Chapter 41
41
D ebbie’s Place – Brooklyn, NY – 1949
The Studebaker hadn’t even stopped rolling when Debbie flung the door open, her patent-leather pumps hitting the pavement before José could yank the emergency brake up.
“Wait! Christ, Debbie ? —”
She was already at the brownstone door. It swung open before she could knock—Carmelo stood there, his white dress shirt wrinkled and untucked, the hollows under his eyes so deep they looked like bruises. Debbie crashed into him, her fingers clawing at his back as she held on to him.
“Where is he?! Tell me now!” she sobbed. “ He needs me. He needs me. Tell me where he is. I have to find him. ”
José slipped in behind her, quietly shutting the door. The living room smelled of stale whiskey and sweat. The place is still boarded up as the repairs have now come to a screeching halt. A half-packed suitcase lay open on the sofa—Matteoo’s, by the look of the Superman magazines and other things spilling out.
Carmelo’s arms tightened around Debbie for a second before he pushed her back gently.“I don’t know. We’ve looked everywhere.”His voice was hoarse, the words slurred like he hadn’t slept in days. “He was here, but when I got here, he was gone.”
“Why didn’t you call us?!” Debbie’s fists pounded against his chest. “I heard my father talking about the funeral—Matteo needs me! He’s been hurting, and you never called!”
José stepped between them and pulled Debbie off Carmelo, who took her slaps and punches as if they felt like nothing to him. “ It’s been hard for all of us.” Was his only response.
Debbie whirled on him.“Kathy calls me every day! She said she wrote to you—did you get the letter? She even called your house, she was so worried about you.”
Carmelo blinked. “Letter?” The only one he’d touched in weeks was the letter left for him beside his mother’s rosary on his father’s desk—the paper still smelling of her perfume. He raked a hand through his greasy hair, pacing past the overturned coffee table.
“Where the hell do we even start looking?”José asked, pulling Debbie against him as she trembled through her rage, grief, confusion, and desperation.“What’s your family doing to find him?”
Carmelo stopped dead.“DeMarco’s dead.”
“Who?”Debbie’s tear-streaked face twisted.“Wait, it’s that bastard. The one who found you guys at Mama Stewart’s, the one who Mateo stopped from killing Kathy? That bastard... the consultant?”
“Yes. The consigliere.”Carmelo’s laugh was hollow.“The day after Ma died, after everything... he got sick. Blood everywhere—from his mouth, his nose, his damn ass.”Carmelo dragged a hand down his face.“They took him to the hospital screaming that Ma poisoned him before she... before she—”His voice cracked.“That fucking cock-sucker. They heard him all the way to Mulberry Street.”
José went very still.“Poison? Bleeding... like King Redmond?”
Debbie froze.“Why would you say that?”
“It’s what people said, Redmond was doing, shouting.”José’s throat bobbed.“Bleeding from every hole. Screaming Italians poisoned him. That your father?—”
“THE FUCK DID YOU JUST SAY?!”
Carmelo moved like a lightning strike—one second across the room, the next with his hands locked around José’s throat, slamming him into the wall hard enough to crack plaster. Debbie’s scream was drowned by Carmelo’s roar:
“YOU CALLING MY MA A KILLER?! THAT SHE TOOK OUT REDMOND?! I’LL RIP YOUR GODDAMN THROAT OUT ? —”
Debbie’s fists pounded Carmelo’s back, her rings splitting her skin. José’s face purpled, his legs buckling.
A right hook to Carmelo’s temple finally broke his grip. José collapsed, wheezing, as Debbie dropped to her knees and crawled to be beside him.
“You son of a bitch! You could’ve killed him!” she shrieked.
Carmelo stumbled back, hands clawing at his own hair.“I’m sorry... I don’t know what... forgive me, José, please...”
“Stay away from us!” Debbie shouted.
“I need your help. I have to find my brother. He can help get things under control. Tell me what to do. I have Nino, and Pa is… worse than ever, and I need him. Debbie, he will listen to you. I’ve been at his place in East Harlem and…”
“Get out!” Debbie spat, cradling José’s head. “You’re just like your fucking father! A coward! Matteo always has to clean up the mess while you cry like a kid! He loved your mother more than me, more than you, and all you care about is using him to fix your shit!—GO STOP THAT MONSTER WHO REALLY KILLED HER. STOP HIM YOURSELF! BE A FUCKING MAN FOR ONCE!”
Mama Stewart’s Diner – 2 Minutes Later
The bell above Mama Stewart’s diner door hadn’t stopped ringing when her thick arms caught Carmelo mid-collapse. He folded into her like a child, his sobs muffled against her shoulder, his fingers leaving damp streaks on the checkered fabric.
"I don’t… I can’t…" he stammered.
She didn’t let him finish. With a grip that had wrangled drunken longshoremen and mob enforcers alike, she hauled him into the back office, waving off the assistance offered by diners and her staff.
“Keep eating, folks. Be right back,” she promised. They passed the kitchen and headed to her office. The scent of simmering collards and frying meat clung to the walls. The framed photo of Joe Louis watched as she pushed open the door and put him inside in a chair. She grabbed his face, forcing his bloodshot eyes to meet hers.
"Listen good,"she demanded. “ I know all about it. Got men out looking for Matteo right now. When we find him, we’ll stash him someplace safe. Get Debbie to him—she’s the only one who can talk him off the ledge. But you?"Her thumb wiped at his tears with rough tenderness.“You don’t have your Kathy or your poor, sweet Mama. It’s just you. You gotta walk back into that house and face your father. Protect what’s left of your family. Be. The. Man."
Carmelo blinked, his breath hitching. "What? Where am I?”
"BE THE MAN!" Her slap cracked across his cheek, sharp as a pistol shot. Something shifted behind his eyes. The tears stopped. His spine straightened.
"Be the man," he repeated, his voice hollow.
Mama Stewart nodded, adjusting his crooked collar with calloused hands."Now wipe your face. Walk out like you own these streets. And don’t you dare let them see you bleed. Get the respect your mother died to give you.”
Carmelo left the diner. He drove home at the speed limit. He parked on the street in perfect precision, with the other cars all lined up outside of his house. He walked the sidewalk and ignored the neighbors’ calls of condolence. He climbed the steps to his door without missing a beat. He went inside.
Alice Romero’s "Sweetheart, you hungry?" dissolved into the background noise of shouting men and a ringing telephone. He took the stairs two at a time. Matteo’s room still smelled of his bay rum cologne and the faint metallic tang of the gun oil he used to clean his Colt .38.
The pistol was under the bed. Carmelo reached it with ease. With the cold metal in his hand, he pulled it out. He stood. He tucked the weapon into his waistband, the steel biting into his skin through his thin dress shirt.
Downstairs, the young, beautiful Maria Romero reached for him, her fingers brushing his sleeve. "Let me fix you a plate—Melo.”
He shoved past her without breaking stride.
The hallway to his father’s office vibrated with Don Ricci’s roar: "brING ME MY SON OR DON’T COME BACK AT ALL!"
The door flew open, men scrambling out like roaches when the light hits. They murmured to Carmelo as he passed— "Kid… your brother… we’re trying…" —but their words were static.
Carmelo never broke his stride.
Cosimo Ricci looked up from the roll of his cigarillo, his bloodshot eyes meeting his youngest son’s. The decanter of Fernet Branca at his elbow explained the tremor in his ink-stained fingers.
"So," the Don sneered, leaning back in his chair while fixated on the gun in his son’s hand. "You’re a man now?"
Carmelo didn’t blink. The gun was in his hand before he’d fully processed drawing it.
"I am the man,” he said. “To send you to hell.”
The shot echoed off the mahogany paneling.
Cosimo’s chair toppled backward, his fountain pen rolling across the desk as his body hit the floor. Carmelo let the pistol clatter to the ground, his father’s blood spreading in a dark halo across the Persian rug.
"I am the man," he said to the empty room. Men came running. He walked past them without stopping. Maria stood in the hall with her hand to her mouth. This time, no food was offered. He went to the basement door, opened it, and went inside Lucia’s sanctuary.
The screaming upstairs faded to white noise as Carmelo descended into the cool darkness. There, curled in the corner like a wounded animal, Nino clutched their mother’s favorite dress to his chest, the lace trim damp with tears.
Carmelo sank to his knees beside his brother. He pulled Nino against him, the way Matteo used to when they were kids, and the nightmares came after his father’s violent outbursts. Matteo took the beatings for them, the pain for them. There was no Matteo, no Mama.
"Be the man," he whispered into Nino’s hair, his voice breaking. "I’m the man now."
Somewhere above them, a telephone stopped ringing. Nobody answered.
* * *
Mama Stewart’s Diner – Brooklyn, NY – 1949
Mama Stewart’s laughter boomed across the diner as she wiped her hands on her apron, shaking her head at the wide-eyed couple hovering by the counter. “A thousand dollars for my recipe? Baby, my secrets ain’t for sale.” She winked just as the plate-glass window to the diner door exploded.
Splinters of glass rained down on the checkerboard floor and sprayed on customers. The man in the doorway didn’t bother stepping around the shards—he just lifted his .38 and fired into the ceiling. Plaster dust snowed down on the meatloaf specials.
“VIA! TUTTI FUORI!” the Sicilian yelled.
Chairs screeched. A waitress dropped a tray of milkshakes, strawberry syrup bleeding across the tiles like fresh wounds. Mama Stewart was already moving, her hips banging against the counter as she lunged for the office. Behind her, a tourist screamed for someone to call the police—it was some fool from Ohio who thought Brooklyn was all about egg creams and Dodgers games. Police would not solve this problem. People ran into the streets screaming. She had to turn and go the other way. The shotgun came out from under the cash register, not the office. Twelve-gauge, sawed-off. She pumped it once, the sound louder than the gunshot had been.
“You greasy bastards think you can ? —”
Then she saw him.
Four men dragged Cosimo Ricci through the wreckage, his custom oxfords leaving smears of blood on her clean floor. The shoulder of his Brioni suit was a ragged mess, the fabric glistening black-red. One eye was swollen shut from the blast effect of the bullet nearly hitting his face, but it had taken off his shoulder instead. The other locked onto hers, the pain in it deeper than the bullet wound.
The lead gunman—some pockmarked soldier she didn’t recognize—kept his Luger trained on her chest.“You save him, Madonna Nera .”
“Fuck him!” She raised the shotgun.“I’ll send his ass straight to hell so Emilio can carve him up proper!”
The gunman didn’t flinch.“His boy, Carmelo, did this. You let Don Ricci die, the Families wipe out Cosimo’s whole bloodline. DeMarco’s already cold. That what you want? Another bloody Sunday?”
Her finger twitched on the trigger. Behind the gunman, Cosimo choked, a bubble of blood bursting on his lips.Lucia’s face flashed in Mama Stewart’s mind, then Matteo’s, then Carmelo’s, all those kids who still smelled of baby powder when she’d first held them to gift them with the blessing of the Madonna Nera . A secret blessing, even the kids didn’t know she performed.
“Motherfucker!” The shotgun clattered onto the counter. “Kitchen! NOW!”
The gunman crossed himself. “Grazie, Madonna Nera ? —”
“Ain’t for him.”She was already yanking open the steel supply closet where she kept her nursing tools—the same ones she’d used patching up boys from Anzio to Iwo J. “ You! Boil water! You! Rip that shirt off him! And somebody get me a goddamn grappa!”
As the men scrambled, she leaned down, her lips brushing Cosimo’s ear.“You live today, it’s ’cause of those boys, ya hear. I love your boys. Remember that when you’re back on your throne, you sack of shit. What I giveth, I can take away.”
His good eye blinked.Slow. Once. Twice.
Another contract.
Mama Stewart rolled up her sleeves and reached for the forceps.