Death Wish (20 page)

“Our emigrant coolies will also be the mules to lug the kilos. So you see, partner, what a perfect setup we're putting together?”

Spino did a pleased jack-in-the-box from his chair and came around the desk to pump Collucci's hand, exclaiming,
“Exquisita! Exquisita!”

Spino tiptoed and slid away, from the mantel top, a superb copy of
The Last Supper.
Collucci gazed through a two-way mirror at a half-dozen nude couples, drinking and laughing in the amber glow.

They were dreamy-eyed as they sat on a gold satin couch, and on the mammoth silk cushions strewn on the snowy carpet of the sunken living room. The flashing smiles of the men did not, however, warm their frozen dark eyes nor mask the cruelty and menace etched on their swarthy faces.

Spino answered Collucci's unspoken question. “They are survivors of the Bomato Family . . . as you know, Sicily's most skillful contract assassins for two generations. Their talents will be necessary for that last difficult stage of our plan.”

Collucci hesitated before he nodded. “But, I thought those not wiped out by the Carbinieri massacre in Palermo years ago were given sentences to hold them for several lifetimes.”

Spino grinned. “True. But for enough lira to tempt a saint . . .” Spino threw tiny hands into the air and sighed helplessness.

“The ex-warden's disgrace was perhaps not a bad bargain at the price.”

They chuckled. Collucci pushed
The Last Supper
back in place to cover the spy mirror.

As they walked down the hallway toward the front door Spino said, “I keep them happy here while they wait for work and payoffs bigger than they got in Sicily. They eat like wardens here, have ritzy suites, the cream of cunts from my cathouses up north, and the best
vino from the Old Country . . . and I've convinced them the high walls and the guards are only to protect them.”

They laughed heartily at that one.

Collucci's index finger made a circle near the side of his head. “We must carefully decide about the terrible ones . . . when their last jobs . . . the old cocksuckers of the Commission have been retired.”

Spino jerked his thumb toward the back of the building. “We will use the terrible Bomatos for the jobs on Cocio, Tonelli, and the jigaboo?”

Collucci buttoned his blue cashmere overcoat. “Yes, on Cocio. He will be set up very soon. I will notify you as to time and place. Taylor and Tonelli will be all my pleasure.”

Collucci shook Spino's hand, then he opened the door to step out and a blast of icy wind teared his eyes.

Spino touched Collucci's arm. “Guns on Cocio?”

Collucci's yellowish eyes hardened. “No! A snake must be hacked to pieces and his head crushed to mush . . . Afterward, doll him up in bra and panties like a faggot for the police and newspapers.”

Spino looked deep into Collucci's eyes and said softly, “Will your old friend Bellini be on our team?”

Collucci stood as a statue for a long moment before he said harshly, “He will, or leave the game.”

As Collucci stepped through the doorway, Spino's words of caution were almost blotted out by the raucous wind. “Take care, Giacomo! We must not arouse the smallest suspicions of Tonelli and the Commission.”

Collucci smiled bleakly. “Cono, who wants to shrink the fucking world?”

Spino shut the door, and Collucci felt euphoric as he went down the steps to the car and sat up front with Angelo.

A
ngelo moved the Caddie through the section of the Westside that years before had been the turf of Collucci's Sicilian Knights. Collucci turned on the radio and spun the dial to the recorded voice of Beverly Sills singing
Aida's
title role. He looked at one
A.M
. on his watch, then lazily stretched out his legs and pulled the brim of his gray hat over his eyes to shield against the lances of oncoming headlights.

He was microscoping his meeting with Spino for any overlooked signs of possible impurities of Spino's heart when he felt the Caddie pull over and stop. He slid his hat back and sat erect as Angelo pointed past him to a wire-fenced junkyard covering almost a city block of what had once been a colony of well-to-do Italian Americans. He looked and wondered why the hell Angelo was fascinated by the graveyard of wrecks.

Then Collucci remembered even as Angelo said, “A lot of that usta be your father-in-law's estate.”

Angelo pulled the Caddie away.

Collucci said, “How the hell . . . ? Tonelli himself would have passed it.”

Angelo grinned. “Me and Lollo made a helluva score in that old pink house caving in over there one night. The owners were fucking around at the King Crip's first coronation in the White House.”

They smiled.

Collucci silenced Sills. He pulled his hat brim over his eyes to muzzle Angelo and relaxed to the whispery pianissimo of the tires as Angelo drove masterfully through the night.

Collucci lounged, slit-eyeing and recognizing the wind-mauled streets, bleak and deserted, except for the phantoms his memory conjured up. His mind started to feast on his early pain and suffering at the hands of Cocio and Tonelli. Collucci remembered his last day in the hospital after the fracas with Tonelli's
soldati.

The afternoon of his release he went directly from the hospital to Cocio's apartment. He had checked out of the hospital an hour before the Tonelli limousine was expected to take him to his car, garaged on Tonelli's estate. He walked the half-mile to Cocio's place in the July heat to collect his thoughts and test his strength.

Cocio opened the door. He was showing out a teenage “hard face” wiggling an adult rear end and rouged to the gills. She rolled hot eyes up at Collucci and brushed her epic chest against him.

She yapped, “Cheapskate, gimme another fin for a real snazzy pair of baby dolls or never call me again.”

Cocio shoved her hard. He showed Collucci his teeth as Collucci stepped into the living room and sat on a sofa beside Cocio. Collucci felt the sofa's horsehair stuffing prickle through his sweaty linen trousers. Under Cocio's stare he shifted himself nervously.

Cocio said with a sly smile, “Jimmy Collucci, the whiz. First day in the streets and you're here to tell me to read in the evening papers how you made your bones, eh? Knife or gun?”

Collucci looked him in the eye. “Mr. Cocio, I'm here so you can name somebody else I can make bones on.”

Cocio threw his head back and laughed. “Mr. Bellini oughta be here to glim his hotshot prize crawfishing on his bones.”

Collucci's face hardened. “You gonna give me another guy?”

Cocio frowned and the tip of the blue-black widow's peak undulated on his forehead. “No dice. It's gotta be Librizzi.”

Collucci shook his head stubbornly.

Cocio stood up and glared down into Collucci's face. “Are you saying no to Mr. Bellini's wishes?”

Collucci stood up, towering above the bantam. “I'm saying I'll get Mr. Bellini's okay to make bones on some other guy instead.”

Cocio horselaughed and said, “Wake up! You're just my strawboss for a gang of punk car snatchers. You're not in. Even if you was, you could get a quicker
undienza
with F.D.R. than you could bend Mr. Bellini's ear. Even I can't bring him a problem except I go through Mr. Tonelli.”

Collucci felt trapped as he stared at Cocio. He mumbled, “Why Bobo?”

Cocio said harshly, “I got legit reasons, but I don't have to give you no fucking reason.” He smiled and lowered his voice. “Maybe Mr. Bellini saw those guys you busted up and overrated your guts. I oughta tell him what you showed him was maybe some freakish miracle, considering your old man had less balls than a broad.”

Collucci reeled as if fist-clouted at the mention of his father's widely publicized cowardice.

Cocio tensed before Collucci's wild face. He stepped back to get drawing space for the forty-five automatic holstered beneath his dressing robe.

Finally words leaped from Collucci's tight throat. “Mr. Cocio, no disrespect, but no bullshit; if you ever mention that crummy cunt to me again, one of us will die. I ain't nothing like him. I got the guts to take a crack at anybody, any time. I even got the guts to race your piece at this distance. You believe me?”

They stared into each other's eyes until Cocio shrugged and
decided to shoot an angle. He said softly, “Sure, I believe you'd try . . .” He took a pack of cigarettes from his robe pocket and held it out to Collucci. They lit up, and Cocio said, “Forget Librizzi. I'll have Ya Ya knock off that finking bastard.”

Collucci saw the danger to his pride and image if Ya Ya Frazzio, his archrival, did a job on a fink he had turned down. But most unbearable for him would be the implication of cowardice. And could Ya Ya and Cocio afford to let him live with so great a feeling for the victim?

Collucci moved close to Cocio to study his face as he said, “Who?”

Not one muscle in Cocio's face was awry as he lied, “He's gonna gab to a secret Grand Jury poking around for a connection between kid gangs and organized crime . . . The finger came from big brass downtown . . . No doubt about Librizzi at all.”

Collucci said, “I've known the guy almost all my life, and nobody can tell me he's gonna walk in and empty his head just like that.”

Cocio said, “The source said he was caught cold in Stickney wheeling a hot El Dorado two weeks ago. The jury is gonna get the beef and his parole violation squashed after he flaps his mouth.”

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.