Kenny hadn’t realized he’d been holding his breath when listening to Frankie talk about his family until he felt tightness in his chest, which forced him to exhale. “What happened?” he asked, breathlessly.
Frankie let out an audible sigh. “I’ve only heard people whisper that Nonno had been set up, and whoever killed him wanted it to look like a robbery. His body was found along the East River Waterfront, not far from the Fulton Fish Market. He’d been stabbed in the throat and heart.”
Kenny felt a chill race over his body. His mother told himthat his father had been killed in an attempted robbery. Former Army Private Kenneth Russell was left to die along a deserted street not far from the Bowery, where he worked in a beer factory. He’d lost his life for less than seven dollars in his pocket. “Was there any evidence it had been a robbery?”
Nodding, Frankie said, “His watch, wallet, and a gold St. Christopher medal he always wore around his neck were missing.”
Ray leaned forward. “What do you think happened, Frankie?”
“I don’t know, Ray. I suppose, like everyone else I believe, he’d messed with the wrong person.”
“What happened to his daughter?” Kenny asked. “Did she end up with her boyfriend?”
“No. She met some Greek kid from Astoria, married him, and went to work in her husband’s family diner.”
“It sounds like mob justice to me,” Ray said under his breath.
“I can’t say if it was or wasn’t,” Frankie countered. “I just know that if he had still been alive, my mother would not have stepped foot here.” He paused. “It was different with her parents, because when Poppa began dating their daughter, they welcomed him like a son.”
Kenny stared out the window facing the rear of the brownstone. There was a picnic table, benches, and several more beach-type webbed chairs positioned in a corner. A small space was set aside for a garden with green stakes for growing tomatoes and peppers.
I wonder if they would have been so welcoming if her boyfriend had been Black? There was no doubt Frankie’s Irish grandparents would have been just as threatening as his Italian grandfather had been. That’s why I plan to stick with my own kind.
Although he didn’t want to think about race, Kenny realized he’d been unable to ignore it completely, because his mother always talked about what Black people had to gothrough in the United States to grasp a tiny piece of the so-called American dream. Earlier that year, heavyweight boxer Cassius Clay had announced that he was changing his name to Muhammad Ali after converting to Islam. Then Malcolm X, the spokesman for the Nation of Islam who’d been suspended from the organization, announced he was forming a Black nationalist party. Kenny recalled his mother crying after hearing that an all-White jury in Jackson, Mississippi, trying Byron De La Beckwith for the murder of NAACP field secretary Medgar Evers, was unable to reach a verdict, resulting in a mistrial.
All of the ongoing talk about Kennedy’s assassination, the growing anti-segregation demonstrations, and the recent news of twelve young men publicly burning their draft cards as an act of resistance to the Vietnam War, made it difficult for Kenny to focus on his schoolwork. Newspapers, magazines, and televised news constantly bombarded everyone with nothing but bad news. He was just a kid who shouldn’t have to worry about wars, demonstrations, and civil unrest.
He wanted to go to school and hang out with his friends in Central Park. It was there they could be themselves as blood brothers who liked and wanted the same things. They all had professed to wanting to go to college, fall in love, marry, and have families of their own.
Kenny had decided he wanted to become a social worker, because he’d witnessed the ones who’d given his mother the assistance that she needed to raise him after losing her husband.
Ray talked constantly about going to medical school to become a doctor. Not only would he become the first one in his family to graduate college, but also the first Dr. Torres.
And it was obvious that Frankie would become an accountant, because he was a math genius.
Kenny’s two friends had discussed taking the qualifying test to get into the Bronx High School of Science, while hewasn’t certain which high school he would apply to. However, he had two more years in which to make that decision. And when he, Frankie, and Ray had made their blood oath to become brothers, they had also agreed to become friends for life.
They’d eaten most of the antipasto salad when they were summoned to come into the dining room for the dinner meal.
CHAPTER11
Kenny felt overwhelmed when seated at a long table with so many people. There were sixteen, including himself, when he’d been instructed to sit on Frankie’s grandmother’s left. There was something about the elderly woman he liked. Perhaps it was because he didn’t have a grandmother that he felt drawn to her. Nonna sat at the head of the table, with her eldest son Francis at the opposite end facing her. Kenny shared a slight smile with Frankie’s youngest sister Carolina, who had inherited her mother’s bright red curly hair, brown eyes, and freckles.
Everyone’s gaze was on Father Morelli, waiting for the young, newly ordained priest from the local parish to begin the benediction, when a stocky man entered the dining room. There was something off-putting about him, and it wasn’t because of his all-black attire, but rather the fact that he had one brown and one blue eye. A frown appeared between his strangely colored eyes when he met Kenny’s.
“I spend eight years in the joint eating with niggers, and now I have to share a table with one,” he spat out angrily. His outburst was followed by a chorus of gasps.
Frankie Delano stood up. “Abbastanza, Pasquale!”
“Enough, Frankie Delano. It will never be enough for me. You promised to take care of me, your cousin, when I went to the joint, but not once did I hear a word from you. Yet, you sit here like the fucking pope, holding court for niggers, spics, and half-wop and half-micks’ kids, while your own Italian flesh and blood rotted in a jail cell for eight stinking years!”
A rush of color darkened Frank’s face even more than it normally was. “You come here and disrespect my home, my mother, brother, his wife and children, and their friends, and Father Morelli, and you want me to feel sorry for you?”
“No! Pasquale shouted. “I just want you to make up for what I lost when I got locked up. My wife and kids had to go on welfare.”
Giovanni D’Allesandro and Anthony Esposito rose at the same time. “Sit down, Gio. I’ll handle this,” the police detective said, in a soft voice that was barely audible. “Either you walk out of here now, or I’ll call some of the boys at the station house and have them lock you up. And you know what that will do to your probation. You’ll be violated, and you will have to serve out the rest of your sentence.”
“Fuck all of yous!” Pasquale screamed. “Especially you, Frankie Delano! I will get you back if it’s the last thing I do. You will pay for what you did to me.” Turning on his heel, he walked out. He slammed the door so hard, the sound reverberated throughout the first floor.
