“Frankie might get hurt in this,” Lenny said. “I don’t know how, but when something involves the DiCicos, most anything could happen. Look at what happened Christmas night.”
Doug stared at his empty bottle. “Another?” Lenny said again.
“No, no, I’m good.”
“Yeah, guess I had too much. And said too much.” Lenny sighed.
“Frankie’s a good kid,” Doug said. “And, I think, so was Gennaro. You can’t help who your father is. Lord knows mine wasn’t worth much.” Doug’s expression turned thoughtful, as if he were seeing something that Lenny couldn’t. His tongue licked at his chapped lips and he stared off to the side. “Whatever happened to the cabdriver, the DiCicos already paid a big price. Unfortunately, it was Gennaro who paid the biggest price. But they all paid, even Big Vinny. I don’t like the guy and I know he ain’t crazy about me. Or let’s say he ain’t too crazy about my color. But his son was murdered. I lost a brother that way.”
Doug spoke slowly, as if selecting his words carefully. It was that all too familiar oblique way of talking about the DiCicos. Like speaking of the tip of the iceberg when everyone knows the real story hides beneath the surface. Lenny stared at Doug.
“Yes, the DiCicos have already suffered a lot. No sense in adding fuel to the fire,” Doug said. “You might burn down a whole neighborhood for one condemned house.”
Suddenly Lenny thought, It’s Doug who overheard Michael and Jimmy.
“Okay, I gotta pick up my kid. Thanks for the beer.” Doug stood up and pushed his chair back into the table.
“Sorry about your brother. I didn’t know.”
“Long ago, Lenny. It was after that my mother sent me to South Carolina.”
Lenny thought about Salvatore DiCico sending Giacomo to America to live with his family. “Parents do what they have to do,” he said.
“Good parents,” Doug said.
Lenny walked Doug to the front door. Doug paused on the stoop and turned back towards Lenny. “Don’t worry about Frankie. It’ll be okay. I got a good feeling about this.”
“Doug ...” Lenny wanted to say that this wasn’t just about Frankie. If Doug testified he was also putting his life and his child’s life at risk. Big Vinny did not forgive easily. But Lenny wasn’t sure if in fact Doug was the one who spoke to the police, and he already had said much more than he should have. “Never mind,” he said. “Thanks for listening.”
Doug nodded and crossed the avenue, and Lenny noticed a text from Frankie. He had arrived safely, and Vi and Ina picked him up at the airport. Ina held a sign with the words: Here To Pick Up My Big Brother. Later that evening Frankie called. They talked about the flight, the birthday party Ina had planned, and a little about Frankie’s misgivings about the trip.
“One day at a time, Frankie,” Lenny said. “After you give it a week or so, if you don’t like being there, I’ll buy your ticket to come back.” Lenny almost said to come home, but he stopped himself.
“We’ll see. It’s all so different. I’ve never traveled this far.”
The longest Lenny ever closed the store was when Frankie was in the hospital. Vacations were the occasional Sunday through Tuesday, and the furthest they ever traveled was to Washington, D.C. Lenny hoped that Frankie would stay in Los Angeles, but he also understood that Frankie was grieving and fragile, and Lenny would accept whatever Frankie chose to do.
He tried to lighten the conversation by asking Frankie if Vi had made him a cassata. Frankie chuckled and said they had an ice cream cake. Lenny didn’t mention that he left Big Vinny’s money at the cabdriver’s house. Some things are better left unsaid, but he knew that Frankie would like the idea.
The following evening, Marie DiCico called Lenny. She was very talkative, asking about Frankie and his trip to California. She sounded much more upbeat than when they had last talked, and Lenny was a little confused by her phone call and her rambling. She wasn’t in the habit of calling him, but then she said: “Lenny, I have some good news.” And Lenny immediately thought of Doug’s words: “Don’t worry about Frankie. It’ll be okay. I got a good feeling about this.”
“The good news is that the murder charges against Michael and Jimmy have been dropped,” Marie said. “Let me put Lena on the phone. She can explain it better.”
“Hello.” Lena sounded annoyed. “I don’t know why my mother can’t explain this. It’s not difficult to understand. Our lawyer called. He said that whoever said that he had overheard my brothers say that they were going to get even with the cabdriver recanted. That’s all the D.A. had. They’ve been trying all these months to build a case, questioning a whole bunch of people, but they couldn’t find shit. Except for that one witness, the D.A. had nothing. And if you ask me, the witness they had was a phony. I don’t believe he even existed.”
Oh, he’s real, Lenny wanted to say, just as he would have loved to tell Lena to put Big Vinny on the phone, and tell Big Vinny to kiss Doug Turner’s feet because he just saved your sons’ fat asses. Of course by saying that he would also be telling Big Vinny that Doug was the person who had informed the police in the first place. No telling what Big Vinny might do. “Good news, Lena. Please tell your mother that I’m very happy for her.”
In the distance, Lenny heard Lena say: “Talk to him. I’m tired of being everyone’s fucking carrier pigeon.”
“You still there, Lenny?”
“Yes, Marie, I’m still here.”
“I just wanted you to hear the news from us first. At least there’s something I can be grateful for. Too much, Lenny. I couldn’t take anymore.”
“I understand, Marie. Believe me, I understand.”
Lenny was just about to close the store when Marie had called, so he slipped his cellphone back into his pocket, locked the front door, and turned out the lights. No trial, Lenny thought. “Thank you ... thank you,” he said as he walked up the three steps from the store to the breezeway. He wasn’t sure who he was thanking — Doug, fate, Filomena, God? — but he was immensely grateful. He also felt remorse. There would be no justice for the cabdriver’s family, but then Lenny thought justice was little more than lofty ideals on paper or in movies. In real life justice looked a lot like revenge. He knew that, had Doug testified, he would have placed his own child and himself at terrible risk. He thought of Lena’s words, the D.A. had nothing. What if Doug had testified and there was no conviction? Then Big Vinny would want his justice. Doug would be a dead man. Peace is more important than justice, Lenny told himself while he stood in the middle of his office and scanned the walls of sour expressions. “What if this? What if that?” he said, and threw up his hands. “Too much. There will be no trial, and right now that’s all I care about.” He fell to his knees. “Mama, if you can hear me, and Gennaro if you loved him half as much as he loved you, please help him to heal. Basta!”
36
The day the sale closed on the Lasante’s store and house, Big Vinny and Scungilli stopped in the store with a bottle of grappa for Lenny, which Marie wrapped in gold paper and tied with a red ribbon. Somehow, the Pulumbo brothers had secured a mortgage from a bank or through a personal loan. Lenny didn’t ask any questions, but he suspected that Big Vinny had something to do with it.
“A few years later than you wanted,” Big Vinny said, “but you’re finally getting out of the neighborhood, and so are Scungilli and me. For a little while anyway.”
The next day, the DiCico men and Scungilli began their sentences in an Upstate prison. Through plea bargains, Michael and Jimmy were sentenced to one to two years with probation; Scungilli, three to five years with probation; and Big Vinny, five to seven years with probation.
“With time off for good behavior,” Big Vinny said, “we’ll all be home for Christmas. The Pulumbos better sell baccalà if they know what’s good for them.”
Scungilli excused himself and left the store. Something Big Vinny must have told him to do so he could talk with Lenny privately. He leaned on the counter as if he were about
to confide a secret. “Do me two favors, Lenny.”
“What’s that, Vinny?” Lenny feared that Big Vinny was about to hand him another envelope stuffed with cash.
“Look in on the girls. Lena’s tough, but Marie is having a hard time. She’s probably glad to get rid of me, but still ... it won’t be easy. I don’t know that she’ll ever get over losing Gennaro. My mother never got over losing Sal, but then neither did my old man.”
Big Vinny pushed himself up and away from the counter. “It’s a lousy thing to bury your kid. Bad enough to bury a parent or God forbid a wife, but never your kid. Marie likes you. She should have married you. She would have been better off, but you were too busy being Father Lasante until Vi woke your pecker up.”
“I promise I’ll keep an eye on Lena and Marie,” Lenny said and waited for the second request.
“One more thing, Lenny. Take care of the grave. Don’t let it look like nobody goes to see him.”
“Of course,” Lenny said. Big Vinny had this way of turning Lenny’s stomach and breaking his heart at the same time.
“We’re better than blood, Lenny, whether you like it or not. One time, last year — it was at the Feast. Seems like 100 years ago. The night before Filomena died. God rest her soul. I said that you were no better than us. I lied ... you shoulda left 104th Street a long time ago, but you did right by your family. You’re a good man, Lenny Lasante. There’s no better.”
Lenny said thank you, but there was no sense in returning the compliment. Big Vinny could smell bullshit a mile away.
“Ciao,” Big Vinny said and left the store.
Big Vinny and Lenny had had more fights than Lenny could remember. Lenny carried a scar over his left eyebrow from Big Vinny’s diamond pinky ring, and Big Vinny tossed out more than a few white shirts that Lenny had bloodied. Since the last Feast of The Assumption there was a lot of loss, but not only loss. Frankie had also begun coursework at UCLA, and soon Lenny would move from Glenhaven into the basement apartment in Angie’s house, which in gentrified Manhattan neighborhoods were called brownstone garden apartments. Lenny called it the cellar in Angie’s attached house, which was good enough for him.
Tootsie seemed disappointed when Lenny first told her that he was selling the store and the house and moving into the city, but she understood — at least that’s what she said. They saw each other often after Frankie left. Lenny even spent a few nights at her place when Tyrone was at his grandmother’s. The night before Lenny moved to Angie’s, Tootsie and he went to Russo’s On The Bay for dinner.
They lifted their wine glasses for a toast.
“I get it, Lenny,” she said. “You don’t have to explain. You were seventeen when you started taking care of people, and you just got done. You need a break. Here’s to a new beginning.”
They each took a sip of their wine and placed their glasses back on the linen tablecloth.
“You also still got a thing for Vi,” she said.
It was an upscale restaurant, dim lighting, good food, and Tootsie looked very pretty, but yes, Lenny still had a thing for Vi, or at least the idea of Vi. Tootsie reminded him too much of the neighborhood and of the folks who never considered leaving, but he couldn’t tell her that. Letting Tootsie think that he was still in love with Vi was a kinder way of letting Tootsie down.
A waiter wearing a white dinner jacket and a black bowtie placed a plate of chicken cacciatore on the table before Tootsie and mussels fra diavolo over linguini before Lenny.
“Do me one favor, Lenny.”
“What’s that?”
“Tonight, instead of going back to my place, let’s spend the night at your house.”
It seemed like a silly idea, but Lenny agreed.
Most of the furniture was gone. Angie, Amelia, Irish, and Tony had divvied up some of the antiques. Lenny didn’t want anything except for a few photographs and the cartoline postale for Frankie, which as it turned out had some monetary value, but Lenny doubted that Frankie would ever sell them, at least not the ones of the great-grandfathers.
Lenny didn’t know why Tootsie wanted to spend their last evening together in the almost empty house, but the sex was great — slow and deliberate until their bodies could no longer hold back, and Lenny bit his lip not to call out Vi’s name.
Afterwards, Tootsie gathered her clothes. “Aren’t you spending the night?” Lenny said.
“Why? Vi’s the only woman that you made love to in this house. So tonight I was Vi. I know that. If you ever change your mind, you know how to reach me.”
Tootsie carried her clothes from the bedroom to the bathroom off the hallway.
After the front door closed downstairs, the house was silent — no creaks, no water running or toilets flushing, no voices, no fragrance of Jean Nate or sauce simmering or coffee perking. It was already someone else’s house.
The next day, the smell of low tide wafted in from Jamaica Bay as the Pulumbo brothers removed the Lasante’s Italian-American Groceries sign. They were Calabrese, not Neapolitan as Big Vinny had said. Very short and dark, and the neighbors called them the hardhead twins. Being hardheaded or stubborn was the hackneyed belief about people from Calabria, and they were called twins because they resembled each other, not because they were in fact twins.
The older brother held the ladder while the younger brother tottered near the top rung, struggling to reach the sign. Onlookers lost count of the number of times that the brother at the top of the ladder dropped whatever he was holding, several times bopping his brother’s bald head, who let go of a barrage of curse words in dialect each time he was hit.
Quite an audience gathered before the brothers were done with their Southern Italian version of a Laurel and Hardy. Elders pulled little ones away from the ladder fearing that falling tools or worse, a falling sign might injure them. When not laughing, old women took tissues from the bosom or sleeve of their housedresses and dabbed at their eyes as if watching a cortege. Old men shook their heads in clouds of cigar smoke. “The end of an era,” Lou Romano from Romano’s Funeral home said as the sign came down.
Lenny waited for the crowd in front of the store to disperse before he left the house to sneak across the avenue and have lunch with Doug. When he entered the garage, Doug was scrubbing motor oil from his hands in a large rusty slop sink.
“Just in time,” Doug said.
Lenny had never thanked Doug for recanting on what he had initially told the police, assuming he was in fact the sole witness that Big Vinny’s lawyer spoke of. Lenny was pretty sure that he was — as sure as he could be of anything that had to do with Big Vinny. Given that the DiCico men were in jail, and no one else was in the garage except for the two of them, maybe now was the time to talk. But there was always the chance that someone might overhear them, and if it got back to Big Vinny that Doug was the D.A.’s witness, Doug would be a dead man and Lenny would be a hero. After all, he was the one who persuaded Doug to recant. At least that’s how Big Vinny might see things.
Doug opened two weather-beaten lawn chairs and an equally worn card table behind an old Cadillac on a hydraulic lift. Next he took several Tupperware and two beers from a cooler, plastic and paperware from a shopping bag, and set everything on the card table.
“This is nice of you, Doug.”
“Well, I figured you’ve been making me lunch all these years.”
“Not exactly the same thing. This is a lot more than a sandwich, and you paid for your lunches.”
Doug opened the Tupperware. “I can’t take credit for all of it. One of the women from my church made the fried chicken, mac and cheese, and corn bread, but I made the collard greens. I figured you should finally taste what I’ve been doing with all those hambones.”
Both men filled their plates and shook hot sauce on their collards. Doug also shook hot sauce on his chicken.
“Delicious, Doug. Especially the collards.”
They talked about the new owners of the grocery store and how the Pulumbos planned to sell mo
re cooked food.
“Maybe I’ll teach them how to make greens,” Doug said, and Lenny recalled Big Vinny’s slur about Doug that evening during the Feast of The Assumption.
They talked about their kids, how well Doug’s daughter was doing in middle school and how Frankie was doing in California. “He seems okay,” Lenny said. “It’s going to take time.”
Doug bit into a chicken leg and nodded.
Lenny also spoke about Tootsie. Not in great detail, but that he liked her and appreciated all that she had done for Frankie. He admitted feeling guilty about the way things turned out.
Doug talked about a woman from church he was dating, the woman who had cooked much of their lunch.
What they didn’t talk about was Big Vinny, his sons, or the cabdriver.
After they finished eating and folded the lawn chairs and card table, Doug handed Lenny a bottle of Sambuca.
“I remember you drank this that day in your house when we talked about a lot of stuff, and I told you not to worry about Frankie. I said he’d be okay. Look how good things turned out.”
Lenny took the bottle from Doug, and their eyes locked. “You were right.” Lenny held up his gift. “Thank you. You have no idea how grateful I am.” They shook hands.
“You’re welcome, Lenny. It was my pleasure. Don’t be a stranger.”
As Lenny crossed 91st Avenue, he thought: Even if Big Vinny had his ear to the garage, he would have no idea what Doug and I were just talking about. Lenny smiled and glanced at the new sign over the grocery store — Pulumbo Brothers.
37 Six Years Later
After Lenny moved into Angie’s brownstone, he volunteered at The Good Samaritan Kitchen. First he volunteered during breakfast one or two days a week, then breakfasts and dinners, and then five days a week became seven days a week, until the program manager of the Kitchen retired, and Father Perez offered Lenny the job. Lenny said yes, as long as he wasn’t required to attend Mass. Father laughed and called Lenny Saint Skeptic, which Lenny saw as an improvement over Hard Luck Lenny.
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