by Jim Fusilli
“He’s not going to gong me,” Bebe replied. “Maybe he gongs the Hudson Four. But he’s not going to gong me.”
A bear of an opera singer with a handkerchief and little feet got to finish his number and the monkeys in the audience cheered like they knew Pagliacci from Bozo. In the box they gave her above stage left, Hennie dropped her chin on her hand, her elbow on the velvet rail. Fidgeting, she dug for another cigarette. She stood, she sat. The Captain hadn’t gonged anybody yet.
The announcer was selling the new Chrysler Imperial Airflow. On the opposite side of the stage, out of sight to the audience, the Hudson Four gathered, ready to appear.
Next, the orchestra played a little fanfare. “And now, ladies and gentlemen,” the announcer intoned, “here’s America’s favorite talent scout, Captain Bridges!”
When the applause faded, Bridges spun the clacking Wheel of Chance and went into his “around and around she goes” spiel, like he left it to fate to choose who’d appear next. Already Bebe and the other two singers were standing at a microphone, those two dumpy ciuccios looking like bus boys, Bebe shining like gold, that smile, and too bad America can’t see those eyes on the radio. Terrasini was seated at the piano, the stage manager creeping away on tiptoes, careful to avoid the stream of cables.
Hennie was electric with nerves. Stomach acid was burning a hole in her throat.
“And now,” said the Captain, reading from index cards, “we’ll have the Hudson Four, a group of good-looking boys from over in Narrows Gate, New Jersey.”
Across the river in Narrows Gate, people who were hunched around the radio turned to look at each other, flush with a swelling of civic pride. They’d been acknowledged on the air for something other than a body found on Observer Road, splayed on the piers, spread-eagle in the Hudson.
“Who’s going to speak for the group?” the Captain asked.
Leaning against the rail, Hennie mouthed the words, “I will, Captain Bridges. I’m Billy.”
“I will,” a chipper Bebe Rosiglino said. “I’m Billy and we’re looking for a job. How about it, Captain?”
An uncomfortable giggle rose from the audience.
Oh shit, Hennie thought. That fuckin’ kid.
“People really like us,” Bebe added quickly. “Honest. They really do.”
The audience sighed at the boy’s innocence, his moxie. They applauded as the Captain clapped Bebe on the back.
“All right then, boys. All right,” he said. “Let’s hear what you’ve got.”
Terrasini played a couple of ringing chords. Bebe tapped his toes. One, two, a one, two, three, four…
“Cause my hair is curly,” the trio sang in unison.
“He’s got curly hair,” Bebe added.
Glancing sideways at each other, the other two sang, “Just because my teeth are pearly.”
“Look at those Chiclets shine,” Bebe chimed, his smile wide and bright.
The crowd edged forward in their seats. They bobbed their heads in time to Terrasini’s rhythm, smiling as they took in Bebe.
Hennie clapped her hands in delight, raining cigarette ash on the audience below.
“Like to dress up in the latest style.”
“I’m hep!” Bebe mugged, tossing in a Durante ha-cha-cha.
The audience howled.
Before the Hudson Four reached the chorus, Hennie was heading backstage.
Show over, she cornered the Captain, who drew up as she approached. Stage mothers were boils on his ass, the worst part of a job he enjoyed and was finding increasingly profitable. The wise guy columnists mocked him for his drawl and low-key demeanor, but they knew he was a formidable businessman. A native of North Carolina, Bridges was a shareholder in Liggett & Myers, Lorillard, R.J. Reynolds and other tobacco companies. At 67 years old, he was a wealthy man.
“Ma’am, your son did a fine job,” Bridges said as he tried to sidestep her. Her boy was the one who’d mentioned a product by its brand name. Tomorrow, the Captain’s men would remind the American Chiclet Company that no one rides for free.
Hennie planted herself between the men’s room and the stage door. Behind the Captain, a crew was breaking down the Amateur Hour set.
“A fine job indeed,” he repeated. “Now, if you would kindly excuse me.”
“Captain, I only wanted to thank you,” Hennie said. “My son was nervous and I know you took the trouble to calm him down. That was very nice of you.”
The Captain stopped. He looked at Hennie, a bulldog in fox and beaded lavender. She was a schemer, a bulldozer, but now she was doling out soft soap. He gave her credit for the shift in tactics. She’d read him right. “Why, you’re welcome, ma’am.”
“Mrs. Rosiglino,” she said. “Billy’s mother.”
“Your son is a clever boy.”
Nodding, she clutched her purse.
“Truth is, ma’am, I’m thinking we might find a place for his little group on the traveling show.”
Captain Bridges’ Traveling Vaudeville Show. He had one touring north of Boston, another south to D.C., a third in the upper Midwest, a fourth in California.
“That would be grand, Captain,” Hennie replied, her excitement contained. “Billy would love that.”
Bridges told her to come by the office in a day or so, well aware she’d be there tomorrow morning.
“One thing,” he said as he maneuvered past her. “He has to change his name.”
Hennie didn’t hesitate. “Any suggestions?”
“Staying Italian is fine. There’s more of you by the minute in the major markets. But make it simple and sweet. Something everybody can say.”
A week before Bebe was set to head up to Monkton with the Traveling Vaudeville Show, Hennie returned to Bridges’ office in midtown, taking the tubes under the Hudson to Herald Square. She brought her husband along, Vincenzo the Fireman, who was more hurt than angry as he trudged beagle-eyed through slush and snow. “Marsala,” she told the Captain, “is the name. Every American can pronounce it.”
The Captain approved. He came around the desk to shake the fireman’s hand, acknowledging the man’s sacrifice, the family name tossed aside. “If I were a betting man,” Captain Bridges said, “I’d wager that soon a great many people across America will know your boy.”
CHAPTER THREE
Mimmo decided Narrows Gate needed to make a big deal out of the Feast of San Gennaro, an event that took over Little Italy across the Hudson every year just as the kids were going back to school. Come September, using St. Francis Church as cover, Mimmo’s crew got the shopkeepers to set up stalls along Polk Street. Vito and Gemma Benno agreed to fry up sausage rings and grill some peppers and onions. Dommie’s would provide the bread for the sandwiches. This one would fry zeppole, that one would hand out torrone slices, Pooch the Grocer would sell watermelon. In a generous mood, Mimmo told them to keep the added profits minus the usual 10 percent cut.
At the north end of Polk, Mimmo had some guys build a wooden stage and parked next to it was a brand new 1936 Buick Coupe, a beauty Freddie Pop boosted off a lot in Hartford. Mimmo was raffling it 10 tickets for a dollar, pressing a booklet on everybody who came down the street; he even sent a couple of kids over to the Lackawanna Station to work over the commuters. (The winner was already chosen—the daughter of a general manager at a trucking firm, a guy Frankie Fortune wanted deeper in his pocket.) By the time the feast was ready to begin, Mimmo had enough money to buy 12 Buicks. Five hundred dollars would go to Father Gregory, the rest to Mimmo minus Fortune’s take, which was considerable. Nothing bumped up to Corini and Gigenti on this, an independent operation and Mickey Mouse by their standards. As for Farcolini, not even Fortune knew where he was: New York District Attorney Thomas Dewey was on Don Carlo’s back with a phony prostitution charge, persecuting him in the papers and on the radio, driving him underground.
The point of the stage was to allow Bebe to sing. Hennie convinced Mimmo that he needed more than ponies for the kiddies—games where you
can’t knock down the lead-bottom milk containers or where the wheel is going to land on 00 whenever the board is covered—and that creaking carnival ride down by Observer Road that looks like it’ll topple if somebody sneezes. Hennie agreed to lend Mimmo the public-address system and microphone she bought Bebe and the Hudson Four before they went on the road last year with the Captain’s regional troupe. In turn, Mimmo had two of his boys bring the piano from St. Francis’s basement up to the stage. Hennie made a couple of calls and booked a few acts for the festivals—comedians, singing sisters, a guy who juggled plates, all fresh from Italy, plus the church’s marching band and Bonifacio, the violin player.
As for Mimmo, he had a little scheme of his own for La Festività de Saint Januarius. His niece, Rosa, he decided, was a perfect match for Bebe. She was sweet and pure with dark hair and dark eyes; at 17 already a woman, soon to be shapely rather than plump. The picture of a housewife and mother-to-be. Mimmo figured the time was ripe: Hennie had told him to be ready—something special was going to happen to her son at the feast.
“What?” Mimmo asked as he adjusted his sunglasses. “He’s going to go back to his old name?”
“The new name is good. It’s fine,” Hennie said, annoyed. “We’ve beaten this to shit, no?”
They were standing on Polk Street, cleared of parked cars, watching carpenters hammer and saw the little booths at the curb. The feast was kicking off tonight. Bebe would entertain tomorrow at sundown. The press had been invited. On Sunday afternoon, the statue of the Virgin would be paraded, dollar bills pinned to her gown, the marching band wailing. Then the phony raffle.
“So. What’s the announcement, Hennie?” Mimmo asked.
“You’ll see,” she said confidently, waiting for him to light her cigarette.
“He ain’t getting married, is he?”
She leaned back. “Where did you hear that?”
“Ain’t he knocked up that girl in Fairview?”
She blew a stream of smoke. “That’s been taken care of.”
“Again?”
“Mimmo…” She saw a reflection of herself in his sunglasses, a scowl on her face.
He held up his hands in mock surrender. “Maybe you tie a string on it for a while.”
“Yeah,” she said dryly, “I’ll do that.”
“Good. ’Cause I’m thinking it’s time he settles down.”
“You are, are you?”
Mimmo nodded definitively.
“Wow,” Leo Bell said. “It’s worse.”
Benno put the piece of gauze back over his eye. A sty that had started out a couple of days ago like a tiny pimple on his upper lid was now chickpea-sized, red and aching. His aunt had dipped the gauze in olive oil, the all-purpose elixir, but this time it didn’t do a damned bit of good.
“You need a doctor,” Bell said.
“Where do I get a doctor in the middle of this?” Benno pointed toward the festivities. Polk Street was overrun with a couple hundred people, Italians coming down from all over the county, plus all the neighbors eating their way from one booth to the next, Gemma stuffing sizzling sausages into rolls, fried peppers going on top. Italian music blared from a Victrola on a fire escape, another one played in Antonio the Barber’s shop. Benno saw Mimmo was onto something: The neighborhood was making a fortune and there was good cheer in the air. Already you could sense tonight was going to see a celebration like back when Prohibition ended.
Benno wore a colorful short-sleeved shirt; Bell, a suit jacket, a collared shirt, and prescription eyeglasses, which added to his air of maturity. They were both 13 years old and had pretty much cast off their childish ways—not that Bell ever had many. Now that the death of Benno’s mother was no longer a shocking reminder of life’s depravity, he had returned to his easy way with everybody, which made him a top-rank flirt and though he was still short for his age, he was no longer plump. All the hard work around the store had put him in tip-top shape. As for Bell, with girls he was often reduced to one-word answers, if not gulps and nods like he left his brain in his locker at the junior high school. A couple of times, Benno tried to nudge his pal into something like a double date—meaning two girls, the cover of night, and Elysian Fields—but inevitably Bell declined.
Even now, as they stood in front of the salumeria, an oily gauze pad over Benno’s eye, a couple of ninth-grade girls out in the street gave them a little wave and stopped, waiting for an encouraging reply. They were pretty, both of them. Scatta was from Lazio on the mainland, Maria from Trabia in Sicily, yet they were friends.
“Let’s get out of here,” Benno said, thinking his sty had him looking like a gargoyle.
“A doctor,” Bell repeated. “Let’s go to St. Patrick’s.”
“I wanna ride the ride.” Benno started south toward the creaking Ferris wheel.
“With the gauze pad over your eye?”
“What’s the difference?”
Bell trotted to keep up. He preferred to amble on his long legs at a pace that gave him time to think. Benno, meanwhile, hurried everywhere, like wherever he was going might disappear before he arrived.
“Maybe we make a patch for your eye,” Bell said. “To keep it clean. An eye patch.”
“What? Like a fuckin’ pirate?”
“Sally…”
Benno pulled up.
“Let me see again,” Bell said.
Benno turned his back to the jostling crowd. He took down the gauze.
Bell grimaced. “I swear it’s worse than a minute ago.”
“It throbs,” Benno admitted.
“Come on,” Bell said, grabbing Benno’s elbow. “We’re going to the hospital.”
Benno knew the emergency room at St. Patrick’s kept the Italians at the bottom of the list next to the coloreds. He saw himself spending the entire festival waiting for some doctor to tell him whatever happened was his fault because he was born wrong.
But the sty hurt, the mass pressing against his eye, and he had a headache like a little drill was at work in there. Every now and then, it struck a nerve. His right cheek was numb, though he didn’t mention it to Bell.
“We ride the ride first,” Benno said.
“I swear to God, there’s another Ferris wheel,” Bell told him.
Benno hesitated. He looked toward Observer Road. “OK,” he said finally.
They stepped into the crowd, letting it pull them uptown like an undertow, which neither of them had experienced, seeing as the Hudson River didn’t make waves unless a ship hurried by, the garbage bobbing by the piers and those white birds soaring down for a feast of their own.
At dusk, the marching band played a fanfare. With Nino Terrasini waiting patiently at the piano and Bonifacio holding his violin at his side, Bebe came from Church Square Park looking like a million dollars. The blue-serge suit brought out the magic in his eyes, the bow tie did too, and the silk shirt took in the light and sent it back out like stardust. He was still as thin as vermicelli, but he seemed formidable, like he knew a secret.
The crowd on Polk Street stretched all the way back to First, people up on their toes to see. There were people on the rooftops looking down. Reporters were on hand—not just the Observer, but the Mirror, the News and Il Progresso from across the river, and the Evening News from Newark.
At the stairs to the stage, Bebe paused to kiss his mother’s cheek, shake his father’s hand and give a little nod to the army of aunts and uncles, also to the mayor and his wife and to Father Gregory in his brown robe and sandals.
“Bebe,” said Hennie, who wore a royal blue gown and had her silver hair done up.
He was taking a last look at his shoes, which were shined to a gloss.
“Bebe, say hello to Mimmo.”
He felt a spark of annoyance. He had gathered himself right, ready for the event, the walk across the park clearing his head. Now it was time to sing. But he knew the game. “Mimmo, hey,” he said. “Come va?”
“Bebe,” Mimmo said as they shook hands, “there’s
somebody I want you to meet.”
Bebe saw the girl next to him.
“My niece, Rosa. Rosa, Bebe. Bill Rosiglino.”
She was wide-eyed and bright, a pretty moonfaced Sicilian, and Bebe saw she was nervous. He cupped her hand the way he did whenever he met a pretty girl and held her gaze for an extra beat or two.
“Hello, Rosa.”
Rosa Mistretta was thunderstruck. Years later, she would tell people that she fell in love with him as soon as he said her name, her hand in his.
“She’s a big fan,” Mimmo said.
“Why, that’s nice to hear, Rosa.” As he released her hand, he gave it a little squeeze. “I hope you can stick around for the show.”
“Of course we’re going stick around,” Mimmo roared. “All this, Bebe, this is for you.” He gestured to the stage, the bunting, the crowd, the fire trucks that blocked off the side streets.
Bebe had nothing lined up for tonight. He’d be free after he talked to the papers. Considering it was Mimmo’s niece, he’d go slow. A meal first, maybe.
Hennie said, “You’d better get up there, Bebe.”
Still looking at the girl, Bebe shrugged sheepishly. “I should listen to Mama,” he whispered.
Now Rosa smiled too.
Hennie gave the Irish mayor a little whack on the arm. “Showtime,” she told him. “Make it rich.”
The mayor climbed the stage to welcome Bebe with an introduction Hennie had approved. His thudding footsteps echoed through the PA system along Polk Street.
“You people,” said the emergency room doctor, shaking his head.
Benno was sitting on a gurney, his feet dangling, his head back under some kind of medical spotlight. Seven hours they’d waited. Seven. Might’ve been more if Bell hadn’t approached the doctor as he tended to a woman who had sliced her thumb peeling apples for a pie. Her crying under control, she and the doctor shared a smoke and chatted like old friends.
