R. Ellory - A Quiet Vendetta

‘He’s a guy, just a guy I know.’

‘And he told you all about me?’

‘No, not all about you. I’m sure he doesn’t know a great deal about you at all. He told me your name, who your father was, and the rest I figured out for myself.’

‘The rest? The rest of what?’

‘Aah, you know, like how pretty you are, and how you look like the sort of person it would be great to know, and how good you and me would look if we dressed up smart and went somewhere nice, like a restaurant or a show or something.’

‘And you figured that all out by yourself, did you?’

I nodded. ‘Sure I did.’

‘Well,’ she said, ‘I don’t know who you are, but if you have a friend called Ten Cent then I can only imagine what kind of people you might mix with, and if you mix with them then any one of them can very quickly tell you that I am not the sort of person that men in the family mix with, and I sure am not the kind of girl you take to a restaurant or out to a show.’

I shook my head. ‘Why, what’s wrong with you… you sick or something? You got like a terminal illness?’

Angelina Tiacoli looked like someone had slapped her face. ‘You are such a smart guy,’ she said, and she took a step towards me. ‘You talk to your stupid friends with their stupid names, and they tell you who I am, that I’m nothing but some hooker’s daughter, and maybe if you follow me down the street I might take you home and fuck you or something. Is that how it happened? Is that the kind of conversation you had back there with your family?’

I was stunned. I didn’t know what to say. I fought with the words in my head but I lost. I opened my mouth and nothing but silence came out.

‘Go back to wherever the hell you came from and tell your friends that if your goddamned family hadn’t cursed me to this life then I would have long since gone. You tell them that from me, and if you come down here again, or if you stop me in the street or follow me, then sure as hell I’ll get someone to clip you, you poor dumb stupid Italian thug.’

She glared at me.

I opened my mouth.

‘Not another word,’ she said, and then she turned and hurried away.

‘I… I’m not… I’m not Italian,’ I stammered, but the sound of my voice was lost in the clatter of her heels on the hot-top, and before I could say another word, before I could raise my head or get my brain in gear sufficiently to take a step after her, she had reached the corner of the street and turned.

Another thirty seconds and I snapped out of it. I went after her at a dead run, but even as I turned the corner I knew she would have disappeared.

I was right. She had vanished. Not a sound.

I stood there for some time with my heart in my mouth, and then I swallowed it with difficulty and started back home.

Christmas came and went. New Year also. I didn’t see Angelina save for a fleeting glimpse near the bus station as I drove past with Ten Cent and Don Calligaris. I couldn’t be sure it was her, but even seeing someone who might have been her was enough to make me realize how much I longed for her. All the time I had been in New York I had not slept with any girl – no hookers, no strippers, no-one – and I believed that back of my celibacy was the belief that I was saving myself for Angelina. I wanted to be with her. I wanted to hear that voice, once so filled with venom and anger; I wanted to hear that same voice as she spoke words of love and passion, and spoke them for me.

The spring unfolded. Winter lost its bitter grip on New York, and with the change of seasons came a change of temperament and mood in the Luchese camp. There was discussion once more of the Teamsters, of this man Hoffa whom I had heard mention of so many months before in the Blue Flame.

‘Has to go, has to fucking go,’ Don Calligaris said. ‘He’s a short fat fuck, a nothing, a piece of shit arrogant cocksucker. Just ’cause he was Teamsters’ president he thinks he owns the fucking country. They sent him down on this jury tampering and wire fraud bullshit but that asshole Nixon grants him clemency and we got him back like a fucking cancer. Jeez, why can’t he just leave the fucking thing alone? We’re doing fine with Frank Fitzsimmons, hell, he’s a pussycat compared to Hoffa. But no, Hoffa’s got to stick his nose in where it ain’t fucking wanted, and he’s giving everyone ball-ache by the truckload. We gotta do something about this motherfucker… gotta make him get the fuck outta here and not come back.’

July of 1975 there were meetings, long meetings. I saw people come and go through the house, Don Calligaris’s place also – people like Tony Provenzano and Anthony Giacalone. I learned that Tony Pro was the current vice-president of the Teamsters, and whenever he spoke of Jimmy Hoffa he spoke like he was talking about something he’d picked up on his shoe from the sidewalk.

‘Whenever we want Frank to look the other way we find he ain’t even on the same block, and that’s just the fucking way we want it,’ Tony Pro would say. ‘Nixon told Hoffa to stay out of the unions for ten years, that was part of the deal on this clemency thing. He comes back and we got the Feds breathing down our necks like you wouldn’t fucking believe. The guy… Jesus, we tell the guy time and time a-fucking-gain to keep his face out of the business, but this guy is so hard of fucking hearing I don’t think he got no fucking ears at all.’

July twenty-eighth, a Monday, and Don Calligaris called me over with Ten Cent. When I arrived at the Mulberry house the place seemed packed with people, some I knew, some I had never seen before. No names were given, but later Ten Cent told me that the guy sitting next to Joey Giacalone was Charles ‘Chuckie’ O’Brien, a very close friend of Jimmy Hoffa’s, someone Hoffa referred to as his ‘adopted son’.

‘We’re gonna kill this motherfucker,’ Joey Giacalone said. ‘Vote’s been taken and he’s been voted a dead fuckin’ loser. We all had enough of this ball-ache he’s been dishin’ out.’

A meeting had been arranged in Michigan, place called the Machus Red Fox Restaurant in Bloomfield Township. Hoffa was going to meet with Tony Provenzano, Tony Giacalone and a Detroit labor leader to discuss Hoffa’s intention to run for presidency of the Teamsters again. Hoffa wanted to know if the heavy-hitters would back him if he challenged Frank Fitzsimmons.

Tony Pro and Tony Jacks would never arrive. Tony Jacks would go to his usual appointment at the Southfield Athletic Club to work out, and Tony Pro would be over in Hoboken, New Jersey visiting local Teamsters’ offices. He would make sure he shook lots of hands and spoke to lots of people who wouldn’t forget him being there. The labor leader would be suitably delayed and would arrive at the Machus Red Fox sometime after three. Joey Giacalone had a maroon-colored Mercury he was going to lend to Chuckie O’Brien. Chuckie would arrive at the restaurant and tell Hoffa the meeting place had been changed. Hoffa would trust Chuckie without question. He would get in the car. He would leave his own Pontiac Grand Ville right there in the Machus Red Fox car lot. He would never get out of the Mercury alive.

There was another element that caught me off-guard.

‘You gotta understand that it also comes back to this thing with Feraud and his connection with Vegas and the Luchese family,’ Tony Pro said. ‘You wanna keep this going with New Orleans, and believe me there is a great deal more money to come out of there than is coming right now, then you gotta understand that we’re doing this not only because we wanna keep Frank Fitzsimmons as president of the Teamsters, but also to keep the south states happy. Who’s the guy we got down there?’

‘Ducane… Congressman Charles Ducane,’ Tony Jacks said.