Part 11 (1/2)
Just what made us so interested in criminals, anyway? Personally, I blamed Coppola for making Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro look so edible in the G.o.dfather movies. I must have been about twelve years old when I saw those films on television and I sure wanted me an Italian. Of course the sad realization that blacks and Italians in American cities are locked in a filthy embrace of loathing and violence against one another for as long as the two races exist was still ahead of me then. Still, while I wouldn't drive through parts of Bensonhurst on a bet, I've never met an Italian from Italy that I didn't get along with.
I started with the old newspapers and magazines.
There were mafia bigwig profiles, mob family genealogies, Cosa Nostra wars, inter-ethnic mob contacts, favorite mafia recipes, gangster angst, coming of age horror stories, interior decorating tips.
I skimmed them all.
Didn't see Valokus. But there was Vincent ... Little Vince ... Big Vince ... Vinnie the Bull ... Vick the Gimp. Val the Hulk. Vicious Vittorio. Vaseline Eddie.
There was Henry the Barber, Henry the Bomber, Sweet Henry, Hungry Henry, Henry the Hangman.
But those preposterous monikers that shared Henry's initials were about as close as I came to locating Henry Valokus.
Pop out of there, Henry, I whispered to each fresh roll of microfilm. But Henry didn't pop. He wasn't in the newspapers. He wasn't in the magazines. He was no pop idol at all.
Then, undaunted, I gathered to my table virtually all the current t.i.tles on the Mob, or La Cosa Nostra, or the Mafia, or the Syndicate. There were fat books by scholars and memoirs by reputed members of the organization, serious sociological treatments of the subject which deplored the stereotypes, bad screenplays, good screenplays, transcripts of crime commission hearings. There were novels that spoofed the mob, recasting its members as comic figures and grisly photo books that gave the lie to the laughter. There was a bonanza right in front of me.
”V” for Valokus.
Eighteen books later I hadn't found a single reference to him.
Now what was I supposed to do? Knock on the door of one of those downtown social clubs and ask if they had any graduation yearbooks?
Wearily, I started returning all the books. I believed those crazies in the van. I believed the gun against my head. If Henry really was a mobster-why hadn't he popped out?
Either because Henry Valokus was not his real name or because he was just too lowly a soldier.
It had been a while since I'd spent the day on a hard wooden chair in the library. My back hurt and I was hungry. I'd had it for the day. I trudged down the marble stairs of the main entrance and toward the exit. But I didn't leave. I had had a perfectly brilliant idea. Twenty-five cents worth.
I rushed to the phone and dialed Aubrey.
I'd remembered her talking about a man-Aubrey had told me about him not long after she started dancing at the Emporium. He dropped in a few times a week to collect the receipts from the safe. He signed the checks, hired and fired. He knew every single person who worked in the club. He was the man.
”Who is it?”
I could hear the tiredness in her voice. I knew that once again I had awakened her.
”It's me, Aubrey,” I said apologetically. ”I'm really sorry. But it's kind of an emergency.”
I heard mumbling in the distance.
”Guess I woke Jeremy up too.”
”Morning, Nan,” he called into the receiver.
”Jeremy says you got more emergencies that anybody he knows.”
”Really? Well, tell him when his little book gets published I'll treat it as a matter of no urgency whatever.”
”Ima let you tell him that yourself, Nan. What's the matter now?”
”Can you get me an appointment with that gangster who manages the Emporium?”
”You mean Justin Thorn?”
”Yes. He is a gangster, isn't he?”
”Who ain't?”
”When do you think you might see him again?”
”I don't know-maybe tonight. Nan, what the h.e.l.l you want with crazy Justin?”
”It's too long a story,” I said in exasperation. ”Look, I know he likes you. Do you think you could get him to talk to me? Tell him I swear I won't take up too much of his time.”
”You shoulda gone to Paris, Nan.”
”I know. I want to let you get back to sleep now. Please, just call him for me. Tell him I don't want to know anything about his business and tell him it won't take long.”
She didn't answer for the longest time. I could hear her lighting a cigarette and inhaling.
Then she said: ”Okay. Call me back in twenty minutes.”
I hung up and rummaged through the postcards section of the library bookstore. I bought one: an old William Claxton photo, a beautiful night-time shot of a ba.s.s player s.h.i.+elding his ax from the rain.
When I called Aubrey back the line was busy. I went back to the bookstore and bought another card; this one of a young Langston Hughes uptown.
I called again five minutes later.
Justin Thorn would see me about 1 P.M. in his office on West Eighteenth Street, a place called Tower Printing.
”I guess next time I see you you'll tell me what the f.u.c.k you doing, Nan.”
”Trust me,” I replied. ”Happy dreams, you two.”
About five minutes to one I took the elevator up to the fifth floor of the dingy building which housed Tower Printing.
I rang a buzzer outside the peeling door. An answering buzz let me in.
There was no printing equipment that I could see on the premises. There were no computers, no typewriters, no files. There was only one desk and one chair in the waiting room. The walls were bare. The floor was highly polished.
A stout, black, middle-aged woman wearing a gaily colored head wrap sat behind the desk. She was cussing bitterly as she fiddled with a boom box.
I greeted her. ”Good afternoon. I have an appointment with-”
”Through there,” she said, cutting me off. Then she added: ”Don't knock. He doesn't like people to knock.”
Justin Thorn looked up when I entered the room. He was seated on a rattan sofa with purple cus.h.i.+ons, reading the Village Voice. There was no desk in the room, only the sofa and two matching armchairs.
”Mister Thorn?” I asked, taken aback and, I feared, unable to mask my astonishment.