One afternoon Larry almost killed, in a brawl, the most feared street fighter in Port-au-Prince over a Haitian sexpot. Tourist Mario Rizzio, James Collucci’s cousin and employee, was mesmerized by Larry’s granite physique and ferret reflexes. Over the years Collucci had failed a half-dozen times to develop a fighter who could win the heavyweight crown.
Mayme respected the warning of the voodoo spirits that Larry’s legion of enemies planned to trap him and lop off his love bone. So she gave her blessing to Larry’s departure for Chicago for Collucci’s evaluation.
Mayme remembered the ecstatic day of revenge on her thirtieth birthday. She let feeble old Poteau fondle the bait of his death trap. Then with his own machete, she cut his throat and beheaded him beside a mountain pool. Ironically, it was the same where Poteau had abused her as a child.
Now in her closet temple, Mayme chanted and hurled powder into an urn that burst indigo fire to summon the Loas. Her hand blurred as she repeatedly stabbed a dagger into the eye sockets of Poteau’s skull.
Mayme stripped and placed the urn on the bedroom floor. She humped and belly danced around it until her sweat-glistened body reflected the blue flame.
Suddenly she groaned ecstatically. She collapsed and lay panting on the floor. Her thighs quivered violently in orgasmic release.
She stiffened and sat up as she heard the satin whispering of the voodoo spirits rise to shrill chanting: “Larry’s lost! Study the entrails of a beast! Larry’s lost! Study the entrails of a beast!”
Mayme went to the phone and called Bone’s apartment. She listened as it rang unanswered. She hung up and felt guilty because she had half expected him to answer after the Loas’s notice of Larry’s death. She called Central police headquarters and the city morgue. No Larry!
She heard hubbub on the street. She went to the front window and watched Mack Rivers’s guests start to spill out to the sidewalk.
The two dozen or so guests were the Southside numbers bankers and their bank managers with their women. These bankers were under the protection and control of Mafia enforcer James Collucci.
Mayme left the window and went to a giant tomcat glaring at her from its cage in the bathroom. She baby talked the cat as she reached behind her back and gripped the butcher knife she would use to disembowel the beast. She must read its entrails as commanded by her beloved voodoo spirits.
Downstairs in the Palace, Mack Rivers beamed his crooked little smile on the last of his guests and locked the door. He stood at the door glass watching several smile and wave back from their flashy machines as they gunned away.
Chumps! he thought, they ain’t never gonna wake up that Old Mack fingered them and their banks to the Mafia. Mr. Collucci fucks them for sixty percent off the top. Old Mack, the genius and president of the chumps’ organization, gets a freebie pass to run his own bank.
4
Angelo drove down an unpaved driveway past Collucci’s darkened Sweet Dream Roadhouse. He stopped at a rambling barnlike building a hundred yards behind the roadhouse. Phil and Stilotti rolled back wide doors. Angelo eased the Caddie into the dim building.
They got out of the Caddie. The four of them stood talking in low voices. The bright eyes of the Mexican girl stared at them from the open trunk of Phil’s Pontiac. They walked to a far corner of the building and stood in a semicircle before Bone. The only light in the big barn was a yellow glow from the parking lights on an old truck near Bone.
Bone was naked, gagged, and bound to a metal office chair with baling wire. His eyes stared up at Collucci. He made grunty noises behind the gag.
Collucci was dressed all in black right down to a black turtleneck sweater. He stood with his hands jammed into his overcoat pockets. He studied Bone with a blank face for a long moment.
Collucci’s three underlings all watched Collucci’s face for the subtle signals that would be flashed there. Collucci was a past master at this kind of fatal choreography.
Collucci raised his right eyebrow slightly. Angelo stooped and removed the gag. Bone coughed and opened his mouth to speak. Collucci glared at him and flung his palm into the air like a Nazi salute to silence Bone. He said softly, “Where are the eight kilos?”
Bone’s mouth gaped open. He stuttered, “Co . . . co . . . Come on now, Mr. Collucci, don’t do me like this. You know I told you the truth about them kilos.”
Collucci smiled thinly and winked his right eye. Phil and Angelo quickly left the scene. Stilotti shucked out of his overcoat, and Bone’s eyes were trapped by a glittery apron of knives around “The Surgeon’s” middle.
Angelo and Phil came back and unloaded Bone’s girlfriend and the four kilos, plastic wrapped, on the floor before Bone. Bone swung his eyes from her to the kilos of cocaine. Bubbles of sweat popped out on his face.
Collucci stroked his index finger across his right cheek. Angelo, wearing brass knuckles, took a step toward Bone and their eyes met. Angelo cocked back his arm. But he hesitated, bit his lip, shot a look at Collucci who raised his eyebrows. Angelo clenched his teeth and smashed his fist against the side of Bone’s face. The brass gouged a red rill from chin to ear lobe. Bone’s face was a fright mask of hate. His mass of muscle corded and puffed against the baling wire.
He screamed up at Angelo, “You cunt wop stinking motherfucker!”
Collucci nodded at Phil. Phil stepped in close and like an unhorsed picador grunted and plunged an ice pick to the hilt into Bone’s upper thigh muscles and spun away leaving it buried. The shock of the thrust relaxed Bone’s angry face to childlike awe. He stared down at the ice pick handle.
Collucci said casually, “Look at me, Bone. Look at your good friend that you double-crossed.”
Bone raised his glowing eyes and his head shivered a spray of sweat. He stammered, “I ain’t . . . double-crossed . . . uh—”
Collucci widened his eyes in threat to cut Bone off and said softly, “Where are the other four kilos?”
Bone licked his grayish tongue across his lips and dipped his head. He said with a quaver, “You ain’t gonna let them fuck with me no more?”
Collucci shook his head.
Bone blurted, “Mr. Collucci, I been doing my own secret thing on them bastards that heisted me and Mack Rivers. I Dick Tracy’d to one of ‘em and copped back four kilos. I kicked the shit outta him, and he put the finger on a young dude they call Charming Mills.”
Bone shook his head mournfully at the cruel irony of it all. “Mr. Collucci, I was gonna run Mills down and them other kilos. All your stuff woulda been safe back in your hands before the New Year.”
Collucci shot a look at his men. His mouth exploded a scornful laugh. Stilotti, with surgical knife in hand, stepped in and scalpeled off Bone’s right earlobe. The lobe fell and glistened in Bone’s crotch hair. He gazed down at it with mouth agape.
Collucci said, “Bullshit! I’ve got mug shots of most of the Warriors. Mills is one of them. Taylor executes them if they don’t immediately destroy all narcotics they confiscate.”
Bone said, “Yeah . . . but lemme . . .”
“Where are the four kilos?” Collucci intoned.
Bone strained forward against the wire across his chest and said, “I ain’t lying. Taylor don’t know Mills is doing his side thing with a gang of dope-jacking pushers. They already killed over twenty dope dealers all over the state. You got to be dealing their dope or paying them two bills a day to deal your own dope . . . if you don’t wanta die.”
“How do you know they aren’t all Warriors?” Collucci said.
Bone said, “I know the rest ain’t Warriors ’cause Warriors don’t kill no outside black people, and no poor people at all.”
Collucci glanced down at his feet and nodded at Angelo and said, “Where can I put my hands on Mills and the four kilos?”
Bone swallowed and bit his lip. Angelo pulled back his right leg and kicked Bone in the side. Bone swayed his head, closed his eyes, and groaned.
Collucci said, “Bone, you got a terrible memory. You t
old me a moment ago you were going to bag Mills and check in the kilos by New Year’s Day.”
Bone gazed down at the blood oozing down his chest from his wounded ear into a gooey pool between his thighs. He had a seizure of bellowed retching.
Collucci stared down at the girl. Her pink dress was wrinkled, stained, and soggy with urine and feces. Phil and Stilotti removed her gag.
She spurted words. “Sir, the black bastard lied to you. He lied to me. He never meant to give the stuff to you. I sold many, many fifty-dollar bags from the kilos for him. Please! Please let me go back to my mama and baby in San Antonio. I will keep my silence about everything.”
Collucci said, “You think Bone is a Warrior?”
She said, “No, too much pig for dope and punta.”
Collucci shrugged and said, “Where can I find Mills and the four kilos?”
She wailed, “Please! Let me clean myself and give me one day and I will find Mills for you.”
Collucci closed his eyes, shook his head, and pursed his lips. Angelo stooped and regagged her.
Bone surged in the chair with excitement and the killer instinct he’d had in the ring. He noticed that a section of the wire strung across his chest was rusted thin between his right chest and right bicep. They had used one long piece of the wire to quickly tie him into the chair while he was still groggy.
He stole a glance at a vertical section of the truck’s front bumper, just two feet away. If he could tilt the chair and fall forward at exactly the right angle he could snag the weak section of wire on the bumper and snap it with his two hundred and fifty pounds.
His arms and hands would be instantly freed. They were not tied together, but against the back of the chair by the same half-dozen strands crisscrossing his chest. The wire around his sweat-greased feet he was certain he could slip or snap with his hands in the blink of an eye. His heart boomed at the thought that before they killed him he’d get a chance to spill some of their blood.
Collucci said, “Bone, I want Mills and the kilos.”
Bone closed his eyes, flopped his head from side to side, and said weakly, “Mr. Collucci, it’s . . . so hard . . . for me to hear. I feel . . . fun . . . ny. I need . . . a croaker.”
Collucci looked at Phil, who dangled a cigarette from his lips. Collucci brushed his index and middle fingers across his lips and dipped his head at Bone.
Phil grinned and stuck the fiery cigarette tip into Bone’s ear. Bone cried out and reared against the wire. He tilted the chair toward the bumper and balanced it for an instant on two front legs. He scraped his toenails against the concrete for a bit of thrust. Then he plunged down toward the bumper.
He heard the wire zing when it snagged on the bumper. Next, he heard it snap and uncoil from his chest and arms. He crashed to the concrete. With flesh-peeling violence he jerked his feet free of the wire and immediately kicked up into Phil’s crotch and collapsed him into a half-conscious heap.
He ducked his head down as Stilotti chopped a knife at his throat. Stilotti slashed his forehead to the bone. The buried ice pick in his thigh made a sucking sound when Bone jerked it out and scrambled unsteadily to his feet.
Bone felt a sharp stinging sensation on his neck and back. He whirled and through a fog of blood flowing from his forehead saw Stilotti’s hand holding a knife high to hack him again. He sighted for Stilotti’s temple and rammed the ice pick at it. Stilotti slipped in a puddle of Bone’s blood. As he fell backward, the point of the ice pick went into Stilotti’s cheek and punched out under his ear.
Bone heard an explosion behind him. He felt a blow like a sledgehammer against his shoulder that knocked him violently against a wall. He turned and through a wavy red mist saw Angelo fumbling with a jammed automatic. Beyond Angelo he saw Collucci pull his Magnum pistol from its shoulder holster.
He hurled himself blindly at Angelo’s throat, but found his hands clutching his face instead. He hooked the fingers of his hands into the corners of Angelo’s mouth and ripped the corners loose into the cheeks.
Hopping on one leg, he rushed Collucci’s vague shadow in slow motion. He saw orange fireflies in the distance. His bloody face grinned as he fell to his knees and thought he’d sure as hell top all the liars in the barbershop on Forty-seventh Street. He’d throw them his true tale about the fireflies that flashed miles away and at the same instant knocked him flat on his ass.
Bone knelt like an ebony buddha on the concrete. Flaps of flesh hung from his blood-soaked body. Collucci, standing over him with gun in hand, heard Bone mumble his last words, “Mayme! Mayme, darling! They kilt your baby brother!”
Collucci turned away and glared at his wounded and bloody troops moaning in a cluster beside the truck. “You careless, stupid bastards almost committed suicide. Phil, you feel in shape to drive yourself and those two to our doctor?”
Phil nodded and pressed his hands tightly against his crotch as he hobbled toward Collucci, his eyes sweeping across Bone and his girlfriend, who had rolled beneath a dilapidated table.
He waved an arm and said, “What about this? Her?”
Collucci slashed an index finger across his throat and said, “Before you leave.”
Phil said, “Up there with them?” He tossed his head toward the secret graveyard two miles beyond the barn on a wooded hill.
Collucci thought for a moment and said, “What was the layout where you picked her up?”
Phil said, “A three-room dump off an alley on Division Street. Condemned houses on both sides of her building.”
Collucci said, “Bone was a notorious cock mechanic. Call Freddie and Marty before you leave and tell them to scrub this joint and plant Bone and the broad in her bed tonight. I can get it on the record and into the papers as an ordinary double murder by a jealousy-crazed undisclosed suspect not apprehended. Let’s get out of this stink.”
Collucci locked up the building himself. Stilotti and Angelo had to be helped into Phil’s Pontiac.
Collucci let Phil and himself into the roadhouse. While Collucci used the toilet, Phil called Freddie and Marty and gave them Collucci’s message. Collucci went behind the bar and poured himself a glass of Courvoisier.
Phil said, “Freddie says Mack Rivers wants to talk to you. He has put together a cinch setup to hit Tit For Tat Taylor.”
Collucci got Mack Rivers on the bar phone. He nodded and smiled as he listened.
After he hung up, Phil asked, “Who and how many guys should I round up? What kinda equipment? Shotguns?”
Collucci said, “Phil, you nuts? You think I’d let anybody share the pleasure of putting that cocksucker to sleep? Get me a fine-scoped rifle before the twenty-eighth of December.”
Phil nodded and went toward the door. He turned and said, “Lollo and Angelo are pretty bad. What if the croaker says they gotta have a hospital. The cops—?”
Collucci cut in. “I’m going straight from here for some of Hilda’s blueberry pancakes on Kedsie. Remember the joint? Then I’ve got to rush home to keep a promise to Petey. Any problems come up, call me.”
Collucci followed him through the door and locked it. He watched Phil drive down the highway with Angelo and Stilotti. Then he got behind the wheel of his Caddie and sped toward Hilda’s House of Pancakes.
Later in the early Christmas evening, Angelo, with his split cheeks bandaged, sipped coffee through a straw with Collucci. He insisted that he felt good enough to drive Collucci to his appointment with Joe Tonelli, but Collucci would have none of it and ordered Angelo to bed.
Collucci felt a persistent uneasiness about the meeting while dressing. He decided that he would try to persuade Olivia to go with him. She was propped up in the bed reading a book.
Collucci leaned over and kissed her forehead and said, “Doll, I’ll have to drive myself to the penthouse. How about you and Petey going along to keep me company?”
She lay the book in her lap and smiled up at him. “I can’t expose Petey again to that mob Papa invites every Christmas. Petey caught the
flu up there last Christmas, and I have a raging headache.”
Collucci said, “The old man is going to be very disappointed.”
Olivia picked up her book and said, “He won’t be. I called him and told him Petey and I were under par.”
Collucci went into his closet and got twin double-barreled derringers with lengths of elastic attached. He finished dressing in the bathroom and kissed Olivia and Petey good-bye.
5
On the way to Tonelli’s penthouse Collucci stopped the Caddie at a stoplight. He stared at a two-headed python ad, writhing and coiling in a fancy pet store window. Cocio and Tonelli are human two-headed snakes, he thought.
He pulled away and passed a honking caravan of wedding cars. He remembered his marriage to Olivia and how Joe Tonelli had tried to strike young Collucci out of Olivia’s life before their marriage.
It had been just three days before Olivia was to leave for the exclusive girls’ school in the East. He remembered lying in his bed on a dazzling September evening. He was childishly fantasizing the plunder of the Big Dipper pendant blazing in the midnight sky. He saw himself toss it casually at Olivia’s feet as a going-away gift so she couldn’t forget him for one moment until they got married.
The phone rang and Olivia blurted out her loneliness, “Just come and hold me a little bit. Please come and stay a little while so I can go to sleep. Please! Sweet Jimmy Collucci!”
He said, “But your father is in town. How about a movie tomorrow?”
“I can’t wait that long. Don’t worry about Papa. He’s busy playing host to a lot of his Old Country friends. They are having one of those wild drinking and gambling stag things in the front house. Hurry over! I’ll lock the Dobermans in the basement and unlock the gate like the last time.”
There was a long silence before Collucci chuckled and said, “Olivia, I should get help for my head.” He hung up.
Collucci slipped clothes on over his pajamas and drove to a side street in Oak Park and parked his new nineteen thirty-eight Buick Limited. He went through the unlocked steel gate and into the bungalow.