He had won more fights than he had lost, but he was workmanlike rather than exciting, finding little pleasure in the sport of beating someone else to death. Toward the end, he had begun to question the sport itself—and when his manager told him one day he was having trouble booking Mario’s next fight Mario said, “Don’t bother. I’m quitting the ring.”
He was in the seminary three months later.
* * *
AFTER MORE THAN A YEAR of tutoring him, Sofia had begun to consider Nilo as a possible solution to her problems.
She knew she could do worse. Nilo was handsome—no, actually he was pretty—and seemed well-mannered, and even though everyone now knew he was one of Salvatore Maranzano’s gangsters, he clearly was prospering, enough to support a wife.
As this interest in Nilo was kindling itself, Sofia tried to make lists of the pros and cons of being with Nilo, but after not too long she tore the list up and threw it away. First of all, there was something in Nilo’s eyes that frightened her. Silky long lashes or no, his were the eyes of someone who viewed all other people as things to be used, to be moved around for his own advantage. Anybody who got in his way would be treated as an impediment, nothing more. She also guessed from his eyes that Nilo really did not care for women, that he believed them worthless, useful perhaps for only one thing. That made them even, she realized; she did not care for men and regarded them all as rapists waiting to strike.
Even if she did try to encourage Nilo, she knew that she was absolutely ignorant of any practical way to do it. She had none of the coquettish charms of Tina Falcone, who seemed to know just when to smile, when to look down demurely, when to chatter gaily, when to act seductive. Tina’s talents had probably come from growing up with older brothers and having to find ways to get them to do what she wanted. Sofia had no such experience, and although she knew in her heart she was as beautiful as Tina, she had no confidence in her ability to entice men, but deep in her heart she knew that enticing men was not going to be high on her list of things to do.
She saw Nilo often now. He had taken to eating dinner frequently at Mangini’s Restaurant and she met with him every week to study language and speech. And in all that time of being thrown together with him, she doubted if they had devoted as much as one hour to pleasant small talk.
He spent more time than that talking with her cousin, Charlie. It struck her as odd that Nilo, who worked for Maranzano, should have so cordial a relationship with Luciano, who was known to be Joe Masseria’s top man.
She had been bold enough one evening, three months earlier, to mention that fact when talking to Charlie before he left the restaurant. Luciano had looked at her as if she were a bug.
For a long frightening moment, she thought her cousin would strike her, but instead, finally, he smiled and said, “So how can I talk to the employee of my enemy? Is that what you wish to know?”
“Something like that. Yes.”
“I will tell you. Not because it is any of your business but because you are family and young and your life will be better if you are wiser. A wise man once said, ‘Keep your friends close by, and your enemies even closer.’ Do you not think it might help for me to know what Nilo’s people are up to?”
“I see. It was presumptuous of me to ask,” Sofia said.
Luciano shook his head. “No. You’re not presumptuous. You’re merely young. Young…” He snaked his hand across the table and rested it on hers. “Young and beautiful.” She made no effort to move her hand, nor to take his. “Young and beautiful,” he repeated. “And family.” He released her hand and brought his back to lift his espresso cup. “So how are things with you?”
She looked around. The restaurant had only a half-dozen diners in it. Her mother was busy in the kitchen, and her father had gone to an organizational meeting of the newly formed Sons of Italy.
“I know I never thanked you properly for helping me that time,” she said. “With my father.”
Luciano raised a hand. “I did nothing,” he said.
“To you, nothing. To us, everything. Since that night, he has not laid a hand on my mother or me. That is a very big thing indeed.”
Or dragged you into his bed, Luciano thought. He smiled his acknowledgment. In truth, the girl had thanked him before and he had accepted the thanks as his due, even though he had done nothing except talk to Mangini after his hand had already been broken. Later, he found out from Mangini’s wife—his mother’s cousin—that it was the young policeman across the street, Tommy Falcone, who had straightened out Sofia’s father. And the girl never knew. Perhaps best just to let it stay that way. Let her think whatever she wants to think. It is not bad to be owed favors by beautiful young women, especially ones who might be enticed to spread their legs.
He wondered, though, why this Sofia did not know that the young cop had been the one to help her, especially since her best friend was that cop’s beautiful sister, Tina. There were no family secrets in Little Italy, but maybe he had stumbled onto one: maybe the Falcone girl was on the outs, somehow, with her family, not privy to their secrets or their actions.
He filed that away in his mind. The truth was that even though he now managed a large stable of prostitutes and call girls, who were always available to him, he thought often of the breathtaking Tina Falcone.
I have plans for her. Someday …
Meanwhile, he would stay in touch with this nosy, meddling Sofia to find out from her what was happening with the Falcones, even if it meant pretending to tolerate her insolent questions about his relationship with Nilo Sesta.
Luciano had told Sofia nothing that night in the restaurant, but she had noticed that he did not deny spending time with Nilo, and shrewdly she decided that he was doing it on Joe the Boss’s orders, as just a way to get a pipeline into the Maranzano operation. Of course, she did not mention that.
And she never mentioned it to Nilo, either, when he came for his weekly English lesson. If he had been a closer friend, she might have warned him that Luciano was using him. But Nilo and she were not close; he would have to learn on his own.
She had moved back into her family’s apartment because, despite the money she made at the restaurant and the weekly five dollars she got for tutoring Nilo, she did not have enough money to get an apartment of her own. She simply could not stay forever with the Falcones. And now, just last night, she had seen her father looking at her in the restaurant and she had recognized the look in his eyes for the lust that it was, and she knew she had to get away.
When Nilo came for his regular lesson, Sofia had him read aloud from various newspapers and books. During a break, she brewed tea.
“You must be very busy,” she said.
“I am. I haven’t even seen the Falcones in months. How are they?”
“Everyone seems fine.”
“And Tina? She is still working at that factory?” Nilo asked.
“Yes. Still saving for her singing lessons. I guess they’re very expensive.”
“And Uncle Tony can’t help?”
“They don’t have that kind of money, Nilo. You know that.”
“No. Honest policemen never get rich, do they? I’ve often thought of offering to lend them money but…” He raised his hands in despair.
Sofia just shook her head.
“Maybe if I sent the money directly to Tina.”
“Her father would find out and make her pay it back,” Sofia said.
Nilo sighed. “Ahh, the pride of the Sicilian. It’ll be the death of all of us yet.”
They returned to their lessons, and as the clock struck the end of the second hour Sofia took the magazine away and said, “I can’t do any more with you. Your accent is gone. You read well. You know as much Latin as I do. You no longer need me.”
Nilo smiled, a flash of almost satin-looking teeth.
“One always needs a beautiful woman.”
She wanted to respond but could think of nothing to say, and after a moment Nilo said, “You should be a teac
her.”
She laughed bitterly. “Or a poet. Or a nun. Or a lot of things, perhaps, but I think I will learn to run a restaurant.”
“Have lots of babies?”
Sofia shrugged.
“With Tommy?”
“Tommy has his own life,” she said sharply.
“That’s his loss. Who is your young man?”
“I don’t like talking about my personal life,” she said.
“You brought it up.”
Sofia managed a smile. “I guess I did. There isn’t any young man. If there ever is, he will probably be fat and dumb and useful only for making babies. That will be my life.”
“Only if you want it to be. You control your own fate.”
“Everyone says that, but only men believe it,” she said. She began to gather up the magazines. Usually Nilo, at lesson’s end, jumped to his feet, handed her an envelope containing a five-dollar bill, and left immediately. But today he seemed to be lingering.
“Nilo,” she said. “This is none of my business, but…”
He stepped closer to her. “Yes?”
“I see you with my cousin, Charlie. Do you consider him a friend?”
“Why?”
“He knows you work against Joe Masseria. I think he is your enemy.”
Nilo laughed. “I know he is my enemy,” he said. “Thank you for worrying. But let others worry. You have done me a great service by being my teacher. Some night I would like to repay you by taking you to dinner.”
She swallowed hard and finally was able to blurt out, “I would like that.” She felt herself blush.
Nilo took two envelopes from his jacket pocket. “This is your fee,” he said. “And this other … There is the carnival tonight at Mount Carmel. Some friends of mine are running a place to eat there. I have tickets for you. Tickets for two. Maybe you would take Tina and cheer her up.”
“That’s very nice,” Sofia said.
“There are two tickets in there for free meals and ten raffle tickets. Cash prizes.” He smiled. “Give half of them to Tina.”
* * *
TONY SAT AT HIS KITCHEN TABLE, drinking a glass of wine and reading the newspaper, when Tina and Sofia came into the room.
“Mama should be home from church any minute,” Tina said. “You sure you don’t want me to fix you something?”
“I’m growing a potbelly like an icebox,” Falcone said. “I can wait a little while for a meal. Where are you two beauties going?”
“The carnival at Mario’s church. We’ll get something to eat over there while we’re examining this season’s crop of boys,” Tina said with a smile.
Sofia noted that Tony did not smile back. This was uncharacteristic behavior, because he doted on Tina, spoiling her totally, and she had always been able to lead him around by the nose.
“Well, don’t waste any money gambling. All the games are fixed. And be careful. There’s a lot of dangerous characters out on the streets these days.”
“I’ll just tell them we are protected by the great Sergeant Falcone. No one will bother us,” Tina said.
Totally without humor, Falcone said, “They’d better not.”
On the street outside, Sofia said, “Your father seemed worried about something.”
Tina shrugged it off. “He spends all his time chasing Italian criminals. I heard him talking to Mama about it. First he’s got Joe the Boss to worry about. Now he’s got somebody named Maranzano to worry about. Joe the Boss was moving illegal liquor into the city. Now it seems this Maranzano is illegally stealing this illegal liquor from Joe the Boss, and my father worries that they are going to start illegally killing each other. I told him I thought it would be a good idea. Let them all kill each other and we’ll be done with it. He said that wouldn’t be so bad except some civilians would be sure to get hurt. Anyway, this is making him so crazy that now he thinks everybody is a criminal. Your cousin Charlie is on the list. Most nights Papa sits around the apartment wearing his gun. Really. You heard him. He even thinks the carnival games are crooked.”
“Should we have told him Nilo gave us free tickets?” Sofia asked.
Tina stopped on the street, looked around conspiratorially, and gave a big overdramatic shush of her lips. “Nilo’s name is not mentioned in our home anymore. To hear my father tell it, he is the worst bandit since Jesse James.”
Sofia laughed at her friend’s charade and said, “Our Nilo?”
“Yes. Do you believe that? Because Nilo’s real estate company is apparently owned by this Maranzano. That makes Nilo a criminal, too. A murderer even. Have you ever heard of anything so silly?”
As they continued strolling down the street in the direction of Greenwich Village, Sofia did not answer. But she was thinking that her friend Tina was very naive. She lived with policemen but never listened to what they were saying. Sofia, meanwhile, worked only in a restaurant and yet knew, firsthand, that there were criminals out there and that, without a doubt, Nilo Sesta was one of them. His life had nothing to do with selling real estate.
* * *
THE RESTAURANT TO WHICH Sofia had been given tickets by Nilo was filled with customers when they arrived, and they expected to be told there was a long wait, until the proprietor looked at their free meal tickets.
“These are your tickets?”
“Given to us by a friend,” Sofia said, almost defensively, wondering if Nilo had perhaps stolen them and they had been reported to the police.
“You have very fine friends,” the proprietor said, and somehow, magically, he was able to find them a table right in the front of the room. At last, for a little while, they were free of the horde of young men who had been following them ever since they arrived at the carnival on the street in front of the church.
The proprietor’s largesse did not end with table selection. Without their having ordered, suddenly their table was heaped with entrées of all sorts, veal and beef and chicken and pasta and salads and vegetables and seafood. Tina protested to the proprietor, “Both our families together couldn’t eat all this food.”
He simply smiled and answered, “I would have it no other way for friends of Don Salvatore.”
Tina nodded majestically, but when the man had left she asked Sofia, “Who’s Don Salvatore?”
“It must be this Maranzano crook. Nilo gave me the tickets.”
“God,” Tina said in mock astonishment. “We’re guests of the Mafia. Do you think they’ll sell us to the White Slavers if we eat too much?”
“You just wish,” Sofia said, and giggled.
After stuffing themselves with food, they sneaked out a side exit and found that the admiring herd of boys that had been following them had dispersed, probably because the carnival site was now packed with people and there were other, perhaps more-willing partners for their zealous lust.
After a few moments of strolling, Tina and Sofia were suddenly pushed aside by a large mass of people. Around them, they heard the sound level drop, as if people were suddenly afraid to talk. The two young women stood on tiptoe and saw a roundish looking man wearing a cape and a white hat, strolling down the center of the walkway, waving almost papally at the other carnival-goers. He was eating fried peppers from a grease-soaked paper bag.
“That’s Joe Masseria,” Sofia told Tina in hushed terms. “He comes into our restaurant once in a while. He’s a pig.”
“He acts like he’s the King of Sheba.”
“Around here, I guess he is,” Sofia said. When the crowd surrounding Masseria had moved on, Tina and Sofia wandered off in the other direction, Tina flirting shamelessly with everyone who looked at her. For a while, they amused themselves playing bingo and the spinning wheels, on which Tina won a stuffed elephant toy. Later in the evening, they bumped into Sofia’s cousin. He was dressed nattily in a white suit and was standing alongside a game-of-chance booth. He smiled when he saw the two young women. Tina nodded curtly, and Sofia said, “Hello, Charlie.”
Nearby Tina saw two of the young m
en who always seemed to be hovering around Luciano. One of them was the very young one Luciano called Benny, the one she had heard beat up prostitutes. He was baby-faced and handsome, Tina thought, and he still seemed too young to have such a reputation. The other was older, Luciano’s age, and handsome too in a darker Mediterranean way.
“Do you girls need anything? Money, tickets for anything?” Luciano asked.
Sofia hesitated, and Tina answered quickly, “No, Mr. Luciano, we’re fine. Except maybe some information.”
“Charlie. Please. I told you, Charlie.”
“Charlie,” Tina said.
“And this information?” he asked warily.
“Some people we talked to tonight told us this place is filled with gangsters.”
Sofia looked shocked. “Tina,” she said sharply.
“No, go ahead, girl,” Luciano said.
“I was just wondering why gangsters would care about a neighborhood carnival.”
“Well, I don’t know anything about that personally,” Luciano began.
“Of course,” Tina said with clear, if muted, sarcasm.
“But some of the proceeds from the carnival go to Mount Carmel Church. And there are different factions of … businessmen … who want to make sure that the people in the parish regard them highly. So they see that their own people come here and spread their names around and spend lots of money.”
“You’re talking about Masseria and Maranzano,” Tina said. Sofia stood silently to the side, aghast at the turn the conversation was taking.
“Ah, you have been listening while your father speaks,” Luciano said, with a patronizing smile on his face.
Bloodline: A Novel Page 18
