wives, kids, dogs. Her father was Dominic Giannini. He brought her along, like it was a vacation. Looking back on it now, I think he probably did it because he was afraid to leave her home alone. Not that she was in danger or something—he had Detroit sewed up tight. He just knew that if he left her home, what he told her not to do was only talk.”
Jane nodded. “I guess things like that don’t change much.”
“You have to understand what the problem was,” said Bernie. “She was beautiful.” Jane could see his eyes glaze over, and then he gave a little shake, as though coming back to the present was painful.
Jane was astonished. “You’re not just remembering, are you? You’re seeing it.”
Bernie touched Jane’s arm gently, as though he were a parent soothing and reassuring her. “That’s part of it, too, you know. You don’t just get to bring back what will make you happy. Once you’ve seen something, you’re stuck with it. If I think about it, I can see her now. She isn’t any different from the way she looked then. Where every long black hair was, every pore of that smooth white skin, whatever was reflected in those huge brown eyes at different times; even things I didn’t notice at that moment—things in the room. There was a lace cover on the counter behind me, and the corner was folded up, just like this.” He folded the edge of Jane’s sheet to demonstrate. “There was a sand fly that was on its way to the window to get out.”
Jane’s throat was dry. She cleared it, and said, “It must be hard.”
“Not in the same way as it used to be,” said Bernie. “I told you we were at the Fontainebleau. The big guys were in a meeting in a suite upstairs with their
“You don’t need to tell me this.”
“Yes,” he insisted. “I do. She locked the door and started taking off her clothes. It wasn’t like she had any experience at it, just determination. This was something she was going to do. She got down to the skin in about five seconds—sort of a ‘There. That’s done’ look on her face. Then she looked up at me for a minute. I’m still standing there with my mouth open. Finally she shrugged her shoulders and said, ‘Tell me what to do.’ Do you understand?”
Jane remembered. The event that you were warned about as most to be feared slowly became an obsession, until virginity was like carrying a handful of hot coals. “I think I do.”
He nodded, and gazed at the rug for a moment. “That was how it happened. It wasn’t one of those things where she just lays there with her eyes shut tight and tolerates it while you work your will on her. She wanted to do everything a man and a woman ever did together. She just didn’t know how.”
In spite of her resistance, Jane could feel it in her own memory. Of course that must always have been a part of it since time began—she remembered the fumbling and clumsiness because she hadn’t been exactly positive about how things were supposed to happen, and had been so afraid that she might be awkward. She remembered the longing to have everything be beautiful and seamless, but it was impossible because she had been watching herself with a critical, unforgiving eye.
“I didn’t know anything either,” said Bernie. “In those days, at that age you were just a kid. But we learned, like everybody does. We sneaked off six more times. Every time the bosses would disappear into the suite upstairs, she would find me.”
“What happened afterward?”
He sighed, and there was a rattly sound in his throat. “She said she was going to work it out with her father, and we would get married. I was a kid, and an outsider. I didn’t know what a job that was going to be. See, I didn’t really fit in. I was only there because I was working for the Augustinos in Pittsburgh.”
“Doing what?”
“Not much. In my one conviction, I was in with Sal Augustino. We were the same age. They didn’t have libraries and college courses and counselors. Radio wasn’t allowed. There weren’t many TVs anywhere, and there sure weren’t any in that prison. What you had was a cell and a bunk. I used to do tricks to keep myself from going crazy—describe baseball games I’d seen, batter by batter, you know? I had read a few books, so once in a while I’d recite one out loud to them. When I got out, Sal told the family about me. They didn’t know exactly what to do with me, but they put me on the payroll. I was a city housing inspector. I had to show up bright and early every Friday for five minutes to get my pay.”
“I take it that wasn’t impressive enough for her father.”
“Worse than that,” he said. “At those big meets there were lots of people around, so a lot of little side deals got made.”
“What kind of deals?”
He sadly shook his head. “You have to understand. These were—are—people for whom everything is for sale. The only issue is price.”
Jane said, “He arranged a marriage for his daughter?”
“No,” said Bernie. “Two things were decided that week. The first was the reason the Augustinos brought me along. They sold me.”
“Sold you? Like a baseball player?”
“Yeah, it was a lot like that. They wanted something from the Langustos in New York. You got to remember what happened after Capone. They got him for tax evasion, and everybody realized that was the easy way to get all of them. I had been keeping the books for the Augustinos in my head, moving money around and keeping track of it. If having a lot of money you can’t explain is a crime, you have to hide it. The Augustinos didn’t have that much, so it didn’t take a lot of time. But the New York families had a lot. I was supposed to go live in New York under the care of the Langustos. The Langustos had worked out a side deal in advance. I would start keeping track of money for all five families in New York. That way, all of them had some protection from the government, and they all had a stake in protecting me.”
“When I heard of you I always wondered how that came about,” said Jane. “I mean, these people don’t seem to trust each other very often.”
“It was a special time,” he said. “Some of these guys hated each other, but the idea of going to jail just for having money was new, and it was killing them. And the New York families had been breathing down each other’s necks for thirty years by then. I was a way to protect their money from each other, too.”
“And you agreed to the arrangement.”
“Who asked me?” said Bernie. “What happened was that my friend Sal got called upstairs. When he came back down, I’d barely made it back from meeting Francesca in her room. I was almost into the bar before I noticed I’d forgotten to tuck my shirttail in my pants. Sal hugs me and says, ‘Bernie, I just got the best news in the world about you. You’re going to be an important man, and you deserve it.’ ” The old man sat silent for a moment. “I told him, ‘Sal, I met a girl. I can’t go to New York.’ He said, ‘Bring her with you.’ I told him who she was. I told him all of it. He looked sick. After about a minute, he says, ‘You’re my friend, and I’ll try to help you. If she really loves you, then no father is going to stand in the way. Just go to New York and I’ll call you when I’ve got it arranged.’ I told him, ‘I can’t go to New York.’ He said, ‘Bernie, if you’re in New York, you’re an important man. You’ll have money, respect.’ He could see I wasn’t getting it, so finally he said, ‘If you’re with the five families, he can’t kill you.’ ”
“And you said yes.”
“I went to her and asked her what to do,” he said. “She told me that Sal was absolutely right. She said I had to go to New York, so she could help Sal work it out with her father. That night I got on a train with Carmine Langusto and eight guys.”
“I take it her father didn’t go for it,” said Jane.
“I’ll never know,” said Bernie. “I said there were at least two side deals arranged that week in Florida. That was the second one. She and her father and his guys went back to Detroit. About two days later, he comes out of a restaurant and gets his head blown off in the street.”
Now Jane was moving into familiar territory. She had heard stories like it a hundred times. “Who did it?”
“I’m not sure even now. There was a story around then that some guys in Chicago wanted to break away and take charge in Detroit. Maybe it was them. If it was, it backfired. They never got to set foot in Detroit.”
