Classics Mutilated (25 page)

For the first time since I was fifteen, I felt my flesh crawling as fear clamped around my heart.

I knew how to cover up a crime scene. The cops weren't going to be called in but I had to make things look right for the rest of the troops. I set the scene to look as if Portman had gotten drunk in his despair over Frankie's death, tried to sober up in the shower, and taken a tumble across the bathroom floor. It would play. I left him and headed back to the house.

It was the day of Frankie's funeral. There were mourners all over the estate. The Sicilians were hugging each other, screaming blood oaths, and promising vengeance.  

No one would miss Portman for the next few hours, everyone already had too much on their minds. I got dressed and listened to the wails all across the house. Grandma Ganucci was never going to settle down. She'd live another twenty years and never wear anything but black. I fully expected her to leap down into the grave when they lowered the coffin in.  

Gina came to my room, looking beautiful and bruised, her eyes with a little more steel in them than usual. She said, "Will you escort me?"

"Of course."

"I don't want to ride in the Caddy. Will you take your own car?"

"Sure."

"What can I do to help my mother?"

"There's nothing you can do. She'll pull it together."

"She's got to."

Tommy found us there, my hands on her shoulders in a half-embrace. He probably already suspected Gina and I were sleeping together. He was a handsome kid wearing an uneasy smile and one of his father's best suits. The handkerchief in his pocket was crumpled and dark with tears. I could guess he'd used it to wipe his mother's face.  

It would take him another decade or two before he was mature enough to realize what losing his father actually meant. He didn't know it was going to color all of his days from this point on. He didn't know that there was a heaviness growing inside him even now that he'd have to carry for the rest of his life. He was just a kid trying to keep the women in his family from completely breaking down.  

"It's time," he said.

Gina and I followed the stretch limos and drove over to St. Mark's. The church was filled to capacity and mourners were lined up out onto the street, several square blocks' worth. The feds were taking photos and video of everybody. Inside I spotted wiseguys from the Chi mob, the west coast syndicate, the Dixie mafia, the Ozark gangs, the bamboo triangle. Frankie's business associations were far-reaching.  

It seemed like the entire neighborhood was there as well. You could barely hear a thing over all the weeping. Father Mike presided over mass and catalogued all of Frankie's many good deeds. All the money he'd donated to the hospital wing, the schools, the university library, the homeless shelter, the drug rehab clinic, the mother church. All of it was true, but of course it wasn't the entire truth. It wasn't any man's entire truth. Tears ran down Father Mike's face too. Gina took my left wrist and dug her nails in, determined not to fall apart in front of just about everybody she knew in the whole world.

After the service we all filed out and headed over to the cemetery. I was wrong about Grandma Ganucci. She didn't take a header into the open grave. It was Frankie's wife, Helen, who decided to give it a go. I saw her gearing up for it, her body still twitching with grief, as she took a flying run and launched herself forward.  

If I hadn't been ready for someone to give it a try I wouldn't have been ready to catch her. She would have flung herself six feet down onto the coffin and broken her spine. I caught her in mid-flight and carried her back to her seat, where she almost fell over sobbing. Tommy went to his knees and wrapped his arms around her waist and buried the side of his face in her lap. After a moment, Gina did the same.I made sure that someone else besides me found Portman. One of the troops went out to see why he hadn't come to the funeral and found his body. After meeting the capos we all came to the decision that we had too many eyes focused on us and Portman should simply disappear. I put three guys on it and told them what to do and where to do it. They weren't happy and came back a few hours later smelling of lime and manure. I wondered if Portman's soul would continue thrashing in a witch's bottle for years to come or if it too would eventually just drift off and die.  

In the middle of the night I awoke on fire.

I burned so badly that I rolled off the bed and onto the floor, trying to pat out flames that weren't there. I could feel smoke and steam rising off my body even if I couldn't see it. Worse, it felt like I had swallowed burning coals and I was cooking from the inside out.

The witch had finally made an attack on me.

I tried getting to the shower and seeing if I could put the fire out, but as I crawled across the floor in agony I saw a pair of beautiful legs standing before me, waiting. A foot lifted and was brought to my mouth, determined that I kiss it. When I didn't, I got a kick to the face and fell over onto my back swallowing my screams.  

I looked up and she stood over me, a goddess come to demand worship and sacrifice.  

She was the iconic beautiful blonde of my every man's life. She was Marilyn, and Betty Grable, Mamie Van Doren, and Jayne Mansfield. I'd always had a preference for Jayne, and as I watched, her features and form seemed to subtly shift before my eyes, until she was entirely Jayne Mansfield. My first heartfelt love.  

My old man used to have a poster of Jayne on the garage wall, behind his heavy bag so he could watch her while he worked his hooks and jabs. She had been a part of my first vivid sexual fantasies, and even now I could feel the attack on my libido. She exuded carnality. She knew what would set me on fire, the way to smile, pose, turn her chin, sip air between her pouty lips.  

In the real world I'd always gone for the slim, brunette, dark Mediterranean types, but this wasn't the world. This was fantasy, and in fantasy Jayne had everything I wanted. My belly twitched as my stomach acids boiled. So did my heart.  

It was only partly about lust. The flesh is weak. It burns. It needs. It cries in the night. It thrashes.  

But if you're stone as I am stone then it can be controlled. Pain can be compartmentalized. Desire can be stashed in the deepest black places within.

A growl escaped my throat. I was the Ganooch's number-one torpedo. I was cool. I was ice. I did what other men could not bring themselves to do. I didn't break. I didn't bend. I didn't rattle. I didn't beg.  

But everything that made me who I was seemed to diminish in her presence. It was a dirty trick. This was human chemistry. It was what made me a man, the need beyond control, the draw of that inexplicable compulsion, that magic. It was sex symbol insanity. It was movie star madness.

She reached for me and I thought, No, I can resist.  

I will not break. I am rock.  

I thought of my capacity to inflict and endure pain. I'd suffered fever dreams for years, and this was only a little different. A will at work. Every minute that I managed to abide and bear the witchcraft, I was proving that I was stronger than they were. Whoever was concentrating on me would begin to feel fear and eventually despair because I would not succumb. No one had more willpower than I did.

The goddess fell on top of me giggling.  

It was a human sound, a luscious full-bodied womanly laugh that made me want to roll with her and ignite the sheets. She reached for me and held my face in both hands. Her eyes were dark but alive with passion. They were Jayne's eyes as well as the eyes of my first love, Carmella Andagio, who drew me to her in the back of my father's Chevelle while the world kept spinning out of control around us and we burned on the seat covers only for each other. Another nasty game, another gimmick.

"I'm yours," she said. "I exist for you and you alone. Take me."

I wondered who was speaking. The witch or the demon? Or the devil himself? Should I remain silent or let it know that I wasn't going to die as easily as the Ganooch and Portman? I'd made my own blood sacrifices in the past. The mud around Sheepshead Bay was thick with my kills.  

"No."

"You're on fire for me."

I knew it was the truth. I was in agony. Cramps seized me and my guts were boiling. My heart hammered and tripped along. My blood pressure had to be near stroke levels.

"You ... can't ... hurt ... me," I gasped.

Jayne wooed me, the way she wooed male moviegoers everywhere. "I don't want to hurt you.
I love you.
"
 

She bent over me, her perfectly draped blonde hair framing a face so beautiful that I wanted to sell whatever was left of my soul to have her for just a night, an hour, a moment.  

As she dipped even closer the shadows covered her over until I couldn't even see the heavenly glint in her eyes anymore.  

"
I need you. I want you
."

I turned away and crossed my arms over my face while her body pressed against mine and she crooned in my ear. All my love and hate roared up through my brain. My hands, my strong and powerful hands, flashed out for an instant in an effort to shove her away.  

She lifted me and danced with me, over me, under me, around me, and laughed the entire time.  

When dawn broke, she vanished with the darkness but didn't take any of the pain away.

I laid in bed, sick for the next two hours, until Tommy came to my door to check on me. I put on my game face and pretended I was fine, took a quick shower and made my rounds across the house the way I did every morning.  

The troops fell in line but they could all tell I wasn't as sharp as usual. Every time I passed a mirrored surface I saw the agony alive just beneath my drawn features and ashen skin. My belly was broiling like the fiery sword of St. Michael had skewered me.  

I had a late lunch with Gina. She asked if I'd go visit her father's grave with her and I said yes. I drove her out to the cemetery and when I bent to pray I grunted in pain and almost let out a yowl.  

"What's wrong?" she asked.

I said, "Heartburn."

On the way back home we hit a red light and I turned and stared at the side of her lovely face and thought she would make a wonderful wife and mother someday. Whether she took over the family business or fled from it, she would be more like Frankie than she'd probably ever know. She'd be able to do things that would stagger another person, and she'd still have the love of the neighborhood and the church and her children.  

I dropped her off at the estate, parked, and walked over to the convent. Before I'd taken two steps through the front door, Sister Maeve was on the phone. I waited for the inevitable. A minute later I heard Mother Superior's footsteps ricocheting all around the place like wild gunshots.  

She rounded the corner and the look on her face actually made me wince. She said, "Your visit the other day disturbed Sister Abigail greatly. She hasn't been very lucid since."

I knew that if I was burning then so was my mother.  

I said, "My mother was greatly disturbed long before the other day."

"You always did have a mouth on you."

"I need to see her again."

"Absolutely not. The fevers are back. She's worse now than she has been in years."

I didn't like the idea of bulling my way into a convent and running roughshod over a bunch of nuns, but that didn't mean I wouldn't do it.

"People are dying," I said.

"People are always dying around you."

"True enough. But this is different. This is—" I hunted for a way to finish my sentence without sounding deranged or foolish.

"You're not groping for the word
evil
surely?" Mother Superior said.

"I was going to say
supernatural
or
occult
."  

She actually scoffed. She squared her shoulders. She was a powerful lady. I remembered the damage she could do with a yardstick. She held her chin up proudly. Most priests and nuns I'd met had chosen the cloistered life out of tradition and cultural legacy rather than any true spiritual calling. They were as down to earth as anyone else. Mother Superior more than most. She taught Physics. She was, at heart, as much a scientist as anything else.  

But she also knew, in her heart, that the otherworldly truly did exist. She'd seen it. She'd been visited by it. She'd lived with it as it existed inside of my own mother. Sister Abigail scared the hell out of everybody.

I left her there and took the stairs two at a time until I hit the fourth-floor landing. This time, the two young nuns were seated on either side of my mother's door. They looked harried and frightened. I knew it was going to be bad then.

"
La Strega
," my mother said, her habit drenched with sweat, her gaze a million miles off.

More talk of witches.

"Who is it? Who's doing this to us?"

"
Your father always did like blondes. Your grandfather too. It's in your blood. You can't help yourself. She's going to drink you alive
."

"Ma, try to hold on. Try to help me."

She took my hand and pressed it over her lips. She kissed my hand. She cried across my knuckles. I tried to be stone but the pain made me spasm and squirm. I almost dropped to the floor. I held on and she held me. She folded my fingers so that I was cupping her tears. She touched me on the wrist and whispered, "
Infection
."  

Then she passed out.

I did too, for maybe a minute. I awoke trembling and cold. My mother's brow was unfurrowed and she seemed almost content for the moment. I carried her to her bed again. I glanced around in a fog. I stared at the saints and martyrs and knew that God himself had His eyes on me. I hadn't done a full rosary since I was thirteen. I did one now, reciting the Hail Mary over and over, and then emphasizing the Lord's Prayer every tenth prayer.  

The answer was here, right in front of me, but I was too stupid to see it. I wasn't going to figure anything out. I wasn't going to be able to survive the demon indefinitely. This wasn't going to end well. Because of my lack of insight I wasn't going to be able to keep my promise and protect
la famiglia
.