361 - Donald E. Westlake [36]
He came back and sat down. He finished the second drink and we ordered thirds. They came and he went on talking as though he hadn’t stopped. “This thing about family, now,” he said. “It’s an important thing with a lot of people. All kinds of people. And I’ll tell you a group of people it’s important to, and that’s the people make up the mob. Particularly in New York. You don’t think so? Hard cold people, you think. No. There wasn’t a two-bit gun carrier on the liquor payroll didn’t take his first couple grand and buy his old lady a house. Brick. It had to be brick, don’t ask me why. It’s in the races, national backgrounds, you know what I mean? Wops at the national level, mikes and kikes at the local level. Italians and Irish and Jews. All of them, it’s family family family all the time. Am I right?”
I said, “People get assimilated. Americanized.”
“Yeah, sure, I know that. Believe me, for the last few years, I did nothing but read magazines. I know all about that, when you’re Americans you got no roots, you move around, all that stuff. No family homestead, no traditions, nothing. Who gives a shit about cousins, brothers, parents, anybody? Only if they’re rich, huh?”
We grinned at each other. I said, “Okay. So what difference does it make?”
“I’ll tell you, boy, there isn’t a man in the world doesn’t want to be respectable.” He pointed a finger at me, and looked solemn, as though he’d spent long nights in his cell thinking about these things. “You hear me? Not a man in the world doesn’t want to be respectable. As soon as a man can be respectable, he is. You got immigrants, they come into this country, how long before they’re really Americanized? No roots, no traditions, who cares about family, all that stuff. How long?”
I shrugged. He wanted to answer the question himself, anyway.
“Three generations,” he said. “The first generation, they don’t know what’s going on. They got funny accents and there’s a lot of words they don’t know, and they’ve got different ways of doing things, different things they like to eat and wear, and all the rest of it. You see? They aren’t respectable. I’m not talking about honest and dishonest, I’m talking about respect. They’re not a part of the respectable world, see? Same with their kids, they’re half and half. They’ve got the whole upbringing in the house, with the old country stuff, and then grade school and high school and the sidewalk outside. See? Half and half. And then the third generation, Americanized. The third generation, they can be respectable. Do you see what I’m getting at?”
I said, “I don’t think respectable’s the word you mean.”
“The hell with that.” He was impatient, brushing it away. “You know what I mean. It takes three generations. And the third generation has practically no crooks in it. I mean organization crooks, the mob. That’s almost all first and second generation, you see what I mean? Because every man in the world wants to be respectable, but a lot of guys are going to say, ‘Okay, if I can’t be respectable, I can’t. But I still want to make good dough. And only the respectable types like in the Saturday Evening Post can get the good jobs with the good dough. But my brother-in-law drives a liquor truck bringing in the stuff from Canada and makes great dough, plus sometimes a bonus for an extra job doing this and that, so what the hell. I can’t be respectable, anyway.’ See what I mean?”
I nodded. “Yes, and I see what you’re driving at. The first and second generations aren’t Americanized. So they’ve got the old feeling for family.”
“Right! And that’s where you come in, boy.” He leaned far forward over the table. “I tell you, family is all to these people. You kill a man, his brother kills you. Or his son. Like you, for Christ’s sake, going after the guy killed Will Kelly. Or things like this, there’s maybe a dispute of some kind, somebody in the mob gets killed by somebody else. And the guy who did it, or ordered it, he sends like a pension around to the other guy’s wife.