by Lyndsay Faye
“Smart enough to know we wouldn’t be bothered out here. Twice a month. Twice a week. Two or three times daily. Every other Sunday.”
Max brushes his thumb over my mouth.
“I had a wife, and I got kids,” he tells me. “Twins, in Brooklyn. They lives with my ma when I’m here. Teddy and Julia Burton.”
To say I’m surprised would be a superlative. Of course he has a family. The fellow is positively in prime working order—why shouldn’t he? But I still feel my stomach grow a yawning hole, face the all-too-predictable realization, I’m not the first one to arrive here, and I never even supposed I was.
“I don’t figure like that’s gonna flummox you,” he continues. “But I said this ain’t figuring to work out, and I meant it.”
I keep very still.
“What happened?” I ask him. “No, apologies, that’s dreadfully blunt, forgive me. But you said . . .”
“Her name was Rosie.” Max rubs at his stubble. “Sorry, Alice, but I’m gonna need that smoke.”
We light a pair, and he sets an ashtray between us. I settle with my legs over his and my back to the wall. There have been times when I could see dead soldiers in Max’s eyes, watched the memory of fallen comrades hardening his pupils.
But that was nothing compared to the way he looks now.
“Like I done mentioned, I was a real stupid kid,” he says quietly. “Army was what changed all that. In France, I had a purpose. Respect. Women too, every sorta woman: black, white, brown—all us guys was neck-deep in fleshpots. When I got back stateside, though, that was over. Back to shoeshine boy as a life sentence. Shoulda seen me first time as I was called George. Jesus.”
Stroking his foot, I nod.
“Anyhow. There I was, a real man for the first time, and I’d known Rosie since I was a tyke. When I done showed up at church in a pressed uniform, she let on as she’d always felt something, and now I’d made good, she was sure of it—Christ, that woman knew what she wanted. Didn’t reckon I could do better. She was gonna make me feel like a king again. No, not a king—just a man. I married her a month later, twins was born lickety-split, but the delivery was too much for her. I had a whole future in frontta me, Alice, straight as a goddamn arrow, five, six decades together. Buying a house in Jersey, hollering at grandkids. The two of us feeding ’em too many penny candies. It was gone in a year, and most of that year I was on a Pullman car. When I look at them kids, Rosie’s so real it . . . it crushes me. When I’m here, or on the rails, she might as well have been a dream.”
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper, circling his wrist.
He nods. “Saw a lotta fellas die for no reason in No Man’s Land. But Rosie died on accountta wanting a family. And there ain’t nothing crueler.”
“Do the others know?”
“Nah. Apart from Blossom. I don’t get no comfort outta being pitied, and Blossom . . . With her, it’s different.”
“I understand.” Pausing, I venture, “Did you love her?”
He shakes his head, eyes shutting. “Wasn’t around enough. But I coulda. Another year, maybe two. And that’s worse. What a crying waste.”
Max sets his cigarette down. He tugs his drawers on and I memorize the lines of his stomach, the V-shaped dusting of hair.
“Coffee,” he says. “You wanna cup?”
“With a kick?”
“Like a mule. I got no other way to serve coffee, Alice James.”
“You are a gourmet, sir.”
“Back in two shakes.”
“I’ll keep the bed warm for you.”
Lovely, Alice. Light a torch in it for him and set the cabin on fire, why don’t you?
Max putters around the kitchen, and the purr of the water boiling tickles my ears. It isn’t as if I was going to get to keep him. Max lives in-between, in the empty spaces, in the hours spent getting somewhere else. And he’d have to have positively shucked his last oyster to carry on an affair with me in Portland of all places, I don’t admire to see him dangling. But I know what Max meant by crushing.
Loneliness is a weight, not an empty space, and it’s pressing on my chest so I can hardly breathe.
“What in the name of fuck?” I hear.
Throwing Max’s shirt over my shoulders, I pad barefoot into the other side of the cabin. It’s a tiny place, just a living area with a sofa and a low trunk for a table, an armchair adjacent, a braided rug, and a galley kitchen. Max stands with his hands splayed on his hips, breathing awfully hard for a gent fixing liquid breakfast. He stares at a tatty Indian blanket draped over one arm of the couch, spilling onto the overstuffed chair.
“Last night we never done bothered over lights.” I’ve never seen Max this upset, and I’ve lamped him as he took in a roasting cross.
“Whatever’s the matter?”
He stabs a finger at the worn coverlet. “This here blanket and pillow, this is a shit show. Davy Lee always arranges it like this when I brings him up to camp. Pretends as it’s a cave. Half the time the kid’s a dragon, half the time a bear or a troll, I dunno, there’s crazy worlds in that sweet little tyke’s head.”
“Oh, Max. It must be ever so upsetting to see it, what with him missing.”
“No, it ain’t.” A muscle leaps in Max’s jaw. “’Cause I always puts it back, like. I did last time. And I ain’t been here since.”
He meets my eyes with a haunted expression. “Which means that Davy Lee has.”
◆ Twenty-One ◆
THEN
The mafia is not a band, nor anything of that sort. It is the resistance which the whole Sicilian people opposes to all kinds of government and authority. It is, how shall I say? A sentiment, a feeling, a sort of wild love of our country, that is a secret, and will do anything. With us, everybody knows what it is, and evil comes to everyone who opposes it—generally death.
—FRANCIS MARION CRAWFORD, Corleone: A Tale of Sicily, 1896
I stood on the West Harlem waterfront in 1921 wearing steel-toed boots, denim trousers, and a corded sweater that made my neck itch even more than the anxious sweat I’d sprouted. A little artful shading and tucking my hair up in a woolen cap completed the image of your average tidal rat. This male Nobody stood in an unseasonably hot April breeze at ten past nine in the evening, watching the lights of New Jersey’s Palisades begin to flicker on, shining electric blessings across the wide river. Down but not out, traded favors to shipping types by keeping his hands soft, collected pornographic playing cards, didn’t have a roof but found a bath daily, drank to sleep but not to forget. That sort.
“Bugger,” dockyard Nobody muttered. About as strong for the current mission as I would have been for a rotten molar.
In 1921, Mr. Salvatici decided that he needed to examine one Officer Harry Chipchase, see what made the chap’s knuckles crack. In fairness, I couldn’t blame him. Harry was the best of the harness bulls—I knew this gospel, seeing as I was in closest proximity. But Harry was worried about everything. Days that ended in the letter Y, the sun, butterflies, walking too close when arresting one of the Nobodies, walking too distant when arresting one of the Nobodies. He muttered grim portents about assignments from shadowing Family men who had the notches of a dozen stiletto murders on their bedposts to whether he’d properly completed my faked arrest paperwork.
In short, he wasn’t guilty of anything other than comprehensive disloyalty to the NYPD. But he acted guilty as hell, and unni cc’è focu, pri lu fumu pari.*
So when Harry was assigned to spirit a hefty amount of pristine counterfeit dinero confiscated from the Clutch Hand out of a police evidence locker—I still remember the childlike glee Mr. Salvatici’s paper-thin mouth assumed when he hatched that scheme—and Harry found the safe already plundered by another boy in blue, our boss fell into one of his rare snits. I don’t think he really supposed Harry kept the contents of the evidence locker for himself. The perceived defeat rankl
ed, however, and Harry was overdue for the proverbial tune-up. Mr. Salvatici was probably the best-natured gangster in human history. But Harry questioned every order with dank pessimism, and I think my guardian wanted to buy himself two or three weeks of peace.
Which is why he hired Nicolo Benenati to interrogate Harry Chipchase in the Hudson riverfront building we referred to as the Cabin. Mr. Salvatici employed Nicolo frequently by 1921—too frequently, in my humble opinion.
“This is killing a mosquito with a cannonade,” I had begged that day in the Arcadia’s restaurant.
“I’ve said three times, he’s being used for intimidation, not for his . . . particular skills.” Mr. Salvatici finished his last mint-and-ricotta ravioli with what looked like fastidiousness but I recognized as pique. “He’s under strictest orders not to touch the man. I only want to be sure of Harry.”
“Then hire Tommy Toothpick or the Caneri brothers or—”
“Nobody, how many times have I told you that the execution can be more important than the deed itself?” In the act of straightening his tie, Mr. Salvatici brightened. “Oh, of course, the Cabin has any number of spying nooks. You’ll go and watch the whole thing.”
I could feel the blood departing my cheeks. “That isn’t—”
“It’s perfect.” Mr. Salvatici, having found a way to scratch two aggravating itches with one fingernail, pushed his chair back. “I know you justifiably don’t care for Mr. Benenati, my dear young lady, and I make certain not to cause you unnecessary interactions, but he won’t catch a glimpse of you and I greatly prefer multiple witnesses during an interrogation. Thank you so very much for mentioning this—I’ll be up until midnight, or you can report to me in the morning.”
He brushed fond fingers over my hairline, dropped his napkin on the table, and that was that.
Poor Harry had been in the Cabin since around eight, deposited there with a cozy bag over his head. Nicolo was due to arrive at nine thirty, giving Harry the chance to meditate on his sins. And there I stood at the waterfront, hands stuffed in my pockets, kicking and cursing and this-ing and that-ing.
“Bloody hell,” I growled at last, borrowing another phrase from Mum as I plunged toward the waterfront staircase that would take me to the Cabin.
It was a rickety, rotting affair, those stairs—or so they’d been made to appear. In reality, what looked to be a structure that lost its war with salt water in 1899, thereabouts, was elegantly reinforced with camouflaged steel struts and girders. There were gaping holes, certainly. But every half-eroded plank that looked like it would send you plummeting to the rocks below was solid as a fire escape, and I knew them well, so I forced myself to slouch down them in high wharf-lounger style.
When I reached the hidden path along the rocks, I cast a cautious eye about. No company yet. The breeze picked up as I walked, carrying scents of seaweed and the coal from the barges. Skimming my hands along the tall grasses, I tried to reassure myself.
He won’t see you.
Because he can’t see you.
You’ll see him, and that can’t do anyone harm.
The Cabin’s outline rose before me, sinister but at least familiar. It looked something like an antique operations booth, and something like a forgotten warehouse with iron grids over its windows, and something like an abandoned shipping office. In fact, it looked like so many things, it looked like absolutely nothing. Which was the point.
Bypassing the main door, I headed across the sand-strewn earth for a mass of granite edging the water. Behind this, I brushed grit away to reveal a metal trap, which I unlocked and opened. It yawned blackly, a gateway into the void. But reaching down, I flicked a switch, and muted electric lights sparked to life, revealing a metal ladder running about ten feet into the earth.
Shutting the trap, I swung myself down the rungs. The cool tunnel soothed me after the summerlike fug aboveground. By the time I’d traversed the short distance and started climbing the identical ladder at the other end, I’d convinced myself that Mr. Salvatici knew exactly what he was doing, and that even if no belly laughs came from this dreadfully pointed object lesson, well, no lasting damage would either.
Silently, I pulled myself up into the crawl space. This was now a hands-and-knees affair, and I inched along the floor, which we’d carpeted for both sound and comfort. After two turns that guaranteed no light reached my vantage point from the tunnel hatch, I spied the floor-level ventilation grate in question.
“I ain’t done nothing, I tells you! Nothing! You gots to believe me, Mr. Benenati, old Harry Chipchase is just about as loyal as the Pope is to Christ.”
Shit, I thought, slithering both faster and more stealthily.
“I want to believe you,” came Nicolo’s voice. “Truly, Mr. Chipchase. The problem as I see it is that Mr. Salvatici hired me to answer this question definitively, and you haven’t yet given me any reason to believe you.”
When I reached the grate, I dropped my pelvis and settled onto my elbows. Two factors clearly had conspired against me: Nicolo was early, probably having come straight from some other more gruesome errand; and I’d been more frightened than I thought, and overstayed my shilly-shallying interlude.
The room I spied on was simple plaster, lined with a few shelves holding secretarial supplies like paper and a pair of typewriters, and less secretarial tools like a set of gardening shears and the makings of an effective tourniquet. You get the idea. In all my time working against the Clutch Hand, I’d only seen them used to intimidate snitches. My function was to point the finger, and then generally, Mr. Salvatici executed his judgments without an audience—or at least without me. But by 1921, I’d no illusions on the subject however much I admired to forget about it when I lay me down with Wynken, Blynken, and Nod.
I might not hurt the sick bastards who kept the Harlem peasantry shackled to the Family like dogs. But we certainly did. And I kept that locked in a very deep drawer, under winter mothballs and girlish regrets.
“What kinda proof you figure suits?” Harry’s crooked face gleamed grey with clammy terror. “Wait a sec! There was that job last January—yeah, see, down by Ninety-Eighth and Broad—and did I say peep when I was posted to stake out that loan shark outfit? A goddamn week with my balls the size of marbles and a foot of snow on my noggin, and did I complain?”
My lips quirked despite the ugliness before me: he had complained, and it had been four days, and one light snowfall, but Harry figured the glass for half-empty. And poisoned.
Nicolo wasn’t using any of the tired pantomime moves—never learned them, never needed to. None of the circular stalking or cleaning his nails with a shiv for my former pal. He leaned against the wall with his arms loosely crossed, his collar undone, teepee brows slack with disinterest.
“You complain plenty from what I hear, Mr. Chipchase, but that isn’t the point.” Nicolo pursed his lips at the blank wall. “Point is, Mr. Salvatici doubts your respect for him, and supposing you don’t respect him, well then—considering the freedom you’re allowed—you could be up to anything. Snitching. Embezzlement. Sabotage. I was hired years back by one of the Jewish operations to take care of a saboteur. His wife noticed her bureau was leaking and found him in a dozen pieces.”
Flat as a knife’s blade, true as a drunken confession. He didn’t even need to look at Harry for the latter to be practically pissing in his socks at the prospect of my old friend carving him like a ham.
Or so I assumed. Wrongly.
“Not respect Mr. Salvatici!” Harry cried, eyes popping. “Christ, Mr. Benenati, I’s fucking terrified of the guy. Ain’t never tried to pull a job for him before warning him as it might not pan out, just to hedge my bets, see? Never fall asleep ’cept I sees him floating in the dark, like. That face. Ain’t never even thought about working for nobody else on accountta that job as he pulled in nineteen eleven. No disrespect, Mr. Benenati, but when they dumped me here, I kn
ew whereabouts I was at straight off, and seeing you show up instead of Mr. S.? I coulda kissed you right in the snoot.”
For the first time in many years, Nicolo and I shared a common expression.
Harry’s finally cracked. One too many summer rainstorms and stray-cat sightings.
“Nineteen eleven?” Nicolo repeated in the same steel-plate tone.
Nineteen eleven, my mind echoed.
A luxurious shudder rolled down Harry’s spine. “Ten years back. Brand-new to the Force, didn’t know a truncheon from a rotten tomato. Coppers was all buzzing over a murder. The real lousy sort, kind what eats at you. Higher-ups working the case was scratching their asses something terrible. You knows how it is in Harlem. I was greener than a grasshopper, dunno the poor lug’s moniker what handed in his dinner pail, it never crossed my desk. Hadn’t parleyed no Italian back then. But one day I comes up on a pair of crooked bluecoats when the station house was real quiet like, one bragging to his buddy as it was him watched the street for the guy what did it, that he worked for the killer. Cleared the road while he staged the stiff in a barrel. Helped clean the basement where the butchering was done. Salvatici. You can bet I remembered that name. And not on accountta some dumb mutt blowing hot air neither.”
“Why, then?”
“’Cause not a week later, stupid bum washed up on Chelsea piers. Knucklehead blabbed too much, see? And the Spider caught wind of it. So when I was walking the Harlem beat and Mr. S. called me into the Hotel Arcadia sniffing around for a new flatfoot recruit, you can bet I said yes. Harry Chipchase likes his mug to stay on his skull, thanks very much.”
My first instinct despite the pang of bitter memory was to laugh.
Poor Harry, always was a few pawns shy of a chessboard, and here you’re blaming Mr. Salvatici for the murder of Mr. Benenati—and to his son, no less.
Nicolo just stood there, whites of his eyes gleaming like bone shards.
Harry’s lips trembled. “Mr. Benenati, youse can see I’m playing straight with you. You want I should make some kinda promise? Pass some kinda test? I’m your guy. Rough me up a little, hell, bring Mr. Salvatici my pinkie, stick a knife in my neck and tell him I croaked loyal to the cause. Just don’t turn me over to the boss. I’s seen what he can do. Been there personal. Ain’t never gonna get my head clean. And ain’t never gonna cross him. I protect Nobody, and that’s a swell fit—she’s a helluva kid, and I’d keep her safe for Mr. S. if it meant a hole straight through my uniform. Honest Injun. Please.”
