Nanette Hayes: Rhode Island Red Part 11

Just what made us so interested in criminals, anyway? Personally, I blamed Coppola for making Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro look so edible in the G.o.dfather movies. I must have been about twelve years old when I saw those films on television and I sure wanted me an Italian. Of course the sad realization that blacks and Italians in American cities are locked in a filthy embrace of loathing and violence against one another for as long as the two races exist was still ahead of me then. Still, while I wouldn't drive through parts of Bensonhurst on a bet, I've never met an Italian from Italy that I didn't get along with.

I started with the old newspapers and magazines.

There were mafia bigwig profiles, mob family genealogies, Cosa Nostra wars, inter-ethnic mob contacts, favorite mafia recipes, gangster angst, coming of age horror stories, interior decorating tips.

I skimmed them all.

Didn't see Valokus. But there was Vincent ... Little Vince ... Big Vince ... Vinnie the Bull ... Vick the Gimp. Val the Hulk. Vicious Vittorio. Vaseline Eddie.

There was Henry the Barber, Henry the Bomber, Sweet Henry, Hungry Henry, Henry the Hangman.

But those preposterous monikers that shared Henry's initials were about as close as I came to locating Henry Valokus.

Pop out of there, Henry, I whispered to each fresh roll of microfilm. But Henry didn't pop. He wasn't in the newspapers. He wasn't in the magazines. He was no pop idol at all.

Then, undaunted, I gathered to my table virtually all the current t.i.tles on the Mob, or La Cosa Nostra, or the Mafia, or the Syndicate. There were fat books by scholars and memoirs by reputed members of the organization, serious sociological treatments of the subject which deplored the stereotypes, bad screenplays, good screenplays, transcripts of crime commission hearings. There were novels that spoofed the mob, recasting its members as comic figures and grisly photo books that gave the lie to the laughter. There was a bonanza right in front of me.

"V" for Valokus.

Eighteen books later I hadn't found a single reference to him.

Now what was I supposed to do? Knock on the door of one of those downtown social clubs and ask if they had any graduation yearbooks?

Wearily, I started returning all the books. I believed those crazies in the van. I believed the gun against my head. If Henry really was a mobster-why hadn't he popped out?

Either because Henry Valokus was not his real name or because he was just too lowly a soldier.

It had been a while since I'd spent the day on a hard wooden chair in the library. My back hurt and I was hungry. I'd had it for the day. I trudged down the marble stairs of the main entrance and toward the exit. But I didn't leave. I had had a perfectly brilliant idea. Twenty-five cents worth.

I rushed to the phone and dialed Aubrey.

I'd remembered her talking about a man-Aubrey had told me about him not long after she started dancing at the Emporium. He dropped in a few times a week to collect the receipts from the safe. He signed the checks, hired and fired. He knew every single person who worked in the club. He was the man.

"Who is it?"

I could hear the tiredness in her voice. I knew that once again I had awakened her.

"It's me, Aubrey," I said apologetically. "I'm really sorry. But it's kind of an emergency."

I heard mumbling in the distance.

"Guess I woke Jeremy up too."

"Morning, Nan," he called into the receiver.

"Jeremy says you got more emergencies that anybody he knows."

"Really? Well, tell him when his little book gets published I'll treat it as a matter of no urgency whatever."

"Ima let you tell him that yourself, Nan. What's the matter now?"

"Can you get me an appointment with that gangster who manages the Emporium?"

"You mean Justin Thorn?"

"Yes. He is a gangster, isn't he?"

"Who ain't?"

"When do you think you might see him again?"

"I don't know-maybe tonight. Nan, what the h.e.l.l you want with crazy Justin?"

"It's too long a story," I said in exasperation. "Look, I know he likes you. Do you think you could get him to talk to me? Tell him I swear I won't take up too much of his time."

"You shoulda gone to Paris, Nan."

"I know. I want to let you get back to sleep now. Please, just call him for me. Tell him I don't want to know anything about his business and tell him it won't take long."

She didn't answer for the longest time. I could hear her lighting a cigarette and inhaling.

Then she said: "Okay. Call me back in twenty minutes."

I hung up and rummaged through the postcards section of the library bookstore. I bought one: an old William Claxton photo, a beautiful night-time shot of a ba.s.s player shielding his ax from the rain.

When I called Aubrey back the line was busy. I went back to the bookstore and bought another card; this one of a young Langston Hughes uptown.

I called again five minutes later.

Justin Thorn would see me about 1 P.M. in his office on West Eighteenth Street, a place called Tower Printing.

"I guess next time I see you you'll tell me what the f.u.c.k you doing, Nan."

"Trust me," I replied. "Happy dreams, you two."

About five minutes to one I took the elevator up to the fifth floor of the dingy building which housed Tower Printing.

I rang a buzzer outside the peeling door. An answering buzz let me in.

There was no printing equipment that I could see on the premises. There were no computers, no typewriters, no files. There was only one desk and one chair in the waiting room. The walls were bare. The floor was highly polished.

A stout, black, middle-aged woman wearing a gaily colored head wrap sat behind the desk. She was cussing bitterly as she fiddled with a boom box.

I greeted her. "Good afternoon. I have an appointment with-"

"Through there," she said, cutting me off. Then she added: "Don't knock. He doesn't like people to knock."

Justin Thorn looked up when I entered the room. He was seated on a rattan sofa with purple cushions, reading the Village Voice. There was no desk in the room, only the sofa and two matching armchairs.

"Mister Thorn?" I asked, taken aback and, I feared, unable to mask my astonishment.

First of all, his faded designer jeans and tight-fitting studded leather jacket-he wore no shirt underneath and he was working on a little belly-made him look like some suburban closet case on Christopher Street twenty years ago. Yes, he was as gay as tics are tiny.

That seemed pretty original for the mob. Or were they a good deal more enlightened than I was giving them credit for? Then again, maybe I was the one who was behind the times. Perhaps tolerance-shall we say, affirmative action-had reached even into the cradle of crime.

Justin's hair was coiffed almost onto death-long, peroxided, tied at the back with a velvet band.

And, perhaps most startling of all, he was no older than I.

"Aubrey's friend?" he asked.

"Yes. Thank you for seeing me."

He looked me over, brazenly, critically, before offering me a seat. There was a hint of distaste in his gaze, and more than a little confusion.

It was apparent that I had discomfited him. And then suddenly I realized why. I realized what he was thinking.

"No, no," I said rea.s.suringly, "I don't want to dance in your club. I'm not here for that. I'm not looking for any kind of job, as a matter of fact."

His face relaxed somewhat.

I jumped right in. "I need information," I said.

"What kind of information?"

"About the mob."

He grinned. "Is that right?"

"Yes. I need some information about someone who's in the mob. Or at least I think he is. That's why I'm here."

He burst into hearty laughter. "That's a good one, child. I never knew Aubrey to be a practical joker."

"She isn't. I'm serious."

He hesitated for a moment, fear creeping around the edges of his expression. "You wearing a wire or something equally ridiculous?"

"No, I'm not."

"Reporter?"

"Not smart enough for that."

"That's very funny too. Now tell me why you picked me to give you a mafia lesson."

"Aubrey says everyone in her business is either in the mob or owned by the mob. To hear her tell it, it's an occupational hazard."

"Let me tell you something, girlfriend. Listen to anything Aubrey's got to say. She's rarely wrong about anything." He batted his eyelids playfully. "So, Okay I'm a mob-stah. But to tell you the truth, I'm really a bartender. From Lockport, Indiana. White bread as they come. That is, I used to be a bartender. Until I was ... discovered ... at the soda fountain."

"By way of the West Street bars?"

"You're not that dumb, miss."

"My name is Nanette."

"Nice name for a stripper." He fired up a Benson & Hedges 100 with a day-glo colored disposable lighter.

Justin didn't have to offer me a cigarette twice. I pounced as soon as he turned the pack my way. I hadn't had a cigarette like that in so long.

"Mr. Thom, I'll come to the point. I'm hoping you know a ... crook ... whose name is Henry Valokus. I seem to be in a fair amount of trouble and so is he, I think. He may not know it but he needs my help. I'm ... in love with Henry Valokus ... and I can't find him. Can you help?"

"You're in love," he said slowly, "with who?"

"Henry Valokus. Valokus. Comma. Henry. Do you know him?"

"What did he do-knock you up?"

"Nothing like that."

He blew smoke at the ceiling and repeated dully, "You're in love-with Henry Valokus."

"That's what I said, Bub."

After his coughing fit was all played out, he rose from the sofa and came to stand very close to my chair.

"But he's an a.s.shole, isn't he?"

"Excuse me, Mr. Thorn, but could you please just get to the point?"

"If he's the same guy I'm thinking of, he's a bit of a b.o.o.b. Kind of looks like Napoleon, dresses like Victor Mature?"

"Dresses like who?"

"Never mind. Comes out of Providence, right? Talks with an accent."

"That's him."

"If I tell you what I know about him, will you promise not to die of boredom?"

"Promise."

Justin Thorn stretched, walked back to the sofa, sat down, crossed his legs and lit another cigarette.

"It's a ten second story, really. He was born over in Europe but he grew up in Rhode Island, which means he worked for the Calvalcante family, out of Boston. They run the rackets in Hartford, Providence, New Haven.

"Valokus was busted for-oh, s.h.i.t, what was it?-right-a hijacking charge. He ratted out somebody or other. Not a big muckety muck, really, but still, the Feds put him in Witness Protection. But when the case came to court Valokus got shredded by the defense attorneys. Prosecution's case fell all to s.h.i.t. Case dismissed."

"Then what happened?"