Death Wish (19 page)

“Dummy up, Smitty, I don't need no priming from you,” Taylor said harshly.

Kong shrugged elaborately and wondered why Taylor was so hostile toward him of late. Bama sent T. an eye signal.

Taylor, reading the warning in Bama's eyes not to tip off their suspicion of Kong, said, “Man, I'm sorry I throwed out that salt . . . but with them dagos and all the other shit happening, I just ain't myself.”

Kong felt surprise and suspicion to hear Taylor's apology for he had never before heard or heard of Taylor apologizing to anybody for anything he had done or said.

Why really did Jessie kiss his ass like that? He stared at Taylor with a bland face, but he now realized how much he feared and hated Taylor. Perhaps from the beginning he had hated him for taking over leadership of his kid gang. Hated him, because for all the long years he had hurt and been humiliated, standing always as an inferior in Taylor's all-powerful shadow.

Kong laughed and said, “You sure as hell ain't yourself, brother. I been knowing you a thousand years, and I ain't never heard you be sorry for nothing you ever said to any motherfucker.”

Bama said smoothly, “Smitty, it looks like some of my gentle manly class and grace is at last rubbing off on the big-foot savage from Georgia.”

They flashed teeth for one another in a chorus of flat laughter.

Taylor looked at Bama and said, “My mind is made up about that dago we know was up there on the trigger or sent a
triggerman up there. I'm gonna ask for a squad to volunteer for a secret mission.”

Kong said, “You mean you gonna try to find and nail him with one squad? An hour after the first dago spotted you over there, you and the squad would be wasted.”

Taylor said, “I ain't gonna underrate him like I did when he sent me to get my skull patched with this steel plate. I'm gonna snatch his head, nigger. I'm gonna shop our turf for Collucci. I think if mean Mack Rivers ain't strawbossing the thieving tricky niggers dealing numbers and dope, that spaghetti-gut enforcer got to stick his ass out for me to blow it off. Collucci got to collect the Mafia's usual bread from over here.”

Bama said, “Jessie, I wish you'd wait until we move against the others . . . But I know your mind is made up on him. It won't be easy even to bag Rivers. He's slick and slippery as owl shit, and he's got a mob of treacherous niggers backing him up . . . How soon?”

Taylor shrugged, looked at his wristwatch, and stood up. “Soon as I can check out his routine and plot the snatch . . . No more'n a week, and maybe sooner, I hope.”

They emerged inside the church. Taylor moved to the microphone and gazed out at the Warriors proudly as they stood at attention.

At the parsonage, Rachel and Fluffy heard his request for volunteers over a speaker in the living room. Rachel went swiftly to the bedroom and started emptying drawers onto the bed. Fluffy came into the bedroom and burst into wild tears.

The mass of men moved toward Taylor as one at his request for volunteers. He selected the members of the squad that had run the psychodrama test that Rapping Roscoe, Lieutenant Porta's tool and intended infiltrator, had failed.

Shortly after, in the command bunker, Taylor briefed the squad and reinstated joyous Ivory Jones to squad leader. Ivory Jones, massive Lotsa Black Hayes, driver of the squad's battered-looking but
supercharged Pontiac, Dew Drop Allen, the tiny, much-loved white Warrior, and Bumpy Lewis, the unwitting sponsor of Roscoe, the dead spy, left the bunker radiant with the challenge of the mission.

Rachel and Fluffy were loading the last of their possessions into the banged-up family Ford outside the parsonage when Taylor walked up. Rachel, fighting tears, waved good-bye and flung herself under the wheel before she broke down. Fluffy lingered on the sidewalk sobbing in Taylor's arms and begging him to force Rachel to stay.

Rachel yelled hoarsely, “I'll leave you, Fluffy, so help me, if you don't come on this instant.”

Taylor tenderly led Fluffy to the car and opened the door. Fluffy kissed him and held on until Rachel seized her arm and pulled her into the car.

Taylor shut the door and leaned in and said softly, “Ra, since we ain't got no doubt you my forever woman, ain't no doubt, is it, you ain't gone for long?”

She whipped her face away to hide the gush of tears and thundered the Ford away for her mother's Westside house.

Taylor's face was drawn and ashen with emotion as he stumbled against Bama.

Bama said, “Easy, pal, I know how it hurts from raw experience, but soon it won't pain except every now and then.”

Taylor turned his wild face and glared down at Bama. “Goddamn you, Bama! Jessie Taylor don't need none of your granny-ass nursing.”

Bama said, “Nigger, don't be mad with me. I ain't left you . . . yet . . . and damn my stupid soul, odds are I never will. You ain't been drunk since the party at Mole's place when you were a kid. Now you got a star excuse to get flying drunk, and I got enough whiskey to fly us to the moon.”

Taylor grinned, and arm in arm they went across the sidewalk. Taylor ducked into his quarters to his intercom system. He
dispatched patrols and guards to protect Rachel and Fluffy around the clock.

And across the hall, a curvy black beauty who had climbed through Kong's bedroom window against Warrior rules, lay in his bed watching him impatiently as he snorted cocaine and wrestled with a momentous decision. Should he tip off Mack Rivers that Taylor was planning to use him to hit Collucci?

O
n an early evening a week after Taylor had selected the squad to help him in the extermination of Collucci, the Collucci mansion rang with music and merriment. The occasion was a gala ball given to honor the husbands of the League of Women for a Greater River Forest. Club President Olivia Collucci was proud. And she felt rekindled affection as she noticed her husband's urbane and charming social intercourse with their elegant guests.

Finally the last guest had departed. Collucci removed his tuxedo for a change into street clothes. He glanced into the closet door mirror and found Olivia's eyes gazing raptly at him. He smiled oddly at her through the mirror.

She came and pressed herself against his back and embraced his hips. He moved free and shivered a little. She nibbled at the patch of goose bumps on his back. He reached a hand back under her panties. She spread her legs as he gently massaged his knuckles against her vulva. She squeezed his organ, bloated with blood. He turned his head and alternately sucked her tongue and lips, then aimed
his head at an erected nipple which he sucked and licked. Her legs trembled as she pulled away and said breathlessly, with great eyes shining, “Can your business wait?”

He stared into her pleading eyes in the mirror and shook his head. He said, “No, beautiful, it will be sweeter for us unhurried.”

She pouted her bottom lip and bashfully pointed at his crotch like a vulgar child. “You will save him for me and bring him back soon?”

He grinned and crooned in Sicilian, “Where else could this bum find a goddess waiting for him?”

He walked into the closet where he flipped on the light then stood looking thoughtfully at suits and coats of cashmere, vicuna, and other lush materials. The garments were shades of charcoal, fawn, and indigo blue, his favorites. Black garments were also in abundance. He wore these to church and on those solemn occasions when he dignified himself to magistrate or perform executions.

He lifted a blue suit from the rack, but his eyes were snared by a slate-hued suit. He had known, looking into the mirror at the tailor's first fitting, that he would never wear it. He'd remembered blowing a bloody hole into Bobo Librizzi's slate-hued jacket. He winced, remembering Cocio's lies and the pressures that had tricked him into his first execution.

Olivia stared at his face, so strangely disturbed with hatred and pain. “Jimmy!” she exclaimed. “Are you alright?”

He grinned, free of the trance, and lied wide-eyed. “Sure, I'm fine now, Sugar Tit. Just a bitch-kitty charley horse in the foot.”

She pulled him to the bed. He sat smiling on the side of the bed. She squatted before him, massaging the foot he lowered into her lap.

Collucci got dressed. Olivia followed him to the front door. They heard Angelo gun the Caddie in the driveway. He opened the door, and she clung to him.

She said, “Am I acting silly?”

He said, “No . . . Why?”

She disengaged. “I feel silly . . . You know, like I could love you hard again.”

Then tremulously, eyes shining up, “Is it safe?”

Her transient helplessness reminded him of her little-girl charm and sweet vulnerability in the dizzying beginning. He felt a rare tenderness for her as he kissed the tip of her nose. “You're in no trouble. It's just the bubbly jazzing you around,” he said as he ducked away from her delicate fist flailing at him.

He smiled back at her and went to drop onto the Caddie's rear seat. Angelo drove toward Collucci's meeting with his secret ally, Westside Captain Cono Spino.

Collucci remembered that Phil and his cousin Lollo had been dead and buried for ten days in the mob's secret cemetery. Angelo had only mentioned them once. Collucci was curious. Why not? He made a note to find out. Collucci mulled the subject matter to be considered by Spino and himself.

Angelo said, “Excuse me butting in my big mouth, Mr. . . . Jimmy. I keep remembering this guy Spino was nothing but a stick-man in a craps joint when Mr. Tonelli, with Mr. Cocio pushing it, picked him up. In ten years he's a big shot. A
capiregime,
like you, leading his own
borgata
 . . . Maybe he ain't solid . . . Maybe he owes Mr. Cocio too much.”

Collucci laughed. “Angelo, you got it all screwed up. Spino gets to keep twenty percent of all net of gambling with cards, craps, bookmaking, and the numbers on the Westside.” He paused and shrugged. “Spino is very displeased with twenty percent and very anxious to be my underboss. His bright future depends on the boss's removal . . . Spino can be trusted.”

Collucci noticed concern still creasing Angelo's face as the Caddie picked its way through neon thickets on the far Westside. He thought aloud. “Spino's
soldati
and my own combined are four hundred, four fifty to sixty . . . only seventy
soldati
loyal to the bosses. So, cheer up, old friend of mine.”

Angelo grinned. “Yeah, I guess you got the edge on the bosses.”

Collucci said, “And another secret edge Spino and myself have imported from Sicily.”

Angelo's mouth started to open, but Collucci frowned and said, “Angelo, we need our eyes instead of our mouths. I think we passed Spino's setup back there a coupla hundred yards.”

Angelo U-turned and retraced. He turned into a wide driveway and the headlamps illuminated a sign:
Holy Mother Home for the Elderly
atop a ten-foot gate of grilled steel.

A guard wearing double forty-fives around his sweatered waist put aside a magazine inside his cubicle. A revolving TV monitor scrutinized the Caddie and its occupants as he spoke briefly on a phone. He pressed a button that swung the gate open.

Angelo drove into the twenty acres, walled in by twenty feet of concrete for what seemed like an hour to him through a long black tunnel of wind-flogged trees, swaying and groaning in the howling loneliness.

Then suddenly the Caddie entered a circular acre of light, seemingly bright as noon. In the center of it sprawled a two-story building of casket-gray stone. Angelo drove down a graveled driveway and pulled the Caddie to a stop before several stone steps.

As they went up the steps, the front door opened. The runt Spino, impeccable in double-breasted blue mohair, greeted them with warm Sicilian words of welcome and embraces.

Angelo removed his overcoat and dropped down into an overstuffed chair in the foyer. He riffled an old copy of
Playboy
to the centerfold.

Spino led Collucci down a glossy hallway leading to the office, then stopped and gestured toward a door. Collucci peered through a rectangle of glass at a score of illegal aliens from Sicily. Some lounged on sofas watching TV shoot-'em-ups, while others sat and stood kibitzing around players at pool, card, and domino tables.

Collucci said as he moved away, “They all clean?”

Spino nodded. “Like the ones before them. No criminal beefs whatever. And like the others before, they have special skills, useful in the Family's bakeries, restaurants, meat markets. One of those you saw is a whiz at counterfeiting money, passports, and stock certificates to dump as collateral for big loans.”

Spino turned into a walnut-paneled office. He flipped a wall switch. A three-tiered chandelier burst a crystal firebomb. Spino was dwarfed as he seated himself behind the massive desk.

Collucci exhaled smoke and said, “They are in good spirits now . . . but I wonder after they slave awhile for coolie pay . . . ?”

Spino jiggled his doll head. His wide mouth shaped his deceptively sweet Howdy Doody smile. “They know a phone call to immigration will dump them back into their shit holes in Sicily. And they understand that the Honored Society can shrink the whole fucking world to the size of a coffin for informers.”

Collucci said, “They came Mexico way?”

“No,” Spino said. “These came in from Windsor by motorboat to Detroit.”

Spino picked up a stiletto letter opener from the desktop. “But many others will be coming both ways soon. They will be needed to replace the
soldati
who sour when we retire those two old bastards.”

Collucci said, “Tonelli's head has rotted between his broad's thighs. Now he weeps like a cunt because punks in Harlem shoot smack. And Cono, I'll lay ten to five, sissy Cocio's mama still spanks his ass if he gets sassy.”

They laughed.

Then Spino's eyes glittered with excitement as Collucci said, “Cono, I am sure that while you have not been doubtful, you have been concerned about my promise over a year ago to get a foolproof source of pure drugs.” He paused for an instant. “I intend to be completely open with you in all matters as I am certain you will be with me. I have arranged a meeting in Rome in the near future with a powerful government clique to secure the control and licensing of
a pharmacological firm which will manufacture tons of merchandise for the drug end of our partnership. At this moment I invite you to share in it equally.