Thomas Perry: Blood Money

“Doing what?”

“Not much. In my one conviction, I was in with Sal Augustino. We were the same age. They didn’t have libraries and college courses and counselors. Radio wasn’t allowed. There weren’t many TVs anywhere, and there sure weren’t any in that prison. What you had was a cell and a bunk. I used to do tricks to keep myself from going crazy—describe baseball games I’d seen, batter by batter, you know? I had read a few books, so once in a while I’d recite one out loud to them. When I got out, Sal told the family about me. They didn’t know exactly what to do with me, but they put me on the payroll. I was a city housing inspector. I had to show up bright and early every Friday for five minutes to get my pay.”

“I take it that wasn’t impressive enough for her father.”

“Worse than that,” he said. “At those big meets there were lots of people around, so a lot of little side deals got made.”

“What kind of deals?”

He sadly shook his head. “You have to understand. These were—are—people for whom everything is for sale. The only issue is price.”

Jane said, “He arranged a marriage for his daughter?”

“No,” said Bernie. “Two things were decided that week. The first was the reason the Augustinos brought me along. They sold me.”

“Sold you? Like a baseball player?”

“Yeah, it was a lot like that. They wanted something from the Langustos in New York. You got to remember what happened after Capone. They got him for tax evasion, and everybody realized that was the easy way to get all of them. I had been keeping the books for the Augustinos in my head, moving money around and keeping track of it. If having a lot of money you can’t explain is a crime, you have to hide it. The Augustinos didn’t have that much, so it didn’t take a lot of time. But the New York families had a lot. I was supposed to go live in New York under the care of the Langustos. The Langustos had worked out a side deal in advance. I would start keeping track of money for all five families in New York. That way, all of them had some protection from the government, and they all had a stake in protecting me.”

“When I heard of you I always wondered how that came about,” said Jane. “I mean, these people don’t seem to trust each other very often.”

“It was a special time,” he said. “Some of these guys hated each other, but the idea of going to jail just for having money was new, and it was killing them. And the New York families had been breathing down each other’s necks for thirty years by then. I was a way to protect their money from each other, too.”

“And you agreed to the arrangement.”

“Who asked me?” said Bernie. “What happened was that my friend Sal got called upstairs. When he came back down, I’d barely made it back from meeting Francesca in her room. I was almost into the bar before I noticed I’d forgotten to tuck my shirttail in my pants. Sal hugs me and says, ‘Bernie, I just got the best news in the world about you. You’re going to be an important man, and you deserve it.’ ” The old man sat silent for a moment. “I told him, ‘Sal, I met a girl. I can’t go to New York.’ He said, ‘Bring her with you.’ I told him who she was. I told him all of it. He looked sick. After about a minute, he says, ‘You’re my friend, and I’ll try to help you. If she really loves you, then no father is going to stand in the way. Just go to New York and I’ll call you when I’ve got it arranged.’ I told him, ‘I can’t go to New York.’ He said, ‘Bernie, if you’re in New York, you’re an important man. You’ll have money, respect.’ He could see I wasn’t getting it, so finally he said, ‘If you’re with the five families, he can’t kill you.’ ”

“And you said yes.”

“I went to her and asked her what to do,” he said. “She told me that Sal was absolutely right. She said I had to go to New York, so she could help Sal work it out with her father. That night I got on a train with Carmine Langusto and eight guys.”

“I take it her father didn’t go for it,” said Jane.

“I’ll never know,” said Bernie. “I said there were at least two side deals arranged that week in Florida. That was the second one. She and her father and his guys went back to Detroit. About two days later, he comes out of a restaurant and gets his head blown off in the street.”

Now Jane was moving into familiar territory. She had heard stories like it a hundred times. “Who did it?”

“I’m not sure even now. There was a story around then that some guys in Chicago wanted to break away and take charge in Detroit. Maybe it was them. If it was, it backfired. They never got to set foot in Detroit.”

“What stopped them?”

“It was way over my head. It was a Commission thing. They met in New York while I was there, but by the time I heard about it, it was over. The family in Detroit—what we used to call the Giannini family—was going to stay put. The new don there would be some local guy I’d never heard of, named Ogliaro. And he would hold the family together by marrying the old don’s daughter. Period.”

“They arranged the marriage without her consent?”

Bernie’s eyes squinted at her as though the light was hurting them. “That week in Florida, the cards got reshuffled, and we were all holding new hands. It was 1947, and this is a twenty-year-old girl who is pregnant. I didn’t know it, but she did. She is also the last remaining daughter in the direct line of men who have been in power in that city for three generations. If she holds out on the off chance of marrying me, the people who killed her father are going to take everything he had. They’re going to kill people who were loyal to him. And if anybody knows she’s carrying the heir apparent, she’s probably first.”

Jane struggled to take it all in. The name Ogliaro meant something to her. Bernie had said “heir apparent.” If there was a child, could it have been Vincent Ogliaro? He would be about the right age. She remembered reading about a conviction a couple of years ago, and some sort of a federal sentence. Jane needed to fight the feeling of sympathy that had been growing in her. She used the only method she had. “She didn’t just go along with it, did she?”

He looked down at the carpet again. “No. She arranged it. She thought of it and got some old guys to go to the Commission with it. I don’t even know if she had Ogliaro’s consent in advance or not. It doesn’t matter. He had to do what they said, just like I did.”

“Why him?”

“He was the perfect choice, exactly the sort of man that everybody would accept. He was a brute, with an animal’s face and an animal’s constitution, and the kind of cunning that some animals have.”

“What do you mean?”

“He started out by cleaning house. Everybody who might be a problem got killed. He built on what was left and went on from there. He was never foolish enough to get in on anything outside his own territory, but he protected the city line like it was made of his own skin. There are people who say that she had something to do with that—that it was too smart for him.” He added unconvincingly, “But I don’t believe that.”

Jane had listened to the description and had already decided that the woman must have done it. She shrugged. “Then don’t. Did you ever see her again?”

“A few times.”

“How?”

“In those days, a lot of women with money used to go to New York twice a year to buy clothes: fall and spring. They’d take the train and go on a shopping spree. A few times I could meet her in her hotel. Then it got too dangerous.”

“Ogliaro suspected?”

His face showed distaste and contempt. “Ogliaro wouldn’t have cared. It wasn’t a marriage. They both went into it with their eyes open. She made him powerful and rich, and he made her and the boy safe. There wasn’t any love. No, the problem was me.”