twenties because that was the romantic era of legendary gangsters.
To Johnny The Wire, crime was not just a means to make money, not simply a way
to rebel against the constraints of civilized society, and not only a genetic
compulsion, but it was also—and primarily—a magnificent romantic tradition. He
saw himself as a brother of every eye-patched hook-handed pirate who ever sailed
in search of plunder, of every highwayman who had robbed a mail coach, of every
safecracker and kidnapper and embezzler and thug in all the ages of criminal
endeavor. He was, he insisted, mystical kin to Jesse James, Dillinger, Al
Capone, the Dalton boys, Lucky Luciano, and legions of others, and Johnny loved
them all, these legendary brothers in blood and theft.
Greeting Vince at the front door, Johnny said, “Come in, come in, big guy. Good
to see you again.”
They hugged. Vince didn’t like hugging, but he had worked for Johnny’s Uncle
Religio when he’d lived back in New York, and he still did a West Coast job for
the Fustino Family now and then, so he and Johnny went back a long way, long
enough that a hug was required.
“You’re looking good,” Johnny said. “Taking care of yourself, I see. Still mean
as a snake?”
“A rattlesnake,” Vince said, a little embarrassed to be saying such a stupid
thing, but he knew it was the kind of outlaw crap that Johnny liked to hear.
“Hadn’t seen you in so long I thought maybe the cops busted your ass.”
“I’ll never do time,” Vince said, meaning that he knew prison was not part of
his destiny.
Johnny took it to mean that Vince would go down shooting rather than submit to
the law, and he scowled and nodded approval. “They ever get you in a corner,
blow away as many of ‘em as you can before they take you out. That’s the only
clean way to go down.”
Johnny The Wire was an astonishingly ugly man, which probably explained his need
to feel that he was a part of a great romantic tradition. Over the years Vince
had noticed that the better-looking hoods never glamorized what they did. They
killed in cold blood because they liked killing or found it necessary, and they
stole and embezzled and extorted because they wanted easy money, and that was
the end of it: no justifications, no self-glorification, which was the way it
ought to be. But those with faces that appeared to have been crudely molded from
concrete, those who resembled Quasimodo on a bad day—well, many of them tried to
compensate for their unfortunate looks by casting themselves as Jimmy Cagney in
Public Enemy.
Johnny was wearing a black jumpsuit, black sneakers. He always wore black,
probably because he thought it made him look sinister instead of just ugly.
From the foyer, Vince followed Johnny into the living room, where the furniture
was upholstered in black fabric and the end tables were finished in glossy black
lacquer. There were ormolu table lamps by Ranc, large silver-dusted Deco vases
by Daum, a pair of antique chairs by Jacques Ruhlmann. Vince knew the history of
these things only because, on previous visits, Johnny The Wire had stepped out
of his tough-guy persona long enough to babble about his period treasures.
A good-looking blonde was reclining on a silver-and-black chaise longue, reading
a magazine. No older than twenty, she was almost embarrassingly ripe. Her
silver-blond hair was cut short, in a pageboy. She was wearing Chinese-red silk
lounging pajamas that clung to the contours of her full breasts, and when she
glanced up and pouted at Vince, she seemed to be trying to look like Jean
Harlow.
“This is Samantha,” Johnny The Wire said. To Samantha, he said, “Toots, this
here is a made man that nobody messes with, a legend in his own time.”
Vince felt like a jackass.
“What’s a ‘made man’?” the blonde asked in a high-pitched voice she’d no doubt
copied from the old movie star Judy Holliday.
Standing beside the longue, cupping one of the blonde’s breasts and fondling it
through the silk pajamas, Johnny said, “She doesn’t know the lingo, Vince. She’s
not of the fratellanza. She’s a valley girl, new to the life, unaware of our