Tom, horrified, nearly got up to intervene. Fred hadn’t mentioned that Fat Willy was one of the first snitches to be taken care of by the FBI and the Witness Protection Programme. In order to make him unrecognizable, the FBI had placed him on a draconian diet and he had shed dozens of pounds. The first time he had been allowed into town, Fat Willy, or Guglielmo Quatrini as he was really called, had dived into a doughnut shop and eaten the equivalent of what he had shed.
“Willy just beamed at life,” Fred continued. “He was always agreeable, always in a good mood, he always had a friendly word for the ladies, and a kiss for the babies’ cheeks, always happy. He only stopped smiling once, and that was when one of his sons was kidnapped. The kidnappers had demanded an enormous ransom, but Willy had held out, right up to the end, when he had received one of the boy’s fingertips in a dental floss box. He not only got his son back alive, he got his hands on the kidnappers. He shut himself up in his basement with them, with bare hands. Yes, believe it or not, bare hands! Well, no one knows what happened then, all I can say is the neighbour had to go away for the weekend to get away from the screams coming from Willy’s basement.”
The fifty people in the audience sat like frozen statues, hanging on the words of this man on the stage. A tremor of amazement passed amongst them, and nobody dared move or say a thing. All the rest, the discussion, the programme, all forgotten. One man was talking and they had to listen.
One spectator tiptoed out and went to ring his wife, who was down the road attending a meeting of the Green Party candidates for the next local elections. Basically, he told her to get over to the cinema club, as “something” was happening. She looked at her watch and suggested to the gathering that they might all go and see what was going on at the town hall.
*
Maggie, now tired of looking through the binoculars, was sitting at the listening table, wearing earphones, absorbed in her neighbour’s conversations. She had just learned that Mr Dumont, the motorbike repair man, had been taking Chinese lessons for the last ten years for no apparent reason, and that his wife wasn’t really his wife but his cousin, that the unmarried mother at number 18 went and put flowers on Flaubert’s tomb in Rouen every month, that the French teacher lived well beyond his means, and won fortunes playing tarot in the back room of the only nightclub in the area, that Mme Volkovitch had knocked ten years off her real age in her dealings with officialdom, and that Myriam, at number 14, spent all her spare time searching for her real father so as, in her words, “to force him to admit to his paternity.”
During each of these sessions, she learned a little more about human nature, what motivated and moved people, what made them suffer – more than she could ever glean from any book or newspaper article.
“It’s that young computer guy who’s placing the small ads in the Clairon de Cholong,” she said, taking off her earphones.
Giving away PC XT computer, 14" screen with jet printer in good condition. Obsolete equipment for which he could get nothing second-hand, but which could be very welcome to someone with no money. That was the sort of thing which thrilled Maggie the most, simple acts of kindness, small thoughts for others. If she felt drawn to the great humanitarian causes, she still had a lot to learn about such discreet and well-judged actions, inspired as much by common sense as good fellowship. Such actions often took the most unexpected forms. For example, her neighbour, Maurice, who owned La Poterne, the other big café in Cholong, had been on holiday in Naples, where he had come across an ancient custom still practised in some of the bars over there. Given the price of an espresso taken at the counter (a matter of centimes), you would often see customers getting rid of their small change and paying for two coffees, and only drinking one themselves; the barman would chalk it up and give a free coffee to some indigent passer-by. Maurice, who wasn’t a particularly generous man, and who didn’t give much thought to any poverty around him, had nonetheless found the idea interesting, and had introduced it. He was the first to be surprised at how many customers played the game. And Maggie had made Maurice into one of her real-life heroes, for having introduced a custom that went against all the expectations of the times, and one you would have thought bound to fail.
*
Quint was planning his revenge. This man, who was expressing himself with all the confidence of a seasoned lecturer before his very eyes, was going to pay dearly for this performance. Tom sometimes forgot about the incredible stupidity of gangsters, and how their taste for bragging was, more often than not, their undoing.
“If you can see them in the streets? Is that what you were asking? Have you ever heard of Brownsville? It’s the West Point for the made men in a sense: once you’ve trained there you can go to the top. In the great days, in that little area about six miles square, you might pass a Capone, a Costello, a Bugsy Siegel (the one who founded Las Vegas) in the street. Or maybe a Louis “Lepke” Buchalter, or a Vito Genovese, who was the inspiration for Vito Corleone in The Godfather. And there I’m just mentioning the legendary figures, but I could also name some of the foot soldiers who were just as responsible for the great moments of the Cosa Nostra. In Brooklyn, you could have passed any number of these guys, who didn’t have any legal existence! They didn’t appear in any official document, except maybe a police record begun when they were fifteen. And you wouldn’t have seen them just in the street – for example, a guy like Dominick Rocco, known as The Rock, he could kill someone in a cinema, just like where we are now, with an ice pick, and no one would notice.
In the third row, Mr and Mme Ferrier, long-time supporters of the cinema club, looked at each other incredulously.
“Is he making it up?”
“He’s a writer, dearest. The more unbelievable it is, the happier he is to make us think it’s true.”
The audience had trebled in size during the hour Fred had been talking. News had travelled and the curious flooded in from the neighbouring restaurants and cafés. Several times Fred had wanted to note down one of his stories to put into his memoirs, but he was on a roll and preferred to carry on with this exercise which had the audience at his feet. Tom was already planning to contact Quantico to consult his superiors, but how on earth was he going to be able to explain that Fred, not content with transforming his Mafia past into literature, had now embarked on a one-man show that would have filled Caesar’s Palace?
*
Di Cicco had gone to lie down in the next-door room and Caputo sat in front of a television with the sound muted – he had forgotten Maggie was there. As for her, watching and listening to her neighbours had put the craziest of ideas into her mind. She was carried away, helped by the grappa, into a utopia in which her neighbourhood had become a free zone that no longer operated according to the old laws of indifference towards your fellow man. Her cheeks blazing and her heart glowing, she began to dream of a small corner of this earth in which the highest ideals of communality in human relations reigned supreme. Just two or three remote streets in which each inhabitant had set aside his or her own selfish interests and instead taken an interest in those of their neighbours. In this little Eden, any way of reaching out to others would be acceptable. You could admit to some weakness or confess to some error instead of sinking into denial. You could affirm the eternal possibility of redemption. Approach the person you had feared without really knowing them. Help someone in distress, despite the urge to run away. Dare to explain what had gone wrong. Satisfy those who are never satisfied. Intervene and mediate in some conflict. Pay back a debt even if it was no longer expected. Encourage a family member’s artistic ambition. Spread good news. Give up an unattractive habit for the sake of those around you. Pass on a piece of wisdom before it disappears for ever. Bring comfort to an old person. Make some tiny unnoticeable sacrifice. Save a life far away by forgoing some useless gadget, and all the others still to be invented.
Maggie, in this poetic trance, saw this whole little world falling into place, all it needed was her own contagious generosity of sp
irit: she would concentrate her efforts on one neighbourhood in the hope of seeing them spreading outwards, into other areas and then into the whole town, and then the rest of the world. With a tear in her eye, Maggie offered Di Cicco a last drink – she was in no hurry to come down to earth.
*
“. . . Tony was famous for his energetic interrogations of suspected rats – he wasn’t called The Dentist for nothing. He ended up as Carmine Calabrese’s lieutenant. For made men, that was like becoming a high official. His career would never be meteoric, but he was safe from a lot of worries. It was a choice that the other wise guys respected. And yet he had the makings of a good capo, and God knows what he could have dreamed up to consolidate the empire.”
Tom was determined to create a diversion so as to bring an end to this unbearable verbal diarrhoea, spewed out by a boastful ignoramus who was going to bring everything down around him. But what sort of diversion, for God’s sake? How was he going to get this bastard to shut his mouth?
One of the spectators managed this miracle by raising his hand.
“If there’s any message we get from the cinema about gangsters and mafiosi, it’s something to do with the idea of redemption. As though they’d been trying to atone somehow for the last thirty years.”
“Redemption? I don’t suppose most of those guys know what that word means. Honestly – have you really been taken in by all that crap? Why would a man who has just blown out the brains of his best friend over some incident with a bookie feel the need to play Jesus Christ? Guilt – that’s a concept invented by intellectuals. Go and try it on Gigi Marelli, who was a fourteen-year-old executioner, a baby-killer as they used to call them. He was known as “Lampo,” the lightning bolt. He had an average of six or seven contracts a year, that kid, and two bodyguards who watched him day and night. One day he was given a special contract: his own father – he was asked to kill his own father. The old man had been stupid, and the capo at the time was insistent that the son should do the job. Once he’d done it, Gigi went and told his mother. They stood together, clutching each other at the funeral. Guilt? There’s a Greek tragedy taking place every day in Brooklyn and New Jersey, plenty of material for new plays and plenty of new theories for psychiatrists too.”
Quint grabbed his phone, called HQ and got Di Cicco.
“Go and wake Maggie up.”
“She’s here.”
“Let me talk to her.”
In the audience, twenty impatient hands were now raised. The jungle drums had beaten around the town, and the hall was filling up. Fred was glowing. His performance was that of an actor and a raconteur, a blend of thinly disguised confession and dramatic invention. This warm glow cleared his mind of the bitterness and sacrifice of the last few years.
“So to answer the question you put at the beginning, yes, you can see goodfellas in the street. You want names? James Alegretti, known as Jimmy the Monk, Vincent Alo, known as Jimmy Blue Eyes, Joseph Amato, known as Black Jack, Donald Angelini, known as The Wizard of Odds, Alphonse Attardi, known as The Peacemaker . . .”
Tom dreaded the logical conclusion of this list, the inevitable moment when an exultant Fred, carried away by his own confession, would finally betray himself.
“. . . John Barbato, known as Johnny Sausages, Joseph Barboza, known as Joe the Animal, Gaetano Callahan, known as Cheesebox, William Cammisario, known as Willie the Rat . . .”
The very last person to come into the hall was Maggie. She walked slowly down the aisle without taking her eyes off the man on the stage, who reminded her of another man, a certain Giovanni with whom she had fallen in love a long time ago. Why him, why that rascal Manzoni who hung around with all the other hooligans? Nobody could answer that except her. She knew him by reputation and she had seen him for the first time at the San Gennaro dance on East Houston Street. She had watched him drinking with his mates and chasing skirt until late in the evening, when a handful of girls remained, all longing to be taken home by the handsome Giovanni. Instead he had asked Maria la Ciociara to dance; she was a plain young woman who had been a wallflower all evening. Seeing him taking the overcome girl in his arms had made Livia’s heart beat harder.
“Frank Caruso, known as Frankie the Bug, Eugene Ciasullo, known as The Animal, Joseph Cortese, known as Little Bozo, Frank Cucchiara, known as Frankie the Spoon, James De Mora, known as Machine Gun, and hundreds of others. Most didn’t wear the pinstripe suits and garish ties you might expect – you had to be a made guy to recognize another one. Otherwise you would just take them to be decent family men coming home from a day’s work, which is what they were, really. And amongst all these, there’s one I want to make a special mention of, a clan boss from Newark, a really special guy. He was married to the sweetest of girls, and they had two lovely kids, a boy and a girl. I must tell you about this guy, the way he took to heart every single thing that happened on his territory . . .”
Fred suddenly caught Maggie’s eye, as she stood below the stage. There was nothing reproachful in her look, on the contrary she was gazing at him with indulgence. He stopped talking, smiled at her, and slowly woke up.
“Come on, Fred, we’re going home.”
With this “come on, Fred,” he felt her take his hand.
Like an old actor relishing applause, he bowed to his audience, who clapped wildly. Alain Lemercier understood that one of the greatest evenings of the cinema club had just taken place. His struggles had all been worthwhile.
*
Tom, Maggie and Fred walked home in silence in the dark. Quint, as he left them at their door, warned Fred:
“If this evening’s exhibition has any repercussions, I’m dropping you all, even if it means the FBI takes a hit for it. I’ll just have to live with the painful knowledge that I have facilitated your death instead of delaying it as long as possible, which is what I’ve been busting a gut doing for the last six years.”
Quintiliani would not have that pleasure. Fred’s pointless foolhardiness would never have any consequences. But the inhabitants of Cholong would long remember this extraordinary performance, which they simply took to be the outpourings of a writer’s extra-fertile imagination.
Fred and Maggie didn’t speak until they reached their bedroom.
“So – you made a fine spectacle of yourself?”
“And you had a good time being lady bountiful with your starving people?”
She turned off the bedside light and he grabbed his toothbrush in the bathroom. A jet of dark-brown water splashed onto the white basin. Disgusted, he went back to his bedside table and picked up the telephone.
“Quintiliani, I want to apologize. I behaved like an idiot.”
“Nice to hear that, but I don’t believe a word of it.”
“I sometimes forget how hard you work.”
“You usually come up with this sort of crap when you’re trying to get something out of me. Do you really think this is the right moment?”
“I’ve got to tell you a story, Tom . . .”
“Wasn’t this evening’s performance enough for you?”
“A story about you.”
“Go on then.”
“Do you remember when Harvey Tucci couldn’t give evidence because he’d had his throat shot out by a hitman? You were part of the team supposed to be protecting him, Tom. Sorry to remind you of a painful moment. You were a new boy at the Bureau.”
“You were just a little squirt yourself, Fred. You were acting as cover for the hitman that evening, you told me about that.”
“What I didn’t tell you was that the shooter couldn’t get Tucci in his sights, after several hours. There was still the possibility of icing one of your people to terrorize Tucci and persuade him not to make the deal.”
“. . .”
“It was your head that was in his sights, Tom.”
“Go on.”
“He asked me what he should do, and I answered, ‘No collateral damage.’ We waited for another ten minutes, which seemed to go on for e
ver, and then that fool Tucci went to smoke a cigarette at his bedroom window.”
“. . .”
“Pretty close, eh?”
“Why are you telling me all this now?”
“This evening got me down. I need to talk to the only family member I’ve got left back there.”
“Your nephew Ben?”
“Do me a favour, I need to know how he is.”
“One suspicious word and I cut you off.”
“There won’t be any. Thanks, Tom.”
“By the way, you never said who the hitman was. Was it Art Lefty? Franck Rosello? Auggie Campania? Which one was it?”
“Don’t you think I’ve done enough snitching?”
Ten minutes later, the telephone rang, and woke Maggie up. She had only just dropped off.
“Hello?”
“Ben? It’s Fred.”
“Fred? What Fred?”
“Fred, your uncle from Newark, who lives a long way away.”
Ben, at the other end, realized that it was his uncle Giovanni ringing from God knows where on the planet, and that the conversation was being tapped.
“You OK, Ben?”
“Fine, Fred.”
“I was remembering that weekend in Orlando, with the children.”