Bloodline (63 page)

“I will talk to him,” Nilo said. He started to his feet, but Maranzano waved him back down.

“Don’t be in such a hurry,” he said. “We never have time to speak anymore. How is your family? The children?”

“The children are fine. Sofia is well.” Nilo wondered what Maranzano would say if he told him the truth:
Sofia wants you and Masseria both dead so that Luciano and I can control New York between us. And maybe she is right.

“And no more
bambinos
are on the way?”

“Not now. Maybe at a later time.”

“Family is the most important thing of all. It is the reason for our success. Because we are, at heart, a great family of Castellammarese. In the future, because of what we have come to learn, our families will never suffer want or prejudice or despair. It is the greatest legacy a proud father can give his children.”

That and the gift of treachery,
Nilo thought.

*   *   *

T
HE WORLD SEEMED
to have swallowed up Harry Birchevsky, but all it meant to Tony was that he would have to dig harder.
He’s either dead or hiding. Nobody covers his tracks this well just by accident,
Tony thought.

His search had continued through the summer. Police records, which he sneaked into headquarters to inspect, shed no light. No one had seen Birchevsky at his old addresses. Tony even questioned other people who had been in jail with the union man, but no one had seen or heard from him.

In early August, when Mario brought the apparently recovering Tommy home from the convent with his recollection that Birchevsky had been Rachel’s killer, Tony felt vindicated. He had settled on the right man; now he merely had to find him.

Tommy offered no help. No, he didn’t know any of Birchevsky’s friends. No, he didn’t know where he hung out or where he might be likely to hide. No, he didn’t have any idea where the man might be. He answered Tony’s questions in a dull voice, almost grudgingly, and Tony felt that the pain of Rachel’s loss was still too much for Tommy to deal with, so he stopped asking.

There is time,
Tony thought,
because I will never forget and I will never give up. Birchevsky belongs to me.

Anna cooked a welcome-home dinner for Tommy, and even Tina showed up. Tommy was glad to see that she was making a special effort to heal the wounds between her and Tony. Tony, though, seemed distant; at odd moments, he seemed to be watching Tina, as if judging her performance. Tommy wished he knew what his father was thinking.

Is she my daughter, the little girl I raised, or is she the harlot of those photographs? Which is the real Tina? Did she do those things willingly or was she forced? Or drugged? Will she ever know how close I came to killing Luciano because of those pictures? How can I ever look at my daughter again without seeing those images in my mind? I have to believe she was a victim. We have all been victims of crime somehow. Tina, Tommy, Rachel, me. It would be so easy to give up. But we never will. Never surrender. Never surrender.

“Papa?”

“Sorry, Mario, I was daydreaming.”

“We were hoping that you would play the phonograph. Some of the new tenors, maybe.”

“Aaaah, the new tenors sound like fishwives. Caruso, only Caruso.”

“Fishwives? Gigli? A fishwife?” Tina demanded.

“The worst,” Tony said. “Just you listen.” He marched off to the phonograph.

They listened to the music as they had many times before, arguing as they always did. As if by design, although none had planned it so, no reference was made to Tommy’s tragedy or his plans for the future. There would be plenty of time for that later on.

For his part, Tommy offered nothing, just sat quietly in the living room, listening, watching. If there was anything on his mind, Tony could not tell it from his son’s impassive face.

The party broke up early. It was only the next morning that Tony found that Tommy’s police revolver was missing from the dresser drawer where Tony had hidden it for safekeeping.

• In Chicago, rival mobster and Maranzano ally Joe Aiello offered a restaurant chef ten thousand dollars to put prussic acid in Al Capone’s soup. The cook refused and told Capone about the offer. At 8:30
P.M.
, October 23, Aiello left the home of Pasquale Prestigiacomo at 205 North Kolmar Avenue to step into a waiting taxicab. As he opened the cab’s rear door, the taxi sped away. At the same time, a window opened in an apartment across the street and a machine gun sprayed bullets at Aiello. Aiello was hit but struggled to his feet and ran into an alley. But another machine gunner waited at the end of the alley and ripped into Aiello as he tried to take cover. Doctors pried nearly sixty slugs from the gangster’s body. Police said the lead weighed more than a pound. Capone told Luciano that he had Aiello hit because he was backing Maranzano while Capone was a loyal Masseria-Luciano man. Meyer Lansky told Luciano, “That guinea’s nuts and is gonna get us all killed.”

• Less than two weeks later, Maranzano struck back. Two of Masseria’s top gunmen, Al Mineo and Steve Ferrigno, were struck by shotgun blasts at noon on November 5, while leaving a bookmaker’s office in the Bronx. After carrying out the killings, Buster from Chicago replaced his sawed-off shotgun in his violin case and ran down the street but was stopped by a policeman. Buster said there had been a shooting down the block and he was trying to escape. The policeman went to investigate the shooting and Buster went back to his hotel.

• Luciano carried the news of Mineo’s and Ferrigno’s deaths to Masseria in his new penthouse apartment at Eighty-first Street and Central Park West where Joe the Boss had moved because it was safer than his old downtown apartment. Masseria was eating dinner with his best friend, Joe Catania, and was clearly annoyed at being disturbed. He waved off the two deaths as inconsequential. “People get killed in wars,” he said.

• He was less sanguine two weeks later when he strolled, with his two bodyguards, out the front door of his apartment building. Two Maranzano gunmen jumped from a nearby doorway and opened fire. The bodyguards were dropped instantly, but Masseria fled down Eighty-first Street and escaped. His bullet-riddled overcoat was left lying on the sidewalk. Later that night, he met with Luciano. “We’ve put up with this Castellammarese bastard for too long,” the frightened Masseria said. “Now he is getting too brazen. I want him hit. I want everybody with him hit. I want everybody on our side to carry guns all the time and shoot them whenever they see them. I want them all dead, and I want them all dead right away. Start with Maranzano and go down the list and get everybody. And do it right away.” Masseria left the city the next day for a winter vacation at an undisclosed location.

• Reelected governor for a second term, Franklin D. Roosevelt announced he was appointing a commission, headed by former judge Samuel Seabury, to investigate municipal corruption in New York.

• A new radio show swept America by storm. It began with a deep-voiced announcer intoning: “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows. Ha-ha-ha.” And it ended with the same announcer’s: “The weed of crime bears bitter fruit. Crime does not pay. The Shadow knows. Ha-ha-ha.”

*   *   *

I
N EARLY
O
CTOBER,
Tommy asked Captain Cochran for his job back.

Cochran greeted him warmly in his offices at the Italian Squad, but Tommy seemed to resist all his efforts to make pleasant conversation.

“I want to come back to work, Captain.”

Cochran sighed. “Your job’s been filled by a lieutenant from Midtown. We don’t have an opening right now for you.”

“I don’t have to come back as a sergeant. Just a detective. Hell, I’ll even come back undercover as Vito. Just let me work.”

“Tommy, I looked at your records. You’ve still got a few months of sick time coming to you. Why don’t you take the time now until you’re feeling better?”

“I look that bad?”

“Worse,” Cochran said.

Tommy rose to his feet. “I’ll try you again in a few weeks,” he said.

Cochran stood facing him. “Tommy, I know how awful this has all been for you. But I don’t believe in vendetta.”

“I do,” Tommy said. “It’s all I’ve got left to believe in.”

*   *   *

A
T THE END OF
N
OVEMBER,
Tommy found Harry Birchevsky.

Since leaving the convent in August, he had gone over the same ground his father had, quizzing Birchevsky’s friends, associates, and neighbors, and with the same lack of success.

But one night, lying on the couch in the apartment where Rachel was killed, Tommy recalled the image of Birchevsky, sitting at a table in a coffee shop, reading the
Daily Racing Form.
And he remembered overhearing Birchevsky remarking how his married sister lived near the Yonkers racetrack which he said was his favorite “’cause all their races are fixed and you just gotta watch where the smart money goes.”

Tommy took to riding the train to Yonkers every day for the races, walking through the grandstand and clubhouse, looking for the union man. Some nights he stayed over at a cheap hotel so he could wander the streets the next day, trying to find Birchevsky’s sister, whose married name he did not know.

Tommy was seedy-looking now, usually unshaven, often unwashed, and he appeared no different from the other gambling degenerates who hung around the small, dirty track. At first, he lived off his meager savings. When that was gone, he shamelessly borrowed money from Mario.

“I wish I knew what you needed this for,” Mario said one day. “It’s sure not for a shave and a haircut.”

“It’s to live, Mario.”

“Can’t I help, Tommy?”

“Only by giving me the money.”

When he found that Tommy had never told the police that Birchevsky had killed Rachel, Mario told Tony. To his amazement, Tony would not tell the police, either.

Tony said, “I’ll tell them about it after I get him. If we tell the cops now, they’re not even going to look for him. All they’ll do is blab about it, send out an alarm, spook him, and make him run. I don’t want him to run. You stick to running the church. Leave the police work to me.”

Tommy was hanging out in the racetrack grandstand when he saw a man step up to the ten-dollar window to place a bet on the final race. The man had a beard and wore a cap pulled down tightly over his forehead, but there was no mistaking his curious duckfooted walk. Tommy shielded his face with a newspaper when the man turned away from the cashier’s booth. It was Birchevsky.

Tommy patted the gun he wore in a holster under his heavy jacket, then walked after his prey. He felt his heart pounding; the image of poor dead Rachel jumped into his mind, and he had to use all his willpower to stop himself from walking up and shooting the man where he stood at the rail, overlooking the track.

Too many people here. I want him alone.

Birchevsky seemed nervous at the track, often checking his wristwatch, and he left the track before the last race. He walked west on foot through a run-down industrial section of the town. Tommy followed a half block behind. It was already dark and a chill rain had begun to fall, but Tommy hardly noticed it. For the first time in almost a year, he felt alive.

As Birchevsky passed a big darkened warehouse, he turned and darted through the front door of the building. Tommy hurried across the street and tried the door, but it was locked.

Cautiously, he moved along the side of the building and found an unlocked door in the rear. He slipped inside and moved quickly away from the door, crouching low against the wall, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness, holding his police revolver in his hand.

Faced with his own moment of truth, Tommy thought,
Can I do it? Can I just shoot him in cold blood? Does that make me as bad as him, as Nilo, as Luciano? As all the rest of them?

Before he could finish the thought, something slapped the gun from his hand. It went skidding across the floor in the darkness. Tommy dove out of the way and heard a heavy clunk, the sound of a heavy piece of wood slamming into the wall near his head.

“You so smart, you think I didn’t see you? You bastard, I shoulda killed you when I had the chance.” Birchevsky’s voice came out of the darkness, followed by another swing of the wooden club in his hand. But this time, Tommy was ready. He rolled away from the club, and as it hit into the floor next to him, he grabbed it and yanked. His force pulled the two-by-four out of Birchevsky’s hands, and Tommy scrambled to his feet and swung the wooden club in front of him. There was a satisfying thud as the board made contact with flesh.

Birchevsky groaned and Tommy swung again. He hit again and Birchevsky cried out in pain.

In the dim light from a low window, Tommy could make out the man’s form now, on the floor in front of him, and he smashed him in the ribs with the two-by-four. Then he swung it over his head, like a timberman’s ax, and brought it down on Birchevsky’s left knee. Birchevsky screamed.

He skittered away across the floor. In that moment, Tommy had his answer.
Yes, I can kill him. But that’s too easy. First I’m going to cripple him, but I’m going to let his brain stay alive so it can feel hate and fear and pain, and then when he can’t stand it anymore, I’m going to make it even worse.

And
then
I’m going to kill him.

Tommy slowly walked after Birchevsky, holding the club in his hands like a baseball bat. Suddenly Birchevsky dove forward, grabbed at something, rolled on his back, and a bullet whistled past Tommy’s ear.

Tommy dropped to the floor, backing away.

“I’ll kill you, you son of a bitch,” Birchevsky shouted, and fired Tommy’s gun again into the darkness.

Again the bullet missed. Tommy heard a thud at the front door, and then, as the door opened, a glow of light from the street cast a faint glow across the warehouse floor. Tommy could see the huddled form of Birchevsky only ten feet from him.