Death Wish (15 page)

Bellini's heart galloped wildly. He had seen the imprint of the derringers when Collucci lit his cigarette. Bellini sat smiling his perpetual half smile and scrutinizing Collucci's performance, determined to seize him if he moved to use them.

Cocio glanced up from the report of Warrior attacks and said to Collucci, “Taylor and his Warriors will soon attack this place if they are not stopped. You brag of learning from me how to handle urgent problems like Taylor. Those at this table know how I kept the coloreds in line.

“Mr. Tonelli before me also kept a lid of steel on them. Taylor goes on and on shoving his black ass in our faces. Every day he is allowed to live is an insult to your responsibility.”

Cocio paused, his black eyes bright with triumph. Bellini, with eyes a-twinkle, switched his attention to the smug face of Tonelli and back to Cocio.

Cocio waved his hand airily and said, “Giacomo Collucci, if you can handle only rabbits perhaps someone who can handle Taylor the lion should fill your position, eh? Perhaps you should exchange positions with the little tiger Momo Spino on the Westside and handle the soft craps and loan businesses.”

Collucci carefully removed the dark glasses and locked his yellowish eyes on Cocio. Collucci shaped a smile as he languidly inhaled, and then exhaled a blast of smoke. “Mr. Cocio, I agree Taylor is overdue . . . more than twenty years overdue,” he said. “For a month after we gave Willie Poe the big salute, I begged your permission, I even wept, so much did I want to put Taylor to sleep. But, do you remember your words, Mr. Cocio? You laughed when I showed you my crooked wrist and the scars Taylor gave me. You told me to write off my kid grudges. ‘And anyway,' you said, ‘I have much more important work for you to do than getting the harmless flunkey of Willie Poe.'”

Collucci looked deliberately at Tonelli who darted an evil look to Cocio.

Collucci went on, “But, Mr. Cocio, I will take all the responsibility for that mistake. Awkward as it would have been, I should have appealed above you for permission from Mr. Tonelli, or if necessary, somehow to Mr. Bellini. Forgive me, friends, for poking into the unpleasant past, but it is better than confusion.”

Cocio stared at Collucci with insensate hatred.

Collucci beamed his most charming smile and leaned forward. “I have Taylor set up . . . Soon now he will be like an aching tooth extracted and we can all get together and celebrate over glasses of good vino.”

There was a knock on the door.

Tonelli said, “Yes, Carlo.”

Dinzio, the bodyguard, opened the door a bit and stuck his bearded head into the conference room. “The nurse wants a word with you, Mr. Tonelli,” Dinzio said in heavy Sicilian. “Something about the twins.”

Tonelli dipped his head, and Dinzio admitted the nurse to Tonelli's presence.

The elderly Sicilian nurse stepped inside the room with a harassed face.

Tonelli said, “What is it, Louisa?”

She wrung her hands. “The twins, Mr. Tonelli . . . The twins, they are spoiled for only your singing of the Old Country lullabyes. I am hoarse as a goose, and still they lie awake crying for you.”

Tonelli smiled his pleasure and said, “Tell them I am coming faster than Batman and Robin.”

Louisa closed the door, and Tonelli shrugged and waved his palms helplessly in the air. “I myself spoiled them rotten, so what can I do?” he said, rising from his chair. He was followed by the others.

Collucci murmured pleasantries and started to shake hands all around. He had to literally hem in Cocio. He seized Cocio's hand, limp and hot with anger. He smiled into Cocio's face and crushed the small hand in his powerful paw for a wincing instant.

Tonelli looked past Bellini as they exchanged last words to say to Collucci leaving the room, “Take my love to your family, Giacomo.”

Collucci nodded and followed Dinzio and Cocio down the hallway toward the reinforced steel door. Dinzio manipulated the electronic device in his palm and the steel door, thick as a vault door, swung open.

Cocio turned down the corridor toward his ancient dwarf of a mother sitting in the living room. She was peevishly cutting her eyes at him for his neglect of her during the long conference.

Collucci went down the corridor past the guards' lounge to the elevator. He pressed the “down” button. His Patek Philippe winked two
A.M
. He felt a presence behind him. He turned slightly and snared Bellini in the corner of his eye. He turned and smiled into
Bellini's frozen face, waiting for it to thaw and blossom for him as always.

Collucci thought he caught a glacial glint in Bellini's eyes as he said in soft Sicilian, “Giacomo, you will take time to drop me off to pick up my car at the service station?”

Collucci said, “Yes, Papa, be happy to.”

The elevator door slid open and Collucci stepped aside and followed Bellini into the cage. He was surprised by Carl Dinzio getting on as the door was closing. As the cage zoomed down, Collucci wondered about Bellini's first and only coldness toward him in their thirty-year friendship.

He glanced at Bellini's face, and Bellini's eyes avoided him. He shifted his back into a corner to face Dinzio and Bellini. His mind churned up the unthinkable thought that his fit of paranoia forced him to think. Had double-headed snakes Tonelli and Cocio somehow poisoned his old friend and mentor against him, and now on the elevator these two would put him to sleep?

Collucci stared at Bellini popping the knuckles on his monstrous hands, still powerful at the age of eighty-five. He stared at the monsters and remembered that strong rumor had it that Bellini, in his youth, had crushed thirty or forty throats fulfilling contracts in Sicily and in America.

Collucci watched Bellini's hands with one eye and the hands of Dinzio with his other eye. He loosely braced himself in the corner. He jiggled his arms so the derringers tickled the heels of his palms.

The elevator reached the basement. Collucci thought he caught Bellini giving him a peculiar look as he left the elevator. Collucci delayed stepping out of the cage for the instant it took for Dinzio to split off from Bellini.

Moments later, Collucci drove Bellini through the tunnel to the street in silence.

Bellini said, “It's Del Campo's station.”

Three blocks from the penthouse and with the blazing lights of the station in sight, Bellini said, “Giacomo, pull over and park for a few words with me.”

Collucci parked and snuffed the car lights and engine. All the while he locked Bellini's hands in the corner of an eye. Collucci fidgeted and listened to Bellini's chronic bronchitis scratching the long silence and thought,
Christ, Papa! Dear friend, don't turn around on me.

Bellini said in Sicilian, “Giacomo, I am very sad for you.”

Collucci laughed hollowly, “Why, Papa?”

“You got troubles, big troubles . . . Please let me help you, Giacomo.”

Collucci said, “Papa, thanks for the offer but the biggest trouble I got is going to sleep with a slug in the head within the week and making everybody happy, especially Tonelli.”

Bellini said, “Has the student lost so much respect for the teacher that he insults him with diversion?”

Collucci frowned. “I will always respect you for many reasons, my dearest friend.”

Bellini said, “Do you also trust me?”

“As much as I respect you, I trust you. But why this quiz?” Collucci asked.

They stared into each other's eyes.

Bellini said, “Then trust me, Giacomo, don't try to fool me. The trouble I speak of is not outside; it is inside your mind eating like a cancer.”

Collucci said, “Read my mind. Go on. Let me also respect you for that.”

“I saw the proof of your sickness at the table . . . You have lost all respect for the Honored Society I brought you into,” Bellini said quietly.

Collucci turned the ignition key and the engine whispered to life. He said, “I'm sorry, Papa, but you're reading me all wrong. I'm tired, and so are you. I'll take you to your car.”

Bellini grunted.

Collucci wondered if Bellini had deserted him. “Papa, dear, you still are my friend as always?”

Bellini shrugged, “Giacomo, what a pity that you must ask. I suspect I will be your friend when you are no longer my friend. Yes, I still love you, Giacomo, but . . .”

Collucci rolled into the service station beside Bellini's seventy-three Riviera. A grease-stained mechanic was just closing the hood.

Bellini turned the door handle and said, “There was a husband in Sicily long ago with a good but homely wife and a ravishing young sweetheart. All the villagers were certain the beauty owned the heart of the husband. Then one day he came upon his sweetheart astraddle his wife. She was about to plunge a dagger into the wife's heart. Without hesitation or a word the husband shot the sweetheart through the head. All the villagers were shocked and amazed to learn in this awful manner who really owned the heart of the husband.”

Collucci's brow wrinkled. “Papa, why the hell tell me a parable that fits nothing that I can relate to? Good night, Papa, good night,” Collucci said wearily.

Bellini got out and went around the back of the car and leaned into Collucci's face as he was lighting a cigarette. Collucci, startled, recoiled.

Bellini shook his head and held Collucci's face gently between his palms and said, “Giacomo, please, you must heal your mind somehow and very soon! You worry me very much.”

Bellini sighed deeply, and his eyes became soft. “Dear friend, you must not forget that your Papa Bellini is married to the Honored Society,” he said.

He walked away to his own machine.

Collucci stared at Bellini's back for a long moment before heading home. He had retraced three blocks past the Tonelli penthouse when he saw Tonelli's bodyguard, Dinzio.

Collucci pulled to the curb and watched him talking to a tall brunette standing on the steps of a gray stone house. Dinzio gave her a gift-wrapped package and a peck on the lips.

Collucci felt high exhilaration as he pulled away for River Forest. His eyes sparkled as he sang to himself,
Dinzio's got a broad, and when I'm ready, I got the key to hit Tonelli!

A
t the moment that Collucci drove wearily into his River Forest driveway, Mayme Flambert left her apartment atop Mack Rivers's Voodoo Palace Cabaret.

The winds shrieked and flogged humpy snowdrifts. They resembled, beneath the funeral overcast, rows of tombstones. Christmas lights, in the darkened loneliness of shop windows, made Mayme's shadow gargantuan as she hunted a second male animal for urgent voodoo rites demanded by the death of her brother, Larry.

A dozen times during the hour and half that she hunted, dark shapes of cats and dogs eyed her with glowing fright and fled before her.

She went down State Street. After several blocks she stood before a fenced-in used auto lot. She cooed Haitian sweet talk at a Great Dane almost as large as a Shetland pony. He leaped and snarled.

She took a plastic-wrapped menstrual pad from a pocket of her fur coat and moved toward the slobbery beast, then she thrust the
pad against the fence. He sniffed hungrily at the meld of blood and vaginal slime.

His hind legs quivered, and his crimson dingus eased out. He whined as he licked and gnawed at the corner of the pad through the fence. Finally he could no longer control his passion. He forgot duty and leaped over the fence. He followed Mayme, snuffling his nose against her coat pocket. A block from her apartment his lust overwhelmed him. He knocked her down and daggered air as he humped above her.

She led him up the stairs and into the apartment. He followed her to the closet that she used as a temple for her voodoo ceremonies.

The dog balked at the threshold and growled. His great eyes were electric with intelligence as they followed her every movement. She realized he was trained to kill if attacked. She had to be sure she didn't miss when she shot for his heart with the butcher knife she scooped up.

She held the butcher knife behind her back and realized that it would be risky to use it on such a large beast. So she lifted the lid of a small silver box containing a variety of deadly poisons. But Mayme slammed the lid down. She couldn't poison the Dane.

She squatted and inserted a finger deep inside herself, then rubbed the finger against his muzzle. He whimpered and licked his swollen organ frantically, but refused to enter the temple.

She stepped past him, concealing the butcher knife beneath her skirt against her thigh. She pretended to ignore him. The Dane spun and sat on his rump with his tongue lolling out. He cocked his head from one side to the other as he gazed at her back.

Suddenly he lunged to his feet and galloped into the kitchen behind her. She lathered him with sweet talk as she turned away from the refrigerator holding a hunk of ham.

He snorted and leaped upon her. The butcher knife clattered into a corner. She crashed to the floor slightly stunned. The dog growled ferociously and ripped her skirt to tatters with his teeth.

He had pried her bare thighs apart with his paws and muzzle when her head cleared. She rolled to the butcher knife. He lunged and covered her like a blanket in the corner, then humped his wet organ against her thigh and lapped his sandpaper tongue against her neck and face. Mayme lay on her left side with her hand touching the butcher knife beneath her. His hind feet slipped on the linoleum, and he tumbled off her with a thud.

She got to her feet and scrambled to a countertop. Furious, he bared his fangs and gouged furrows into the counter with his front paws as he tried to pull himself up. She stared at the pulsing of his heart against his buff-colored hide. Then she grunted for velocity and backhanded the butcher knife deeply into the center of the pulse beat. He shuddered and fell twitching to the floor, gouting blood. His mouth was agape sucking air.

Within a half hour Mayme had attended to her bruises and lacerations and was intently reading the entrails of the Dane for a lead to Bone's murderer. Suddenly she froze. A radiant smile lit her coal-black elfin face. She was certain she heard, faintly, the silky whisperings of the Loas.