Bloodline (53 page)

The others all mumbled something more or less in unison, which Nilo took as a greeting. He found his heart beating wildly with excitement. This was what he had been hoping for for a very long time. It would be Maranzano’s formal acknowledgment of Nilo’s importance, delivered in front of all these top lieutenants.

Maranzano motioned for the others to stay seated, then surveyed the rest of the room with ponderous dignity.

“We are all the children of Castellammare del Golfo,” he began. “We are a family and we live by our honor and our word.”

Despite himself, Nilo was awed. He had longed to become a member of the Mafia brotherhood, but he had always half-sneered at the ritualistic ceremonies he had heard about. Now he found it impressive and dignified.

“Now a new one, Danilo Sesta, comes to our family to stand with us against our enemies.”

Maranzano reached into the pocket of his black formal suit and removed a .38 revolver and a deadly looking dagger and set them in front of Nilo.

“These are what we live by. If necessary, these are what we die by.”

He nodded to Nilo. “Rise, child of Castellammare del Golfo.”

When Nilo stood, Maranzano said “Make a cup with your hands.”

Nilo did as he was told, and Maranzano took a piece of paper and set it in his cupped hands.

“Now repeat after me,” he said, lighting a match to the paper. “This is the way I will burn if I betray the secrets of this family.”

Fighting to control the pain of the burning paper without showing it, Nilo repeated the words.

When the fire had gone out, Maranzano reached across and carefully parted Nilo’s hands, letting the ash drift down to the table.

“There are three rules,” Maranzano said. “Break any of them and the penalty is automatically death.

“The first is complete obedience to your superiors.

“The second is silence,
omerta,
complete and utter about our activities to outsiders.

“The third is to never touch the wives or female relatives of members of this family of the Castellammarese.”

Nilo nodded.

“Extend your right hand.” When Nilo did, Maranzano picked up the dagger and stuck it into the tip of Nilo’s index finger until blood came. Nilo looked at his bleeding fingertip and remembered that it was the same one with which he had once shared blood with Tommy Falcone.

“This blood means you are now one of us. You have deserved this honor for a long time.” He paused. “But I thought it best to wait until the fuzz on your cheeks had turned to whiskers and all here would recognize you as brother.”

He smiled at Nilo, then looked around, and the entire table broke into applause for Nilo, along with laughs and shouts of congratulations. It lasted a long time, only subsiding when waiters poured into the room carrying large trays of food of all kinds and bottles of wine and liquor.

Nilo leaned over and took Don Maranzano’s right hand in his and kissed it.

“This is more honor than I deserve, Don Salvatore,” he said. “But you will never regret your decision here tonight.”

“I know that, Nilo. You are truly my son.” He leaned close. “Do not drink. We have business yet to do.”

Throughout the after-dinner drinks, individually and in small clusters men seated at the table came up to congratulate Nilo and welcome him. Finally, the conversation died down and Maranzano rose in his place and lifted his glass.

“To all in our family …
salute.
”

Around the table men raised their own wineglasses, and Nilo did the same. Although excited, he was now getting tired; he hoped this ceremony would end soon. But to his dismay, Maranzano seemed ready to talk on.

“The Mafia is an old organization,” Maranzano said, “but this is a new country. And old things must change or else they will become weak and irrelevant. But you cannot talk change to some of those in other families. You know who they are. They see the world and cannot understand it and think nothing will ever change. But everything changes. The only thing unchanging is the permanence of the grave.

“We too will change as time goes on. Right now, we are a family of Castellammarese, and that is the way it must be, because we are brothers and we must treat each other as brothers. And we are brothers under attack. The people aligned with Joe Masseria…” Maranzano stopped and spat on the floor at his feet.

“The people aligned with Masseria have watched our growing power, our growing strength, and now have vowed that they will destroy our family. Separately, individually, they have begun to strike out at members of our family. They believe that they can quietly pick us off one by one until there are none left who will stand together. But as your leader I tell you now that will not happen. Even this very night, we strike back against them. It will be but another early battle in a long war. But I know, if we hold true to our beliefs and faith in each other, we will be victorious.

“Still I warn you, it will be dangerous out there now. It is not a time to relax one’s guard. Be alert and be careful. The war has begun. You are my chosen lieutenants, each and every one of you. If you do not let yourselves become victims, you will be the victors. You have my word on it.”

The men seated at the table cheered and applauded again at the declaration of war. Maranzano let the commotion die down before he spoke again.

Nilo stifled a sigh. He was growing weary with Maranzano’s endless bombast.

“The great poet Florio talked of the nine pains of death,” Maranzano said. “And the last and worst was to have a friend who would betray you. Let us resolve, each of us, to avoid that pain of death.” The don sat down, again to applause.

Nilo realized everyone must have been as exhausted by the hour as he was because almost immediately men got up from the table and began, trying to disguise their haste, to bid Maranzano good night and to head for the door.

Nilo stayed in his seat and watched the men—the backbone of Maranzano’s family—come up to the old Sicilian and pledge their undying loyalty.

Yeah. Until someone makes you a better offer,
he thought.

Maranzano seemed to linger a long time in conversation with one man, who finally nodded and turned to Nilo.

Maranzano said, “Nilo, Brother Gentile has graciously agreed to drive you back to the city.”

Nilo rose. “Thank you,” he said to the man, who nodded again and said, “My driver and I will be out front.”

As he left, Nilo was hugged by Maranzano in a warm embrace. The old man also whispered in his ear, and the words chilled Nilo more than any words ever had in his life.

He went outside and saw Gentile sitting in the backseat of a waiting limousine. Nilo got in, expressed his thanks very strongly, and said, “I’m tired. I’m not used to these late hours.” He sat back in a corner of the seat and closed his eyes.

About twenty miles toward New York City, on one of the lightly traveled highways that were under construction all over Long Island, the driver stopped at a traffic light.

Nilo sat up and glanced around. There were no cars visible at the intersection. He drew his gun from his pocket and shot Gentile in the head, then turned his gun on the driver and shot him too. He reached over the seat and turned off the key, then shot both men again at close range to make sure they were dead.

He got out of the car and a moment later was picked up by another car, which had been trailing them without headlights since they left Maranzano’s estate. A man got out of the car and drove Gentile’s auto away.

The driver, the only other person in the car, told Nilo, “I’ll take you home now.”

“Yes,” Nilo said.

“Did everything go all right?” the man asked.

“As the don wished,” Nilo said. He thought of Maranzano’s chilling words at the house when he had ordered Nilo to kill Gentile.
He chose to serve Masseria.

He sat quietly on the ride back, remembering other words Maranzano had spoken. He had said, “We Castellammarese are a good family and good friends.”

Unless someone crosses us,
Nilo thought.
And then we kill.

*   *   *

D
RESSED CASUALLY IN A SWEATER
and skirt, Tina Falcone looked over at her bandleader, raised her arm, and then in her signature gesture slowly let it drop. There was a split-second pause and the band lit into a slow, string-driven version of “Lover, Come Back to Me.”

Tina let them go through the introduction and then came in for the verse. It had been more than a year since she had sung, not since that nightmare in the warehouse in the Bronx. During the days of recuperating in her apartment, while Mario lied to her family and told them she had gone out of town, the question came back to her over and over:
Have I brought this all on myself? Is God punishing me for my sins?

She tried to push the thoughts out of her mind.
Keep singing,
she told herself, and somehow she managed to get through the song. She glanced back at her bandleader and he was smiling without forcing it. She had done it all right this time.

“Okay, boys,” she said when she had finished. “You were great as usual. I think I’m even getting a little better.”

She was greeted with affectionate boos and hisses from the band. Things were coming along, getting looser. Last week and the week before had been a horror. She had been terrible and she knew it. No voice. No control. No passion. Nothing.

It was clear the band had felt sorry for her, although no one knew why they should. The gossip said she had gone into a sanitarium to dry out. Or away to have a baby. Or she was suffering from tuberculosis. There were a thousand explanations—all of them wrong—but they had all ended with the prediction that she would never be able to sing again as she had before.

Then three days ago, it had started to come back. The atmosphere at rehearsals had changed. Nobody felt sorry for her anymore.

“Okay, boys,” she said. “I want to do sort of a real low-down ‘Sweet Georgia Brown.’ You know what low-down is, don’t you? Just think of your sister-in-law. And then we’ll sort of slide into a nice, ladylike—stop laughing, you—‘Bye, Bye Blackbird.’”

The band played better than she had expected them to. They were obviously starting to catch on to her rhythms and phrasing and framing them with their own tempos and volume. And when the rehearsal was done, she sincerely thanked them for their work, sent them off for supper, and began making an inspection tour of the new club.

The days with Charlie Luciano and Ross’s Club were over and done with. There was no going back to that, not ever. He had denied any part in her attack, of course. He had come to see her, and when he learned what had happened, he swore he was not involved. He even offered to find the young man, Congreve, and bring Tina his penis for proof. But Tina was beyond fixing blame for the evil humiliation she had suffered. She just wanted to put it behind her, put it out of her mind. To Luciano’s offer, she had said, “It won’t make any difference, Charlie.” And she had meant it. She was moving on.

Nilo had made it possible. After she had gotten out of the hospital and taken the job Mario had found for her, Nilo had bought a club on Forty-seventh Street, just off Broadway, and soon after, he visited her apartment.

“I need help,” Nilo said.

“The new club?”

“Yes.”

“You need a singer?”

“No,” he said, suddenly and flatly.

Before she could figure out what she had done wrong, before she could even speak, Nilo laughed aloud and said, “I don’t need a singer. I need a partner. I bought this place and all I’ve got is money going out, nothing coming in. I need somebody who knows something. If you’re willing, it can be our place. We’ll call it the Chez Tina … no, the Falcon’s Nest, and you can be my headliner and my manager. I’ll put up the money. You put up the talent and the work and we share fifty-fifty.”

That was a better deal than she had ever had with Luciano, who had paid most of her personal expenses but had kept her on a straight salary at Ross’s. This was a new world of opportunity.

“Well, what do you say?” Nilo asked.

“Nilo, we were never that close. And then, when you came home, that business with Sofia. It was innocent, but it looked terrible and I regretted it so much. You’ll never know how much. Why have you come to me?”

“We’re family,” he said, and smiled again. “I’ll be back tomorrow and I’ll bring you the club plans to look at.”

*   *   *

A
FTER LEAVING HER ROOM,
Nilo went downstairs to his car, sat behind the wheel, and laughed aloud.

He had in his pocket a set of the pictures of Tina, taken during the assault in the warehouse.

And I didn’t even have to use them,
he thought.
She came along without even a suspicion. So I’ll save the pictures for when I need them. When I want her to do something that she doesn’t want to do.

She’ll do it then. She’ll do anything I want her to do.

He had business to take care of in the Bronx, and as he drove slowly back to Manhattan, he passed the warehouse where Tina had been raped. He smiled to himself. It was one of the good things about the real estate business, knowing where vacant properties were located. And Don Maranzano, who had bought the vacant building to use for a liquor storage warehouse, did not even know what it had been used for.

No one knew. And no one would ever know, unless Nilo wanted them to.

*   *   *

T
INA STOOD IN THE MIDDLE
of the dance floor, watching the band leave, and surveyed the setup. It was basically the same as the Ross’s Club, only more so—better, plusher, more classy. She was proud of it, glad that Nilo had given her the chance to do it right.

*   *   *

“
M
ISS
F
ALCONE.”

She turned around. It was one of the nightclub’s young pages.

“Mrs. Neill is in your office.”

“Mrs. Neill?” It took her a moment to realize that Mrs. Neill was Sofia. Nilo had taken to calling himself Danny Neill in public, and obviously his wife was doing the same thing. She walked toward the stairs that led to the second-floor office. It had been hard thinking of Sofia Mangini as Mrs. Sesta. It would be even harder to think of her as Mrs. Danny Neill.