not tell, and I kept it. I forgot all about him. When I listened to Esther sing . . . all that low, rumbly power. I thought of him. He had a voice like God.”
“Yeah. He did.” My father laughed like he was hearing that voice in his head. “He had a voice like God, and an ego to match. Bo got involved with a woman he shoulda left alone. Her name was Maude Alexander.”
I kept eating, hoping he’d go on. After a minute he did, though I could tell he was giving me the bare bones and leaving off the meat.
“You ever heard of Maude Alexander?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“Her grandfather, Thaddeus Morley—her mother’s father—was one of this country’s first millionaires. He made his money building bridges and railroads. He built his fortune right alongside Cornelius Vanderbilt. He even built his mansion next door, on Fifth Avenue. That was a long time ago. The mansion is gone now . . . most of the Morleys are gone too. Maude’s father, Rudolf Alexander, was a bootlegger. He took the Morley money and used their railroads to move his booze. He made a killing during Prohibition and even more money during the second war. If you control the movement of goods, you control the world. He got involved with the labor unions too. He has a law degree that he waves around, and he’s smart enough to make the little man think he is on his side. He even ran for president a couple times as ‘the voice of the common man.’” He laughed, mirthlessly. “He wasn’t ever one of the little guys.”
“So what happened to Maude?”
“She was what they call a socialite. Rich. Beautiful. One of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen. Name always in the papers. But she didn’t just go to parties and make the fashion pages. She was a trained opera singer. Giuliana loved her voice. We used to listen to her on the Sunday Night Showcase on WOR. We took you to hear her sing once. You mighta been too young to remember. We were going to leave you with Nonna, but your mother said she wanted you to hear. Giuliana was sick and going out was hard, but it was a concert in the park, a little more family friendly. So we brought you along. Sal and Aunt Theresa came too.
“You and your mother were transfixed. You hardly moved. You sat in her lap, and you wore the same expression. Pure happiness. Peace. It was beautiful. The woman had a voice. She was really something.”
“I think I remember her name . . . now that you mention it.”
“New York was obsessed with her. Sal was obsessed with her too.”
“Sal?” I asked, taken aback.
“Sal,” Pop answered, grave. I just shook my head.
“He has a way of making things go bad,” I muttered.
“Don’t say that, Benny.”
I shook my head again, but let it go.
“Maude liked him too, for a while. He was handsome. Powerful. Persuasive. I think she was flattered. Women like Sal . . . and she liked that he was trouble. I don’t know why women like trouble. Giuliana didn’t like trouble.”
“She married you, Pop,” I reminded him, my voice wry.
Pop frowned at me, like the irony was just occurring to him.
“Keep going. The Alexander woman liked Sal. Sal liked her . . . then what?”
“She didn’t like that Sal had a wife. She didn’t want to sneak around. If she was going to be a mobster’s girlfriend, she wanted to be on his arm, on the front page, not tucked away in his bed.”
“She told Sal no?” Nobody told Sal no. Not even my father.
“Not in so many words. She flirted with him, but she had her eye on someone else.”
“Bo Johnson?” I asked.
“Yeah. Bo Johnson. Poor son of a bitch. He shoulda run. Bo was a star in his own right. When he wasn’t in the ring, he dressed in the best suits, tailored to show off his strength. He carried a cane and wore a bowler hat. He mixed with men and women that would have barred him from their soirees if he wasn’t a celebrity. Bo loved to take what he wasn’t supposed to even touch. He loved the white girls for no other reason than it made everyone nervous. And the white girls loved him. Maude loved him. Maude Alexander’s world was all about glitter, glamour. She didn’t think the rules—unspoken and spoken alike—applied to her. And they