She said, “Everything you did today, Johnny. What they've been saying. About my brothers… and my father-my daddy?”
“Yes, Maria.”
Everybody just stared at him, maybe waiting for her to give the order to kill Dane.
Dane scowled at one of the toughs. Just another kid really, no more than twenty or so. Dane said, “You. You just got promoted. What's your name?”
“Nunzio.”
Jesus, all these old-world Italians and their names from the Olive Oil villages. “All right, Nunz, I want you to take the Don out of here. Use the Caddy out front. Vinny's in the trunk.”
“Holy fuck,” Big Tommy said.
“Bury them wherever you get rid of bodies, Big. The Meadowlands? Fresh Kills?”
“Yeah, Staten Island. There's no room behind Kennedy Airport anymore.”
“Go take them.” Gesturing to the muscle. “Both of you help him. Remember the spot though. In a couple of weeks we'll drop a call to the police, have them found and brought home. Give them a big funeral.” They deserved that, and both of them would've understood this had to come first. “Afterward, I'll have a list of more to do. And your salary's just been doubled.”
“Everybody in the organization?” Delmare asked.
“Everybody in this room. Get the troops together in the morning. I got a few things I can teach them.”
“Do you mean military tactics?”
“Yeah.”
“What are you planning to do?”
“To pay a visit to the Ventimiglias. We're going to take out Vito Grimaldi.”
“But why? They haven't done anything. By implicating them with all these recent crimes, they'll be smeared in the media and under continuous investigation for months. There's no reason to take a stand against them.”
Dane looked at him. “They're the last rough crew around.”
“Yes, that's right.”
“So that's the reason, Georgie.”
Everybody grateful now. The two thugs with the same expression on their stupid faces-giddy, sensing major changes ahead. They grabbed the Don's body and hustled him down the hallway and out the door. Big carried away the blood-smeared chair, and that was the only evidence that the Don had died in his own living room. Georgie nodded and left for his office.
Dane turned to Maria and saw real fright in her eyes.
He stepped closer and saw the lust there too, the reverence.
Rispetto.
She was looking at him as if noticing him for the first time since he was a child, and she was.
It made his pulse hammer and the sweat flood down his back. He took her gently but assuredly, encircling her waist and drawing her to him. She held her ground for an instant, then flowed against his body, squirming there, then yielding.
“Do you still want to be an actress?”
“I never really cared much about that,” she said. “It was something to dream about until something else better came along.”
He thought of her on the screen, sharing her with the world, ten thousand theaters filled with squirming men, guys at home with their VCRs all freeze-framed on her. “Good,” Dane told her. “I need you here.”
“You need me.” Her face softening even more, so beautiful that he could barely control himself.
“I always have.”
“I've been waiting for you, Johnny.”
JoJo had been right. We all got one thing in the world that we love more than anything else. That makes us do what we do and makes us who we are.
He led her upstairs, kicking in doors until he found her bedroom. As he kissed her throat he saw the photo of JoJo Tormino behind her, on the night table. He eased her down on the mattress, reached over, and slapped the frame to the floor.
She unbuckled his belt and he said, “JoJo loved you. I promised him I'd tell you that.”
“I don't give a shit,” she whispered, and Dane rolled her back on the bed and was on her.
The boy with the sick brain happily bounded forward from a corner of the room, perhaps finally ready to tell Dane whatever it was he'd been trying to say. An angel with golden wings as shiny as coins sat on the edge of the mattress, supplicant but silent, a burning sword in its right hand. Dane lay with his love and let out his first real laugh in thirty years against her throat as he waited for the kid so much like himself to again mutter all the grievous, joyous, secret languages of the profane and fitful dead.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
TOM PICCIRILLI is the author of fourteen novels, including November Mourns, A Choir of Ill Children, The Night Class, A Lower Deep, and Coffin Blues. He's had over 150 stories published, and his short fiction spans multiple genres and demonstrates his wide-ranging narrative skills. He has been a World Fantasy Award finalist and a three-time Bram Stoker Award winner. Visit Tom's official website, Epitaphs, at www.tompiccirilli.com. Tom welcomes email at PicSelf1@aol.com.
