The Last Days of Il Duce

by Domenic Stansberry

  “Something else,” Chinn asked. “Did your brother know anyone in Reno?”

  “Not that I know of.” I avoided looking her in the eye. She was coming at me from too many angles. “Why do you ask?”

  “We found some ticket stubs in his room. Credit card reports. It seems he went there not long before he died.”

  “I don’t know anything about that,” I said. “I have to get hurrying. There’s things I have to do.”

  As we walked out of the alley, Leanora Chinn was quiet. I felt burly alongside her. She was a small woman really, delicate, in her midnight skirt and her dark blouse, and as we emerged out of the alley into the pagodas and glitter of Grant Street, I was tempted again to divulge to her all the things I knew, to make a breast of it before it was too late. Instead I shook her hand at the corner and disappeared as fast as I could into the crowd along Columbus Avenue.

  TWENTY-ONE

  THE ENEMY WITHIN

  It was sunset and an orange light filled the sky. I sat in the graying shadows of that light, at my desk, and studied my wall of ancestors. My mother’s Aunt Angela in her peasant dress. Her uncle Tony, arms crossed in front of his belly, legs big as tree stumps. My grandparents and great grandparents standing in a wheatfield in the middle of the Abruzzi nowhere, back home in Italy. I had pictures of these people but no memories because they’d never come to America. They were the ancestors I had never known, and their images hung on the wall alongside pictures of yellow fields I had never seen, and postcards from Italian cities whose names I could not pronounce.

  Among them hung photos of myself and my brother and my parents too, standing in front of our Chevys and Fords, hands on the door handles, as if ready to launch ourselves into that sun whose reflected light was fading this minute from the windows of the TransAmerica Pyramid. Only in those pictures, we did not yet seem convinced we were ready for any such journey.

  They had no advice for us then, those ancestors, and no advice for me now.

  The way Chinn had taken me down that alley, reading my face the whole time, it was no coincidence. The longer I thought about it, the more I figured the cops had gone up and down Kai-chin alley not just with my brother’s photo but with mine too, looking to see if anybody recognized me. Maybe someone had. Maybe someone had seen me walk up to that yellow door and hand the valise inside. If so, it would look to the cops like I had arranged the murder.

  Maybe that’s the way it was supposed to look. I told myself the Romanos were behind this. From what Chinn had told me, I knew my brother had gone to Reno. Joe had been onto something after all, I guessed, and he had tried to use it, to make sure he got a piece of the China Basin deal. Only the Romanos wouldn’t be blackmailed. Michael Jr. had lifted the photos of Joe from the album in Marie’s apartment during one of his visits, I guessed. Then he and the old man had sent the money and photos to Jimmy Wong, who’d passed them along to me. They’d managed it so I’d delivered the hit message on my own brother, handing the whole package to the assasin, and now there was nothing I could do.

  If I went to the police with this story, how would I prove it? Romano had his valise back and all the evidence pointed to me.

  So I couldn’t go to Chinn. And I didn’t feel like I could tell Marie either, because she wanted me to take Romano’s job, and I didn’t want to bring everything crashing down around us. The easiest way would be to play dumb. Just take Micaeli’s offer. Act like I thought it came from the goodness of his heart. It was tempting, I had to admit. Because Marie would be mine and the old man was dying anyhow, and I could get my revenge against him the easy way, by going back later and spitting on his grave.

  Even so, I didn’t know if I could keep the truth balled up inside me like that, knowing that Romano had been the one behind it. How he’d arranged my brother’s death and made it so the blood was on my hands too, carrying that money down the alley.

  I didn’t know what to do. So I studied my wall of ancestors for a while, then I searched out the old article I’d lifted from Johnny Bruno’s place, the one about Pavrotti’s death. I found nothing in it I hadn’t already gone over in my head, so I went back to the clipping from the real estate section and tried to decipher the figures my brother had scrawled on the other side over the obituaries. The writing was in pencil, barely legible, and I copied the figures over onto a fresh piece of paper, one letter at a time, one number, but they still did not mean much to me.

  AR—Ren 130; Lv Mon 2

  Then I lay down on the bed with the clipping in my hands. Out of idleness really, for no other reason, I began to read the obituaries, and as I did so, I had reason to sit up suddenly. I noticed something I had not noticed before. A faint circle, drawn in pencil, around the name of one of the dead men.

  Billy Dios, Reno.

  The obit was nothing much, a simple paragraph announcing the death of a man named Billy Dios, formerly of North Beach, age 78, who’d died in Nevada of natural causes. Survived by two daughters, it said, though it gave neither of their names.

  Dios, though, that part of it clicked in my head. I felt for a moment that feeling you get when things suddenly juxtapose—weightless, dizzy, an enthusiasm in the chest—a sudden knowledge of the inevitable, that makes you feel powerful, Mr. Somebody, rubbing elbows with fate, until you realize you are only a watcher, hopeless in the face of what will happen next. In the middle of this headiness, all frothed up, I went back to the article I had lifted from Johnny Bruno. There it was again. Forty years ago, a North Beach man by the name of Dios had been held for questioning in connection with the death of Pavrotti. It came to me then just as it must have come to my brother.

  Dios and Ciprione were the same man.

  I looked at the scrawled notes on the real estate clipping, and at last I realized what they were. Flight numbers. Arrival time and departure. Joe had called the flight operator with the obituary in his hand and made notes on the back side. He’d hunted up Johnny Bruno, keeping his suspicions to himself, feeling him out for information about the past. Then he’d flown to Reno to see what he could find.

  Joe had found Ellen Ciprione, I was almost sure. And he’d gotten something to use against Romano. Nothing else made any sense.

  I wanted to be sure, though, because the medical records in Reno had identified the dead man as Ciprione, not Dios. So I dialed up Reno information, then I called the daughter. She picked up on the third ring, her voice sultry with alcohol.

  “Hello.”

  “Yes,” I said, putting on my lawyer’s voice from the old days. I could still find it, sometimes, when I needed to. “I’m looking for an Ellen Dios.”

  There was a hesitation on the other side. “What is this in regards too?” she asked.

  “An inheritance. The estate of Billy Dios. He had an insurance policy, naming his daughter as beneficiary.”

  It was nonsense, of course. There was no policy, but I wanted to get her to admit her father’s other name. She did it more quickly than I expected, drawn out by the smell of money. If she’d been sober—or if she could have seen my face—probably she would have shut me down sooner than she did.

  “My father was Billy Dios. But he changed his name to Ciprione. Before I was born.”

  “I see,” I said.

  I didn’t say anything for a while. There was a small silence while I contemplated my next move. That was my mistake. Not thinking it out in advance before I called, but instead rushing headlong with the moment, and now wondering what to say. In that silence I could feel her growing suspicious.

  “Who is this?” she asked.

  “An insurance adjuster. I.…”

  “Bullshit,” she said. Then she hung up.

  I had lost her. Maybe I could have played Ellen Ciprione differently, I thought, but probably it didn’t matter. She was a clever one, or if not clever, naturally suspicious, and your only chance with someone like her was to get her drunk up close and personal, and then hope she wasn’t a mean drunk. Anyway, it was too late for that. At lea
st I knew for certain Ciprione and Dios were the same man, and I could be pretty certain my brother knew it too. Joe had been to Reno, tracking down Romano’s past, and he’d found something the old man didn’t want him to know. About the old fascist business, maybe. About Romano’s connection to Billy Dios. So the Romano clan had had him killed. I was sure of that now, or almost sure. Even so, my elation from a few minutes before, that was gone. Because knowing what was up, and proving it, these were two different things. The more I thought about it, the more I realized old man Romano was still safe. He’d fixed it so there wasn’t anything I could reveal without implicating myself. After all, I was the one who had delivered the money, and that was the only thing the cops would see.

  Later that evening the phone rang. It was Marie, her voice taut and silky, filled with pleasure, anticipating our new life.

  “We still on for tomorrow?”

  “Of course,” I said, because I didn’t know what else to say, and I still wanted her.

  “I’ll bring dinner. I’ll come up the back stairs to your apartment, so no one will see. That’s a good idea, don’t you think?”

  “Double good,” I said.

  “We’ll have a nice time, a nice dinner. Then I’ll leave early and let you rest.”

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  “It’s a big day for you Tuesday. You’re going to Micaeli’s, remember? To meet with the men from Hong Kong. Your first day on the job.”

  “I’m excited,” I said.

  “You should be.”

  “But I want you to stay with me tomorrow night. Give me a send-off.”

  “Like a rocket ship.”

  We cooed back and forth like that on the phone for a while, whispering sweet sounds into one another’s ears, and though I didn’t really believe any of it, hers or mine, that sweetness lingered even after we got off. I told myself what the hell difference did it make. I could dress up in a white shirt and a tie and take the drive over to Sausalito and play the old man’s game, hell, take his money, pretend nothing had happened. What did it really matter how my brother had died after all? It was only my life that mattered now. I took a drink, then another one, and blew smoke out the open window and wondered how long I would be able to keep myself happy with that idea.

  TWENTY-TWO

  LAST HAPPINESS

  Marie stood in my living room holding a bag of groceries. She had made herself over and was self-conscious as hell. She wore a blue dress, a string of pearls around the collar, her hair dyed chestnut brown like it used to be, so it curled up in a schoolgirl kind of flip. She smiled and I remembered a different kind of passion, one I had felt when I was younger and more innocent and did not fear so much that the pleasures of the world would pass me by. Marie’s smile faded as she stood there, as if she could read in my face that darkness passing over me.

  “Has something happened?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Should I not be here?”

  “You look beautiful.”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “I do. You’re the most beautiful woman in the world.”

  It was silly stuff but Marie liked it. She ditched the groceries and put a finger beneath my belt, tugging me towards her. I wore my new slacks from Stephano’s and we kissed each other in our wholesome clothes. Then she went into the kitchen. She yanked an apron out of her bag and I helped her put it on, running my hands up over her breasts and my fingers under the collar of the blue dress and pushing lewdly against her while she reached down where polite girls are not supposed to reach. Then she went back to her vegetables.

  That’s the way the evening went. All over each other one moment, then demure as hell. We set the table and touched each other and put spoons in one another’s mouths and our hands beneath one another’s clothing. We talked about where we would go and the things we would do and how we would live our lives. Except every once in a while I would think of the fraud that lay underneath it all, that son of a bitch Romano, and a cloud would darken my face and she would see that cloud.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Then how come the five days of gloom on your face?”

  I went again to the window and gandered down at the street. On Columbus Avenue old man Zirpoli was standing in front of his news store like he’d done every day of his life, like his father had done before him. Meanwhile the street hustlers were weaving among the tourists, pickpockets and camera thieves looking for a bit of work, and an old woman held a dead chicken by the neck as she wound her way into Chinatown.

  Marie leaned out beside me.

  “Same old streets,” she said. “Nothing changes.”

  “It’s changed.”

  “I don’t know. Old man Zirpoli’s still out in front of his shop. It still says Molini on the deli window. There’s still the drunk beatniks on the corner. It looks like the same old streets to me.”

  She was right but then she was wrong. Zirpoli could stand in front of his newsstand until Mussolini rose from the dead, but the truth was Molini’s deli was up for sale, his kids had moved to East Jesus, and there was no such place as North Beach anymore.

  “Don’t be so blue,” she said. “You take that job, six months, we can move a little bit away. Maybe the other side of the bridge.”

  “I’m not blue.”

  I smiled, pert as hell, and took another drink. We toasted one another there in the window and just then Zirpoli happened to glance up. He yelled at us in Italian and Marie yelled back.

  “Ah, like old times, to see people young and beautiful leaning from their window,” he said.

  “Yes, and just like old times, we are getting ready to leave this place forever.”

  Some tourists the other side of Columbus watched our little scene, charmed.

  “Let’s raise our glasses to them,” Marie said.

  “All right.”

  We raised our wine glasses. They got out their cameras.

  “Let’s laugh.”

  So I laughed and she laughed and the cameras clicked away. I could hear the shutters flashing across six lanes of traffic.

  “We look the Italian couple.”

  “Let’s kiss,” she said.

  We did it first for the tourists, a joke, then passionately, tongues deep in one another’s mouths, so that when we looked back the gawkers, embarrassed, had turned their heads. Old man Zirpoli spat in the gutter.

  “I feel desperate,” she said.

  “We were going to keep our romance a secret. Remember?”

  “Nobody here cares.”

  She pivoted on her heels. I lingered at the window, studying the fading sky and the neon shadows up and down those water-colored streets. Marie was wrong though, somebody did care. Because then I caught sight of Chinn’s undercover man in his blazer and long thin tie, up from the Mission, leaning against a corner building just beyond Zirpoli’s. No doubt he’d seen me in the window kissing Marie, and I wondered how many days he’d followed me and what kind of ideas he had. Probably the cops wanted a motive for the murder. Me, acting the fool, I’d just given them a notion or two, if they didn’t already have one, showing how I wanted Marie all to myself. The undercover man kept on staring. I stared back, thinking he would turn his head and scuttle away, but he didn’t bother. His gaze was relentless. I pulled down the window shade and went inside, trembling.

  “Marie,” I said.

  Marie was clearing the table, matter-of-fact, but when she turned toward me her eyes were wide. Maybe she’d heard that tremble in my voice.

  “Yes, Nick.”

  I didn’t know what to say next. She was too much for me in her blue dress. I took her by the hand and led her to the edge of the bed, meaning to talk, I think, though I’m not so sure. She pressed her lips against mine, muttering words I couldn’t understand, and I rolled back onto the bed, dragging her down onto me, urging her up on top. So I made love to her that way, or perhaps it was her blue dress that I lov
ed. I felt a hopeless enthusiasm and desire rising in my chest as I struggled to possess her, and I pulled her closer, then closer, and we grew wild for a little while, going at it until I could feel the presence of my dead brother in the room, and then I rolled Marie over so she was beneath me now and we continued more fervently than before as if to vanquish him in our delirious motion.

  The next morning we lay there in the endless haze that poured through the slatted blinds. I could see the age in Marie’s face but also the soft features of the girl she had been.

  “What time’s your appointment with Micaeli?”

  “At eleven. Some kind of brunch.”

  “Where?”

  “At his condominium. In Sausalito.”

  “I know that place. That’s where Micaeli entertains businessmen from out of town. They take the ferry over from the city.”

  I wondered how she knew so much about Micaeli’s affairs. Maybe I should have wondered about it longer, but she was naked on the bed beside me, vulnerable, and my mind was on other things. I watched her stand up and loop the dress over her head. She looked rumpled and delicious and sad, like somebody’s wife in a television commercial, and I wanted to fuck her again.

  “You still plan to meet him, don’t you?”

  “Sure,” I said but I didn’t want to go. I was afraid of what might happen out there. All my anxiety came back to me, and it seemed everything between Marie and me was a charade and we were both masking some ugly truth.

  “How about if I didn’t go to work for Romano?”

  “What would you do instead?” Her voice was level but I knew what she was thinking. Life was expensive. I didn’t make much money and wouldn’t, not working for Jimmy Wong.

  “It was just an idea. A wild hare.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “We could leave. Just strike out. Not take anything from anybody.” It was a bold plan, genuine action, but now it was Marie’s turn to back away.