by Jim Fusilli
He stiffened as he anticipated the wood’s revealing creak under Gigenti’s weight, but the boss went up the stairs quietly and with surprising grace.
Pellizzari waited, unsure whether he should do the same.
Gigenti paused at the landing. He knew the dump’s layout. On his way up in Patti’s organization, Gigenti had whores working the neighborhood. As he considered the hideaway’s door, he figured Verkerk would have the broad on the Murphy bed, either he or his crony pumping her or the other guy’s gone and Verkerk sleeps. Or they’re in the kitchen, coffee at the table, the puttana dismissed.
Pellizzari climbed the stairs on his toes, his hand clutching the shaky banister.
Gigenti then stepped back, drew up and slammed his foot against the door, exploding it off its hinges.
All three people on the bed jumped in fear. The bottle blonde was on all fours, sucking a guy while Verkerk rammed her from behind.
Gigenti’s first shot took off Verkerk’s jaw.
The broad screamed as the other man tried to wriggle free.
As Verkerk toppled over, his erection bobbing, Gigenti crossed the room, his gun held high. The second shot went into Verkerk’s back. He landed on top of the screaming woman.
The other man, his face now coated in Verkerk’s blood, leaped from the bed, grabbing in vain at a sheet. He looked at Gigenti, then at the doorway, now filled by Pellizzari.
Gigenti fired his third and fourth shots into Verkerk as he lay dead on the puttana. Both bullets penetrated his body and entered the slit’s back.
The other guy ran to the window and dove out, head first.
Pellizzari lumbered down the stairs and found the man in the dirt and stone driveway of the decaying building next door. He’d hit the ground with his head, which bled in a stream. Pellizzari raised his gun, then flopped the man’s body over with his foot. Dead and, look, he still had a hard-on.
Some puttana, Pellizzari thought as he holstered his pistol.
When he turned the corner, he saw Gigenti ambling down the stairs, calm, like he was going out for a loaf of bread. The fury that had gripped his face for a week was gone. He handed the .38 to his driver.
“We go,” he said in Sicilian.
“Mulberry Street, Boss?”
“Sure,” Gigenti replied. “Why not?”
Benno was sitting on the hydrant outside the salumeria, watching the guys coming off the 8-to-4 shift at the shipyards, lugging empty lunch pails, their faces and T-shirts coated in dirt from hard labor. “Hey, Sal,” said this one. “Sally!” cheered that one, waving a knobby hand. Benno nodded like he always did, smiling as he spun his fedora on a finger, letting the sun over the Palisades warm his face. He had no plans for the evening unless he could find a girl in the neighborhood who wasn’t off-limits, her boyfriend overseas. Madonna mio, he died when he saw Scatta strolling by, saying, “Sal…” wicked like she did, then laughing, her dress swaying this way and that. Her boyfriend was in France, they said, and she was true.
“Sal.”
Benno turned. There was Mimmo, his suit jacket over his arm, one of his suspenders twisted.
“Making the rounds, Mimmo?” Benno asked as he stood.
“Too early.”
Benno nodded. Every evening, Mimmo walked up and along the downtown streets like he was surveying his kingdom. The shopkeepers said hello and so did the women out on the stoops after the dishes were put away. By now, everybody knew Mimmo was in charge of nothing, so he couldn’t be blamed for the weekly shakedown, his authority down to zero.
Three or four times a week, Mimmo moseyed over to Benno’s, looking for somebody to bullshit with. Sal asked him how come he don’t chat with Boo Chiasso or Fat Tutti or one of the other guys Fortune had on the payroll, but Mimmo said, “You never tell the help what you know or pretty soon their ass is in your chair,” which made sense to Benno.
“You heard what happened?” Mimmo asked.
Benno said no. He’d heard lots of things that happened, but he didn’t know which one Mimmo meant.
“With Bebe.”
“He’s going to California. Rosa don’t want to go, but he says it’s a good place for babies. Nino’s going, too.”
Mimmo leaned back offended, his rat eyes wide under his sunglasses. “I thought you ain’t heard.”
Benno said, “I don’t know, maybe you wanted to talk about Don Carlo getting kicked over to Sicily.”
“That’s what you think happened? They kicked Don Carlo out? Jesus.”
“That’s what they put in the papers.”
“The papers. Who gives a fuck for the papers? What’s wrong with you?”
Benno found them entertaining, but he said nothing, seeing as Mimmo was winding up to tell him everything he shouldn’t.
“You know why Don Carlo’s going to Sicily? One,” Mimmo said, counting on a finger, “he wants to be in Sicily. Two, we got business in Sicily. Three, the Army needs him in Sicily.”
“The Army? The American Army?”
“No, the Martian Army.”
Benno heard the government needed Farcolini, Gigenti, Corini and the rest to keep the waterfront in business—Mimmo told him—but he didn’t know nothing about this move.
“Why do they need him?” Benno asked.
“Ah,” Mimmo said triumphantly. “Maybe they don’t put the right shit in your newspapers.”
“I don’t get you.”
Mimmo held out his hands. “You’re so smart, you figure it out.”
“Whoa, Mimmo, you never heard me say I was smart.”
“Well, think about it,” he replied as he walked away, pausing for passing traffic on Polk Street.
Benno stuck his head into the store, the crowd thin so Vito was doing his numbers in the storeroom, the calculator churning.
“You need me?” Benno yelled. “I’m going to see Leo.”
Gemma scurried around the counter, her slippers skidding on the sawdust. “Wait, I make a sandwich—”
He told her no, they were going out to eat. Then he went to wash up and throw on a fresh outfit. One thing he noticed about going to see Leo: A lot of good-looking broads liked to go to the library, wander around. They got a billion books over there, and then the women would sit on the steps with whatever they found, concentrating and looking happy to be in somebody else’s story. Which made Benno have this little tweak of regret; he didn’t give a shit for books. Soon he would turn 20 years old. It was too late to start in with them now.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Leo Bell was lost to concentration, time flying as he reviewed his typed notes, comparing them to what he’d written on a legal pad the first three times he read Landis’s report on Hitler. He was thirsty, hungry too, but he didn’t mind. The work was good; he was moving in. Finally, he figured out what was wrong. All the facts he needed were in front of him—a puzzle put together wrong, but the pieces available. After a while, it was like they wanted to be set right.
Now, hours later, the 300-page report was edited down to 255 pages. With a glue pot, a brush and a ream of typing paper, Bell made the thing new, filling in the blanks by reworking flat language, trimming dubious conclusions and retyping new sections, bringing ideas into focus that had seemed vague. He liked what he was doing. He felt renewed, like he’d found a purpose. His father would say God had intervened, giving a frustrated messenger his chance to shine.
Just in case no one else liked his work, Bell kept careful notes that Tyler or any of the Ivy League boys could use to correct the typos and punctuation errors in the original document.
He looked at his watch. It read 8:45.
Tonight or tomorrow, he thought as he stood and stretched.
He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. Sitting on the corner of the desk, he dialed Tyler’s number.
Major Landis answered.
Startled, Bell explained he was locked in his storeroom. A security measure, he said, while he proofread the report.
“Are you finished, Leo?�
� Landis took the fatherly approach.
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. I’ll send someone down.”
Moments later, the dead bolt turned. An elderly Negro in a New York Public Library uniform opened the door.
Bell washed up quickly in the men’s room. Then he took the marble stairs two at a time. His footsteps echoed in the vast stairwell, the building having been closed to the public for hours now.
Landis was in uniform, his hat tucked under his arm as he waited for Bell in the corridor outside Tyler’s empty office. Landis greeted him with a warm, tired smile and returned his salute. “Did you find anything, Corporal?”
Landis was in his early 50s, his hair snow-white. His tone and the glint in his eye suggested he knew Bell wouldn’t hesitate to seize the opportunity to express an opinion.
“My proofreading notes are in here, sir,” Bell said, holding out the envelope, its flap taped shut. “I also made some recommendations.”
“Find it enlightening?”
“Amazing is more like it,” Bell replied as he took a breath. “It sounds like you’ve been following Hitler for years.”
“In a sense, we have been.”
Bell nodded. He really didn’t understand how a psychological report could be prepared on someone none of the authors had met, but Hitler had been carrying on in public since 1920. According to Landis’s report, his psychoses were obvious. Future actions could be predicted with relative reliability. For one, Landis concluded Hitler would commit suicide rather than be called to account for his actions.
“Well, good night, Leo,” Landis said as he put on his hat. “Thank you for your perseverance.”
“Good night, sir,” he replied.
As the major reached the landing below, Bell sagged with disappointment. He’d hoped Landis would look at his work now, without Tyler standing between them. He believed Landis would appreciate the initiative he’d shown.
By the time Bell kicked down the library steps to Fifth Avenue, it was almost 10 o’clock. And there in the forecourt was Sal Benno, flipping his hat in the air and catching it, flipping it, catching it. Alone in the moon glow except for the pecking pigeons.
“They wouldn’t let me in,” Benno said.
“They told you I was in there?”
“No, but I went to the Y and you ain’t there.”
The Army had Bell bivouacked at a YMCA downtown.
“Maybe I’m out on a date, Sal.”
“You?”
They stood between the stone lions, the lights of passing cars sweeping across Bell’s face. “Is everything all right?”
“Except for we’re fighting two wars, yeah.”
“With Gemma and Vito.”
“Yeah, sure. But you heard about Maria’s boyfriend? He got it in on Guadalcanal.”
“Jesus. Artie, right? From Second Street.” Bell went down a step toward Fifth. Now he and Benno were the same height, looking eye to eye.
“Some Irish guy from Cleveland Street, too. In Tunisia,” Benno added. “That makes twenty-one men we lost, and still I’m twisting arms to collect scrap iron.”
Bell took note that Benno counted the uptown Irish in his tally, making Narrows Gate one town with one population, at least during wartime.
“You want to get something to eat?” Benno said. “I mean, I hate to tell you but you look like shit.”
They went to a fish joint, the place long and narrow like a canoe. The jug-eared waiter wore a black vest and an apron that hung to his ankles. He stood silently as they looked at the menu.
“What’s good?” Benno asked.
The guy shrugged.
“Keep it simple,” Benno told him. “And bring lemons.”
The place was almost empty, a couple over there polishing off a bottle of wine.
Bell tried to stifle a yawn and failed.
“Let me ask you something,” Benno said. “The Axis got Sicily, right?”
Bell nodded.
“You think Farcolini could be working for them?”
Bell snapped alert. “What?”
“I mean, he wouldn’t go against us, would he?”
“Jesus, Sal, that’s a hell of a question,” Bell replied as he took a breadstick from the glass.
“Look, they worked it so he gets deported, Corini, Frankie, the crew…”
“They worked it?”
“Sure. They opened up the waterfront if the feds let Farcolini out of Sing Sing.”
Bell paused as he chewed. “OK. I’ll buy that.” He remembered Tyler’s suggestion that organized crime was involved when a Nazi sub infiltrated Long Island Sound and torpedoed a tanker, then a freighter near a Coast Guard base in southern New Jersey.
“You think the feds are dumb enough to let Farcolini go help Mussolini?”
Bell said, “No. They’d keep him here if they’re concerned.”
“So Farcolini is over there helping us?”
“If he’s helping anybody.”
Benno sat back proud, a satisfied smile crossing his face.
The waiter returned. The flounder looked pretty good, fresh, ample. Benno would rather eat his socks than a boiled potato, but the broccoli was firm and bright green. He dug in. Bell, too.
“You got a pencil?” Benno asked, his cheek plump with dinner.
Bell nodded.
Benno took the cloth napkin off his lap and moved his plate aside. “Draw me a map. Show me why we need Farcolini to get Sicily back for us.”
Soon, Bell had a crude drawing on the napkin, North Africa here, the southern tip of Italy over there, Sicily like a football at the boot’s toe, little waves to show the Mediterranean and Tyrrhenian seas. For good measure he put an arrow showing the way through Austria to Germany and, what the hell, here’s how you get into France.
Never for a moment did he stop thinking that right now Major Landis was looking at what he’d done to the report. As his fatigue grew, the warmth in his stomach lulling him toward sleep, Bell began to question whether he’d gone too far.
“You can’t draw for shit,” Benno observed as he dropped a finger on the map and slid it toward Tunisia and Algeria. “Boom,” he went, lifting his hand like it exploded. Then he dragged it toward Calabria, then up through the tip. “Boom,” he said again. For good measure, he blew up Germany, then made a left and tapped his finger on France.
“Boom?” asked Bell.
“No. Don Carlo won’t blow up no good guys.”
“You don’t think so?”
“I’m telling you. Dewey, Roosevelt, they need us. Farcolini gets settled and pretty soon that fuckin’ Mussolini, he’s finished. Next, the goose-step fuck.”
Bell held up his water glass. “Your lips, Sally, to God’s ear.”
Benno tapped the glass with his fork.
The detectives came straight to the club, badging the guy out front, and a minute or so later Pellizzari, leaning over there against the car, saw Bruno Gigenti come out handcuffed, his face a stone mask. Old man Questo, who poured the espresso, was trained to call the lawyer if anything happened. As the cops’ car pulled away, Pellizzari walked inside. Questo was on the phone.
Maybe it was a half hour later when Eugenio Zamarella turned up on Mulberry Street, his fedora tipped down but his pockmarks visible. “Driver,” he barked and waggled a crooked finger. Pellizzari followed him into the club.
Questo wore a brace and dragged his foot, and as he brought a cup of espresso to Zamarella, he quaked a little bit. The rumor was when Zamarella killed you—up close with a .38 or at a distance with a Carcano bolt-action rifle—you didn’t know why you were dead until the Devil told you. Questo worked the club when it belonged to Gus the Boss, who Farcolini and his men ambushed out in Coney Island, a breach of protocol. Since then, Questo didn’t trust nobody.
“What happened?” Zamarella said, not waiting for Pellizzari’s ass to hit the chair.
“When?”
“By the Navy yard.”
“Three down,” Pellizzari
replied.
Zamarella held up two fingers.
“Bullshit,” the driver said. “I saw the guy on the sidewalk. Dead.”
“The broad,” Zamarella said as he dropped his palms on the table. He stood, putting on his hat as he made for the exit.
In his olive skivvies, Leo Bell took a call at the Y from one of the Ivy League guys, pleasant as usual, “Good morning, Leo, sleep well?” and all that. And then he was told to go to a brownstone on 44th Street between Eighth and Ninth where the Free French kept their operatives. A stylish woman met him in the vestibule and handed him an attaché case. To his surprise, they walked out together, arm in arm, toward Times Square. They spoke Polish. She was seeing her hairdresser, she said, before the concert tonight at Carnegie Hall, chiding him over whether he’d forgotten. When they folded into the crowd, she let go and disappeared down the steps of the IRT station. Bell continued along 42nd Street, refusing to look back to see if he had been followed. When he reached Sixth, he heard a voice call to him by rank.
It was Tyler, walking behind him, angry, his customary blandness vanquished.
“What in the name of God did you do?” he said as he approached.
Bell said, “Sir?”
“With the report. What did you do?”
Confused by the subterfuge with the Polish-speaking French woman, Bell had forgotten the report, at least for a moment.
“I proofread it, sir,” Bell replied. “Then I tried my hand at editing it.”
“Editing it?” Tyler was incredulous. “You ripped it apart.”
“Sir, I—”
“You might as well have called Major Landis incompetent.”
“I didn’t intend—”
“He’s furious, you know. Furious.”
A light drizzle had begun to fall on Bryant Park.
“Permission to speak freely, sir,” Bell said.
“Go ahead. I’d love to hear what excuse you have for your insubordination.”
Bell took a few steps toward Tyler. “If you read it, you know it was bullshit until the conclusion. That tells you it was poorly organized and you know damned well the whole thing was puffed up with ten-dollar words.”
