Mafioso, page 9
part #1 of The Mafia Chronicles Series
Don Corrasco knew all this—and it was a pisser. A guy with a seat on the Commission who couldn’t even speak Italian. Whose mother was not Italian, but Scotch-Irish, whatever the fuck that was. A guy who wasn’t Italian at all. Not with that name, that voice.
“And a good morning to you,” Earl Rizzo said in his soft, bouncy voice. “Been having a lot of snow they tell me, D.C. Up north that is, not down heah in the Southland. Sometimes I pity you Yankees. Why don’t you come on down as Jim Dooley used to say on television. We always keep a place set for you, D.C.”
You Yankees! D.C.! Come on down! Jim Dooley. It was like talking to a savage. In South Brooklyn English Don Corrasco asked Earl Rizzo how the hell he was feeling. And the family?
“Sitting up and taking nourishment,” Rizzo said. “Everybody fine, D.C., and thank you for asking. How’s every little thing your end?”
“Under control,” Don Corrasco said. “I got the message you wanted to talk.” Don Corrasco let the last sound drag out in mocking imitation of Rizzo’s drawling voice.
“Yeah,” Rizzo said. “Yeah, I guess I did. No use us guys get together like this unless we talk. That’s Amurika for you. Let us reason together.”
The joke was lost on Corrasco DiSalvo, no fan of Lyndon Johnson’s.
“I called Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Los Angeles, Montreal,” Rizzo said. “You know how it is—they’re worried. Well, not worried, but you know how it is? Too much heat, too much publicity. You know what they say about Hollywood? They say in Hollywood—correction! No such thing as too much publicity. They’re wrong—there is.”
“You got a big phone bill, Earl. You make a lot of calls.”
Rizzo said, “Business, D.C. You know—business! That’s what Calvin Coolidge said. The business of business is business. Remember?”
Don Corrasco had jumped ship during Coolidge’s administration. It was one of the few quotations he could remember. He didn’t bother to correct the American, Rizzo.
When Don Corrasco didn’t answer, Rizzo said, “We’re all worried, not me especially, but the other guys. Jerry in Los Angeles—you know what a worrier he is. Pete in Montreal—another worrier.”
“What about Jilly in Chicago?” Don Corrasco asked. Earl Rizzo laughed. “You know Jilly, D.C. He don’t worry about nothing. Jilly thinks it’s still 1928. Big Al is still alive. We got the world by the balls. Who ever heard of income tax evasion or bugging or anti-trust suits? Anti-trust suits! That’s hound dog Mitchell’s latest shot. Can you imagine?”
Don Corrasco took out his pocket watch. These Southern Italians were worse than real Italians. Maybe that came from eating what they called magnolia. “Earl,” he said in English. “I got to water the horse.”
“Okay,” Rizzo said quickly. “I called the people I said. You can check. I still say you’re wrong—I say that with respect—and we’re right. This war up there has gone on long enough, too long, and you ought to get it stopped. I know. I know you can’t see letting people in, these spics and blacks, but for Christ’s sake, can’t you make some kind of truce? At least make a meet with the cocksuckers. Talk with them. I’m telling you”—Rizzo let it hang for a while. “I’m not telling you, D.C. I’m suggesting most strongly and the guys I spoke with will back me up. You can check what I say. I say it again. Call the other parties involved. Listen to what they say.”
“What’ll Jilly in Chicago have to say?” Don Corrasco asked.
“He’ll say first fuck the blacks and spics,” Rizzo’s soft voice said from Louisiana. “What would he say to you, his old friend from Palermo?”
“You make him sound out of date, like me. Am I out of date? To you, I mean, Earl? Is that what you and your American, your American friends think? I ask you, Earl. Where were you thirty years ago when we were putting this thing together?”
Rizzo wasn’t afraid and it wasn’t only because he was eighteen-hundred miles away. “I was seven years old,” he said. “That isn’t the point, Padrone.” Rizzo’s stab at pronouncing the respectful name was terrible. “We all owe you a lot. It isn’t the point. We have respect—great respect. Couldn’t have more. You’re one of the founders, the great men. But times change. Times change and we must change with them. We can’t stand still ...”
“You sound like Nixon,” Don Corrasco said, annoyed almost beyond words. “Don’t be like Nixon, Earl. Say it straight, for fuck’s sake. If you have the right to say it.”
Across eighteen-hundred miles of telephone wires, Don Corrasco could hear Rizzo sucking in his breath. “Not only me,” he started, “but most of the other guys—all of them in a clutch. And I do have the right to speak. Make peace with Coakley. Maybe you can beat him in the end, but that takes time the way we hear it—and what happens meanwhile? Not just your family suffers. We all do. Mine and Detroit and Jilly’s in Chicago and L.A. and the other places. Thirty years ago—fine. We waste the cocksuckers. We zap them good. Only now—ain’t you heard—these blacks won’t take no. They’re organized and no isn’t good enough. It’s not like Coakley was by himself. That’s right, D.C. They got themselves organized, too. All the big cities and the small cities. New York, New Orleans—all over. They’re listening to Coakley”—Rizzo pressed the point with silence—“just as they listened when you spoke a long time ago. There’s twenty million of the black bastards, and I don’t know how many spics—a lot. Right here in New Orleans they’re already grabbing for my balls. I’m not shitting you.”
“And you want to let them in?” Don Corrasco asked. “Let them fuck the Organization in the ass?”
“That’s what they’ll do,” Rizzo said. “Like it or not. I say let the motherfuckers in. They’re tough, but they aren’t smart. We’ll have them eating shit in no time.”
Don Corrasco studied his clean, colorless fingernails. “And what if I don’t? I’m the one has the problem.”
Don Corrasco knew Rizzo talked too tough, even in his Southern way, not to be speaking for the other five members of the nationwide Commission—the Supreme Court of the Mafia of which Don Corrasco was a member. A dissenting member now, perhaps with Jilly of Chicago as the only ally.
“Well, come on, Earl.”
“Get Coakley fast, maybe it’ll work if you do that,” Rizzo said. “All the blacks all over are watching what Coakley’s trying to do. If you can hit Coakley clean and quick, maybe they’ll get the message. I still say you’d do better to make a deal. But ... but if you can’t see it that way, do it fast, for Christ’s sake. End the fuckin’ thing before it ends all of us.”
“Us?” Don Corrasco echoed sarcastically.
“That’s right, D.C.—us! We all got a stake in this. The word is your man Lanzetta just knocked off four more of Coakley’s boys. So what happens now? Coakley knocks off four of yours. Meanwhile, Coakley becomes a big hero to every black hood in the country. What I’m saying, D.C., is this—kill Coakley quick or make peace with him.”
“Is that a suggestion, Earl?”
“Sure, Padrone, what else?”
“Then tell me this, Earl, what happens if I decide how to handle this my own way? It’s my territory—my business.”
“The Commission will have something to say,” Rizzo said. “That’s what the Commission’s for, D.C. The Commission will have to call a meet if this thing goes on. You know what that means—no more suggestions. The Commission will decide. That’s what it’s for—you helped to set it up yourself and it’s worked pretty well.”
It galled Don Corrasco to have to admit that Rizzo was right. Mostly what annoyed Don Corrasco was hearing it from a shithead like Rizzo. Jilly in Chicago or Pete in Montreal—all right. But a shithead like Rizzo.
Don Corrasco made a firm decision, more for himself than for the fuckin’ Commission. His dry laugh was carried over the wires. “Tell the boys not to get their balls in an uproar,” he said. “I’m going to wrap this thing up in a week. Two at the most.” Don Corrasco moistened his thin, dry lips and swallowed the old cliche, the bitter pill. “If I don’t, I’ll make a marriage with the black. You got my word on that.”
Rizzo was relieved. “That’s better than a savings bond,” he said, trying to dispel the unspoken bad feeling that would always exist between them after this morning, no matter what happened. “You know I got great respect, D.C. Nobody’s got more. I—we—wouldn’t even call if it wasn’t important, wasn’t serious. We aren’t all as tough as you are.”
Don Carrasco had an answer for that. He didn’t give it. “I still got to water that horse,” he said. “And do a couple other things.”
“Then I won’t keep you, D.C. But I meant it about coming down to Loosiana sometime.” Rizzo gave the State the Southern pronunciation. “We got Southern fried that’ll beat the pants off your Yankee cacciatora. And the Loosiana shrimp—holy shit!”
Don Corrasco hung up the telephone and went to the locked door of the liquor store office. He tapped and the driver-bodyguard unlocked it. The bodyguard and all the members of Don Corrasco’s household staff came from Palermo. All were in the country illegally, though their papers were now in order. They were loyal to him because he could have them sent back at any moment. Some spoke no English at all, and they seldom left the estate. Don Corrasco knew he could trust them as much as any man can ever trust other men. Just having the around was a constant source of reassurance that the world had not changed completely. Not changed to the point where a mongrel like Earl Rizzo had genuine importance. After the talk with Rizzo, it was a pleasure to speak Italian. Smiling, Don Corrasco asked his bodyguard what he thought of Southern fried chicken, batter-dipped shrimp and Creole gumbo.
The bodyguard was accustomed to Don Corrasco’s whimsical enquiries. The food mentioned seemed barbarous to him. He rubbed his stomach and made a face. “Briosci,” he said.
Don Corrasco smiled and clapped him on the arm and they went out together to the car.
On the way home, Don Corrasco rested his head against the soft leather upholstery. His stomach burned more than usual so early in the day, and he was reluctant to admit that the donkey, Rizzo, had caused the additional discomfort.
He took a silver pillbox from his jacket pocket and put a Maalox tablet in his mouth, disliking the chalky taste but chewing resolutely. He sighed, thinking a man had to do so many necessary things to survive. The mineral water, heeding the advice of the bloodless American doctor, Gallup, the stomach tablets, disposing of his old and dear friend Daniello. They weren’t really friends—he and Daniello—but they were of an age and with common links to the past. Perhaps he missed Uncle Joe, the great fat belly, the emotional outbursts, the genuine respect Daniello felt for him, respect not rooted in fear, but respect!
And now there was Lanzetta to consider. Lanzetta was a good man for an American and, Don Corrasco thought, the man’s respect was real. Yet, it was not the same as Daniello’s. An American, Lanzetta respected the power, Don Corrasco thought, but not the man himself. Well, yes, some respect for the man, but the power came first. If the power disappeared—a ridiculous thought ...
Lanzetta and the girl annoyed him, vaguely, and he didn’t know why. Well, yes, he knew. Lanzetta and the girl weren’t right. It was, considering how Daniello had died—messy. Lanzetta hadn’t told him about the girl, but, of course, he knew. There was nothing wrong with it, and yet there was. It was—messy. Daniello was gone—gone absolutely—and so should the girl. The money in the suitcase, the half million had been returned to the Daniello family. Lanzetta had been given ten percent, fifty thousand, and that should have ended it. Don Corrasco had an uneasy feeling about the girl. Another girl, an Italian girl, might have guessed the truth and understood the necessity of her father’s death. There were many such cases. But this one wasn’t even an ordinary Italian-American girl. She was not, like Rizzo, an Italian at all. Don Corrasco’s respected but unloved wife was long dead—he had married late in life for an Italian, and for convenience—yet he understood the unsettling influence of women. Italians, Don Corrasco thought, were the ones who lost their heads over women, at least by native folklore. But real Italians, in the end, never lost sight of woman’s actual place in the business of life—and business. Lanzetta, he thought, should know better. The man should sense the danger of the situation. Don Corrasco decided that if Lanzetta and Daniello’s daughter stayed; together, they would have to marry.
Don Corrasco made a face—the matchmaker!
Chapter Ten
There was a high-pitched noise. Sleeping beside Kate Daniello, Lanzetta thought it was part of the dream he was having. A disgusting dream in which his skin had become black, and no matter how hard he rubbed the dark stain wouldn’t come off. In the dream, Daniello was alive, and red-faced with rage. Daniello was dressed in a white suit, a Southern planter, and he had a white goatee and spoke like Colonel Sanders—finger lickin’ Colonel Sanders.
“Unhan’ mah chile, yuh black fiend,” Daniello was saying, shaking a black English umbrella. The ferule of the umbrella was fitted with a silencer …
Lanzetta woke up cursing—the bitch had taken the telephone off the hook. He replaced the receiver and almost immediately the telephone bell rang.
It was GeeGee Pignataro. “You sleeping or something, Nick?” Only GeeGee still called him Nick. Lanzetta had given GeeGee a thousand from his ten percent of Daniello’s half a mil.
GeeGee sounded loyal but concerned, and when a stonewall like GeeGee was concerned, something was up. Lanzetta didn’t answer the question.
“The fuckin’ phone company,” GeeGee covered. “I got a guy on the way in by car. Tell him to get lost—I got you. Coakley blew up Uncle Joe’s house in the Heights a couple hours ago. It was on the news. I guess the black bastard thought the girl was there. It had to be Coakley. Not just Joe’s house but half the block. A panel truck loaded with dynamite parked out front. Killed Joe’s wife, people in the other houses. Five, six—I don’t know how many.”
The dream still bothered Lanzetta. “What?” he mumbled. “What’s that?” The girl was grabbing for him in her sleep. He took her hand away and she rolled over on her side. Lanzetta got out of bed and went into the living room to take the call.
“This is bad, Nick,” Pignataro said. “Macklin, the politician, lived on Joe’s block. He was getting out of his car when the truck blew up. They found him down the street. No head. The Mayor was on TV with the U.S. Attorney. So was Mitchell in Washington. Don Corrasco called here, said he couldn’t get through. I think you better call him, Nick.”
Lanzetta told Pignataro he’d get back to him. He dialed Don Corrasco’s private number.
The coldness in the Don’s voice was more threatening than any outburst of temper. “About the matter we discussed. The two-week time limit. It’s got to be moved up. Finish it now. Let everything else go. Use all the men and money you need, but finish the project. You will be held responsible for everything.”
Don Corrasco hung up without saying goodnight. Lanzetta stretched out both hands and looked at the slight tremor in the fingers. The bitch was getting him down. He should have kicked her ass all the way out to Kennedy as originally planned. A week after he snatched her back from Coakley she was still hanging around, and he hadn’t done anything about it. Except screw her all the time. Lanzetta couldn’t understand why he found it so hard to get rid of her. The idea that he might have fallen for her was a bunch of horse-cock. A black-loving sex maniac like that. Lanzetta cursed himself. Jesus, he must be getting soft, thinking about a dope-smoking bitch when he ought to have his mind on Coakley.
The big Negro was a hard man to hit, Lanzetta thought with some admiration. But he had to be hit. He’d be laying his own life on the line if he failed. If Coakley didn’t get him, Don Corrasco would retire him the same way he retired Daniello.
He called Pignataro at the South Brooklyn headquarters. “I just spoke to the head of the company and he wants that business deal closed. Written off the books right away, no matter how much it costs.”
For the thousand bucks Lanzetta had given him, Pignataro dared to be mildly disrespectful to the head of the Family. “He don’t ask much, does he? If he was out on the street he’d know that particular deal could take time.”
The way he felt, Lanzetta was grateful for Pignataro’s support. But it didn’t mean much, and if there were two sets of phone taps, Don Corrasco’s as well as the FBI’s, Pignataro could always say he was just testing the new capo. “Yeah, sure, but he’s right,” Lanzetta said. “After what happened business will be worse until it gets better. Much worse. The only way to make business conditions better is to get this deal closed.”
Usually, Lanzetta didn’t mind having to talk in circles on the phone. With the possibility—the certainty—of an FBI tap, it was an absolute precaution, something you learned to live with. He held the phone with his right hand and stretched out the left. The tremor was still there. Right now, because of the shaky fingers, the broad and other things, the double-talk bugged the hell out of him. Lanzetta never thought of the FBI—the city cops maybe, but not the FBI—in personal terms. Because, in its own way, the FBI was a lot like the Mafia. It was smart, silent, and a lot of the time it worked outside the law. He wondered why they didn’t call the FBI dictator “Don Edgar.” For a moment he hated Don Edgar and his clean cut, wash and wear gunmen.
“We got to have a meet,” Lanzetta said. “Another thing, paisan, it’s time the company stopped taking you for granted. What do you say to a promotion?”
