R. Ellory - A Quiet Vendetta

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Anyway, her father’s wife, the woman who shoulda been her mother but wasn’t, she don’t want anything to do with Angelina, and so she tells Don Alessandro that he better take care of the girl seein’ as how the girl is his niece, and she’s gonna go someplace upstate and start her life over again away from her dead husband’s crazy good-for-nothin’ family. So Don Alessandro gave her some money, and then he made sure Angelina was looked after until she was all growed up, and then he bought her a place. That’s where she lives now, all by herself.’

‘And how come she’s out of bounds?’ I asked.

‘Because it just ain’t done, you know? The girl’s mother wasn’t Italian, she wasn’t part of the family… the poor kid’s mother was some half-crazy fucked-up junkie bitch from no place special who put her pussy where it shouldn’t have been. Now get the fucking oranges would ya for Christ’s sake… what the fuck is this with the third fuckin’ degree anyway?’

I saw her again a week later. Same store. Was down there by myself collecting groceries for Ten Cent. I made a point of saying ‘Hi’ to her, and though she said nothing in response she did look at me for a heartbeat, and in that heartbeat there was the ghost of a smile, and in that smile I saw the promise of everything else that might lie behind it.

The day after I saw her in the street. She was leaving a hairstyling salon on Hester. She wore the same summer print dress and camel-colored overcoat. She carried her purse tight in both her hands as if afraid someone would snatch it from her. I approached her, and ten or twelve feet away I sensed that she was aware of my presence. I slowed down and stopped on the sidewalk. She slowed down also. She glanced to her right as if wondering whether to cross the street to avoid me, but she hesitated, hesitated long enough for me to raise my hand and smile at her.

She tried to smile back, but it was as if the muscles of her face were denying her the right. Her hands did not move; they clutched the purse tightly, as if the purse was the only thing she could be sure of in that moment.

‘Miss Tiacoli,’ I said quietly, because I knew her name from Ten Cent, and would not have forgotten that name even if forgetting had been a life-and-death matter.

She tried to smile again but could not. She opened her mouth as if she planned to say something, but not a word came forth. She looked to her right again, and then once back at me, and then she stepped suddenly from the sidewalk to the street and hurried across Hester.

I watched her go. I followed her a good fifteen yards on the other side of the road.

She stopped suddenly. She turned towards me. Cars went by unnoticed between us. She let go of the purse with her right hand and raised it, palm facing me as if to stop me coming any further, and then as quickly as she had stopped she started walking again, faster this time. I let her go. I wanted to follow her but I let her go. At the corner of Hester and Elizabeth she glanced back once, just for a split second, and then she turned and was gone.

I walked back to the house empty-handed. Ten Cent called me a ‘dumb fuckin’ Cuban’, and sent me out once again to get cigarettes.

In April of 1974 we moved house. Apparently where we were had been marked by the Feds and it was no longer safe. Don Calligaris stayed in his tall narrow house on Mulberry but me and Ten Cent went over Canal Street to Baxter on the edge of Chinatown. The house was bigger, I had three rooms to myself, my own bathroom, and a small kitchenette where I could cook the food I wanted when we weren’t eating together. I bought a record player and started listening to Louis Prima and Al Martino, and when Ten Cent was out of the house I would take a suit on a hanger from my wardrobe, hold it close like a partner, and pretend I was dancing with Angelina Maria Tiacoli. I had not seen her since that day on Hester when she came out of the salon, and most nights I thought of her, of how it would be to lie beside her in the cool half light of morning, the warmth of my body against hers, the words we would share, of how important everything would become if she were with me. I felt like a child with a schoolyard crush, and there was a passion and promise that lay within that feeling that were new to me.

In June me and Ten Cent had to go uptown to Tompkins Square Park and meet with a man called John Delancey. Delancey was a Clerk of the Court on the Fifth Circuit. He told us that there was a pending investigation coming to a head. The target was Don Fabio Calligaris and Tony Provenzano.

‘Tony Pro had someone killed,’ John Delancey told us. ‘I don’t know why, I don’t know what it was all about, but the guy was a cop’s brother. Cop’s name was Albert Young, a sergeant at the 11th Precinct. They cut his brother’s balls off and put them in his mouth for God’s sake, and the cop has been shouting long enough for someone to take notice.’

Ten Cent was nodding. He looked intent. ‘So how come this falls on Calligaris?’ he asked.

‘Because the Feds have been after Calligaris for years but they never got anything on him. Calligaris is hand-in-glove with Tony Ducks, and Tony Ducks is boss of the Luchese family, and if anything happens to Calligaris then the Feds reckon it will bring down the Lucheses. They wanna make it seem like the Lucheses welched on Tony Pro and start another faction war.’

Ten Cent laughed. ‘Shit, these people work for the government and they must be the dumbest motherfuckers ever to walk the face of the earth.’

‘Maybe so,’ Delancey said, ‘but they got wires and circumstantial evidence, fabricated or otherwise, that puts Calligaris in a room with Tony Pro saying as how they’re gonna whack the cop’s brother.’

‘That’s bullshit,’ Ten Cent said. He looked like he was going to get angry.

Delancey shrugged. ‘Just tellin’ ya how it is, Ten Cent. You gotta get Calligaris to sort out the cop, make him shut his mouth, and then you gotta plug the leak that’s inside your family.’

‘You gotta name?’

Delancey shook his head. ‘No, I don’t gotta name, Ten Cent, and if I did you’d have it, but all I know is that someone inside your camp, someone who comes close to Calligaris, has given the Feds what they need and they’re gonna use him as a witness.’

Later, after a fat brown envelope was passed discreetly from Ten Cent to Delancey, we walked back to the car.

‘Not a word of this to anyone,’ Ten Cent warned me.

‘A word of what?’ I asked.

Ten Cent winked and smiled. ‘That’s my man.’

Three nights later on a dark corner – East 12th near Stuyvesant Park – I picked up on Sergeant Albert Young of the 11th Precinct leaving a wine store and crossing the road to his car.

Four minutes later Sergeant Albert Young of the 11th Precinct – twice decorated for valor, three times commended by the Office of the Mayor for bravery above and beyond the call of duty, seven times recipient of a 118 citation for excessive force – was slumped in the driver’s seat with a.22 caliber hole back of his left ear. He wouldn’t shout about his brother any more. More likely than not he’d get to speak with him real soon in cop heaven.

Four days subsequent Don Calligaris came to our house and spoke with me and Ten Cent.

‘You guys gotta plug the leak,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘We watched what happened after the cop got clipped, and we know who spent too much time away from home. We had him followed and he met some suits in Cooper Square up near the Village yesterday morning.’

Ten Cent leaned forward.

‘This name goes out of this room and there’s gonna be hell to pay. You gotta do it quick and quiet. Send Ernesto. He did good with the cop, very good indeed, and we need the same kind of thing here. We need it to look like he was into something bad so they don’t parade him round like some sort of martyr, okay?’