Nightjack (16 page)

The night spoke in a voice of darkness and regret.

Whispered reminders of lives already gone or waiting to be born. Crying children and quiet lullabies. The words of your mother, the laughter of your wife. The decisive snarl of your eighth-grade gym teacher, barking down at you on the wrestling mats. Hating your father because you thought he hated you. The lost chance to forgive.

You hung back in alleys and watched the Ganooch boys swagger down the street to their Coupe de Villes. Using grease in their hair like the old days, a couple of them with ducks’ asses. These guys still thinking they were part of the Rat Pack, as if Dean Martin and Frankie were about to bust into song, call them up on stage, share a tall one with them. You never drop the zeppoles. You didn’t even have to be half-good to run through these guys, not even when they were supposedly on their toes. It just meant more muscle packing more heat, carrying more sopping oily bags. Your whole life you thought the mob was full of all-powerful men, and when the time came they went easy as snuffing out votive candles.

Are you cured
?

Chin in hand, with his face damp, Pace awoke sitting at the foot of the bed.

He glanced over and saw Pacella lying under the covers, looking comfortable and well-rested. He wore a kind of post-coital leer that actually disturbed Pace a little.

Pacella said, “It’s all right. You did what you were supposed to do.”

“No, I haven’t.”

“Just leave. There’s no place for you here anymore. You did what you could. We all have. Now take a powder.”

“It’s not supposed to work this way,” Pace said. “We’re going backward.”

“Move aside, crybaby.”

“So when did you become so tough, huh?”

Waves lashed the rocks of the shore, sending an unpleasant booming staccato vibrating through the house.

A contrapuntal to his heartbeat. The rain poured down the panes in vivid designs, some of them recognizable. He saw Dr. Brandt and Jane there, moving across the glass separately, then together. He watched himself performing strange functions of death.

Pace dried his face with the sheets and glared at Pacella, who was supposed to be long gone by now. The hell was happening when you couldn’t count on the dead wimps staying out of your way?

He drew the knife and slipped up the mattress, eased himself forward and pressed the blade to Pacella’s throat.

The guy just kept smiling

“You’re not William Pacella, are you?” Pace said.

“Who do you think I am?”

“You’re Jack.”

“No, you still don’t get it.” Showing teeth the way Pacella never would, unless Jane was with him. “It’s you. You’re Jack.”

Are you cured
?

And Pace thinking, I’m not stepping aside for you or anybody else. I’ve got too much left to do.

fourteen

Jack had saved the Ganooch for last.

He’d taken out all the major capos, a few of the made guys, a couple of dirty cops, and about a dozen of the Ganucci family soldiers.

Big Joe Ganucci, like all the old-time mobsters, pretended to be a regular businessman in waste management and disposal, too cheap to have a first-rate burglar alarm put in. Even now, with the syndicate in shambles, he still believed in a show of muscle, surrounding himself with stupid bodyguards.

The first thing a pro learns is to never compromise your hands. Don’t read the paper on duty, don’t have donuts and coffee, don’t run off to the john. Don’t hold the fucking bag of zeppoles. Drop the fucking zeppoles, idiot. These guys, they spent most of their time trying to find the TV remote behind the couch cushions.

When Big Joe and Jack were finally alone, the Ganooch just sitting in his wheelchair in the center of the room, with the sacred heart of Jesus picture overlooking the gutted bodies, the old man looked around a little sadly like he expected to leave more behind in this world.

“You’ve done a good job of taking me out of the game,” the Ganooch said calmly. “Who the fuck are you?”

Pacella told him.

“The schoolteacher. The fucking schoolteacher. Jesus. Never count out the common man.”

Jack liked that. The old guy showing no fear at all. Jack was a grinner not a talker, so he slid aside and let Pacella answer.

“Yes.”

“I always
thought
maybe it was you doing all this, something in the back of my head telling me it might be you, but nobody believed me. You’re a pantywaist. No one could pin anything on you.”

“You’re not very good.”

“No, I guess not. You hire the private eye that was watching us?”

“Yes.”

“Things are falling into place. He used to steal cars around here, that one, first when he was a kid in the Sixties, and then lately to follow my men. Drive around in their cars, the prick.” Nodding, glad that he could finally scratch some of the itches that had been bothering him. “How have I wronged you?”

“
Emilio’s
restaurant,” Pacella said.

Ganooch thought about it. “Place on 67
^th
and Madison. Where your wife died.”

“You burned it to the ground.”

“Me? No. Not personally.”

Like that might matter, after everything that had gone down.

“You ordered it done.”

“That’s what this is all about?”

“Three people died.”

“Yeah, yeah, that I knew, but I didn’t think you’d blame me. The whole job was sloppy. Bad for business. But it was a favor. You understand? Cavallo asked me to do it. You skip him and come at me and all my crew? What are you, a child? You should’ve just taken him out. He’s the one who had it done.”

Pacella’s jaw hung open at that. He’d known Emilio Cavallo for almost five years, since Jane had first became manager of the restaurant.

“Why?” he asked.

“You really got to ask that? You gotta ask why? In this economic climate? Why else? He was losing his shirt and wanted out of the business. He did it for the insurance. Everybody does every goddamn thing for the fucking insurance, I have to explain this to you?”

Blinking, Pacella realized just how naive he was. He wanted to go back to sleep and let Jack return, but Jack was having fun watching Pacella twisting like this. “Cavallo did it himself? He torched his own place?”

The old man started to get excited in his chair, sorta hopping in it now, his fists jumping in the air. “I took a small interest in the restaurant at the beginning, back in ’67. We grew up on the same block in Ozone Park, me and Emilio. You always help somebody from the neighborhood, that’s old school, it’s the rule. I lent him money a year or two ago when things started to slide for him, but nothing helped him dig his way free. So he took the only way out he had left.”

“Three of his own employees burned to death.”

“You wanted to kill somebody, you
pazzo
son of a bitch, you should’ve killed Cavallo! My men had nothing to do with it. But you want the truth, it wasn’t Emilio’s fault either, or mine. My consigliere set that up with some pyro on the outside. My right hand man, you killed him two months ago. Strangled him, from behind. Broke his neck. I got guys...had guys...who told me how hard that was to do. Breaking somebody’s neck from behind.”

Jack, the mad surgeon inside, was starting to cackle, because it had been so easy.

“Who was the torcher?” Pacella asked. “I want a name.”

“I don’t know, and that’s the truth. I never had anything to do with that side of the business anymore. Even when I did, I never knew the details. I gave the order and others got it done. You
pazzo
prick, you murdered all my guys for this? You got it all wrong. You weren’t even close.”

“You should’ve hired a smarter consigliere, it would’ve saved us both a lot of grief,” Pacella said, rolling over and sinking down to where it felt like death, even though he couldn’t die. The old man only managed a small whimper before Jack finished the job.

So the Ganooch wasn’t last after all.

Emilio Cavallo.

Pacella had always liked the guy. He’d eaten many meals at the restaurant and shared a lot of wine and Italian beer with Emilio, who was seventy and had been in the country nearly all his life but still talked with an Italian accent. Emilio was always admiring Jane from afar, telling Pacella how beautiful she was, what a lucky man he was, how he should never let her go. Pacella always agreeing, knowing it was all true.

If you weren’t already insane, a betrayal like this would push you over the big edge. Thinking about every time you laughed with the man, broke bread with him, listened to him the way you had never listened to your own father or grandfather. Believing he loved you and was forever looking out for you. That man, who made you promise aloud to protect your wife—that one, he was the one who took her away.

Pacella boarded the train into the city, took a cab out of Penn Station up to the east-side brownstone where Cavallo had lived alone since his wife died from a stroke a decade earlier. Pacella and Jane had visited the place a couple of times, attending Christmas parties and stopping over when Emilio celebrated his 70
^th
birthday. Jane had bought him cuff links made of Italian gold, and Pacella had brought a rare biography of Dante Alighieri, written in Italian.

Pacella paid the cabbie and, as he turned and hit the first step of the brownstone stairs, Jack started urging him to move it faster, faster. Pacella sprinted up the steps and leaned on the buzzer, Jack’s hideous giggle at the back of his throat.

Cavallo was surprised to hear Pacella’s voice over the intercom, but buzzed him right in.

Pacella walked in and there was Emilio Cavallo, standing with his arms wide open. By then, Cavallo was going almost three hundred pounds but still carried it pretty good. He had a deeply bronzed tan, the kind that takes two months in Miami Beach to get.

Pacella walked into Cavallo’s huge arms and hugged the guy, pressed his cheek to Emilio’s chest, shut his eyes. He’d missed his friend.

“
Beltrando
,” Emilio said, supposedly an Italianized version of Bill. “
Mio amico. Che se dice
? What brings you to the city?”

“An important matter.”

“
Che cosa
?”

Cavallo had wept until he’d nearly collapsed at Jane’s funeral, this close to being one of those old world types that scream and throw themselves into the grave, pounding on the casket. He’d hugged Pacella this same way at the funeral, like a father, and Pacella could hear Emilio’s heart beating out rough, painful rhythms of grief.

“What matter, ah? You tell me.”

When they broke away from one another, Cavallo moved to a bottle of wine already open on the dining room table. He poured two glasses and he and Pacella sat across from one another, sipping the wine in silence. The surgeon inside hated the smell of any type of alcohol because it reminded him of the hospital where he was forced to take care of orphan children to keep up appearances.

Cavallo just sat there with a big smile, his false teeth way too white in the brown face.

Pacella put the glass down and said, “Why didn’t you clear them out first, Emilio?”

A shudder went through the fat man. It started at his ears and worked right down through him inch by inch. It was beautiful to see—to know they weren’t going to have to race around the bush for an hour before Cavallo admitted to it. The old man knew exactly what Pacella was talking about. His eyes lit with fear and shame.

“What’s that?
Che cosa
? What’s that you say to me,
Beltrando
?”

On the wall, another sacred heart of Jesus picture. These killer Italians, all of them under the watchful eyes of Christ, like they’d never be called to judgment. “You should have made sure the restaurant was empty.”

“I don’t know what you’re saying.” Cavallo poured himself another glass, drinking it down fast. “What are you saying? Explain this.”

“You were right, I should’ve looked after her better. I got there too late. I almost got the torcher but he slipped away. I nearly got trapped in the fire myself, Emilio.” He wrenched open his shirt and showed off his scars. Repulsive as they were, he hardly ever thought of them anymore. It was good to get a chance to show them with some pride. “I watched her die, Emilio. Everything that’s happened, it’s your doing.”

“Will—”

The name lingering there without enough substance.

Will, always with the Will.

Pacella’s rage took on its form—a process of growth and movement—as he stood quickly, the seams of his soul stretching to their breaking point, everybody inside wanting out.

It wasn’t time yet. He still had questions. He struggled to continue talking, as demands and promises began to fill his head. “You knew what night it was set for. Why didn’t you protect your own employees? They were your family. You always said the people who worked with you were family.”