by Norman Green
The two of them sat in silence. Finally Giovanni stirred again on the wooden pew. ‘She didn’t last long,’ he said, “just over four years, I think it was. Turned out, they didn’t have nothing to worry about. She wasn’t in there long before she couldn’t remember a thing. Didn’t know who I was, didn’t know who she was, most likely.”
“What did you do with her, when she died? Where did you bury her?”
Giovanni stuck the cigar back in his pocket. “They cremated her for me,” he said, “at the hospital. The one she was in. I took her ashes up to Oneida Lake, upstate. There’s a little town there, Silvan Beach. We went up there on holiday once. You remember the place?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Well, you were probably only three or four. Anyhow, at the southern end of the town, there’s a canal runs out of the lake, I buried her there, under an oak tree. Where her and me walked along the bank that one summer.”
“What about that kid in the hospital? He mind you borrowing his finger?”
“No, he didn’t care. I did him first, smothered him with a pillow.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“Ahh, it didn’t mean nothing, he was gone already. Poor bastard, just laying there in the bed like a stick of celery. Probably did him a favor. I had a hard time knowing when he was dead, you want to know the truth.”
“Nobody noticed he was missing a finger?”
“They put you in a box to bury you, for chrissake. You think somebody’s gonna open the box and count all the parts up? The guy didn’t have nobody, anyhow.”
“No? You check first?”
“No, that’s just the way it worked out.” He twisted to face Silvano across the aisle. “What do you give a shit about the guy, anyhow?”
“I guess I don’t, nobody else does. So my mother was still alive when you brought what’s-her-name home. Your second wife.”
“Her name is Elaine.”
“Yeah. Her.”
It was Giovanni’s turn to shake his head. “Okay. Yeah, you wanna get technical, Rachael was still alive. I didn’t think of her that way. You seen her in that bed, you wouldn’t have, either. Elaine was just a broad, you know. I didn’t mean for her to be anything more than that.”
“So what happened?”
The old man shrugged. “I had needs. She moved in, and girlfriends turn into wives. That’s just the way it goes. Hadda wait seven years, you know, before Rachael was declared dead. Elaine was counting the days, though I didn’t know it. Time was up, Noonie and Annette were already here, it was more trouble to get rid of her than to just go along with it. So . . .”
“So that was that.”
“Yeah.” The two of them sat with it for a minute. “End of story,” Giovanni finally said. “How’d you know I’d be here?”
“Called your wife,” Silvano said. “Elaine. She told me you do this, most Sundays.”
“She never mentioned that you called. You ask her not to?”
“No. She probably forgot.”
“Could be. You wanna come to the house? We got some nice veal for supper.”
Hell, no, Silvano thought. “Can’t,” he said. “I gotta wait here until it’s dark, and then I got business, over in Howard Beach.”
“He don’t live there no more.”
“Who’s that?”
“Don’t play stupid. He moved to Manhattan, a couple years back.”
“Yeah, I heard.”
“You’re gonna have to whack him, you know. Either that or you gotta run. Is that why you came back?”
“No. I came to look for Noonie. See if I could find out what happened. I figure, Dom lets me be, I let it go.”
“He ain’t going for that.”
“Yeah, I know. His mutts already tried for me once.”
“I heard.” The old man’s face broke into a wolfish grin. “They gonna bury Massimo in a coupla days. He’s the one, you broke his neck.”
“Short fat guy?”
“Yeah.”
“Wasn’t my fault. They should be glad the other three walked. The driver’s half asleep, for chrissake, the one guy’s standing out front like he’s the freaking doorman. I shoulda walked away, when I seen ’em there. I had the choice. I shoulda just went on by.”
“Don’t matter. You can’t leave things the way they are.”
“What’s the difference? I hit Domenic, you guys be looking for me forever.”
“They’re looking for you now, for Massimo, but I don’t think it matters all that much. You lay low for a while, everybody will forget about him. It’s Little Dom you gotta worry about. Why don’t you get him when he’s alone? Who could tell what happened? That way, coulda been anybody.”
I’m like a horse, Silvano thought, I’m going off at ten to one and he’s got fifty bucks on me. He wants to win his bet, beyond that he don’t give a shit. “I didn’t come here for that,” he said. “I came for Noonie. I ain’t going looking for Little Dom, but if he comes after me, I’ll finish it.”
“Oh, he’ll come, don’t you worry. He says it’s all your fault. Angelo dead, Jeannette turning into Sister Mara, him being what he is instead of Frank fucking Lloyd Wright, Jr., all of it would have been different, wasn’t for you. Everything would have been strawberries and fucking cream.”
“He can think what he wants.” He wants to hear the story, Silvano thought, but he’s too proud to ask. “You ever hear anything about Noonie? Any of your South Brooklyn buddies ever say anything?”
Giovanni leaned forward, resting his elbows on the back of the pew in front of him. “Nobody ever said a thing,” he said. He stared up past the altar where the light from a rack of small candles flickered up against the wall. “I thought at first, it might have had something to do with this business between you and Domenic, but everybody said no.”
“You believe that?”
“Yeah, I do. Otherwise, after some time went by, a little birdie would have whispered in my ear. You know how that goes. Funny thing was, last year he was alive, I kept trying to decide if I should have him put away, you know, find someplace nice where he’d be happy, keep him out of trouble. I went to talk to one of his doctors, this guy over at Bellevue was seeing him, guy told me Noonie would be better off learning how to function in normal society. So I left it alone.”
“Yeah? So what’d you do to the guy told you to leave him on the outside?”
“The doctor? Why you always gotta think the worst about me?”
“Come on. What’d you do?”
“I didn’t have to do nothing. Guy’s car caught on fire, with him inside. Terrible thing.” Giovanni gripped the back of the pew in front of him and pulled himself erect. He stepped out into the aisle, stiff from sitting so long. “You ready, for when Little Dom comes for you?”
Silvano reached down and pulled the black Beretta out of the ankle holster under his pantleg. “Yeah.”
“Okay. Anything you need, call me.”
“All right. Sure.”
“I gotta go home. To Elaine.” A hint of a smile lurked near his mouth.
“Yeah? You still got needs?”
“On occasion,” Giovanni said, grinning. “On occasion I get one, but at my age, you gotta use it right away or it folds up on you.”
HOWARD BEACH IS A SMALL, hermetic square of neighborhood, an enclave of quiet streets, small houses, postage-stamp-sized green lawns. It is bordered by the Belt Parkway on the north, by JFK Airport on the east, and by the Atlantic Ocean on the other two sides. It was, in the seventies, overwhelmingly Italian, fiercely defended by some of its inhabitants.
“Damn.” The car service driver was black, and he looked around suspiciously at the streets they were driving past. “You sure know how to pick ’em, buddy. First Bensonhurst, now Howard fucking Beach. You trying to get me killed?”
“Not me. You driving a cab. You really think anyone would mess with you?”
The driver swiveled in his seat to glare at Silvano, sitting in the back. “That a
trick question?”
“All right. Tell you what, I need to talk to someone, shouldn’t take no more than an hour. Place is halfway up this block. You drop me here, you can shoot up to the stop sign, grab a left, and run straight up Cross Bay Boulevard, go have a short one up near Aqueduct someplace. Come back down this block in, say, an hour and fifteen minutes, go slow, leave your right-hand turn signal on so I know it’s you, we’ll both be out of here before anything bad can happen. You okay with that?”
“Sounds like a lot of hanging around to me. I got expenses, man.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll take care of you.” The big Lincoln glided silently over to the curb. They discussed terms, and then Silvano got out, slammed the door shut, and watched the car pull slowly away.
THE HOUSE DIDN’T LOOK like anything special, it was a Cape, same as all the other houses on the block, short driveway, one-car garage. A ’68 Mercury Cougar was parked in front of the garage door. Silvano ran his hand over it as he walked up the driveway and stood in the pool of darkness between the garage and the house. Over the rumble of traffic in the background, he could hear the noise of a television from the house next door, voices from a loud argument over on the next block, a jet on its final approach to JFK, but nothing from the house he was interested in. There was light coming from what he assumed was a kitchen window, but the glass was opaque and he couldn’t see through it. Be best if she wasn’t home, he thought, but there was no way to hang around and wait for her to go out. Not on this block.
What if Little Dom’s in there? he thought. He pulled the Beretta out of the ankle holster and stuck it under his belt. If he is, it’ll all come down right here and right now . . . He walked up and tapped on the glass of the window in the back door, then stepped back into the shadows.
He heard someone stirring, heard the creak of a floorboard, but no footsteps. The door opened and she leaned out, shaking long hair out of her eyes. She looked around, saying nothing, until she spotted him standing in the darkness. “Yeah,” she said, combative, no fear in her voice. “What?”
He stepped forward into the light so she could see who he was. He kept his voice low. “Can you talk?”
She worked at a smile, couldn’t get it more than halfway on. “I’ll be damned,” she said. “If it ain’t the Antichrist himself. How the hell are you, Silvie?”
“Okay so far,” he said. “He around?”
“You kidding? I haven’t seen Domenic in months.” She looked at the pistol and rolled her eyes. “You guys,” she said. “Put the cannon away and come inside.”
He stuck the Beretta back in the holster and stepped up to the doorway. She stood there, blocking his path, long straight blond hair, dark brown eyebrows, brown eyes. Standing barefoot on the first step, she was almost at eye level with him. She let go of the door and inclined her face to be kissed. She embraced him when he did it, crushing him to her chest with surprising strength for such a small person. He stood there with his hands on her back and his face buried in her hair until she was ready to let him go. “Come in,” she said finally, pulling away. “Come on inside.”
“The Antichrist,” he muttered, half to himself. “Gimme a break.”
“Hey, listen,” she said. “In this house, you are the big, bad bogeyman.” She preceded him into the dimly lit kitchen. It had a yellow tile floor, yellow cabinets, yellow refrigerator with children’s artwork taped to the door. “Have a seat,” she said, gesturing to the table. “You want something to drink? I don’t even know what I got, maybe some wine . . .”
“No thanks, Gina,” he said. “I’m okay, I don’t need anything, really.”
She was looking in the refrigerator. “Man, Silvie, I really got nothing to offer you. I’m sorry.” She closed the refrigerator door. “I’m not much used to entertaining, these days.”
“That’s okay,” he said. “I’m fine. Last time I saw you, you had brown hair, and you were wearing it all piled up on top of your head.”
“Beehive,” she said, grimacing. “Don’t remind me. Well, Domenic still wears his hair like Frankie Avalon, but I see you finally quit getting yours cut like Sergeant Rock. How about I make us some coffee. You want a nice cup?”
“Gina, stop, I’m fine.”
“Silvie, listen to me. Domenic left six years ago, I been stuck here in this jail cell with two kids ever since. Everybody in the neighborhood knows him and me are separated, and every guy I know is scared shit to even say hello. All I get to talk to is girlfriends, wives, and old ladies, and even that’s only on the phone, most of the time. I haven’t had a man in my kitchen, not one I like, anyhow, for so long I can’t even remember. Let me make you some fucking coffee already.”
“Coffee would be nice.” He watched her busy herself at the counter. Damn, he thought, she looks better than I remember her. She was wearing white shorts and a blue denim work shirt with the sleeves rolled up. “Why don’t you leave, things are that bad?”
“He’s got me sewed up here, Silvie. Bought and paid for.” She was pouring water into the pot, and she didn’t turn to look at him. “The house ain’t mine, it’s in the name of some lawyer friend of his. He sends me enough money to feed the kids, pay the bills, and that’s about it. I’ve never had a job, Silvie, I leave here, I leave with nothing, I gotta support two kids, I wouldn’t know where to start. You take milk and sugar?”
“Black is good. You really wanted to go, you could find a way.”
“Maybe I could. Maybe I will, when the kids get old enough. Unless someone puts a bullet in Domenic’s head first, then I won’t have to wait. That what you came here to do?”
“No,” he said. “I didn’t come here to get this thing with Dom started up again. I just want to find out what happened to my brother Nunzio, that’s all. You remember him?”
“Course I remember Noonie.” She turned around and leaned back against the counter. Behind her, the coffeemaker coughed into life. “I was real sorry to hear about him.”
“What did you hear?”
“Somebody seen him, down at some check-cashing place they were sniffing around at. I heard that, and then I heard he come up missing.”
“You sure it was a check-cashing joint?”
“Something like that.”
“Guy named Ivan. I don’t know his last name.”
“Big guy, right, couple years younger than us?”
“That’s him.”
“Ivan tied in with Domenic?”
“They both run with old Antonio’s crew. Ivan was Domenic’s boy, probably still is. They were like Heckle and Jeckle for a few years.”
“Okay. You ever see Domenic?”
“It’s like I told you, Silvie. On very rare occasions, maybe once or twice a year, he comes over the house, drunk out of his mind. Terrorizes the kids, slaps me around, brags what he’s gonna do to me, passes out on the floor before he gets around to doing it.” She crossed the floor and sat down across the table from him. She had this look on her face, he couldn’t tell if it was resignation, sorrow, or just fear gone stale from the passing of time. “He’s an empty hole, Sil. He don’t care about anything or anybody. Since you left, he just kept getting meaner and meaner. The only thing he got excited about, the last year we were together, was getting back at you. He had some guy from the feebies calling him every time you got a new posting. He knew where you were the whole time, from when you went in all the way up through Viet Nam. Then, when you got sent over to the Defense Department, the guy couldn’t trace you anymore, Dom went wild. It was like he lost his mind. That was about the time he moved out. He blames you for everything, Sil, everything that’s wrong in his life is because of you.”
“That’s funny. I used to think all my problems were because of him.” He looked into her face. “What went wrong with you and him?”
She shook her head. “It was like a gradual thing. When we first got married, he was just like, you know, normally unhappy. You know what I mean? He didn’t like his job, he didn’t like this hous
e, he was like everybody else. But then he started getting weirder. Like, he couldn’t stand it if I made any noise, he had some guy putting soundproofing in the walls, he had to have it like a freaking monastery in here. He even started talking quiet himself, you had to strain to hear him. I was all the time, ‘What, what?’ and that pissed him off no end. And you couldn’t argue with the guy no more, I couldn’t fight with him the way regular people fight about things, he would sit there, and then he would just blow up. It was all life or death. Then, when the kids came, sheesh. I mean, kids make noise, that’s what they do. They cry and shit. He couldn’t take it. I had started to worry, you know, he was gonna do something permanent to me or to the kids, but what happened, it all came to a head when his grandfather died. ‘You’re free now,’ I told him. ‘Why don’t we just sell everything and just leave? You could go to school, like you always wanted.’ We had enough money for that, we could have just went. I guess I pushed him too hard. I mean, all those years I hadda listen to him complain, now he’s got the perfect chance to go do what he wants and he won’t take it. We had terrible rows over it, Silvie, terrible. Then they made Antonio Malatesta the new capo, to replace old Domenic, that was it, he beat the shit out of me and moved out.” She laughed, but it wasn’t much of a laugh, just one short, humorless exhalation. “You know, I think he was actually jealous of you. You know, you being in a war, going all over everywhere, and all. Old Dom never even had to get him a deferment when he got out of high school, did you know that? When he went before the draft board, they gave him a 4-F.”
“How come?”
“Mentally unfit.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah, coo-coo. Listen, nobody knows that, you say anything about it and he’ll kill me.”
“Him and me, we’re always having these long conversations.”
“Hey,” she said. “I had to mention it. What did you do, anyhow, for Defense? Dom was convinced they turned you into James Bond, it really ate him up, you know, him still stuck here in Brooklyn.”
