Once everyone was satisfied, Luca and I entertained Clemenza privately in the dining room, just the three of us. Meanwhile, the Clemenzas made nice with the Morellis in the sitting room closer to the entrance.
My takeaway from this night so far is that Lou Clemenza is angry.
He ate angrily, drank angrily, made angry small talk. I said nothing, and smiled sweetly whenever he glared at me. I acted every inch the perfect Mafia Wife, because I knew it would piss him off even more. Luca sat through the whole dinner with his lips slightly curled in the suggestion of amusement.
“I must say, Don Clemenza,” my husband says now, “you’re very exercised by this business deal I’ve made. It’s perfectly legal.”
“It ain’t the legality I object to,” Clemenza growls. “And you fucking know it, Morelli. That company is three centuries old and it’simportantto my Family!”
“Then you should have made that clearer to your business partners in Italy. Or had contingency plans in place.”
“Oh, yeah? Like Tino Morelli had contingency plans? Look where he is now.”
My hands clench beneath the table. That was a direct fucking threat. But Luca remains calm. “I can’t help it if it suits my purposes to break up that company. It will be very profitable for me. If it hurts you, your investors, you need to get better financial advice. I can give you the name of the firm I use—”
“You must think you’ve done Tino proud,” Clemenza snarls. “Is that right? Well, perhaps you have. Yes, I think Tino would be pretty proud of himself, seeing what you’ve done to the city. To the Morelli Family.”
“I like to think he would,” Luca replies mildly, ignoring the bitter twist to Clemenza’s words. “But Lou, let’s put your feelings about finance aside for the moment. There’s something more important that I want to discuss.”
Clemenza barks out a laugh. “More important? What could be more important than—”
“Your life,” I tell him, because I can’t help myself any longer. “Your life, Don Clemenza, is hanging in the balance. Has been, all night.”
Clemenza’s rheumy eyes have swum from Luca to me and back again. “You gonna let this kid speak to me like that, Morelli?” Clemenza asks. For a moment I get a glimpse of the man he once was, the most feared Mob Boss not just in New York but on the whole East Coast. I can see in those wet red eyes exactly what he’d do to me if he had the chance.
Luca bangs a fist down on the table, making both Clemenza and me jump along with the silverware. But when he speaks, his voice is still calm. “You will respect my husband, Don Clemenza, or you will regret it.”
“Yourhusbandjust threatened me!” Clemenza struggles to his feet. “You invite me into your home—you show me hospitality—” He’s spluttering so hard I wonder if he’s going to just stroke out and save us some time and trouble.
But then I get it. He’s just playing a part, the same part that has suited him since Luca came to power: a doddery old man, no threat to anyone. But he’s been working hard to undermine the Morellis for a long time. SincebeforeLuca became Don Morelli.
He’s a little like me in some ways, Louis Clemenza. He likes to appear harmless.
“Sit down, Lou,” Luca says, relaxing back in his chair. We wait, and Clemenza eventually reseats himself, but there’s a wariness to his face that wasn’t there before. “I think it’s time we all laid our cards on the table,” Luca continues. “I know that you’ve been working against me for some time. I know, for example, about your attempted hit on my lawyer, Carlo Bianchi. I know about your plant in the law firm, feeding you information.” He leans forward, his voice soft velvet. “I know you were there the night Tino was murdered. And I know you helped.”
Clemenza snorts. “That’s bullshit, Morelli. Tino and me, we had our differences, sure, but he was a good man.”
“He was agreatman,” Luca corrects him. “Sometimes I think that’s more important than being a good man, in this city at least. He reshaped New York in many ways. Didn’t he?”
But Clemenza is still stuck on Luca’s accusation. “I had nothing to do with Tino’s death!” he protests. “That was all Sam Fuscone. He was a loose cannon, Sam.”
I take out my phone and scroll through it. Without preamble, I hit play on the video of Tino Morelli’s last moments, which Luca has sent to me, and I play it for Clemenza. Luca watches him unblinkingly, but Clemenza just stares the video with an expressionless face. Only the light of glee in his eyes as Tino smiles his last smile gives away what’s going on in his head.
“Looks to me like he died relatively happy,” is all he says. “Would that we could all expect the same.”
“I don’t think you’re paying attention to the right thing,” I tell him. I play a portion of the audio again, putting my hand over the video so he can concentrate only on what is being said. I hit stop again, and raise a questioning eyebrow.
Clemenza shakes his head, brows creased as though he’s puzzled. “I don’t know what you want me to say,” he says. “It’s a terrible thing Sam Fuscone did that night, but he did it without permission from me. Any of my guys who were there, they went out on their own.”
“I’ll play it one last time for you.”
I see the moment when Clemenza realizes what he’s supposed to be listening for. His eyes grow hooded and his fingers clench into fists. He might be an old man now, but those fists are the same ones that beat men to death in his youth. If he still had his strength, or his gun, he wouldn’t hesitate to attack me.
Or Luca.
Clemenza is definitely nervous now. And when Luca and I stay silent, waiting, he knows, at last, that he’s in trouble. “What’s going on? Why are you two staring at me like that? What the hell’s going on?”
“What’s going on, Don Clemenza,” Luca tells him quietly, “is retribution.”
