Futile Efforts (36 page)

Sometimes you got it in the back from where you were least expecting it, and sometimes you got it up front from the contemptible mutt you always knew was going to go for your throat.

"Any particular reason why?" I asked.

Bone's deathly white face almost turned pink with overwhelming joy.
 
He drew the blade and said, "You should've gotten out of the game a while ago.
 
You've been rotting for years."
 
I almost agreed with him but kept it to myself.
 
"
Mitsomosho
is streamlining the Yakuza.
 
They're hard and fit and coming back into their own, not burning out like the crime families here.
 
In a few years they'll take over the American economy from the bottom up.
 
You won't be able to buy a whore or a slice of pizza without paying tax to them."

I couldn't help wondering just how much like a lizard he might really be with that cold blood in his veins.
 
If I threw him in a meat locker would he go into suspended animation?
 
Did the bastard eat flies?
 
I thought about nabbing the half-depleted fire extinguisher off the floor just to give myself an edge, but it seemed soft to try something like that, and I wanted Bone to know I didn't pull any tricks.

I moved in to meet him.
 
Joey Fresco shoved me aside and I let out a bark of frustration and fear because Joe was perfect for most fighting but not for this.
 
He tried to go for his sawed-off shotgun under the coat but there wasn't enough time or room to pull it.
 
I shouted and tried to get back into the mix but Joey shoved me away again, leaving himself wide open.

The wide arc of Bone's knife came slashing over and downwards and I knew Joe was too wide and slow to slip left and escape the blade.
 
He brought up his massive hands and tried to throw a punch that would've broken Bone's neck if it had connected.

But he was already toppling over as his cut throat threw arterial spray all over the room.

I caught him in my arms and felt the warm blood leaking against my chest.
 
I was weak.
 
I didn't have what it took to lead the family.
 
I was overly sentimental and I cared only for aesthetics without substance.
 
His mouth worked silently much the same way my father's had on his deathbed, trying to tell me something important that I'd never listen to anyway.

"Joey!"

He gripped my wrists and forced me to let him drop to the floor because Bone was coming at me again and I needed my hands free.

Waggling the knife back and forth, Bone slithered closer, the gleaming metal weaving through the air as he snapped here and there trying to fake me out.
 
The knife moved like a cobra but he didn't appear to be in any rush.
 
He was toying with me and his small leer barely grew at all, but was still somehow broad and insane.
 
I knew this was him laughing loud and heartily.

The thought didn't thrill me.

I elbowed him hard under the heart and hoped to feel his ribs snap, but it hardly made him even grunt and he didn't back off an inch.
 
The blade came down for my neck but I could sense it was too forward a move for him and knew he was really aiming for somewhere else.
 
Probably my belly, so he could watch me die slowly.

I elbowed Bone again in the same place and this time it hurt him.
 
I stomped his inner heel and got a thrill when he gasped.
 
I let out a chuckle, spun and came in low, drawing him closer as he slid the knife up towards my neck and started to flex for a nice stab and slash.
 
I rolled my shoulder and ducked and drove the thick part of my palm into his mouth.
 
The viscous fluid that passed for his blood spurted over his lips.
 
He took a step back and raised the blade again, belly high.
 
He was going to go low and bring the knife up under my ribs into my heart.

I'd had enough.
 
I dropped my arms leaving my stomach and chest defenseless, and watched as a gleam of profound happiness filled his eyes.
 
He really was stupid and never should have been on the payroll.

Bone surged forward and let out a hiss of laughter.
 
It wheezed from him and grew louder and louder as the blade touched my shirt.
 
It went no further because I grabbed hold of his wrist and started to twist it.
 
Bone's tongue unfurled in his mouth and now he made a new inhuman noise of pain.

The fear burned up his oxygen and he started sucking down deep breaths, making tiny
froggie
croaks.
 
I liked the sound. I kept bending his wrist backwards until it snapped and took the blade from his broken hand and drove it into his ear.

He had just enough time left to whimper, "You—" with such surprise that I actually smiled.

After the first kidnapping threat, Joey had shown me how to use my hands when I was a kid.

I pulled him up until we were nose to nose, his eyes swirling with his final terrors as I gave him my death gaze.

"I'm not such a good boy," I said and watched Bone die.
 
His chilly blood splashed against my chest but didn't cool any of my freshly ignited rage
.

I
got on the phone and called the Rossi mansion.
 
After some nasty browbeating and curses from her three brothers, Carl finally picked up.

"Carla, baby," I said.
 
"Marry me!"

A few seconds of silence where it could have gone either way, and then, "Oh, Tommy, honey bunch!"

"I'll leave all the arrangements to you.
 
Anything you want."

"How about we hold the ceremony at St. Patrick's Cathedral?" she said.
 
I could hear the delicacy easing into her voice.
 
The sweetness, the softness.
 
"Or St. Mary the Virgin?
 
Or the Cathedral of St. John the Divine?
 
You love the upper west side."

"How about Rome?"

"Rome!"

"We've always wanted to go and never made the time before.
 
We can start the honeymoon right after the wedding."

"Oh, Tommy!" she cried.

After all these years, I was finally feeling good
.

T
he Pope was on the phone trying to get
Cheechio
Fasulli
to push the button on Emperor
Mitsomosho
.
 
Sounded like
Cheech
wanted at least a hundred g's and the Pope wasn't going above twenty-five.
 
He looked up, took off the big hat, wiped sweat from his gray brow and said, "You ready to whack that little guy yet?
 
He knows kung fu.
 
It won't be as easy as you might expect."

I handed him my grandfather's painting
Jesus Wrestles the Mafia to Feed the Homeless
and started walking away without a word.

"Hey, I'm
talkin
' to you!"

"Listen, old man," I said.
 
"I'm trying to be understanding.
 
You've got a rat in your ranks who's running this place in circles."

"There are no rats in my house, kid!"

"Check again or I'll bring in my own exterminator."

"Threatening me proves that you've got about as much brains as JFK's corpse!"

"Just hang that thing in Saint Peter's Basilica."
 
I was already slightly annoyed that most of
Donato
D'Angelo Bramante's architecture had been razed in order to bring in the glass and metal of the modern age.
 
"Up front where everybody can see it."

"It smells funny.
 
How much is it worth?"

"It cost me a lot."

"I like it then," he said.

"And I need you to do me a favor this Sunday.
 
I'm getting married, and I want you to preside."

"You got nerve, kid!"

"I'll make it worth your while."

I left the Palace, stood on Vatican Hill and stared at the surrounding medieval and Renaissance walls of the enclave.
44 hectares (109 acres). The smallest independent country in the world, Vatican City was established in 1929 under terms of the Lateran Treaty, superseded in 1984 by a new concordat, which also recognized the full sovereignty of the Holy See jurisdiction of the pope
.

I couldn't shut him out anymore so I let his data course through me, the way most people had to listen to their grandfather's war tales over and over, boring endless stories about his youth, the days before H-boxes, how he once met Frank Sinatra's clone in Atlantic City.

I could feel the history of Rome lap at my feet.
 
The Papal Palace had more than 1000 rooms and housed government offices of the Roman Catholic church, libraries, and the Sistine Chapel, with its great ceiling frescoes painted by Michelangelo.
 
The museums were outstanding and included
the Gregorian Museum of Egyptian Art; the Gregorian Museum of Etruscan Art; the
Pio
Clementino
Museum, with a superlative collection of antiquities; and the Vatican
Pinacoteca
, with representative works by Italian masters
.

Carla was off shopping on the Piazza
di
Spagna
.
 
Ganooch
, Dante and Joey Fresco sat in their wheelchairs, grinning wildly. Barabbas heeled to me and panted in the heat and refused to move.
 
I lifted him into my arms and his jowls flapped against my neck.

The buzz in my mind was strong enough to stagger me as I walked down the steps, but I was getting used to it.

"Okay, boys, you had enough of these art galleries and museums yet?
 
Ready to go back to the hotel now?"

But no, they weren't.
 
Jerusalem, as reported at Queen Alia Airport, Jordan, 84°F, Sunny, UV Index: 0 Minimal. Wind: Calm.
 
Dew Point: 32°F.
 
Humidity: 93% Visibility: 4.3 miles
 
Pressure: 30.15 inches and steady
.

"Okay," I said.
 
"On the second leg of the honeymoon, all right?"

Ganooch
wanted to paint the Garden of Gethsemane in the breaking streams of a sanguine dawn, Dante needed to visit the grove and pray through the night, and Joey had heard that their olive oil was the best, but he wanted to find out for himself.

by Christopher Golden

T
he idea behind
FOUR DARK NIGHTS
was simple enough: four different writers would each craft a novella whose only requirement would be that its main action take place in a single night. I think all four of the authors--Douglas Clegg, Bentley Little, Tom Piccirilli, and I--stretched the rule quite a bit, in large part because what horror is so often about is not merely the fright of the moment, but the haunting echoes of the past.

“Jonah Arose" Tom Piccirilli's masterfully unsettling contribution to
FOUR DARK NIGHTS
, is the perfect example of that. With its twisted imagery and the same Bradbury-meets-Barker sensibility that informs his wonderful novel
A CHOIR OF ILL CHILDREN
, "Jonah Arose" is a tale that will give you some haunting echoes of your own.

--Christopher Golden, author of
WILDWOOD ROAD
and
THE BOYS ARE BACK IN TOWN

for Dick
Laymon

1

T
he flood was upon us, and I wanted to go with it.

I watched the Works for three days of freezing Manhattan rain, lingering inside a storm that wouldn't die down.
 
Arching rivers flowed in the streets and draped off the vaulted roofs, splashing, white-capped in the vicious wind.
 
Whenever I looked at my soaked, prune-
ish
fingers I thought of the pickled punks floating in their yellow liquids, tiny fetal hands clasped in prayer.