Росс Томас: The Singapore Wink

“Fudge for dinner,” she yelled, and disappeared into the kitchen and started to slam some pots around.

His name really wasn’t Christopher Small. It was Fiore Smaldore and he had been born in East Harlem on 108th Street and by the time he was fourteen he was running numbers after school. His older brother, Vincent Smaldore, had risen quickly in the gangland hierarchy and seemed destined for a brilliant career until one October morning in 1931 when somebody dumped his body out at the corner of 106th Street and Lexington Avenue, a casualty of the bitter feud between Joe (the Boss) Masseria and Salvatore Maranzano. The older brother of Fiore Smaldore (soon to become Christopher Small) had insisted that the youngest member of the family finish high school, but the seven bullets in the body of Vincent convinced the younger brother that safety lay elsewhere. Los Angeles was as far as he could get before his money ran out on Christmas Day, 1931. He drifted into motion pictures, first as an extra and then as a bit player when they discovered that he had a voice that recorded well. It satisfied him, and his friends and enemies back in New York, inveterate movie-goers all, liked to punch each other in the ribs whenever they saw him on the screen. They also thought that it was nice to know a motion picture actor who could show them around Hollywood even if he weren’t a real star. There wasn’t much Small could do about it, and over the years he had served as tour leader for a large number of those who made their very good livings on the darker side of the law in such cities as New York, Cleveland, Chicago, Detroit, and Kansas City.

“It wasn’t so bad in the forties and the fifties,” Small once told me. “We’d go to places like Ciro’s and the Derby and Romanoff’s and we’d get our pictures like you see over there on the wall took. But now you know where they got to go? Disneyland, that’s where. Christ, I must have been to Disneyland fifty times.” The pictures, I once noted, were all signed and bore such salutations as “To Chris, a swell guy, from his pal, Nick,” or “Thanks for a swell time, your buddy, Vito.”

Small was now leaning towards me, his elbows on his knees, a look of apparently genuine concern on his face. “What do Callese and Palmisano want?” he said.

“You know them?” I said.

“I know them. What do they want with you?”

“They want me to see a man in Washington.”

“What man?”

“The godfather of Angelo Sacchetti. They say that Angelo isn’t dead and that his godfather wants me to find him.”

“Where?”

“Christ, I don’t know where.”

“Why you?”

“I don’t know that either.”

Small rose and walked over to the bookshelves and picked up one of the china kittens. “Marcie collects these things, you know,” he said.

“I know. I gave her a couple.”

“Salvatore Callese,” Small said to the kitten. “Or The Yellow Spats Kid as they used to call him a long time ago in Newark.”

“He still wears them,” I said.

“What?”

“Spats. Only they’re pearl grey now.”

“He’ll always wear them. You want to know why?”

“Okay. Why?”

“Because his feet are cold. You want to know why his feet are cold, even on a warm day in Los Angeles?” Small turned from the collection of cats and kittens, leaned over the back of the green overstuffed chair, and stared at me with eyes that seemed almost haunted.

“Okay,” I said again. “Why are his feet cold even on a warm day in Los Angeles?”

“Because about thirty-seven years ago when he was just a punk the 116th Street boys caught him screwing one of the guy’s sisters. So you know what they did? They had a party. They got a washtub full of ice and dumped some rock salt in it to make it good and cold and then they put the beer in and they also took off Callese’s shoes and socks and put his feet in the tub so that they’d cool off. They kept them in there for about three hours until all the beer was drunk up and then they took him back to Newark and dumped him. He damned near lost both feet and they’ve been cold ever since and that’s why he wears spats and that’s why they used to call him The Yellow Spats Kid.”

“What happened then?”

Small walked around the chair and sat on one of its arms. “He waited. He waited until he could walk again and then he started. One by one he picked them off. Some got run over, some got cut up, and some got shot. He was thorough. That’s one thing you can say for Callese, he’s thorough. He did such a good job that they finally moved him over to Manhattan, downtown, and then when Siegel got it, they sent him out here to help look after things. He’s been doing it ever since.”

“What about Palmisano?”

“Him.” Small sniffed as if he smelled something bad. “Giuseppe Palmisano, alias Joe Dominoes. He’s fresh out of Atlanta where he did a straight six for conspiracy to violate the narcotics laws. No parole, no time off for good behavior. An ordinary soldier and not too bright. You want to know why he’s sometimes called Joe Dominoes?”

“Why?”

“You notice how his left arm sticks out funny — like he can’t straighten it out?”

“I noticed,” I said.

“Well, they caught him one night, four of them, and they busted his arm in four places. Each one got to bust it once. Then they cut his throat and left him to bleed to death, only he didn’t, but they nicked his vocal cords or something and that’s why he talks so high and that’s why he wears turtleneck sweaters — he was wearing one, wasn’t he?”

“I thought he was just trying to be stylish.”

Small shook his head. “No, he’s always worn them, ever since they cut his throat.”

I took another swallow of my drink and waited. Small was staring at the floor now, his own drink held in both hands. I doubt that he still knew I was in the room.

“All right,” I said. “Why do they call him Joe Dominoes?”

Small snapped back from wherever he had been with a slight start. “Why? Well, all this happened about the time that Wallace Beery had just made Viva Villa! You ever see it?”

“I’ve seen it.”

“You remember the scene where Beery decides to save ammunition and he lines — what was it — three or four prisoners up in a row? Then he uses one bullet to pass through the bodies of the three or four prisoners he wants executed. Well, Palmisano, after he got well, saw this flick and he decided that it seemed like a good idea. So the story goes that he caught up with all four of them at once, lined them up in a row, and used one 30.06 slug from an old army rifle he had to kill all four of them and they just fell over like dominoes. That’s what they say anyhow and that’s why they call him Joe Dominoes.”

“You know some nice people,” I said.

“You know why I know them.”

“Yes, you told me. What about the godfather of Sacchetti? Do you know him?”

Small was silent for several moments, staring at the carpet again. Then he said, “I think I’ll have another drink. You want one?”

“No thanks.”

He rose and disappeared into the kitchen, returning a few minutes later with a drink that was darker in color than the one he had had before. He took a long swallow of it and then lit a cigarette.

“The godfather,” I said.

“In Washington.”

“That’s right, in Washington.”

“You remember that I once told you about my brother and how he wanted me to finish high school and all.”

“I remember.”

“I didn’t tell you why though, did I?”

“No.”

Small sighed. “Well, believe it or not I was taking a college preparatory course. You know, so I could get into college. Can you imagine that — in East Harlem?” He laughed, but there wasn’t any humor in it, just a certain amount of bitterness. “There were only two of us taking that course, me and the other guy who’s the godfather of Angelo Sacchetti.”