Brooklyn Noir 2: The Classics (22 page)

“Jesus.”

“After we do it, he passes out. Then I’d hit him between the eyes. He wouldn’t know he got killed.”

“
No
. No, Sylvia.
Jesus,
no.”

“You
believed
me?”

“I did.”

“I really wouldn’t.”

“Don’t, Sylvia.”

“Hey, Frankie, I’m not that kind of girl. I couldn’t do that, take his gun and kill the SOB, even if he is a rat by trade.”

“I’m glad. Killing is the worst thing. It makes us rotten as him. My father says that.”

“Not that I’m saying it’s right in this case, Frankie. But you have to kill rats
sometimes
, or they can nibble a person to death.”

“Jesus. Don’t do it. Not for my sake,” he said.

“It ain’t only for your sake. It’s for mine too. And I just got a great idea. It’s getting us out of this mess. Out of Bruno’s clutches.”

“Yeah? What’s the idea?”

“I can’t tell you yet. After I figure out all the answers to all his questions.”

“You sure I can’t tell him nice myself?” said Frankie.

“You want to kiss my toes again?”

“Something else this time.”

“You listening to me? And not talking to Bruno?” she said.

“I’m listening to you,” he said.

“Good. Later we’ll go out for macaroni and clams.”

For her performance Sylvia bought a nice sensible dress that came up to her neck and down to her knees and had plenty of room for her breasts. Ordinarily, her breasts were pushing against the fabric. She was just too big-busted, the shopgirls in the dress stores would say. And her new dress was also in white to look cherry. She had had a sexy look since puberty but had kept her cherry until giving it to Bruno, which was the biggest mistake of her life.

Actually, Sylvia had two plans. If the first didn’t work, then she would ask Tony to get Bruno off her back. Bruno would kiss Tony’s toes. Bruno worked for Tony, and was scared of Tony. And Tony had told Sylvia, who was his secretary in the olive oil office, that whatever her problem, it didn’t matter if it was money or love or hate, he, Tony Tempesta, wanted first crack at solving it for her. Even though she was Jewish, she was in his family like his sister and he wouldn’t let any harm come to her.

Before Bruno asked for their next date at the motel on Long Island, she asked him to have a drink when she got off. She was in her modest white dress and almost looked like a nun in the summer habit, and Bruno didn’t give her the usual slap on her ass as soon as they were alone, and not getting it now, Sylvia knew her idea was working. He took her in his Caddie to The 19th Hole on the corner of 14th Avenue across from the Dyker Heights Golf Course. At the back of the bar they took the red leather booth where no one else was around.

Bruno’s long black hair was combed straight back, his teeth were slightly irregular, his face was square and strong, and he still wasn’t fat from all the food he ate, and he had the kind of smile that one minute could love a person to bits and the next minute could chop a person in pieces. The bad part of Bruno’s smile came from his eyes, which were brown, but not warm as brown eyes often are. His eyes were like dried blood, scabby and mean, and if they weren’t disguised by his smiling mouth, then the average person could feel a chill that no amount of clothing could warm up.

“I don’t know how to tell you this, Bruno.”

“So tell me. I won’t bite.”

“I got this marriage proposal,” said Sylvia, very calmly. “He’s a nice guy.”

“He screw you?” he said.

“You know I wouldn’t,” she said.

“But he wants to get hitched anyway?” he said.

“Yeah. He’s Jewish.”

“I thought my Sicilian cock converted you.”

“He’s an accountant. He’ll make a good father for my kids someday,” she said.

“Accountant. That’s pretty good. So you’re quitting your job?” he said.

“Not till I get pregnant.”

“I wouldn’t screw up your wedding plans.”

“I knew you’d understand, Bruno.”

“Hey, I ain’t no animal. I respect a woman who tells me what she has to do in her life. So, do I get an invite to the wedding? Like I’m just a friend from the office?”

“It’s going to be a civil ceremony. At city hall. Just us.”

“When you set the date and all, you let me know. So I can give you a wedding present. What can I give to show I appreciate all the good times we had?”

“I wouldn’t ask for anything, Bruno. I had good times too. But thanks just the same.”

“You finishing your drink?” he said.

“I had enough.”

“Let’s get out of here. I’ll drop you off at your house. Don’t worry, I ain’t asking for a last piece of nookie. By the way, what’s his name?”

“His name?” she said. “He’s just a guy.”

“I’m curious.”

“Oh. Herbie.”

“Herbie what?”

“Herbie Schwartz,” she said, biting her tongue too late.

“So, pretty soon, you’re going to be Sylvia Schwartz. Is that the truth, Sylvia?”

“Of course.”

“Well, that’s pretty good for Herbie. Not so good for Bruno. But what the hell, I’m married anyway. Maybe I’ll go give Marie a good screwing for a change. You know, that butterball, she gained another five pounds last month.”

Frankie and Sylvia waited for weeks to see if anything would go wrong from her dumping Bruno. Then they had a rip-roaring celebration, just the two of them, at Le Petit Cabaret in Greenwich Village. There Frankie spent his money on French champagne, escargots, and calf brains in brown butter. The show had Apache dancers, cancan girls, a comedian, and a canary, blonde, small, but with the voice of a choir.

They sat close, touching hands and thighs under the table, and saying clichés they meant. They danced cheek-to-cheek on the crowded floor. But their golden hour wouldn’t last. Frankie, in order not to spoil the evening, didn’t mention the greetings from the draft board in his pocket. He would tell her, if not that night, and not when they awoke in the morning in their rented room with other things on their minds, then another night.

A week went by and, not being able to tell her his notice had come, he just handed it to her. She read the place, Whitehall Street in downtown Manhattan by the financial district, and the date, Monday, November 30, 1942, at 8:00 a.m., and she wept.

Frankie now had another reason to resist going into uniform: his furious and singular passion for Sylvia, equally matched by her passion. That reason, of course, wouldn’t excuse any man from the service. So he had no acceptable excuse, and they both knew it.

“I’m going in.”

“We could run away. Change our names. Get a forged 4F card,” she said.

“I couldn’t,” said Frankie, and was surprised to hear his angel say that Sylvia’s plan was pretty good and that he should take her up on it.

“If you go, and won’t kill them, you won’t last. Not five minutes. The Nazis will aim at you first. You can’t go in, Frankie.”

“It would be a disgrace to Bensonhurst.”

“Screw Bensonhurst,” she said.

“We still have fifty days,” he said.

“Think about it, honey. We could set up housekeeping. Get jobs in a war factory. What a wonderful time we could have.”

“I’ll think about it,” he said, but he knew he wouldn’t change his mind. The right thing to do, as everyone saw it, was to go in and be a soldier.

To store up on love and lovemaking, they were together every free minute. Frankie even met her for lunch a few times in the next weeks, and once Bruno got a glimpse of them. And they moved into the rented room and played house, cooking on a hot plate and going down to the basement to do the laundry. They put the calendar in the trash and lived as if it hadn’t been invented.

When Frankie came home one evening with cartons of chow mein and sweet-and-sour pork, carried from the restaurant on his Harley, Sylvia wasn’t there. Neither were her clothes and things. Her note said she couldn’t see him for a while, but that she would explain everything in her letter when she had time to write it, and that she still loved him and always would.

For Frankie, losing the woman he loved was no easier at eighteen than it would be for another man losing his wife after decades. He brooded for a night and a day, not leaving the room. The mystery of her departure finally drove him into the street and he phoned her house, but her father said she wasn’t there. Then Frankie had to make a run to Tony Tempesta’s office where Sylvia was the secretary, but she wasn’t on the job either. So then he really got worried and went and rang her father’s doorbell. When no one answered, he went to the back door and jimmied the lock with his Barlow knife and went inside to Sylvia’s bedroom. She was in bed in bandages.

“Jesus! What happened?”

“How’d you get in? You shouldn’t’ve come here. Leave, Frankie, leave.” Sylvia was a little hysterical, which was unlike her.

“I ain’t leaving,” he said, sitting on her bed, touching the gauze on her face and arms. “Does it hurt? How’d you get all that?”

“It doesn’t matter. I’ll heal. Then I’ll do what I have to,” said Sylvia.

“Were you in an accident?” said Frankie, who had the true explanation in his ear, but as always it was something he didn’t want to hear.

“Yeah, an accident,” she said. “And I don’t want you getting in one too. So don’t come around no more. But write me which camp you go to. Maybe I’ll send you cookies, and if it ain’t too far, come and see you.”

“Make a list of anything you need. I’ll come back tomorrow. And bring you roses. Red roses.”

“You’re my honey,” she said.

“You ain’t getting in no more accidents,” he said.

“What’s that mean?” she said, sitting up, extending her arm, and he came back and took her hand again.

He loosened up to put on his wouldn’t-swat-a-fly grin. “You know that angel? She’s been a pain. So I’m leaving her here. And she’ll watch out for you.”

Frankie looked around the room, looked under Sylvia’s bed, but in her closet he thought he saw her. She was a frail and pretty young thing, with bright round eyes of sky, which she dimmed shyly.

“You stay here,” said Frankie. “Don’t leave Sylvia. If you follow me this time I’ll get sore. And besides, you could get hurt out there too.”

Sylvia said, “You have a screw loose, Frankie?”

“It could be.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “I made one mistake. Herbie’s name.”

“Is Herbie okay?” he said.

“Yeah. He just shit in his pants.”

“I won’t.”

The next morning Frankie was a hot boiler with a head of steam that had to be let out, so he raced his Harley to the olive oil office, but Bruno wouldn’t be in until two. Tony could feel Frankie’s anger, so slowly Tony prodded him. Then Frankie realized that Tony didn’t know the real reason Sylvia wasn’t on the job, and remembering that Tony would watch out for her, he told him what had happened.

“Beating up Sylvia wasn’t nice,” said Tony. “You go home, kid. I have a talk with Bruno. He belongs to me.”

Frankie was still steaming when he rode off. He tried to cool down by bringing the roses to Sylvia, but when he saw her bandages again his steam rose a few more degrees. Getting back on his bike, he charged around too fast and almost spilled, but he couldn’t decide on a place to go, so he steered back to the olive oil office. He had to give that bully a broken nose.

He had been waiting outside the office for a half hour, straddling his bike, when he saw Bruno walking up the street. Without any planning, Frankie turned on the ignition, gunned it, shifted into first, and, speeding up, shifted into second. With his bike roaring like a cannon going off, he aimed it at Bruno. Bruno didn’t jump out of the way soon enough to avoid the bike entirely. One leg was hit.

Frankie had tried to kill Bruno by running him down, but he had killed himself instead, by missing Bruno and hitting the brick wall beside the plate-glass windows of the office. His neck was broken.

Tony came out. When he saw that Bruno was still alive, he helped him inside and away from the crowd. In the back room where the counterfeit olive oil was mixed, Tony sat Bruno on the work bench and lit a smoke for him. When he returned from the front room with coffee, Bruno sipped it. Then, with a pistol that had a silencer, Tony shot Bruno in the head and put the body in an empty oil drum.

Frankie was laid out at the Califano Funeral Parlor and, in her bandages, Sylvia sat next to his father, Giovanni, for the three days that the body was on view. Gene, Rocco, and Nick were also there every day, in suits and ties, not knowing what to say to anyone. They had known Frankie better than they had the members of their own families. They had loved him as boys do each other, simply and without question, before they must turn to the richer love of a man for a woman, complicated and always questioning.

The last night of their vigil, an hour before the funeral parlor locked its doors for the night, Rocco hid himself in an unused room. Then, Gene at the handlebars of Frankie’s Harley and Nick behind him in a swiped priest’s cassock, they rode across the Brooklyn Bridge. Following the Madison bus on the Skyway, they arrived in Union City and at the Hudson Theater once again. As they had anticipated, the priest’s cassock got Nick in the stage door when he said to the guard, “It’s an errand of mercy.”