Later that morning, a laughing guard who seemed to regard Nilo’s aroma as an occasion for hilarity, assigned him a job in the weaving plant. For his first hour inside the plant, no one came near him. Finally, just before time to be marched to lunch, a paunchy prisoner with graying hair, eyeglasses, and oversize fleshy features walked toward him, his feet shuffling along in a peculiar ducklike gait.
“You’re Nilo Sesta,” he said. It was not exactly a question.
“Yes.”
“You smell like hell. You can’t work in here smelling like that.”
Nilo bridled, ready to attack if attacked.
“Tell you what I’m going to do,” the big man said.
“You tell me.”
“I’m going to get you a fresh set of clothes.”
Nilo eyed him suspiciously.
“And what’s the price?”
“No price,” the other man said. “I’m a friend of a friend of a friend. They asked me to look out for you while you’re in here. That’s why you got a job in this shop. It’s the best in the whole joint. And tonight you’ll get a new cell, one with no bedbugs. I’m sorry; I would’ve done better by you yesterday, but you people weren’t supposed to get here until today.”
Nilo stared at the man in disbelief. He was still young, but he had learned a long time ago to be distrustful of people who freely offered favors.
“Oh, and another thing,” the man said, reaching into his pocket. “Here’s fifty dollars that your friends outside sent in. You’ll need it if you want to eat decent in here. You’ll have to buy all your food through the commissary. You can’t eat the crap they call meals here.”
He grinned and held out his hand.
“My name’s Harry. Harry Birchevsky.”
* * *
ON MONDAY, Tommy showed up for work at his police precinct and bumped into his father.
“When are you going to resign?” Tony asked him.
“Are you that anxious to get me off the force?”
Tony drew his son into a vacant office, where they sat facing each other across a bare wooden table.
“I never expected you to stay on the job this long,” Tony said.
“But why quit? The work’s easy and it’s a paycheck, and that comes in handy when the tuition’s due.”
“Yeah, but … dammit, if you’ve got to work, you should be doing some other kind of work, something important, something with lawyers.”
“Police work’s not important?” Tommy said.
“Not to you. It’s important to me, but not to you. I’m a cop at heart. You’re not.”
“Papa, let’s stop beating around the bush. You’re just worried that some night I’m going to walk into a stray bullet.”
“Okay, what’s wrong with that?”
“What’s wrong is that I’ve been a cop long enough to know how to be careful. I’m just going to hang around until law school’s done, and then I’m finished. I’m no hero.” He paused. “So what are you doing here anyway?”
“They hired some new patrolmen. I’ve got to give them a rundown on who the gang guys are that they should watch out for.”
“That’s a week’s work,” Tommy said lightly.
“More like ten minutes. All I got to do is show them a picture of Charlie Luciano. He’s running everything now. If it’s women, it’s his. Booze is his. Gambling’s his. Drugs are his. It’s all his. You know, it’s funny. I looked up his record and I probably gave him his first collar as an adult.”
“Yeah?”
“And I don’t even remember him,” Tony said. “Of course, I know him now.”
There was nothing to say to that, as Tommy realized again how deeply hurt his father was by Tina’s taking up with Luciano.
“Well, I’ve got to move on,” he said, getting to his feet. He clapped his father on the shoulder and moved toward the door.
“Tommy, if you see Tina anytime, have her come home and visit Mama. If I know she’s coming, I’ll make sure to stay away.”
Tommy again tried to think of something to say and again could not. He nodded and left.
* * *
WHEN SHE SAW THE DISMAL slushy slop that packed the city’s gutters, Tina was happy that she traveled these days only by chauffeured car.
Charlie had told her, “You’re a star now. No more trolleys and buses for you. When you wanna go someplace, you just call up and we’ll have a car take you there.”
It sounded very generous, but Tina knew that it also reflected a little of Luciano’s personality, his need to control everyone around him. In his not-so-subtle way, he was telling her that she was his woman and she could go no place without his knowing, no place that he did not approve of.
Tina understood that and did not mind at all. Meeting Charlie had been the best thing that had ever happened in her life.
She was a headliner now at Ross’s Club and the place was packed with enthusiastic crowds every night. She sang under the single name of “Justine.” That too was Charlie’s contribution.
“People like that one-name shit,” he said to her while they were in bed in her apartment. “It sounds like … you know…”
“Elegant?”
“Right. Elegant. That’s the word. And it sounds French too. People like French.”
Tina giggled. “I know you like French,” she said.
“I like a lot of things.”
While she saw him almost every night at the club, Charlie still spent several nights a week with her at her downtown apartment. Several times she had been in Charlie’s suite at the Plaza, but he had not invited her to move in.
Whenever she mentioned the suite to Charlie, he changed the subject. “I keep it for business. It’s a good address to have when you want to do business deals. You got room service and waiters and cleaning people, and it impresses people a lot. But when I want to relax, I come here with you. No telephones, nobody pestering me for decisions all the time, and that’s the way I like it, and that’s the way it’s going to stay.”
It was not the opera stage, which had been her life’s dream, but considering what had happened to her and her throat, life could hardly have been better. She rarely thought now of her family. Once in a while, when she knew her father was working, she went over to the family apartment to visit her mother, but even that conversation was strained, as if Tony’s presence permeated the house. Occasionally, she would stop at the parish house to see Mario, but he tried too hard to get her to make up with her father and she was beginning to find that tedious. She talked to Tommy only on the telephone. For a while, he had seemed always to be on the run, between working his police job and going to law school, but now he seemed to be mostly bored with life. In either event, he was not much of a conversation companion.
She did not see a lot of Sofia either. In the last year, her longtime friend had grown increasingly bitter toward the world, and a visit with her was a souring experience. Sofia hated Nilo; she hated her family; she hated everybody. When Tina invited her to come some evening to the club, Sofia said, “I doubt that Mr. Maranzano would approve. Charlie is not a favorite of his.”
“Why does he have to approve?” Tina asked. “You’re not a prisoner, you know.”
“These mobs run our lives—yours, mine, all of us. If you don’t believe it, try getting away. I told you once, we’re all prisoners,” Sofia had said.
The driver parked in front of the main entrance of the Plaza, and Tina waited in the car while he went inside to get Luciano. A few minutes later, the two men came out. Luciano got in the backseat and the driver took them downtown to a small building on the fringes of Chinatown.
Charlie helped her out of the car, then kept an arm on her elbow and guided her down a narrow alley, up a rickety flight of stairs, and down a long hall. He knocked on a door and waited for it to slowly swing open.
The air, Tina noticed, was strange, redolent of some sweet, spicy smell, and was vaguely nauseating. An old woman greeted them in Chinese. She obvious
ly knew Charlie, and she led them inside through an anteroom into a bigger inner room. Tina stopped just inside the door, trying hard to impress all the sights and sounds and smells on her memory.
The room was nearly dark with only a single lamp with a red and amber shade providing a dim light. Here and there around the room, she could see the flickering of tiny flames, flames surrounded by weaving, dancing shapes and shadows, although she could not tell what the flames were or what purpose they served.
As her eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, she was able to make out numerous small tables, most less than a foot off the floor. The air was heavy with black smoke, and she could almost feel a fine powdery residue in the air.
Charlie turned to her and smiled, then leaned down and kissed her on the side of the neck. She shivered in delight. He had never done that in public before. In fact, he never made any physical display of affection. Tina squeezed closer to him and rubbed him gently with her body.
The old woman clapped her hands twice, sharply but lightly, and two Chinese boys immediately appeared. They were dressed only in loincloths and were carrying beautifully decorated silk robes. They stepped into a small alcove, and Charlie immediately began to undress, stripping down to his bare skin. He put on the robe and handed his clothes to the old woman. After hesitating a moment, Tina did the same. The two boys then each took one of Tina’s hands and led her toward one of the flames, picking their path carefully.
It was only then that she realized that the floor of the room was packed with dozens of people, half of them men and half women, almost all totally naked and engaged in various arrangements of coupling, some hard and passionate, some slow and gentle, in all kinds of combinations. Tina moved slowly, watching as much as she could.
Their guides took them to a small cubicle in the far corner of the room, just slightly more private than the rest of the room. She and Charlie sat on cushions at the low table on which a small candle burned. One boy began rubbing their bodies with aromatic oils. Tina saw the other one prepare a long bamboo pipe. Around them, she sensed, rather than heard, the air fill with sound: the breathy meanderings of some strange flute playing even stranger music and punctuated occasionally by hissing, as of something boiling, the hissings followed by steady, delicate popping sounds.
Charlie stretched out on a long narrow pad and motioned for her to do the same on the one next to him. She did, with her legs pointing away from him and her head next to his. They kissed and when they stopped she realized that somehow she was no longer wearing her robe. She looked over at Charlie, but he only smiled at her, and she reached over and kissed him again.
The opium boy worked quickly now, taking a long needle and sticking it into an ornate pot filled with a sticky, darker-than-amber paste, twirling and working it into a small pill, not much larger than a teardrop. Then he held the drop over the flame of the lamp and carefully cooked it into a golden color. The boy smiled at Charlie and said, “Real good stuff this night. Number one. We mix Benares with Yunan. Try it. See.” He dropped the golden pellet into the black earthenware bowl of a pipe made otherwise of brown shell and held the bowl over the lamp flame till the drop of opium glowed and a small tendril of smoke curled up and he handed the pipe to Luciano. Charlie inhaled a mighty lungful and held it down, releasing the smoke slowly, reluctantly. When he was done, he smiled at the boy. “Very good,” he said.
The boy next offered the pipe to Tina. She took it, then hesitated. She had never smoked anything before, not even a cigarette. And with her throat she was frightened. She wavered just a moment, then took the pipe and gulped at it hungrily, the way Charlie had seemed to. The smoke burned its way down her throat, and she found herself fighting against panic. Then she began coughing, long noisy spasms that she was sure would stamp her as a hick in the eyes of all the other people in the room. But Charlie only smiled, so she tried again, a smaller sip of smoke, and this time it went down smoothly. And the next sip yet more smoothly.
By the time she had finished the bowlful of opium, she was transported. She felt alive as she had never felt before. Every inch of her body was sensitized to the environment around her, and she had never, she thought, been in a more beautiful place. She noticed tiger skins that covered the walls and imagined herself a Moorish princess being carried across the desert sands to be laid at the feet of the caliph, forced to capture him with her charms. She looked over at Charlie and saw his immense swelling and twisted herself so that she was on top of him, riding him hard, and him bucking like some stallion in a cowboy movie and then exploding inside her.
It was all foggy, lights and sounds. There was music; there were voices. She heard one voice say, “You’re a whore now. You’re my whore.” And the thought delighted her so much she said, “Yes, yes, yes, yes.” And the voice said, “Someday I’ll have you turning tricks,” and she said yes again.
Daylight came too soon, and when it did the pipes were put away and the dreamers departed.
* * *
FOR THE FIRST TIME since Nilo had been shipped to Dannemora more than six months ago, Sofia had come to visit.
Visitors were a rare occurrence in his life. Maranzano wrote long flowery Latin-tinged letters, but they mostly concerned the weather and the life of Caesar, hardly light reading for a lifer. And once a month, he sent his driver, Rock, to the prison, just to make sure that Nilo was being treated right, to give him some gossip, and to pass along the don’s instructions not to give up; things moved slowly, but they were being worked on.
Nilo had no other visitors and, in fact, no other letters. Sofia had never written to him, not once. Although he had never written to them, he assumed that his parents back in Sicily had been told where he was, but they had not written, either, so all visitors were welcome, even one as unpleasant as the wife who had once admitted bearing someone else’s bastard child.
The guard led him into a small room, one furnished with a rug to hide the concrete floor, and with a sofa, a couple of chairs, a big desk, and curtains to hide the bars on the windows. It was clearly the office of some prison bureaucrat, but at that it was a lot better than the usual visiting area, and Nilo knew he got the privilege for being one of Maranzano’s men.
He sat down behind the desk and began idly pulling out the various drawers, inspecting their contents while he waited. He found a small penknife and slipped it into his pant pocket. In just a few minutes, Sofia was let into the room.
She entered cautiously as the door closed behind her, stopping halfway to the desk.
“Hello, Nilo,” she said.
“Hello, Sofia.”
“How are things going?” she asked.
“Fine,” he said. “Fine. How about you? And the boy?”
She nodded slightly. “We’re both fine,” she said.
Sofia was still very beautiful, Nilo thought, and her figure was accentuated by a tight-fitting two-piece suit. He stared at her bosom, remembering those days when she had tutored him and he had often thought of getting her into bed. She had carefully applied makeup to her beautiful features. Was there just a chance that, in some curious way, she longed for her husband, any husband?
“I’ve been talking to some of the people in the church,” she said. “Actually Mario’s been helping me. Nothing official, but we’ve talked to a lot of people.”
“What about?” Nilo asked. He could feel the hairs on the back of his neck start to stand on end. An uneasy feeling spread in the pit of his stomach.
Sofia took a deep breath, and then the words came out in a rush.
“Nilo,” she said. “What would you think about having our marriage annulled? Through the church?”
He looked at her without saying a word but then slammed both fists down onto the desk in front of him.
“Why?” he snapped.
“Because I want to get on with my life. You know there was never anything between us. And the only reason I married you was so I wouldn’t have to testify. We could get it annulled.”
“Who
put you up to this? The kid’s father? Who is he?”
She looked at him for a long time before answering. “Stephen’s your son, Nilo,” she said. “I was just angry when I said he wasn’t. All you’d have to do is look at him to see it.” She paused to blow her nose and to wipe her eyes.
“If you don’t care for me…”
“I don’t,” he snapped.
“Then care for your son,” she said softly.
“Never. An annulment is for some capon, some castrato. What would people think of me?”
“You bastard,” she said. “You’re here, pitying yourself. What will people think of you? Think of somebody besides yourself for a change. I’m not old. I can get married. Stephen can have a real father, not some murdering jailbird who will make him the joke of the neighborhood. Please, Nilo.”
Nilo stood up behind the desk.
“You know why we’ve got this office to meet in?” he said.
Sofia looked around, as if noticing the place for the first time. “No, why?”
Nilo came around the desk. “Because I’ve got a little influence in this place because of who I am. And prisoners with influence get a chance sometimes to use a room like this to meet their wives, just in case they want to do a little husband and wifing.”
Sofia looked confused.
He stood in front of her now, and his hands reached up and grasped her breasts harshly. He spoke in almost a whisper to her. “I thought when you came up here today that maybe you wanted to see me, for me to be your husband. But I should have known. Mario sent you. Another one of my Falcone friends. Are you screwing him? Or Tommy? Or just anybody you meet?”
Angrily, she pulled back from him and snapped, “Anybody but you. You wonder what people might think of you? I will tell you. Because I will tell them. You are a useless excuse for a man. You can never satisfy a woman.”
Bloodline: A Novel Page 35
