of the table, and through the floor, picked up a darker hammering tone that, I suppose, if you were a sleeping gangster who had recently been shot at, could have sounded like another attempt on your life.
Vincent, recovering his poise, laughed as if he found it funny. And when he laughed so did the others. But he’d been shocked into a state of aggressive awareness. No more sleeping now, he was the crime boss once again.
What is this dump! he said. Am I in a junkyard? This is what you guys find for me? Massimo, the best you can do? Look at this place. I have retribution to think of. I have serious matters. And you drop me in this rat’s nest. Me! And where is the intelligence I need, where is the information I count on? I see you look at each other. You wanna give me excuses? Oh there are debts to pay, and I will pay them. And when I’ve put out their lights I will turn to who in the family set me up. Or shall I believe it’s blind fate that I am now minus one ear. I’m talking to you! Is that what it was, blind fate, they just happened to find me in the restaurant where I was?
His men knew better than to say anything. They may have even been comforted to find their boss up to form. I could hear him striding about, pushing things out of the way, throwing things aside.
AS LANGLEY TOLD ME later it was as Vincent prowled about holding a hand over his ear hole that he found one of the army surplus helmets and put it on. And then there was a need to see himself in a mirror and the men brought down the standing mirror from my mother’s bedroom, a lady’s bedroom mirror that could tilt in its frame.
As Vincent saw his reflection he realized his suit was a mess. He stripped—off came the jacket, trousers, shirt—and in his skivvies and shoes and socks he found a set of our army fatigues that fit him and said, Nobody will believe this is me in this outfit. I could walk out the front door in broad daylight. Hey, Massimo, whaddya think? I look like anyone you know?
No, Pop, the son said.
A course I can’t be seen like this. What it would do to my rep. He laughed. On the other hand if I’da had on this helmet the other night I’d still have my ear.
Our washing machine was in the alcove behind the kitchen, an old model with a wringer attached, and one of the men found it and took Vincent’s clothes and dropped them in the machine to get all the bloodstains out. We must have had by then a good number of electric irons and two or three antique hand irons that you put on the stove to get them hot. So some time went by as Massimo and one of the men attempted to get Vincent’s suit washed and wrung out and ironed so that it was a reasonable simulation of a dry-cleaned suit.
While all this was going on Langley didn’t see why he should stand there and be bored so he went back upstairs to his typewriter and the clacking and platen banging resumed and Vincent said, Massimo, go up there and tell the old man he doesn’t shut up with the typewriter I’ll stick his hands in this clothes wringer. Massimo, showing an initiative in an effort to please his father, brought the typewriter down in his arms and Vincent took it and heaved it across the room and I heard it come apart with a silvery shatter, like a piece of china.
IT WAS ONLY WHEN Vincent was preparing to leave that I became frightened. I wanted him gone but what might he order his men to do to us by way of parting? For hours it seemed, the crime family consulted among themselves while Langley and I waited, as instructed, upstairs.
When the last light had faded from the windows we were summoned and tied up in two kitchen chairs back-to-back with clothesline, of which we happened to have enough looped and coiled in the hardware cabinet in the basement to go twice around a city block, though our practice in hanging things to dry was to prefer those metal umbrella rigs, of which we had a few, that could be unfolded and folded again when we were through with them,