“Boss, I’m tellin’ ya, it’s not wise to wait
for that broad of yours to come here before heading to Canada. She
could be in jail and singin’ like a canary, or split town.”
“I don’t think so, Hess,” Vito opined. “Flo
is a stand-up doll, and she really has it for me. I know she’ll be
here before the day is out, and it would be un-gentlemanly of me to
rush off without her.”
“Un-gentlemanly? Boss, I gotta be up front
with you for your own good, which is part of my job. Your major
weakness is dames like Flo. You find one broad you see as classy,
and you’re hooked! A man of your position can have any girl he
wants, you don’t need to settle—”
“Settle? Watch how you speak of Flo, Heff,
or I’ll forget what your job is! How would a trigger-holding mook
of your position know the difference between a floozy and a woman
of worth anyway?”
Heff merely looked at his boss, hesitant to
speak out of fear for what he might say in response to the insult
on both his person and station.
“Look, Heff,” Vito finally said after a few
minutes of silence. “I didn’t mean it like that. I’m just saying
that I know a stand-up girl when I meet one, and Flo is it—”
The Gambino Don was then interrupted by a
knock on his cabin door. Another of his guards announced that he
received a package and note from Florence. He euphorically opened
the door and took the shoebox-sized package with purple wrapping
and mauve ribbon. It had an envelope on it with large cursive
letters saying, “To My Mookie Vito” in Flo’s very distinctive
hand-writing.
“Boss, let us take a look at that before you
open it,” Heff said.
“No, no, it’s okay, it’s from her,” Vito
retorted. “Purple and mauve are her two favorite colors, something
known only by people who know her as well as I do. Also, that
handwriting is very obviously hers, and the nickname she gave me is
something only she and I would know.”
Vito unwrapped the package, inside which was
a letter attached to a small gift. More of her handwriting was
scribed on the interior letter: “My dearest Vito, this is from me
to you, until we can be together again.” Upon opening the lid to
the gift, he realized, to his horror, that upon being opened it was
rigged to pull the pin on a Mills grenade inside the package.
“Oh, shit,” he said quietly.
Seeing what happened, Heff shouted to his
boss to duck behind his heavy oak dresser set while he grabbed the
package and ran towards the side portal to hurl it out into the
water. Despite his practiced speed, Heff was a second too late, and
the grenade went off while he was about to throw it. The guard’s
body was blasted to pieces in a shower of blood and internal
organs. The impact of the explosion sent Johnny-Boy flying clear
through the locked door of the quarters, reducing every organ in
his body to shapeless mush in the process. Severe damage to the
entire vessel had ensued, though Vito was spared serious injury
thanks to the thick, heavy wood of the dresser he hid behind.
“Dear God,” he said as he recovered from
being stunned and deafened. Through his haze, he could hear the
intense exchange of gunplay between his trigger men and those of…
someone else.
The bitch found me
, he mused to himself.
And you must have helped her, Flo. How could you sell me out
like that, babe? We could’ve had it all…
Vito forced himself to his feet, scrambling
to search for his Colt while his senses returned.
Elsewhere on the yacht, the surprise
detonation of the grenade succeeded in allowing Gia’s crew to
breach the heavily secured vessel. She personally strode over its
deck and into the corridors of its living area, with Fido and Ira
at her side, the three of them blasting all opposition aside with
the Colt and Tommy guns they respectively carried. Behind them, a
horde of her trigger men engaged those of Vito, with losses on both
sides accumulating in favor of Gia’s forces.
Finally, Gia located Vito’s cabin, its
location described to her by Florence. She stepped over
Johnny-Boy’s piecemeal corpse and into the room. She grinned with
satisfaction when she saw the remains of Heff spattered all over
the floor.
“Careful you don’t slip on the mess,” she
cautioned her two compatriots.
Having recovered his Colt, Vito peeked from
the cover of one of his dressers and fired. Gia saw him just in
time, however, and she leapt behind a large oaken coffee table on
the other side of the room to evade the shot. Fido and Ira jumped
back out the door for cover, but prepared to step back in and
return fire.
“Stay out of this, boys!” Gia ordered. “This
is between me and that dirty rat!”
“You fat
puttana
!” Vito yelled as he
took another shot, also failing to penetrate Gia’s cover.
“Hey, watch what you say about my weight,
Mister!” she replied while likewise returning a shot.
“Your father didn’t deserve to run this
city!” he decreed. “And neither does a whore like you! You think
you can take over from him?”
“I don’t think that at all,” she said. “I
know
it, ’cause I owe my Papa. And I owe
you
somethin’ too.”
“Then let’s do this, bitch!” he shouted.
“Yes,
let’s
!” she concurred.
With that mutually decided, the two rushed
out of their hiding places, going for broke as they charged each
other with their guns drawn. Gia fired first, delivering a flesh
wound to Vito’s left shoulder. Fueled by rage and adrenaline, he
all but ignored the shot and returned fire, winging Gia in her
right leg. A surge of will prevented her left leg from giving out,
and she fired again. That one hit Vito in his left hip, but he
still forced himself to stay on his feet. He returned fire, but his
aim was off due to his injuries, and Gia only lost a nick of flesh
on her left arm.
Realizing he had one bullet left, Vito knew
he had to make it count. Summoning all of his will, he blocked out
his injuries and aimed his gun. But Gia was by now upon him, and
she kicked the piece from his grip before he could shoot.
“You always did have a big mouth,” she said
just before forcefully shoving her gun into his gullet and pulling
the trigger. The entire contents of his head were blown out the
back of his skull, painting a canvas of gore on his cabin’s back
wall.
Ira told Fido to go back downstairs and see
if the rest of the yacht was secured by the Provenzo forces, while
he would go and tend to Gia.
“Are you all right?” he asked as he ran up
to her, concerned over her several bleeding wounds.
“Never better, sweetheart,” she replied as
she admired her handiwork. “Papa is avenged. And this city now
belongs to me.”
* * *
Several days later, Gia was lying on her bed dressed
in her best silk nightgown, waiting for the arrival of Ira, whose
visit was due. He was an hour late, and her concern was mounting
when the familiar knock of Jennings on her door made her jump up in
elation.
“So he’s finally here now, Jennings?” she
asked hopefully.
“Actually, no, Miss Provenzo,” the dour
butler answered through the door. “It was a delivery boy, who
brought a letter from him.”
“At this hour? Slip it under the door, will
ya?”
Jennings did as ordered, and Gia picked up
the envelope and removed its contents. A simple, hand-written note
informed her thusly:
Dear Gia,
Please forgive me, but I can’t do this. I’m a man of
tradition, and being with a woman who is my boss, and who provides
for me rather than the reverse, goes against all of that tradition.
I feel like a kept man being with you, and the rest of your crew
treats me accordingly. Because of this, I accepted a position with
a different syndicate taking over in New Orleans, so I won’t step
on the toes of your family’s business. Your father meant everything
to me, and so did you. But it had to end when you took the top spot
instead of letting Al have it. So after I helped you avenge your
dad, I think my obligation to him was fulfilled. I’m sorry for not
telling you face-to-face, but I think it’s better this way. Good
luck with your new position, and thank you for being my lady. It
was great while it lasted.
It ended with, “Love always, Ira.”
Gia crumpled the letter in her hand and
tossed it across the room, before verbally venting, “You dirty bum!
Ya didn’t tell me to my face ’cause ya knew I would kill your
yellow kiester right there!”
As she listened to the somber lyrics of
Ethel Waters’ “Stormy Weather” on her phonograph—Ira’s last gift to
her—she walked to the window of her expensive manse and looked out
over the evening spires of the city she now considered her own.
Yea, I have it all now,
she thought
to herself.
Except what I wanted more than anything. And to
think I always wondered what Papa meant when he told me about the
‘price’ that comes with success.
Gia Provenzo’s sobs vanished into the
melancholy rhythms of Waters’ song.
TRAGIC LIKE A
TORCH SONG
by
Shannon Muir
— :: —
“And welcome back to our stage the fabulous Hazel
Atwood!”
Hazel heard the packed house clapping as she
stepped out into the spotlight, as she did many a night these days.
Hazel Atwood performed regularly at the Swan Song and every night
the crowds responded. Therefore, at least according to the owner,
there existed no plans to change the headline act until the crowds
stopped dwindling and buying the booze. He knew they weren’t coming
just for the drinks as those flowed freely everywhere once again in
post Prohibition 1934.
“Evening everyone,” Hazel said to the crowd
in a sweet, almost naïve sounding voice. The persona took her
practice to cultivate, as her own real life had been the complete
opposite. The stock market crashed in 1929, causing her single
father to lose his job working the docks at a clothing factory.
They’d moved in with her mother’s sister Luella Wall and her father
became a private investigator, only to be gunned down while chasing
some booze smugglers in 1931. Even three years later, it all still
felt like yesterday to Hazel Atwood. Even though she came off sweet
and innocent in her speech, the singing would always tell a
different story.
“Tonight I’m going to start off with a new
number,” she continued to explain. “It’s all about loss and
love.”
Hazel possessed a good sense of how to make
words flow but not so much of a gift of matching them to the
musical notes. That’s where her regular piano player partner Martin
James came in. He knew how to find just the right melody to make
her words sing. Often, however, they’d go into these new tunes with
little or no rehearsal, since Harold’s wife didn’t like him
performing at the house and they couldn’t go to Hazel’s Aunt’s
either. So Harold would try to guide and Hazel would need to feel
her way, just like tonight.
After the lead in notes, Hazel felt
confident she could follow along.
My heart it aches remembering you
And everything you used to do
But now you’ve left and gone away
Leaving me alone to stay
It’s all tragic like a torch song
Hazel looked out among the audience, made up
entirely of men, who did appear to respond to her performance.
Perhaps, however, they cared less for her singing and more for her
young, shapely looks, but she tried not to focus on that.
Time has passed and still I know
My heart it cannot let you go
You still live on inside
And I have nowhere to hide
It’s all tragic like a torch song
Hazel noted someone at the front of the club
watching her every move, an older man she’d never seen before. On
the surface, he appeared to have only a friendly passing interest.
She couldn’t help to keep paying attention to him
,
though. He seemed to be the only one solely
interested in her, as unlike the others his drink stayed ignored on
the table as the others drank throughout the set.
At the end of the set, Hazel thanked
everyone as she always did. As she began to walk off, she heard a
sound to which she wasn’t accustomed.
“Encore! Encore!” a male voice called out.
From the sound, Hazel suspected it to be the man who watched her
intently the whole night. Hazel started to head back out to oblige,
but her manager Franklin Gorton grabbed her arm.
“You know we don’t do additional songs,” he
reminded her. “We don’t get paid extra for doing anything like
that, so why do more for the same amount of dough? Besides, I got
to get my percent.”
“You always got to get your piece,
Franklin,” she huffed at him.
The proprietor came by and gave them their
night’s earnings in cash.
“You taking your part out of more than the
dough?” joked the proprietor who handed the night’s cash take to
the manager. The manager counted it out and then gave Hazel her
part and pocketed his.
“Oh I wish,” said Franklin. “The wife would
have a fit if I got a little extra on the side. Not to mention the
little broad’s Aunt would have my hide for it. Using that voice of
hers to make a little extra now that her dear old Dad’s kicked the
bucket and Mama died in childbirth. And the last thing I would need
is to risk getting a little bastard of my own.”
“Well the two of you sure bicker like lovers
sometimes. You got your money, now hit the road and I’ll see you
tomorrow.”
Hazel and Franklin shared a cab to get back
home, as Martin lived within walking distance of the club and the
piano belonged to the Swan Song.
“Lovers, hah! The way he treated us sounded
more like a love and hate relationship with us performing there,”
noted Hazel.
“Maybe he was on to something though,”
Franklin told her. “Cora and I, we’re not getting along as well
these days. I know she’s seeing someone, and frankly I’ve wondered
if maybe I should try and do the same thing too.”