Sunburn (3 page)

The database went back ten years, and the oldest reference to Delgatto was from The New York Times of December 20, 1985.

Frankie Scalera, aged boss of the Pugliese family and for a decade the head of the New York Mafia, had recently been rubbed out, and organized crime experts were analyzing the likely shape of the post-Scalera Mob. The new Godfather, it was broadly agreed, was Nino Carti, a preening thug of violent charisma. Carti lacked finesse, but he was young, broad-shouldered, and cocky; he represented, in the words of one FBI source, "the Mob's last best hope to rejuvenate itself." Carti's under-boss would be Tommy Mondello, regarded by Mob watchers as an uninspired choice. Mondello wasn't bright, nor was he showy. One state attorney dismissed him as "a glorified bodyguard" whose main qualification was that he would be no threat to Carti's leadership.

More interesting, in the experts' view, was the promotion to consigliere of Vincente Delgatto.

Delgatto was sixty-three at the time—almost two decades older than his new bosses—and there was much conjecture about the meaning of this wide disparity. One investigator saw Delgatto's selection merely as "a sop to the old men" and claimed he would be a figurehead with no real power. Another expert said, however, that while Delgatto's position might indeed be a symbolic one, the symbol was significant; it indicated that the "Sicilian Mob was not ready to abandon altogether its traditions of respect and relative restraint, to sink wholly into the depths of random violence and dog-eat-dog."

This discussion, in the short term, turned out to be academic, because the Mafia, for the next three years or so, was Nino Carti, period.

Arty Magnus, his back to the dribbling air conditioner, munched pretzels, skimmed through hundreds of Carti cites, and remembered the cult of personality that had prevailed through the late eighties. Carti made all the decisions; Carti hogged all the headlines. Carti was a one-man show.

But the flamboyant Godfather's fame was also his undoing. By 1989, the Feds and New York State had put together a blue-ribbon task force whose single mandate was to make an airtight case against this brazen gangster whose continued freedom was a needling embarrassment. "We want him badly," said an unnamed prosecutor, when the 116 count indictment was finally announced. "He's made it so the machine can hardly run without him, and if we put him away, that's our best chance to destroy the entire enterprise."

Carti told the press, "I wish the suits good luck."

Then, in early 1991, as the still cocky Godfather was waiting to go on trial, the unthinkable occurred. The Daily News, with its great gift for succinctness, put it best in a front-page headline:
mondello rats out carti
. The nearly invisible under-boss, picked solely for his dumb and doglike loyalty, had contemplated those counts of murder and extortion in which he was also an accused and cut himself a deal.

Over the next months, the gambits of prosecutors and defense attorneys dominated the New York local news, but when it became clear that Nino Carti was going away, probably for life, the journalists' attention returned to the Mafia's battered state and uncertain future. The database showed a steeply rising number of references to
delgatto, vincente
. Arty Magnus ate his pretzels, rubbed his itchy eyes, and delved.

who's next?
asked the
Post
on September 18, 1991, the day after Nino Carti's sentencing. The gist of the article was that there now existed an unprecedented power vacuum at the top of the Mob. Vincente Delgatto, sixty-nine, was the highest-ranking member of the Pugliese family not in custody, but sources quoted in the article doubted that he would ever see the solemn interfamily ceremony that signaled the coronation of a Godfather. "He's a competent administrator," said one Mob watcher, "but an old man with old ideas who no longer inspires fear. His moment has passed." Warned another expert, "There are four other Mafia families in New York, and if they see this as an opportunity to wrest power from the Puglieses, it won't be pretty."

But the gang war hinted at in the Post didn't happen—at least not right away—and an article in the Times a couple of weeks later suggested why. Prosecutors were crowing about the broader applications of the RICO case they had built against Carti. Having firmly established the Mafia as "an ongoing criminal enterprise," authorities could now bring charges against anyone who headed that enterprise. Boasted one FBI source, "The way it is now, it's like a shooting gallery. The first duck that pops up is the first duck that gets nailed."

Given this situation, it became ever clearer that the Mob was floundering. Hierarchies were breaking down; lines of jurisdiction were blurring. And the Mafia's lack of leadership was costing it.
sicilians losing ground to chinese gangs in garment district
, reported the Times in March of'92
. irish toughs flex muscles on the docks,
said the Post in April.

Then, in May,
Newsday
scooped the competition and surprised the experts by reporting that, at a subdued and formal sit-down at a social club in Queens, Vincente Delgatto, seventy, had in fact been ratified as
capo di tutti capi
.

Details of the ceremony were lacking, of course. But the reporter's unnamed source did offer the following analysis: "The Mob needs a boss. Delgatto knows that, everybody knows it. What's unusual, though, is that, typically, bosses have been driven by greed, blood lust, ego. Delgatto seems to be accepting the crown out of duty. It's become a lousy job."

Taking his cue from this remark, the reporter dubbed the new leader "The Reluctant Godfather."

Arty Magnus looked up from the screen and said the phrase aloud. His voice sounded a little strange in the empty office. That's good newspaper work, he thought: Get the story first and be the first to put a spin on it. Reluctant Godfather. Smart.

He blinked, his eyelids felt rough as they ground together and almost stuck, and he realized quite suddenly that he was fried. He looked at his watch; it was nearly midnight.

He felt suddenly jittery and suddenly depleted: midnight under fluorescent lights with a green computer screen in front of him and nothing but three beers and a bag of pretzels in his skinny gut. He yawned, got up from his desk, and stretched. He switched things off, headed for the door, and on the way downstairs he was laughing at himself for the wise, well-meaning, patronizing way he'd been trying to tell Joey Goldman there was a snowball's chance in hell that his old man had a story.

The editor unchained his ancient fat-tire bicycle and climbed aboard.

The Reluctant Godfather. The nickname was still rattling around inside his head, and he added to it another phrase, a private joke, a distorted echo: The Reluctant Writer. He tried to chuckle over that one, but nothing resembling a laugh came out. He pedaled off down Duval Street. Slurred and whiny music still spilled out of mostly empty bars; here and there couples strolled, leaned against each other, purred and giggled. Being tourists, they were trying much too hard to have a good time, there was something bleak about the effort, but Arty Magnus grudgingly acknowledged that maybe, just maybe, they were succeeding. The word reluctant would not let go of him. He rode home tiredly, wondering all the way if maybe he was just a reluctant sort of guy.

Two days later, a gorgeous Saturday, Gino Delgatto showed up in Joey Goldman's driveway with a bimbo on his arm.

This should not have been surprising; Gino always traveled with a bimbo, sported one like a Brit carries an umbrella, would have felt as at sea without one as a musician on the road without the comfort of his cello. Certain things about Gino's bimbos varied, others always stayed the same. Hair color might be blond or red or black, but it was always the kind of hair that looked immaculate on beauty parlor day and then got wilder and spikier through the week. Eyes might be any shape and any hue but were always graced with unlikely lashes and surmounted by brows plucked slenderer than anchovies. Chests were always prominent, the rest of the torso seeming to fall back from the boobs as in some trick of exaggerated perspective; hips tended to be slim, buttocks flat, the whole tail section suggesting something of the mermaid.

Of this particular bimbo, not much could at first be seen. She was wearing big round sunglasses that covered her from the middle of the forehead to below the cheekbone, and a vast sun hat that carried its own eclipse as she moved toward the front door.

As for Gino, he'd gained some weight he didn't need. His sheeny pants were creased between his beefy thighs from sitting on the plane, he walked like the material was crawling up his ass. He squinted in the sun, or maybe he was smiling; pads of fat crinkled at the corners of his flat black eyes, his full lips spread and the flesh stacked up in his pudgy cheeks.

It shouldn't have been surprising that he brought a bimbo, but he hadn't said anything about it, and as Joey, Sandra, and Vincente stood there in the doorway, a slight strain on their faces hinted that maybe they were a little bit surprised.

Sandra thought: His mother just died; he's here to see his father; he's such a jerk.

Vincente thought: Gino, he's my firstborn; I love him, but he reminds me of the worst and saddest things about myself when I was young.

Joey thought: My big brother; it kills him that I have a house big enough for him to have a room in; he worked it out so there's no way he can stay here.

They all met on the lawn, under the frangipani tree. Gino kissed his father on both cheeks, shook hands with Joey, gave Sandra a hug she didn't want. Then he stood back, glanced up at the sky, and spread his arms in a mock-hearty gesture, the gesture of a lounge comedian telling his audience that life is wonderful now that he's onstage. "Florida," he said. "Beautiful."

He dropped his hands, folded up the smile. So much for Florida. "Come on, let's go in. I gotta pee like a racehorse."

He started for the house, then noticed that slightly awkward glances and attempts at greetings were passing between his family and his traveling companion. "Oh yeah," he said, "this is Debbi. You'll like 'er, she's a good kid."

Inside, Gino trundled off to the bathroom, seeming to make a point of seeing nothing on the way. But Debbi took everything in; she turned her head this direction, that direction, her enormous hat tracking like a radar dish. "This is so nice," she said, looking at the louvered windows, the ceiling fans, the white wicker furniture sparsely arrayed along the pale bare wooden floor. "So airy."

Sandra decided she liked her.

"Can I get ya something?" Joey asked. "You guys had lunch?"

Gino, coming back up the corridor, one hand still fussing with his fly, answered for her. "Nah, nothin', Joey. We just stopped by ta say hello. We gotta go get checked in, have a shower."

"Where you staying?" Sandra asked.

Gino welcomed the question, the chance to make it clear that for him there could only be one place. "Flagler House. Oceanfront. The best."

Sandra and Joey shared a look. The last time Gino had been in Key West, he'd misplaced a fraudulently rented Thunderbird, run up an eleven-thousand dollar tab at Flagler House on someone else's Gold Card, then bolted by water in the middle of the night. But there was a lot of turnover in the hotel business, it was a universe of forgotten faces, and Gino would no doubt have a different piece of plastic and a different name this time.

But Gino hadn't waited for an answer. He was heading for the door. A jolt and a breeze pulsed out behind him, like when a truck slams past on the highway. He blew by Debbi and she started to follow; then she stopped and walked up to Vincente. For the first time she removed her sunglasses. Her eyes were a green that was almost blue, and even though her hair was all up in her hat the old man knew she was a redhead. Joey's mother had been a redhead.

"Mr. Delgatto," Debbi said, "I just want to tell you I was very sorry to hear about your wife."

The Godfather took her hand in both of his and shook it warmly. "Thank you, dear, that's nice a ya ta say."

Gino started up the rented T-Bird. Joey, standing in the doorway, said, "Nice car. The license and the credit card—they match this time?"

The visitor gave a serene thumbs-up. As soon as the bimbo had got in he floored it in reverse and spit some gravel onto Joey's lawn.

"Kids," said Vincente. "You never had any, didja, Bert?"

"Nah," said Bert the Shirt. "My wife. Her insides. Nah."

"And the girlfriends? No slips wit' the girlfriends?"

They were on the beach across the road from the Paradiso condo, where Bert lived. They sat in folding chairs and looked out at the ocean. If you had to talk about the past this was the place to do it because the ocean was a wide flat bath of forgiveness and forgetfulness, it took the sharp edges off memories like it did off stones. Here an old man could recall things with acceptance, with affection, and with less pain than he feared would be there.

"A million years ago," Bert said, "yeah, I had a slip or two wit' girlfriends. But ya know, it wasn't like wit' you and Thelma. I wasn't in love wit' them, they weren't in love wit' me. No one wanted a kid. But ya know somethin', Vincente? Those years, OK, I did what guys did, but the truth is I was much happier home wit' my wife."

"I wasn't," said the Godfather. "I guess that's a shitty thing to say, Rosa barely cold. Not her fault. She was a good soul, she tried. But happy at home? Nah. Bored stiff at home. The saints, the candles, the sewing kit always out. I envy you, Bert."

Envy was a hard thing to answer, so Bert the Shirt just looked out at the ocean. The sun was very low, there was just enough haze so you could bear to glance at it, and a gleam like grayish-green aluminum was coming off the water. Absently, Bert stroked the geriatric chihuahua curled up in his lap; short white dog hairs came off on his blue silk shirt shot through with silver threads.