The Family(10)

Rosa watches the carrots and tomatoes and beans as they spin in the boiling broth and feels herself settle. She remembers her mother in the kitchen, wrist-deep in ground meat, humming. Her father out, again, working—God knows where. God knows with whom. For God knows how long.



* * *



    —

Joey knows without even asking that he needs to meet with Tommy Fianzo. There is a swirling, nauseous pit where his stomach and heart should be.

Joey knows Carlo would never have left his family. He also knows Tommy Fianzo would do anything to protect his standing as one of the most powerful men in Brooklyn. Carlo’s ambivalence had been a weakness.

At the mouth of the Red Hook waterfront there is a bedraggled concrete building where the Fianzos hold court. As Joey arrives he can smell the sea and has to stop and hold a hand to his chest to control himself. He saw Carlo just last night. Joey knew this was coming, didn’t he? Somehow, he knew it would be soon. You should have warned him, he tells himself. And in the same moment, I could never have warned him. I would have ended up just like him. Sofia’s face swims to the forefront of his mind. He made his own decisions.

And then, this is your fault.

Tommy is standing by the window of his office. When he sees Joey, he wraps him in a hug. He thumps Joey on the back, a clap that reverberates through Joey’s heart and lungs. “I’m sorry about all this,” he says. Joey can hear Tommy’s voice move out around them in waves. It gets swallowed in the concrete walls. Joey fights an urge to sink into the comforting arms of the man who has guided him since he was a teenager.

Tommy pours them both glasses of wine. He gestures to the chair on one side of his desk and sits in the other. “Tension,” he says, “does not look good, in a family. Conflict does not look good.” He takes a sip of his wine. “It exposes us. It makes us vulnerable. You know Eli Leibovich?”

Joey shakes his head. No.

“You will, soon. He’s making a name for himself on the Lower East Side. Jewish. Smart as hell.”

Joey is used to the nature of a meeting with Tommy Fianzo. Tommy will get to his point eventually. His power affords him the right to express himself in whatever way he wants to. Even if he has just disappeared your best friend.

“I’m responsible for a lot of people, Colicchio. Not just you, and not just our flighty friend. A lot of men, and each of them has a family to take care of. So I look at someone like Carlo, and where you see a man who regrets his choices, who wants something different for himself and his family, I see a man who is endangering not just himself but me, and you, and everyone else in this Family. He was skimming off the top, did you know that?”

Joey did not know that. He knew Carlo was restless, ambivalent. Flighty. He didn’t know Carlo was reckless. Stupid. He pictures Carlo, sliding a dollar out of the billfold. A moth circling the flame of freedom. A body, trailing a spiral of blood in the East River current. His breath hitches up into the back of his throat. Betrayal of trust: the worst possible crime. Unforgivable. “I didn’t know, boss,” he says.

Tommy continues. “Well, he was.” Tommy pauses. A muscle twitches in the side of his neck. Tommy Fianzo is a good cook. He is a gentle father, when he wants to be. He is the most violent man Joey has ever known. To control himself in this moment must be costing Tommy a great deal. “He was stealing, from me. From us. And because it’s my job, I’m looking across the river at someone like Eli Leibovich and I’m thinking ahead about how to protect us. I’m thinking about how we can offer up a united front.”

Joey, unable to help himself, is caught up in the rise and swirl of Tommy’s words. Tommy Fianzo, with his chiseled-out chin and the low boom and swell of his voice, exudes confidence. Righteousness. Power. Joey knows all this. He knows how it works. The transition from knowing how it works to experiencing how it works makes him dizzy.

“I’ve always hoped you’d be my number two, Colicchio. You’re like a brother to me. You’re good at this. It’s why you understand that it’s a good thing Carlo Russo seems to have gone away. You understand how it solves a problem.”

Joey does understand, and he does not. Loss is like that. The world shimmers in and out of focus: one moment it is the place you live in, and the next it is utterly foreign, and you cannot even breathe the air.

“I think this loss will affect you, though,” continues Tommy. “I worry you won’t be able to think of me in the same way. If I’m being honest, I think Carlo’s disappearance will make it impossible for us to trust each other. Do you agree?”

Joey hears himself nodding, the whistle of air past his eardrums. He feels like he is floating above his body, but he knows that his fists are clenched, that his breath is ragged, that there is boiling within him a vicious thing like hate or fear and that it is directed at Tommy Fianzo.

“So here’s what I’d like to do,” Tommy says. “I’d like to give you the promotion I always intended to, but a little earlier than planned. And with some conditions.”

Then Tommy pulls a map of Brooklyn from his desk drawer, and he begins to outline a section, including Red Hook and Gowanus and a long rectangle up through Brooklyn Heights. “This,” he explains, “will be your area. Minus this office, of course.” The Fianzos, he explains, will let Joey operate relatively independently. He won’t have to go to meetings with them; they will not eat together each week; Joey can hire who he likes, as long as Tommy Fianzo gets a hefty percentage of Joey’s earnings each month. This, Tommy explains, is in the interest of keeping the peace. “War does not look good in a family,” he repeats. “Losing two strong young men, when it’s possible to lose only one, does not look good.” Looking good is something the Family needs to do in front of its enemies, and even, though Tommy does not admit it, in front of the Americans, who think the Family is nothing more than a bunch of petty, mewling gangsters, and who would love nothing more than to watch Tommy’s Family tear itself apart from the inside out. The Russo widow, Tommy says, will be left up to Joey. It’s traditional to care for her, Tommy says. To make things easier. Tommy Fianzo is not without honor. He will murder a parent, but he is not without honor. These things coexist.