Who is Lou Sciortino?

by Ottavio Cappellani

  “Minchia,” she says to Cinzia, “let’s hope Steve doesn’t stop by.”

  “Why didn’t you invite him?” Cinzia asks, trying to balance a huge plate of meat on her lap.

  “What are you, stupid? Steve was supposed to be going to the opening of a pub this evening and, because of this asshole barbecue, I had to tell him I had the flu. Do you think I could have told him, ‘No, I can’t come because I gotta go to a barbecue given by my hairdresser brother’?”

  Cinzia shakes her head in sympathy.

  “And you know how well he took it. ‘What,’ he says, ‘you gotta get the flu tonight of all nights? You want me to show up with some dog and make us both look like a couple of losers?’”

  “So what did you say?”

  “What did I say? What did I say? I slammed down the phone! Sure, the flu was a lie, but excuse me, did he know it was a lie? He tells me off because I got the flu? Asshole!”

  Cinzia is trying to cut the meat into smaller pieces.

  “How can you eat that crap?” Rosy says. “It’s all … hacked to pieces!” She laughs. “It looks like the fly on Steve’s pants.”

  Cinzia lifts her knife and fork from the plate.

  “Steve cuts his jeans with scissors. Here!” Rosy says, putting her hands between her legs. “Then when he puts them on, he staples them!”

  Cinzia says nothing.

  Rosy sighs. “Minchia … let’s just hope he doesn’t happen to drop by!”

  * * *

  The black Mercedes is parked in front of Tony’s garden. Tuccio, his eyes still on the wheel, says to Nuccio, “We’re going to get out now and go to the fucking barbecue, and you keep your mouth shut. Got it? I’ll do the talking. Let me do the talking. Make like you’re not here. Got it?”

  “Fuuuuuck, what a fucking kaboom!”

  “I said shut up!”

  * * *

  “Do you realize what bullshit that is? I don’t envy anybody’s penis! What I’ve got is clearly an Oedipus complex!”

  In Tony’s kitchen, Alessia, who’s studying psychology, is telling Mindy she’s the living refutation of psychoanalysis and all that bullshit about men and the Oedipus complex, because she’s the one who wants to kill her father!

  “Ale, you haven’t even got a father,” Mindy says.

  “So what? Makes no difference … I’d like to kill Uncle Sal!”

  “It isn’t nice to kill anybody,” Mindy says.

  “In my head, Mindy, don’t you get it? Only in my head…”

  Mindy is dressed in one of those dresses her mother makes her from a pattern. She looks like a figurine cut out of one of those fashion magazines that aren’t really fashionable, the cheap ones that come wrapped in cellophane and offer packs of low-quality cosmetics by mail order from companies nobody’s ever heard of. Her face, though, has nothing to do with her dress, it’s a normal face.

  Tony bursts into the kitchen, looking like someone with an urgent need to let off steam. He stops in front of the girls and starts to drum with his foot on the floor.

  “What happened, Tony?” Mindy asks.

  Tony says nothing and keeps on drumming with his foot. He’s acting like a sulky little kid, but not for the usual reason that the color of the paper napkins doesn’t match the color of the glasses, or the fact that Cettina watered the garden only two hours before the barbecue, so now all the guests have got wet shoes, not to mention the ladies in sandals … It’s not even because of the beer Cettina forgot to put in the fridge, even though it was right there in the kitchen, and when a housewife enters a kitchen and sees bottles of beer the day of a barbecue, then she puts them in the fridge. I mean: it’s something automatic, instinctive, like blinking if somebody tries to stick their finger in your eyes … And if a person doesn’t do it, then she doesn’t do it on fucking purpose! But that’s not what’s making him tense. It’s Uncle Sal and his fucking remark about Nick! What was the name of that fucking antique dealer? Tony can’t remember, but he remembers perfectly what Uncle Sal said the day they found his body slashed with a razor blade. “Everybody knew the guy was a snob.” That’s what he fucking said!

  Tony stops drumming with his foot.

  “Valentina’s looking very pale,” he says. “I don’t think she’s feeling well … You’d better get out of here!”

  * * *

  Tuccio and Nuccio enter Tony’s garden, cutting right though the guests. They don’t say hello to anybody, they’re looking for Uncle Sal and no one else.

  Nuccio walks confidently, with a blissful look on his face like somebody thinking, Fuck, I’m a really handsome guy and I bet these whores are getting excited. I smell pussy! Fantasizing, Nuccio adjusts his balls.

  Tuccio, on the other hand, walks fast, face drawn. He hopes he won’t bump into Uncle Sal right away: he had a clear plan in his head before he got out of the Mercedes, he’d carefully weighed his words and gestures, silently mimed the right expressions, but the lights and faces at the barbecue have driven every thought from his mind.

  So for the third time now, he passes the same face. Either they’re going around in circles or Tony’s garden isn’t as big as it seems. Tuccio stops to look at the face, a face he knows, even if he can’t remember exactly who the fuck it is. Not knowing what to do, Tuccio says good evening.

  The guy says good evening, too, politely, like a rambling old man met by chance on a one-way street.

  Nuccio is wondering why on earth Tuccio is talking to that fucking guy instead of Uncle Sal. But it’s none of his business. He makes a little gesture with his shoulders, a little shake, like he’s straightening a very well-cut jacket, though he’s not wearing a well-cut jacket, then readjusts his balls. The guy facing him makes an embarrassed sign with his eyes, indicating a point behind Tuccio’s back.

  Tuccio doesn’t understand, he’d like to say to the guy, What are you looking at, you little faggot? But the guy’s a guest at Sal’s nephew’s barbecue. He may even be a Scali. So Tuccio blinks a few times as if to dispel the aggressive feelings rising inside him.

  The guy repeats the gesture, and it’s even more embarrassing.

  Tuccio decides to turn around (he doesn’t know why he decides to turn around, but he does) and sees Uncle Sal standing there, with his hands in the pockets of his dark gray worsted jacket. Tuccio thinks, Fuck, he’s pissed about something, otherwise he wouldn’t have his hands in his pockets … a guy like that doesn’t put his hands in his pockets if he isn’t pissed. Tuccio tries to approach Uncle Sal, looking as nonchalant as he can, but as he walks, his body and feet seem to be going in different directions.

  Uncle Sal stands there with his hands stuck in his pockets, while Tuccio, who’s quite a bit taller, bends to whisper something in his ear. The guy who was in his way, and who’s watching the scene now with feigned detachment, sees for a moment in his mind’s eye the grille of the confessional, an image that used to disturb his adolescence.

  Uncle Sal is listening, solemn and motionless, his lips curled in a bitter grimace.

  MEANWHILE IN NEW YORK

  Meanwhile in New York, at the offices of Starship Pictures, in Lou Sciortino’s former office to be precise, Frank Erra is sitting at Lou’s former desk and rummaging nervously through the drawers.

  “Chaz! Chaz!” he shouts out of the corner of his mouth, the other corner being entirely occupied by one of his usual Cohiba Coronas Especiales. “What kind of crummy office is this? They haven’t even got a fucking lighter!”

  * * *

  Frank Erra is in Lou Sciortino’s former office because, about a month ago, Lou’s grandfather, Don Lou Sciortino, summoned Pippino the Oleander, Tony Collura, Jack Bufalino, and Turi Messina to his house and, pointing to the phone with a grave, solemn gesture, said, “Turi, call John La Bruna for me, please!”

  Turi Messina turned white. The previous weekend, in one of the best tapas restaurants in New York, Turi Messina had met Angelo La Bruna together with two Puerto Rican girls with these breathtaking Spanish as
ses, and so he could flirt with those asses he’d thrown caution to the winds and started talking to Angelo, the nephew of John La Bruna, his boss’s rival.

  “Don Sciortino, you gotta believe me…” Turi stammered.

  “Okay, okay, son,” Don Lou said softly, “it’s all right … it’s all right. I owe you an explanation.”

  The explanation was that a couple of months had gone by since the bomb had exploded in their faces, and they still knew fuck all, but now they had to deal with whoever was responsible … “Like the Chinaman says … or was it somebody else? Who was it? Minchia! If the enemy won’t come to you, you gotta go to the enemy!” Don Lou had said, getting confused between Sun-tzu and the Prophet. “Anyway, Turi, call me that suckass John La Bruna!” And Turi had called.

  After the voices of a couple of secretaries, probably interrupted giving blow jobs, Turi heard the voice of John La Bruna in person and passed the receiver deferentially to Don Lou.

  “How are you, John?” Don Lou said.

  “Lou!” La Bruna replied. “Lou! What a nice surprise! I’m fine. How you doin’?”

  “Fine!” Don Lou said.

  “Cazzarola, Lou! What an unexpected pleasure!”

  “I got a problem, John.”

  “Tell me, Lou,” La Bruna replied sympathetically.

  “I need somebody at Starship Pictures … Somebody who understands something about the fucking movie business.”

  “Cazzarola, Lou! I should have called you before! How can you ever forgive me?… Shit! The world we live in these days. Bombs going off for no reason!”

  “No problem, John, no problem…” Don Lou replied.

  “If I understand you, Lou, you need somebody to take your grandson’s place.”

  “Exactly, John! I guess you know I sent my grandson to Sicily. To get a bit of sun!”

  “You did the right thing, Lou … absolutely! Hmm, let me think it over a little, eh, Lou?”

  “Take all the time you want, John—” Don Lou said, meaning days, weeks, or months.

  “There may be somebody…” La Bruna interrupted. “He’s still a kid … but he’s smart … Do you know Frank Erra, of Erra Productions?”

  “No, John, but if you tell me he’s somebody you can trust, I believe you.”

  “Okay, Lou, let me talk to the kid, I’ll call you back.”

  “Okay, John, talk to you later!” Don Lou said in conclusion. Then, turning to his men, “That’s enough fucking around for now!”

  * * *

  “Chaz!” Frank Erra shouts again in Lou Sciortino’s former office. “What the hell is this?” (In one of Lou Sciortino’s former drawers he’s just found a knife.) “Jesus! Who can you trust? What were they doing with this knife?”

  * * *

  Frank Erra is short (not much more than five feet tall), fat, and bald, with a rubbery neck. Right now he’s wearing an elegant gray flannel suit too pale for a man of his bulk, but only six years before he was a waiter at the Sarago, a restaurant where every evening they sang Autunno, Maruzzella, Cristo è o paese d’o sole, and where the prominent customers were Vicienzo Arpaia, Carmine Quagliarulo, Benny Gravagnuolo, and, of course, John La Bruna. Later he became the manager, and that meant keeping the books. Frank was very careful about keeping the books. He had a healthy terror of the books not balancing, and that terror has taken him far. When everybody threw themselves into movies because there was a lot of money to be made, and you needed companies that spent a lot to launder it, Frank became the figurehead for the La Brunas’ company. Erra Productions had a beautiful, spacious office in Manhattan, with a huge white leather couch Frank used for banging young actresses who wanted to hit the big time. He didn’t have much influence, but he always managed to get them a walk-on.

  When they put him in charge of the Sciortinos’ Starship Pictures, Frank was really touched, the way his nephew Al had been the day Frank lovingly showed him how a gun was made. He was only a figurehead, his name meant less than nothing in New York. But they knew that, even if he didn’t count for shit, he was practically one of them. Madonna, they’d put him, not illustrious sons and nephews like Angelo La Bruna or Alphonse Quagliarulo, at the head of a business that took real balls. Frank would have liked to get to know one of these sons or nephews who’d been pushed aside to make way for him, and show him his office and sit him down there, at his desk, and say, “Don’t worry about it, kid, everybody in the family has his place according to his abilities, and that’s why I’m here and you’re doing something else, but if you want to come here and sit in this armchair behind this desk you can do it whenever you like, because Frank Erra is someone who knows the meaning of gratitude.”

  * * *

  Frank gets up from the desk and waddles to the door, the seat of his pants caught between his buttocks. “Chaz!” he calls again. “CHAZ! Come here!”

  Chaz is his bodyguard. But he’s also his confidant. Chaz listens to his stories and nods. When Chaz nods, it means his stories are okay. A good kid, Chaz. Doesn’t say much, just nods.

  “Come on in, Chaz. I got something to tell you.”

  Chaz comes in, sits down on the other side of the desk, rummages in his pockets, takes out the lighter, lights Frank’s Cohiba, then nods and listens in silence.

  “He phoned me!” Frank says. “In person, capish, Chaz? ‘Frank,’ he said, ‘we’ve never spoken on the phone, but I know you’re a smart kid, Frank, because that’s what they all tell me.’ I was shitting my pants, Chaz, so I stammered, ‘But … who is this?’ And he said, ‘Who is this?’ and started laughing, an affectionate laugh, capish, Chaz? ‘Who is this? he asks me,’ and he laughed happily. ‘You want to know who this is, Frank?’ he said. ‘This is John La Bruna.’”

  “Shit,” Chaz says.

  “‘Book a flight to Sicily, kid,’ he told me. ‘Go to Catania, a friend of ours wants to meet you.’ ‘Please, Don La Bruna,’ I said, still shitting my pants. ‘May I know … the name of this friend?’ ‘You gotta know, Frank,’ he said. ‘His name is Sal Scali … he’s a well-dressed guy like you, and just like you, he handles business for us. Capito, kid?’”

  “Okay, Frank,” Chaz says without nodding, “I’ll go tell Jasmine to book—”

  “Where the fuck are you going, Chaz?” Frank cries, nervous because Chaz hasn’t nodded. “You think I can land in Catania, just like that?”

  He stands up and, after a couple of attempts to unjam his pants from between his buttocks, continues, “If Jasmine makes that fucking call, I’ll find myself at Catania Airport with those FBI pigs all over me! Cazzarola! Frank Erra plus Sicily equals disaster.”

  “You’re right, Frank, I’m sorry…” Chaz says, nodding.

  “We need an excuse.”

  “An excuse, Frank?”

  “Yes, I gotta find an excuse to go to Rome.”

  “To Rome?!”

  “Of course, Chaz, I can’t go directly to Sicily, not even with an excuse, because, excuse or no excuse, the FBI will be suspicious … I gotta find an excuse to go to Rome, and then from there I gotta find an excuse to go to Sicily.”

  Chaz doesn’t understand shit, but he nods repeatedly. And Frank, seized by a sudden wave of affection, has to restrain himself from giving him a big, passionate hug.

  IT’S ELEVEN O’CLOCK WHEN NICK GETS UP WITH A START

  It’s eleven o’clock when Nick gets up with a start from the armchair where he’s spent the night. The TV is still on, with the volume turned down. There’s a cooking show on. There’s a huge turkey and a guy, who’s also huge, in a white chef’s jacket, talking to a blonde who seems to find what he’s saying very funny. The turkey is covered in aspic, and it’s so shiny, and so obscene with its hacked-off legs and naked skin, that Nick runs to the bathroom. In the bathroom he shivers from the cold, but still he turns on the cold water, puts his head under the faucet, looks at himself in the mirror, and groans.

  Out of the same compulsive need that makes us go to the toilet before we enter an operating roo
m or after a doctor has told us we’re done for, Nick picks up the shaving foam and shakes the can. The can slips from his hand, he bends down to pick it up, feels dizzy, leans on the sink, looks up, fills his hand with shaving foam, smears it on his face, shaves, and tries to whistle.

  In the kitchen, he opens the fridge and is lost in wonder at the big cartons of milk. Why do I buy all this fucking milk? Why? One day he told Tony about his craving for cartons of milk. Tony nodded sympathetically. “Of course, Nick! There was that kid from that family, what was his name, the one where the father had a knot in his tie as big as an apple, and the kid with that fucking cap who seemed like the only grown-up in that crazy house, every time the family pissed him off he went to the kitchen, opened the fridge, took out this carton that was bigger than he was, poured himself a big glass, and started reflecting on life with a big milk mustache. Of course, Nick, I know all about those cartons.”

  Christ, Nick thinks as he pours the milk into a glass that’s yellow with lime, the fucking things that come into Tony’s mind …

  Meanwhile the doorbell rings, three or four times, the fucking bell Nick never hears. Nick comes out of the kitchen, with the glass in his hand, turns off the TV, takes out a Charlie Parker CD, opens the stereo, slips in the CD, presses play, and sits down in the armchair again. Charlie’s band starts up, hundreds of soloists playing as one. Then the band stops abruptly, waiting for Charlie and … Nick hears the ringing. Fuck, there’s somebody at the door! He runs to the bathroom. His clothes are hanging on the rack. How the fuck did I get them on the rack? Fuck it, they seem clean. The case! Where’s the case? He runs back to the armchair, the guitar case is still propped against it. Near the handle, there are shiny stains of a more opaque, darker black. The doorbell rings again. He goes back to the kitchen, takes a paper towel, wets it, rushes to the armchair, grabs the guitar case, and wipes the handle with the paper towel. The stains are still blacker than the black of the handle. He slips the paper towel in the pocket of his jeans and, heart pounding like it’s part of Charlie Parker’s rhythm section, reaches the door, looks through the peephole, and sees the serious, bored face of Uncle Sal. Nick opens, trying to appear normal.