Pudge, meanwhile, busied himself working the streets, keeping up the crew members’ morale and assuring concerned parties that all was not lost. But Pudge was much less patient than Angelo and his nerves were starting to fray. He was eager for the action to begin. “Angelo would be willing to wait until he was close to death for his opening,” Pudge told me over those long, frustrating days. “I gotta admit that sometimes it gets to me, sitting around, watching our body count add up, losing as much money as we are and doing nothing about it.”
“A lot of times, too long can get to be too late,” Nico complained. “They’re already saying he’s lost the stomach for the fight, that he doesn’t care enough to protect what belongs to the crew. The talk on the street is that he’s never been weaker.”
“Those are nice words for me to hear.” Pudge smiled for one of the few times during that period. “That makes me think maybe he really knows how to win this damn war.”
“I’ve never seen him like this before,” I said. “It’s almost like he’s not even with us, he’s so distant. Sometimes it’s scary to be around him.”
“Angelo puts the moves in place in his mind before he makes them on the street,” Pudge explained. “It’s what’s always worked for him. It’s just that now we’re up against the kinds of crews we’ve never seen before. They make up their rules on the fly and don’t look too far beyond the win. That’s their big advantage going into all this. Unless we do a total wipeout, they can’t help but come out with a gain.”
“Whatever happens, I hope it happens soon,” Nico said with a shake of his head. “I’m down to less than forty men in the Bronx and half of the Queens crew is laying low. These guys are looking to gun down anybody even close to us. If Angelo doesn’t make his move before too much longer, he’s not gonna have any turf left to defend.”
Pudge poured himself a cup of fresh-brewed coffee. “They’ve taken their shots at everybody in our crew,” he said as he walked out of the room. “Everybody except me and Angelo. We can walk down an empty street unarmed and nobody ever dares come near us.”
“You’re no threat to them without a crew backing you up,” Nico said. “They eliminate them, they eliminate you.”
“Maybe that’s it,” Pudge said. “Or maybe there’s a little part of them that’s still too scared to make a full play. And if that holds to be true, then we got them by the short hairs.”
“I hope that’s not the whole plan,” I said.
“That’s the plan for now,” Pudge said.
• • •
TONY MESH STEPPED over a thick pile of shoveled snow and cleared a path to get to the driver’s side of his four-door Plymouth. He was wearing a coffee-colored army jacket, tan pants, L.L.Bean rubber-soled boots and a rain-soaked Yankees cap. A cigarette hung off the center of his mouth. He opened the door, scraping its bottom against ice and slush, and hopped in behind the wheel. He tossed the cigarette into the middle of the street and slammed the door shut. He blew warm air into his cupped hands and looked around at the empty boulevard, still reeling from a long night of snow. He checked the time on his Three Stooges wristwatch and smiled, knowing he was less than an hour away from the big time.
He had been Richie Scarafino’s main muscle these past three months as they had both cut a slow carve through Angelo and Pudge’s aging crew. Now, finally, they were making the direct move against the two top gangsters, something Mesh had been pining for since the start of the one-sided war.
“Believe me when I tell you they don’t have the stomach for it anymore,” Mesh said to Scarafino as they sat in the back of a cousin’s restaurant off the Brooklyn waterfront, in the flush hours of their early planning stage. “They got way too much money to care and too little time left in their lives to waste it fighting with us.”
“I wish I had a pocketful of nickels for every time I heard that Bones Vestieri and Pudge Nichols were ready for the dirt farm,” Scarafino said.
“They’re getting hit from three sides, Richie.” Tony Mesh slapped a palm on the white-clothed table for emphasis. “This ain’t no one-on-one goomba war like they’ve been used to fighting. This is three crews, all packing large, looking to do nothing but kill. Against that, they can’t win. I don’t think any of the big-time crews could. They’re going to get hit like they’re in the middle of Pearl Harbor.”
“Yo, professor, try not to forget who ended up winning that fight,” Richie said, taking a sip of espresso. “Look, let the Colombians and the smokes go their own way. We stick to my plan. We hit the outside of their crew and work our way in, the way we’ve been doing. So far, not a peep from either Vestieri or Nichols. So if we keep going, when you do go out to whack them, you’ll face a lot less muscle than we could’ve faced. And if, like you say, they’ve both lost their taste for the action, then the takedown becomes an in-and-out job, with us still ending up with a large chunk of the business.”
“I’ll work it any way you want, Richie,” Tony Mesh said with a resigned shrug. “I’m just looking to get us up to the top rung at a faster clip.”
Richie Scarafino leaned across the table and put an arm around Tony’s wide shoulders. “And I love you for it,” he said. “But let’s climb that ladder one step at a time. Trust me, we do that and we’ll enjoy it a whole lot more.”
• • •
THE HOMELESS MAN standing alongside the idle Plymouth shook Tony Mesh out of his thoughts and brought him back to the moment. He was holding a black cup, his face buried under dirty rags and a wool cap. His hands were stained dark with dirt and oil, and he was wearing a soiled pair of pants that were held up by half a belt and a long roll of thick cord. His feet were covered by torn desert boots, their soles wrapped in tinfoil.
He rapped on Tony Mesh’s window with two cracked knuckles and held his empty cup against the glass. “Whatever you can spare,” he mumbled.
Tony Mesh rolled down the window and peered up at the homeless man, his short-fuse temper already set to go. “How about you find an empty lot and curl up until you freeze?” Tony Mesh said to him.
The homeless man kept his head down, slowly shifting one of his hands to an inside pocket of his torn navy pea coat. “Just trying to make it through the day, pal,” he said, his head still down, voice even lower. “Not looking for trouble, just a warm spot in my stomach.”
“All you’re gonna get out of this spot is a hard kick in the ass,” Tony Mesh said sullenly. He pulled a fresh cigarette from his shirt pocket and pounded it against the steering wheel. “Now go take yourself a long walk before I stop being so nice.”
“You got an extra one of those?” the homeless man asked, standing up against the door, his back blocking the sideview mirror.
Tony Mesh looked at the homeless man, shook his head and opened the driver’s side door. “You don’t have to worry about the cold weather killing you,” he said as he stepped out of the car and stood inches from the homeless man’s face. “You don’t get away from my car, I’ll kill you.” He unzipped his army jacket and showed the homeless man the .38 special he kept on a hip holster.
The homeless man shoved Tony Mesh up against his car, keeping his hand inside his jacket pocket. Tony Mesh’s eyes searched the homeless man’s face, surprised at his strength, unable to break the hold, his back crammed along the panel next to the open door. The homeless man pulled his free hand out of his navy pea coat and came out holding a fully loaded .9mm. He jammed the nozzle of the handgun under Mesh’s rib cage, his eyes suddenly alive, shedding the street drunk’s downcast demeanor and replacing it with an assassin’s confidence.
The homeless man waited as Tony Mesh’s hand slid out of his jacket. He then held the cup he was holding up to Mesh’s face. “Are you crazy?” Mesh asked, staring down at the half-filled cup. “I’m not gonna drink what’s in there.”
“You can drink or you can bleed,” the homeless man said.
Tony Mesh looked with eager eyes up and down the wide avenue, the streets still empty, the stores not yet op
en. The homeless man moved closer, shoving the barrel of the gun harder against Tony Mesh’s body, smiling when he saw the lines of sweat forming along the sides of his face and neck. “I’m not drinking poison,” Mesh said, his right eye twitching, his upper lip trembling.
The homeless man tossed the cup over Tony Mesh’s shoulder and watched it land and spill across the Plymouth’s front seat, a thin line of blue liquid flowing out and dripping onto the brown rug. The homeless man stared into Tony Mesh’s eyes and leaned into him, pinning his arms at his side. Then, with a professional calm, he pumped three slugs into the center of Mesh’s erect body, each shot causing the younger man’s head to tilt back. He held Mesh in place until he saw the blood run down the sides of his mouth and his eyes begin to flutter and drift, the soft coat of tears masking the drain of his life. The homeless man checked the street for pedestrians, then stepped aside to gently place Tony Mesh back inside his car, positioning his hands on the steering wheel and leaning his head back against the leather rest. He reached across his body, picked up the discarded cup and brought it up to the dying gangster’s lips. He poured what remained of the poison liquid down Tony Mesh’s throat and threw the cup back down to the car floor. “This way you get the best of both,” he said.
The homeless man slammed the door shut and started a slow shuffle walk up the avenue, leaving behind Angelo Vestieri’s first victim of his last war.
• • •
IT WAS HALFWAY through the five o’clock mass when I looked away from the altar and saw Angelo sitting in a back row of the church. There were no more than thirty other faces sitting in the high-ceilinged cathedral, most of them elderly, their rosary beads wrapped around trembling hands. I was working the mass alone, serving as altar boy to Father Ted Donovan, a middle-aged priest who brought a driving passion to both his sermons and the Sunday afternoon touch football games that were organized for the kids of St. Dominick’s parish. I rang the bells and bowed my head, wondering why Angelo was there. I had been an altar boy since my grammar school years and this was the first time I had seen him at one of my masses. As with most gangsters, he had little regard for the demands the Catholic faith made on how their subjects chose to live their lives.
“They were in the rackets centuries before the first gangster was even born,” he once said to me, dismissing the very notion of religion with a slight wave of his hand. “They got a big-time money operation going and the perfect cover. Who better to partner up with than God?”
“They do a lot for the poor,” I said, watching him pour hot milk into a large cup.
“They give them a warm place to sit for one hour a week,” he said, looking up at me as he poured. “And even for that, they expect some coins in the basket. To me, that’s not help. That’s taking advantage. They do the same thing to the poor that we do, except the interest rates they charge aren’t as high. You want to go inside a church and say a few prayers, don’t look to me to stop you. But don’t be fooled. It’s a business, just as cold as ours.”
I had always found comfort inside a church, seeking my silent refuge across its empty pews. I would light a daily candle to St. Jude, the patron saint of lost causes and, ironically, cops as well, and would, on occasion, walk the stations of the cross, retracing the steps of Christ leading to the crucifixion. But mostly, I would sit in a back row, taking in the familiar smells, watching the sun slant through the decorated windows, and allow my mind to wander and rest. It was the place I sought out when the delicate balance of my life would prove too difficult to bear. It was not so much peace I sought as an escape. Inside the dark walls and high ceilings of St. Dominick’s, there were no gang wars that needed to be fought and there were no high school pressures that had to be faced. There were just quiet moments where life stayed still and allowed me the luxury of catching up to it.
I slid in the back pew alongside Angelo and sat facing the main altar. He patted me on the leg and nodded. “You did good up there,” he said. “From what little I understand of it.”
“There’s not much to it,” I said. “If you can sit and kneel, you can pretty much handle the job.”
“I’m sending you to Italy for the summer,” he said, his eyes looking up at the large wooden cross hanging down from the center of the church. “Soon as you’re done with school.”
I looked away from the altar and turned to face him. “Why?” I asked, raising my voice slightly. “I can’t leave you in the middle of . . .”
I stopped myself from saying anything further. But Angelo continued my thought, speaking quietly but leaving no room for argument.
“The war will be at an end long before we see summer. One way or the other. But either way, you’re going to Italy.”
“I know I’m not much of a help,” I said.
“You’re going to learn more about our way of life,” he said. “That way, maybe one day, you’ll be a bigger help.”
I sat back, took a deep breath and realized what Angelo was telling me. I was being sent to Italy to be further schooled in the gangster ways, and I knew, even then, that if I boarded that plane, my life would be set on its path and any say I would have in its outcome would be tossed aside. I would be in too deep, be too ingrained in their ways to want to seek out any other. All that was needed was for me to take that one final step and earn the missing degree in my criminal education.
“Who’s there to teach me?” I asked, watching an old woman kneel in front of a statue of St. Anthony, her head bowed in prayer.
“You’ll stay with a family on a small island just off the coast of Naples,” Angelo said. “I’ve been doing business with them since before the Second World War. They’ll treat you as one of their own. All you have to do is listen to what they say.”
“Why don’t you come with me?”
“Because vacations are bad for business. But you won’t be going alone. I’m sending Nico. He’ll make sure you don’t run off with the first girl who smiles your way.”
“Who’s going to be there to keep an eye on him?”
“He’s old enough to call his life his own,” Angelo said with a slight shrug.
The sun came down on us in warm slants, leaving half our bodies buried in shadows as the flickering glow from the candles danced on the walls of the large church. I watched the women dressed in black whisper their daily prayers for the dead, the color of their clothes reflecting their mood. Up at the main altar, a young priest began to prepare for the last mass of the afternoon.
Angelo tapped me on the leg and nodded. “Let’s get out of here before they pass around the basket. I’ve lived this long without giving them any of my money. Not looking to start the habit now.”
“There are things I want to say to you but I can never figure out how,” I said, looking over at him. “I’ve practiced them hundreds of times when I’m alone, but I just can’t seem to get the words to come out straight when I’m with you.”
“It’s easier to talk to Pudge. He’s got a way about him that makes people tell him things. With me, they tend to stay quiet. Maybe because I encourage it.”
“I don’t ever want to do anything to disappoint you,” I said, my words coming out slow and measured. “I want you to be proud of me and to never regret the choice you made in taking me into your home.”
Angelo stared at me with warm, dark eyes, but he didn’t speak, the sunlight bouncing off the hard lines of his face, and he kept his hands still and folded across his lap. I knew this was the kind of talk he liked the least, but it was important for me to finally tell him. There was so much more I wanted to say, but I didn’t know if it would draw him closer to me or force him to take a careful step back. He was not a man who made a show of his emotions, and he understood that such reticence only added to his mystique. He also had an inbred mistrust for those who were quick to open up to others and reveal their innermost thoughts. “If you know what I think, then you know how I think, and that could be enough to give my enemy the edge he needs,” I once overheard him telling P
udge. “Besides, there should be a private place in your heart that no one should know about, no matter how close you are. A place no one should ever be allowed to see.”
Pudge was always quick to laugh off such talk, preferring to let you know how he felt and what he believed even before you had the time to ask. While such an attitude made Pudge an easier man to be around, there was a magic to Angelo’s silence. I felt that simply by being allowed in his company he was handing me entry into a very dark but very special world.
“I don’t love easy,” he finally said. “And I don’t disappoint easy. It has helped keep me alive, even on days when I didn’t care if I died. That’s a part of me that won’t ever change. But I know you won’t do anything to disappoint me. You haven’t yet and I don’t think you’re ever going to start.”
“I don’t know what it would have been like for me,” I blurted out, tears unwillingly falling down the sides of my face, “if you and Pudge hadn’t come along. I feel like I have a place where I belong. And I know that I’ll do anything not to lose it. Or to lose you.”
Angelo leaned over and for the first time in my life kissed me on the cheek and forehead. “Let’s get out of here,” he said, “before they sign us up as priests.”
I wiped at my tears with the sleeve of my shirt. “Wouldn’t be such a bad thing,” I said. “Pudge says wearing the collar is the perfect cover. He says you’d make money hand over fist if you planned it right.”
“Don’t kid yourself.” We stood and eased our way out of the pew and turned our backs to the center altar. “The church bosses would never let Pope Pudge past the front doors. They’d eat him up. That’s a crew that could give us lessons.”
• • •
PABLITO MUNESTRO SAT in a center booth of the crowded restaurant, one hand wrapped around a large glass of rum and the other resting on the thigh of a tall brunette in a black maxi skirt and high heels. His older brother, Carlos, was wedged in next to him on his left, edgy and nervous, anxious for the meeting to begin.
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