The Gangster (Isaac Bell 9)

“Sit while I make.”

Vella smiled in spite of his troubles. “I thought rich men’s servants make their coffee.”

Branco looked up from the grinder with a conspiratorial grin. “I make better coffee than my servants. Besides, I am not rich.”

LaCava’s eyebrows rose in disbelief, and Vella greeted such modesty with the knowing smile of a fellow business man. “It is said that you turn your hand to many things.”

“I don’t count in one basket.”

Vella watched him putter about the makeshift kitchen, warming cups with boiling water, grinding the beans fine as dust. Antonio Branco had been the biggest Italian grocery wholesaler in New York City even before he landed the aqueduct job. Now he had thousands of captive customers shopping in labor camp company stores. He was also a padrone who recruited the laborers and stone masons directly from Italy.

In theory, city law banned padrones from the job, as did the unions, which fought the padrone system tooth and nail. In practice, the contractors and subcontractors of the Contractors’ Protective Association needed sewer, subway, street paving, and tunnel laborers precisely where and when events demanded. Branco worked both sides, hiring surrogate padrones to supply newly arrived immigrants for some sections of the aqueduct, while he ingratiated himself with the Rockmen and Excavators’ Union by operating as a business agent to furnish union laborers for others.

“You could teach a wife to make coffee,” said Vella.

“I don’t have a wife.”

“I know that. However, my wife’s younger sister—ten years younger—is already a splendid cook . . . and very beautiful, wouldn’t you agree, David?”

“Very, very beautiful,” said LaCava. “A girl to take the breath away.”

“Convent-schooled in the old country.”

“She sounds like a man’s dream,” Branco replied respectfully. “But not yet for me. I have things to finish before I am ready for family life.”

He curled wisps of cream onto the steaming cups and handed them over. “O.K.! Enough pussyfoot. I hear you have troubles uptown.”

“They took my license. The city is suing me. But that’s not why I’ve come. The Black Hand is after LaCava now. Show him the letter, David.”

Branco read it. “Pigs!”

“This is the fourth letter. I fear—”

“I would,” Branco said gravely. “They could be dangerous.”

“What would you do?”

“If it were me?” He sipped his coffee while he considered. “I would pay.”

“You would?” asked LaCava.

Vella was astonished. He had assumed that Branco’s city contracts made him untouchable.

“What else could I do? A small grocery I supply suffered attack last year. Have you ever seen what a stick of dynamite does to a store?”

Vella said, “I hate the idea of knuckling under.”

“Who doesn’t?”

“Besides, what’s to guarantee they won’t come back for more?”

“What would you do instead?”

“I have an idea how to stop them,” said Vella.

Branco cast a dubious glance at LaCava. LaCava said, “Listen to him. He has a good idea.”

“I am listening. What will you do, Giuseppe Vella?”