Manhunt. Volume 3, Number 1, January, 1955

The Blood Oath by Richard Deming

Manville Moon had never seen Fausta frightened before. But Fausta had never run into the Mafia before, either...

I have, on a variety of occasions, seen Fausta Moreni exhibit strong emotions. I have seen her joyful, angry, loving and jealous. But never before that day had I seen her afraid.

It was more than mere fear. Her face registered almost stark terror when I opened her office door unexpectedly and she looked up to see who was entering. When she saw my face, relief flooded her own, which was an indication of her state of mind. Normally, while I do not exactly repulse people, the sight of my face does not inspire abandoned joy. In my youth a set of brass knuckles gave it a bent nose and one drooping eyelid, and even people as fond of me as Fausta are inclined to flinch when I come upon them unexpectedly.

Before I could even get the door closed Fausta was around the desk and clinging to me like a child seeking protection from a bully. Because of her Latin impulsiveness, it was not unusual for her to throw herself into my arms on sight, but usually, after planting one quick kiss on my chin, she would back off, examine me from narrowed eyes and lightly slap my face, as though I had been the aggressor. This time she merely clung.

Taking her by the shoulders, I pushed her away far enough to look down into her face. It was a lovely face. Though you usually expect Italian women to be dark, Fausta has vivid blonde hair in striking contrast to her brown eyes and coffee-with-cream complexion. Add perfect features, a form which would give goose bumps to an octogenarian, and you will begin to understand I had quite a woman by the shoulders.

I said, “What gives, baby?”

“Manny,” she said. “Oh, Manny!” And she struggled to get back into my arms.

“Whoa!” I said, still holding her at arm’s length. “What’s all the excitement?”

She stopped struggling and just looked at me discouragedly. Then, with her shoulders sagging, she moved back to her desk. Opening a drawer, she removed a small sheet of paper and handed it to me.

The paper contained nothing but an India ink drawing of a black hand.

Examining the sheet on both sides without growing any wiser, I finally handed it back.

“Nice likeness, if you care for pictures of hands,” I said. “Is it supposed to mean something?”

Fausta collapsed in the chair behind her desk. “Just the Mafia,” she said tonelessly. “It is their way of announcing a death sentence.”

“The Mafia! That comic opera outfit?”

And I began to develop a slow burn. I knew something, though not a great deal, about the Mafia. I knew Sicilian bandits had originated it in the nineteenth century at an extortion racket, but when immigrants brought it to the United States it gradually underwent a change. Though its criminal members still often used it for extortion, it had spread to include thousands who were not criminals at all. Probably most of its members were law-abiding people, at least those who lived in America, but also most top racketeers of Italian descent belonged to the secret organization.

I also knew it operated under a ridiculous grammar-school sort of ritual which included blood oaths, passwords and idiotic warnings such as Fausta’s black hand.

I said, “Maybe you’d better tell me the whole story.”

It developed there was not much of a story to tell. The previous week two men had come into El Patio, Fausta’s supper club, asked the head waiter to see her and been ushered back to her office. Neither gave a name, and she could describe them only as both dark, probably Italian, both of average build and both as well-dressed. She guessed them to be respectively about twenty-five and thirty years old.

The older man did all the talking, Fausta said, and even he did very little. He simply announced that the Mafia from that day forward expected ten percent of El Patio’s net profit, and said he or his companion would stop by once a week to pick it up.

As the most popular supper club in town, El Patio’s net profit runs into nearly a quarter million a year. Hoping that the Mafia would settle for less than its original demand, Fausta placed only a hundred dollars in the envelope the younger man called for that morning. The result had been the black hand missive, which had come to her in a sealed envelope handed by some unidentified customer to one of her waiters.

“Why did you pay anything at all?” I asked. “Why didn’t you phone the police?”

“Report the Mafia, Manny? Then surely they would kill me.”

“They’re only men,” I said. “Not supernatural creatures. They fit into jail cells as easily as other men.”

“You do not understand,” she said hopelessly. “No one can fight the Mafia. Do you not know that even the great Enrico Caruso all his life paid ten percent of his earnings to the Mafia?”

“I’ve read that,” I admitted. “But just because he was a sucker, you don’t have to be.”

At that moment the desk phone rang. Answering it, Fausta drew a deep breath and then just listened.

After a moment she said, “All right. Anything you say. This evening at seven.” And slowly hung up.

“The Mafia again?” I asked.

Numbly she nodded. “I have another chance. My fee is five hundred dollars a week. They say they estimate the club’s profit at five thousand, but it is not that high. They want to pick up the other four hundred for the first week at seven tonight.”

Looking at my watch, I saw it was nearly one. “That gives me six hours,” I said. “Get the envelope ready, and if you don’t hear from me, pay off when they come. I may be back and I may not.”

Coming around the desk, she laid frightened hand on my arm. “What are you going to do, Manny?”

“Just poke around,” I said.

“You will be killed, Manny. Please do not try to fight the Mafia.”

I said, “I won’t be killed, so stop jittering. Just do as I said.”

She made another attempt to stop me by throwing her arms around my neck, but I simply pushed her away and walked out. I even forgot to tell her the reason I had dropped by was to ask her to go night-clubbing that night.

Normally if anyone told me about being blackmailed by the Mafia, I would advise calling the police and let my responsibility end there whether the advice was taken or not, for as a private cop I have no responsibility to hunt down criminals unless a client engages me to do so. But Fausta Moreni is not just anyone. She is the girl I once wanted to marry, and though that is now a thing of the past for reasons which make another story, she is still pretty special to me. I had not let Fausta see it, but the fear in her face put me into a boiling rage. I had plans for her extortioners which would either get me dead, or convince them Fausta was a good person to steer clear of.

My first stop was at the office of my old friend, Inspector Warren Day of Homicide. As usual he raised his skinny bald head to peer at me over his glasses when I entered, and inquired when I was going to learn to knock before opening doors.

“When you start squandering your money on loose women,” I told the tight-fisted old woman-hater. “What do you know about the Mafia, Inspector?”

He looked at me silently as I found a seat and reached for his cigar humidor. Automatically he moved it out of the way before I could raise the lid, forcing me to light one of my own cigars.

“What about the Mafia, Moon?”

“That was my question. What about it?”

He examined me curiously, finally said, “It’s supposed to run the national crime syndicate. Or maybe vice versa. Aside from that I don’t know anything about it.”

“I don’t mean nationally,” I said. “I mean the local Mafia.”

“There isn’t any,” he said flatly.

“You’re certain?”

For a long time he just looked at me. Then he said, “Maybe there is some local stuff, but it’s not the same bunch that’s tied up with the syndicate. Maybe in a loose sort of way it’s part of the same organization, but it doesn’t function as a racket. You know how old-country people are. They stick together. They like their own people to settle disputes according to their own traditions instead of going into strange courts. A lot of Italians who never did anything criminal in their lives belong to the Mafia. The leaders act as sort of extra-legal judges to settle marital disputes and so on. I wouldn’t be surprised to find the Mafia here, but I’ll bet its members are all grocers and barbers and working men, not hoods.”

“I see,” I said, rising. “Thanks a lot, Inspector.”

“Wait a minute, Moon. What’s this all about?”

“Nothing. I seem to have been following a wrong lead. See you around, Inspector.”

Having verified what I already suspected, that the police had no knowledge of the Mafia running its extortion racket in town, I realized I was going to have to stick my neck out a little to gain information. My next move was to visit Rome Alley.

Rome Alley is the colloquial name for a five-block stretch of Columbus Street occupied almost entirely by restaurants, fruit stands and other small businesses run by Italians.

My plan of strategy was based on the knowledge that the Mafia’s extortion racket is aimed solely at Italians. Though I have made no detailed study of the secret organization, I assume the reason for this is that the Mafia knows the chance of an Italian running to the police is much slimmer than if the Mafia indiscriminately picked on all nationalities. Practically from birth people of Italian descent, even third — and fourth-generation citizens, know what the Mafia is and have an inbred fear of it. They know its ruthlessness and they know what happens to Italians who refuse to pay the traditional ten percent tribute. I was therefore fairly certain that if the organization was operating on any large scale, practically every small business along Rome Alley would be paying tribute.

I started at a small fruit store. It was empty when I entered, but the jangle of a bell attached to the screen door brought a luscious, olive-skinned woman in her late twenties from what seemed to be an apartment at the rear. She was a typical Italian beauty, plump and ripe and clean-smelling as fresh sheets. She wore a simple print house dress.

“The boss around?” I asked her.

White teeth flashed in a smile. “I am the boss, mister. Mrs. Nina Cellini.”

The “Mrs.” made me glance at her left hand, which bore a plain gold band. It is uncommon among Italian families for anyone but the man of the house to be boss, and I must have looked surprised, for she grinned at my expression.

“I am a widow five years,” she explained. “You selling something, mister?”

“No,” I said. I moved my head toward the rear apartment. “Anyone else back there?”

She looked at me suspiciously, but after examining me again, apparently decided I wasn’t a stickup artist. Suddenly a light of understanding dawned in her eyes. Moving from behind the counter, she came close and looked up at me with frank interest.

“You are in answer to the ad,” she stated.

“Ad?” I asked.

Tilting her head first to one side and then the other, she studied me from head to foot.

“You are in good health?” she asked. “No physical defects?”

“I have a false right leg below the knee,” I admitted. “Otherwise I’m pretty sound.”

Her lips pursed and she lowered her gaze to stare dubiously at the indicated limb. Since she seemed interested, I walked across the store and back again, just to show her I had no limp.

“It does not show and does not seem to inconvenience you,” she decided. “You have two thousand dollars in the bank?”

Still at sea, I said, “About eighteen hundred, I think.”

Her shoulders raised in a shrug. “For two hundred dollars I would not quibble. But the important thing is love.”

She raised her eyebrows questioningly and I said, “Well, if you’d like a demonstration...”

Suddenly coy, she cast down her eyes and blushed a furious red. Then she slanted her gaze upward again and said in a conspiritorial voice, “Maybe one kiss. Just to see, I mean.”

“Sure,” I said agreeably, and immediately she moved into my arms.

I suspect we would still be glued together if I hadn’t decided I needed air after about two minutes, for she gave no indication of ever wanting to end the kiss. I broke away by main force, retreated a step and wiped the lipstick from my mouth with a handkerchief.

“Did I pass?” I asked.

“I think, but it was really very short to tell.”

She moved toward me tentatively and I retreated another step. Accepting defeat, she clasped her hands in front of her and again eyed me critically.

“I have three children,” she said. “You like children, do you not?”

I decided that interesting as the conversation was, it was time to clarify things.

“Just who do you think I am?” I asked.

She looked surprised. “You are in answer to the ad, are you not? My matrimonial ad.”

Regretfully I shook my head. “I’m just here for the weekly tribute. The ten percent.”

“Tribute? Ten percent?” She looked puzzled. “You are not in answer to the ad?”

“The Mafia tribute.”

Her face had begun to develop an angry look, but the word “Mafia” changed her expression to startlement. “Mafia? I know nothing of the Mafia.”

That was all I wanted to know. Tipping my hat, I walked out while she looked after me with an expression on her face which indicated she thought I was crazy.

Mrs. Nina Cellini’s reaction was typical to what I encountered all along Rome Alley. Her reaction to the Mafia, I mean, for I didn’t run into any more people who mistook my identity. I hit fifteen places of business, in each announced I had come for the tribute, and in every one get nothing but uncomprehending looks. When I dropped the word “Mafia,” the reaction was either startlement or guarded truculence, but nowhere did it seem to inspire fear.

It seemed that no one at all along Rome Alley was afraid of the Mafia.

Near the end of Rome Alley I came to a drug store and decided I might as well use it for my next move. When I asked the druggist if I could use his phone, he waved me to a lone booth at the back.

Turning to the yellow section of the phone book, I went down the restaurant list and picked out several first-class restaurants located outside of the Italian section, but which were run by people of Italian descent. In order I began to call them.

I hit the jackpot on the first try. Mr. Anthony Marizelli, proprietor of Marizelli’s Restaurant over on the West Side, grew panic-stricken when I inquired about the tribute.

“It was paid!” he said. “The man picked it up yesterday. You cannot blame me if it was not turned in by your man. I swear on my mother’s name it was paid!”

“Relax,” I said. “I guess there’s just been a mistake. See you next week.” And I hung up.

Two more phone calls, with similar panic-stricken reactions from both restaurateurs, gave me the picture. The extortionists were carefully avoiding Rome Alley and hitting only Italians who owned big establishments and could pay off in a large way.

The first thing I noticed when I came out of the phone booth was the odd expression on the face of the druggist. He seemed so pointedly preoccupied with inspecting a shelf of toiletry supplies, I got the impression he was watching me out of the corner of his eye.

Sensing the strain in him, I swept my eye around the store. Two men had come in while I was in the phone booth. One sat at the soda counter puffing on a cigarette, but with no drink before him. The other idly glanced over the magazine rack. Neither paid any attention either to me or to each other.

Both were dark, muscular men of middle age and looked like they might be day laborers. After examining their cheap but serviceable suits and heavy work shoes, I decided they were just that, and I was letting the Mafia’s reputation touch my imagination.

Neither so much as glanced after me when I walked out.

My walk along Rome Alley had left me four blocks from my Plymouth. During the walk back to it I glanced over my shoulder several times, but saw no sign of the two men.

However, I did experience a momentary feeling that I was being followed just before I reached the drive leading into El Patio’s ground. In the rear-view mirror I glimpsed an ancient Dodge touring car about two cars back, and realized I had spotted it in the mirror twice before. When it drove on by as I turned into the drive, I decided it was my imagination again.

It was just six o’clock when I turned my Plymouth over to a parking lot attendant.

Inside I told the head waiter not to disturb Fausta, and had him get me a table near the door leading back to Fausta’s office. By a quarter of seven I had finished dinner, paid my check so that I wouldn’t have that delay if I had to leave suddenly, and I spent the next fifteen minutes smoking a cigar and sipping a second cup of coffee.

At exactly seven the two men came into the dining room from the archway into the cocktail lounge. As Fausta had said, there was nothing particularly distinctive about either, unless you want to count a complete lack of facial expression. They were both dark, smooth-skinned men of average height and build, and both were dressed in expensively-tailored suits.

The older man, whom I judged to be about thirty, stopped in the archway and looked over the crowd with incurious eyes while the younger one made his way across the dining room. He passed within three feet of me and disappeared through the door into the back hall. In exactly three minutes by my watch he was back.

I was right behind the men when they went through El Patio’s front door and handed their car claim check to the doorman. I gave him mine also. While we waited for our cars to come around, I paid no attention to them and they afforded me the same treatment.

My 1950 Plymouth arrived right behind their brand new Buick. Until the Buick passed between the stone pillars marking the entrance to El Patio’s drive, I stayed within feet of its rear bumper. Then, making a mental note of the license number, I let the interval lengthen until I barely had it in sight.

Apparently the extortionists were so confident they had their victims completely cowed, they had no fear of being tailed. Not once glancing back, they crossed town at a moderate speed and parked in front of a rooming house on North Eighth Street. I pulled over to the curb a half block back, waited until they had entered the house and then sauntered past it.

The number, I noted, was 819 North Eighth. Pausing to touch flame to a fresh cigar, I glanced at the Buick out of the corner of my eye. The windows were rolled up. Quickly glancing at the house and seeing no evidence that I was observed, I checked the car doors and discovered they were locked. That probably meant they were through with the car for the night, I guessed, which in turn meant the rooming house was not just another shake-down call, but was home.

As that was all the information I wanted at the moment, I started back toward my Plymouth. But I only made it half way.

From a tree on one side of the walk and from a doorway on the other two shapes drifted toward me in the gathering dusk. I was just raising my cigar to my lips, and by the time I had dropped it and started to reach for my armpit, it was too late. A gun barrel pressed into my right kidney.

“Straight ahead, mister,” a soft voice said in my ear.

We took their car instead of my Plymouth, and it was the same ancient Dodge touring car I had spotted behind me just as I reached El Patio. When I discovered my captors were the same two men I had seen in the drug store, my ego took a drop. I like to think I am a hard person to tail, but apparently these two had been behind me ever since I left Rome Alley.

Relieving me of my P-38, they blindfolded me.

The ride was merely a long series of meaningless twists and turns to me. When we finally stopped, I had not the faintest idea where we were. They led me from the car, I heard a door open, and we went down some stairs into what, from the noticeably cooler temperature, I guessed to be a cellar.

Someone removed my wallet from my hip pocket. Apparently its contents were examined, for I heard a mumbled discussion among several men in which my name was mentioned twice. Then the wallet was returned to my pocket, I was pushed into a hard wooden chair and the blindfold was removed.

I was seated directly under a large-watt electric bulb which was shaded by a conical enameled shade such as you usually see over pool tables. This bathed me in bright light, but left the surrounding area in shadow. Blinking at the light, I could see nothing but the legs of the group of men surrounding me. There must have been at least fifteen.

Behind me an unnaturally deep voice with a strong Italian accent said, “We know from your papers you are a private detective named Manville Moon. Today you ask many questions about the Mafia, Mr. Moon. Now we like to ask you some.”

I said, “Who are you?”

“You would know if you see me, Mr. Moon. I am one of the merchants you ask for tribute. I am also what you might call the leader.”

I probed my mind to place the voice, but it was no use. Obviously its unnatural deepness was a disguise, and the man might have been any of a dozen restaurant owners, fruit dealers or barbers I had talked to that day.

“Hold out your left arm,” the voice ordered.

When I obeyed, a shirt-sleeved man whose sleeves were rolled to his biceps stepped forward. The light shade hung even with his chest, so that even when he was within a foot of me, I could not see his face. Taking hold of my left arm, he shoved the sleeve back nearly to my elbow and examined the bare flesh.

Glancing at his own bare left forearm, I suddenly understood what he was looking for, because the underside of his bore a small scar in the shape of a cross. Vaguely I remembered somewhere acquiring the knowledge that part of the Mafia initiation ceremony is the gashing of the left forearm in that manner in order to let the blood which is supposed to seal the blood oath.

Dropping my arm, the man said, “He is not of the Mafia,” and stepped back to take his place in the encircling ring.

“No, I’m not of the Mafia,” I announced, deciding that if my captors were going to kill me, I might as well have the pleasure of telling them what I thought of their cloak and dagger outfit first. “I’ve just been checking up on your extortion racket. It must take a lot of bravery to belong to a secret gang which demands tribute from its own countrymen on the threat of death.”

For a long time there was silence. Then the voice from behind me said, “I think you do not understand the Mafia, Mr. Moon. It is part of our way of life. It has been used for evil, but it is not in itself an evil thing. Here it is only an instrument of justice.”

“Sure,” I sneered. “The kind of justice that takes from the rich to give to the poor. The poor in this case being members of the Mafia. Who do you think you’re kidding? I could name at least three of your fellow Italians you’ve been knocking down for tribute.”

“Name them.”

I managed a forced laugh. “And have them bumped off? No thanks. None of them squealed anyway. I ran across your racket by accident.”

“You have proof?”

“Oh, come off it,” I said irritably. “I tailed two of your pickup men only this evening. Matter of fact, your gunnies nailed me just after I’d run them to ground.”

“You know the names of these men?”

“No,” I admitted. “That was to be my next move. All I got was their address and the license number of their Buick. 819 North Eighth. License X-223740. But from that you ought to be able to figure out which of your pickup men I was on.”

Again there was a long silence, then the leader behind me issued an order in such a low voice I failed to catch it. A moment later the blindfold was being refitted to my eyes.

Again I was taken for a long, winding ride in what I recognized from the wheeze of its motor as the same old Dodge touring car. When we stopped and the blindfold was removed, I discovered we were double parked next to my Plymouth and I was in the company of the same two middle-aged men who had originally picked me up. One of them handed me the clip to my P-38, told me to put it in my pocket, and when I complied, gave me back my gun. I put it back under my arm.

Then he motioned me out of the car. As I stood in the street, staring at the two men without comprehension, they nodded impersonally and drove off. I noted the rear license was so coated with mud, it was indecipherable.

When I checked my wallet, I found the contents intact.

The whole thing was too much for me. I drove home and went to bed.

Next morning I was routed out of bed at eight o’clock by a phone call from Warren Day. “I want you at the morgue immediately,” he growled.

“No thanks,” I said. “I’m not dead yet.”

“I’m in no mood for wise cracks, Moon!” he yelled. “You be at the morgue in thirty minutes, or I’ll send the paddy wagon.”

I got to the morgue in thirty minutes.

Day was already waiting. Grunting a noncommittal greeting, he led me into the cold room and over to two sheet-covered figures on marble slabs. Both sheets he pulled back only far enough to disclose the faces.

Carefully I did not change expression when I recognized them as the two men I had tailed from El Patio to the rooming house on Eighth.

“What makes you think I know them?” I asked.

“You were asking me questions about the Mafia, and these are the first Mafia killings in this town in twenty years.”

“How do you know they’re Mafia killings?”

In answer he stripped the sheets all the way down. My stomach turned over when I saw the gaping holes in the chests of the two men.

Their hearts had been cut completely from the bodies.

Reaching over first one corpse and then the other, I raised the left arms and examined their under sides.

“These guys didn’t belong to the Mafia,” I said. “Mafia members all have a crossed scar on the left forearm.”

I could have explained to the inspector right then and there what had happened, but I didn’t see what it would accomplish. I doubted that he would even believe me.

In a definite tone I said, “I’m sorry I can’t help you, Inspector, but I don’t know who either of these men are.”

I didn’t in the sense that I didn’t know their names, and there was nothing Warren Day could do about it but growl at me a bit and let me go. He would have growled even more had I told him the truth. For I realized I had condemned the two men to death.

Even now it is difficult for me to understand how a group of respectable Italian merchants could be so steeped in the traditions of the Mafia that they would so ruthlessly avenge the misuse of the Mafia’s name. None of the men who had ringed me the previous night had ever before committed a crime, I am now sure. Yet the blood oath, probably taken by some as long as twenty, or even forty years ago, held in the face of all other law.

I tried to visualize the mental processes of the honest barbers and restaurant owners and grocers as they reached one-by-one into a hat to withdraw a small ball, each hoping his would be white instead of black, but each steeled to perform his sworn duty if the lot fell his way.

I felt a little sick when I realized my experience of the night before had been in the nature of a trial, and if the local Mafia had decided that, on the evidence, I was using its name for extortion purposes, my own heart would now be separate from my body.