The Legend of Joey Trucks: The Accidental Mobster

by Craig Daliessio

  Ms. Anna Phylaxis

  Peppers was standing next to my bed. Hank Milledge was out in the hallway talking to Gladys and a doctor. “Where am I?” I asked. “Lynchburg Baptist,” Peppers answered, “You was out cold for the entire ride.” My heart was racing and doctors was coming and going. “Mr. Lowery?” the one doc said. “You’re a lucky man. If your neighbor hadn’t known what was going on, you’d have never survived to make it here.”

  “Wha…who? What neighbor?” “Mr. Mezilli,” the doctor answered, “He saved your life.”

  The doctor explained. “Mr. Mezilli recognized that you were going into anaphylactic shock. He stuck coffee grounds under your tongue and got help as fast as he could. I don’t think you’d have made it without him, sir.”

  I was stunned. “You’re a lucky man,” the doctor said as he turned to walk out the door. “Anaphylactic shock?” I mumbled. Peppers leaned in. “Phil,” He asked, “was this your plan? Your plan to stop that sleeping with the seven fishes business and save Joe Mezilli’s family?” I’d forgotten all about that for a moment. Peppers, apparently, had not. “Is this how you did it, Phil? By eating them shellfish even though you knew you was allergic?” I was still cloudy from the medicine they gave me. “What Peppers? What the hell are you talking about?”

  “You had an allergic reaction to shellfish, Phil, That’s why you went into shock and how you ended up here. I’ll tell ya, that was one hell of a plan, Phil. You sure brought the law to their house in a hurry. Of course, Stan Stevens was already there, ‘cause he was invited, so it might have been hard for Joe to kill his folks anyway. But then the ambulance came, and three more sheriffs, it was quite a sight! That was some good plan Phil!” “Peppers…” I groaned. “Shut the hell up.”

  Hank came in the room, leaving Gladys in the hall, talking to the hospital folks. “Well, you saved the day for sure, Phil.” Hank said with a belly laugh. “Yes sir, there won’t be any whacking at the Mezilli household tonight, not with half the first responders in Bedford county over there eating Mezilli’s seafood. Nice going there, Agent Lowery.

  “That ain’t funny Hank,” I said, “it ain’t funny at all. Now that I thwarted his plan, Mezilli will be out for my head, you watch!” Milledge stuck his hands in his front pockets of his jeans. He does that whenever he gets angry. “Now look here, Phil,” he began, “The man saved your life tonight! The rest of us were sitting there watching your head blow up like a beach ball and wondering what the hell was going on. Hell I thought an alien was going to pop out of your chest, the way you was turning blue and writhing. If Mezilli wanted you dead, he sure could have just sat there and watched it happen like the rest of us were doing. Now I think this game of yours has gone on long enough. He’s a good man and that’s a good family. He ain’t no mobster. Now let it go!”

  Milledge turned and walked out the door. “C’mon Peppers!” he barked on his way out. “Let’s go back to Mezilli’s before the shellfish is all gone!” He said the word with a snarl. Nobody believes me, I thought. Nobody understands.

  13

  Burial

  At Sea

  Another summer was fast approaching in our new home. We’d really settled in here. The kids were making friends and I finally convinced my parents, and even my grandmother, to start taking the train down here for long weekend visits. The train had food and a bathroom for Nonna’s microscopic bladder, and she never feared the tracks would suddenly end over a body of water. They actually fell in love with the train rides, and were talking, from time to time, of moving down here.

  One evening in late May, my mom, the Old Man and Nonna were sitting out on our deck in the backyard. Angie and I had gotten the kids squared away inside and we were all just sitting around sipping some wine we’d found at a local vineyard nearby. My grandmother started getting very wistful watching the sun set behind the mountains to the south and west of our home. She never drinks, but tonight we’d convinced her to have a glass with us. I guess it loosened her up a bit. She got teary-eyed, and started telling us about her courtship with Nonno. “This sunset on the mountains…it looks like back home.” She whispered. “Your grandpa, he was from a little village about halfway up Montecassino, and I lived down in the town below. His father, your great-grandfather, was a cobbler up there. They lived on a little patch of land and had a couple of cows and some chickens and a goat. Giuseppe would ride into town on his bicycle when he was just eight or nine years old and he’d make deliveries for his Poppa. That’s how we met. I leaned forward on my chair. It was getting a little chilly and I wrapped a thin little blanket around Nonna’s shoulders, and she smiled and patted my hand. “I never knew that Nonna. How did you fall in love?”

  She continued; “Giuseppe, he never did want to be a cobbler like his Poppa. He always said he wanted to go to America. He came to our house once to deliver a pair of shoes to my mother and when I answered the door…the lightning bolt! I was only ten years old, but I knew I was going to marry this boy one day.”

  She let out a little laugh, “Just like you and Angie,

  Giuseppe. I remember you walking home from Mass one Saturday night and your Nonno asked you why that little girl made you smile so much when we were walking out. That was you, Angie.” She said, nodding at my wife. I looked at Anj and she was crying softly. I felt her grip my arm tightly.

  Nonna put her hand gently on Angie’s cheek. “It’s true,” She whispered. My Giuseppe asked Joey why he was smiling so much and what your name was and when Joey answered;

  “Her name is Angie, Nonno.” It was the biggest smile I ever saw on Giuseppe’s face. Giuseppe told him how he met me when he was eleven and I was ten and he was delivering shoes for his father. Joey do you remember?” I was surprised to find myself blinking back a few tears. Typically Nonno didn’t elicit warm emotions. But this time was different.

  “Yes I do, Nonna,” I answered, “I remember we stopped at D’itillio’s and had Water Ice and he told me about how he thought you were so beautiful the first time he saw you. How he would talk his dad into doing extra deliveries in your town so he could ride his bike past your house.” Nonna was quiet for a minute. Then she spoke again. “The swine flu hit his town hard that year and his whole family died. Within a week, your Nonno was an orphan. He decided that he would try to make his way to America instead of going to live in an orphanage and having to work in the slaughterhouses or on a farm. He sold all the shoes his poppa was working on and rode his bike to my house the night before he left. He was so brave, your Nonno. Fourteen years old, he was. He sold his bike and left early one morning and snuck on board a steamer from Gaeta. He ate bread that he stole from the kitchen late at night. They finally caught him and the captain gave him a beating, but then he let him work until they got to America and he gave him ten dollars, which was a lot of money then.” Nonna paused and sipped her wine. She had tears in her eyes and the smile had not stopped playing on her lips.

  “Giuseppe had faked his papers and told the Immigration officer he was eighteen, when he was really only fourteen. They sent him to the house where the owner of the textile mill lived and he started work the next morning.”

  “Dear Lord,” I said softly, “I never thought about this until now, but he was the age our Petey is. I can’t imagine Petey suddenly having no family and having to make his way to an entire new country.” I shuddered to think. It gave me a different perspective on Zippie and why he was so gruff.

  Nonna continued with her story; “Giuseppe would write me all the time. Every week I would get mail from him, but back then it was airmail and it took weeks to get it to me. He was working in the mills in Chester and he had moved in with Hank Kroyczek’s family. They treated him nice, and he was safe. He would always say in his letters; “I’m sending for you one day. Wait for me.” He would ask me about other boys in my town and I would always play like I had suitors, but the truth was I was in love with Giuseppe. If he hadn’t sent for me, I might have joined the Convent!” Nonna laughed at thi
s, more to herself than to us.

  She kept going, I was surprised at how much she felt like talking tonight. “My Poppa, he tells Giuseppe that he won’t send me alone to America, so if he wants to marry me, he has to pay to get us all over there. Me, my Poppa, my Momma and one of my sisters. The other sister and my brother wanted to stay behind. Giuseppe worked for almost four years to save enough money to move us all over to Philadelphia. He worked in the mills all day and drove a garbage truck at night. That’s where he realized how much money could be made in trash.”

  My dad was crying. I wouldn’t have noticed, because I was so captivated by Nonna’s story, but I heard him sniffle and then he blew his nose into his hanky. He caught my eye and I winked at him, letting him know it was okay. I could tell he had never heard these stories either and he was missing his dad…maybe for the first time in his entire life. “We got off the boat on a Tuesday afternoon, and that Saturday Giuseppe came to our house to serenade me.” A little heritage lesson is necessary here. In the Old Country, when a boy was proposing to his girlfriend, he would go to her house and sing to her. Sometimes he hired a few musicians to help him, but usually because they were poor, the boy didn’t have the money and he’d play guitar and “serenade” his bride-to-be and her family. Then the parents would open the doors and have a party in their courtyard and all the neighbors would come and bring food and presents. We still do it, although a modified version, back in Philly when we get engaged. Angie and I had a wonderful serenade at her folk’s house the Wednesday before our wedding.

  My grandmother continued, “Giuseppe sang to me and my Poppa opened the door and we had a little party in the back yard. We were so poor back then…we didn’t have nothin’ but we were in love and Giuseppe was such a hard worker. So the following Saturday, just ten days after we landed in America, I married your Nonno, at the same church your Poppa married your Momma and where you and Angie got married. I was sixteen by then and he was eighteen. We were just kids, but we were so in love.

  My mom was crying like a baby now. She has a very close relationship with her mother-in-law and now I knew why. They were kindred spirits. We sat there in silence for a little longer and then headed in the house, and got ready for bed. I had learned a whole lot about Zippie tonight, and it was something special. I guess everybody has a story.

  A Weekend with the Fellas

  By the start our second summer in Virginia, we’d really settled in. The place felt like home. Tommy had a really good crew, and he was doing great with the renovation business. The kids were doing well in school and in sports. I had been awarded a charter for a Son’s of Italy chapter here in Forest and I got that started. We met at a nice cigar shop in Wyndhurst, a little hamlet about two miles from my house. It was nice having some paisan to hang with. I was making some great friends in the neighborhood. The guys in Forest weren’t exactly like the guys in South Philly, but they were a good bunch of fellas. We did a lot of stuff together. They loved my big, professional sized pool table and they had a blast out at the hunting camp. But the thing they seemed to love the most – besides eating all the authentic Italian cooking they could- was fishing. We fished at Smith Mountain Lake quite a bit, and I was a minor celebrity after disclosing to them one day, that Mike Iocanelli, the B.A.S.S. pro, was my second cousin. I was surprised how important that made me. Back in Philly it wasn’t as big a deal as it was down here. This was Bass country and Cousin Mike was a rock star.

  One evening early in that second summer, I was sitting on the deck with Angie and watching the sunset. I thought maybe I needed to do something special with the guys in the neighborhood. “Anj,” I began, “I think I should take a couple of the neighbor men fishing on the big boat. Just a weekend getaway for the boys.” Angie thought that would be a nice thing. “Why don’t you do it the week after Independence Day? I’ll be taking the kids to my folks for the week anyway.” “Yeah, that’s a thought.” I said. “I’ll call them tomorrow.” Another couple of minutes later, Emmy came outside wanting to catch lightning bugs so we spent the next twenty minutes trapping them and keeping them in a mayonnaise jar to use as a nightlight.

  The next morning I got on the phone and called my neighbors. I planned a nice weekend deep-sea trip with three of the guys who lived closest. I invited Hank Milledge, Tommy Erickson, and Phil Lowery. I also invited my cousin George to come down and go out with us. George loved deep-sea fishing and we always looked for a chance to take an excursion. I invited Tommy Fallone, too. I wanted the locals to get to know him a little better. Someday, his past would inevitably come to light, and I wanted them to see ahead of time, what a great guy he actually is.

  We decided to go out the weekend after Independence Day. The drive to Hampton would be less snarled with vacationers, and the Gulf Stream would be a little closer to the coast by then. Even so, we would be going out about eighty miles in order to find the really big game fish. Everybody was in, and cleared their calendars for that weekend.

  Everybody except Phil. He made a stream of excuses when I asked him about going with us. I had already decided to try a little harder with Phil, and I’d walked over to his house one early summer evening with a small paper bag full of tomatoes from my garden. Gladys answered the door and seemed a bit nervous. I understood completely. The way Phil likes to play it off like he rules the roost over there, I imagine she has to toe the line when one of the neighborhood men shows up at the door.

  I handed her the tomatoes and she looked at them like they were my kids’ poopy diapers, from ten years ago. I don’t know what it is with Phil and his wife and their aversion to my tomatoes – or maybe to any tomatoes- but it wouldn’t fly in Philly.

  “Phil here?’ I asked Gladys. She stammered a bit. “Y-yes he is, Joe,” I waited for a very long, uncomfortable minute. Finally, when it was apparent that she thought I was simply asking his location, and didn’t need to actually talk to him, I asked her, “Well, can I speak to Phil, Gladys? I need to ask him something important.”

  Gladys snapped out of her fog and called down to the basement. “Pheeel!” she said, in her distinct drawl, “Pheel git up here!” Phil walked up the steps talking about how he was busy fixing the TV again. He stepped through the door holding an actual cathode ray tube from a TV. The last thing I watched on a TV with cathode tubes was Nixon resigning, when I was about five. Phil stopped in his tracks when he saw me. For whatever reason, since almost the very day I moved into this neighborhood, Phil Lowery has treated me like he owes me money. Every time he sees me. “W-well hey there, Joe. Uh...what brings you over?” he stumbled. “Well, Phil I brought you some tomatoes. The early spring has me with a harvest already if you can believe that. Last week of June and I have tomatoes. Nice huh?” Phil looked at the bag in his wife’s hand like it contained severed heads. Tomatoes! I thought, These people just don’t understand... “Well thank you neighbor,” Phil said, rather uneasily, “We sure do appreciate this.” I got to the point right away. “Phil, listen, the rest of the guys are going on that deep sea fishing trip in two weeks. I was hoping to change your mind and get you to go with us. I know you said you had things planned that weekend. What with the Pork Rind Festival and all.” That was the excuse he gave us. Over in Galax there was something he called a “Pork Rind Festival” and he went every year.

  Gee...I must have missed that one in Conde Naste Traveler.

  Phil sputtered, “Well Joe, Y-ya know I’d love to go out there with you boys but I gotta go to the Festival. My cousin Jim-Bob has a vending booth there and he sells some of the best pork rind you’ll ever have. He depends on me to help him with the sales that weekend. So let me get this straight, Phil. You’d rather spend the weekend in Galax, Virginia selling pork rind. I thought to myself. You’d rather be dishing out the fried skin of a pig than fishing off the coast of Virginia with three of your friends on a fiftyfour foot Hatteras? My inner voice was so loud by this point that I thought, for just a second, that I had actually said it.

  I snapped to at
tention. “Well Phil,” I said, “If you don’t want to go along, I guess that’s okay. But it will be a fun weekend and the boys sure would love to have you. It’s so peaceful out there. We go out about eighty miles and it’s just so quiet at night. Nobody around. Nothing to disturb you. It’s really relaxing. I hope you’ll reconsider.”

  I turned to leave and noticed Gladys was staring at me slack-jawed. I might never understand these two. To be very honest, I was getting tired of trying.

  Gone Fishin’

  “Hurry up and shut that dang door, Gladys” I told her. She was standing there gawking at Don Mezilli walking back to his house. “What’s wrong with you Gladys?” I asked, “Every time that man comes over here, or you see him outside, you get glassy -eyed and lose your composure. You got a crush on him or something?” Gladys looked at me like she wanted to kill me. Kill me slowly.

  “Phillip Lowery. I am a Christian woman.” She snarled. “It’s just that, he seems so very nice and sometimes I imagine him doing those terrible things you say he’s done and it’s very perplexin” I was losing my wife again. Just when I convinced her he was a mafia, she goes and gets all girly on me and wants to see the good in him. “There ain’t no good in him!” I said, not meaning to say it out loud. Gladys seemed startled. “Huh?” she barked.

  “Nothin’…nevermind” I said.

  “Gladys, something bad is gonna happen on that boat, I just know it. There’s a reason he is taking the local boys out there along with his hit-man Tommy, and his cousin from Philly. There’s trouble brewing. He’s gonna consolidate his power and stake his claim.” Gladys looked at me as if I had a third eye. “Consolidate his power?” she whined. “Who has any power around here that he’d need to feel like consolidating? Hank Milledge? He’s sixty years old. Erickson? Maybe Erickson, he’s almost as obsessed with the mob as you are Phil. Is he after Timmy Peppers and his backhoe?” I was getting downright steamed. Gladys was heckling me in my own house. I didn’t cotton to it a bit. “The man only understands power, Gladys,” I said, trying to be reasonable. “He needs to be the alpha dog no matter where he is. He’s got the mindset of a Mafia and that’ll never change. Living in Virginia ain’t gonna change that part of him.” I shouldn’t have to explain this to her. Gladys isn’t stupid. Well she’s a little stupid, but not that stupid. She’s not stupid like a dumb old dog; she just isn’t wise to the ways of the world. Especially not to a ruthless killer like Joe Mezilli.