Authors: George V. Higgins
He laughed. “
Maybe that’s what I should’ve done. Told you an’ Nunzio, and Rocky Girolamo, ‘All right, first one gives me a fur coat anna white Caddy convert, red leather seats, sets me up a nice apartment, his will be the organization I will join.’ Become a sweet boy, a
castrato,
have a nice life for myself.
”
“Carlo next,” Hinchey mouthed. Someone on the tape belched loudly. Farrier nodded. “
Jesus Christ, Tommy, ’chou got any manners? Makin’ awful noise like that. Sound just like a fuckin’ pig. What if our good friend here, Nick, what if he’s got a wire on, huh? Workin’ for the FBI, and then when they hear you do that, what they gonna think of us, huh? ‘Huh, some kind of bigshot Mafia wise guys these are, makin’ noises like they’re pigs. Some kind of animals.
’ ” There was general laughter on the tape.
“Cavicchi,” Hinchey mouthed.
“
Well, I can’t help it, can I? Fuckin’ Bacciochi always puts too much oil and peppers, garlic, in that stuff, inna sauce, when it’s his turn to make it. Doesn’t bother you guys, I guess, but me, I got a sens’tive stomach. That’s the way it affects me. So what’m I supposed to do? Sit here watchin’ you guys eat, an’ I’m not havin’ any? Fuck that fuckin’ shit, I say, if that’s what you guys want. No, just don’t use so much, the peppers anna garlic—you’ll see then I’ll be all right.
”
Hinchey mouthed “Carlo next again.”
“
Ah, we shouldn’t blame you, Tommy. ‘It’s all his father’s fault. Look what he married.’ That’s what Nunzio always said, someone like our Tommy here, disappointed him. ‘See what happens? Didn’t
marry an Italian. No, Italian girls’ not good enough—he hadda go outside. What that does, it always happens—thins the blood. Weakens the stock. Makes the man less in his mind, his fortitude, you know? What he has to be a man with.
’ ”
“Poor Cavicchi,” Farrier said, laughing and shaking hs head. Hinchey paused the tape. “Hafta feel sorry, the guy. His father marries a Jewish girl whose family came from Florence, moved down there from Zurich fourteenth century or so. Generations they’re bankers ’n’ brokers for Medicis, and Borgias. Then the war comes, First World War; they pick the wrong side and they’re ruined. What’s left of them come here, she’s still a little girl. Marries Giovanni Cavicchi, why not? All she’s ever known’re people with Italian names and this’s America, the melting pot—what the hell is wrong with what? Turns out—everything. Here’s her kid now, crowding sixty—even
he
can’t live it down.”
Hinchey restarted the tape. “And Carlo again,” he said.
“
But you say that, along with me for Nunzio here, the Girolamos, when Rocco and his people are having their wars with Brian G. and them, the Girolamos at the same time as I am asking you, they are also doing that. Because Rocco’s not agreeing if the Gallaghers are done with, should be Nunzio in charge—bastard Rocco, he thinks it should be him.
”
“Now Cistaro,” Hinchey mouthed.
“
Yeah, that’s how I remember it. Me and Hugo, matter of fact, way we were lookin’ at it … well, that he was lookin’ at it …
”
“
Hugo Bottalico …
”
“
Right, yeah, Hugo Botto. I was still with Hugo then. Well, I wasn’t with him, really, not that way that you would mean it. I, I did some things for Hugo before I went in the service. You know, little stuff, like you do for someone when you’re still really just a kid, an’ what they’re doing’s testing you, giving you small things to do, seein’ how you handle it. You think you’re the hottest stuff there is
but really, all you really are’s a real stiff dick that won’t let the big kid it’s on think about a single thing in the whole world except a place where he can put it, hot, tight an’ wet, ’stead of usin’ his own hand.
”
There was laughter on the tape and then Cistaro’s voice continued. “
Yeah, we all know that’s how it is because we know how we all were—at the age where the only thing in the whole world that you can think about is pussy. Anyway, then I decide to enlist. My father was all over me. He don’t like what he sees as the way that I am headin’, wants me apprentice with him, learn stonecuttin’, all right? Always tellin’ me it’s an honorable trade, ‘good honest work, always ’ll be needed,’ and … well, you know, it wasn’t like I thought he was wrong, or like that—I didn’t wanna do it.
“
I seen the kind of life he had, how hard he hadda work, outside, in all kinds of weather, and what he got for it, and … that just wasn’t what I wanted. So I then decided what I really needed most was some time to think about it, by myself. Or maybe just some time to maybe grow up a little—first some time to learn to think, and then after that, to think. Anna service—that seemed like it’d be the best place to do that, get myself figured out.
So that was what I did. I signed up the navy. But before I went to do it, along with tellin’ this to my parents naturally, about needing time to think, I also went to Hugo, told him what I’m gonna do. So he won’t think, you know, I’m now agreein’ with my father—because he knew what my father said, what my father thought of him, and of me doin’ things for him—he’s not the kind of guy that I should be workin’ with. Because he’d been good to me.
”
There was quiet on the tape and then there were murmurs of assent from several speakers.
“
Sure, you know, so like I said, I went to Hugo, and I told him, so his feelings wouldn’t be hurt. Said ‘I’m goin’ in the service, gonna be a navy guy.’ And he, you know, gave me his blessing, and that meant something to me.
”
Carlo’s was among several voices saying “
Sure
” and “
Course it did.
”
“
And what he then said to me, this’s Hugo, I’m talking, he said that when I’m back again, I get through with the service, ‘If I am then still alive, and have things that you might do, things that another man would do, I hope you’ll still come and see me and that sometimes now and then we may do some things together.’ Which I knew by that he meant that I would work with him and be like sort of junior partners with him, and that when he was ready to hang it up, retire, I would then take his place. Well, I took it that way, anyway, and, well, you know, I was kind of honored by it.
“
And so that’s what I was doing back then, four years later and I’m now back from the service, when Nunzio had you saying to me I should join with him and you, and Rocky and the guys with him were saying I should join with them, and both of you’re telling me with what I know, explosives and the other stuff, the service, either way it’s guaranteed that whoever gets me will be the ones knock Brian G. off and become the bosses here.
“
And I did not know what to do. So again I talked to Hugo. Since I’d come out of the service I’d once again been doing a few things with him, nothing really major but still bigger’n anything I did for him before I went in, and he said to me himself, he’s becoming an old man, and it’s a natural thing for an old man to slow down—‘You know, I hope you stay with me, all right?’ So I had the idea still that I am going to succeed him, and this would mean that I would have my own small operation—not like with Nunzio, where you would be above me, or with Girolamo, where the boss would still be Rocky.
“
But the thing with Hugo was that he wasn’t, really, slowing down. His was always a small operation of course, mostly the furnishing of advance money and safe places to keep goods and so forth until they could be sold. Or if you wished, to sell them for you, sixty-five cents on the dollar, no matter what he got. And then of
course the money-lending. The airport and the Navy Yard were his territories.
“
Now I saw it didn’t have to be this way with what he had. If he had had the kind of operation that you and Nunzio and Rocco had, or even Brian G., then what Hugo had for himself would have been the basis for a much bigger one. A bigger operation and a much larger organization to run it. But he didn’t have partners or people under him, and even though what he had said to me before I went inna the service made me think if I came back that was what we would become, and that in time when he retired, his operation would be mine, I began to see that what he did about retirement was that—he talked about it.
“
And so I therefore went to him and told him about you and Nunzio, and also about Rocco, and asked him what I should do. And he told me I should stay with him, and again when he was somewhat older that this operation, ‘and it is a good size for an operation because the man who runs it can do almost all of it himself—with one other person he can trust, which is about as many as one man in one lifetime can expect to find, and need not concern himself about betrayal as he would working with many.’ And so I saw that if I expected to become richer before I was as old as he was, I would have to make a change.
”
Hinchey paused the Ampex. “Now this’s where Carlo comes in and really puts it to him,” he said. “I give it to the guy—he’s good. Carlo’s been around a while and he runs an operation full of very hard guys. When he wants to know something, he wants a straight answer. He’s not used to having people bob and weave on him, and that’s just what the Frogman does. I think that’s what he does, at least. Maybe you listen, you tell me.” He touched the Play button again. “Carlo now,” he said.
“
You say that. But you didn’t come with us. And you didn’t go with Rocco. Instead you went with McKeach. Why did you do that? When I had spoken with you, you had said that Girolamo also
wanted you to join him, and that what you thought you had to do was decide whether you’d be better off with him or us, or if you simply stayed with Hugo as the broker for a bunch of amateurs. Nothing about McKeach to me. Not a word of him.
”
“Cistaro,” Hinchey mouthed.
“
McKeach was not McKeach then, when you talked to me. McKeach then was Brian G.’s man. Very powerful, but still, one part of an organization—very dangerous, as we all knew, never to be insulted, but he did not have an organization that he ran and made decisions. He enforced Brian’s decisions.
“
When he came to me, this’d changed. It was right after Brian G. went down. I know some people—cops, I know, believed Bernie G. would take his place, but no one I respected did, and I didn’t either. I thought, ‘Now that Brian G. is gone and leaves his organizaton and the man who managed it for him, McKeach, the man who managed it for him will have it for himself.’ And when he asked to talk with me and said we should get together because if we did that then with what he had left from Brian G. and what I had with Hugo we could make it possible for business to continue, while Nunzio—you—and Rocco’s people fought with each other, and then when you had settled that, we would be the other organization in a city that is big enough for two.
“
That made sense to me, the best sense I had heard, and so I said that I woud join him. And that is what I did.
”
Hinchey mouthed, “Carlo.”
“
Again, you confuse me. You said that you remained with Hugo because he made you believe that if you stayed with him long enough that when the day came he retired you would have what he had made. But then after Brian G.’s death and our war with Rocco began and McKeach then came to see you, you said you would associate yourself with him to form an independent organization—when you could have come with us. Or joined with the Girolamos. And Hugo was still in place then, when you joined up with McKeach.
”
The tape ran and made no sound. Farrier raised his eyebrows. Hinchey said, “Here it comes, now. Cistaro here.”
“
Yeah. Well, tell you how that came about. What’d happened, see, was this. My wife Madelyn and I, I’m still livin’ with her then, hadn’t been married that long, and what can I tell you, huh? We’re still in love. So these two young guys that dealt with Hugo every now an’ then, freelancers—like most the people Hugo did his business with, you know? Hugo’s organization was basically a bunch of people who weren’t organized, didn’t have a gang that they knew they were a part of, so when they needed something, just did something or they’re getting ready tah do something, they came and they saw Hugo. And these were two of them, just a couple of young Irish guys worked on the docks, I guess, and I therefore also knew them. And my wife’s then just found out for sure she’s pregnant, with our first. This would’ve been our daughter, Suzanne, and the baby’s not for at least seven months but she wants a washing machine. Right off, she’s gotta have one. And a drier. Both of them. So, and you know how they are, they got one in the oven, they decide they rule the world. You don’t get for them what they want, when they want it, well good-bye, that’s all she wrote; go stick your dick in somewhere else.
”
There was knowing and appreciative laughter on the tape.
“
So I talk to Hugo about this, and he says, ‘Here’s what you do. Get ahold the Ryan brothers, tell ’em what it is she wants, I said get ’em for you onna cuff. And then when it falls off of a truck I loan you my station wagon and you get a friend of yours to help you, pick them up and take them home, an’ hook ’em up? Guarantee it you’re a hero, finest husband ever lived, and when you get home at night she’ll have a cold beer in her hand for you an’ your dick out of your pants before you can get your coat off.’
“
So this sounds good to me and that is what I do, get a couple guys McKeach knows help me muscle the units around and I borrow Hugo’s car. This big green Olds Vista Cruiser, had this little
windshield inna roof like the railroad cars with two decks in ’em. ‘Yeah, we got the washer. Got two very nice units for you. Go down the Navy Yard,’ they tell me, ‘sometime after nine o’clock. Building Seven. Maytags’ll be onna dock.’
“
So we do that, me and these two other guys McKeach knows. And maybe I should also mention this’s Friday, Memorial Day three-day weekend. So these guys’re all around, but places like the Navy Yard no one is around—because they’ve all gone away someplace for the long weekend. Anyway, this’s plus McKeach himself, he also comes, because the two guys he’s sending with me, they don’t have a car. I guess they cracked theirs up or something, means they’re gonna need a ride, and McKeach says he is free that night and what he’ll do, he’ll drive them.