DiGeordano’s pink lips turned to a smile beneath his gray mustache. “Yes. This was very early in the sixties, you were maybe five years old. Nick had bought a cheap fishing pole for you and baited it with a bloodworm. You were holding the pole-he was holding it, really, standing over your shoulder-and a perch hit the line. Nick yanked it from the channel and removed the hook, and this little perch, it was no bigger than the palm of your hand, it flipped off the walkway and back into the channel.” DiGeordano laughed deeply. “You were wearing a pair of denim overalls with a red flannel shirt underneath, and I’ll never forget you chasing after that fish, trying to scoot under the railing. Nick grabbed you by the straps of your overalls and pulled you back-he laughed the rest of the day about it, talked about it at our card games, how you tried to go in after that fish. He talked about it for years.”
I stopped walking and put my hand on his arm. “I need your help, Mr. DiGeordano.”
He looked me in the eyes, shrugged, and made a salutatory motion with himotont size="s hand. “Anything.”
We walked on. A low, thick cloud passed beneath the sun. Its slow shadow crossed the channel in our direction. “Do you remember a murder last year, a young white man in his apartment on Sixteenth Street, a reporter for a small newspaper in town?”
DiGeordano withdrew a lozenge from his overcoat pocket, unwrapped it, and popped the lozenge into his mouth. He clucked his tongue, staring ahead. “Yes, I remember it. It was in the papers, every day. Then nothing.”
“That young man was a friend of mine,” I said.
“Go on.”
“He was researching a story on a pizza place called the Olde World and a man named Bonanno at the time that he was killed. I think the people that run the Olde World have an arson business and gambling operation as well, and I think my friend was murdered because he got too close.”
“Bonanno’s a filthy pig,” DiGeordano said.
“You know him?”
“Of course.”
I stopped and struck a match, cupping one hand around it, lighting another cigarette. Then I blew out the first sulfurous hit and ran a hand through my tangled, uncombed hair. DiGeordano leaned his back against the rail and looked at my unshaven face. “You’re deep into this,” he said, “aren’t you?”
I took a fresh drag off the smoke. “Bonanno’s a fat man, bushy gray sideburns, right?”-DiGeordano nodded-“and there’s two more with him, a guy named Frank and a tall man with bad skin. Who else?”
“No one else,” he said tiredly. “Bonanno and Frank are small-time hoods out of Jersey. The tall man goes by the name of Solanis. Contract mechanic, from Miami. They say he killed a cop and drifted north. Caught some buckshot in the face while he was drifting. Bad business, that-killing cops, and outsiders-it isn’t done. Very sloppy. They’re not going to last.”
“What are they into? Organized gambling?”
DiGeordano chuckled. “Not too organized, from what I hear. As far as bookmaking goes, they don’t know shit from apple butter. They still work from chits, for Christ’s sake, and notebooks.”
“So what’s their game? Arson?”
“Their game?”
“They moved their shops near a string of pizza parlors called the Pie Shack, and every one of the Pie Shacks got burned out. That can’t be a coincidence.”
“It’s not,” he said. “But arson’s not their source of income. Neither is gambling.”
“What is, then?”
DiGeordano said, “Pizza.”
I dragged off my cigarette and looked out into the water. The cloud had passed, leaving the channeing l shiny and brilliant in the noon sun. “Tell me about it.”
“It’s simple,” he said. “The pizza business is very profitable. Bonanno moved into proven, established neighborhoods and burned out the competition. Solanis was there to make sure there weren’t any belches. The guy who owned the Pie Shack simply left town, and felt lucky to leave alive. Bonanno puts a couple hundred thousand in nontaxable income in his pocket every year. The gambling is their kick, and the business end of it just covers their losses. No drugs, prostitution, nothing like that-just a bunch of hoods, selling pizzas.”
“What about the law, the fire people?”
DiGeordano shrugged. “Bought.”
I flipped the remainder of my cigarette out into the channel. “A cop by the name of Goloria, and his partner, a woman named Wallace, they paid me a visit a while back.”
“Goloria,” DiGeordano said.
“That’s right. Things got rough-he said it was about April Goodrich, but something wasn’t right. Is Goloria connected to your son Joey?”
“No. My ties with the law in this town go farther back, and higher than that. We don’t have to get down in the shit with cops like him. He tried to approach us, once. I sent him on his way.”
“He’s been talking to people I know about the young reporter’s murder.”
“That’s not a surprise-I would think he’d be a little nervous that you’re looking into it.”
“Why’s that?”
DiGeordano ran his fingers along the brim of his hat. “Goloria’s in with Bonanno.”
I leaned on the railing and looked down into the gray channel. A dead catfish floated on the surface, near a large sheet of packaging paper. I felt feverish and dizzy in the cold wind, and I unfastened the top buttons of my overcoat as I turned to DiGeordano. “Who killed the reporter?” I said.
“You should have talked to me from the beginning,” he said. “There’s still very little going on in this town that gets by me. I know you disapprove of me, and my son. I can only tell you that in all my years, I never shed any innocent blood, in anything I did. In fact, there was very little violence at all. That’s why I can’t stomach what’s happened to this city. People like Bonanno-they’re vampires, but fragile as dust. Their own ignorance exterminates them. Do you understand?”
“Who killed the reporter?” I said again. The wind whistled through our silence, and water slapped the concrete.
“The knife job,” DiGeordano said. “That’s the signature of Solanis.”
“That’s what I needed to know.”
“Before you act on this,” he said, “you’d better think things over.”
“I’m fine,” I said. The cold win. T” d stung my face.
DiGeordano studied me. “There’s something else?”
I nodded. “There’s one more piece of business.”
“You’re talking about my son’s problem, with April Goodrich.” DiGeordano waved his hand slowly in front of his face. “Like I said, nothing gets by me. You found the girl, and she’s dead. Isn’t that right?”
“Yes. But there’s more to it.”
“Such as?”
“Have Caruso pull the Caddy next to my Dart,” I said, pushing away from the rail. “I’ve got something to show you.”
I worked early shift at the Spot for the next four days. At the end of each shift I changed clothes, drove out to Gallatin in Northeast, and parked my car in front of the row of brick colonials. Then I walked into the woods and waited for them to arrive at the Sears bungalow, and on each of the four nights, they showed with the pillowcases filled w ith gambling chits, at roughly the same time. Occasionally there were visitors, interchangeable ruddy-faced men in dark clothing who drove through the woods in Buick Electras and Pontiac Bonnevilles and stayed for a few quick, stiff drinks. But always at the end of the night there were the three of them-Bonanno, Frank, and Solanis.
On the fourth night, a Wednesday, I returned to my apartment, poured a drink, phoned Dan Boyle, and told him everything I knew.
On Thursday afternoon Boyle walked into the Spot with a gym bag in his hand and took a seat at the bar. He put the bag at his feet, ordered a draught, and asked for it in an icy mug.
“What’s in the bag, Boyle?” I said as I wiped down the bar.
“You’ll find out soon enough.” Boyle put a Marlboro to his lips and pointed a thick finger past my shoulder. “This beer’s gettin’ lonesome,” he said. “How ’bout a hit of that Jack?”