Cautiously, he moved along the side of the building and found an unlocked door in the rear. He slipped inside and moved quickly away from the door, crouching low against the wall, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness, holding his police revolver in his hand.
Faced with his own moment of truth, Tommy thought, Can I do it? Can I just shoot him in cold blood? Does that make me as bad as him, as Nilo, as Luciano? As all the rest of them?
Before he could finish the thought, something slapped the gun from his hand. It went skidding across the floor in the darkness. Tommy dove out of the way and heard a heavy clunk, the sound of a heavy piece of wood slamming into the wall near his head.
“You so smart, you think I didn’t see you? You bastard, I shoulda killed you when I had the chance.” Birchevsky’s voice came out of the darkness, followed by another swing of the wooden club in his hand. But this time, Tommy was ready. He rolled away from the club, and as it hit into the floor next to him, he grabbed it and yanked. His force pulled the two-by-four out of Birchevsky’s hands, and Tommy scrambled to his feet and swung the wooden club in front of him. There was a satisfying thud as the board made contact with flesh.
Birchevsky groaned and Tommy swung again. He hit again and Birchevsky cried out in pain.
In the dim light from a low window, Tommy could make out the man’s form now, on the floor in front of him, and he smashed him in the ribs with the two-by-four. Then he swung it over his head, like a timberman’s ax, and brought it down on Birchevsky’s left knee. Birchevsky screamed.
He skittered away across the floor. In that moment, Tommy had his answer. Yes, I can kill him. But that’s too easy. First I’m going to cripple him, but I’m going to let his brain stay alive so it can feel hate and fear and pain, and then when he can’t stand it anymore, I’m going to make it even worse.
And then I’m going to kill him.
Tommy slowly walked after Birchevsky, holding the club in his hands like a baseball bat. Suddenly Birchevsky dove forward, grabbed at something, rolled on his back, and a bullet whistled past Tommy’s ear.
Tommy dropped to the floor, backing away.
“I’ll kill you, you son of a bitch,” Birchevsky shouted, and fired Tommy’s gun again into the darkness.
Again the bullet missed. Tommy heard a thud at the front door, and then, as the door opened, a glow of light from the street cast a faint glow across the warehouse floor. Tommy could see the huddled form of Birchevsky only ten feet from him.
Birchevsky must have seen him, too, because he raised the gun, and then another bullet rang out, and Birchevsky rolled across the floor. In the doorway, a man’s silhouette was visible. He was holding a gun.
“Tommy,” he called out.
Papa!
Tommy ran toward his father and then suddenly more shots rang out inside the warehouse. Tommy saw his father fall. He looked back and Birchevsky was still, a lump of flesh on the floor. The shots had not come from him, and then there was another shot and Tommy felt a searing pain as a bullet creased his shoulder.
Then all was silent.
Tommy ran to the doorway and knelt alongside his father, who groaned. Tommy turned him over.
“Papa,” he cried.
Tony smiled up at his son. A trickle of blood appeared at the corner of his mouth. “I got him, Tommy. I got him for Rachel.”
“Oh, Papa.” Tommy cradled his father in his arms.
Suddenly Tommy heard the rear door of the warehouse open. He glanced back there just long enough to see a man faintly silhouetted as he moved across the open doorway. The man darted back outside and the door slammed behind him.
Was he the shooter? Maybe it was someone who was just wandering by and had heard the noise. Tommy wanted to follow him, but Tony groaned and his eyes began to roll back in his head and Tommy held him close. Tony tried to lift his torso as if to whisper in his son’s ear. His words came in a gasp. “Never surrender to the bastards. If we fight, we win. Never surrender.”
His head lolled off to the side. His eyes were frozen open, but he saw no more. Tommy cried and said the prayers for the dead that he had heard Mario recite over Rachel’s body.
* * *
THE YONKERS POLICE TOOK TOMMY into custody while they sorted things out. Allowed one telephone call, he phoned his father’s retired partner, Tim O’Shaughnessy, who drove with Mario up to Yonkers, and, after a lot of blustering, succeeded in getting Tommy freed.
In the car driving back, Tommy sat shuddering and Mario put his arm around him. Dully, Tommy asked, “What was Papa doing there?”
“He was following you,” Mario said. “He’d been following you for a long time.”
“Why?”
“Because he knew you took your service revolver back. He didn’t want you to make a mistake with it that might ruin your life.”
“His death was a waste. You should have told me, Mario.”
“Why? So you could hide from Papa and maybe get yourself killed, too?”
O’Shaughnessy put a big hand on Tommy’s knee. “I know it hurts, Tommy, but your Papa died the way he wanted to. In harness. Don’t cheapen it by calling it a waste.” Tommy only shook his head.
* * *
MARIO SANG A REQUIEM MASS in Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church and then they buried Tony Falcone, with full police department honors, in St. John Cemetery in Middle Village, Queens. An assistant commissioner spoke at the graveside of the ultimate sacrifices Tony “and other unknown warriors have made in the battle against crime and lawlessness. While he was retired from the force, Lieutenant Falcone—at the time and in the manner of his death—acted in the highest traditions of the New York City Police Department.”
Mayor Jimmy Walker sent flowers to the cemetery. Standing quietly in the crowd of mourners was Tommy’s old law-school friend, Tom Dewey, and Kinnair, the Daily News reporter who had been covering the story and had written about the Falcones as “New York’s greatest crime-fighting family.” But Tommy spoke to none of them; he moved through the proceedings as if in a fog.
Nilo accompanied Tina to the funeral and caught up with Tommy as they left the cemetery.
“I haven’t seen you in so long. I just wanted to tell you how sorry I am about everything.”
“Forget it, Nilo.”
“I didn’t have anything to do with this, Tommy. Or your wife. If I had known…”
“I said forget it.”
“I’m glad you don’t blame me, Tommy. We’re brothers, remember? We always were. We always will be.”
Tommy wheeled around. “Brothers? We gave all that up a long time ago. Don’t ever think we’re brothers. As far as I’m concerned, you’re a piece of garbage, just like the rest of the garbage on the streets out there. And I’m coming after you and all the others just like you. I’m taking you all down.”
Nilo tried a small smile. “Do I have to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder?”
“No,” Tommy said. “That’s your way. The bullet in the back, the hired gun. I’m going to take you down the way my father would have. Face-to-face, so I can watch you fall. You and all the others just like you. No, I don’t think you told your fairy boyfriend to kill my wife. But even if you had, it wouldn’t change anything. I’m going to take you apart, a piece at a time. Don’t ever call me brother.”
He strode away just as Mario came up alongside Nilo.
Nilo glanced at the priest, then back at Tommy’s departing figure.
“You were wrong, Mario,” Nilo said. “Sometimes we just aren’t able to choose the path of righteousness.”
* * *
TWO WEEKS AFTER THE FUNERAL, Tommy closed the apartment where Rachel had been killed, the place where he had been happy so briefly, and moved back to the Falcone family flat on Crosby Street.
* * *
HOW LONG HAD IT BEEN, Tina wondered, since she had spent a New Year’s Eve with her family, instead of surrounded by rowdy, drunken revelers?
New Year’s Eve or not, e
very night is just the same. These people are the same. They … and me … we just don’t have any reason for living.
During the evening, it seemed that every gangster in New York had passed through the Falcon’s Nest, men from both the Masseria and Maranzano camps, as if a New Year’s Eve truce were being observed. She recognized most of them from the days when she sang at Luciano’s speakeasy.
There was Benny Siegel, the one some people called Bugsy, all grown up now and still handsome, but still with a distracted air, as if he were thinking he should be somewhere else. He wished her a happy new year before leaving the club. She saw Luciano enter with his two closest henchmen, Vito Genovese and Joe Adonis, but they sat in the back of the room and left before she had to talk to them. Many of them she knew by name only. There was Legs Diamond and a doughy-faced thug from the Bronx named Dutch Schultz, who sat at a front table surrounded by hangers-on, making lewd comments to women on the dance floor in front of him.
Tina saw Nilo was busy working the floor, moving from table to table, trying to keep everyone in a good humor. She saw a tall slender man, who seemed barely out of his teens, enter the speakeasy and sit by himself in a table on the left of the dance floor. He had thick lips that seemed set in a permanent sneer, which he fixed on Schultz across the room. After a few minutes, Schultz and his party left the club and the slender man laughed aloud.
Nilo went to the young man’s table and talked with him, then led him behind the stage curtain to the private offices. They were in there for almost an hour before returning.
Meanwhile, Tina had kept singing, taking only short breaks, convinced that it no longer mattered whether she sang well or poorly, since nobody listened anyway to anything except the sounds of their own voices.
I dreamed of grand opera. I achieved farce. I’m glad Papa never saw me do this.
During a break, she went over to the table where Mayor Walker was sitting like a potentate, receiving supplicants, and when he looked at her, she thanked him for sending flowers to her father’s funeral. Walker smiled and told her she was in really good voice, and it was clear that he was drunk and had no idea what Tina was talking about.
Nilo and the young man came out of the offices and Nilo walked him to the front door. On the way there, Tina saw the man intentionally bump into another thug and then laugh, almost maniacally, when the other man simply walked away.
During a break, she asked Nilo who the young man was. “He seemed to be looking to pick a fight.”
“He’s always looking for a fight. Crazy Irisher named Vince Coll. Schultz is scared to death of him.”
“He’s so young.”
“He’s old enough that they already call him Mad Dog,” Nilo said.
“You have interesting friends,” Tina said with a smile.
“I have no friends. Only business associates. Happy New Year.”
1931: The War
* * *
“I’M AFRAID I’VE GOT BAD NEWS for you, Tommy.”
Tommy smiled ruefully across the desk at Captain Cochran. It was the first week of the New Year, and he had shown up in the captain’s office asking to return to duty. “Go ahead, Captain. I’m used to it.”
“I’ve talked to city hall. They can’t keep you off the job, but they’re going to make your life miserable. I guess you’ve made some enemies.”
“So what does it mean?”
“You come back as a patrolman. You work nights in uniform. They want you on the whore squad.”
“Vice?” Tommy said.
“Yeah. Midtown, rousting streetwalkers, pimps.” Cochran looked dejected; both he and Tommy knew that working vice was the lowest, sleaziest duty on the force.
Tommy was silent and Cochran said, “They want you to turn it down and quit.”
“I know. Who’s got it in for me?”
“Nobody’s talking, but I’d guess Luciano. He’s the only one with that kind of muscle in city hall, and he must have figured out you were no friend of his.”
“I’ll take the job.”
Cochran seemed to wince. “Tommy, what do you want it for?”
“It’s all I know how to do.”
“What about practicing law? What happened to that?”
“The law’s a joke,” Tommy said.
* * *
DURING THE FIRST WEEK of the New Year, Tina stopped in Nilo’s office. “This seems as good a time as any,” she said. “I’m going to be leaving, Nilo.”
“Where are you going?” he snapped angrily. “Who hired you?”
“Nowhere and nobody. I’m just quitting the business. I’ve had enough of it.”
“You can’t just leave,” he said. “This is your club. It’s named after you. You’re a star.”
“I don’t want to be a star. You can have the club. I’m going to go. I have to move on.”
He drummed his fingers on the desk. “I could make you stay,” he said. Tina had wanted this to be smooth and businesslike, but instead it was becoming personal. “I doubt it,” she said.
“I don’t. I could—” He stopped and tried to force a smile. “Well, we can’t have people working here who are unhappy. I won’t stop you. But you’ve got to do me a favor.”
“What’s that?”
“The summer. You’ve got to stay into the summer. Meanwhile you can start breaking in a new manager and you can start finding acts to replace you. You’ll give me that, won’t you?”
“The summer,” she said grimly. “And no more.”
As the office door swung closed behind her, Nilo angrily jabbed the point of a letter opener into the wooden desktop. So now she’s giving me ultimatums? Slut. She’ll stay as long as I want her to. There’s always those pictures.
* * *
TOMMY REPORTED TO WORK and went through the motions. He walked the Midtown streets at night, patrolling in front of the smaller hotels near Times Square, arresting prostitutes who were too noisy or aggressive with passersby. He tried to be polite and businesslike, and often the streetwalkers, accustomed to heavy-handed cops who swung the billy club with one hand and held the other hand out for a bribe, would offer him a bonus in trade. He always turned them down. He diligently did the paperwork on the arrests, advised the girls to leave the business before they got hurt out on the street, and when his shift was over he went home, where he usually spent his day sitting quietly in the living room, looking out the window at busy, bustling Crosby Street, thinking of the night his father was killed.
And every day he did the same thing.
• At the end of January, well-tanned and even fatter than when he left, Joe the Boss Masseria returned from his winter vacation in parts unknown. He was upset to find that Luciano had not yet launched the all-out shooting war against Maranzano’s forces. “It hasn’t been a good time,” Luciano explained patiently. “They’ve got that Seabury investigation starting down at city hall. If we stick our head up now, somebody’s liable to blow it off, and everybody’s too frightened to cover up for us.”
“Then why the hell are we paying twenty thousand dollars a week to those bastards, if they don’t have to do anything for it? We pay graft, we should get protection,” Masseria argued. “Do what I told you to do.”
• Four days later, Buster from Chicago struck again. Joe the Boss’s best friend, Joe “the Baker” Catania, was found dead on a Manhattan streetcorner with six bullets in his head on the morning of February 3. Masseria added three more men to his army of bodyguards and stayed behind locked doors in his penthouse overlooking Central Park.
• The stock market continued its slide. The Dow Jones average had made a small recovery but was dropping again, reaching 260 by the end of the year. Since its peak sixteen months earlier, it had lost nearly 60 percent in value.
• In the Daily News, John F. X. Kinnair quoted a police official’s report that more than fifty people had been slain so far in New York City’s gangland power struggle: “. . and those are only the bodies that have been discovered. God knows how ma
ny others are buried out there. And the killing won’t end until someone wins the war between Masseria and Maranzano.” Meanwhile, Kinnair wrote, “the next generation is waiting in the wings. Behind Masseria stands Charlie ‘Lucky’ Luciano, the master organizer, while Maranzano’s Number Two man is Nilo Sesta, who won notoriety a half-dozen years ago when he was convicted—but later freed—for a double murder in Italian Harlem. Sources say that, in a crime world not noted for restraint, Sesta sets a new standard for viciousness and brutality.”
* * *
NILO CAME OUT of the bedroom, fully dressed, and Sofia pointed to the story in the Daily News.
“You’re getting famous,” she said. “The paper today calls you vicious and brutal.”
“That’s because they never met you,” he answered with a small smile. She walked to him and put her arms around him from behind.
“We’re almost there,” she said. “When this is all done, you and Charlie can divide the city between you. Don Nilo Sesta. It has a ring to it.”
“Until Luciano gets ambitious,” he said.
“Then we’ll deal with him, too.”
Nilo nodded, but he seemed distracted. He kissed Sofia perfunctorily and left the apartment.
Sofia went back and read Kinnair’s Daily News column again. Probably just by dumb luck, she thought, the reporter had stumbled onto the truth. Sooner or later, Masseria and Maranzano would be gone. Nilo would be king and she would be queen, and she would lead the king around by his nose because she had his children and she had the brains to lead.
Her only lingering worry was Tina. She was sure, in her heart, that her husband and Tina were lovers, and that made Tina a danger to her. But Sofia knew she had a secret trump card that Tina did not have, and when the time came, she would use that to bond Nilo to her. She would be the richest woman in New York and her children would be legislators and governors. They would have all the power to control their own lives that she had never had, and she would be the one to give them that power. And nothing can be allowed to stop it.
* * *
BECAUSE OF HIS FAIR TREATMENT of them, the hookers in his district had taken to calling Tommy “Sir Galahad.” He found it embarrassing, and one night, after breaking up a fight in a cheap brothel on Thirty-seventh Street, Tommy said to the madam, “If you all like me so much, why don’t you just go somewhere else? Or leave the business?”
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