Bloodline (2 page)

They stopped back inside the first woods, and someone came over to him and asked his name and wanted to know where he hurt. Between screams, Tommy told him. Then Tommy could see something flashing in the moonlight. He cringed and tried to pull back from whatever it was.

The other man laughed. “Big, tough Marine, afraid of needles.”

Then in a kinder voice: “Don’t worry. This won’t hurt you. It’ll make the pain go away. It’ll make you feel better.”

Feel better. That sounds like a good idea.

“What is it?” he croaked from between parched lips.

“Morphine,” the other man said. “It means ‘sleep.’”

In New York City, as the war wound down, life went on.

• Enrico Caruso sang in
Rigoletto
at the Metropolitan Opera House, then to raise money for the war effort, sang in regular concerts at which his rendition of “Over There” never failed to bring down the house.

•
Dere Mable,
a comic collection of letters from the front, became a best seller.

• A young artist named Norman Rockwell painted covers for
The Saturday Evening Post
magazine.

• And on October 24, 1918, a sixteen-year-old Russian immigrant named Maier Suchowljansky was returning home from his job as an apprentice tool and die maker when he heard screams from a deserted tenement building on the fringe of the Jewish neighborhood where he lived. He rushed inside and found a naked prostitute and a partly clad teenage boy whom he had often seen on the streets. The prostitute was being beaten and kicked by her pimp, a swarthy, sharply dressed Italian in his early twenties, and when the good-looking young boy—who had been enjoying the prostitute’s services—tried to protect her, the older man advanced on him too. Suchowljansky grabbed a wrench he carried in a belt around his waist and slugged the Italian man over the head. As he went reeling, three policemen, called by neighbors, rushed into the room. Sgt. Tony Falcone, who led the police detail, told the prostitute to find a new neighborhood and ordered the three males brought to headquarters. Riding there in the police wagon, the swarthy young Italian man, whose name was Salvatore Lucania, slipped a twenty-dollar bill into Falcone’s hand. Falcone slapped his face and stuck the bill into Lucania’s mouth. “You’ll pay for that,” Lucania snarled. “Quiet, pimp, or it’ll be worse,” Falcone responded. At the precinct, several hours later after a few telephone calls were made, Lucania was released and, because of his age, so was the boy whose name was Benjamin Siegel. Suchowljansky was held for two days, then fined two dollars for disorderly conduct. He never went back to the tool and die works.

PART ONE

Nilo

CHAPTER
1

May 1919

The sirocco was blowing hot and fierce out of the heart of the Sahara desert, hopping quickly across the short span of the Mediterranean that separated Africa from Sicily, up the face of the Sicilian mountains, down the other side, and on out into the Gulf of Castellammare.

Danilo Sesta stood in the bow of the
tonnara
boat and stared back over the purple and blue and peacock-green waters into the heart of the hot wind, back toward the town of Castellammare del Golfo.

He did not much care for work, rising early, laboring until after dark, forced into the company of loud and stupid men, but still, he thought life was good.

And someday it will be perfect.

The tunny were running well this spring, and even though he was just eighteen, he was making a man’s wages. For now. But when the fishing season ended in the autumn, he would be the first to lose his job, and that would not be so good. Perhaps he would go to America. It was cold there, he had been told, and he would not have the sun and the heat that he loved. But there would be work. He would grow rich, as did all who went to America.

And then when he was old—forty or so—he would come back to Castellammare del Golfo and build himself a fine villa and stock it with many fine things to eat—he was always hungry—and many beautiful women: women of every color and sort, but all of them very, very
bellissima.

“Hey, Nilo.” A voice behind him spoke his nickname.

Nilo turned around and smiled. “What, Fredo?” he asked.

Fredo motioned him to come closer. He was perhaps a dozen years older than Nilo, a short, sturdily built man who looked like one of the Saracen lords who had ruled this island so many hundreds of years before.

“We’ve work to do,” Fredo said.

He was looking down into the
mattanza,
the “chamber of death” as it was called, the small room made of fishing nets and hung in the sea between the two boats of the
tonnara.

Nilo was puzzled. He moved closer to the older man. They were not supposed to be fishing this day, not collecting the tunny or spigola or dolphins or swordfish or sharks that had swum into the chamber, there to be speared and hauled aboard either of the
tonnara
boats.

Indeed, there were only four of them out on the water: Nilo, Fredo, and, on the other boat, the two Selvini brothers, Paolo and Enzo. The others of the
tonnara
crew were all ashore, helping to celebrate the wedding of the fleet owner’s daughter, and only the four of them had been left behind to clean up the boats and to protect the nets from vandals or thieves.

Nilo did not like the other three, but he had found them useful. They drank too much, and when they did, they were careless with their money and some of it found its way into Nilo’s pockets. He justified this by thinking,
As well into my pocket as into the purse of some waitress or prostitute.

“I did not think we were to do any fishing this day,” Nilo told Fredo.

Fredo smiled at the boy and put his arm around him. Nilo was handsome, almost to the point of prettiness. He had large chocolate eyes with thick black lashes, pouting lips, and a slim boyish body. At night, several times when the boats had been at sea overnight, Fredo had lain down next to him, gently brushing the boy’s back. Nilo had pretended to remain asleep, ignoring him, as if he had not noticed.

“That is not the kind of work I mean,” Fredo said.

Nilo looked at him for a moment, then shrank back. He had the fleeting fear that Fredo knew Nilo had been stealing his money and that of the other crew members. He tried to tell himself that it was only his imagination.

“What do you mean?” Nilo asked. He tried to move sideways carefully to the rack where the great long gaffs that they used to haul in the fish were stowed.

Fredo laughed softly, almost shyly.

“Have I ever told you how beautiful you are?” Fredo asked.

Nilo stopped. He said nothing.

“I dream of you all the time,” Fredo said. “You and nothing else.”

Nilo laughed and then spat into the sea.

“I thought you were a man, Fredo,” he said. He was just out of arm’s reach of the gaffing poles.

“I
am
a man, and as a man, I must have you.”

Nilo felt a shiver run up and down his spine. Where were Paolo and Enzo? He needed help. Fredo was too big, too strong. There was no place to run to. No help could be expected from the wedding guests until late this night at the earliest. And despite the way he made his living, Nilo could not swim. The water had always frightened him.

Nilo called the names of the other two men. “Paolo! Enzo!”

Now it was Fredo’s turn to laugh.

“It will do no good, little thief,” he said. “They feel the same as I. And we have all paid in advance. With all the money you have lifted from our pockets.”

The two brothers appeared just then in the corner of Nilo’s vision, and he turned toward them, but with just a glance, he could see that what Fredo had said was true.

Nilo fought them to keep them from catching him. And he fought them while the brothers held him down while Fredo carefully, methodically violated him. He fought them when Paolo entered him, and he fought when Enzo did the same. By then he was bleeding terribly and he felt as though his flesh had been gashed open, just as he had gashed open so many of the fish that they had hauled in from the
mattanza.

They let him lie there on the deck, unconscious, after that. Then, in the heat of the dying late afternoon, they came into him again and again and again, drinking and laughing and singing songs of the sea.

When the sun went down and darkness covered the waters and they were done with him, the three men threw Nilo into the sea, counting on the predators that always swam around the
tonnara
boats to finish him off.

*   *   *

I
T WAS SPRING AGAIN.
Tommy Falcone knew that before he even opened his eyes. He could smell it on the air: a scent dense with lilacs and some other unidentified heavy, sweet flowers, an aroma that somehow managed even to gently, subtly overpower the sick, septic smell of the hospital all around him. Tommy could tell it, too, from the very texture of the air. It felt warm and moist, soft, pleasant, comforting. The worst was over.

He opened his eyes slowly. The operations were over, they had told him. No more going under the knife. His body would repair itself now, they said, and in a few short months—six at the outside—by Christmas, he would be well enough to go home. Tommy smiled to himself. He almost felt like singing. But he could not do that. It would disturb the other men on the ward, other men far sicker than he, many of them with no hope of ever really recovering, no hope of ever going home.

Tommy’s eyes were open all the way. Then he remembered. He was not on the ward anymore. He looked around him. They had moved him the previous evening. He was in a private room, a room to himself. He stretched, felt a twinge of pain from the exertion, and laughed anyway. It was the first time in over a year that he had slept in a room by himself. God, he loved it. He loved life.

There was a robe lying across the end of his bed. He put it on, limped to the window, and looked out. There was an immense green lawn that seemed to stretch on and on forever, spotted here and there by clumps of trees. Tommy laughed again. In his neighborhood in New York City, ten thousand people—maybe twenty thousand—would live in that amount of space, but here there was nothing except for a few robins tugging at their breakfast worms and a couple of squirrels playing a frenetic game of tail-chasing.

The feeding robins reminded him that he was hungry. For some reason, even that thought amused him, and he laughed again and began to think he had turned into an idiot who thought everything was funny. He wondered how soon breakfast would be served. He turned and walked carefully to the door. Walking was still a new experience to him. He had spent months in bed while his liver, his kidney, his stomach, and his hip bones were being carefully rebuilt, and even now, after all the surgeries had been deemed successful, he walked slowly and cautiously. He made it to the door and turned the knob. It did not open. He went back to the bed to sit down and ponder this bit of information.

He looked again toward the world beyond the window and noticed for the first time that the window had bars on it. For a moment, Tommy fought back a rapidly rising panic. Then the door opened.

A nurse came through carrying a breakfast tray. She was old and almost ugly, but she had a cheery manner and she showed her teeth when she smiled.

“Good morning, Tommy. It’s a beautiful day out, isn’t it? How are we feeling this morning?”

Tommy noticed that she had not bothered to close the door behind her.

“I’m fine,” he said carefully.

“Is something wrong, Tommy?” the nurse asked. “You don’t sound like yourself this morning. And look what I’ve brought you. Remember last night? I asked you what you’d like and here it is. Eggs. Pancakes. Bacon. Even orange juice. And lots of coffee.”

“Thanks,” Tommy said without enthusiasm. “That sounds good. Real good.” He paused. “Is there some special reason why I’m in here?” he asked. “And why there are bars on the windows? And the door’s locked?”

The old woman smiled at him reassuringly.

“Doctor will be in after breakfast,” she said. “He’ll answer all your questions for you then.”

Then she was gone and Tommy heard the door click locked behind her. It was only after she had left that he realized she had forgotten to give him his shot.

He was tempted to call after her but decided not to. He would wait until the doctor came.

He tried to eat his breakfast. The nurse was right: it was all the things he liked, but nevertheless he had no appetite. He was feeling too restless to sit down and eat.

*   *   *

“
G
OOD MORNING,
T
OMMY,”
the voice said. It had a slight southern drawl.

Tommy opened his eyes slowly. Had he fallen asleep? It did not seem likely and yet he must have.

He twisted around until he was sitting on the edge of his bed. The man perched on a chair next to the bed was dressed in the uniform of a U.S. Navy medical officer. It took Tommy a moment to get beyond the uniform, and then he noticed the man himself: he looked young, not much more than Tommy’s own twenty years.

He nodded briskly at Tommy and said, “I’m Doctor Singer. We haven’t met before.”

“I don’t feel so good, sir,” Tommy said.

The doctor half-smiled.

“I’ve been reading your records,” he said. “It says that you were a very brave man at Belleau Wood.”

“I don’t remember, sir. I just remember being scared. I guess all I did was what I had to do to stay alive. And not let my pals or the corps down.”

“In my book, that adds up to brave.”

“Thank you, sir,” Tommy answered.

“Now you’re going to have to be even more brave.”

“Sir?”

“We made a mistake,” the doctor said. “We’re going to try to correct it.”

Tommy felt panic beginning to grab at him.