Free The Family Corleone by Ed Falco Page B

“Let’s get out of the rain.”
    As soon as Sonny closed the car door and started the engine, Stevie Dwyer said, “Did you talk to him about the money?” The rest of the boys were quiet, as if waiting to hear what Sonny had to say.
    Cork said, “What’d you want him to talk to me about, Stevie?” Cork was in the front seat and he leaned over to look into the back.
    Sonny pulled the car out onto the street. “What’s eatin’ you?” he asked Stevie.
    “What’s eatin’ me?” Stevie ripped off his cap and slapped it againsthis knee. “We got robbed is what’s eatin’ me! The truck was worth three grand by itself!”
    Cork said, “Sure, if you could sell it on the street. But who’s buying a truck with no papers?”
    “Not to mention,” Nico said, “a truck that’s gettin’ you a bullet in the back of the head the wrong person sees you drivin’ it.”
    “That’s a good point too,” Sonny said.
    Cork lit a cigarette and then rolled down his window to let some of the smoke out. “We did okay,” he said to Stevie, “considering we didn’t have anything to bargain with. Luca was holding all the cards. No one else is buying Mariposa’s hooch from us. Nobody. He knows that. He could have offered us a buck fifty, we’d have had to take it.”
    “Ah, bullshit,” Stevie said. He jammed his cap on and fell back in his seat.
    Cork said, “You’re just sore ’cause Luca busted you in the mouth.”
    “Yeah!” Stevie shouted, and his shout came out like an explosion. “And where the hell were all my buddies?” he yelled, looking around the car wildly. “Where the hell were you guys?”
    Angelo, who was probably the quietest of the gang, twisted around to face Stevie. “What did you expect us to do?” he asked. “Shoot it out with them?”
    “You could’ve stuck up for me!” Stevie said. “You could’ve done something!”
    Cork tilted his cap up and scratched his hair. “Come on, Stevie,” he said. “Use your head.”
    “Use your own head!” Stevie answered. “You fuckin’ guinea-wop-dago-loving son of a bitch!”
    Briefly, the car was quiet. Then, all at once, everyone but Stevie laughed. Sonny slapped the wheel and yelled at Cork, “You fuckin’ guinea-wop-dago-loving son of a bitch, you! Come here!” He reached across the seat, grabbed Cork, and shook him.
    Vinnie Romero slapped Cork on the shoulder. “Fuckin’ dago lover!”
    “Go ahead and laugh,” Stevie said, and he hunched himself up against the door.
    The others did as they were told, and the car moved along the streets rocking with laughter. Only Stevie was quiet. And Nico, who found himself suddenly thinking about Gloria Sullivan and her parents. Nico wasn’t laughing either.
    Vito flipped through a thick stack of blueprints for the Long Island estate. He loosened his tie as he went over the floor plans, already seeing in his mind’s eye the furnishings he imagined for each of the rooms in his house. Out back, he planned a flower garden in one part of the yard and a vegetable garden nearby. In Hell’s Kitchen, in the postage stamp of courtyard dirt behind his old apartment building, in the days when he was just starting the olive oil business, he’d nurtured a fig tree for several seasons before a deep frost finally killed it. For years, though, friends were pleased when he brought them figs from the tree—and amazed when he told them that they grew right there in the city, in his backyard. Often one friend or another would come back to his building with him, and he’d show them the fig tree, where its brown stems and green leaves sprouted close to the red brick of the courtyard wall, its roots reaching down under the building, clinging to the basement and the heat of the furnace through the winter. He had set up a little table in the courtyard, with a few folding chairs, and Carmella would bring down a bottle of grappa and some bread and olive oil, and maybe some cheese and tomatoes—whatever they had—and