by Jim Fusilli
“Oh shit,” Terrasini uttered.
“No, Louella. Bill’s not here. He can’t comment. He’s in Spain. With Eleanor Ree. That’s right. He’s left me and Bill Jr. He fired Phil, and he’s left us. Of course, you can print it. Who can stop you? It’s true.”
Terrasini sank.
“A statement?” She paused in thought, all the while staring into Terrasini’s eyes. “Phil Klein is in my prayers. He was a dear, dear friend to Bill since the earliest days of his career. I’m sure the shock—Well, no, I can’t say that. I’m sure I’ll be down to see Phil this afternoon. He’s a lovely man. But you know that.”
They waited as Parsons asked a question.
“Heartsick? Do I sound heartsick? Well, then, I suppose I am. Foolish? No, not foolish. I do wish Bill had said good-bye to his son.”
Before hanging up, she said, “Anytime, Louella. Yes, I appreciate that. Thank you.”
Terrasini said, “Maybe that was too much, Rosa.”
“Hey, Nino, that’s how you do it in Narrows Gate, right?” She held out her arms and took the baby. “There’s a bottle in the fridge. Maybe you could heat it, if you don’t mind?”
Terrasini nodded. From behind the refrigerator door, he said, “Maybe I should call Ziggy Baum in Vegas and let him know about Bill leaving. He can pass it up the chain.”
But Rosa was already dialing the candy store in Narrows Gate. If her uncle wasn’t there, they’d find him. Mimmo would set it in motion.
Bottle in his hand, Terrasini said softly, “Rosa, por favore.”
Her face steely with determination, she said no. “Non questo volta, Nino. Not this time.”
PART THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
With the bullfighter’s gun, Marsala had put a hole in a lamp on the Baroque credenza and the silk-papered wall behind it.
When Eleanor Ree sat where he’d been on the settee, she noticed the trajectory was about even with her eye level, as if he might’ve shot the bullet with the gun near his head. A while ago, her oilman reported a rumor: Bill tried to kill himself as a kid, jumping off a ledge into traffic. She didn’t believe it. And yet…
“You make me crazy, baby,” he said when she returned, rushing in, terror and desperation on her flawless face.
She slapped him and he liked it fine. It meant she cared. She still burned for him.
He stopped the next blow by grabbing her wrist. Then he kissed her hard on the mouth. “I won’t let you walk out on me,” he said between long, swirling kisses.
She moaned and they fell into bed.
He was dead asleep when she went to the settee, naked except for the pillow she held against her breasts.
No, the fool didn’t try to blow his brains out, did he? Maybe he thought about it, but then he jerked the gun away from his skull and shot it in anger at the lamp. That’s it, isn’t it? She looked at him, all peaceful and warm in the bed. She shook her head.
Racing across the ocean, taking on de Zuera like that. Taking me like no other man ever could. Asking nothing and making sure I get all I need. When it’s over, when other men turned and slipped away, he holds me, stroking my hair and staying at my side, skin to skin.
Unpredictable bastard. Lightning on a beautiful summer’s day. A man who didn’t give a shit but cared more than anything. Exactly what I need, and to hell with anyone who can’t understand.
Leo Bell watched as Tyler dropped off Vernon Buie at the top of the viaduct. Buie struggled out of the car, chicken gizzards in a bag. Tucking his crutch under his arm, he headed into the late-after-noon shadows on the steep concrete steps up alongside the soap factory. From a distance, he gave Bell a clipped nod in gratitude.
After an illegal U-turn, Tyler pulled in front of the supermarket. “You have something for me?” he said, talking across the front seat.
Bell stifled a yawn. His long face sagged; he had bags under his eyes. “Let’s hump.” He thought walking with Tyler wasn’t much of a risk. In his raincoat and suit, he looked like a fed, but to passersby maybe he’d seem a salesman from United Fruit.
They went south, St. Matty’s spire up ahead. “This thing with Corini and Gigenti could escalate,” Bell told him.
“How so? You have something more on the Pellizzari killing?”
“I’m just saying,” Bell replied. “Keep an eye on them. Could be one of Farcolini’s lieutenants is making a move.”
“Mistretta?”
“Mimmo? No. You couldn’t give Mimmo away.”
“Because of Marsala?”
“Because, in general, he’s a nitwit,” Bell said. “But, yeah, Marsala, too.”
“Who is it?”
“Take a look at Frankie Fortune.”
“Frankie Fortune,” Tyler repeated. “Is that why you went to Anthony Corini’s home last night?”
Bell stopped. Tyler did, too.
“You were at Corini’s. We know this.”
Astonished, Bell raised a finger to make a point, but he let it go.
“Who was the other guy? He looked damned angry in the photos.”
Bell said, “He’s just a kid I knew growing up.”
“He’s in the crew?”
“We don’t talk about him, Charlie. He’s just a kid.”
“Visiting Corini in the middle of the night—with you, Leo—is quite a bit different than his Monday afternoon deliveries.”
“He works in his uncle’s grocery store,” Bell said, as they continued along the street. “Mimmo recommended the food. Believe me, there’s nothing there.”
“He keeps turning up in surveillance photos and that might be difficult to prove.”
“I don’t care how difficult it is. He’s off the books. No matter what.”
They walked in silence past a row of brownstones, hopscotch board in chalk on the sidewalk and an errant rubber heel. Boys maybe 10 years old played on the other side of the street, pushing and shoving, punching and laughing.
“What’s Corini like?” Tyler asked finally.
“It’s hard to say,” Bell said. “He keeps it close to the vest.” Bell knew Corini was playing Benno. He’d chosen the fatherly approach, like he knew Benno’s old man had run out.
“Think he knows anything about you?”
“Like what? I go to college?”
“He’d like that,” Tyler said. “Maybe he’d groom someone to represent him with Tammany’s lawyers, the unions—”
“Charlie,” Bell said wearily, “I know where you’re taking this. I told you I’ll listen, I’ll look around, I’ll let you know what’s what. But I’m not joining the crew.”
“Your friend must’ve made an impression on them.”
Bell stopped again. “Ah, Jesus, Charlie,” he said. “Nobody makes an impression. Don’t you get it? If they can use him, they’ll use him. But they’d butcher their own children if it could make them an extra dime.”
Tyler pointed to Church Square Park. There were kids everywhere, a football game, teen girls in the gazebo deep in a gab-and-giggle fest. Bell followed him to a bench facing St. Matty’s, the noise behind them.
“Landis is in trouble,” Tyler said as he rubbed the cold off his hands. “The report on Hitler. It remains classified, but people who’ve read it are challenging it. ‘Unscientific,’ they say. ‘Armchair psychoanalysis. Anecdotal gibberish.’”
Bell bristled. “He nailed the suicide, didn’t he?”
“He’s marginalized, Leo, so he’s not going to be studying Stalin or Chiang Kai-shek or anybody else. He’s going back to New Haven. These days, desk jockeys don’t count for much. They want people on the ground.” Tyler stood, crunching brittle brown leaves. “I’m going over to the Department of Justice. I’m bringing our deal with me.”
“Why? The CIA’s no good?”
“It’s the right move—for both of us.”
“Does Justice want people on the ground, too?”
“One step at a time, Leo. Do this well and you’ll have options.”
Bell stood, too, and buried his cold hands in his topcoat pockets. “So now you work with the FBI.”
“That’s right.”
Bell smiled. “I thought Hoover said there’s no organized crime.”
“It might be interesting to prove to him that there is,” Tyler replied. “That’s a fine ambition, isn’t it?”
“For you, sure.”
“We’ll see,” Tyler said. He tapped Bell on the shoulder. “By the way, you should know that Frankie Fortune was in Corini’s apartment last night when you got there and he left twenty minutes after you did. If he’s selling out Corini, he’s playing it very, very cool.”
Securing a sitter for the baby, Rosa Mistretta Rosiglino rode with Terrasini to Cedars of Lebanon Hospital. The whole trip along the 101 and then waiting in traffic on Sunset, they stayed silent. They were visiting Klein and then she was seeing a divorce lawyer, a Beverly Hills shark. Terrasini agreed to drive her to his office so he could take one last shot it at. Like maybe she could see there was still something in Bebe worthwhile. That he wasn’t in his right mind when he took off. Yeah, he’s a selfish jerk when he gets like that, but maybe we should see it as a weakness, Rosa, no? Besides, how could he know about Phil?
Terrasini parked in the shade. “You look nice,” he said as he opened her door and held out his hand.
“Really? I don’t feel too great.” Her stomach had turned sour. She knew there was no turning back.
“Sì. Bellezza. Really.”
She smiled weakly, closing her handbag.
“Rosa—”
“You know, Nino, he left you, too. You know that, right?”
She wanted to enter alone, so she went in through the front doors on Fountain, while Terrasini parked in the emergency bay and waited in the hallway outside Klein’s room, oxygen canisters banning a smoke. Klein had yet to be moved upstairs and an intern suggested he might not be. “Mr. Klein,” the young guy said, “is dying. A stroke is to the brain what a heart attack is to the heart. Since everything’s connected, sometimes the heart goes, too.”
Rosa came up a few minutes later. “How is he?” she asked.
“They don’t think he’s going to make it.”
She titled her head. “It’s that bad? My God.”
Thin blue curtains around the bed blocked their view. From the hallway, all they could see were the shapes of machines and a body in the bed.
“Maybe you don’t want to see him, Rosa.”
“I have to,” she said.
“He’s unconscious, though.”
“No, I have to.”
She drew up and Terrasini saw her back in Narrows Gate, this beaming kid struggling to stand her ground with Bebe and the swarming girls, the next one more beautiful than the last. She always had character. Now she’s fighting for her place—not with Bebe. That’s done. She’s fighting for her place in the world.
Terrasini nodded. “Andiamo.”
Klein was on the edge of death. Pale, with one side of his face slack, the other twisted, he had one tube in his nose, more in his arms. He seemed so small and helpless. He rattled when he breathed.
“Oh no,” Rosa sighed.
Terrasini put an arm around her.
“Oh this poor, poor man,” she said.
They stared for a moment, unsure what to do.
Rosa went to the side of the bed. Leaning over the protective rail, she kissed Klein’s forehead.
“Maybe we wait for his son,” Terrasini said. Klein was a widower. The talent agency had notified the young man, an accountant happily married down in Escondido.
Suddenly, Rosa started to sob. “What did he ever do but be kind? Nino…”
Terrasini pulled a handkerchief from his back pocket.
As she dabbed at her eyes, Terrasini looked at Klein, then at Rosa, and thought, Bebe, you are some lowdown motherfucker. You know that?
Now it was December and still nobody told Benno he was off the Monday run to the city, but he was. And nobody mentioned nothing about his visit to Corini and so he had all this time to do nothing but tell his uncle to nap while he ran the store in his place. He met this usherette at the Avalon, Italian, she lived in Union City and her father, a widower, worked nights so she had Benno over two, three times a week. What the hell, he tried to push it to a new level like Bell had with Imogene the Irish nurse, but it wouldn’t take. The only thing she liked about him was the evening’s worth of hammering he threw her now and again. He tried a book, but fuck that, too.
One evening, while the usherette worked at the movies, Benno sent his aunt and uncle upstairs and cleaned up, sweeping the sidewalk and laying down rock salt. Then he sat in the store, nibbling on a crust of bread and staring out the bay window. Night had fallen with a fuckin’ thud and soon everyone was off the streets. Alone and, tell you the truth, wishing Leo would stop by, Benno put on his coat and hat and walked over to the pizza parlor, Nunzie’s. Nunzie Jr. was in a T-shirt, the wood burning in the brick oven throwing off a hellish heat. Benno ordered a slice. A few minutes later, he said, “Nunz, what the fuck is this? You call this shit pizza? Where’s the dough?”
“The Irish, they go for it like that. Flat,” Nunzie said, flour in his hair, rushing, sweating. “My brother wants we should open a joint uptown.”
And then 11 o’clock, half-past, midnight. Benno was back at his perch, a little frost gathering on the storefront glass, container of Coca-Cola in his fist. For no reason, Benno turned and there was Mimmo on the other side of the dull Fords and Nashes, surveying his turf, peering through shop windows like a beat cop. Every once in a while, he bent down to pick up a wrapper, a cigarette butt, maybe somebody broke a bottle.
Benno saw him disappear. What? A tissue, an empty book of matches?
The windshield in the car behind where Mimmo had been standing suddenly exploded into a thousand pieces. Mimmo rose and then, shot, he flew backward like he’d been yanked. Slammed to the sidewalk, he let out a guttural groan and rolled under a car.
Dropping the soda, Benno bolted into the cold, his jacket left behind.
“Sally,” Mimmo shouted. “Where’s it coming from?”
Benno had ducked behind the stoop, looking toward the Lackawanna yards for the gunman. “I can’t see nobody. You hit?”
“I’m hit.”
“Hold on.” Benno stuck his head out and when a car approached, he dashed in front of it like he was trying to get run over. The guy slammed the brakes, providing a shield. Benno dove onto the cold cobblestone.
Mimmo’s arm hung sideways, dead, and Benno saw by the blood on his back that he’d been shot through the collarbone, the thing probably split in two. Meanwhile, the shooting had stopped.
“You’re bleeding like a son of a bitch,” Benno said. “Hold on.”
He crawled backward, came out from under the car’s trunk and on his knees, ripped off his shirt. Under again and he told Mimmo to wad it up and press it against the wound. “Mimmo, you need a hospital.”
“No,” he said, the side of his face on stone, his sunglasses cracked. “The candy store.”
The candy store, Benno thought, is over in the direction where the bullets came from.
They waited and heard cars pass. Neighbors appeared, winter jackets over pajamas and housecoats, women with their hair in curlers, everybody buzzing. Then everyone went silent when they heard a stampede rumble and soon a giant fat hand reached down. When Benno came out first, he saw Fat Tutti gasping and sweating and Boo Chiasso trotting.
“In the shoulder,” Benno said, adjusting his glasses as Chiasso went to his knees. “He’s bleeding pretty good.”
Mimmo appeared and they got him to his feet. His face was ghostly and he wobbled so bad they had to lift him, making their arms into a chair.
Benno was looking for the bullet in the car with the smashed windshield.
“Sal, get out of here,” Boo Chiasso shouted. “Go now.”
As he opened the side door, Benno thought, Yeah. OK. Give me a minut
e.
“Sally, go!”
There was a hole in the upholstery and Benno stuck in his fingers. Sure enough, he found something besides springs. The seat already ruined, Benno tore it and dug out a little slab of metal that still looked enough like a bullet and why not—it didn’t hit nothing but glass and padding.
Shoving the slug in his pocket, Benno started walking uptown. On Polk Street in an undershirt and slacks soiled with blood, he didn’t even know he was freezing until he reached the Bells’ brownstone.
He threw stones at the window until Bell answered.
“What the hell happened?”
“It ain’t mine,” Benno whispered, pointing to the blood. First words he said since he left Mimmo with his absent bodyguards.
Bell ran out barefoot, in his boxers.
“They shot Mimmo,” Benno explained. He started to shiver.
“Dead?”
“No. Or maybe. They’re fixing him at the candy store.”
“You saw it?”
“From A to the end.”
“Who?” Bell asked.
Benno slipped a hand inside his pocket and produced the spent bullet. “What are the odds it’s from the same rifle that took care of Pellizzari?”
“Better than even,” Bell replied.
“It’s war. Gigenti against Corini. Like Farcolini versus Gus the Boss all over again.”
Bell hefted the slug. “Could be.”
“Maybe I should go tell Corini what happened.”
“Maybe you should come in and not get shot.”
“Yeah, I wouldn’t mind a hot bath,” said Benno, his lips blue.
Since the government had reneged on its deal with Carlo Farcolini, citing as its reasons his continued involvement in the trafficking of narcotics, particularly heroin, Cy Geller increased the number of armed guards he employed to six, each of whom worked four-hour shifts at his house in Coral Gables and another four hours at a marina in nearby Miami, though they were often at sea beyond the Florida Straits. Three of these men were Sicilian, the other three Cuban. They knew Geller had the support and protection of Don Carlo as well as the governor of Florida and had seen Gen. Fulgencio Balboa in his home, both when he was the president of Cuba and now that he resided in Daytona Beach. Well paid, they had killed for Geller and each assumed the other guards would kill any among them who betrayed their boss. Which was true, though it hadn’t happened since ’39 when a guard who had stolen antique silverware from Mrs. Geller’s collection was fed to the sharks as chum.
