Sons of the City (11 page)

“Lucky you.”

“He looked me up and down, like, Who is this? I pretended not to notice. Mrs. Correri told me later he comes in all the time.”

“Who’s Mrs. Correri?”

“She and her husband own the fruit store. Anyway, I hung out in there during my whole lunch break yesterday, hoping he’d come in.”

“And you got lucky again.”

“Yep, and I think he came to see me. As soon he walked in the door, he looked around, like he was looking for somebody. I was talking to Mrs. Correri, and he noticed me and started staring. Finally, he came over and said hello to Mrs. Correri—he calls her ‘Mama Correri'—and then he asked her, ‘Who’s your new customer, Mama?’ She told him I was the new manicurist next door, and she introduced us.”

“And?”

Michelle shrugged. “Well, that was it. He got a banana and left.”

“Another banana? What is he, a monkey?”

“Anyway, I had to call in sick at Angela’s this morning, you know, so I could go to the funeral, and when I called, they told me Bravelli’s coming in tomorrow morning at eleven for a manicure. He specifically asked for me.”

“Michelle, if he finds out who you are, he’ll kill you. Your face was on the TV news tonight, I’m sure it’s going to be in the papers tomorrow …”

“Not this face,” she said, pointing. “People who don’t know me won’t make the connection. And anyway, Bravelli’s going to see what he wants to see.”

“And what’s that?”

“Some new girl in the neighborhood who turns him on.”

All I could think of was, That fucking asshole Bravelli is invading my life again. Here I meet this great woman, and now she and Bravelli are going to start going out together? And she’s going to get killed doing it?

“No way,” I said.

“What?”

“This is a bad idea, Michelle, and I’m not going to help you.”

“Fine. I’ll do it myself,” she said, getting up from the table.

“You can’t go undercover without backup.”

“I’m already doing it.”

“Really? Do you even know the first thing about working undercover?” She started moving through the living room, and I followed. “Have you called any friends from your new apartment? Your phone could be tapped, you know.” She kept walking. “Have you put family photos out—somebody else’s family?”

She stopped at the front door and turned.

“See? This is the kind of stuff I need you for.”

“You can’t do it alone.”

“Well, are you going to help me?”

“Do you mean am I going to help you get killed? No.”

She nodded, and opened the door, and then she was gone.

I
ended up going to Westmount the next morning to watch Bravelli get his manicure. It wasn’t so much deciding to go as not being able to stay away.

I remembered that there was a hardware store across the street from the beauty parlor, and I figured that’d be a good place to watch from. I drove to Westmount in my black Chevy Blazer, and parked around the corner from the store. I had on jeans and a dark green golf shirt, which is what I would have worn before going into work that day anyway. I didn’t stand out, but of course I didn’t blend in, either—you couldn’t do that in Westmount unless you lived there your whole life.

As I walked into the hardware store, the door jangled some little bells. The store was dimly lit and cram-packed with cans of paint, black-plastic wastepaper baskets, boxes of nails, toilet seats, rolled-up American flags in boxes, even garden hoses—as if anyone in Westmount had a lawn. And everything was covered with a thick dust, like no one had stepped inside the store in twenty years.

I walked to the front windows and looked out across the street. I could see the clubhouse, the fruit store, and, directly across from me, the beauty shop. On the big front window was written in nail polish-like paint “Angela’s.”

“Whadda ya need?”

I turned to see a little guy about ninety years old, squinting up at me through thick, smudged glasses. His pants were way too big—they probably fit him sometime before World War II—and had to be held up with suspenders. It was like he had suddenly shrunk inside his clothes and hadn’t had time to change into smaller ones. He stared at me, his lower lip sticking out, shiny and wet, in a permanent pout.

“Just looking around,” I said.

He shrugged and walked back behind the counter. He was halfway through some kind of sandwich, maybe chicken salad. I watched as he picked it up with both hands and took a tiny bite, like a little squirrel. He had forgotten all about me.

I looked back out the window at the clubhouse. When I was in OC we had done surveillance on it, usually from a van parked across the street. Like most mob clubhouses, it was where the guys could get together and relax—they’d play cards, eat sandwiches, shoot the shit. The public wasn’t invited. This one was in a vacant storefront, and the tiles on the sidewalk in front still had the old store’s name, written in script, “Westmount Shoes for Ladies.”

From the sidewalk, you couldn’t see inside. There were dusty gray curtains in the windows, and the glass front door was painted black. Hanging in one window was a big Italian flag, sagging a little in the middle. In the other was a sun-faded poster for an Italian-American parade from two or three years before.

We knew from informants who had been inside that there were a couple of tables for cards near the front, a few stuffed and folding chairs here and there, and a fairly new, regulation-sized pool table. They had some sort of video game, but supposedly the deafening sound effects drove Bravelli crazy, and no one dared use it while he was there.

You could tell it had been a shoe store—the walls on either side were still lined with slanted wooden shoe racks, still painted pink for the ladies of Westmount. Farther back. a new kitchen had been installed. That’s where they made the sandwiches and kept the beer.

There was also a TV that always seemed to be on, maybe to make it harder for a bug to pick up conversations. An informant told us that one time when he came into the clubhouse, six mob guys were watching a soap opera in the middle of the day, hanging on every word.

Actually, they shouldn’t have worried about us bugging the place. A couple of times we tried to get in, posing as servicemen for Philadelphia Electric, but something always went wrong.

One time Doc and I got dressed up in electric company uniforms and banged on the clubhouse door. We had toolboxes and everything—we were all set to wire the place up. But just as the door was opening, an off-duty cop from the neighborhood happened to walk by.

“Hey, Doc,” he said. “When’d you quit the force?”

The door slammed shut, and that was the end of that.

I smiled at the memory, then glanced at my watch. Just about 11, time for the manicure. A moment later, Bravelli emerged from the clubhouse. I moved back from the window, though I doubted he’d be able to see in. It was dark where I was standing, and the windows were pretty dusty.

Bravelli was dressed to kill. Perfectly tailored gray nail-head suit that had to cost at least two thousand dollars. Dark shirt, long black tie. The guy was a walking cliché. When you saw Bravelli, you got the feeling he went to mob movies, saw what everyone was wearing, then went out and bought the same thing for himself. Which probably wasn’t surprising, considering that he supposedly loved to watch gangster movies.

I thought he was heading straight for the beauty shop, but instead he ducked into the fruit store. It took up two storefronts, and had probably been grand in its day. But now the place looked rundown, almost abandoned. Its brown paint was peeling badly, and discarded wooden fruit crates were stacked up in the windows.

Bravelli came out of the store carrying a red apple, then disappeared into the beauty shop. A few moments later, he and Michelle sat down at a table in the window, across from each other, like they were in a restaurant. He handed her the apple. What a fucking teacher’s pet.

I was surprised—Bravelli was violating a mob rule. You never sit in the window, it’s too dangerous. You sit with your back against the wall, so you can see who’s coming in the door. But here they were, right next to the glass, and with the sun coming in I could see them both clearly, even the expressions on their faces. It was like Bravelli was so confident on his own turf, he was almost daring somebody to come by and take a shot.

He extended his right hand across the table, and Michelle took it and looked at his nails. He said something and she laughed a little, and then she started doing something to his hand, I couldn’t tell what, some kind of stroking or massaging. It made me a little sick just to watch it. I could see him talking and smiling, turning on the charm. That may work with your usual bimbos, I thought, but it ain’t gonna get very far with Michelle.

I had to admit, she was right—Bravelli was seeing what he wanted to see. Now and then she smiled shyly, playing along. But a manicure was one thing, what about outside the beauty shop? She’d be on her own, in unfamiliar territory. One slipup, one small mistake, he’d know she was a cop. And he wouldn’t hesitate for a moment to have her killed. I stood there in the window thinking, this is going to end in her death. Michelle is going to her death.

“Whadda ya need?”

I almost jumped a foot. The old guy was right next to me, squinting up through his thick glasses. It was like he had never seen me before.

“Nothin',” I said.

He shrugged and headed back to the counter. I started to watch Michelle and Bravelli again. What am I going to do, I thought, just leave Michelle out here in Westmount on her own? Just hope I don’t hear a call over Police Radio one night of a woman found dead?

Bravelli looked out the window, and his gaze swept the street. I took an involuntary step back, into the shadows. What if Michelle saw me here, and got rattled and gave herself away?

The bells of the door jingled, and in walked Frankie Canaletto. He didn’t see me. I quickly turned away, pretending to be examining some feather dusters sticking out of a big tin watering can.

“Hey, Charlie,” Canaletto said to the old man, “I need me a new float for my toilet.”

I glanced around and realized I was standing right in the toilet-float section. There were three of them, piled together in a wire basket at my elbow.

“What kinda toilet you got?” the old man asked in a gravelly, damp voice.

“What difference does it make? A toilet is a toilet.”

“No, no,” the old man said, “now they got these modern toilets, you gotta have special floats. I remember when I used to carry one kind of float, one kind was all you needed for any toilet anybody had. Then they made things complicated, they’re always makin’ things complicated. Look at this faucet piece here, see how they made it complicated, I remember—”

“Charlie,” Canaletto said, “I don’t want no faucet. I want a float. You got all kinds, right?”

“I don’t got the modern ones. What kinda toilet you got?”

“I don’t know, Charlie, a toilet toilet. Let me take a look at your floats.”

“You probably got a modern toilet. I probably don’t got what you need.”

“Where’s your floats, Charlie?”

“Over by the window. But I probably don’t got what you need.”

I could hear Canaletto’s steps on the dark wood floor. I waited until he was right behind me, then I whirled around and snarled, “What the fuck are you doin’ here?”

He almost fell backwards in surprise, but then he straightened and glared at me. “What are you doin', you spying on us?” He turned his head to look out the window, and immediately spotted Bravelli and Michelle in the beauty shop.

He turned back to me with a triumphant smile. “You
are
spyin’ on us. Hey, Charlie,” he said, keeping his eyes on me, “this guy’s a cop, you know you got a cop in here?”

“Whadda ya sayin'? I don’t know nothin’ about him. He didn’t want to buy nothin'.”

“That’s ‘cause he’s a cop, Charlie. He’s spying on people.”

I had to get out of there. I grabbed all three toilet floats from the basket and shoved them at Canaletto. “Here,” I said, brushing past him. “Go home and clean up your shit.”

When I reached the door the old man called out to me. “Hey, mister.”

I turned. “Yeah?”

“You don’t see what you need, just ask.”

Canaletto rolled his eyes. I slipped out the door and hurried down the sidewalk and around the corner.

A
half hour later, I called the beauty shop from a pay phone, I figured the manicure would be over by then. I didn’t know what name Michelle was using, so I just asked for the manicurist.

“Which manicurist?” the woman on the phone asked. “We got two, ya know.”

“Uh …”

“You want Lisa or Annie?”

“Which has the curly brown hair?”

“They both got curly brown hair.” “Which is the new one?” “They’re both new. What do you want, hon, you want a manicure? They’re both good, believe me, either one, take your pick.”

“Well, I talked to a manicurist in the fruit store the other day, I don’t know which one it was, she said definitely to ask for her. But I’m not too good at remembering names.”

“The fruit store? Probably Lisa, she’s been goin’ over there. Hey, Lisa!” the woman screamed. “Guy onna phone wants a manicure!”

I waited for a few seconds, then I heard footsteps and someone picking up the phone.

“Hello?”

I couldn’t tell whether it was Michelle.

“This is Eddie.” I figured if I got the wrong girl, the name wouldn’t mean anything.

There was just silence, then: “Why are you calling me here?” Definitely Michelle.

“Do you still want me to help you?”

“Of course. But you shouldn’t be calling me here.”

“I know, but I didn’t have any other way of getting in touch. Can you page me when you get off? I’m going into work at four.”

She said OK, and I gave her the number and hung up. I was on the street when she paged me that evening, and I found a pay phone and called her back. We tried to figure out where to get together. One thing we agreed on: it had to be a place where no one from Westmount would ever go.

A
t noon the next day, I was sitting in my Blazer at Carver Plaza, a public housing project in North Philadelphia that was almost all black. Its three high-rise buildings had seen a lot of misery over the years. All the balconies were covered with wire fencing, so children wouldn’t fall out, and half of them had clothes drying on lines. Probably none of the basement washers or dryers worked.