Sons and Princes

by James Lepore

  “It’s on the table.”

  Joseph caught the waitress’ eye, and, making a scribbling motion with his hand, called for the check. Jodi slipped out of her banquette seat and headed to the ladies room. Watching her long legs and beautiful, high rearend sway as she made her way, swan-like, across the room, regret, desire, a burning itch to be high, and fear for his brother made a potent brew in Joseph’s heart.

  At the “W” suite, Joseph found Woody Smith, in the silk robe that came with the room, stretched out on an overstuffed chair, watching Bladerunner on a large, flatscreen television. Two small candles on the coffee table, and the TV screen, gave off the only light in the otherwise completely darkened room. Joseph sat on the sofa and watched Harrison Ford chase bad androids through the streets of a very noir future Los Angeles. An empty bottle of Dom Perignon in an ice bucket and three champagne glasses were on the table as well. “I think he might be done for the night,” Nicole, the NYU graduate student who moonlighted for Jodi, had said when she let Joseph in, before retiring to the bedroom. The other girl was not in sight. Joseph had greeted Woody before sitting down, but received no answer. Now he got up, took the remote from the mulatto’s hand, found the mute button, and pushed it. The sudden silence brought Woody back to the world. He had not been sleeping, just drifting in heroin land.

  “Fuck,” he said. “Who’s that?”

  “It’s me, Wood, Joe Massi.”

  “My man. How you doin’?”

  “I’m good. How’re you doing? You look pretty hammered.”

  “Hammered. You wanna get high?”

  “Not right now. I need a favor.”

  “Favor? Fuck.”

  Joseph did not reply immediately. On the television screen, Ford was meeting for the first time the android he would later fall in love with – a sultry and beautiful woman who never learns she is not human. Woody also gazed at the screen.

  “I ran into your albino friend,” Joseph said, taking a flyer, but unconcerned. Nothing would backfire with Smith in this condition.

  “Mickey?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He’s a freak, but he pays good.”

  “It was on the news: two bodies fished out of the river.”

  “Big fucker, that river.”

  “The mighty Hudson.”

  “He shot the guinea in the head, man. Bam! Then he jumps out, and I gun that motherfucker. Bam! Almost went over myself.”

  “I need your help, Wood. I need to meet Mickey. I need you to set it up for me.”

  Woody’s emergence from the land of nod, slurred and half-witted at first, reached a sudden and eerily animated crescendo with his description of the events earlier today at the top of the Palisades. Immediately afterward, as if the memory and recitation of that heart-stopping experience were utterly exhausting, his chin fell to his chest.

  “Woody.”

  Joseph went over, lifted Smith’s eyelids and checked his pulse, which was slow, but not too slow. He was out cold. Looking around the room, his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he saw a foot dangling over the arm of a small sofa facing a picture window at the far end of the room. It was probably the other hooker. He found the bedroom door and knocked. After a few seconds, Nicole, in pink panties and a tee shirt, opened it and peered at him.

  “I’m leaving.”

  “How’s Woody?”

  “Nodding in and out.”

  “We expected him to be prancing around the room all night. The high roller.”

  “Superfly.”

  “Right.”

  “What happened?”

  “He went right for the smack.”

  “Something’s on his mind.”

  “That’s fine with me.”

  “He’ll be himself again in the morning.”

  “I can’t wait.”

  “When’s quitting time?”

  “Ten a.m. we’re out of here. I have an exam I’m trying to get ready for.”

  Through the half open door, Joseph could see into the over-designed bedroom. A halogen lamp, extending from the darkness on a long black arm, cast a cone of white light on books and notebooks spread open on the king-sized bed.

  “Otherwise, I’d ask you in,” Nicole continued, smiling for the first time since Joseph arrived.

  Five hours later, Joseph was driving over the Williamsburg Bridge into the rising sun heading for the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn,“Bed-Stuy,” as it has come to be known, with unhappy connotations. Though it is crime-ridden and filled with decrepit housing, it has its share of quiet streets lined with old but well-kept brownstones and brickfront houses, once one-family affairs now divided into as many apartments as various physical and metaphysical laws would allow. Woody Smith – half Jamaican, half a polyglot of lighter-skinned races – lived in one of these, in the basement apartment, with his mother. Joseph and Woody had never been friends, but drugs, much more than politics, make strange bedfellows, and he easily located Smith’s Pulaski Street building, having been there several times to buy drugs or get high.

  Joseph stopped for coffee and a bagel at a deli on Lafayette Avenue, then found a parking space on Pulaski Street with an unobstructed view of the steps leading to Woody’s subterranean apartment. While eating his breakfast, he thought over the events of the previous evening. He and Nicole had snorted Woody’s coke and made love in his fancy hotel room. When he was leaving, she gave him a few of the amphetamine tablets she had been taking as a study aid. Joseph didn’t usually need speed; he was wired all the time, getting three or four hours of sleep on his good nights. But last night he had not slept at all, and there was no telling when Woody would arrive home, so he pulled one of the gel-caps from his shirt pocket and swallowed it with the last of his coffee. Nicole was interesting, but a type well known to Joseph. On a career path, with a boyfriend in Westchester County, while at the same time addicted to the thrill of illicit sex and drugs and the call girl’s heady power, she was blithely unaware that, life being what it is, she would not be turning too many more corners before she ran into a buzz saw of one sort or another.

  The rest of the night Joseph had spent in two private clubs, one in Queens, the other in the Bronx, both Mafia hangouts, trying to find out if DiGiglio or Barsonetti were looking for Chris. Joseph’s drug problems were widely known, and loathed, by the men who frequented these places, but he was tolerated because of his father. Joe Black’s reputation as the consummate professional assassin, deeply loyal, willing to kill the Pope for his don, had assumed near legendary status since his grizzly death. Even the Mafia needs its mythology, and so there was a tacit agreement not to disrespect the flawed son of one of their lesser gods. Joseph was let in on a petty scam from time to time, in which he acquitted himself fairly well, and, not without his charms, as the years passed, he developed a series of friendships among his contemporaries in and on the margins of the Mafia world that stood him in good stead for various purposes. In this group, no one had heard anything about Chris Massi being the subject of a hunt. From the rest – the “made” men, the official members of crews and of families, the occasional capo regime, the ones he never spoke to directly unless requested to do so – he received no weird looks and picked up no snatches of conversation that referred to the Scarpa/McRae murders or Chris Massi.

  Joseph had called Lou Falco twice, the second time from Marsha’s apartment, where he had stopped to shower and change his clothes, at six-thirty. No Mafia types had stopped in at La Luna the night before, and, as of seven o’clock – Joseph had asked Lou to check and call him back – Chris was sleeping soundly. He had also called Vinnie Rosamelia, who told him that at around midnight, the albino co-star of the snuff film, now with a cast on his left wrist, had forced him at gunpoint to let him into Chris’ apartment, which he ransacked, obviously looking for the DVD Joseph had so accurately described as radioactive.

  Watching the morning sunlight fill Pulaski Street, Joseph was beginning to think with increasing confidence that Labrutto had acted
alone in killing Scarpa and Allison, which was an immense relief. Although Labrutto had a business relationship with Junior Boy, and was his distant cousin, he was not made, not a member of the family, by close blood or ritual, which meant he could be dealt with, that is, killed, without fear of serious repercussions. Junior Boy might not give his blessing, but he of all people would understand that the Massis’ only logical answer to Labrutto’s attempts to take Chris’ life would be to kill Labrutto. And if Labrutto were to be eliminated, why couldn’t Joseph take over his porn video enterprise and become Junior Boy’s partner?

  The first step would be to persuade Woody Smith, who would do anything for cash, to lure Mickey and Labrutto to a meeting where they could both be killed. The more Joseph thought about it, the more certain he felt that the universe had lined things up so that his last and best chance at redemption was at hand. His father had despised him, his brother loved him but had no respect for him. No one had to tell Joseph Massi how fucked up his life had been. Killing Labrutto would save Chris’ life, and earn his respect. It might even earn the respect of Anthony DiGiglio, and, thereby, give Joseph an opportunity to make real money in the grownup world. But more than all of this, it would show that world that Joseph’s days as a lackey and a drug addict were over, that Joe Black Massi’s blood ran in his younger son’s veins after all.

  Two hours later, Joseph watched as a figure turned the corner and walked slowly down the block. There was one tree on Pulaski Street, a tall, spindly thing a few doors distant from Woody’s building. Five or six crows had been raucously quarreling in its highest branches for the last half hour. As the figure approached, the crows became silent, and, one at a time at what seemed like precisely the same intervals, flew off. The figure – Woody – was almost directly under the tree when the last crow took flight. Joseph, watching intently, was about to get out of his car when another figure, a slender, balding man, wearing a dark shirt and slacks, emerged from a nearby shadow, and, coming abreast of Woody, placed a silencer-tipped pistol to his temple, and pulled the trigger. Woody crumpled immediately to the sidewalk, where the thin man, who Joseph recognized as a DiGiglio soldier named Phil Purcell, bent down and shot him twice in the forehead. A car, large and dark, pulled up. Purcell got in the front, and the car drove off. Joseph’s hand was still on the door handle, his body arrested in mid-movement, as he watched the car disappear.

  4.

  The next day, Anthony DiGiglio was sitting at his desk in his book-lined study, reading an account of the Scarpa/McRae killings in the New York Times when Joe Pace handed him the cards of two FBI agents and told him they were waiting in the driveway. The don put the paper down and told Pace to find Nicky Spags. Then, despite the extra fifty pounds he had begun to carry in the past few years, and the arthritis beginning to announce itself in his knees, he rose gracefully from his tooled-leather swivel chair and walked to the tall, leaded-glass window facing the driveway. His study, built over the house’s fourcar garage, had views of three sides of the manicured fiveacre property. The agents, both middle-aged, one in a tan, the other in light gray suit, were leaning against their car, which was parked facing the heavy wrought-iron front gate. Their arms folded across their chests, they were gazing silently at the small pond on the front lawn, on which a pair of swans glided gracefully, the morning sun dancing on the water around them. Junior Boy took this scene in. Before turning away, he took a moment to assess the face – creased and fleshy, not so proudly handsome at sixty-six as it was even five years ago – reflected in the window, and to dwell on the premonition of trouble that crossed his mind, not at the presence of the agents, but at the presumptions they seemed to be making as they looked over his property, his home.

  That premonition became a certainty an hour later at the start of his interrogation by Ed Dolan.

  “I know more about you and your family than anyone alive,” Dolan said, without preliminaries or the usual cop posturing. The prosecutor was sitting at one end of a long conference table, lounging in a tilting chair, facing Junior Boy at the other end, who was sitting upright, gazing over his interlocked hands at Dolan. He did not answer.

  “Your great grandfather, the first Anthony DiGiglio,” Dolan continued, “ran liquor from Canada into Rochester in the twenties. He was betrayed by a lieutenant named Toretti. He had Toretti and his entire family killed – his wife, four kids, his two brothers and their entire families in Sicily. They called it the Castellamare War. There hasn’t been a betrayal in the DiGiglio family since. Your father, the second Anthony DiGiglio, was at that meeting in Appalachia. He was one of the five who weren’t rounded up in the cow pastures. He refused to allow his people to deal in drugs. You made your bones by killing a rogue family drug dealer. Your father died in his sleep in 1981. You moved your operations to Jersey to get under the radar of my task force. You don’t deal drugs, but you do everything else: gun trafficking, counterfeit money, gambling, loan sharking. How am I doing?”

  Junior Boy allowed a half smile to appear briefly on his face. “It sounds like a pulp fiction novel to me.”

  “You dropped out of school at sixteen. You lived in Palermo for two years. Your brothers are your top generals. Your people never talk business on the phone. They don’t make scenes at restaurants. Everyone who asks to see you is searched. Am I ringing any bells?”

  By talking about me, you’re revealing yourself, DiGiglio thought. Out loud he said, “My brothers and I are in the trucking business.”

  “Yes, Blue Jay Tricking. A front.”

  The IRS had audited Blue Jay three times and Anthony and his brothers twice in the past ten years, with no adverse findings of any kind. But surely Dolan knew this and was building up to what he thought would be a knockout punch. “Your people,” Anthony said, “said something about a material witness warrant.”

  “There is no warrant, but I can get one quickly. That would permit me to hold you for a while.”

  “On what?”

  “Two murders.”

  “Of whom?”

  “I think you know.”

  “You better get the warrant. My lawyer will deal with it when he gets here.”

  Anthony had not known that he would be questioned about the Scarpa/McRae murders. If he had, he would have had a lawyer or two meet him at the house and they would never have let him talk to Dolan. But now he was glad that he had decided to come to this “interview” voluntarily, as it gave him a chance to personally assess the dangerously unbalanced Dolan, who loomed suddenly and forcefully as an adversary.

  “Who’s coming?” Dolan asked. “Tom Stabile?”

  “Yes.”

  “Too bad you can’t use Chris Massi, your ex-son-in-law. I suppose you know he’s been disbarred.”

  Junior Boy shook his head slightly and remained silent, taking note of the slight tremor in the hand Dolan was resting on the table.

  “Scarpa’s wife,” Dolan said, “says that Massi was with her husband the morning he was killed. He was also at the McRae girl’s apartment the day before. They were all at Guy Labrutto’s house in Alpine yesterday morning. Your cousin Guy. The one who was over to your house last week.”

  Junior Boy was surprised to hear this, although his face remained expressionless. He knew that Joe Black Massi had killed Dolan’s father, but not, until now, that young Dolan was mad with the need for revenge. “It looks like you’re not getting that warrant,” he said. “In which case, I’ll wait for Stabile outside.”

  As he was saying this, a phone, located on the credenza behind Dolan, began to ring. The prosecutor swung abruptly, picked up the receiver, listened for a second or two, then said into the mouthpiece, “I’m bringing him out.” “It’s Stabile,” he said, swinging back to face DeGiglio. “One more thing before you go,” he continued, getting to his feet. A pause ensued, during which the slightly mad theatricality of the moment was inescapable to Junior Boy. Dolan was savoring a moment he had waited years – a lifetime – to arrive.

  “I’m listeni
ng,” the don said, his face deadpan.

  “I’m putting this Palisades thing on your head,” Dolan said, “and Chris Massi’s. He’s disbarred. He needs work. His father was a hit man. You hired him to kill Scarpa and the girl. That’s my theory. Whatever I have to do to prove it, I’ll do. In the federal system, we execute by lethal injection. I’ll be there looking you and Massi in the eye as you take your last fucking guinea breath.”

  Later that day, in a quiet and comfortable back room of Benevento, a busy restaurant on Forty-fourth Street in mid-town Manhattan, Junior Boy sat sipping Pellegrino water at a round table covered with a snowy white tablecloth and set for three. He was waiting patiently for Frank and Aldo DiGiglio to arrive.

  The night before, Rocco Stabile had met Guy Labrutto at a diner in Clifton to discuss the double murder that had come as a total surprise to the family. According to Labrutto, Scarpa and the girl had been caught stealing over fifty thousand dollars in cash, along with videotapes worth another fifty thousand on the resale market. The two thieves were supposed to be having sex at a secluded overlook when the car shifted accidentally and went over the cliff. Scarpa had gone wild, however, and Mickey had had to shoot him. This panicked Mickey’s helper, who, when he saw Mickey get out of Scarpa’s car, immediately gunned the BMW and rammed the Buick over the cliff.

  No mention had been made of Chris Massi. Mickey had broken his wrist in the fight with Scarpa inside the car. The gun had been disposed of. All this Rocco had relayed to Aldo, who related it to Junior Boy at just before midnight. The don, very unhappy, but not worried, had told Rocco to track down Mickey’s helper and kill him without delay. Today, he was still unhappy, but now he was also worried, and angry. The helper had not been found. Labrutto had lied to him. The FBI thought he – Junior Boy – was involved, and, incredibly, his ex-son-in-law was somehow in the picture.

  Aldo and Frank arrived, greeted the don with kisses on both cheeks at his chair, then joined him at the table. Of the three of them, only Aldo looked like a gangster. Squat, swarthy, his black hair slicked back with some kind of men’s grooming cream, wearing a diamond pinky ring and expensive, custom-made clothes, there was nothing understated about Aldo, who at sixty-five, had the same fire in his eyes that he had at twenty-five. A throwback to the fifties, he disdained the Wall Street look – and pretensions – that were beginning to be adopted by certain gangster elements. To Aldo, the difference between a firm of investment bankers and a Mafia family was that the bankers stole legally but without honor, while the Mafia family stole illegally but with honor. He had no wish to be seen as a member of the dishonorable group. Frank’s style could not be categorized, largely because he wished to make no statement about himself by the way he dressed. Of the three of them, he alone remained slender, although under his nondescript suit, his body was wiry and strong. At sixty, he could, if called upon, still use the garrote to lethal purpose. His face unlined by age, his light brown hair kept short, he looked, if anything, like a mid-level bureaucrat, or a high school science teacher, comfortable with his monotonous existence.