Sons and Princes

by James Lepore

  Aldo, who was sweating profusely and had turned white, managed to get a yes out before Chris told him to untie his brother and take him into the house.

  At home, Chris called Teresa and told her to get a ride home with someone. Later, when the kids were sleeping, Chris quickly packed a bag while Teresa hovered around him in their bedroom.

  “Tell me again why you’re leaving,” she said.

  “I almost killed your two asshole cousins. I don’t know what stopped me.”

  “So you think you’re a killer like your father?”

  “I don’t know what I think. I know I have to leave though.”

  “What about the kids?”

  “I’ll come by and talk to them.”

  “My father will be heartbroken.”

  “I’ve told him the family business is not for me. He should have kept Aldo and his idiot sons off my back.”

  “What about me? I thought you loved me?”

  Chris had finished packing and was standing by the bed looking at his wife of five years, in many ways more a stranger to him now than when they first met. Which of them had changed more? Which of them had tried harder? He didn’t know.

  “They forced me to choose,” he said, “and I’m choosing.”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “I don’t know if I love you. That’s the truth.”

  “That means you don’t.”

  “Teresa, did you think the constant fighting, the constant pressure to join the family, wouldn’t have an effect on me?”

  “Your father’s a hit man, your brother’s a junkie, so you think you have to be a saint, is that it? You can’t condescend to be a part of my family. We’re dirty, we’re sinners. Everyone’s dirty, Chris, everyone’s a sinner. You refuse to grow up, to open your eyes and see that.”

  Chris hired a lawyer, rented a small apartment in the West Village and waited for the DiGiglios to react. But they never did. He was allowed to divorce Teresa. No mention was ever made of what he did to Aldo Jr. and Sal. After a while, he stopped looking over his shoulder. He left the U.S. Attorney’s office and took a job with DeVoss and Kline, a respected and successful white collar criminal defense firm on Wall Street. In time, his visitation arrangement became more like shared custody. Tess and Matt adored the life he offered them in the city. His career soared. In 1995, he was made a partner at the firm, and in 1997, he bought a spacious three-bedroom loft in Tribeca, from which he could walk to work.

  In those years, if his life was a record, this was the A side. The B side was the off-key tune played by his parents and his brother. Joe Black, getting older and sent out only on special cases, nevertheless made his living in the same way as he always did. Joseph, after making several nonattempts at college, settled into a life of drug use, rehab and street scams, living off of a series of girlfriends and the cash that Rose slipped him from time to time behind her husband’s back. The idea that the A and B sides of his life could ever come together in any sensible way never occurred to Chris. Both tunes played in his head, the one sweet, the other bitter.

  On the drive from the hospital back to the city, as Chris watched the sun rise behind the Manhattan skyline, he called Joseph and asked him to find out as much as he could about Jimmy Barsonetti: where he lived, where he hung out, who were his friends, his enemies, did he have a routine, what were his vices. No longer tired, after parking the car in a garage near his apartment, Chris bought coffee at a deli and walked to Washington Square Park, which was empty at this early hour except for the usual assortment of the lost and the homeless. It occurred to him that the park’s old-fashioned green benches had become icons of change in his life. He chose one near Stanford White’s famous arch, and sat to sip his coffee and think. He had no doubt that his handsome and devious younger brother, who had been roaming the city at night since he was seventeen, would accomplish his mission. Armed with this information, Chris would find a way to kill Barsonetti on his own, without Anthony DiGiglio’s help. Junior Boy would keep his end of the bargain, but Chris would not be in his debt, as he would be if the don set the killing up. Chris would lose his soul, but not to DiGiglio. And he would have his son.

  When he finished his coffee, Chris left the park and began walking up Fifth Avenue. The thought of failure had occurred to him, but did not faze him. He knew how to handle a gun and he was not afraid to die. No one took more precautions beforehand nor acted more decisively when the moment came than Joe Black Massi, and his blood ran strong in Chris’ veins. Barsonetti would be overconfident, complacent in his power, and Chris would find a way to put a bullet in his head and walk away unseen.

  The morning broke full and fair and clean as Chris, letting his mind wander, in no hurry to return to his tiny, airless apartment, joined the city’s throng. At St. Patrick’s Cathedral, he stopped for a second, recalling the spring day, only seven years ago, when he held his six-year-old son’s hand and walked him into a church in Jersey for his first communion. Without thinking, Chris ascended the famous cathedral’s long gray steps and entered its vaulted chamber, cool and hushed after the heat and noise of the city. He was surprised at the number of people kneeling and sitting in pews, lighting candles and genuflecting as they passed the altar. To his immediate right was a holy water font. He reflexively dipped his fingers into it, and felt the cool water penetrate his being. He did not make the sign of the cross as he had a thousand times when he was a boy. There was no prayer in the catechism in aid of murder, no patron saint of assassins.

  Turning, he exited the church and began the long walk downtown.

  4.

  Chris had inherited his father’s eyes: coal black pupils surrounded by deep brown irises embedded with tiny flecks of a mesmerizing dark green. Set in a field of clearest white, they were eyes both guarded and vigilantly watchful, the eyes of the Sicilian peasant who is by nature wary of strangers and fiercely mistrustful of official authority. Softened by long lashes, framed by a graceful brow above and planed cheekbones below, they stamped his visage with the feral pride of the hawk or the eagle. His dusky complexion also came from his Sicilian father, but the glinting color in his eyes, his straight nose – still slightly crooked twenty-seven years after his accident – full lips and square chin were his Tuscan mother’s contribution to a face that was as captivating as it was darkly handsome; captivating because in a way not quite definable, it seemed both to invite and bar entry to Chris’ inner being. After he recovered from his car accident, Chris’ mother – one foot still in the hilltop Tuscan village where she was born, fearful since his early boyhood that her first-born son’s charismatic beauty would lead inexorably to a tragic end – was secretly happy that his face had been permanently marred.

  Ten days after burying Rose, Chris traveled uptown to meet his brother Joseph at the penthouse bar of the Peninsula Hotel. Facing each other across a drinks table along a plate glass wall overlooking Fifth Avenue, the most casual observer would quickly see that Chris and Joseph were brothers. With the room’s muted light obscuring their age difference, they could easily be mistaken for twins. Closer scrutiny, however, would reveal subtle but distinct differences: his eyes as piercing, his features as classically handsome, his lustrous black hair falling carelessly across his brow, Joseph’s was a more refined, almost feminine beauty. It was as if portraits of the same striking model had been made by artists of markedly different sensibilities, Chris by Michelangelo, perhaps; Joseph by John Singer Sargent. These differences held true in gesture and body language as well: Joseph’s drink was an elegant prop, Chris’ a part of his arm.

  “Are you clean?” Chris asked, putting his drink – a single malt scotch over ice – down on the gleaming black table, next to a candle flickering under a filigreed cover, also black.

  “You know I am,” Joseph answered.

  “How do I know? I haven’t seen you since the funeral.”

  “I’m clean. What’s going on with the house?”

  “The closing is next week.
”

  “When will we get our money?”

  “A few days later.”

  After Joe Black’s death, Rose had put their house on the market, and by March, a contract had been signed for its sale. Chris’ share of the proceeds could not come too soon. When his indictment was announced, almost two years ago, he had immediately been let go by his law firm. In eighteen months, he went through his savings of a hundred thousand dollars, and his 401K of two hundred thousand dollars to pay for his living expenses, child support and legal fees. Three months ago, broke, in the middle of a fierce and expensive disbarment battle, he rented his condominium in Tribeca and accepted Vinnie Rosamelia’s offer of the apartment above the African Queen.

  “Why don’t you take it all?” said Joseph. “Call it a loan.”

  “You’re not serious.”

  “Sure I am. I’m rolling in dough.”

  “That won’t last long.”

  “You could be in for a surprise this time.”

  Chris eyed Joseph across the small table, thinking it would be hard to find a spoiled five-year-old with more brazenness – and less moral compunction – than his thirty-two-year-old brother, whose current girlfriend was a forty-two-year-old artist with enough money to live on the Upper East Side and indulge Joseph’s wishes regarding clothes, cars and cash. The timeline for the relationship would depend upon how quickly Joseph returned to heroin, which is when the abuse and the money drain would really start. This is how it had been with all of his other women. Why would this one be any different?

  “Thanks,” he said, “but I’ll be okay”

  “I’ll spend it, Chris,” Joseph said. “You know me.”

  Yes, I do know you, Chris thought. A hundred grand will buy a lot of heroin. Out loud, he said, “It’s yours to do what you want with. Now what about Barsonetti? Did you come up with anything?”

  “A little. He lives in Forest Hills. He was married, but his wife died. No kids. He has about a dozen captains who are also his bodyguards. They rotate, two on, two off, twenty-four/seven. Very bad guys. When they’re not with him, they’re breaking heads or supervising his ongoing business and one-time scams. He hires people to do his killings, Chinese, Mexicans, never Italians or Sicilians, never anybody from the city. He has a big gambling book in Queens and now owns the entire Velardo operation in Brooklyn. Just asking about him made people nervous. They say he likes to have his enemies’ heads brought to him.”

  “What else?”

  “He goes out in his car a lot. He probably does a lot of business from the car, probably with throw-away cell phones. He just made a big score ripping off and reselling those phone card things. About two million, they say. I don’t think he’s stupid.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Not really. Like I said, people are afraid to talk about him.”

  “That’s it? Does he have a favorite hangout? Does he have a routine? Does he like women? Little boys? Does he go to the track? What?”

  “Nobody seems to know. Or they won’t talk. I’m sorry. There is one more thing. Remember Nick Scarpa, from the neighborhood?”

  “The fighter?”

  “Yes. He’s been in jail forever. He got out a few months ago. He’s living in Jersey, but he hangs out in the city. I ran into him a couple of nights ago. He’s working for a guy named Labrutto, running errands, getting his car washed. Nick’s got a cauliflower brain, if you know what I mean. Labrutto makes porn videos. The rumor is he’s backed by Anthony DiGiglio. Scarpa says he made a delivery from Labrutto’s house in Jersey to a house in Forest Hills. As he’s leaving, he sees Barsonetti come out the front door and get into a big Lincoln. Barsonetti wears an eye patch so he knows it was him.”

  “What was in the package?”

  “Nick wasn’t sure, probably cash. It wasn’t big.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  “How can I reach Scarpa?”

  “I have his number. I told him you might want to talk to him. What’s going on?”

  “Nothing. Stop asking around about Barsonetti. Let me talk to Nick Scarpa first.”

  The two brothers stared at each other across the table, the candle’s small flame dancing in their beautiful eyes. Usually, it was Joseph who was telling the lies or keeping secrets, but tonight, their quiet role-reversal seemed almost natural, such had been the upheaval in their lives – especially Chris’ – of late.

  “Okay. Whatever you say,” Joseph said. “There’s something else I have to tell you, though.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “I hear they found Paulie Raimo’s body.”

  “What’s that got to do with me?” Chris asked.

  “I hear Eddie Dolan thinks you were involved.”

  “Come on.”

  “This is what I hear.”

  “You don’t think I killed him, do you? Or had a hand in it?”

  “No,” Joseph answered, “because I know who did. But it’s not what I think, it’s what Dolan thinks that matters.”

  “Unbelievable,” said Chris, leaning back in his plush chair, and picking up his drink.

  “I know,” said Joe. “Joe Black fucks with us once again. Even after he’s dead, he fucks with us.”

  “Where did you hear this?”

  “Reliable people, believe me.”

  “Who killed Paulie?”

  “You don’t want to know that.”

  Joseph was right. Chris did not want to know who killed Paulie, because if he did, he might be forced to reveal it someday, and that would only lead to more trouble. Finishing his scotch, he caught the waitress’ eye, and motioned for two more drinks. Joseph was also right that Joe Black was giving them heartache even from the grave. Ed Dolan was an Assistant United States Attorney in New York, in charge of an organized crime task force. Chris and Ed had once, long ago, been best friends, playing every street sport imaginable in tandem and running track together at LaSalle Academy, until one day, in 1977, Joe Black Massi gunned down Ed’s father while on a mission for his capo, Richie “the Boot” Velardo.

  When Chris was an Assistant U.S. Attorney, he worked in the securities fraud section at 7 World Trade Center, while Dolan worked at the federal complex in Foley Square. They rarely crossed paths, but when they did, no words were ever spoken and the chill was palpable. When Chris left to go into private practice, Dolan stayed and made a career as a federal prosecutor. It was Dolan who prosecuted Chris for conspiracy to commit stock fraud. At the trial in the spring of 2002, Dolan’s star witness was Paulie Raimo, a low-life who had been a client of Chris’ right up to the announcement of his indictment. After Chris was acquitted, it was Dolan who goaded the federal and state ethics authorities into disbarment proceedings, something they may not have done in the absence of Dolan’s meticulous portfolio of Chris’ undeniable Mafia connections.

  “No, I don’t want to know,” Chris said, finally. “And I don’t believe you know, either. But if you do, don’t go around talking about it, even to people you think you can trust. Pop never said a word about what he did, because he knew that in his world, he couldn’t trust anybody.”

  “Don’t worry about me.”

  “Don’t worry? I know you, Joe. You’ll brag to one of your idiot friends, and he’ll end up giving you up for a few dollars or to try to gain favor with some other idiot a few steps above him in the food chain. Then you’ll be dead or crippled. And for what? For bragging, for being a show-off.”

  Joseph brushed back the lock of silky black hair that fell perpetually onto his forehead, then picked up his drink – a martini with a fancy name – and sipped from it. Putting it down, he said, “Are you finished?”

  “I’m finished.”

  “Good. I’m trying to help, that’s all. I hear something like this, you want me to tell you, don’t you? So you can be prepared? I mean, if Dolan wants to pin Raimo’s murder on you, then that means you’re in a whole different ball game with him. It means he wants you dead or permanently locked
up. It means he’ll break the rules – make up shit – to get to you. It means he’s lost his mind, but he’s a cunning fuck, so it worries me.”

  Chris had already come to these conclusions. It did not take any great analytical skill to reach them; but hearing them from Joseph was surprising. Not that he was stupid, or lacked insight. To the contrary, self-serving schemers needed to know a great deal about human nature in order to successfully manipulate their victims. Chris was surprised because there was the ring of credibility in his brother’s voice, as if he actually cared about something or someone other than himself. Sarcasm, irony and anger had ruled their relationship for so long that, for a moment, Chris did not know how to answer.

  “I appreciate it,” he said, finally. “He’s probably just trying to scare me, but of course it helps to know.”

  “I don’t know, Chris. He brings you to trial on nothing, he gets you disbarred. But he’s not satisfied. He wants to put a murder charge on your head.”

  “You could be right, but Ed Dolan’s the last of my worries right now.”

  “What could be worse than being falsely charged with murder?”

  A real one, Chris thought, then smiled and said, “Not much, you’re right. And I know how much Dolan hates me. But let it go. I can’t think about him right now. How’s Sharon?”

  “It’s Marsha.”

  “Marsha.”

  “She’s fine. She wants to meet you.”

  “Sure.”

  “Speaking of girlfriends, do you remember Danielle Dimicco?”

  “Of course.”

  “I got a call from her yesterday.”

  “How is she?”

  “She’s good. She’s taking acting classes, waiting tables. She still thinks she can break through.”

  “What about her?”

  “Her roommate’s gone missing. She wants someone to check in on her.”

  Joseph had met Danielle in the brief time – three months – he attended NYU’s film school in the fall of 1990. A beautiful aspiring actress and model, only seventeen, she fell hard for the sexy rebel that Joseph had no trouble affecting in those days. Five years later, after addicting her to heroin and ignoring her tortured attempts at rehab, he left her at the altar of her parish church in Queens. Joe Black paid the Dimiccos for the cost of the reception, and Rose paid to send Joseph to Florida to recuperate from the stress of having to make such a “courageous” decision. Most of the members of both families were relieved. They knew Joseph was poison. Soon afterwards, Chris heard that Danielle had moved to California where she was said to be working at staying clean of heroin and resurrecting her career, but she had been off of his radar ever since, until tonight.