“You have a family?” I asked, standing and leaning over the wall, breathing in the air coming up off the river.
“Came close a few times to sliding that ring on my finger,” Nico said. “But I broke away before it got that far.”
“How come?” I asked, watching as he stepped up alongside me and stared over at the uptown traffic.
“There’s gonna be a night, no matter how good you are at this, when you just don’t make it through a job. It’s one of the first things I learned. And I never wanted to have somebody I cared about be on the other end of a phone call where they’d have to hear something like that from a stranger.”
“Thanks for helping me out tonight,” I said to Nico. “I really appreciate it. Maybe the next guy Pudge sends you out with won’t be as bad at it as me.”
“There won’t be a next guy,” Nico said.
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve been made your guy,” Nico said. “When they send you out on jobs like these, you’ll be going there with me.”
“Not too exciting for you, working with somebody who’s probably going to throw up at the end of every job.”
“Don’t look for me to knock it,” Nico said, walking past me and back toward the driver’s side of the car. “The pay’s good and the hours are easy. And judging by what I saw today, you’re only going to get better at this end of the game.”
Nico jumped in behind the wheel and slammed his door shut. He watched as I stepped toward my side and did the same. He gently slipped the Cadillac into drive and moved back onto the West Side Highway, easing the car into the speed lane and heading downtown toward Angelo and Pudge’s bar.
“Will the radio bother you?” he asked, clicking it on. “You can pick the station, won’t make any difference to me.”
“Anything except opera’s fine,” I said, leaning back against the headrest and shutting my eyes. “If you tuned in to some rock ’n’ roll, I wouldn’t be upset about it.”
“Rock ’n’ roll it is,” Nico said, pushing buttons on the console with his right hand and steering with his left, moving up and down the dial until he found the station he wanted.
We rode the rest of the way in silence, both of us listening to Sam Cooke, Frankie Valli and Little Richard, my jacket pocket filled with crisp hundred-dollar bills collected from an actor with a debt. I opened my eyes and looked out at the illuminated city as it sped by and I smiled.
My first day as a gangster had been a success.
• • •
THE GIRL WAS walking up Thirty-first Street, a leather belt wrapped around her books held tightly across her chest. She was dressed in her school uniform, black-and-white checkerboard skirt and white blouse, topped by a blue winter coat with a hood attached. She had short brown hair and hazel eyes, and her feet were clad in white socks and a pair of shiny lace-up Buster Browns. She was alone, her head down against an early afternoon wind, her coat unbuttoned and flapping to the breeze.
“There she is,” Nico said to me. “The girl of your dreams. Now comes the hard part. Making those dreams come true.”
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” I asked, sitting on the hood of a car, my feet resting on a bumper, the girl walking toward us from the other side of the street. “I mean, what if she says no?”
“I don’t see how you have any other choice.” Nico stood next to me, his hands in his pockets. “Not unless you want me to be your date at the school dance.”
I looked over at Nico with a weak smile. “You’re always bragging about what a great dancer you are. Maybe I should give you a chance to prove it.”
“You need a Ginger not a Fred, and that’s not something you’re going to find on this side of the street,” Nico said. “So get going.”
I sighed, slid off the car, straightened my jacket and ran a hand through my hair. “Is there anything else I should know before I go?” I asked, my eyes focused on the girl as she walked past the dry cleaner and turned to glance in our direction.
“If you remember her name, it would give you a leg up,” Nico said. I gave him a playful shove, checked the passing traffic and walked at a fast clip toward the girl in the checkerboard skirt.
She saw me coming, flashed a sweet smile that made my face flush and said, “Hi, Gabe. What are you up to?”
“Not much, Maddy,” I said. “Just talking with my friend.” I pointed over my shoulder and saw her cast a glance at Nico, his foot up on a fender, a lit cigarette in his mouth.
“He’s a pretty big guy,” Maddy said, crinkling her nose. “Looks like he plays football.”
“He likes to play all kinds of sports,” I said.
“Did you finish that French report yet? I haven’t even done the reading for it. I had such a hard time picking my topic.”
“I can help you with it, if you want,” I managed to get out. “French and History are the only classes I’m any good in. I can barely stay awake for the rest of them.”
“That would be great,” Maddy said. “I mean, if you have the time.”
“I can make the time,” I told her. “How about after school Friday in the library? That’ll give you some time to finish the reading.”
“It’s a date,” she said. “Friday, three-thirty, in the library. I’ll sneak in some candy. That way we won’t get too hungry while we work.”
She started to walk away but I screwed up my nerve, my fists clenched nervously by my side. “So . . . speaking of dates . . . are you planning on going to the gym dance Saturday night?”
“I’d like to,” Maddy said with the kind of coy smile that comes so easily to teenage girls, “but no one’s been around to ask me yet.”
“Would you go if I was the one who asked you?” I tried to swallow with a mouth dry enough to hold sand.
“I’d love to go with you, Gabe.” Her smile disappeared as quickly as it had come. “I really would. But I can’t.”
I was red-faced now and confused by her quick refusal. “What, are you waiting for somebody else to ask?”
“No,” Maddy said, shaking her head.
“Then I don’t get it. Why can’t you . . .”
“I can’t go with you, Gabe,” she cut me off. Then, starting to walk away, she said, “Please just leave it at that.”
I reached out a hand, grabbed her by the elbow and held her in place. “Whatever the reason is, I’d like to hear it. I don’t know, maybe there’s something I can do to help change it.”
Maddy looked at me and then over my shoulder at Nico, still in his place by the parked car, talking bets now with Little Angel, a neighborhood loan shark. “My father would never say yes to it,” she said. “And there’s nothing you can say, nothing you can do that will ever change his mind. It’s just the way he feels about you.”
“The way he feels about me?” I didn’t bother to mask my anger or surprise. “There’s no way he could feel anything about me. I’ve never even met the guy.”
“It’s not about you, Gabe,” Maddy said. “It’s the people you live with.”
I’ll never forget the rush of emotions that flooded through my body at those words. It was a mixture of anger and humiliation. Anger that the men I knew and loved were not considered good enough for her or her family. Humiliated because even then, I understood why that was so. Things had changed since I’d come to live with Angelo and Pudge. But I was still on the outside looking in. I was still in a world that was somehow soiled, yearning to cross over to one that was nice and new and clean.
Maddy must have seen my agony, because she said, quite gently, “My father works hard, very hard to take care of his family. He takes a lot of pride in that. Goes to church on Sunday mornings with my mom and coaches Little League games on Saturdays. The only time I ever see my father get angry is when he talks about your friends. He says they live off other people’s hard work and ruin every neighborhood they go into. And he says you’re a part of them, Gabe. So as much as I like you, I can’t go to the dance with you.”
I shoved my hands in my pockets, looked at this beautiful girl and nodded. “I would never ask you to do that,” I said. “I’ve learned to stay away from places where I’m not wanted. I’m sorry I bothered you, Maddy. I won’t do it again.” I stepped off the curb, waiting for the traffic to clear.
“My father’s a good man, Gabe,” Maddy called out after me.
“He hates people he doesn’t know and has never even met,” I said, looking over my shoulder at her. “If that’s the way a good man is supposed to act, then I’ll stay next to the bad guys where I belong.”
I waited for an opening and ran across the avenue, away from Maddy and back over to the smiling faces of Nico and Little Angel.
Back to my side of the street.
• • •
ANGELO LEANED AGAINST the edge of the rooftop and watched as his flock of pigeons flew in a wide circle above his head. There were two large buckets of feed by his feet and a dripping garden hose curled alongside the coop. I tossed a pail of soap and water into the coop, grabbed a mop and started to scrub it down. There was a portable radio resting above the coop’s wires tuned into the Italian news hour. I listened to the announcer discuss the latest fiscal crisis to hit Naples. There were times when I felt I knew more about what was going on in a country I’d never seen than I did about events in my own city.
“I wanted to say so much more to her,” I said to Angelo. “I wish I had. I just didn’t want to hurt her feelings.”
“What more was there for you to say?” Angelo asked me. “Nothing would have made her go against her father’s wishes. She’s been brought up well, how could she betray his respect?”
“I still could have told her some things,” I said, leaning down heavily on the mop, trying to clean out all the corners of the coop. “Not so much to change her mind but maybe to help open her eyes a little bit.”
Angelo walked over to the coop, reached up above my head and turned off the radio. “Open her eyes to what?” he asked.
“That Little League field for one thing.” I rested the mop against a pole and looked at him. “You know, where her father coaches the kids every Saturday? Well, I could have told her that there wouldn’t be a field there for him to coach on if you and Pudge hadn’t put up the cash and built it.”
“And they would have said we did it with money that wasn’t ours. Money we took from the pockets of the poor. They’ll always find a reason not to accept us, Gabe. And they’re right. That’s just something you’re going to have to learn to live with.”
“It was only a dance,” I said, walking toward the ledge to pick up the hose. “It wasn’t as if I asked her to marry me.”
“To you, it was only a dance,” Angelo said. “To the girl’s father it was the start of something that he couldn’t allow. He’s an honest man and he would never run the risk of crossing the line into our end. He knows who we are and what we do, and wants nothing to do with any of it, either for himself or for his family.”
“But I see men like her father all the time,” I said, spraying water into the coop, washing down the soap and the dirt. “They’re always nice to you and Pudge on the street. They make it their business to stop and ask how you’re feeling and wish you well. And I see them come into the bar and ask for your help to get them out of some jam they’re in. If they don’t want anything to do with us, then why do they do that?”
“Nothing we do for them is done for free,” Angelo said. “They know that the minute they walk into the bar, even before they ask. They have to pay if they want that favor to be done, with money or service. I’m not the first person they come to for help. I’m the last, and I cost them the most.”
“So if it’s all going their way, then they don’t want anything to do with us.” I dropped the hose and reached for a broom in the corner, resting against the side of the roof door. “But the second there’s any kind of trouble they can’t get out of on their own, they forget all about what horrible people we are and come running in and beg for our help. If it was up to me, knowing how they really feel, they could come in and cry all they want. They wouldn’t get the right time.”
“You don’t go into the rackets to make friends,” Angelo said, looking up at a cloudy sky, watching his pigeon flock circle the edges of the West Side piers. “You go into it to make money. If you want people to think nice thoughts when your name’s mentioned, be a priest.”
I swept the last of the water out of the coop, watching as it ran down the roof toward a rusty drain pipe. “I left the dry rags downstairs,” I said. “You want me to bring something to drink on my way back up?”
“For yourself, if you like,” Angelo said. “I’m good the way I am.”
I nodded and opened the door leading back into the building. As I made my way down the old wooden steps, one hand on the rickety railing, I went over what Angelo had just finished telling me. I was not troubled by what I had learned. I had grown used to being alone and keeping my thoughts and feelings to myself. I had long ago learned to be my best source of counsel and realized that aside from Angelo, Pudge and, to a lesser extent, Nico, it would be best to continue that practice for the rest of my life. Such a skill had been nurtured during my early years as a foster child, when there was no other solution but to stay silent and pretend not to hear the words clearly aimed in my direction. It would prove to be the perfect start to living my life inside the darkness and silences of a gangster’s home.
I realized I was the perfect child for Angelo and Pudge.
I would never betray the trust they placed in me nor speak to anyone outside their scope about anything beyond what needed to be discussed. The incident with Maddy and her father only helped to reinforce and solidify the belief that I was part of a powerful and feared group of men. They did not care about being liked by those around them, were not concerned with the trappings of family, and had little regard for an American value system they had long ago learned to scorn and exploit. They were wealthy men who did not flaunt their money nor seek to make the climb up the rung to a higher class. They solved their problems with warnings and with violence and initiated any business takeovers with guns and force. They were an ingrained part of twentieth-century America, their hands wrapped around every form of commerce, legal or not, yet they operated openly and freely.
They were hated by the law enforcement community and tolerated by the public. In many ways, they ruled the country they had come to think of as their own. I was now an accepted part of their world and, for that, I was glad.
“We always knew how people really felt about us,” Pudge once said to me. “It’s not like anybody tries to keep it a secret. We just didn’t care, one way or the other. We didn’t want to be liked by them anyway. That’s one of the reasons we became gangsters in the first place. When we got to this country, they were the ones holding all the jobs, the money, the power to get things done and, believe me, not one of them went out of their way to share, especially not with anybody fresh off an immigrant ship. So we made a play for the power and did whatever we had to do to hold on to it. And they hated us for doing that. They’ll never want anything to do with us. If they need a favor they’ll take it. They want to do business, they’ll work it out. But that’s as far as it goes. Don’t let anybody tell you different. The door that leads into their world will always be locked and bolted to people like us. Always.”
• • •
I WAS CARRYING a bucket full of dry rags in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other when I stepped back onto the rooftop. I looked around for Angelo and finally spotted him sitting on the ledge, his legs stretched out, his face tilted up to the sky and his eyes closed to the warming sun. He looked at ease with himself and at peace with his surroundings. I put the bucket down and started to dry off the stalls in the wet coop, sipping my coffee as I worked. I went about my job quietly, comfortable with the silence that was around me, broken only by the occasional wail of a siren or a car horn honking seven stories below. I liked being in the coops with Angelo and
enjoyed being allowed to share in the caring of the birds. He always seemed to me to be much more relaxed around his pigeons and his dogs than he was in the company of people. Like most men in his profession, he put more trust in the behavior pattern of animals than he did in another human being’s word. On his rooftop, his flock of birds flying overhead, Angelo Vestieri could close his eyes and allow his mind to drift off and explore the wells of his memories. He did not need to be a gangster in their presence, his body always on the alert for a slight or the first sign of a betrayal. On his roof, he could let down his shield and take refuge from the battle.
I had finished drying the coop and was filling the feed tins with seed and water. I glanced down and saw Angelo’s shadow behind me. “I’m just about done here,” I said.
“Good.” He looked up again as the flock was swooping in, circling the tenements in a tight pattern. “They should be coming down in a few minutes.”
“They’ve been out for a long time,” I said, following the birds in their flight. “They must like it better when it’s cold.”
“You’re good with them.” Angelo walked into the coop, reached down into the feed bucket and began to help me fill the tins. “And they’ve responded well to you. The same is true for Ida. I think now she likes you better than she does me. That’s a good sign. It’s harder to get an animal to trust you than it is to get a man to do the same. Animals are smarter, they can sense if you’re out to do them harm. A man has to get hurt a few times before he learns. If then.”
“It doesn’t take much to make them happy,” I said. “A clean place to live, regular food and a little attention. You treat them fair and they’ll do the same back. They’ll like you based only on that, not on who you are, where you live and who you live with.”
“Not like that girl’s father.” Angelo stepped out of the coop as the pigeons came in as a group, roosting and cooing on the outside of the cages. “He’s more like most of the people you’ll meet. They decide that they know all they need to know about you before they even sit across the table. More times than not, that kind of thinking works to your advantage. Sometimes, like with you and the girl, you end up being hurt. But, with time, it passes.”