word.”
A handshake, and the deal was sealed—with or without the uncle’s consent. At the end of each month, the two thugs in fedora hats came by to collect the money, leaving almost nothing for Rocco’s salary—just like the baron’s men back home would come and get our crop, that sonnabitch God forgive him, commented Mamma Lucia in her tale.
Then, one day, Lucia’s father came home with good news: he had been hired for one of the big construction projects that came about with the New Deal. That evening he went out to celebrate with some buddies of his who had had the same good fortune. Two hours later, the police knocked on the door to notify the family that someone should go to the morgue to identify the body. The police never found out what happened exactly. A brawl... an attempt to break a fight... to help a friend... the knife missed the intended target... he got the blow. Nobody came forward to provide any information, and those who were interrogated kept their mouth shut. After a perfunctory investigation, the case was closed. Not for don Vince Marrano, though. Eyewitnesses in his service identified the killer, and the guy was promptly gunned down in broad daylight in front of Rocco’s diner. This was don Vince’s way to declare his protection publicly with a spectacular gesture.
To further tighten the grip on Rocco’s family, don Vince hired Lucia’s younger brothers—with or without the family’s consent. They were just fourteen and fifteen years old, and their job consisted of keeping watch during the mob’s operations—usually, the operations involved moving alcohol cargoes from the warehouse to their network of speakeasies. The two unsuspected lookouts would alert the gang if the police were closing in. Although Prohibition had ended the previous year, U.S. federal law imposed numerous limitations and heavy taxation on the production and distribution of distilled spirits, and organized crime was still thriving on bootlegging. As the brothers grew up, their level of involvement increased, and at age twenty they were full-fledged members of the racket. This put Rocco in the awkward position of having to pay protection money to his brothers-in-law. But the brothers, discretly, never showed up at the diner, and within the family nobody ever talked about business. So, on the surface, they were all friends.
By the end of the thirties, the brothers were able to provide a decent living for their mother. She and Lucia quit their cleaning jobs and the family moved to a nice house in Brooklyn, where everyone had a room of their own. Even Joe, who at the time was eight years old. He needed his own space, because every year on his birthday don Vince would send him a magnificent gift, something a working-class kid could only dream of. One year, it was a rocking horse, lusciously decorated like the ponies on the merry-go-round. The next year, it was an electric train with a railway network that covered half of his room. More recently, it was a bicycle that looked like those for grown-ups in all details. Joe was ecstatic and felt grateful to “uncle” Vince. On the other hand, something about the man made him uncomfortable. He sensed that his father disapproved of those gifts. When they were alone, Rocco would suddenly hug him tight and say something like, ”This stuff’s not for free... I’m so sorry I can’t do anything to stop it...”
Rocco and Lucia had no other children after Joe. And so, Rocco’s desire to shield his son from the Mafia occupied all his thoughts. He even made a vow to St. Christopher that he would help renovate the church if the saint would free them from under the thumb of the mob. However, deep down he doubted that St. Christopher would be able to work that miracle. Affiliation with the Marrano family was for life. The few who had tried to terminate it had their lives terminated instead. But then, something happened. It is not clear whether St. Christopher wanted so badly to have his church renovated, or whether it was a mere coincidence, but a month later Lucia’s brothers were killed in a shootout with the police. Lucia and her mother were stricken with grief. But Rocco breathed a sigh of relief. At least one link was broken, although the chain had not completely fallen off. Don Vince offered his condolences to the mother together with a generous lump sum for compensation.
That money came in handy in the next four years, when another major event disrupted the normal course of things. The vicious Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor propelled the United States into a war that had expanded from Europe to Africa, and now Asia.
Rocco was among the first to join the Army as a volunteer, moved by patriotic spirit. He thought that among his comrades-in-arms he would finally feel like a “true” American. He was thirty-one years old at the time and had no military training, but he was accepted immediately because of his bilingual background. The Army needed interpreters for its daring European mission.
A sense of duty and sacrifice in the service of the country’s ideals of freedom and democracy inspired everybody. Many young guys in the neighborhood, who were drafted, looked forward to the great adventure with enthusiasm and high expectations. The minorities—immigrants and blacks—felt redeemed by a sense of pride. But even in upper-scale America, where nobody needed redemption, and where money and connections could have been used to avoid the call, most young men left behind families and jobs to perform their patriotic duty.
Only a few tried to dodge the draft. It was after all a war, where one could get killed. One of those was Frank Marrano, Vince’s son. He was twenty-one and a college dropout.
For the first time in his criminal career, Vince felt powerless. The military complex was not a field of operations he was familiar with. No matter how hard he tried, he failed to hook up to the higher echelons in the chain of command. Not even his political connections, who could normally be bought for money or persuaded by threat, could help in this case. In the end, Frank had to go. He and Rocco were assigned to the same assault division that would first reach the shores of Italy in the summer of ’43.
Before the guys’ departure, Vince showed up at Rocco’s place. He looked tired and depressed as if he had somehow aged overnight. He sat at the kitchen table, took a glass of wine from Lucia’s hands, patted Joe on the head, then looked at Rocco in the eye and said:
“We’ve known each other for years. I’ve got to love you as a second son, and will continue to keep your family under my protection when you’re gone. But now I want you to do something for me. I want you to keep an eye on my boy when you two are over there. I don’t want him to come back in a body bag. Look over him, as if you were his guardian angel. Dammi la tua parola d’onore. Your word of honor.”
Vince extended his hand. Rocco took it and said:
“Parola d’onore.”
The Americans disembarked on the coast of Sicily and joined the British and Canadian forces already on the ground. It took about six weeks for the Allies to secure their positions on the island. In early September, they began their march north through the peninsula. They did not meet a serious resistance for the first two months, because the Italian army had evaporated after the government signed an armistice with the Allies, and the occupying German army had strategically retreated as far as the town of Cassino south of Rome. But Rocco took his guardianship job seriously, and made sure that Frank had plenty to eat every day, even sacrificing part of his own ration, and a comfortable place to sleep at night.
When the Allies arrived in Naples, at the beginning of October, they were prepared for a big battle to liberate that main military and commercial port. But, to their surprise, the local population had already liberated itself in a bloody uprising that lasted four days, and there was not a single German soldier left in town. So far so good, Frank thought, there’s nothing so terrible about this war, and spent a few days in the city spending his money generously on girls and local food, offered on the black market at astronomically high prices. The city was devastated and on its knees, and the people were desperate to exploit whatever opportunity the new powers would bring.
Frank began to get a true sense of the war when the army reached the German fortifications at the foot of Monte Cassino. The road north to Rome was barred by the formidable Gustav Line, which extended from the Tyrrhenian to the Adriatic coasts. It consisted of trenches, gun pits, concrete bunkers, turreted machine-gun platforms, barbed wire, and minefields, and employed fifteen German divisions. Monte Cassino dominated the entrance to the Liri Valley, through which ran the main highway. On top of the mountain was a sixth-century abbey, believed to be a German post. To make things worse, it was now the middle of November, there were several feet