The Family Corleone (17 page)

“You were only twelve,” his mother managed to say through her sobs. “You were only twelve, and it was after that everything started with you. It was after that you started getting in trouble.”

Luca sighed and toyed with one of the meatballs on his plate.

“You didn’t mean to do it,” his mother said, her voice barely above a whisper. “That’s all I want to say. I blame myself for all of it. It wasn’t your fault.”

Luca got up from the table and started for the bathroom. His head was pounding, and he knew it was one of those headaches that would last all night unless he took something. Aspirin weren’t likely to help much, but even a little was worth trying. Before he made it to the bathroom, though, he stopped and went back to his mother, where she was sobbing again with her head in her arms, her plate of pasta pushed aside. He touched her shoulders, as if he were about to massage her. “Do you remember our neighbor?” he asked. “The guy who lived across the hall from us?” Under his hands, he felt his mother’s body stiffen.

“Mr. Lowry,” she said. “He was a high school teacher.”

“That’s right,” Luca said. “How’d he die?” He waited a moment and then said, “Oh, right, he fell off the roof. That’s right. Isn’t it, Ma?”

“That’s right,” his mother whispered. “I hardly knew him.”

Luca smoothed his mother’s hair again, and then left her and went to the bathroom, where he found a bottle of Squibb’s in the medicine cabinet. He shook out three aspirin, popped them in his mouth, and then closed the medicine cabinet door and looked at himself in the mirror. He’d never liked his looks, the way his brow protruded over deep-set eyes. He looked like a fucking ape-man. His mother was
wrong about it being an accident: He had intended to kill his father. The two-by-four was out in the hallway because he’d left it there. He’d already made the decision to beat his father’s skull in the next time the old man punched his mother or knocked Luca across the room or kicked him in the balls, which was something he liked to do and then laugh about while Luca moaned and whimpered. He did these things, though, only when he was drunk. When he wasn’t drunk he was nice to Luca and Luca’s mom. He’d take them down to the docks and show them where he worked. Once he took them both out on the water in somebody’s sailboat. He’d put his arm around Luca’s shoulder and call him his big boy. Luca almost wished the good stuff had never happened, because the old man was drunk a whole lot and nobody could put up with him like that, and if there wasn’t that other side of him, then maybe Luca wouldn’t have dreams where his father was always coming back. It made him tired, the dreams and the little flashes of memory that were always popping up: his mother naked from the waist down and her blouse torn open, exposing the shiny white skin of her belly swollen taut and round as she crawled away from his father on the floor, bleeding where he’d already stabbed her, the old man crawling after her with a carving knife, screaming he’d cut it out of her and feed it to the dogs. All that blood and her round, white belly swollen, and then the old man’s bloody head when Luca laid him out with the two-by-four. His father was out cold with the first blow to the back of the head, and then Luca stood over him and wailed on him until there was nothing in the air but blood and screams, and then the police and days in the hospital, and a funeral for the infant brother who’d never made it out of the womb alive, the funeral while Luca was still in the hospital, before he could come home. He’d never gone back to school after that. He’d only made it as far as fifth grade, and then he was working in the factories and on the docks before they moved to New York, where he worked in the rail yards, and that was something else he didn’t like about himself: He was ugly and stupid.

Only he wasn’t so stupid. He watched himself in the mirror. He watched his own dark eyes.
Look at you now
, he thought, and he
meant that he had more money than he knew how to spend and he ran a small, tight gang that everybody in the city feared, even the biggest of the hotshots, Giuseppe Mariposa—even Mariposa was scared of him, of Luca Brasi. So he wasn’t so stupid. He closed his eyes and the throbbing in the back of his head filled up the darkness, and in that throbbing darkness he remembered the rooftop on Rhode Island where he had lured their neighbor, Mr. Lowry, the teacher. Luca’d told him he had a secret to share, and once they were up on the roof he’d pushed him over. He remembered him falling, the way his arms reached out on the way down as if someone might yet take his hand and save him. He remembered him landing on the roof of a car and the way the roof caved in and the window glass shattered like an explosion.

In the bathroom, Luca ran some water into his cupped hands and washed his face. It felt cool and he smoothed his hair with his wet hands and then went back out into the kitchen, where his mother had already cleared the table and was standing in front of the sink with her back to him, washing the dishes.

“Listen, Ma,” Luca said. He massaged her shoulders gently. Outside the evening was fading into night. He flipped on the kitchen lights. “Listen, Ma,” he said again. “I’ve got to go.”

His mother nodded without looking up from her work.

Luca approached her again and smoothed her hair. “Don’t worry about me, Ma,” he said. “I can take care of myself, can’t I?”

“Sure,” his mother said, her voice barely audible over the running water. “Sure you can, Luca.”

“That’s right,” Luca said. He kissed her on top of the head, and then found his jacket and hat on the hall tree next to the door. He slipped into the jacket and settled the hat on his head, tilting the brim over his forehead. “All right, Ma,” he said, “I’m going.”

With her back to him still, without looking up from the dishes, his mother nodded.

On the street, at the foot of the steps to his mother’s building, Luca took a deep breath and waited for the pounding in the back of his head to subside. Climbing down the steps had made the throbbing worse.
He smelled the river in the wind and then the sharp odor of manure someplace close by, and when he glanced out onto Washington Avenue he located a big pile of crumbling horseshit close to the curb—no wagons around, only a few cars and people walking home, climbing the steps into apartment houses, talking with neighbors. A couple of scrawny kids in tattered jackets ran past him like they were running away from something, but Luca didn’t see anyone chasing them. In his mother’s building, a window opened and a little girl looked out. When she saw Luca looking back at her, she ducked into the apartment and slammed the window down. Luca nodded to the closed window. He found a pack of Camels in his jacket pocket and lit up, cupping the match in his hands to shield it from the wind. It was blustery out and the weather was turning cold. The streets were darkening and the shadows of the apartment houses swallowed up spaces around stoops and in tiny front yards and long alleys. The throbbing in Luca’s head was still there but a little better. He walked to the corner of Washington and then turned right on 165th, heading for his apartment, which was in between his mother’s place and the warehouse.

He touched the butt of his pistol where it stuck out a little from an inside pocket, just to reassure himself that it was there. He was going to kill Tom Hagen, and that would rile up the Corleones. No way around it—that was big trouble on the way. Vito Corleone’s reputation was more talker than killer, but Clemenza and his boys were tough guys, especially Clemenza. Luca tried to pull together what he knew of the Corleones. Genco Abbandando was
consigliere
. He was Vito’s partner in the olive oil business. Peter Clemenza was Vito’s
capo
. Jimmy Mancini and Richie Gatto were Clemenza’s men… That was all he knew for sure, but it wasn’t a big-time organization, nothing like Mariposa, or even Tattaglia and the other families. It seemed to Luca that the Corleones were someplace between a gang and an organization like Mariposa’s and Tattaglia’s and LaConti’s—or what was left of LaConti’s. He knew Clemenza had more men than just Mancini and Gatto, but he didn’t know who. Luca thought maybe Al Hats was with the Corleones too, but he didn’t know for sure. He’d have to find all this out before he took care of the kid. He
didn’t give a fuck if the Corleones had an army behind them—but he liked to know what he was up against. Luca considered that his boys weren’t going to like this, and then, as if the thought made them appear, JoJo’s yellow De Soto pulled to the curb beside him, and Hooks stuck his head out the window.

“Hey, boss,” Hooks said. He got out of the car wearing a black porkpie hat with a green feather in the hatband.

“What’s this about?” Luca watched as JoJo and the rest of the boys got out of the car and slammed the doors. They made a circle around him.

“We got trouble,” Hooks said. “Tommy Cinquemani wants a meeting. He just showed up at the warehouse with a few of his men. He wasn’t happy.”

“He wants a meeting with me?” Luca said. His head was still pounding, but the news of Cinquemani coming up to the Bronx to arrange a meeting made him smile. “Who’d he have with him?” he asked, and he started walking again, heading for his apartment.

JoJo looked back to his car parked on the curb.

“Leave it,” Luca said. “You’ll come back for it later.”

JoJo said, “We got guns stashed under the seats.”

“And somebody’s gonna steal from you in this neighborhood?”

“Okay,” JoJo said, “yeah,” and he joined the others as they headed for Luca’s.

“So who was with Cinquemani?” Luca asked again. The bunch of them took up the sidewalk. The boys were in suits and ties as they walked on either side of Luca.

“Nicky Crea, Jimmy Grizzeo, and Vic Piazza,” Paulie said.

“Grizz,” Luca said. He was the only one of the three that he knew, and he didn’t like him. “What did Tommy have to say?”

“He wants a meeting,” Hooks said.

“Did he say about what?”

Vinnie Vaccarelli stuck his hand down his pants to scratch himself. He was a wiry kid in his twenties, the youngest of the gang. His clothes always seemed about to fall off. “He’s got
some things
he wants to talk to you about.”

“So the dentist wants to see me,” Luca said.

“The dentist?” Vinnie asked.

Luca said, “Stop scratching your balls, will ya, kid?” Vinnie yanked his hand out of his pants. “That’s what they call Cinquemani. The dentist. Maybe he wants to work on my teeth.” When the boys were silent, Luca explained, “He’s likes to break guys’ teeth off with pliers.”

“Fuck that,” Hooks said, meaning he wanted no part of a guy who breaks people’s teeth.

Luca smiled at Hooks. All his boys looked a little nervous. “Bunch of
finocch’s
,” he said to them, and walked on as if he were both disappointed and amused.

“So what do you want to do?” Hooks asked.

They were on Third Avenue, alongside the El, a few doors down from Luca’s place.

Luca climbed the three short steps up to the door of his building and unlocked it while the boys waited. He pushed the door open and turned to face Hooks. “Let Cinquemani wait,” he said. “Don’t tell him anything. We’ll make him come back and ask again, nicer.”

“Ah, for Christ’s sake,” Hooks said, and he stepped into the hallway, edging in front of Luca. “We can’t play around with these guys, boss. Mariposa sent one of his
capos
to see us. We ignore him, next thing we know we’re all gonna be in boxes.”

Luca moved into the hallway with Hooks, and the rest of the boys joined them. When the door closed, the hall and the steps were dark. Luca flipped a light switch. “You smell cigarettes?” he asked Hooks, and he looked up the steps to the next landing.

Hooks shrugged. “I always smell cigarettes,” he said. “Why?” He tapped a Lucky out of his pack and lit up.

“Nothing.” Luca started up the stairs with the boys following. “I don’t like Cinquemani,” he said, “and I don’t like Grizz.”

“Jimmy Grizzeo?” Paulie asked.

“I did a heist with Grizz,” Luca said, “before he hooked up with Cinquemani. I didn’t like him then and I don’t like him now.”

“Grizz is nobody,” Hooks said. “It’s Cinquemani’s the problem. Mariposa sent him, and we can’t ignore Mariposa.”

“Why not?” Luca asked. He was enjoying himself. His head was still throbbing, but the pleasure of watching Hooks squirm almost made him forget the pain.

“ ’Cause some of us ain’t interested in dying,” Hooks said.

“Then you’re in the wrong business,” Luca said. “Lotta guys die in this business.” They were at the door to his apartment, and he turned to face Hooks as he felt around in his jacket pocket for keys. “You can’t be worried about dyin’, Hooks. It’s got to be the other guys worried about dyin’. You see what I’m saying to you?”

Hooks started to answer, and then a door slammed and there was a rush of footsteps someplace above them, and everyone turned and watched the stairs to the roof.

“Give me your heater,” Willie said.

“What do you want my gun for?” Donnie had just started down the ladder off the roof, and he was looking up at Willie. When they’d seen Luca had all his boys with him, they’d abandoned their plan for another time. The roof across the alley was empty of people and crowded with crates. There wasn’t much light left, and the rooftops were all shadows.

“Never mind,” Willie said, “just give it to me.”

“You got your own gun,” Donnie said. He lifted himself up to get a look back at the closed roof door. “Ain’t no one comin’ after us,” he said. “They don’t know nothin’.”

“Just give me your fuckin’ heater,” Willie said.

Donnie reached into his shoulder holster and handed Willie his gun. “I still don’t know what the hell you need my gun for.”

Willie gestured down to the next rooftop. “Go on,” he said. “I’m right behind you.”

Donnie laughed and said, “Are you goin’ daffy on me now, Willie?” He looked down to locate the next step on the ladder, and when he looked up again, Willie was running. Confusion froze him in place
for an instant before he leapt up off the ladder and back onto the tar paper as Willie disappeared through the roof door.

Luca thought it was one of the neighborhood kids. Kids were always climbing the rooftops. He thought maybe some kid being chased when the door banged open and someone came running down the steps, and then, to confuse matters even more, a train roared by on the El. Luca backed into the shadows and pulled his gun. Then lead started flying.