Toughs Page 25

  8:00 p.m.

  At the Barontis', the apartment's windows were black and fringed with frost, and everyone except Mama was in the living room reading newspapers and drinking coffee. Mama was at the kitchen table kneading a lump of dough, the table surface powdered with flour. Every once in a while she'd pick up the dough and hurl it down at the table like she meant to do it harm and a dust of powder would leap up. In the living room, Augie tossed his paper away and picked up his coffee. He had kicked off his shoes and was sitting on one end of the couch with legs outstretched. He held the coffee cup and saucer at his chest. Freddie was at the other end of the couch reading the Mirror, and Gina and Loretto were seated side by side in a pair of chairs by the window. Gina was reading the Post, and Loretto was reading over her shoulder.

  Augie said, "You think those kids can't identify anybody, or you think they're scared?" He was talking to Loretto, but Freddie dropped the Mirror to his belly and said, "What are they gonna do? Give Frank the electric chair twice?"

  From the kitchen, Mama yelled, "I don't want talk about no electric chair! Go someplace else!"

  "Jeez . . ." Freddie went back to reading the paper, and Augie lit up a cigarette.

  "Hey, Ma!" Gina yelled. "I forgot to tell you. Mrs. Esposito upstairs, she asked you to come see her for a minute."

  "When?"

  "Now. I forgot."

  "What's'a matter with her?"

  "How do I know, Ma? She asked you to come up!"

  "Madon'!" Mama clapped the flour off her hands, straightened out her housedress, and left the apartment.

  Once Mama was out the door, Gina exchanged a look with Augie. She put her hand on Loretto's knee. "Freddie," she said, and then waited a moment until Freddie lowered the paper.

  "What is it?" Freddie folded the newspaper and dropped it in his lap.

  "It's Pop," Gina said. "Mama heard from the hospital today. He doesn't have long."

  "What's wrong with him?" Loretto asked.

  "Cancer," Gina said.

  Augie patted his chest. "The lungs," he said to Loretto.

  Freddie put the paper down on the couch beside him. "That's why Mama's upset. Nobody tells me?"

  "We're telling you now," Augie said.

  "Mike's coming," Gina said, and then, as if on cue, the kitchen door

  opened and Mike came in wearing sleek black leather gloves, a handsome black overcoat, and a white cashmere scarf.

  "I can only stay a few minutes," Mike said. "I got people waitin' in the car."

  "Big shot," Gina said.

  "Don't start." Mike sat on the arm of the couch next to Freddie. "You asked me to come, I'm here. What are we doing about Pop?" He put a hand on Freddie's shoulder but directed his question to Augie.

  Freddie said, "First I'm hearing about any of this."

  Gina said, "You knew he was sick, Freddie."

  "Yeah, but I thought he was doing better."

  "He was in remission before," Augie said. "Now . . ."

  "Now he's dying," Mike said. "Forgive me, but what? I'm supposed to cry?" To Gina he said, "You're shedding tears?"

  Gina didn't answer. She took her hand from Loretto's knee and looked out toward the kitchen, as if by looking away she was removing herself from the scene.

  Augie said, "The point is, in a few days, a couple of weeks at most, we'll have to arrange the funeral—and Mama wants us all together."

  "So what's wrong with that?" Freddie said. "Why shouldn't we all be together for the funeral? We're his family, aren't we?"

  "Ask your sister what's wrong with it," Mike said. "What do you say, Gina?"

  "If it's what Mama wants . . ." Gina's voice was soft and distant, like she was talking to everybody and no one.

  Freddie said, "Hey, Gina," and then his eyes got watery and he looked down at the floor and was quiet, gathering himself. A few seconds passed. He said, "I'm sorry, Gina. I wasn't thinking. Whatever you say. If you don't want to go to his funeral . . . I'll go along with whatever you say."

  "Me, too," Augie said.

  Gina said, "No. I'll go. Mama wants us all together. I won't disappoint

  her. We'll all do our part," she said as if finalizing the decision for all of them.

  Mike said, "You're a bigger man than me. What he did . . . I'd spit on his grave."

  Before Mike finished speaking, Gina got up and left the room. The boys looked at each other and then to Loretto. Mike said, "I got to go."

  "Wait a second," Loretto said to Mike. "I want to talk to you, but let me . . ." he gestured toward the back room, where Gina must have retreated.

  "I'll meet you outside," Mike said. "Don't be too long."

  Loretto found Gina sitting on Freddie's bed, looking out through a circle in the window where she had wiped away the condensation. He sat beside her. "How come you never told me your father was sick?"

  "You notice me talking about my father much?"

  "No," Loretto said. "I take your point, but—"

  "I can't," Gina said, cutting Loretto off. "I can't talk about him. I'm sorry."

  In the kitchen, the sink groaned, and then the radio came on with Jack Benny's familiar voice talking about something or other followed by radio laughter. Loretto put his hand on Gina's back. He half expected her to pull away; instead, she leaned in to him and rested her head on his shoulder. "I should go," she said. "They need me at the theater again in the morning."

  "Wait before you go. Let me talk to Mike a minute, and then I'll come back and walk you out."

  "All right," Gina said. "I'll go get Mama. Mrs. Esposito'll keep her up there till the second coming if I don't get her."

  Loretto kissed her again and then retrieved his overcoat from the ladder to the roof, where he had hung it earlier.

  Gina shook her arms as if they had fallen asleep. "Don't be too long," she said. "What do you want to talk to Mike about anyway?"

  "I want to know what he hears from Vince." Loretto buttoned up his coat and pulled a pair of gloves from the pocket. "Mike'll be talking to Lottie, and Lottie's talking to Vince and his lawyers, so . . ."

  "So what?" Gina straightened out Loretto's coat, grasping it by the lapels. She kissed him on the lips. "What's it matter to you what's going on with Vince?"

  "Bunch of things," Loretto said. "I still don't know where I stand with him."

  "Won't make any difference long as he's locked up, will it?"

  "I don't know." Loretto pulled his gloves on. "It's still a mess, my whole situation."

  "Sure," Gina said, "but without Vince in the picture, that's at least something."

  "I don't know about that." Loretto kissed Gina on the forehead. "I got to go," he said. "Mike said not to keep him waitin'."

  "All right," Gina said. "Go on. Don't keep the big deal waitin'."

  Outside, on the street, Loretto found Mike alone in the driver's seat of a new Packard Speedster. He got in beside him. "Nice car," he said. "I thought you had people waitin'."

  "I lied. What's going on?"

  On the street, a couple of teenage boys were hurrying along shoulder to shoulder, huddling close to each other in the cold. "Look," Loretto said, "Gina doesn't know anything about me still doing jobs now and then with you and Patsy. If she finds out, it's gonna be bad for me."

  "Yeah? And so?" Mike looked annoyed, like Loretto was wasting his time.

  "I guess I want to know what's going on. Things don't look good for Vince. What'll happen if it goes for him like it went for Frank and Tuffy? What'll happen to his business, his speaks and all the rest? Have you thought about that?"

  Mike pulled a cigarette from the pack in his pocket and lit up. Loretto did the same.

  Mike said, "So what you're really asking is, are you out of it if Vince gets the chair? Ain't that right?"

  "I don't want to see Vince get the chair." Loretto rolled down his window a little to let out the smoke. "But, yeah. I can't be in this and with Gina. It won't work. She won't have it."

  "Don't be so sure ab
out that."

  "I'm sure about it."

  "Well, don't be," Mike said, raising his voice.

  "Yeah? You taking Vince's place now? You issuing orders?"

  "Take it easy," Mike said, and he smiled as if amused by Loretto's anger. "Don't be bustin' a gasket. All I'm sayin' is, Gina's stuck on you. She ain't gonna drop you 'cause she don't like what you're doing for a living."

  "I'm saying she will, Mike." Loretto tapped the ash off his cigarette out the window. "She won't have it."

  "I know Gina a lot better than you do. She won't like it, but that don't mean she won't put up with it."

  "You're wrong about that."

  "Well, you got a problem, then, Loretto, 'cause either way, if Vince gets off or he gets the chair, we're still gonna need you."

  "See, that's what I'm asking," Loretto said.

  "And what would you do anyway?" Mike turned in his seat to face Loretto. "Are you a working stiff now? You breaking your back for fifteen dollars a week?" He pulled a roll of bills from his pocket, peeled off two twenties, and tossed them at Loretto. "Take a couple weeks off. On me."

  Loretto gazed at the twenties. For a moment, he was furious. Then he laughed. He stuffed the twenties back in Mike's coat pocket. "I don't know what I'm doing," he said. "Gina's got me crazy."

  "Dames." Mike straightened himself out behind the wheel, getting ready to leave. "Listen, Loretto. You're not a working stiff. You don't want to be working like a slave when big money's there for the taking. It's nuts." He started the car.

  "What big money are you talking about?"

  "I'm talking about Diamond and upstate. If Jack gets sent up, we'll have to move fast if we want to take over his operations. We can't wait to see what happens with Vince."

  "Yeah? That sounds like Lottie talking."

  "It's me talking." Mike poked a finger at Loretto chest. "If we're doing this, we'll need you. We need the manpower. You're one of us, Loretto. That's the whole story."

  "Sure, I'm one of you," Loretto said. He reached for the door handle. "But I'll make up my own mind about what I do or what I don't do."

  "Is that what I should tell Vince?"

  "Tell him whatever you want." Loretto slid out of the car and walked off toward Dom's Packard without looking back. Behind him, he heard the Speedster pull out into the street and drive off.

  It was freezing in the wind but it seemed even colder in Dom's car. Loretto put the key in the ignition, hit the starter—and nothing happened. He rested his head on the steering wheel and wrestled back the desire to find a tire iron and pummel the car till there was nothing left but twisted metal and broken glass. "Dominic," he said aloud, as if Dominic were in the car beside him, smirking.

  Loretto wouldn't need the car till the next day, when he had to get to work, but now he knew he'd have to ask Augie and Freddie to help him with a push start in the morning. He tried the ignition once more, and when nothing at all happened, he pulled his coat tight around him and started back to find Gina.

  Thursday - December 13, 1931

  10:15 a.m.

  By the second day, Lottie was better able to watch the trial without her nerves getting the better of her. Vince sat at the defendants' table looking like a handsome schoolboy, his hands folded in front of him, his attention focused on the judge or Neary or the detective who was on the witness stand, the short one who'd put a gun to Vince's head and pulled the trigger. Of course that wasn't going to come out, that the little bastard detective, Giovanetti, put a loaded gun to Vince's head. No, because Giovanetti would just deny it and who would believe Mad Dog Coll's word over some straight-arrow son of a bitch detective? Lottie kept her eyes on Vince. She was having a hard time concentrating. Her thoughts kept flying off in different directions. At that moment it was Giovanetti. He was answering questions from Neary and talking about the night he'd arrested Vince at the Cornish Arms, but Lottie was imagining Vince sitting in a bathroom stall with that little bastard holding a loaded gun to his head. Vince had told her the story with a laugh, like it was something funny because he said Giovanetti was more scared by the whole thing than he was, which Lottie could believe. Nothing in the world scared Vince. There were lots of things that made him angry, a million things could throw him into a fury. But scared? No. She'd never seen him scared of anything, not for a second. It was like that part of him was missing, killed off a long time ago. That meant Lottie had to be scared for both of them—and she was, though she did her best not to show it because she'd rather be like Vince, scared of nothing, if she could manage it.

  Back when she'd first started seeing Vince on the sly, when she was still with Sam, she was scared of what Sam would do if he found out. In the beginning with Vince it was nothing but a thrill: he was a big-time gangster, one of Dutch Schultz's boys, plus he wasn't hard to look at, but then she fell for him the first time they slept together. That was in the Cornish Arms, which was why they kept going back: it was their hotel, it was where they'd made love the first time, and then after, in bed, Lottie got to where she was almost crying, and Vince made her spill it, that she didn't want to be with Sam anymore, that she wanted to be Vince's woman. That was late afternoon and everything in the hotel room was tinged with a reddish light and the red of the hotel windows was reflected in the windows across the avenue so that it was like everything was on fre. She told Vince why she was scared of Sam, because Sam had stabbed Jake in the heart with a bowie knife, killed him like an animal with his hands and a bloody knife.

  She hadn't known Vince back then. She hadn't known there was something like a callus where there was supposed to be fear, and all Vince did was look at her, amused by something, and then he told her to wait, not to go anywhere, and he got up and got dressed and left her alone in bed. She thought he'd gone out to get her flowers, to do something nice for her, but forty-five minutes later the phone rang and it was Sam and he was sweet as could be. He said, sure, he understood falling for a tough guy like Vince. He even laughed a little when he said it. I'll drop out of the picture, those were his exact words. You can come by and get your things. Then he said, Wait, and Lottie could hear him talking to someone and when he came back on the line he said, Listen, I'll move out. You can have the place to yourself. And after that, Sam was a ghost. One day he was there and then he was gone, left the city, might have left the country for that matter. No one had seen him and not a word from him since—and Vince swore he never laid a finger on him, didn't do a thing but offer him a couple of choices, and Sam chose to disappear.

  On the courtroom floor, a wave of murmurs washed over the spectators, and Judge Corrigan banged his gavel to put a stop to it. Behind Lottie, the padded doors opened and Strenburg stepped partway onto the balcony and waved for her to join him. In the hall, he put his arm around her and whispered, "Jack Diamond's been acquitted up in Albany. Verdict's innocent. He's scot-free."

  Lottie didn't much like Strenburg, but she clapped her hands to his cheeks and gave him a kiss on the lips.

  Strenburg blushed behind a big smile. He was a skinny guy, all rattly bones inside his fancy suit. He pulled himself up straight and winked at Lottie like he was the one to take care of her, nothing to worry about with Strenburg around. "That Diamond's got more lives than a dozen cats," he said, "and isn't that good for us?"

  "Sure thing," Lottie said. "Now he can testify with no trouble."

  "An innocent man harassed by the coppers," Strenburg said, "just like our boy."

  1:45 p.m.

  Bo Weinberg tucked a five-dollar bill into the pocket of Lucille's apron

  and asked her not to seat anyone in the next booth. He was in the Palace Chop House seated next to Dutch and across from Charlie Luciano and Henry LaSalla. "Bring Mr. Schultz a couple of Alka-Seltzer and about this much water in a tall glass." He held his forefinger a half inch from his thumb.

  "Smart alec," Dutch said to Bo. He nodded to Lucille, a kid still in her teens. "Yeah, go ahead." When she walked away, he picked up a fat Reuben from his plate,
looked at the pink chunks of corned beef like they might be poisoned, and let it drop.

  Luciano held a cup of coffee in one hand as if poised to take a sip, a cigarette in his other hand, pinched between two fingers. Beside him, Henry LaSalla might have just rolled out of bed, his eyes were so bleary and his bulbous nose so red and raw and swollen it looked like it had just taken a punch.

  "I'll be a son of a bitch," Dutch said. "You'd think Diamond had God Himself in his pocket."

  Luciano said, "I heard the judge was putting him away for four years, minimum."