Chances

  “Let me worry about that,” he replied. “C’mon, let’s get her out to my car.”

  “Thank you,” Clementine whispered gratefully. “You have made a decision you will never regret.”

  Wednesday, July 13, 1977

  New York and Philadelphia

  “I think I’m hallucinating.” Lucky groaned. “Either that or I’m going fucking mad! I keep on seeing a big comfortable bed and a cold glass of orange juice.” She moved around on the elevator floor. “And my ass is killing me! How’s yours?”

  Steven didn’t reply.

  “Fine, thank you!” Lucky mimicked his voice. “Of course it is! Your ass is probably made out of rawhide. God forbid you should complain about anything.” She waited for him to say something.

  He didn’t.

  “I wonder,” she continued, “if I’ll get elevator sores—y’know, like bedsores or something.”

  Still the silence.

  “Why won’t you talk to me, you sonofabitch?”

  More silence.

  “You’re an asshole, you know that?” She stood up and stretched. Gotta keep fit. Christ! Is this what they did in solitary confinement in jail? No wonder they had fucking riots.

  She touched her toes once and then sat down again, exhausted. She had discarded all her clothes and bunched them up so that she had something to sit on. Ha! How about the scene in the morning when they were rescued. What an eyeful for the fire department or police or whpever came to get them, NUDE WOMAN FOUND IN ELEVATOR WITH BLACK MAN. Or, better still, LUCKY SANTANGELO, DAUGHTER OF THE NOTORIOUS GINO SANTANGELO, DISCOVERED NAKED WITH BLACK MAN IN ELEVATOR.

  Gino. Fuck it. Why had she thought of him?

  Because he’s coming back, that’s why. And how the hell can I do anything about it trapped in a fucking elevator?

  The screaming boy burst into the kitchen, obscenities still spewing from his mouth. “I’m gonna find ya, cocksucker! I’m gonna chop off yer balls an’ use ’em for tennis practice!”

  Dario held the lethal kitchen knife straight ahead of him in the darkness and remained crouched in his hiding place.

  “C’mon out, faggot. I know yer here, I know it.” A manic laugh. “I’m gonna slit ya up like a side of beef an’ then I’m gonna roast yer ass an’ eat it!”

  Carrie did not draw a second glance, standing outside the meat market on 125th Street. She stood there for at least an hour, a bedraggled figure.

  Gradually she realized that nobody was going to approach her. She was alone and was going to stay alone. The power failure must have changed the blackmailers plans.

  Several fires had been started along the street, the fire trucks were already roaring up, sirens screaming. An unruly crowd had gathered, and as the firemen attempted to deal with the flames, they were pelted with bottles and tin cans.

  Carrie felt sick to her stomach. She saw a young girl pulled into an alleyway by a group of boys. She saw an elderly man, blood pouring from a cut on his head, stagger by with a heavy stereo set. She saw two men snatch it from him and beat him to the ground.

  She ran.

  Once rid of the girl, Gino picked up the phone.

  “What number are you calling?” the operator inquired.

  He began to give Costa’s number in New York, then changed his mind. Better not to call. Why alert the feds to where he was? More than likely they were tapping Costa’s phone.

  “Forget it,” he said to the operator.

  He stood up, unzipped his pants, and took them down for the second time that night. He couldn’t help smiling.

  Who would have thought that Gino the Ram would be turning down a naked broad? His old nickname. Hadn’t been called that for years.

  He put on his pajamas, placed his gun under the pillow, and switched on the TV.

  Johnny Carson.

  He settled back to watch.

  Johnny Carson.

  Now he really felt like he was back in America.

  “Hey,” mumbled Lucky, “whatcha think? You think we could suffocate in this sweat box? ’Cause I sure as hell feel like I am.”

  “There’s plenty of air, it’s just that it’s hot air.”

  “Ah ha! You’re talking again. Thank Christ for that!”

  Steven sighed and shifted his position on the elevator floor.

  Yes, Lucky, my ass is sore and my back is stiff and my legs ache and I want to piss and I’m so thirsty I could kill

  He said, “Why do you think that talking’s going to help? It’s obvious we have nothing in common. I’m uncomfortable enough; I don’t need stupid conversation.”

  “Thanks a lot! It takes two to argue, you know.”

  “Which is exactly why I have stayed quiet.”

  “Don’t you like me?” she demanded.

  “Lady, I don’t even know you, and I don’t think I want to.”

  “Why?”

  “Here we go again.”

  She yawned. “You do know me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I know you.”

  “How?”

  She smiled in the darkness and affected a black street accent. “I can smell your balls, man.”

  She had succeeded in embarrassing him. There was a frosty silence.

  She twitched her nostrils. It was sweaty as hell in the elevator, his and hers. In fact it did stink. “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I’m going stir crazy. How long has it been now?”

  He didn’t answer.

  Dario held his breath. The boy was near, within touching distance. His hands, clutching the carving knife, were damp with perspiration.

  The boy moved slowly now, sensing he was close to his prey. He had quietened his screaming and singsonged softly, “Hey mothafucka… cocksucka… asskissa…”

  Dario was ready for him.

  Carrie ran right into the arms of a cop, who grabbed her roughly. “Where you runnin’, nigger?”

  She hadn’t been called nigger in more years than she cared to remember. She stared up into his big face, brought her arm back, and whacked him across the cheek as hard as she could.

  He was taken by surprise. “Well, I’ll be a son-of-a-bitch.”

  She wriggled free and ran again. But she was no longer a young girl, and he caught her easily.

  “I’m bookin’ you, bitch!” he said, fastening cuffs on her. “Assault of an officer on duty.”

  “You don’t understand,” she gasped. “I’m Mrs. Elliott Berkely.”

  “So what? I’m Dolly Parton. Don’t mean I shit sugar.”

  He pushed her over to a police wagon standing by the curb and bundled her in. It was already full of complaining blacks, and there was no room to sit. She stood shoulder to shoulder, thigh to thigh, with her fellow prisoners.

  “Fuggin’ disgraaace!” screamed a very tall man. “All I took was a pair a’ sneakers. Some them cats rippin’ off sixty-dollar patents. Me, all I took was fuggin’ sneakers!”

  A beautiful young Puerto Rican girl swayed, her eyes closed. “Por que?” she kept on muttering. “Por que?”

  Carrie felt like asking the same question.

  At approximately 2:30 A.M. there was a hammering on the door of Gino’s hotel suite in Philadelphia.

  He came awake slowly, wondered where the hell he was, groped for his watch, pulled on his silk robe, pocketed his gun, and went to the door. “Who’s there?” he demanded suspiciously, thinking, What the hell am I doing here, alone in some lousy hotel in Philadelphia?

  He was back in America now. You don’t fuck around on your own in America. Not when you’re Gino Santangelo, you don’t.

  Gino

  1934

  Clementine Duke was right. Gino never had cause to regret the decision he made that fateful October night in 1928 at Senator and Mrs. Duke’s party. It was a major turning point in his life.

  Now, six years later, as he lay on the bed in the blue guest room, once again in the Westchester mansion, all the memories came flooding back.

  He had rushed
the little black girl to the hospital, dumped her there, and made a quick getaway before anybody got around to questioning him. What happened to her after that was her problem; he had enough lame dogs in his life.

  Clementine Duke had been truly grateful. She had invited him to her townhouse the following week to discuss the matter. Dinner, she had said. But when he got there dinner was not on her mind.

  He would always remember that evening. Just the two of them, no servants around, no Senator. Candles lighting the garden room, and incense burning.

  Clementine Duke in a filmy white robe. Those goddamn nipples of hers staring at him. She had held his hand tightly and in a low voice said, “I suppose you know my husband is a homosexual.”

  “A what?”

  “A homosexual. A man who does not get excited at the thought of my milky white thighs gripping him round his somewhat portly belly. On the contrary, he likes men. He likes tight flat bottoms. Preferably young. Preferably negro.”

  “You mean he’s a fairy?”

  “Ah, your street language is so much more descriptive.”

  “Jeeze!” Gino whistled through closed teeth. “You gotta be kiddin’. Fairies don’t get married.”

  “Oh, no? You’d better tell my husband. I think he’d be inclined to argue the point with you.”

  “Why are you tellin’ me this?”

  “Why do you think?” Her green eyes narrowed in a catlike fashion as she took his hand and guided it to her breasts.

  He had needed no further invitation. After all, under the classy trappings Clementine Duke was only another broad. He worked her over good, right there in the candlelit room.

  She sighed and moaned and growled his name over and over at her moment of climax. Afterward she smiled and said, “I knew you would be wonderful. A little rough, but then you are still so young.”

  He was insulted. He had never had any complaints before. “Hey, whatcha mean, rough?”

  “I’ll show you.” And she had. She had taken him step by step through everything they had done before. Only this time she made him do it all very very slowly, very very softly.

  “Instead of sucking my nipples, lick them,” she suggested. “See how good it is when I do it to you.” She was right. “When you are inside me, slow down, relax. You’re not pumping gas, you’re indulging your sensuality.”

  “My what?”

  “Your lust. Your carnal desires.”

  “Hey, talk English.”

  She laughed softly. “It seems to me you’ve become so intent on pleasing the woman that you’ve forgotten about your own pleasure.”

  “I get pleasure,” he objected.

  She shushed him. “Of course you do. One wild orgasm. I want your climax to last as long as my titillation.”

  He pinched her smooth white ass. “I don’t understand a word you’re sayin’.”

  “You will, you will.”

  And he did. Eventually.

  Months later, their lovemaking was so good that he could hardly wait for their weekly meetings. He knew what she meant then. He even learned some of the words. Salacious. Hedonistic. Carnal. Their lovemaking encompassed all those feelings. Good as he had thought he was, he had only been playing before.

  Coming face to face with Senator Duke after making love to his wife gave Gino an attack of the guilts.

  “Don’t be so ridiculous,” Clementine scolded. “He doesn’t care—he has his own interests. I told you. Besides, he likes you, thinks you’re shrewd. And as long as we are discreet…” To that end she had insisted he keep Cindy as a live-in girl friend. “I could never be jealous of her,” she had said dismissively upon meeting the girl. “Keep her around. At least I know you’ll get breakfast every morning.”

  He got more than breakfast. Cindy had made herself indispensable. She cooked and cleaned, kept his clothes immaculate, drove him around when he needed her to, and—most important of all—kept a neat handwritten record of his many business transactions. Apart from all this, she was still as pretty as ever.

  In the course of six turbulent years, Gino Santangelo had risen to the top. With a little help from his friends.

  Charlie Lucania—now nicknamed Lucky Luciano on account of a one-way ride that he came back from, his surname changed for easier pronunciation.

  Enzio Bonnatti, who had fled Chicago and settled in New York right after the notorious Saint Valentine’s Day massacre on February 14, 1929. Seven hoods had been lined up in a garage on Chicago’s North Clark Street and then machine-gunned to death by a rival gang. Some said that Enzio was responsible and had got out before he was hit with retributions, but this was never proved.

  Aldo Dinunzio. A hard, conscientious worker with just the right amount of larceny in his blood. Married now to Barbara Riccaddi, who nagged the shit out of him. Father of two babies, a third on the way.

  And Senator Oswald Duke. The most important friend of all.

  Without the Senator, who knew what would have happened to Gino Santangelo? Just another hood making his living bringing in bootleg. Small-time stuff. Pissing away his profits on suits and cars, parties and women.

  Senator Duke made Gino’s money legitimate as he had promised. He took a few thousand here, a few thousand there, and invested it in good solid stock.

  Gino was uneasy. He liked his money in cash—in a bank box—where he could get his hands on it.

  “Trust Oswald,” Clementine had insisted. “He’ll make you rich.”

  Gradually, as he watched his money grow in the pages of the Wall Street Journal, he began to believe her. He even argued when, in the spring of 1929, Oswald insisted on selling out and reinvesting abroad.

  With anger Gino watched his sold-out stocks go even higher. “Shit!” he complained to the Senator. “Why’d ya hafta sell?”

  “Wait and you will see,” Oswald replied.

  And sure enough, on October 29, 1929, the stock market crashed, bringing down many men and their fortunes. It also heralded the beginning of the great American depression.

  Only Gino wasn’t depressed. Gino was in very good shape indeed.

  From that day on, whatever the Senator advised financially, he did. Of course there were the favors he was asked to do along the way. Nothing serious. The Senator would place his hand lightly on his arm and say, “Be sure to take care of the matter personally, dear boy.” So Gino did.

  The matters ranged from threatening a young black jazz musician with instant castration if he ever contacted the Senator again, to roughing up some two-bit newspaper reporter who was planning an expose article Oswald did not want published.

  The favors were so far and few between that Gino gave them no thought. He didn’t mind what the old man asked him to do. After all, he, Gino, was screwing the guy’s wife and making money. What more could anyone ask?

  Enzio Bonnatti had made his move to New York at just the right time. With the collapsing stock market and the ensuing panic and fear, the so-called Roaring Twenties were staggering to an end. Money, once plentiful, was now in short supply. And speakeasies were closing their doors all over town. The result of this was gangland feuds the like of which had never been seen before. There was not enough money to go around, and everyone wanted what there was.

  The main war was between two gangsters of the old school—“Mustache Petes,” as they were known: Guiseppe Joe-the-Boss Masseria and Salvatore Maranzano.

  Lucky Luciano, Enzio Bonnatti, Vito Genovese, and Frank Costello, the young bloods, stood back and watched, ever hopeful that the two men would wipe each other out.

  Gino hovered on the periphery. He was Enzio’s right arm; later, his partner.

  The Castellammarese War raged for several years, finally culminating with the killing of Masseria in April, 1931, and Maranzano a few months later.

  With the old “Mustache Petes” out of the way, Lucky Luciano was ready to take over. And right along with him were his friends and associates.

  Luciano wanted to change the face of organized crime a
nd form a nationwide syndicate that could operate together in peace and harmony. He formed a commission of mobsters and appointed himself chairman. But he was at pains to point out that all members would have an equal vote.

  Gino, a member of the commission, liked his style. He admired his strength, cunning, and business head. His ethics he didn’t give much thought to.

  “The man is a killer,” Clementine told Gino one day. “He arranged for that Masseria character to be murdered. He sat and had lunch with him and then went to the men’s room while his hired assassins came in and butchered the man. He should be in jail. I refuse to have him to my parties any more.”

  Gino couldn’t help smiling. Clementine’s idea of who was in or out depended on whether she invited them to her parties or not. However, he enjoyed his conversations with her. She sure knew a lot for a skirt. You could learn plenty from a woman like Clementine. Even more from her husband.

  Oswald informed Gino long before prohibition was officially repealed in December, 1933. By that time he was well into other businesses anyway: gambling, loansharking, and the numbers racket. He refused to touch prostitution and drugs in spite of pressure from Enzio. Because of this conflict they split their interests in January, 1934, and went their separate ways. They parted the best of friends. Aldo elected to stay with Gino, who appreciated this mark of loyalty. They worked well together; they always had.

  Gino’s old enemy, Pinky Banana, had been involved in a bad contract job and had to get out of the city. This relieved Aldo no end, who had always imagined Pinky creeping up to get his revenge one dark night.

  Gino’s businesses were all profitable in spite of the depression. The numbers racket appealed to everyone, from cabdrivers to bank managers. It was a surefire way of having a thrill. You bet your dime or quarter on a number, and if that number came up you could win two or three hundred dollars—even more, depending on your initial stake.

  Gino called it mug’s money. And it rolled in.

  He had over fifty runners operating in three different neighborhoods collecting bets from customers. They took the money to five central collecting points, usually stores with a special room in the back where the bet was recorded and the cash stored ready for pickup by Gino’s bagman. A lucrative business indeed.