CHAPTER 20: COMPLETELY STRIPPED
Brad
I conducted my interview with Danielle Nardelli, the mother of Vin Masoli, in a hotel room at the Comfort Suites. Strangely, she arrived in the lobby with a suitcase and another large travel bag. Her long brown hair was tied back in a pony tail and she wore a tight white-collared shirt and black pants under her long, black overcoat as she checked in at the front counter. At the time, I wondered if I was about to approach the wrong woman. She easily could pass for a business woman instead of an exotic dancer. She also had not mentioned anything about staying at the hotel when I requested an interview with her over the phone.
“Danielle?” I asked.
“Yes,” she confirmed with a slight hesitation. “You must be Brad.”
“Yes, Brad Wolzinsky of Power Chord magazine, nice to meet you,” I said, shaking her hand. “Are you checking in here?”
“I am,” she said. “I’ll explain later. I just want to get settled in my room first and then you can come and meet me there. OK?”
“Sure,” I said, trying not to sound too confused.
“What room will it be?” she asked the young man behind the counter.
“208,” he said.
“Thanks,” she said.
“When should I knock?” I asked.
“Give me 10 minutes,” she said. “I appreciate it.”
“No problem,” I said.
After Danielle answered her door and let me into her hotel room, she invited me to sit in a chair while she reclined on the king-sized bed with a couple of pillows propping up her attractive face and torso.
“You don’t mind if I lay down, do you?” she asked.
“Not at all,” I said. “Whatever makes you comfortable.”
“I’m just a little stressed out,” she said.
“And I appreciate you coming here and giving me the opportunity to interview you,” I said. “You must be very proud of Vin and what he’s been able to accomplish with this band at such a young age.”
“I am, Brad, you have no idea,” Danielle said, forcing a smile as her brain continued to be preoccupied with something else.
I could sense her tension and tossed out a softball question to start things rolling.
“When will Vin be 19 anyway?” I asked.
“May 19th,” she said with a smile before turning serious once again. “Brad, I brought my suitcase and checked into this hotel because I want to give you some information for this story that needs to be told. However, I have held this information secret for many, many years and it will greatly affect myself, Vin, Al and our whole family. It also may cause Al to become very upset with me and want to harm me. He’s very unpredictable. He may react very well or he may want to kill me. It probably won’t be something in between. Either way, I’m taking a vacation until things blow over and I’m sure it’s safe to come back. I’m the only one who knows my itinerary.”
“OK, I understand,” I said in the most empathetic tone I could muster.
“The bottom line is I want this secret to come out through this interview and story process, and not by me telling Al or Vin directly,” she said. “I am not equipped to handle that right now. I want to give them time and let them deal with it on their own before they confront me about it.”
“Fair enough,” I said. “I am sure I can help make that happen any way you want me to.”
“Great,” she said, taking a deep breath. “I feel a little better already. You know, I’ve stripped since I was 18 and most of those years I never really felt completely naked and free because I’ve been carrying around this secret all that time.”
“That’s rough,” I said, prodding her along as gently as possible.
“Vin’s father is not dead,” she said as I nearly choked on my own spit.
“Really?” I managed to utter in between coughs.
“Uncle Al is Vin’s real, biological father, but I’m the only one who knows that,” Danielle said, looking right at me. “Wow, it feels good to finally kick that one out of the fucking closet!”
I just nodded and hoped she’d continue right on going. She took a quick drink of water from a glass on the night table and did just that.
“All of this dates back to when I was married to Frank, Al’s brother,” Danielle said. “They both kind of had a thing for me and they were both very competitive, prideful young men. Al was four years older than Frank and seven years older than me so I was dating Frank, but I knew Al liked me, too. It was all a bit weird. I didn’t really know what I was doing back then, but I loved all the attention at such a young age.”
“I confess I researched some of this on my own as well,” I said. “I found a copy of Frank’s death certificate. The cause of death was suicide by pistol.”
“It’s true,” she confirmed. “It wasn’t long after I married Frank that things weren’t going well between us. He drank too much. He doubted himself sometimes. Looking back on it, I could see that he was depressed. I don’t think marriage was the fairytale he had expected.”
“Were you still stripping during the marriage?” I had to ask.
“No, he definitely wouldn’t allow that,” I said.
“Why did Frank kill himself?” I asked.
“Al and I kind of had an off-and-on affair when things were bad with Frank and he had no idea,” Danielle said with some remorse in her voice. “When I got pregnant, I knew right away Al had to be the father because Frank and I were not even having sex at the time. We were mostly fighting.”
“Didn’t Frank put two and two together?” I asked.
“He wasn’t very good at math and I made sure we had sex a few times before I really started showing in a desperate attempt to cover it up,” she said. “The whole thing was a huge mistake. I was too young. I was caught between two crazy mobster brothers. I had no idea what to do.”
“So what happened?” I asked.
“Do you mind if I smoke?” she asked.
“Not at all,” I said as Danielle lit her cigarette and took a nice, long drag to calm down.
“I stopped seeing Al, he kept his mouth shut about our affair and eventually I gave birth to Vin,” she said. “I guess I hoped giving Frank a beautiful baby boy would help our marriage, and it did for a little while. But during one of our big fights, when Frank was all drunk and little Vin was only about 10 months old, I told him I didn’t love him and wanted a divorce.”
“How did he take that?” I asked.
“He basically threatened to kill me if I ever left him,” she said. “That’s when I just took off with the baby and asked Al for, you know, some protection. He was happy to help.”
“And that, I imagine, led to the fateful fishing trip that Vin told me about in our brief phone conversation the other day,” I said.
“There was no fishing trip,” she said. “I just made that up. How do you tell a child, even a teenager, about this kind of stuff?”
“I have no idea,” I said. “That’s pretty heavy.”
“Al just confronted Frank and told him the truth,” Danielle recalled. “He confessed that Al and I had an affair, and he apologized for his role in further screwing up our already fucked-up marriage. But he also told Frank to move on, come to grips with the fact that I didn’t love him anymore and that he wasn’t going to let Frank harm me.”
“Wow,” I said, taking a deep breath myself as I glanced at my tiny recorder to make sure it was getting all of this. I also scribbled some notes on my yellow legal pad as we talked.
“The next day,” Danielle said before her voice quickly trailed off and her eyes filled with tears.
“That was it,” I interjected, trying to keep her thoughts audible.
“Frank shot himself,” she confirmed. “He couldn’t take it. Who could blame him? All the guilt that Al and me felt, you have no idea. I mean we basically helped put the gun to Frank’s head. He pulled the trigger, but we did all the rest.”
“Did Al ever ask if Vin was his son?” I had to ask.
r /> “Yes,” she said. “A couple of weeks later, he asked me, but I just lied to his face. I couldn’t deal with that. I wanted no part of Al after what happened with Frank and I sure as hell didn’t want a mobster raising my baby,” she said with sharp contempt in her voice.
“Did Al press the issue at all?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “He didn’t want that kind of responsibility at that time, raising a baby. He wanted nothing to do with me either. I was toxic to him just as he was toxic to me. We both blamed each other and ourselves for Frank’s death.”
“Is that why Al went to Miami?” I asked.
“Pretty much,” she said. “He definitely wanted a fresh start. He spent a few years chasing women around down there, but he settled down. He’s been married to Sally for quite a while. They have two teenage daughters younger than Vin.”
“So Vin has a step-mother and two half-sisters he doesn’t even really know about,” I noted.
“Not to mention a father he doesn’t know about yet,” she added.
“True,” I said.
“And that’s why I got so upset with Vin after he insulted Al and Sally in that song,” Danielle said. “He couldn’t have known it obviously, but he was disrespecting his own father and step-mother.”
“And how do you think Al and Vin will react toward you when they find out what you’re telling me tonight?” I asked.
“Horribly at first,” she said. “I’ve lied to both of them for so long. That’s why I don’t want to be there when the shit hits the fan. Call me a coward all you want, but I could’ve taken this secret to the grave with me. I just decided this is the right time to be brave and let it out … with your help, so thank you.”
“I’m happy to help, Danielle. But why now?” I asked her.
“Because Vin is a young man now and he’s old enough to know the truth,” she said. “But the biggest reason is the music. Because of this band, Vin and Al are closer now than they’ve ever been. It’s my hope and belief that after they stop screaming at me and calm down, they will realize the gift I’m giving them by doing this. A father will have discovered a son to go with his two daughters. And a son who thought his father was dead all these years will get the biggest surprise of his life.”
“His papa is not a gravestone after all,” I said.
“No,” she said. “That was his uncle.”
“I think most young men would take that trade,” I tried to reassure her.
“I hope so,” she said. “The catch here is I will allow you to tell Vin when you interview him tomorrow at my house, but do not tell Al. I need to be long gone and hard to find before he hears about this. My life may depend on it.”
“Danielle, I promise I will do whatever you ask,” I said. “I absolutely think you’re doing the right thing and I have a feeling everything will work out in the end.”
“That’s the only thing keeping me sane right now,” she said.
“Well Danielle, you’ve been through a lot tonight, but you did great and now you can focus on taking a vacation in the morning,” I said.
“I can’t wait,” she said, allowing half a smile as she freed her hair from the pony tail and let it spill down her shirt. “I may be fully clothed at the moment, but deep down it sure feels good to finally be completely stripped of all my secrets. And now, if Al does kill me, at least the whole world will know why.”