Island of Divine Music (16 page)

It was the night before Christmas, and Paulie Verbicaro lay asleep on the concrete floor of a noisy hotel in Ensenada. His father lay alone in a motel room in Oakland with a sprained lower back, brooding about his son and his wife and Julie, occasionally picking up and setting down the telephone, eventually taking a sleeping pill and saying
sayonara
to the whole damned holiday. Penny sat in the kitchen with her mother and helped her drink a bottle of chi-anti, imagining it her job to help the younger children understand that their parents were fighting, that their father had just needed to get away and be by himself for a few days. This wasn’t the first time they’d fought or the first time he’d taken off, though, and her brother Angelo, who was upstairs singing in a terrible voice, and her baby sister, who was laughing at the TV, didn’t seem particularly upset.

Mickey was upset, though. She sat by the window, as she had done every Christmas Eve, and stared into the sky through tears.
Even though her brother had told her that Santa was just a story and that the guy at Hink’s was probably just a bum, she kept her eyes on the stars.

She remembered that Christmas was about Jesus, and not just Santa, and she thought it might be a sin to wish so much for presents on Jesus’s birthday, so she started saying, Happy Birthday, Jesus. Happy Birthday, Jesus, she said, over and over. Suddenly Lady-Bird started yelping.

And what to Mickey’s eyes should appear but Santa himself being led from a taxi to her front door by the biggest and ugliest man she’d ever seen. Merry Christmas, Mickey, the huge man said. You are Mickey, ain’t youse? She picked up Lady-Bird and nodded. The man was grinning, and his teeth looked yellow and pointed. Look who’s here. I brung him all the way from the North Pole.

Three of Santa’s ribs and one of his thumbs were broken, but the fat man managed a jolly ho-ho-ho and allowed the giant to escort him to a chair. Santa said he wanted to personally apologize to Mickey and her family and make sure he heard the child’s wish for Christmas.

Hey, Santa said to Mary and Penny, wincing as he eased into the chair, I was completely out of line with the girl and her father. Completely.

Mickey’s mother and older sister stood in the living room with mouths open and wineglasses held under their chins as if to catch their teeth in them. Her baby sissy, Janine, clutched her mom’s dress. A new Beatles album which Angelo had found and opened
early was playing a song called No Reply from the upstairs, but the boy was downstairs now, too.

Everybody makes a mistake, Jimmy the Finger said. He winked, then urged Mickey to sit on Santa’s lap. The fat man’s face went white at the suggestion, and he made a sound like a balloon letting out some air when she sat on him, but he managed to ask her what she wanted for Christmas.

Well, Mickey said, do you have enough time to make this stuff on Christmas Eve?

No problem, Santa squealed. But if you could please sit still.

I got a long list, Mickey said.

He don’t care, Jimmy the Finger said. Them reindeer ain’t going nowhere.

How come you came in a taxi and not a sled?

He’s saving his reindeer for later on tonight, the huge man said. Go ahead and ask him for anything you want. Especially things from Hink’s.

Mickey shifted her weight, which made the jolly fellow squeal like Lady-Bird did when Mickey hugged her too hard. Oh, my God, her brother Angelo said. Mom, I just realized that
Santa
and
Satan
are the same name with one letter moved. Did you ever think of that, Mom?

Angelo, don’t get started.

Seriously, that’s gotta mean something, Angelo said.

Mickey, Santa’s busy, her mom said. Her face was white as Santa’s beard, her voice trembling. Tell him what you want so he can get going

Janine clutched her mother’s dress like a mountaineer on a cliff. That’s not Santa Claus, she whispered.

There were so many things Mickey wanted, but for some reason it was hard to wish. Part of her was thrilled by Santa’s visit, by the prospect of having her every dream come true, but another part of her knew that Santa looked kind of pathetic and couldn’t really bring her happiness right now. She knew there was some sickness going around the whole country, like her sister had said. Her brother Paulie had it, and so did her father, and probably so did Santa and his big assistant in the checkered sport coat. She got up.

Hey, kid, Santa said, what do you want?

Angelo once told her that for Santa to actually fly to every house in the world and bring a gift to every person like a magical astronaut orbiting the planet he’d need to move faster than Superman. She went to her room and returned with the figurine of the Buddha.

Here, she said. He has a big belly like you.

Santa stood slowly and accepted the gift. You’re a nice kid, he said. His eyes were moist. You’re a very nice kid.

Ain’t that nice, Jimmy the Finger said. Hey, where’s the johnny? He lumbered down the hall.

Rub the belly, Santa, Mickey said as she showed him to the door. She kissed his cheek. You better skedaddle.

She smiled and waved as Santa, with the Buddha still clutched in his gloved hand, hopped down the steps. He ran faster than you’d think a fat man could, making a beeline for his sleigh and the houses of all the children in the world, disappearing into the night.

Ludovico

L
udovico Verbicaro loved a good cigar and the idea of its leaves harvested by brown-skinned women on a tropical island where the mountains disappeared in steaming clouds. He loved a good scrap ending with a knockout, a ball smacked out of the park, a tee shot over the drink and fifty yards past the young guys a foot taller than himself. Lu loved the little guys from the Caribbean who played their nuts off and slid on their bellies under the catcher’s glove, the underdogs with the huge heart, the rally in the bottom of the ninth. He lived for these moments, but he nearly died for them, too, over and over, his own heart and his stomach and some place in the back of his brain nearly snapped in two when they happened. While his handsome, dim-witted older brother drifted along with a smile and a winning ticket, and his younger brother calculated and schemed the smartest course to take, Lu followed his heart and his gut and that place on his brain stem which often seemed about to snap like a suspender strap, and he rode his number out to the bitter end.

In the summer of 1970 Lu was riding a long shot that could put
him in cigars and bananas for the rest of his life or, more likely, could land him in prison and lifelong debt. He’d already run up a debt from gambling which a year of his salary from the family business couldn’t cover, and he kept this a secret from the brothers he shared the construction business with. He owed six hundred dollars in parking and traffic tickets alone, and his Chrysler Imperial needed a transmission he couldn’t afford, so he told his family he was tired of driving. He put another mortgage on the house he rarely spent time in since his children had grown up and his wife had passed away, and he threw ten grand he didn’t have into a scheme orchestrated by a little wise guy named Jimmy Olivera.

How Lu met Jimmy began with a conversation in the late ’50s with Jimmy’s brother-in-law, a made man from the East Coast whom Lu happened to meet at the dog races. The man said he was part of the Gambino family of New Jersey, and that he had come to the Bay Area to make a few investments with his associates. Lu and his older brother, Narciso, welcomed their interest because they seemed like great guys with a lot of money to spare, but their younger brother, Joe, turned the Jersey men down a few days later. No hard feelings and no disrespect intended, but Joe said they had a small business and all they could do to keep it small enough to manage and keep Uncle off their backs. Lu could hardly believe his brother’s balls at saying this to New Jersey, but the leader of the entourage said he understood.

A dozen years later this same man, jowly and white-haired now, had another business proposition for the Verbicaro brothers, and Joe did his best to turn him down again. The man stared across the
table a moment, his cheeks coloring. A man comes to you in good faith to ask a favor, for which he will gladly pay you very well. Joe swallowed and nodded. A brother-in-law, the man said, a nice guy with not much talent or initiative, to be honest, needs some office space here in California for a small import business.

Hell, he can have Ciso’s desk, Lu said. Narciso nodded.

Office and a little storage space is all he needs, the mafioso murmured. He waved a hand to a young man who’d sat silently at the table through all five courses of lunch, and the young man opened a briefcase and placed some papers on the table next to the calamari. Lu reached for the papers, and Joe put his hand on his arm.

Hold the phone, Amos, Joe said, trying to sound like Andy in the old radio program.

What’s the problem now, Mr. Verbicaro?

Yeah? Lu wanted to know.

Joe squinted at the contract, but he wasn’t reading it, he was averting his eyes and buying time to cool off and think. Office and storage space, Joe said, as if he were studying the paper. Hmm. Joe was remembering the conversation he’d had with his brothers right after their first meeting with these Jersey guys, how Lu and Ciso had finally seemed to grasp the significance of steering clear of mobsters, how even their mother had scolded them for being so naive. The black hand, their old mother had said, I knew who those boys were in the old country. They’re all a bunch of lost ducks.

What the hell does Ciso use his desk for? Lu asked. He puts golf tees in the drawers.

I got a lot of addresses in there, Ciso said. People I know. But, hell, I could share it.

Joe cleared his throat and told New Jersey he’d lease them half of one of his two old warehouses, which he really never filled now that business was slow, and erect a partition and office in it for the brother-in-law and his business. Power, utilities, maintenance of street access, all part of the lease agreement. I’ll write it up, have your man here look it over, and we all sign. Totally separate businesses.

Why do you worry so much about keeping things separate?

Something our old man taught me. What does this guy import?

The mafioso grimaced and stared into Joe’s eyes a moment, then he smiled. He sighed. My little sister’s husband, Jimmy. He tries, you know? He’s a little soft up here. He tapped his forehead, and both Joe and Lu nodded, and the three men glanced at Narciso and nodded some more. He tries. He brings in coffee, Italian cheeses, cigars. That kind of thing.

Cigars? Hell, he can have my desk, Lu said, and all the men, save Joe, chuckled.

A
year later, the brother-in-law’s office remained dark twenty-two hours out of twenty-four. The door had no business title or name painted on it, and the storage space usually held a few cardboard boxes connected by hammocks of spiderweb, and a few salamis and cheeses hanging in a corner above a couple of oil drums. Whenever the door was open, Ciso and Lu would stop, and
Jimmy Olivera would give them cigars and whatever he had around that month, some chianti, a little sheep’s cheese. This new stuff was always right there in the little office space, in the file cabinet or on the desk. The desk was Ciso’s, and most of the furniture had come from the brothers, including a phone which Lu had hooked up to their own business line. What the hell does Jimmy need a phone bill for if he’s here twice a month? Lu had said, and Jimmy had thanked him heartily.

For all his connection with the wealth of the East Coast, Jimmy seemed perpetually broke. He bummed lunch and rides from the brothers. His own car, which he always parked behind the warehouse next to a Dumpster, was an old Buick Century whose paint, like Jimmy’s hairline, was receding on top. His suit was nice, but he always wore the same thing, and the knees and elbows were shiny and thin. His expensive Italian shoes were over a decade old, and the shape of his big toes advertised themselves like the handprints in front of Grauman’s Chinese.

Olivera could tell a good story, though, and both Lu and Ciso loved to hear him talk. He talked about huge bets he’d won, trips to the Caribbean, show-business people he’d met. He talked about that dirty son of a bitch Castro, and how the increased price of cigars was a direct effect of communism. Olivera had frequent words about Castro, about how much he’d love to be the one to put a bullet in his head.

Once in a great while, maybe three times that year to Lu’s knowledge, the warehouse would go from empty to filled to the rafters overnight. It seemed that only Lu and Ciso were privy to
this, and only if they happened to stumble onto Jimmy the day after delivery. Olivera told them to keep it under their hats. Timing, he said, was everything in his line, and if they were to tell people, like their brother Joe, for instance, and word got around, his prices would sink. Then some morning, maybe a week or two later, they’d drop by, and Jimmy’s warehouse would be empty again, as if dwarves or mice had carried everything off in the night, and Jimmy would have some new box of chocolate or a crate of banana liquor to share with them on Ciso’s bare desk.

Lu knew Jimmy wasn’t soft in the head like Ciso, so he wondered why the Jersey guys had seemed so hesitant about him. Lu’s own brothers-in-law, his sisters’ husbands, were slow workers and hard drinkers who put in their days and anesthetized themselves every evening with Jack Daniels. Olivera, to Lu, was maybe more of a dreamer, more of a gambler and schemer, and for this Lu found him lovable.

It takes a dreamer to make something big happen, and it takes a risk, and this was where Lu’s ten thousand dollars came in. One spring morning they drove past the warehouse, and the office door was ajar, and Lu could see the glowing tip of a stogie in the shadows. Soon they were talking, and Olivera asked them if they wanted to go in on something big, something humongous, a once-in-a-lifetime deal. Ciso said, No, thanks, and fooled with the radio dial, but Lu asked Olivera to elaborate. The little guy’s eyes darted at Ciso, and Lu sent Ciso to the local market for some orange juice and batteries, and the two dreamers leaned over the desk after he’d gone. It had to do with cigars, the very best cigars in the world, the best
crop they’d get for a decade or maybe forever because Jimmy knew a few things most people didn’t. Like how they’d had their bumper crop in Cuba this year, and how a few guys who worked for Sam Trafficante were thinking it was time to kick Castro in the balls and fix international prices by dropping some napalm on some tobacco farms, and how he could get things past the customs guys, etc., etc. Right now even, you know how much I could get for this torpedo I’m smoking if I was to sell it in Switzerland?