“I’m busy, can’t you see?” Pappajohn said.
“Oh, Georgie, always business.” Rona Pappajohn pouted. “And you promised.”
“Hello, operator!”
“Georgie, you promised to buy little Rony a bracelet today so she won’t be mad at you for running out of ink in your pen.”
“Allo, allo,” Pappajohn said. “Ah, Meester Assistant Secretary of State. How are you, Meester Assistant Secretary? I don’t like to wake you up at this hour, but I have a question to ask of you. Meester Assistant Secretary of State, what is this bullshit with my ship?”
In Washington, in his house in Georgetown, MacGregor Wallingford of State listened glumly while the world’s biggest shipping magnate screamed about an accident in Brooklyn involving gangsters. Wallingford didn’t know what it was about. When Pappajohn hung up, Wallingford clicked the phone and told the State Department operator to get the Attorney General at his home.
Chapter 20
IN THE MORNING AFTER the rain, the breezes coming down the street did not cause the usual swirl of soot to rise from the sidewalk on nth Street. The streets seemed washed, and the air was clean and cold and sparkling in the sun. At the subway station, the lightshafts coming down the subway stairs made even the dingy change booth seem pleasant.
Angela and Mario were holding hands while they came down the stairs. They stopped in the pool of light in front of the change booth.
“I’ll be back soon,” he said.
“Well, I don’t know, I have to be home,” she said.
“Why go there?”
“Because I have to.”
He let go of her hand and thought for a moment. He pulled out the key to his apartment.
“Go back and wait, it won’t be long,” he said.
“I have to see. I’m afraid there’s so much trouble.”
“Don’t go home any more. I don’t want you near the trouble.”
“I just don’t know.” She bit her lip.
She took the key from his hand and lifted her face and kissed him. He took her hand.
“I just have to see the woman about my painting and come back,” he said. He took out twenty dollars. He felt strange when he held it out to her. He had never given away anything in his life. “Buy something if you need something,” he said.
She gave him another quick kiss. He went up to the change booth. She spun and went up the stairs with her legs kicking freely. She had her head down and was humming something to herself and she didn't see the two men at the top of the stairs until one of them reached out and took her by the arm. The other pulled a warrant out of his jacket pocket.
Mario got to the fountain in front of the Plaza Hotel at 11:15. His date with Maxine Finestone was at noon. Over the phone the night before she had told him her husband was excited about the painting. That meant money, Mario knew. He sat down on one of the benches around the fountain. He was shaky, as are all veterans immediately after a battle. But the proximity of success soothed him. The woman would pay for the painting, and Baccala, between kisses, had given him a private phone number. He would be able to raise so many thousands out of Baccala that a subsidy for an art career, and also a good start toward building an orphanage in Catanzia, seemed assured. Mario thought it was so good that he would have to steal only one-third of the money for Father Marsalano, instead of half. He bent down and pulled his shoelaces apart. He reached into his pocket and took out his uncle’s eyeglasses. He got up and began stumbling over to the steps of the Plaza.
Detective Donald Jenkins came off the bench on the other side of the fountain.
“Now where is he going?” Jenkins said.
“Look at the walk,” a detective with him said.
“He’s a pisser,” Jenkins said.
“What the hell is he doing?” the detective said.
“I don’t know,” Jenkins said. “One day he’s a priest, and now he’s blind, I guess. The hell with it, let’s start finding out right now what this son-of-a-bitch does.”
They came onto Mario from each side. They guided him to a black Plymouth which had pulled up in front of the hotel a few minutes before.
The raid on Marshall Street took place at 10:15. It would have been much earlier, but Benjamin Goodman, in making calls to news desks, found that two of the local television channels did not have camera crews scheduled to work before nine a.m., and there was no way to get them in earlier. Goodman postponed the raid until the crews reported for work, picked up announcers, and drove to Brooklyn. The raid itself went off smoothly. Cops hit the block in battalion strength. No resistance was offered. They arrested Kid Sally Palumbo and fifty-nine others without incident. The day’s only accident came when Benjamin Goodman, charging the vending-machine office for the television cameras, pulled open the cellar door and the lion flew out at him. This caused Benjamin Goodman to faint, but his reputation for fearlessness was saved by television cameramen who fled when they saw the lion.
The bridge man in Part I, Brooklyn Criminal Court, needed cough drops near the end of the afternoon to finish calling out the various charges against the sixty defendants. The charges began with homicide and attempted homicide and ran through conspiracy to commit homicide, felonious assault, possession of automatic weapons, unlawful possession of a lion, and, as the last line on Big Jelly’s warrant, illegal possession of narcotics.
“It was only marijuana, I’m allowed to have that,” Big Jelly said.
“What do you mean by that?” the judge snapped.
“I’m a high-school student,” Big Jelly said.
There were sixty people in the courtroom. Bail was set at $100,000 each. The total came to $6,000,000, highest bail figure ever heard in a courtroom anywhere. Benjamin Goodman rushed into the men’s room and began combing his hair. He came out into the television lights and gave interviews for an hour. It was after six when he got back into his office. Gallagher was tapping Mario’s passport against the desk.
“What are we supposed to do with the girl?” Goodman said.
“Do what we’re supposed to do,” Gallagher said.
“What am I going to hold her on?” Goodman said.
“What you got now is good enough. Material witness.”
“Where does that take us?”
“Right to here,” Gallagher said. He slapped the passport against the desk. “He gets us everything we need.”
“All right. Put the girl up in a hotel, like any other material witness,” Goodman said. “Then let’s bring this wop of yours in here and have a talk with him.”
“How do you want to work it with him?” Gallagher said.
“Put him into the grand jury with immunity, and when he’s through, your lovely Italian girl is no longer a material witness. She’s a defendant. And I’ve got myself a good witness as a little insurance policy in case the rest of these bums try to go to trial with this.”
Jenkins had been sitting with Mario in a dingy room at the end of the hall. Now he brought Mario into Goodman’s office.
“Did you advise him of his rights?” Goodman said.
Jenkins shook his head yes.
“All right, you can go,” Goodman said.
He leaned back in his chair. “Want a lawyer?” he said to Mario.
“I don’t know one,” Mario said.
“You better get one, you’re in a lot of trouble,” Goodman said.
“You’re going to jail,”" Gallagher said.
“Have you ever been locked up with fags?” Goodman said.
Mario didn’t understand the slang.
Goodman smiled. “A man of the world like you doesn’t know what fags do to you in jail?”
“I don’t know what they do in Italy, but in this country they make a big line in jail and they all rape you,” Gallagher said.
Mario clutched his chest. But he said nothing.
Goodman leafed through the passport. “Pretty serious matter,” he said. “Impersonating a priest, conspiracy to commit murder.” He shook his
head. “Why did you come to this country?”
“I think the big question is, how does he like it here?” Gallagher said. “Would he like to stay here, or would he like to get sent home right away?”
Mario picked him up on it. Now they were telling him what they had on their minds.
“What do I have to do?” he said.
Goodman and Gallagher smiled at each other. “You know, you’re pretty cute,” Goodman said to him.
“You’re going into a room where nobody can see you,” Gallagher said, “and you’re going to tell a jury, a private jury we call a grand jury, you’re going to tell them what you’ve seen and heard.”
“Nobody can see me?” Mario said.
“Nobody.”
“Who will know what I say?”
“Nobody,” Goodman said. “I’ll be there, you’ll be there, and the jury will be there. Nobody else. You understand? Nobody else. Grand-jury testimony is secret.”
“What do I have to say?”
“Just what you’ve seen and heard.”
Mario nodded.
“If you don’t, you get sent home. Bingo. Home to sunny Italy. Right to the town you came here from.”
“All right,” Mario said.
“Did the girl use to sit down with them and talk about what they were going to do?” Gallagher said softly.
Mario took a sharp breath.
“Didn’t she?” Gallagher said.
Mario looked carefully at their faces. “Does she get in trouble?”
“You get sent straight home to Italy,” Gallagher said.
“I never said that,” Goodman said. “I never said we’d forgo criminal charges before deportation.”
It was a very easy thing for Mario to do. He simply nodded yes, and he stood up, and this detective, Jenkins, came and took him out of the building and they drove to a new motel overlooking fishing piers in Sheepshead Bay. They ate in the room and sat and watched television, and Mario felt nothing.
All the next morning Mario sat in Benjamin Goodman’s office and went over what he was to say in front of the grand jury.
“And who came into the restaurant?” Goodman said.
“Kid Sally Palumbo,” Mario said.
“And what did Mr. Palumbo have in his hand?”
“A gun.”
“All right,” Goodman said. “Now, let’s go back. When you sat in the kitchen at fifty-one Marshall Street, with whom did you sit?”
“The grandmother, the brother, the little man you call dwarf, and the fat one, Jelly, and the sister.”
“The sister’s name is?”
“Angela.”
“And during the conversation did Angela Palumbo contribute anything?”
“Contribute?”
“Yes, say anything. Did she say anything?”
“Yes.”
“What did she say?”
“She said, ‘Don’t forget to steal license plates for the truck.’ ”
Goodman sat back. Gallagher smiled. “Accessory before an attempted homicide,” Goodman said.
“All right, tomorrow is your big day,” he said to Mario.
Mario felt good the next morning. One of the detectives had bought him a new shirt. Mario whistled while he buttoned the shirt. All he had to do was walk into this room where nobody could see him, say what he had been told to say, then walk out of the room and go back to the apartment on 11th Street. When he thought of the apartment, Mario could feel Angela next to him. He reached for his tie and began knotting it. Maybe, he thought, it was better that he hadn’t met Mrs. Finestone at the Plaza yesterday. It would make him seem more independent, like a real artist.
The hallways at the District Attorney’s office were crowded in the morning with assistants coming in and out of their offices and going down to the courtrooms. Jenkins took Mario to Goodman’s office and Goodman, leafing through a briefcase, told Jenkins to take Mario down to the grand-jury room. He would follow. Jenkins led Mario down the hallway toward the rear elevators. A policewoman was standing in a doorway near the end of the hall.
“Hi,” she said to Jenkins.
“Who’s that?” Jenkins said.
“You know,” the policewoman said. She glanced into the office.
“Hey!” Jenkins said. He put his arm out to stop Mario. The policewoman tried to step inside the office and close the door. But Mario was even with the doorway and he could see Angela sitting inside. She was in a chair by the window. She had her coat on, and her hands were in her coat pockets. Her face was very white, and she looked very small and very young. He was looking at her, with no expression on his face, and Jenkins’ hand pressed against his back and moved him on down the hall. While he waited for the elevator, Mario wondered if Mrs. Finestone would pay more than $300 for the painting.
The twenty-three people on the grand jury shifted around in red leather chairs when Mario came in. He sat facing them. Goodman walked in, carrying a bundle of yellow legal pads and crinkly onionskin paper covered with smeared typing. He put the bundle on the desk and began going through it. Mario sat in the chair and looked around. Fluorescent lights played on the brown walnut paneling of the room. There were no windows. The people on the grand jury were men, old men mostly, with chicken skin hanging over their collarbuttons. Most of them wore these dark ties with tiny dots.
“Good morning, gentlemen,” Goodman said. The light played on his red hair.
He turned to Mario. “All right, now would you please tell these gentlemen if you know an Angela Palumbo.”
“Parlo solo Italiano,” Mario said.
Goodman smiled. “No, no, just relax. Answer the question in English.”
“Parlo solo Italiano.”
“What are you saying to me?” Goodman said.
“Io no sache.”
“Can’t he speak English?” the foreman of the grand jury, a retired bank official named Everett Cashman, said.
“Tu pari ca ti chiavi a mammata,”[1] Mario said to the foreman.
“What’s that?” the foreman said.
“One of the words was your mother, I know that,” a man sitting next to Cashman said.
Mario smiled and nodded in agreement. “Sorita sa appaura di te la notta,”[2] he said.
Benjamin Goodman’s eyes widened. His lips pursed. His finger shot out at Mario. “Now you listen to me …”
Mario stood up, made a courtly little bow, and came out of the bow with the middle finger of his right hand held up.
“A foongool a bep!”
Mario never did stop to think about what he had done. He just sat in one office while everybody screamed and cursed at him, and then went with the detectives over to another building, the Federal Court Building, and two other men who looked like detectives put him in an office and somebody brought him a sandwich and cup of coffee. Late in the day he was brought into a huge paneled courtroom. A man from the Italian consulate was there. Mario heard discussions about whether he wanted a hearing and when the judge glanced at him, Mario said, “Tu si nu porco grosso.” [3]
The man from the consulate spoke to Mario in Italian. He said Mario could have an immigration hearing at a future date, but he would have to stay in jail while awaiting it. And there would be a chance he would have to face criminal charges. Or Mario could just sign a waiver and be sent back to Italy immediately. Mario shrugged. Anything but jail. At dusk two men who looked like detectives drove Mario through the heavy traffic to Kennedy Airport. At the Alitalia terminal they were ushered into a small cinderblock office.
“You’ve got about two hours before the plane leaves,” one of the men with Mario said.
Mario folded his arms and closed his eyes. He wondered if Mrs. Finestone would have paid $350 for his painting.
At the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office there had been so much shouting and commotion in the hallway that the policewoman was afraid to put her head out and ask for anything. Finally, when the office was getting dark and she had to put on the light, she decided t
o look outside and ask.
“Hey,” she said to a detective, “what do I do with her?”
“With who?”
“I’ve got Palumbo’s sister in here. Been here all day. Nobody told me what to do with her.”
“Stay there and I’ll find out,” the detective said.
He walked down to Goodman’s office. Goodman ran a hand over his eyes.
“I don’t have time to start on her,” he said.
“Well, the policewoman wants to know what to do with her.”
“Throw her out of here,” Goodman said. “I got no use for her now.”
“Just send her home?” the detective said.
“I don’t care where she flops, just throw her out of here without me seeing her,” Goodman said. “And this old broad the grandmother, too. She’s in detention. Release her. I can’t hold her now. Just make sure I don’t see them walking out of here.”
“You can go home,” the policewoman said to Angela.
Angela was still sitting motionless, hands in her pockets, by the window. She looked up.
“Home?”
“That’s right, dear, you can go home.”
Angela got up slowly. The policewoman held the door open.
“If I were you, just between us girls, I’d go right home and write your boy friend a thank-you note.”
“A note?” Angela said.
“Yes, dearie, I think you’ll find your wonderful boy friend has just had his ass thrown out of the country.”
“Out?”
“Today. Bang! Out on his ass.”
“When did he go?”
“Don’t ask me. Just get yourself together and leave so I can go home too. I didn’t even get lunch here today.”
In the hallway, Angela asked a detective if he knew about Mario Trantino.
“Who?” the guy said.
She looked around at the faces walking past her in the hall, and she left the office. She came running out of the lobby into the start of the night and her arm was up to call for a cab but two lawyers edged in front of her and took it. She stood on the crowded downtown Brooklyn street, waving her arm. All the cabs were filled. After fifteen minutes, she turned and ran into the subway.
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