Omertá

“Anybody any questions, gentlemen?” Gerard stood with his back to the window, addressing the leaders of the three main prostitution rings in the state, who were craning round in their seats to watch him talk, as he had positioned himself out of their line of sight. Worm still stood behind the desk, towering almost as tall as the cabinet, staring a little vacantly at a spot on the opposite wall.

“Yeah, I uh… I got one.” The one in the middle chair – Henry Damer, a skinny man with blonde hair and a more expensive suit than Gerard’s – spoke. “Why you call him Worm?” He nodded towards the bodyguard, and the other two smirked. Worm looked down from the wall and raised his eyebrows at him, re-adjusted his cufflinks.

“Because he’s slimy and he only comes out in the rain,” Gerard deadpanned. “Now unless anyone has anything worthwhile to say…”

“You ain’t our teacher, Mister Way.” Damer stood up to leave, and the other two followed his lead.

“No. I’m your protector. You wouldn’t be shit without me. The police’d be on ya and you’d be on the run to Nevada with all your whores. You’d be the greatest circus on Earth – except you wouldn’t want that. We all have families, don’t we?”

There was a general mumble of agreement, but Damer stayed silent and raised his eyebrows at Gerard. At this he attempted not to flinch or break eye contact, and as he held the door open and bid the other two men farewell, he tapped Damer on the shoulder and brought him back into the office, closed the door.

For a moment, the Don was speechless, searching for a way to articulate in a sophisticated and threatening manner what he feared. He knows. Of course, of all people, he would know – he wondered whether the name he paid under had escaped and entered into people’s knowledge, or whether the whores gossiped, and this piece worked its way upwards. Of course, it was Newark – it was always Newark, all four times. Damer had Newark. Gerard swallowed imperceptibly, glanced out of the corner of his eye at Worm - who was now gazing out of the window as if alone – and fixed Damer with a look that he had perfected, that said ’I know just as much as you, if not more.’ Damer raised one eyebrow slightly and gave it right back, grey eyes locked on Gerard’s with ease. “I have places to be, you know, Way.”

“I realise that. I wish to re-iterate to you that I own you, and that I own your information. This means that if I so much as catch a whisper on the wind of a piece of information that I do not want releasing, then I will not bother with your business, but simply take care of you and anyone else who knows. You are endangering lives by telling anyone – your friends, your wife, anyone in your business, anyone.” Gerard’s voice was a dangerous whisper as he stood at Damer’s tailored shoulder. Damer nodded, put off for a second after he finished, before smiling a little again.

“I realise your predicament. I trust the information I am protecting is simply the fact that you are one of my customers – being what you are, I must say I was surprised to find I had your custom at all. I was under the impression you mobsters were good little Catholic boys.” He leered, revealing a few dull teeth. “Blood on your hands, none on your manhood, that kinda thing?”

Gerard’s upper lip curled a little. “I think you know that’s not exactly how it works.”

Damer averted his eyes and continued in the same lecherous manner: “But then, I think I remember, you were something of a special client, weren’t you?”

Worm shifted his feet, and both men looked over at him. Damer cleared his throat.

“How is Bert, anyway?” Gerard whispered. His nostrils were flared, his eyes still on the attack.

“He’s quite alright. He doesn’t seem to have a grasp on client confidentiality, unfortunately.”

“Do you think he’s told many people?”

He smiled and shook his head a little. “He’s probably told a great many insignificant people, but I have no way of knowing. I know he told me.”

“Right.” He squinted a little out into the white sky through the window, and the outlines of grey buildings on the horizon. “Right. I’d better let you go, anyway – I wouldn’t want you to be late for whatever I’m keeping you from.”

Damer glanced at Worm, and bent down to bring his face close to Gerard’s. “Of course, I can guarantee the information never gets above the scum – I can make it my business, but I’d need something in return.” He narrowed his eyes at Gerard, but this time it was Gerard who smirked.

“You know that’s not how it works, Damer. Goodbye.” Damer took his hat and allowed himself to be backed out of the door and have it closed in his face.

Gerard took a step forward and leant his forehead against the door. Worm, unnerved by this act of vulnerability, shifted his feet again and tried to look away.

“The past never fucking goes away, does it?” All the Italian gone again, his voice echoed off the wood. Worm stood silent, which was what was expected of him. After a moment, he heard the head of New Jersey’s Mafia move away from the door and sit down in his chair, and the clinking of a bottle and a glass, at which point he thought it safe to turn around. “It’s been… it’s been over a year. It’s been a year and a half. But stopping, it doesn’t mean it goes away. You stop out of fear, but you still gotta be just as afraid, all your fucking life.” He drank deeply, his elbow on the desk. After a while, he took out a notepad and pen from a drawer, jotted something down, tore away the page and pocketed it, and drained his drink. “Anyway, I guess I’d better not be late for dinner. Seeya tomorrow, hey?” With that he sprang from his chair and swept out of his office in one movement, as if chasing something.

“Frank?” Lucia stepped into her shoes and patted her hair. “They’ll be here any moment, Frank.”

“Yeah, I know.” His voice was closer than she expected. He was in the doorway to the spare room (the kid’s room, she couldn’t help thinking of it as – it was in waiting for the beginnings of their eventual, inevitable brood), his hands in the pockets of his dress trousers, his hair falling over his face a little.

“Oh! Come here.” She tucked the tendrils behind his ear, smoothed them into the rest of his hair, and he smiled at her as she did so – a smile that was simultaneously adoring and deeply amused.

“Didn’ I tell you not to wear those shoes? You’re as tall as me.” He brought his hands from his pockets to her waist, and she looked down at her feet and grinned apologetically.

“Even for you, honey, I’m not going to give up my heels.” She kissed him on the forehead and he chuckled.

“C’Mere.”

“You’ll spoil my lipstick!” He ignored her protestations and kissed her, both of them laughing, and she stepped out of her shoes again and allowed herself to be deliberately ruffled. “Hey! Stop that!” She pretended to swat him away as the doorbell rang, and pulled away and scurried back into the bedroom as he began to descend the stairs. “Oh – wait.” She followed him and turned him around, wiping the dark red from his lips with her thumb before letting him go again, patting her hair as she stepped back into her shoes on the way back to the mirror.

The doorbell rang again before he got to the welcome mat, seeing for a second the two ghostly figures through the frosted glass, one black and one red. He fiddled with the chain and threw the door open.

“Frankie!”

“Gerard!” The men shook hands enthusiastically, before both turned to the blonde-haired woman in a blood red dress who was standing beside Gerard. “And this must be Candida.” Frank took her hands and kissed her on each cheek, as she did the same with vivacious enthusiasm.

“Frank Iero, Gerard’s told me all about you!” Frank’s eyes met Gerard’s with a smile layered under the one on his face.

“I certainly hope he hasn’t.”

“So modest, Frankie.” Gerard had on his business accent. Frank had wondered vaguely in the past whether he used it with his women, and now he knew.

Lucia appeared at the top of the stairs, her makeup and dark, wavy hair immaculate. She stood there for a moment like a Deco woman in her long midnight-blue dress, as if to deliberately make an impression on everyone in the hallway before descending the stairs. Gerard certainly put on an act of being deeply impressed. “Lucia, darling, you look stunning. Frankie, if you ever feel like a swap –“ Candida elbowed him in the ribs through his black jacket, and he lowered his head in dramatized shame as she pouted at him, eyes glittering. This woman looked like a doll – her face all eyes, dark and with lashes that seemed long enough to produce a breeze when fluttered; a delicate, childlike nose and doll-pout mouth, painted matte scarlet. Her eyebrows were drawn black, and her hair was bleached. She was trying to be Marilyn Monroe, and succeeding quite beautifully.

Lucia was statuesque stood next to her, and together they were a doll and a porcelain ornament. They kissed each other’s cheeks dramatically and fussed over each other’s earrings and dresses, and Frank and Gerard smiled, ushering them out to the car where they sat like chattering birds of paradise in the back seat. Frank took a moment to stand outside and marvel – Gerard had only procured it the week before, and had promised to show it to him. It was a red “1957 Jag, cream leather seats, max speed 120mph, 0-60 in 9.1 seconds, yada yada yada”, he informed Frank as he held the door open for him, sweeping round the other side to get in. “Don’t it make ya feel like a Prince?”

“It might make you feel like a Prince. It don’t make me feel like a Prince, ‘cause I don’t own it. I feel like I’m riding shotgun with a Prince, though, and that’s a pretty good feeling.” They laughed, and Gerard started the engine, sitting back for a moment to listen to it, a satisfied smile on his face. In the back seat, Candida rolled her eyes at Lucia and they giggled, at which Gerard rolled his eyes at Frank, and backed the car out of the driveway.

De Lago’s was under the street, so that people walking by could, if they were the kind of people to watch the ground as they walked, see the diners through little windows set into the base of the office building above. Inside, the light was subtle, a candle on every table, a red rose in every vase. Music was provided by the black grand piano situated by the entrance, which Alfie Ferrari, the owner, would often come out and play it himself later in the evening, his fat fingers stomping over the keys in the jazz style, prompting some of the older diners to get up and dance to the tunes of their youth. As Gerard Way’s party were shown to their seats a small man with a moustache that appeared to be drawn on sat down at the bench and began to trill away in a “most obtuse and irritating manner”, as Gerard pointed out with a good-natured smile to his companions. “I can pick out the tune if I close my eyes and try.” Candida giggled as he sat back in his chair and did just that, stage-concentration playing across his features. Lucia smiled lopsidedly and looked to Frank for guidance on how to react – but Frank had his elbow on the table and his fist over his grinning mouth, looking just as enraptured by Gerard’s antics.

”Oh, how the ghost of you clings!” Gerard opened his eyes, turned in his seat to the piano at the other end of the room. ”These foolish things, remind me of you.” His voice rang like bells, rose and fell like a nasally force of nature, an animal call or tenor birdsong, hawk or eagle’s spontaneous cry – and, as could be expected, the rest of the diners fell silent and turned to him as a rabbit will stop and press itself to the ground, but smiling, albeit in some instances rather nervously. He flickered his gaze around the room in a miniscule movement and a small, satisfied smile grew on his lips. The pianist skipped a few beats – one of the rabbits – and went back into the verse, a little slower. Gerard sat back in his chair again and rested an elbow on the chair back, facing Candida conversationally. ”A tinkling piano in the next apartment… those stumbling words that told you, what my heart meant… a fairground’s painted swings –“ He stopped quite suddenly and picked up his wine glass, and the piano stopped with him when he didn’t continue. He took a sip. “Bored now,” he explained to his table, but it was audible to the rest of the silent diners, and most probably to the pianist, who waited a few moments before beginning a new, more sombre song, which he again overcomplicated with ostentatious notes. The conversation returned to the rest of the room haltingly over a matter of seconds, and Gerard settled back in his chair again and placed an arm around Candida, smirking in a lazy fashion, exchanging a conspiratory glance with each of his party before dropping his gaze to his free hand, with which he began fiddling with the tablecloth, and Candida began wondering aloud which wine they should have.

“Come home for drinks! Come home for drinks!” He insisted it as soon as he came out of Ferrari’s office, covering Candida’s potential question – she still asked, not through naiveté but through a misplaced playfulness. Her little red mouth was already open when he spoke, and she closed it again and pouted as he put a jovial hand on Frank’s shoulder and marched him towards the stairway.

“Darling, do you want to go back to Gerard’s for drinks?”, he called over his shoulder.

“Sure, why not? I don’t think I have any choice in the matter.” She stood by the coat stand, fumbling in her purse for a light for her new cigarette. By the time the women caught up with Gerard and Frank they were leaning against the brick walls halfway up the stairs like bookends, the streetlight shining down between them, stood as if what had needed to be told had been told.

“We gonna go then?” The cold night felt gorgeous to their well-fed, warm bodies in their varying states of drunkenness – Frank tactfully tried to offer to drive Gerard’s car home for safety, but it was met with a knowing laugh. “You and your ‘delicate constitution’ could give you free rein on all your friend’s cars, Frankie, but you ain’t driving this baby tonight.” Frank shrugged it off and opened the back door for Lucia, who mouthed ‘Is he drunk?’, and Frank nodded gravely, but with a small smile. With Gerard, up until a certain point it was difficult to tell.

“Hokay, here we go.” He started the engine and manoeuvred back and forth for a while, almost crashing into the cars parked in front of and behind them.

“Gerard honey, don’t kill us all,” Candida muttered sleepily from where her head was lolling against the window.

“I won’t, sweetie.” He turned to Frank with a small, lazy smile, and successfully pulled out into the road.

The Way house was silent, but the front door was unlocked. Gerard acted like this was normal and breezed straight in, holding it open for his guests, closing it again and knocking on the door at the bottom of the stairs before opening it. “Evening Mikey. Georgie. How goes it?”

The room was large but dark, the walls half panelled in dark wood and half rich green, the light coming from a standing lamp by the doorway. In two black leather armchairs at a small card table sat two men: the older of the two was large, pot-bellied and tan-faced, in his mid fifties and smoking a cigar; the younger was wiry and bespectacled, his hair scraped back from his forehead into a severe, greasy parting, his features and cheekbones at sharp angles, as if Gerard had been starved and stretched. He was smoking a cigarette, and when Gerard opened the door he inhaled too fast and began to cough.

“Gerard.”

“He didn’t tell me he was inviting you around, Georgie, did you, Mikes?”

“Should I have? I-I didn’t think I-I had to.” He addressed the table, tapping it absentmindedly with his fingers before bringing them to his mouth and sitting back as if pretending he had not spoken.

“No… no, you didn’t have to. This is your house as much as mine. Well, legally, it is mine, but we ignore that.” Gerard turned and smiled at Frank, Lucia and Candida, who were trying to look casual standing behind him in the hallway. When he turned to them they all gave a small smile in return. The grandfather clock in the hallway ticked loudly. “Well… If I was interrupting anything, we can go sit in the lounge, but my good cigarettes are… where are they, Mikey? You have one there.”

Michael looked at it as if this observation was news to him, then scratched the back of his neck in a typically Way fashion. “They’re in the cabinet, Gerard. Th-this one.” He gestured to it with his smoking hand, and ash dropped onto his shoulder. He dusted it off. During this whole exchange, the older man sat in silence with a slight smile on his face, smoking contentedly and watching Gerard out of the corner of his eye.

Gerard crossed the room to the cabinet and took out a cigarette box and a large crystal bottle of spirits, tucking the former under his arm and leaving the room swiftly, stopping at the door to say “I didn’t know you smoked.” DeVerez coughed into his laughter and Michael crushed his cigarette into the ashtray violently, rested his head in his hand.