ANTONIA PAOLI ORDERED her coffee, which she liked black, strong and hot. When it came, she sat back against the wall, lit a cigarette and reflected on ‘Jimmy Corsaro.’
She was reluctant to see him leave. Not that she could possibly be in any danger from the families; that was ridiculous. They simply did not mistreat their women. As far as other dangers went—she shrugged.
She brought herself up short. Where was her head? It had already happened to her once that night. The thought of the sharp blade against her throat sent a shiver coursing through her. In school, in her official capacity, one spoke of muggers as being disadvantaged, of stemming from broken homes, poverty-stricken and under-privileged. Of course, one said with understanding and compassion, they would be forced into the streets to rob and waylay. It was an overt cry for help.
Balls, Antonia said to herself. She was not in class at the moment and the knife had been pointed at her throat. She hated the preying maggots. Motherfuckers, indeed!
Fortunately, Jimmy Corsaro had been with her.
Strange man, that. And very exciting. She wanted to know more about him, but she suspected that would take a great bit of doing. He did not speak freely about himself. Perhaps this close-mouthed withholding was part of his fascination.
Yet, she knew he could let go when the occasion called for letting go. She’d had ample evidence of that, as they rolled about on her living room floor. He was a man who knew what he was about. Fantastic.
Seated there in the coffee shop, sipping her drink, Antonia smiled with satisfaction. She had engineered the whole affair. Her initial hostility had been quite genuine. She was hostile to all of her family’s hoods, small men big with greed and avarice, killers for a nickel. And she had assumed, quite properly, that Jimmy Corsaro was merely one of them. But no; he was different. There was much more to him than that. And once having determined that, Antonia Paoli made up her mind to take him by storm. The direct approach, blunt as it was, was the right one, for it quickly established them as equal adversaries in the game of love. He would think twice before lording it over her. (Although, she had to admit that, having once experienced Mr. Corsaro, he could now lord it over her any damn time he chose. She loved it.)
With a sudden twinge of conscience, Antonia realized she had given little thought to her father. Had she really grown so hardened that she could forget that her father had been gunned down just a few minutes before? That he was still warm in his bed, blood-spattered and riddled with an assassin’s bullets? Antonia examined her heart, her deepest emotions.
Perhaps the full import of it had not yet been absorbed into her consciousness. But no; the truth was pretty much the way she had explained it to Corsaro. As a female born into the house of a Mafioso, her entire training had been toward an acceptance of death. It was the tradition among the women to become stoics, to accept the inevitability of their men’s death. She could no longer count on the fingers of both hands how many of her relatives had been slain. Among Sicilians, it was endemic, if not downright epidemic.
But in Antonia’s case, there was something more, something that stood between her and her late father: a great barrier of betrayal, as thick and solid as a stone wall. For what he had done to her, Antonia could never fully forgive him. And what he had done was symptomatic of the whole rottenness that stood at the core of Cosa Nostra. Our thing, all right, a thing that, like a vacuum cleaner, sucked up everything in sight. People, money, possessions, honest business enterprises. Nothing mattered. Nothing could stand in its way. The greedy hose of Cosa Nostra sucked it all up.
Antonia Paoli felt the rage rising. Just thinking of it was enough to make her want to spit. Angrily, she ground the cigarette into the saucer and, without thinking, reached for another.
She’d been sixteen, in high school, concerned with studies and innocent flirtations. Pretty, yes, although she never thought about it because her entire consuming interest was in advancing herself. She was acutely aware of her background. Over her books at home, she often heard the whispers, the secret phone calls, the midnight coming and going. Again and again, it was drummed into her that silence was their way, that nothing that transpired in the house was to be breathed to another soul. And she knew, too, the terror of open warfare between her family and the police; her family and other Italian families. With her own eyes, she had seen an older brother gunned down as he stepped from his car. Her favorite cousin, the man who always brought her little gifts, was found on a parking lot with a hole in the back of his head. Others were whisked off to prison, or disappeared entirely. And still the family whispered and conspired, and never, once, turned to the proper authorities, because the only authority they recognized was their own.
Antonia, early in life, knew that she had to break out of the family life style before she was totally caught up in it, before her dreams of something more, something better, were crushed for all time. And she knew exactly how she was going to do it: through learning. She was going to be something. She buried her nose in her books and worked for good grades and continued to dream of the better life.
In her sixteenth year, there was a celebration held at the house. Antonia no longer remembered what the occasion was, only that the clan gathered, dozens of them from all parts of the city, that much pasta was consumed, and more red wine, and that she had been in her sweet sixteen party dress, with her dark hair up, to make her look older (and sexier). She had been cautioned that, since she was no longer a child, she must present herself as a hostess and be gracious and kind to all.
It was then, at the height of the party, when she became aware of the man staring at her. He was a handsome man, with gray hair, deep dark eyes and bushy black brows. He might have been a movie actor, he was that handsome, that worldly. To young Antonia, his stare was somehow special: deep and consuming, as if—and she laughed deliciously to herself—as if he wanted to devour her. The man’s stare followed her throughout the evening, when she danced, when she helped to serve the food, when she poured wine for the thirsty men. It was unnerving: Antonia found herself growing flushed, as if she had been reading a sexy novel. She tried to dismiss it. He was an old man, she told herself; handsome, yes; but so old. He couldn’t ... But there he was, his stare reaching out to her from across the room. It sent strange chills coursing through her ...
That was when her father, heady with wine, had taken her across the room to meet Vito Spazzi. “Don Vito,” her father had said, “is a very important man, Antonia. Treat him nice.”
Vito Spazzi turned out to be a charmer. Soft-spoken, well-mannered. He was interested in Antonia’s school work, in how she spent her idle hours. And, as she told herself that she had been mistaken in her first impression of him, she found it easier to talk. Although he confessed he was not much of a dancer, they danced to a slow foxtrot, and his arm about her was warm, but gentle. And then she excused herself to attend to other guests.
It was much later, as the party grew rowdier and more raucous, that Antonia discreetly left and went up to her room. It was, after all, her father’s party; his friends, not hers. She’d done her duty and she wanted the rest of the night to herself.
Upstairs, in her room, she removed her party dress; and because it was a humid night, she sat at her desk in bra and panties. She was soon absorbed in reading. So absorbed, that she did not hear the door open. When she looked up, Vito Spazzi was standing in the room, staring down at her.
Along with her shock at seeing the man behind the closed door of her room, the true meaning of his stare flashed across her mind. It was the look of a man who hungered.
His lips moved, his tongue darted between them, but he said nothing. His stare burned into her, leaving her petrified and totally immobilized. He began to move toward her, lips working, breath coming in hard, quick gulps. She could not move. Then his hands were on her, tentatively at first, exploring the texture of her bare flesh. He raised her out of her chair and crushed her to him. His lips were hungry, devouring, encompassing. His arms were like steel bands about her, as he maneuvered her to the bed. Firmly, he laid her down, kissing and sucking her breasts. His hands kneaded along the length of her and gently, smoothly, removed her panties.
She wanted to scream out, but no sound came. She clawed at him, bit him, but he came on relentlessly, his tongue penetrating the deepest part of her being. And then, wonder of wonders, she stopped fighting. In the most brutal, primeval way, Antonia Paoli had become a woman.
He was smiling at her, the hunger gone from his eyes. But now it was she who could only stare, speechless, unable to comprehend either what had taken place or the tumultuousness of her emotions.
Slowly, he disengaged, backing away, adjusting his clothing. He stood beside the bed. “Do not mention this to anyone,” he said. “No one.” He kissed her on the forehead and was gone.
And she didn’t. For two months, during which time she neither saw nor heard from him, she kept the secret to herself. And then it became apparent that she could not keep the secret for very much longer. Antonia was pregnant.
She had no close friends, no one she could tell. Frightened, she sat, day after day, long night after night, in her room, her head in a chaotic whirl.
Then one morning, early in her third month, Antonia threw up at breakfast. Her mother, who was alive then, blamed it on her eating too fast, gave her some Pepto-Bismol and sent her off to school. When it happened again the following morning, her mother turned pale and seemed to shrink into her dark housecoat. She followed Antonia into the bathroom and closed the door.
The old woman was almost afraid to ask, afraid to know what she already knew. But Antonia broke and through her tears, confessed. Her mother let out a wail, beat her breast and rocked her grief. Her daughter, her Antonia, had dishonored them all. She had reared a puta, a common whore. Righteously, she called upon the good Virgin and Jesus and all the Saints to strike her daughter dead. And shrieking, she ran through the house, like Paul Revere, to wake the men of the family.
Her brothers, her father, waked abruptly out of whatever dreams possessed them, came running. Carlo, in his underwear, even had a gun in his hand. They gathered in the kitchen and there learned the shame that Antonia had brought upon them. Her older brother, Rocky (now dead), beat her about the head, calling her names. Carlo, hand tight about the gun, was all for rushing out and putting a bullet into the bastard who had done it to her. Who? Who was it?
And when she told them, through her tears, who the man was, the revelation was met with a shocked, hollow silence. Spazzi? Don Vito Spazzi? Impossible! It couldn’t be!
But it was. And as the full meaning sank in, her father and her brothers began to recall the stories they’d heard over the years; how, for all his power and for all the control he held over his family; and for all the wealth he had accumulated from his countless business ventures, the Don had a madness. An insatiable craving for young girls. It was said that his soldiers were constantly on the lookout for new Lolitas, which they fed to him with great regularity.
So, to the business at hand. What to do about the shameful dishonor that had befallen them? Abortion was a dirty word. One did not destroy a seed, even if it ultimately meant the destruction of the mother. Characteristically, the brothers had a simple, but direct, solution. Take a few of the boys down to Brooklyn and cut the godfather’s cock off. Let the sonofabitch pay where it hurt the most. That’s how it would have been done in the old country; and they’d have been applauded for it.
But Vincent Paoli, rising to eminence in the Mafia hierarchy, held his brash young sons in check. To journey to Brooklyn with guns blazing could only result in open warfare between the families. To what gain? This was to be avoided. But just as there were two sides to every coin, so there had to be a way to turn this sad misfortune into good fortune. He stared at his daughter, and then stared through her, into the future. Perhaps there was a way. Don Vito had much power and influence. He was handsome and rich. And he was a widower. Vincent Paoli would handle this delicate matter personally.
There followed a period of very secret, personal negotiations between Vincent Paoli and the Don, during which Paoli sagely pointed out the devastation that would occur if the Paolis were forced to avenge the dishonor. On the other hand, think of the benefits to all if a union could be forged between the two families? The strength ... the power.
Three weeks later, at St. Anthony’s on Stilwell Avenue, Antonia Paoli and Vito Spazzi were joined in holy matrimony before the combined families, associates and well-wishers. Antonia, the dutiful daughter, bride, and mother-to-be, accepted her fate as a pawn as if she had a choice. The wedding cavalcade then wove its way to Gino’s Restaurant for a real bang-up celebration. In the course of the long and tumultuous evening, while the band hammered out Italian folk songs, only two fights broke out, both of which were blamed on the free-flowing booze and the hot natures of Southern Italian men.
Then the Don and his bride, accompanied by three bodyguards, were off to a honeymoon in Nassau, where the hotel clerk made the mistake of assigning a suite to Mr. and Mrs. Spazzi and another to Mr. Spazzi’s daughter, Antonia. That trouble straightened out, bride and groom retired to their rooms to consummate their marriage.
This time, unlike the brief, hot encounter in Antonia’s room, Don Vito was impotent. Antonia presented herself to him in all her naked sixteen-year-old glory. Her body was only slightly rounder, breasts full and quiveringly alive. But Don Vito was unable to get it up. He tried and she tried; no go. He said it was the excitement. He said he’d had too much to drink. He said he was tired.
He tried again the next night, and the next. And pretty soon, he stopped trying altogether. For the fact, as it developed, was that, although Antonia met all his requirements, she was also his wife. Don Vito could no sooner fuck his wife than his mother. Like so many old-fashioned European men, there were only good women and bad. One’s mother, wife and daughters, were good. All others were bad. To be exciting, sex had to be illicit. Prostitutes, pickups, other men’s wives and daughters, all were fair and exciting game to Don Vito. Especially those under twenty. To anything else, he could not respond.
Antonia lost the baby.
Don Vito Spazzi took his bride home to the fortress he had built in the heart of Coney Island. No ordinary ancestral home, it stood in the shadow of a rollercoaster that roared and rumbled ceaselessly overhead; a bathhouse, with outdoor lockers and steam rooms leading to the boardwalk and beyond, to the sea; a high, blank wall along the entire length of the property that faced onto the street; and to the rear, a row of games and concessions along a midway known as The Bowery. Here, in a small shack, Don Vito had spent his early years soon after his arrival from Sicily. At ten, he was a towel boy in the Baths. By fifteen, he had graduated to the rollercoaster , collecting tickets and buckling passengers into their seats. Later, he jockeyed cars around a parking lot on the next street; hawked for customers at the bottle game on The Bowery. But ten years later, thanks to a flourishing shylock sideline, he was the sole proprietor of the rollercoaster , the baths, the parking lot and the entire row of Bowery concessions.
Vito Spazzi never had any desire to leave the Island; he was comfortable there, easy. In time, he came to look upon it as his Island. Over the years, he expanded the shack under the rollercoaster , adding rooms and stairways around an inner court. And unless one were invited through the heavily guarded high wall, one never knew the Spazzi home existed on the other side.
Vito Spazzi had come a long way over the years. From behind the high walls, which he seldom left, he directed an empire of diverse interests, including, but not limited to, gambling, prostitution, loan sharking, narcotics, restaurants and trucking. Nothing seemed to move through Brooklyn without first being cleared with Vito. Congressmen, judges, police chiefs and assorted ward heelers paraded endlessly through the wall to pay their respects and partake of the fine wine cellar Vito provided. His name, when mentioned, was always in a hushed whisper: he was “big”.
In Coney Island, Antonia was deposited in a room of her own, high enough so that she had a view of the sea and the lights and bustle of the Island. Books were brought to her for her own study, but she was not permitted to attend school, since that would be unseemly for the wife of Don Vito. She was permitted to shop and visit her family, but never alone. She was, after all, the Don’s property; and as such, had to be properly guarded.
Vito made no further attempt to have sex with his wife. His pleasures came, instead, from an unending stream of young girls, brought to his office suite under cover of darkness and sent on their way before dawn. Antonia sometimes saw these creatures, but she was surprised that she felt nothing, neither compassion nor distaste. She, herself, had been one of them for a few brief moments.
So, for a month or so, Antonia was left pretty much to her own devices. It wasn’t too bad a life for a young girl married to an old man. But one evening before a “special” dinner, Vito appeared in her room. For a man who was eminently successful in his dealings with the great and near-great, he appeared to be uncommonly uncomfortable before Antonia. His voice was exceptionally low-keyed and hesitant. He was entertaining a gentleman, he explained, a VIP, and it was most important that Antonia assist in the entertainment. To put it bluntly, he expected her to “be nice” to the man, and to go along with whatever he suggested.
Antonia was only sixteen, but it was patently clear to her what “being nice” entailed. She told him, in effect, to get one of his whores. Vito was not known for his patience, particularly with women. He slapped her across the face and ordered her to be nice. His business—and that of her father, too—was at stake; and if she wanted to grow to be a normal woman, she would do as she was told.
The VIP turned out to be a State Supreme Court Judge. Throughout dinner, Antonia listened to the small talk and the jokes, without having much to contribute. She didn’t like the man; he was too oily, too suave for her taste, and quite as old as Vito. Nor did she like the way he would speak to her and run his hand along her thigh during the meal. There were, of course, lots of drinks, before, during and after dinner, and the Judge was soon afloat, face flushed, laughing at jokes that escaped Antonia, his speech growing fuzzy.
At this point, Vito got a phone call. Most apologetically, he announced that he would have to leave them for a time. No, Judge, please stay, help yourself to whatever you like ... And he was gone, leaving Antonia to be nice to the guest.
To the Judge, the situation seemed tailor made. He warmed to the subject at hand. They drank, they danced. His breath was hot and alcoholic in her ear and his hand slipped to her fanny. Impressed with the need to make haste, he shortly drew her down onto the sofa beside him, where he really went to work. In no time at all, he was dying for need of her and spraying kisses over her cheeks and neck and breasts. Antonia tried to squirm out of reach, but he was still agile. Somehow, he managed to get on top of her, her legs pawing high above them, her skirt up around her waist. And at that point, the room exploded in a flash of brilliant light, followed by another and another.
The Judge pulled back as if shot. He had, indeed, been shot, but not with bullets. Don Vito stood towering above them, flanked on either side by Tommy Trip and Dino Martin, his two stalwarts, each armed with the latest model camera.
Don Vito was most abject. “Judge,” he said in his most polished manner, “I am disappointed in you. I thought you could be trusted with my wife. You have betrayed my trust.”
It was the second oldest trick in the world; but if he hadn’t been before, His Honor, the Judge, was now safe in the hands (and pocket) of Don Vito Spazzi.
Antonia held her peace until the Judge, muttering loyalty to the Don, took his leave. Then, her assignment completed, she quietly stepped up to her husband, slapped him hard and spit in his face. Still in her dinner gown, she strode out of the house, through the big door in the high wall, and took a taxi to her father’s house.
That had been six years ago. And oddly, Vito Spazzi had never, in all that time, come to claim his young bride.
For her part, Antonia was gradually accepted back in the bosom of her family, despite early attempts to send her back to her husband. But since Vito seemed satisfied to leave the situation as it was, the Paolis accepted it.
Antonia returned to school and eventually went on to get first, one degree, then another. And when her mother died, she and her father took their apartment together on University Place.
Six years. In six years, Antonia Paoli (she had dropped the Spazzi) changed from a confused adolescent into a very determined, very beautiful and very intelligent young woman. But for her age, she was also very cynical. She would no longer permit men to “use” her, unless she were free to use them quite as much. She despised the Cosa Nostra and pitied the thousands of maligned and innocent Italians who suffered at their hands. She knew; she was one of them.
The University was her life, and soon, she would be receiving her doctorate in Sociology. Her thesis was already taking shape: “The Characteristic of Self-Destruction Among Italo-Americans.” In it, the future Dr. Antonia Paoli was attempting to document the fact that, unless Italo-Americans dehyphenated and became true Americans, they were doomed to self-destruction at the hands of their own kind.
In the well-lighted coffee shop on Eighth Street, Antonia was about to call for a second cup of coffee, when she looked up into the cold eyes of Tommy Trip. Beside him, Dino Martin, jowly and heavier than she remembered, was blandly staring at her boobs.
No greeting; merely, “The boss wants to see you.”