"Terrific."
Joey Fresco kicked in the door, wearing an overcoat and pajamas, with an extinguisher in hand, panting and sweaty.
He put out the burning sheets, looked around and, though nobody else would ever be able to see it, I could tell he was furious, alarmed, and even embarrassed.
The hit had been attempted on his watch.
I told him what had happened.
He wanted to say he was sorry but didn't know how.
It didn't matter anyway.
In the old days, the soldier who came in right after the disaster was the traitor.
He met my eyes, each of us sort of second-guessing the other, wondering how much of the past meant anything anymore but unable to leave the history behind.
"That's a
Tybok
, ain't it?
Why's it got a tail?
That's
frickin
' stupid.
Some kind of rewired probe.
Must've been programmed with a derivative kill-order."
"Its movements were too human.
I could swear I felt the thing hating me.
Some kind of
cyborg
?"
He dug around in the scrap pieces.
"No, it's not biological, but there's been a lot of enhancements made on this one.
An android with a neural pathway interface, piloted by a
tele
-intelligence."
He didn't like talking smart but he made due.
"Somebody was in cybernetic charge of this."
"Did we kill the pilot when we clipped the android?"
"I doubt it.
Probably just ejected his intelligence and self-destructed the unit.
Them Rossi's are playing for keeps."
"This isn't Carla's doing."
"How do you know?"
"Trust me, I can tell."
Carla didn't believe in being coy, subtle or sly, not even when it was to her advantage in life or business.
She didn't have the personality for it.
My girl had enough on her mind without having to play at delicacy.
She might kill me but not like this.
A chuckle worked itself loose from my throat.
We'd been meant for each other all our lives, and the only reason we weren't married was because her relentless drive and energy reminded me too much of my grandfather in his prime.
Explosion on the north side of the property nearly rocked us off our feet.
The house shuddered and a hairline crack appeared in the window I'd imagined plunging through.
Flames lit up the garden and illuminated the trees, but there didn't seem to be much serious destruction from what I could see.
Columns of cinder loomed into the night sky.
"Jesus, they're using artillery!" Joey shouted.
"Now that's Carla," I said.
"Making a point."
If he'd had a neck, he would've cocked his head.
As it was, his eyes narrowed and he stepped in close.
"What the hell did you do?"
"She's a little angry, that's all."
"What'd you do, Tommy?"
"She found a gray hair."
"What?"
"She wants me to marry her.
See, she found a gray hair, and—"
He set his back teeth so firmly that it sounded like he was crunching a rack of ribs. For a second I thought he was going to slug me.
"Well, get over there and propose!
The
frig's
the matter with you?
What, you waiting until she takes us out with a thermonuclear device or some nerve toxins?
They got stuff that'll liquefy your skeletal system in four hours but still leave you alive.
You want that?"
"She's just a little hot at the moment."
"You gotta be the dumbest guy I ever met when it comes to broads.
If you push the buttons on your average woman you're still playing with dynamite.
With Carla Rossi you're talking about someone who's got political sources in her pocket who can send a stealth bomber over here in ten minutes."
"Not to be quarrelsome, Joey, but don't you think that's a good reason to keep as far away from her as possible?"
"Yeah?
And where you gonna go?
What, you gonna marry one of them home and garden broads and play house out Long Island?
There's nobody else for you, Tommy, but Carla Rossi."
"I know."
"Then go do the right thing."
"I don't like to be pressured."
"She's blowing up the estate, Tommy, and this ain't even pressure yet.
When it comes, it'll squeeze your heart bad.
And maybe irradiate the Hudson Valley for about twenty thousand years.
Mutate us into giant bugs or something"
"When I was talking about dropping bombs, Joe, I was speaking in metaphor."
"Yeah, but I ain't."
My grandfather spoke in my ear.
"What's he saying?" Joey asked.
"I know he's reaching out but I can't quite hear him."
"He's triangulated on where the
tele
-intelligence came from.
Vatican City."
"Hmmm."
Joey rubbed his colossal hands together and cracked knuckles the size of walnuts.
"I knew that guy had something hidden in his funny hat."
I ran it around for a minute trying to make everything fit.
"A cybernetic skull-cap web so he could send off androids like this?
Why's he taking a run at us?"
"He might be mad you turned him down when he asked you to off Emperor
Mitsomosho
."
"I thought he was half-kidding."
"Maybe it's the other half that's got him pissed."
Mama
Ganucci's
shrieks drew us into the hallway.
Dante had fallen halfway up the stairwell.
I ran to his side and couldn't spot anything wrong except for a small burn spot on his robes.
The plasma shot had gone through his chest right below his heart, instantly cauterizing his flesh.
One of the
Tybok's
two wild shots must've hit him.
There wasn't so much as a drop of blood, but he was dying.
He smiled up at me and said something in Latin again that I almost recognized from catechism.
It was a psalm, but I couldn't tell which one.
Mama kept screaming until my cousin Antonia led her away, both of them shrieking and hugging each other.
I heard a noise like an animal's growl.
I looked at Barabbas and he stared back at me.
The sound got louder and louder and finally I realized that I was making it and stopped.
Joey Fresco leaned down beside me.
Bone stood at the bottom of the stairs playing with his knife.
"Medical team will be here in ninety seconds," Bone said.
I grabbed a fistful of Joe's coat and said, "Get him to the family doctors."
"They might not be able to do anything."
"We pay them enough.
Let 'em try."
"How…ah…drastic should their measures be?"
"He saved my life.
Go all the way."
"Even if it makes him like the boss?"
Joe's hesitancy didn't escape me.
"You sure you want that?"
I thought about it for only a second.
Dante was nuts but he had more spirit and grit than me.
I wasn't sure any of that would come through if he was left with only a rewired brain.
But I couldn't be certain it wouldn't either.
"Yeah."
"Okay."
Mama's wails rattled the windows and made the back of my head seethe even more.
The medical team arrived via chopper in the next minute.
They ran in and loaded Dante onto a gurney with such cold and expert efficiency that he was gone before I could even say a word to anybody.
I hooked my laptop into one of the
Tybok's
intracom
dockets to see if I could figure out what syntax and morphology the pilot's signals had been transmitting.
Maybe the directions were readable, and I could see exactly what the pilot had been thinking during the hit.
But the character encoding wasn't what I'd been expecting.
At first I thought the syntax had been encrypted because of all the protocols and crypto link farms.
But then I realized the android had actually been translating language, and not only idiom but characters and meaning in multiple sets.
Ganooch
sat in his chair, the floor around him covered with debris.
The bay window was open and ash from the burning trees wafted in and stuck to the oils.
He brushed it right in.
His style wasn't quite as fervent as before.
Now it suggested something more blue and calming, as the limbs and faces on the canvas took on more shape, grew manifest and almost distinct for an instant, and then subsided once again.
I wondered if he knew what he was doing anymore, or why.
Perhaps this was a confession, by way of defacement.
He couldn't finish until whatever he felt inside himself was finished as well.
My grandfather was already in my mind and answering my question before I had even formed it.
Based on 32-bit technology, giving sentence-by-sentence translation from idiomatic databases.
Unlike the English language, Japanese is written with three related sets of characters. These character sets are called hiragana, katakana, and kanji.
Hiragana is the set of 46 phonetic symbols that represent the syllables in Japanese, used for verb endings and personal names. Katakana is a mirror phonetic representation, a more block-like version.
Kanji are the 2000 "pictograph" characters that represent meaning as opposed to phonetic sound.
Well, I thought, isn't that goddamn cute.
I called Joey Fresco and Bone in and three of us stood staring indifferently at one another without moving.
There was a time just a few years back when we would've relaxed together playing poker and drinking a few beers.
There wasn't much of a crew left since my father had died, but I tried to keep the center holding.
I'd done a bad job of it.
I could trace most of the family's recent failings directly to my unwillingness to do what needed to be done.
"The Japanese sent it," I said.
"You sure it wasn't our Holy Father?" Joey asked.
"No, it was the Emperor, but he did it from the Vatican."
"Maybe there's a mole."
Joe pawed his chin, grappling with the pieces.
"Japan makes it look like the Pope put the whack out on you for failing to accept the contract on Emperor
Mitsomosho
.
The Vatican responds by wiping out the
Ganucci
family.
Nice and clean, and the Emperor doesn't have to worry about anybody but the New Buddhists and the Yakuza.
That's enough trouble for anyone."
"Somebody's been telling lies about me," I said.
"If they've got a mole in the Vatican then there's one here too."
Joey gave me a sidelong glance that nearly brushed me over.
He knew there were family bosses who got paranoid along the way and started clipping their own soldiers.
He grew rigid and got ready to punch my head off my shoulders if he had to.
It's why I'd always liked Joey—his resolute devotion didn't overshadow his instinct or intelligence.
He didn't take shit off of anybody, not even a
Ganucci
.
I stared into the icy eyes of Bone and didn't have to wait more than a couple of seconds before he gave me that little smirk again.
It was a tell that I remembered from playing poker with him.
The grin gave him away every time, but he never realized that anybody could actually see it.