Flicker & Burn: A Cold Fury Novel (18 page)

She hesitated as the rage in her face went from red to pink to pale. Clearly, they’d covered this painful ground before, with the old man forgetting more of it and Annabelle forgiving him all over again. “Daddy,” she sighed, slowly embracing him.

“I’m disappearing. Bit by bit. I want to take care of you and Heather before . . .”

“That’s why we’re here,” she said, leading him from the kitchen.

I watched the door swing shut, hurried to a box on the counter filled with molasses cookies, and grabbed it. As I sped from the bakery, the tragedy of what had occurred sunk in—the razor-thin chance of discovering the
“Volta”
secret of ultimate power gobbled away by a garbage disposal. It had been just copies of the chapter’s secret pages, but there was no way Annabelle would let Uncle Jack work on another version. I had no idea what Juan Kone knew about ultimate power—I still had no idea what it was myself!—but if I’d hoped it would serve as a defense against him and the squad of creatures, that fantasy was gone too. I pulled to the curb, trying to figure out my next move, as my hand brushed the Rispoli & Sons Fancy Pastries box. Looking down at it, I realized that everyone is left a legacy by her parents.

Sometimes it’s soft, sweet cookies and secret meetings with gangsters.

Other times the legacy is a moment that scars your neck, and soul, for life.

In the end, it’s what she does with it that matters.

THE ADDRESS IN THE NOTE THAT SUMMONED
me to the sit-down was on a gray block right off Michigan Avenue, between Oak and Elm, that I wasn’t aware existed.

If I hadn’t been looking for Poplar Street, I’d have driven by without a glance.

Idling at the corner, looking from the note through the windshield, I was struck by the blandness of the area, populated by faded brick apartment buildings, chunky Victorians, and skinny mid-rises. Somehow the note had become damp, and I realized my hands were sweating. I swung to the curb and cut the engine, grabbed the cookie box, and shut my eyes. To say I was nervous was an understatement; it was full-soul trepidation, as if I were about to face a demon that knew everything I was hiding about my missing family, especially my (possibly rat) dad. I thought,
What if he does? What if that’s why I’m here?
and realized that it didn’t matter—there was nowhere to run. The thought didn’t calm me down but it did get me moving, and half a block later I stood outside a building that was neither shabby nor luxurious. More than anything, it was forgettable, an anonymous rectangle leaning toward the sky like an upended shoe box. A discreet brass sign affixed beside a revolving door read:

HOTEL ALGREN
Long-Term Residency Only

NO TRESPASSING—SOLICITORS WILL BE PROSECUTED

I looked skyward, seeing only sooty stone and stringy clouds. I was expecting the secretive majesty of the Commodore Hotel, with a red-carpeted entrance manned by a doorman in a bell captain’s uniform. Instead I pushed through to a tiny lobby. A dusty palm tree wilted in the corner and circulars for pizza and Thai places were scattered under a row of mailboxes. There was no doorman; the entry to the home of the Boss of the Outfit was completely unguarded. I checked the address again—correct—and crossed to an elevator. It arrived with a groan and complained all the way to the thirteenth floor, leaving me in a hallway with worn carpeting and buzzing light fixtures. Somewhere nearby, a TV grumbled. The note read
Apartment 1306,
and I counted down until I came to the door. For luck, I kissed my mom’s gold
R
signet ring and pressed Max’s Triumph medallion against my neck. I barely knocked, and the door swung open to a guy who looked like an ancient Roman statue. He was as solid as poured cement, with cropped silver hair and penetrating eyes peering down an aquiline nose.

Slowly, with no question mark at the end, he side-mouthed my name in a Chicago accent that sounded like
Seer-uh Jee-un Riz-booli.
I nodded, smiled, lifted the cookies, received no smile in return, and slowly lowered the box. He made a clicking noise with his tongue and motioned me inside. I entered a small, plain room. A single bed covered by a thin blanket sat next to an old TV and chipped wooden chair. An oil painting of geese in flight hung on the wall, and plastic slats covered the window. The door closed behind me, locked, locked again, and locked once more.

I turned and said, “Lucky?”

He jerked his head at a door. “Bathroom,” he said, sounding like
bee-ath-rum.

“Pardon?”

“Go.”

“I . . . don’t have to . . .”

“Go,”
he hissed through clamped teeth in a way that made the hairs on my neck stretch. I entered a pink-tiled, bleach-smelling restroom and shut the door. A glass vanity etched with rose vines hung above a pink porcelain sink. I yanked a pull chain on the vanity as a frost-covered fluorescent light stuttered to life. There was nothing behind the shower curtain but a (yes, pink) tub, and then I looked over the toilet where a homey, hand-painted sign hung. Next to an image of an apple-cheeked little boy and girl holding hands while making their way to an outhouse, a verse read:

Be it ever so humble

For woman or man,

Whether pee-pee or poo-poo,

There’s no place like the can!

I stared at it, seeing the raised
C
in
can,
and pushed it. The wall and false toilet attached to it lifted, revealing a concealed hallway. I stepped forward, the wall swooshed shut, and I moved cautiously toward a floor-to-ceiling barricade of riveted steel. A slot opened in it wide enough to reveal a pair of shifty eyes. I’d seen something like it before, thinking of the Prohibition-era door to Club Molasses. A voice said, “Password.”

“Password? Oh, right!” I said, remembering the note, and I read, “‘I refuse to answer on the grounds that it may incriminate me.’”

The slot slammed, a door rose, and I moved toward the owner of the eyes, which resided in a bullet-shaped head attached to a gorilla body. An Uzi was slung over his shoulder and a .45 strapped to his waist. His partner, a gawky dork with slick hair, ushered me toward a metal detector while Bullet-Head rested a hand on the pistol. Slick stared at me and removed a toothpick. “You’re the Rispoli?”

“That’s right.”

He snorted, unpeeling a “big fragging deal” grin. As I entered the metal detector, he said, “Take off the ring. And whatever’s around your neck. What’s in the box?”

“Molasses cookies.”

“Cookies?” he said with mock wonder. “Guess I didn’t get the memo.”

“What memo?” Bullet-Head said.

“That we were becoming a branch of the
Girl
Scouts!” Slick said as they guffawed together, two idiots with the same donkey laugh.

I blinked once, the cold blue flame leaped like a caged tiger, and I held Slick’s wiseguy gaze until his forehead sprouted sweat and his chin quivered. When his worst fear was traveling between us (him modeling women’s frilly underwear in front of a mirror and being discovered by Bullet-Head), I said, “You’re making me late. I’ll tell Lucky why.”

“No . . . please, Counselor,
please,
” he whispered.

I blinked, watching him collapse against a wall. Turning to his partner, I said, “How about you, cue ball? You get the memo?”

“Yes, ma’am. I mean, no, ma’am . . . miss . . . Counselor!” he said, vigorously shaking his head and pointing a finger. “That way. The viewing room.”

I turned down a hallway wide enough to park a Cadillac in and stood outside glass doors where sad, sweet lutes and ululating angels played through the air. I knocked once, got no response, and put an ear to the door, hearing a muffled sobbing. I knocked again and entered a dark room flickering with Technicolor. On-screen, Bambi nosed the dead body of his mother. Two figures sat side by side in the front row. An explosion of sobs shook the room as the cartoon deer whispered, “Mother? Mother?”

“Oh God! It’s
just . . . not . . . fair
!” the voice wailed, pounding the arms of the chair.

“There, there,” a female voice said comfortingly. In the dark, I saw the spark of a lighter and smelled a cigarette.

“Why the hell does the poor mother
always . . . get . . . killed
?”

“’Cause Disney likes to kill mothers,” the female voice said.

“Excuse me,” I said softly. “I’m looking for Lucky.”

It was silent, and then the crier blew his nose, calling out, “Cut the film! Turn up the lights!” Bambi disappeared, the room was semi-lit, and I hadn’t even taken a step when he said, “We’re coming to you.” I stood nervously, expecting a specimen more intimidating than the thug who’d answered the apartment door. A metallic scraping preceded them as an elderly man emerged from the gloom, pushing a walker. He was not thin or fat, tall or short. The Cubs ball cap could’ve been brand-new or fifty years old, and his glasses, framed in black, were neither thick nor thin. He wore a dull dress shirt beneath a light-blue Windbreaker covering a soft potbelly, beige pants with no crease, and white Velcro tennis shoes. As he approached, he thumbed away tears with a handkerchief. His appearance was similar to the facade of the Hotel Algren—in one glance little impression was made, and he was forgotten. I knew enough about the Outfit to realize it was a purposeful effect. When you spend a lifetime carrying out brazen crimes and committing acts of terrorism, anonymity is a strategy for survival.

Then he drew closer, and I saw his eyes.

In contrast to the rest of him, they were impossible to ignore or forget.

They were iridescent black pearls, sucking in the light around them while giving out nothing, and I knew I was looking into the face of death.
A shark could try to disguise itself inside a dolphin suit,
I thought,
but its eyes would give it away.
He stared at me coldly and said, “Who’da thunk it? A girl got the
malocchio.
”

“
Malocchio
?” I said, my voice shallow.

“The evil eye. In the old days, guys used it for intimidation. They’d practice, squinting into a mirror.” He chuckled, shaking his head. “Idiots. Only certain Rispolis got
malocchio,
right?”

“Yeah,” I said. “That’s right.”

“I’m sure your pop told you, but as a gentle reminder”—he grinned wickedly—“use it on me and I’ll slit your goddamn throat.” My tongue went dry and before I could speak, he said, “But then, why would you? If I’m incapacitated, you are, as the poets say, shit outta luck. Symbiosis is a big word, but it fits—we benefit each other mutually. You sit in judgment over homicidal thugs and force them to behave, and I make sure the losers in those disputes don’t kill you . . . and they want to, every last one.”

Of course he was right. On some level, I was aware of being protected as counselor-at-large. The losers were harshly punished
and
highly vindictive, and after all, I had these cold, furious eyes in the front of my head, but not the back. The past four months had shown that I was as vulnerable to sneak attack as anyone; ghiaccio furioso would be useless if an Outfit enforcer got the drop on me, threw a bag over my head, and started in with a tire iron. Besides that, there was a question that occurred to me each time I used cold fury on a thug to settle a dispute—how long did the effect last? Was it temporary or forever? I had no way of knowing since I’d been deploying it for just several months. I could only imagine Lucky’s bloody wrath if I used cold fury on him, and then the old man snapped out of it.

Quietly, I said, “I won’t, ever. You have my word.”

“There’s a reason Nunzio and Enzo lived to be old men and your dad’s suffering some disease instead of a bullet,” he said, “and you’re looking at him. I’ve been Boss a long time. Someone’s always plotting, ready to slit my throat and take over, but I’ve survived it all. The counselor-at-large helped me do it—
helped
—but the real reason I’m still in charge is because I never make a threat I don’t fulfill.
Tu capisci?
”

“Si.”
I swallowed.
“Capisco.”

“Speaking of your dad, poor Anthony Rispoli. So sick, he hasn’t been seen on the street in months. So near death, a girl is doing his job. Back in the day, the Outfit wasn’t always Italian, but it was always everything
except
female.” He shrugged his thin shoulders. “Times change. One thing the Outfit does well is change with them. Just to be clear, I don’t give two craps in a handbag if your dad is sick, healthy, or dead, as long as a Rispoli is serving as counselor-at-large.”

“Good. That’s good,” I said, trying to keep the relief from my voice.

“The problem is, some people
do
give two craps. That’s why you’re here.”

“I don’t understand. What people?”

“Zip it. I never stay in one place while discussing business. We walk and talk.”

“Or roll,” said the woman at his side, and I looked at her for the first time. Lucky may’ve been seventy-five or ninety-five, and she was up there too, but showgirl sexy in a timeless way. Her hair was a platinum tidal wave swooping over one side of her face, while her curvaceous body was girdled into a va-va-voomish dress ending just above the knees. She smiled with ruby lips, scrunched a not insubstantial nose (it made me like her), and said, “Peek-a-Boo.”

“Uh . . . the same to you?” I said.

“No, silly,” she said, switching a cigarette from two French manicured fingers to the corner of her mouth. “Peek-a-Boo Schwartz. That’s my name. Well, my stage name, anyway. If history has taught us anything, it’s that nobody wants to see a broad named Irma shake her moneymaker.”

“My girlfriend,” Lucky said, “who left girlhood behind long, long ago. Everyone seems to know it except her wardrobe.”

“You’re no spring chicken yourself, you old bastard,” she said as a horn honked softly. We moved out to the hallway where Bullet-Head waited with a golf cart, helped Lucky into the driver’s seat, and disappeared. The old man pointed me into the seat next to him. Peek-a-Boo lifted the Cubs cap, kissed Lucky’s head, and said, “Be nice.”

“I was born nice,” he growled.

“I ain’t even sure you was born,” she said as he and I whirred away.

The hallway seemed to go on forever. I cleared my throat, saying, “This is a huge apartment. I mean . . . it’s the whole floor, right?”

“Whole damn building,” he said. “Them cookies for me?”

I had a death grip on the pastry box. “Oh. Yeah.”

“Open it,” he ordered. One hand on the steering wheel, he grabbed a cookie and devoured it, jaws snapping, then burped softly. “Tastes like my childhood. I was pals with your grandpa Enzo . . .
amico mio.
We came up together.”

My lips moved without permission, saying, “What about Giaccomo?”

The cart slowed to a stop with his eyes pinned on me. “Enzo’s brother wasn’t in the Outfit and didn’t know nothing about nothing. The . . .
end.
”

I swallowed a mouthful of pebbles. “Right, so, uh . . . you watch a lot of movies?”

“A good film is like a well-made clock. All the parts moving in sync. Just like the Outfit. We supply addicts and perverts, and they pay us. We bribe bad cops and crooked politicians to protect us so we can keep supplying addicts and perverts, and so on. It’s the circle of freakin’ life.” He bit into a cookie and paused, looking like he’d tasted spoiled milk. “Except all’s not well in paradise. We got problems with the Russian mob. They’re young, bold, and bloody, and their leader has
testicoli
of steel. He ain’t shown his face yet, but his guys are encroaching on our turf, kicking inside our business, stealing our daily bread, and busting heads.” He leaned in, the combination of rage and excitement unmistakable. “There’s gonna be a war. Prisoners will be taken for leverage and revenge. You’re gonna use that precious
malocchio
to get ’em talking—names, locations, stash houses—and then, according to the crimes they’ve committed against the Outfit, you’ll make a crucial decision over and over again.”