Page 6 of Falling for Carla
“No. Organized crime.”
“Oh. Shit. How do you feel about that?” she asked, her humor and bravado gone, my sincere friend speaking softly, careful of my feelings.
I tried to give a nonchalant shrug. “I’d be lying if I said it didn’t take me by surprise, but I guess it’ll be fine. I’ll probably ace it with no effort, being that I’ve had a front row seat to the Russo crime syndicate since I was old enough to sit up.” I gave a bitter laugh.
My dad, the one with the high expectations and harsh punishments, had been the head of the Russo crime family out of Brooklyn since before I was born. My older brother was his right-hand man and the heir apparent. I never wanted anything to do with the business even before my mom died. Now, I just put as much distance between myself and that life as I could.
A year and a half of therapy had convinced me I shouldn’t freak out every time someone mentioned the East Coast or the Mob, but I still had anxiety about anything relating to the family business. Brenda would know I’d find it upsetting, especially as much as I had been thinking about Mom lately.
“It’s got to make you uncomfortable just thinking about it,” she said. “Do you think you could get into the other section of Crim 4? The one I’m taking? It’s all read the textbook, answer the discussion questions online, write a paper about some crap that happened in the eighties?”
“No, I’m not going to run from it. I think I can learn a lot from this professor—he has a different approach, more about the motivations to get involved in that kind of life and what the stakes are for an individual. Maybe it’ll teach me to look at it as a law enforcement official and not in a personal way. It’s just going to be tough for a while. Maybe it’ll be all about Sinatra and Kennedy and Vegas and stuff,” I said.
“Okay. If you say you can handle it, I know you can. It just seems like you’re putting yourself through it when you don’t have to.”
“I may end up working that kind of case as a cop, Bren. I can’t pick and choose what I’m assigned once I’m part of a department. And if I’m faced with an organized crime case, I’m going to have to deal with it like a pro, be detached and be smart about it. So it seems like it’s important that I do this even though it’s hard. It’s gonna suck, and we’ll have to keep extra ice cream in the freezer for a while to get me through it, but in the end, I think it’ll be useful.”
“You’re a tough cookie, Carla Russo,” she said, “here, I’ll give you another fry.”
CHAPTER 5
DRAKE
Twenty minutes before class time on day two of my Criminology IV section, there were already three kids waiting in the room, one of whom was the brunette who was occupying a seat in the front row again. All her equipment was arrayed and ready for business—laptop open, recorder out, and she was scrolling on her phone.
“There’s no extra credit for beating me here in the morning,” I said, setting down my coffee and logging into my laptop to bring up the slide deck. The two male students chuckled politely, but the brunette gave the barest eye roll without looking up from her phone.
I asked their names, where they were from. The two guys were both from Arizona and lived in a frat off campus. The brunette said her name was Carla Russo and she was from New York. Something about that name rang a bell, but I couldn’t quite remember what it was.
I wondered what her story was, coming so far to a huge, famously liberal university for law enforcement when Columbia was right on her doorstep as well as other lesser schools where you could get a criminal justice degree cheaper. I was used to the social justice warriors trooping through my program in their Birkenstocks with their top-of-the-line tech that didn’t match their sustainable ideals. They didn’t usually last long out in the field, too much harsh reality and too little opportunity to make systemic changes when you were busting up drug deals and domestic disputes.
Before I could ask any of them any more questions, the rest of the class started to come in. I asked their names and where they were from just as I’d asked the first three, and I tried to forget that Carla Russo was in the front row.
I referred to the assigned reading and cued up my slides. We were starting with Hollywood portrayals and misconceptions of organized crime.
“I’m going to show a clip from Donnie Brasco. Most of you probably haven’t seen it—although Pacino deserved an Oscar for it—but it’s a more earthbound depiction of organized crime, the macho trash talk, the crappy locations and the sitting and waiting and the rigid hierarchy in the organization. It’s not glamorized like a lot of films about the Mob. Not everybody has on a dark designer suit and lives in a penthouse and keeps business separate from family life so the women and children are clueless. It’s a lifestyle, not a wealthy one for the most part, but more likely to be violent and seedy and full of desperation than the way it’s often shown in the media.”
I played the clip and my eyes fell on Carla Russo, who wasn’t watching the screen beside me. She was typing on her laptop and rather stubbornly not looking up to see what we were about to discuss. After the clip played, I told them to take a second and then give me a descriptor for how Mafia activity and lifestyles were being portrayed there.
“Realistic,” one student said.
“Very seventies,” a woman said. “The fashion and the lighting and everything was kind of distracting.”
“That’s the time period it was set in. It’s based on a true story about a cop who infiltrates the organization. Any other thoughts?”
“It was kind of boring,” one young man offered.
“I’m inclined to agree with you to a certain extent. It’s not all action packed, there’s a lot of talking, a lot of double meanings and rites of passage and ways he has to prove loyalty. And there are long periods that are just uneventful. So any preconceived notions you have of organized crime being some sort of titillating dark underbelly to extreme wealth—you’re going to be disillusioned and probably disappointed as well. It’s an ugly business, but it’s a business, and in a lot of ways it’s no more interesting than any other kind of business. I want you going into this with open eyes—it’s not dazzling casino openings and forbidden romances between rival families. Now we’re going to go to the next slide and talk about the primary sources of income for these organizations. You have drug trafficking, human trafficking, charging for protection…”
During the entire lecture, I don’t think Carla looked away from her computer one time. I know, because my eyes kept straying to her, wondering if something was wrong based on the way her head snapped up in alarm when I announced our topic for the semester during the first class meeting.
I was sensitive to her reactions, waiting for her to contribute a comment or ask a question, even to look up and make eye contact. Nothing but furious typing and a clear refusal to even look at the slides I’d made for the presentation. Maybe she was an auditory learner, I reasoned, and my lecture was how she gleaned information. Or maybe she thought Donnie Brasco sucked and didn’t want to flatter my slides with her attention after that.
Or maybe something was wrong. Perhaps, though, I was spending too much time thinking about how one student was reacting to the lecture. I shook my head. Preoccupation with Carla Russo’s feelings about the subject was not a good use of my time. I’d have to get over this interest in her. It should be a simple matter, I told myself, with more confidence than I felt.
CHAPTER 6
CARLA