“So you’ve said. Right now, that’s the least of my worries. What have you found out?”
“Very little, actually. The silence surrounding the late Chief McDonald continues to astound me.”
“You said you’ve learned very little, but very little isn’t nothing.”
“Our Larry was not beloved,” he said.
“Ambitious men usually aren’t.”
“I suppose not. When people feel they’re being reduced to an exploitability quotient, I imagine they find it less than endearing. I have hit upon a number of sources willing to tell me this or that about how Chief McDonald screwed them or used them or walked on them. There’s no shortage of people griping about how Larry managed to get the bump to deputy chief and then over to chief of detectives, but no one’s talking about the suicide.”
“No one thinks it’s murder?”
“Why would they? There’s nothing to indicate it was anything other than suicide.”
“He didn’t leave a note,” I said rather feebly.
“Come, Moe, many, many people have taken the pipe and not left a note. There was a time not long after my grandson’s murder that I came very close to doing myself in. I had my neck in the noose and my feet on the stool. I didn’t leave a note.”
“But people would have known why. They would have understood it was grief over your grandson even without a note. Larry would have wanted people to know why.”
Wit opened his mouth to respond, but Willie came by with our drinks. He and Wit engaged in a second round of their patented banter before Willie politely excused himself. Wit and I clinked glasses, my host looking rather too hungrily at my Dewar’s. Discussing suicide and the murder of his grandson probably weren’t the best things for his continuing sobriety. Thankfully, I hadn’t ordered bourbon. The time had come for a change of subject.
“So Wit, in all your travels, you ever do a piece on organized crime?”
“I have had the occasion, but not in many years. Why do you ask, other than to change the subject?”
Not much escaped Wit.
“Frankie ‘Sticks and Stones’ Motta.”
“Quite a colorful moniker,” he said.
“Never heard of him, I guess. How about Tio ‘the Spider’ Anello?”
“Tio Anello, the man who had his arms in everything? Absolutely! He was the subject of one of my first pieces for
“Sounds like you liked the guy.”
“I’m not certain I had any great affection for the man. The Mafia holds no particular romance for me. However, I did respect Anello. He was very old school. And you realize how us Yale men feel about old-school types. He was never once arrested. Never sold anyone out. Avoided publicity like the plague. Moe, as foolish as it was, he really loved this girl, but he put a stop to their relationship before the ink was dry on the first newspaper story about their affair.
“And unlike Carlo Gambino, Anello had a serious no-drugs policy in his family. It’s the one thing he didn’t have a piece of. Gambino gave lip service to it and looked the other way while he shoved the drug money under his mattress. I know for a fact Anello had people in his own family seen to for selling drugs.”
“Seen to?” I teased. “Interesting turn of phrase.”
“Must I explain the facts of life to you, Moses?”
“No. But his no-drugs policy cost him in the end. Probably why he didn’t have the money or the troops to withstand the Russians moving in on him. The Red Mafia doesn’t have a no-drugs policy.”
“That’s a shame.”
“Stop it, Wit. You sound like the Spider’s campaign manager.”
“I’ll send you a copy of the piece.”
“I’d like that.”
Willie brought our salads and we were too busy stuffing our mouths with bits of bacon, chicken, and avocado to do much talking. But not a second had elapsed between the time his knife and fork hit Wit’s plate and he was back at it.
“You’ve piqued my curiosity, Moe. Why bring up Anello and this other fellow, Motta?”
“No reason, their names just came up in conversation. Larry’s ex and I had dinner the other night. I was hoping she might remember something, but it was sort of a waste.”
“Who was this Frankie ‘Sticks and Stones’ character?”
“Forget it, Wit.”
“Satisfy an old man’s curiosity, will you? I am paying for lunch, after all.”
“Capo in the Anello family. Real tough guy, hence the name. He did a stretch in federal prison and I haven’t heard about him in years. Apparently, him and Larry were tight when they were kids, but Larry never mentioned him to me.”
Wit rubbed his little gray beard and stared off into space. “And the dark-haired beauty, what of her?”
“Like I said, the line didn’t get crossed. Let’s drop it, okay?”
“Very well, my friend.”
“Thanks for the help.”
“Better to thank me for lunch. I’m afraid I wasn’t much help,” he said.
“Yes and no. Sometimes it’s what you don’t find that’s revealing. From the way Larry was acting and the things he said, I thought there might have been something going on recently that was the problem. But no, it’s definitely about the past.”
“What is?”
“Everything.”
I needed to clear my head. The weight of the case, of my lack of sleep, and of my flirtation with Melendez was getting to me. I felt like a fighter pilot pulling too many Gs, losing consciousness, the blood unable to feed my brain.
I started driving over to the Mistral Arms, then turned away. Rico would have no answers and being with him would only add to the weight. Seeing him now, his life in the world of crack whores, cigarette butts, and one-eyed cats, made things worse than when he was completely out of my life. The Rico Tripoli I had known was gone. The harder part to accept, I think, was that the Moe Prager he had known was gone too. You can always rebuild burned bridges, but not the people to cross over them.
I made my way toward Columbus Avenue, to City On The Vine, our first shop. I parked at a meter across the street, but couldn’t manage to get out of the car. I stared at the store. I’d had mixed feelings about the wine business way before I got into it. Like I said, the business was Aaron’s dream, a dream of redemption for our father’s failures, and of security and of a hundred other ingredients that didn’t belong to me. As I gazed through the rush of traffic at the store, I realized
Once I made the decision to move on, the paralysis was gone. I drove into Brooklyn across the Brooklyn Bridge, but instead of exiting onto the streets and going to talk with Klaus, I continued on the B.Q.E. to the Gowanus and finally onto the Belt Parkway. Even the thought of hanging with Klaus wasn’t enough to get me inside one of our stores, not today. Halfway across the bridge, it began drizzling rain.
Coney Island is a dirty, dark-hearted place, a place that once was and no longer is. Rain washes nothing but the good away in Coney Island. And when the weather drives the visitors back to their cars and subways, they take their happy memories with them. In their wake, only the truth of the place remains: the moldering garbage, the rusted and crumbling rides, empty arcades, and sideshow spielers pitching their rigged games to the crush of absent hordes. I looked up and noticed that the top of the Parachute Jump was lost in the low clouds that covered the beach. I knew just how that felt, to be lost that way.
