“It’s nice when your dreams can come true,” she said, disappearing into the small, dark hallway.
Gaspaldi stood in the foyer of a building on the corner of East 234th Street, watching as the action unfolded. The police had blocked off both ends of the street, their sharpshooters crouching behind the cover of their parked cars, one man, a captain, controlling and coordinating their every move. Gaspaldi had seen his master plan to bring down the cop from Naples blown to shreds, ignited by Lo Manto’s strategic countermoves and the stunning and unexpected presence of Pete Rossi. He put a match to the tobacco end of a French cigarette, took a deep inhale, and wondered which of the two men he should aim to kill first—the cop who wanted him dead or the don who had betrayed his cause. Three of his shooters were spread out across two streets, dead. The sniper shots came from the subway station, not the roof, which meant there was either a cop moving without orders or another hitter in play. Either way, it didn’t much matter. Gaspaldi needed to do what he should have done from the very start.
It would be the pimp who would bring an end to the cop’s run.
Gregory Flash Randell had reloaded his rifle and was staring down at Lo Manto. Pete Rossi was on the other end of a parked car, gun in hand, walking toward the badge. He didn’t know why he was there and frankly, to Randell at least, the reasons didn’t matter. If Rossi had done a flip, that was Camorra business and would be handled by them in their own way. But if Lo Manto took a fatal bullet, then someone in the crime family would still pay top dollar for his body and that was cash destined for Randell’s pockets. He clicked the bullet into the chamber and aimed down at the street, the eye scope squaring in on Lo Manto’s upper torso. Randell shifted the muscles in both his shoulders and took a deep breath, primed to take out one more life, this one the most lucrative shot of his long career.
The English bulldog sank his jaw into the lower half of Randell’s ankle and stabbed his teeth around white flesh and thick bone. The shock of the bite forced the shooter to snap his body back, the rifle falling to the ground, his pants leg drenched with blood, the dog holding on to the ankle as if he were locked to it. Randell looked up and saw an elderly black man walking with a cane, wraparound shades hiding his eyes. “I’m going to kill your dog, blind man,” Randell shouted. “You won’t see it, but you’ll hear it. That I promise.”
“He’s just a puppy,” Blind Moe Ravini said, walking closer, each step carefully measured. “He don’t really mean much harm. Just looking to play some. Only reason he bit down was because you were doing something he didn’t care for. I don’t know what that would be, but I’m sure it was valid.”
Randell started raining down fists on the dog’s head, each glancing blow jarring the bulldog, loosening his grip on the hitter. He was throwing punches with both hands, the dog’s growl turning to a whimper. He didn’t even notice Blind Moe Ravini standing over the two of them. “I hate it when anyone gets violent with an animal,” Blind Moe said in a hushed voice. “Goes against my very nature.”
Randell looked up at Blind Moe, his free leg kicking at the dog’s rib cage. “Like I give a shit,” he yelled. “By the time I walk off this platform, there’s going to be two black bastards laying here dead.”
Blind Moe Ravini lifted his face to the warmth of the sun and took in a deep breath. “I guess then it’s on me to make sure you never get the chance to walk off this platform,” he said.
Blind Moe snapped his cane against the hard ground. The bottom half of the walking stick broke in two, exposing a thin twelve-inch blade, serrated and sharp as the crease on a designer suit. Blind Moe took two steps forward and rammed the blade into Gregory Flash Randell’s chest. He held it there, twisting it, listening to the gurgles coming out of the shooter’s mouth, ignoring the cut and bleeding hands Randell had wrapped around the cane, trying with all the strength he had left to pull the blade free. The old bookie stood his ground, his thin fingers gently rotating the walking cane, each twist causing the blade to carve through more tissue. He felt Randell’s body slump to the side, his hands letting loose their grip. He gave the blade one final twist and then yanked it free. With a flip of his wrist, he snapped it back in place, the blade once again safely hidden within the white shell of the walking cane.
“Let’s go, Little Moe,” Blind Moe said to his shaky English bulldog, weakened by the blows but not defeated. “Our train’s coming into the station.”
Lo Manto and Rossi stood five feet from each other, each with a gun in his right hand, both bleeding, sweat streaking their faces. “Looks like it’s just you and me,” Rossi said, glancing at the dead bodies around them.
“And about three dozen cops,” Lo Manto said, nudging his head toward the corner half a street away. “Just waiting to get a jump on both of us.”
“They’ll only move on your say-so,” Rossi said. “Not like them to go up against one of their own. No matter what country he lives in.”
“I don’t know why you did what you did,” Lo Manto said. “I’m sure you had your reasons. But I came here to end this between us and I’m not going back until I do.”
“It’s been a long fight,” Rossi said, “and we both gave as good as we got. You’re right that it should end now. Right here, where it started. Down to just you and me.”
“This one is for my father,” Lo Manto said, slowly raising his gun to waist level.
“For mine, too,” Rossi said, the nine-millimeter held away from his body, his finger on the trigger.
“Lo Manto!” It was Felipe shouting from under the car, half his body on the sidewalk, his eyes staring out at Gaspaldi sneaking down on the cop and the gangster. The pimp fired off the six rounds in his gun, tossing his last set of dice on a final roll. Pete Rossi moved first, standing between Gaspaldi and Lo Manto, his nine-millimeter aimed at the man who for the last fifteen years had worked under his reign. The bullets caught Rossi in the center of his back, buckling his knees, dropping him forward into Lo Manto’s arms. The cop from Naples reached out for his most bitter enemy, held him close to his chest, reached over one shoulder, and aimed his .38 at Gaspaldi. With his left hand, Lo Manto grabbed Rossi’s gun arm and pointed the nine-millimeter at the pimp.
“Take him out,” Rossi whispered to Lo Manto.
“We both will,” Lo Manto said.
He squeezed down on the .38 Special at the same time that Rossi used his sapping strength to pull the trigger on his own gun. The bullets from both caught Gaspaldi in the chest, neck, arm, and face. He landed with a loud thud against the brown brick façade of a tenement building and crumpled to the steps next to it. Lo Manto tossed aside his gun, bent to his knee, and brought Rossi down with him, holding the wounded man in his arms.
“Why?” Lo Manto asked him in hushed tones. “Why did you do this?”
“It’s what my mother would have wanted,” Pete Rossi, the most powerful Camorra don in the world, answered.
24
LO MANTO SAT on a soft plastic chair facing the hospital bed. His right arm was heavily bandaged and resting in a sling. It ached whenever he moved. He was dressed in jeans and a thin dark shirt, his handsome face marked with a bruise along his left eye and a long cut on his chin. He looked over at Pete Rossi, asleep on the bed, the sheet folded up to his waist. A series of small tubes and needles ran from clear liquid bags hanging on silver hooks into his hands and arms. His breath came in slow spurts, his chest and back wrapped in rows of gauze, old blood drying in circular patterns. His forehead was wet with cold sweat and his face flaunted a two-day growth. His wife and children were waiting outside the large private room on the third floor of the hospital wing, along with several armed bodyguards.
Lo Manto poured some cold water on a small hand towel and dabbed at Rossi’s head. The don opened his eyes and smiled up at him. “I usually like my nurses in tight white outfits,” he said, his words coming out slowly and embedded with pain. “Not used to getting wiped down by a cop.”
“This is a new place for me, too,”
Lo Manto said. “And I’m not very good at it.”
“What’s she like?” Rossi asked.
“Who?” Lo Manto asked.
“Our mother,” Rossi said. “I don’t even have a picture. Never even got a chance to see what she looked like.”
Lo Manto put down the hand towel, resting it on a countertop behind him. He reached into his shirt pocket and handed Rossi a photo. “It’s for you,” he said. “It was taken about three, four weeks ago. I don’t have a lot of photos of her. She hates having any taken.”
Rossi lifted the picture and stared at it for several minutes. “That’s one thing she had in common with the old don,” he said. “He’d rather set his own leg on fire than stand in front of a camera.”
“I wish she were here with us,” Lo Manto said. “For you to meet and get to know. She’s a good mother, stubborn, tough, demands to have it all her own way. Most of the time, she gets it.”
“It had to be rough for her,” Rossi said. “Knowing the truth and never saying a word about it. You need strength and courage to do what she did. I respect her for that.”
“I wish she didn’t have to be put in that position,” Lo Manto said. “Wish she could have had a full life with her children. All her children.”
“There’s nobody to blame,” Rossi said. “Her husband was who he was and my father was a crime boss. Neither one could go against that, even if they wanted to try.”
“I’ll keep an eye on your kids for you, if you like,” Lo Manto said.
“That’d be nice,” Rossi said. “Be good for them to know they have an uncle who cares. Even if he is a cop.”
“Is there anything you need?” Lo Manto asked, sitting on the edge of the bed, gazing down at his brother. “Anything you want me to do?”
“Just one thing,” Rossi said, his voice starting to slip away. “You can say no to it and I’d understand.”
“What is it?” Lo Manto asked.
“Stay with me until I die,” Rossi said.
Lo Manto moved in closer to the wounded man and reached for his hands, clutching them in his, their fingers locking. “That’s the least I can do for my little brother,” Lo Manto said, his voice breaking, eyes welling with tears.
Rossi stared at him and nodded. “You would have made a great don,” he said.
“And you would have made a great cop,” Lo Manto said.
Lo Manto held the hands tighter and watched Pete Rossi’s final breaths rumble through his ruined chest, his eyes shut, his body at rest. He laid his head at the edge of the pillow and cried over the body of his only brother.
A brother he had only known as an enemy.
25
LO MANTO AND JENNIFER walked along the quiet grounds of Woodlawn Cemetery, rows of headstones on both sides of the path dotting the beautifully landscaped property in the East Bronx.
Jennifer walked with a slight limp, favoring her left leg. Her right hand was in a cast up to her elbow, the arms of her leather jacket fitting snugly around it. They had just left Pete Rossi’s funeral, the only two detectives in a crowded field of Camorristas. “It’s odd, isn’t it?” Lo Manto said. “A few days ago I would have exchanged gunfire with anyone in that party. Instead, now we stood there together all with tears in our eyes. As if we were all one big family.”
“He was family to you,” she said. “It’s just that neither of you had the time to figure it out.”
“How did you figure it out?” Lo Manto asked.
“More a hunch than anything else,” Jennifer said. “And I only went looking for a connection. I never counted on coming back home with what I did.”
“Why’d you go to him and not me?” he asked.
“I wasn’t sure how you’d react,” she said. “More likely than not, you would have hauled in headfirst against him, looking for all sorts of answers to any number of questions. With him, it was just about letting him know he had a mother and who she was. That seemed the easier of the two ways to go.”
“I’m glad you did,” Lo Manto said in a low voice. “I came here looking for closure on my father’s murder. I go back with a whole other kind of closure. One I never thought I’d ever have to find.”
“What are you going to tell your mother when you see her?” Jennifer asked.
“Not much,” Lo Manto said. “I think I’ll sit in the garden with her, put my arm around her shoulders, and let her take it from there. She wants to talk about it or she wants to keep it quiet, it’s all up to her. She’s more than earned that right.”
“Are you just about ready to leave?” Jennifer asked. They were walking past a row of large, imposing mausoleums, most built at the turn of the century.
“It’s down to a few days,” Lo Manto said. “Captain Fernandez cleared a lot of the hurdles for the shootings. Not that anybody’s going to complain too much, not with us taking five prime-time shooters off the page.”
“He kept the link between you and Rossi out of the papers,” Jennifer said. “And the police reports.”
“He’s a good friend,” Lo Manto said.
“You seem to have quite a few of them,” she said. “They really came through big-time on this one.”
“Your father didn’t do too bad for himself, either,” Lo Manto said. “I always heard he was one of the greats. It was nice to be able to see it firsthand.”
“Do you have any plans?” Jennifer asked. “I don’t mean for when you go back. More like for dinner tonight.”
Lo Manto looked over at her and smiled. “No, not really,” he said. “Though a nice Italian dinner might do us both a lot of good.”
“I was thinking more like sushi,” Jennifer said. “There’s this place I like on the East Side, makes a wicked salmon skin hand roll. It’d be my treat.”
Lo Manto stopped and stared at Jennifer, the sun at her back, her face bright, clear, and beautiful. “Our work together is finished,” he said to her. “You don’t have to baby-sit me anymore.”
“I know,” she said. “It has nothing to do with business. We’re both off duty.”
“Does that make it a date?” Lo Manto said.
Jennifer moved down a narrow path, past a row of headstones, all surrounded by a thick field of elm trees. “Let’s get you past the tekka maki and spicy tuna roll first,” she said. “Then we’ll decide what we’ll make it.”
“It’s your call, Detective,” Lo Manto said. “I’ll just be there as backup. You decide where it goes and how it ends.”
Lo Manto stared down at Jennifer, asleep in the crook of his left arm. He gently moved aside several strands of her hair and ran his fingers along her face and neck, her skin soft and warm to the touch. He kissed her forehead and held her closer to him, at peace in the soothing comfort of her presence.
He leaned back, his head resting on the center of a thick pillow, and closed his eyes. Outside the apartment window, he could hear the city slowly come awake, early risers running for exercise, men in suits rushing for crowded buses, kids giggling as they made their way to the start of day camp. But inside, under the warm sheets of the four-poster bed, all seemed frozen in place and Lo Manto knew for the very first time in his life what it meant to be in love.
Jennifer had sat across from Lo Manto, ordering all the different types of sushi she thought he needed to at least try, laughing as she watched him struggle with chopsticks and bravely chew on anything she put on his plate, quick to wash it down with long gulps of cold beer. “In Naples, the only fish we eat raw are clams and mussels,” he told her. “And even there, we’re very careful.”
“There was a beat cop in my precinct,” Jennifer told him. “Needed to lose sixty pounds or risk having a stroke. He went on a sushi diet and worked out every day. Three months later, he lost all the weight, got himself a new wardrobe, and even had plugs put in his head. He’s like a new man.”
“I like my clothes,” Lo Manto said to her, a smile spread across his face. “And I have my own hair, and my mother thinks I need to gain weight, not lose
it. So why am I eating all this raw fish?”
“Because you love me,” Jennifer said, reaching a hand across the table and taking one of his. “And you want to make me happy.”
“And don’t forget, you’re also paying for the meal,” Lo Manto said, softly rubbing her fingers.
They walked and talked deep into the night, letting the lights of the city serve as their guide. Lo Manto held her close to him, her head at rest on his still damaged shoulder, her words soothing, allowing him to release the grip he had learned to keep on his emotions, free at last to feel the power of a woman’s love. He had never felt more comfortable and trusting in someone else’s presence as he did when he held Jennifer Fabini in his arms. “I didn’t know there would ever be anyone like you,” he told her as they approached her apartment building. “I didn’t think women like you existed, or, if they did, that I would ever get to meet one. I don’t know what happens to us from here, but I know I always will want you in my life.”
“I guess that means you’re coming upstairs,” she said.
“That was my best shot,” he said.
“I’m okay with it,” Jennifer said, smiling and reaching for her keys. “But I’d keep an eye out for Milo. I don’t know how this is going to sit with him.”
“I’ll try not to wake him,” Lo Manto said. “Then, in the morning, over coffee and a saucer of milk, we’ll have a heart-to-heart. Talk it out man to cat.”
“Sounds like a plan,” she said, opening the door to the foyer. “But I warn you, he’s not too chatty in the morning.”