Page 94 of Hanging and Burning

“Yes.”

“You think he might trust me now?”

“I’m sure he will.”

“What did you say?”

“I told him what you’d done to protect us, and—and how sorry I feel for his being sick.”

“Anything else I should know?”

“No,” she replied, almost whimsically. “We just talked about nothing important.”

Back down in Mel’s second-floor office, I called Arman again.

Ilsa answered, “Yes.”

“Can I speak to him?”

The phone made a few airy sounds, then Arman said, “You got all the way up my ass, didn’t you, Joe?”

“You asked me to find somebody and lied to me about who she was. I was just doing what you asked for, cleaning it up as I went. What did Dalia tell you?”

“That she understood why I did what I did. That—that she forgives me.”

I wanted to know if he forgave himself, but instead I said, “Tell me why Paulie Jr. thinks you know about his father’s death.”

A kind of straining quiet settled over the airwaves. My client was struggling against a lifetime of keeping secrets, the kind of omertà that brought on peptic ulcers, heart attack, and stroke.

Finally he said, “Paulie’s mother was named Nova—you know, like an exploding star. When Junior’s father was killed, all she wanted was revenge. I don’t think she ever cried but just hated, hated with all her heart. It was that spite she filled Junior with, telling him that when he became a man he would have to get revenge on them that killed his father…”

“Did she know their names?”

“No. Before Paulie was killed she was just a gangster’s wife, buyin’ loud clothes and furniture. The gravy train stopped at her front door, and she’d just shovel it in.”

“And after he died?” I asked.

“The tracks didn’t go by her house no more. I gave her and the boy what money I could, but I had quit the business. She had no idea who killed Junior’s father, but she believed that I knew who it was.”

“And do you?” I asked yet again.

“I told Junior that I was dyin’ and—and that I’d leave him what I knew in a letter. I said that I couldn’t tell him while I was still alive.”

“Were you just blowin’ smoke?”

“The kid was heartbroken and scared. He didn’t want to mess with bad men. Shit. They would’a cut him down like wheat.”

“Who killed Paulie Sr.?”

22.

I WAS IN a priest’s meditation chamber, in the heart of Staten Island, talking to Arman Babylon on the other side of the country in an upscale cancer ward… But it felt like we were in the same room, as if I could smell his diseased breath, see the glaze in his upturned, rheumy eyes.

“Paulie Sr. was a crazy son of a bitch,” Arman admitted. “He wanted it all. When I told him I was quittin’ the protection business he said, ‘Good, now everything is mine.’ I didn’t care. I could see what would happen sooner than not. I could see it.”

“What exactly was it that you saw?”

“The Mafia guys never messed with us when they were in the same business in other boroughs and neighborhoods. They were fine as long as we stayed in our own little garden. But when things turned to drugs and human trafficking, they didn’t want the Mustache Petes like me and Paulie causin’ law enforcement to get all agitated. They had told Paulie to stop. They even offered him a job workin’ for them. But he was stubborn. He felt like he owned the places he protected, even though there wasn’t much need for his kinda services anymore.