I looked down at his hand in mine. He had a point. It was one thing to know abstractly what Angelo Messina had done in his life. It was another to hear the tales straight from his own lips. “I can’t pretend you’re something you’re not. So I’ll do my best to listen and understand, and—I can’t promise, but—I don’t think it’ll change the way I feel about you.”
That put some of the color back in his face. I could only hope it wasn’t a lie on my part.
“How you feel about me?” he echoed.
I nodded. “Yeah. And we need to talk about that. But first you tell me your story, Angelo,” I said, “and then I’ll tell you mine.”
He nodded, as though that were a fair trade. Maybe it was in his mind. And then he began to tell me about Giorgio Benetti. About how Benetti was a Clemenza Family member Angelo had run into unexpectedly in a gay club downtown. At first, they’d each been wary, expecting the other to react poorly. The only reason any mobster should be in a gay club was to collect protection money from the owners.
Definitely not to enjoy the atmosphere.
Angelo had left at once the first time, terrified, but nothing had happened. No one had approached him about it. No one seemed to know.
The next time Angelo had gone to the club, Benetti had been there again.
“We didn’t even need to speak. He took my hand and led me outside into the back alley. He pushed me up against the wall and for a second, I thought he was going to slide a stiletto between my ribs. But all he said was, ‘Aren’t you too young to be in here?’ I told him, ‘Neither of us are supposed to be here, but here we are.’ And he kissed me for that, really kissed me like I’d never been kissed before. That was all, that first night. But it happened again, the next week, and then again—you understand, we hadn’t done more than kiss. I liked having this secret that was all my own, although I was frightened about what would happen if anyone ever found out.”
I bit my lip. “And someone found out.”
Angelo nodded. “One thing you have to understand about Benetti, he was vicious, temperamental, even then. But never toward me. I felt… He made me feelsafe. Protected. I thought nothing would touch us. And so we got lax. One night he had some of his boys with him, his crew. They didn’tlikehim being gay, but they put up with it. They were scared of him, too. But we’d gotten too bold by then, and he didn’t even try to hide it, just pulled me into their circle and started kissing me right in front of them. The fact that he was kissing a Morelli Family member, that was too much. The Clemenzas and the Morellis, we’ve been enemies from way back.”
“And then what happened?” I asked, when it looked as though he were going to stop speaking.
“Nothing. Or, not really. Word got back to Tino, and he asked me to come see him in his study. He told me he was disappointed in me, and then he said maybe it was time I started to make it on my own. That I was eighteen, and a man, and I should start to prove myself in the world.”
This was a hell of a long way from what Angelo had told me that night in his car—that Tino had protected him, had never cared about his sexuality. But on the other hand, it was much closer to what I would expect from any crime Boss. “Let me get this right. Tino Morelli kicked you out of his house for being gay?”
Angelo sighed. “It wasn’t like that.”
“How is it not like that?”
He waved his hand like my question was a buzzing fly. “You don’t understand what it means to be in the Family. By all rights, Tino should have had me killed for disrespecting him and the Family. Not for being gay, but for associating with the Clemenzas.”
“Yeah,” I said. “You know what, I don’t think it’s the Clemenza thing he was most worried about.”
“Tino was merciful to me,” Angelo insisted. “He looked the other way. He even gave me a chance to rectify my mistake, years later. Benetti was causing major problems for us by then, for all of us. Killing without permission, leaning on the wrong people, stepping out of line all the time. This was when I was still an associate, you understand. Tino called me to him and told me he needed Benetti…taken care of.”
“Stop,” I said, a wave of nausea coming over me. “Wait. Just…just give me a minute.” Angelo looked down at his hands as I fought down my fear. I knew what was coming. I didn’t want to hear it.
But I had to hear it.
“Okay. Keep going.”
And so Angelo told me the rest of the terrible tale: that Tino Morelli had instructed him to kill Benetti by any means necessary. I heard, too, what Angelo didn’t—maybecouldn’tsay—that this was a way for him to prove himself to the man who had raised him, to the man he loved. To show that he would do everything and anything it took to be a part of Tino’s Family.
To show that he would accept his punishment for being gay—not only accept it, but willingly participate in it.
And yet…Angelo did not seem to understand that himself.
I stared at him, appalled, after he finished his story.
“Well,” he said at last, with pained smile, “it seems youdofeel differently about me now.”
“I do, yes,” I said. “But not in the way you think,” I added quickly, as his eyes turned dark.
He looked down at his hand in mine again, and I saw with faint astonishment that his cheeks were slowly suffusing with red.
Shame. He was ashamed.
