R. Ellory - A Quiet Vendetta

‘You did good, Lourdes,’ I said, and then I took the cushion, pressed it down against the back of his head as he kneeled on the floor, and I shot him.

Lourdes collapsed forward, and within a moment you couldn’t tell whose blood was whose.

I tucked the gun into the waistband of my pants. I stepped out of the room and closed the door quietly behind me. I went down the corridor, passed a door through which I could hear some guy hollering Baby baby baby , and went down the risers two at a time to the lower hall.

I paused for a moment, breathed once through my nose to remind myself of how goddamned awful the place smelled, and then I went out through the front door and closed it tight behind me.

Later, after dinner, I called Michael Cova at home.

‘Done,’ I said quietly.

‘Already?’

‘Yes.’

‘Okay, Ernesto, okay. Hey, how’s the wife?’

‘She’s good, Michael, thanks for asking.’

‘When’s the baby coming?’

‘June… should be June.’

‘Well, God bless you both, eh?’

‘Thank you, Michael… appreciated.’

‘You’re welcome. Tell her “Hi” from me.’

‘I will, Michael.’

‘See ya tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow,’ I said, and hung up the phone.

‘Nesto?’ Angelina called from the front.

‘Sweetheart?’ ‘Come massage my feet for me, would you, honey? I ache all over.’

‘Sure thing, sweetheart. Just gonna lock up the front.’

I locked the door, flipped the deadbolt, and walked back in front to see my wife.

June seventeenth 1982, St Mary Magdalene Hospital on Hope Street near the park, Angelina Maria Perez gave birth to twins. A boy and a girl. I cannot begin to describe what I felt, and so I will not attempt to, save to say that there had never been anything before and nothing since that could even come close to what I experienced in that operating theater.

We had no idea there were two. I knew she was big, but big compared to what? I had expected one child. We were blessed with two. I counted their fingers, their toes. I held one within each arm. I walked around in circles looking down at them until I believed I would fall over with the sheer weight of joy and emotion and pride and love.

My babies. My blood. My family.

At that time I did not question whether I would be caught in some conflict between the family of my business and the family of my blood. I questioned nothing. I asked for nothing. In that moment I believed that whatever God may have existed, whatever power was out there beyond the parameters of my understanding, I had been blessed with something priceless and beyond measure.

Three days later we took Victor and Lucia home. They cried, they were forever hungry; they woke us with their pleadings in the cool half-light of nascent morning, and we went from our bed with something in our hearts that had never been there before; something that we had once believed unattainable.

For six weeks, right until the end of July of that year, I made no attempt to contact anyone. In some way I was grateful for this. I received one call from Michael Cova. He expressed his good wishes and sent the blessings of his family. Ten times, perhaps more, we would wake, we would go outside the front door, and there on the porch we would find baskets of fruit, wickerwork jars of dried meats and salami. I understood then that whatever kind of people they were, whatever blood may have been spilled in the name of greed, of vengeance, of hatred and possession, they were still human beings. They respected blood and family and the ties that bound such things more than anything else. They respected me, and in this way they gave me the time I needed to be with my wife and my children.

Angelina and I – like teenagers caught with the first enthusiastic sweep of love – could find no wrong with the world. Each day dawned with a brighter sun, a bluer sky, a sweeter smell in the air. Angelina did not ask why there was no business to attend to, and it was perhaps for the first time during those weeks that I began to question why she had never asked me what I had done, what business I would leave to attend to in the days before the birth of our children. At first I imagined it was because of her heritage, the fact that she had been born herself within the confines of this world, that her father, her father’s brother – all these people surrounding her as a child – had been there inside the dark underbelly of American organized crime. Later, as I watched her play with Victor and Lucia, as I caught her watching me from the doorway of the kitchen when I pulled faces and made them smile, I realized that she did not want to know. She asked no questions because she already knew the answers, and thus she stayed silent, even as the telephone calls started in the first week of August; silent as I stood in the hallway, my words hushed to a whisper, as I explained to the world beyond our door that I needed a little more time: another week, perhaps two.

After the calls ended I would walk back in to see her.

‘Everything okay?’ she would ask.

I would nod and smile and tell her everything was fine.

‘They want you back?’

‘Sure they do, Angelina, sure they do.’

‘And you’re going?’

‘Not yet… a little while longer.’

Silence for a brief while, and then, ‘Ernesto?’

‘Yes?’

‘You have a family now-’

‘Angelina… we have spoken of this before. Everyone I know has a family. All of these people have families. Their families are the most important things in their lives. They still have things to attend to, business still goes on and it has to be dealt with. Just because I now have a family doesn’t change the fact that I am responsible for my agreements.’

‘Agreements? Is that what you call them?’

‘Yes, Angelina, agreements. We are here because people helped us be here. I have a duty to return the favors that are granted. This is a long-term thing, Angelina… you have been part of this life even longer than I. You understand the way these things work, and there’s nothing that can be done to change it.’

‘But Ernesto-’

‘Angelina, enough. Seriously, enough for now. This is the way that our life is-’

‘But I don’t want this life any more, Ernesto.’

‘I know, Angel, I know,’ and then I would hold her and she would say nothing, and I would be afraid to look at her because I knew she would see right through me, and understand that I also did not want this life any more.

On Monday 9 August 1982, the same day that John Hinckley was detained indefinitely for the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan, Samuel Pagliaro, a man I had known as Ten Cent in another life, came to the door of our house and asked for an audience with me.

I greeted him warmly, I had not seen him for the better part of five months and I was happy to see his face, happy as he gripped my shoulders and hugged me, and kissed Angelina, and then lifted my children from the carpet as if they were nothing more than feathers, and complimented their beauty, their bright eyes. It was good to see Ten Cent, but beneath my superficial welcome there was a sense of darkness and foreboding that warned me of what was to come.

Later, after we had eaten, he took me aside. We sat in the room at the front of the house. Angelina was upstairs with Victor and Lucia attempting to get them to sleep.

‘Don Calligaris is pleased for your good fortune,’ Ten Cent began. ‘He is very pleased with the work you have done out here, and good words have come back home from Michael Cova also. But this time has come to an end-’

He looked at me with a flash of anxiety in his eyes. He knew me well enough to understand that I could be capable of violence and passion. He was – despite his size – perhaps a little concerned about my potential reaction.