Bloodline (58 page)

“Lev never told me about it. I don’t know if he knows.”

O’Shaughnessy laughed his musical Irish laugh and leaned closer to Tommy, glancing toward the kitchen before he spoke.

“You might try to find out. From what I heard, they were more than just friends. If you get my drift.”

Tommy had nodded slowly. Birchevsky and Nilo, working together. He had wanted to talk more, but Kinnair wandered into the living room holding a glass of wine and looking more than a little drunk. He shook his head.

“You’re quitting, Uncle Tim, and you, Tommy, you left the force too soon. Tony’s going to have all this Flying Squad fun by himself.”

“It’s never fun,” Tommy said.

• All through September, the stock market drifted downward. From its high of 381 at the beginning of the month, the Dow Jones average fell to 370 … 360 … 330. By month’s end, the market had lost 15 percent of its value.

*   *   *

S
OFIA WAS WATCHING
carefully, sure that even worse lay ahead. She pointed it out one morning to Nilo, but he was more interested in modeling for her the bulletproof vest he had just acquired. Safety had become a big interest for Nilo recently. He always was armed before going out and rarely ventured outside the apartment door unless his bodyguard was waiting for him. He never showed any concern, however, for Sofia, but she knew it was because of the unwritten Mafia rule that wives and children of enemies were not fair targets.

He made her feel the thickness of the bulky vest. “Three guys killed this month. The next one isn’t going to be me,” he said.

“Maybe if you stayed home … off the streets … spent some time with—”

Nilo pulled away. “Now don’t you start.”

“But—”

“But, my ass,” he snapped. “Don’t go giving me any of that wifey crap. I just don’t want to hear it.”

“Nilo, you’re my husband. I—”

“Don’t say ‘love,’” Nilo snapped. “Don’t even think about saying it. What you and I got is kids. It’s business, nothing else.”

He walked angrily away into his bedroom. A few minutes later, he came out, fully dressed, ready to leave.

“It’s Tina, isn’t it?”

“You haven’t heard a goddamn word I said, have you?” Nilo said, disgust coating his words. “Sure, it’s Tina. We screw every night when she comes to work. And most nights when she’s finished work, I hump her again. She says she likes playing with me even better than playing with you.” He reached across the table and touched her face gently.

“Happy now?” Nilo said with savage courtesy, then walked from the apartment.

Sofia sat at the table for a long time, looking at the door through which Nilo had gone. Then she looked down again at the morning paper, trying to follow the stock market reports, but she could not concentrate. She lowered her face to her hands, cupping them over her tired eyes. An old phrase sounded in her mind, over and over again.…

Rats got no complaint … rats got no complaint … rats got no complaint.…

She realized she must have dozed off, because she was startled by the knock on the door. She stood against the wall next to the door and called out, “Who’s there?”

“Salvatore Maranzano,” answered the familiar voice.

Before opening the door, Sofia checked through the peephole to make sure it was indeed the don, then let him inside.

He quickly made himself at home and sat with Sofia in the kitchen, drinking coffee.

“Where are your beautiful children?”

“The nurse has them out in the park,” Sofia said. “One of your men is with them.”

“And they are well?”

“Yes, Don Salvatore. They’re well; we all are.”

“I noticed you were very careful at the front door,” he said.

“I always am.”

“It is wise. There are rules, but there are always galoots who do not understand or abide by the rules. And I fear it will only get worse.”

He stirred three spoons of sugar into the coffee and sipped it black before going on. “So I think you ought to take your children and go on vacation for a while.”

“But—”

“No buts. You and the children will be safer out of town. I fear things around New York are going to be dangerous for a while. Nilo will be very busy. I do not want him to be worried about his family.”

Sofia bit back her impulse to laugh, to point out that Nilo cared nothing about her and not much more about his children. She simply nodded.

“Where would I go?”

Maranzano shrugged. “Go anywhere you wish. Someplace maybe you have always dreamed of visiting. Take your nurse with you. You have been working very hard; it is time to see some reward for all that effort.”

He took another sip of his coffee and stood. “Make plans quickly,” he said. “If you need cash or help, please…”

“Thank you, Don Salvatore. I can manage.”

He looked at her appraisingly. “Nilo has been very blessed. He has a wife not only beautiful, but intelligent and talented. Sometimes I don’t think he knows how lucky he is.”

Sofia blushed and walked with the don to the apartment door. After he left, Sofia walked to the front window and looked across the street toward the park. She could see her two boys with their nurse and the squat man in a dark suit, who sat on a nearby bench, watching them carefully.

It would be nice, she thought, to get the boys out of New York City for a while. Especially with the violence ready to escalate. Maranzano, she knew, would not have brought up the subject unless it was certain to happen.

Not for a moment did she worry about whether or not her husband would be killed. He seemed to invite occasions of violence, and there was nothing she could do about it; if he was going to be killed, it would happen, and her staying in New York City would not change that outcome at all.

Let him get shot and let his whore, Tina, mourn for him. My sons and I will be away.

The more she thought about it, the more pleasant the idea of a vacation sounded. In her whole life, she had gone on vacation only twice—both times, as a child, when she went to visit relatives on Long Island and found they lived in the same depressing conditions that she had left behind in the city. This would be a real vacation, with money in her purse, and hotels and restaurants, and it all made her a little giddy and more than a little nervous.

She might have to buy luggage, she thought. She went into the bedroom, where she was pretty sure that Nilo had stashed an old suitcase on one of the top shelves. She decided if it was too worn or threadbare, she would buy new luggage.

As she pulled the tan canvas satchel down from the shelf, a paper bag that was behind it fell, too, and spilled some of its contents onto the floor. She bent over to pick them up and then saw they were photos.

She picked up the bag to replace the pictures. Inside, she could feel a large roll of film. Then she looked at the pictures that had spilled out.

They were of Tina having sex with a tall blond man. She sat down heavily on the floor and sighed in confusion, then looked through the pictures. Not just the blond man. There was Tina having sex with other men.

She looked at Tina’s face, trying to read its expression, but it was blank; her eyes were closed.

When were these pictures taken? And what is Nilo doing with them?

She looked through the pictures again. There were more than two dozen of them. But Nilo was not in any of them.

Would it be any surprise if he were? First Charlie. Then Nilo. Men cannot resist women who will do anything.

She put the pictures back into the paper bag and replaced it on the shelf. She also replaced the suitcase the way it had been.

Sofia closed the closet door.

“Slut,” she said.

• In the first ten days of October, the stock market rallied. Then the panic began. U.S. Steel dropped 7 percent in one day and then closed down twenty-two dollars for the week. General Electric collapsed at almost thirty-four dollars a share.

*   *   *

T
OMMY HAD STARTED
tailing Birchevsky at odd times and places. And late at night, letting himself into the closed union offices with a key he got from Mishkin, he studied Birchevsky’s appointments and outgoing and incoming phone calls. Gradually, the pattern had begun to emerge. More than once, he had met with Nilo in the offices of the speakeasy run by Tina. Most of the people he talked to were truck drivers who moved the clothing in and out of the factories.

It took a little while for the implications of that to sink in, and then it was obvious. There were fewer than a hundred drivers moving goods from one place to another, and without them, the garment industry would close down. Lepke had gotten a lot of power in the industry by taking over the cutters’ union, but Maranzano—and Nilo—were trying to trump him by capturing the drivers.

Control the drivers and you control the industry. And Nilo figured it out, and that traitorous son of a bitch, Birchevsky, is helping him do it.

Tommy started hanging around in the neighborhood joints frequented by truck drivers. Eventually, he learned that Nilo was trying to take the truck drivers out of the garment makers’ union and start a separate union for them. When he had done that, it would be a simple step to back-organize and take actual garment workers away from Lev’s union.

We’re headed for bloodshed,
Tommy thought.
If Nilo gets the drivers for Maranzano while Masseria’s man already has the cutters, they’ll be machine-gunning each other in the streets. Whoever wins, it won’t be the union members and it won’t be Lev.

One night in early October, Tommy sat in a neighborhood speakeasy, sipping a beer, and listened to Birchevsky, who was a little drunk, arguing with a driver a couple of barstools away.

“You worry too much,” he heard Birchevsky say.

“Mishkin has been all right with us guys. I ain’t gonna go with nobody else’s union, especially some mob guys. Before you know it, they’ll have us delivering booze.”

“Hey, one union’s just like another union,” Birchevsky said.

“The hell it is. Tomorrow I’m gonna see Lev and tell him he’s being sold down the river.”

Birchevsky lumbered to his feet and tossed some money on the bar. “Don’t do anything stupid,” he said. “These ain’t kid games.”

“Go to hell.”

After Birchevsky left the speakeasy, Tommy sidled down the bar to sit next to the angry driver.

“How you doing?” Tommy said. “Sounded like that guy was busting your chops.”

“Aaaaah. He’s a double-crossing son of a bitch.”

“Let me buy you a beer. My name’s Vito.”

*   *   *

T
HE DRIVER’S NAME WAS
E
DDIE
C
OLE,
and he drove for one of the smaller companies in the garment district. He had been in Mishkin’s union for more than ten years. But as hard as Tommy tried, he could not get the man to tell him the story of Birchevsky’s offer. All he would say, no matter how many beers his new friend Vito bought him, was that there was “a rat bastard scheme going on, but I’m gonna fix it all tomorrow.”

It was after midnight when Tommy left him in the speakeasy. The next morning, he called the garment company where Cole was employed, but the man had not shown up for work. Two days later, his wife reported him missing. It was time, Tommy thought, to tell the story to Lev Mishkin.

• On Sunday, October 13, Tina Falcone attended Mass at Mount Carmel Church and received communion from her brother Father Mario just as Sofia Sesta and her two sons were boarding a transatlantic liner for Italy.

• On Monday, October 14, the stock market continued its relentless downhill slide. Tony Falcone got an envelope in the mail. Inside was another sealed envelope, with no address or name on it. When Tony opened it, he found two pornographic pictures of Tina, and a block-printed note that read: “Dear Tina, Call me sometime. I really miss the fun we used to have. Charlie L.”

• On Tuesday, October 15 …

*   *   *

A
T 10:00 P.M.,
Luciano stood on the corner of Sixth Avenue and Fiftieth Street, waiting for his driver to bring the new touring car around. Luciano had particularly chosen that car this night because he was meeting a new showgirl and he liked to make a good first impression. He was wearing a brown tweed suit, one of a dozen new suits he had bought that day, and all in all, Luciano was feeling on top of the world. He had finally chased everyone else out of the prostitution business in New York City, and the five thousand hookers in town all helped contribute to his million-dollar-a-year tax-free income.

He had purchased a stable of racehorses and had a hand in dozens of legitimate private businesses in the city. Bootlegging would probably die soon, but Luciano would go on. He had learned early in life never to put all his eggs in one basket.

The two stupid Mustache Petes Maranzano and Masseria were still trying to kill each other, but the younger members in each gang were listening more and more to Luciano’s talk of peace making them all rich. Since the Atlantic City conference in May, there was no doubt around the rest of the country that the man to see in New York was Charlie Luciano. And with Al Capone still in jail, where he would probably rot and die, New York was the tail that wagged the dog.

Run New York and you run the country. And I run New York.

He allowed himself a momentary feeling of satisfaction.

He was thirty-one years old.

A car rolled down the street toward him, its high beams blinding him, and Luciano stepped back from the curb. As it pulled abreast of him, the car’s curtained rear door flew open and, before Luciano could move, two men with scarves over their faces had jumped out and tossed him onto the floor in the back of the car. A moment later, he felt adhesive tape being pressed over his eyes and his mouth. He could not see and he could not talk or scream.

He felt hands passing professionally over his body, frisking him for a weapon. But Luciano rarely carried a gun and he was unarmed this night. He tried to focus. The best he could guess was that there were three men in the backseat of the car facing him. Add in a driver, there were at least four other men in the vehicle.