“Mikey, I think you’re doing this just to get back at Papa. The poor old man doesn’t even know who or where he is now!”
“No. I’m doing it because my wife wants it.”
Michael denied it, but he was as uneasy about insulting Saint Rocco as his brother. But Kit’s tolerance for religious superstitions had its limits and he was leery of pushing her any further. He’d won the one concession that mattered when she’d agreed that their son, who would be raised a Protestant, would be entrusted to the authority of the Jesuits when Danny was old enough to enroll at Matteo Ricci Preparatory Academy.
“Let me talk to her.”
“I can hear that conversation, Frankie. Please, Kit, you don’t understand how important Saint Rocco is to our family. He’s protected us from the evil eye for generations. Why tempt the fates?”
Frankie would be willing to compromise. It had made little difference to Michael, who set foot in a Catholic Church once a year to make his confession on Good Friday and only then because some habits were too ingrained to shake, if his son was baptized an Episcopalian. But Frankie had been shocked by Michael’s casual rejection of the religion in which they had been raised and, after consulting with his friend the priest, had upset his brother and his wife by politely and respectfully declining the honor of standing as godfather to his nephew in a Protestant ceremony. It was a decision he would now reconsider if a concession were necessary to steer the maliocch’ from an innocent child.
“Just let me talk to her. She’ll understand.”
Which she didn’t, but she surrendered, wary of creating a rift between her husband and his brother, and on the morning of his nephew’s christening, Frankie stood in the baptistery of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church and recited the words of the Book of Common Prayer, vouching before the Lord Jesus Christ in the name of Daniel Rocco Gagliano that his godson did, indeed, renounce Satan and all his works.
The ceremony was mercifully brief, followed by a gathering at Highbrook that threatened to go into the evening hours. The Judge was in unusually high spirits, both figuratively and literally, courtesy of Maker’s Mark bourbon. Kit thought his frequent memory losses were the consequences of years of alcoholism, but Michael recognized the same early signs of dementia he’d seen with Papa. The assembled descendants of storied Philadelphia families engaged in the perfunctory oohs and aahs and good-natured (but purely polite) arguments about which parent young Danny, the mirror image of his father, most resembled, before drifting off to engage in more pressing conversations about recent scandals involving the inhabitants of their rarefied world.
Kit, ever vigilant for the sounds of activity on the baby monitor, was engaged in the kitchen and sent her husband upstairs to check on their infant child. Danny was red-faced, crying out for someone to change his soaked diaper. Michael, who had never held, let alone changed, a baby before his son was born, was amazed by how much poop such a tiny creature was able to produce.
“You’re all nose and hose,” he said as he sprinkled talc on his boy’s tender skin. His son had inherited the noble Gagliano beak, and Michael took paternal pride in the impressive length of his penis. He picked up Danny and held the crown of his child’s head close to his face. It was a smell like no other, sweet and gentle and fragrant. Michael had never felt more content, at peace, than he did when he was holding his son, breathing in his essence, and his wife would find him in the wee hours of the morning dozing in a chair, his baby cradled in his arms.
“He’s so beautiful. Just like you when you were born.”
He hadn’t heard Frankie creep up behind him and the sound of his brother’s voice brought unexpected tears to his eyes.
“Tell me I’m nothing like him, Boo,” he whispered. “Please. Say that I’m nothing like Papa or I’ll walk out that door and never see my boy again.”
“You’re nothing like him, Mikey. Nothing at all,” he said, neither a lie nor the complete truth.
Michael had inherited his keen intelligence from his astute, if unschooled, father, a fact he only begrudgingly admitted. They both had quicksilver tempers and were prone to act before thinking. But Papa was an angry, bitter man. He was cold and cruel while his younger son had a tender heart, despite his best efforts to conceal it. Michael had tamed the wild beast that lived inside him, and Frankie, who knew him better than anyone, even his wife, assured him he would never lift his hand to strike his child.
“How do you know that, Boo? How can I be sure?”
“I just do, Mikey. Trust me. I just do.”
FRANKIE, 2000
“Now aren’t you glad that I insisted we do this?” Jack asked as they ended the third night of Frankie’s fortieth birthday cruise with a nightcap after winning big in the casino.
With Jack traveling incognito, in civvies and no clerical collar, they were quickly adopted as “the boys” by middle-aged couples who wouldn’t invite two obvious fairies to their dinner tables in their provincial hometowns. The husbands were amused by their wives’ coy flirtation with Frankie, feigning indignation over their admiration of his dimpled chin and long eyelashes. Claiming two left feet and trick backs, they encouraged Frankie and Jack to partner their women on the dance floor, busting a gut as their graceless wives attempted cheesy lounge act favorites like the Electric Slide and the Macarena. Frankie and Jack were in constant demand, the most popular men on board, even recruited to judge the Annette Funicello look-alike contest after the movie night viewing of How to Stuff a Wild Bikini. Everyone competed for “the boys” to sit at their table, and the women prodded Frankie to indulge in two rich desserts every night.
All good things must come to an end. The days passed quickly and suddenly it was the last night on board: one final dinner with new friends, phone numbers and e-mail addresses exchanged, solemn promises made to stay in touch. The priest made the last toast of the evening, his oratorical gifts on full display, and the couples all dispersed to their cabins, leaving Frankie and Jack alone. The band, playing to a near empty room, took all their requests: “Rhiannon” and “Landslide” for Frankie, “Close to You” and “Goodbye to Love” for Jack. Usually so garrulous, they were strangely quiet, each lost in his own thoughts.
Frankie realized he hadn’t thought of Charlie Haldermann even once during his week at sea. The hard truth was that the past year had been the most peaceful he’d had in over a decade, blessedly free of any stress and strife other than the predictable difficulties of dealing with a demented Papa. Charlie was dead and no longer needed to be rescued from creditors and hustlers and law enforcement agencies threatening to prosecute another DUI. Surely God would forgive Frankie for being grateful for having such a burden lifted from his shoulders. He’d envied the relationships of his friends. True, some of them went after each other like cats and dogs while he and Charlie never raised a voice against the other. And none of them were monogamous, either by agreement or deception, but they shared an intimacy Frankie and the schoolteacher had lacked.
The thoughts preoccupying his friend must have been much darker than his own, judging by the black clouds of anger that had settled upon his face. Jack tossed back four shots of Sambuca, then bellowed at the bartender to put the bottle on the table. He snapped at Frankie’s suggestion they call it a night, drinking until he could barely lift his head, babbling almost incoherently. The only words Frankie could understand were ones he pretended he didn’t hear. He led Jack back to their cabin, staggering under the dead weight of a stumbling drunk. Jack came to life as he kicked the cabin door behind him. He tore at Frankie’s shirt, buttons flying across the room, and dropped to his knees, struggling with Frankie’s belt buckle, finally burying his face in Frankie’s crotch, crying tears of frustration. Frankie stood erect, immobilized by the arms wrapped tightly around his legs. Jack moaned, then pushed Frankie away, scrambling on his hands and knees to reach the toilet. Frankie gagged, sickened by the smell of anise-sweetened vomit on the cabin floor.
Jack was already awake when the rocking of t
he boat roused Frankie from a deep sleep. Frankie heard the soft rumblings of the priest’s voice and rolled to his side, opening his eyes. Jack, dressed in a white T-shirt and his black dress cleric trousers, knelt beside his own bed. His back was toward Frankie, his Breviary in hand, the yellow soles of his bare feet and the black stole draped across his shoulders in plain view as he recited the solemn prayers of his Daily Office. Frankie closed his eyes, allowing Jack his privacy, and drifted back to sleep, comforted by the gentle murmur of the holy words.
God, come to my assistance; Lord, make haste to help me.
Jack was gone, his packed suitcase on his bed, when Frankie awoke. He quickly showered and threw his last dirty clothes in his bag and rushed upstairs to the breakfast room. He found Jack sitting alone at a table, staring into a bowl of cold cereal.
“Good morning! Did you sleep well?” he asked, his voice full of false cheer.
Looking into Jack’s sad, bloodshot eyes, he knew it was useless to try to erase last night’s sordid events with willful ignorance.
“Thank you,” the priest whispered, his dry throat cracking as he spoke.
“For what?” Frankie asked, not understanding what he had done to earn Jack’s gratitude.
“For being stronger than me. For not letting me break my vows.”
Frankie felt his cheekbones blazing with shame. He was afraid to look Jack in the face, knowing the truth would be apparent in his eyes. It hadn’t been noble thoughts that had caused him to refuse to yield to a tortured plea for a single kiss, but revulsion at the thought of having his ugly friend’s tongue in his mouth.
MICHAEL, 2005
If anyone could pull off a surprise party for Michael’s fortieth birthday, it was Katherine Morris Scott. Either she was deft and skillful—not one of the dozens of clever invitations with the black-and-white snapshot of Michael as a fifteen-year-old boy celebrating the 1980 World Championship found its way into his hands—or he was simply too oblivious to notice, having lately been entrenched in spearheading the Commonwealth’s latest challenge to yet another of the seemingly endless appeals of the capital conviction of the killer of the tragic Carmine Torino. She’d called him at his office, where he was spending yet another Saturday afternoon, to ask him to pick up Danny at his grandparents’. Nothing seemed suspicious as he drove the long, winding entrance road to Highbrook, and his only thoughts were about how he was going to need to talk his son off the sugar ledge after twenty-four hours of unlimited access to candy and cupcakes. Later he learned the guests had been instructed to park at a neighboring estate and arrived at Highbrook by party bus. He nearly pissed his pants when three hundred of his friends and colleagues pounced as he walked through the front door, shouting Surprise! in his face.
Kit had thought of everything. She’d rented amusement rides for the kids and hired a member of the Charlotte Ingersoll School swim team to act as a lifeguard so that parents could enjoy their cocktails without needing to worry about their offspring drowning in the deep end of the pool. Michael never knew so many people genuinely liked him. Teammates from the Academy and Princeton. Colleagues from the Law Review. The once-young bucks who had cut their teeth with him in the Philly DA’s Office. He was touched that his old mentor Walter Rudenstein, now the Dark Prince of the Defense Bar, had made the effort to attend. Steven Kettleman, District Attorney of the County of Delaware and Michael’s boss, not only made an appearance, he lingered and mingled until after the cutting of the cake. Even Kit’s childhood dance teacher, the imperious Miss Peterson, had deigned to hold court.
“Now please, will you forget about Carmine Torino for one day,” Kit whispered in his ear as she refilled his glass with small-batch bourbon.
Carmine Torino had been a loner, harmless and shy, whose life had peaked at twenty-seven when he was promoted to manager of a Wawa convenience store. Slightly overweight, bald by twenty-eight, he lived alone in a third-floor walkup apartment and drove a six-year-old Hyundai. The poor bastard had left a seedy Ridley taproom one fateful night, giddy with excitement, probably pinching himself, thinking he was having a wild dream from which he would abruptly awake. He would never have had the nerve to invite a pair of hard-bodied, good-looking young men to come home for a nightcap. But his new friends wanted to keep the party going, hinting that things could get a little crazy after a few more Jack and Cokes and a hit or two of Tina.
The tenant of the apartment below had called the fire department at 5:16 in the morning. Carmine Torino’s body was slightly charred, his killers being too impatient or too high on crystal to start a proper blaze. He was lying on a blood-soaked mattress, naked, bound and gagged with duct tape. The coroner concluded he’d been kicked or punched in the head multiple times. The lacerations to his neck, throat, and face were too numerous to count. One eye had been gouged and his fifth and sixth vertebrae had been severed. In the pathologist’s expert opinion, the victim had aspirated on his own blood five to ten minutes before expiring.
Eyewitnesses had placed Billy Kucic and Tommy Corcoran at the bar and seen them leave with the victim at last call. Corcoran’s fingerprints had been found all over the duct tape, but the only prints on the hunting knife used to shred Carmine’s throat matched those on record for Kucic, who’d just been released from prison after serving a sentence for assault. Kucic had somehow eluded custody. Unsuccessful leads had placed him in Canada, New Mexico, and an island in the Caribbean. In the Commonwealth, an accessory is guilty of murder in the first degree, punishable by death, if proven he had the same intent to kill as the actual perpetrator. Corcoran, fair and doe-eyed, a man who might even be called pretty, had taken the stand in his own defense, crying convincingly, swearing he didn’t know his friend was going to kill the guy. They were just going to knock him around, steal his car and his wallet. He feigned revulsion at the events of the night and claimed to have fled the sickening scene of Kucic hacking at the victim’s throat. At least one member of the jury might have believed that the baby-faced and soft-spoken altar boy on the stand was incapable of wanting to carve up another human being with a hunting blade.
Fortunately for the prosecution, Kucic and Corcoran were stupid fuckers who had made the mistake of seeking refuge at the nearby house of a friend, a biker named Thornton, who’d testified under oath and over objection that Tommy Corcoran, covered with the same blood as Kucic, was the more agitated of the two, insisting the victim himself was to blame. I told him not to touch me. I told him I wasn’t no fag. I told him. He should have listened to me. His words were persuasive evidence of the intent necessary for the death penalty. Michael wasn’t a religious man, but he’d prayed as he stood in the courtroom waiting for the foreman to deliver the verdict, haunted by a vision of Frankie bound and gagged, lying on a bed, his face mutilated beyond recognition.
“Where’s my brother? Where’s Frankie? It’s my birthday, Kit. Why isn’t he here?” he asked his wife, who calmly explained to her frantic husband that Frankie was in the kitchen assisting with the supervision of the catering staff.
Where else would he be? Michael realized. Better to stay occupied, making himself useful, than to stand awkwardly on the periphery of the conversations of strangers with whom he had nothing in common. Michael doubted any of them had ever known a stylist other than the one who cut their hair. Not a single person from his life at Eighth and Carpenter other than Frankie was present. Not even his godfather, Sal Pinto, who had first put a football in his hands, had been invited to cross the impregnable border between the life of the accomplished and respected family man who lived in a House with a Name, “Sleepy Peter’s Quiet Nook,” and the childhood of Michael Rocco Gagliano, son of the neighborhood barber.
It was for the best. He would have been on edge the entire party, waiting for Sal to malign the moulinyan or brag about how he’d Jewed down a car dealer. A polite invitation to that horse-faced priest who trailed his brother like a lovesick puppy should have been extended. But the list of names from his past that might have been included
stopped there. He’d renounced his citizenship in the neighborhood when he moved away and a language barrier had arisen in the ensuing years, making it impossible to sustain a conversation with those who had known him as a boy.
Everyone wanted to offer a toast to the man of the hour, and no one, not Kit, not his brother, discouraged him from drinking his fill or nagged him to limit or at least slow down his alcohol intake. When the sun went down, he stripped off his shirt and cannonballed into the pool to the shrieking delight of a dozen waterlogged kids. A local Springsteen cover band played until midnight, and Michael, usually so reluctant to demonstrate his lack of rhythm, stomped barefoot on the makeshift dance floor. He hadn’t needed convincing to step up to the microphone and take the lead vocal on “Born to Run.”
It was nearly three in the morning when Kit surveyed the wreckage of a very successful party. Tomorrow would be soon enough to begin to clean up the mess. It had been a long day and every muscle in her body ached for the bed in her old room upstairs. But the birthday boy had gone missing and a little reconnaissance would be necessary to reel him in.
“Michael! Michael!” she called, her voice loud enough to carry without needing to shout. “Michael, the party’s over! It’s time for bed!”
Her brother-in-law responded, This way, over here. She found them propped against the trunk of an ancient oak, her husband sprawled on the ground, snoring, his head resting in his brother’s lap. “Go on to bed, Kit. He’s dead to the world. I’ll bring him inside when he stirs enough to wake him.”
The Boys from Eighth and Carpenter Page 13
