Wasteland Read online

(1)

  The punch had been square to the nose, and as a result, Patrick Shea had once again knocked Angelo Marchetti onto his arse. Blood spurted from both nostrils and ran down the back of Angelo’s throat in hot generous gobs. His gray eyes blurred and watered from the unprovoked strike, but the boy on the ground didn’t dare cry. Things would be worse if he did, because if there was one thing Patrick Shea reveled in, it was someone else’s tears.

  Angelo wanted to crawl off and lick his wounds, but he kept a firm lip and kept seated, because as the schoolyard rule book stated: you stayed down when you’d been put down. Still, that didn’t stop Angelo from regarding Patrick with cold eyes that would someday have their revenge. Today however, was not to be that day, and so the only thing that Angelo Marchetti could do was sit on the cracked pavement and bleed buckets.

  It was humiliating to be made spectacle of in such a manner. If only it had been a fair fight then Angelo could of at least have taken solace in the fact that he’d met combat in good form. But as far as that brief slug match with Patrick had gone, Angelo had been beaten like a mangy dog.

  In Angelo’s peripheral vision, stood other orphans who had also felt the heavy mitts of the Mount Hope Bully. They looked on from relative safety like docile sheep, and the sight of them made Angelo’s blood boil, those weak timid ewe faces which had stood by and done nothing to help. However, what bothered Angelo most of all was his own frailty, the prepubescent limbs at his sides that lacked both strength and skill, their poor coordination hopelessly bound to a twelve year old body.

  “What are you looking at, Angela?” Patrick asked with a mean spirited laugh.

  Patrick loved to call Angelo, Angela, that and wop faggot.

  Angelo slowly took in Patrick’s details with murderous disdain: the way Patrick’s curly red hair was wound too close to his otherwise thick skull. The dull unremarkable eyes of outhouse brown and the beefy meat hooks that hung stupidly beside his overly plump frame. Yes, Patrick was nothing but an ugly fifteen year old idiot, a genuine sack of crud with the brains to match, and someday, God help him, Angelo would make the Mount Hope Bully pay in blood.

  To an adult, Patrick was not an intimidating specimen, but rather an armchair athlete with a fondness for pork rinds and soda pop. However, to a flock of young children he was a giant. Angelo understood this, but that never made accepting the beatings any easier. Patrick had three years on Angelo and at least seventy-five pounds. If Angelo was ever going to win a fight, he would have to grow like a weed on steroids, because on this level of the schoolyard jungle, size was paramount to leverage, a commodity Angelo Marchetti did not have in abundance.

  “Didn’t you hear me, Angela?” Patrick razzed. Patrick knelt down to gloat over his handy work. The bloody nose on Marchetti’s face was deeply fascinating, the shiny redness of it, the way it splintered down his chin and onto his neck like scarlet tree roots. “I said what you looking at?”

  Patrick never cared much for the way Angelo regarded him. It wasn’t so much a hostile glare inside the skinny wop’s cold eyes as it was something else. Something strong, a trait that perhaps fought oppression and challenged Patrick’s absolute authority over the orphaned residents of Mount Hope. Patrick felt that such a seed must not be allowed to blossom. So Patrick had taken it upon himself to make sure that the little snot nose was taught a lesson on a regular basis. Still, as much as Patrick enjoyed walloping Marchetti’s ass, he couldn’t help but feel as though the little prick was plotting something, a nasty deed that might get Patrick Shea in trouble with the orphanage’s strict administrator, Edgar Cornwall, or maybe even the authorities. Whatever the little wop bastard may have had planned for him, Patrick didn’t like it. The uncertainty of it put Patrick in mind of an open ended threat. Angelo felt like a loose end that must be tied, and the best way to put out that fire would be with buckets of Marchetti’s blood. Given enough time, Patrick was certain that he could hammer the lanky little wop into complete submission, just as he had with all the rest. And so the beatings would continue until that weird glimmer of light went out of Angelo’s faggot eyes once and for all.

  As for Patrick’s question, Angelo’s reply was muffled out by the recess buzzer, and it was a good thing that it had, because the kid that bled buckets had said something that would not have helped his situation in the least. In fact, Patrick Shea might very well have kicked Angelo to death if he had caught wind of it.

  As for what Angelo had said, it was a simple melding of two words, one that would’ve cut right to the core of Patrick Shea’s dark soul: Murder-suicide.

  Those two words were the reason why Patrick Shea had come to be in the good care of Mount Hope Orphanage. Rumor had it that Big Daddy Shea had killed Patrick’s mom with a serrated steak knife when Patrick was nine years old, and rumor also had it that poor old Patrick had witnessed the terrible scene. In fact, if one cared to look beneath Patrick’s frayed striped shirt, they’d see that the Mount Hope Bully had one hell of a beauty mark carved into the center of his own chest, and no, it wasn’t a surgical scar.

  Seemed that Big Daddy Shea had taken it upon himself to perform a post-birth-abortion just before he hung himself from the garage rafter. Of course, Patrick had survived the attack, and in honor of that murdering son of a bitch father who had maimed him so deeply, Patrick had taken it upon himself to see that the old man’s nasty disposition lived on within his son.

  Murder-Suicide.

  No one dared to speak those words to the Mount Hope Bully, because the last kid that did had lost an eye and picked up a terrible stutter. According to that tale, the assault would’ve been murder if a teacher hadn’t intervened and saved the kid from being pummeled to death. Still, enough damage had been done to the boy to render him a handicap, and as for Patrick, he’d served only three years in reform school as punishment. But thanks to budget cutbacks and a lack of alternative accommodations, Patrick was once again back amongst the regulars of Mount Hope Orphanage, and wouldn’t you know it, he was meaner than ever.

  So much for reform school.

  Patrick stood up and looked down on Angelo with a twisted sneer, his thin pale lips parted enough to show stained yellow teeth. “Time for class you stinking wop faggot. And don’t think about telling on me, or I’ll slit your freaking throat. You hear me, Angela?”

  Angelo nodded slowly as he wiped the blood from the lower part of his face. He’d never been so glad to hear that miserable old buzzer which usually went through him like nails along a chalkboard, but today it had saved him from his own stupidity.

  Patrick casually retreated back into the building’s ocher bricks while Angelo stood upon legs that felt as though they might buckle at the knees without warning. Angelo was pumped up on adrenaline, but had enough flesh dipped into the mundane to let him know that he’d been hurt bad. The bloody nose was just the icing, there were other injuries to contend with: bruised arms, swelling on the side of his skull and a nasty scrape on his left shoulder. Angelo was a sorry looking soldier, but any battle you walked away from was undoubtedly a good one. Now he would hobble back into school, clean up in the washroom and then make up an excuse as to why he was late for class.

  Of course all the students would know what had happened, but none of them would confess a word to the teachers either, lest Patrick somehow find out and pound them into hamburger. No, Angelo was on his own, and the only thing he could do was tend to his cuts and avoid Patrick as much as possible. Of course there was that certain sick knowledge that always preceded the inevitable, the absolute certainty that there would be other beatings to contend with. Perhaps not this week nor the next, but soon enough. Angelo could already feel those injuries yet to come screaming through his nervous system.

  But what was he to do?

  What could he do?

  Wait until that someday came along, the day when his twelve year old body grew into a man’s and then god willing, Patrick Shea would get what he had coming to him.

  Angelo�
��s eye spotted a figure just outside the schoolyard’s chain link fence. It was a large bear of a man dressed in a brown waist length leather jacket, dark blue jeans and expensive leather shoes. The big galoot ate shelled peanuts out of a brown paper bag as he watched Angelo with a keen interest. Angelo spat a wad of crimson onto the pavement, angry and well-aware that the greasy guy had probably watched the entire fight and done nothing to stop it.

  Who needed to watch cable when a person could walk down to the orphanage and watch a couple of kids duke it out for free?

  Angelo immediately concluded that the bastard was just one more sicko in the world, a messed up adult who had no problem watching others suffer. Angelo flipped the guy the one finger salute as he slowly sauntered back toward the school. However, the big mean looking bull surprised Angelo by actually applauding. At first, Angelo thought the gesture was a form of sarcasm, but soon realized it was offered out of a genuine sign of respect.

  Suddenly, Angelo felt bad for having been so rude.

  The kid drew in his horns and let his eyes find the ground as he skulked back in through Mount Hope’s stone archway and down into the lower locker rooms to lick his wounds and get cleaned up for class.

  (2)

  The movie had been an atypical slasher flick with big Hollywood special effects and a tacked on romantic plot which just didn’t seem to fly. Still, the gore had been top notch, especially the scene where an alien sucked a guy’s brain out through an eye socket.

  Now that had been damn fine cinema.

  The matinee reel may not have been a contender for an Academy Award nomination, but it had been a great way to kill a couple of hours on a Saturday afternoon. Angelo couldn’t help but think that Peach would’ve loved it. In fact, Angelo could just hear his old friend’s enthusiastic comments now.

  That was so freaking gross Angle! Yowsa! The sound that slimy thing made when the eye popped out…oh yummy…damn tasty if I do say so myself!

  But Peach wasn’t in the game anymore, at least not in the litter pool that is. Peach had won the orphan lottery and had moved out west with a young married couple who were software engineers or something of the sort. Christians who had lost a son around Peach’s age several years earlier in a boating accident, a kid that just happened to bear a remarkable resemblance to good old Peach Pit.

  In the end, Angelo guessed it didn’t matter why they had taken Peter “Peach” Pit with them, only that they had.

  Anything had to be better than Mount Hope.

  Hell, as far as Angelo was concerned, he’d shack up with the Manson Family if it meant he got out of that miserable dung hole.

  Can you say amen brother!

  Still, Angelo couldn’t help but wish that his old friend was here, or at the very least, had seen this particular movie with him. Peach would’ve really gotten a kick out of it.

  Yowsa! The sound that slimy thing made when the eye popped out!

  “Yeah Peach…damn tasty,” Angelo muttered.

  The alleyway behind the theater was relatively empty, save a few trashcans and a gauntlet of black garbage bags. The pungent odor was of sour pop, moldy popcorn and stale nachos. It was the less glamorous exit of the movie house, but it was closer to the bus terminal. Angelo always hated getting stuck amidst that slow penguin march to the lobby doors, not because he hated crowds, but because it felt vulnerable. A great place for an attacker to casually stroll up behind you and then, BAM! Good night nurse.

  Angelo hated to think in such paranoid terms, but that’s how his mind was hardwired. Perhaps that mindset had to do with living in the orphanage, always being on guard for Patrick Shea and those other lesser tyrants who were always on the prowl for fresh meat.

  It was a survival mechanism, Angelo’s way of observing the world as an environment of potential dangers. Threats such as neighborhood street gangs, desperate crack heads who’d roll a nun for a quarter, opportunistic child molesters and just mean spirited dung heads like Patrick Shea.

  It was a terrible thing to live in fear, but it also made Angelo sharp of mind, tuned the senses with a battlefield mentality. Life to Marchetti was like living inside a muddy foxhole twenty-four-seven, where those hit-miss mortar shells rumbled like thunder and flashed like lightning from sunup to sundown. True, Peach may have been gone, but Angelo was never alone, fear was a constant companion.

  Angelo walked down the alley, finished off a soda pop with a slurp and then ditched the spent cup into a dented container. A healthy belch resounded from his diaphragm, an example of poor manners that would’ve tickled Peach’s funny bone to no end. Beyond the narrow passage of ashen cinder block lay the theater parking lot. It was relatively empty this afternoon, most people were at work, not to mention there wasn’t really anything worthwhile listed on the marquee playbills. Summer’s blockbusters were still a few weeks away, so for now the house only spun B-flick drama on a shoe string budget.

  The sun had grown in strength since Angelo had gone into the theater and had become uncomfortably hot. It was a good feeling, one that let Marchetti know that soon there would be summer camp, and for a few blessed weeks he would be free of Patrick Shea and those like him. Of course camp always had its share of idiots, but even those bullies seemed to busy themselves with productive endeavors for the most part. Having something to do could work miracles with problem kids, especially if that activity was situated in the great outdoors.

  Angelo exited the alley and into the sting of sunlight. Brightness squinted his eyes and for a second the world was overwhelmed by daylight. A clammy hand wrapped firmly around Angelo’s neck and tossed him back into the dank partitions of the alley. Angelo almost fell onto his ass, but managed to hold his feet with a quick well-placed shuffle. His eyes cleared in the shadows, and when they did, they looked down the shiny edge of a switchblade knife.

  “Give me your money kid,” whispered the raspy voice of a middle aged man. “Or else I’ll slit your throat!”

  Slit your throat was a promise recently uttered by Patrick Shea, although at the moment Angelo hadn’t placed the connection.

  Angelo’s hands instinctively wrapped around the bony wrist that helped to secure him. The man’s arm was scrawny, but held amazing strength. Angelo’s eyes adjusted on the man’s disheveled features and beheld a sorry specimen that looked anorexic. The dirt on the man’s cratered face and foul stench emanating from his oily hide suggested that he hadn’t bathed in at least a decade. Pimples dotted his pale skin, greasy hair draped across a wrinkled forehead like wet seaweed and within the crazy wild light of blood shot eyes lived unimaginable desperation.

  This was the face of a hungry drug addict, a junky who’d probably stab Angelo regardless if the kid gave him what he needed to secure a fix or not. The weird light inside those dead eyes said they had nothing left to loose and that they had bottomed out years ago.

  Angelo eyes glanced past the junky’s shoulder and out into the parking lot. In the distance, an elderly couple slowly sauntered up to their car. They’d never see Angelo from their angle, let alone the knife wielding maniac who held him captive in the shadows. Still, there was a powerful urge to cry out for help, but the kid at the end of that bony wrist knew that the knife would steal the air from his lungs as easily as a needle pricked a balloon if he did.

  “I’ve got five bucks,” Angelo said through constricted vocal chords.

  The junky was really putting the squeeze on Angelo, and if it continued, Angelo would probably pass out from a lack of oxygen to the brain.

  “Get it!” the junkie growled.

  Angelo’s hand fumbled into his back pocket and withdrew a wallet and held it up for the junky to see. There was a strange insane moment where the junky seemed to be calculating some kind of crazy math, perhaps figuring out how much money he owed against how much money he needed to secure the next fix.

  It was here that a baggie hit the pavement beside them.

  Angelo’s eyes twisted down onto the ground and s
o too did the junky’s. In that all too brief glance they could see a plastic baggie with a round piece of whitish crystal inside. Drugs, the hard kind that sucked the souls out of people, the very poison that had drained the spirit from this poor excuse of a man years ago.

  The junky’s eyes widened at the sight, and Angelo couldn’t help but note the intense reaction. Not once had the addict bothered to look over his shoulder to see whom had thrown down this tiny piece of heaven, instead his attention held onto the crystal the way a starving dog fixated on prime rib. At that moment there were no consequences, just the object of the addict’s infinite affection. The junky’s interest in the boy and his measly five dollars fell into abandon, and before Angelo knew it that knurled hand that had wrapped so tightly about his throat, released him so it could go and snatch up that coveted piece of hard candy.

  Angelo could breathe freely again and wasted no time setting foot to heel in the direction of the parking lot when a large shadow suddenly appeared and loomed within the alley’s entrance, effectively blanketing out most of the day’s remaining sunlight. The sizable silhouette put Angelo in mind of a bear, except that this bear wore a strong splash of cologne, gaudy gold rings and a brown, waist length, leather jacket.

  “That’s it pooch, fetch the nice treat,” the bear said in a low threatening tone.

  The junky froze, his grungy fingers caught in the anxious process of tearing open the dime-store-baggie. The junky’s waxy ears recognized the deep voice and as a result the junky froze. Suddenly, that voracious need inside those polluted veins departed and was replaced by a strong lick of fear.

  Slowly, the junky turned his mangy head towards the source of the voice. “Vincent?”

  “Bad pooch,” said Vincent with a tisk-tisk.

  The junky examined the baggie and then the shadow named Vincent. “I wasn’t going to hurt the kid, honest.”

  Angelo took a step backward as the hulking frame of Vincent the Bear sauntered into the alley with a confident swagger. Marchetti thought to run, but for some reason his legs couldn’t move. Fear had him firmly rooted in his tracks.

  The junky stood cautiously, his stature at least a full foot shorter than Vincent the Bear’s. “Can I keep it, Vince? Please can I?”

  The junky sounded like a small child asking if they could stay up late to watch television. Part of Angelo almost felt sorry for the addict, but the memory of the switchblade knife made short work of that compassion.

  Vincent casually took hold of the junky’s hand which held the knife. “What’s this pooch? Is this how you beg for change these days?”

  A swift motion followed by a loud crack announced that the addict’s wrist had just been expertly broken. The knife fell to the concrete as did the junky. However, the junky did not cry out, instead, his mealy mouth shaped a scream that had no air on which to place its note.

  Angelo winced, imagined how such an injury most surely hurt seeing as the back of the addict’s hand now touched his oily needle pricked forearm. Surely the limb would never work again no matter how much surgery it received.

  “Don’t mess with the family!” Vincent growled. “Don’t ever mess with my family!”

  The junky regarded Vincent with questioning eyes, eyes that said they had no idea who the kid was and just how truly sorry they were for having trespassed against someone who was obviously a member of the Gambaro crime family. However young that little master might be.

  “Say you’re sorry pooch,” Vincent ordered with a sadistic grin stenciled across his tanned face. “Say it, or I’ll rip your stinking hand off and shove it up your dung hole!”

  The junky looked at Angelo, tears streaming down the blackheads and zits that scarred his face, and somewhere from deep down inside, the junky’s voice found enough strength to say one thing---sorry.

  Angelo nodded, although he was more in a state of shock than morally offended by the junky’s inexcusable actions.

  “Now, get the hell out of my sight pooch, before I decide to give you a lobotomy with your own blade, you freaking speed monkey!”

  Vincent grabbed the junky by the neck and then tossed him into a pile of trash cans. Angelo wasn’t sure, but he thought he heard yet another crack of bone as part of the addict’s skeleton gave way upon impact.

  Vincent regarded Angelo with a father like concern, as if he wanted to chastise the boy for being so goddamn careless. “It’s cool, Angelo. That idiot won’t ever bother you again, bet on it.”

  Angelo swallowed and nodded. He was stunned to have been witness to such a brutal display of violence, but then again, Angelo too had felt the receiving end of such cruel practices, just ask Patrick Shea about that.

  “Jesus,” Vincent said with a warm smile. “Goddamn, you’ve got your mother’s eyes, you know that. God rest her soul. And you also have your old man’s chin, the crazy bastard.” Vincent said this character disparagement about Angelo’s father with the sentimental endearment of an old friend. “God I miss him.”

  Angelo was confused and more than a little bit shell-shocked. Things had happened so damn quick, and now this big thug with the slicked back Italian hairdo and linebacker physique was reminiscing sentimentally about who---Angelo’s parents?

  That was the kicker.

  What possible connection could his deceased parents have to this heavy handed leg-breaker? Everything about the guy felt wrong, not that he was a liar, but that he was strongly linked to a criminal element, perhaps even organized crime itself.

  It was the wise-guy accent, mannerism, clothing style, the practiced way he had interacted with the junky, it all rang of trouble in a professional sense. Whoever this guy was, it was obvious he worked with the kind of people who sold items off the back of a truck.

  “Come,” Vincent ushered with a genuine sense of compassion. “Let me get you out of here.”

  Angelo regarded the junky with curious and fearful eyes. The addict laid on the ground, sobbing softly, eyeing Vincent the Bear with a beaten dog’s attention. Still, he clung desperately to the plastic baggie with the icy white crystal inside, a drug that promised to ease his suffering and take him to that wondrous castle of the mind.

  “Don’t fret the pooch none,” Vincent said with a tender voice, a parent assuring a child that the monster couldn’t hurt him anymore. “He’s been neutered.”

  Vincent gave the junky a gesture of a knife slash across the throat, which Angelo did not see. It told the junky that tonight, Vincent the Bear would find him and put the poor pooch out of its misery once and for all.

  Tomorrow that addict’s badly beaten body would be found floating in the harbor, but that was okay, because no one ever made much fuss over a dead junky.

  Case closed.

  (3)

  They walked slowly across the parking lot under the warmth of an afternoon sun. Vincent the Bear regarding the boy with a sort of awe struck fascination, one that marveled and perhaps even loved.

  Who was this big maniac?

  Sure, the big lug may have just hauled Angelo’s bacon out of the fire, but that didn’t change the fact that Angelo was still terrified of him.

  Little did Angelo know, but most folks who knew or heard of Vincent the Bear were terrified of him. Apparently, Vincent had a nasty reputation for being a mean spirited son of a bitch who’d crushed more than his share of skulls and testicles in a vice down inside Calvetti’s frozen meat warehouse. Not to mention that Vincent was an intimidating specimen to begin with: a goon with big mitts and big bones that could throw one hell of a jawbreaker.

  “Would you like something to eat…something to drink?” Vincent asked. He could tell the kid was unnerved, and that fright made Vincent fume inside. Tonight the junkie would pay dearly, balls in a vice dearly. “I could take you back to Mount Hope if you’d like?”

  Mount Hope!

  The name felt like ice water: sobering.

  Angelo stopped mid-step, to which Vincent halted his gait as well.

 
; “What is it?” inquired Vincent.

  “You knew my parents?” The question was a bit shaky but not without its nerve.

  Vincent touched Angelo’s face with a thick hand that had more than its share of scars and twisted knuckles that had been broken and poorly reset over the years. “Yeah, Angelo…I knew your folks well.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Jesus!” exclaimed Vincent with a hearty laugh. “Where are my freaking brains? I never introduced myself. My name’s Vincent Marchetti. I’m you’re old man’s brother, which makes me your uncle. Va-Voom!” Vincent feigned a punch to Angelo’s arm and then messed up the kid’s hair affectionately. “We is family little Capone. Me, you and someone’s cousin back in the old country I suppose.”

  This was said as a joke, but Angelo failed to get it, he was still trying to process the information.

  “I don’t understand,” Angelo said. “Why…I mean, they said I was an orphan…no family.”

  Vincent stopped smiling and looked away as if hurt, and perhaps he had been. “I’m sorry Angelo. I guess your momma and poppa wanted to spare you certain details.” Vincent spoke as though he understood this, but it nonetheless caused him some pain, perhaps embarrassment. “Black sheep of the family, that’s what Uncle Vincent is little Capone. The freaking black sheep.” He brokered a smile that seemed genuine enough, one that spoke of water under the bridge. “But don’t blame your folks none…they were just looking out for you, that’s all.”

  “Where have you been all this time?” Anglo blurted out the question as if it were an accusation. Angelo felt divided, both angry and grateful. Mount Hope was hell and here this big goon with no neck hadn’t stepped forward to claim him, to free him from the dark dungeon daycare and the evil clutches of Patrick---

  ---and that’s when it dawned on Angelo. This had been the guy back at the schoolyard. The gorilla that had stood by and done nothing but stuff his face on shelled peanuts while Patrick Shea hammered Angelo’s nose into tomato paste. Suddenly, Angelo’s face went flush, his hands tightened into fists and Vincent the Bear could see just how put out his little nephew was with his new Uncle.

  “I can explain, Angelo,” assured Vincent in a voice that sought forgiveness. “It’s complicated, but if you’d let me tell you why, I’d be as pleased as pussy punch.”

  Angelo almost smirked at the pussy remark. No adult had ever spoken to him like this large ogre had. And truth told, Angelo was never more happy to know that he had family. However colorful that relative’s tainted history might be. Yes, it was true, Angelo wanted to punch Vincent’s eyes out for letting him rot away inside Mount Hope, but Angelo also wanted to give the big galoot a hug for having both saved and found him. Besides, the Bear said he had an explanation, and Angelo Marchetti very much wanted and needed to hear one.

  Angelo nodded an agreement, to which Vincent grinned most favorably.

  (4)

  The apartment was extravagant and not at all what Angelo had expected: a brick studio style loft with a freight elevator, a huge pair of skylights, the décor straight out of a home renovation catalogue. But aside from high end furniture, there were wonderfully framed photographs upon the walls, images Angelo recognized. The one picture that drew Angelo’s attention most was a black and white portrait of his mother, Angelina. She stood on a west coast boardwalk beneath a summer sky, wind caught within her long dark hair, her attractive smile locked in time. A white cotton dress hung off her delicate shoulders, a tiny heart shaped locket draped lightly around her slender neck, the kind that held precious keepsakes within. Angelina was beautiful, the way Angelo remembered, and it warmed his heart to know that at one time she had been happy. However, Angelo was ill-prepared for the strong emotional impact the image would wield over his heart.

  A part of Angelo’s soul had just broken and he had to fight off the tears.

  The boy had not one picture of his own to enjoy for all such treasure had been lost in the house fire that had claimed his parent’s lives so long ago.

  “That’s my favorite one of your ma,” Vincent said as he took up the role of museum curator. “Your dad took it.” Vincent let his wide thumb trace the frame. “He told me that he proposed to her that day…she said yes…a year later you were born.” Vincent placed an arm around Angelo’s shoulder. “She loved you dearly…they both did.” Vincent shook his bull sized head and frowned with thick homely lips. “Goddamn, what a freaking waste.”

  Angelo’s eyes closed as his eyelids soaked up tears.

  Vincent was right: it was a waste, a terrible one.

  Angelina was so beautiful, both his parents were and they were gone.

  Life was cruel, Mount Hope was cruel, Patrick Shea was cruel, the junkie was cruel, and yes even lovable Uncle Vincent was cruel. Nothing made sense, everything was pain and loss, and Angelo had paid more than his share already.

  The first five years of life had been blessed with love, and then the following seven long years and counting had been cursed with violence and sorrow. Angelo had seen refugee children on television, boys and girls that had been maimed in war and starved by drought, but none of those media blogs had ever shown his story.

  Did kids like Angelo count for anything?

  Too close to home, that was the problem. No one wanted to look in the backyard and see that kind of trouble next door. It was better to distance such issues, because if society could do that, then it could go on believing that things, although not perfect, were nonetheless peachy. Besides, the old adage “children were to be seen and not heard” still very much applied around the world, although Angelo felt anything but seen. But then again, Vincent had seen him and seen him quite well. Perhaps this could be a turning point in Angelo’s life, a loving guardian come to save him from the land of the forgotten. Somehow that blessed miracle felt provisional, and the reason for that would no doubt have to do with Vincent’s colorful past and ongoing lifestyle.

  “Here,” Vincent motioned.

  The Bear led Angelo to another picture, one that showed Vincent as a boy. In the photo, the big galoot stood next to a skinny kid that held a remarkable resemblance to Angelo.

  “There’s me and your pop. We used to spend a lot of time together when we were younger, “ Vincent said with a soft laugh. “He was thirteen in that picture and I was fifteen.”

  Vincent’s large shape dwarfed Alfonso’s meek frame, two odd brothers on opposite ends of the spectrum, but nonetheless bound to each other by blood.

  “I used to toss him around like a bean bag until he took a growth spurt at fourteen. Christ the little pecker-head got strong. After that, things got a little bit more even.” Vincent rubbed his jaw as if recalling one strike in particular. “Va-freaking-voom!”

  Angelo felt a sudden kinship to Vincent through these telling images, pictures that spoke their story like nothing else could. There was no denying that the big galoot, however rough around the edges, was indeed family.

  Angelo followed after Vincent, listening intently as Vincent led the boy through the extensive collection of family photos. Vincent complimented the images with a personal narrative that added vitality to the slide show as only a familiar firsthand account could. There were interesting tales of triumph, loss, sadness, comical situations and of course love. And in the few short hours that it took for Vincent to reiterate the Marchetti time line, Angelo had learned more about his parents than he ever thought possible. The information was truly a magnificent gift to receive and Angelo’s gratitude toward Vincent went beyond the scope of any spoken thank you.

  Still, there was one matter that had yet to be resolved: why hadn’t Vincent come forward to claim Angelo after the tragedy? Despite Angelo’s wish for it to be otherwise, he was nonetheless bitter towards his uncle. The boy felt slighted to think he’d been deliberately abandoned by Vincent, and even more so the better he got to know the big goon. In a short amount of time, Angelo had grown to like Vincent, almost love him, and so that emotional conne
ction amplified his feelings of abandonment.

  Together they sat on a sectional leather coach before a glass coffee table where the family photo album laid open onto a series of hospital pictures: Angelo’s birth. Angelo’s parents were nothing but smiles, happy and loving toward their newborn child.

  Vincent stopped talking, eyed the boy with a somber expression of a man who was about to confess to a terrible deed, one that might very well be unforgivable. Vincent enjoyed this family time with his nephew. The boy had begun to feel like more like a son than an estranged nephew, and Vincent feared that once the kid heard the whole story, he’d bolt out of the apartment never to be seen again. There weren’t many things in this world that could hurt Vincent deeply, but something like that most certainly would. Vincent wanted to leave the explanation for another day, but knew he couldn’t. He’d made a promise to the kid to come clean on certain issues, damn important ones, and that was what this stand up guy was going to do.

  “Angelo,” Vincent said and then paused.

  God, the kid reminded Vincent of Alfonso, the square cut of his jaw, the thin lay of his piercing steel gray eyes. Angelo was an attractive kid and someday would grow into a handsome man. Vincent had always envied that beauty in his kid brother, and as he recalled that foolish pettiness, he couldn’t help but feel ashamed.

  “I loved your dad more than anything, but there were certain things we didn’t see eye to eye on.”

  “Like what?”

  Vincent ran his big mitts back through his gelled hair and sighed deeply. “Well, we grew up in a pretty wild neighborhood, you know what I’m saying…drug dealers, speed monkeys, merchandise players, street gangs and an…organized…crime element.”

  “You mean the Mob?”

  “Va-voom,” replied Vincent with a click of his tongue and a wink. “Anyways, Alfonso was a straight shooter. Kept out of trouble.”

  “But you didn’t,” concluded Angelo.

  Some things were just too obvious to let slip by.

  “Va-voom again.” Vincent had begun to wring his hands like a nervous child and looked as though he was about to mope. “I used to make a few extra bucks carrying packages back and forth between Dante’s Pool Hall and Puccini’s restaurant. Sometimes I’d even carry some packages across the border.”

  “Drugs?” Angelo asked without reservation.

  The boy was not surprised but oddly quickened by the idea as it felt so forbidden.

  Vincent eyes drifted to the floor. “Yeah, drugs. Sometimes cash, other times guns and every once and a while…” Vincent looked at the kid and decided not to say. Hearing of body parts was too much too soon. “The money was damn good. In less than a year I had squirreled away enough cash to buy a brand new car and not a low end one either, but a fine sports car.”

  “Wow,” Angelo said with a bit of awe.

  “That’s what your Grandfather Bussi had to say, too,” Vincent said with a look that suggested that Grandpa Marchetti was a man who could get quite mad when he had to. “Well, long story short, Bussi was pissed and so was Alfonso. Your pop said I was heading for trouble if I kept in with that crowd, but I told him to mind his own damn business.” Vincent closed his eyes and shook his head. “I was kicked out of the house shortly after, and that’s when the real trouble began.”

  “What happened?” Angelo was intrigued by this tale, it sounded like it was out of a movie.

  “I was making good scratch running packages for Romulus. But now that I was out of the house, I wanted to make more green.” Vincent sat back on the couch and took on a stance that looked justified in its thinking. “Jesus, here I was surrounded by these dung heads that were making a freaking fortune working for Romulus. I mean, I was making peanuts compared to these idiots. I wanted in big time and I told the man in no uncertain terms that I wanted in.”

  “So what happened?”

  “Romulus tells me to go pound sand,” Vincent replied in a tone that said he was anything but pleased by the big cheese’s response. “So I keep on him over the next few months. I want better work, I want the good jobs, teach me, teach me, teach me. So one day he loses his temper with me and yells, “you want a cut of the big pie tough guy! Okay, go to the backroom of Dante’s Pool Hall tomorrow afternoon at one. See a guy named Vanni. He’ll set you up good. Now get the hell out of here before I bitch slap the crap outta ya!””

  “Were you scared?” Angelo was captivated, lost to the flow of this story that sounded like a crime confession, which is what it was.

  “Hell yeah,” Vincent laughed. “I’m sure if Romulus had had a gun at that moment, he’d of capped me good. God I got on his nerves. I learned later that’s how a fella lost his wedding package once. Never hound Romulus or bad things will happen.”

  Angelo subconsciously let his hand gently cup his genitals in protection. “So what happened in Dante’s?”

  “I walk into the pool hall’s backroom, ready to show this Vanni idiot that I’m a wise guy first class with a length of steel running down my spine that’s sturdier than a flag pole, when I’m met by three freaking leg breakers with whiskey on their breath.” Vincent’s features went dark, his eyebrows hunched and his fists tightened. “The next thing I know, there’s a freaking pool cue wrapped round the side of my head. Then there’s some idiot choking me with his bare hands, while the other two mothers take pot shots at me from behind.”

  “What did you do?”

  Vincent glanced at Angelo, noting how entertained his nephew was by this savage retelling. Hell, if Angelo liked this story, maybe he’d like to hear some of the others. Suddenly, Vincent the Bear thought he might actually have a chance to keep his nephew in his life.

  “Well, I freak. I knee the bastard who’s choking me square in the balls, so he goes down to the mat, and then I elbow the idiot that’s walloping me in the back of the head, it gets him square in the nose and his snout crunches the way only bone can.”

  Angelo suddenly recalled the incident with the junkie, that sickening crack when his wrist snapped. Vincent was right, bone had its own distinct noise when it let go and it wasn’t a pretty tune either.

  “By this time, the other leg breaker nails me hard in the kidney.” Vincent reached behind and caressed his backside as if the thing still stung to this day. “It was a nasty punch. A real dirty hit, and Jesus did it ever freaking hurt. So by this time, Mr. Kicked Nuts reaches out and snags onto my pant leg, while broken nose wraps his arm around my neck in a choke hold. I can’t get my balance, I’m losing air, the third leg breaker’s as fresh as a daisy, va-voom! So I do the only thing I can think of. I fall forward onto tapped nuts and broken nose falls with me. Together we’ve got to weigh over four hundred pounds and tapped nuts is bearing every freaking pound of it. He gets the wind knocked out of him, while broken nose’s face squashes into tapped nuts’ shoulder and he bellows out in pain. His grip around my neck loosens and then I’m free to deal with leg breaker number three. I stand up, huffing and puffing, mad as hell, but I can already feel the welts throbbing all over my hide. I’m in a bad way, blood flowing from my mouth, my ear, my hands, I’m a total freaking mess. Anyways, number three looks at me and starts to smile. I says, “what’s so freaking funny moron?” And then he says, “congratulations tough guy, you got the freaking job.””

  Angelo’s jaw hung open. “You mean that was an interview?”

  Vincent nodded slowly. “Toughest interview in my life little Capone.”

  “So you were in?”

  Vincent regarded Angelo with a knowing grin that was tainted on its share of regret. “Oh yeah, I was in all right.”

  (5)

  The kid took the story with little resistance, although, Vincent knew that hearing about such brutal violence and being witness to its horrors were completely different issues. In Angelo’s eyes this tale of a mafia initiation was little different than the movie he had seen this afternoon: a work of fiction. But if Angelo had personally stood inside the pool hall and seen
firsthand what a pool cue could do to a man’s face, then his reaction would’ve no doubt been noticeably different. But the kid had no relative reference to draw upon, and that was a good thing, because such innocence was necessary when you were twelve years old. But soon a line would be passed, a moment when the awful truth would not only touch Angelo’s young ears, but his young heart as well.

  Would the kid be strong in the face of such knowledge or would he cower down?

  Only time would tell, and so Vincent continued along with his tale.

  “The job I got wasn’t exactly what I thought it would be,” Vincent confided in a humble tone. “But…”

  Vincent looked at Angelo, noting the boy’s wide gray eyes, the way he hung on every word. How could Vincent do this tactfully? There was no good answer.

  “Angelo, I’ve never killed anybody who never had it coming. Capisce little Capone?”

  And there it was, out there, those dreadful words that told so much. Killing was completely different from snapping a junkie’s wrist and having it out with three leg breakers. Thou shall not kill was one of the ten commandments, a big one, the kind of transgression that got a guy juiced in an electric chair or locked away in a remote concrete timeshare with an indefinite lease. Vincent had put a great deal of trust into his nephew, but what else was he to do? The kid had to know why he’d been left to stew in Mount Hope, and the only way to do that was to play the game straight like a genuine true to the article standup guy.

  “Kill?” Angelo asked the question, but he still didn’t know how he felt about the question. One thing he did know was that he needed to hear more, all of it if need be.

  “Ain’t no sugar coating the deed little Capone,” Vincent explained with an easy shrug. “A man’s got to make choices, and I made mine a long time ago.”

  “You killed someone?”

  “No,” replied Vincent with a soft voice. “Not someone…a lot of someones.”

  Angelo watched him with eyes that were wide and lost for direction. Here, he was sharing a sofa with a confirmed killer and Angelo didn’t know if he should be scared or not. Would Vincent murder him if he acted inappropriately? Would Vincent use those big mitt hands of his to squeeze the life out of Angelo’s throat if fate took an ill-turn? A part of Angelo wanted to run out of the building screaming, but another part wanted to stay.

  Why was that?

  Because despite Vincent’s ill-deeds, he was still family, and after spending the better part of his life being tossed around within the government child welfare system, Angelo had learned an important thing: family was everything. It was a fact most folks could never have understood unless they themselves had walked that lonely mile to the cemetery.

  So the question was, could Angelo forgive Vincent’s murdering ways?

  The answer turned out to be yes, because in the end it was better to have the love of a confessed killer, than to have no love at all, especially when you were just twelve years old.

  “Are you a hitman?” Angelo asked.

  The answer felt like a foregone conclusion, but when a man spilled his guts, you wanted to make damn sure you’d heard him correctly.

  “I’m a hitman little Capone,” Vincent replied with surprisingly little remorse. “I take care of trouble makers, and like I said before…I ain’t never killed anybody who didn’t have it coming.”

  Angelo stared, blinked and then stared some more. What was he supposed to say to something like that? What was he supposed to do?

  “I’m sorry,” Vincent apologized. “I know it’s a bit much to digest, but I needed to tell you, because you deserved to know exactly why I never came to claim you from Mount Hope.”

  “You were in jail, weren’t you?” Angelo concluded. “That’s why you’re not in most of the later pictures. That’s why you weren’t at the hospital when I was born.” Angelo tapped on the photo album as if to drive home the point.

  Vincent smiled and messed up Angelo’s hair playfully. “Kids got brains. What do you know? Va-voom!”

  “What happened to you?”

  Vincent sighed and shook his head in a pissed off gesture. “A freaking wire tap connected my name to a couple of dead bodies. Then some prison snitch named Pico gave testimony to the cops that he’d seen me plug some moron in the back of the head with a magnum. Greasy little moron wanted an early release from the hoosegow. You know the type.”

  Angelo nodded, while in actuality he had no experience to draw upon. The greasiest person he knew was Patrick Shea, and although Angelo wasn’t sure if Shea were the snitching type, he nonetheless supposed this Pico character probably had a lot in common with a guy like Patrick.

  Morons always had similarities.

  “Long tale short, I ended up serving fifteen years in the pokey before Romulus’s fancy lawyers managed to spring me.” Vincent became somewhat withdrawn, lost to a set of memories that must’ve been horrible in their recollection. “I’d have rotted in there if it wasn’t for Romulus, little Capone. I’d have been buried in the prison graveyard where the posies don’t grow and the dirt is a dry chalk sand in perdition’s bleak garden. Can you say va-freaking-voom.”

  “Va-freaking-voom,” Angelo whispered without realizing it.

  Vincent regarded the boy for a second and then burst into a hearty laugh. “You’re okay little Capone. You know that. Okay by a long shot.”

  Angelo nodded a thank you and then gave the convicted killer a genuine smile. “So you were in your own prison, just like I was stuck in mine.”

  Vincent reached over and took hold of Angelo’s hand and squeezed just tight enough to let the boy know that what he was about to say was to be remembered.

  “I’d of walked through hell to find you little Capone…bet on it…nothing…nothing’s more important than family…nothing! You hear me?”

  Angelo felt his hand all squished up inside Vincent’s, but the dark brown eyes that held him felt even tighter. “Yeah,” Angelo nodded. “Nothing’s more important than family.” And then for further measure the boy added, va-voom.

  Vincent laughed and tucked the kid under his big arm in a playful headlock. “Look out world, the Marchettis are back in force, va-voom!

  “Va-voom!” Angelo shouted, his voice muffled by Vincent’s jacket.

  Vincent let the boy go and studied Angelo’s face with eyes that looked as though they might begin to cry.

  “I’ve waited a long time for this day, Angelo. You have no idea.”

  Vincent placed a hand on Angelo’s cheek. The palm was rough, calloused, but Angelo hadn’t felt an act so tender in sentiment since his mother was alive. Somewhere between the movie theater and this artsy apartment, Angelo had fallen in love with Vincent in a way that only those who shared blood could. He was family, they were family, and nothing was more important than that, nothing.

  “Am I going to come and live with you now, Uncle Vincent?”

  Never had Angelo wanted anything more in his entire life.

  Vincent pursed his lips and reluctantly shook his head. “I’m sorry little Capone. I’ve already had Romulus’s lawyers check into it. I’ve got a record and given the nature of my…lifestyle, well let’s just say that child services does not approve of such activities.”

  Angelo bowed his head sadly. “Will I see you again?” His eyes closed as he braced to learn the worst. Angelo figured it would be just cruel enough for it to be so, one more rug to be yanked out from beneath him.

  Vincent reached into his pocket and removed a key, Angelo stared at it and wondered what it went into.

  “Here,” Vincent motioned. “Take it.”

  Angelo wrapped the key inside the palm of his hand.

  “It’s the key to this apartment. You stop by whenever you like, you hear.”

  Angelo smiled broadly and Vincent once again messed up Angelo’s hair affectionately. God the kid looked so much like Alfonso that it was uncanny. Vincent may not have been able to make amends to his dece
ased brother, but he sure as hell could proxy them on behalf of his brother’s son.

  “Don’t tell anyone that you’ve seen or talked with me, Angelo,” Vincent explained with a pointed finger. “There’s apt to be trouble for both of us, especially me.”

  “Not a word,” Angelo certified with a cross of his heart. “A secret between you, me and the banana tree.”

  “When you turn eighteen you’ll be an adult, then you can come live with me full time if you’d like. Until then, we keep a low profile.”

  “Got ya Uncle Vincent.”

  “There’s one more thing, Angelo.”

  “What?”

  Vincent pointed to a gray metal fire door that was set within the studio’s decorative brick wall. “That room’s off limits…keep out…capisce?”

  Angelo studied the door curiously. It looked normal enough, but that didn’t mean it housed the run of the mill knickknacks. There were secrets to be had in there, the kind Angelo was better off not knowing.

  Angelo regarded Vincent with a single nod. “Keep out means stay out, got ya.”

  Vincent’s eyes smiled brightly. “So, what time you have to be back at Mount Hope?”

  Angelo looked at the clock on the wall and sprang to his feet. It was four-thirty-eight. “Damn it! I’m supposed to be home by five.”

  “Keep cool little Capone,” Vincent said with a steady motion of his huge hands. “I’ll drive you back. Drop you off a few blocks from the school so no one sees, capisce.”

  Angelo felt the key within his hand. It felt sacred, a key that could open up a magic doorway into a world he never knew existed. Yes, he was frightened, but at the same time exhilarated. Vincent had done terrible things, but he had also served his time in prison for them, well, at least some of it. But that technicality didn’t matter, because Angelo could tell that Vincent Marchetti was at heart, a good guy. Whatever trouble he may have been in before was yesterday’s news, and the bear deserved a second chance.

  As Vincent stood, Angelo abruptly hugged him. The boy’s short arms couldn’t extend around Vincent’s girth by a long shot, but that was okay, because the big goon in the expensive Italian leather jacket understood what the boy had just conveyed to him, family, at long last, he finally had family.

  Vincent hugged him back, his tough looking face pressed against the top of Angelo’s thick dark hair. “Don’t worry. We’re together kid. Nothing’s gonna change that now, va-voom.”

  They separated slowly, but continued to hold one another within each other’s eyes.

  “Thank you for rescuing me Uncle Vincent.”

  “Thank you for not judging me.”

  As they headed out the door for Mount Hope, Vincent inquired about someone he’d seen Angelo with just the other day, a kid Vincent would come to know as Patrick Shea.

  (6)

  Ten bucks had transformed Angelo Marchetti into the most respected kid in all of Mount Hope Orphanage.

  But how could that be?

  Vincent had been in Angelo’s life for a couple months, and in that short time the boy had come to learn a few things from the big bear: that Angelo’s old man used to jump off the Cross Way train bridge into Stick River, (a good sixty foot fall) and that his mother had played the violin, (Angelo had even heard a rare recording. It was a bit pitchy in parts, but nonetheless displayed a genuine musical talent) and he had also learned some other interesting things.

  Philosophy had been part of Angelo’s tutelage, extreme beliefs as taught by Vincent Marchetti. Those sessions reflected religious ideologies, social structures and the overall meaning of life. And through those discussions, Angelo had come to understand a great deal about personal perspectives: views such as right and wrong and the gray areas that obscured those absolute certitudes. Angelo had come to see that moral ambiguity was everywhere, and that religious fundamentalism was by nature, hypocritical. Everything in the world was open to interpretation: art, music, literature, law and most of all, God.

  Angelo was a good student: young, impressionable and soaked such knowledge up like a biscuit in gravy. He accepted Vincent’s words as gospel, because they not only made sense, but they also carried water from the well.

  One of those teachings in particular pertained to humanity’s justification of killing.

  Angelo was taught that governments killed every day under the guise of securing public safety and enforcing various other ideologies. These mandates for war were sometimes blatantly obvious, but more often than not they were subtly obscure. Their motives usually rallied support via differing political views, or territorial and legal acquisitions of natural resources that if not protected could undermine free market economies, and thus influence cultural liberties by a slow arduous death of attrition. Technology, oil, democracy, diamonds, gold and religion, each of these things were the bloody gears inside the global killing machine, each motive sanctioned under the moral certitude that God had ordained a country to declare an act of war, because in the end it ultimately served The Almighty’s enigmatic agenda.

  Death was sold to the masses just as easily as it was sold on an individual basis, that’s if you knew how to put the right spin on it. And as for Angelo Marchetti, he had very much been sold.

  (7)

  If Vincent weren’t a hitman, he surely would’ve been a salesman. He was a first class liar with a merit badge in people skills. Sure, Vince’s face may have looked like a catcher’s mitt, but the guy could talk a good game. Here, he had sold a twelve year old kid on the idea that murder was normal, watered it down until its taste wasn’t so cold and bitter on the tongue. That ability took a combination of smooth talker talent and a susceptible pupil of naïve experience. It was the kind of brainwashing done in third world countries daily, recruiting the young in a cause that was dipped in blood. Of course Vincent had no intention of introducing Angelo into the hitman lifestyle, Vincent merely wanted a sympathetic ear to bear his confessions, a boy that would come to regard him as a father figure and love him unconditionally. But the only way Vincent felt he could have that was to desensitize the boy to killing. So he justified this terrible pursuit as being quite harmless, equated it to hunting deer or rabbit. After all, it wasn’t like the boy was in training to be a killer. Vincent was just opening his beloved nephew’s eyes up to the nature of the world.

  What harm could there be in that?

  None, that’s what. So the mafia strong arm continued to talk his game and toot his horn, because it was all supposedly in the spirit of helping Angelo understand life.

  Of course the best lies told were the ones we tell ourselves. Vincent knew this, but his need to have the boy in his life outweighed any concerns as to what might happen. In the end, Vincent was just smart enough to be dangerous. He didn’t realize what manner of man he was creating and perhaps if he had, then he might’ve left Angelo to his fate.

  Who was to say which future would’ve been preferable?

  Sometimes the coin had crap on both sides, and what you ended up with after the flip was bound to stink no matter which way it fell.

  Vincent may have been selfish in that regard, but he did have some redeeming qualities such as loyalty. Vincent was the kind of guy that if he was your friend, you could have none better, but if you got on his bad side, then lord help ya. A quick sense of humor and the ability to look you in the eye with an endearing smile while secretly sizing you up for a casket had helped him climb the ranks in the Gambaro crime family over the years. Still, he would’ve gone further up if had more style, skill and of course an even temper. But despite the handicap, Vincent had done quite well for himself: a good wad of cash in the bank, a nice studio warehouse apartment downtown, and an ample share of high end hookers and strippers that frequented his bed chamber in exchange for either cash, or by far favorite, a good supply of dope.

  This was how Angelo had come to understand the nature of women as explained by Vincent “The Casanova” Marchetti. Women for the most part were bitches to be use
d and exploited by men, except on those rare occasions when a man was blessed with the good fortune to meet a genuine Italian angel. Angelo’s mother had been such a precious creature, as too was Vincent’s late mama, Theresa, God rest her soul. Other than that, females were sperm dumpsters, things that relieved your “condition” as Vincent so succinctly put it. Further he’d said that when it came to a man with a huge slice of salami between his legs, or a thick wallet pasted to his hairy backside, the cash would win over a woman’s gold-digger heart every freaking time.

  Vincent also added that he was fortunate in both those departments, va-voom!

  The ongoing lessons were both interesting and enlightening in their jungle street mentality sort of way, but to a kid like Angelo the most important thing that he had learned from Vincent to date, was literally in the form of ten measly bucks.

  Treasure sometimes could be found in the strangest of places. For Angelo Marchetti one-hundred dimes wrapped inside two rolls of bank paper had seemed like gold bullion bars.

  (8)

  The recess buzzer went off and as a result a swarm of students exited their respective classrooms for the temporary reprieve of the playground. It was mid-September, warm, but a coolness had crept into the air, especially early in the morning. But for now, it was sunny, almost hot, but there was a weird glint in the sunlight, or perhaps a strange scent in the air that put Angelo on edge. There was danger afoot, he could smell it, and that meant Patrick Shea was on the prowl in search of his favorite punching bag.

  Angelo slipped his hands into his new leather jacket’s pockets and casually walked to the edge of the playground towards the wire mesh fence. If the schoolyard were a coral reef, then the outer edge near the fence was the equivalent of shark infested water. It was always wise to stick close to the school doors in case one had to make a quick escape inside. That foresight had saved Marchetti on several occasions in the past, but today he had other ideas.

  Angelo adjusted the jacket across his youthful shoulders with subtle movements, relishing its tailored fit. The jacket had been a gift from Vincent, a black beauty calf hide with stylish lapels and ebony stone buttons. There’d been lots of gifts lately, most of which Angelo kept at Vincent’s apartment so people wouldn’t get suspicious of their origins.

  Questions as to how an orphan could afford such luxuries would be difficult to explain.

  As for any curiosity about the jacket, Angelo had merely said that someone had donated it to a second hand clothing store and he’d been the lucky son of bitch to nab if off the rack first. It seemed plausible, so no one bothered to push the issue further, after all, even orphans got lucky sometime.

  Angelo stood before the spot where Vincent had looked on while Angelo had gotten his bell rung by Patrick Shea. He recalled giving Vincent the one finger salute and couldn’t help but grin. Vincent later had said how proud he’d been of Angelo, of how he had taken those lumps and hadn’t cried like a baby. It showed that the kid was tough, that Marchetti blood did run through his veins. Besides, Vincent said that there were always lessons to be learnt from losing a fight. It taught a man humility, it tempered him with experience, and if that man were a Marchetti, it also poisoned him with a need for vengeance.

  Vincent had told Angelo on several occasions that if you knock a Marchetti down, you’d better make sure they don’t get back up again, because when they do---BANG! To the morgue my good Bentley and don’t spare the whip. As for Angelo, he had learnt his lessons well. Humility, experience and now all that was left to discover was vengeance.

  “Angela!”

  The voice of Patrick Shea went through Angelo like diarrhea. Angelo’s heart pumped like a cam piston as his breath ran shallow and his pupils widened to full aperture. It felt like getting sick, the way fear made your knees wobble and how the adrenaline injected a cold fire into your tense muscles.

  The clash would be inevitable now.

  Soon the taunts would cease and Patrick’s fists would begin to fly. Angelo glanced back across the schoolyard which was a cluster of screaming kids actively at play. If he broke into a run now, Patrick would overtake him before he managed to crawl back through half the crowd. Still, he entertained the notion of just tucking tail and chancing it. But he could hear Vincent’s voice inside his head, telling him to hold ground, to remember what he’d been taught and what had been practiced.

  Angelo took a deep breath, then, like a boxing match bell signaled round one to commence, he clearly said, va-voom!

  (9)

  “Where’d you get the nice jacket, Angela…your boyfriend?”

  By this time several kids had stopped playing to watch the drama unfold before Mount Hope’s wire mesh fence. This fascination spread quickly throughout the playground ranks like a frightened bird alerting a flock to danger. A crowd erected a semi circle around Angelo and Patrick, effectively penning them against the fence. Both boys were in the spotlight now and what the crowd demanded was arena blood.

  Angelo gave them a brief glance, disgusted by their morbid fascination and obvious hypocrisy, especially those armchair dung heads who had also felt the heavy hands of this bully over the years.

  Had they forgotten what this kind of attention felt like?

  Angelo wanted to spit on them, but deep down he knew that if their roles were reversed, he’d probably watch the show, too.

  And why?

  Because this was the jungle and in the jungle predator and prey always promised exciting action.

  “Didn’t you hear me faggot?” Patrick teased in a babyish voice that mocked Angelo. “Is that your boyfriend’s jacket?”

  Angelo faced the Mount Hope bully with stern features etched into his face like chiseled stone. For the first time, he resembled the man he would someday grow to be: Angelo Marchetti, hitman extraordinaire. There was an unnatural power within his gray eyes, courage and something else that was not readily identified. It was that elusive quality Patrick had seen from the get go, the unnerving character trait which the Mount Hope Bully had sworn to squash into oblivion. There was an unexplainable strength lit within those eyes, and as Patrick tried to stare that strange quality down, he felt an unusual amount of uneasiness to be had within himself.

  The little puke wop stood a foot shorter than Patrick did, but for some unknown reason the scrawny kid exuded an aura of height. Patrick didn’t care for that sort of energy, hated it in fact, because on some psychological or even perhaps spiritual level, it threatened Patrick’s supremacy. That could and would not be tolerated, especially in the presence of such a large audience. Yes, today would be the day that Angelo Marchetti got put in his place once and for all, and the only way Patrick could do that was to make the little bastard bleed buckets.

  Patrick’s freckled face twisted into a flush shade of anger as his fists knotted up into two sizable clubs. “Don’t you look at me like that you little wop!”

  Angelo felt lightheaded, pumped up on fear and rage. He hated Shea with every ounce of his fiber, but he had to let that weight go. Right now he had to remain cool, get on top of that fire or else it would consume him. Vincent had taught Angelo that fear had to be channeled into a weapon, its energy harnessed, because if the fire raged out of control, it would drown a man’s thoughts until he was a mindless idiot. Fear fed muscle, while the mind worked strategy. If Angelo remembered that, then the combination would lead him to victory every time.

  Angelo concentrated, and as he did, the Mount Hope Bully finally came in swinging.

  (10)

  Angelo calculated his position in relation to Patrick, balanced his stance. This was it, the moment Vincent had prepared him for, the thrill of combat. Marchetti yanked both hands free of his jacket. They were cold, clammy, but firmly grasped the wrapped dimes for dear life. For a moment the boy in the leather jacket thought they might bust open under the squeeze of his sweaty palms, but they kept firm: fifty coins a hand that transformed two fists into weighted hammers.

  Patrick was al
most on top of him when Angelo dropped to one knee. He only had one shot at this. If Angelo missed, he’d have to improvise.

  Angelo’s arm drew back, a fist full of change clutched tightly inside his right hand and threw a punch for all its worth. The knuckles on his hand buried deep into the pocket of Patrick’s exposed crotch with devastating force. Angelo could feel the bully’s flesh give way to the rolled coins like a steak under the swing of a heavy mallet. Still, there was no time to register the strike’s effectiveness, because Angelo had to keep up the momentum like Vincent had taught him. Angelo rolled down onto his left shoulder and came up behind Patrick where he launched a blow into the bully’s left kidney, while an additional right punch found the organ’s twin. Another volley connected with Shea’s right ear, bursting an eardrum. Patrick rolled round. Angelo delivered another blow that instantly swelled an eye shut. By this time Patrick had fallen onto his knees, one hand cupped over his family jewels while the other ineffectively tried to shield him from Angelo’s onslaught.

  The Mount Hope Bully couldn’t believe this was happening, that such a tiny little puke could hit so damn hard. The kid’s hands felt like wooden clubs, and each time they hit Patrick he could feel his body shudder from the impact like a Jell-O mold. Meanwhile, the crowd that had gathered around the spectacle began to scream and holler in frenzied excitement. They called out things like, get him Angelo, and kill him! There was little if any sympathy for Patrick Shea, and that fact injured the fallen boy as well.

  The words of the mob were lost to the sound of the heart beat that boomed inside of Angelo’s ears. For the first time in Angelo’s young life he felt in control of his destiny. Revenge tasted sweet, a vintage wine that must be savored to the last drop, and as far as Marchetti was concerned the bottle wasn’t even half gone yet. Angelo was no longer cool and collective, he was like a dog that had been trained to kill, driven by primal rage. He lapped up the shouts for blood like a reward, because he deserved their praise, and the more the crowd complied the more he loved them for it.

  Angelo suddenly stopped, stood up and glared down on the fallen bag of guts called Patrick Shea. The kid’s fists of iron ached and throbbed. It was a good feeling, the pain sharpened the wits and gave him focus. Patrick looked up at Angelo with an expression that was vacant of its former rage, a boy who’d been brought to his knees and now sought the mercy of his former prey. Surprisingly, Angelo felt a stab of compassion pierce his heart, and for a brief second his anger dissipated to reveal a ray of sympathy. Suddenly, the Mount Hope Bully was just another frightened kid, lost and alone inside the senseless violence of a cruel jungle. The eyes of his tormentor pleaded to be left alone, they swore never to bother anyone ever again if Angelo would just stop hitting him. Those eyes said they’d learned their lesson and they’d swear on a stack of bibles that they’d seen the error of their ways.

  Angelo was torn on what to do next.

  But Vincent had already anticipated this kind of scenario and had previously instructed his young nephew on what to do. Now those words rang through Angelo’s thoughts like a loud church bell. It had been a quote from some book called “War and Peace,” as spoken by a guy named Tacitus and went as follows: “He that fights and runs away, may turn and fight another day. But he that is in battle slain, will never rise to fight again.”

  There in lied the wisdom.

  If Angelo let Patrick Shea up to fight another day, then his retribution would be terrible. No, Marchetti had to send this bastard a message in the only language Patrick’s kind could understand.

  Angelo did not hesitate again.

  A hard kick from a sneaker heel found Patrick’s nose. There was a loud crunch of bone followed by a gush of blood from both nostrils. Patrick gave a shrill anguished cry. The Mount Hope Bully fell backward onto the pavement, where Angelo wasted no time in taking advantage of the situation. Marchetti jumped on Patrick’s stomach, to which Patrick wheezed and choked on the blood that now ran down the back of his throat in generous streams. Angelo straddled the injured boy’s shoulders with his knees, pinning his victim to the ground in an extremely vicarious position. Patrick could see what was going to happen next, but he was in too much pain to throw Angelo off. Any other day it would’ve been laughable, that a hundred pound kid could pin down someone as big and strapping as Patrick Shea.

  But today was a day of reckonings.

  Angelo stared down on Patrick with eyes that seemed detached from reason.

  Was this what it was like to murder someone?

  It was horrific, but as terrible as this situation was, it was nonetheless better to give than to receive. Angelo hauled back and let those hands loaded down with wrapped change do their sinister work. Blow after blow tenderized Patrick’s face until it was nothing but a bloody pulp of eyes that had swelled shut, a nose that had been shoved over to one side and a muted grin of yellowish broken teeth. Angelo tried to stop the pounding, but found he couldn’t. This was his one chance to make sure that Shea got the message, and to do that, Angelo would have to drive Patrick close to death’s doorstep.

  But when would that be?

  How much could Patrick take before he actually died?

  Thankfully, Angelo never found out, because before he knew it a group of hands hauled him off of Patrick Shea and pulled him back into the crowd.

  It was utter chaos.

  There were celebratory pats on the back, congratulations given, criticisms that he’d gone too far and even a few kisses offered from some girls. Through it all, Angelo never once let his eyes leave Patrick Shea’s fallen body. He kept expecting the Mount Hope Bully to rise like a giant and come barreling down on him, eyes shut, face a slather of wet blood, broken teeth wrapped around a screech of I’m going to kill you Angela! But Patrick never moved, save to breathe.

  At least he did that much.

  Everything felt tilted, as if Angelo had injected a tainted narcotic and had taken a bad trip. The approval of the mob felt electric, their crazed energy hardwired into his thoughts which only fueled that low grade dope like a breeze stoked a flame. Any worries over what consequences might befall Angelo for these actions were lost to the intensity of his victory. A strong division threatened to unhinge his mind. Regret, validation, fear, courage, an entire gambit of emotions exploded along the synaptic fibers of his brain. If this was what warriors called glory, then he could understand why some men craved it. It was exhilarating, an endorphin rush and deeply empowering, as if you’d looked God himself in the face and the Almighty had embraced you into a bosom of gold plated armor.

  In the background the Mount Hope buzzer signaled recess had concluded and its dull flat noise sobered Angelo enough to remember something else Vincent had instructed him to do. Without thinking, the boy with the cut up knuckles tore both rolls of dimes open and tossed them into the crowd. Little did he know what such an action signified, but as Vincent would someday show him it was always best to dump your weapon at the crime scene.

  Meanwhile, the other kids scrambled to scoop up the loose change, and as they did, Angelo used the distraction to slip back into Mount Hope to tend to his bloody knuckles and his frazzled nerves.

  (11)

  Patrick had spent several days in hospital, enough time to set a nose bone, stitch up a couple deep wounds and perform a few medical tests. Brain scans mostly, checking to see if Patrick had one if you asked Angelo. But now the Mount Hope Bully was back, and trudging through the hallways like a humble monk who had found religion. Of course there had been a battery of questions about what had happened, but no one had said anything to anyone.

  What happened on the playground stayed on the playground.

  The guardians of Mount Hope had taken it upon themselves to expose this little conspiracy of silence in order to punish the culprit, or culprits who were responsible for maiming poor Patrick in such an unforgivable way. But as to date those government appointed guardians had discovered nothing. A strict curfew along with a loss of en
tertainment privileges still hadn’t been enough to loosen the orphans tongues. The kids kept quiet, rode out the inquiry until it had eventually blown over. Even Patrick had kept his mouth shut, said he’d been jumped from behind and hadn’t gotten a look at who’d done it. But just why he’d done that was anyone’s guess. Only Patrick could answer that question as to why he hadn’t sold Marchetti out to the authorities. Perhaps that silence had to do with the embarrassment of being thrashed so badly by a much smaller opponent, or maybe it was because Patrick had learned in reform school that snitches did more than toss the salad, they tasted the shiv. Whatever Patrick’s motivation, it suited Angelo just fine. Sure, Marchetti had harbored concerns that Patrick might seek revenge, but after an incident in the locker room bathroom, Angelo had laid those worries to rest.

  (12)

  The episode had been brief, but telling: Patrick Shea taking a piss in the bathroom urinal, when in walks Angelo.

  They both made eye contact at the exact same second.

  Patrick had casually glanced over his shoulder and had caught sight of Marchetti. Patrick immediately stopped pissing and zipped up so quick that he almost circumcised his foreskin. Angelo regarded the Mont Hope Bully with genuine surprise and braced for some form of immediate reprisal. They were completely alone, two archenemies who had spilt each other’s blood, eyes locked across twenty feet of aqua marine ceramic tile. It kind of felt like a quick draw showdown, two gunslingers who had unsettled business to hash over and issue that involved ten bucks in shiny rolled dimes.

  Unfortunately, Angelo didn’t have so much as a nickel in his pocket, and at the moment he couldn’t help but see just how much of an oversight that lack of preparation could be.

  What was the saying: hope for peace, but prepare for war?

  Whatever the idiom, there was no denying that Angelo was ill-equipped for combat. He was vulnerable and if Patrick Shea wanted to even the score, then there would be little Marchetti could do to stop it.

  Patrick stepped away from the urinal stall and stared at Angelo with a blank expression. Stitches crossed Patrick’s forehead, chin, and eyebrow which kind of made him look like a lackluster Frankenstein. A dim hue atop Shea’s cheekbones showed the fading remnants of two black eyes. Patrick continued to look beaten, but on the mend nonetheless.

  Again, one of Vincent’s teachings came to mind, something the Bear had learned on the street during his “car theft phase” as he liked to call it. Poker was more than a game, it was a philosophical approach to life. Sometimes chess served as an excellent metaphor, in political affairs mostly, but in the cruel landscape of angry junkyard dogs, poker was the currency everyone recognized. Its rules were simple, yet complicated, a game of discipline whose complex art was built on subtleties. In poker you learned to read people, to anticipate their bluff or the strength of their hand. Observation was a gift you cultivated over time through experience. Then there was the other side, the not being read aspect of the game, or misleading your opponent into thinking you had one thing, when in fact you had something completely different: the bluff.

  At present, Angelo had the upper hand thanks to their last battle and ten bucks in rolled change. If Angelo tucked tail and ran now, that power would shift back into Patrick’s favor once more, and that was not the place Angelo wanted it to be. If Angelo was to uphold the leverage of that victory, then he would have to maintain momentum.

  Vincent’s words spoke: “If that Patrick bastard comes back after you, then you raise the ante. If he throws a fist, then you swing a bat, if he draws a knife, then you pull out a gun. That’s the only language these idiots understand Little Capone. Eat or be eaten. And never ever let them see you sweat. If they smell blood in the water, then that moron’s gonna take a bite, bet on it.”

  Angelo slowly let his right hand move toward his back pocket, his eyes narrowing into what would become their trademark expression someday. Those sharp gray eyes watched Patrick with unusual cunning and with that weird glint which Patrick had come to loathe and fear.

  Patrick swallowed, his brown lackluster eyes growing wide, and that’s when Angelo knew he had him. Angelo paused, kept his hand hidden behind his back as if he held something dangerous.

  “I’m a minor Patrick,” Angelo said with surprisingly little emotion, which made him sound even more vicious. “If I carve you up, nothing major is going to happen to me. Capisce?”

  Patrick didn’t reply, he just stared on with complete shock.

  “You’ll be dead, and I’ll get out in a few years, and then when I’m out, I’ll drop by to piss on your grave, capisce?”

  This time Patrick nodded.

  “Hell, I might even take a crap if it’s a nice day,” Angelo smiled, showing his enemy that he was not afraid and more than just a little bit crazy.

  “I’m sorry,” Patrick apologized in a voice that cracked and wavered. “They’re transferring me out next week…I’ll be gone for good, Angelo…swear it…just leave me alone…please!”

  Would Angelo let Patrick go?

  Of course he would. Hell, he’d pack Patrick’s suitcase and pay the cab fare if it meant Shea left Mount Hope.

  Angelo let his hand slide forward until it rested easily beside his waist. “I don’t want to see you between now and then. Capisce?”

  Patrick nodded, rushed past Angelo and out the door where he wasted no time hightailing it back to his dormitory room. Later, Patrick would claim to have come down with a virus and spend the last remaining days at Mount Hope in bed out of sight, but never out of mind.

  It was the last time Angelo ever saw the Mount Hope Bully.

  (13)

  On Angelo’s fourteenth birthday he had gotten big news.

  An older couple in their mid-fifties by the name of Joseph and Helen Montgomery had decided to adopt Angelo. True, Angelo had gone through all the usual polite interviews over the years, but nothing had ever come of them. Time and again he’d been passed over in preference of a younger child. Newborns were the hot commodity. No one wanted a grown kid, especially a teenager. Couples wanted a child that they could shape in their image, and the best way to do that was to nab a toddler while they were still in training pants. But here, despite the odds, Angelo Marchetti had finally won the litter pool, and as a result, he didn’t know exactly how to feel.

  Every kid in Mount Hope had the dream that a wealthy family would come lay claim to them and whisk them away to a better life where love was just as plentiful as the provisions. Angelo didn’t know about the Montgomery’s love, but as far as acquisitions went, he’d hit the jackpot big time.

  The Montgomerys were both influential doctors with money to burn. Helen was a world class neurosurgeon, and Joseph a high end plastic surgeon to the social Elite. Both had been featured many times in numerous medical journals and had even once attended a formal dinner with the Queen of England. No, they hadn’t sat at the same table, but they nonetheless had broken bread inside the same room. Needless to say the Montgomerys rubbed elbows with money and power, and here Angelo Marchetti was being inducted into their prestigious clan. He should’ve been doing back flips over his good fortune, but instead he couldn’t help but think of Uncle Vincent.

  They had grown close over the past few years, close enough that the term “family” was more than just a word or a moral obligation, it was something you’d willingly lay your life down for. Angelo loved Vincent dearly, and knew the big goon with the slightly punch drunk mannerism felt the same way about him, too. They were best friends, and here these rich do-goods were threatening to break that family up.

  The Montgomerys lived four hundred miles away, and if Angelo went to live with them, he and Vincent would fall out of touch. It wasn’t as if Angelo would forget Vincent, it was just that Vincent really wasn’t an internet chat or email type of guy. Vince didn’t write ditzy letters and hang off the phone for hours at a time shooting the breeze with people, he was an “in the flesh” kind of guy. Deals were done with a hand
shake, payments were cash, friends hung out in the usual spots on a daily basis, and family lived and died in the neighborhood.

  Four hundred miles just wouldn’t cut it with the Bear, not by a long shot.

  But then what choice did Vincent have?

  Of course Vincent had said he’d understood, that it would be an amazing opportunity for Angelo, but still, there was something cold about Vincent after hearing the news. An emotional detachment that had unnerved Angelo in a way he never thought possible, and the kid knew what it was. For the first time Angelo had seen the cold blooded killer within his uncle’s dark eyes, and it had sent a shudder through the kid. Angelo had tried to put it out of his mind as best he could, but some things in life had a tendency to linger.

  Just like that unfortunate business with the Montgomerys shortly thereafter.

  Fate as it turned out had a nasty sense of humor, and as far as that rare adoption of Angelo’s went, fate had told the kid one hell of a real knee-slapper.

  (14)

  The signed adoption papers sat on Mount Hope’s Senior Administrator, Edgar Cornwall’s desk. The man with the small round spectacles regarded Angelo with pale eyes that were not without their share of pity. It was a look that Angelo had come to despise, the “poor little orphan” gaze that so many people often expressed when they heard of his unfortunate circumstances. That look seemed so damn condescending, and as a result the boy in the leather bound chair had to concentrate on not getting angry. Fortunately, he had bigger things on his mind, issues that distracted his attention easily from the well-meaning attentions of Edgar Cornwall.

  Angelo hadn’t had much interaction with Edgar over the years, just those usual social pleasantries like the occasional nod and faint smile as they passed each other in the hallways. For the most part they lived separate lives. After all, Angelo’s existence for the most part was spent within Mount Hope’s bricked walls, where as Cornwall’s exposure was limited to a fancy office from nine to five, Monday to Friday where he played provisional warden and institutional father figurehead. Still, Edgar had put forth a genuine effort with the kids, like committing their names to memory and working to secure the best resources available for their future. But as with anything people had a tendency to dwell on a person’s negative attributes, rather than their successes. With Edgar it had been a pile of stupid things: poor posture, shoes that squeaked, the poor lay of his comb over, trivial details that kids just loved to nitpick. But at this moment, Angelo couldn’t recall a single one of this man’s failings, the kid just kept staring at the government issue document with eyes that were lost for an appropriate emotion.

  “I’m so sorry, Angelo,” Edgar offered. “I know you hardly knew the Montgomerys, and I can only imagine how you must feel right now.”

  Angelo let his attention find Edgar’s wrinkled, but otherwise pleasant face. “Thank you.”

  Edgar sighed, folded his well manicured hands together and continued to offer condolences. “It’s such a waste. They were wonderful people. They would’ve given you a good home, I’m sure. Maybe…” Edgar was going to say something stupid like perhaps another rich couple might come along and adopt Angelo, but the government suit stopped short of tasting that particular foot inside his mouth. To make such a statement would not only be an insult to his, but to the boy’s intelligence as well. “Well, you still have us.”

  Angelo understood that sentiment, but the words still felt like a kick in the nuts. Angelo wanted to assure Mr. Cornwall that he did indeed have more options, that he was loved by Uncle Vincent, but caught that poorly spoken wisdom before it flew off his tongue. There was no need to complicate this issue with details that involved a former mafia hitman.

  “Yes,” Angelo nodded. “I know.”

  “Perhaps we could arrange a special treat for you,” Edgar proposed.

  It sounded like a lousy second place consolation prize, perhaps a small plastic trophy that couldn’t even hold a decent shot of hooch.

  “We received a donation recently,” Edgar explained in a tone that sounded hushed, as if he were speaking a great secret. “It’s supposed to be a birthday present or Christmas gift, but I don’t see the harm in letting you have it. We’ve been quite blessed this year in our fund raising efforts and public contributions.” Edgar gave an insider’s wink as he opened the top drawer of his oak desk and withdrew a palm computer. “Here you go my boy. I hope it’s to your liking.”

  Angelo reached over and took possession of the portable device. Angelo didn’t have the heart to tell Edgar that Vincent had bought him three of these things over the past year, and the worst of that lot was still better than this low end model.

  Angelo was right: it was a lousy consolation prize.

  “Thanks,” Angelo said politely, although his tone was anything but enthusiastic.

  Why was that?

  Wasn’t he glad that the choice to go with the Montgomerys had been settled by fate?

  Didn’t he want to stay with Uncle Vincent?

  Angelo felt confused and couldn’t understand why.

  Edgar pursed his lips and frowned. There was little else he could do for the boy. The kid had been screwed over and no trinket or words of wisdom would fix that. Time was what Angelo needed now, and hopefully that slow medicine would weave its practical magic on his wounds sooner than later if God willed it.

  As Angelo stood from his chair and walked towards the office door, Edgar offered up one last bit of solace. “You still have family here, Angelo…you do know that don’t you?”

  Angelo squeezed the palm computer within in his hand and nodded. “Yes sir…I most certainly do.”

  (15)

  Angelo laid awake in bed, his palm computer lighting up the room with a dim olive glow. The LCD screen displayed a web page that provided macabre details that surrounded the mortal demise of Doctors Helen and Joseph Montgomery. The print explained that the couple had died on impact after careening down a steep embankment and into a snarl of trees, victims of an apparent accident, although no exact cause for the crash was given and so the matter was subject to an ongoing investigation.

  Ongoing investigation.

  The words whispered inside Anglo’s mind, making it difficult for him to bundle down into a restful sleep.

  Why was the matter ongoing?

  What were the authorities hoping to find?

  Vincent’s eyes kept coming to mind, the way they had taken the news of Angelo’s adoption. Angelo laid the palm computer down and stared into the darkness. He felt cold, nervous, as if perhaps he had taken part in the Montgomery’s untimely fate. But then that was crazy. After all, what had he done to them? Nothing, that’s what. However, there was a seed of doubt inside his heart, small, but tenacious nonetheless.

  Had Vincent whacked the Montgomerys?

  Angelo twisted his head deeper into the pillow as if to grind the question out of his mind, but it was no use. The eggs were already inside the cake.

  Ongoing investigation.

  Angelo recalled the meeting earlier with Edgar Cornwall, and couldn’t help but surmise that the senior administrator must’ve known about Angelo’s uncle. No doubt there was a document on Edgar’s laptop computer or tucked away inside one of his office filing cabinets that listed the orphans’ family lineage, both living and dead. Vincent’s name had to be in there, and Edgar Cornwall in all likelihood had seen it. Still, the kindly old gent hadn’t mentioned a single word that acknowledged Vincent had even existed.

  And why?

  Because Vincent Marchetti wasn’t just bad people, he was a convicted felon. No responsible adult would point a child’s attention in that dark direction, especially if that kid happened to be alone in the world. The promise of family could be a strong pull to an orphan, and Edgar Cornwall along with Mount Hope’s faculty understood that Vincent Marchetti had the destructive potential to pull the boy into a sinister world that was comparable to a spiritual black hole. But if Edgar discovered that Ang
elo not only knew of Vincent, but visited with him frequently, then that might push the situation with the Montgomerys in an entirely different direction, namely into a criminal investigation.

  And there it was again, the questioning, the uncertainty and the coincidence.

  Had Vincent taken the Montgomerys out of the picture?

  Angelo pulled the covers over his head and tried to escape into a gentler world of dreams, but sleep was elusive. If only he had kicked up a stink, defied the adoption procedures, then perhaps the Montgomerys would still be alive today. In that sense, he felt every bit as much a killer as dear Uncle Vincent, because Angelo had seen into those soulless eyes when they’d been given the adoption news, and still the kid had done nothing to thwart the Montgomerys’ ill-placed efforts.

  The darkness of the small dorm room closed in while doubt continued to turn Angelo’s stomach and gnaw upon his bones.

  Had Vincent done something unspeakable to the Montgomerys?

  The question tortured Angelo’s conscience, implicated him by association.

  Had there been a choice that could’ve changed the outcome?

  The memory of his uncle’s cold killer eyes insinuated the potential for foul play, but that didn’t stop Angelo’s heart from begging for it to be otherwise. To Angelo, Vincent was the salt of the earth, a big goofy, but lovable goon. And hadn’t that big goof told Angelo that he didn’t murder people anymore?

  Actually no, he hadn’t.

  What he’d really said was that he “hadn’t killed anybody who didn’t have it coming.” But that didn’t mean the mafia slaughterhouse was still open for business. Far from it. What it meant was what it said, nothing more. To read things into it was not only paranoid, but disrespectful to a stand up guy who had gone out of the way for his nephew.

  Was this how Angelo rewarded such acts: with suspicion and persecution?

  Yes, Vincent may’ve hung out with a rough crowd, but that didn’t mean he was fitting folks with cement footwear either, it just meant---

  ---it just meant that Angelo had been lying to himself.

  Truth told, there was a damn good reason why Angelo had wanted to go off and live with the Montgomerys, reason enough to turn his back on Uncle Vincent. And as hard as he tried to deny it, he couldn’t, because that small gloomy room behind the metal door said things to the contrary.

  (16)

  Sunlight poured in through the apartment skylight and filled the large brick wall room with a crisp natural glow. It was late afternoon, one week before Christmas. Vincent had business uptown and wouldn’t be back until late tonight, so Angelo had the run of the place. Angelo had just finished watching a movie, a flick about a pharmacist named Galan Whicker who had an entire small town addicted to a supernatural prescription. It wasn’t exactly an Oscar worthy film, but nonetheless entertaining, the sort of fiction you’d compare to an ice cold beer with a greasy slice of pizza: sinful mindless pleasure.

  Angelo sat up slowly upon the coach where he had been sprawled out on for the past two hours. His sock feet slapped down onto the hardwood floor. It was quiet, no sirens or traffic to be heard, a welcomed rarity. Weekends were spent at the apartment. This reprieve from Mount Hope was usually accomplished by means of a clever lie which involved the cooperation of one of Vincent’s regular squeezes, a bartender stripper named Tracy Malone. Tracy had a daughter named Tina. Tina was Angelo’s age, so the story told to Mount Hope’s administration involved a fictitious chaperoned sleepover so that Angelo could be close to his special friend. Of course Tracy had signed all the necessary papers of legal responsibility and answered Mount Hope’s random phone calls to check on Angelo’s status, but in the end the nonsense was well worth it, because it freed Angelo up to spend more time with Uncle Vincent.

  Dumb bitch had been the words Vincent had used to describe Tracy often. Apparently her best quality involved the ability to suck a golf ball through a garden house as well as slip a condom onto a dick with just her mouth. (Vincent had joked that if Angelo were ever to meet such a woman, then he should marry her, va-voom!) As for Angelo, he liked Tracy well-enough, not because she had helped with his weekend getaways, but because she was always upbeat. Of course most of that joy stemmed from the cocaine Uncle Vincent fed her on a regular basis, chemical bliss she inhaled a gram at a time, but still she was never lost for a kind word or a smile.

  She was a hardcore junkie with the hard luck lines circling her otherwise sharp blue eyes and pouty mouth. But when she caked on the makeup and teased up her curly blond peroxide she was quite the head-turner. Firm ass, tiny waist, big tits, low IQ, no self esteem and a heart of gold made for easy exploitation. She was a walking talking bull’s eye, the kind of dame that attracted abusive boyfriends and yes, guys that would feed her dope until she finally began to really look her age. On that day she would finally be out on the street with no education and no marketable skill-set, that’s unless you counted being able to suck a golf ball through a garden hose, as well as slip a coat of latex over a Johnson rod with just her mouth a skill-set. Then there was the possibility that she could just overdose. It would sure save a heck of a lot of time. Besides, women like Tracy usually showed up on a morgue slab with a mile of train tracks running down the length of their forearms, needle scars that invariably led to their final destination. That didn’t make it right, but it sure as hell made sense, because when you courted the lifestyle you also inherited the baggage.

  It bothered Angelo to see Vincent use Tracy in such an unhealthy way, but then he supposed that street ran in both directions. After all, Vincent was paying out good hard cash to keep up with Tracy’s habit, and not once had Angelo ever heard Tracy say she’d pay Vincent back for his trouble. They had a symbiotic relationship like a plover grooming a crocodiles teeth. Vincent provided blow and Tracy provided blow jobs. Although Angelo himself was in no position to pass judgment, because he too had sinned, and that transgression involved Tracy’s daughter, Tina.

  Tina was a cute girl, not gorgeous, but do-able as Angelo liked to put it. She had her mother’s shapely body, but her father’s pointy nose and big gum smile. Still, Angelo had had sex with her dozens of times. It wasn’t like they were boyfriend and girlfriend, they were just friends with benefits, although Angelo suspected Tina wanted more of a commitment. Angelo however, had always been distant when it came to getting close to others. It was a defense mechanism which protected him from being emotionally hurt. Angelo understood that life was fleeting and if you invested too much stock into any one person you could be left for broke if and when the market crashed. He could tell you that that kind of hurt went deeper than deep, it burrowed down into the very spiritual foundation of a person’s soul until everything that was built upon it thereafter was always provisional. Every decision made was based upon an inevitability that death would eventually claim that which Angelo coveted most: love.

  It was best to keep a distance, even from family like Uncle Vincent.

  Needless to say, if Tina wanted tenderness, she would have to get it from someone else, because as far as Angelo was concerned those who wore hearts on their sleeves bled the hardest. But none of that mattered at the moment, what did was that Angelo had the apartment to himself this afternoon, and that was a rare treat.

  Angelo stood from the couch and into a yawning stretch. Overhead, a cerulean blue sky deceived the eyes to how chilly it was outside. No snow had fallen as of yet, but the weather forecast had predicted a big dump within the next few days. Apparently it would be a white Christmas after all. Without premeditation, Angelo’s eyes fell upon the locked metal door that was deemed strictly off limits. He’d contemplated its mystery since the first day Uncle Vincent had forbade him entry. It kind of put him in mind of Eden’s forbidden tree of knowledge, of God’s decree that Adam and Eve could eat of every tree in the garden except from the tree of good and evil, for on that day they would surely die. The door had always represented a puzzle to Angelo, the missing piece that could pos
sibly explain his big galoot of an uncle once and for all.

  Everyone kept some little secret about themselves hidden, an impure thought or minor act of indecency that served more as a social embarrassment than a spiritual condemnation. But as for Vincent, his secrets were so big that they rattled like a skeleton’s bones inside a closet, a closet which just so happened to have a fireproof metal door. Behind that door surely an interesting answer must lie, but Angelo had given his word that he would never go inside that forbidden room. But this afternoon as he stared at the flat gray surface that was basked within the clear wash of midday sun, he contemplated the unthinkable.

  Angelo moved across the living room and stood before the door, examining its dull smooth surface with eyes that were analytical and calculating. The itch to pick the lock was damn strong, ran deep into the bone. The only way to scratch it would be to find out what mystery lurked behind Vincent’s vault of the unknown. But how could he compromise such a formidable barrier without leaving any evidence of tampering?

  If only he had the key.

  Over the past year, Angelo had become something of a thief. It wasn’t like he needed the money, (Vincent was quite generous when it came to handing out cash to his nephew,) it was just a crazy way of showing his beloved uncle how alike they were. After all, Vincent used to hotwire cars when he was sixteen and then drive them to a neighborhood chop shop, so when Angelo stole, in a way he was paying homage to the Marchetti family tradition, and although Vincent had voiced his objection to such actions, Angelo had nonetheless seen the pride light up inside his uncle’s dark eyes. But five finger discounting gold watches and popping car locks to lift a few stereos was one thing, cracking a door that was built like a bank safe was something else. Perhaps if he had a cutting torch and a stick of dynamite he could blow it down, but then that would leave one hell of a mess and invite Uncle Vincent’s terrible wrath.

  It soon dawned on Angelo that he’d been overanalyzing the situation, and when he realized that, he couldn’t help but crook a clever grin.

  (17)

  The upstairs loft had three bedrooms: Vincent’s, Angelo’s, and a spare guest room. Angelo had only been in Vincent’s bedroom twice. Once when the big galoot had overslept, (a bad hangover had been the culprit that morning,) and the second time had been to sneak a condom when Tina had unexpectedly shown up one morning for a quickie. Both times had been brief visits, but in each instance Angelo had noticed one thing in particular: a black metal cash box on a table beside the dresser. On several occasions when Angelo had been in the hallway he had heard Vincent fiddling with the box. The sound always began with keys jingling, then the crunch of metal penetrating a lock and finally the soft yawn of hinges. Shortly thereafter, Vincent would always go downstairs when he thought Angelo wasn’t looking and open the metal door in the living room. But Angelo had been watching, and the kid had concluded that the key to Vincent’s mystery door must be kept inside the metal cash box.

  It was almost laughable really, a sturdy security door whose key was kept inside a flimsy flea market cash box for safety. Angelo felt it was like putting a back screen door on a bank vault: ridiculous. Still, if no one knew where the key was, then they’d have quite the scavenger hunt to find it, not that anyone aside from a burglar would look for it, and most likely that frantic search would involve too much effort. No, the key was probably in as good a place as any, and sometimes the best place to hide something truly was out in the open.

  Years from now that philosophy would actually save Angelo Marchetti’s life, but as for now it just felt like a simple practicality.

  Angelo lifted the cash box up off the table and examined it with eyes that had become quite adept at thievery over the past year. The box was weighted down with something heavy, probably a gun or maybe even a hand grenade---who knew. But what Angelo did know was that the lock mechanism would be an easy pick. The kind of job thieves called a candy. (As in taking candy from a baby.)

  The boy had come prepared, a thin sliver of metal he had purchased from a hardware store pressed skillfully between his thumb and forefinger. It was feeler gauge, flexible, strong and a bit thicker than a piece of paper. It was better than a credit card in the right hands and right now it was in a master’s. Angelo edged the gauge in between the thin crack of the cash box, wiggled it towards the lock, jiggled, twisted gently and a few seconds later the box sprang open.

  “Voila! Presto magnifico!” Angelo said upon successfully opening the box.

  The shim found Angelo’s back pocket, while the cash box found the table beside Vincent’s dresser once more. Marchetti had been correct on one assessment: the cash box did house a gun. Carefully, he lifted the firearm up and inspected it with curious fascination. It was beautiful, a brand new nickel plated Archer Howitzer automatic pistol with enough kick to drop a bear at twenty paces. Angelo had never seen this gun before, although he had held Vincent’s nine millimeter on many occasions when they’d gone shooting out in the country. Beer cans, pop bottles and the occasional animal had served as target practice on those days. At first, Angelo hadn’t wanted to shoot the critters, but Vincent insisted that the boy learn how to kill. He said that every man should know what it felt like to take a life, to remind them it was in our nature to do such things. He also stated how much he hated those bleeding heart liberals who’d buy a steak at the grocery store while at the same time condemn an act so barbaric as hunting. According to Vincent those idiots were hypocrites who deserved to be shot.

  Sometimes Angelo was frightened by Uncle Vincent’s views. They were extreme and the way Vince spoke of them with such passionate conviction was nothing short of unnerving to say the least. In the end, Angelo had obeyed Vincent and had killed dozens of squirrels, raccoons, porcupines, birds and even a coyote once, and the boy’s natural talent with the sidearm hadn’t gone unnoticed by the big goon. The kid wasn’t just accurate, but lightning fast, could reload quickly and calmly when pressed to do so. That took a certain type of person, what Vincent recognized as a potentially talented assassin. Although the big galoot had no intention of guiding his nephew in such a dark direction. Still, Vincent understood the need to be strong, that nature always defeated nurture no matter how well nurture presented its case to the jury. The world was a jungle, eat or be eaten, and Vincent would do everything in his power to see that his nephew was well-equipped to meet whatever nastiness life threw at him.

  Angel looked past the gun and noticed several other pieces of treasure inside the cash box: a pair of brass knuckles, a jet-blade knife, a few expensive rings, a small baggie of cocaine, and last but certainly not least, a key ring.

  Presto!

  Angelo replaced the Archer Howitzer, scooped up the keys and ran downstairs to the metal security door. This was it, the moment of truth. There were six keys in total on the ring. One looked as though it went to a pair of handcuffs, another to a bus locker, three resembled keys Angelo himself owned that went into the apartment front doors, and the last was a heavy double sided monster that was sculpted from stainless steel.

  Pay dirt!

  (18)

  The thick sturdy key slid into the metal door’s lock and turned easily.

  “Oh crap,” Angelo whispered. “What the hell am I doing?”

  A good question, after all this was a violation of Vincent’s trust, not to mention that once an oath had been broken, then no oath thereafter could ever be trusted. Angelo’s words would become the words of an accomplished liar and that was not how he perceived himself. It should’ve been a simple choice to walk away, but still he hesitated.

  Why was that?

  He wasn’t sure.

  A noble virtue such as honor was frequently tarnished by better men than Angelo. Circumstances had a terrible way of wearing a man down over time, and once that gracious asset became pitted by corruption, then never again would its armor shine so bright. Compromise claimed many a man’s nobility, but such negotiations always had their roots grounded in the
common good. Pragmatism twisted issues into practicalities, and that religion perverted ideology into political debate.

  Angelo shook his head, blinked and locked the door. He was over thinking the issue, but thinking in this case was definitely warranted. One might even say he was being pragmatic. You either honored your word or you didn’t, there was no in between. And as much as the curiosity tugged on his wits, Angelo had to retain that virtue. Yes, he may’ve been a thief, but there was still a line that he would not cross.

  “Boo!”

  Angelo turned so fast that he looked like a blur, and before he knew it he had Tina grabbed firmly by the throat with his fist drawn back to strike.

  “Jesus it’s me!” Tina screeched.

  Angelo relaxed his fist and released her. “Goddamn it, Tina! You scared the crud out of me!”

  Tina rubbed her neck and laughed nervously. “Dido.”

  That laugh helped to ease the tension and allowed Angelo the presence of mind to manufacture a smile.

  “You must’ve been some deep in thought not to hear me come in,” Tina said as she wrapped her arms around Angelo in a lover’s hug. “Did you forget I was coming over?”

  Of course he had. He’d been so preoccupied with the movie and now the security door, that she had completely slipped his mind. Angelo rolled his eyes and bowed his head apologetically. “I’m sorry Tina. I just…”

  “The front door was left open,” Tina said, motioning with her head.

  “The damn thing’s been locking on its own,” explained Angelo. “I threw the trash out the other day and accidentally got locked out myself. The landlord is supposed to fix it tomorrow.”

  “Oh,” Tina nodded. She then planted a big wet kiss upon Angelo’s receptive lips. “Well, I just let myself in. I hope you don’t mind?” Her hand dropped down to his crotch and massaged his manhood to which an immediate erection replied.

  “No,” Angelo smiled. “Not at all.”

  A few more French kisses and sexual petting easily disarmed the situation.

  “Mmmm,” Tina grinned. “Let’s go upstairs.”

  “Sure,” Angelo whispered and then offered another kiss.

  “You got any beer?”

  Angelo nodded. “Couple cans in the fridge.”

  “Good,” Tina giggled. “It’ll go good with this.” She removed a joint from her cleavage. “Let’s get stoned and shag all night.”

  “Nothing wrong with that,” Angelo replied with a sigh. “Wait here.”

  Inside the fridge sat twelve cans of cold brew: Vincent’s stash. Angelo quickly scooped up two beer and returned back to the living room.

  It was here that he found Tina deep inside the forbidden room.

  (19)

  Both cans fell out of Angelo’s hands and down onto the hardwood floor with a dull thud. “What are you doing?”

  Tina did not reply, her attention was too captivated by whatever she was seeing inside the room to notice Angelo.

  Vincent had once said that fate had a way of making up our minds for us. Without realizing it, Tina had done just that. Now, Angelo had no choice but to go inside that room. Sure, he could’ve asked Tina to come out, close the door and not tell him what she’d seen, but that would be impossible for her. Tina couldn’t keep a secret if her life depended on it. Her loose lips and pierced tongue would soon be blabbing on about everything she’d seen, and she wouldn’t let up until she’d gotten it all out of her system. Angelo would have to be that ear, not her mother, because if Tracy found out she might tell Vincent. Then everyone would be up crud’s creek without a roll of toilet paper.

  Reluctantly, Angelo stepped over the fallen beer cans and into the room, his oath not so much as broken as it was cracked.

  (20)

  The room was bigger than Angelo had imagined, large enough to park two cars within its cubed dimensions. The space was cool, dry and smelled of cement dust and something chemical, the mild aftertaste of a potent pesticide perhaps. A solitary fluorescent light buzzed from the ceiling which lit the smooth white concrete floor and walls up with an uncomfortable brightness. Gray metal stock shelves lined the walls, the kind you’d see in a pharmacy storage area, except these shelves didn’t hold prescription remedies for itchy hemorrhoids or flaky dandruff, these shelves held a huge arsenal of knives, guns, pipe bombs, ammunition and remote detonators. It was a survivalist’s wet dream, your one stop shopping needs if you had someone who absolutely positively just needed to be whacked.

  It was an overwhelming discovery, but still not enough to render someone deaf and speechless as it had with Tina. No, the thing that had done that sat in a corner on a short wooden crate of dynamite.

  Angelo stepped past Tina, who remained open mouthed and quite incapacitated by what she’d seen. He thought to shake her senses back into her head, but instead focused his keen eyes on the source of her distress.

  (21)

  Translucent plastic had been wrapped loosely around the bulky remains of a stale cadaver. It had not yet begun to rot, but it had begun to stink. It then dawned on Angelo that this dead body was the source of that chemical like odor, its pasty white skin not quite yet a soft mildew film, perhaps in a few more days it would start to exhibit graveyard wax, but as for now it was solid enough.

  Surprisingly, Angelo’s heart did not race nor was he truly surprised. A voice inside his head said that this was to be expected, that someday something like this was bound to happen. It was apparent that Vincent Marchetti was still very much in the whacking game, and this victim was in temporary storage until Vincent got round to throwing out the trash.

  “Son of a bitch,” Angelo muttered, more pissed off than frightened. After all, Uncle Vincent was supposed to be on the straight and narrow these days, not feeding the fish with people. Angelo clenched his teeth and balled his hand up into a fist. If Vincent were to walk through the door right now, Angelo would’ve popped him right in the nose. How dare he do this, let alone leave Angelo in the apartment with a dead body.

  What the hell was the crazy mother thinking?

  Maybe Vincent and Tracy had been snorting the kind of low grade blow that rotted your brains. What other explanation could there be?

  Just then Tina began to scream.

  It was a good scream too, the kind that made your eardrums bleed on the utter shrillness. Angelo turned, grabbed hold of her, covered her mouth, dragged her out into the living room and wrestled Tina onto the coach where he threw her down and laid on top of her.

  “Tina…Tina…” Angelo hushed in a subdued but anxious tone. “Shut up! The last thing we need right now are the cops coming in here, okay.”

  Tina settled, let her wide wild eyes study the handsome features of Angelo’s face. She could see that he was upset too, that he had no idea the body had been in there, but she could also see that he understood the seriousness of the situation, even better than she did. Tina nodded once to show that she would keep silent, at least for now.

  “Look,” Angelo said as he climbed off her and sat before her on the coffee table. “We can’t tell anyone about this. Capisce?”

  “What’s going on, Angelo?” She was surprised that she could find her voice, let alone that it would sound so steady.

  “I don’t know,” Angelo shrugged. “But I do know this: if Vincent finds out we went in there…that we found that body…then we’re going to end up on a milk carton.”

  Tina shuddered, drew in a sharp breath and for a second Angelo thought she might actually scream again.

  “You’ve got to keep this secret, Tina. I’m not kidding, this is big time. Do you hear me?”

  Tina looked past Angelo towards the door, to which Angelo grabbed her by the chin and directed her stare into his eyes. “Do you hear me Tina? Not a word to the cops, your mother, or in your prayers if you say them. Capisce?”

  Tina swallowed hard, almost began to cry and then nodded quickly. “Not a…a word.”

  Angelo put his face into his hands
and sighed heavily. “Why the hell did you have to go in there?”

  “Curious,” Tina whispered, as if that were an appropriate excuse.

  Angelo regarded her with an expression that almost looked amused. “Yeah, well we all know what curiosity did to the cat, don’t we?”

  “Who…is that?” Tina said as she pointed a shaky finger toward the room.

  Angelo glanced back at the door and then shook his head. “I don’t know, but what I do know is that the poor bastard probably had it coming.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Angelo could hear Vincent’s words inside his head: I’ve never killed anyone who didn’t have it coming Little Capone.

  “Look, we can’t stay here tonight…not with that body in there,” Angelo said.

  “We can go back to my place, if you’d like.”

  “No,” Angelo replied.

  Angelo suspected Tina would look too spooked for the next little while. Even if her mother was stoned out of her head most of the time, she’d still see that fear inside her daughter’s eyes. No, they had to go somewhere else for a while.

  “A motel,” Angelo said “We can chill out up the street at the Bell Water.”

  Tina nodded, almost broke into tears again, but shook it off. “Okay, we’ll crash there tonight. But what are you going to do about that…guy?”

  Angelo stood, faced the metal door, placed hands on hips and let a flurry of expletives fly. He couldn’t believe this was happening, couldn’t believe that he’d been so naïve to think that Uncle Vincent had changed his ways.

  How gullible had he been?

  Angelo thought to go back inside the room and check on the roll of plastic. A part of him debated the evidence, said that perhaps they’d seen it wrong, that maybe it was a manikin or a Halloween prop, one that could hop up without notice and shout boo or maybe even va-voom. But that stale smell said better. It said whoever sat on top of that crate of dynamite had once been a living breathing human being, and regardless if they’d been shot, stabbed, strangled, drowned, or bored to death, it didn’t change the fact that they’d been murdered.

  What was he to do?

  The door was relocked and its key replaced back upstairs.

  Angelo and Tina vacated the premises as quick as they could for a seedy motel where the management had no reservations about renting a room to a fourteen year old kid and his girlfriend.

  (22)

  That had been the crux of the situation, the reason why Angelo had wanted not only a change of venue, but lifestyle. The body inside the forbidden room bothered him deeply, and what made it worse was the not knowing, the active imagination that filled in the nasty details of how that cadaver in rolled plastic had come to be there.

  Did they deserve it?

  There was no resolution.

  The incursion into the room had been kept from Uncle Vincent successfully. Even Tina hadn’t breathed a word of it to anyone, she never even spoke of it with Angelo. Unfortunately, she had stopped coming over to visit and had ended their intimate liaisons shortly thereafter.

  Angelo couldn’t blame her.

  Tina wanted out of the scene and so too did Angelo. But it was different for him, Angelo was bound by blood and one didn’t turn their back on family without a damn good reason. Murder, when you were a Marchetti was insufficient grounds for separation, especially when you were well-aware that your kin had a prior history of criminal assassination. But then there was that legal loop hole, a technicality which courted a strange sort of moral ambiguity: adoption.

  Angelo was an orphan, and as such could be optioned off to potential couples who sought to expand their bloodline. It was the law, and moreover it was Angelo’s only ticket out of the dark shadow of Vincent Marchetti. Still, he had felt guilty, because the Vincent Angelo knew was a kind, funny and friendly type of guy. Sadly there just happened to be that other side of him, the fractured split in his personality that killed people for money.

  I’ve never killed anyone who never had it coming Little Capone.

  Miraculously, Angelo had been given a way out: the Montgomerys. But now they were dead, and the official report warranted an ongoing investigation. That always indicated suspicious circumstances, and if the crown could establish motive, then the bloodhounds would be set loose. There’d be a manhunt and it wouldn’t take a rocket scientist to see the connection. Here, the Montgomerys were about to adopt a boy who just happened to be related to a “former” mafia hitman, and now those good people were dead under suspicious circumstances.

  Do the math.

  How terrible would that be if Angelo had to take the stand and testify against an uncle he had come to love. Fortunately that day had never come, the Montgomerys’ deaths had eventually been deemed a mechanical failure, so Vincent never went to jail, and as for Angelo, things went on as they always had, at least until he turned sixteen.

  (23)

  Florence and Aiden Tyler were their names, two poster children for gamblers anonymous. The Tylers owed the Silver Fox Casino a bundle, so much in fact that there was no chance in hell that they could ever hope to pay it back.

  Chuck Tollo was the Fox’s sole proprietor. Tollo had a gentleman’s contract with Romulus in regards to casino security: debt collection and some other side ventures for a certain percentage of casino take.

  That’s where Vincent came into the picture.

  Vincent handled not only debt collection, but other miscellaneous issues, and as for those other issues, tonight they involved Florence and Aiden Tyler and a shallow grave in the wilderness.

  The couple had been bound and gagged, stuffed into the caddy’s trunk and trucked fifty miles outside of town to a spot Vincent affectionately referred to as “Marchetti Meadows.” Many a dead beat gambler and rival family faction member had been laid to rest within the harsh soil of Marchetti Meadows. Some shot, others strangled, some stabbed, hell, even one guy had been skinned alive. Now that took real sand to do something like that, but damn if that miserable prick didn’t have it coming, at least according to Vincent he had.

  But as for Florence and Aiden, Vincent wasn’t so sure.

  And the reason for that change of heart had to do with something he never thought possible: a young boy’s love.

  Angelo had become like a son to Vincent over the years, and as a result the big goon with the face like a catcher’s mitt had come to value life in a way he hadn’t before. It was hard to be a cold blooded killer when you were concerned about things like if you had left enough food in the fridge for Angelo to eat, and did Angelo remember to wear his jacket because it had been chilly lately, and was Angelo getting sick because he’d coughed a few times this morning. The list of stupid worries went on until Vincent was faced with the sudden realization that he wasn’t just a murdering son of a bitch, but also a concerned parent.

  Where did he draw the line?

  Somewhere between the day Vincent had first seen Angelo on the playground and the other day when he had dropped him off at school, Vincent Marchetti had gotten soft. And in a harsh mafia business such as his, that kind of weakness was akin to disaster.

  (24)

  Florence and Aiden had been dragged out of the trunk and knelt down before a three foot deep hole that would serve as their bed of sorrow until the end of time. Tears stood in their eyes, pleas for mercy muffled behind rags sealed over with strips of duct tape, ropes cutting into their lanky wrists and ankles.

  Neither Tyler was in peak physical condition: die hard smokers who drank more booze than they did water and ate more take out than they did home cooked meals and they had the potbellies to prove it. Not that any of that mattered at the moment, because they were hyped up on adrenaline, and most of their aches and pains were like screams heard from the distant end of a long tunnel. They were big time losers, gamblers who’d bet the farm that they were about to die from a bullet to the back of the head. Fate sometimes had a funny way of twisting events into bizarre
outcomes that you would never have bet on, so on that previous wager, the Tylers would have both lost yet another pot again.

  (25)

  Vincent paced behind the Tylers, inspired by a crazy idea that had him weighing a critical decision. Mathematical numbers crunched inside his head, figures that calculated money owed against time served. In two more years, Angelo would be eighteen years old and legally an adult. Then he would be free to walk out of Mount Hope forever. As for the two bozos that knelt on the ground, they owed forty three thousand dollars to Chuck Tollo’s Silver Fox Casino, and would be dead in a few more minutes if Vincent couldn’t figure this situation out realistically.

  The question was: how bad did Vincent want Angelo out of Mount Hope Orphanage?

  Forty three thousand dollars worth?

  True, the Bear did have a bunch of cash saved up, a cool million in Grand Cayman, a quarter mill in Switzerland, five hundred grand in various holding companies located on the Island of Mann, not to mention a hundred and fifteen thousand on credit with the Silver Fox Casino. If Vincent used that credit against these idiots debt to Tollo, then he could blackmail the couple into helping him out with Angelo. Of course they would never be able to walk into the Fox or any of its subsidiaries ever again, but that was okay with Vincent, because he didn’t need their continued business, he just needed their compliance.

  An Archer Howitzer tapped on Vincent’s sturdy thigh anxiously as he drew back the bolt. At the sound of this noise, Flo and Aiden replied with an even greater degree of protest. Death was close now, literally at their heels with a finger poised on the trigger.

  How had it come to this, a shallow grave dug in the middle of nowhere?

  Debt, plain and simple, too much money in arrears with one of the most corrupt gaming houses on the coast and no way in which to pay it back. Someone had obviously decided to call in the loan, and that person wanted the bill paid for in blood. It would serve as a lesson to all the other deadbeats that if you owed the Fox, then you sure as hell had better pay up.

  Another noise came from behind, this time a soft snap followed by a series of low computerized tones. It was a cell phone being dialed, and the voice that spoke into it had asked to speak to Chuck Tollo. The man and woman who knelt on the ground listened intently, aware that their lives depended on what would be said next.

  The Tylers felt like condemned convicts waiting a stay of execution.

  There was a brief pause, followed by a loud animated conversation. Expletives roared and colored most of the dialogue with veiled threats and warnings that insinuated dire consequences if the big goon with the nickel plated Archer Howitzer didn’t get what he wanted. After all, he worked for Romulus, not Tollo, and if the goon said Tollo was holding back, then Romulus would believe it. Shortly after that bomb had been dropped the angry tone of the conversation died down to a more civilized medium in which specific dollar values were logically discussed, and an item simply referred to as the “trash” was promised to be dealt with sternly.

  With that bit of business transpired, the big Bear stood inside Flo’s and Aiden’s bed of sorrows which barely came up to his wide hips and stared at them with an expression that went beyond serious, it looked wholly possessed.

  Whatever the goon wanted, he had just negotiated a mint for it, and the determination inside his dark eyes said that Flo and Aiden had better not mess it up or else there’d be another hole dug with a zero chance of reprieve. It was here that the thug in the pricey Italian loafers and tailored leather jacket made the middle aged couple an offer they could not refuse.

  (26)

  The air had tasted sweet, the stroll down the front walkway performed on heels that felt as light as helium. It was flying, truly the way a bird felt after it had been released from a cage after years of imprisonment. Admittedly, it was a harsh description of an institution that had fed and clothed Angelo for so many years, but it was nonetheless how he felt. Sure, the trek too could’ve been performed in fairer company, but at the moment Florence and Aiden Tyler held the wondrous beauty of heaven’s highest archangels.

  The plan had been three months in the making, a deal worked out with Vincent and two slot monkeys who couldn’t win a bet with an inside tip on a sure thing. Still, Flo and Aiden had no criminal priors, and thanks to Vincent and a few wise guy connections, the Tylers had secured excellent jobs working for of all places, a casino.

  Well, at least on paper they had.

  In ink, Flo was a bartender and Aiden worked security, a stretch of the imagination to say the least, but if you didn’t know them, then perhaps you could almost swallow the possibility. In actuality the lackluster duo resembled a pair of sweat shop seamstresses rather than a hale guard and a breast implanted barkeep, but on paper anything was possible. And so the lie had been effectively sold to the establishment, and as a result, Angelo Marchetti now had legal guardians who in reality owed their lives to one Vincent Marchetti, which in turn meant that Angelo belonged to Vincent. So at the end of the walkway it was not surprising to see Flo and Aiden climb into a city cab and Angelo climb into a black limousine.

  It was a special occasion, and as such Uncle Vincent had pulled out all the stops. There would be a celebration tonight at the Silver Fox where a belated sixteenth birthday cake would be served, and after that they would go down to Mandy’s Escort Service and lay as many high end whores as they could before staggering back to Vincent’s pad for some shuteye. It would be the first of many such nights to come, because this was what men did according to Uncle Vincent, they took their pleasures like a lion. And on that first night they had indulged themselves greedily, drank their fill and laid their share of loose women. But that celebration would come to an end shortly after sunup, and when it did, nothing would ever be the same again.

  (27)

  For the first time the apartment hadn’t felt like a secret hideout, but rather an actual home. After years of sneaking in and out of Vincent’s brownstone, it was a relief to finally not to have to worry about being seen by someone. He was here by the legal consent of his adopted mother and father, Florence and Aiden Tyler. Perhaps not so much pillars of the community, but when it came to signing on the dotted line, their John Hancock met all the necessary criteria.

  Angelo hadn’t been privy to the specific terms of the adoption, only that Flo and Aiden had been “recruited” to adopt Angelo on behalf of Vincent until Angelo turned eighteen at which time the contract of convenience would be legally nullified. It wasn’t really fraud so much as it was an ethical ambiguity, a victimless crime where no one got hurt. Still, Angelo had a few reservations, namely the way Florence and Aiden acted whenever Vincent was around. Those interactions with the big goon had been brief, but telling. The look inside their otherwise empty eyes radiated primal fear, as though they were looking into the face of death itself. That regard alone gave Angelo pause for consideration.

  What had been the price of this adoption?

  It was too easy to see that this wasn’t just a favor owed to an old friend or a few hard luck cases jonesing for a few bucks, they’d been forced into this contract, and the details of that extortion had no doubt been dictated from the barrel of a gun.

  Angelo tried not to sweat it, to let those questionable circumstance along with their selfish motives slide. After all, what could he do about it? The deed had been done and as a result, Angelo had walked out of Mount Hope with two years still left on the clock.

  In a way, Angelo could empathize with Vincent’s release from prison. Mind you it was a stretch, but only as close to actually experiencing such a hardship as Angelo would ever hope to compare. But those darker days were behind both of them, especially tonight, because this was a celebration of freedom, a declaration to the future that said the Marchetti family, no matter how small, was together once again.

  They sat on the couch, each with a can of beer in hand. A pale hue of purple could be seen through the ceiling skylight as dawn rose out of an eastern sea. Nei
ther Marchetti felt any pain. It was quiet, the mood calm as the clock wound down towards daybreak. It was the sort of interlude where seldom spoken words found form and hidden truths confessed and sought atonement.

  “Jesus,” Vincent said after he took a large gulp of brew. “I’m glad you’re here Angelo. You know that?”

  Angelo nodded and sipped his beer. “I wanted to thank you for everything you’ve done for me Uncle Vincent.” Flo and Aiden flashed into his head. Even the dead body that he and Tina had discovered a few years before. The visions tainted his perception and called into question the virtues such a man as Vincent the Bear could possess. Everything was relative in the end, no pun intended. Family was close and owed its principles to a different code of doctrine.

  Was Angelo truly thankful?

  Could he be grateful to a cold blooded killer?

  Surprisingly the answer was yes, and moreover embraced with genuine love.

  “Hey, we’re family Little Capone,” Vincent replied with a deep resounding beer belch. “We Marchettis have to stick together.”

  Angelo smirked, finished off his beer and then crushed the can. “Ain’t that the goddamn truth.”

  “Va-voom!”

  Vincent laughed heartily. The Bear was more than a little bit buzzed, he was freaking polluted. So too was Angelo, but at this moment his line of thinking had never been more sober. Subconsciously he had always know that this moment would come, that the confessional would perhaps set a strange rite of passage, that of untold knowledge being passed down from master to what---an apprentice? That idea sent a cold surge of electricity down Angelo’s spine, because at its heart a great truth was there to be found, and at its core it said that Angelo Marchetti was in actuality fascinated by Vincent’s macabre profession no matter how hard he had tried to deny it.

  Why was that?

  Vincent’s line of morbid work wasn’t glamorous, nor was it a game or a make-believe matinee flick. People died and when they did they stayed dead. And that finality courted the most dire of consequences: prison, execution, not to mention the emotional fallout of guilt. Anyone with a conscience would surely tally up a bitter sum of emotional baggage over time, bricks you’d have to carry until you finally laid down inside a cold dank grave yourself. Yes, it may have been cool to carry a big gun, to shoot scumbags that got in your way, but life wasn’t a Louis L’Amour western. People died for real and when they did, nothing was ever the same after.

  How could it be?

  Did Vincent have psychological scars and regrets?

  As the daylight grew, Angelo knew that if he was ever going to discover those answers it would have to be now.

  “Vince?”

  “Yeah?”

  “What’s it like to kill somebody?”

  The smile bled out of Vincent’s face, leaving a stunned expression to take its place. Still, Angelo fixed his uncle with a determined gaze, one that sought important answers and would not rest until it had them.

  “Jesus,” Vincent replied with a faint laugh that said it was not impressed with such an inquiry. After all, they’d been having a blast up until now. Why ruin it with talk of business? “It’s late Little Capone. Let’s call it a night.”

  Angelo remained seated, his gray eyes burrowing into Vincent’s with stubborn willpower. They exuded an age that went well-beyond those of youthful years, making the kid look like an old soul, and at the moment Vincent felt compelled to confess to them as a catholic dispensed sins into a priest’s ear.

  “It’s not for you Little Capone,” Vincent assured in a soft voice that conveyed that it did indeed have its share of regret. “When you take a life, part of you dies as well. There’s no glory in killing. It’s just a means unto an end. It’s business Little Capone. A freaking paycheck…capisce?”

  “But it gets easier, doesn’t it?”

  Vincent shuffled uncomfortably as if the heat in the room had suddenly shot up a dozen degrees. “You get desensitized, yeah, but it’s never easy. Being a…killer, well, it takes a strong mind, and a…cold heart.” At this, Vincent let his eyes fall to the floor, then slowly find the metal security door as if perhaps someone or something were inside listening. “Everyone’s good at something Little Capone…whacking morons came naturally to me…it’s in my blood.” He then let his gaze find Angelo, and when it did, the big goon smiled. “And I guess that means it’s in yours, too.”

  That statement frightened Angelo. He wasn’t sure if the booze had Vincent talking so or if the big bear were simply departing with his personal belief on the matter. However, Angelo did not cringe nor offer up protest, instead he contemplated the remark with an odd fixation that made his heart beat faster. Fear had stolen a part of Angelo’s mind with a question that seemed to have no resolution.

  Was killing in his blood?

  “Do you still do contracts for Romulus?” Angelo asked.

  Vincent raised an eyebrow, his facial expression implying a displeasure with the question. “What do you think?”

  The question sounded defensive, which it was, a man who’d been tagged for what he was and didn’t care for the spotlight.

  “I think you’re still doing contract killings for Romulus,” Angelo charged in a calm even voice. “You don’t know any other way to live, except in the taking of life. You’re what people would call a monster dear uncle. A cold blooded killer.”

  Angelo couldn’t believe he had said such a horrible thing to his beloved uncle. To be so openly disrespectful to a man who had done so much for him was unforgivable. Insolence however, had not been the boy’s intention. It was just the bitter sound that such language made when it spoke the truth.

  Angelo bowed his head briefly and frowned. “I’m sorry.”

  Vincent considered, nodded and then replied. “You say true Little Capone. I am what I am, and I make no apologies for it. If God judge me damned on judgment day, then I’ll walk into that hellfire without hesitation, because in my heart I know what I am…a beast.” Vincent finished off his drink and then tossed the beer can onto the floor. “There are wolves and sheep in this life, Angelo. I say it is better to feast on the flock than bear the monster’s fangs, amen.”

  “You speak in such absolute terms,” Angelo countered. “What ill-fate befell such a man as yourself as to turn his heart to stone?”

  Vincent’s expression hardened, his lips twisted as if he’d just tasted a sour shot of piss. “Such words would consume your mind with anger. Such knowledge would poison your heart until your dying day.” Vincent smiled wanly and in the dim morning light he looked near death, as if Angelo’s last question had stabbed him in the heart and the wound had been fatal. “Ignorance is my gift to you,” Vincent offered. “And so I’ll say this to you just once…let it go.”

  Let it go.

  What kind of an answer was that?

  Cryptic to say the least. Angelo was ravaged by curiosity. How could he let this subject go? He was close to a big answer and he simply must have it. Besides, what kind of knowledge could change Angelo’s heart? The potential answer felt like a poetic metaphor perhaps, a resolution that was not to be taken literally.

  If only he knew.

  “I’m not a child Uncle Vincent. You can tell me anything.”

  Vincent stared at him intensely, and for a brief moment, Angelo thought the big lug might actually begin to cry.

  “What I am about to give you is a crown of sorrows Little Capone. Regardless of what you may think of yourself, until this moment you were innocent as a newborn babe. Now, that darkness will twist your soul and take it down into misery just as it has taken mine.”

  Angelo pondered the warning, but could not heed Vincent’s caution. Tonight had been a night years in the coming, and as such owed its inspiration to fate. Who was Angelo to dismiss this providence? But it was more than that, and it had to do with that which had killed the cat. Angelo needed to know everything, and if such knowledge burned him, then so be it. Truth told he’d bear t
he fires of hell for an answer to the Marchetti mystery.

  “It’s a price I’d pay gladly,” Angelo assured.

  Vincent arched his thick brushy eyebrows and barred his teeth like a trap. “Then welcome to my hell Little Capone…welcome to my hell.”

  (28)

  Vincent regarded the skylight with displeasure, a vampire dreading the coming dawn along with the dark secrets that would be revealed within its garish light.

  How had they come to this place?

  Truth told, Vincent had always known a day like this would come. He just didn’t think it would be this soon. But here it was, in all its lackluster glory, and for all intents and purposes he felt the disclosure was pressed for time, as if such words were never meant to be touched by daylight.

  “Deluca,” Vincent mumbled.

  The Bear’s huge fists wound into tight clubs and his entire persona became volatile, a volcano on the verge of exploding.

  Angelo could see the disdain within Vincent’s less than attractive features as if the word just spoken was in fact the devil’s actual name. “Who’s Deluca?”

  Vincent shot a sharp glance at Angelo, one that said the boy was not to speak, but to listen. “He’s the source of mine and your despair…the cancer that’s been eating at us since you were five years old.”

  Five years old? Angelo tried to recall the name Deluca, but came away empty. The thought briefly crossed his mind to field another question, but he understood this was not to be a Q&A session, but rather a dark narrative.

  “Eleven years ago, me and your old man had it out.”

  Vincent unconsciously stroked his jaw, a gesture Angelo recalled from the first day they had met. The motion implied a serious altercation, one that had been violent.

  “We were in business together, Angelo. And it wasn’t selling bibles either. Out of respect for your pop, I won’t get into specific details. All you have to remember is that your pop was a good man.” Vincent pointed a finger at Angelo most forcefully. “Capisce?”

  Angelo nodded, but was nonetheless shocked to discover that his father was engaged in criminal activity. Suddenly, he wondered if his father whacked folks too, that maybe killing really was in his blood.

  “We had a package to deliver,” Vincent continued. “A briefcase. We didn’t know what was in it. All we knew was that the courier said it would explode if it went through an X-ray machine or if anyone tampered with the lock, and that if it didn’t get to its destination within fourteen hours, it would self-destruct. Needless to say, we wanted to get rid of it as soon as possible. No one wants a bomb hanging off their goddamn wrist if they can avoid it.

  “Problem was we delivered it to a guy who just so happened to be dead. Of course no one knew at the time that the son of a bitch was tits up. Killed by a professional assassin we would come to discover later.

  “Anyways, we go into this dead man’s house only to find him sitting in his den with a hole the size of a silver dollar stamped into his forehead. At this time, I had never seen a murdered body, but your old man had. It threw me for a loop at first, but your old man calmed me down and got us the hell out of there double time.”

  Angelo wanted to ask Vincent when his father had seen a murdered body before, but doubted Vincent would say. Vincent wanted to preserve Alfonso’s memory as best he could and the best way to do that was to omit certain sordid details involving Alfonso’s past.

  “So there we are: two dopes carrying god knows what to god knows where while the clock ticks down. We decided to call Romulus, ask him what to do. But we can’t reach him because as luck would have it, his mother had just died.” Vincent sat forward. “Now you’ve got to understand, Romulus loved his mama more than anything. If we disturb him while he’s in mourning, it better be with news that we just found a cure for dead, because if not…in his grief…well, he just might arrange for two certain bulls to be castrated.

  “So when we call in, we find out that Deluca’s been put in temporary charge of family business.” Again, Vincent became disturbingly dark, the thought of Deluca raising hot blood into his face. “Now he’s as useless as a butthole on your elbow, but what are we supposed to do? Romulus is in mourning, and his last orders were that Deluca was in charge for the time being.” Vincent folded his big mitts together and they shook slightly as if he held onto someone’s neck and was strangling them. “Normally, we’d have said the hell with this crap and figured it out ourselves, but whatever’s inside this briefcase is crazy hot and set to go off in a couple of hours. Kaboom! We need help from the top. We need direction. We’re not in our own pond. We’re in a strange city. There’s no safe house and as far as we know we’re alone.

  “Deluca says he’s aware of the situation involving the briefcase. Said its going to have to go back to where it came from until things get sorted out. We say fine, so where’s that exactly? Deluca says to take it to the airport. Said there’s a private charter waiting to take it off our hands. We say fine and then hightail it to the airport. After a few code words were whispered into the appropriate ears, we gained access to a terminal back door which led us out onto the tarmac. There we found a fueled up jet prepared for takeoff.” Vincent paused, twisted his neck as if trying to swallow an unusually large chunk of rage. He took in a deep breath and slowly let it out. “Some fancy pants suit steps off the plane and asks for the package. We hand it over to him, and then what does numb nuts do? He goes to throw down on us.” Vincent shook his head in disbelief. “If it wasn’t for your old man, we’d of been goners.”

  Angelo was captivated by this retelling, and although he intellectually understood that his father was involved in serious mob business, he couldn’t restrain a certain amount of pride. After all, his father had led an exciting life, kind of like a secret agent, and as a result, Angelo had been struck by misplaced hero worship.

  “This suit reaches into his jacket and before he can get the gun out, Alfonso’s got his arm in a joint lock.” Vincent grinned. “You should’ve seen the look on that idiot’s face. Anyhow, your pop puts him on his knees with a submission hold and I take the gun. Suddenly he’s all apologies and assurances that he wasn’t going to shoot us, but we can tell that we were going to be buzzard meat, you know.”

  Vincent glanced at the skylight with growing annoyance. The day was coming fast and he felt this tale must close before the sun’s strength came pouring in through the glass. Some things were just never meant to be spoken in daylight.

  “Jesus…for that son of bitch to do something like that for no good reason…I mean, who were these people? That’s taking a huge chance. There’s security cameras everywhere, not to mention your crew manifest and flight number are all going to be registered with the flight tower. A gumshoe would’ve tracked the suit down in about five minutes.” Vincent’s fingers stroked his chin. “Why take a chance like that?”

  Angelo couldn’t help but respond. He’d seen enough movies and read enough Tom Clancy books that dealt with espionage not to be somewhat of an authority on the subject.

  “You were involved with government agencies,” Angelo replied. “Guys who’d kill you and never have to worry about standing before a judge. Guys that could make a flight disappear. As for what was in the briefcase, I’m guessing it was weapon related. Not guns, but rather nuclear or maybe even biological in nature. Something with huge political and economic value on the global market. As for the suit, he was told to minimize the witnesses. Maybe that’s what happened to the guy with the hole the size of a silver dollar in his head. Maybe he was pitching for the wrong team, and what you got caught up in was the fallout of an interdepartmental civil conflict.”

  Vincent wasn’t the smartest guy on the planet, but he seemed to follow that twisted scenario easy enough. Besides, at its heart the motivation involved money, greed and power, and who couldn’t relate to those human jewels.

  “Maybe,” Vincent nodded.

  The Bear regarded the skylight again and continued his tale.


  “Alfonso snaps the suit’s wrist and breaks his trigger finger. The guy screams and before we know it two other suits jump out of the plane, handguns loaded. I drop to my knee and take aim with the suit’s gun, while Alfonso yanks out his archer so fast its little more than a blur. Your old man yells for everyone to keep cool. Meanwhile, the briefcase is on the ground next to Alfonso’s foot. Needless to say, the situation is tense. We got an injured suit on the ground, two suits taking aim, and me and your pop holding ground.”

  Vincent began to giggle, amused to no end over what was to happen next.

  “I’m thinking we need to shoot these mothers right now, but I’m holding out for what your pop’s gonna do. I hadn’t expected him to say keep cool, so I figure he’s got an idea in that wild head of his.” Vincent winked at Angelo. “Your pop was a smart cookie.”

  Angelo smiled faintly and continued to listen.

  “Your old man gets that crazy look in his eye and then aims his gun at the briefcase, to which the three suits get that, what the hell are you doing look in their eyes. It’s obvious that they understand one thing. If your pop shoots that case, then we’re all dead. It’s here that Alfonso lays down the law. He tells them to get back on the plane and get out of here or else he’ll blow a hole into the case. The trio of expensive suits confides that if they leave without that case, they’re dead men. It is here that we realize that we have a true Mexican standoff. Me and your pop prepared to die for our reasons, and they for theirs.”

  The sunlight from the skylight dimmed as a cloud passed by overhead. It felt like a enough of a reprieve to allow Vincent to finish his tale in relative darkness where it belonged.

  “One of the suits aims his gun at the injured suit on the ground and says to your pop like, “this idiot overstepped his authority.” “Then he fires a cap into the injured suit’s melon, killing him instantly. Problem solved assured the suit. He then said that if we gave him the case, then nothing more would be made of it. We could each go our separate ways in peace.” Vincent raised his thick bushy eyebrows and shrugged. “The situation was edgy and the case was our only leverage, but still, we wanted to be rid of the damn thing…bad. At this point we just want out, so Alfonso agrees and steps back away from the briefcase. The suit comes forward picks up the package and he and his associate…the one’s that’s still breathing, pick up the dead suit and climb back aboard the plane and flew off.” Vincent cracked his knuckles with a degree of professional satisfaction. “That’s when me and your pop went home.” Vincent then regarded Angelo with eyes that were hollow from a deed long since departed but not forgotten. “That’s when the trouble really began.”

  (29)

  Outside a flash of light was followed by a volley of thunder which sliced open a storm cloud. Rain danced off the skylight in thick melted sheets and filled the relative empty space of the apartment with a low tinny rhythm. Suddenly, it was almost pitch black again, as if the lords of karma understood that a terrible dark knowledge was about to be exposed, one that must never embrace the day.

  Angelo could feel his stomach tighten and his mouth go unusually dry. He realized that in a few moments his entire world would be turned inside out.

  The answers were close now.

  “It was late when we got back to town,” Vincent explained. “After midnight. I escorted your pop back to his house. It had been a long day. We figured it was best to get a good night’s rest before standing tall before Romulus or Deluca in the morning.” Vincent crooked a barely noticeable smile, the slightest wedge of a tear stuck in the corner of his eye. “You’re mom greeted us at the door. She was pissed that we were so goddamn late, but you could see she was worried.” Vincent touched at his eyes with a forefinger and carried on. “God I loved her…she was the best…your pop was a lucky man.”

  Again, Vincent touched his face as if remembering a strike. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that Vincent had been romantically in love with Angelo’s mother who also happened to be Alfonso’s wife. Finally, Angelo understood the nature of the conflict between the brothers, a love triangle that had seen siblings come to physical blows over a woman. Through Vincent’s recollection Angelo could see that the big Bear’s heart had been horribly broken by those events long since passed, a pain that remained with him even until this day. As a result, Angelo couldn’t help but feel a deep gush of pity for his uncle. Angelo thought to sit closer to him, to offer him a shoulder in comfort, but such an affection was not the Marchetti way. According to the family doctrine strength alone dictated a man’s actions, and if he were compelled to express a hint of compassion, it was only to be in regards to young children or a loving wife.

  No exceptions.

  “Wait,” Angelo interrupted. “I thought you said you were in prison during that time of my life…you said that’s why you weren’t in any of the photographs…that’s why I…we never saw you.”

  Vincent looked at Angelo with a bit of embarrassment, like a child that had been caught in the middle of a bold faced lie. “It’s…complicated Little Capone…your mother and I…your pop…it’s a bit sordid.”

  And there it was again, that telling look in his eyes that spoke of how much Vincent had loved Angelina Marchetti. It was obvious that he had distanced himself from her, because the pain of seeing her with Alfonso, of seeing them so damn happy was tearing him apart inside.

  Angelo raised a hand in assurance which said that those specific details involving the timeline were not important, and in that gesture, Vincent could tell that his nephew had seen straight through him, that he understood how complicated and strained the trio’s relationship had been.

  Vincent nodded in gratitude and gave the kid an affectionate wink. “Thank you Little Capone.”

  And out of nowhere Angelo added. “I loved her, too.”

  Vincent’s eyes glistened and he smiled warmly. “We all did.”

  Then after a brief pause, the big galoot continued his story.

  “I needed to take the edge off,” Vincent confided. “You mother, god rest her soul, did not permit alcohol in the house. She was a strict catholic. So I politely excused myself to walk down to the corner store and pick up a bottle of Jack.”

  Vincent bowed his head and placed his face into those big mitt hands of his. For a moment Angelo was certain that the big goon would cry, but he kept firm. But the next time the large man with the uni-brow showed his face it looked not just heartbroken, but seasoned on a kind of hatred Angelo never knew existed. This went beyond the disdain Angelo had witnessed on Patrick Shea’s round scarlet mug, or even that sick desperate hunger that consumed the junkie like a ravenous cancer, this was demonic.

  “When I came back the fire had already started,” Vincent whispered as he gazed into space. “I tried to get to them, but…the man in the black sweater…he wouldn’t let me.”

  At this bit of news, Angelo’s blood began to boil.

  Who had dared to stop his uncle from rescuing his parents?

  Suddenly a flash of lightning lit the apartment and a burst of thunder shook the roof as if it too had been enraged by such an act of evil.

  Without realizing it, Angelo had jumped to his feet, hands curled into fists, eyes wide and menacing. “Who wouldn’t let you?” It wasn’t so much a question as a demand.

  Vincent looked up at his nephew, his teary eyes caught between despair and a cool anger that had simmered on years of misdirection. But there was more than that, there was also a deep rooted shame, guilt for not being able to have saved them. That expression looked weak, helpless, something so pathetic that it had even humbled an intimidating specimen like Vincent the Bear.

  “Forgive me Angelo…I just wasn’t…strong enough.”

  Upon hearing this, Angelo’s fists relaxed and his intense gaze eased into an expression of confusion. Until this day his big brute of an uncle had seemed a force of nature, a wall of impenetrable stone, but at this moment he looked disturbingly fragile, as if he’d been
eaten away by a vicious cancer that began in the heart and slowly wormed its way into the brain until every thought had been infected.

  Who could be so strong as to stop Vincent the Bear?

  What horrible beast could have stood in the path of a such a formidable man as to keep him from saving his only family?

  Angelo doubted if even an Archer Howitzer would’ve dissuaded a man like Vincent from racing into that house, but where a powerful weapon would’ve most certainly failed, something, no, someone had most certainly succeeded.

  Angelo sat back down, bowed his head, hands folded together as if in prayer, but in truth they were braced for the sour news they would inevitably receive next.

  (30)

  “I dropped the bottle of Jack,” Vincent continued as his eyes slipped back and forth with vivid memories. “The smoke was already in my nostrils before I bounded two steps. It lit up the night like a freaking supernova. I ran for all my worth, calculating how I was going to get all of you out.” He wiped at his brow with a hand that displayed a slight tremor. “There was so much fire…it poured out of all the windows…through the chimney…goddamn it, I was at least a hundred feet away and I could still feel that miserable stinking heat. It was like hell, and the man in the black sweater was…” Vincent clutched his fists and shook back and forth with anger. “He was the goddamn devil.”

  “What did he do?” Angelo asked in a voice that sounded more like a wolf’s growl than a human tongue.

  “It was almost as if he came out of the flames,” Vincent described, but he couldn’t have. “He must’ve come from beside the house, through the smoke. He startled me, but I wasn’t thinking clearly. I needed to get inside that house! I needed to save my family!”

  “He started the fire didn’t he?”

  “Yes,” Vincent nodded. “He was there on purpose…waiting for me to come back. At first I thought he might’ve been a neighbor, that maybe he had tried to get into the house himself, but then I saw the look in those dead eyes. Cold…dark…no emotion, just a heartless killing machine.”

  Angelo thought Vincent saw eyes like that every time the Bear shaved, but the comment was uncalled for, let alone true.

  “I had to act fast,” Vincent said in a voice that had become unusually soft.

  It was obvious the Bear’s thoughts were replaying the details in a way that sought a deeper understanding of what had actually happened. Perhaps he questioned how it could’ve gone differently: if only he had done this or that, then maybe, just maybe.

  The Bear blinked as if his head had suddenly cleared and continued to speak briskly.

  “He drew close enough that I could see the thin scar that ran beneath the wisp of his grayish hair. I reached for him, but he slipped aside so easily and gracefully that I knew instantly that I was up against a professionally trained fighter.” Vincent rolled his shoulder and cracked his neck in a telltale gesture that denoted a man who had extensive experience in combat. “I had some training, too. Six years of judo and a lifetime of dirty street fighting. But this guy was something special. The entire dance was done in the blink of an eye. When I threw, he dodged, when he returned, I unfortunately collected.” Vincent ground his teeth. “Damn the little bastard could punch!”

  More lightning flashed which was followed tightly by a heavy split of thunder.

  “Somewhere in the fray I managed to grab hold of his arm. I held on for dear life, trying to manipulate the short mother into a submission hold. But he was too good. Too well trained. And all the while I’m thinking about my family inside that burning house…how the valuable seconds are ticking down. I’m sure I can hear the screams, but I know it’s only my imagination. This little bastard with the heavy knit sweater isn’t the type of guy that burns people alive, he’s the kind that whacks folks first and then disposes of the evidence nice and neat afterwards. In my heart…I know…the fire is just to get rid of the bodies…my family is already dead, and in less than a minute I’m going to be dead, too.”

  Despite the fact that Vincent was alive and breathing and narrating this story, Angelo still couldn’t help but worry for uncle’s well-being, as if by some miracle the Vincent in the story had actually died and all that was left of him was this clever replica.

  Vincent then grinned an absolutely wicked little grin, one that said payback was a bitch.

  (31)

  “The tiny dirt licker got my arm in a wrist lock. The pain was excruciating.” Vincent clutched his fist. “But somewhere between dropping the bottle of Jack and butting heads with this idiot, I completely snapped. I was beyond reason…beyond grief…beyond pain. And when I overpowered that miserable maggot…when he heard my wrist break and I kept grinning at him while reclaiming my arm…that cold dead look inside that little prick’s eyes turned to fear. I was like a junkie pumped up on PCP. There was no pain nor consequences, just utter rage.

  “I had totally lost my mind, but had still managed to hold onto enough of my sense to devise a plan. I knew he was going to try and shut me down by one of two ways: crush my windpipe or squash my balls. Pain or no pain, if he shuts off my air, then I’m a goner. So I leave my crotch open…let him have my nuts, and I can feel that sharp thick pain radiate out of my entire body. But I swear to god it feels good, sobers me, hypes me up even further. That pain is like a cold fire as seen from a distant shore. It wasn’t part of me at that moment, it belonged to someone else, someone who crumbled under such agonies, but that someone was not me. The beast within me didn’t care what happened to its body, it just wanted revenge. And I remember that crazed man praying to Satan to grant him such a reprisal, and he did.” Vincent then gave a curt laugh that showed nothing but contempt for his opponent. “In that moment he was all I had…that and my hatred. We were locked together in a match for survival. But the only difference being was that I didn’t care if I lived or died, and that is why I am here to tell this tale.”

  Angelo nodded, anxiously awaiting to hear how his uncle had made the man with the thick black sweater pay for having killed his parents. Although, Angelo knew nothing would be good enough to reward that foul deed, nothing aside from an eternity inside a lake of molten fire.

  “My teeth parted and closed on his neck…a second later his jugular vein was spurting streams of blood down my throat. He tried to twist my wrist in a circle…I could hear the bones snapping, the pain exploding up my arm and into my brain, but I stuck to his neck like a vampire, tearing out mounds of flesh until I could feel bone and cartilage on my tongue. With my free arm I continued to hold him until I felt the strength run out of his knees, and then I let him drop.”

  A satisfied grin aligned Vincent’s wide lips, as if the taste of that bastard’s blood still lingered upon his taste buds and its residue had never been sweeter. The Bear had been granted his revenge, but as for Angelo, his retribution would forever go unrealized.

  “Thank you,” Angelo said in a soft voice. “Thank you for killing my parent’s murderer.”

  Vincent nodded, although his eyes suggested there was more to the tale, much more, and that Angelo’s gratitude unfortunately was partially misplaced.

  “I suppose you’re wondering why you weren’t killed that night.”

  Presumption projected from Angelo’s eyes. At this point in the story he had assumed that big brave Uncle Vincent had stormed into the house and rescued his sleeping nephew from the deadly smoke and fire.

  This had not been the case.

  “As much as I hate to admit it, Angelo, I tried to get into that house, but that prick had taken too much out of me,” Vincent confessed in a humble tone. “I watched him die in front of my eyes, but when I turned to make the front steps my legs gave out. The pain of my injuries had come home to roost and my head swam with distorted images…he had taken the best out of me Little Capone…I had failed. I’m not really sure what happened afterwards. I recall crawling towards the house. There were sirens…people yelling…and then there were hands on me. I tried to fight
them off, but there were too many.”

  Angelo nodded in understanding, although he was admittedly a bit confused. “I was told that someone had left me in the neighbor’s backyard hammock wrapped in a blanket. I barely remember it. It was like a dream. I remember being carried, but I don’t recall who had done it. I slept through most of it.”

  Vincent gritted his teeth and twisted within his skin. “The man in the black sweater must’ve done it. He wasn’t a complete monster, but damn I hate to think that I owe your life to him…little mother!”

  Angelo didn’t know how to feel about that information. Would he have rather died with his parents than have been saved by their executioner? He couldn’t decide. Meanwhile, another flash of lightning followed by a whip crack of thunder added an element of drama to the narrative.

  “Their deaths…it involved the briefcase didn’t it?” Angelo surmised.

  Vincent closed his eyes and sighed. “That goddamn briefcase…and the man named Franco Deluca.”

  (32)

  The world teetered like a child’s top that had run low on spin. The icy wind that howled outside rattled the rafters and shook the windows and doors within their jams. The fire from the stone hearth filled the bar with a hellish heat, but despite its uncomfortable sting, Angelo nonetheless felt unnaturally cold, as if he’d been encased in a monument of ice like those odd shapes he had first seen upon arrival to these strange lands.

  Angelo’s eyesight blurred as if reality were viewed through a pair of eyeglasses dipped into thick clear soap. The effect exaggerated dimensions and added qualities to items which they normally would not possess. The colorful bottles on the bar appeared to burn like cathedral candles, the mirror gleamed like a star of quicksilver, and the bartender’s face was a compilation of rugged bones, a skull covered over in a thin burlap of dead skin.

  Beneath Angelo’s arms the Archer Howitzers vibrated like tuning forks, the energy reminiscent of a song whose title and melody eluded their owner. But still, they sang their beautiful music, a tune that reached into the very center of Angelo’s soul and gave him strength. In an instant, he understood a great many things, that on this level of reality he and the guns were one, that the thing he had to do was---

  ---but the hitman never got that all important answer, because the bartender had sensed Angelo had slipped out of the mirror and back into his body, and it was here that the barkeep sang his own song, an alien chant that lulled the hitman back into a realm of reflection where yesterday confessed the kinds of secrets a man like Angelo had no interest to declare.

  (33)

  Previously, Franco Deluca’s name had been little more than background noise in Vincent’s tale, now it blared like an air raid siren inside of Angelo’s ears. Who was this man and what connection did he have to the deaths of his parents?

  The drone of rain pelted the skylight while a shadow of storm clouds kept dawn at bay. There was still time to finish this tale before the sky cleared, but then given this latest bit of news, nothing, not even the break of day nor a brilliant sunset would keep Angelo from hearing the rest of this sordid drama. The answers were too close to simply be postponed until a later date. The facts no matter how painful, had to be spoken, there was just no other way.

  “Useless as a butthole on your elbow,” Vincent repeated from a previous character assessment of Deluca. “Like I said: Deluca had temporarily replaced Romulus who was in mourning over his mother.”

  “Did he order you guys killed?” Angelo asked.

  “It’s more complicated than that Little Capone,” Vincent replied. “First let me tell you that I was arrested after gaining consciousness inside the hospital. The cops pinned the murder of the man in the black sweater on me, seeing as my teeth marks were in his neck.”

  “What was his name?”

  “No identification was recovered from his corpse…no fingerprint trace or dental charts could reveal his identity…it was as if he never existed.”

  Angelo felt a bit of a shudder as if Vincent had described a ghost instead of a man.

  Even though Angelo was young, he understood that whomever that man had been, he must’ve worked for some very powerful people. Perhaps NSA, CIA, or some other covert government agency which had links to organized crime. It wasn’t impossible, in fact at one time in history the CIA had agents running drugs out of Vietnam during the war, so it wasn’t hard to imagine certain individuals in government till this day, still using that exclusive power to make money through various underworld institutional connections. Greed was the most powerful weapon known to man, and when added to political immunity then you had all the makings of a doomsday bomb.

  “Couldn’t you have claimed self-defense?”

  “I had a couple priors,” Vincent snuffed. “Assault with a knife, assault with a baseball bat and a few others. That and they’d had their suspicions of my activities with the Gambaro Family, although they couldn’t officially link me to the Family. Of course they tried to get me to talk, to turn evidence against Gambaro, but I told them to go screw themselves.”

  “I don’t understand Uncle Vincent,” Angelo interjected. “I thought you said you were a hitman. When exactly did you take up that…job?”

  A sighed passed off of Vincent’s wide frowning lips. “I began my career as a courier for Romulus. Me and your old man.” Vincent’s laugh was bitter sweet. “Wrong place wrong time Angelo…me and your folks…go figure.” Vincent rubbed his large hands through his thick black hair and then slapped them down onto his sturdy thighs. “In Gambaro, I was involved with petty mule crap…you know…hoofing the trails with money, drugs and various illicit paraphernalia.” He gave another sour chuckle, which showed his contempt for circumstance. “Here, I was little more than an errand boy, and what happens? I go up the creek for committing the big body job…forget about it.

  “Anyhow, it took years, but the Gambaro lawyers eventually secured my release.”

  “And when they did…”

  “I went on the war path Little Capone…I finally became a hitman of my own accord.” Vincent became somewhat introspective, recalling details within his own troubled thoughts. “I killed a good many folks who messed up that deal with the briefcase…that is everyone that wasn’t made.”

  “Made?” Angelo had heard the term before, but wasn’t sure what it meant.

  “When a guy’s been made, then you can’t touch him without explicit approval of the crime boss…godfather, capisce? And even then there’s no guarantee that the head honcho will be able to break the code and have a guy whacked. It’s complicated, but it keeps order within the organization, there’s a law that each member must obey, even the top pit bull.”

  “Then Franco Deluca…?” Angelo asked.

  “Is a made man,” Vincent replied in a tone that was both bitter and apologetic, a man who had been cheated not only of his revenge, but his nephew’s as well. “I’m sorry Little Capone, but Deluca can’t be touched by a lowly soldier such as myself…not without say so from Romulus, and even then it might be a tentative order. If Romulus were to cross the line and violate that code without sufficient reason, then there would be pandemonium within the Family.”

  Angelo bounded to his feet, his face a mask of anger. “What! What do you mean you can’t touch him? He killed my parents! He tried to have you killed!”

  Vincent raised a hand in an attempt to calm his excited nephew. He knew Angelo had a right to be pissed off. Hell, Vincent wasn’t happy about the situation either, but he understood the flow of things when it came to working within a crime family. There was a code and buddy boy you had better not break it or else you’d end up wearing your balls for earrings.

  “The matter of Deluca is complicated, Angelo.”

  Angelo sat back down and let his face collapse into his hands. All his life he had thought that his parents’ death had been an accident and now this. At least the mother in the black sweater had met with justice, but what about this guy Deluca? What was his godda
mn story?

  “Jesus Christ, Vincent…Jesus freaking Christ…please…please explain this to me! What did Deluca have to do with this…?” Angelo couldn’t finish, he was too disgusted to go on.

  Vincent regarded his nephew with the deepest of sympathy. If only he would have stayed with Alfonso, then perhaps none of this crap would’ve happened. Of course Vincent knew better, knew that he would have been as dead as his dear brother and sister-in-law if he had gone into that dark house with them. The man in the black sweater would have seen to that readily enough. But there was no way that Vincent would go inside the house without downing a bottle of Jack to ease the emotional pain of having to see Alfonso and Angelina together, no sir no how.

  Ironically, his broken heart had spared him a bullet to the noggin.

  At least it had been good for something.

  (34)

  “When Deluca took over for Romulus, he was in communication with the supplier of the case, some government numb nuts named Landry,” Vincent explained. “Apparently, Deluca had been under the impression that me and your old man had found out what had been inside the case. When Deluca dropped that bomb, Landry flipped.”

  Furious as he was, Angelo still had the presence of mind to follow the story intelligently. Questions begat questions within his troubled mind, but he was smart enough to sift through the clutter in search of the relevant information.

  “Speaking of bomb, how the hell were you two supposed to have figured out what was inside the case if it was wired with explosives?” Angelo asked.

  “Exactly Little Capone,” Vincent nodded with a ‘I couldn’t agree with your more’ type of sentiment. “Deluca messed up. But I know why the fat bastard did it.” Vincent tapped a sausage sized finger against his temple in a gesture that displayed smarts. “He alone was in charge and didn’t want to mess up a job this big…not on his watch. He didn’t want any loose ends so he decided me and your pop were expendable. To hell with what happened to us, just deliver the goods and then off the messengers.” Vincent bit down on his bottom lip and scrunched up his nose angrily.

  “What about the code?” Angelo asked. “You guys were in the Family…surely you were made men. Deluca couldn’t touch you without breaking the code, right?”

  The smirk on Vincent’s face spoke volumes, and what it had to say suggested that honor amongst thieves and cut throats did have its limits. “Deluca isn’t Gambaro…Deluca’s a mutt.”

  “What’s a mutt?”

  “A mule of another sort,” Vincent explained. “He’s carries information between Gambaro and various governments agencies in exchange for merchandise and cold hard cash.”

  “Whoa!” Angelo exclaimed. “Back up a minute. I thought you said that Deluca was a made man…that you couldn’t touch him without proper authorization, and now you’re telling me he isn’t Gambaro…that he’s just a glorified government clerk.”

  Vincent rubbed his eyes. “Romulus extended the code as a…” At this Vincent chuckled with pathetic amusement. “Jesus Christ…as a honorary membership…a wise guy brand of ambassadorial diplomacy if you will.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” Angelo spat. “A freaking honorary PHD I’ve heard of, but not honorary membership into a crime family!”

  “Deluca is an egotistical mother,” Vincent said with a strained effort as though he couldn’t believe what he was saying himself. “Deluca wanted to be a tough guy. He wanted to be made just like in the movies. He got a kick out of the idea. So a certain ceremony was performed with the understanding that our rules applied to Deluca, even though he wasn’t a pure Gambaro…a mutt.”

  “Jesus H Macy!” Angelo said with astonishment. “Did Romulus suck his dick, too?”

  Vincent gave Angelo a sharp glance which said he should show Romulus more respect, after all, he was the big cheese, not to mention that deep down the greasy gangster was as stand up as they came. Still, the kid was upset, and because of that a certain degree of latitude was granted.

  “Romulus wanted the money and the government protection such a marriage with Deluca could promise,” Vincent explained. “So he wined and dined Deluca. Gave him his mafia secret decoder crime ring and baptized him in good fella gold. Now he was more than just a business partner, he was a made man with all the privileges thereof.” Vincent offered up another curt laugh of revulsion. “What a joke.”

  “But still…” Angelo inferred.

  “He was a mutt,” Vincent stated. “And that made him dangerous, because the code to him was provisional. It could be ignored if he chose to wear the government liaison hat instead of his gangster panama. He could kill without fear of retribution, because in reality he wasn’t actually a Gambaro.”

  “Screw me,” Angelo muttered. “So he cut you guys loose because---“

  “---he wasn’t entirely sure what we knew. There was a panic on. Romulus was indisposed, and Deluca didn’t want to take any chance of being wrong. You see, guys like me and your pop are like dirt between Deluca’s toes. He’d have no problem scraping us off and flushing us down the porcelain pipe without hesitation.”

  “And he did,” Angelo surmised.

  “Damn straight!” Vincent agreed vehemently. “You see, Deluca’s got the goods on everyone…even Romulus. If something happens to Deluca, then the entire Gambaro Family will fall. Still…”

  “What?” Angelo asked after Vincent’s unusually long pause.

  “Romulus.”

  “What about the prick?”

  Again, Vincent gave the boy a discouraged expression that showed he was not impressed with such a blatant display of disrespect. “Don’t be so quick to judge Little Capone, not until you’ve heard what I have to say next.”

  (35)

  Angelo waited on Vincent’s words of justification, something that could adequately explain away Romulus’s half ass choices.

  “Romulus spoke to me before I went inside,” Vincent explained in a tone that became both low and respectful, a man in the presence of an absolute authority. “We were at the restaurant in his office. It was here that he offered me---”

  “---a lame excuse!” Angelo scoffed.

  Vincent regarded the boy patiently, well aware of just how emotional Angelo must feel right now. “No…he offered me his condolences and something else…an explanation.”

  A brief lick of shame filled Angelo’s heart with regret for having spoken so ill of Romulus. Still, its power was short lived and soon replaced once more with its former bitterness.

  “Romulus had apologized for the tragedy involving your parents,” Vincent said in a compassionate voice as if recreating the manner in which it had been offered to him. “Said it had been an unnecessary waste. I agreed and furthermore strongly suggested that something should be done about it.”

  The skylight overhead continued to ripple from the pounding rain. From its dim gloom the apartment managed to hold onto the night’s gray shadow like smoke trapped inside a jar, but its vapors were nonetheless thinning, and soon even the heavy downpour would not be strong enough to dispel that demon sun from blowing light back into the room. Still, Vincent dawdled, weighed his words as if time were a static hand upon a broken watch.

  “It was here that Romulus reminded me about Deluca’s made man status,” Vincent said. “That in itself told me that your folks deaths were definitively connected to Deluca.” Vincent then rolled his shoulders as if preparing to take a poke at some moron who desperately deserved it. “Said Deluca had gone off half cocked…cleaned house with a freaking flame thrower when all he had to do was lightly dust the china.”

  Angelo drew in a deep breath and slowly let it out. The alcohol in his system had burned off within the fire of his anger. If Deluca were here right now Angelo would have cut his balls off with a rusty razor dipped in iodine. Perhaps later he’d go good on it, after all, Angelo wasn’t a made man, and so the rules of the crime family didn’t apply to him. Still, he doubted killing a man as powerful as Deluca would be an easy tr
ick to perform. The guy probably had an army of thugs around him at all times, not to mention the security systems money such as his could easily afford. His home was no doubt a castle fortress where an idiot of a king occasionally resided.

  “Romulus apologized again for my dilemma,” Vincent said. “He understood that I’d been done over for no reason. He understood that I wanted revenge, but he reminded me that the code applied to Deluca. Said that at the end of the day business was still business, and sometimes that meant mistakes were made and deals went bad.”

  “Business!” Angelo said in a voice that was little more than a whisper, but held all the ferocity of a growl.

  “I’d asked him what the hell had exactly happened, but Romulus couldn’t give me specific details, because of the sensitive nature of the operation…but he did offer me something else.” A faint grin laid loosely upon Vincent’s wide lips. “He promised me that the lawyers would fight tooth and nail to get me out of prison, and that when I got out, he’d have a list of names for me…idiots that had something to do with Alfonso and Angelina’s deaths.”

  “Guys who weren’t made?” Angelo asked, although he felt such a sentiment to be hollow, seeing as those goons would’ve just been following Deluca’s orders to begin with. If anyone needed to be whacked it was Deluca, not some symbolic effigies.

  “Government guys I could take retribution on Little Capone,” Vincent replied in defense. “Romulus didn’t have to do that, but he did this at risk not only to himself, but the Family. And when I got out he had gone good on that oath.”

  “But what about Deluca?” Angelo snapped. “That bag of dirt deserves---“

  “---a thousand deaths I know!” Vincent barked. “Don’t you think I know that? Haven’t you been listening? But to kill Deluca would be like assassinating the goddamn President of the United States: difficult to say the least. Not to mention they’d have…” Bowing his head, Vincent closed his eyes as if in prayer.

  “They’d have what?” Angelo demanded.

  Raising his large unruly head, Vincent gazed at Angelo with tired old eyes that were lost for purpose, save one.

  “Romulus said that he sympathized with my loss, but reminded me that I still had something very much to lose.”

  “What?”

  “You.”

  Angelo’s piss and vinegar bled out of his veins as if his limbs had been effectively severed by a sharp machete. How was he supposed to respond to such a statement? Anything to the contrary would’ve not only sounded like childish vibrato, but also insensitive to his beloved uncle’s feelings towards his only nephew, his only living blood relative. The Bear had shouldered an incredible burden: the deaths of Alfonso and Angelina along with the protection of his young nephew. What choice did he have, but to comply with Romulus’s warning. Sure, Angelo may’ve been gung ho to kick some ass right now, but the only reason he was alive and on this couch today was because his uncle had had the wisdom and foresight to let some unspeakable injustices slide. How hard must that have been for a take action kind of man like Vincent Marchetti not to avenge his loved ones deaths and let their killer go free, a man who he indirectly supported through Gambaro Family business.

  It was goddamn unthinkable.

  “Do you understand, Angelo? Do you see why I had to let him live? I couldn’t let them take you, too. I just couldn’t. Something of Alfonso and Angelina had to survive, and that something is you.”

  Angelo rubbed his eyes and shook his head as if to clear his thoughts. “Romulus would’ve actually killed me if you had---“

  “---no, not Romulus,” Vincent interrupted. “He made that much clear to me. Said he would never touch the boy, but he said others would, and there would be nothing he could do to stop that from happening.”

  Angelo sighed and then laughed in disbelief. “Forgive me uncle, but this nonsense is totally crazy. I mean this whole thing started over the stupidest thing, a miscommunication and an anally retentive butthole who’s a neat freak when it comes to tying up loose ends. I mean, Deluca’s a psychopath, he has to be. This all could’ve been settled with a freaking phone call. You guys aren’t going to lie about the briefcase…it’s not a matter of credibility, it’s just…insane!”

  “Did you ever see a movie called “The Warriors”?”

  Angelo blinked, studied Uncle Vincent as if he had perhaps lost his mind. “What?”

  “A movie called “The Warriors”” Vincent repeated without humor. “It’s an old flick, but it centers around this gang that gets wrongly accused of shooting this other gang’s leader, a guy named Cyrus who’s trying to unite all the city’s gangs into one super gang.”

  “What happened?” Angelo was surprised he’d actually asked the question. It seemed out of place in this discussion, irrelevant.

  “There’s this one punk who gets it in his head to shoot Cyrus.”

  “Why?”

  “Good question,” Vincent shrugged. “It doesn’t make sense. All the little bastard said was that he liked doing stuff like that.”

  “Jesus,” Angelo muttered. “Are you saying that’s Deluca? That he likes doing stuff like this?”

  “I don’t know Little Capone, but some men have a terrible itch that can only be scratched one way…just because Deluca wears high end suits and rides in a limo doesn’t mean he isn’t a sociopath or a psychopath. Maybe he was the kind of kid who pulled the wings off flies…maybe his father buggered him in the chute until he bled buckets, who knows? But I do know this, a man that can kill with a phone call is far more dangerous than a man who kills with his bare hands.”

  Angelo contemplated that statement and couldn’t help but agree. It was a mark of power, killing on a completely different level, one where bloody campaigns could be waged from the cushy comfort of an easy chair or a water cooler war room.

  “Damn it,” Angelo whispered.

  A puddle of tears had funneled into the corner of the kid’s eyes, but he would not dare to let them fall. No, Deluca had taken much, too much, but he would not have Angelo’s sorrow as well---vengeance yes, sorrow most definitely not.

  “Purpose…I was hoping to find a purpose to their deaths, but it was meaningless, wasn’t it? An act of senseless violence dictated by a man who places absolutely no value on other people’s lives whatsoever,” Angelo said as an after fact.

  “Someday Little Capone…someday.”

  Angelo fixed Vincent with a stare that shared a common understanding of someday. “When you got out, you said you went on a warpath. What happened there?”

  “Rest assure those government henchmen connected with the assassination of your folks have met their ends most slowly and painfully in a war, I might add, that was carried out under the direct instruction and protection of Romulus.”

  “Did Deluca know?”

  “Of course he knew, but he didn’t care. His balls weren’t being crushed in a vice, his eyes weren’t being plucked out with pliers. He was safe on his goddamn phone, smoking Cuban cigars and nibbling away on tins of caviar, son of a bitch.”

  “So he did nothing.”

  “Romulus explained the situation to him, and it was my understanding that the miserable mother actually liked the idea…it sounded so “Godfather” part one, two and three to him. A Francis Ford Coppola flick right out of a Mario Puzo novel.”

  “He almost sounds like a…freaking mob fanatic.”

  Vincent made a gruff noise that almost passed for a laugh. “He’s a complete nut. Has every mob movie and documentary ever made. He’s a collector, too. Al Capone’s furniture, house, cars, clothes and a whole warehouse full of other gangster crap…mostly from the early twentieth century.”

  “So he’s living the life of a mobster, but with diplomatic immunity because of his government position.”

  “He’s the devil Little Capone, a soulless son of a bitch.”

  “And we can’t touch him.”

  “Someday…someday.”

  Perhaps that day might come,
but for now Angelo regarded Vincent with an utter loss for moral, emotional and spiritual direction. “And what now dear uncle…what now would you have us do?”

  Vincent stood and looked down on the boy with eyes that had shed more than their share of tears over the subject, now they looked honed, rattler eyes that lay in wait to strike when the opportunity availed itself. “For now I would have you sleep and have sweet dreams of your mother and father.”

  Angelo stood, nodded and then embraced his uncle the way a man showed his appreciation to another. And with that done both men quietly went to their separate rooms to dream the kind of dreams that always accompanied those who only ever dreamt of vengeance.

  (36)

  Beneath the covers, Angelo stared into the dim paleness of his darkened bedroom with fuzzy eyes that had begun to spin like gyroscopes. The booze had turned toxic inside his bloodstream, morphing into what would no doubt be a world class hangover in the hours to come. But the aches and pains associated with that parched desolation were easily discarded for another sort of misery, that which only heartbreaking news could dispatch.

  Vincent had warned him what such knowledge would most certainly do, and it had. Now Angelo Marchetti’s heart was filled with hatred, and how could such an emotion ever hope to yield anything beautiful? Hate was the kind of poison that you alone drank until it either killed you, or you somehow resolved the issue within your own heart. Misery was its constant companion, and despite the darkness within the bedroom, he could nonetheless feel its cold shadow within its wake.

  Welcome to my hell Little Capone…welcome to my hell.

  Vincent was right, Angelo had been innocent up to this point, despite the horrible crud he’d seen and been through during his sixteen years of life. Knowledge could either enlighten a soul or condemn it, and right now Angelo’s soul waded through a lake of fire.

  Franco Deluca.

  The very name made his gut tighten, his teeth grind enamel. How hard must it have been for Uncle Vincent not to avenge his family? Unthinkable. Angelo had been a liability and still was. If only there were a way that he and Vincent could circumnavigate the wise guy code, the bureaucratic nonsense that gave Deluca immunity. But how? The answer required the mind of a strategic genius, and as for the Marchettis they both had a problem spelling more without the on. No, this problem was freaking huge, Rommel in Africa kind of huge. They were surrounded on all sides by politics. If Vincent sought vengeance then Angelo would be punished, if Angelo went after Deluca, Vincent would bear the brunt.

  But if they worked together, they just might be able to get themselves both killed.

  Angelo tossed and turned, buried his face deep into his pillow and before he knew it he began to scream.

  (37)

  Eighteen years old.

  It didn’t particularly mean much to Angelo, one more year down the drain and one more year of failing high school, that about said it. Soon he would drop out, probably tomorrow. Besides, Vincent had said school was for schmucks, and if anyone disagreed with him, all they had to do was look inside his thick Gucci wallet.

  Of course the most important thing about being eighteen was the freedom from Aiden and Florence, those dead beat parents who had never once sent him a birthday card or a Christmas present. But then that was to be expected, because their short term relationship had only ever existed on paper. It wasn’t like they were tethered together or living under the same roof like a regular dysfunctional family. The Tylers had served their sole purpose and were effectively out of the picture for good. Angelo had never harbored any illusions that just because they had signed his adoption papers that they were morally obligated to express him any affection. No, Flo and Aiden were reluctant figureheads, and Angelo doubted very much that they’d look back on their days of parenthood fondly. After all, the boy had been like a Damocles Sword above their worried heads for two years, and now they were finally free to blow town and mess up someplace else, probably at a casino that’d be stupid enough to front them credit.

  In the end it didn’t matter, they had paid their debt to the Marchetti Family in spades, and regardless of how they may’ve felt towards erasing that debt, that too didn’t matter. They were gone and Angelo wished them nothing but luck, although what they really needed was a good long stint in gamblers anonymous, that or a winning hand in a million dollar blackjack tournament.

  Angelo waited in the apartment for Uncle Vincent to come back from an important meeting with Romulus. Vincent hadn’t said what the powwow was about, but the kid could tell the big goon had been nervous about going. The Bear had paced the floor while muttering crazily to himself.

  Through those nonsensical ramblings, Angelo had discerned a few key words: made, family, and most cryptically of them all, boondocks.

  Was the meeting with Romulus to take place out in the boondocks? Or was boondocks an actual spot on the map? Perhaps a business or a club. The word could’ve meant anything.

  “Boondocks,” Angelo whispered, and as he did, he suddenly felt faint, dizzy, as if his feet didn’t belong inside this upscale apartment, but somewhere else. A place much further down the road, as far as one could possibly travel, perhaps even to another dimension.

  Suddenly, the apartment door opened, slammed and then the heavily laid feet of Uncle Vincent marched his wide girth into the living room. There, the big Bear looked down on Angelo with a strange sort of apprehension.

  Something big was up, and whatever it was, it involved Angelo specifically.

  “Hey,” Angelo nodded, a look of worry lain across his handsome face. “How’d your meeting with Romulus go?”

  “Stand up!” Vincent exclaimed. “Stand the hell up!”

  Angelo climbed onto his feet not so much with caution, but with guarded curiosity. There was sweat on Vincent’s thick brow, his breathing appeared shallow as if he’d been running. He looked all bent out of shape and that immediately put Angelo on edge right away.

  “What’s going on Vincent? Is everything ok?“

  “Come with me.”

  Vincent reached over, grabbed Angelo’s leather jacket off a chair and tossed it into his nephew’s arms. Angelo quickly slipped into the sleeves and then regarded his uncle with further unease.

  “Vincent…what’s up?”

  “Let’s go!”

  (38)

  The trip in the elevator had been tense. Vincent would briefly glance at Angelo, prepare to say something and then fall strangely quiet. The suspense had the kid wound up tight, but he knew better than to badger his uncle with a barrage of questions. The big galoot seemed to be under enough pressure as it was, the last thing he needed was a game of twenty questions. Besides, Angelo already had an idea what this odd bit of business might be about.

  He was eighteen now, an adult, and as such was free to set his life in any direction that he pleased. There was no need to worry about child services coming to haul him away because he hung with the wrong kind of people. Those days were gone forever. He was on his own now, so if he messed up, then he alone would have to stand tall before the man just like everyone else. Bad decisions courted serious consequences now, the kind that either saw you hanging from the end of a rope or stuck inside a freaking bird cage. No more juvey detention hall or house arrest for pinching car stereos, now a fella did hard time next to the psychos and hobos inside a high security Johnny Cash Folsom.

  Beyond eighteen the stakes grew significantly, and if Angelo continued down the path he was headed, then tragedy would inevitably find him. Such was the way of the gangster, dangers from both without and within the organization.

  They exited the brownstone and got inside of Vincent’s luxurious gray Mercedes coupe. The interior smelled of Italian leather and Cuban cigar smoke. Angelo thought to turn on the stereo to ease his anxiety but abstained. Vincent hated Angelo’s kind of jungle music at the best of times, not to mention that Angelo knew that if his uncle was going to open up, he’d most certainly do it on the drive.


  They weren’t two minutes into the trip when Vincent finally broke the silence.

  “Romulus wants to meet you.”

  Despite Angelo’s suspicion that this adventure involved the Gambaro Family, he was nonetheless surprised to hear Romulus’s name. He thought it would be a lowly group of thugs, loan shark leg breakers, maybe even a bookie, but the big man himself, The Romulus. That was indeed big----huge as a matter of fact.

  “Jesus,” Angelo whispered.

  Suddenly, the kid’s hands had become cold and his heart had quickened its beat.

  “Freaking hey,” Vincent concurred with a curt laugh. “So be on your best behavior Little Capone. No spitting when you talk or picking your nose. And for god’s sake call the man sir. No lip, no guff, just Mr. Manners in a Sunday morning church suit…capisce?”

  Angelo nodded, although he had secretly dreamed of giving the big cheese an earful for allowing Deluca to go on living and breathing considering what had happened to his mother and father. But today was not the day to air the Marchetti unmentionables, today was a day of acknowledgement, and that in itself was a profound offering of respect from a man who didn’t have to give a snot nose punk like Angelo the sweat off of his hairy change purse.

  “Why does he want to meet me?” Angelo asked.

  Taking his eyes of the road for a moment, Vincent regarded his nephew with an odd curiosity. “He’s curious…maybe…” Vincent shook his head and continued to drive. “You know, I’ve never pressured you to…” Vincent didn’t finish the statement, there was no need to, some things were just a given, inherently understood.

  “I’ve wanted in for a long time compadre, you know that.” Angelo glanced out the side window, watching the buildings without actually looking at them. “I tried to deny it to myself, tried to convince myself that I was romanticizing murder, but goddamn, I swear this junk is in my blood.”

  “Blood,” Vincent reiterated with a sigh that sounded overly tired. He then crossed himself like a traditional catholic, an act Angelo had never seen before. For a second he actually thought Vincent might burst into flame or get struck by a bolt of lightning. “Forgive me.”

  Angelo had a suspicion that Vincent hadn’t invoked the lord’s name, because the prayer for forgiveness had actually been meant for someone else: Angelina Marchetti, Angelo’s beloved mother and Vincent’s forbidden love.

  The car stopped in a small parking lot that was tucked behind the back of a modest Italian restaurant called Donatello’s. The parking spaces were a showroom of high end automobiles, imports that cost more than an average man’s yearly salary. Here too was the appeal of the gangster lifestyle, that upper class element built of finer things which to many was completely unattainable. Sure, Angelo could go to college for ten years and study his ass off to attain such a lofty income, but why do that when he could have it all by the time he was twenty five.

  It was a no brainer.

  Easy street was the only road to travel. The Gambaro Family had a top notch organization, and here the kid formerly of Mount Hope Orphanage just happened to have an uncle in the union. He’d be a fool not to pledge to such an exclusive fraternity: the brotherhood of wise guy goodfellas. Sure, some of its shady members needed to be tenderized with a meat hammer, namely Franco Deluca, but the best way for Angelo to get that messy business seen to was from the inside. There, opportunity would patiently wait until that time came, and when it did---bye bye Deluca.

  Vincent parked the car, checked his watch and then turned in his seat to look directly at Angelo. “Listen Angelo, I wanted to tell you something. I just wanted to…you know, get some things off my chest.”

  Angelo nodded and briefly glanced at the Donatello’s heavy oak door. For a moment he felt cold, as if he’d seen a door like that somewhere before, perhaps in another life. And then, for a short second, Angelo’s feet left the car floor and went travelling through time and space once more, somewhere over the rainbow. Bright colorful candles spotted his eyesight, and for a fraction of a second, Uncle Vincent resembled a ratty haired pirate of a bartender in a midday matinee, Treasure Island or perhaps Sinbad the Sailor. The trip however, was short lived, and soon enough he is back inside the car breathing strong leather and chewing on the pungent aftertaste of cigar smoke. He pegged the experience on nothing more than bad nerves and a lack of sleep the night before. Still, there was a residual feeling trailing closely behind, and it’s mild wake was nonetheless distracting. Here he was about to meet the big cheese himself, the one and only Romulus, so the last thing he needed right now was to be off somewhere daydreaming.

  “Are you listening to me Little Capone?” Vincent asked with a hint of annoyance.

  “Yeah…of course…go on,” Angelo assured. “I’m listening.”

  Vincent crooked his mouth, considered and then accepted the boy’s guarantee. “We’ve known each other a while now and…” He shook his head and laughed at his poor attempt to say what was on his mind. “Jesus H Macy! Here it is Angelo. When I came to you, it was out of love, capisce. Nothing more. Never once did I have an ulterior motive. Never once did I expect anything from you. You were my nephew, my brother’s son, and your place was with me, no one else’s!” He drove home this latter point with a slam from his beefy hand upon the steering wheel. “Family is everything…blood looks out for blood…everything and everyone else is secondary.” At this he bowed his head almost timidly like a submissive dog fearing its master’s wrath. “Do you believe me…do you Angelo?”

  Why wouldn’t Angelo believe Vincent after everything the big goon had done for him? Still, Angelo had to admit he felt morally deceived, or perhaps better stated, manipulated. Motives were seldom selfless, each person had something to gain from their actions. Even good deeds served a Samaritan’s emotional addictions with warm fuzzy feelings inside. As for Vincent, he wasn’t a saint or a Samaritan, he was very much into the “me” business. He wasn’t dishing out bowls of hot chicken noodle at the soup kitchens or stuffing crisp bills into homeless people’s hands, he was too busy building himself a huge nest egg while blowing a fair amount of scratch on Columbian blow and high end hookers. But that crap didn’t matter to the kid, because if Angelo had that much dime he’d be doing the same thing, too.

  The pot and kettle were black and damn proud of it.

  Still, where was this going?

  That kind of ignorance was downright laughable. The kid knew damn well where this was going and welcomed it with open arms. And perhaps that was the greatest deception of all, the boy letting the big goon in the wide lapel leather jacket think he had led them in this direction.

  There was only one thing to say.

  “Of course I believe you,” Angelo smiled. He was a good looking kid, rugged and rough around the edges the way most girls liked, a rock n roll rebel. “We’re family, blood first and foremost, nothing comes before it.”

  Vincent raised his big head and regarded the young man with deep satisfaction, as if a large weight had been partially lifted from his wide shoulders. “You know what’s inside that restaurant…you know where I’m taking you and what will surely follow thereafter.”

  Angelo nodded once. “I know we’ve never openly spoken about this, but we both know it was what I wanted…what we wanted.”

  At that inclusion, Vincent couldn’t help but look away, as if seeking an answer from the Almighty. “What I said earlier…I meant it…I never set you on this path knowingly…but…” He closed his eyes and rubbed at his nose as if it had a bad itch and then stared deep into the boy’s steel gaze. “I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want you in with me…that I haven’t thought about it for a long time.”

  A soft casual smirk lit up Angelo’s stern face. He was young, but he looked weathered on an age that set its clock by an old soul’s timepiece. “I’m a Marchetti…I was born to be what I am…and I have no regrets nor will I ever. This choice is mine alone, not yours. But I am honored to hear you say that you want me in with you, and
I’ll gladly accept that position if Gambaro will allow it.”

  Reaching over, Vincent let that giant mitt of a hand of his press upon Angelo’s athletic neck tightly, but affectionately. “You’re a man Little…no…no more Little Capone…just Angelo.”

  Angelo raised up his hand and squeezed on Vincent’s. “So…what do you think? Should we go inside and dazzle these mothers with some Marchetti charm or what?”

  A boisterous laugh erupted from Vincent’s wide mouth in a roar. “Classy gents off to the goddamn county club. Va-voom!”

  Both men climbed out of the car and into the sting of a hot afternoon sun.

  It was here that Angelo got his first clue that something was terribly wrong.

  (39)

  Midday heat wrapped its hot electric fingers around Angelo’s face as the sun made his eyes squint from its brightness. It was a gorgeous day: no wind, no clouds, nothing to come between the sun and the warped cracked pavement of the Donatello’s back parking lot.

  There in lay the problem, the conflict.

  Why was that?

  Angelo couldn’t figure it out. It felt as though the world had just lied to him, that somehow in a less than effective effort to bluff its way through an old story of which it had absolutely no recollection, it had messed up and had inadvertently tipped its hand. But what cards had it shown? What was the dilemma?

  Angelo walked beside Vincent, their feet choreographed with confident footfalls. One a sizable linebacker of a specimen, the other a tall lean quarterback with wild dark hair. They had determined looks upon their weathered faces, but as for the younger of the two, he nonetheless appeared to be preoccupied, as if perhaps he had just received a full out case of the heebie-jeebies. An odd thing to have happen on such a lovely day, but its presence was incontrovertible.

  Vincent’s big mitt grabbed onto the large iron handle of the restaurant’s heavy oak door and pulled. As the door swung open, Angelo was taken aback by a variety of strong odors. Cigar smoke, cooked meat, old wood that had eaten more than its share of hard age. But there was also something else in the mix, subtle, faint, a staleness associated with rot. Dead that had died if that made any sense, a conundrum.

  Immediately, Angelo’s hands darted beneath the stiff lapels of his leather jacket with incredible speed. They were searching for something vital, something that should be there but wasn’t.

  “What’s the matter?” Vincent asked, startled by Angelo’s quick moves. “You okay?”

  Angelo’s hands came away from his ribs and hung empty beside his hips. He felt naked, vulnerable and eerily out of place. It was kind of like déjà vu without the familiar backdrop. And there it was again, that blistering sun baking the high end luxury automobiles in garish urban light. It didn’t belong here, at least not today and just how he knew that was impossible to explain. But if the kid could compare this experience to a déjà vu, then he’d say the thing that felt missing was thunder and lightning.

  That was it! The goddamn weather was wrong! It was supposed to be raining today, buckets if he wasn’t mistaken, but even that forecast seemed incorrect.

  Thunder and lighting.

  “Angelo?” Vincent snapped his fingers in front of his nephew’s face. “Anyone home?”

  Angelo blinked, stretched his fingers and then nodded with a slight ease of a smile. “Sorry Uncle…I just felt…a twinge in my back. It’s okay now.”

  Vincent appraised his nephew with due consideration. “Well, just don’t be making no herky-jerky movements in front of the big boss man, capisce. He might think that you’re going for a gun or something, and that’s bound to be bad for both of us.”

  “Yeah,” Angelo laughed with a laid back manner. However, the kid felt wound up, disoriented and more than a little bit confused. “Oh, wasn’t it supposed to be raining today?”

  Vincent hunched his eyebrows and then laughed. “Get the hell out of here. What do I look like, a freaking weathervane?”

  Angelo smiled warmly and shrugged, but inside he couldn’t help but feel as though thunder and lightning were missing.

  (40)

  The Donatello was a dimly lit bar and grill, late night ambiance would be the best phrase to describe it. In here it always looked like midnight, a den where seasoned alcoholics no doubt came to nurse old habits and where deals with the devil were often made. The mahogany tables sat empty, hardwood leather upholstered booths vacant, a small pool room in a separate section haunted by a short old man who might’ve had one inch on a midget. This skinny elf wore a blue polyester leisure suit, and when he noticed Angelo and Vincent standing in the entrance, he merely nodded cordially and then snapped off a powerful break with the cue ball.

  Four balls went in.

  Angelo trailed after Vincent as they moved through the dining area and around a corner to where a well stocked bar sat beneath a trellis of wine glasses and creeping vine lights. The mirror on the wall was spotless, except for where someone had written on it with red marker.

  Shots $3.00

  Hard stuff $8.50

  Beer $8.75

  Kitchen open till midnight

  Happy Hour 6 till 9 Monday-Friday

  But it was not the menu that gave Angelo pause, it was the thing that sat in the middle of the mirror like a big eyesore. There someone had drawn a huge question mark between a set of wavy quotation marks. Why had they done that? It had no relevance to anything, but then again, Angelo felt it was of the utmost significance.

  “Have you thought of your question yet?”

  Angelo spun quickly, eyes narrow and sharp, stance poised for sudden action. “What? What did you say?”

  Vincent stopped, turned around, surprised by his nephew’s reaction. “Jesus…what’s with you today? Judging by the way you look you’d think I’d just said something disrespectful about your mother, god rest her soul. Are you okay?”

  “What did you say? Something about a question.”

  Vincent nodded, regarded the mirror for a second and then fixed Angelo with a strange stare. “What I meant was that you must be wondering about Romulus…you must have a few questions for him…I was curious if you knew what you were going to ask him, that’s all.”

  Angelo squeezed his eyes tight and then rubbed at his forehead with massaging fingers. “I’m sorry, Vincent. I guess I’m just a bit edgy.” He looked at the mirror with the gaudy question mark. “What the hell is that thing supposed to mean?”

  Vincent studied the grammar symbol and then shrugged. “Damned if I know…maybe it’s supposed to be a hook or a cane.”

  “Inside quotation marks?”

  Again Vincent shrugged. “It’s irrelevant. Come on, let’s get a groove on. And by the way, no questions about Deluca or your folks, capisce.”

  “Capisce.”

  As if Angelo had to be told that bit of information. He may’ve only been eighteen, but he wasn’t stupid. No, the subject of mom and pop and that miserable son of a bitch named Deluca were most definitively taboo subjects when it came to Romulus. But then again if the big cheese should offer to mention the incident, then Angelo would jump on the opportunity with both feet.

  As they walked, Angelo’s caution gave way to the significance of the grammar symbol on the barroom mirror. Its presence denoted a question as well as Vincent’s suggestion. Was that a coincidence? Angelo couldn’t decipher it, and what his gut said didn’t seem to make much sense either. It insinuated that’s why Angelo felt so weird, awkward, so hopelessly out of place. It suggested that maybe the bar and everything in it was in actuality built from the deceptive smoke of a dream. But that was crazy, right off the freaking map kind of crazy, but still, the gut grumbled and complained and it was everything for Angelo to ignore it.

  (41)

  They walked past a row of one armed bandits, a gaming room filled with roulette wheels flanked by a dozen or so blackjack and poker tables, and into another lounge area with a small stage that was cluttered with musical instruments and amplifiers.
It was beside this stage that they saw six men who easily rivaled Vincent in size and power: the Gambaro hired goon patrol.

  They stood causally before a thick door that had been fashioned from a sturdy trunk of maple, a door that had a solitary symbol engraved into its finely sanded wood. It was of a serpent, a king cobra coiled on its tail like a roll of rope, its hooded head bowed, fangs exposed in a poisonous hiss. It was an amazing work of art, but the snake’s exquisite detail escaped Angelo’s mindful eye and was perceived by his imagination which couldn’t help but notice just how much the damn thing looked like a question mark.

  The goons offered no greeting, just the dangerous eyes of very large men who knew how to hurt people. It was obvious that they’d been expecting the duo, and judging by the expression on their faces they seemed quite curious about the young man with the shaggy hair and the Manhattan designer jacket.

  Systematically the Marchettis were frisked and checked for weapons. After a clean bill of sale the duo were permitted access into the Big Kahuna’s chamber of secrets and it was in there that the very world fell out from beneath Angelo’s feet once and for all.

  (42)

  Lightning blinded Angelo’s eyes while thunder deafened his ears. A sour bitter aftertaste of muddy soil filled his mouth and permeated into his nostrils with a stale stench so vile that it constricted his stomach into a single spasm of projectile vomit. All was darkness, except for that residual remnant of the lightning flash which continued to show Angelo’s brain a dull display of mute fireworks.

  Dry heaves gasped out of his parched mouth like a beached fish. His body felt deathly cold, cocooned within a frost so hard that it splintered the bone. Somewhere in the dark his hands itched and burned from frostbite, his toes felt crushed, his ears two husks that had been submerged into liquid nitrogen. But despite the severity of these torments, they were nothing in comparison to the angst within his heart. This ailment wasn’t physical, but psychological, maybe even spiritual. It felt as though he had regurgitated more than just a bad batch of booze or a poorly settled breakfast, but as though he had puked out a part of his very soul.

  How could that be?

  He couldn’t have, it was impossible, damn foolishness to think otherwise, a man hurled cookies, not karma. But nonetheless, Angelo felt emptier, depleted of a goodness he never knew existed, perhaps robbed of that virtue known as grace. Regardless of the sorrowful sensation, he willed himself to ignore it. Instinct reminded him of the importance of being mobile, only poets had time to bleed buckets, as for pirates, they just got nasty.

  Angelo clenched his teeth, growled, squeezed his hands into two frozen clubs. Knuckles popped and cracked, felt as though they might split at the joints like fractured doweling. The pain was excruciating, but served to clear his head, and before Angelo knew it his thoughts had flown back out of the barroom mirror and into the crusty frigid shell that was his waiting body.

  CHAPTER THREE

  RED