Flicker & Burn: A Cold Fury Novel (24 page)

“I don’t know who it was, you silly bitch!” Juan spit, his head vibrating. “A ghost, a phantom, and now it’s gone, just like your family! Save me, damn you!”

I slowed, knowing Juan was right, that my family was gone again, and I stopped in my tracks. “No,” I said softly, the blue flame puffing out. “Damn
you.
”

Teardrop stepped over the barrier into the marshy grass and paused.
“Soy belleza y belleza es yo.”

Juan turned to Bubbly Creek, gas blisters burping to the surface. “No . . . no,” he said, trying to put authority into his voice, “you listen to me!
¡Escuche!
”

Teardrop looked down at the wasted body in its arms. “My Beauty drowned. Swallowed dirty, cold water, and died.
Mató la Belleza
 . . .
you
killed Beauty.”

“No, stop! I
command
you to stop!” Juan screamed.
“¡Monstruo! ¡Diablo!”

Teardrop looked back with its eyes less red and more human, and walked slowly into the creek. Juan’s head battered the creature’s chest, pecking and biting like a trapped bird, too busy fighting to scream, and then he was underwater with only Teardrop’s shoulders and head visible. And then, with a determined plunge, it went all the way under. The sludgy water swallowed them both, belching mud. I stared at the swirling surface, waiting for nothing, and turned back to the warehouse.

Doug was standing close to Heather, holding a thick black folder. “It’s about you. And your dad,” he said. “It explains cold fury.” I nodded, and we pushed Heather toward the door, pausing at the field of bodies. Doug glanced beyond, at the vat of Sec-C that had done it. There were chemicals everywhere, in green bottles and tin drums. “Let’s burn it down,” he said.

“In a minute,” I said, looking at a dead creature staring past me blankly, its red eyes focused on nothing. I remembered Lucky’s command, returned to Juan’s lab, and came back with a scalpel. I bent over the creature and paused, murmured an apology, and then removed its eye with a delicate flick. Lucky would have his ghoulish, ocular trophy and never suspect that it came from anyone but Johnny. I wrapped it up carefully and said, “Okay. Torch it.”

It took only a few minutes to soak everything with flammables.

After a moment of silence for the dead, Doug dropped a match.

Dancing flames caught the chemicals and when everything was burning—victims, my dad’s blood, Sec-C—we hurried out. South Karl was weedy and deserted. There was no sign that anyone was aware of the rapidly growing conflagration. Bubbly Creek oozed past, smelling like death. The Lincoln looked empty until Johnny’s head appeared, lifting slowly into view. His face softened, like seeing an old friend. “I dreamed of home. I saw it.” We moved him in front, placed Heather in back, and I climbed in beside her. Doug started the car, and when he turned the wheel, driving away, she leaned into me woozily, head on my shoulder, and stayed there. I touched her cold hand, and it moved.

“I heard Juan talking about your dad,” she said, “mocking his weakness.”

I was quiet, looking out the window, seeing the sooty South Side speed past.

“It’s the part of your brain where love exists. That’s your weakness too.”

“Because of how I feel about my family . . . about Max.”

She coughed thickly and took a deep breath. “He didn’t do it. With me, I mean.”

I looked into Heather’s gray gaze, her beauty intact but infected, and my heart clutched, seeing her more dead than alive. “We were alone,” she said. “I was ready to use ghiaccio furioso when he began talking about you. I saw the love in his eyes . . . it was right there, a living thing. And then I remembered something and the flame blew out.”

“What was it?”

“We’re family. We’re Rispolis . . . and I . . . love you too,” she said, blood leaking from the corner of her mouth, spattering her gown.

“Doug,” I said to the front seat, “we have to get to a hospital, now.”

She looked at me pleadingly, her eyes searching mine. “Don’t hate me.”

“I don’t. I never will.”

She laid her head against my shoulder and closed her eyes. Her mouth curled into the ghost of smile as she whispered,
“Break away to where the sun shines every day . . . at Family Fun Town, we wanna be your host . . . have fun, fun, fun . . .”

“With the people who love you most,”
I sang, without music in my voice.

Heather shivered once, and the car was quiet. I stared at her a second longer, willing her to open her eyes. When she didn’t, I looked out the window, seeing nothing, letting a piece of my heart drift away.

• • •

The rest is predictable, I suppose. Sometimes there’s nothing as tragic as things turning out as you could’ve guessed they would. I couldn’t risk exposure, so as respectfully as possible, we left Heather’s body at a hospital along with contact information, and sped away. Juan’s poison turned out to be formulated from diamorphine. A pathologist ruled her death an overdose of heroin. Annabelle assumed that her addicted daughter had fallen off the wagon, all the way to nowhere. I stopped at the bakery the day before she and Uncle Jack left for good, taking Heather’s body back to L.A. I’ve never seen a person cry as hard or deep as Annabelle. The sorrow unstopped her voice as she sobbed brokenly for her only child’s wasted life. I held her, standing in the kitchen, and when she pulled back, her face was filled with the same devastating disappointment—in fate, in life, in herself—that used to crease Uncle Buddy’s. I guess things other than cold fury run in our family. She tried on a smile, licking at tears, and handed me a sheaf of bound papers, croaking painfully, “Take this. Uncle Jack wanted you to have it. He has no use for it now.” I looked at the title, reading:

The Weeping Mafioso

An original screenplay by Jack Richards

June 26, 1966

I turned to the old man sitting on a stool with his back to me. Besides the hum of the refrigerator, the kitchen was quiet. All of the reassuring smells of freshly baked cookies and cakes had dissipated. Something had broken inside him in the past few days, either a severe worsening of Alzheimer’s or the terrible shock of Heather’s death—or maybe unearthing an old memory filled with guilt, self-hatred, and subterranean bodies that was better off dead and buried beneath the disease. Whatever it was, he was still alive but as far away as his granddaughter. I touched his shoulder lightly, and he turned, his warm brown eyes searching mine. A showbiz smile lit his face as he touched my arm, saying, “And who are you, my dear?”

It was the perfect line, delivered perfectly.

I thought about what had happened in less than a month and all I’d been through.

I said nothing, since sometimes I knew who I was, and other times I had no idea.

SOMETIMES THE ONLY WAY TO GET AWAY FROM
yourself is to leave the place where you’re the most yourself. Becoming immersed in a different city or country requires a person to conform to its rhythm and language, creating new layers of identity. Unfamiliarity is like a psychological bottle opener that pops you out of a groove.

I was out of the groove now, thirty thousand feet in the air, getting as far away from myself as I could.

It was time to go because I’d failed miserably at the last, best chance to save my family. I hated Chicago, the Outfit, and myself, and I was unable to separate the three. I was losing my mind pacing the Bird Cage Club, not knowing if my family was alive while driving knives into my heart by repeating that verse over and over again.

We are alive

in Sara Jane

Each day we wait

for Sara Jane . . .

Until something happened that nearly drove me over the edge. Dressed in formal sit-down attire, I visited the Hotel Algren carrying a small cooler filled with ice and presented it to Lucky. My explanation was simple: something had been wrong with Johnny’s mind that cold fury could not affect; I was unable to extract information and killed him as ordered. The proof shone up from the cooler, glistening red. Lucky nodded as I spoke, lifted the eyeball from ice, and placed it on the table between us. “This war is just beginning. You’ll have plenty of opportunities to torture or kill. The Russians think they can beat me, an old man,” he said, dropping a fist like a hammer and squashing the eyeball into crimson pulp, “but
I’ll
crush every last one of them.”

I was driving away in a daze when Tyler called.

He was charming and witty, but it all sounded like mud in my ears until I heard one word. I made him repeat what he’d said, staring out over the gray, hateful city for a long moment before answering with a quiet, “Yes. I’ll go to Rome with you.” And that’s where I was now, on the StroBisCo jet, in a thick leather seat sipping something bubbly, looking down at Chicago growing smaller and farther away. Tyler’s proposition had been flattering—he’d moved his business meeting from Paris to Rome just so I’d go with him—and also grasping, since it was plain he’d go to great lengths to draw me in. I leaned into the aisle, looking at the back of the plane where he sat meeting with three rapt employees, issuing orders to the trio of underlings only slightly older than himself. Sitting back, I removed a piece of lined paper, unfolded it, and read it again.

Dear Sara Jane,

By the time you get this, I’ll be on my way to California. My dad says there’s a good high school nearby and that I can ride my motorcycle every day. So I guess there’s an upside to everything.

I got your voice mail. Thanks, I appreciate your words. It meant a lot to me that you were finally ready to talk. The thing is—and I don’t want to hurt your feelings, only tell the truth—it’s too little, too late. We started out strong and true, and I tried to keep it that way, but you didn’t. Your voice mail seemed to acknowledge the ever-present element of . . . well, I guess the only word is dishonesty.

This letter isn’t about love.

For us, that was the easy part.

It was about all the things you wouldn’t tell me, all the weird situations you refused to explain. And when you didn’t show up at Mandi’s party, it changed something. I went from not understanding why you wouldn’t talk to me truthfully to not caring anymore. But I do care about your happiness, Sara Jane, I want you to know that.

I hope you find what you’re looking for.

Best, Max

I stared at the words
find what you’re looking for,
feeling their unintentional sting. My message had been simple and, I saw now, heartbreaking for him. I’d left it after dropping off my cousin at a hospital, when I was finally alone in my dark room at the Bird Cage Club, whispering earnestly into the phone, “I heard about you and Heather. She told me the truth. And now I’m ready to tell you the truth, Max . . . about everything.” And I had been. I was so devastated at losing my family again, so bereft at the futility of Heather’s death, that I wanted to give away part of myself—to unload the burdensome secrets, lies, and classified criminal information I carried like a tumor. If Max had picked up instead of letting it go to voice mail, he would know everything now. But just like my inability to save my family, I’d missed that opportunity too. And now that he’d done the brave thing, removing himself from a broken relationship, I had to let him go free.

I was trying to free myself too.

All I knew was that my family had been taken by Lou’s “friend”; otherwise, the trail was cold, leading nowhere. It seemed certain now that they were gone forever, and as heartbreaking as that was to accept, I was being whistled in, sit-down by sit-down, decision by decision, by a larger, criminal family. I couldn’t fight the tide any longer. I also didn’t want to be completely alone, and if I were with anyone, he’d have to understand my life without requiring an explanation. And then he was leaning over me with an arm on the back of my seat, smiling with perfect teeth, green eyes set off by copper-colored skin. Tyler wears a type of cologne, lightly, that smells of lemon and spice, and his thick, dark hair is cut to frame his face like a fashion ad. He’s half African American and half Sicilian—he refers to himself as “Africilian”—and really is one of the best-looking guys I know, and smartest too.

Smart enough to know that our respective roles would make us a power couple.

The Outfit has a long, sensible tradition of keeping the things that matter—secrets and profits—as strictly in the family as possible. As long as Tyler and I fulfilled our responsibilities, our relationship would be regarded favorably, like the prom king and queen of organized crime. It may seem self-serving, but dating Tyler also strengthens my position. Of course, he comes with all of the inborn Outfit traits—suspicion, double-talk, duplicity toward enemies, mistrust of friends—but he’s also of my generation. As far as I can tell, he has no issue with the counselor-at-large being a woman.

He’s also not Max.

But I resolved to get past that.

So when he leaned closer, gingerly touching Max’s
T
medallion at my neck, I tried not to flinch. He said, “I like this. From now on, it can stand for Tyler,” and before I could respond, he kissed me lightly. It was pleasant, soft, nonthreatening, and still not Max, which meant no sparks but nice. Very nice. Definitely something I could get used to, like fat-free cupcakes. And without the element of love, I’d never be in the position of weakening myself, suppressing cold fury and the electricity, which I’d need more than ever as my role as counselor-at-large expanded. Which reminded me of the thick black folder in my backpack, the one Doug took from Juan’s lab marked
La Ciencia de Ghiaccio Furioso
(The Science of Cold Fury). Doug read it (his Spanish is a million times better than mine), saying that if Juan had done anything good in his life, he’d at least provided a simple neurobiological explanation for cold fury. My reaction was that “simple” and “neurobiological” don’t belong in the same sentence, but I realized how important it was to understand myself, and I resolved to read it on the flight.

Doug had looked at me then, silent a beat before saying, “You’re really going?”

I nodded without speaking, tossing clothes into a bag.

“Max is already gone, huh?”

“Yep. Gone.”

“Hard to believe it’s over . . . that you’re giving up the search,” he said quietly.

“Not giving up as much as moving on,” I said, lifting the bag over my shoulder.

“I wish things were different . . . ,” he said, letting the words drift since there were too many things to wish for. Instead, he opened his thin arms. “What about this place? Am I still a resident of the Bird Cage Club?”

“As long as you help take care of Harry. Oh . . . ,” I said, remembering something. I dug in my pocket and came up with car keys, flipping them to him.

Doug looked at the key chain with an image of a stallion on its hind legs. “Really? The Ferrari?”

“It’ll get you around Chicago faster than the Lincoln. It’s good of you to help Johnny try to find his way home.” I shrugged and said, “Keep giving him Screaming Banshee. Maybe it’s not too late.”

“When I look at him, I see myself if I’d gone a step further. If he has any chance at all, he’ll need someone who really loves him. Or tough-loves him. Whatever,” he said, punching my arm lightly. “Anyway, it’s the least one ex-junkie can do for another.” He pointed at the folder and said, “Promise you’ll read it on your way to Rome?”

I did, I promised, so when Tyler went to speak with the pilot—“my airborne chauffeur,” he called him—I reached into the backpack for
La Ciencia de Ghiaccio Furioso
and my Spanish dictionary. Instead, a sheaf of papers caught my eye. It was Uncle Jack’s screenplay,
The Weeping Mafioso,
bound by brass tacks that had gone green with age. I flipped it open, intending to skim a few pages.

An hour later I sat back, dumbstruck.

Uncle Jack wrote it in 1966 when Nunzio was counselor, Enzo was in training, and Lucky had recently become Boss.

It was part family history, part Outfit lore, and it completed part of the puzzle in a way that the notebook never could.

The story centered on Uncle Jack’s protagonist, a sort of super-gangster called Renzo “Rumrunner” Nispoli. Renzo runs a bootlegging operation, and as the years pass, his fortunes and power increase based on a singular talent for brutality. He kills, kills, and kills again at the behest of his superiors, first freezing victims with “the Look,” squinted ferociously through sky-blue eyes. Renzo was a composite of Nunzio’s and Enzo’s cold fury, Nicky “Daggers” Fratelli’s ability to murder without guilt, and Lucky’s emotional peculiarity—the weeping part—which even Uncle Jack would’ve known about. After Renzo kills a club full of innocent people (the Catacomb Club massacre fictionalized), he hides out in a theater showing
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
When the witch murders Snow White with a poison apple, Renzo bursts into tears. He’s overcome by what he’s done, weeping away the guilt in the privacy of a darkened theater.

So many old, dead secrets mixed up in that screenplay, just like Uncle Jack’s mind, and I kept reading until my eyes froze on the page.

I blinked, but the words were still there.

All I could hear was the vacuum-hum of jet engines, the chatter of my teeth, my heart punching my chest, as I whispered the dialogue spoken by Renzo.

“I know the secret to ultimate power . . .”

And there it was, lifted from
“Volta”
all those years ago by Uncle Jack, transcribed as a throwaway plot point in a movie script that no one wanted to make. It was Renzo speaking furtively to the only person he trusted and who wouldn’t betray him, someone near the Outfit but not allowed inside. His wife.

RENZO

I know the secret to ultimate power—
potenza ultima
—and where it’s hidden! All I need to get my hands on it is one little brass key . . .

WIFE

How? How do you know where ultimate power is, Renzo?

RENZO (grinning like a fox)

Because my old man helped put it there, a long, long time ago. He told me when he didn’t think I was paying attention. But I
always
paid attention.

WIFE

Tell me . . . where is it?

RENZO (
cautiously, whispering)

It’s in a vault made of brick, deep beneath the streets of Chicago. Right under what the old-timers used to call the “Troika of Outfit Influence.”

I read all the way to the end but no further mention was made of ultimate power.

None was necessary.

I knew beyond all reason that the “Troika of Outfit Influence” was the heart of
“Volta,”
the hidden nugget I’d been searching for. So long ago, when Uncle Jack was a young man transcribing Nunzio’s words into Buondiavolese, the poetic phrase must’ve stuck with him. He was paying attention—he
always
paid attention—and had recycled it decades later for his script.

“The Troika of Outfit Influence,” I said, tasting the secrecy of it.

I licked my lips, feeling my brain spin like a roulette wheel, wondering where in Chicago it could possibly be. And then the little white ball click-clacked to a stop on the only possible answer, where everything began and ended—the notebook.

Ultimate power in its physical form resided inside the earth, but the meaning of the elusive phrase—the actual, pinpoint location—had to be contained within the creased and tattered collection of old secrets.
“Volta”
provided the
what,
and now I was sure that some other chapter, or yellowed letter or blurred snapshot, contained the
where.
All I had to do was examine each page, line by line and word by word, for the last elusive link to finding and freeing my family. Whoever had taken them hadn’t cared about my dad’s blood or Juan Kone’s plan for a genetically engineered army. They’d cared about my family, the Rispoli clan, Outfit counselors-at-large for four generations.

They cared about ultimate power.

I nearly had it in my hands.

What I did not have was the notebook, which I’d locked in the steel briefcase and hidden where no one would find it back in Chicago. I wondered suddenly what I was doing on a plane to Rome—what I was doing
anywhere
outside the city while my family was still there—and I waved at Tyler. I met him the aisle, where he said, “Hey, sorry, I’m not ignoring you. He’s a chatty one, my airborne chauffeur.”

Remember the chauffeur,
I thought, dismayed at how easily I’d been sidetracked by disappointment. “Listen, we have to turn the plane around.”

“Huh? You’re kidding, right?”

“I’m not much of a kidder, Tyler, you should know that by now. I need to get back to Chicago right away.”

A slow smile spread over his chiseled face. “You almost had me there. Turn the plane around, my ass . . .”