Soul Patch

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Bay Ridge was a tale of two restaurants.

Within spitting distance of the Verrazano Bridge, Cara Mia was an old-style Italian joint on Fourth Avenue. It was cheap and charming and perfect for first dates. The waiters had been there so long they bled red sauce and there was more garlic in the air than oxygen. The tablecloths were red and white and frayed with age, and Chianti bottle candlesticks caked thick with wax stood at the center of each table. The neighborhood lore was that they used a chunk of old lasagna as a doorstop.

Across the street from Cara Mia was Villa Conte. Villa Conte was everything Cara Mia was not, and less. Renowned for its Northern Italian cuisine, it was almost as well known for its snooty wait staff and Manhattan prices. The decor featured polished marble, marble, and more marble. And there was enough white linen in the place to supply the Ku Klux Klan for the coming decade. Villa Conte had style, a touch of class, and all the charm of a chest cold. I hated the place, but not for its pretentions.

On February 18, 1978, at the best table in Villa Conte, Rico Tripoli broke my heart. It’s one thing when a woman breaks your heart. You understand that when you take the dive with a woman, heart-break is always a risk. But there’s no expectation of betrayal between best friends, brothers, really. That’s why it hurt so much, why it still hurt so much. The story was that Rico had invited me to lunch to celebrate getting his gold shield. Was I jealous? Yeah, a little bit. A lot. In those days, with the city on the verge of bankruptcy, a gold shield was nearly impossible to come by.

I knew my chance had come and gone. Marina Conseco’s rescue had been my ticket to make detective, but, for whatever reason, the department had failed to punch my ticket. In February of ’78, my head was spinning. I’d met Katy Maloney, found and lost her missing brother, and had already made my pact with the devil himself, my future father-in-law. Aaron and I had yet to find the money for our first store, and my knee still ached so badly that my nirvana was shaped like a pain pill. So yeah, I guess the last thing I wanted to celebrate was my best buddy getting his gold shield. What an ass I was.

At that lunch, Rico confessed that he’d sold something even more valuable than his soul to get his gold shield. He’d sold me out. He had played me, using our friendship to manipulate me, to insinuate me into the tragedy of Patrick’s disappearance, to use me as a tool to ruin Francis Maloney’s political career. The worst of it was that he thought I would come as cheaply as he had. Rico and his boss offered me the two things I once would have given nearly anything for: my police career and a shield of my own. It was three years before I spoke to Rico again and another eight until I knocked on his door at the Mistral Arms. And fuck me if it didn’t still hurt just to look across the street at the entrance to Villa Conte.

“Moe,” Margaret whispered, “are you all right? You seemed lost there for a second.”

“I’m fine. Just remembering things. That’s all.”

“I’ve been doing a lot of that myself lately.”

“Come on, let’s go in.”

We were greeted by Senora. She was a frail woman with white hair, a faded white dress, puckered pale skin, and impish smile. Senora was the matriarch of the family that owned Cara Mia. She had been called by her honorific for so many years, I wondered if even she remembered her given name. She sat us at a quiet two-top in the darkest corner of the restaurant.

Margaret seemed very far away. It was a night to feel far away. A teacher of mine once said that history was everywhere you looked. She was right, but there were just some places where you almost didn’t have to look. You could smell it, taste it. It came up to you wagging its tail and tugged at your pant leg, demanding your attention. Cara Mia was that kind of place.

“First date?” I asked.

“How’d you know?”

“It’s in your face, in your eyes.”

And they were startling eyes, blue flecked with gray. She had put a few pounds on her once perfect body and there was some gray mixed in with her satin, blond hair, but it was easy to see why Frank Spinelli considered himself blessed. Twenty years ago, Margaret McDonald was the gold standard for the rest of us on the job. We all measured our girlfriends and wives by her and, until I met Katy, my companions always came up woefully short. The thing about her wasn’t her looks. She was calm and understanding. Married to Larry, she would have to be.

“Larry didn’t have much money back then, so he took me here. It was perfect. He was a real gentleman, and so nervous.”

“Larry, nervous! I’m having trouble picturing that.”

“I know, but with me back then. . That’s how I knew we were meant to be. He made me nervous too. Even now. . Let’s order.”

“Come on, Marge. No secrets between us, not tonight.”

“Thinking about him, I get. . I can’t say it.”

“Okay,” I said, “I’m sorry.”

“Please don’t apologize, Moe. Do you know that night when I was waiting for him at the Blind Steer, I was going to throw myself at him? I would have begged. I would have given up everything to have him back. Attracting men has never been a problem for me, but no man ever made me feel the way he did.”

“But he walked away from you.”

“He did. Larry could be a very selfish man.”

“You would have taken him back?”

“In a second.”

“Why?”

“I can’t explain it so that it would make sense to you.”

The waiter came by with a basket of semolina bread and two complimentary glasses of Chianti. We ordered and said very little during the meal. Margaret pushed her veal cutlet parm away from her. She hadn’t eaten it so much as push it around the plate. I hadn’t eaten much of my eggplant.

“That what you ordered on the first date?”

“Yes,” she said. “I didn’t eat much of it that night either. Larry ordered lasagna and a bottle of Mateus Rose. Christ, remember when we thought that was real wine?”

“Don’t remind me. We have a few bottles in each store. Every now and then somebody’ll come to the register with one. It’s always someone my age and we sort of laugh quietly to each other. We never have to say anything. It’s just understood, you know?”

“We didn’t know anything back then, did we, Moe?”

“I guess not.”

“I really grew to love this place. At least once a week for a year, Larry and me, we’d eat here. You know, he proposed to me right over there.” Margaret pointed at an empty table across the room. “He got down on one knee and everything. Senora came over and kissed us both and refused to let Larry pay. I’d give my soul to have those days back.” A silent tear rolled down her cheek. I didn’t wipe it away.

“You said you came here once a week for a year.”

“I did.”

“What changed?”

“We stopped coming here and went across the street.”

“Villa Conte?”

“The food’s great, but it just wasn’t the same,” she said. “It didn’t feel. . It didn’t feel like home.”

“Believe me, Marge, I understand better than you think.”

“And we’d meet some of Larry’s old friends from the neighborhood.”

“Old friends?”

“Frankie Motta.”

“Frankie ‘Sticks and Stones’ Motta!”

“No one ever called him that to his face, but yeah, that was him.”

Life never failed to bite me in the ass. It was getting so that a few more bites and my pants wouldn’t stay up. I’d known Larry McDonald for over twenty years and, though I was never as close to him as I had been to Rico, I thought I’d had Larry covered. Apparently not. I suppose you never do truly know someone else. It was a lesson I kept learning over and over again.

Frankie “Sticks and Stones” Motta earned his nickname on the streets as a kid, because no matter what you hit him with, Frankie kept coming at you. He became a capo in the Anello crime family-the

“How close were they, Larry and Frankie?” I asked, trying to sound casual.

“Why?”

“I’m just wondering. I never knew Larry was friends with Frankie.”

She was defensive. “It didn’t last. After a few years, we stopped seeing Frankie altogether.”

“Did something happen between them?”

“Is it important?” She answered with her own question.

“I don’t know, Marge. Probably not.”

“It was so long ago.”

I was tempted to share a quote that I picked up during the few years I had kicked around the city university system before entering the police academy. Faulkner once said, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” I wanted to shake Margaret and tell her that so long ago is never long enough. Just ask my father-in-law.

“Yeah, Marge, you’re right. One more question about this and I’ll drop it completely, okay?”

“Sure, Moe, anything.”

“Can you remember when you guys stopped hanging around with Frankie?”

She didn’t answer right away, but gave it some thought. Although the subject made her terribly uncomfortable, Margaret was a woman of her word.

“I can’t remember any particular incident between Larry and Frankie. It was like a few months had passed since we’d seen Frankie and whatever woman he was dating at the time. I tried bringing it up to Larry, but he told me to drop it. That was okay with me, because as pleasant and charming as Frankie could be, he made me uncomfortable. It wasn’t a sexual thing, like he was interested in me or anything. He just. . I don’t know.”

“Okay, but can you remember the timing?”

“Sure, it was the same year you rescued the little girl from the water tank.”

“Marina Conseco.”

“It was right around then, a few months after that. Late spring, maybe. Early summer. I think that was the last time we saw Frankie.”

There was nothing that struck me about that timing, so, as promised, I dropped it. Maybe Larry’s friendship with Frankie Motta was nothing. Hell, I had friends from my old neighborhood who were connected to the Anellos, the Gambinos, and the Lucheses. None of them had achieved the level of success of Frankie Motta, but they were connected just the same. Maybe Larry wised up and understood that his relationship to a known mob figure would hurt his rise up the career ladder. It was definitely Larry’s M.O. to shed anyone or anything that might hinder his ambitions.

“Do you want some dessert, Marge?” I asked, moving on.

She shook her head no and took my hand. “Do you think he killed himself, Moe?”

“I don’t know. I wanna believe that Larry wasn’t the type of man who would run away from things, but he was really worried the last time we spoke. I’d never seen him so shaken. I just don’t know enough.”

“But I knew him. I slept in his bed. I spent hours with him inside me. It’s different for a woman, having someone inside her. A woman can know a man in a way he can never know her. I can’t explain it, but I don’t think Larry would have killed himself and not left a note. He wouldn’t have done that.”

“Maybe. Who knows? A person on the verge of suicide maybe isn’t thinking clearly about who they’re going to hurt.”

“I just can’t believe Larry would leave that way without explaining why. It wasn’t his way.”

She seemed really haunted by his suicide. I understood haunting.

“C’mon, Moe, let’s get out of here. I’m feeling sad and I don’t want to feel sad here.”

Outside, I hugged Margaret and kissed the top of her head. We didn’t really speak. There were looks and shrugs and silent understandings. I had lost a lot with Larry’s death, but nothing compared to what she had lost. I watched her pull away from the curb and I followed her taillights until they disappeared near the bridge. In an hour or so, she’d be home with Frank. I wondered if his kindness and understanding made it better or worse for Marge. Then I turned and