Mafia Chic
is the author of
Spanish Disco, Diary of a Blues Goddess
and
Divas Don’t Fake It (and Nine Other Things I Learned Before I Turned Thirty),
all published by Red Dress Ink. She is also the author of the gangland novel
The Roofer,
published by MIRA Books, and the vampire novel
Urban Legend
(Silhouette Bombshell). Like the character of Teddi, Erica knows how to score boxing on the ten-point must system, and she is an avid card player. She lives in Florida in a completely chaotic household of family and unruly pets, and she can be reached at www.ericaorloff.com.
Erica Orloff
Dedicated to my own special kind of family.
And to Pamela Morrell, honorary family member.
As always, a huge thank-you to my agent, Jay Poynor. He has always been my biggest supporter.
Thanks also to Margaret Marbury, for her absolutely brilliant eye, and to Jessica Regante at Red Dress Ink. A note of thanks to Laura Morris, marketing genius at Red Dress Ink, who appreciated the heroine of this tale. Thanks to Dianne Moggy (we still have to go out for spaghetti and meatballs), part of the great network of support I have for my books, as well as publisher Donna Hayes, for her vision. I also have to say this cover is my favorite of all my books so far—so a special thank-you to the terrific designers at Harlequin in Toronto.
You can’t write a novel about a special kind of family without having a tight-knit one of your own. Thank you to my parents, Maryanne and Walter Orloff, Stacey, Jessica, extended family members, Gloria and Joey, and the memories of my grandparents, Robert and Irene Cunningham. Wherever my grandmother is, along with my grandfather, they’re likely playing pinochle. Love to all my nieces and nephews: Tyler, Zachary, Pannos, Cassidy, Tori.
To the members of Writer’s Cramp, Pam Morrell, Gina De Luca, Jon Van Zile, thank you for faithfully meeting every two weeks. I know the food and wine are enticements, but it’s also the hard work we do. Your comments are always dead-on.
My friends, Cleo, Nancy, Mark DiBona (my resident bookie and gambling expert), Kathy Levinson, Kathy Johnson and Chris Richardson, for being rock-solid supports.
And last but not least, Alexa, Nicholas and Isabella, for being truly happy and extraordinary little people. And to J.D. For it all.
E
very other Friday from the time I was born until I was sixteen and allowed to start dating, I slept over at my grandma and Poppy Marcello’s house. My brother slept over, too, and my parents used the free night to go out for dinner and have some time alone.
My brother and Poppy used to go down to my grandfather’s wood shop and make birdhouses. Then they’d watch the fights on cable or would play checkers. My grandmother and I cooked in anticipation for Sunday’s big family meal, hand rolling meatballs with chopped veal and beef and bread crumbs. She taught me all the secret family recipes, passed down from her mother and her mother before that.
After cooking, Grandma and I would go sit in the den and have sweetened iced tea in summer or hot tea with lots of milk in winter. One Friday night, when I was about eleven, I remember dragging out the heavy family photo al
bums lining the bookshelves. I brought one over to her on the couch and plopped next to her and opened it.
“What’s this a picture of?” I asked on the first page.
“Oh…” Her eyes misted over, and her smile was bittersweet. “My goodness, but the time flies, Teddi. That was your mother’s fifth birthday party. Your grandfather… Every birthday had to be better than the last one. That was the year we had pony rides.”
“Wow.” I wanted a pony. I turned the pages, and each photo brought on a story. I knew most of the tales already, but I never got tired of curling up next to my grandmother and hearing them again. Then I found a page that had somehow gotten stuck to the page before it. Gingerly, I pried the pages apart. There, in black-and-white photos, was a man I had never seen before. “Who’s that?” I asked.
Grandma’s eyes welled up, and she heaved an uncharacteristic sigh. “That, my darling, is my youngest brother. He’s your great-uncle Mario.”
“And who’s that lady next to him? She’s beautiful.”
“Yes, she is. Was. That woman is Mariella.”
“How come I don’t know them? How come I’ve never met your brother, Grandma?”
“He was struck by the thunderbolt.”
I looked up at my grandmother’s face, still relatively unlined, rosy-cheeked, her dark hair, graying at the temples, pulled up in a topknot and secured with bobby pins. I furrowed my brow. “A thunderbolt? He was hit by lightning?”
She laughed, even as she dabbed her eyes with a little handkerchief she kept in her apron pocket. “No…it’s an expression we Italians have. When you’re older, you’ll fall in love and get married. Maybe it will be someone you’ve known a long time…a friend you suddenly see in a differ
ent light. Or maybe you’ll go off to college and meet a boy you could imagine yourself spending the rest of your life with. Someone with good values. But maybe…just maybe…you will be struck by the thunderbolt. That means you’ll look across a crowded room, or you’ll bump into someone on the street…and from the very second you look into his eyes and he looks into yours, that’s it. You know.
He
is the one. It won’t make any sense. People will tell you that you’re crazy, but you will know. There’ll be this voice, this feeling deep inside…you will just know, and your life will never be the same, because none of it will matter until you finally get to be with him. Your love.”
I looked down at the picture of my long-lost uncle Mario. “So what happened to him?”
“He’s in prison, dear.”
“Prison? For what?”
She hesitated, and then said, “He killed a man.” She said it as if she’d said, “He ran a red light.”
I shivered slightly and snuggled closer to her. “Why? How?”
“Oh…it’s a long story.” She looked at me, and I clearly wasn’t going to let the matter drop. “All right, then. Your uncle Mario saw Mariella at a dance. And that was it. They were both struck by the thunderbolt. You’ve never seen two people more in love than your uncle Mario and Mariella. It was like electricity ran between them. When people were around them, it was intoxicating. You could just
feel
the way they were meant to be together.”
I hung on her every word. “And?”
“Mariella’s father was not a reasonable man. A very over-protective Sicilian. But a little crazy, too. He decided Uncle Mario was not the man he wanted Mariella to marry. He had already decided she should marry Joey Antonelli.”
“The plumber?” Everyone in our neighborhood knew Antonelli and Sons plumbing. Their vans—all a bright yellow—were always on the streets of Brooklyn.
“Yes. The plumber. Anyway, Mariella’s father sent her two older brothers to scare Uncle Mario. They went to beat him up.”
“Oh, no!”
“Yes.” She nodded. “Only they didn’t count on Uncle Mario being so strong and so in love. It was like he was superhuman. He turned around and beat one of her brothers so hard he killed him right there on the street.”
I shuddered. “But…but couldn’t he tell the police it was only because they were going to beat him up?”
“Yes. He did say it was self-defense. But…the beating was so brutal. And Uncle Mario didn’t have a mark on him. And it was around the time that…well…the judge wanted to teach a lesson to our kind.”
“Our kind?”
“The family. It’s too much for you to understand. But it didn’t go well, the trial. They added some other charges—racketeering. Anyway, he got a prison sentence.”
“And he’s still in jail?”
“Yes. He’s eligible for parole next year.”
“And what about Mariella? Did she marry Joey Antonelli like her father wanted?”
Grandma shook her head.
“Well, what happened to her?”
“She stood by Uncle Mario. She had no choice. She’d been struck by the thunderbolt. She was very sad about her brother, but she still loved Uncle Mario. Her family disowned her. She ended up moving away. She visits Uncle Mario every weekend. She dresses all in black. People say
she’s crazy. She dresses like a widow. She missed any opportunity to marry like her friends, to have babies. Waiting…waiting…all this time. Like a penance or something.”
“But they’ll get to be together when he comes out of prison. They’ll finally be together.”
“Yes. But…well, they’ll never be those two young people so in love.” Suddenly, Grandma seemed to think better of telling me the story of Uncle Mario and Mariella. “Oh…what am I telling you this sad story for?” She patted my knee. “It’s in your blood, you know. The passion. Maybe you’ll be struck by the thunderbolt yourself. Maybe you will have that kind of love.”
I looked down at the picture of my uncle Mario and the beautiful, tragic Mariella. And I knew one thing. I never,
ever
wanted to be struck by the thunderbolt.
“J
ackson is going to take a dive in round three,” I said, glancing at the television as I passed through the living room, where my roommate sat with her boyfriend of the moment, a boxing buff.
Dave eyed me the way men do when they assume a woman doesn’t know the first thing about sports or the difference between a Phillips head and flat-head screwdriver (for the record, the Phillips head is shaped like a cross on the end). “Jackson? A lot you know about boxing. He’ll go all twelve and take the decision.”
I stopped in my tracks and whirled around. “Wanna bet?”
“I hate to rob you of your hard-earned money, Teddi, but you’re on. Five bucks says he’ll go the distance.”
“Then let’s make it interesting. Hundred bucks…
and
the loser cleans the kitchen.” I stood in the doorway of the living room and cast a backward glance to the kitchen, where a porcelain tower of dishes was precariously leaning in the sink.
“A hundred bucks?” He was handsome, I’d give Diana that. Nice biceps. But then Diana always had handsome men following her around. I called her Lady Di, and her British accent, Paris fashions and catlike eyes made her stand out, even among New York City’s trendsetters. However, something about this guy annoyed me. He was too cocky, a trait I was certain Lady Di would discover very quickly. She tolerates fools and assholes less than I do.
“Yes. A hundred bucks
and
the dishes. Unless you’re afraid a
woman
will beat you,” I said, emphasizing “woman” as if I had said “herpes” or “vomit.”
“You’re on.”
I strode across the living room and stuck out my hand. “Then shake on it.”
Dave shook, firmly I might add, and I sat down on the love seat to watch the boxing match. “What round is it?” I asked.
“Second.” Lady Di spoke up, her smirk barely contained. She knew that, other faults aside, I never took a sucker bet.
The bell signaled the end of round two. Jackson looked to be in terrific shape. His muscular back and coffee-colored skin glistened with sweat, but he wasn’t even breathing heavy. His opponent, “Rocky” Garcia, was nine years older—a lifetime in boxing years, sort of like dog years—and he already looked tired. The guy was known as a “bleeder,” sustaining cuts above the eye that would pour down his face, blocking his vision. If you’ve never actually watched a boxing match, then you might not know cuts like that entail sticking a Q-tip directly
into
the gash. Boxing is not for the squeamish. And though Garcia was the champ, no one expected him to win against Jackson.
Dave leaned back on the couch and stretched. “I’m going to take Diana out to Whiskey Blue with our hundred
bucks—which we’ll blow on a bottle of champagne. And we’ll tell you
all
about it in the morning.”
I rolled my eyes, then focused on the television set. When the bell rang, Garcia came out with a flurry. Left, right, left jab. Uppercut. The announcers were getting excited, shouting into their microphones. The crowd in the MGM Grand in Vegas rose to their collective feet. Jackson shook his head from side to side, as if to clear it from the small pounding he took. Garcia came at him again with a series of body blows and then—wham!—Jackson hit the canvas like a man who’d just had a safe fall on him in a cartoon. He was caught square on the jaw.
Dave leaned forward on the couch, in shock, screaming at the television set. He stood up and leaned still closer to the TV, not believing his eyes. “Get up, you loser! Get up!” Dave was willing the fighter to climb the ropes and stand again, in the way men have of believing the athletes on television can actually
hear
them through some miracle of technology. But Jackson just lay there, as I knew he would. The fight was called, the champ held up the belt he retained with the victory, and I stuck out my palm.
“A cool one hundred, please.”
Stunned, Dave pulled his eel-skin wallet out of the back pocket of his beautifully cut pants (Italian, no doubt). Lady Di tried to look appropriately sad that he lost, but she couldn’t look at me for fear we would both dissolve into gales of laughter.
“Here,” Dave said through his teeth, seething. He handed me five twenties.
“Fastest hundred I ever earned. Thanks…and Dave?”
“What,” he said evenly.
“Don’t forget the kitchen,” I replied in a singsong voice. “You’ll find everything you need under the sink…sponges, dish towels and detergent.” I twirled around and veritably pranced into my bedroom and shut the door. I looked at my clock radio—10:37 p.m. I gave Dave ten minutes before he left and slammed the door.
He only took five.
Lady Di knocked on my bedroom door a moment later and poked her head in. “What an insufferable ass,” she said, then squealed with laughter and flopped down on my bed.
“He deserved it.”
She squeezed my hand. “You are something else, Teddi ol’ girl. This calls for champagne cocktails.”
She climbed off my bed, went into the still-dirty kitchen and returned with two champagne flutes with sugar cubes nestled in the bottom, a splash of bitters on each and a bottle of Moët. She popped the cork and poured us each a glass right to the rim.
“To Teddi, for knowing much more about boxing than Dave will ever know—and to her hundred dollars.”
“And to my grandfather Marcello, for owning Tony ‘the Dancer’ Jackson—and to Garcia.”
We clinked glasses and sipped the bubbly champagne. Lady Di sat down on the antique rocking chair in the corner of my room, next to a small pie table I inherited from my great-grandmother and covered in pictures of family and friends encased in silver frames.
“You’re always complaining about your family, Teddi, but it seems to me they come in terribly handy at times. My parents are pathetically boring—so utterly devoid of any life. Their faces are so stiff, they look like Botox patients whose
treatment went horribly awry. I’d much rather be in your family. The food on Sundays is better, too.”
“Well…you’re an honorary member, anyway. They adore you. But trust me, you really wouldn’t want to be in my family if you had a choice. My childhood wasn’t about snooty British boarding schools, Miss Fancy Pants. I didn’t learn to ride English on Thoroughbred horses, and I didn’t ski in St. Moritz on vacation.”
In fact, Di knew very well that I learned three-card monte before I started kindergarten. I learned how to score a boxing match on the ten-point must system before I learned my ABCs—and it wasn’t too long after that when I found out most of the matches were fixed. I know about the over-under in football, and I can shoot pool better than Minnesota Fats—well, maybe not him, but I can outshoot almost anyone. This does not make for a) an idyllic childhood orb) the kind of skills you like to show off to men. I mean, on what date do you tell the man you potentially want to sleep with that before you discuss birth control it might be a good idea to see how he feels about the Witness Protection Program?
“Hmm.” Lady Di frowned, squinting her blue, almost-violet eyes. “I’d hate to give up my ski vacations. Nonetheless, your family is much more fun than my own pathetic ’rents.”
“Maybe, but then there’s the little problem of surveillance. Go to the window.”
“Oh, not again.” She shook her head. “Don’t tell me…”
“Go on. Peek out the blinds.”
She did as I asked.
“Let me guess, Di. A long, black Lincoln Town Car? A guy leaning on the hood? He’s sort of just hanging around—maybe even reading a newspaper?”
“You know very well that, yes, he’s there. Appears to be your cousin Anthony—who I will reiterate for the thousandth time is very hunky, by the way—and your uncle Lou again.”
“Of course, because we two nice single girls shouldn’t be living alone in the big city.”
“Puts a crimp in things, doesn’t it?”
“Tell me about it.”
“You’d think they would have grown tired of this by now.”
“Please…my uncle Tony once waited fifteen years to extract revenge from a guy who screwed him in a casino deal in Atlantic City. My family is nothing if not patient.”
Lady Di and I had moved in together two years ago when my father “persuaded” someone to rent us this place for a song. I realize how extremely hypocritical it is to complain about my family at the same time that I enjoy a two-bed-room apartment with a view of the East River in a doorman building. Of course, the spacious apartment and the view came with the vigilant watchdog eyes of various members of my family. My cousin Tony—whom Di has a crush on, and vice versa—seemed to have drawn the short straw or something as he is the one who watches over us the most.
Lady Di came over to the bed and sat down. “So we ignore them. There’s nothing exciting going on here, anyway. Eventually, they’ll go home. What do you say we hit some clubs tomorrow, Teddi? It’s your night off.”
“I don’t know.”
“Please,”
she pleaded, “I have a smashing new outfit that I’m dying to wear. And now that Dave appears to be out of the picture, you can’t expect me to spend the brisk and bitter days of autumn in New York alone, can you? It’ll be winter before you know it.”
“No, I suppose I can’t. Though Lord knows I’ll be by my lonesome.”
“Don’t say that, Teddi.” She smiled and refilled my glass. Standing up, she kissed me on the top of my head. “I have a feeling you’ll meet the right one before long. See you in the morning, love.”
“Good night, Lady Di.”
She shut my bedroom door. I turned on my stereo and listened to a vintage Bruce Springsteen CD. I stripped and pulled on a sleep shirt, then I padded over to the window. Tony was pacing the sidewalk. I knew he and my uncle would stay another hour, then head over to Mario’s for some pizza and a card game.
I went into my bathroom—
my
bathroom…in New York City where most people live in apartments the
size
of bathrooms. Our apartment has floor-to-ceiling windows, crown molding, Ralph Lauren paint and hardwood floors glossed to a sheen. I washed up and brushed my teeth.
Back in my room, I sat on my bed and pulled out a photo album I kept on the shelf near my bed. In my life, I hit the crime-family genetic lottery. My mother’s family, the Marcellos, own one of the largest pizza chains in New York. They also are bookies and gamblers, loan sharks and pool hustlers. Suspected of money laundering, they are what New York newspapers call “an alleged crime family.”
Flipping through the album, I thought back on the birthday parties in the pictures I had slid into plastic photo sheets. Other little girls had parties with ponies and pizza, clowns and confetti. I had parties that lasted until the morning of the day after. I had ponies, too, and cake with real whipped cream frosting, and spumoni. But there was always a craps
game going on in the basement, or even the occasional fistfight between the Marcellos and the Gallos.
Turning another page in the album, I landed on photos of my cousin Marie Gallo’s wedding. The Gallo clan was Sicilian—which some might think is the same as Italian, but it’s not—at least not in Brooklyn. Where the Marcellos were prone to angry outbursts, the Gallos were always picking on one another and pulling elaborate practical jokes, all in good fun—until the fistfights started, usually for reasons no one could remember the morning after. Two of my father’s six brothers were on the fringes of the five families. My uncle Jackie and uncle Tommy are both serving hard time in prison for murder. My father managed to squeak through life with a rap sheet a mile long but no major convictions. I can’t say what he actually does for a living. Not because I won’t say, but rather I
can’t
say, as in I’m not quite sure. However, because of the family, I grew up hearing clicks on the telephone because we were bugged, and catching sight of unmarked federal cars in my rearview mirror as I learned to drive.
I sipped my champagne and crinkled up my face. Champagne and Crest toothpaste don’t mix. I swallowed another swig anyway and sighed. In between these two crazy families was me, a mix of both. I had inherited dark masses of curly Italian hair from the Marcellos and the olive skin of the Gallos. Green-eyed (a Sicilian trait), I have a very ethnic look—whatever that means. I’ve been told, by less-than-gracious dates—and haven’t I had enough of those?—that I look like I “just got off the boat.” And when I get fed up with said lousy dates, when I want to see whether or not a man is
really
interested in me, I say that on my mother’s side, I am one of
the
Marcellos. That usually makes most men turn pale.
Because while all this may sound delightfully colorful, it ceased to be even remotely amusing when I became an adolescent. Suddenly, I had to explain my “family,” in more ways than one. And bringing a date home to meet the Gallos or the Marcellos was like subjecting the poor, hapless guy to an FBI interrogation. My male relatives would corner my date to find out his intentions. My solution? Stop dating. (Not really.) I just became as devious as my family—only far less criminal. I hid my dating from everyone. Lady Di became my conspirator from the moment we met when we were freshmen in college. Once we moved to this apartment, I also relied on my doorman, Michel, to frequently slip me out the back of my apartment building, enticing him with fresh cannolis from his favorite bakery.
I shut the photo album. Walking over to the window, I saw that my cousin Tony and uncle Lou had left for the night. They had my best interests at heart. They all did. But both sides of the family were pressuring me to marry and have babies. And while I did feel a baby urge when I saw mothers and their rosy-cheeked little cherubs in Central Park, the likelihood of ever meeting anyone who would find my extraordinary three-card monte skills endearing—let alone maternal—was not likely. And what man in his right mind is going to sleep with a woman whose father says, “You hurt her, we’ll break your legs”—and means it? The truth is that despite America’s obsession with all things Mafia, from the
Godfather
to the
Sopranos,
being a Mafia princess is most decidedly not what it is cracked up to be.