“Only Yesterdays”
is a non-fiction biography, encompassing the events that lead to the 1927 tragedy and the 1927-1928 trials of Francesco Caruso.
Written by Dominic Caruso
Copyright 2011 by Dominic Caruso
Smashwords Edition
Cover design by Dominic Caruso
For Family Pics SEE:
http://nomoretonorrowstheebook.webs.com/
Preface
The word Mafia and New York City somehow seem to go together, but the name of that Sicilian organization and the American Medical Association do not. Or do they?
Francesco Caruso, known as Cheech to family and acquaintances, was convicted of murder and sentenced to death in the late 1920’s. The death that earned him this sentence forever changed the course of medical practice in urban areas; for, after 1927, doctors would be paying far fewer house calls, at least to the poor. My father’s murder trial and appeal pitted certain elements of the AMA and the ‘Mafia’ against each other, a drama which was played out in the newspapers of the day, hurtling one hitherto obscure but proud family of immigrants from Sicily into the national spotlight.
Francesco “Cheech” Caruso was the head of my family; he was my father. I tell his story to honor my heritage, all aspects of it, the light and the dark. Even more so, I tell it to honor my mother, who worked publicly to free Cheech from prison when to do so went against her extremely and private reserved nature. In a strange country and language, she would ultimately make speeches, give interviews, and plead with public officials for her husband’s life. Her strength and courage sustained our family through difficult times; but none were more trying than the period when Cheech waited upon death at Sing Sing’s death row.
I’ve chosen to tell about my parents as a narrator of selected scenes that bring together family memories and news accounts. This allows me to combine family stories with news stories of the time in a cohesive, readable manner.
Dialogue among people in this account follows reports from different members of my family. Where possible, I have used the very words related to me by Mom, Dad, my sister Lena, my Uncle Lou and my father’s last surviving relative, his younger sister, living at Sicily whose memories of the time were most vivid.
In all dialogue, I have been careful not to change the gist of conversations or alter the nature of events concerning how them happened and how it was said. Since both my father and mother spoke broken English, dad more so than mom, I have tried to write his words in dialect as sparingly as possible without altering how he spoke, how he used words, in an effort not to make it too difficult for the reader.
Despite the famous personalities on these pages, Only Yesterdays is my parents’ story, told by a son who wishes he had one more tomorrow with them. Dominic Caruso..
INTRODUCTION
It’s the decade of the twenties, a gay time, a time of expensive watered-down liquor, speak-easies, the Charleston, flappers and two years before Black Friday, April 14, 1929, the stock market crash and the Great Depression that followed.
The year 1927 finds Americans finally accepting the telephone as an important part of life. The Victrola, 78rpm records and roller-playing pianos are becoming popular and more affordable.
In a few months the first sound-equipped movie will be made, with the great entertainer Al Jolson starring as a black-faced songster in The Jazz Singer. African-Americans were already starting to get noticed, at least in the world of theatre and the arts, perhaps the most celebrated of whom was the American expatriate living in Paris, Josephine Baker, whose showmanship is still legendary. A young Charles Lindbergh will soon buzz New York City, trying to raise the money for a solo flight across the Atlantic. Simply unheard of!
The greatest baseball team of all time, the 1927 World Champion New York Yankees, dominates the baseball world and the World Series with the help of the great Babe Ruth and his sixty home runs.
The longest underwater passageway, the Lincoln Tunnel, has just been recently opened to the public.
The Broadway musical, Showboat, produced by the great Flo Ziegfeld opens for the first time, enthralling New York audiences with the possibilities of a theatrical extravaganza destined to sweep the nation.
Though 1927 is memorable for all those events, a single immigrant family’s tragedy has spread its influence like a cold fog off the docks of New York that year. In Brooklyn’s Little Italy, the death of a small boy named Joseph Caruso will draw public attention for far many more years than he is fated to live.
*
In the beginning, the life of Joseph Caruso was a happy one spent with a family who adored him, a life lived in obscurity, just one among a millions others. Before the year 1927 was over, this one life lived in contented obscurity would, in death, be remembered by millions in both the U.S. and abroad.
This is how the story of my little brother’s death and the travails of my family, which would touch every household in 1927 begins.
*
The influx of immigrants through places like Ellis Island has become a veritable deluge of humanity, this happy, wondrous, sad, and even mystical time in America is the 1920’s. Irish immigrants are the largest group of people to arrive in this country, followed by the next largest group, the Italians. Almost half of the Italian immigrants will return to their homeland.
As immigrants settle into this strange land, they form little homelands away from home, small communities within the city. These ethnic communities are sometimes no larger than a city block or two (in New York City, that can of course be quite enormous!)
Each nationality is grouped together to recreate a semblance of home, to make such friends as language and culture as familiar as possible in a strange land. They find time to enjoy each other's company. Dealing with this new environment is difficult, of course, and the immigrants needed the comfort of speaking fluently among themselves, enjoying such things as their favorite foods and even the entertainment they had brought with them from the Old World. Thus villages of immigrants are popping up all over New York City, New Jersey and Connecticut. These cultural centers of home away from home will become known as the Irish neighborhood, Little Italy, China Town, the German neighborhood, etc.
The mood and the cultural diversity of the times are aptly symbolized by The Statue of Liberty, which proudly carries the inscription, “Give me your poor, your huddled masses….” They would come and keep coming, poor in everything but pride, tradition, spirit and hope. For the most part they are hard-working people of limited means but determined to give their children the life they can only dream of and toil after, working incessantly in sweatshops, loading docks, and other---all in a strange land which neither understand their native language or appreciate their traditions and way of life.
Advantages and services are not generally available to them in this land of plenty, this country with mythical golden-paved streets. Many have arrived here only to die of starvation or disease. Most immigrants live in what is known as cold-water flats, apartments that have neither hot water nor heat. Slum neighborhoods have become over-populated and infested with rodents. The better ethnic neighborhoods have their share of rats, mice, roaches and lice. Conditions will worsen, epidemics spreading everywhere. Such perennial blights as chicken pox, measles, malaria, whooping cough, and diphtheria are among the many illnesses immigrants have to contend with.
In order to find a solid remedy for the plethora of diseases which arose from such omnipresent conditions of squalor and poverty which have plagued many immigrant neighborhoods, the medical community has made a conscious effort to serve the needs of the general public, being forced, under the circumstances, to treat even the very poor. It cannot be emphasized enough that in the larger cities like New York of 1927, the population is mostly comprised of poor immigrants. Realizing that the poor can’t afford to go to hospitals or doctor’s offices for their medical needs, the doctors and nurses find themselves enlisted into poor immigrant neighborhoods to treat those whom many ‘respectable’ doctors and nurses obviously considered little more than the ‘dregs of society.”
Therefore, in the 1920s, physicians began making house-calls at the apartments of these impoverished patients, recruiting midwives and nurses to do follow-up visits. By 1927, medical staffs will have treated hundreds of thousands of people, through house calls alone. Health care ranging from headaches to minor surgery and childbirth are provided in people’s homes.
The sad reality is that the incessant poor health of many immigrants has made fertile grounds for many epidemics, which know no bounds and now must be stemmed at their source. The medical community must act quickly to contain the problem, but realizes that the new battle may be easily lost if they do not marshal all their reserves in a strong, concerted action to stem the rising tide of poverty and squalor, which nearly always follows poor nutrition. In reaching out to the impoverished in their flats, the medical establishment must find ways to control contagious diseases while still somehow making a profit. Payment plans are soon arranged according to the family’s ability to pay. Sometimes the amount owed is as little as 25 cents a week.
Common procedure in a contagious disease situation is for an authority to post quarantine signs on entry doors, notifying visitors of the risk from the condition. Only authorities could remove a posted sign, under threat of fine or imprisonment to others. Penalties are strictly enforced.
Doctors, midwives and nurses who make house calls are easy targets for those who earn their livelihood by crime. Often health-care givers are beaten and robbed of anything they have on their person from money, medicine and vehicles to the very clothes they wear.
Though no one knows it, in Italian neighborhoods medical care providers are protected. The organization keeping them safe isn’t widely known to the immigrants’ new world. Today it’s called ‘The Family’ or Mafia.
*
On February 13, 1927, at three o’clock on a Sunday afternoon in Brooklyn, an event occurred that changed the way the medical community viewed house calls, nation-wide, from that time forward. The event set one powerful organization, the New York chapter of The American Medical Association, against another organization not as well known but just as dedicated: The Mafia. This event pitted one Italian against the other and posted a message that no doctor, mid-wife or nurse was truly safe anywhere. Not even in Italian neighborhoods, which had been the exception.
In reporting the story, the newspapers, magazines and radio distorted the truth, warping details into sensational headlines. Headlines sold, and this chronicle was wrung for the lurid attention that sells newspapers.
The elements of high drama are easy to overplay: the unfortunate death of a young boy; grief-crazed parents including a pretty young mother; and the brutal murder of a medical doctor in Little Italy.
Media staff probably assumed the immigrants involved had no power to protest news accounts or to protect themselves and their surviving children from unwelcome public attention.
Stories about the brutal murder of Dr. Casper S. Pendola would separate readers into groups- mainly those in support of the death penalty and those against it.
However, conspicuously absent during these troubled/tumultuous times were the behind-the-scenes maneuvers of the American Medical Association and the Mafia. Battling each other for a singular man’s life was the political might and formidable organization of one of the world’s most affluent societies and the little-known force of one which was just beginning to carve a permanent niche in the United States and, by extension, into the remainder of the modern world---the previously mentioned AMA.
*
Francesco “Cheech” Caruso will flee the scene after Dr. Casper S. Pendola’s death and go directly to family, in the Sicilian manner. His older brother Rosario Caruso lives on Staten Island. About 4:30 p. m. on a cold and windy Sunday, February 13, 1927, Cheech is sitting in a welter of emotion at his brother’s kitchen table. This is his story, a story that would involve New York City, The American Medical Association, and the Mafia.
Chapter 1
Down the common dark hallway between flats, Rosario speaks into the public phone. “Operator, please give me the Brooklyn policia department.” He cups a hand around the mouthpiece, keeping his voice low.
The operator doesn’t hear or can’t understand his heavy accent.
Clearing his throat, he speaks a little louder, pronouncing the harsh English syllables with care. “Please give me the Hamilton Avenue Brooklyn policia department.”
His message understood this time, he added, “Thank you.”
In the long, dark passage of his apartment building, Rosario curved his body around the wall-mounted telephone box, closing out curious neighbors. Sicily wasn’t like this, people stacked atop each other in cold boxes so they couldn’t break wind without neighbors knowing.
Waiting in silence to be connected, he turns just enough to look toward the end of the hall through the open door into his apartment. Inside, his younger brother sits at a small kitchen table. With his elbows on the tabletop and his head buried in his hands, Cheech waits, quiet and motionless.
Hearing a voice at the other end of the telephone, Rosario says, “Hello, Mr. Policia, this is Rosario Caruso. My brother Francesco is here with me, and he wants you should come and get him. He wants to give up. He wants to go back to Brooklyn.”
The officer responds, “Who the hell is this?”
Straightening in surprise at the officer’s rudeness, Rosario speaks the difficult language with all the precision he can muster. “My brother said he killed a man today in Brooklyn. He said the man he was a doctor, Doctor Pendola. Do you know what I am talking about?”
After a pause full of muffled voices, the officer said, “Where are you calling from? Give me your address and I will see that someone comes to get him.”
“I
cannot tell you that yet, sir,” Rosario says.
Americans think
you were stupid if you speak English with an accent. “Please.
First you must listen to me. I have something to tell you from my
brother. He said that he will only give up to you if policia-man Sgt.
O’Mally comes into my house to arrest him.”
Another pause, then the police officer speaks again. “He’s not working today; he’s off duty. I can’t get him now.”
Rosario shifts, gazes at Cheech’s hunched figure, and says with urgency, “You must find him. I will call you back in an hour. After my brother he speaks to O’Mally, then I will tell you where I am. One hour. Goodbye!”
Hanging up the telephone, Rosario wiped cold sweat off his face onto his shirtsleeve and walked slowly back to his apartment. It was only right that his brother came to him for help, but could he deal with this disaster? Would he be deported for his part in it he thinks to himself?
Closing the door, he collects a bottle of Italian wine and two glasses. Easing onto a chair across from Cheech, he places the wine and glasses on the table and fills both glasses. When Cheech doesn’t move, he gestures for his brother to drink.
In Sicilian he makes an effort at rough humor. “Cheech, come on, drink up. Once they get here, you won’t be drinking wine for a long time.” Cheech grimaces but takes up his glass. Both men taste the wine.
Rosario watches, still shaken, as his brother sits down the glass, lips wet like his swollen eyes, and buried his face in his hands again. Cheech had always been the best looking of them, drawing women and men alike to himself with easy charm when he chose. When he’d pounded on the door earlier and stumbled inside, Rosario had felt shock at his ill, wild appearance. The shock had only deepened as he learned why Cheech had come.
Shaking his head, Rosario said, “What have you done, what have you done? In this country you will get the electric chair. Do you know that?”
Cheech took his huge hands from his face and wiped his eyes. “My life is over anyway, Rosario, it is over. When Joey died in my arms, inside, I died with him. It’s best I die. It doesn’t make any difference if I live.” Rosario’s eyes widen with shock. “Joey is Dead?”
Cheech struck his deep chest and flung up his arms. “All I do is cause misery and death everywhere I go. I killed Valenta, and then Papa, and now I killed Doctor Pendola. I lost Joey.” His voice throbs with grief as he clutches his shirtfront. “I lost everything. I have nothing. My life is over. My heart is dead.”
Leaning across the table, Rosario grasped his wrist and whispered, “Cheech, my poor brother, you still have a family, and you shouldn’t give up. We love you.”
Cheech pulls free and shakes his head. “This isn’t the first family I left. I left close relatives in Sicilia and now I leave this family in America.”
Removing the cork from the wine bottle, Cheech lifts it and gulps. Then he refilled both their glasses and replaced the bottle on the table. The two brothers stared at each other and lifted their glasses in a mute toast.
Rosario stands up, walks to the icebox, finds another bottle of wine and returns to the table, placing the vino in front of his brother.
Cheech leaned on his forearms, tragedy sagging his face and massive shoulders. “I’m always running. I’m good at running.”
“You don’t run when you have me call a policeman for you.” Rosario wondered that Cheech would know an Irish police officer. “This O’Mally, he is a good friend to you?”
Head down, Cheech nodded. “He is like a brother, a real brother. He is my only friend.”
“How long have you known each other? Are you sure you can trust him?” Rosario pours another glass of wine, wishing he had more to give Cheech in his devastation. “How did you meet this unlikely friend?”
“I did him a favor a long time ago and he never forgot it. It was my pleasure to help him.” For the first time since his arrival, Cheech straightens up. “It was something he could not do for himself because he was a policeman. So I took care of it for him.”
Rising from the table, Rosario set his glass down with a thump. “Its time to call the police again. Come on Cheech, you talk to O’Mally.”
The brothers walk out of the apartment, broad shoulders nearly touching as they pace down the narrow passage to the public phone at the other end. Rosario dials the operator and is quickly connected with the Brooklyn police station.
A male voice crackled down the line. “This is the Hamilton Avenue Police Station, officer Ryan speaking.”
Clearing his throat, Rosario tells the officer, “This is Rosario Caruso and my brother is ready to speak to O’Mally. He would like to speak with Officer O’Mally.”
“Hold on,” Ryan instructs. Rosario hears distant voices and scuffling sounds.
Then a wary voice said, “Hello, this is O’Mally.”
Rosario hands the receiver to Cheech.
Cheech leans forward, closer to the mouthpiece mounted on the box. This is his only chance. “Hello, O’Mally. Is that you, piason?”
“It‘s me.” O’Mally lowers his voice. “Are you okay, Cheech?”
Shutting his eyes, Cheech knows he will never be okay again. “As much as I can be. I am sorry I ruined your Sunday, piason. I did not know who else to turn to.”
“Don’t worry about it,” O’Mally says. “Sure you call me.” Leaning against the wall in relief, Cheech heard reassurance in O’Mally’s tone. Still, he was a cop, and right now a roomful of his cohorts could hear every word he said. “Will you come with the detectives to get me, and stay with them until I’m locked up?”
O’Mally agreed at once. “I understand. I know what you mean.”
The Irishman was a friend indeed. His presence would keep Cheech alive and more or less in one piece. Thanking O’Mally, Cheech says, “Now I’m gonna give the telephone to my brother so he can give you the address.” He hands the receiver back to Rosario.
Listening to his brother, Cheech could tell O’Mally has to search for paper to write on. Finally Rosario concluded as if repeating, “About an hour. We expect you. Thank you.” With care, Rosario hangs up the earpiece.
As they trudged back to the apartment in silence, Cheech felt the high ceiling and confining walls close in on him like a prison, like the prison that certainly lay ahead for him, if not worse.
Once the door closes, Rosario reverts back to their native tongue. “Tell me again what happened. I mean at the house with Joey, please. While we have the time.”
Cheech wiped his eyes and puts his hands together. He managed to say, “My Joey,” before tears choke him again. Deep sobs, shakes his shoulders and wrenched his chest until it hurt to breathe. He needs to talk. He came here to spill the torrents of poisonous rage and grief to a brother who would recognize their headwaters.
Finally he rasped, “Joey was sick for about two weeks, he was getting worse all the time.” His words struggled out as he wept. “First he had a cold, then a sore throat and a fever, then he started to have trouble breathing. He had trouble sleeping. My precious son, he was so sick.”
Tears scalded his cheeks as pain hurt his throat. His son had suffered far worse torment, and he had been able to do nothing for his beloved boy. “One morning I opened the door to our apartment to go to work and saw a quarantine sign on the door. I didn’t know where it came from, but I knew what it meant. We couldn’t leave our rooms. Not for work, food, anything.
My neighbors looked out their doors and they told me they would take care of the food for us. I thanked them and went back inside. I told Maria that we were quarantined, that we had to stay behind that door until the nurse said we could leave. Somebody will come to help us, I told her. They will come.”
Anguish and a surging sense of betrayal set his blood pounding. He talks faster and his voice becomes louder. “But nobody ever comes, not anyone, not the doctor, not the nurse, nobody. Days go by and Joey, he gets worse and worse. Maria and I stay up with him for three or four days and nights with little or no sleep.
“The other children are starting to get sick. We don’t know what to do for Joey anymore. Maria and I take turns swabbing Joey’s throat. It is so swollen, so red, like it’s burned by fire.” He shrugs and grimaces, hands spread wide. He has seen it hurt Joey, doctoring his throat, and he would rather cut out his own heart with a spoon than see Joey hurt. “Still nobody comes and we don’t know why.”
How could a man protect his son when an official sign imprisons him? What kind of government let children sicken unto death behind a barred door? “I didn’t know what to do. Nobody came to help us. Other tenants had doctors and nurses visit them, but nobody came to help us.”
“Finally I couldn’t bear it anymore, to watch my Joey suffer. I told Maria to keep Joey warm, that I would be back with a doctor as soon as I could. So I put on my coat and hat and I went out to look for a doctor.”
Rosario leaned forward, frowning. “The quarantine! You broke the quarantine!”
Shaking his fists, Cheech roars, “By then I didn’t care about the damned quarantine or if they arrested me forty times over!” Clenching his teeth, he swallows the taste of bile. He needed to explain to Rosario before the police came for him. “Joey was bad, worse by the minute. I had to go. I looked everywhere for a doctor, but their offices were all closed.
“So I started back to the house. On the way back I saw Pendola’s Drug Store. I had been there for medication when Joey first got sick. I knew the man and his wife. I went inside and told the drug man that Joey had gotten worse and I needed a doctor. I told him that they were all closed and I needed one right away. I pleaded with him to help me with his medicines, for my boy’s sake.”
“He tells me, ‘my brother is a doctor. He lives in Queens. If he is home he will come. Give me your address.’ He told me to wait, then he went to the back of the store.”
Rosario nodded. “He’s a good man, the druggist.”
“When he came out, he said his brother was home and would leave right then. I was to go home and wait there for him. I thanked Pendola and hurried home.”
Bitterly, Cheech recalled Maria’s expression of relief and her admiration for him when he told her he had arranged for a doctor to come to their boy. “About an hour later the doctor knocked at the door and I let him in. He looked at Joey, shaking his head and saying he was very sick. Joey was having trouble breathing. He said Joey should be in a hospital but we pleaded with him not to take him away. The doctor says he will try to treat Joey at home.”
How thankful Maria was, not to have their boy carried off to that monstrous place where people were cut on and died. “The doctor turned Joey on his side and rolled up his little shirt. Out of his black bag he took a needle and filled it with medicine. Then he stuck Joey in the back. Joey cried, but the doctor said he was going to be okay.”
“He told you Joey would get better?” Rosario shifted on the hard wooden chair and frowned. “Then I don’t understand what happened.”
“I do.” Cheech pounded his thigh with a fist. This was the part Rosario had to know. “The doctor gave me a piece of paper with the name of another medicine on it. He said for me to go to the drug store and get it filled right away. I ran back to Pendola’s drug store and gave the drug man the paper.
“He looked at the paper and told me that this medicine was too strong for a six-year-old child! He said, ‘My brother should not do things like this.’”
Rosario raises dark brows. “He said that, about his brother?”
Nodding, Cheech got up to pace the floor. He couldn’t sit still and relive the nightmare of the last few hours. “Then the drug man shook his head and went in the back of the store. When I got back home the doctor was still there. I told him what his brother said, and he said his brother should mind his own business, that he didn’t know what he was talking about.”
Cheech stopped, flinging out his hands in supplication. “I didn’t know what to do. The drug man, he was so sure it was wrong, but the doctor—he is a doctor! His job is to know the medicines for healing.”
Rosario nodded in agreement. Thrusting thick fingers through his hair, Cheech resumes pacing in the small space. “Then the doctor said he would be back at three o’clock the next day and he left.
“Maria and I were up all night long, never leaving Joey’s cot. Joey was restless all night, until after twelve o’clock when he started to have tremors and bring up foam.
His voice started to change. He didn’t talk like a little boy anymore. His little voice got like a low, rough whisper, heavy like a man. It was hard to understand him. Maria understood him better than I.” Cheech stops to swallow, but the knot in his throat seems permanent. “Then he couldn’t talk anymore. He just stared into space.”
Cheech covered his face with his hands, shoulders heaving. “We could hear each breath going in and out, in and out. He worked so hard to suck air into his little lungs, it had to hurt him. And I ached with him for every breath.”
Cheech’s heart felt like it would explode. “I sat down on the floor beside his cot near the stove and watched him breathe. I kept on telling him he was going to be okay, but he didn’t answer. He just looked away. Maria and I kept asking him if he could hear us but he didn’t say anything.”
“Then his little body started to stiffen and his breathing became softer. I moved one of his arms gently to see if he would respond and he did. Then he said the last words of his life.”
Crying louder and out of control, Cheech sags where he stands.
Rosario finds him a towel and leads him to a chair at the table. He embraces Cheech for a long moment, and then pours him another glass of wine. “You going to be okay?”
Burrowing his face in the towel, Cheech said, “He told me, ‘Papa...the doctor is killing me with that shot he gave me. I feel like I am on fire. I’m dying, Papa, please help me; help me, Papa, don’t let me die!’”
After another storm of weeping, Cheech groans and mops his ravaged face with the towel. “I tell him, ‘you are going to be okay, you will not die and leave me. I will not let you die!’”
“He put his little shaking hand on my arm, and it was so thin by then it’s like a feather’s touch, no more. He looks at me one last time and then his eyes turned away from me.”
Cheech tried once, twice, before his voice grates out. “And he stopped breathing.”
His head sank forward and tears rained on the wood tabletop. “I watched him real close and looked for a breath, but there was none. I looked at Maria on the other side of the cot and she was crying with no noise, both hands on her mouth. I looked at Joey and all I could think about was Papa. I killed him and named my son after him, and now I killed my son, too.”
Rosario shakes his head. “No, Cheech.”
“Yes! I killed him.”
“But the doctor, when did the doctor come back?”
“Let me think.” Cheech rubs his aching head. Since Joey died, his thoughts had attacked and scattered like wild pigs, but the pain of the loss didn’t stop for an instant. “I started crying and acting like a crazy man. It’s hard to remember what was happening.” His voice rises until he is almost yelling. Seizing handfuls of his dark hair, Cheech began pulling at it.
Rosario, taken aback by the change in his brother’s mood, reached across the little table and grabbed Cheech’s wrists. His brother’s hands were too intertwined with his hair to remove them. Hoping to prevent him from hurting himself, Rosario says, “Cheech, Cheech, stop. Don’t, Cheech, please, no.”
No response. Rosario begged, “Cheech, you’re scaring me.”
Cheech grabbed his brother’s hands in a painful grip and flung them away, lips curling back over his teeth.
Rosario massaged his wrists, frightened. Never had he seen his younger brother act this violently before. Not in the natural fights among all the brothers back home in Sicily. Not against outsiders.
Becoming aware of wetness, he looked at his hands. Red. In horror, Rosario says, “Cheech! My hands are covered with blood. What is it, where did the blood come from?”
Cheech crossed his arms in front of him on the table and rested his forehead on them. “Don’t touch me, Rosario. Don’t touch me.” When his brother rises, scraping back the chair, he says sharply, “Sit down.”
“Cheech.” Falling onto the seat, Rosario holds out both hands. “The back of your head is covered with blood. What happened to you?”
“I don’t know,” Cheech said in puzzlement. He touches the back of his scalp, winced, and looked at his besmirched hand. “I can’t remember.”
With increasing agitation, he cried out, “I wish I was dead! Rosario, give me your gun, I want your gun. I’ll settle this now.”
“No, no!” Rosario protests. “No more trouble. Enough is enough. Let me wash my hands, then I’ll take care of your head.”
At the shallow sink, he scrubs his hands, keeping watch over Cheech. Wetting a dishcloth, he returns to his brother and attempted to blot the blood. Cheech wrenches away, overturning his chair as he leaps up. A snarl distorts his features as his eyes look at nothing. “You are the reason I killed Papa, you and your no good brothers. You are the reason Papa is dead. I will never forget that, never. You and your brothers should have never done that to me. I will never forgive you.” Words fall over each other like ants escaping a kicked hill. “You all left me out there miles from nowhere with no clothes, no food and no way to get home. Because I made your brothers pay for what all of you did, I have been cursed. You got away; I couldn’t find you. You son of a bitch, you got away. You hid like a rat!” Rosario shakes his head but doesn’t dare interrupt Cheech in this wild frenzy.
Cheech sways on his feet, looking into the distance. First Valenta died, then Papa died and now Joey is dead. Will he be the last? No, I don’t think so. I don’t care with Joey gone.”
Hoping to calm his brother, Rosario takes a step toward him. Head snapping up, Cheech put up both hands. “Don’t touch me, Rosario. You touched me enough.” Cheech raises clenched fists and yelled, “You touch me one more time and I kill you, too. Gabish?”
Rosario returned to the table and sat down on the far side, as far away from Cheech as the small kitchen allowed. He would remain quiet. Cheech was crazy with grief. He didn’t know what he was saying. Maybe he didn’t know what he was doing, either.
Chapter 2
Cheech looked so strange as he raved that Rosario risked speaking. “Cheech, what happened to Papa was an accident. No one knew that would happen. We didn’t mean it to happen like that. It wasn’t your fault that Papa died.”
Eyes red and glaring with an unfamiliar face, Cheech took a step toward him. “After O’Mally comes and takes me away, I don’t ever want to see you again, you bastard. You’re no good and your brothers are just as bad.” He stumbled back, clutching handfuls of hair again. “I don’t even know what I’m doing here; how did I get here? Why did I come to your house?”
Rosario said the only thing he knew, the simple truth: “Because I’m your brother. We’re still family no matter what you think of me.”
“You are no goddamn brother of mine, you son of a bitch, you no good bastard.” With empty eyes, Cheech didn’t even look like himself when he talked this way. “You stopped being my brother when Papa died, you and the rest of your God damned brothers.”
Leaning over to look out the window, Cheech seemed to see Sicily instead of Staten Island outside. “Papa took me out of school when I was eight years old because none of you bastards had the piss for the business. I didn’t even want it. You and your brothers wanted it. But none of you could take it on because you were all cowards. And you blamed me!” He jabbed a thick forefinger in Rosario’s direction. “I wish on you and your family all the tragedy you and your brothers have brought to me and my family.”
“You don’t mean that, Cheech.” Even with the madness of his son’s death on him, his brother’s unreasonable charges stung.
Cheech grabbed his brother by the throat with one hand and pulled him onto the kitchen table’s surface. “Don’t you ever forget what I say, Rosario. I wish on you and your family the same burden of tragedy that you have placed on me, both you and your damn brothers, and I mean every word. I curse you all.”
Without effort, he flung Rosario back into the chair with enough force to make its legs screech against the floor. His voice and face changed, from demon to damned. “Now give me your gun. If you want to do me one favor in your good-for-nothing life, give me your gun. For once do something for me!”
Touching
what felt like bruises on his throat,
Rosario said, “I don’t
have a gun, Cheech. I wouldn’t have a gun in the house. We don’t
live like that here.”
Cheech sneered. “That’s because you’re a coward. Just like you’re no good brothers. That’s why Papa picked on me to take out of school. That’s why he ruined my life. He knew none of you could do it, so it was up to me.” Turning his face upward, he threw out his arms and cried, “And now look, look at what came of it.”
Hands in his hair, he pulled at it and groaned. “Rosario, don’t say one more goddamn word until O’Mally gets here. I’m a dead man. I could kill you for nothing. I don’t want to hear your voice. I must have been out of my mind, crazy out of my mind, to come here!” Holding his head as if it ached, he grimaced. “I don’t understand. I don’t feel so good.”
Rosario wiped his face and filled the glasses one more time. He had to try to calm Cheech down, or his brother might take on the whole police force when they arrived and be killed. “Okay, okay, Cheech, I’m sorry. Come sit with me and drink, to show you can forgive me.”
“Shut up, I’ll never forgive you!” Cheech shouted. He winced and clutched his head. “Be quiet and sit still. Sit still! Madonna MIA, my head hurts! I just want quiet.”
Staggering along the table, Cheech pulled out a chair and sat heavily. He crossed his massive arms on the tabletop and rested his forehead on them. “I just want to be quiet, Rosario. I haven’t slept in weeks.”
Horrified at the wild menace Cheech had become, Rosario didn’t know what to expect from his brother next. Like this, Cheech could easily kill. Cold to his core, he feared for his own life.
Rosario didn’t know how long they had sat frozen across from each other when he heard the car from down in the street, he heard it pull up and come to a stop in front of the apartment building.
Watching Cheech, he rose slowly and edged over to the window. He pulled the curtains back to look outside. “Cheech,” he said quietly. “I think they are here. Is that O’Mally getting out of the car?”
Cheech shoved back the chair and joined him at the window. Below, four men in overcoats climbed out of a car. One man turned to the others and made hand motions as if to say, “Stay calm, stay calm.” Looking up, he waved to Cheech and Rosario. The other men stood looking up, hands on the door handles of the sedan.
Rosario looked at Cheech. “Is that O’Mally?”
Cheech nodded. “Cie, that’s him the one who waved.” O’Mally disappeared into the building below them. Rosario listened for footsteps on the stairs to the second floor apartment, heard them come down the hallway. A knock sounded on the door.
In English, Cheech called, “Come on in O'Mally.” O’Mally opened the door and walked in without hesitation. Rosario tensed, not sure what to expect from Cheech after his ranting and threats. As O’Mally approached the table, Cheech smiled and headed toward him. The two men reached out for each other and locked in an embrace.
“I am so glad you come, O’Mally,” Cheech said. “Thank you.” O’Mally thumped his back. “I’m glad you asked for me. It gives me a chance to pay you back. Are you okay?”
Cheech wiped his eyes as he stepped back a pace. “I will never be okay again. My life is over. Joey is dead and soon I will be dead, too.” He gestured at the table. “Come on, sit down with me, have a glass of wine and we will talk. We need to talk. I have some things I want to speak to you about.”
As Cheech filled the two glasses used earlier, he said, “Rosario, bring a glass for my friend.” O’Mally pulled back one side of the curtain and waved to the officers at the car. He shouted, “I’m okay; I’ll be down in a while.”
A faint answer rose on the sharp winter air, heavy with coal smog. “Don’t be too long, and stay in view.” As he turned back from the window, O’Mally inspected the injury to the back of his friend’s head. “Be Jesus, Cheech, do you know what you’ve done?”
Cheech ducked away from the touch of examination, but he answered in a heavy, low voice. “Cie, I know what I did. I killed the bastard. The no good bastard that killed my son. Joey told me he was dying and I did not listen to him. I trusted the damned doctor, that good for nothing bastard. He killed my beautiful little boy. Now I don’t have Joey no more.”
O’Mally rubbed his fingertips together after touching Cheech’s scalp. “What the hell happened to your head, Cheech?”
Rosario said, “I tried to clean it for him, but he will not let me help him.” Nodding, O’Mally said, “Bring me a wet rag and I’ll take care of it.”
Cheech rubbed his neck and looked bemused. “I don’t know what happened. I can’t remember. I can’t remember a lot of things.” Looking around with heavy eyelids, a gaping yawn ended in a grimace. “O’Mally, my head hurts so bad I wish I was dead.”
With rough kindness, the policeman puts a hand on Cheech’s back. “Put your head down so I can wash off some of the mess.” As O’Mally worked with gentleness his big hands belied, Rosario filled the glasses again.
“I can’t believe Joey’s dead,” said O’Mally. “Little Joey. What the hell happened, Cheech?”
Slight movements of his head when the injury was touched showed body awareness, but in tone of voice and expression, Cheech seemed barely alive. “I don’t know, piason, I do not know. Some times I can remember everything and other times I’m no good. I no can remember anything. All I know is I am never gonna see him again.” He closed his eyes and the tears begin to roll from his eyes and across his nose. “He’s gone for real.”
Handing the bloody cloth to Rosario, O’Mally said, “Cheech, if there’s anything you have to say to me, if there’s anything I can do for you and your family, now’s the time to tell me. Since you asked for me, they know we’re friends and they won’t want me hanging around the station as long as you’re there. So I won’t be able to help you unless you tell me now.” Moving around in front of Cheech, he bent to look him in the eye. “They’re already looking at me funny. I need to know now what you want me to do. Your family, Totto, anyone else. You know.” Cheech leaned back and returned the significant look. “If you would, O’Mally, there are a few things I need for you to do.”
Straightening, O’Mally nodded once. “Okay, Cheech.”
“I want you to first go see Maria and see if she needs anything, please. Then go see the boss. I want you to take him a note for me.” He gestured to his brother. “Rosario, get the paper for letters.” After a quick trip to the bedroom, Rosario brought a tablet and pencil to the table.
Cheech shoved the writing materials toward O’Mally. “I’m no can write English, you write for me, okay?” Pulling the pad toward him, O’Mally straddled the chair Rosario had used earlier.
Cheech frowned at his brother. “You get out here. This is not for coward’s ears.” Rosario looked between the two men, his face working. Head down, he went into the bathroom and closed the door. “Now,” Cheech said, sighing heavily, “You write what I say:
Boss, The man who brings you this paper is my friend. He is my brother. He’s not Sicilian, but he is a man of his word, an honorable man and a man of respect. Help him. Protect him. Because he helps me he is not safe anymore. I ask you to watch him, his wife and children. Before the law kills me, I would like to speak to you one more time. There are things I want to say to you. I will not forget you. Do not forget me. Do not bring attention to yourself by helping me.
“That’s all.”
Silently, O’Mally pushed the tablet and pencil over to Cheech.
At the bottom of the page, Cheech signed his name in Sicilian, your piason Cheech. He folded the paper with deliberate moves of his huge hands. “Make sure no one sees it except the boss.”
O’Mally leaned on the table, looking troubled. “That part about me, you don’t have to do this, Cheech.” “Cie, I do. Do you know what’s gonna happen to you, now that you are here? Now they know you’re my friend, that I asked for you. Forgive me. You’re gonna need the boss’s help. He will make sure nothing happens to you while you’re walking the neighborhood. Let me do this for you my friend, my brother.” Cheech clasped his friend’s wrist and said with urgency, “Understand? Gabish?” Jaw set, O’Mally nodded. “Yes, Cie, I do. Thank you Cheech, I Gabish.”
“Good.” Cheech passed a heavy hand over his face and, glancing toward the bathroom door, lowered his voice. “Now I tell you what to do. Go to Brooklyn, to Giovanni’s. You know Giovanni’s?”
“I’ll find it.”
Cheech nodded. “When you enter the restaurant, go to the back of the club and look for the biggest table in the corner of the restaurant. Tell the men sitting there that you are Cheech’s friend and that you have a message for the Boss. They will understand.
“Now this is important.” Cheech leaned forward and spoke with emphasis. “As long as you stand still you are okay. Be nice, on your best behavior when you speak to them. They will help you.”
Cheech leaned closer. “Even if somebody say to, don’t give the note to nobody but the boss. When you are with him, give him the note.” He lifted a hand of caution. “Make sure you tell him that you are reaching for the note and do it slow as you go. Sometimes you act Sicilian, but, my friend, you are not. You are Irish.”
“I know, Cheech,” said O’Mally with an effort at a smile. “I’m Irish, but I’m no fool.”
“Good. After he has read my note, introduce yourself and tell him I thank him for everything he did for my family, my friends and me. Tell him that I do not want him to become involved in this, no matter what happens to me. This is a personal matter and he should not get involved.”
O’Mally shook his head. “But you’ll need all the help you can get.”
“It’s too late for help.” Cheech rubbed his forehead, looking days past exhaustion. “Tell him that I’ll be okay. Tell him I want to die. I am tired and I want to die. I want to go home. Tell him that if I can see him one more time, I will take care of all of our business.”
Shifting on the hard chair, O’Mally grunted. “I’ll tell him.” “After you see the boss, go see O’Donald in my building, second floor, you know O’Donald. Tell him to do as we said when I was there and spoke to him, everything will be okay. Tell him to use his daughter as we said. He’ll know what I mean. I tell you one more time. Do not let anyone see this note. If you have to, eat it, manja.”
O’Mally nodded and held out a hand. “No one will see it. You have my word.” Taking the folded paper, he unbuttoned his tunic and tucked it into an inside pocket.
Silently, the two men sat and looked at each other.
Finally Cheech said, “Thank you, O’Mally. Thank you for your friendship. I will never forget you, not ever. You have been the friendship of my miserable life. My only friend. I hope you know that there is nothing I would not do for you, including give up my life.”
O’Mally’s eyes begin to water though his gaze remained steady. “I’ve always known that, piason. It wasn’t necessary for you to tell me.”
Sighing heavily, Cheech made a wide gesture and laid both hands on the tabletop. “Basta, that’s all, finish, finito. Let's go.”
O’Mally took out a set of cuffs as he slowly came to his feet. Lurching slightly as he stood, too, Cheech said, “Can you put them on in the front?”
“Sure.” Making a face, O’Mally turned the cuffs awkwardly. “It bothers me that I have to put them on at all, but I do.”
“I know, piason.”
As if delaying the inevitable moment, O’Mally crossed to the bathroom and tapped on the door with the cuffs. “Rosario, we’re going. You can come out now.”
As his brother opened the door slowly and stepped out, Cheech’s expression tightened from the camaraderie of the last few minutes into a threatening snarl. “Don’t forget what I said: Do not come to the trial.”
Though he took a step back, Rosario shook his head. “I can’t do that, I can’t stay away from my brother’s trial.”
Cheech made a rude gesture. “You’re not my brother, you son of a bitch. I will die soon, but you are already dead.”
Turning a shoulder against Rosario, Cheech gazed at O’Mally with liquid dark eyes that filled with warmer emotion. The policeman’s face turned deeper red as he stared back. The cuffs dangled from his hand as his shoulders heaved.
Straightening, Cheech stepped toward him and extended his wrists.
Head down, O’Mally placed the cuffs on Cheech and snapped them closed. Then he wiped his eyes and turned away, muttering, “Holy Mother of God.”
Leaning out the window, he shouted in a voice that cracked on the first word. “We’re coming down now. He’s handcuffed and unarmed, so don’t do anything stupid.”
At the door to the passage, O’Mally stood back for Cheech to precede him. Rosario hurried to the window.
Down the dark hallway and stairs, O’Mally and Cheech walked side by side, shoulders touching now and then. At the building’s entrance, O’Mally moved ahead. “Let me go first.”
As they stepped into the wan winter daylight, Cheech ducked his head and squeezed his eyes shut. O’Mally took his arm to steady him. From the back of the buildings on both sides, came four of Staten Island’s finest to grapple Cheech away from O’Mally.
“Wait a damn minute,” O’Mally said, pushing back as Cheech stumbled under their rough handling. “The man’s hurt!” Holding up his cuffed hands with palms out, Cheech said quietly to his friend, “It’s okay, I’m okay.”
The four officers marched Cheech to the waiting car with O’Mally bringing up the rear. The detectives from Brooklyn waited, keeping a wary eye on curious passersby. They ignored insults from several men with pushcarts.
Reaching the car, a Staten Island officer announced in an officious tone, “We’re surrendering the prisoner to you for the trip back to Brooklyn.”
Two of the Brooklyn detectives stepped forward to bracket Cheech, with a quick nod. Never letting go of his arms, they poked him into the back seat. O’Mally was forced to sit up front with the other two detectives.
The doors closed against the pervasive rotten-egg stench of burned coal heavy in the air. Despite the close fit of six big men in a car, the air bit as sharp inside as out.
The engine ground to life and the car pulled away, heading for the Staten Island Ferry back to Brooklyn.
*
Apart from coughs and throat clearings, the Brooklyn detectives and their prisoner traveled a few blocks in silence. O’Mally glanced at Cheech a few times in the rear view mirror, worried about his friend. The man wasn’t himself, and the injury to his head didn’t look good. Cheech had acted as usual toward him, but his behavior toward his brother seemed strange.
Finally O’Mally put his arm along the back of the bench seat so he could glance back at Cheech. “What was going on between you and Rosario back at the apartment?”
Staring at his hands, Cheech barely shook his head. He looked ill, as if he could hardly stay erect.
The detective on one side elbowed him. “You better learn to speak up when a cop asks a question.”
His head fell back from even this slight jolt, but his expression didn’t change from its withdrawn stoicism. Cheech spoke to the headliner, sounding as if someone had simply turned on his thoughts. “I have six brothers. My father knew that out of seven sons, I was the only one who had the fortitude to run the family business. I was removed from school at the age of eight so I could learn the family business, against my wishes. They stayed in school. As the years went by I grew in stature in our family and the surrounding towns. My brothers, they resented it. When Papa wasn’t around they did things to make me look poorly. I think Papa knew but nothing they did bothered him.”
“Tough luck,” said the driver, downshifting as he slowed for a trolley. “You think anybody here grew up in a rose garden?”
Cheech might not have heard him. “One day after delivering a shipment of products, my brothers and I headed home in the wagon. They stopped at a lake to water the horses and take a dip. While I swam, they took all of my clothes, took the horses and wagon. Left me there alone in my skin, with nothing. By the time I knew what was going on, they were gone. I could hear them laughing as they rode off down the road.”
The driver snorted. “What’s horseplay among brothers got to do with the mess you’re in?”
Life returned to Cheech’s strong frame, and he surged forward on the seat. “You don’t know what I’m saying. The bastards hope I never get back alive! Because of them, my papa, he died!”
The detectives on either side yanked him back against the seat.
Despite the cuffs, Cheech fisted his hands and hit his wide thighs. “I was three hundred miles away from home and I had no clothes, no food, no water and no horse. During the day, I had to hide because people stopped at the lake to rest. With sunset I start looking for clothes. Finally after a few hours I find clothes left out to dry on a line. But I could not find shoes.”
Apart from O’Mally, the detectives stared out their respective windows. Cheech didn’t seem to notice or care. He talked like a radio in an empty room, for himself, not an audience. “The first night, I eat fruit and sleep in a barn. The next morning the man that owned the barn found me sleeping in the hay. After I told him what happened to me, he fed me and gave me a pair of old boots. I thanked him and started walking home. That night I took shelter in another barn and just before dawn, I stole one of the farmer’s horses.”
“The start of your life of crime,” muttered the driver.
“By this time I was so angry I could kill. I rode all day long and only stopped to water the poor horse. Finally on the third night, tired, angry and hungry, I arrived home about mid-night. Everyone was sleeping. I went to the barn and got a bunch of rope. I took it to each of my brother’s bedrooms, gagged and tied them up and then beat each of them until my hands were so sore I could not hit them anymore.”
O’Mally was no stranger to violence and cruelty, but the bitterness in Cheech’s tone surprised him.
“Then I left them like they left me and I went to bed. The next morning I awoke to Papa yelling and pulling me out of bed. He dragged me down to the basement, the wine cellar, and beat me with a board until I was unconscious. The last thing I remember before I passed out was Papa telling me that he wished I was dead and that he did not want to ever see me again.”
Cheech heeled his eyes with his cuffed hands. “When I came out of it, Mama and my sister were taking care of me. The next day when I could be moved, I went to stay with my older sister and her family until I could decide what I was going to do. I knew I would not be welcomed at home anymore.”
The driver lit a cigarette, kneeing the steering wheel as he fumbled with box of matches. The heavy car swerved slightly, and O’Mally braced himself against the dash.
Cheech swayed with the car’s movement but kept talking. “I decided to join the Sicilian Army and one night out in the wilderness, our group was ambushed and everyone but I was killed. I was hurt so bad I was left for dead. My personal things were returned to my family and—. “Cheech closed his eyes, and when he continued, his voice was thick and tragic. “As soon as my father saw them, he had a heart attack and died. He died with my things in his hands. Mama said his heart was broken because of the things he had said to me when he beat me. She said he spoke of me all the time after he sent me away.”
O’Mally noticed that the detectives had begun to listen, glancing at Cheech as he talked. The man had always been able to hold a crowd’s attention, whether he talked or sang.