Who is Lou Sciortino? (11 page)

“Don Giorgino,” Uncle Sal says, “you're here.”

And he stands there, waiting for a sign.

Don Giorgino doesn't move.

One of his
picciotti
goes up to Don Giorgino and whispers in his ear, “Sal Scali's here.”

Don Giorgino jumps. “Turuzzeddu is here?”

“Here I am, Don Giorgino!”

“Here he is,” the
picciotto
says.

“So why don't you tell him to sit down?” Don Giorgino says to the
picciotto.

The
picciotto
signals to Uncle Sal that he can sit down.

Uncle Sal sits down and looks around him.

“Is it true Turuzzeddu fucked up?” Don Giorgino asks the
picciotto
on his right.

“It's true, Don Giorgino, I fucked up!” Uncle Sal says.

“It's true, he tells me,” Don Giorgino says. Then he turns to the
picciotto
on his left. “Is it true or not that I always say, when somebody fucks up they gotta put it right?”

“It's true,” the
picciotto
confirms.

“It's true!” Uncle Sal says.

Don Giorgino nods and turns to the
picciotto
on his right. “I know if Turuzzeddu fucks up, we gotta give him time to put it right. He's a quick thinker, I'm sure he'll straighten things out within a week, because I got some business to take care of in town next week, and I need everything to be clean.
Minchia,
” he says, laughing his toothless laugh, “it's a good thing Turuzzeddu's a quick thinker, otherwise I'd be in the shit!”

The
picciotto
turns to Uncle Sal and says, “Don Giorgino is sure you'll straighten things out in a week.”

“Tell Don Giorgino that Sal Scali has already straightened things out.”

“Sal Scali says—”

“I heard him, what do you think I am, deaf?” Don Giorgino says. “Why don't you two boys go for a walk? Did you hear? Turuzzeddu's already straightened things out. Now sit here, and tell me about it.” He squeezes the arm of the
picciotto
on the left and says, “Turuzzeddu says he's straightened things out, then he has. You think somebody's going to say things are straightened out when they're not?”

The
picciotti
look at each other, take off their dark glasses, and go out without a word.

Once they're alone, Uncle Sal sits down on the chair next to Don Giorgino.

“Turuzzeddu, tell me about it!” Don Giorgino says.

“Everything's fine,” Uncle Sal says, “just like you ordered. Tonight, that kid Sciortino meets the junkie. He already went to see Uncle Mimmo and threatened him … That way, like you ordered, we talk to the cops, tell them the
americano
is trying to fuck things up for Sal Scali, shifting the blame from that junkie dipshit onto two of my
picciotti
who just happened to be passing through Uncle Mimmo's store! He's trying to make the cops think I'm some nobody whose word's for shit—that's our line. But he who lives by the sword…”

“Takes it in the ass!” Don Giorgino says. “Please, I need everything in place for next week, the La Brunas are sending us that package from America, and we gotta get it delivered.”

LOU SCIORTINO SENIOR LIVED IN BROOKLYN UNTIL NOT SO LONG AGO

Lou Sciortino Senior lived in Brooklyn until not so long ago. Now he's got a beautiful house in New Jersey, horses by de Chirico on the walls, a grand piano in the living room, and
picciotti
in the garden, all spruced up. But Don Lou hasn't felt comfortable since he left Brooklyn. In Brooklyn, Catherine and Charles Scorsese were his neighbors, they were so proud of their boy. All his dreams are there, all his experiences. Fuck, Vincente Minnelli in person once knocked at his door. He was a bit too scented for Don Lou's taste, Don Lou was just a boy then, an ambitious boy, but he already knew how to spot a limp wrist. He went with him to a party, Gambino's orders, to make sure nobody insulted him. Fuck, what a party! Everybody was there! Marilyn, Joe, but above all the man himself, Frank, you just had to look at him to know he had three balls! Lou Sciortino Senior later told everybody what had happened. How he asked Frank Sinatra for a cigarette, and Frank said, “Sorry, kid, I haven't got one,” and he said, “Don't matter, Frank,” and Frank said, “Hey, kid, what's your name?” and he said, “Lou Sciortino,” and Frank said, “Wait there, Lou,” and went out and came back with a huge silver tray full of cigarettes. Don Lou subsequently read the same story in a magazine, told by some fucking actor, and his first reaction was that the fucking actor was a son of a bitch who'd ripped off his story, but then he thought maybe the real son of a bitch was Frank, who must have scripted the entire scene.

But what Don Lou remembers most of all from Brooklyn and his youth is Saul Trento. Lou and Saul, everybody said in Brooklyn. Saul Trento was more than a friend, he was his brother, even though he wasn't Sicilian, but was born in Bacoli, a little village near Naples. At a certain point, all the Trentos decided to move to Pennsylvania. Don Lou said to Saul, “What the fuck you going there for? There's nothing there but cowboys!” Saul lasted only a couple of months in Pennsylvania, then came back to Brooklyn, worked a couple of jobs with Lou, and married Jenny Tagliacozzo. It wasn't until the wedding, a nice Jewish wedding with all the usual complaining, that Lou even realized Saul was Jewish.
Minchia,
a Jew from Bacoli, near Naples! But Saul really loved Lou. He loved him so much that when he died very young, Lou secretly helped Jenny, and then Jenny's children and Jenny's children's children, including Leonard, the degenerate grandson who'd seen fit to take the “o” off his name.

When Don Lou got the idea to launder a little money by making movies, he naturally thought of Leonard, who wanted to be like Catherine and Charles's boy. The kid pissed him off at first, thought he was an artist after some idiot at
The Village Voice
called him one. Then he understood: movies and construction, brilliant!

“So, Leonard, how's your old maid cousin in Pennsylvania?” Don Lou is sipping Amaretto Di Saronno, with two ice cubes, in the living room of his beautiful house in New Jersey. Leonard Trent has come to tell him about all the things that have been happening at Starship, the conversation with Erra, the premiere in Italy, shit like that.

“She's getting married next week, Don Lou!” Leonard says. “She met a widowed dentist in a fucking half-empty movie theater in Pennsylvania, during a showing of
Tenors.
”

“
Minchia,
sometimes we do good deeds!” Don Lou says.

“Many times, Don Lou, many times! I can't imagine Starship in the hands of a suckass like Frank Erra!”

“What kind of guy is he?”

“Five feet something of overdressed lard, Don Lou.”

“I mean, how is he … as a person? Conceited … modest?”

“In Neapolitan, my father would have said he's a
meza cazetta,
a nobody, Don Lou!”

“He's a buffer, Leonard! All buffers are
meza cazettas!
You can't put somebody with too much brains between you and the
picciotti,
because somebody with too much brains, sooner or later he's going to put you between the
picciotti
and him … John La Bruna's nobody's fool. He picked the right guy for the job!”

“What should I do, Don Lou?” Leonard asks timidly. “Should I go to Italy?”

“Mmmm…” Don Lou says, placing his glass on the little table next to the armchair. “Frank Erra doesn't give orders, he carries them out … The only reason he wants to go to Italy is because John La Bruna's told him to go to Italy … Because … because…”

Leonard Trent waits respectfully, saying nothing. Don Lou presses down on the armrests of his chair with his hands and gets to his feet with a groan.

“Because … You know what? I'm going to call my grandson in Catania right now. We're going to Italy together!” he says. “While I still got some juice in me … I'd like to see Rome and Catania one last time.”

Faced with that old man, that white hair, those bright blue eyes staring right into his, and that incredibly straight back, Leonard finds it hard to contain his emotions.
Fuck!
he thinks.
That's how my grandpa must have been: tall, upright, with that look that sends shivers down your spine! Men with balls, damn it, not backslappers like us!

Leonard doesn't know his grandfather was short, with a slightly curved spine and a gentle face, because Jenny Tagliacozzo lost all the photographs of her beloved Saul in a fire.

NUNZIO AND AGATINO ARE DEEP IN THOUGHT

Nunzio and Agatino are deep in thought. They're wearing their dress uniforms, which they always wear when there's an important customer like Signora Zappulla in Tony's salon. Tony had them made to exactly match the uniforms in a seventies sci-fi series, the main characters of which did in fact look like hairdressers.

Tony's salon, on Via Umberto, is a cross between a seventies nightclub and an eighties Brazilian disco. The reason is that Uncle Sal, although he doesn't play an active part in the business, thought he could take advantage of the opportunity to launder some cash. This is the way it goes: You buy all the building and decorating materials in one of those warehouses in northern Italy where you can find anything, from a leopardskin couch to a glitter ball, and pay with a postdated check. Then you resell everything to yourself or some figurehead at a markup. The more you buy, the more you launder. That's why glitter balls are so expensive in Catania. “Tony, you want a marble floor?”

“Uncle, what can I say?… Every saint needs his chapel! That'd be fantastic!”

“Write it down, Tuccio, marble floor. Tony, you want Doric columns?” Tony's eyes shone. “Write it down, Tuccio, Doric columns.”

Nunzio and Agatino also have the same muttonchop mustaches as the characters in that seventies series. Agatino, who lifts weights and is, as Signora Zappulla says, pointlessly tall, is wearing Japanese flip-flops that reveal little wisps of yellow hair on his big toes. Nunzio, on the other hand, who is short, is wearing platform shoes six inches high.

They're deep in thought because Signora Zappulla has already been shampooed, and needs her hair done for the political dinner tonight, and Tony hasn't yet appeared.

“You don't suppose he had problems with the paper, do you?” Signora Zappulla says anxiously. She's a well-preserved woman about fifty, a beautiful woman, except for her voice.

“Who, Tony?” Agatino says vaguely, trying to peer out the door.

“You know, Signora Falsaperla, Tony's giving Signora Zappulla the house special today,” Nunzio says, getting ready to shampoo Signora Falsaperla.

“Do me a favor!” Signora Falsapera says, lying stretched out like a woman in labor, with her legs in the air and her feet nude because Nunzio has just finished giving her a pedicure. To help the polish dry, he's put cotton between her toes, which are as swollen as giant slugs.

The house special at Tony's is pieces of colored paper inserted in the hairdo to match the customer's clothes. Tony has also tried inserting Caltagirone ceramics, little pieces of volcanic rock, sea stones from Letojanni, and terra-cotta tiles, but the customers prefer colored paper.

“There's a political dinner at my house tonight,” Signora Zappulla says, “and Tony is giving me paper inserts in the colors of my husband's coalition.”

“I always tell Tano he should go into politics,” Signora Falsaperla says. “If you can run a butcher's shop, you can run a country. Not like the guests on Bruno Vespa's talk show, who don't even know the price of a kilo of beef. Ask my husband Tano, he'll tell you how much it is! Actually, in our shop it's a bit more because we only sell beef from Argentina…”

“In my opinion, politics is too serious, you need to lighten things up a bit,” Signora Zappulla says. “Have you noticed that on Vespa's show, when those bimbos from the gossip columns are on, they always talk about cooking?
Minchia,
here, before we sit down to eat we have to give our condolences for the people in the coalition who got killed!”

“Why?” Signora Falsaperla says. “Did they just kill some people in your husband's coalition?”

“Don't you read the newspapers?” Signora Zappulla says.

“Of course I read them,” Signora Falsaperla says resentfully, “but I don't pay them any attention!”

“Three days ago, they killed the head of the cultural commission in Baulí!” Signora Zappulla says.

“Oh, that was because he was screwing somebody's wife … Heads of cultural commissions never have any money,” Signora Falsaperla says.

“Well, I don't know about that,” Signora Zappulla says, going back to leafing through a newspaper. “Anyway, I'm having my hair colored, to lighten things up. By the way, is Tony coming, or did they kill him, too?”

Nunzio and Agatino exchange a glance.

*   *   *

Tony has forgotten to get out of the car.

He's parked not far from the salon in his purple Fiat 127. He's also wearing a dress uniform, he has his hands on the steering wheel, which is covered in blue plush, and he's staring into space. A scented rubber flying saucer hangs from the rearview mirror, still swaying.

He's listening to “Tragedy” by the Bee Gees.

*   *   *

'Nzino is a mute. That is, he can hear and all his vocal equipment is in the right place, but he's never spoken a word in his life. His mother had the same psychological defect, that was why his father married her. And that's also why Uncle Sal hired 'Nzino as a driver.

So, today, when Uncle Sal said, “Why the fuck are you stopping again? Tony's salon, I said! I knew you were mute, but deaf, no!” 'Nzino couldn't say, “Look, you didn't say a fucking thing!” He started the car and set off. It was a bumpy ride, because whenever they go to Tony's salon, 'Nzino gets a little nervous. If he wasn't wearing gloves his hands would be sweaty.