by Ed Falco
“What about it?” Cork glanced back up the stairs and then motioned for Sonny to come into the hallway. “It’s cold,” he said. “Feels like winter already.”
“The shipment’s small,” Sonny said. He took a seat on the steps and pushed his hat up on his forehead. “It’s coming in a car rigged with an undercarriage. Plus there’ll be more bottles stuffed in the upholstery.”
“Whose is it?”
“Who do you think?”
“Again? Mariposa? What’ll we do with it? We can’t sell it to Luca.”
“Best part,” Sonny said. “Juke’s buying it from us direct. No middleman.”
“And if Mariposa finds out Juke’s selling his hooch?”
“How’s he finding out?” Sonny said. “Juke sure as hell’s not telling him. And Mariposa’s not in Harlem.”
Cork sat down next to Sonny and stretched out on the steps as if they were a bed. “How much money will we make with a small shipment like that?”
“That’s the beauty,” Sonny said. “It’s high-class champagne and wine direct from Europe. The classy stuff: fifty, a hundred simoleons a bottle.”
“How many bottles?”
“I figure between three and four hundred.”
Cork laid his head back on a step and closed his eyes, doing the math. “Holy Mother of God,” he said. “Juke’s not paying us that much, though.”
“Course not,” Sonny said, “but we’re still gonna make a bundle.”
“Where’d you get the tip?”
“Don’t do you any good to know that, Cork. Why, don’t you trust me?”
“Shite,” Cork said. “You know we’re all dead men if Mariposa finds us.”
“He ain’t gonna find us,” Sonny said. “Plus, we’re already dead men if he finds out. Might as well be rich dead men.”
“How many guys—” Cork said, and the door to Eileen’s opened at the top of the stairs.
Eileen leaned over the steps with her hands on her hips. “Will you invite your friend up, Bobby Corcoran,” she said, “or will you be stayin’ out there in the hall making your wicked plans?”
“Come on up,” Cork said to Sonny. “Eileen’ll make you a cup of coffee.”
Sonny tugged at his jacket, straightening himself out. “Are you sure it’s okay?” he asked Eileen.
“Didn’t she just tell me to invite you up?” Cork said.
“I don’t know,” Sonny said, “did she?”
Eileen’s little girl came out of the apartment behind her and took hold of one of her legs, “Uncle Booby!” she shouted.
“She’s a pip,” Cork said to Sonny, and then he jumped up the steps and charged her as she ran away into the apartment screaming.
“Come on up,” Eileen said. “No need to be hanging around in the hallway.” She went back into the apartment and left the door open.
In the kitchen, Sonny found her looking relaxed with a cup of coffee and a plate of brownies on the table in front of her. “Sit down,” she said, and she pushed an empty coffee cup across the table. Her hair seemed brighter with the new hairdo. The waves glittered under the kitchen light with every movement of her head.
Cork came into the room with Caitlin on his shoulders. “Say hello to Sonny,” he said. He plopped himself down at the table, lifted Caitlin off his shoulders, and dropped her into his lap.
“Hello, Mr. Sonny,” Caitlin said.
“Hi, Caitlin.” Sonny glanced back and forth between Caitlin and Eileen and said, “Wow. You’re almost as pretty as your mama.”
Eileen looked at Sonny askance, but Cork only laughed and said, “Don’t be giving her a fat head.” He put Caitlin down, patted her on the butt, and said, “Go play by yourself for a minute.”
“Uncle Booby,” she said, pleading.
“And quit it with the Uncle Booby before I give you a shellackin’.”
“You promise?” Caitlin said.
“What?” Cork said. “That I’ll give you a shellackin’?”
“That you’ll come play with me in a minute?”
“Promise,” Cork said, and he waved her off into the parlor.
Caitlin hesitated and glanced quickly over to Sonny before skipping off into the living room. She had her uncle’s fine blond hair and her mother’s hazel eyes.
Sonny said, “Uncle Booby,” and laughed.
“Isn’t that perfect?” Eileen said. “Out of the mouths of babes…”
“Don’t be encouraging her, now,” Cork said to his sister. “She only says it to get a rise out of me.”
Eileen toyed with her coffee cup, as if thinking about something, and then said to Sonny, “So have you heard that one Mr. Luigi ‘Hooks’ Battaglia is still huntin’ down Jimmy’s killer?”
Sonny turned to Cork.
“Ah,” Cork said, “last time I ran into Hooks he asked me to tell Eileen that he hadn’t forgotten about Jimmy.”
“Almost two full years, now,” Eileen said to Sonny. “Two years and he’s still out there beating the bushes for Jimmy’s killer. We got a regular gumshoe in Mr. Hooks Battaglia, don’t we, now?”
Cork said, “According to Hooks, it was one of Mariposa’s goons that killed him.”
“Don’t I know that?” Eileen said. “Doesn’t everybody know that? The question is, which one of Mariposa’s goons and what is anybody ever goin’ to do about it, now that all this time has passed?”
Cork said, “What’s time got to do with it? If Hooks finds him, he’s gonna kill him.”
“What’s time got to do with it…?” Eileen repeated.
Sonny said, “Hooks is Sicilian, Eileen. Two years is nothing. If Hooks finds out twenty-two years from now who killed his friend, take my word for it, that man’s dead. Sicilians don’t forget and they don’t forgive.”
“Sicilians and Donegal Irish,” Eileen said. “I want the law to prosecute Jimmy’s murderer.” She said to Cork, “You knew Jimmy. You know how he’d want it.”
“God knows I loved him like a brother,” Cork said, and he seemed suddenly angry, “but we never agreed on these kinds of things, Eileen. You know that.” He slid his chair back and looked into the living room, checking on Caitlin. “Jimmy was an idealist,” he said, turning to Eileen again, “and me, you know I’m a realist about such things.”
“You’d approve of murdering the murderer, would you?” Eileen leaned over the table toward her brother. “You think that would prove something? You think that would change something?”
“Ah, you sound just like Jimmy now,” he said, and got up from his seat. “It’s breakin’ my heart. Hey!” he called out to Caitlin in the living room. “What are you doing over there?” To Eileen he said, “If I knew who killed Jimmy, I’d kill him myself and be done with it.” He looked to the living room again, raised his hands over his head, roared like a monster, and went chasing after Caitlin, who screamed from someplace out of sight.
Eileen looked across the table to Sonny. “Jesus,” she said, “the two of you…”
Sonny said, “Sounds like a family argument.” He glanced behind him to his hat, where he’d hung it on the back of the door. “I should be going.”
“Bobby and Jimmy,” she said, as if Sonny hadn’t said a word. “They’d argue right here at this table. The two of them, and always the same argument, different particulars: Bobby sayin’ the world’s corrupt and you have to live with it as it is, and Jimmy sayin’ you have to believe in something better. Around and around.” She looked down at her coffee and then up at Sonny. She didn’t appear unhappy. “That was Jimmy,” she said. “He didn’t disagree with Cork, the world’s full of dirt and murder, and he didn’t even think it would ever change—but he’d tell Bobby, tryin’ to teach the boy something, ‘You have to believe it can change, for the sake of your own soul.’ ” She was quiet then, watching Sonny.
Sonny said, “I’m sorry I never met him,” and Eileen nodded as if the prospect of such a meeting amused her.
Cork called to Sonny from the living room, and
Eileen motioned for Sonny to go join him. “You came to see Bobby after all, didn’t you?”
Sonny found Cork with his arms wrapped around Caitlin. She was giggling wildly and struggling to get loose. “Give me a hand with her, will you, Sonny?” he said, and he spun around. “She’s too much for me!” he shouted, and as he completed a revolution, he tossed her screaming through the air and into Sonny’s arms.
“Hey!” Sonny said, as he caught her and held on to her writhing body. “What do I do with her?” he asked, and then he spun around and tossed her screaming and yowling back to Cork.
“Had enough?” Cork asked her.
Caitlin stopped writhing, looked back to Sonny, and then up to Bobby. “Do it again!” she screamed, and Bobby spun around, getting ready to toss her again to Sonny, who was laughing and readying himself to catch her.
Between them, in the doorway from the kitchen, Eileen leaned against the wall, shaking her head with a smile on her face that turned into a laugh as Caitlin went screaming through the air and into Sonny’s arms.
8.
Sean pinched a flake of peeling yellow paint from the wall and waited for the clatter of a steam engine rumbling along its tracks on Eleventh to pass before he knocked again on Kelly’s door. He’d just spent the last few hours riding the streetcars because he didn’t want to go home to face Willie and Donnie. He couldn’t stay out all night, though—and they’d told him to go, didn’t they? Still, he didn’t want to see them yet. “Kelly,” he shouted to the closed door. “I know you’re in there. I saw you walkin’ past your window from the street.” He pressed his ear to the door and heard a mattress squeak and then the clink of glass on glass. He imagined Luca Brasi’s body slumped against the door to his apartment, and he wondered if Donnie really would cut off the bastard’s dick and shove it in his mouth. He pictured it, Luca Brasi with his own dick in his mouth, and the image made him wince. He ran his hands through his hair and touched the gun in his pocket when Willie’s words came back to him… every dago bastard in the city looking to shoot our mick asses. “Kelly,” he said, pleading. “Come on, now. It’s your own brother out here.”
When the door finally opened, he took a step back and put his hands over his face. “For God’s sake,” he said into the darkness.
“Well,” Kelly said, “you wanted to see me, Sean. Here I am.” She held the half-opened door in one hand and the doorframe in the other. Both her eyes were blackened, her cheeks were swollen, and a red gash on her forehead disappeared into her hair. She wore a pair of bright red shoes and a man’s white shirt with the sleeves folded up. From the size of the shirt, it had to be Luca’s. The shirttails reached her calves. “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Sean, stop being a baby, will ya? It’s not so terrible.”
Sean took his hands away from his face and winced as he looked at her. “Ah, Mother of Mercy,” he said. “Kelly.”
Kelly sneered at him, and then grimaced as if the sneer had caused her some pain. “What do you want, Sean? I thought the family was all done with me.”
“You know I wasn’t ever a part of all that,” Sean said. He peeked behind her, into the apartment. “Can I come in?”
Kelly looked into her apartment as if it might have suddenly transformed into a place someone would want to enter. “Sure,” she said, “welcome to my palace.”
Inside, Sean searched for a place to sit. She didn’t have a kitchen table and chairs, only an empty space in front of an empty sink. She didn’t have a kitchen, really. There was a space with a sink and a few cupboards and then a hint of an archway that separated the kitchen space from the bedroom space, which was occupied by a small bed, a rickety nightstand beside the bed, and a big stuffed chair alongside a window that looked out onto Eleventh. Magazines and clothes were piled on the chair up to the armrests. Sean kicked at some of the clothes and magazines and clutter on the floor, where the faces of Hollywood stars stared up at him: Jean Harlow, Carole Lombard, Fay Wray. He turned to find Kelly leaning against the closed door watching him. Her shirt was opened halfway, and he could see more of her breasts than he was comfortable seeing. “Button up, Kelly, will ya?” He gestured toward her breasts.
Kelly pulled the shirt closed and fumbled with the buttons but didn’t make any progress.
“Ah, Kelly,” Sean said. “Are you too drunk to button your own damn shirt?”
“I’m not drunk,” Kelly said, her voice muted, as if she were talking to herself as much as Sean.
“Nah, you just can’t make your fingers work the buttons,” he said, and he buttoned up the shirt for her, as if she were a little girl again and he was taking care of her. “Look at you, Kelly,” he said, and his eyes filled up with tears.
Kelly said, “When are you gonna quit being a baby, Sean?” She pushed him away and got back into bed. She pulled a red blanket to her waist and fixed a pillow under her neck. “So now you’re here…” She leaned toward him, as if to ask what he wanted.
Sean cleared the clothes and clutter off the chair and pulled it alongside the bed. “Kelly,” he said, dropping down into his seat as if exhausted. “Darlin’,” he said. “This is no kind of life you’re livin’.”
“Isn’t it?” Kelly said. “Should I go back to cookin’ and cleanin’ for all of you? Doin’ everyone’s bidding like a house servant? No, thank you, Sean. Is that what you came here for? To bring me back home?”
“I didn’t come to bring you back home,” Sean said. “I came ’cause I’m worried about you. Look at you.” He slid his chair back as if to get a better view of her. “You look like you should be in the hospital, and you’re lying here drinking yourself into a stupor.”
“I’m not drunk,” she said. On the night table beside her, a mostly full bottle of rye waited alongside an empty glass. She poured herself a drink and Sean snatched the glass out of her hand before she could get it to her lips.
“What do you want, Sean? Tell me what you want, and then leave me in peace.”
“Why would you stay with someone who beats you like a dog?” Sean put the glass down on the night table and noticed for the first time a small vial of black pills. He picked it up. “And what are these?”
“I had it coming,” Kelly said. “You don’t know the whole story.”
“You sound like Mom,” Sean said, “every time Dad gave her a beatin’.” He rattled the pills, asking her again to explain.
“Luca gets them for me,” she said, and she took the bottle from him. “They’re for the pain.” She spilled two small black capsules into her hand, popped them into her mouth, and washed them down with the rye.
“Kelly,” Sean said. “I’m not here to take you home. Donnie wouldn’t have it anyway.”
Kelly settled herself in the bed and closed her eyes. “Then tell me what you’re here for.”
“Look at me,” Sean said. “I’m here to say when you want help, I’ll do everything I can for you.”
Kelly laughed and her head sank back into the pillow. “You’re a big baby,” she said. “You always have been, Sean O’Rourke.” She touched Sean’s hand and closed her eyes again. “Go away and let me sleep,” she said. “I’m tired. I need my beauty sleep.” A moment later her body went loose and rubbery and a moment after that she was sleeping.
“Kelly,” Sean said. When she didn’t answer, he touched her neck and felt her steady pulse against his fingertips. “Kelly,” he said again, talking to no one. He took one of the pills from the plastic bottle, examined it, and then put it down. There was no label on the bottle. He pushed Kelly’s hair back and saw that the gash went all the way up past her forehead almost to the top of her head. The cut was scabbed and ugly, but it didn’t look deep. He pulled the blanket up to her chin, took her shoes off, and placed them side by side next to the bed. When he left the apartment, he checked to be sure the door was locked behind him.
Out on the street, a harsh wind blew across the avenue, off the Hudson. He clutched his jacket to his neck and hurried to his building, where he elbowed the door
open and marched up the stairs and into the familiar rooms of his home. In the kitchen, his mother was sitting at the table with the comic pages of the New York American spread out in front of her. She had always been a frail woman, but the years had turned her scrawny and her neck in particular was hard on the eyes, all skin and tendons and sunken flesh, like a chicken’s neck. In her eyes, though, there was still a hint of the old brightness as she smiled at something in the comics. His father was out of sight somewhere, probably in bed with a bottle of whiskey next to him and a tumbler in his hand. “Mom,” Sean said, “where are the boys?”
His mother glanced up from the paper. “Krazy Kat,” she said, explaining the big grin on her face. “The boys are up on the roof,” she added. “Doing something with those fool birds. Are you all right, then, Sean?” she asked. “You’re lookin’ a mite troubled.”
“Nah,” Sean said, “nothing’s wrong, Mom.” He held her by the shoulders and kissed her cheek. “I’ve just been over to see Kelly.”
“Ah,” his mother said, “and how is she?”
“Still drinking too much.”
“Sure,” his mother said, and went back to reading the comics, as if there was nothing more to be said on the subject.
On the roof, Sean found Willie and Donnie sitting on a bale of straw next to the pigeon coop. The bottom of the coop, under a patched-together structure of wood and chicken wire, was thick with fresh straw. Donnie and Willie sat side by side, smoking and looking out over the rooftops. Wind riffled the collars of their jackets and mussed their hair. Sean took a seat on the roof ledge in front of them. “Well,” he said, “did you do the job?”
“Son of a bitch got lucky,” Donnie said. “He came back with his whole bloody gang.”
“I put holes in a few of them,” Willie said.
“What happened?” Sean said. “Did you shoot it out?”
Donnie nodded to Willie and said, “Your brother’s a bleedin’ lunatic.”
Willie, grinning, said, “I lost my temper a wee bit.”
