Flicker & Burn: A Cold Fury Novel (11 page)

I watched the light in his eyes flicker and fade. “I don’t know,” he said.

Annabelle’s hands were moving as Heather said, “My mom wants to know what that is. Buon . . . Buondiavo . . . whatever that was.”

Uncle Jack and I stared at each other, my face taut with hope, his lined by confusion. Quietly, I said, “Buondiavolese. It’s a form of Sicilian that our family used to speak and write a long time ago. Uncle Jack may have known it once.” The old man remained silent, lost but searching, and I looked at Annabelle and lied as well as I could off the top of my head. “I’m doing a school project on it, for extra credit. I found a story written in the dialect . . . sort of a modern fairy tale, but I haven’t had any luck translating it.” Turning back to Uncle Jack, I said, “Maybe you can help me.”

“I wish I could,” he said, rubbing his forehead. “But I don’t remember.”

“Perhaps you will, if you just look at it.”

“I don’t know. Perhaps . . .”

I thought about the risk again, about exposing myself to scrutiny, and then shoved it aside, knowing that if I’d ever have a chance of comprehending
“Volta”
—of finding the vault and using the brass key to open it—I’d have to roll the dice. “Tell you what,” I said. “If we reopen the bakery and you start to feel better, will you at least try? I’ll give you a copy of the story to go over, line by line. It will be good therapy.”

Annabelle’s fingers moved slowly, reassuringly, while Uncle Jack nodded his head. “Yes, it’s a very generous offer,” he said, and he turned to me. “Thank you, my dear. Of course I’ll try to help you. I can’t guarantee anything, but I’ll do my best.”

“Wait . . . we’re
staying
?” Heather said, as if Chicago were a lunar outpost. Annabelle responded efficiently and then, to my surprise, did the Rispoli patting-hands-together thing that signaled the conversation was over. Heather crossed her arms again. “Fine. I’ll go to school. But don’t expect me to do extra credit like her.” She looked at me and said, “I’m sure your little project-doohickey is important. No offense.”

None was taken for the simple reason that I liked her.

Out of nowhere, what felt like an (supremely beautiful) ally had materialized.

I smiled politely as my brain raced with danger and possibility.

At least I had an excuse why Max couldn’t meet my family—relatives had dropped in unexpectedly. And I wouldn’t show up at Lucky’s dreaded sit-down without molasses cookies—Annabelle agreed to bake three dozen and was already excitedly perusing the cookbook. It was the first time in months that hope did not seem intangible, because Uncle Jack was real and had written
“Volta.”
Ultimate power was hidden inside it, just like Buondiavolese was concealed within his tangled mind.

If I could help him find the language, maybe he could help find my family.

ALL DAY SATURDAY FOLLOWING THE SURPRISE
appearance of my relatives, the exterior and interior forces threatening to tear me apart—ice cream creatures and my homicidal electricity, respectively—backed off and left me alone.

Things were so placid that it scared me to death.

I cautiously entered the Damen Avenue public library early Saturday morning, prepared as usual to fight or flee from whatever lurked around the very next corner.

It was an elderly librarian at a desk.

She looked up and smiled. I smiled back weakly, and she returned to the open book before her. Gripping the steel briefcase, I hurried to the copying machines, removed the notebook, and prepared to Xerox the ten pages that comprise
“Volta.”
I was desperate for Uncle Jack to see and, with luck, translate them, knowing it was a delicate balance. My hope was that exposure to Buondiavolese, written in his own hand, would spur his memory of it; at the same time, I prayed that what he read—whatever was contained in those mysterious pages—would not seem real to him. I needed his knowledge of the language but not his recollection (if he had one) of the content; despite the fact that he was flesh and blood, despite his failing memory, there was still no one I could trust with the secret of my missing family. Allowing him to read it was as much of a risk as allowing the bakery to open, but I had no choice. There was an unforgiving hourglass dripping sand somewhere in the cosmos; dissecting my mom’s finger was chilling proof that my family’s value was running out. If ever there were ever a time to gamble that an octogenarian Alzheimer’s patient could translate a forgotten language, this was it.

I opened the notebook and placed it on the machine.

Quarters clunked, I pushed a button, and a flash of light rolled beneath the pages.

The solitude of the past two days, amplified by the quiet around me, made my tiny neck hairs stand on end.

Disturbingly, the red-eyed freaks had disappeared once before, only for Teardrop to shape-shift out of nowhere as a Chicago police officer—who knew what they were plotting now? As for the electricity, it may’ve gone dormant, but it was still there, a half step behind cold fury. Knowing that it was inherent and uncontrollable made me feel as much like a mutant as the creatures. I worried constantly during that dead calm, sure that shattered glass, broken laws, and busted bones would explode around me at any moment.

Instead, horror snuck up on muffled monster tiptoes in a silent library.

There were no screeching brakes or squealing mutants but only the sedate
whirr
of the copy machine. I yawned as the first reproduced page of
“Volta”
slid onto the tray. I lifted and glanced at it, and the yawn became a gasp. Streams of words in Uncle Jack’s handwriting, in English, appeared around, beneath, and on top of his Buondiovolese text. My eyes skipped across the sheet of paper from the words
tommy gun
to
massacre
to
Rispoli.
For months, poring fruitlessly over
“Volta,”
I assumed its ten pages were warped and rippled from age. But the copier had served as an x-ray machine, revealing other hidden pages
inside
the notebook pages. The concealed English text of those secret sheets was printed right on top of the Buondiavolese text, creating a mishmash of words.

Enough was legible to see that it hinted at a tale of murder.

I shoved everything in the briefcase and bolted from the library, not even bothering to answer the librarian’s hushed “Have a nice day.” Speeding back to the Bird Cage Club, my eyes darted into the rearview mirror at the street behind me, empty of ice cream trucks. I parked beneath the Currency Exchange Building, rose quickly in the private elevator, and paused only to note that Doug’s usual spots on the couch or at the control center were unoccupied. Harry whined insistently, demanding to know where his BFF was. I’d returned late the previous evening after spending hours at the bakery with Uncle Jack and his family, expecting Doug to be awake and waiting to dish on the Mister Kreamy Kone S-C Party; instead, it had been only Harry asleep on the couch, twitching with loneliness and the need to pee. After cautiously walking the little dog, I texted Doug several times to make sure he was okay, received oddly cheerful replies, and then went to bed. He wasn’t there in the morning either, but copying
“Volta”
was my priority, and I’d rushed out the door. Now I was back and he still hadn’t returned, but his absence barely registered as I hurried into my office/bedroom. Harry followed, ears in the air, as I rummaged through a small but effective collection of weapons—palm-sized can of mace, brass knuckles, rolls of quarters wrapped in masking tape—until I found a switchblade.

Carefully, like doing surgery on envelopes, I slit open the tops of each page of
“Volta”
and withdrew five rice-paper-thin sheets of handwriting.

They were delicate with age and some of the phrases ended abruptly where the ink had faded, but Uncle Jack’s run-on sentences still told an old, brutal narrative of Outfit retribution against one of its own.

Irving Cohen was a former bootlegger who, at the end of Prohibition, turned his speakeasy into a full-service gambling den. He possessed ambition and an education—not to mention fashion sense—which set him apart from his criminal colleagues. Thin and dapper, perfectly attired in Savile Row suits (his catchphrase: “Speak Yiddish, Dress British”), Cohen was rarely seen without a fresh yellow rose in his lapel. As a young man, he’d earned a degree in chemistry, which helped him greatly in the 1930s when he was making illegal liquor, and again in 1956, when he had what he described as a “million-dollar idea.” That same year, he also made the biggest mistake of his life—he stole money from the Outfit.

In particular, he stole from my family.

Cohen’s gambling den was designed for people who enjoyed betting and losing compulsively. There was roulette, slot machines, broadcast sports events, booze to loosen their wallets, and a stage show featuring a stripper who, since it was 1956, barely stripped. In turn, Cohen sunk every illegal dime he made into his front business, convinced that his million-dollar idea would earn the kind of fortune that would eclipse his gambling operation. Using his chemistry skills, he formulated sugary recipes in a South Side neighborhood called Back of the Yards, home to Chicago’s famous slaughterhouses. No address was given for his factory, only that it was near Bubbly Creek, named for the methane gas that rose from animal carcasses decomposing beneath its stagnant waters. It was there, in a former rendering plant, that Cohen’s idea became a reality. Using lard—pig fat—as its chief ingredient and coagulant, his ironically named “Pure Dairy Confection Company” created a formula for yummy frozen treats that miraculously melted six times slower than normal frosty desserts, even under the most blazing summer sun. It was a revolution in lickability.

The pages mentioned his nickname, and a bitter lump rose in my throat.

Irving “Ice Cream” Cohen.

He intended to sell his delicious toxic products directly to children through a fleet of little tinkling trucks.

To do it, he needed cash to buy them and hire drivers, but he was nearly broke from developing slow-melting lard ice cream. That’s when he thought of Nunzio Rispoli. The power behind the old counselor’s eyes was capable of forcing the strongest-willed thug to do whatever he commanded; if it worked on murderers, certainly it would work on a quarterback. In 1956, the Chicago Bears were on track to win the NFL championship. Only a moron would bet against them in an upcoming game versus the truly terrible Los Angeles Rams—unless the game was fixed for the Bears to
lose.
Cohen’s plan was simple. He’d bet on the Rams while Nunzio used ghiaccio furioso to force the Bears’ quarterback to blow the game, winning enough to purchase trucks plus a tidy sum left over to split. Nunzio listened politely and then explained how he’d been approached many times to participate in every type of scheme but always declined; as counselor-at-large, he couldn’t show favoritism to one hoodlum over another.

That’s when Cohen robbed the Bird Cage Club.

When Prohibition ended, Nunzio’s illegal income dried up; bootleggers stopped making black-market alcohol, which killed the demand for molasses. However, his personal value as counselor-at-large had grown immeasurably, as the Outfit leadership realized it could not function without his coldly furious peacemaking abilities. It was decided, therefore, that an annual income of two million dollars would be paid to my family for as long as a Rispoli with cold fury acted as counselor -at-large (I’d wondered how our little bakery supported us all; now I knew). It was delivered on a monthly basis in greasy wads of illicit cash, which meant a good laundering was in order. So Nunzio exercised his hundred-year lease on the Bird Cage Club, which he’d shut down after Prohibition, and reopened it as a supper club. Of course, it was actually a place to exchange soiled Outfit money for clean civilian dollars, but that didn’t stop him from making it a first-rate spot with fine dining and dancing, and the best views in Chicago.

Grandpa Enzo’s day job was working at the bakery (and as understudy to Nunzio until it was his time to serve as counselor) but he ran the Bird Cage Club at night. He was in his twenties then, so perhaps he wasn’t in full command of cold fury, or maybe he was caught off guard; in any event, two masked men stormed his office (my current bedroom) after hours, blindfolded him so he couldn’t see (or use cold fury), bound him to a chair, and emptied the safe of thousands of dollars. Holdups like that happened often in Chicago, including Outfit-on-Outfit crime, so there was no reason to immediately suspect Cohen. Even his tantrum after being rebuffed by Nunzio wasn’t enough to cast suspicion; he wasn’t a stickup man by trade, and only an idiot would hijack a Rispoli. After the thieves fled and Grandpa Enzo freed himself, however, he noticed something on the floor—a fresh-cut yellow rose, the lapel pin still piercing its stem. Cohen’s reasoning isn’t revealed, but witnessing the lowest forms of human behavior as counselor-at-large has made me aware of the stupidest of all motivations—revenge. He needed money, Nunzio refused to help, and that’s all it took to blind him to his own stupid action.

My family’s reaction was not blind in the least.

It was clear-eyed, cold-blooded, and calculated.

Through faded ink, the pages whispered of Grandpa Enzo shooting a room full of innocent people to bloody shreds.

It was a few days after the robbery when he entered Cohen’s gambling den, his face masked with only his eyes visible, and produced a tommy gun from beneath his overcoat. He ordered everyone in the room to meet his gaze, and then cut them to pieces in a barrage of bullets. Ironically, Cohen himself survived the shooting—he hadn’t been there. When word of the massacre reached him, he gathered up his wife and infant son (and presumably the money from the Bird Cage Club heist, which was not recovered) and escaped the United States, never to return. Afterward, the Outfit bricked up Cohen’s place, sealing away the gruesome evidence. He was dead to the organization (he would’ve been deader if he’d showed his face in Chicago again) while the Rispoli family was protected at all costs. My eyes moved to the name of Cohen’s gambling den—the Catacomb Club—and then the country to where he fled—Argentina—and I slowly lowered the delicate pages.

The Catacomb Club and its mummified massacre I’d stumbled upon, about which Tyler had smirked, saying,
We all know what Enzo did there . . . allegedly.

Argentina, where Doug discovered the creatures’ silver cones had been made.

My mind sped like Uncle Jack’s handwriting—
cata
comb
club
massacre
icecreamtrucks
argentina
—as a tiny electrical volt danced across my shoulders.

A phantom mystery from the past had kicked open a virtual Capone Door into the present, showed itself for a split second, and escaped through another, and I suddenly suspected where it was hiding: every electrical fiber of my being told me that my family was being held within the crumbling walls of the Pure Dairy Confection Company, wherever it was.

Too many of those old, dead secrets were roaming the streets of Chicago for it to be a coincidence, right down to the fleet of Mister Kreamy Kone trucks. I wondered then if my family’s disappearance was payback for Nunzio’s refusal to conspire with Ice Cream Cohen all of those years ago? No decision is made in a void; each has consequences that ripple outward in time, forever touching those who loved, hated, or were even tangentially connected to the decision maker. Was this whole thing an act of revenge orchestrated by Cohen himself? But no—he’d be far too old and was likely dead and buried in Argentina. Still,
someone
knew about Cohen and his ambitions, and what happened between him and the Rispolis—and that’s when I remembered the mention of someone he’d recruited to help rob the Bird Cage Club.

I found it at the bottom of a page in Uncle Jack’s scrunched hand.

A stream of legible words followed by dead space where other words had faded away forever, and then the important one—
partner
—followed by a name.

c o h e n f l e d b i r d c a g e c l u b t o h i s f a c t o r y w i t h p a r t n e r w e s t o n s k a r l o v . . .

I said it aloud, “Weston Skarlov.”

Nothing was recorded about his fate, which meant the Outfit had caught and killed him or—or maybe the mask he’d worn during the holdup had been enough and he’d escaped into a world of double or even triple identities. If so, maybe over the years he’d mentioned to someone where the Pure Dairy Confection Company was located. That’s what I cared about now—the factory’s address and busting its doors down—and I resolved to discover all I could about Weston Skarlov.

What I could not set aside was the massacre of innocents.

I could not ignore that Grandpa Enzo had been a merciless killer. Nunzio had to have known about it—the entire Outfit knew—which made my great-grandfather an accessory. I stared at the date again, 1956, the year Uncle Jack abandoned Chicago and his real identity forever. Like Uncle Buddy, Jack’s lack of ghiaccio furioso rendered him useless as a counselor-at-large, and thus of little value to the Outfit. His father had probably forbidden him to hold any other Outfit role in order to keep him safe, just like my grandpa had done for Uncle Buddy. My guess was that after recording the tale of his brother as a murderer and his father as complicit—seeing his family for what it really was and the horror it caused—he fled.