Chapter 26
DAMIANO
That night, just after eight, Vito pulls into the curb at a narrow apartment block in Queens.
Paint peels off a door frame that houses a cracked glass window.
I get out first, and then—after I make sure to look around for threats this time—I open the door for Caligula and pull him into the building fast.
“Third floor,” I mutter to him. “You sure you’re ready for this?”
He’s been quiet all day. Hibernating in my room, sleeping a lot, eating what I put in front of him. But he nods.
“Your funeral,” I grunt.
“Not with you protecting me, Dami. Right?”
I’ve already mounted the old stairs, which are sagging under my feet, and I turn back to look at him. He’s not smirking. Not even close.
He’s dead serious.
“No one’s gonna kill you on my watch,” I agree after a moment. “So come on.”
We make it up two flights of stairs without them collapsing on us, and at the top, Ferraro is waiting, wearing what I assume is the best suit he owns these days.
It’s pretty tight around the waist, and I don’t think he’d be able to get the jacket buttoned up if he tried.
But the look on his face is sheer excitement.
He practically shoves me aside to get to the Clemenza, grabbing at his hands.
“You’re here! Come in, come in—everyone came.”
I yank Caligula back by the shoulder when he tries to walk straight into the apartment. “What the hell do I keep saying? Stay. Behind. Me.” Then I grab Ferraro as well. “You make sure no one’s carrying?”
The old man glares, but he nods. “Of course.” And I guess an old hand like Ferraro would at least know how to do that right.
I push open the door cautiously and see ten or eleven men waiting. Most of them have at least twenty years on me. A couple are younger—a guy in his early thirties with a scar slashed across his jaw, and a kid around Caligula’s age who keeps glancing at one of the older men. A relative, probably.
I step inside, and every eye trains on me. I raise a hand to motion Caligula forward. “Come on in, Don Clemenza,” I drawl.
He brushes past me, chin lifted. His hands are clasped behind his back. It looks commanding. Regal, even. But his fingers are gripping each other so hard the knuckles are white.
Ferraro follows him in, and I’m left to shut the door behind us all.
I might as well leave that door open for all the protection it offers.
Safe house? This place is a death trap. I wouldn’t be surprised if the floor suddenly gave out.
Single-pane windows, no reinforcement. The deadbolt on the door is sparkling new—Ferraro’s work, I bet—but the door frame is made of wood so old and cracked it would only take one kick to knock it in.
All the men stood up when Caligula entered—those who weren’t standing already, because most of the chairs in the room are just as old as everything else in here, and the one sofa looks like it’s lost all its springs.
A bottle of olive oil and a fresh loaf of bread have been placed on a tray on top of the coffee table in the middle of the room. I’m pretty sure I know what they’re for.
And I don’t like it.
The Clemenza takes all this in and then looks around at the men.
“Thank you for coming,” he says, and then takes the only seat in the place that looks like it might not collapse.
The rest of them sit or slouch against the walls.
“I know some of you,” he goes on, “but not all of you. Perhaps we could start with introductions. My name is Caligula Clemenza. My father was Cesario—” He glances my way as he says the name, but I just stare back at him.
“—and Louis Clemenza was my grandfather. As far as I’m aware, I’m the last direct descendant of my grandfather, which means I am the heir to the Family. ”
“You don’t gotta prove that to us,” one of the old guys says. “We know who you are. Just glad to see you alive.”
“What’s your name?” Caligula asks.
“Mike Giordano. Big Mike. I used to work in your uncle Pat’s crew.”
Caligula turns to the nervy kid standing next to him. “And you?”
“Mike Giordano Junior. He’s my dad.” He thumbs at Big Mike. “Um. I never worked for the Family before, but I’m—I’m real interested.”
He goes around the room, asking each person’s name, repeating it back, and nodding as they explain their previous positions in the chain of command. None of them were particularly high up, and none of them seem to have much to offer except loyalty. But loyalty is important. I know that.
The Clemenza does too.
But something is happening to the Clemenza as he moves through the introductions.
Each man who says his name, who explains what he did for the Family, who looks at Caligula with that desperate hope—it’s feeding him.
I can see it. The color coming back into his face.
His shoulders settling. His voice gaining ground, losing that careful, testing quality.
By the sixth or seventh introduction, he’s sounding almost…
Like himself.
These losers and antiques are giving him back to himself, and I should be glad about that. I set this up, for Christ’s sake. So I don’t know why watching it makes something hot and hard unfurl in my belly, makes me want to remind them all that he doesn’t belong to them.
He’s mine.
He’s about three-quarters through the introductions when footsteps sound on the stairs outside. I’m in front of Caligula with my gun aimed at the door before Ferraro even gets there.
Three sharp knocks sound. “Hey!” hisses a voice from outside. “Open up, will you? I’m here for the meeting.”
Ferraro, doing something smart for once, looks through the peephole. When he turns back, his lips are curled with disgust. “It’s that traitor, Scags,” he hisses. “He was with your grandfather the night he was murdered. He betrayed the Old Don.”
“Let him in,” Caligula says.
Ferraro stares. “Sir?”
“Let him in.”
“He’s with the Morellis now,” Ferraro protests. “He shouldn’t even know about tonight. And he turned on your grandfather—”
“Don’t make me have to tell you again,” Caligula says softly, his eyes fixed on the old man.
The atmosphere changes. Suddenly they all seem to remember exactly what Louis fucking Clemenza was like in those good old days. And now they have to confront the fact that their fantasies about remaking the Family mean bending to the whims of a twenty-one-year-old asshole.
I’m so certain they’ll drop their bullshit that it’s a shock when Ferraro reaches for the deadbolt.
“Stop,” I snap, stabbing a finger toward him. I turn to Caligula and lean over the chair, mouth to his ear, and mutter, “Are you outta your fucking mind? Any one of these assholes might kill you, and now you want to add a Morelli plant?”
He puts a hand on my chest. “Move back.”
I find myself obeying.
“Strike,” Caligula says, “let him in.”
I keep my gun up. The door opens, and the guy strolls in. Stocky, bearded, cheap leather jacket. I recognize him now. Scaglietti. One of those fucking Morellis who grabbed Caligula off the street.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Ferraro demands, putting up a hand to stop him moving forward any further. “We should kill you where you stand, rat.”
“I ain’t no rat! The Morellis only left me alive that night because they wanted someone to get the message out that Lou Clemenza was dead.”
“Bullshit. You’re one of them,” spits Big Mike. “How the fuck did you hear about tonight?”
“Listen,” the guy says, holding up his hands in a calming gesture.
“D’Amato already heard all about the meeting.
He sent me. But,” he goes on quickly, as I lift my sights to rest between his eyes, “I figured I could be, like, a double agent. I hate him just as much as the rest of you. If there’s a way to get rid of him—”
“That’s enough,” Caligula says. “Come in. And keep quiet.” He points at a rickety-looking chair. Scaglietti goes to it slowly, watching me the whole time, because I keep my gun on him. “Enough, Dami,” Caligula says at last, and only then do I drop it.
“No funny business, Morelli,” I growl at the guy.
“Says the Giuliano,” he scoffs. Big Mike crowds up close behind his seat, and I’m glad he hasn’t lost that intimidation instinct.
“All of us will have done things we’re not proud of to survive,” Caligula says. “So let’s put aside the past and focus on the future. But first: the Morellis.”
That gets their attention. Every eye locks on him. This is what they’ve been waiting for, a call to war. All of them hate the Morellis, and so does Caligula.
But with a pair of Morelli ears sitting right there in front of him, it doesn’t seem wise. Surely the Clemenza doesn’t believe this guy’s story?
He’s broken. I broke him. So maybe he does believe it. Maybe he—
“Don Morelli rules this city,” Caligula says. “He rules it because he earned it. He has been a great friend to us, offering protection. We will not challenge him.”
Ferraro’s mouth opens. “But—”
I glance at him, and it’s enough to shut him up.
But I don’t like what I’m hearing either. Because that Morelli protection wasn’t around when Caligula was sleeping on the streets or selling himself at the Obelisk, was it? I’m the only one who actually protected him, and I don’t like hearing that erased. Even if I’m also the one who—
I shut that line of thought down.
“Right now, we are still trying to survive,” Caligula says, and it hits me then: he’s using the royal “we,” although his Loyalists don’t seem to have noticed it.
They just think they’re being included. “So we are going to find the people who retain those old loyalties,” he goes on, “and make them an invitation to return. That includes any who might have turned to other Families to survive. We will not judge them for it. And we will show mercy, even in the most difficult of circumstances.”
His eyes land on Scaglietti, who seems surprised at Caligula’s words. But around the room, others are nodding. They know what they’ve done to survive.
I think most of them probably know what Caligula Clemenza did to survive, too.