Who is Lou Sciortino?

by Ottavio Cappellani

  Uncle Sal is looking at a point somewhere on the street that Nick can’t see. He turns with a smile.

  “Hello, Nick, I hope I’m not disturbing you.” He comes in without waiting for an answer. “Just got up, did you? Maybe you were having breakfast…”

  What the fuck is Tony’s uncle doing here? Nick must have seen him dozens of times at Tony’s barbecues. A few polite greetings, the feeling he’d met a Joe Pesci type, the real thing, not a fake like the American actor, who plays a man of honor in movies only, nothing more.

  “If it’s about last night’s barbecue, Don Scali,” Nick says, “I was just thinking of going to Tony to apologize…”

  “You’re a good kid, Nick, a real good kid … You can go later, Tony’ll still be home. At this hour, he sends his boys to the salon: you know, those two faggots from Caltagirone. But … can I sit down?” Uncle Sal asks, and, again without waiting for a reply, takes out his handkerchief, dusts the armchair with a dramatic gesture, and sits. Nick hurriedly picks up the guitar case and props it against the wall where the stereo is.

  “Jazz…” Uncle Sal says, indicating the stereo. “I once read an article about jazz by this guy in the Giornale di Sicilia … He said jazz is like … how do they say?… like coitus interruptus. They start a tune and it never ends. But I don’t agree. I like it…”

  “I’m sorry, Don Scali,” Nick says. “I’ll turn down the volume.”

  “Tony’s right, you know. He always talks fondly about you, says you’re a real good kid, nice manners.”

  “Tony’s too good to me,” Nick says.

  Uncle Sal opens his arms like he’s saying, You’re right, too! Then he says, “So, d’you listen to the radio this morning, Nick?”

  “The radio? I’m sorry, Don Scali, but—”

  “I know,” Uncle Sal says. “Only people who were born before the war listen to the radio in the morning …

  “Anyway,” he adds, dusting his left elbow with the fingertips of his right hand, “last night there was a murder right here … in the neighborhood … A sergeant of the carabinieri got whacked.”

  Nick’s face turns red like he’s been slapped in the face.

  “It makes my blood boil, too,” Uncle Sal says, looking into his eyes. “I mean … in my nephew Tony’s neighborhood, a son of a bitch comes into Uncle Mimmo’s store, robs a poor old man, and mows down a sergeant. It’s a slap in the face, Nick, see what I’m saying?”

  Trying hard to recover his composure, Nick nods.

  “This morning,” Uncle Sal continues, “I immediately phoned some friends of mine, capish? To find out more. I mean, you gotta know what happens in your own neighborhood, am I wrong? Apparently, the sergeant was shot in the mouth, in the mouth, capish? I mean: it’s not like they know exactly what happened, because of the condition of the face, but on the shelves behind him, along with his brain they found these really tiny pieces of teeth, and from that the forensic people worked out the bullet hit him in the mouth … The things forensics can do these days!”

  Nick squeezes the paper towel in his pocket, and realizes it’s even wetter than before.

  “Who’s playing?” Uncle Sal says, frowning. “Duke Ellington?”

  “No, Don Scali,” Nick says in a thin voice. “It’s … Charlie Parker.”

  “You know, Nick, I’m an old man now…” Uncle Sal says. “I can remember the fifties, goombahs coming over from America, talking about the Duke. Minchia, I thought he was a boss of bosses, but he was a musician!

  “Anyway”—he looks at his watch, gets up very slowly, and just as slowly heads for the door—“it’s getting late.”

  A few steps from the door, he stops and slaps Nick on the back. “It was a pleasure talking to you, Nick.” Then, lifting the flap of his jacket near the buttons, “Tony, Tony, all these barbecues of his aren’t so good for the figure…”

  At the door, he suddenly stops. “Oh, Nick, I almost forgot, you need to be careful … Apparently the son of a bitch who did the robbery is someone who lives in this neighborhood … in this neighborhood, capish? It’s an outrage!”

  With one foot almost out the door, he stops again. “I almost forgot something else, minchia, I’m really getting old … Mindy asked me to say hello.”

  “Mi-Mindy?”

  “Look at him, he’s got a stutter!” Uncle Sal says, squeezing Nick’s right cheek hard between the index finger and middle finger of his left hand. “You’re pretending you don’t remember, huh? Tony’s right, you’re a real good kid. And like all good kids, you’re shy. Mindy, yes, Mindy … Look, we see these things, we know how these things are between you young people … We talk about other things, it seems like we don’t notice, but we got our eyes on you! All you did last night was talk, I know … But you and Mindy were really hitting it off!”

  “Last night?”

  “Sure, last night, at the barbecue. We all saw it … you know what I’m saying? It’s obvious you’re a smart kid, like Tony says … Last night at the barbecue, we all saw the way you and Mindy were looking at each other … all of us … And you know what? I’m telling you this in confidence, man to man: Mindy told her mother she thinks you got a pretty face … Capish, Nick?”

  Outside the door, Uncle Sal looks quickly at the street, then strokes Nick’s cheek and says in conclusion, “Make sure you don’t miss the next barbecue, eh, Nicky?”

  “MISTER CECCAROLI FOR YOU”

  “Mister Ceccaroli for you.”

  Jasmine’s shrill little voice interrupts Frank’s fantasizing. He’s been thinking about his meeting with Sal Scali and wondering why John La Bruna said, “He’s a well-dressed guy, just like you.” For the first time, the words seem off-key, out of place; it hurts his feelings. “He’s a well-dressed guy, just like you.” What the fuck is that supposed to mean? “Who’s he?” he replies absently.

  “Mister Ce-cca-ro-li from Rome,” Jasmine repeats irritably.

  Frank hasn’t even had time to say okay when Ceccaroli’s Italianized English rings out at the other end of the line. “Nice-a to ear you! ”

  “Ceccarò,” Frank says. “Let’s talk Italian, huh?”

  Marco Ceccaroli owns a private TV station in Rome, buys and sells almost all the TV movies made by Erra Productions, and phones Frank every week with his latest gret ideeas for unlikely miniseries to export to America. Frank, who doesn’t give a fuck about miniseries, or maxi-series for that matter, listens to him because he buys his TV movies, but mainly because he can’t say to him, “Look, it’s got nothing to do with me, I’m just a name on the office door.”

  Until now, Ceccaroli has always talked to Frank in English, and Frank’s unexpected request to talk in Italian paralyzes him. How should I talk to him? What should I say? he’s thinking.

  “Whatever … whatever you like, Frank,” Ceccaroli stammers, trusting in Providence.

  “Ceccarò,” Frank says, “you know that guy in Florence who picked up Italian rights in Leonard Trent’s Tenors?”

  “I seen him a few times, Frank,” Ceccaroli says, though he doesn’t know him at all.

  “The movie’s crap,” Frank continues. “It’s about a tenor who nobody knows but, according to that asshole Trent, he’s got ‘the highest singing voice’ that ever existed.”

  “As a director, Trent’s a little eccentric,” Ceccaroli says. He’s a fan of Trent, and likes nothing better than talking about movies. Christ! Movies! The kind that, when you show them on TV, you know they’re real movies because they don’t fill the whole screen!

  “I say he’s an asshole,” Frank says. “But anyhow … you know that movie was made by Starship Pictures, right, Ceccarò?”

  “Sure … sure, Frank.”

  “And you know I’m in charge of Starship Pictures now…”

  “Sure, Frank! Everybody knows that!”

  “Anyhow, Ceccarò, we need to do something for the fucking movie in Italy!”

  “Sure, sure, Frank, I understand,” Ceccaroli says, then adds timidly,
“And what do the people in Florence say?”

  “Ceccarò,” Frank says angrily, “they buy and then they don’t do shit!”

  “Frank,” Ceccaroli hastens to say, “send me the cans with the trailer and I can start putting out a couple TV spots a day!”

  “That’s fine, but we need something … something…”

  “More aggressive?” Ceccaroli suggests.

  “Right,” Frank says. “Anyway, Ceccarò, I want you to organize a nice premiere in Rome with journalists and critics!”

  “You ken relex-a, Frank!” Ceccaroli bursts out: it’s a Freudian slip, his hands are shaking with anxiety. “I’ll rent a multiplex, send out invitations, organize a nice dinner with you and Leonard—”

  “Good, good, Ceccarò,” Frank interrupts. “Let’s see, when’s the best time to do it…” He leafs loudly through his diary. “Cazzarola, too many meetings, what a fucking life … Let’s see…”

  Ceccaroli’s hands are shaking even more.

  “So … I could be in Italy … Let’s say … Tuesday of next week.”

  “Tuesday? Of next week?”

  “Is that too soon?”

  “No!” Ceccaroli says, but even the receiver has started shaking. “No problem! In fact, it’s a great idea! A sneak preview!… Journalists eat them up!”

  “Good for them,” Frank says. “I’ll have Miss Zimmermann call you. She’s a ballbreaker but she’s the only one here who knows what the fuck trailers are, shit like that! ’Bye, Ceccarò!”

  “’Bye, Frank, and … thanks!” Ceccaroli says.

  Frank puts down the phone, picks up a sheet of paper, writes on it, and then calls Jasmine on the intercom.

  Jasmine—Jasmine Artiaco, a dyed blonde with a low-slung ass whom Frank puts up with only because she’s Anthony Artiaco’s daughter—arrives breathless.

  “Call this number,” Frank says. “I want you to arrange a trip to Italy.”

  “You’re going to Italy?”

  Frank looks at her.

  Jasmine lowers her eyes to the notepad and starts to scribble.

  “I’ve written it all down,” Frank continues. “Destination, timetable, date. The only thing missing is the number of people, but I’ll tell you in a couple hours. Now get Leonard on the phone.”

  “Leonard who?”

  “Leonard … you know…” Frank says irritably.

  “Leonard Trent?” Jasmine cries in excitement. “Who made Tenors and Plastic Love?”

  “Chaz!” Frank cries.

  Jasmine jumps. Chaz rushes in.

  “She’s wasting time,” Frank says, pointing to Jasmine with an absentminded gesture.

  Chaz, who, unknown to Frank, fucked Jasmine during their early days at Starship Pictures, looks at Jasmine as if to say, What can you do?

  Jasmine runs out in a huff.

  “UNCLE SAL CAME TO SEE YOU?!”

  “Uncle Sal came to see you?! When was this?”

  “Fifteen minutes ago, Tony … I already told you!”

  Tony’s talking to Nick, who came running straight to his house. Tony also spent a sleepless night, watching a TV auction where the presenter was getting really excited about some paintings by Cascella and Purificato. Minchia, Tony’s got Cascellas and Purificatos in the living room, and even Carusos, just above the orange leather couch where he’s stuck with Nick! But he doesn’t get excited looking at them. He knows they’re out of date.

  “Cettina, Cettina, come here!” Tony shouts toward the bedroom. Cettina appears, half asleep, hair tousled, wearing a dressing gown like Aunt Carmela’s. Fuck, Tony thinks, I married a hooker!

  “Did you hear?” Tony says, trying to dismiss the bitter thought from his mind. “Uncle Sal went to see Nick!”

  “When?” Cettina asks in a tired voice.

  “This morning, fuck me!” Tony replies irritably. Then, turning to Nick, “And what did Uncle Sal want?”

  “I don’t know, Tony,” Nick says. “I really don’t know … He told me … he told me there was a robbery last night … here in the neighborhood…”

  “A robbery! Here, in the neighborhood?!”

  “Yes, a robbery,” Nick goes on. “Uncle Sal says … somebody from the neighborhood came into Uncle Mimmo’s store, robbed … Uncle Mimmo and shot a sergeant.”

  “Somebody from the neighborhood?” Tony says, eyes wide.

  “Yes,” Nick says, bowing his head slightly.

  “Impossible!” Tony says.

  “Want me to make coffee, Tony?” Cettina says.

  “Okay,” Tony says, “make coffee, but hey? Put some clothes on, will you?”

  Cettina looks at him, alarmed, then looks at Nick with an expression of patient resignation and heads for the kitchen.

  “Did you see the way she dresses?” Tony says.

  Nick looks in embarrassment at the window and the view of the garden.

  “But you know, Nick,” Tony continues, crossing his legs to reveal the cardinal-red socks under the cuffs of his purple pants, “you know what happens to somebody in this neighborhood who does a robbery and shoots a sergeant? I mean: to you it may seem normal, I don’t know, like on TV, in Baretta, a guy wakes up in the morning, puts on his jumpsuit, takes his gun from the gun drawer … Minchia, you ever notice something? In those TV shows, they never lock that fucking drawer. There are guns in there, and gold bracelets and necklaces, and wads as thick as this in gold money clips, it makes you think, if some deadbeat nigger has got so much money and so many gold things in that fucking gun drawer, what does he gotta do another robbery for? But the babbasunazzo goes out, takes a look around the neighborhood, finds a liquor store, goes in, whacks a couple of cops and the store owner, who’s black like him, grabs the money, and takes off, singing like Michael Jackson! Fuck, somebody like that in Catania, they’d shoot the guy as soon as he went out the door!”

  Nick is still looking toward the window.

  “You see that fucking barbecue, Nick?” Tony says. “Nice, huh? It’s just like one I saw in an issue of Cosmopolitan. You know how long it took me to get a permit to build it, Nick?”

  Nick makes a face that says, How long?

  “Minchia, three years! And I’m a member of the Scali family, capish, Nick? There’s a whole bureaucracy here … You want to rob somebody in Catania, first you gotta find out if they’re paying protection, because if they’re paying protection you can’t rob them, or else what’s the point in paying protection? So you gotta put yourself on the list … I mean, if you gotta do a robbery, you gotta rob the people who don’t pay protection, that way the others see those people got robbed and they start paying protection, capish? The organization tells you which stores you can rob and which you can’t and, to avoid two people showing up at the same store to do the same robbery, the organization has to make up a fucking schedule … It’s not like America here, Nick, we got no free trade!”

  Tony lights one of his menthol cigarettes (he smokes exactly three a day), then continues. “Anyhow, once you got permission to do your robbery, you know, I mean you know, that sergeants don’t get whacked, because if you whack a sergeant the cops get really pissed off … they never get pissed off except if some cop gets whacked, but a sergeant, can you imagine, fuck!

  “When Alfio … you know who Alfio is? No, you wouldn’t know, you weren’t living here then … Anyhow, there was this guy Alfio who does a robbery, all authorized, papers in order. During the robbery a cop comes in, right? Now, when something like that happens, everybody knows what you gotta do is say, ‘I’m sorry, Mr. Policeman, it’s true I was doing a robbery, I understand you gotta arrest me, I know it’s your job, let’s just try to cooperate and no one gets hurt, here’s my gun, and here am I.’ And the gun, Nick, is always unloaded, if you want to do a robbery in this neighborhood, you know, it’s a rule that the gun isn’t loaded, I mean, cazzo, it’s a fucking rule, that way nobody fucks things up for anybody else. Capito? The guy does a few days in jail, and then they let him go because the jail on Piazza
Lanza is overcrowded, so what are they going to do, keep people inside who do robberies with unloaded guns? The only place you can do a robbery with a loaded gun is a bank, but that’s a whole ’nother story, because the protection thing’s a whole lot more complicated. But if you’re talking about stores, forget about loaded guns and forget about dead sergeants. Capito?”

  “What about Alfio?” Nick says.

  “Oh, yes … Alfio … So, Alfio goes to do his robbery, his gun’s not loaded, right? He robs a hardware store. The guy in the store’s an idiot, he thinks to himself, I sell hardware, what the fuck can they do to me, they can burn my store down, but the store isn’t mine, I rent it, and hardware doesn’t burn. You see what a dickhead he was? Anyway, what happens is, during the robbery, in walks this cop. Up to now everything’s fine, the dipshit hardware guy’s smiling, which is fine, let him laugh, then slip the bomb up his ass … Alfio gives the cop the gun, you following me? Then suddenly … who the fuck knows what went through Alfio’s head, million-dollar question … suddenly he just loses it, picks up a fucking hoe, and goes and smashes the head of that poor cop, who’s only doing his duty. Capito? The cop already put his gun back in his holster, he was just about to slap on the cuffs. Everybody in the neighborhood knew Alfio, he was a professional, that was how he made his living, he wasn’t your usual misfit, he was all square with the bureaucracy, and suddenly he just goes crazy.”

  “And then?” Nick says.

  “Then … then Alfio takes off. The other cop, who stayed in the car, sees something strange happening: Alfio taking off, he’s never seen anything like that, he starts the car, but then he’s stuck in traffic, so he gets out of the car, but by this time Alfio’s gone. Let me tell you, it was a mess. Newspapers, TV reporters, street demonstrations against protection, the police pissed off, and Alfio gone. Capito?”

  Nick nods.