The Family Corleone (47 page)

JoJo carried the note across the room and bent down close to the flame of the cigarette lighter. “Dear Mr. Capone,” JoJo said, reading from the note, “now you know how I deal with my enemies.” He
coughed, clearing his throat. “Why does a Neapolitan interfere in a quarrel between two Sicilians?” he continued, taking his time with each word. “If you wish me to consider you as a friend, I owe you a service which I will pay on demand.” He pulled the paper close to his face, trying to read through a blood smear. “A man like yourself,” he continued, “must know how much more profitable it is to have a friend who, instead of calling on you for help, takes care of his own affairs and stands ever ready to aid you in some future time of trouble.” He paused and tried to wipe away another blood smear over the last sentence. “If you do not want my friendship,” he read, “so be it. But then I must tell you that the climate in this city is damp, unhealthy for Neapolitans, and you are advised never to visit.” When he was finished, he stood and handed the note back to Luca, who folded it and slipped it into Joey Daniello’s jacket pocket.

“That’s it?” Joey said. “Just deliver this note?”

“Can I trust—you to deliver it?” Luca asked.

“Sure,” Daniello said. “I can deliver your message for you. Sure I can.”

“Good,” Luca said. He picked up the machete and started for the door. “You know what?” he said, pausing in the doorway. “You know what?” he repeated, approaching Joey. “I’m not so sure—I can trust you.”

“Yeah, you can trust me,” Daniello said, the words shooting out quick and hurried. “Why wouldn’t I deliver your boss’s message? You can trust me, sure you can.”

Luca seemed to think about it. “You know that—Frankenstein monster—you were—jabberin’ about? I saw that movie.” He pursed his lips, as if to say he didn’t know what all the fuss was about. “Not much—of a monster—if you ask me.”

Joey said, “What the hell’s that got to do with anything?”

Luca turned his back on Daniello, took a step toward the door, and then spun around with the machete like Mel Ott swinging a bat and beheaded Daniello with a quick series of three blows. Daniello’s head rolled across the floor and into the wall under a spray of blood. To JoJo, Luca said, on his way out the door, “Let them—
bleed out—wrap up the bodies—get rid of them.” He went back, pulled Don Corleone’s note out of Daniello’s pocket, and handed it to Vinnie. “Put this in—a suitcase with—the kid’s hands—make sure it gets—delivered—to Frank Nitti.” He tossed the machete into the blood-reddened dirt and walked out into the darkness of the corridor.

O
ne of Tony Rosato’s men leaned over a sink full of sudsy water in the Twenty-Fifth Street apartment and scrubbed his shirt on a washboard. He was a short, squat kid in his twenties, wearing a sleeveless white undershirt and wrinkled dress pants, his thick head of hair a rumpled mop. Giuseppe had been up for an hour already. From the look of the sunlight through the kitchen windows, it was after ten in the morning. The kid was intent on dragging his shirt over a washboard, a sheet of opaque, corrugated glass in a wood frame, splashing suds over the side of the porcelain sink and onto the linoleum. Giuseppe glanced up and down the hallway outside the kitchen and saw no one moving. After ten o’clock and every one of the idiots working for him was still sleeping, except this
idiota
washing his shirt in the kitchen sink. Giuseppe looked at the front page of the
New York Times
, which he had just picked up a moment earlier outside the front door, where he’d found both of Tomasino’s guards asleep in their chairs. He’d picked up the newspaper, closed the door, and come back down the hall to the kitchen, and he hadn’t roused anyone’s attention, not even this moron washing his shirt in the sink. What balls! Washing his shirt in the kitchen where everybody else eats.

Albert Einstein was on the front page of the
Times
looking like
some
ciucc’
in a good suit with a wing collar and a silk tie—and he couldn’t comb his fuckin’ hair.

“Hey,
stupido
,” Giuseppe said.

The kid at the sink jumped, splashing water onto the floor. “Don Mariposa!” He looked at Giuseppe, saw his expression, and held up his shirt. “I spilled wine all over my good shirt,” he said. “The boys was all up late last night playing—”

“
Mezzofinocch’!
” Giuseppe said. “I catch you again washing your clothes where the rest of us eat, I’ll put a bullet in your ass. Okay?”

“Sure,” the kid said, like the
idiota
he was. He reached into the soapy water and pulled out a rubber stopper. “It won’t happen again, Don Mariposa,” he said, the water draining fast out of the sink, a whirlpool parting the suds.

“I’m going up on the roof. Get Emilo and tell him I want to see him, and tell him to bring Tits with him.”

“Sure,” the kid said.

“Then get this place cleaned up, put on some coffee, and get everybody else out of bed. You think you can handle all that?”

“Sure,” the kid said, and he leaned against the sink, soaking the back of his pants.

Giuseppe glared at the kid and then went back to the master bedroom, where the sheets and covers to his bed were bunched up at the footboard. He tossed and thrashed most nights, fighting with his bedding. He groaned too. Sometimes loud enough that he could be heard in the next apartment. On the other side of the open bathroom door, a mirror over the sink was still fogged with steam from the shower. He always took a shower as soon as he got out of bed. Unlike that
stronz’
, his father, long dead and good riddance, or his mother, the two of them, a pair of worthless drunks, them and their beloved fuckin’ Sicily. They stunk to high heaven half the time. Giuseppe got up, got showered, got dressed, first thing, always, ever since he was a young man. Always wore a suit: Even when he didn’t have two nickels to rub together, he found a way to get hold of a decent suit. Out of bed, dressed, and at his business. That’s why
he was where he was and the rest of these nobodies were working for him.

He looked over the bedroom, at all the furnishings, the mahogany sleigh bed and the night tables and the matching dresser and mirror, everything brand-new. He liked the place and thought maybe he’d keep it for one of his girls after all this bullshit with Corleone was over. His jacket was hanging on the back of the bathroom door, and under it, his shoulder holster. He put the jacket on and left the holster. He opened a dresser drawer and chose a tiny derringer from a clutter of pistols. He put the gun in his jacket pocket and went up to the roof, smacking each of the sleeping guards on the head as he passed them, waking them and walking away without a word.

It was gorgeous on the roof, the sun heating up the tar paper, warming the stone cornice. He guessed the temperature was in the seventies, a sunny spring morning, almost summery. Giuseppe liked being outside, in the fresh air. It made him feel clean. He went to the edge of the roof, put a hand on the back of a gargoyle’s head, and looked out over the city, which was already bustling with people and traffic rushing along the avenues. Nearby, the white arrow of the Flatiron Building gleamed in the sunlight. When he was still coming up, he worked awhile for Bill Dwyer in Chicago. That was where he met Capone. Whenever Bill asked him to do something, didn’t he jump to it? He did. He jumped, and then they started calling him Jumpin’ Joe, which he made a big deal of not liking, but he didn’t mind it. Goddamn right he jumped. He jumped all his life. Something needed doing, he jumped to it. That’s why he rose up the way he did.

When the roof door opened behind him, Giuseppe reluctantly turned away from the warmth of the sun on his face and glanced back to Emilio, who was dressed casually in dark slacks and a blowsy pale-yellow shirt opened a couple of buttons down at the neck, revealing a gold link chain. Emilio was a sharp dresser, which was one of the things Giuseppe liked about him. What he didn’t like was seeing him in casual clothes. It wasn’t professional.

“Joe,” Emilio said as he came up alongside him. “You wanted to talk to me?”

“I get up this morning,” Giuseppe said, turning around fully to face Emilio, “I find two of your boys sleeping outside the door, everybody inside fast asleep, except one of Tony’s boys, some moron, washing his clothes in the kitchen sink.” He opened his hands, asking Emilio how to explain such bullshit.

“They’re just getting settled,” Emilio said. “The boys were up till dawn playing poker and drinking.”

“And so what? That makes a difference if Clemenza sends some of his men up here? They won’t blow our brains out because the boys were up late playing poker?”

Emilio put up his hands in submission. “It won’t happen again, Joe. I give you my word.”

“Good,” Giuseppe said. He took a seat on the stone cornice, resting his arm on the gargoyle, and motioned for Emilio to sit alongside him. “Tell me again,” he said, “we’re absolutely certain it was Frankie Pentangeli’s boys?”

“Yeah,” Emilio said. He sat alongside Giuseppe and tapped a cigarette out of his pack. “Carmine Rosato was there. He says it was Fausto and Fat Larry and a couple of boys he didn’t know. They shot up the place. We’re out ten grand, easy.”

“And the union offices?” Giuseppe motioned for Emilio to give him a cigarette.

“Had to be Frankie. We got a war now, Joe. Frankie’s with the Corleones.”

Giuseppe took the cigarette Emilio offered and tapped it against the stone cornice. Emilio handed him a lighter. “And us?” Giuseppe said. “We still pullin’ our puds?”

“They’ve moved or shut down their banks and most of their gambling places, so they’re losing money. That’s one thing. The guys,” Emilio said, “all their big guys are out at that place on Long Island. It’s like a fortress out there. You gotta risk your life just to get a peek. To get inside? You’d have to lay siege to the place, like in medieval times.”

“What times?” Giuseppe asked. He handed the lighter back to Emilio.

“Castle times,” Emilio said. “Like castles and moats and such.”

“Ah,” Emilio said, and then he was quiet as he looked up at a blue, cloudless sky. “So now we know for sure,” he said, not looking at Emilio. “It was Frankie tipped them off about the Anthonys.” He turned a grim face to Emilio. “See, I never trusted Frankie,” he said. “He didn’t like me. He smiled, he said the right things—but I could tell. He never liked me. Only thing I’m sorry is I didn’t just put a bullet in him like I should’ve.” He stubbed out his cigarette and tossed it off the roof. “You stood up for him, Emilio. You said hold on, don’t rub him out, wait and see, he’s a good guy.”

“Hey, Joe,” Emilio said. “How could I have known?”

Joe tapped a finger against his heart. “Instinct,” he said. “I didn’t know, but I suspected. I should’ve gone with my gut and killed him.”

When the roof door opened and Ettore Barzini came out of the shadowy doorway with Tits following, Giuseppe said to Emilio, slipping in a final word before the others joined them, “This thing with the Irish better work, Emilio. Do you hear me?”

“Yeah, sure,” Emilio said. “I hear you, Joe.”

Giuseppe and Emilio stood up as Ettore and Tits approached. “Emilio and I were just talking about that scumbag traitor, Frankie Pentangeli,” Giuseppe said.

“Son of a bitch,” Ettore said. He was wearing a smoky gray suit with a black shirt and no tie, the collar open. “I can hardly believe it, Joe.”

“But the thing is,” Giuseppe said, looking at Tits, “the thing that’s got me confused is, we didn’t tell Frankie about the Anthonys. And Frankie didn’t know about Capone’s men. So how’d he find out?” He took a drag on his cigarette and exhaled, his eyes on Tits. “How’d he know about Angelo’s? How’d he know about the guys the Outfit sent over? Somebody had to tip him off. Tits,” he said, “you got any ideas?”

“Don Mariposa,” Tits said. The kid’s face, his plump cheeks and ready smile that made him look childish, turned uncharacteristically hard, almost angry. “How could I tip off Frankie?” he said. “I’m not one of his guys. I have no dealings with him at all. When would I
even see him to tip him off? Please. Don Mariposa, I had nothing to do with this.”

“Joe,” Ettore said, “I’ll vouch for Tits. Why would he tip off Frankie? What’s in it for him?”

“Shut up, Ettore,” Joe said, looking at Emilio. “Do you vouch for him too?” he asked Emilio.

“Sure I do,” Emilio said. “The kid’s been with me since he was a boy. He wouldn’t turn on me. It’s not him, Joe.”

“Of course he wouldn’t turn on you. You’re like a father to him. He ain’t gonna turn on you.” Giuseppe shook his head, disgusted with the whole question. He motioned for the others to follow him as he started toward the roof door. “You know how this makes me look to the other families now? To my friend Al Capone? To the Outfit? Do you know how this makes me look?”

Tits bolted in front of the others to open the roof door for Giuseppe.

Giuseppe said to Tits, “You don’t like me much, do you?

Tits said, “I like you fine, Don Mariposa.”

“
Don Mariposa, Don Mariposa
,” Giuseppe said to Emilio as he stepped into the shadows of a foyer-like space above a flight of steps. “Now all of a sudden your boy’s full of respect.”

Tits pulled the door closed behind him and the four men stood in a small circle at the head of the stairs.

Giuseppe shook his head again, as if responding to an argument that the others couldn’t hear. “You know what?” he said to Tits. “I don’t know if you tipped off Frankie or the Corleones or what the fuck. But other than my captains, you’re the only one who knew all the details, so—”

“That’s not true, Don!” the kid shouted. “We all know everything.”

“I don’t keep things from my men,” Emilio said, stepping a little closer to Giuseppe. “I gotta trust them, and they all knew Frankie was cut out. None of my men said squat to him.”

Giuseppe looked into Emilio’s eyes before he turned back to the kid. “Still,” he said, “I don’t trust you, Tits. You’re a punk and I got my suspicions, so—” He took a quick step, closing the gap between himself and Tits. With his left hand he held the kid behind the neck
and with his right hand he pushed the derringer into his heart and fired. He stepped back and watched the kid crumple to the floor.