by Jim Fusilli
“Salvatore…” Corini would say, stretching the four syllables.
Should Bruno Gigenti, for whatever far-fuckin’-fetched reason, find himself in his rival’s apartment, maybe even he’d act like Benno wasn’t just some fly buzzing the room. But not Frankie, who dug in the crates for the envelope, then walked away.
To hell with him, Benno thought as he crossed the street, a nip in the November air. Out of habit, he threw the crate up on his shoulder, blocking his good eye’s side view so he could leave his right hand free to shake with the doorman, who also said hello better than Frankie.
Then Benno felt something heavy crack him hard above the right ear, and his hat flew off. The pain shook him down to his soles and back again. Maybe his head would burst. He landed on the sidewalk next to the crate, food rolling toward the curb.
Before the lights went out, he saw the bottom of the guy’s shoes as he ran toward Columbus Avenue. Wiry little motherfucker, wiry, but no kid. Holding his hat with one hand, the envelope with the other.
Leo Bell left City College’s gothic campus for Amsterdam Avenue on his way to the IRT, humping a leather satchel heavy with texts and research, a sleeveless sweater over a white Oxford. The nuns at St. Claire’s had given Imogene a breather, so they decided to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art before dinner and a picture in Times Square.
Bell had introduced her to Benno and they got along like he knew they would, teasing, laughing, Imogene insisting she’d find him a steady girl, Sal telling her he didn’t need no help. It was easy with her family, too. Ruthie was a pisser, his surrogate kid sister. Mr. O’Boyle insisted Bell call him Mike. Mrs. O’Boyle invited Bell to join the family at Sunday Mass. He declined politely, saying he was busy elsewhere. “But do you go to Mass, Leo?” she asked, her brogue thick with sincerity.
“I do, Mrs. O’Boyle,” he replied. At the Church of the Central Intelligence Agency, Charlie Tyler presiding.
Bell met Tyler in New York City, the location chosen at the last minute. “So?” Tyler would begin. Bell told him Boo’s crew hijacked a truckload of radios off the Pulaski Skyline; Fat Tutti bent back Albini the Tailor’s knees over a cash dispute; the vig on street money is up to 12 percent: day-to-day stuff Tyler could’ve overheard walking Narrows Gate from the Lackawanna Station to St. Matty’s.
Tyler wanted more.
“Let me get a semester under my belt,” Bell replied. “Then I can spend time in town, talk to people, go to the clubs.”
Though he dropped in on the candy store maybe a half-dozen times since he enrolled in City College, Bell hadn’t gotten a single tip on his own. Everything he’d ever learn that would be worthwhile to the CIA would come through Benno, who’d get it from Mimmo. Stinking of discontent, Mimmo moaned to Benno about Ziggy Baum spending three or four times the budget Corini and Geller had approved to build the Sandpiper Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. Mimmo bitched about how Gigenti wanted points on the heroin going into the projects in Jersey, too. Mimmo had turned into a spout. “Now he comes to my uncle’s store, sits on the ceci and starts yakking,” Benno complained. “I think there’s a worm loose in his head.”
Though everything Benno reported added up to tension between Corini and Gigenti, Bell repeated none of it, at least not yet. He wouldn’t put Benno in a position of having to confirm speculation.
Now, strolling away from the City College campus, his topcoat open, Bell reached Broadway, crossing a strip of shade.
And there, near the subway station, was Benno, sitting on his truck’s running board. Forlorn, he was as pale as his brown skin would allow, holding a gauze pad against the side of his head. Blood had dried on his collar and apron strap.
“I was hoping you didn’t drive to school,” he said as he struggled to stand.
Bell grabbed his elbow. “What the fuck happened to you?”
“They robbed me. They took the money.”
“Let me see,” Bell said, nudging the thick pad away from his friend’s ear.
The skin was split open good and the gash hadn’t stopped bleeding.
“The doorman took care of me. I didn’t tell Corini or Frankie or nobody.”
“Your melon…Minga.”
Bell reached into his friend’s slacks and withdrew the truck keys. “I’ll drive.” He helped Benno around the front of the truck. On the passenger’s seat was a fold of wax paper, the dried tail of a salted cod peeking out.
“Lost the money,” Benno said, as he climbed up. “But I saved the baccala.”
They picked up Imogene by the Port Authority and she tended to Benno in the truck’s cab, Bell driving through the Lincoln Tunnel back to Narrows Gate. “You might need stitches, Sal,” she said, her professional demeanor shining through.
On the Jersey side, they stopped at a pharmacy and then went to Bell’s secret place under the 14th Street viaduct.
They must’ve knocked my brain loose, Benno thought as he trudged up the stairs. Leo Bell has a love nest?
Taking off Benno’s apron and his bloodstained shirt, they helped him down the hall to the rusted sink where Imogene poured peroxide on the wound. Benno yelped.
Imogene turned on the water. “Rinse it good,” she instructed.
“You going to stitch me?” he asked as water ran along his ears and cheeks.
“Let’s get the bleeding to stop and we’ll see. I don’t suppose you want the side of your head shaved.”
“No, but I’ll take a couple of aspirins. An ice pack, too.”
They put Benno on the bed, an old towel covering the wound. Thinking concussion, Imogene insisted he rest.
Out in the hall, Bell said, “I’d better go see what’s what.”
“Are you going to tell me what this is about?” she asked.
“I don’t think you want to know,” Bell said as he inched toward the newel post.
“I do, Leo.” She liked Benno. She thought he was cute, a big little boy.
“They robbed him,” he replied. That was as thin as he could slice it. “They took the money.”
“Oh.”
“I’m not lying.”
“But you’re not truthing, either.”
He decided he’d go down to the store to let Vito and Gemma know Sal was all right. When he arrived, Mimmo was sitting on a stack of canned tomatoes, his hat on a barrel of rice.
“Ding,” he said. He gestured to the back room.
Bell held up his finger as he waited for Gemma to come around the counter. “He’s fine,” he said to her in Italian. “Maybe a stitch or two. But he’s fine.” He leaned down and let her kiss his cheek. He gave her a hug and as he held her, nodded at Vito, who was stiff with dread.
Bell followed Mimmo to a table in back.
“So?”
“They liked to take off the side of his head,” Bell replied, staring into Mimmo’s sunglasses.
“What about the money?”
He repeated what Benno told him.
“They took his wallet?” Mimmo asked.
Bell said no.
“He tell you what he was doing? The deliveries?”
“I figured,” Bell said.
“Sally talked.”
“About what?”
“About the bag. The take.”
“To who?”
“Somebody.”
Bell shook his head. “You know better than that.”
Mimmo made a little shrug.
“How much was in the envelope?”
“Twenty-nine Gs and change.”
And you don’t provide protection, you stupid son of a bitch? “Maybe it’s about Pellizzari and the hit at the motel.”
“You heard about that?”
“Everybody heard about it,” Bell said. “You like it when people know. This thing, though…”
Mimmo hoisted away from the table. “Maybe they’ll ask where you were, College Boy.”
“You think I took you for thirty large and sapped Sally? Come on, Mimmo. Be yourself.”
Mimmo sta
rted toward the door.
Eleanor Ree had developed an appreciation for the tradition of siesta—especially after she’d been up until dawn in the bars on the Gran Via where she dazzled patrons. Throwing her dark mane back, she danced, hips swaying under her free-flowing peasant skirts, her boisterous laugh rippling above the guitars and rhythmic handclaps. They called her gitana de ojos verdes—the green-eyed gypsy. The Spaniards loved her as she strolled the Plaza Mayor, shopped in El Rastro, dined in the restaurants of El Escorial, acknowledging their compliments in the few words of Castilian Spanish she learned.
The cast and crew loved her, too: She was thoroughly professional, despite the aches and minor injuries she suffered in her scenes in the rugged Sierra de Guadarrama. But alone she was miserable. The entire picture was a difficult shoot with multiple locations and a script that was an insult to Hemingway’s source material. The summer sun was brutal, at noon a heat lamp on high. After lunch, she slept, grinding her teeth, tossing mercilessly until the wake-up call beckoned. Her thoughts taunted her, her mind on a pendulum that swung between reflex and hammering doubt. She needed a lover to fight off the devils lurking in her solitude, someone who could fill the inescapable hole in her soul.
Now she awoke from a fitful sleep. A ceiling fan wobbled above her.
He was in the shower. Antonio was a proud and fastidious man. His sinewy brown body glistened.
She thought of joining him, coming up from behind, wrapping her arms around his narrow waist, the cool water trickling down her breasts. He’d turn elegantly and stare at her, his head cocked, conquest in his eyes, as if he had an estoque in one hand, a red muleta in the other and she were a seething beast about to be taken.
She reached to the nightstand and rinsed her mouth with gin. As she left the bed, she heard a timid knock on the hotel room’s door. Slipping into her robe, she said, “Sí?” though no one on the Palace staff would dare interrupt Antonio Miguel de Zuera during siesta.
“Eleanor, it’s Johnny Cornax.”
A unit publicist for the picture. “Come back in an hour, John,” she said.
“It can’t wait, El. Sorry.”
Ree wiped the sleep from her eyes and poked her head into the hallway. “Hi, Johnny,” she said with a shy smile.
Cornax coated bad news for a living, but there was no way to sugar this. “Bill Marsala just landed at Barajas.”
Behind her, the shower stopped with a prophetic groan.
“A reporter from United Press saw him. Marsala told him he’s here to be with you. To see the sights.”
“I know nothing about it, Johnny. Honest.”
“He asked that you two be given some privacy, but…”
“Yeah, I know,” Ree said.
“I can let you know when he arrives. I can move you to another hotel if you want.”
“No, no,” she said. “I’ll—I’ll—” What the fuck was Bill doing in Spain? Why would he tell reporters we’re together again?
Because he’s certifiable. A four-star filbert.
“I’ll call up,” Cornax said.
Ree shut the door. When she turned, there was de Zuera, towel around his waist, body glistening, black hair slicked back and off his lean, flawless face, his feet set firmly in place.
Bell brought Imogene back to school. When he returned to 14th Street, he found Benno waiting outside the decaying building, the now bloody towel pressed against the side of his head. The sun was gone and the streetlamps on the viaduct cast eerie shadows. They got into the truck, Bell behind the wheel. Benno said, “She asks a lot of questions.”
She’d asked Bell, too, and he answered, walking a tightrope. “He knew some bad guys growing up” and “He can’t say no” and “Maybe this will wake him up” was the best he could do.
She said, “What about you, Leo? You knew the same people.”
“I caught some breaks. My father, the Army, Landis, college.” He took her hand. “You.”
The truck smacked a pothole. “What did you tell her?”
“I didn’t tell her nothing,” Benno replied. “I don’t know what she knows.”
“About the crew? She knows only what she reads in the papers. She sees the words Narrows Gate and she asks me if I know the guy or the place they found his body. I say no.”
They turned onto Fillmore. Bell looked in the rearview for company. “Mimmo thinks you told somebody,” he said.
“No, I ain’t talked. I would’ve told you if I did.”
“Then it was an inside job,” Bell said. “Unless you stole the money yourself.”
“After I hit myself on the fuckin’ noodle?”
“You took a smack for thirty Gs.”
“They said there was thirty Gs?” Benno grimaced in disgust. “Means fifteen. Or less.”
When they reached Third Street, Benno told Bell to pull over and get out. “Bring your car behind the store,” he said as he climbed over the stick.
Ten minutes later, Benno came out of the alley wearing his leather jacket and gloves. “The Holland Tunnel,” he said, jumping in, pointing past the train yards. “I got an idea.”
As instructed, Bell headed toward Observer Road.
Benno sat with his eyes closed. Bell saw a calm before a storm.
“Who could it be?” Benno asked.
“Corini, Fortune and Mimmo. They know. Boo and Fat Tutti, too.”
“Give me odds.”
“Mimmo doesn’t play smart,” he said, “and he can’t make a move on his own, especially with Bebe on probation.”
“So it’s Corini or Fortune.”
The tunnel was clear. Bell paid the toll and they cruised toward bright tile under the river. Soon they came out into the starry night. The Lower West Side was minutes away.
Benno said, “Go left, make a left, make a left.” They headed east and Bell saw they were going to Little Italy, to the members-only social club used as a base by Bruno Gigenti, Corini’s murderous rival.
“Hear me out,” Benno said. “This is one of two things. This is Corini setting up Gigenti. Or it’s Gigenti—he wants to show he can go after Corini’s guy and he don’t give a shit what’s next. Either way, Frankie’s in the middle of it. He’s the go-between.”
Bell looked at him. “This is the right move, Sal?”
Benno rolled down the window and tossed the bloody towel onto Leonard Street. Bell shivered at the rush of cold air.
Gigenti’s club sat on the other side of a park on Mulberry Street. As stout, olive-skinned men in coats and baggy slacks played bocce under lamplight, shuffling to stay warm, Bell settled the car alongside a high, cast-iron fence.
A couple of big guys, Gigenti’s version of Boo and Tutti, flanked the club’s door, the Italian flag draped over its header. An empty chair faced the park and soon a young man filled it, an espresso cup in his hand, collar turned up.
“Him?” Bell asked.
“Not him. But the guy’s in there,” Benno said. “If he’s not, he’s coming. And if he ain’t coming, somebody knows where he is.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
One of the big guys left, the little guy, too, and the other big guy went inside, pulling the door shut behind him. The park was abandoned now, Mulberry Street empty. Bell was drowsy, but Benno remained as vigilant as a cat. Suddenly he said, “I’m going in.”
“Sally—”
“Gigenti’s not in there. Not until two in the morning.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Doing what? Playing scopa with the help? The guards are pulled, right?” Benno reached inside his jacket and eased out a dull, long-barrel pistol. He hefted it, hand on the wooden grip.
“Holy Christ, Sal.” Bell hadn’t seen the gun since they were kids and Benno showed him how he intended to shoot Maguire, the crooked cop Gigenti hung from St. Matty’s.
“The big fat fuck who went in is still in there with I don’t know what, a fuckin’ cannon maybe. But the little shit, too. I hope.”
Bell stared at h
im in astonishment.
“See, Leo, being smart with the books, it don’t mean shit right now.”
Bell reached for his arm. “You walk into Gigenti’s club fixed and it’s a new ballgame, Sal. You know that.”
Benno tugged free. “Fuckin’ right it is.” He stepped onto Baxter Street.
Bell followed as they cut through the vacant park. Spindly branches bobbed in a breeze.
Benno said, “You in?”
“You ought to calm the fuck down, Sal.”
Breathing heavy, his face red, Benno repeated, “You in?”
Bell nodded.
“Throw the chair through the front window.”
“Sal—”
Seething, Benno said, “Straight through.”
They crossed Mulberry. The storefront windows were painted navy blue to chest level. On the glass, in front of dusty sun-stained curtains, gold-leaf block lettering said “Mulberry Street Community Center” and “Members Only.” Peering between the curtains, Bell saw the back of old wooden shutters and hanging plants.
Benno stood bold by the door.
Bell picked up the chair and charged. Giant shards of window glass crashed into the shutters, blowing them open.
“Stand back,” Benno said. Head bowed, his arm stiff, he held the gun high and tight.
A second or two later, the big fat guy opened the door. And Benno reached up and shoved the nozzle between his eyes.
“The motherfucker who robbed me,” Benno said, backing him up.
Bell rushed in. The club appeared empty, but he ran behind the musty bar to check. Nobody.
“The motherfucker who robbed me,” Benno repeated, pushing the big guy back.
“I don’t—”
Benno brought the barrel down hard on his nose and blood shot from the wound and his nostrils at the same time. “Il suo nome, il suo indirizzo or morite. Semplice.”
Blood oozed through his bloated fingers. “Who?” he managed. “I don’t…”
