birthday. Don Fabio Calligaris and Tony Provenzano threw me a party at the Blue Flame, a party I will never forget.
It was Tony Giacalone who asked me, asked me what I wanted for my birthday, told me I could have anything I wanted in the world.
‘Your blessing,’ I told him. ‘The blessing of the family.’
‘Blessing for what, Ernesto?’
‘To marry a girl, Don Giacalone… that’s what I want for my birthday.’
‘Of course, of course… and who do you want to marry?’
‘Angelina Maria Tiacoli.’
They gave me the blessing, reservedly perhaps, but they gave it, and though it would be another four months before I saw her again it was on that day that my life changed irreversibly.
Later many other things would change also. In August Nixon would finally concede defeat and resign, taking with him the spider’s web of connections that ran throughout the families right across the United States. On 15 October the following year Carlo Gambino would die of a heart attack while watching a Yankees game on the TV in his Long Island summer home. He would be succeeded, not by Aniello Dellacroce as everyone believed would be the case, but by Paul Castellano, a man who built a replica of the White House on Todd Hill, Staten Island; a man who negotiated a truce with the Irish-New York Mafia and offered their leaders – Nicky Featherstone and Jimmy Coonan – permission to use the Gambino name in their dealings for a ten percent cut of all their earnings from Hell’s Kitchen on the West Side; a man who would ultimately contribute to the relinquishing of power the Italian crime families held in New York.
Carmine Persico would depose Thomas DiBella as head of the Colombo family in 1978; Carmine Galante would hold sway in the Bonanno family until 1979 when he was murdered at Joe and Mary’s Italian Restaurant in Brooklyn, and he was replaced by Caesar Bonaventre, the youngest ever capo, merely twenty-four years old. By then my time in New York would be coming to a close; by then I would have long-since graduated from the clip jobs and shootings where I had earned my reputation, and my apprenticeship would have ended.
I believed I came to New York to find something. What it was I was looking for I did not know then, and even now cannot be sure. What I found was something I could never have anticipated, and that is something I will share a little of with you now.
It was close to Thanksgiving, and though Thanksgiving was not a particularly significant event in the Italian calendar, it was nevertheless a reason to eat more, to drink more, have parties at the Blue Flame and make wisecracks about one another.
I borrowed Ten Cent’s car, took it to an autoshop and had them valet it. God almighty only knows what they found inside, but they were family people and wouldn’t have cared anyway. I parked the car a block from the house so Ten Cent wouldn’t forget he’d lent it to me and drive off someplace, and I walked home. I dressed nice, like for church or something, and I cleaned my shoes and knotted my tie. It was early evening, a Saturday, and by seven I was leaving again with a spring in my step and two thousand bucks in my pocket.
When she opened the door she was dressed in nothing but slippers and a housecoat. Her hair was tied back of her head like she’d been cleaning or something, and when she saw me standing there with a thousand-dollar suit and a thirty-five-dollar bouquet it was all she could do to keep her eyes in her head. I was not a spectacularly handsome man, I mean hell, I couldn’t have modeled for magazines or whatever, but I scrubbed up clean and you could have taken me anyplace and not felt ashamed.
‘Yes?’ she said.
‘There’s a show at the Metropolitan Opera,’ I said. ‘A music show.’ I handed her the flowers. She looked at them like I was handing her a bag with a dead rat inside. ‘Anyway, there’s a music show at the Metropolitan Opera-’
‘You said that already… you better hurry now or you’re gonna miss the start.’
I looked at her. ‘I worked hard to look this good, and you look good even in your housecoat and your slippers. You get happy just being mean to people, or is it because you’re sick in the mind or something?’
She laughed then, and the sound was like something better than anyone might ever hear at the Metro.
‘No, I’m sick in the mind, and I can’t help but be mean to people,’ she said. ‘Now go away with your stupid flowers and whatever. Go find some pretty blonde with legs to her neck and take her to the opera house.’
‘I came to take you.’
Angelina Maria Tiacoli looked aghast. ‘I seem to remember seeing you in the street. That was you, wasn’t it?’
‘On Hester Street when you came from the hairstyling salon.’
Angelina frowned, was momentarily taken aback. ‘What, you take notes or something?’
I shook my head. ‘No, I don’t take notes… I just have a knack for remembering important stuff.’
‘And where I get my hair done is important?’
‘No, not where you get your hair done… the fact that it was you was what was important.’
‘You’re serious, aren’t you?’
‘Serious enough to ask for Don Giacalone’s blessing, and for the blessing of the family.’
‘Blessing for what?’
‘To marry you, Angelina Maria Tiacoli… to marry you and make you my wife.’
‘To marry me
‘Yes, that’s so.’
‘I see,’ she said. ‘And you know who I am?’
‘I know enough about you to want to take you out, and I don’t know enough about you to find you very interesting indeed.’
‘So I’m interesting, eh?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Interesting and beautiful, and when you speak I can hear everything in your voice that makes me think I could love you for the rest of your life.’
‘Did you practise this before you came over, or did you get a Hollywood screenwriter to make this stuff up?’
I nodded my head. ‘You got me there. I got a Hollywood writer to put it all down on paper for me, and I told him if it didn’t work then I was gonna go over to his house and shoot him in the knee.’
She laughed again. I was getting through.
‘So you went and dressed up all smart and you bought some flowers and you came over here with no invitation to ask me if I would go to the Metropolitan Opera with you?’
‘I did.’
‘I can’t come.’
I frowned. ‘Why?’
‘Because I can’t go out with you, or anyone like you, so you’re gonna have to get over it real quick and find someone else to harass.’
Angelina Tiacoli smiled once more, but it wasn’t a warm or well-meaning smile, and then she closed the door hard and fast and left me standing on the stoop.
I waited for thirty seconds or so until I heard her footsteps disappear inside, and then I stepped back, laid the bouquet against the door and drove home.
I went back the following afternoon after lunch.
‘
‘
‘You’re not gonna give up, are you?’
I shook my head.
‘How was the music show?’
‘
‘
‘
‘
‘
‘Or a show at the Metro.’
