by Albert Demeo
The moment I crossed the threshold, time always seemed to slow down. Walking into the social club always felt slightly surreal to me, like entering another world. As the doors shut behind me, I was plunged into a dusky world filled with strange sights and sounds. Bare bulbs with mushroom glass covers dangled from the ceiling, giving just enough light to see.
Straight ahead of me was the bar, with its large espresso machine towering above, almost as tall as my father. The machine was huge, glowing brass with an eagle on the top, its wings spread in flight. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I gazed up at it in awe. The aroma of the coffee beans washed over me as I drew near. Mixed with the aroma of espresso were the scents of food, much like Uncle Frank's restaurant. A table near the bar was covered with Italian pastry, piles of cannoli and other rich delicacies. Large platters of antipasti were laid out, heaped with cold cuts and a variety of cheeses. Every couple of hours the restaurant down the street would deliver hot food—pasta, meat dishes, whatever anyone wanted. Servers from the restaurants laid the food out on the tables and quietly disappeared back outside. Next to the bar was an old-fashioned candy counter with display cases at eye level for me. To my disappointment, no one ever put any candy in it. The only candy I ever saw there was a dusty roll of Neccos that remained untouched week in and week out. There was a cigarette machine next to it, also empty. I asked my dad for quarters for the machine, just for the fun of punching the buttons, but my dad said there wasn't anything in it.
There were usually fifty or sixty men gathered around plain wooden tables in groups of five or six on a weekend afternoon. The chairs they sat on were red Naugahyde with brass studs. Like everything else in the place, the chairs were worn but clean. The dark floors were made of wood, scuffed from generations of men walking their boards. The white walls were bare except for some pictures of saints. The only decorations were a painted wooden statue of the pope, about three feet tall, and another of the Virgin Mary and the Christ Child.
There were two main rooms at the Ravenite: one in the front where people ate and played cards, another in the back where private business was conducted. There were no women there, and I never saw anyone in a uniform. Everyone wore nice slacks or a suit, and most of the men were swarthy and dark haired like my dad. The main room was filled with activity, dozens of men eating or playing cards. The front of the room was crowded with men watching a television mounted on the wall inside the entrance. Just as in the club near the business district, there was always a horse race showing, and the shouting and cursing of the onlookers made it hard to hear. In a smaller room in the back, the atmosphere was quieter. This room was much darker than the room out front. This was where we met Uncle Nino to do business.
People came and went continually, and everybody seemed to have something to buy or sell. The negotiating was ordinarily fast and furious. Three or four guys would sit at a table doing deals. One had a truckload of electronics to sell, another had cases of fine watches, another exotic fruit. Sometimes the buying and selling was outright; other times it was a series of elaborate trades. One guy would hook the other guy up with a buyer in exchange for something he needed. Occasionally one of the men would leave for a few minutes and come back with a sample of his merchandise. Other men would be talking money. “Joe over here needs fifty thousand, he's got a little union problem he needs to take care of.” Or “Tony needs a little start-up money for his shop.” Someone usually wanted to talk to my dad about getting a little help. After a while I would get bored and go looking for something to do.
I usually gravitated toward the old men who gathered at the club. While my father conducted boring business, I sat at the table with them to eat and play cards. I loved listening to their stories about the old country. My father taught me to have respect for older people; he told me that they were living history books, full of wisdom. I got to know many of them after a while. They liked me, for I was a polite boy. I would kiss them in greeting, call them “Uncle” or “Mister,” and always remember to say “please” and “thank you.” Some of them had no grandchildren, and as I was the only child in the club, they looked forward to seeing me. I felt like a lucky boy, for though both of my own grandfathers had died before I was born, the social club gave me a roomful of grandfathers to tell me stories, give me treats, and pat me on the head. I felt comfortable with them, more comfortable than I did with the kids at school.
One afternoon at the Ravenite, my father stuck his head out of the back room and called me over to him. “Go out to the car and bring in that package for me. You know the one. It's for Uncle Nino.” He handed me the keys to the Cadillac.
I went outside and got the package out of the trunk. I knew there was a gun in it, because I had watched my father wrap it. I put the package inside my shirt, as I had seen my father do with other packages, and carried it back inside to Uncle Nino. He sat at the table with my father and two men I didn't know. As he took the package, Nino said, “So Albert, what do you think of the gun?”
I instinctively replied, “What gun?” Somehow I knew that I shouldn't acknowledge what was in the package.
Uncle Nino smiled at me and nodded his approval.
A few minutes later my father told me he wanted to introduce me to someone very special. We into the back room again, and I saw an elderly man seated at the table next to Uncle Nino. He was average height, with receding white hair and a lined tan face. He looked like an ordinary old grandfather, the kind I saw feeding pigeons in the park near home. The only thing that set him apart was his grooming. He was expensively dressed, with an Italian suit and shoes like my father's. He wore a diamond on his pinky finger, and his nails were beautifully manicured. My father introduced him to me as Mr. Dellacroce. I kissed him politely, and he said something to my father and patted me on the head. Then my father said, “Tell Mr. Dellacroce what you do if you have to shoot somebody, Al.”
I knew the answer; my father had taught it to me when we were cleaning guns one day in the workshop. I promptly recited, “Two in the head, make sure they're dead.”
I paused, and my father prompted me with a nod. Remembering the rest, I finished, “Then slit their fucking throats!”
Mr. Dellacroce guffawed, then said, “Good boy!” and bent over to give me a kiss. All the men were laughing. My father ruffled my hair and beamed with pride. I loved getting laughs. I'd even gotten to say a dirty word right out loud. Dad and I never used dirty words around my mother, only when we were alone. I started laughing with them. It was good to be in on the joke. In the car on the way home, my father talked to me about Neil Dellacroce.
“You can't always tell a man's importance just by looking at him, Al. That frail old man is very, very powerful. All he has to do is nod his head and hundreds of men will kill for him. That's why you must always be careful and respectful. You don't always know who you're really talking to.” I was very surprised. To me Mr. Dellacroce seemed like just another grandfather telling stories.
I found out years later that he was the last surviving member of Lucky Luciano's Murder, Inc., the most dangerous gang in the 1930s. He was also the underboss of the Gambino family.
In the dozens of trips I made to social clubs with my father, no one ever asked me to leave so they could talk. The moment someone approached my father, I walked away, but invariably I would be told, “No, no, you can stay, Albert. It's okay.” I usually retreated to a distance anyway; though on the occasions I did stay, I seldom understood the discussion. I heard a great deal that I didn't understand, but I instinctively knew that the conversations were meant to be secret. Unless somebody was selling something, everything they said was so vague that it didn't mean anything to me. I couldn't have repeated anything meaningful if I'd wanted to.
Usually I didn't say a word during the conversations between my father and Uncle Nino at the Ravenite. One afternoon, however, I found myself drawn into their conversation for the first time. They were talking about a trial. Somebody they knew had been arreste
d, and the police had tapes of the guy committing the crime. Apparently the police were also helping Uncle Nino because he was talking about a cop who had brought him copies of all the reports. Uncle Nino was reading the cop's reports as I sat there. He handed the sheets to my father as he finished each one, and they spoke about what they were reading. Uncle Nino seemed pretty worried.
“We can't afford to have him go down for this. We gotta make those tapes disappear.”
“I thought you had a guy on the inside,” my father replied.
“I do. I could have him lift the tapes from the evidence room, but then they might be on to him. He's too valuable to lose. Besides, he might sell me out if he has to deal.”
“There has to be a way to get rid of those tapes without getting caught.”
As the men pondered out loud, throwing out ideas, I remembered something I'd learned at school. We were studying magnets, and the teacher had showed us what happened when you put a magnet next to an electronic tape. The magnet lifted the particles and erased the tape. I waited until he and Uncle Nino paused for a minute, and then said to my father, “Why don't you just put a magnet next to the tapes? That would erase them, wouldn't it?”
My father stared at me a moment; then he and Uncle Nino started to laugh. Finally Nino said, “The kid's right, Roy.” Then turning to me, “You're one smart kid, you know that, Albert?” My heart swelled with pride. Uncle Nino ordered ice cream for me while my father went down the street to a hardware store and bought a big magnet. He returned a few minutes later and handed it to Nino. All the men slapped me on the back as we left that day. My father beamed with approval.
That evening when we pulled into the driveway at home, I saw Lisa sitting on the front steps waiting for us. Her small face was pale and worried as we got out of the car. The moment my father saw her face, he went over and sat beside her, putting his arm around her and looking into her eyes.
“Are you all right, honey? Is everything all right?”
Lisa's face was serious as she replied, “Daddy, I need to tell you something. Something bad.”
“What is it, sweetheart?”
“I broke the basement window in the back. I didn't mean to do it. I was playing with my ball. I wanted to tell you because you told me it's always better to be honest, and I promised never to lie to you. You can take the money to fix it out of my allowance. Are you mad at me, Daddy?”
My father drew her onto his lap and held her tight. I saw his eyes fill with tears. “No, sweetheart, I'm not mad at you. It was an accident. You're my honest girl.” Looking at my little sister's sober face, I suddenly didn't feel quite so proud of myself. I caught my father's eye, and he looked away. I felt as though a rock had formed in my stomach as we went inside to have dinner.
A couple of months later I asked my dad what ever happened to the tapes. He said a policeman put the magnet next to the tapes in the evidence room, and it erased everything on them just like I'd expected. When the lawyer played them in court, there was nothing but silence. The lawyer was furious, but no one could figure out how it had happened.
From then on, I enjoyed a new status among my father's associates at the social club. I had proven myself to be more than just Roy's son. Each time I went downtown with my father, men competed for the honor of giving me things. I could choose whatever I wanted from the trucks being unloaded on Mulberry Street. Guys from the club carried food back from restaurants for me. I could have the best food in Little Italy any time I wanted, in any amount I wanted. If I said some ice cream or a candy bar sounded good, someone would rush off to get it. If they got the wrong flavor, they went right back out the door to buy the right one. At school I was a well-behaved third-grade kid learning my multiplication tables in a back-row desk, but in the social clubs I was a little man who basked in my father's power.
That spring, with the return of warm weather, my father spent more time at home on the weekends, preparing the soil for my mother to plant. I started working in the small garden my father had dug for me, planting vegetables for the summer. It felt good to be outside instead of cooped up in a smoky room. My mother's bulbs were already sprouting, and daffodils and narcissus peeked through the gaps in the picket fence. As Easter approached, I prepared to take my first communion in the Lutheran church where my sisters and I attended Sunday school. My mother took me to May's to buy me a new suit for the occasion and told me Easter dinner would be extra-special that year in honor of my communion. My father brought home a whole pig from the butcher's to cook for Easter dinner, and my relatives and Uncle Mikey were invited to share the occasion.
The pig was stuffed with fruit and was rotating on a spit in the upstairs kitchen by the time we got up on Easter morning. The Easter Bunny always came the night before to hide our baskets, and though I had outgrown believing in the bunny, I hadn't outgrown the basket. Even my older sister, who was nearly fourteen, loved the annual basket hunt. All three of us tumbled out of bed to begin the search before we even had breakfast. The “Bunny” was fiendishly clever when it came to hiding baskets, and that year it took us over an hour of determined searching to find them. We spread out all over the house, opening cupboards and ransacking every possible hiding place. Debra finally found her basket hidden among boxes of memorabilia in the attic. Mine was stashed behind a box of my father's tools in the basement workshop, but Lisa's was nowhere to be found. After we found our own, Debra and I pitched in to help her find it, but it was no good; we couldn't find it anywhere. Finally Lisa started crying and ran to my father for comfort, saying the Easter Bunny had forgotten her.
My father picked her up in his arms and reassured her that the Bunny would never forget a girl as good as she was. Then he took her upstairs and hinted that she might see it in the yard if she looked out the upstairs window. Lisa stuck her head through the open window and there, suspended from a hook on a rope from the attic, hung her basket. She screamed with joy as Dad pulled it up to the window for her. Everything in our baskets, even the chocolates, was homemade and absolutely delicious. We were happily covered in sugar syrup and chocolate when Mom called us to the breakfast table, already too full to eat. My mother just laughed when she saw us and sent us down the hall to wash off and get dressed for Sunday school. A while later we lined up for inspection, me in my new suit and my sisters in beautiful pastel dresses. Then it was off to church and Easter services.
The relatives had already started arriving by the time we got home, but my father had an errand to run in Little Italy before dinner, and he took me with him. He had given me a small diamond pinky ring that matched his for a communion gift, and when we got downtown, he had me show it off to the men at the Ravenite. When I showed it to the first man and told him what it was for, he immediately got to his feet, congratulated me on this holy occasion, and gave me a fifty-dollar bill. All around him other men began getting to their feet to fall in line behind him and pay their respects to me. One after another, they blessed me and put one-hundred-dollar bills into my hand. No one else gave me less than a hundred dollars, and some of them gave two hundred. By that time, the first man to congratulate me had noticed with embarrassment the amounts other men were giving me. So he got in line again and gave me another hundred, calling it “an additional gift.” I looked at the growing pile of bills with amazement, politely thanking each man as he handed me the cash and bent to kiss my cheek. When it was all over, I had added nearly three thousand dollars to my little roll of bills. I shoved it deep into my pocket for the ride home.
By the time we got back, Uncle Joe and Uncle Louis and Aunt Marie and all the cousins were there. I put my money on the top shelf in my room, in the box where I kept my trick cards and other treasures, and went outside to play. High from the sugar we'd been eating all morning, we kids ran around the backyard and ruined our new clothes while the women finished preparing Easter dinner. My grandmother made her Easter bread from a secret recipe. It was heavy and rich with eggs and butter. My mother made grain pie from a traditional Ita
lian recipe that called for soaking whole grain overnight and then mixing it with ricotta cheese and sugar. She had already made two kinds of pie and cake and her anisette cookies, another Easter specialty. My aunt made pizza rustica, a kind of deep-dish pie made with ham and a mixture of Italian cheeses. The roast pig was served whole on a big platter in the center of the dining room table. As everyone sat down, my mother made a little speech congratulating me on my first communion, and everyone offered me blessings. My father had me show everyone my new ring. I saw my older cousin Benny roll his eyes and look at his sister, but everyone else complimented me politely on my ring when I proudly told them it was just like Dad's. Then my mother announced, “Let's eat,” and everyone forgot about anything but the food.
Uncle Mikey had just gotten back from a vacation in Italy with his wife, and he kept everyone entertained with stories of his travels while we ate. Dad had arranged for them to visit our family's ancestral town, and they toured in style. Mikey's wife talked about the villas and the gardens, but Uncle Mikey had better stories to tell. He'd found out the hard way that some of the bathroom facilities were pretty crude in the area, so he was caught unprepared when there was no toilet paper. The only thing he had with him was his wallet, stuffed with Italian lira, so he took out a handful of bills and used them to wipe his backside. When he told his hosts about it afterward, expecting them to laugh, they were amazed that anyone could be wealthy enough to do that. Word circulated through the village that Mikey was fabulously wealthy. And even though the lira were worth far less than American dollars, some enterprising teenagers went excavating in the facilities and managed to dig up the lira. Uncle Mikey roared with laughter as he told me about it. I could tell from my mother's face that she didn't think it was an appropriate story to tell at the dinner table, but I didn't care. I laughed so hard, I spit my food out.
