Thunder City (20 page)

“Signor Dolan! What an honor and a surprise.”

“Where is he?”

“He?” The butcher’s fat smile remained in place, but the brightness went out of his eyes as if a veil had slid between them and his brain.

“Your partner. I want to see Borneo.”

Now the smile was gone. “He is upstairs. I will tell him you are here.” He squeezed his bulk through the narrow space between the end of the counter and the right wall.

“I’ll go up with you.”

The butcher paused, then jerked his chin in a brief nod. He went out through the front door and held it for Dolan. When they were both outside he drew the door shut.

“Aren’t you going to lock it?”

Grapellini snorted rudely. “When Signor Borneo becomes my partner I throw away the key.”

Dolan followed him into the narrow alley alongside the building, through a side door, and up a flight of rubber-runnered stairs between walls of mustard-colored plaster. At the top they turned down a wainscoted hallway with a hardwood floor, lit only by the weak fixture over the staircase and a morsel of winter sunlight coming through a window at the other end, which looked out on the brick wall of the blacksmith’s shop next door. Ten feet short of the window they stopped before a blank door and Grapellini rapped on one of the panels. A muted voice from the other side asked who it was.

“Grapellini. Signor Jim Dolan is with me.”

“Come in.”

Dolan wasn’t sure what he expected to find in Sal Borneo’s lair. Luxury, he supposed, some Mediterranean ideal of lavish vulgarity, beaded curtains and layers of rugs and ornate carvings and castings dripping with gilt. What he found was an office of business that would have passed muster anywhere in the city. The walls were paneled in some light wood, teak perhaps, with tasteful hunting prints hung on them in plain oak frames. An oak desk, handsome but unremarkable, stood before a leather-studded swivel, and a pair of armchairs were drawn up in front of it. There was an ordinary black metal telephone on the desk and a square of pale yellow rug with a plain brown border on the floor. The only exotic touch was a marble bust of some classical figure on a barrister case in the corner by the desk, the shelves of which were stuffed with books bound in dark leather. Dolan read Gibbon’s name stamped in gold on several of the volumes. A homely white-painted steam radiator shed heat beneath a window that looked out on most of Little Italy, its banners and awnings put away and the whole of the neighborhood withdrawn for the winter into a gray concrete cocoon.

“Welcome, Mr. Dolan. I believe this is the first time I have had the pleasure.”

Dolan was unprepared for his first exposure to the man with whom he had been in partnership for so long. He had once seen Borneo’s predecessor, Uncle Joe Sorrato, in company with Sorrato’s four sons, and the memory of those elephantine men in their wrinkled white suits and broad-brimmed Panamas had fixed in his mind a matrix for the type. The man who rose from behind the desk as he entered, forty and slight in a well-cut but nondescript suit of charcoal wool with a black knitted tie on a white shirt, might have been doing business from an office on Woodward Avenue instead of a butcher shop in Woptown. His strong features might have belonged to a Sioux Indian but for a silken moustache whose points drooped over the corners of his mouth. Only his complexion, sallow and riddled with the shallow scars of what must have been a long and nearly fatal battle with pox, attested to a life harder than the one he was living. When he set down the book he had been reading and reached across the desk, a heavy gold ring glinted on the small finger of his right hand. It was the only extravagant thing about him. Dolan had never shaken a smoother hand.

“That’s all for now, George,” Borneo said without taking his eyes off his guest.

The man to whom this was addressed was the ugliest human being the Irishman had ever seen. His face was absolutely flat, like a piece of shale, and his eyes were hooded beneath thick lids and a heavy shelf of bone. Old scars braided his cheeks, paralyzing the muscles of expression so that he showed no more emotion than a big cat. His cheap suit strained at its buttons and fell inches short of his wrists. He’d have looked less grotesque in filthy overalls or the horizontal stripes of a convict. He stirred from his place beside the bookcase and headed toward the door, crouching a little with his arms bent, like a wrestler stalking his opponent. Dolan suspected he was a Greek.

“Thank you, Vito,” said Borneo.

This was as much a dismissal as were his words to the disturbing George, and Grapellini took it as such without question, accompanying the other out into the hall. When the door was closed, Borneo smiled, uncovering a set of uncommonly fine teeth for an immigrant. Dolan’s own were tobacco-stained and filled with gold, and he found himself resenting the man even more when he smiled.

Borneo mistook the object of his distaste. “George is a horror, but he’s loyal. He did me a favor once. Nothing guarantees gratitude more than asking someone to do something for you that is within his power.”

“Isn’t that the other way around?” This fellow’s repose was annoying. The Sicilians Dolan had dealt with in the past were either comically boastful or toadying to the point of nausea.

“It should be, but it is not. When you do a thing for someone, the response is almost always resentment. It’s very difficult to secure a kindness in return for a kindness done. Integrity may already be a thing of the last century.” Was that an edge to his tone, at last?

“He’s an animal,” Dolan said flatly.

“This animal was recommended by my attorney.”

“You have an attorney?”

“You might know him. Maurice Lapel.”

“Lapel’s a kike!”

“When I require a barber I go to an Italian.” Borneo tilted a palm in the direction of one of the armchairs before the desk.

Dolan remained standing. “You act as if you’re not surprised to see me.”

“Nothing has managed to surprise me since I came to this country and found that no one was waiting on the dock to hand me gold. Won’t you sit down, Mr. Dolan? I have a weak back, which I will not indulge while others stand.”

“I thought all you dagoes were as strong as niggers.” But he sat down. The full-grain leather was as soft as a broken-in baseball glove.

“Actually it’s my kidneys.” Borneo lowered himself into his chair, pulling a slight face as he did so; the first sign of discomfort he had shown in Dolan’s presence. “A reminder of an old visit with the police. It was one of your people, as a matter of fact.”

“I doubt it. If it was one of mine he’d have finished the job.”

Borneo took the challenge without changing expression. The little silence that set in when he lifted the book he’d been reading and set it down on the edge of the desk, as if to remove an obstacle that lay between them, said that it had been understood.

“I cannot vote,” he said, in the bland tone he’d been using right along. “I am not a citizen. However, I follow politics closely. It’s the only sport that interests me. Your candidates appear strong this year. Congratulations.”

“My people are loyal, like your George. I wish I could say the same for everyone I have to deal with.”

“Integrity again.”

“An outmoded concept, as you say.”

“It is a matter of faith, and science has replaced that. Secular times require solid measures. You must reinforce the mortar with steel. An arrangement of trust is not enough. It must be backed up with force.”

“I agree. We may have to push in a few brothels and horse parlors, just to make sure the support we have continues into November.”

There it was, on the table. Dolan sat back and folded his hands across his great middle. He was glad of the long carriage ride from Corktown. It had given him time to harness his rage. The game was patience.

Borneo—maddening man—withdrew. “Such a stoic art, and so suited to the Celtic temperament. This is why so few Italians succeed at it. Our love for our families distorts our judgment and weakens our resolve. Your own family must be very understanding.”

“My family is not your affair.”

“I apologize. We have been associated for so long, you and I, that I forget we are not old friends.”

“We will never be friends.”

“My great regret. You must know, Mr. Dolan, that I admire you very much. These monkeys who perform in public and make the proper faces in order to win wide regard are contemptible. Power is not a collective thing; it has never rested with the people, who have no idea what they want until someone with true power tells them.”

“Thank you. I don’t admire you.”

“There is no reason you should. I’m only a merchant. The least of my customers is more powerful than I. If I cannot supply what they want, I cannot remain in business.”

“And I tell them what they want.” Dolan began to think he was gaining ground at last.

“So long as you do not misjudge. Even such authority as yours has limits. Human limits. We are all of us poor clay.”

The game had reached its crisis. Big Jim Dolan leaned forward and smacked the desktop with the palm of one hand. The sting went clear to his elbow and jarred a horsehair pen out of its black onyx stand. “I sent your whore walking today.” He did not shout. He kept his voice at conversation level, impressing even himself. “She made a mistake and forgot her lines.”

“I can’t say I’m surprised. Her career onstage was brief.”

Nothing in the Sicilian’s appearance or demeanor had changed. He looked and sounded as if he were still discussing the vagaries of politics and power.

“You admit she’s your creature.”

“It would be a mistake to call her that. She is quite independent. One might say she is more in the nature of a contract worker.”

“Fancy term for a harlot.”

“I hope you didn’t call her that to her face. She considers herself an actress, with some justification. She had just left a touring company when she was recommended to me; a rather melancholy little farce with the unpromising title
Madame Lombardo’s Confession.
I understood she had an artistic difference with the director that required twenty-two stitches to correct. Before that she was the companion of the original stage manager, who left the troupe in Cleveland. That fellow put up a bond to keep her out of the Women’s Workhouse on Blackwell’s Island in New York.”

“That’s a jail.”

“Not her first visit, nor her first jail. I can provide specifics, if you’re interested. The detective agency was quite thorough.”

“Start with her name.”

“Thelma Brown.”

“That ain’t Italian.”

“Certainly not, although she’d be happy to learn her preposterous accent passed muster. She is a mulatto. Her father was a janitor employed by the New York Port Authority.”

“A nigger.” Dolan felt the blood draining from his face.

Borneo watched and said nothing.

“Why?”

“In a way it was a compliment to you.” The Sicilian picked up the fallen pen and bent it between his fingers. “You had no weaknesses to exploit, so it became necessary to provide one. Oh, there was the record of your shameless corruption, but your constituency is too loyal. It was conceivable that I could present them with a photograph of you picking a cardinal’s pocket and they would argue that you were in fact making a secret donation to the Church. In any case, voters expect their public servants to steal from time to time, in order to level the field. They aren’t the fools their own candidates often take them for; they just don’t care. Adultery is quite another thing. The system is not so far gone the electorate will tolerate a basic and flagrant disregard for the sacred vows. Even a philandering bricklayer will scream for the head of an incumbent who’s as much a slave to his lust as he is. The miscegenation feature was a gift. I would not have thought of it if it hadn’t plopped into my lap. Since you had no weakness, I had to go to your strength. You are your popularity.”

“Why?” he said again.

“You know why. You’re not an imbecile.”

“My candidates were elected on a decency platform. Our arrangement was founded on the understanding that you’d have to stand for a raid on your establishments from time to time. If we ignored you, it would only call attention to our arrangement. We’d all be out come November and you’d be back pushing a cart.”

“This isn’t about horse parlors and brothels. And you know that.”

“I
don’t
know.” He genuinely didn’t. He spread his big hands, fully conscious that it made him look like a supplicant. Which he was. He had come there as Boss Dolan, demanding answers, and the answers he got had broken him.

Borneo watched him, again in silence. After nearly a minute he opened the belly drawer of his desk, drew out a copy of the
Detroit Evening News
folded to the advertising section, and slapped it on top of the desk. Dolan read the top three lines of the full-page notice without picking it up.

To Manufacturers, Dealers, Importers, Agents, and Users of Gasoline Automobiles

“The Association of Licensed Automobile Manufacturers, indeed,” Borneo said. “I am not an imbecile either, Big Jim. Did you think I would not recognize your hand?”

“That’s Secretary Whitney’s red wagon. Your beef is with him.”

“He’s your cat’s paw. Don’t make this worse by insulting me. Where did you ever obtain the idea you could get away with prohibiting consumers from buying automobiles not built under the Selden patent? Lapel informs me no judge in this country would rule in favor of that.”

“That was just to frighten away customers. We never intended to press action against them.”

“If you’d wanted to attract the attention of Roosevelt’s trustbusters, you couldn’t have stumbled upon a better plan. Ford knows that. It’s why he felt safe placing an advertisement indemnifying his customers. He knew he’d never have to make good on it. All you’ve succeeded in doing is make him a hero.”

“This isn’t just about Ford.”

“I know what it’s about. It’s about thirteen hundred acres of Ohio farmland and half a dozen streetcar company executives with a bad case of cold feet.”