Gangster (48 page)

    That's right, he nodded. They own a couple of construction companies, too. It was the wrong time for them to make a move. Their finances were stretched a little thin.

    I would have handled it, I said.

    Who said you didn't? Angelo feigned a casual indifference, but I had seen that hard look in his eyes many times and it never reflected a happy mood.

    What did you want to see me about?

    A woman you know, he said.

    Why?

    What is she to you? he asked, ignoring my question.

    Someone I love, I said. Someone I'd like to marry.

    How much does she know about you? About your life here?

    I've told her what she needs to know, I explained. If she's going to marry me, it's only fair.

    And what do you know about her!

    I looked down and watched the puppy gnaw on the edges of my desert boots, his small teeth sinking into the soft heel. I leaned over and petted the top of his head. That when she tells me she loves me she means it, I said, looking at Angelo.

    Do you know her well enough to trust her? he asked.

    More than anyone I know, I said.

    Angelo picked up two sheets of paper that were resting on the coffee table. Her name is Janet Wallace and she's thirty years old, he said. She comes from a successful, upper-class family in Dearborn, Michigan. Her father was a full partner in a small accounting firm and died when she was in college. Her mother works for the local city council and is active in a variety of civic groups. Janet is an only child and graduated with honors and earns $55,000 in a good year. She smokes a pack of Marlboros a day and drinks wine with lunch and dinner.

    I know all that, I told him, my eyes never straying from his face.

    Now let me tell you what you don't know, Angelo said.

    I could feel sweat break out against the back of my neck, my eyes looking at the folders and the two wrapped packages, the room around me suddenly feeling smaller. My mouth was dry and my face felt hot. I can stop now, he said, walking slowly toward the desk.

    I shook my head. Finish it.

    He stood behind the desk, picked up a folder and opened it. This woman you love and trust so much has had many lovers before you, he said. These folders will tell you all about them. They're from all over. One's a writer, one an actor, a few lawyers, a plastic surgeon, a cop, even a drug dealer. Three years ago she got pregnant with one of them, only she wasn't sure which one. But she cleared up that problem. She was into drugs pretty heavy, cocaine and grass mostly, and drank a lot more than she does now. This guy she just divorced is an AA dropout who dropped back into cocaine.

    He put down the folder and picked up the two wrapped packages. She's posed for nude photos, he said, looking up at me. One of her old boyfriends was fond of cameras. He sold the photos to some people in Michigan; that's how I got them. Most are your standard T and A shots. The ones in this package give you a little more. The other package is a video. She went out with an actor for a few weeks, some guy who was in a commercial she was putting together. She spent most of the nights in his place, not knowing he'd hidden cameras all around the rooms. He likes to make films of himself having sex and show them at parties. I bought those, too. You want the full details, you'll find it all in the folders.

    I looked at him and took a deep breath. How?

    She keeps a diary, he said. Some of the pictures were even there, up on one of the bookshelves. Once I found that, the rest fell into place.

    I glared down at Angelo and walked closer to the desk. You would never have done this if Pudge were still alive, I said to him.

    Neither would you, he said.

    Angelo stood up and walked over to me. You can stay the night, he said. Read the folders or throw them away. They belong to you. When morning comes, you can go back to her or stay here, where you belong. She's wrong for you. That world, out there, is wrong for you. This is your place. This is what's right. You can't turn your back to it anymore.

    I'm already where I belong, I said.

    This woman ever say she loves you? Angelo asked.

    I nodded.

    Do you believe her when she says it? he asked.

    Again I nodded.

    Do you think all those other men believed her, too?

    I believed you when you said you loved me, I said. Was I wrong to do mat?

    Nobody's ever going to love you like I do, Angelo said.

    Was it love or was it just business?

    We've both thrown away a lot of years if you don't know the answer to that, he said.

    Then why are you doing this? I asked.

    To save you, he said, lowering his head and walking toward the door.

    What about Nico? I took a step closer to him. Was that really a takeover? Or was he another piece of the plan to save me and keep me here with you.

    He was whatever you think he was, Angelo said, glaring at me.

    I have something in my life now that you don't have, I told him. Something you can't ever have.

    What? he growled.

    Someone to love, I said. And someone who loves me.

    I had that. His lips barely moved as he spoke. You know I had that.

    Then let me have it, too, I pleaded. Let Janet be my Isabella.

    She can never be that, he whispered.

    You lost her. It was you. This life of yours cost you all the years of her love. I won't let that happen to me.

    Does that make you the better man? he asked.

    I shook my head and said, No, just a lucky one.

    He turned to look back at the desk filled with folders. Luck runs out, he said. For all of us.

    Angelo opened the door and left the room.

     *     *     *

I WALKED AROUND the desk and sat down, my hands stretched out across the folders. I picked one up and opened it, resting it on my lap. I tossed aside a head shot of a middle-aged man with dark hair and a thin beard and began to read through the neatly typed, double-spaced information. I sat there well into the morning hours and read through each folder. I then opened one of the wrapped packages and looked at the fifteen 8x10 black-and-white photos. Next, I grabbed the video and slid it into the VCR resting under the TV next to the desk. I sat back in the leather chair and stared at the twenty-five-inch screen and watched Janet make love to a thin man with short hair and a wiry body.

    I sat in the chair, in a room that held so many warm memories and watched the screen go blank, the photos strewn about the floor around me. I stood up and turned off the television. I picked up an open folder, stared down at it and then tossed it against the farthest wall. I picked up another and did the same. I kept going until I had thrown every folder across the room, all the pages landing on the floor and on top of furniture. I then walked over to one of the bookshelves and picked up a framed photo of Angelo standing in front of the bar with me sitting on a stool next to him, my arms on his shoulders, a big smile on my face. I was twelve in the picture and had been living with him for two years. I wiped at the tears running down my face, lifted the photo and smashed it against the wall.

    In that room, hidden behind all those folders and photos and video, Angelo Vestieri had lost his battle.

    He had left in his wake a free man.

    And even then, even after the brutality of what he had just done, I couldn't help but wonder if all of it had been part of an even bigger plan. That this was his way of opening a final escape path, convinced that I had found a love that was as strong as what he had himself once felt. There was no way for me to ever know the truth.

    Such is the mystery and power of Angelo Vestieri.

     *     *     *

I NEVER WANTED Janet to have to defend her life choices to me. After all, the man holding her in judgment had killed and stolen and lived off the blood of others for most of his life. I could not denounce her morally, for I, too, had done much worse than she ever had. She sought out love and romance to quench her lonely desires while, for many years, I looked only to revenge and quick money. She was also a product of the world she knew and in such a place she did not commit a wrong. I was a product of a violent society that held others up to an unforgiving code of honor. We were two different people who met at a point in our lives when each filled a void in the other. From a brief spark of passion a blaze of love had bloomed.

    I went back to Janet two nights later and have stayed with her for sixteen years.

    I never spoke to her about my night with the folders that were filled with her private history. I didn't have to really; in my silence and in my actions, she was smart enough to know what had happened. Every life has a vulnerable point, a place where the most painful damage can be inflicted. Angelo had found Janet's and exploited it with the full arsenal of his power. His attack had left me weakened, but he had failed in one crucial area. He could not make me stumble from that room hating the woman I loved. Our hearts were strong enough to withstand a gangster's fury.

    We were married six months after that night I had spent on the top floor of Angelo's bar. We chose a friend's apartment for the occasion and the short ceremony was presided over by a minister who had driven in from the suburbs and was thirty minutes late. Janet looked happy and beautiful, a bride for the second time in little more than a year. I was still in the midst of climbing out of the large emotional hole Angelo had thrown me into, confident that I no longer needed his care or guidance to find my way.

    Janet and I made a life together. We had two children and both managed successful careers. At night, as they were tucked under the warm blankets of sturdy beds, I would tell both my children the stories of the people I knew and the ones I had heard so much about. Their minutes before sleep were filled with the tales of Angus McQueen, Ida the Goose, Pudge Nichols and a string of pit bulls named after each one. Along the way, as they got older, I began to tell them about Angelo Vestieri. They were all an important part of my life. It was my history and now it belonged to them as well.

    As with any long marriage, Janet and I faced low periods intermingled with the highs, but the love and passion that had helped forge the union only grew greater with the passage of time. She was all that I hoped and never did I ever regret turning my back on the life that once so clearly seemed to be my destiny. In that way, Janet Wallace proved to be much stronger than Angelo Vestieri.

    I now had the life that Paolino Vestieri had envisioned when he landed on these shores so many years ago. I lived and thrived in the America he had hoped to find. I was living his dream, one that he had been unable to pass on to his son. It was a life that Angelo could never have allowed himself to see.

    On many occasions, I would think back to that night in the upstairs room with Angelo. I'd been raised in a silent world and knew how important it was to keep such things hidden.

    We all need to keep our secrets buried, especially from those we care for the most. To reveal them is neither an act of love nor one of trust. But rather, it is a crime that will wipe away all happiness and bring a chilling freeze to the warmest of hearts.

    I would never allow that night to be known to anyone. It is a night that must never see light. A night that was meant to destroy a love and damage a woman. A night that was designed to bring me to my knees and point me toward the life of a criminal.

    It was a night that will always be in my memory.

    A night that would give birth to a thousand horrible dreams.

    A night when I saw the true face of the gangster.

    It was the face of evil.

21

_____________________________

Summer, 1996

I WALKED OVER to Mary, sitting by Angelo's shriveled feet, her head buried in her hands, her shoulders shaking with grief. I put my arm gently on her back and held it there as I stared at the man who had given me such joy and caused me such pain. That's pretty much my story, I said to her, my voice grown hoarse, talking about that night for the first and only time in my life.

    I wish I had known, she said, her head still low, her hands rubbing against her cheeks. I wish someone had told me. All these years! No one told me, Gabe! I swear to you, no one said a word.

    I stared at her for several seconds and then placed a hand on one of her cheeks. Who are you? I asked her. Who are you that anyone would need to tell you?

    Sit down, she said. Over there. In my chair. And after you hear what I have to say, what I came here to tell you, I want you to do one favor for me in return.

    What is it? I asked.

    Try not to hate me, she said.

    I stared back at Mary and didn't respond.

    As I told you when I first walked in here, I met Angelo on my father's boat in the summer of 1953, she said. I wasn't naive about who he was. My father often did business with gangsters and made quite a bit of money doing so. I also didn't think I would ever see him again after that day and dismissed it as a brief flirtation. Then, a few months later, he was at my front door, asking me out to dinner. He didn't bother to call. He just showed up.

    He hated phones, I said, well aware of Angelo's habits and phobias. In all the time I lived with him, I can't remember seeing him talk on one.

    At any rate, I accepted his invitation, Mary said. I already had a mild crush on him from that day on the boat. It didn't take long for a mild crush to turn into a romantic affair.

    Was he married when you met him? I asked, leaning back in the chair and stretching out my legs.

    We both were, Mary said. Neither Angelo nor I are the types who go and seek out an affair. It's just something that happened between us. I was a lonely young housewife married to a much older man. And he was as sad and equally as lonely. We made a comfortable fit.