by Jim Fusilli
Fortune shot him a look as he went for his car. Benno watched as he drove off, pleased he came up with some bullshit to cover his curiosity.
A couple minutes later, the door opened again Hennie wobbled out, Mimmo slumped and trailing. He looked at Benno. “Walk her home,” he said.
Hennie didn’t realize she had an escort until they reached Third and McKinley. She was surprised to find that she’d been hanging onto a young man’s arm.
“I know you,” she said. “You’re the one with the eye.”
“Sal,” he said. “I’m Vito and Gemma’s nephew. The Bennos.”
“Your mother…She died young, right? The trolley. It was raining.”
“She slipped.”
“But your father—”
“Nobody knows where that bastard went.”
She put her hands high up on her bosom. “I think I’m having a heart attack.”
“Nah,” Benno said, though she did seem a little washed out. “You look like somebody who just got herself a second chance.”
She stepped back. “You’re a smart little son of a bitch, aren’t you?”
He laughed. “Mrs. Rosiglino, I got to tell you that’s a new one on me.”
They continued, the steeple on St. Matthew’s coming in and out of view to the west.
“You know my son? Bill Marsala?” Hennie asked. The color was returning to her face, a riot of gullies and fleshy knots.
“I seen him sing a couple of times. To tell you the truth, I seen him also at Yankee Stadium with that actress.”
“What was in his head, that kid? Yankee goddamned Stadium.” She bared her tombstone teeth, brown from cigarettes and booze.
“Well, Bebe wasn’t too shy,” Benno said. “I guess Bill Marsala ain’t going to be too shy neither.”
“They want me to straighten him out and how.”
Even though Hennie was right up there with Bebe on his list of all-time shit heels, he said, “You ask my advice, Mrs. Rosiglino, I’d say you should tell him it’s a matter of being useful.”
Hennie stopped.
“There’s no percentage in counting on friendship with them,” he added, pointing to his glass eye like it was a gateway to wisdom.
The cute little bastard was right, she thought. It’s as simple as that. Bill’s got to stay on top.
“You never know,” he said as he held out his arm. “Maybe they already got somebody who can sing a song.”
“Not like my beautiful boy,” she barked. “Never.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
The next afternoon, Benno, fresh from a delivery to Jersey City Heights, was sitting on a crate under the store’s awning, a dripping rag on his head. He’d sweated through his apron and clothes, and he didn’t want to think what would happen when he took his shoes off. He grabbed the rag and, lifting his glasses, ran it around his face. When he opened his eyes, Hennie Rosiglino was standing over him. A good dress, handbag, shoes that matched, hose and she got her hair done. Still ashy gray, though, despite the rouge.
“Let’s go, Sal,” she wheezed.
“Go?”
“To see Bebe.”
“I’m going to see Bebe,” he said plainly. “When? Now?”
She nodded.
“Jesus, Hennie, I stink.” Benno sniffed an armpit.
She leaned in. “Yeah, you stink. I’ll give you ten minutes.” She returned to the black limo at the curb.
The driver swung around Columbus Circle and continued along Central Park South. Hansom cabs and overheated horses waited across from a row of hotels, and Benno thought, We go this way and I see Bebe; we go that way and I see Anthony Corini. They should meet in the middle, Corini gives him a good smack on his head and we all go home.
There was a limo right in front of the Hampshire House, so Hennie said something foul, the car stopped and the next thing Benno knew he was chasing her up a crowded Central Park South.
“Hennie…Hennie, hold up.”
She’d built up a pretty good head of steam and barged to the front desk as Benno spun through revolving doors.
“Tell Nino Terrasini to come down,” she demanded.
The guy at the desk frowned. “Who may I say—”
“Tell him Bebe’s mother’s here.” Then she turned and stomped across the black-and-white lobby.
Chains rattled and then the elevator doors opened. Terrasini emerged still struggling into his jacket. “Hen—”
She put her hands on his chest. “Roundtrip,” she told the operator as Terrasini retreated.
The door began to shut and Benno jumped in.
“Where’s Bebe?” Hennie said. The cage lurched skyward.
The hotel was class, but Benno saw he could buy what he needed from the lift operator, the tiny pug listening so hard he tilted.
“I haven’t seen him,” Terrasini replied.
“Bullshit,” Hennie said.
Terrasini recognized Benno from the old neighborhood. “Sal, what are you—”
Hennie said, “Nino, where’s Bebe?”
“Hennie, come on. You know I can’t say.”
Benno watched the arrow dip to the right: 12, 13, 14.
“He didn’t go to work today, did he?” she asked.
“I don’t know.” He shook his head. “I don’t think so. No.”
16, 17, 18.
With the back of her hand, Hennie rapped the operator on his epaulet. “Which room for Eleanor Ree?”
The pug looked up at Terrasini. “Ma’am, I’m not permitted—”
“Come on, pal,” Benno said. “You don’t want her banging doors.”
Terrasini muttered the room number. The elevator settled on the 19th floor.
“Nino,” said Benno, as Hennie burst into the hall, “throw the guy a fin, he didn’t give you up.”
Terrasini dug for his money clip, the one that said, “Nino, Forever, Bill Marsala.”
They jumped at the sudden pounding. The door rattled.
“What in the hell?” a startled Ree shouted. She tugged her terry cloth robe to cover her breasts.
Marsala sagged. It was the same goddamned sound that had exploded his peace in his bedroom as a kid in Narrows Gate. For a second or two, he felt as queer and queasy as he did when he was a desperate child. He tied the belt on his robe as he looked for his slippers.
“Bebe!” That familiar grating screech.
“My mother,” he told Ree.
“Bebe!”
Ree started toward the bedroom.
Marsala waved, saying, “No, doll, you stay.”
“Fuck no,” Ree said.
Recovering, he smiled mischievously as he went for the door. “Help me out, OK? Charm her. You’re an actress.”
Ree said, “All right. Fine.”
“Who is it?” Marsala winked.
“Bebe, open this fuckin’ door!”
“Mama!” He was laughing now.
She was in. Benno and Terrasini followed.
“Bebe,” she panted, “answer the goddamned door when I’m calling—”
He hugged her and kissed her sweaty cheek. “For Christ’s sake, Ma…”
“We’ve got to talk, Bebe. Now.” Heaving bosom and then phlegmy coughs. “Now.”
Benno didn’t know where to look. Ree was sitting on the arm of the chair, barefoot, her long brown leg exposed up to there and meanwhile, it was like a tornado landed off Central Park: bottles on the floor, silverware, cushions, clothes, newspapers, telegrams, too; a lampshade dented. Minga, he thought, that must have been some kind of fucking. He expected less from Hollywood.
“Ma, meet Eleanor.”
Ree stood, but Hennie stayed. “I’m Rosa’s mother-in-law.”
“Ma, be nice, huh?”
Hennie started toward the bedroom. “Bebe, follow me.”
“No, that’s all right,” Ree offered. “I’ll—”
Hennie said, “Don’t do me any favors, honey.”
Marsala grabbed his forehead. In an instant, he had a he
adache and a knot in his stomach, too. He turned to Terrasini, over there helpless. “Bromo,” he said.
Then he looked at Benno. “And who are you?”
Before Benno could reply, Hennie said, “He’s with Frankie Fortune. You understand now, Bebe?”
Staring up at Marsala, Benno nodded cold but respectful, as he imagined Don Carlo might’ve done.
Marsala sidestepped the room-service trolley. “I’m sorry,” he said to Ree as he passed, squeezing her shoulder, then running the back of his fingers along her cheek.
Now I know where he gets it, Ree thought as he disappeared, sealing the bedroom door.
As Terrasini grabbed up sofa cushions, slapping them back into place, Benno noticed a couple of crystal glasses, liquor and rocks, on the carpet.
“You need something?” Benno said to Ree as he sat, his tie hanging between his knees. “Coffee? Your cigarettes?” Not that he felt like serving Bebe’s broad, but she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen in his life and right now he couldn’t think who was number two. No makeup, her chestnut hair tangled—but the cheekbones, that dimple on her chin and those green eyes. She glowed like lightning.
I’m melting, he thought.
“So,” Ree said as she groped for her glass, “who’s Frankie Fortune?”
“Boy,” said Benno, sitting back, clasping his hands behind his head. “There’s lots of ways to answer that one…”
The bedroom was chaos, too, and Ree’s perfume was overwhelmed by the scent of bodies and sweaty sex. Stepping over a pillow, Hennie scrunched her nose in distaste.
“Sit, Ma,” Marsala said as he raised a window shade. “You’re out of breath.”
Ree’s stockings lay across the back of the desk chair.
Marsala eased onto the foot of the disheveled bed. He tapped the spot at his side.
When she ignored him, he uttered, “Ma…”
She dropped her handbag on the chest of drawers. “You’re stacking up enemies.”
“Listen, I know what I’m doing.”
“Really? You? Bebe Rosiglino.”
“Don’t be wise. They tried to make me out a strunzo, Mayer, the rest of them. Let them cool their heels. They can’t make the picture without me.”
“And this one?” She pointed toward the living room.
“She’s a good kid.”
“She’s a puttana.”
Marsala recoiled. “You’re out of line, Ma. She’s solid. All the way.”
“Solid? Rosa’s solid. You know, Bebe, I think they’re right. I think you lost your mind.”
Marsala dug out a pack of Chesterfields and offered one to his mother. She inhaled it down to her heels. “They sent for me, Bebe,” she said, looking at the orange tip. “Mimmo, that creep. Frankie Fortune was there.”
Marsala paced. “They had no right,” he said finally.
“Oh, so you’re going to punch Fortune in the nose. Like some restaurant owner.”
“Ma—”
“Like Louella Parsons.”
Marsala sagged.
“Frankie said you got no business fucking up your career. You know what he means?”
Marsala was at the window again, looking down at the green expanse of Central Park, the boats on the lake, serpentine pathways teeming with strangers. “They bet on me,” he said.
“You paid off yet?”
He turned. “Las Vegas,” he replied. “With Ziggy Baum. The casinos.”
“But nobody’s going to want you in Las Vegas—”
“They’ll want me. Don’t worry about that.”
“—if first they bury you.”
Hennie sat on the bed. She felt lightheaded, sour in her throat. She’d worked herself up good, calculating how to get him to understand what he’d done. She had to put her son in his place long enough for him to understand he had to get back on top. She had to remind him what she always said: Believe you’re better than the rest and play the game. Simple.
In a way, she could see why he chose Ree, the hottest dame in Hollywood, the papers said, a magnet for famous men who’d had them all. But you make that move after you’re out of reach, not when you’re cashing in last year’s chips, your movies for shit and new songs that sound like somebody wrote them over lunch.
“They swooned, why?” she asked, her gravelly voice low. “You were sweet and small-town, a skinny kid they could love while their boyfriends were overseas. Now, you pick fights, you’re a big shot, you don’t go to work, and you throw over Rosa—and my grandson.
“This is what the fans see, and they feel like goddamned fools. The GIs are still sore and they say, ‘I told you he’s no good.’ Also there’s this Mayer fuck in cahoots with the columnists. You gave them a loaded gun, then you put it against your own temple. Jesus. Maybe you are a strunzo.”
Marsala stubbed his cigarette in the ashtray.
“I think maybe, Bebe, you should come home and shine a few shoes. Maybe work with your father at the Hook & Ladder. See where you’ll be, you don’t stop.”
“I think I can do better than the Hook & Ladder, Ma.”
The weight on her chest was sapping her energy. “Then go up to the Lakeside Inn and sing with an apron in your belt.”
Sitting on the ledge, Marsala stared at his thin feet. Leave it to Mama to lay it out straight. There was nobody better at finding the sore spot and digging it until it bled. He could try to explain, but with her, he wouldn’t find words she’d listen to.
“All right,” he said, as he left the ledge. “I’ll go see Corini.”
“Put the cumare on the next train.” Hennie hoisted off the bed. “Send a telegram to Mayer. Apologize. Then you call Rosa, then Klein, have him put you two together with that Louella Parsons. Then you go see Corini.”
She let the cold ashes she’d collected in her hand drop to the floor. “This way,” she said, “he knows you can do right and Frankie Fortune don’t matter if Anthony Corini is on your side.”
There was knock on the bedroom door. On command, Terrasini entered with a hissing glass of Bromo-Seltzer.
“Give me that,” Hennie insisted.
“So there’s this guy,” Benno told Eleanor Ree, “his name is Fortunato Spaletti. He was born in Sicily, but he comes over here and pretty soon he meets up with Carlo Farcolini, who I’m sure you know from the papers, considering that son of a bitch Dewey. Naturally, if your name is Fortunato, they’re going to call you Fortune, so he’s Frankie Fortune.”
“I see,” Ree said, her green eyes fixed on the lively young man.
“When Mr. Farcolini makes his move back in the late twenties, Frankie gets New Jersey, which is everything coming in and out of the piers, and every joint Bebe worked on his way up plus a taste of this and that.”
Elbow on the chair’s plump arm, she’d cupped her chin in her palm. Hearing the punch line, she knit her brow.
“And I’m telling you, to this day, when he could be sitting pretty, Frankie goes at it. Which is good because with Anthony Corini making moves like he’s a gentleman and Bruno Gigenti just getting back his routine, you need somebody who knows the game. See, there’s muscle, but brains is the thing.”
Ree unfolded her legs and leaned forward. She saw Benno steal a glance at her cleavage. A little smile formed on her lips.
“Me, I wouldn’t be surprised if some day Frankie ran the whole thing.” Suddenly, he snapped his fingers. “Oh, and I forgot to mention Mimmo, who you met at the Louis–Conn fight. He’s in Frankie’s crew, but he’s also Rosa’s uncle. So he’s Bebe’s uncle-in-law.”
“Bill’s wife is…” She sat back, amazed. “She’s…”
Madonna mio, ain’t she the most perfect thing? “By blood. Oh yeah.”
Ree shook her head in dismay.
“See,” Benno said, “I told you there were lots of ways to answer that question.”
When she stood, Benno traced her from the ground up.
“Excuse me,” she said.
“Sal,” he said. “I
’m Sal.”
She nodded and went to the credenza for the phone. Benno watched as she told the hotel to book her onto the Pennsylvania Railroad’s Broadway Limited bound for Chicago.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Returning from putting his mother and the glass-eyed kid in a car to Jersey, Marsala found Ree slipping a light coat over her emerald dress. “I’ve got to get back,” she said. “You understand.”
“Listen, baby, let me explain.” He dropped his hands on her arms.
“Let’s leave it at I’ve got to get back.” She lifted herself up on her toes and kissed his forehead.
“Baby…”
“Could Nino manage my luggage?”
Scarf knotted under her chin, sunglasses hiding much of her face, she went directly to the private lounge at the station, sending Terrasini for magazines. Then, replaying Benno’s soliloquy, she smoked one cigarette after another, swallowed down a gin and tonic, gin and tonic, then a double. She bit the lime and ran her sour tongue across her bottom lip.
“Ready?” Terrasini said, holding out his hand like she needed help out of the chair.
Her ankle buckled when she stood.
There was a walkway that permitted Broadway Limited passengers to go directly to the train without crossing under the stark light of the station’s glass roof. The shadowy path had a red carpet and in her hazy state, Ree saw that the blood from the bullets Frankie Fortune’s men would fire into her would seep into the rug and disappear. She jumped when the conductor shouted, “All ’board!”
“You OK?” Terrasini asked as they emerged near the waiting train.
“Swell,” she replied.
Not so. She was terrified. She’d heard the rumors—her ex-husband Simon insisted on telling her. But when Marsala said they were bullshit, a slur against all Italians, she believed him.
“All ’board!” yelled the conductor again.
“Nino,” Ree said, “walk me to my compartment.”
Terrasini looked at his watch. He didn’t like to leave his boss alone when he was blue. “Sure,” he said. He couldn’t figure why she was scared. Bebe was crazy for her.
