroom and got him just as he was turning around. Rickie the Nose Mistretta just disappeared from about the eyes down—there was blood on the wall eight feet behind him.
For a long time the girl couldn’t stop screaming. I mean, she made more noise than the shotgun—what did she think I was going to do, kiss him on the cheek?
Finally I put my hand around her throat and gave it a friendly squeeze, just enough to convince her that if she didn’t shut up on her own I’d do it for her.
“Now listen, honey. I’m gonna yield to my sentimental nature and let you live. But before you hear what you tell the cops, you come see what a load of birdshot did for the Nose.”
I dragged her over to the edge of the bed and held her head so she couldn’t look away. When I pulled her back she had trembling so bad her teeth were chattering.
“It isn’t a very nice way to die, is it. You wouldn’t like it to happen to you, would you.”
The story she gave to cops was that Rickie didn’t remember to close the front door, that all she saw was the blast of the shotgun, not the man behind it. She told them that over and over. Could be she came to believe it herself.
After that things settled down a bit. I got a message from Enrico Galatina that it had all been a terrible misunderstanding, that Mistretta had been strictly freelance and they didn’t have the faintest idea where he got his stuff, that they were perfectly happy with their cut and that of course no one would dream of muscling in on my territory.
Fine. I accepted his apology. Everything was just fine, and life w
as beautiful. I wasn’t even mad at the Galatina brothers—I wasn’t mad at anybody. It was over three years before I had any more trouble with the dagos.
I had moved into the house on Stanhope Street by then, and I had come to a comfortable understanding with my landlady. Lenore was a widow with no property except a big, empty house, and she was maybe a year older than me and, I gather, had had plenty of company. She had two other boarders when I arrived, but I kicked their asses out and took over the whole place.
Lenore was still nice looking and, more important, an easy woman to get along with. I liked the way she fucked, I liked the way she cooked, I liked the way she didn’t ask questions and didn’t get all bent if I stayed away all night. She was perfect for me. I stayed in that house for four years.
Sometimes we’d go up to the Moonlight to have a couple of drinks and dance to whatever miserable band George had hired for the weekend. We’d sit at a table and drink champagne and I’d think, “In a few hours I’m gonna take this nice lady home. Then I’m gonna lift up her party dress and fuck her eyes out.” I think that’s why people go to places like the Moonlight, just to prolong the agony.
And George would come around in his monkey suit and smile and sit down to drink a glass with us. It was a dim little place and it was all your life was worth to have dinner there, but George loved owning it. He loved going down to the basement to count his wine bottles. He loved going up to the second floor and having the dealer ask him if so-and-so’s marker was good. He even loved buying the county sheriff a drink once a month and then putting five bills in the slob’s hat when he went to fetch it for him from the cloak room. He loved being a respectable crook.
The Moonlight Page 19
