Street to Baxter on the edge of Chinatown. The house was bigger, I had three rooms to myself, my own bathroom, and a small kitchenette where I could cook the food I wanted when we weren’t eating together. I bought a record player and started listening to Louis Prima and Al Martino, and when Ten Cent was out of the house I would take a suit on a hanger from my wardrobe, hold it close like a partner, and pretend I was dancing with Angelina Maria Tiacoli. I had not seen her since that day on Hester when she came out of the salon, and most nights I thought of her, of how it would be to lie beside her in the cool half light of morning, the warmth of my body against hers, the words we would share, of how important everything would become if she were with me. I felt like a child with a schoolyard crush, and there was a passion and promise that lay within that feeling that were new to me.
In June me and Ten Cent had to go uptown to Tompkins Square Park and meet with a man called John Delancey. Delancey was a Clerk of the Court on the Fifth Circuit. He told us that there was a pending investigation coming to a head. The target was Don Fabio Calligaris and Tony Provenzano.
‘Tony Pro had someone killed,’ John Delancey told us. ‘I don’t know why, I don’t know what it was all about, but the guy was a cop’s brother. Cop’s name was Albert Young, a sergeant at the 11th Precinct. They cut his brother’s balls off and put them in his mouth for God’s sake, and the cop has been shouting long enough for someone to take notice.’
Ten Cent was nodding. He looked intent. ‘So how come this falls on Calligaris?’ he asked.
‘Because the Feds have been after Calligaris for years but they never got anything on him. Calligaris is hand- in-glove with Tony Ducks, and Tony Ducks is boss of the Luchese family, and if anything happens to Calligaris then the Feds reckon it will bring down the Lucheses. They wanna make it seem like the Lucheses welched on Tony Pro and start another faction war.’
Ten Cent laughed. ‘Shit, these people work for the government and they must be the dumbest motherfuckers ever to walk the face of the earth.’
‘Maybe so,’ Delancey said, ‘but they got wires and circumstantial evidence, fabricated or otherwise, that puts Calligaris in a room with Tony Pro saying as how they’re gonna whack the cop’s brother.’
‘That’s bullshit,’ Ten Cent said. He looked like he was going to get angry.
Delancey shrugged. ‘Just tellin’ ya how it is, Ten Cent. You gotta get Calligaris to sort out the cop, make him shut his mouth, and then you gotta plug the leak that’s inside your family.’
‘You gotta name?’
Delancey shook his head. ‘No, I don’t gotta name, Ten Cent, and if I did you’d have it, but all I know is that someone inside your camp, someone who comes close to Calligaris, has given the Feds what they need and they’re gonna use him as a witness.’
Later, after a fat brown envelope was passed discreetly from Ten Cent to Delancey, we walked back to the car.
‘Not a word of this to anyone,’ Ten Cent warned me.
‘A word of what?’ I asked.
Ten Cent winked and smiled. ‘That’s my man.’
Three nights later on a dark corner – East 12th near Stuyvesant Park – I picked up on Sergeant Albert Young of the 11th Precinct leaving a wine store and crossing the road to his car.
Four minutes later Sergeant Albert Young of the 11th Precinct – twice decorated for valor, three times commended by the Office of the Mayor for bravery above and beyond the call of duty, seven times recipient of a 118 citation for excessive force – was slumped in the driver’s seat with a.22 caliber hole back of his left ear. He wouldn’t shout about his brother any more. More likely than not he’d get to speak with him real soon in cop heaven.
Four days subsequent Don Calligaris came to our house and spoke with me and Ten Cent.
‘You guys gotta plug the leak,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘We watched what happened after the cop got clipped, and we know who spent too much time away from home. We had him followed and he met some suits in Cooper Square up near the Village yesterday morning.’
Ten Cent leaned forward.
‘This name goes out of this room and there’s gonna be hell to pay. You gotta do it quick and quiet. Send Ernesto. He did good with the cop, very good indeed, and we need the same kind of thing here. We need it to look like he was into something bad so they don’t parade him round like some sort of martyr, okay?’
‘Who?’ Ten Cent said.
Calligaris shook his head and sighed. ‘Cagnotto… Stefano Cagnotto, the dumbass sorry excuse for a piece of motherfuckin’ shit.’
‘Aah fuck, I liked him,’ Ten Cent said.
‘Well, you ain’t gonna get to like him any more, Ten Cent. Asshole got himself picked up on a speeding ticket, they searched his car, found a bag of coke and a.38. He was looking at a year, two tops if he screwed up the trial, and he’s talking about turning States and walking if he gives up me and Tony Pro for the cop’s brother.’
Ten Cent turned and looked at me. ‘You remember him from the Blue Flame?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘but you can show me who he is… and he sure as hell is gonna remember me, right?’
Calligaris smiled. ‘You’re a good one, Ernesto, and it sure as shit is a shame you ain’t from back home otherwise you’d be getting yourself made before fuckin’ Christmas.’
Don Calligaris left then. Me and Ten Cent sat for a while in silence, and then he turned to me and said, ‘Sooner the better, kid. Let’s go check out where the motherfucker is and see how we’re gonna do this, okay?’
I nodded. I stood up. I asked if I had time to clean my shoes before we left.
That night, middle of a hot June in New York, I sat in the back room of Stefano Cagnotto’s overnight apartment in Cleveland Place. A block away was the Police Headquarters building. I appreciated the sense of irony. I had been waiting for the better part of two hours before I heard the sound of feet on the risers below. The tension felt good in my gut. I wanted to take a piss but it was too late to move.
The apartment was dark but for a thin film of light that seeped through the curtains to my right. In my hand I felt the weight of a silenced.38. I was dressed in a good five-hundred-dollar suit. I had on a white shirt and a knitted silk tie. Had you seen me at the Blue Flame with the Luchese crew you wouldn’t have thought twice. I was part of their family, Cuban blood regardless, I was part of the Lucheses, I was someone, and that someone felt good.
Stefano Cagnotto wasn’t drunk, but he carried a skinful, and when he came through the apartment door he fumbled and dropped his keys. He swore twice and searched around in the darkness to retrieve them. I heard the jangle of metal as he picked them up. He closed and deadbolted the door. That was instinct. In this business you always deadbolted even if you’d only come back ’cause you’d forgotten your pocketbook.
Once inside he flicked on the light. I heard him sit down. Heard his shoes scuttle along the floor as he kicked them off. He started singing to himself. ‘Fly me to the moon, and let me play among the stars…’
I worked my feet around in circles until I heard the ankle bones pop. I eased myself forward in the chair and took the weight of my body in my knees and my feet. I rose carefully, soundlessly, and I took a step towards the front room. By the time I reached the doorway Cagnotto had walked out back to the kitchen. I heard the rush of the faucet.
I held my breath and waited for him to come back.
In his hand he held a glass. He saw me. He dropped the glass.
‘What the fu-’
I raised my hand.
‘Ernesto,’ he said. ‘Jesus fucking Christ, Ernesto, you gave me the scare of my fucking life! What the living fuck are you doing here?’
I brought my right hand out from my side.
Cagnotto’s eye fixed on the gun.
‘Aah Jesus Christ, Ernesto, what the fuck is this shit?’ He looked down at the ground. ‘Look what the fuck you made me do,’ he said, indicating the shattered glass at his feet. He stepped over the broken shards carefully and took a couple of steps into the room.
