Naked Came the Stranger (11 page)

Mario Vella had succeeded where some of the best men in the
Organization had failed. He had blended into his environment. To most
of his neighbors he was Mario Vella, thirty-six, the darkly handsome
owner of the highly successful Bella Mia Olive Oil Company and the
equally affluent Fort Sorrento Construction Corporation in nearby
Port Jefferson. He was also known to dabble in the entertainment
field, most recently in the career of a fast-rising ballad singer,
Johnny Alonga.

The young singer had waxed only one solid hit, "A Dying Love," but
it had remained either on or reasonably near the top ten for eighteen
months. Careers had been made on less. And Vella had produced the boy
as a free entertainer at several local charity affairs and political
dinners; he had even appeared twice for Vella at the King's Neck
Country Club. Vella now was being flooded with invitations to become
a board member of every worthwhile organization in sight. He could
never be sure whether his popularity was attributable to Alonga or to
his own ready checkbook. The Organization had helped. Whenever Vella
lent his name to a fund-raising concern, journal ads poured in from
construction and garment firms throughout the state.

There had been, of course, rumors of gangster associations, but
they were hardly ever more than rumors. The newspaper that made the
mistake of referring to him as a "friend of the underworld" –
and that was eight years ago in another town – paid $45,000 for
its error.

Next spring he was slated to be honored as Man of the Year by the
Society for the Prevention of Rickets in Children. And in January he
would assume office as president of the League to Preserve
Italian-American Dignity (LPIAD). He had helped to found that one,
and the Organization credited him with a master stroke. Two city
newspapers had attempted to build circulation with investigations of
the Organization, but a few LPIAD picket lines had discouraged the
publishers. Television, always gutless, canceled a scheduled
documentary. And now politicians came to Vella seeking advice.

Mario Vella jabbed at the button with his manicured finger and
opened the driver's window. It was a warm day for November and his
eyes had been smarting from the cigarette smoke in the sealed car. He
pushed the buttons on the car radio, pushed them until the car was
filled with the syrupy sounds of Johnny Alonga singing "A Dying
Love." He listened for a few seconds, then changed stations again.
The song still made him want to puke. It reminded him of Donna Marie.
They had been married for ten years. Ten years of rotting waste,
studding Man O' War to a milk cow.

He'd had that same thought earlier in the day. He had awakened at
six thinking about Gilly. He reached over to the night table, lit the
cigarette, lay on his back, motionless, staring up at the absurd
sky-blue canopy that Donna Marie had insisted on having custom made.
He tried to keep his thoughts on Gilly, but Donna Marie was stirring
at his side. He imagined Gilly kneeling in front of him, her honey
blonde hair bobbing at her shoulders. He could visualize the severely
tailored white blouse unbuttoned to the bottom button and half-draped
over her firm upper arms. He could see her cupping her erect, compact
breasts in her hands, gently massaging the pink nipples with her
index fingers. Her breasts seemed a creamy contrast to the fading
tan. Her brief pale green skirt was pulled upward against the strain
of her body, exposing an eyeful of nylon-sheathed thigh.

He saw himself standing, his clothes thrown to the side. He saw
her wriggling closer and playfully massaging the inner part of his
legs with her breasts, up and down and up then down again. Gently.
She never came all the way up, always stopping just a little short.
The suspense surging within him always turned to agonized impatience.
She would look up at him with that smile. "Are you still afraid of
me, Mario? Do you still want me to go away?" He leaned over and
pinched her ear lobes, delicately, lovingly, and then carefully
guided her unresisting head up, up — "Mario!"

Donna Marie's voice had slashed through his dream. He jackknifed
into a sitting position and turned to face his wife.

"Your cigarette," she said. "You dropped your cigarette on the
bed. Do you want us to burn to death in our own house? Look, you've
burned a hole in the comforter. My father gave that to us. A hundred
and fifty dollars it cost, all the way from Italy. It's ruined. What
will we tell him?"

He shrugged his shoulders, a half-hearted gesture of apology. He
poured a glass of water from the night table onto the smoldering
satin comforter. Secretly he was pleased. He had always hated the
comforter, an unreasonably faithful embroidery reproduction of sunset
over the Bay of Naples. It was just like his father-in-law Septimo.
Vintage wop.

He reached over and pulled Donna Marie to him, the hunger for
Gilly still racing in his blood, hoping that this time it might be
different. As always, Donna Marie was submissive. She had been raised
to submit to her husband, whoever he might be, unquestioningly, sick
or well, night or day. Men are that way, her mother had explained. It
was a wife's duty to give, not to expect, at least in the bedroom.
Her long black hair, lustrous from a lifetime routine of one hundred
brush strokes a night, streamed across the pillow behind her head.
Mario snaked his hand under the hem of her short flannel nightie and
flattened it palm down on the broad expanse of her belly. There was
not the slightest quiver of movement in return. He moved his hand
upward, over a soft bulge of fat, to her great flaccid breasts. God,
he wondered, do all Italian girls get this swollen after three
children? He pulled his hand away and Donna Marie automatically
rolled over on her back, hiked her nightie up and spread her legs.
She waited patiently. He did it, hating both her and himself.

As he rolled away, she sat up and asked: "Are you going to be home
for dinner tonight? I'm making lasagna and broccoli with garlic. You
know you like that, Mario. But you have to tell me now – the
broccoli is no good heated over."

Just like Donna. All the while he was doing it, she was planning
out her goddam lasagna and broccoli with garlic.

"Maybe you could bring Louie and Danny home with you," she went
on. "It's been a long time since you brought anyone home with you and
you know how they like lasagna. And the kids love to see them. You
know that."

Fat chance, he had thought, as he glanced at his wafer-thin
platinum watch. It was 7:00 a.m. That meant it was 6:00 a.m. in
Chicago and if Louie and Danny were doing their job they were in
Chicago right then. If they were on schedule, in a half hour Louie
would be slowly strangling the life from some fink stoolie with a
piece of piano wire and Danny would be flicking him with a knife for
kicks. It was a funny thing about Danny and that knife.

"Are Danny and Louie still in the undertaking business?" Donna
Marie asked.

"Yes," he said. "But they can't come tonight. A very very rich man
died in Chicago and they had to fly there to make arrangements for
the body. I won't be home myself, not until late. I have to take
Johnny over to the studio to make a record." Then, an afterthought.
"I may even stay over in town if it gets too late."

Donna shrugged, moved to her bottle-littered vanity table and
began to pin her hair into a bun. She looked over her shoulder, her
face impassive.

"By the way, Gillian Blake called last night. She said she wanted
to speak to you, that it was very personal. What in the world could
she want to talk to you personal about?"

Mario didn't like that. Gilly should have the brains not to call
him at home. She had never done it before. Why now?

"She probably wants to get Johnny on that show of hers," he said.
"They all do."

"And something else," Donna Marie said. "My father called you last
night. Twice. The second time he sounded mad. You haven't been doing
anything to upset him?"

"No." Mario answered carefully. "He's impatient because the new
oil shipments haven't come through. I'll call him today if I get the
time."

Now, heading east on the Expressway, Mario Vella wondered about
Septimo. He had called all over for him that morning and hadn't been
able to reach him. But that wasn't what worried him. It was something
he sensed, a difference in the voices. Mario had used all the proper
codes, but everyone had answered in a strangely short way. He'd
called all the New York operations – Galaxy Liquors, Deuce
Lathing, Tornedo Linen Supply, Septimo Construction over in
Whitestone, even the four restaurants. At every outlet, the same
answer. No one knew where he was. Even Seraphina, his mother-in-law,
she didn't know. And all of them seemed distant on the phone. Yes and
no, that was all.

Septimo Caggiano was very important in Mario Vella's life. It
might have been different if Mario's own father had lived. His
father, Onofrio Vellaturce, wanted for two murders in Naples, had
jumped ship in Hoboken and settled down to life in America. The
Organization welcomed him like a long-lost brother, and inside of
twenty years he'd headed the largest Organization family in the New
York area. From a castlelike home on the Palisades, Onofrio ruled
everything in sight – docks, produce, trucking, terminals,
narcotics, gambling, labor unions and politicians. And in Brooklyn,
Sicilian-born Septimo Caggiano began to worry that Onofrio might
begin to lust after his organization. They set up a union, a union
scaled by the marriage of Donna Marie and Mario.

Mario, the son of an Organization leader, understood what was
expected of him. Two kingdoms were to be joined. Donna Marie –
doe-eyed, dark-haired, plump – had a peasant's taste in
clothing, running to sequins and ornate embroidery. She would cook,
bear children and keep a house as well as its secrets. Onofrio had
told him to overlook the girl's bad points. There were always girl
friends, he had said with a wink; and, as long as they were kept at a
distance, they would bring no shame to the family name. One must
never overlook, his father had said, the peculiar Sicilian ideas
about honor.

The two young people had had a total of three dates, all of them
well chaperoned. They were married at Salve Regina Church in
Brooklyn. The reception in the grand ballroom at the Hotel Commodore
was a convention of politicians, monsignors and Organization
luminaries from both coasts and most of the states in between. And
that night Mario dimmed the light in the bridal suite and learned
that he had married a sexual zombie. One week after this depressing
discovery, while honeymooning in the Laurentian Mountains north of
Montreal, Mario received a phone call telling of his father's sudden
death. His father had apparently dozed off behind the wheel of his
Fleetwood in Jersey City. And for some reason he had selected that
night to give Louie, his bodyguard-chauffeur, some time off. The car
had plunged through the guard rail just south of the Park Street
viaduct and spilled down the cliff onto Hoboken, exploding in a ball
of flames.

A meeting of the board was held. Septimo took over the joint
Organization with his father's old friend, Gino Viccardi, as
underboss. It was agreed that Mario should start at the bottom. He
would have to be blooded. If all went well, Gino would retire in
eight years and Mario would take his place as underboss. And some
day, when old Septimo decided to step aside, Mario would be expected
to fill his shoes. He had done as he was told. He had been blooded in
Cicero, Illinois, and he would never forget that first kill. He had
met the rebellious union reformer behind the Giaconda and blown off
the back of his skull with two .45-caliber slugs.

Though Mario had always used a gun, he got no pleasure out of
killing. It was a job that had to be done. And a gun was the quickest
way to do the job. Men like Louie and Danny liked to make death last.
They used piano wire and knives. Louie was an expert at loosening the
wire just before his victim passed out, then tightening it again,
then repeating the cycle. Danny could probe his knife in just short
of a vital spot and then twist it out for still another jab. They
liked what they did; maybe that's why they were still doing it. But
ten years had passed and Mario no longer had to do the dirty work. He
had no criminal record, and now he was the underboss of the combined
Organization. Gillian Blake. He savored the name as he repeated it.
Class, just like Gilly herself. She was a thoroughbred. Class. The
way she floated into a room. The way she dressed. The way she talked.
The way she ate.

Why hadn't he plowed her when they first met for lunch? He could
have, he was sure. There had been women in Cicero, in Jacksonville,
in a dozen other towns where he had paused to kill on contract. He
knew he appealed to women. His black hair was frosted at the temples
but he kept himself in shape. His taste in clothing was expensive but
not flashy – Sulka shirts, Brooks Brothers suits, rep ties.
They had met at the studio to discuss the possibility of having
Johnny on the Billy & Gilly Show. Her husband, Bill was his name,
had left them – had said there was a squash match at the
Racquet Club. It wasn't until that moment that he had figured Gilly
for a score.

"Why don't we have lunch, Mr. Vella?" she had said. She had been
wearing a sack dress, and only two parts of her touched the material.
Sure, he had answered.

She had suggested Michael's Pub. She had ordered a martini,
specifying the gin, telling the waiter "just a breath of vermouth."
Class. He stuck with a tall Scotch and water and she stuck with
martinis, three of them. She knew exactly what she wanted and she
made certain that she got it. After lunch he suggested that he drive
her home. She had said that would certainly be preferable to the Long
Island Rail Road.