Gangster (4 page)

    Mary's eyes caught mine and she nodded, our thoughts seemingly cross-linked. It seems like he was doomed from the start, I said to her.

    That's one way to think of it, I suppose, she said, pouring herself some water from a plastic pitcher.

    What's another? I asked.

    That his life turned out exactly the way he wanted it to, she said. As if he planned it himself from the very start.

2

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HE WAS RAISED amid rows of tenements crammed against one another like dusty sets of dominos, with as many as three families jammed inside each weary apartment. In the winter, the thin windowpanes cracked from ice caked on their sills, while children slept huddled against the arms of their mothers, shorn blankets their only layers of protection against the brutality of cold city mornings. The summers brought with them a heat so muscular that the walls would sag and the white apartment paint would chip and crack. Turn-of-the-century lower Manhattan was a place where no child was meant to be raised, especially one as poorly suited for its elements as AngeloVestieri.

    As an infant, Angelo was dependent on the young mothers of the neighborhood for the excess milk from their breasts, the risk of serious infection ignored in return for a nourishing meal. He lived minus the warmth of a mother's embrace, in the company of a father who had grown to fear displays of emotion. It was an infancy that helped ease him into the comfortable stance of a loner, needing and seeking the affection of no one. Such beginnings are a common trait among gangsters, who are adept at turning external deprivation into inner strength. I met many men in the gangster life in my years around the old man, and never found one who could be described as chatty. I was known and liked by many of them, and yet knew I would never earn their trust. To trust someone is to take a risk. Gangsters survive by minimizing risk.

     *     *     *

YOUNG ANGELO SUFFERED from a variety of illnesses, but poverty meant he would not be soothed by proper medical care. He was plagued by a constant cough, the result, the neighborhood doctor claimed, of breathing in excessive amounts of smoke at birth. His weakened lungs left him vulnerable, his immune system under steady attack from the jet stream of contagious diseases that thrived in the overcrowded tenements lining Twenty-eighth Street along Broadway. Angelo spent large chunks of those early years in a small bed in the back of the three-room railroad apartment his father rented for two dollars a week. There, under an assortment of quilts and jackets, he coughed, shivered and wheezed through long days and empty nights. He never complained, always kept to himself, had great difficulty learning English and was very conscious of the chopped-up manner in which he spoke the language of his new country. Again, the severity of such a shuttered existence would serve Angelo well in his later years, when the ability to be isolated and silent for long periods of time would be perceived as a sign of strength.

    Angelo was always lost in waves of thought and most at ease when left alone in a world of his own design. It was only on rare occasions that he would venture out and join other boys his age to play the neighborhood street games on which they thrived--stickball, using shaved-down broom handles; Johnny-on-the-pony; ring-a-levio; stoop ball; penny pitching. I was a bad fit from day one, he once told me. It just wasn't important to me to be accepted. What those kids thought about me, what they believed to be true, meant nothing. I was a stranger to them and that was the way I wanted it. It was all I had in my favor back then.

    Angelo was in and out of the poverty wards of the area hospitals, constantly forced to fight the effects of the ocean crossing and the flames that had seared his lungs. Three times during those early years he was pronounced days away from death, and each time he recovered. For no other reason than to prove them wrong, Mary said with a slight smile.

    Paolino would stop by the ward every morning before work and every night prior to the start of his second job. In the evening, he would bring along his son's favorite meal, hot lentil soup poured over thick slices of Italian bread, and there, faces lit by the soft light of a nightstand lamp, father and son were warmed by good food and each other's company.

    Where do the ships you work on come from, Papa? Angelo asked, his mouth crammed with a large chunk of bread.

    Any place in the world you can think of, Paolino said, holding a spoon close to his son's lips. They arrive every day from Italy, Germany, France, even some countries I've never heard of before. All filled with food and goods from their land. The ships are so heavy that sometimes they barely make it into the harbor.

    Where does all the food go? Angelo asked, his mind alive with images of long lines of hulking cargo ships slowly slipping into port.

    All across the country, Paolino said. Stores, restaurants, shops. It is a large country we are now part of, Angelo. There is plenty of food and work for everyone who wants it.

    Even for us, Papa? Angelo said, scooping out the last of the lentils from the bowl his father held cupped in his hands.

    This country is rilled with people like us, Paolino said, wiping at his son's chin with the folded edge of a cloth napkin. It is a special place for a boy like you. It can grant any wish and take you to places that go beyond any dream.

    Will I be able to work on the big ships when I'm bigger? Angelo asked. Like you do, Papa?

    Even better, little Angelo, Paolino said with a wide smile. One day, you can even own one of the big ships. Be a rich man. Sit back and let others work for you.

    Angelo rested his head against the soft pillow, looked over at his father and smiled. That would be nice, Papa, Angelo said. For both of us.

    Paolino rested the bowl against the side of his chair and leaned over and held the sickly boy in his massive arms, rocking him gently until his eyes closed from the weight of illness and a healthy meal.

     *     *     *

AFTER ONE FOUR-MONTH hospital stay, Paolino decided to move Angelo into the downtown apartment and care of Paolino's great-aunt, Josephina, a widow who lived across the hall from the lonely duo. Josephina was a hefty woman, with thick, flabby arms and legs mapped from foot to upper thigh by ridges of swollen veins. She had dark olive eyes hidden under massive curls of black hair tinged with gray, and a quick and easy smile. She was a formidable-looking woman, with a quick-to-surface temper and a ragged scar streaming down both sides of her chin, the result of a decades-old dog bite. But she loved and cared for Angelo and sought to give him the mother's attention the boy clearly lacked though never outwardly craved. She embraced the boy, welcoming him under the shade of her large wings not as a son but as a student. She didn't believe in the evils of the camorra or the mafia, which put her at odds with Angelo's father, Mary said. But how could she believe otherwise? She was the proud wife of a slain crime boss. She respected and held to the traditions of their ways. And she passed those ways down to Angelo.

    Josephina would sit him up in bed, his back against her side, a heavy hand gently stroking his thick hair, and tell him stories about the land where his bloodlines rested. It all began because of the French, she told him one morning, both of them sharing a cup of hot chicken broth. That's what the word mafia means--Morte Alla Francese in Italia. Death to the French in Italy.

    Perche? Angelo would ask, in his half-English, half-Italian way of speaking. Why dead?

    Centuries ago, they came in and took land that did not belong to them, Josephina said. It belonged to us, to the Italians. The police, they did nothing, out of fear. The politicians did nothing, because that is what they were paid to do. That left it up to the men of the towns to form a group that only they could trust.

    Did they win? Angelo asked. Did they get their land back?

    Much blood was spilled, but yes, they won their fight, Josephina said. And no one ever touched their land again.

    Was your husband in the group? Angelo asked, reacting to the story as most children would to a favorite fairy tale.

    Yes, Josephina said. He was capo of the town where we lived and where he died.

    Papa says that it was to get me and Mama away from men like Uncle Tomasso that we came to America, Angelo said.

    Your father is weak, Josephina hissed in a dismissive tone. He will never be more than what he is, a piece of furniture moved about by other people.

    I am weak, too, Angelo said, sad eyes peering up at Josephina.

    That will change, Josephina said, a large hand reaching out and caressing the boy's face.

     *     *     *

ALL THE GANGSTERS I have known are superstitious, and it stems from childhood days spent with women such as Josephina, who spoon-fed them hand-me-down tales that have no weight in a modern world yet have lingered for centuries. Their everyday fears go miles beyond the simple black cats and open ladder phobias most people demonstrate and are driven by dreams, numbers and suspicion.

    Do you know his biggest fear, courtesy of Aunt Josephina? Mary asked, shaking her head in disbelief.

    Maybe I do, I said. If you came into a room with your jacket buttoned it meant you were planning to kill him.

    That was a good one, Mary said. But the one I got the biggest kick from was that he would never sit at a table or even be seen with a woman who had red hair.

    Why not?

    It was the color of the devil, Mary said. And Josephina believed that they had the power to turn the hearts of the most loyal of men.

    Do you think he really believed all that? I asked.

    I hope to God he did, Mary said, the smile gone from her face. He had more than one man murdered because of them.

     *     *     *

ON SUMMER AFTERNOONS, Angelo would sit on the middle step of his tenement stoop, staring at the faces in the crowds that squeezed their way past. The street was congested with human and horse-drawn traffic, and thick piles of manure and litter lined both ends of the sidewalk. Across the street from Angelo's building was a dilapidated saloon with an unhinged front door, chipped walls and an uptown name.

    It was called the Cafe Maryland.

    Inside its dark, beer- and bloodstained interior, local gangs met to plot their murders and burglaries, map out hijacking routes and collect on their cash loan-outs. In the summer of 1910, three men were shot and killed after a long and loud argument over a woman whose company many of the bar patrons had already shared. The morgue attendants pulled their black van up to the front door soon after the final shots had been fired, scooped up the bodies and vanished back into the darkness, shrugging then: shoulders and laughing after another night of battle between the dagos and the micks.

    Angelo was warned by his father never to step near the Maryland. The people in that bar and the people we escaped from are one and the same, Paolino said. There is no difference. Paolino ached to spend more time with his son, but the need to work two jobs that barely brought in enough money put an end to such fatherly desires. He worked three full day and night shifts at the midtown piers, helping unload the ships that flooded in and out of the packed harbor. For that, Paolino earned seven dollars a week, but he had to kick back half of that to Chick Tricker's enforcers, who guaranteed the work in return for the payoff.

    In the first decades of the twentieth century, Chick Tricker ran Manhattan's Lower West Side. Tricker was a saloon keeper who found hiring out thugs as collectors an easy route to a more lucrative lifestyle. So while an army of hardworking men headed home each night to soak aching muscles, wondering aloud if an honest life was worth living, Tricker stood behind the wood of his bar, a bottle of his finest to his right, and counted his haul, at peace with his place in the American Dream.

    Paolino's remaining nights were spent in a little West Twelfth Street slaughterhouse killing, skinning and slicing pigs and sheep for morning delivery to the area meat markets. Not lost on him was the irony that whereas in Italy he once tended to the needs of a flock, he was now here, in America, slicing open their throats. With this job, he was allowed to keep all the money he earned, working straight twelve-hour shifts in near-darkness and unsanitary conditions bordering on the criminal. In addition to his six-dollar salary, Paolino was given two lambs' heads a week, which Josephina would marinate in red wine vinegar and crushed garlic and then roast over a tin wine barrel. Those Sunday afternoon meals were as close to heaven as Paolino Vestieri was meant to find on this earth.

    The long hours he worked and the small sums of money such jobs produced left Paolino not just broke but broken. And it made a hard impression on young Angelo. I watched him come home at night and I'd pretend to be asleep, he told me, tending with care and patience the long rows of olive trees that took up three acres of his Long Island estate. He looked so beaten, so powerless. He'd sit on the edge of his bed and hang his head, too tired to even take his clothes off. At first I felt so sorry for him. But with time sorrow turned to pity. I knew I could never lead his life. Even death would be a better option.

    Paolino didn't have much social life. He had a few male friends who, on occasion, would get together for brisk games of briscola or sette bello. On summer days, he sometimes walked alone at the edge of the West Side piers, the harsh glare of the sun turning the Hudson into a long sheet of blue glass, and thought about his second son. Was such a cold country the place for a frail boy to find and make his way? Would he have the courage to deal with the challenges his father envisioned him facing? And would he amount to more than what Paolino saw in himself--a man of simple dreams living a life of wasted wishes.

    On rare occasions, Paolino pictured himself married again, a woman at home to supply warmth and comfort and a smiling face to a tired man. Despite his weak financial status, Paolino was still considered a worthy catch among the middle-aged widows and old maids of the neighborhood. But those visions were fleeting, leaving in their wake only the warm memory of Francesca secure at his side. His mood was laced with sadness as he wandered on his walks, wondering whether there had been any point in his leaving Italy. There was, after all, little difference between paying tribute money to the camorra of his homeland or to the Irish thugs of NewYork.