“You stopped going to classes after that?” she asked, placing a hand on top of mine.
“I thought about it and figured he was at least half right,” I said. “I could have always added an initial to my name. I just would never have had the talent.”
“Are you happy with the way your life’s turned out?” Mary asked.
“I have two great kids and a business that pays the bills,” I said. “I have a wife who listens to me when I talk and a dog that always seems happy to see me.”
“And is that all that you wanted it to be?” Her bright eyes shone like lanterns against my face. I felt as if she knew everything I was feeling and could read any thoughts that passed through my mind.
“What you want your life to be and what it becomes are never the same,” I said. “Angelo would be the first to tell you that. It’s only about what you end up with or what you settle for. And by the time that happens, it’s too late for you to do anything else.”
“What would you have changed?” she asked.
“The last twenty years,” I said.
7
* * *
Spring, 1926
JACK WELLS WAS sitting in the back room of Baker’s Bar on the northeast corner of Tremont Avenue in the Bronx, nursing a mug of ice-packed root beer. He watched the nervous man sitting across from him light a cigarette, take a deep drag and blow the smoke up toward the tin ceiling.
“If I get caught on this, it’s over for me,” the man said, his voice a trembling whisper. “A hothead like Pudge Nichols won’t give in to reason. He’ll come right at me with a gun in his hand.”
“Then make sure you don’t get found out,” Wells said. He wiped a line of foam from his upper lip with the back of his hand.
“I wouldn’t even be doing something like this if I had a better stable of girls working for me,” the man said. He had smoked the cigarette down to the butt. “The ones I got couldn’t get laid in prison if they were holding a handful of pardons.”
“Listen to me, Francis,” Wells said, his eyes boring in on his companion, giving his words extra weight. “I may not look like a busy man to you, but I am. So, knowing that, the last thing I need to hear about is how hard a balls-on-his-ass pimp has it. You don’t like your life, bitch about it to your mother. Now tell me, can you handle this or not?”
“I think so,” Francis said with a slow nod.
“I want to hear a yes or a no,” Wells said. “Anything else, I go deaf.”
“Yes, Mr. Wells,” Francis said. “I’ll handle it.”
“That’s good news,” Wells said. “I’ll let you and Fish work out the details. What matters most is that you get him inside that room. My crew handles it from there.”
“When do I see you again?” Francis asked. He bit down on his lower lip. “You know, so I can pick up the payment.”
“You’re never going to see me again!” Wells jabbed his index finger against the center of Francis’s sweaty forehead. “You live through this, you die through this, it makes no difference. I just gave up all the time I got to give to a pimp.”
• • •
CARMELLA DALITO RESTED a gnarled, vein-riddled hand over her mouth and stared across the small table at Pudge Nichols, her dark eyes shining off the shimmer of the candlelight. Angelo stood directly behind Pudge, his arms folded, staring down at the small wooden bowl at rest in the center of the table. The old woman, whose thick rolls of gray hair framed a scarred face, was a Strega, an Italian witch, paid to relieve Pudge from the pain of a lingering headache.
“I still think we would have been better off going to see that doctor on Little West Twelfth,” Pudge said. He never took his eyes off the old woman, careful to gauge her every move. “Drunk or sober, he might have come up with something to help me.”
“This is better than going to a doctor,” Angelo said.
“This is starting to creep me out,” Pudge said. He ran a finger under the brim of his heavily starched shirt collar. “Maybe I should learn to live with the headaches.”
Angelo put a hand on Pudge’s shoulder. “Stay calm,” he advised.
“You ever get sick, first stop I make is to find a guy with a white coat,” Pudge said. “I don’t drag you off to see a witch, that’s for sure.”
“She’ll do more than just clear away those headaches,” Angelo said as he took a step back into the shaded darkness of the small room.
“Let me take a shot at it,” Pudge said. “She’s gonna put back that missing toe on my foot.”
“Even better,” Angelo said. “When Carmella’s finished, you will know who it is that is giving you those headaches.”
Pudge turned away from the old woman and looked up at Angelo. “You serious?” he asked.
Angelo stared back at his friend. “Yes,” he said.
Pudge smiled at Carmella and patted her on the hand. “Okay, sweets,” he said, a wide smile now on his face. “Give us the works.”
Carmella reached behind her, picked up a glass of water and emptied it into the wooden bowl. She lifted a small tin of olive oil from the side of the table and poured the thick yellow liquid into the bowl, watching as it formed a slick on the surface of the water. She yanked a rumpled linen handkerchief from her dress pocket and spread it across the table. In the center of the handkerchief, soaked through with blood, was an eye.
“It’s the eye of a goat,” Angelo whispered to Pudge. “She will mix it in with the water and oil.”
“Then what?” Pudge asked.
“Then I will know who wishes bad for you,” Carmella said, speaking for the first time. Her voice was softer than her harsh looks. “And then you will know, too.”
She picked up the eye and dropped it gently into the oil and water. She stared down at it, watching as it floated in the stillness of the bowl. She placed the tips of her fingers around the lid and looked up at Pudge.
“Wet your fingers with the water,” she told him. “Then, put your hands down flat on the table.”
Pudge did as he was instructed. The old woman tilted her head back and closed her eyes, low-moaning a string of Italian phrases. She shook and stammered, her back arched, her fingers spread inside the bowl. She tilted her neck up to the chalk-white ceiling.
Pudge sat there mesmerized by the old woman’s physical gyrations. “If she’s looking to scare the shit outta me,” he said in a low voice, “she’s about half the way there.”
Carmella leaned over the edge of the table, inches from Pudge’s face and clamped down on his wrists with her gnarled hands. She stared into his young eyes, her face a cracked wall of purple veins, white scars and ragged lines. Pudge kept still, anxious to see the end result of the old woman’s voodoo quest.
“It is a woman who will cause your blood to flow,” the Strega said. “She will make you reach out for the comforts of death.”
“What’s her name?” Pudge asked as he turned briefly and looked over at Angelo.
“She will give you the love of her flesh,” Carmella said, ignoring the question, locked into her Strega glare. “And you will take it. Your desires will cause you great pain.”
“She’s not going to give me the name?” Pudge asked Angelo.
“She doesn’t know names,” Angelo said. “She only knows actions. We figure out the rest.”
“This smells like a scam to me,” Pudge said. “All she’s doing is reeling us in like two saps.”
“It’s not a scam,” Angelo insisted. “I’ve used her before and she’s never been wrong.”
“How the hell do you know she’s never wrong?” Pudge asked, turning to face Angelo. “Unless these headaches are making me deaf, too, I didn’t hear her tell us anything. She didn’t give up anybody.”
“It’s hard for her to narrow it to one woman,” Angelo said. “You’ve got a lot of girlfriends.”
“What if we throw a little more money her way?” Pudge said. “Maybe that’ll help her see a face in the water bowl.”
“No,” Angelo said,
looking over at the witch. “She’s told us all she knows.”
Pudge pulled his hands away from the old woman and stood. “So what now?” he said to Angelo. “I spend the rest of my nights with you?”
“You have to learn to listen as much to what the witch didn’t say as to what she did,” Angelo said, nodding his thanks to Carmella. “She told us everything we need to know. There’s going to be a trap. A cover to get you to a place where you’ll feel safe. And the gun that’s used will come from someone else’s hands.”
“Whose?”
“Jack Wells,” Angelo said. “He’s the one who wants us both dead.”
“Why me first?” Pudge asked as he followed Angelo out of the Strega’s room.
“He fears you more,” Angelo said. He stood in the stairwell as he spoke, his words direct and filled with calm. “You’re the dangerous one. Once you’re dead, he doesn’t think he has anything to fear from me.”
“I need some fresh air.” Pudge eased past Angelo and walked down the flight of steps.
“How’s the headache?” Angelo asked, following him.
“It’s gone,” Pudge said over his shoulder. “But now my stomach’s starting to bother me.”
“You want to go back up and see the Strega about it?” Angelo asked.
Pudge stopped and turned to look at Angelo. “I’ll take a pass,” he said. “She gave me enough good news for one day.”
• • •
ALL GANGSTERS ARE superstitious. Their phobias travel well beyond the acceptable and venture into arenas rarely visited by those not in the underworld. Jimmy “Two-Gun” Marchetti never passed a church without kneeling and making the sign of the cross and he always began his day with a black coffee and four large cloves of garlic. He believed both habits would keep him safe from harm, which they did until two days before his twenty-seventh birthday, when he was gunned down in an East Side bar.
Most gangsters believe in the healing powers of Stregas, prefer cats to dogs because of their alleged spiritual strengths and always follow the same ritual on the day of a prearranged kill. As a group, they are always wary of anyone detecting a pattern to their movements. Yet they routinely eat their meals in the same restaurants, venture down the same streets and treat their daily schedule as if it were chiseled in granite. The pockets of their suits and overcoats are crammed with lucky items—a coin from a first payroll heist, a bullet fragment removed from a leg, a religious figure meant to ward off evil, a ring given by a first gang boss. All are meant as safety valves.
Angelo wore a St. Joseph’s medallion around his neck, left to him by Josephina. He was not a religious man, but he believed the strength of the medal helped him ride free of the danger zone. “I put two fingers up to the medal when I went out on a job,” he told me. “I can’t say for sure it helped, but I figured it was a good thing to have on my side.”
Angelo understood that to be good at his work and survive, you needed to be fearless in a business ruled by fear. So gangsters turn to the small things—bracelets, billfolds, same tie worn on the same day, a walk in a cemetery—whatever it might be, to give them that extra edge. “Being superstitious is married to being careful,” he told me. “And being careful goes hat in hand toward helping a guy like me stay alive.”
• • •
ISABELLA QUIETLY CREPT up behind Angelo and placed a hand on his shoulder. He sat facing a window, his back to the door, in the corner of his room above the bar. “I was worried,” she said in a soft voice. “You haven’t been around the past few days.”
“I need time alone,” Angelo said.
“Can I help?” She stepped around him, her hand still touching him, and stood staring at a hard face and soft eyes. The room was dark, the only light filtering in through the drawn shades of an open window.
“You have never met my father,” Angelo said, looking at her, finding comfort in her beauty and warmth. “He’s a good man but an unlucky one. Thousands of men like him came to this country, worked hard, made a place for themselves and their families. He was unable to do that, no matter how hard he worked, he could never make the next move.”
“Many men work hard and stay poor,” Isabella said. “There is no crime to it, no shame. It’s as true in Italy as it is here.”
“I never wanted you to meet him,” Angelo said. “I wish I didn’t feel that way about him, wish I wasn’t so angry and so ashamed.”
“Being poor is not something to be ashamed about, Angelo,” Isabella said.
“It’s not about being poor,” Angelo said. “It’s about a murder.”
Isabella sat down across from Angelo and stared at him, his face blocked by the shadows of the room. “Whose?”
“My father came to America not to seek a fortune or make a new life,” Angelo said. “He came here to run from a crime. He came because he had murdered his own child.”
Isabella gasped when she heard the words, her hands clasped across her face. “Why? Why would any father commit such an act?”
“A man pulls a trigger for many reasons.” Angelo’s low voice started to break. “Most of them wrong.”
“Your father’s gone, Angelo,” Isabella said, regaining her calm. “He is the one who must live with what he has done, not you.”
Angelo leaned closer and held her hands, gazing deep into her dark eyes. “All that I have learned, everything that my life has prepared me for tells me my brother’s death must be avenged. And it can only be avenged by me. But I don’t know if I have such courage. He is my father and I love him very much.”
“Your father faces his crime every day that he lives. Is that not enough to satisfy vengeance?”
“In some worlds, yes,” Angelo said. “But not in mine. My father lives and my brother lies dead. And the price must be paid.”
“Then that would make you just like him,” Isabella said. “Do you have the courage to live with that?”
“I’m afraid to know,” Angelo said. He stood up, reached out his arms and held Isabella very, very close.
• • •
IF A YOUNG woman such as Isabella were to become a gangster’s wife, she would do so on her own terms and be primed to follow the traditional patterns put in place centuries ago in Italy. Most of these women were strong-willed and fully aware of what it was their men did for a living. They were raised to love and respect their husbands and demand the same treatment in return. Mistresses would not be tolerated and her rule of the house and children was never to be questioned. “You had a wife back in those days it was like having yourself a partner,” Pudge said. “They weren’t blind to what went on, and you could count on them to be loyal from the get-go. Those were marriages that lasted until death, usually his. And if she wore the widow’s black and kept her husband’s name and her reputation clean, the bosses made sure she was well taken care of for the rest of her years. None of that holds true now. We’re as much of a disaster as the rest of the country when it comes to marriage. But back then, when a wife said she loved you, you could chisel it in stone.”
• • •
THE JAZZ QUARTET was winding down a slow rendition of “Alexander’s Ragtime Band,” the large dance floor below them crammed with the young and high-heeled. Angelo held Isabella’s hand as they both watched the dancers sway and shimmy to the beat. He caught the glow in her eyes, allowing her to be swallowed by the glitter and romance of a world that whirled along on fast forward.
“What do you think?” Angelo asked, raising his voice to be heard over the music.
Isabella answered his question with one of her own. “Do you spend much of your time here?”
“Mostly for business,” he said. “The man I work for owns the club.”
Isabella took a sip from a glass of cold water and smiled at him from above the rim. “Is tonight business?”
“No,” Angelo said, shaking his head.
“Then you must have something important to ask me. Or else why bring me here?”
Angelo looked over at t
he crowded Cotton Club dance floor. He studied the faces of the soft-skinned men in their smart-tailored suits and the young women whose eyes gleamed in their presence. Old money mixing easily with the newfound wealth of the illicit. All of them with too much free time and excess amounts of cash. These were the people Angelo would feed off of as he continued his rise through the ranks of the mob. They would buy his whiskey, frequent his clubs and invest in his illegal pursuits. Next to them, Isabella was a vision of freshness and love, a bright light casting a sharp glow across a decadent room. He turned to look back at her, her open face trusting in him only, ignoring all other movements around them.
“I’ve wanted to ask you for six months,” Angelo told her. “I just haven’t been able to put the right words together. It’s not what I do well.”
“And I’ve been waiting six months for you to ask. Right words or not, my answer will still be the same.”
“Is that answer a yes?” Angelo said, staring at Isabella above the glare of the candle in the center of the table.
“Is it so impossible to ask the question?” Her fingers gently stroked the top of Angelo’s hand.
“Be my wife, Isabella,” Angelo said. “I have been in love with you from the second I handed you that peach.”
“That very expensive peach,” she laughed.
“I wish to make you happy, Isabella. It is all that matters to me.”
“Have you talked to my father yet?” Isabella asked.
“Last Christmas. He’s been waiting as long as you have for me to ask you.”
“He probably has the wedding all planned out already.” She took another sip of water and glanced over her shoulder at the dance floor, dozens of couples dancing to a clarinet-led blues medley. “Do you like to dance?”
“I never have,” he said in a shy whisper.
“I never have either,” Isabella said. “My father always told me that my first dance would have to be with the man I love and expect to spend the rest of my life with.”
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