Death Wish (2 page)

“Whatta ya mean, Bone? Bone, this morning it's like we don't know each other. Mr. Collucci sent me with a message.” Angelo shrugged helplessly and shook his big head in apparent puzzlement.

Bone exploded off the red cushion to his feet and towered over Angelo, slit-eyed. He leaned his smashed nose down close to Angelo's face. His index finger slashed the air before Angelo's upturned face like an ebony stiletto as he mimicked with whispered ferocity,
“Whatta ya mean, Bone? Bone, this morning it's like we don't know each other.
Dago, motherfucker, I mean, is everything cool? I mean, level with me, man! I mean, you owe me! It's like you don't know me, gray ass.

“I mean, have you forgot those slugs I took in the gut outside the stadium because you couldn't keep your pecker outta that Swede's broad? I coulda laid back and let him blow a few extra holes in your head. How's the weather, man? Is Mr. Collucci upset or something? This is Christmas morning, man!”

Angelo smiled weakly, “Hell, no, he ain't salty about nothing. He was a creampuff just a few hours ago. You know, with smiles and a good mood.”

Bone stood lie-detecting Angelo's face, softened now into a con mask of righteous innocence in the blue cathedral glow of the table lamp.

Angelo baited the hook. “Bone, I swear by the Holy Mother there ain't nothing to be uptight for. Alright, I'll risk my balls in the fire 'cause you're my friend.

“I'm gonna tell you what I ain't supposed to know.” Angelo paused for a long moment, and then threw the hook. “Mr. Collucci is holding two black guys he wants you to look at . . . at his road-house in Skokie. He's pretty sure they heisted the eight kilos from you and Mack Rivers.”

Bone was dizzy with relief. Collucci couldn't have the guilty heist men waiting to finger him into the grave! Couldn't know that he, Bone, had set up the heist! He had talked to Charming Mills, one of them, on the phone just five minutes before Angelo showed.

He flung himself on the couch beside Angelo and pounded Angelo's back. “Baby, why you dangle me like that? Pappy, you gonna overlook my uncool? Right?”

Angelo grinned, bear-hugged Bone, and said, “I ain't no fucking friend if I'm gonna tally a small misunderstanding between us. Right?”

Bone stood up and felt the Tuinals reel him for an instant. His fingers roughhoused through Angelo's mane of coarse gray hair. He weaved toward the bedroom and slurred, “Pappy, last night's juicing is kicking my ass, so I'm just gonna slip a coat on.”

A bolt of cunning lightning flashed through the darkening Tuinal overcast. He'd finger Collucci's prisoners and closed the eight kilo case! He turned and still-lifed himself in the bedroom doorway.

Finally he found his voice and croaked, “Ain't it a bitch, Pappy, I just got a helluva powerful vision. Mr. Collucci's probably right
on the money with them two jokers he's got on ice. Pappy, I'd bet a C-note against the clap they the ones.”

Angelo nodded, drained his glass, and stood up. He caped his overcoat across his shoulders and walked to the bedroom doorway to make sure there wasn't the usual broad in Bone's bed.

Alarmed by Angelo's sudden presence, Bone's hand froze on the automatic he was stashing in a dresser drawer. He recovered and slipped into a fur-trimmed black suede coat. They moved toward the door.

Bone stopped and turned, looking about the living room. “I'll be back before daybreak, so I won't kill my lights.”

Angelo shrugged and said, “Yeah, the lights might keep some hustler from shimming open your door for a score.”

Bone turned and stood facing the wall beside the door, covered with a photo of Bone in his fighter's trunks and, surrounding it, Polaroid shots of broads of almost every race and hue. Angelo remembered the long years of misery and pressure as Bone's handler. Bone gazed with pride at the freaky rogue's gallery of groupie sex-pots. They had drained away the steely ballet in his legs. The rattle-snaking instant oblivion coiled in his fists had crawled these caves of easy slime and died.

Bone stumbled twice on the way down the stairs to the vestibule. The child junkie was shivering as she huddled over a large coffee can in a corner on the stone landing. She stared hypnotically at dragon tongues of fire licking into the chilled vestibule air from a tight roll of newspaper inside the can.

Bone scrambled past her through the street door. He went to a snowbank at the side of the building and scooped up a mound of snow. He came back and flung it into the can. A steamy genie hissed angrily and escaped into the air.

Angelo stood on the landing behind Bone, smiling crookedly. Bone squatted, clucking concern before the scarecrow clump sobbing and snotting guilt and fear of eviction.

Bone patted her humpy back, and she cringed away and wailed. “That ain't my fire. One of them Forty-seventh Street hypes musta made it. Bone, I swear it ain't mine.”

Bone said, “Easy, girl, you know your play. Uncle Bone wouldn't put no hurt to you. Li'l Dee, why you in these streets like this on Christmas morning? Pearl know you out here?”

She blotted a bubble of snot with her sleeve and said plaintively, “I been had a habit two months. Mama threw me out. Ain't no room and food for no junkie with them ten squealers still at home.”

Bone shook his head and said, “Go home, li'l Dee. Ain't no way Cecil wouldn't take you in tonight with that bad hawk screaming and blowing instant TB out there. Li'l Dee, use your outs.”

She said sadly, “You ain't heard? The cops wasted Papa hiding in Sam's Baby Store just before midnight last night.”

Bone sighed and fumbled with a ring of keys. He unlocked the glass door and held it open. He ordered in mock anger, “Li'l Dee, take your skinny ass to the shower in the basement and throw them clothes in the furnace. Tell old man Franklin, the janitor, I said give you a old shirt and a sandwich and let you sleep on that cot by the furnace. Uncle Bone will hustle up you a jive wardrobe in a coupla days. G'wan, girl, before I throw you to the hawk.”

She got up laboriously like a decrepit crone, her child eyes brimming tears of gratitude. She squeezed Bone's hand and kissed it.

Bone tenderly slapped her bony behind and said, “Li'l Dee, stop playing that jive on Love Bone Larry Flambert. Girl, I'm hard and cold as a bandit squad roller at Eleventh Street Station.”

She grinned wanly and started through the door.

Bone held her arm for a moment, and his glazed eyes looked down seriously at her. “Li'l Dee, Uncle Bone gonna help you kick that thing you got. You gotta get back to your schoolbooks.”

She nodded. The Tuinals wobbled Bone's legs as he turned away and followed Angelo to the sidewalk. Angelo felt it unnecessary to play the disarming game of “you follow me in your El D.” He
steered Bone directly to the yawning maw of the opened rear door of the black sedan.

Bone stooped and swiveled his head inside the car for an instant and recoiled back against Angelo. “Man, who—?”

Angelo cut in smoothly. “Mr. Collucci is gonna have a Christmas dinner, fun-and-games kinda thing, around noon at the roadhouse for some friends and their kids. The guy in the back is a chef, and the guy up front is his helper and waiter.”

Bone mumbled and flung himself onto the backseat beside beaming Stilotti. Angelo slammed the door shut and went to the driver's seat. He started the Caddie's engine and pushed a button on the door armrest. Bone didn't hear the faint click inside the door next to him as the sedan pulled away. Bone was sealed inside a two-inch-thick bulletproof glass-and-steel-plated rolling prison.

Bone leaned across the seat and stared filmy eyes at Stilotti. He sniggled a spray of spit full into the round, kindly, stunned face and babbled, “Chump, you ain't no cook. You got no whiskers and red vine, but I'd know your lard ass anywhere. Shiiiiiit! You Mr. Santa Claus. I got a last-minute list to lay on you. I wanta . . .”

Bone's head dropped back against the cushion in open-mouthed, growly sleep. Phil guffawed. Angelo grunted and gripped the steering wheel. “The Surgeon” giggled tears down his fat, pink cheeks.

A
ngelo sped the black sedan and its prisoner toward Collucci's roadhouse in suburban Skokie.

Nude Collucci thrust anxiously on silk sheets in his mansion in posh suburban River Forest. He felt himself go limp against the vulva's pink lips pouting through the silky brambles. He had failed miserably once again between the alabaster thighs of Olivia Tonelli Collucci.

He rolled away to his side and watched her violently undulate her round dimpled butt in the fading glow of a fat yellow moon. Then she impaled herself on his long index finger and hissed hotly as she rode and humped the wet stump. She jackknifed her thighs as he suckled at her breasts. Finally, she galloped madly for the finish line. He vised her nipples together under his big hand. He chewed, bit, sucked, gnawed, and stabbed her into orgasm.

In a raging storm of guttural joy, she flip-flopped in great voluptuous spasms of starved release. Then immediately she was hurt, furious that again he could not stay hard for her. At this
moment she hated his mechanical finger-fucking that had, after all, done nothing for her that she couldn't have done for herself. She scooted off the punching dildo and sank her nails into his crotch and drew herself into a fetal ball, panting and glaring blue fire at him.

Collucci reached for her. “Angel, doll, I'm . . .”

She uncoiled and knifed her teeth into the tender web between his thumb and index finger. He gasped in pain and sucked at the wound. She taunted him with a wicked grin.

He said harshly, “You treacherous witch, I'll beat the pee out of you.”

She laughed mirthlessly and needled in her throaty voice, “You do, Rubber Dick, and I'll scream the whole neighborhood and Papa into this house.”

She moved away and turned her back as she barbed over her shoulder in Sicilian, “You horny Westside scum, why don't you beat the pee out of your new black whore you must be screwing? They have been why you can't get hard for a decent white woman anymore.”

He was enraged to be reminded of his slum beginnings. And he was always infuriated when she mentioned his wild hang-up on coal-black sexpots.

He choked back the angry words, the truth to shake her clean, serene little world of teas and kid-glove hustling for worthy causes, the truth that Joe Tonelli, her precious father, had swum a river of blood to his present wealth and image of the respectable retired businessman.

After a long silence Olivia said softly in a breaking voice, “Please forgive me . . . You know I don't really mean to say those awful things. I just feel sorry for you, I really do. You're going to lose me, lose Petey . . . everything.”

Collucci scooped his yellow silk pajamas off the Persian rug. Then he slipped into them with a wry smile. He pillow-propped himself
against the headboard and glanced at the Patek Philippe's diamond face winking four
A.M.
on the nightstand.

He lit a cigarette and sucked deeply, exhaled, and watched a poltergeist of smoke float across the bedroom and suicide against the frosted floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the frozen grotto-garden. The garden sparkled like a crystal Shangri-La in the blaze of security spotlights ringing the mansion.

He glanced over at Olivia's silky mane firing golden skyrockets on her pillow and idly thought that the Golden Fleece with the dragon bodyguard he had read about somewhere must have had the pulse-leaping magic of his Olivia's hair. He tried to remember the names of the two heisters with the balls to rip it off. He bit his long bottom lip rummaging his memory.

Yes, he'd get back to his reading of the classics on a regular basis. He had to keep his respectable, upper middle-class role-playing free of telltale flaws. That and other self-improvement things he would do as soon as he managed to put Tit For Tat Taylor and his Warriors to sleep in Rosedale Cemetery, or wherever.

He whipped the satin quilt over Olivia's splendor and thought what a beautiful no-suck, one-way, hung-up Catholic lousy lay she was. And for the thousandth time he wondered what the ungodly sexy Mayme Flambert would be like to lay.

He remembered when sex with Olivia had become a bore. It had happened when he started handling a big buck. He had showcased his impeccably groomed six-six frame in the posh watering and feeding establishments on the near Northside. Then a succession of foxy high-fashion nymphs and three-way society whores freaked his tongue and nose wide open for licking and rooting into pungent valleys.

He had gotten hopelessly jaded over the years while Olivia remained the invincible one-way lady who could not be even a two-way bitch in the bedroom.

He gazed at her realizing that the sexual and spiritual love he had
felt for Olivia in the beginning, thirty-five years before, had not been really lost, but rather it had transformed itself. Now he felt for Olivia only proprietary lust, perhaps the infatuation, that trapped orgasm-of-the-eye kind of cold passion that an art fanatic lavishes upon the most fabulous piece of his collection.

He puffed his cigarette and got a whiff of Olivia's vaginal fragrance on that finger. But oddly he thought not of Olivia, but again of the haughty and mysterious Haitian temptress and wondered what her scent would be. He sure as hell was going to find out. Like all the others, she was going to spin and dance her crotch on his stiff organ like an ecstatic yo-yo. Willingly or by violent force. His. Soon!

He had always gotten the choicest of the coloreds. He visualized the last one he had played with. She had been a strikingly unique beauty, as all the other black ones had been. She had been haughty and aloof at first, like Mayme. Previously, she had belonged to a trigger-happy black numbers banker. She had had an absolutely fantastically curvaceous body. But the awesome oddity that Collucci could not resist was that her skin, eyes, and hair were one color. Rich, ripe, radiant apricot.