Collucci said quietly, “I’ll do it.”
Cocio said, “It must be done quickly. He might get called tomorrow.”
Then Cocio added, “You can get a clean rod?”
Collucci nodded.
“You gotta watch you don’t tip him by some kinda changes in your face and acting. Remember, no witnesses, and you will do a sweet job on him if you got the rod rammed up under the hump on the back of his noggin when you blast. Capisce?”
Collucci nodded solemnly.
Cocio’s eyes were radiant with victory as he added, “I chose you, not just to make your bones, but because it will be very easy for you . . . He trusts you, eh?”
Collucci said, “He trusts me.”
Cocio followed Collucci to the door and extended his hand. Collucci hesitated for a mini-instant.
During the handshake Cocio said, “Everybody that’s got business, friendship, or whatever between them is gotta bitch at each other sometime. So let’s forget today’s hassle, eh?”
Collucci said, “It’s forgotten,” and stepped outside.
Cocio thoughtfully stroked his earlobe and followed. Collucci stopped and turned to face him.
Cocio said, “Say, he only lives a block from the dump. You can con him out there and strip him. Pile a lotta crap on him . . . The zillion of rats will finish him to the bones. Maybe he won’t be identified if ever found.”
Collucci dipped his head and went down the sun-baked walk. He picked up his Buick and went home for a bath and some rest.
• • •
That night directly after dinner with Olivia at the Tonelli mansion, Collucci went back to his apartment to plan and prepare himself for the job on Librizzi. He sat at a window in his darkened living room peering through binoculars at Angelo, Lollo, and Phil and their girls eating and laughing it up at the combination deli-poolroom hangout across the street.
It was early, only ten P.M. by his watch. A minute later Bobo’s girl, beauteously blond Carlotta Fugatti, made the scene driving a used blue La Salle coupe Bobo had given her. She sat alone at a window table on the deli side sipping gin-spiked Coke.
Collucci had finished planning. He sat drinking stout red vino like water and stoking up a poisonous fury inside himself. Maybe he could catch Bobo at home. He was reaching for the phone when it rang.
Collucci was shaken for an instant by Bobo’s voice saying he’d meet Collucci at the hangout and share some dynamite grass he’d scored.
Collucci said, “Bo, some guy threw a coupla slugs at me. I got a tip it may be Ya Ya after both of us. Walk out to the east end of the dump and make sure nobody follows you. I’ll meet you in fifteen minutes.”
Collucci listened intently as Bobo said, “Yeah, Jimmy. I’ll be there. Oh, what about Carlotta? She’s gonna meet me at the hangout.”
Collucci said, “We don’t wanta tip off any moves if Ya Ya is around, so don’t call her. I’ll send one of the broads across the hall over there with any message you got.”
Bobo said, “Swell. Tell her to blow the joint and I’ll call her at home later.”
Collucci put Carlotta in the binoculars for five minutes to check if Bobo was conning. Carlotta wasn’t called to the phone.
Collucci stuck a thirty-two automatic under his waistband at the small of his back and wore a summer shirt outside his belt.
On his way to put Bobo to sleep he felt a pang of regret at the sight of Bobo’s ten younger brothers and sisters singing and laughing on their stoop as they waited for their mother to come home from her eight-to-twelve shift. Two blocks later he felt really low as he passed the listing frame house that had rung with the screams of his mother and sister.
A half mile away, the stink of the dump poisoned the summer air. He parked the Buick on a side street, two blocks from the dump. A hundred yards from it, he felt nauseated in his belly pit at the squealy thunder of the rats. His flesh crawled as he stood at the edge of the rat pit and heard the rustling roar of their teeth and bodies as they scampered and scavenged through the sea of rot.
He turned at the sound of footsteps rocking on his heels from the vino. Bobo stood there decked out in a slate-hued gabardine. He wore his dimpled smile, and his eyes were enormous and innocent in the glow of the full moon.
They said, “Hi,” together.
Collucci thought, Nobody should have to croak the fucking Mona Lisa.
The burning tip of the stick of pot Bobo passed him reminded Collucci of the fiery agate he’d swindled Bobo out of when they were five years old in trade for a cracked barber-pole agate he’d glued together.
As he filled his lungs with the biting smoke, he remembered Mrs. Librizzi broom-beating them that same fall their mothers enrolled them in kindergarten. Mrs. Librizzi had caught them rubbing their organs together in her basement.
He passed the joint back and studied Bobo’s face as he said, “I think we better fix Ya Ya tonight before he tries a double-cross . . . Did you bring your piece?”
Bobo grinned. He drew a nickel-plated snub-nose that sparkled in his palm. He said, “My other close friend,” before he returned it to his hip pocket.
Bobo turned his head to glance behind himself. “I looked for your short . . .”
When Bobo turned his head, Collucci scooted himself a few inches closer to him without lifting his feet. He needed to brew up a murderous storm inside himself to do a job on Bobo.
Collucci wiggled his head as he said, “It’s parked over there . . . Maybe you need glasses, Bo?”
Bobo stood in a long silence and wondered if he’d really heard a strange raw note in Collucci’s voice and also why Collucci wanted to meet right here at the stinking dump. He said, “I got double twenty peepers, but both of us could get galloping TB inhaling all this crap.”
Collucci said, “You . . . We can’t live forever, Bo.”
Bobo said, “We can try . . . You think Carlotta got salty ’cause I couldn’t show?”
Collucci’s bottom lip curled. “Bo, you need glasses for your mind too, if you don’t know that broad wouldn’t quit you if you crapped on her chest. She don’t wanta go back to that dry cleaners.”
Bobo comforted himself that Collucci’s peculiar mood was due to the weed. He said nervously, “This batch of tea is pretty good stuff, huh, Jimmy?”
As Bobo held out the glowing butt toward him, Collucci said, “That alfalfa don’t even buzz me.”
Bobo drew on the butt and said, “I been thinking . . .”
Collucci said, “No shit!”
Bobo exhaled. “Yeah, I been thinking the guy was loony that told you Ya Ya was ready for a showdown. Ya Ya ain’t got more than a deuce of troops that he could count on, on his side . . . The guy is too cagey to risk his ass in a sling when he don’t stand a Chinaman’s chance.”
Collucci studied Bobo’s face as he said, “Dummy up and listen, Bo. Ya Ya is gonna give secret evidence on me to the nailers and take over . . . Mr. Cocio got it from downtown.”
Collucci stared with lidded eyes while Bo chewed his bottom lip in puzzlement. Ya Ya couldn’t be so stupid he would try for Collucci’s spot with a secret finger. Everybody in the car ring knew Mr. Cocio had a wide-open pipeline to downtown.
Bobo shook his head stubbornly, “Jimmy, I can see Ya Ya double-crossing, but much smoother than that.”
Bobo got a whiff of Collucci’s breath as he weaved a little closer. He said, “Jimmy, let’s go to my joint and finish talking, and I can call Carlotta.”
Collucci’s voice was shrill and slurred a little as he said, “When is the last time you called your old lady? Don’t you know your old lady slaving for forty a week is more important than some pushover broad . . . Don’t you know that, asshole?”
Bobo backed up from Collucci’s twisted face and burning eyes. He mumbled, “C’mon, now, Jimmy, gimme a break with the needle, huh? Carlotta ain’t just some broad I’m banging. We’re gonna get hitched next month after her divorce is in the bag.”
Collucci said violently, “Y
ou poor sap, that old stale floozie would marry a jigaboo if he was making big dough.”
Bobo recoiled and said, “Jesus Christ, Jimmy! Drop Carlotta, huh? I know for a fact she ain’t been banged by a lot of guys . . . She’s only twenty-six.”
Collucci snickered and said, “If all the pricks shoved into her was stuck outside her, she’d look like a fucking porcupine.”
Bobo’s eyes batted nervously, but he said with heat, “Lay off her, Jimmy.”
With long fingers dangling like some ancient gunslinger, Collucci said, “Make me, chump! You got a piece . . . Make me!”
Bobo said, “You gone nuts? I’m clearing the hell out of here.” He retreated several steps backward with a thumb hooked into the corner of the side pocket holding his nickel-plated piece.
Collucci said, “Defend yourself, chump,” as he eased on the balls of his feet toward him. His smile was full, his yellowish eyes compelling, like the reach-out-and-touch moon.
Bobo was like a wild-eyed bird trancing before a rattler.
Three feet away, Collucci sneered, “Whatsa matter? You lose your voice with your guts?”
Bobo said jaggedly, “I ain’t . . . Lemme go, Jimmy . . . I can’t talk to you.”
Collucci said, “Pretend I’m the secret Grand Jury, stoolie cock-sucker!”
The utter shock on Bobo’s face at the accusation was translated by Collucci as lead-pipe-cinch guilt.
At the instant that Collucci lunged, Bobo darted his hand into his pocket for his piece. He tripped as he stepped back for drawing space and crashed flat on his back. Collucci stomped the gun out of his hand. He lay there staring up at Collucci leveling his thirty-two automatic at his head.
Bobo pleaded, “Please, Jimmy! Don’t! Somebody put a bum finger on me!”
Collucci frowned in his anger with himself because his finger, his goddamn trigger finger, was paralyzed . . . couldn’t pull to blast out the fink’s brains.
Suddenly in one agile motion, Bobo jackknifed a leg and blurred a heel cleat against Collucci’s kneecap, and rolled toward his piece.
The staccato bombing of Collucci’s automatic shuddered the air and silenced the rat pit as he collapsed to his knees.
Bobo, unhurt except for a rill of blood across his cheek, pointed his shiny gun at Collucci’s belly.
The automatic spewed bolts of orange lightning, and Bobo was dead with a neat triangle of holes in his forehead. Then he blasted holes in Bobo’s slate jacket over his heart.
Collucci struggled to his feet and stripped the body of credentials, watch, and ring. Bobo’s clothing he would burn in his apartment building furnace.
Limping to spare his throbby knee, he dragged the corpse to the brink of the rat pit, then rolled it over and stood breathing heavily. He listened to the awful commotion of the rats as they descended to feast.
He walked to his car and battered down his guilt and remorse by blaming Bobo for his own death.
He tried to croak me. The lousy bastard was responsible for his finking and dying. He was stupid and guilty, so he had to go. So Collucci coined the con for his conscience.
• • •
Several days later, as the discovered remains of Bobo Librizzi were lowered into the grave, Collucci saw Cocio comforting Carlotta as she theatrically wailed grief. A week later, Collucci saw Carlotta dolled up and driving a new La Salle sedan. He tailed her to a posh bar in a Loop hotel. Several cocktails later he watched them take the elevator for the obvious purpose.
Collucci sat there across the street in his car for over an hour. He was stuporous with remorse and rage that he had put Bobo to sleep just because Cocio had had a hard-on for the slut Carlotta. He decided to stalk Cocio for that moment when he could kill him and avenge Bobo’s death.
After Collucci and Olivia were married with full church ceremony, the freshly weds were honored at a party on the Tonelli estate that even a Caesar might not have quickly forgotten. Collucci noticed that Cocio’s ferret eyes were bright with envy and hatred.
In the center of the quarter-scale Colosseum, the guests feasted on prime cuts of barbequed beef, lobsters, clams, sausages, cheeses, huge black olives, and the hearts of the artichokes, topped off with French and Italian pastries and frozen desserts, sculpted and lavishly decorated. They guzzled gallons of beer and scotch whisky. French champagne leaped and frothed from crystal fountains that splattered rainbow lights and gleamed the papier-mâché columns like purest alabaster. The wedding cake stood in the center of the feast. It was a five-foot replica of the Vatican, with bride, groom, and priest dolls assembled on top.
Mobster leaders and their lackeys, from six states, laughed and danced with their women to the band’s Old Country music that resonated the night.
Then the center of the arena was cleared of the banquet. Burly Mafiosi, in gladiator costumes, wrestled and clanged shields with bludgeons and swords in realistic bouts for the revelers.
Collucci stood tall beside his spectacular bride, gowned in peach satin, as the long lines of Mafiosi passed with kisses for Olivia, and for him congratulations and envelopes fat with paper money.
After a two-week honeymoon in Mexico, Collucci and Olivia moved into Joe Tonelli’s wedding gift, the River Forest mansion, luxuriously furnished and clear, except for taxes. That same week he was summoned to become a chauffeur for top boss Bellini.
Soon after shopping trips and a camping trip in the lush Wisconsin wilds, Collucci crept into the hearts of Frank and Angelita Bellini as a real son would have done. Collucci, for his part, was very proud and admiring when, with Bellini beside him on the front seat, and cars of bodyguards behind them, they visited Little Italy on the Westside.
Housewives, leaning and chattering gossip from tenement windows, the cute-butt broads, the ditchdiggers, the thieves, the kids stickballing in the lumpy streets, snow-crested old men cackling to each other’s hoary lies and jokes, pasta-bloated shopkeepers and leather-lunged pushcart hucksters all would freeze in awe at the sight of Bellini’s entourage.
They would whisper to one another, “It’s him! It’s Papa Bellini!”
All eyes would follow as he alighted from his limousine and went into Scatattis, the restaurant of a boyhood chum. He sat calmly at a table with his face unreadable.
The people with problems and in dilemmas bowed and scraped before his bodyguards for permission to enter his presence. Then before him, they trembled as they asked to be forgiven for violating his privacy.
Old friends and acquaintances going back to the old days in Sicily hugged him and kissed his hands and face. A clubfooted ancient needed condemnation of a duplex rescinded. A weeping mother needed a decent lawyer for her son accused of killing a bank guard.
A cement worker pleads that Papa Bellini force a crooked contractor to pay him a month’s back wages so he will not have to kill him. He has thirteen children, and if he goes to prison, their bellies will shrivel up and ache with hunger.
A wrinkled landlord hobbles forth on crutches and wired jaw. He sobbingly mumbles for the eviction and chastisement of a hoodlum tenant who refuses to pay a cent of rent.
Papa Bellini almost always listened in silent sympathy until each had spoken the last word of his plea. Then he would command one of his aides to “Handle this” or “Look into this.”
The people had great trust in him because they knew he would make himself and his clout, political and otherwise, available to them several times a week to solve their problems and resolve their dilemmas. A multitude was in his debt, and yet, no one knew when, if ever, he would demand payment.
Collucci, on many occasions after he drove Bellini home for the day, would prowl for a chance to kill Cocio. He had decided to visit Cocio on some pretext and blast him at home with the risk a neighbor would possibly see him coming or leaving.
He sat in the living room about to draw his piece and put one through Cocio’s head as he tied a shoelace when a woman came from a back bedroom and stared at him.
Cocio straightened up and sa
id, “Meet my mama come from Sicily just this morning.”
The next year the team of Cocio and Collucci gave bad Willie Poe his booming salute into oblivion. Shortly after, with determined politicking by underboss Tonelli, Cocio was given the choice plum of Southside Enforcer.
The demands of husband and Mafioso upon Collucci’s time and energies reduced his raging urgency to put Cocio into his grave to cold everlasting hatred and first-chance vow.
Collucci moved up quickly as Bellini’s protégé to a lieutenant in charge of a squad responsible for the gambling and vice take from a large hunk of the far Westside.
Bellini summoned Collucci to his house when Collucci was in his early thirties one early evening. It was the day after the funeral of Bellini’s wife, Angelita.
After dinner, Bellini gazed across the table at Collucci before he said in quiet Silician, “Giacomo, I would be very happy if you managed our affairs with the coloreds.”
Collucci was stunned. Capodecina! Enforcer!
Then he thought, What about Cocio? Has he committed some executable offense? He felt giddy at the possibility that the old man could be hinting that he put Cocio to sleep.
Bellini smiled as he read Collucci’s face and said, “Tonelli has been passed the big responsibility and wants Cocio for his underboss.”
Collucci’s suspicion of Tonelli and concern for Bellini whitened his face as he leaned forward. “Papa, are you in trouble?”
Bellini frowned at the disrespectful implication that Tonelli was capable of treachery. “Hell, no, Giacomo,” Bellini said evenly. “And keep that garbage out of your head.”
Collucci said, “Then I don’t understand why, Papa. You are not young . . . but you are not sick.”
Bellini pressed a bell for coffee and lit mammoth cigars for himself and Collucci. He exhaled blue smog and said, “Giacomo, because I feel that down deep in your insides you are in heat for that treacherous witch, power, you are puzzled that I don’t stay between her thighs. Now I will have the time to really enjoy fine music and my painting.”
Bellini half turned to gaze at his favorite oil painting hung above the Chippendale buffet behind him. Bellini had captured his teenage ethereal Angelita emerging from a holocaust of blue lake, aflame with Sicilian sun. Neoned rays of gold beamed from coils of honey hair atop her elfish face tinted the patina of priceless porcelain.