The Little Brothers

by Dorothy Salisbury Davis

  Marks dialed the Ruggio number again. Ten rings without an answer. He rang almost as long trying to get a telephone operator. He asked for a tracer on any outgoing calls. That the operation was automated meant it would take time. But it also meant a record.

  Tomasino had written up the Gerosa statement before going off duty. Marks read it through and then sat thinking about Grossman’s shift from one notorious concentration camp to the other … where he had been able to commandeer the musical talent of a communist internee. And others? Two men did not make an orchestra.

  He decided to talk to his father about it. Julian Marks, a noted trial lawyer, was active in politics and philanthropy, and well-connected in the state of Israel. He was an early riser while the detective’s mother was a heavy sleeper, but when Marks phoned, he got the maid who was neither, but who loved her “Davie.”

  She was sufficiently awake to tell him about the dinner party he had missed the night before. “You promised your mother, Davie.”

  He always promised his mother, rarely attended, but generally called to offer his last-minute regrets. He now went through the part of the ceremony which applied when he had not called. Nor did it matter whether he spoke to Matty or to his mother: they worked it out together. “What did I miss, Matty?”

  “A very nice young woman, a Ph.D., but not too brainy.”

  His mother had a way of bringing out the eligibles. “Too bad,” he said.

  “I’ll get your father. It’s very early, Davie. Have you been to bed?”

  “Yes, Matty, I’ve been to bed.”

  He told his father about Grossman, detailing mostly the Gerosa information. Then he found himself reviewing the case as he saw it to the hour. “There’s a little square of clean glass in the shop window that keeps nagging at me. A window within a window. Somebody said yesterday it was like a frame where he was supposed to see a face that would haunt him.”

  “That sounds very Christian to me, Dave.”

  Marks laughed.

  “I should think if it was a matter of justice—or of vengeance—it would have happened long before this. And more directly. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth—nothing devious about that. But I’ll find out if there’s anything on him one place or another. What time is it now in Haifa?”

  “Two or three in the afternoon.”

  “Some hours before sundown.”

  “Oh, Christ,” the detective said. “Do they keep the sabbath that strictly?”

  “Allah is even stricter,” his father said.

  Detective Westcott’s report on the Ambrose Corporation showed it to be an importer of food products, which Marks knew from his ill-managed visit to the warehouse when he had let Ruggio disappear on him. The firm had been incorporated in 1959, taking over the assets of a bankrupt company that had been around since 1912, Amalfi Brothers. The Ambrose record was pristine. Westcott suggested that since the original deal had been made in cash and property, if there was Family in it, it was well concealed. The time was right: the date coincided with guarded Family entrances into legitimate businesses. There could be an ex-mobster wrapped up in its respectability.

  Westcott’s reports always read like carefully researched theme papers. Marks blessed him for it. He had dug into the history of the building on Hester Street. It had come to the Ambrose outfit in the Amalfi package, purchased in 1933 by Rudolph Amalfi for $46,000. Which, Marks realized, was the exact amount Grossman had paid for it twenty-seven years later. That could not be coincidence. Irony, maybe. Something quirky. The property had been appraised at $72,000 in 1933: Amalfi had got himself a Depression bargain. Why had Grossman got himself an even better bargain in a seller’s market? Then he remembered Gerosa’s words: Would you say today he got a bargain, lieutenant?

  Westcott had done both a genealogy and a business précis on the names connected with the firm. Thus, he showed that Bruno Rosetti, a director of the Ambrose Corporation, was also a partner in the Rosetti Construction Company, the same company for whom, it was safe to assume from the name, Bonelli Senior had been working at the time of his back injury.

  An evaluation of Grossman’s legitimate business showed that while on the surface the absence of receipts and vouchers might suggest carelessness or conversely carefulness, the more likely explanation seemed to be that he turned over all his receipts and records to someone else, a part of the operation involving the eighty thousand dollars in the safe. Duplicates of his import vouchers were on file with the customs office, in the files of the shipping carrier and in those of a cartage firm. The market for religious articles was more lively on paper by far than on the Hester Street premises. The retail value of Grossman’s total imports came to just under $30,000 in ten years. To have sold as many statuettes as he had purchased, he could have placed at least two in every home in Little Italy—where nobody bought by Grossman.

  Marks wrote a memo to Westcott to get together with Wally Herring, who was covering the narcotics angle for the division.

  Tomasino checked in, his tie hanging out of his pocket. He was disappointed to see Marks in ahead of him. “I didn’t even stop for breakfast, for Chris’ sake.”

  Tomasino sipped coffee from a plastic cup and Marks brought him up to date as they drove to Elizabeth Street. They stopped on the way to confer with the stakeout. The stakeout car was a beauty: two crumpled fenders and a dented door with cracked window-glass. There had still been no traffic to or from the upstairs apartment. And Mrs. Ruggio was not answering the phone.

  “Or else they have an arrangement,” Tomasino suggested. “Only answer if I hang up for a beat and dial again. Something like that.”

  “Possible,” Marks agreed.

  “Why not put an all points out on him?”

  “Not yet.”

  “What do I do if she does come out, boss?” the stakeout asked. “Do I follow her?”

  “If she has the baby with her, yes. Otherwise not. But I don’t think she’ll come out, maybe not till she rots.”

  “Jesus, you’re cheerful this morning.”

  Marks was watching a milk truck deliverer set out four cases in Allioto’s doorway. Baby Ruggio was on his mother’s milk. She wasn’t going to run out of that right away. “Hang in,” he said to the man on watch.

  “With five kids, what’s my option?”

  Marks grinned. “Six.”

  There was country music playing behind the Bonelli door as Marks and Tomasino passed on their way to see Mrs. Niccoli. Tomasino called attention to the unpainted repair to the railing. He smelled the wood. “It’s new,” he said.

  Mrs. Niccoli was an old woman with sharp black eyes and, Marks soon learned, a tongue to match. She began on Tomasino before they got in the door. “Why don’t you live in the neighborhood anymore, Tommy?”

  “What’s so great about living here? My folks still live here. Can we come in for a minute?”

  “At my age a minute is worth something, but come in. Your father don’t make such good suits no more. For the politicians maybe. Not for the people.”

  “All the people want is a First Communion suit—out of a pair of pants.”

  She cackled with laughter and Tomasino pinched her cheek. He introduced Marks.

  The country music penetrated the walls. “What went on in there last night, Mama Nicco?”

  “Noise.” Then, disparagingly, “Them.” She went to a table covered with a lace cloth where an electric coffee pot was percolating, the room filled with the aroma. She pulled out the cord. Imperiously, she gestured them to sit down and brought a coffee cake from the sideboard. “I like a good fight—a man and a woman. Then you learn something, how much money he makes, how much she spends and for what, if he’s been faithful. If he brings it up, last night he was faithful. If she brings it up, you don’t blame him. When two women fight, it’s better than television. But them. Like two bulls. It makes me sick. You’re not Italian.” The last sentence to Marks without a change of inflection.

  Tomasino answered, “He’s
got an Italian heart, Mama Nicco.”

  “That don’t cut no shit with me, Tommy. What do you want?”

  “We’re investigating the homicide of Grossman, the shopkeeper on Hester Street.”

  “Mama Niccoli knows nothing. Help yourself to the cake.” She poured the coffee.

  Tomasino served himself and Marks. “Then let’s talk about your neighbors.”

  “Them? No.”

  “Why not, Mrs. Niccoli?” Marks said quietly.

  She looked at him coldly. “How is he?”

  “I saw him in the hospital last night. He’ll come home today.”

  She gave a sigh he could not interpret.

  “They haven’t always been bad neighbors, have they?” Tomasino took over gently.

  “Once …” she started and cut herself off. “That’s the truth, Tommy. Ric … even him.” Then she let go: “I’m an old woman. I got nothing to lose. When I’m blind, it won’t matter I don’t have a window. Sometimes I feel sorry for Ricardo the father. When you can’t work, you don’t make bargains, believe me. He put a son through college, then law school. What a party there was last winter when Johnny got his license. And a year ago when Marguerita got her rich husband. But where are they now, the rich Bonellis? Suburbia.” She made a beautiful Italian word of it. “It’s not like the old country, no sir. And Ric? Everybody’s punching bag, all his life. Nobody likes him. His father don’t like him either. And that’s what he wants—why doesn’t he like me, Mama Nicco? From a little boy. What do you tell him? Find somebody else you can make like you. Papa loves me, papa loves me, papa loves me. He used to say that over and over, playing by himself in the hall. What else can I tell you, Tommy?”

  “What time did they start fighting last night?”

  “I couldn’t hear the eleven o’clock news for them. I knocked on the wall. It was quiet and I went to bed. They woke me up—I don’t know what time …”

  “You called the police at twelve:forty-five,” Marks said.

  “So.”

  “Over a bottle of wine,” Marks prompted.

  “A bottle of wine,” she repeated.

  “From Mike’s place?” Tomasino said.

  She shrugged. “Where else at that hour?”

  “And I suppose they’d have fought over money,” Marks said as though he himself were reminiscing.

  “Always … No, not always, but nowadays every single time.”

  Marks said, “And the Jew?”

  There was the faintest beginning of confirmation. Then she straightened up, out of the reverie. “You go to hell, Mr. Detective, whoever you are.”

  Marks got up. “Sorry, Mrs. Niccoli. Thank you for the coffee.”

  “Bah!” And when Tomasino followed Marks to the door, a piece of the coffee cake still in his hand, “Shame on you, Tommy.”

  “We got a dirty job to do, mama.”

  “You don’t do it to me no more.”

  In the hallway Tomasino jerked his thumb toward the door to the Bonelli apartment. Marks shook his head. He wanted to try for Phillips’ identification first.

  They walked to Mike’s Bar, less than a half block away. Mike had a barrel from which he drew wine for the locals. It was closed at that hour of the morning. No matter for now.

  Tomasino went on to the precinct house. He was to see that Allioto showed up for the lineup, an inexact term in this instance, but it was what the occasion would amount to. Marks drove to St. Patrick’s rectory. He had seen no point in confiding Phillips’ identity to Tomasino. The priest was in the clothes of his office when he came into the small parlor where Marks waited, studying the photographs of the last three popes. The difference in Phillips was striking: a self-assurance, but without the taint of arrogance which Marks now took to have been self-protection. They shook hands and talked for a few minutes. Neither of them referred directly to where they had met before, but it was important to Marks to explain that certain of the boys he wanted Phillips to view might well be implicated in Grossman’s murder. And that was all he said of the boys.

  “Let’s go,” Phillips said.

  “There’s no hurry. Julie will be there. So will the delicatessen owner.”

  Phillips smiled. “Are you saying there’s time for me to change into mufti?”

  “I guess that’s what I had in mind, father.”

  Phillips shook his head.

  Julie and Allioto arrived within a couple of minutes of one another, and Marks placed them along with Phillips behind a one-way mirror in a glass-partitioned office with a view of the entrance, the desk, and the lobby. The normal routine of the stationhouse went on uninterrupted.

  The Little Brothers were punctual. No group of youngsters, according to the desk officer, was more cooperative with the police than the Little Brothers. The last to arrive was Ric. He was sullen and silent except for something he said out of the side of his mouth to Angie. The smaller boy moved away from him. Ric followed him. Marks let them wait for five minutes to allow his witnesses a full viewing. Louis joked with the desk officer. The others spoke among themselves and now and then said a word to the men coming off or going on duty.

  Allioto felt that he had seen them all at one time or another, and he knew Ric and Louis from their having brought in the flags he displayed in his store window. He was pretty sure that the round-headed boy with the short haircut had collected a donation from him for somebody who couldn’t meet their rent and was facing public assistance.

  “What if you hadn’t been willing to donate?” Marks asked.

  “I don’t think I’d ’ve got a knife in my back,” Allioto said.

  Marks persisted. “What would have happened?”

  Allioto thought about it. “Maybe a few cartons of milk would go to the poor in my name.”

  “Robinhoods,” Marks said without enthusiasm. He turned to Phillips. “Father?”

  “The fattish boy could have been the one I saw, but I will not swear to it.”

  And that was that.

  “Who’s the slight, sweet-looking boy?” Julie asked. “I’ve seen him before.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t really know. Just … around.”

  “Near Grossman’s?” He was leading the witness and Marks knew it.

  Julie said carefully after a moment’s thought: “I don’t ever come farther downtown than Hester Street.” Then: “That isn’t true either. I often go to Chinatown for dinner.”

  “He’s your voyeur,” Marks said.

  “Is he? I don’t think I mind.”

  “I’ll arrange an introduction,” Marks said dryly.

  “He owes me pretty close to a hundred dollars,” Phillips said, “and God knows I could use it.”

  “St. Patrick’s is a poor parish, isn’t it?” Julie crooned in mock sympathy.

  “What does that mean?” He was hurt, but he’d asked for it.

  “They must have more priests than they need to go round.”

  Marks said, “Especially when the Little Brothers get there first.”

  Allioto, whom they had forgotten for the moment, laughed. So did the priest.

  Marks asked them to wait until the Little Brothers had gone and thanked them for coming in.

  He went out the back door of the room and around through the corridor. He told the boys that they could go and even managed regrets for having got them up early on a Saturday morning. Louis glanced at the room with the mirror. It was an incongruous piece in so antiquated a setting. Louis knew, but he did not say anything in Marks’ presence, and the boys started to leave. At the last minute Marks called Angie back.

  17

  AS ANGIE TURNED BACK, Louis said: “Hold it, Brother. See the mirror in the room over there? It’s a phony. He’s got a witness back of it who maybe identified you, so watch yourself.”

  Angie did watch himself as he followed Marks to the stairway. He tried to think, but his mind kept getting stuck on the words, Watch yourself. How could you watch yourself except in a mirror? He knew wh
at Louis had meant, of course, but he didn’t know what to do about it, so he let the words keep repeating in his mind.

  Marks took him into an empty room where there was a long table with chairs on both sides, empty of people. He sat where Marks told him to. “Louis is one smart fellow, isn’t he?” the detective said.

  “I guess he is.”

  “Miss Borghese identified you, but she couldn’t remember from where.”

  “I could identify her too,” Angie said.

  The cop snorted, not exactly a laugh. Then his eyes turned dead serious. “You like peanuts a lot, don’t you, Angie?”

  “Yeah, I guess I do.” Whatever he had expected, it wasn’t that. He waited for the number-two punch.

  It didn’t come. Instead, for no reason Angie could guess unless he suddenly had to go to the bathroom, the detective got up and left him. All he said was that he’d be back. Alone in the big room with its green walls and the iron-meshed windows through which a muddy sunlight oozed, Angie felt he was already in prison. There was a bulletin board with notices and photographs of wanted people. He could get up and look at it. Nobody said he had to sit there in one place. He did get up, but only for a second: there was something about sitting still that made him feel safer, more inside—something, he did not know what. The room was terribly big.

  Peanuts. He did like peanuts. He had a plastic bag of them in his hideout. He’d seen somewhere that they were a very nourishing food. He’d decided that if he had to choose one food for survival, he’d take peanuts. Not salted, but in the shells, natural food. Sitting hunched up, waiting, hearing the distant sound of voices, the more distant sounds from the street, motors taken quickly up in speed, all seeming to go away, and feeling himself caged in when he almost wished he was caged in, he thought what it would be like to be a monkey. He began to scratch his head, for it did itch, and then his back and under his arms, his ribs. It was crazy and yet it made him feel better; he not only got up, but he climbed on the chair and then onto the table. He jumped up and down and hammered his chest, moving very quickly from the smaller of the species to the larger.