Bloodline (48 page)

“What?”

“You want to have dinner tonight?” he asked.

*   *   *

T
HAT NIGHT,
while Tommy Falcone and Rachel Mishkin were having dinner, Romeo LaRocca, the Castellammarese immigrant with lung cancer, was dying in St. Luke’s Hospital. In the presence of two Italian-speaking priests, an attorney, a policeman, and John F. X. Kinnair of the
Daily News,
he made a detailed deathbed confession to the murder of Enzo Selvini and the young Roggerio boy. He said that Selvini had wronged his family in Sicily and that he had followed the man to New York to take his vengeance. He had stalked him carefully for weeks before first trying to shoot him and then putting a fire ax into his head in the theater.

He was, he knew, dying, and his immortal soul could not rest if he continued to let Nilo Sesta take the blame for a crime that he, LaRocca, had alone committed.

LaRocca died during the night. A day later, his body was returned to Sicily accompanied by his suddenly wealthy wife and their children, who traveled first-class with tickets paid for by Don Salvatore Maranzano.

*   *   *

T
OMMY WAS HALFWAY
through his shift when he stopped into a small diner to grab a sandwich. He sat alone at a table in the far corner and was surprised when Captain Cochran came into the diner and walked back to join him.

Tommy started to scramble to his feet, but Cochran, dressed in civilian clothes, pushed him back down.

“At ease, Tommy,” he said with a grin. “I came to talk to you.”

“I do something wrong?”

“Nope. Your father tells me you’re thinking of putting in your papers. To retire.”

“It can’t be soon enough for him, Captain. He’s been after me to quit since the first day I joined the force.”

“So you’re going to?”

“Pretty soon. I’ve just about got enough money saved to finish law school. If I’m not working, I might get done even faster.”

“I’ve got a suggestion,” Cochran said. He signaled the waitress for coffee. “I’m not telling you anything you don’t know, but the thugs have had a pretty free ride in this city for a long time.”

Tommy did not respond, and Cochran said, “But the times are changing. I can see it happening now. The politicians are getting afraid.”

“I guess I’ll believe that when I see it,” Tommy said.

“Trust me. It’s coming. And when it happens, well, the Italian Squad’s going to be where all the action is. If the mob gets cleaned up, we’re the ones who’ll do it.” He paused and chuckled. “I’m really working hard to convince you, and you still don’t have any idea what I’m talking about.”

Tommy grinned back. “My father says the Irish are that way but that they get to the point eventually.”

“All right, let me get to it. I’ve got some discretionary money in my squad budget. What I’d like you to consider is not retiring. Everybody’ll think you quit, but I’ll hold your papers and carry you on unofficial leave of absence. I’ll keep you on salary out of my private funds, and you work undercover.”

“Undercover? What’s that?” Tommy asked.

“It’s a new thing they’ve been trying in Washington. Basically, what you do is get out and hang around with the gees. Become one of the boys. Find out what they’re up to, what they’ve got planned. Then let us know so we can squash it. You make your own hours, set your own schedule.” He stopped talking as the waitress returned with his coffee.

“Make no mistake,” Cochran said when she left, “it’s dangerous. If you get found out, you probably get killed.”

“You make it sound appealing. What’s the good side?”

“Well, you keep your pension, you build up your seniority, you get paid, and, mostly, you help us get the bastards.”

“Why me? Why not somebody else?”

“You’re Italian, you’re smart, and you’ve got guts. And nobody can throw mud on your reputation. I’ve been thinking about you for this job ever since you turned down that promotion to detective.”

“I’d want to talk to my father about it.”

Cochran frowned. “I know this is tough, Tommy, but that won’t work. If your father knew what you were up to … well, you know what he’s like. Every time you turned around, he’d be following you, barging in, making it impossible for you to get anything done.”

“Sounds just like Papa.”

“So this’d have to be just between you and me. If anybody else knew, it might put you in danger.”

“And what about the brass, your bosses? Why should I trust them?”

“All I can ask you is to trust me. I won’t tell anyone. And that means no one. Only you and I will know.”

Both men sat and sipped their coffee. Finally, Tommy said, “Wow.”

“I know,” Cochran said. “But just promise me you’ll think about it. You can do a lot of good here.”

“I’ll think about it, Captain.”

*   *   *

T
HE SUN HAD FINALLY APPEARED
and was trying to burn off a chill fog as Nilo Sesta walked through the front gates of Dannemora. He stopped and waited, without turning, for the heavy iron gates to clank shut. For a moment, he was tempted to look back, but he did not.

Never again. Never look back. Never think of this place again, never talk about it, never have anything to do with it. I am free. No one will ever return me to a place like this.

His release had come with lightning swiftness. Only a day before, he had had no idea. Then he had been called to the warden’s office and told that he had received a full and complete pardon from the governor’s office.

“I’m not happy about this, Sesta,” the warden had said.

Nilo did not answer. He was too busy trying to figure out what it all meant, and he could not yet comprehend the idea of freedom, not coming so quickly after three years behind bars.

“As far as I’m concerned, you’re nothing but a baby-killer,” the warden had said. “I don’t care if you do have friends who lie and other friends who can get to the governor’s office, you and I both know that it’s only a matter of time before you’ll be back in here. And I’ll be waiting for you. I promise you that.”

Nilo had waited quietly for the warden to talk himself out and then waited a few minutes longer to be dismissed. The guards moved him right away to an isolation cell: nobody wanted anything happening to him now that he was slated to be a free man. That would not look good in the papers, Nilo thought. He had laughed at the idea. The only time they cared about his welfare was when he was leaving their prison. All the while he had been in one of their cells, he had been treated like dirt. Like worse than dirt.

One of the guards had told him that his pardon had come from an acting governor. The full-time governor was off somewhere, talking about running for president, and in his absence an acting governor had signed the pardon.

He thought two men were approaching him, but he could not be sure. He had forgotten how to see things at a distance; in prison there was nothing far away to look at; everything was up close. These two might be walking to him or they might just be planning to walk by.

The two figures resolved themselves out of the morning fog as the lawyer Koehler and Salvatore Maranzano.

“Ah, Danilo,” Maranzano said. “It is good to see you. You look fit.”

“Thank you, Don Salvatore,” Nilo said. He started to shake the man’s hand and then stopped and instead bent forward and kissed it, as he would the hand of a pope.

But Maranzano pulled him up and wrapped the young man in a bear hug. “It is nothing. My only regret is that it took so long. Even politicians and judges who are bought and paid for sometimes take longer than they should to do what they know they are eventually going to do.”

“My life is yours, Don Salvatore. Use it as you wish.”

Maranzano seemed slightly embarrassed. “Come, this is America,” Maranzano said. “We do not say such things here. I have brought you new clothes and we will stop at the hotel for you to change them. There is still more than an hour for the train to take us home. There is a restaurant there, too. You might like to have breakfast before we get under way.”

“It might be wise,” the lawyer said, looking around, “if we moved on. The press might yet be here to badger us.”

“Good thought,” Maranzano said, and smiled at Nilo. “You see, this is what I pay this big legal genius for. To protect me against the complications of life.” He took Nilo’s arm and led him toward a taxicab waiting in the fog down the street. Nilo saw the bodyguard known as Rock leaning against the fender of the cab, his arms crossed, carefully looking in all directions.

At the hotel, Nilo soaked and scrubbed himself in a hot bath until he felt he had rubbed off the last trace of prison dirt. He dressed hurriedly and then, with the other two men watching him and encouraging him, gorged himself at the hotel’s restaurant. He spent the rest of the trip fighting off violent indigestion.

They sat in a private compartment in the train, and Rock took up a position in the corridor outside, guarding the door. The lawyer excused himself and said he was going to walk to the bar car. When he and Nilo were alone, Maranzano opened a bottle of red wine and they drank a toast to each other as the don explained the deathbed confession of Romeo LaRocca.

Nilo raised his glass again. “To his immortal soul. May he rest in peace.”

“I’m afraid that will be up to a power greater than ours,” Maranzano said.

It was the first time Nilo had tasted wine in many years. He had forgotten just how good it was. That was one of the great evils of prison. It made you a lower form of life and, after a while, you forgot that the pleasures you once cherished even existed.

“You will have work for me?” Nilo asked Maranzano eventually.

“Ah, yes, the family man. With a wife and child to support. Yes, Nilo, I have work for everybody. And I need you at my side.”

“Things then are going well?”

“Exceeding well. It began with your plan to pump in whiskey past the Coast Guard boats. That gave us money. Then this Mussolini decided to assault our people on Sicily, and they have flocked to the United States to escape him. That gave us manpower. They come by the dozens, by the scores, and they are all in our organization now. We were big and powerful. Now we are gigantic and powerful beyond measuring.”

“And people like Masseria? They accept this?” Nilo asked.

Maranzano waved his hand, dismissing Masseria as if he were only an annoying insect.

“Joe the Stupid who would be Joe the Boss, he just goes on doing things the same old way, as big a fool as ever he was,” Maranzano said. “Without his even knowing, our organization grew to rival his. Now we are probably larger. His day has ended. For we sons of Castellammare del Golfo, the day has just begun.”

“And there will be no fight over this?”

“Oh, he makes noises about the pain he will inflict upon us Castellammarese, but it is too late. No one cares what he will accept or what he thinks.” Maranzano smiled. “Still, I keep a guard on the door.” He nodded to the door of the compartment, beyond which Rock waited.

“There is a place of honor for you in our new organization,” Maranzano said. “You will be at my right hand. All know that you have my trust.”

“It is a great honor,” Nilo said.

He found his mind, though, wandering from business and thinking about Sofia. As the distance of time and temperament had widened between them into an irrevocable gulf, he had begun to think of her more and more as his wife. Of her child as his child. In some curious turn of mind, he had started to regard himself as a husband who had been away, through no fault of his own, and would be now returning to the bosom of his family.

He had understood it for the survival mechanism it was. The thought of some sort of life beyond prison had sustained him, especially during those times when he had come close to ending it all, to killing himself. Often he had thought of diving headfirst off the topmost gallery of the cells, down seventy feet to the waiting concrete floor and oblivion. But he never acted on the impulse, and one of the things that had helped him through was his growing dream of Sofia as his wife. Mrs. Sesta.

“Sofia,” he began.

“I am sure she waits for you in great anticipation. She has been a faithful wife for all these years,” Maranzano said. “She has attended college and studied accounting. She now does the books of businesses you will help run. Your son is healthy and happy. Your wife does not go out at night and has no undesirable friends. The only person she sees with regularity is the one named Justina Falcone, who visits her frequently.”

“Tina.”

“The policeman’s daughter,” Maranzano said with a nod. “Sofia has been true to you in every way.”

“If I could believe it,” Nilo said.

“You can. I have been in charge of this,” Maranzano said officiously. “It is only wrong to believe with a whole heart in things which are empty of truth. ‘Quae volumus et credimus libenter, et quae sentimus ipsi, reliquos sentire speramus,’” Maranzano quoted. “Caesar, of course.”

Nilo thought and remembered the passage. “‘We believe to be true what we want to be true … and we expect everybody else to believe the same as we ourselves do.’ That’s it, isn’t it?”

Maranzano nodded and refilled their wineglasses. “Well done,” he said. “It is a good quotation and useful to check yourself against it and remember that your enemies can always delude themselves. When they do, they are vulnerable.”

Not just enemies,
Nilo thought, anger creeping back into his thoughts.
Even friends can delude themselves. Like you, Don Salvatore, in believing that my wife is my wife in anything but name, at least for now.
Still, he said, “I will remember that, Don Salvatore. I will remember.”

After that, Nilo dozed off and woke only when the train pulled into Grand Central Station. Twilight had just settled in and a limousine was waiting to take Nilo home to the apartment that Maranzano had rented for Sofia and the baby.

As Nilo got out of the limousine, Maranzano handed him a set of keys.

“These are for your place,” he said. “A man should be able to open his own door.”

It was a simple comment, but Nilo had to fight back tears. Maranzano reached into his pocket and brought an envelope from it and handed it to Nilo.