by Jim Fusilli
As for Geller, he was relieved the government had asked only for additional help with the waterfront. That left Don Carlo with a big chip to play. Roosevelt’s generals understood the strategic significance of the island of Sicily. Its airfields, now in the hands of the Axis powers, were vital to all plans to invade Europe from the south and would give the Allies complete access to the Mediterranean. Carlo Farcolini knew this, too. Before surrendering to Dewey, he’d initiated a discussion with Maurizio Marra, the head of the Mafia in Sicily. Don Mauro agreed to contact his peers in Catania, Licata, Messina, Palermo, Sciacca and Siracusa and tell them the Allies would need their cooperation.
Geller went to his private phone, secure in the knowledge that business would soon improve.
CHAPTER TEN
Each time Bebe’s return from the road was delayed, Rosa Rosiglino—her name on the marriage license, though everyone called her Mrs. Marsala—believed what he said: He had obligations. He was tied up. He said, “The music business is a competition, doll, a fight to the death. You’ve got to earn it wherever you can.” How could she question him? What did she know about business? She was over the moon in love, a kid who had gone from a Roman Catholic high school for girls to the arms of Bill Marsala, singer for one of the most popular orchestras in the country. Her only experience with men and marriage came from her father, who was a good man. If her father said something, it was so.
Bill said he wanted nothing more than for them to be together. He told her he imagined she was always at his side. The time the band was held over for two additional weeks in Newport and she wasn’t allowed to join him? The bandleader, not her Bill, said no. “I’m dying for you, baby,” he said. That extra month out in Hollywood doing fundraisers for the USO? Of course he wanted her there, but was it fair to the boys heading overseas to have his angel by his side when they were going to do without theirs for years?
The time he was gone seemed endless. Rosa yearned for his caress, the words he whispered, the almost unbearable tenderness, the joy she felt as they walked through a park, went on a drive along the Hudson, held a conversation over candlelight and a cocktail. She ached for that feeling of contentment at hearing his voice as he sang while he shaved, brushed his suits in their bedroom, whisked eggs for their breakfast. In his absence, she listened to his records, dusted the frames around his photos and cooked his favorite meals as if he would be home by suppertime. She practiced doing his shirts the way he liked and pressed his slacks to a scalpel’s edge. She kept busy, making the little apartment a home. “Are you lonely, Rosa?” asked her sister Bev.
She said no. “I know he wishes we were together.” She pointed to the gifts he sent, the pins and pendants, a necklace for their second anniversary. The flowers always came with a note signed “Your Bill.” She didn’t mention the long, desperate calls when the bandleader was displeased or when the audience didn’t respond; she couldn’t tell anyone how much he needed her at those moments, how he longed to fold himself into her embrace and make the world go away. “You keep me safe, baby,” he whispered. “You’re my sanctuary.” Nor did she mention how she had to calm him down when his temper detonated. “This son of a bitch acts like he doesn’t know my name. Meanwhile, I’m carrying his crap orchestra on my back. You think they come out to listen to his syrup? Baby, they turn out to hear me. They want me.”
Of course I’m lonely, she thought. The phone calls, cables, postcards, gifts and flowers weren’t the same as if he were here. She’d spent many more days and nights in the apartment alone than together with him. But how could she complain? Her friends from school were alone, too, their boyfriends off to war. Their brothers and fathers. Bev’s husband. Her Uncle Teddy. A girl who worked at the telephone company had lost her fiancé. A teacher at the Bayonne High School lost a nephew. The newspaper said three soldiers from Bayonne who survived the attack on Pearl Harbor were in a platoon trapped on the Bataan Peninsula.
Now the city in which she was born and raised was populated only by women and girls, old men and little boys. Flags in the parks and on public buildings flew at half-staff, sagging in autumn’s dying light as if defeated. The radio reported the Allies had been overrun; London and Moscow were in ruins. Hitler could not be stopped and the savage Japs were choking off the Pacific. Innocent women and children were being slaughtered by the Axis troops.
Every day, she faced the endless and impossible news from overseas by herself. Finally, she was inspired to action. Everyone was needed, the president said. Her kid sister, Ida, planted a victory garden in the small strip of land behind their parents’ brick house, and the neighbors followed suit; people who spent their entire lives in a cozy New Jersey city now believed they were farmers. “The Green Thumb Brigade,” as the Observer called them, donated what they grew to the veterans’ hospital.
Enough self-pity, she told herself. It’d be good to get out for more than grocery shopping and going to church. “Bill, I’d like to volunteer at the Red Cross.”
“Go ahead, doll,” he said. “It’ll do you a world of good.”
Excited, she took a bus to their offices in Jersey City the next morning. They were glad to have her. A girl who had been a grade behind her in grammar school was there to show her the ropes. They shared a sandwich like old friends. Bill called that night from a hotel in Los Angeles. She couldn’t wait to tell him what happened, how proud she felt of herself. He said, “On second thought, baby, I’d like to know you’ll be home if I need you. Isn’t there something you can do around the house? Write letters to the boys overseas, maybe. Send them my picture.”
She felt abandoned, though her family invited her over, setting an extra chair at the dining room table. When her mother visited—“our little coffee klatch,” Alice Mistretta called it whenever she brought along a crumb cake or some anginetti—Rosa told her about Bill’s latest phone call. She showed her a photo of him taken near Niagara Falls or on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, all the guys crowding around. “Look how happy he is, Mama,” she’d say, grateful for her company. Later, when her mother tried to press a few dollars into her hand, she’d say, “No, I have more than enough. Bill provides. He’s a good man. He’s just…Oh, never mind. Mama, next week the lemon cookies are on me.” Then she added, “When he calls tonight, I’ll give him your love.”
But later, when she realized he wasn’t going to call, the night having gotten away from him as he stole a few hours’ sleep on the bus, she’d nestle on his side of the bed and call up an image of her Bill singing to an adoring crowd, the spotlight in his blue eyes, his head tilted just so, his arms open wide when he held a note. But soon the vision haunted her. “Bill…” she moaned as she padded through the dark railroad flat wearing a nightgown he’d sent but had never seen her wear. Then she chided herself, repeating Hennie’s words. “Rosa,” she’d say aloud, “your husband has to build his career. It takes time.” She repeated what he said when he finally called from Denver or Santa Fe: “The time we’re away now, well, we’ll double that—no, triple that—with the time we’re together when I’m running my own shop. You watch.”
More gold stars appeared in the neighborhood windows: a young man who had been the paperboy when she was a child was killed during a training exercise at Fort Bragg; two boys she knew who were going to attend the teachers’ college were killed by a land-mine in Libya; a nurse who had studied at St. Claire’s was killed in New Guinea; a colored man who worked at the Flying A filling station lost two sons when a transport was torpedoed in the Atlantic.
How could she complain? Her Bill was coming home. She’d hold him, cuddle him, stroke him, tell him there was no other man in the world, and when they made love, he’d attend to her and then they’d make love again and she’d know she was the luckiest girl on the face of the earth to have a husband who wanted to build his world around her. Her dreams were their dreams; his dreams were hers. It was a beautiful life full of love, devotion and song.
Finally, the taxicab pulled in front of the house. F
rom the second-story window, she saw him exit, waiting as the driver hurried to retrieve his bag. Tanned, a silk scarf around his throat, a suit she didn’t recognize. Still skinny, those ears, those beautiful eyes: her Bill, glowing in the late-afternoon sun. With one last look around the bedroom, one last glance in the mirror at her dress and hair, she flew down the steps.
Bebe was sliding bills into his money clip when the building door opened. He turned as she ran to him. She was as lovely as he remembered. No, more so. A woman now. His wife. A rock at his side.
She jumped into his arms.
He couldn’t wait to tell her.
They kissed with passion, forgetting they were on the street with its draped flags, its air of trepidation. In his arms, she felt secure. They were building a life together.
He stepped back and took her hands, his smile wide and shimmering with satisfaction.
On the front porches, neighbors smiled at the young lovers.
“Hi, Bill,” she said, a tear streaking down her cheek. She loved him so much it hurt.
“Baby, great news,” he said. “We’re moving to California!”
Cpl. Leo Bell found Tyler waiting outside the closet-sized room he’d been given at the New York Public Library, home to the Office of Strategic Services’ Psychoanalytic Field Unit.
“Where have you been?” the lieutenant said.
“The St. Regis Hotel, sir.”
Tyler nodded for Bell to step into the space, which was on the first floor, off the newspaper room.
“Sit,” said Tyler, who remained standing. He was in civilian clothes, a tweedy suit, the kind popular with the unit, almost all civilians, all graduates of Ivy League colleges. “Who’s at the hotel?” Tyler asked.
“A former ambassador from Turkey,” Bell replied. He was in his khaki uniform, which was better suited to the mid-May heat.
“And?”
“General Stansfield and Mr. Lowell.”
“The cartographer,” Tyler said.
Most of the men in the unit had doctorate degrees, including the CO, Major Landis, a Yale man. Tyler didn’t and to compensate, he broadcast to Bell whatever fact he had on the subject at hand.
“I don’t know, sir.” When Bell arrived with the document, Lowell was showing his work to Stansfield, who reported to General Eisenhower, commander in chief of Allied Forces, North Africa. The Turk studied the large, detailed map that was unfurled across four card tables.
“What did you deliver?”
“Eyes only, sir.”
The unit used Bell as a research assistant and courier. He combed the library shelves for books for them, dug out old journals and microphotographic copies of newspaper stories. He hurried to the United Nations, the British embassy, the Free France consulate, the New School in the Village or uptown to the New York Psychoanalytic Institute. Now and then, Bell took a train down to Washington or up to Harvard in Cambridge, always carrying a locked attaché case. In the 17 months since he enlisted, Bell translated a handful of intercepted documents in Polish and Italian, ranging from official Axis reports to personal letters. He had been pressed into service when the Ivy Leaguers who knew the languages were unavailable.
The Ivy Leaguers all smoked pipes and rarely remembered his name. Bell couldn’t say they were rude, exactly; in fact, they were exceedingly polite. But they treated him as if he were a lesser species—like a chimp who could read.
“I’m incidental,” he told Benno over lunch near Grand Central.
“Means what?” Benno replied, holding an oyster cracker up to the light.
“Never mind,” Bell said with a shrug. “I was hoping to be useful.”
“Hey,” said Benno, “we don’t win this thing unless everybody pitches in.”
Bell still didn’t know what he wanted to do when the war ended. But he was certain he’d prove to himself that he was as good as the guys with the PhDs up on the third floor. He already knew he had it over Tyler, except for figuring how he’d bluffed his way in.
Tyler held an envelope.
“Where do I take it?” Bell asked.
“No,” Tyler said. “You read this.”
“Polish or Italian?” Bell asked.
“Open it.”
Bell used a knife to slit the seal. He withdrew a carbon copy of a report perhaps 300 pages thick and stamped “Confidential.” The authors were Landis and the guys at Harvard, the New School, and the Psychoanalytic Institute. The title page read, “A Psychological Analysis of Adolf Hitler.”
“They’re dizzy up there from looking at it,” Tyler said. “Proofread it hard and tight. It’s going to Wild Bill on Sunday.”
Wild Bill. Like they were pals.
Bell quickly scanned the first page. If he didn’t put the fan on, he’d be asleep before he got to the second. “When do you need it by?” he asked.
“I’m locking you in until you’re done,” the lieutenant said, pulling the skeleton key from the door.
“Maybe I could grab some lunch?”
“No,” Tyler replied.
Yanking the front door open, Bruno Gigenti barreled out of his social club onto Mulberry Street and pointed sharply at Fredo Pellizzari, his driver, who was dipping his thick fingers into a small brown bag of salted ceci. A dark, broad-shouldered Sicilian in his mid-40s, Pellizzari snapped alert, burying the bag in a pocket. Usually, Gigenti sent a boy out to tell him to start the car up, reducing the risk he’d be left standing in public should someone advance with a grievance. But Gigenti had been in a foul mood all week and now Pellizzari figured whatever had been gnawing at him had finally torn through. He held a rear door open for his boss and could feel the heat when Gigenti passed. Pellizzari knew someone was going to pay for sins, his own or otherwise.
They headed north along a street crowded with peddlers and their patrons. Gigenti never told any of his drivers where he was going until the car reached Canal, and then God help him if he tapped the blinker, pumped the brakes or made any kind of move Gigenti interpreted as a signal to a tail. If it was true that Gigenti trusted nobody, he especially didn’t trust the people who were paid to keep him upright. As his drivers knew, he always wrapped his fist around a .38 Special throughout the trip.
“Make a right,” Gigenti said in Sicilian.
At the Bowery, he said, “Go ahead.” Meaning the Manhattan Bridge, which would deposit them across the river in Brooklyn.
No one in his crew knew, but Gigenti had been boxed out, again, by Geller and Corini. Neither man had revealed that they’d had to negotiate with the feds after Farcolini surrendered until the deal was done and all they needed was someone to enforce the plan. “Open up the piers,” Geller had said. Gigenti replied, “My piers? Says who?” It was then that Geller said, “I had a visit from the FBI. Anthony Corini went up to Sing Sing and Don Carlo says open the piers.” Then he added, “You’re going to see a story in the newspapers. Don Carlo is being deported to Sicily. Don’t interfere. This is what we want.”
The call from Florida chafed Gigenti’s ass. Corini had gone to see Farcolini and Gigenti knew nothing about it. If the matter was the waterfront, Gigenti should’ve been the contact. Plus the way the Jew said, “We.” We, thought Gigenti. Who the fuck is “we”?
“Take Myrtle,” Gigenti said, spitting the avenue’s name at Pellizzari.
The Brooklyn Navy Yard, the driver thought. When he glanced quickly into the rearview mirror, he saw Gigenti was still seething.
Furious, bitter, insulted, Gigenti nevertheless did what he was told. The piers opened up overnight. Then he learned that Peter Verkerk, the head of a longshoremen’s union, whose father had sway on the docks before the Sicilians moved in, had gone to the feds and told them the order on the slowdown came from Gigenti. This the FBI already knew, but then Verkerk proposed that the feds, who were still new to the waterfront, work through him instead of Farcolini’s crowd. “Force them out,” Verkerk said, “and I’ll keep the waterfront running like you want.”
The deal betw
een Don Carlo and the feds fucked Verkerk good, but not long and hard enough to Gigenti’s mind. Eugenio Zamarella, Gigenti’s preferred button, proposed Verkerk would take off and volunteered to track him down. But Gigenti knew Verkerk would wait to see whatever shook from Don Carlo’s departure. Maybe he recognized a void in the leadership; maybe he heard the feds went to see Geller, not Bruno Gigenti. Maybe he learned Corini, not Bruno Gigenti, took the train up to Sing Sing to meet with Don Carlo. Gigenti paced the social club, his home out in Queens, his mistress’s apartment under the Williamsburg Bridge. Soon, all Gigenti’s roiling anger at the insult from Geller and Corini centered on the head of Peter Verkerk, a degenerate whose idea of fun was to fuck a skank with another guy in on the action.
“Make a left,” Gigenti said. He gave an address.
Pellizzari turned down a seedy side street about a mile walk from the Navy yard. He crossed an intersection and entered a grimy block rank with potholes and rotting garbage. Pellizzari grimaced at the foul scent that rose from the river.
In the backseat, Gigenti flexed his fingers on the barrel of his .38, adjusted his fedora and rolled his shoulders under his brown suit jacket.
Pellizzari pulled in front of a decaying two-story building with a wooden staircase in back. A flop upstairs, thought Pellizzari.
The second the car stopped, Gigenti reached for the door handle.
“I’m coming, Boss,” the brawny driver said.
Ignoring him, Gigenti stepped out, crunching broken grass under foot.
Pellizzari checked the pistol in his shoulder holster and hurried from the car.
Gigenti crossed a patch of yellowing grass, moving quickly along the cracked driveway to the side of the paint-chipped house. With the driver trailing, he marched resolutely toward the stairs.
“Boss,” whispered Pellizzari, thinking, Jesus Christ, what happens if Gigenti walks into an ambush? “Boss.”
