Death Wish

  Bellini bounced a gigantic hand off Tonelli’s shoulder and nodded knowingly. “Ah! With the team of Collucci and Cocio, you will not further disappoint me.” He paused thoughtfully and said, “I will not be unhappy if they hide a big salute inside his transportation as another way . . .”

  Tonelli beamed and said, “Never again, Mr. Bellini, will a nigger be permitted to become a Willie Poe.”

  11

  T. remembered the day before Bama went East to play con with Bulldog Slim, and a week before Rachel’s release from the narc treatment center in Lexington. Bulldog, Bama, and T. drove past a mixed couple going into a plush apartment building. Bama frantically blew the car horn.

  The couple put suitcases down to wave. The thin, sharp-faced white man, in faded denim, was in stark contrast to his flashily dressed Amazonian companion.

  Bulldog said, “Bama, that lady is some pretty, too pretty for a silk stud that’s raggity as Yakima.”

  Bama chuckled and said, “That lady is Willie’s sister, Reva, back from vacation. He’s her husband. His skin is white, but he’s as much nigger, in his heart, as we are. He wiped his ass with the social register. He split the white world with more money than Hollywood’s got cocksuckers.”

  T. shook his head. “How did he get rich?”

  Bama said, “Building better bridges and digging better tunnels all over the world. He’s Darrel ‘the Mole’ Miller the Third.”

  At a stoplight, Bulldog said, “Lemme out here! Dig you on this corner later.” He leaped to the street and pumped his pipe-stem legs toward a sexy whore on the corner, grinning at him, as she ducked into a corner bar.

  T. gazed back through the rear window. He shook his head. “That white joker for real? . . . Needs to at least blow a buck on a haircut for that lady’s sake.”

  Bama said, “Reva digs him just the way he is, and she’s all that matters to him.”

  They pulled up before Willie’s bar and went inside and joined Willie. He had his back rammed into the corner of his favorite rear booth. His eyes never left the front door. His hand was never far from the machine gun on the seat beside him.

  Bama said, “Reva and Darrel are back.”

  Willie said, “I know. She was on the phone preaching to me a moment ago.”

  Willie pushed a miniature coffin to the center of the booth table. “It’s some dago psyching that came special delivery a half hour ago,” Willie said lightly as he raised the lid.

  Bama and T. stared at the nude doll daubed crimson from its ragged throat to its crotch. The eyes and mouth in the black face were popped wide in terror.

  Bama said, “Yeah, the cunning bastards hope to chill you into the palsy. When they try for you again, you’ll freeze, and they’ll have that fatal edge on you.”

  Willie said, “Shit, my ticker’s pumping Prestone Antifreeze. Let the sneaky cocksuckers go on dreaming they can psych Willie Poe into a coffin.”

  Bama swung an arm toward the lone drunk at the bar and said, “Willie, why don’t you bounce that barfly and take the ride with us to pick up Bulldog Slim?”

  Willie jerked a thumb toward the numbers check-in station behind him. “I’ve got a policy wheel to run. And besides, I close the bar early and the wops will think Willie Poe is folding up.”

  Bama said, “Well, why don’t I leave Jessie to keep you company?”

  Willie snorted. “You mean keep me guarded, don’t you, Bama?”

  T. said, “Unc, I’m not leaving you in the joint alone.”

  Willie patted the machine gun and said evenly, “Jessie, you and Bama get out of my ass and leave Willie Poe to bodyguard Willie Poe.”

  Bama and T. exchanged a look between them and got to their feet. Hurt and angry, T. took off for the front door.

  Willie called Bama back and said, “Goddamn! He’s a sensitive jackass. Which reminds me, I told Gold Dust to nix that insurance con on Jessie for the scratch in the suitcase . . . You’re giving me a look reserved for marks. Bama, don’t misunderstand why I nixed off Gold Dust.”

  Bama grinned and shrugged. “Oh no, I understand, Willie . . . I really understand,” Bama said and started to turn away.

  Willie stood up and said, “Go to hell, Bama.” Then he walked toward Bama and said, “Tell Jessie, Darrel is picking me up and the suitcase. Tell him he can sport his dick or wipe his ass with the double sawbuck in the glove compartment.”

  Bama grinned like a Cheshire. “Yes, sir, cold-blooded Uncle Willie, I’ll tell him.”

  Willie scowled and goosed Bama’s rear end with the snout of the machine gun. Bama galloped for the door. Willie pursued and swung open the door. He said to Bama’s back, “Hey, bubble butt, you want to bring Slim and Jessie to a get-together from ten on at Reva and Darrel’s place?”

  Bama turned, pointed at the machine gun, and said, “Yes, baby, if you promise not to bring your rattle to the party.” He went to the Imperial.

  Willie waved at a squad of police cruising by and went into the bar. T. was behind the wheel with an injured expression on his face.

  As T. bombed the car away, Bama said, “Damn, buddy, easy on the gas pedal. Willie invited us to a party Reva is throwing tonight. Her joint is gonna be lousy with round-butt foxes.”

  T. cut speed and said, “He gonna be there?”

  “Who?” Bama asked.

  “Uncle Willie,” T. said with a frown.

  Bama said, “Yeah, he’ll be there. So what has that to do with boo koos of fine foxes?”

  T. said, “Since he can’t stand me in his face, I sure don’t want him in mine.”

  Bama said, “You lop-eared mark! Willie don’t want you between him and that next dago on the turn. Sucker, you’ve hooked and hog-tied Willie. Which reminds me, old antifreeze said tell you he’s springing for the double saw in the glove damper so you can grease your Jones.”

  As T. cruised the Imperial into Gary, Indiana, he said, “Bama, I’m gonna deck out in one of them vines Unc bought me and have my first free world fun since I was a kid.”

  Bama said, “Always demand and feel you deserve the best you can yank out of the game, Jessie, before He calls it on account of darkness.”

  • • •

  For two weeks Frank Cocio and young Jimmy Collucci had separately and together tailed Willie Poe around the clock. Collucci, wearing nondescript clothing, was staked out near the Fifty-eighth Street El station. He had been seated in a drab Ford sedan intently watching the front of Willie Poe’s bar since T. had dropped off Willie that morning.

  Reva Miller, lonesome and missing her husband, Darrel, away on business in Florida, had insisted, against Willie’s objection, that she drive them to T.’s wedding reception at Rachel’s home on the Westside.

  Willie had told T. that morning that he would get to the reception on his own and that T. could use the Imperial to honeymoon at a resort in Michigan.

  In the twilight Collucci saw Reva Miller’s blue Caddie pull to a stop. He watched Willie Poe get in with his ever-present machine gun concealed in a tall leather hatbox. It was dark when Reva reached Rachel’s home. The sidewalk was clogged with the overflow crowd of celebrants, their parked, brightly streamered cars jammed the block.

  Reva went down the block and parked around the corner. Collucci parked a hundred yards ahead and pondered taking off Willie Poe by himself. But he remembered the stern warnings of Tonelli and Cocio about going up solo against Willie and his machine gun.

  Collucci went to a phone and within an hour Cocio arrived with a G. M. master key and a bomb. While Collucci stood as a lookout, Cocio placed the bomb under the front seat of the Caddie and ran a wire from it under the floor mat to the ignition.

  At the reception, Willie gave the couple the key and deed to a Southside bungalow as a wedding gift. Willie and Reva kissed the happy couple and wished them well. T. threw his arms around Willie and Reva and walked them to the Caddie. He stood by the side of the car as they got in.

  Willie said through the open window, “Have fun, sport, b
ut watch you don’t throw your back out of joint.”

  T. laughed and said, “When I get old like you, Uncle Willie, I’ll look out for my back.” He waved and walked away toward the sidewalk. Reva waved and turned the key in the ignition. The blast slammed T. across the sidewalk and into some bushes where he lay dazed.

  Finally he struggled to his feet and pushed through a ring of spectators to the odor of death and the bloody bits and pieces of Willie and Reva. He was stony-faced and dry-eyed while Rachel walked him back to the house.

  T. locked himself in the cellar. Willie’s death and T.’s piteous bellowing of sorrow and hurt chilled the guests and the party died. It was daylight before T. came up from the cellar encrusted with the coal dust that he had rolled in.

  Willie’s funeral was the biggest the Southside had ever seen. Willie and Reva’s bronze caskets shimmered like slabs of gold as the pallbearers snailed from the church into the late-summer sunlight.

  Great crowds of the poor that Willie Poe had helped with a Christmas basket or a five-dollar bill pressed into the palm wept and suffered that Willie Poe was dead.

  And then the multitude raised their voices to a deafening din, chanting, “Good-bye, Willie Poe! Good-bye, Willie Poe!” until the hearse disappeared.

  On the way to the cemetery in the family car behind the hearse Bama, T., and Darrel Miller sat silently huddled together in their sorrow and rage.

  At the wake it was agreed that in their anger they should avoid taking reckless and ineffective action against their powerful enemy. In two months they would meet again, unhampered by unreasoning rage. Then they would sit down together and coldly plot how best to avenge the death of Willie Poe and Reva Miller.

  Bama went back East to finish his last con tour. T. departed, determined to dredge up ex-members of the Black Devastators.

  Darrel Miller locked himself away from the world and vowed to use his millions to avenge the murder of his beloved Reva. He gave birth to the concept of the “Free Zone” from which the Warriors for Willie Poe would battle the Mafia.

  The Warriors bought the vacant church and, under the supervision of The Mole, started construction of the tunnel system beneath what would become the Free Zone. The Warriors would set up, in that Zone, an interracial rehabilitation clinic for “H” addicts. The clinic’s high percentage of success would awe America.

  12

  T. sat very still at the window as he remembered one night a year after Willie Poe’s death. He and Rachel had lain in the master bedroom of the parsonage, breathless and dewy after their wild love-making. She lay atop him, feeling him still hard inside her as they inhaled the honeysuckled breezes floating through the open window.

  T. said, “What you thinking, Ra?”

  She said, “About how much I love you. About how shocked and comical Mama looked when I let you just walk in after five years and carry me out to the car in your arms without first saying at least ‘hello.’ ”

  He laughed. “Wasn’t nothing to shuck and jive about when I come to claim my forever woman.”

  She said, “Jessie, I hope we don’t have to stay here forever.”

  He said, “Ra, why you say that?”

  There was a roaring silence.

  He said, “I’m living better than I ever did and even you, too. Ain’t that right?”

  She said, “Yes, Jessie, I know . . . but there’s something about this whole setup that worries me.”

  “Why you worried, Ra?” he asked with a tiny edge of annoyance in his voice.

  She said, “It’s the tunnels . . . the guns . . . I get the feeling that we will someday have to pop into our holes like gophers to save our lives.”

  Silence again!

  She pecked his lips. “I’m really worried the most about you, baby.”

  She felt him go limp inside her. Then she heard him rumble from his chest, “I hope you ain’t worried, Ra, like a lotta sisters figuring ain’t no nigger smart enough and man enough to beat a white man in a death duel like we planning to whip on the Mafia. That why you worried, Ra?”

  She oozed herself off his rod and rolled to his side. She said flippantly, “Hell, no, Jessie. My reason was I love you and want you alive. But since you’re the baddest and the smartest there is, I won’t worry anymore, okay?”

  He said, “Ra, you cracking shit on me I ain’t laying still for. I may be the baddest, but you know ain’t no way I can be the smartest with no big high school learning in books like you and your pimping dope fiend nigger dead and stinking in Detroit . . . But, Ra, I got too much smarts to let a mothuh pimp on me plus shoot poison dope in my body. Plus I heard them freakish dogs suck on a woman while she swallow their come.”

  She stiffened in shock and immediately fled to the side of the bed, whimpering and rocking with her head squeezed between her palms. She sobbed, “You said he would be forgotten like pee down the toilet, remember? How could you break your promise . . . when you see me trying to be happy . . . staying well . . . wanting to forget?”

  He stared at her heaving back and realized he was wrong. He felt remorse shake him. He scooped her into his arms and cradled her against his chest like a baby. His lips moved to say I’m sorry, but his hooligan pride choked him mute.

  She said with a childish quaver, “Daddy, you sure you love me?”

  He said, “Ra, I ain’t got no doubt . . . I do, as long as you don’t doubt I’m gonna be a man up ’gainst even the Mafia.”

  She asked, “Could you do without me?”

  He chuckled and said, “Ra, you ain’t got to worry about dying, strong and healthy-looking as you are.”

  She propped her elbows on his chest and rested her face between her palms as she stared into his face. She said, “Damn, Jessie! You’re sure of me. I meant what would you do if I got up right now and left you forever?”

  He studied her face. Her eyes were glistening with guile, and his pride was hurt that she dared to test him. He visualized himself without her and felt a load of loss leaden his chest and spasm his scrotum. He realized he couldn’t do without her. He recoiled from a vision of himself groveling and begging her with his eyes popping out not to leave him.

  She thought, Your turn now against the wall, and said, “Come on, Jessie, what would you do? Say.”

  “Ra, I’d roll and cry like a crumb crusher, blocking the door so you couldn’t get in the wind. I’d moan and groan, crap my pants like I had a thousand teeth and alla them rotten and aching.”

  She giggled, “Jessie, you jiving? You so stubborn you’d probably help me pack.” Then she traced his features with nippy kisses and said, “Daddy, you know I need you and love you too much to even ever want to get in the wind. Don’t you?”

  He nodded and sucked her tongue. She leaped astride him and impaled herself on his joint, heavy veined and fat with blood. She hooded her eyes and humped his weapon until she squealed and drooled saliva. Then in slow motion she looped the noose about the head of his organ.

  Jessie gazed at her awesome butt reflected in a moonlit mirror. It was swaying and tossing with airy artistry as the noose leeched and grabbed. With a growl of joy he flung her beneath him, then smoothly eased himself into her and stroked her womb gate.

  Later, after a nap, she said drowsily, “Why do beautiful dreams always have to run out so fast? . . . It was so real and wonderful. I wore a white mink coat that tickled my ankles when we went to the ‘coming out’ of one of our slew of lovely daughters at a cotillion ball . . . You were so distinguished and handsome in white tie and matching sideburns . . . and we had a finer house than even those Braddock snobs that Mama did laundry for . . . Oh, Jessie, baby, we were so happy!”

  He said lazily, “Yeah, Ra, you pretty and sweet and you dreaming sweet pretty dreams . . . real pretty.”

  She said, “You’re pretty and sweet too, so what have you been dreaming lately?”

  He said carefully, “Ra, I ain’t had no pretty sleeping dreams since I dreamed in the penitentiary I was out here in the free world
with you, and alla them was sweet and wet.”

  She laughed and belly-banged his crotch. “What kinda pretty dreams you having wide awake?”

  He fidgeted and yawned. “Ain’t but one all the time.”

  She pushed out her bottom lip. “Am I in it?”

  He said, “Ain’t that kind.”

  She beat tiny fists against his chest. “What kind? What kind?”

  He sighed, “Ain’t gonna tell you, Ra.”

  “Why can’t you tell your wife?” she said and rolled off him and slapped wads of tissues between their legs.

  He said, “ ’cause my wife might crack up and bust a gut.” He turned his back. “Sleep tight, Ra.”

  She said, “I won’t laugh. Tell me, Jessie.”

  She razored a silver-lacquered fingernail down his spine to his buttocks. He shivered and howled and flipped to face her.

  “Awright, Ra, the deal is, if you grin even, I’m gonna smack you cockeyed. A deal?”

  “Damnit! Don’t dangle me!” she said and swooped to scissor his nipple between her teeth. He flinched and pinched her honey-colored bottom.

  He locked his eyes on her face and began. “Outta the box, you gotta know how the dream come to me through Uncle Willie. I growed to love him more than Bama even. Though I only knowed Uncle Willie a short spell, he’s the foundation bricks of my dream.

  “Before I knowed him I ain’t doubted just a teeny mean look from a Mafia man woulda dreened pee down everybody’s legs from the police to the president and me even. But no, no, not Uncle Willie, and ’cause I worshipped him, I kilt one and lost my fear of Mafia men.

  “After Unc was buried I rounded up more’n three hundred of the baddest niggers on the Westside to heist and shake down numbers banks and dope dealers for the geeters to buy artillery to waste all the Mafia men in Chicago for killing Uncle Willie.

  “I guess except for Bama and them brains in his big shiny skull, and Darrel wasn’t no slouch, you wouldn’t have no husband here in the bed. They heard my plans and pulled my coat to how to use our power to fuck up the Mafia. How to get politicking protection by rounding up sympathy and blessings of the biggest baddest power there is. And they the people! All peoples, black, white, and green, fear and hate the Mafia men and wish all a them was dead and stinking.