From his dark doorway across the street Nino could see the bartender serve two drinks and neglect to ring the cash register. Another dollar fifty would go into the tips cup rather than into the till. Nino filed it in his memory and moved on.
Two Negro boys were standing on a corner. Nino passed them without looking up. Black people were seldom seen in Italian neighborhoods. 'The Boys' wanted to keep such areas safe for their families. Black kids didn't last long.
He cut across a vacant lot, broken glass and crumbled bricks crunching under his heavy shoes. From behind him there was a noise and he suddenly heard, rather than felt, a blow on the side of his head. He whirled in a crouch and backed away. The boning knife was already out from under his watchband, thin blade under his extended forefinger and the handle almost invisible in his ham hand. Blood trickled down his cheek.
"Give us the money, mothah-fuckah!" One of the black boys had a lead pipe wrapped in bloody black tape; the other one had a two-by-four. They were coming at him again.
Grunting, he leaped to one side and made a horizontal swipe with his extended hand. One boy ran off screaming. The one with the lead pipe kept coming. Like a fencer, Nino leaned in under the descending blow. The knife went into the belly to the hilt. The pipe fell and a look of surprise bugged white eyes from the round brown face. Nino ripped from right to left and disemboweled him. In the stink of entrails and hot blood, Nino looked down and saw a severed black finger wiggling on the ground. He skewered it and stuffed it down the boy's throat to stop the screaming; then he wiped off his knife on the boy's clothes and walked unhurriedly away, tucking the knife under his watchband.
Apartment lights had gone on as people looked out at the noise. They went off again as he walked away, not looking up.Nino grunted with satisfaction and took another Napolione from the huge mounded platter in the middle of the table; the extended dinner table set for their family Easter dinner. They were having Espresso from the new coffee set. Before that there had been cuccuzza and carrots and onions and potatoes and wine and a greasy lamb, and before that, lasagna.
Nino was doing well. Racetracks and restaurants were awash with black market money at the end of World War II. Nino did less and less butchering, more and more delivery. Knowing the bars and the owners as he did, he could sell an extra shell of beef or rack of lamb when others couldn't. "Good Iowa beef" he would say. "I dress it for you myself." And they would buy. They trusted him to give them good meat or exceptional bargains they could disguise with pungent sauces. Nino would hang around the bars and restaurants, buying drinks for others, but only sipping his own--taking number bets, getting to know the other numbers’ runners. As they tired or moved on, he would take over contiguous routes. His meat deliveries were the perfect cover.
At his local numbers bank, he was known as an earner.
Since his father's death, Nino was the titular head of the family. He sat at the head of the family board, and he tried to look after his little family. Older cousins would try to help and Mrs. Maruzza ran the household, but it was Nino who held them all together.
For their Easter dinner, Nino's mother had invited a cousin, Monsignor Belterra, and the priest's mother. Mrs. Maruzza was proud to have them as guests, and happy to show off her three boys. The Monsignor was in charge of a parish and school on Fourteenth Street. Not only was he a successful priest, he was a successful man by any standards.
"John make-a that himself. Good, eh?"
"Very good indeed," answered the priest.
Nino smiled at his younger brother. He had been trying to get the boy a job in a restaurant. John had a natural talent for cooking. He even looked like a cook. At sixteen, he was chubby, red-cheeked, and complacent.
Joseph, the youngest brother, was thirteen and had had straight A's in school until recently. Puberty had suddenly overtaken him. He had grown three inches in one year, and was always in trouble at school.
Joseph asked for a chocolate-covered cherry. Much to his surprise, sticky liquor ran out of it when he bit, and dribbled down his shirt. "Ah--shit!" he said.
Nino picked up a table knife and threw it at him. It broke the skin over the boy's right eye.
"What'd you do that for?"
"What kind of stuff…."
"Nino, he didn't mean it…."
They were all yelling. "You tell the Monsignor you're sorry," Nino said. "You don't talk like that in my house."
The priest got ice from the kitchen and made an ice pack for the boy after cleaning off the blood. Joseph's dark eyes stared in sullen resentment.
"Anthony, that's no way to treat your little brother."
"Lousy smart-ass kid," Nino grunted.
"See how he talks? I do it, I get hit."
"Well, Joseph, your brother has taken very good care of you. You must make allowances.…"
"All the time this goes on," their mother said. "Joseph is good boy, but.…"
Nino grunted. When he had been that age he had done a man's work for a man's pay. All he asked from his brother was good schoolwork.
The doorbell rang. There was a lull while Mrs. Maruzza went to peer through the peephole. "It's-a John Cotello!" she exclaimed, unchaining the door. "Giannu, make-a more coffee. Joseph, you run change your shirt."
"Gianni, chi onore! Buona Pasqua!"
"Buona Pasqua, Sarina. Ah, Monsignore. Piacere di rivederla."
Nino stood up to greet his cousin. "Thank you for coming," he smiled. "Have some coffee." Nino was honored to have this visit. He had been encountering John Cotello often in the restaurants he serviced. The older man was a much respected person in certain circles, and he had once done Nino's father a favor. Nino was happy to show off his home.
"Che belle stanze! What nice rooms you have!" his cousin said. "And this boy must be my godchild. Chi panza, Gianuzzu!" He patted his namesake's round stomach.
"And here's Joseph. Joseph, shake hands with your cousin John."
"What happened to your eye?"
"Nothing. An accident."
Joseph went to sit by the Monsignor as John Cotello took the place at Nino's right hand and had Espresso with a liqueur. "A fine family you're raising here."
"Thank you. We owe a lot to you."
"No, nothing at all. We like to do favors. Blood is thicker than water." They discussed new restaurants that were opening, and the families that ran them. The others listened respectfully or muttered quietly among themselves.
"Well, I must be on my way," Cotello said after a time. "A Jewish wedding. Judge Santini will be there. On Easter, of all days!" He stood up. "Monsignore, a pleasure to see you again."
The priest nodded curtly, not rising from the couch.
"Sarina, che bella casa, e bella familglia ch'ai! Bona dfPasqua, e buona fortuna. Ciaou--Gianni--tutt.” He shook hands with the family as they crowded around, helping with his coat and holding open the door.
"Thank you for coming."
"Addio."
Mrs. Maruzza was impressed to have had such a visitor, and proud.
"Disgraziato," muttered the Monsignor. Nino raised his eyebrows in silent question. "A disgrace to the family," the priest said.
Sarina Maruzza sniffed and began to clear the table of all but the wine and nuts. "You know--when my husband he die, John Cotello, a big help. He send food, buy clothes. Even before, he help when they try to force us out on the street, out of our restaurant. The speakeasy. John, he call on his friends. No more trouble."
"Melandrini!" The priest was disdainful. "Gangsters. Cheap hoodlums."
"They help us when we need it."
The priest ran his handkerchief around the inside of his Roman collar, and then hugged Joseph to his side. Of all the family, it was the youngest that appealed to him. His snapping dark eyes with their haunted expression hinted of an intelligence just waiting to escape, to make its own way.
"Signora, why don't you send Joseph to me as an altar boy every Friday? It can't do him any harm. Maybe he could stay over at my mother's apartment sometimes and do the Saturday masses too. I could help him with his homework."
The Monsignor's mother had a nice apartment in an exclusive middle-class development in her son's parish, an apartment she was able to get through the influence of her son. Sarina Maruzza had never been invited there. Although she was jealous, she was glad that her youngest might be exposed to what she regarded as middle-class luxury and security, and to educated persons.
It became a regular custom, and Joseph was affected by it deeply. It changed his life. There were those who said that the only escape from the slums was through the police, through crime, or through The Church. Joseph chose the church.
Nino had never graduated from high school, but like most immigrants and immigrants' sons, he valued education. He thought it a magic key to the middle class. He wanted his brothers to do better than he, to go places he could never go. Thus, the occasion of his brother John's graduation from high school was a victory to be celebrated. The entire family attended, and then went home for cakes and coffee and the expected visitations from the Belterras, the Trinachias, and the other assorted cousins.
Now they were going out to dinner, and Nino's mother was taking forever to leave their tenement apartment. Nino fidgeted by the car. In the backseat Joseph and the priest's mother, old Mrs. Belterra, were already waiting. The sun was setting, but it was still a hot June day. Nino wanted to get going.
"Come on, Ma," he yelled up to the fourth floor.
"We'll be right there," his brother piped from the window.
"That's what they said ten minutes ago," Nino complained. He turned to watch the stickball players, scratching himself, uncomfortable in a suit.
At eighteen, his brother John was red-faced and still plump as a eunuch, always smiling and willing and amiable, but still a boy--a boy without visible ambitions or talents other than cooking pasta. He was probably upstairs combing his hair in front of the mirror. Again.
They finally appeared on the front steps. "Jeez, it's about time!" Nino held the car door open for them, and then went around to get in the driver's seat. The kids playing stickball disappeared from in front of his car as if by magic, for Nino was a local celebrity of sorts. No one wanted to cross his path.
They got across Manhattan and onto Seventh Avenue. "Christ," Nino said, looking at his watch. Their reservation was for seven-thirty, and it was already a quarter to eight.
The restaurant where they were to have dinner was Nino's biggest meat customer, and he wanted to make a good impression, and to spend some money there.
"The Big M!" The doorman was all smiles as he ushered Nino's party onto the sidewalk and took the car keys.
"My brother's high school graduation." Nino introduced the family. You never knew when the doorman might be somebody's cousin.
Inside the restaurant it was the same. "Hello, Nino! Your table is all ready."
When they were seated, Nino introduced the family to the restaurant owner, not omitting to mention that old Mrs. Belterra was the mother of a Monsignor.
While the family was perusing the menu, Nino's practiced eye swept the restaurant. At the bar, he saw a numbers runner he knew, and a few stools away, a couple of 'the boys' from uptown. The rest of the customers were unexceptionable, but at a back table, John Cotello was deep in conversation with a red-faced, red-haired Irishman. Nino had arranged his party so that his mother's back was turned to Cotello. He himself studiously ignored his cousin.
They had a big dinner, topped off with Baba au rhum, coffee, and a cigar for Nino. He sent drinks to acquaintances at the bar, and they raised their glasses in salute.
"Nino, Sarina! How are you?" Cotello and his guest had finished their conference and stopped at Nino's table on their way out. "This is my friend Frank Reilly--from the Tonawanda Club." He introduced the politician to his cousins.
"Join us. We're just celebrating Johnny's graduation."
"John! My own namesake and I didn't even know about it! That's terrible. Congratulations, young man."
"Thank you, " John beamed shyly.
"So what are you going to do now? College?"
"I don't know."
"I gotta get him a job," Nino said. "It's about time somebody else brought home some money."
"Anything I can do to help.…"
"That's very nice of you to offer," Mrs. Maruzza said. The Monsignor's mother was staring off into the near middle distance. She was not happy to be seen in public with this particular member of the family.
When Cotello and his associate had departed, Nino paid the check, tipping liberally, and leaned back to finish his cigar. The dinner rush was over. The owner stopped by the table to thank him and say goodnight.
"I didn't know you knew Mr. Cotello," he said, warily.
"He's my cousin."
"You never told me that."
"I don't always tell everything I know," Nino smiled, suspecting that his reputation had just risen one hundred percent with this particular restaurateur. "How's business?" he asked.
"Not bad. Day bartender just quit, though. Going out to the Hamptons." He sighed and scratched his back. "Know where I can find somebody trustworthy?"
"It’s a bad time of the year."
"He doesn't have to do much. More of a position of trust--just open up and start the sauce and serve a few drinks. We don't do much of a lunch."
Nino blotted the sweat from his forehead with a napkin. "How about my brother?" he suggested. "He can make sauce with the best of them, and I can teach him all he has to know about bartending in five minutes."
"How about it, young man?" the owner asked John. "Think you can keep the porters in line until the day man gets here?"
"I'd like to try. I love to cook--I.…"
"You got a job. Meet me here at eleven tomorrow morning and I'll show you what you have to do." He turned to Nino with a smile. "I hope you'll keep an eye on him, my friend."
"Don't worry. If he gets out of line, I'll bust his cugliones."
It was an inaugury, and John Maruzza's start as a restaurateur. He learned bartending, and to supervise the cleanup staff, and hung around the chefs enough to learn restaurant cooking by observation and experience. As he replaced different employees who went on vacation or quit, he learned to do every job in the restaurant. He loved to talk about cooking, but what he did best was the job of headwaiter and host. And as he earned more money of his own, the best Italian silks his tailors could sell him draped his rotund and prancing form.
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