The Family Corleone (8 page)

“Nobody knows us. Last year we were all in school.”

Luca was silent a long moment, watching Cork. “You’re smart,” he said, “but you’re thickheaded, and I’m not your mother. I gave you the straight dope. You keep doing this, you’re gonna wind up dead. Me? I don’t like Mariposa and I’m not scared of him. You want to keep robbing him, I’ll keep working with you. From now on, though, you’re the only one I’ll talk to. Don’t let me see any of those other mugs again, especially that crumb with the chopper. We have an understanding?”

“Sure,” Cork said. He stood and offered Luca his hand.

Luca opened the door for him. “I’ll give you another piece of advice, Corcoran. Get rid of the sneakers. It ain’t professional.”

“Okay,” Cork said. “We’ll do that.”

Luca pointed to the side door. “Leave it open a little,” he said, and then disappeared back into the office.

Hooks was on the street with the others, listening to Paulie Attardi tell a joke. They were smoking cigarettes and cigars. Cork stood back from the circle they made and waited. His boys were out of sight. The corner lamppost was dark and the only light on the street came from the open side door. The rain had turned into a cold mist. When the joke was over and everybody laughed, Paulie took a slug of something from a silver flask and handed it around.

Hooks broke away from the circle and pumped Cork’s hand, friendly, and then held it tight and pushed him away from the others. “How’d the boss treat you?”

“He don’t seem so terrifying,” Cork said. “He’s a big one, though; I’ll give you that.”

Hooks didn’t say anything right away. Though he was probably near thirty, he still had a baby face. A few curls of auburn hair pushed out from under the circle of his porkpie hat. “What did he tell you?”

“He gave me some advice,” Cork said.

“Oh yeah?” Hooks slid one hand through a belt that wrapped around the middle of his jacket. “Was part of that advice to watch your back, because if Mariposa finds you he’s gonna kill ya?”

“Something like that.”

“Something like that,” Hooks repeated. He put his hand on Cork’s back and moved him into the shadows. “I’m gonna tell you a few things,” he said, “because Jimmy was a close friend of mine. Luca Brasi, first of all, is a fuckin’ psychopath. You know what that is?”

Cork nodded.

“You do?” Hooks said. “You sure?”

“Yeah,” Cork said. “I know what a psychopath is.”

“All right,” Hooks said. “Well, Luca Brasi’s a psychopath. Don’t get me wrong. I been with him since I was fourteen and I’d take a bullet for the guy—but what’s true is true. In this business, being a psychopath’s not a bad thing. But you need to understand, he was all nice to you because he hates Mariposa. He loves it that you’re sticking it to Joe. He loves it that Joe’s blowing his top all over town about it. See, it’s this way.” Hooks looked up a moment, as if trying to find the right words. “Because Luca’s the middleman and everybody knows it, and because Joe still hasn’t done anything about it, Luca comes off looking like… I don’t know, like a guy nobody screws with, not even Mariposa. See? So you guys, to his way of looking at it, you’re doing him a favor.”

“What’s the problem, then?” Cork said.

“The problem, Bobby,” Hooks said, “is that eventually you’re going to get one or all of us killed.” Hooks paused for dramatic effect. “Luca,” Hooks continued, “being who he is, don’t give a shit. But I do, Bobby. You see?”

Cork said, “I don’t know if I do.”

“I’ll make it simple,” Hooks said. “Stay away from Mariposa’s goods. And if you steal from him again, stay away from us. Now you understand?”

“Sure,” Cork said, “but how come the big change? Before you were—”

“Before I was doing Jimmy’s wife’s little brother a favor. Mariposa’s at war with the LaContis, so I figured a couple of shipments of hooch get lost in the shuffle, who’s noticing? And if anybody notices, they figure LaConti. That’s not the way things worked out, though. The way things are now, Joe knows somebody’s stealing from him, he don’t like it, and somebody’s gotta pay. Right now, nobody knows you. If you’re as smart as I hear you are, you’ll keep it that way.” Hooks stood back and opened his arms. “I can’t make it any clearer,” he said. “Be smart. Stay away from Mariposa. No matter what, though, stay away from us.”

“Okay,” Cork said. “Sure. But what if Luca comes to me? What if he wants me to—”

“That won’t happen,” Hooks said. “Don’t worry about it.” He took a pack of Luckies from his jacket pocket and offered one to Cork. Cork took it and Hooks lit it for him, and then lit his own. Behind them, the rest of Luca’s gang ambled off the street and back into the garage. “How’s Eileen?” he asked. “Jimmy was a good egg. How’s the little girl? What’s her name?”

“Caitlin,” Bobby said. “She’s fine.”

“And Eileen?” Hooks asked.

“She’s all right,” Bobby said. “She’s a little tougher than she used to be.”

“Being a widow before you’re thirty will do that to you. You tell her for me,” Hooks said, “I’m still looking for the son of a bitch that killed Jimmy.”

“It was a riot,” Bobby said.

“Bullshit,” Hooks said. “I mean, sure it was a riot,” he added, “but it was one of Mariposa’s goons that killed him. Just tell your sister,” he said. “Tell her Jimmy’s not forgotten by his friends.”

“I’ll tell her.”

“All right.” Hooks looked around and asked, “Where’d your boys go?”

“They’ll be waiting for me on the corner,” Cork said. “Can’t see nothin’ with the streetlight out.”

“Got a driver coming by to pick you up?” When Cork didn’t
answer, Hooks laughed and patted him on the shoulder before he went back into the garage.

Cork moved slowly along the sidewalk, navigating through the dark toward the sound of voices. When he reached the corner, he saw the red glow of two cigarettes burning, and as he approached closer, he found Sonny and Nico sitting on the bottom steps of a rickety wooden stoop. Behind them, several floors of tenement windows were dark. The mist had turned into a drizzle again, and drops of water were clinging to Nico’s cap. Sonny was bareheaded. He ran his hand through his hair and shook off the rainwater.

Cork said, “What are you doing sitting in the rain?”

“Got tired of listenin’ to Stevie bumpin’ his gums,” Nico said.

“He’s complaining about the deal.” Sonny stood and turned his back to the car, which was parked against the curb on the other side of the street. “He thinks we got robbed.”

“We did,” Cork said. He looked around Sonny, across the street. In the car, the red tips of cigarettes moved around, making loops and swirls. The windows were partially open and a shimmer of smoke drifted up past the rain-streaked roof. “That pickup was almost new. We should have got a couple grand more, easy.”

“So?” Sonny made a face that said,
Why didn’t we?

“What do you want to do?” Cork said. “Call the coppers?”

Sonny laughed at that, and Nico said, “Brasi had a point. He’s the one’s got to deal with Mariposa. I’d rather take less money and stay alive longer.”

Sonny said, “He’s not saying anything about us to anybody, right?”

“Yeah, sure,” Cork said. “Let’s get out of the rain.”

As soon as Sonny closed the car door and started the engine, Stevie Dwyer said, “Did you talk to him about the money?” The rest of the boys were quiet, as if waiting to hear what Sonny had to say.

Cork said, “What’d you want him to talk to me about, Stevie?” Cork was in the front seat and he leaned over to look into the back.

Sonny pulled the car out onto the street. “What’s eatin’ you?” he asked Stevie.

“What’s eatin’ me?” Stevie ripped off his cap and slapped it against
his knee. “We got robbed is what’s eatin’ me! The truck was worth three grand by itself!”

Cork said, “Sure, if you could sell it on the street. But who’s buying a truck with no papers?”

“Not to mention,” Nico said, “a truck that’s gettin’ you a bullet in the back of the head the wrong person sees you drivin’ it.”

“That’s a good point too,” Sonny said.

Cork lit a cigarette and then rolled down his window to let some of the smoke out. “We did okay,” he said to Stevie, “considering we didn’t have anything to bargain with. Luca was holding all the cards. No one else is buying Mariposa’s hooch from us. Nobody. He knows that. He could have offered us a buck fifty, we’d have had to take it.”

“Ah, bullshit,” Stevie said. He jammed his cap on and fell back in his seat.

Cork said, “You’re just sore ’cause Luca busted you in the mouth.”

“Yeah!” Stevie shouted, and his shout came out like an explosion. “And where the hell were all my buddies?” he yelled, looking around the car wildly. “Where the hell were you guys?”

Angelo, who was probably the quietest of the gang, twisted around to face Stevie. “What did you expect us to do?” he asked. “Shoot it out with them?”

“You could’ve stuck up for me!” Stevie said. “You could’ve done something!”

Cork tilted his cap up and scratched his hair. “Come on, Stevie,” he said. “Use your head.”

“Use your own head!” Stevie answered. “You fuckin’ guinea-wop-dago-loving son of a bitch!”

Briefly, the car was quiet. Then, all at once, everyone but Stevie laughed. Sonny slapped the wheel and yelled at Cork, “You fuckin’ guinea-wop-dago-loving son of a bitch, you! Come here!” He reached across the seat, grabbed Cork, and shook him.

Vinnie Romero slapped Cork on the shoulder. “Fuckin’ dago lover!”

“Go ahead and laugh,” Stevie said, and he hunched himself up against the door.

The others did as they were told, and the car moved along the streets rocking with laughter. Only Stevie was quiet. And Nico, who found himself suddenly thinking about Gloria Sullivan and her parents. Nico wasn’t laughing either.

Vito flipped through a thick stack of blueprints for the Long Island estate. He loosened his tie as he went over the floor plans, already seeing in his mind’s eye the furnishings he imagined for each of the rooms in his house. Out back, he planned a flower garden in one part of the yard and a vegetable garden nearby. In Hell’s Kitchen, in the postage stamp of courtyard dirt behind his old apartment building, in the days when he was just starting the olive oil business, he’d nurtured a fig tree for several seasons before a deep frost finally killed it. For years, though, friends were pleased when he brought them figs from the tree—and amazed when he told them that they grew right there in the city, in his backyard. Often one friend or another would come back to his building with him, and he’d show them the fig tree, where its brown stems and green leaves sprouted close to the red brick of the courtyard wall, its roots reaching down under the building, clinging to the basement and the heat of the furnace through the winter. He had set up a little table in the courtyard, with a few folding chairs, and Carmella would bring down a bottle of grappa and some bread and olive oil, and maybe some cheese and tomatoes—whatever they had—and she’d make a little dish for him and their guests. Carmella would join him often, with the kids sometimes, and while the kids played in the yard, she’d listen as if once again fascinated while he explained to his neighbors how he carefully wrapped the tree in burlap and covered it with a tarp after each September crop of figs, bundling it up for the coming winter.

Often, after work, even through the fall and winter, he’d stop by the courtyard to check on the fig tree before going up to the apartment. The courtyard was quiet, and though it belonged to the whole apartment building, the neighbors had ceded it to him without his asking. Not once in all the years he’d lived in Hell’s Kitchen—
with the clatter of the freight trains rumbling down the streets, and the noise of car engines, and the ragman and the iceman and the peddlers and knife sharpeners shouting up at the buildings—not once in all the years he lived in that noisy part of the world had he ever found someone else sitting at his table, next to his fig tree. In August, when the first crop fattened and dangled under green leaves, he’d place a wooden bowl full of juicy figs on the first-floor landing in the morning, and when they were all gone by midmorning, Carmella would bring the bowl back up to her kitchen. The first fig of the season he kept for himself. With a kitchen knife, he’d slice through the mahogany-colored skin to the light pink flesh. In Sicily, they called this kind of fig a Tarantella. In his memory there was an orchard of fig trees behind his home, a forest of them, and when the first crop came, he and his older brother, Paolo, would eat figs like candy, stuffing themselves on the sweet, juicy fruit.

These were some of the memories from his childhood that Vito cherished. He could close his eyes and see himself as a boy following in his father’s footsteps in the early morning, at the first light of day, when his father went out hunting, the barrel of the
lupara
slung over his shoulder. He remembered meals at a rough-hewn wood table, his father always at the head of the table, his mother at the other end, he and Paolo across from each other, facing each other. Behind Paolo there was a door with glass panes, and beyond the glass, a garden—and fig trees. He had to struggle to recall the features of his parents’ faces; even Paolo he couldn’t completely recall, though he had followed Paolo around like a puppy all the years of his life in Sicily. Their images had faded over the years, and even if he was sure he would recognize them instantly were they to come back from the dead and stand before him, still he couldn’t see them distinctly in his memories. But he could hear them. He heard his mother urging him to speak,
Parla! Vito!
He remembered how she worried because he spoke so little, and shook her head when he explained himself by shrugging and saying
Non so perché
. He didn’t know why he spoke so little. He heard his father’s voice telling him stories at night, in front of a fire. He heard Paolo laughing at him one evening when
he fell asleep at the dinner table. He remembered opening his eyes, his head on the table next to his plate, awakened by Paolo’s laughter. He had many such memories. Often, after some brutish ugliness required by his work, he’d sit alone in his tiny courtyard, in the cold of New York and America, and remember his family in Sicily.