“For what?”
“For showing me that I really am a priest. Because if I weren’t, I would kick you all around this building till you never walked again.”
Mario walked slowly back to the rectory. In the end, he knew he could say nothing of his meeting with Nilo, not even to his father. It had been done under the seal of the confessional. In the end, the drama would have to play itself out.
Mario finished his breakfast, put the newspapers in the trash, and walked over to his small parish office, where he found Sofia Mangini waiting for him. The bright and beautiful and vibrant young woman he had known was gone. He had not seen her for more than a year, and it took him a moment to recognize her. She was pale and haggard and looked burdened with anguish.
“Mario,” she said, and stopped. “Father,” and stopped again. “Oh, I don’t even know what to call you.” She began crying and Mario patted her gently on the back.
“Call me Mario,” he said. “It doesn’t make me any less a priest. And we were friends before I ever put on this collar.”
It was not exactly true, since Sofia was not yet even a teenager when Mario had found his calling. But the statement put her at ease.
Sofia sniffled a time or two, then made a game effort to smile.
“Everything’s so wrong,” she said. “Everything.”
“Explain it to me very slowly,” Mario said.
“It’s about Nilo. I was reading the newspapers. Is Nilo the one the police are looking for? For killing that man, the one from Castellammare del Golfo?”
“Why do you ask?” Mario asked cautiously. Sofia’s eyes searched his face.
“Because … because it’s Nilo, and he’s one of us.”
“It’s a police matter. I don’t know anything about what the police are doing. And Nilo’s hardly ever been one of us.”
“I thought … I thought with Tommy and your father, you might have heard.”
“They don’t involve me in their business,” Mario said. “I’m afraid I can’t help you.”
Sofia rose from her chair. She no longer seemed so mousy or frightened. “You’re right,” she said. “I shouldn’t have come.” Without waiting, she left the office. Sitting at his desk, Mario had the curious feeling that he had just been used for something, but he could not tell what.
Sofia walked down to the Battery and sat on a park bench, looking out over New York Harbor.
There was no one to help her, no one to love her, no one who cared if she lived or died. She was alone and would always be alone. No man was her friend and only one woman, and she too had turned away from Sofia. And now she did not care. She was in this alone and only for herself. That was the hand she had been dealt, and that was the hand she would play.
Sofia took a trolley uptown to the Broadway real estate office of Salvatore Maranzano. She presented herself to the redheaded receptionist and asked to see Mr. Maranzano.
“Do you have an appointment?”
“No,” Sofia said. “My name is Sofia Mangini. I am a friend of Nilo Sesta’s.”
The secretary nodded and said, “I’ll talk to Mr. Maranzano. Please wait.”
As the receptionist walked away, Sofia looked her over. The young woman was beautiful, and Sofia had no doubt that she had been sleeping with Nilo. There had been a brief glint in her eyes when Sofia mentioned his name. Just another of the many young women Nilo had bragged about having. Sofia thought, for a fleeting moment, that her idea was stupid and she should just flee, but, despite her nervousness, she forced herself to wait in the office.
A moment later, the receptionist returned and said in a chilly voice, “Follow me, please.”
Maranzano rose to greet Sofia when she entered his office. He escorted her to a chair and poured her tea from a large carafe on his desk.
“Miss Mangini. I’ve heard a great deal about you.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. You’ve done a wonderful job in tutoring Nilo.”
“Thank you.”
Maranzano returned to his seat, then said, “Now what can I do for you?”
Sofia swallowed hard. “I know the police are looking for Nilo in connection with those two killings.”
“Oh? And how do you know this?”
“I’ve heard it,” Sofia said. “I thought I could help Nilo.”
“And how would you do that?”
“I could say that I was with him that entire day. That I spent the day in his apartment. That we made love.”
“Why?” Maranzano asked.
The teacup was shaking in her hand, and Sofia put it back on the wooden coffee table. “Because I want to marry Nilo. I love him. And I want to show just how much.”
Maranzano shook his head. “On the day those two people died, you will say you were with Nilo. But someone will surely come forward and say, no, you weren’t, because they saw you here or there or somewhere else.”
“No,” Sofia said. “In the morning, I took a train to Coney Island. I was there by myself. I saw no one. I came back alone at night. No one can ever say I was not with Nilo.”
“We could probably find someone else who would say they were with Nilo,” Maranzano said.
“But someone from his neighborhood? A childhood sweetheart? Trained by the nuns and of impeccable reputation?”
“This will be very difficult for you. It will be your word against Lieutenant Falcone’s. He is an old friend of your family, I believe.”
“I am not afraid,” Sofia said.
“You truly love Nilo.”
“I do.”
Maranzano rose. “I will have one of my drivers take you home. You will hear from me.”
“Do you look with favor on my proposal?” Sofia asked.
Maranzano nodded. “You are a brave and beautiful woman. You will make a very fine witness. And wife.”
* * *
TONY FALCONE HAD BEEN STANDING across the street for more than two hours watching the front door of Nilo’s apartment building, and twice a local beat cop had tried to roust him. In this uptown American neighborhood, the people grew suspicious when olive-skinned men, who just might be those dreaded foreigners, stood around too long, no matter how well dressed they were.
Tony took a long, final drag on his cigarette, ground it out on the sidewalk, then crossed the street and entered the apartment building. Fortunately, there was no one on duty in the lobby. Tony did not want to see anyone or be seen, so instead of waiting for an elevator, he climbed the five flights of stairs to Nilo’s apartment.
Tony knocked on Nilo’s door, three measured, middle-of-the-road knocks that could come from a neighbor or a custodian. He put his ear to the door but heard no sound inside. When another knock received no response, he took a ring of keys from his pocket and methodically began trying one after another in Nilo’s door.
The third key worked, and Tony stepped inside and closed and locked the door behind him.
It had been a full week since the two killings up in Harlem, but the frenzy created by the press had every cop in the city on the lookout for the “Dago Baby-Killer” as he was now being called in the tabloids. So far, nobody had been able to put a name to the killer’s face, but that hadn’t stopped the vast majority of New York police from keeping an extra-tight lookout for whomever he might have been. Nor had it kept the family of the dead child from swearing to deliver a slow and terrible death to the one who had killed a mere baby. Tony wanted his nephew, Nilo, in custody before the young man was killed out on the street.
He was not quite sure what he was looking for, except for some clue on where Nilo was, but he began methodically to search through the apartment. In the kitchen, he eventually found a new, shiny revolver wrapped in an oily rag and kept in a bread box. In the back of a small built-in pantry was a hidden shotgun, its barrel cut down to only eighteen inches long.
We Sicilians never change, Tony thought. We love the lupara.
He left both guns on the kitchen table, then moved into the bedroom. A close
t there revealed nothing but enough clothes to dress three ordinary men, but that was all. The dresser too held only clothing.
Tony went back into the living room, sat down at a small desk in the corner, and began going through it drawer by drawer.
“Is that legal?”
Tony looked up. “Charlie Luciano. What brings Joe Masseria’s chief punk into a high-class neighborhood like this?”
Luciano seemed not to take offense; he just smiled.
“Just running an errand for a friend,” he said.
“I didn’t know you had any friends,” Tony said. He casually unbuttoned his jacket to make it easier to reach the pistol in his hip holster.
“I have all kinds of friends,” Luciano replied, and there was something oily and mean about the answer. Tony felt, but could not understand how, Luciano was taunting him.
Sure, Tony thought, whores and dope fiends and other pimps. But why is Masseria’s boy in an apartment that belongs to one of Maranzano’s men? Especially when he must have let himself in with a key?
Tony said nothing. He often found that being silent was a very valuable tool in getting information from people. Quiet seemed to unnerve many, and by holding his tongue he had found that sooner or later they would start to talk and maybe spill more than they had planned to.
After a moment, Luciano said, “I was asked to bring you to meet a friend of your nephew’s.”
“How did you know I was here?”
“You were seen hanging around,” Luciano said.
“And why would anyone send you to get me?”
“Maybe they know how far we go back.”
“How far is that?”
“You arrested me when I was a kid. You smacked me around.”
“Sorry. I tossed around so much garbage that I don’t remember.”
Luciano smiled. “I remember, though. I’ve always remembered. Tough Tony Falcone. The honest cop.”
“This friend who wants to meet me. Would he know where Nilo is?”
“He might,” Luciano said as he sat on a sofa on the far side of the room and began looking through a copy of an Italian newspaper.
“Don’t strain your brain,” Tony said. He picked up the telephone on the table, dialed a number, and said, “This is Lieutenant Falcone. I’ll call in later. I’m with Charlie Luciano.”
When he hung up, he saw that Luciano was smiling.
“That wasn’t necessary,” he said. “I wouldn’t hurt you.”
“Just humor me,” Tony answered. “I’m the cautious type.”
He put the two guns he left in the kitchen inside a brown paper sack he found in the cupboard, wrapped it tight, then followed Luciano out of the apartment and down in the elevator.
As they reached the curb, a sedan pulled up and Tony climbed into the backseat after Luciano. The driver was darkly handsome and Tony recognized him as Joe Adonis. He was no ordinary driver but instead one of Luciano’s top guns and the man in charge of delivering Masseria’s booze all through Midtown Manhattan.
“Where are we going?” Tony asked.
“To Maranzano’s office.”
Tony held the bag of guns on his lap. “Since when are you doing favors for Maranzano? Everybody knows Masseria and Maranzano don’t get along.”
“Just between us in the car here?” Luciano said.
Tony nodded.
“Fighting between our group and their group is not going to help anybody.” He smiled. “Except maybe your group. The police. I’m trying to build bridges of understanding. And in case you’re wondering, Joe Masseria knows what I’m doing.”
“Quite a diplomat,” Tony said. “It must come from negotiating labor contracts with your whores.”
“No need to be nasty,” Luciano said.
“You make it so easy, though.”
The rest of the ride passed in silence. Adonis stopped the car at the curb in front of Maranzano’s Broadway office, and Tony, clutching the paper bag with the guns, got out.
Luciano said, through the open rear window, “Now, don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
“And just what is it a pimp wouldn’t do?” Tony answered. Luciano’s face clouded over, and the car pulled away from the curb into the busy traffic.
When they were a few blocks away, Luciano said, “He’s going to take a fall someday.”
“It’s not good to hit a cop, Charlie. It gets everybody agitated.”
“I’m not going to hit him. I’m going to break him,” the other man said.
“Just because he arrested you once when you was a kid?”
“Because he treated me like dirt then. Because he still treats me like dirt,” Luciano said. His lips were pressed tight over his teeth. He made an effort to relax. He lit a cigarette and put it into a thin ivory holder. “Anyway, we done good work today.”
“I’m gonna have to take your word for it because I don’t know what we did today.”
Luciano stifled a sigh. Sometimes, he thought, Adonis was too stupid to be allowed loose on the street. He spoke slowly as if lecturing a backward student: “First we let Maranzano know that we know Sesta is this ‘Dago of Death’ the papers are talking about, but that we aren’t going to do anything about it. It keeps our hand in with him pretty good. Then we brought Falcone up here for him to talk to. Who knows? Maybe he can talk Falcone out of testifying against the little bastard.”
“I don’t like the idea of Sesta maybe getting off. I don’t forget that night you said he set me up for that beating.”
“Don’t worry; he’s not getting off. Once we find out where he’s hiding, then he gets shot by the cops or else he’s gonna fry. Either way, Sesta is dead meat. But we stay Maranzano’s good friends. You never know what day the shooting’s going to start around here between these two Mustache Petes, and I don’t want us to be in front of anybody’s guns. Not until we’re ready, Joey.”
“How do we know that the cops want Sesta anyway? That Falcone spotted him as the killer?”
“Because somebody always talks, and we’ve got a guy on the inside with Maranzano.”
“You’re real smart, Charlie. I just want to look in the bastard’s eyes when he dies,” Adonis said.
“Enough that Sesta dies,” Luciano answered. “We can’t afford to do anything that’ll mess us up with Mr. Maranzano.”
“Don Salvatore,” Adonis said mockingly.
“His turn will come, too. Meanwhile, life goes on.”
“Yeah,” Adonis agreed cheerfully. “Life goes on. Until it’s over.”
* * *
WALKING INTO MARANZANO’S real estate office, Tony felt dirty. Meeting Luciano always made him feel as if he needed a bath, because there was something corrosively sinister about the sneering droopy-eyed gangster. He was, Tony knew, not even thirty years old yet, but slowly and carefully, he was pulling all of New York City’s crime together in a network under his control. And when he had done that, he would be more fearful, more dangerous than all the old-time Mafia bosses had ever dreamed of being, because like a spider, he would sit in the middle of the web, pulling strings, and no one would be able to reach him.
The receptionist announced him. Tony thought this must have been the girl whom Nilo was ready to use for an alibi that February night two years earlier when Tommy was slugged. He wondered if Nilo would try to use her again.
After a few moments, a large, well-dressed man came through the door. He smiled, and before Tony could respond he pumped the policeman’s hand in a warm gesture of welcome.
“Lieutenant Falcone, I’m Salvatore Maranzano. I appreciate your coming. Come inside, please. Can I take your bag?” He nodded toward the paper bag of guns Tony was still holding in his left arm.
“I’ll hang on to it, thanks,” Tony said. Maranzano nodded and led Tony back through an anteroom into his large private office. He waited until Tony had seated himself on one of the leather chairs in front of the desk, before walking around to sit behind it.
It was the first time T
ony had ever met Maranzano face-to-face. The man, whose challenge to Masseria’s position as head of New York City’s Mafia was growing more serious each day, seemed hardly the type to be a crime boss. Masseria was old-style, a crude, foul-mouthed man, usually wearing a dirty wrinkled suit. Maranzano was impeccably dressed in well-tailored silk. His nails were trimmed neatly and polished. His voice was soft and his Italian was courtly, rather than coarse. He looked like a college-trained bank president.
Tony knew that among the younger men in the mob people like Masseria and Maranzano who were not born in America were derided as “Mustache Petes.” He thought that description fit Masseria quite well, but anyone trying to apply it to Maranzano, thus underestimating him, might be in for a surprise.
Maranzano bridged his fingers in front of him. Tony noticed that he wore no rings, another sign of his difference from the crowd, where gold and diamond rings of all sorts were a kind of badge attesting to the owner’s success in this world.
Maranzano spoke calmly. “I know you’re a busy man, Lieutenant Falcone, and I will get right to the point. You and I have a mutual problem. Your nephew, Nilo Sesta.”
Tony nodded. “I think he has a bigger problem than either of us,” he said.
“I will not waste your time by beating around the bush. You want Nilo for killing that man in the motion-picture theater. I will say now he did not do it. But if he had, he would have been fully justified. If I had been a mere boy and raped by that animal and other animals like him, I would also be after my revenge.”
“Raped?” Tony said.
“You did not know.”
Tony did not answer.
“It is true enough. I blame myself for the whole sad affair. We get so many people here, new arrivals from Sicily, looking for work, and this rapist Selvini was one of them, but I did not know it. I should have. Instead, Nilo found the man’s name. As I say, I blame myself.”
Tony remained silent, wondering to himself where this conversation was going.
“Lawyers, and we have many, tell me that many people will attest to the fact that Nilo was otherwise engaged at the time these two tragedies occurred.”
“Alibi witnesses have been known to lie.”
Bloodline: A Novel Page 25
