Uncollected Stories 2003 (19 page)

They had heard things, of course. That there was a place in Colorado
that was completely neutral ground. A place where even a crazy little
West Coast hood like Tony Giorgio could sit down and have a fancy
brandy in a balloon glass with the Gray Old Men who saw him as some
sort of homicidal stinging insect to be crushed. A place where guys from
Boston who had been used to putting each other in the trunks of cars
behind bowling alleys in Malden or into garbage cans in Roxbury could
get together and play gin and tell jokes about the Polacks. A place
where hatchets could be buried or unearthed, pacts made, plans laid. A
place where warm people could sometimes cool off.

Well, here they were, and it wasn't so much – in fact, both of them
were homesick for New York, which was why they were talking about
the Yankees. But they never saw New York or the Yankees again.

Their voices reached down the hall to the stairwell where the
murderers stood six risers down, with their stocking-covered heads just
below line of sight, if you happened to be looking down the hall from
the door of the Presidential Suite. There were three of them on the stairs,
dressed in dark pants and coats, carrying shotguns with the barrels
sawed off to six inches. The shotguns were loaded with expanding
buckshot.

One of the three motioned and they walked up the stairs to the hall.
The two outside the door never even saw them until the murderers
were almost on top of them. One of them was saying animatedly, "Now
you take Ford. Who's better in the American League than Whitey Ford?
No, I want to ask you that sincerely, because when it comes to the
stretch he just The speaker looked up and saw three black shapes with
no discernable faces standing not 10 paces away. For a moment he
could not believe it. They were just standing there. He shook his head,
fully expecting them to go away like the floating black specks you
sometimes saw in the darkness. They didn't. Then he knew.
"What's the matter?" his buddy said. The young man who had been
speaking about Whitey Ford clawed under his jacket for his gun. One of
the murderers placed the butt of his shotgun against a leather pad
strapped to his belly beneath his dark turtleneck. And pulled both
triggers. The blast in the narrow hallway was deafening. The muzzle
flash was like summer lightning, purple in its brilliance. A stink of
cordite. The young man was blown backward down the hall in a
disintegrating cloud of Ivy League jacket, blood, and hair. His arm
looped over backward, spilling the Magnum from his dying fingers, and
the pistol thumped harmlessly to the carpet with the safety still on.
The second young man did not even make an effort to go for his gun.
He stuck his hands high in the air and wet his pants at the same time.
"I give up, don't shoot me, it's OK – !”
"Say hello to Albert Anastasia when you get down there, punk", one
of the murderers said, and placed the butt of his shotgun against his
belly.
"I ain't a problem, I ain't a problem!" the young man screamed in a
thick Bronx accent, and then the blast of the shotgun lifted him out of
his shoes and he slammed back against the silk wallpaper with its
delicate raised pattern. He actually stuck for a moment before collapsing
to the hall floor.
The three of them walked to the door of the suite. One of them tried
the knob. "Locked."
"OK."
The third man, who hadn't shot yet, stood in front of the door, leveled
his weapon slightly above the knob, and pulled both triggers. A jagged
hole appeared in the door, and light rayed through. The third man
reached through the hole and grasped the deadbolt on the other side.
There was a pistol shot, then two more.
None of the three flinched.
There was a snap as the deadbolt gave, and then the third man kicked
the door open. Standing in the wide sitting room in front of the picture
window, which now showed a view only of darkness, was a man of
about 35 wearing only jockey shorts. He held a pistol in each hand and
as the murderers walked in he began to fire at them, spraying bullets
wildly. Slugs peeled splinters from the door frame, dug furrows in the
rug, dusted plaster down from the ceiling. He fired five times, and the
closest he came to any of his assassins was a bullet that twitched the
pants of the second man at the left knee.
They raised their shotguns with almost military precision.
The man in the sitting room screamed, threw both guns on the floor,
and ran for the bedroom. The triple blast caught him just outside the
door and a wet fan of blood, brains, and bits of flesh splashed across the
cherrystriped wallpaper. He fell through the open bedroom doorway,
half in and half out. "Watch the door," the first man said, and dropped
his smoking shotgun to the rug. He reached into his coat pocket, brought
out a bone-handled switchblade, and thumbed the chrome button. He
approached the dead man, who was lying in the doorway on his side. He
squatted beside the corpse and yanked down the front of the man's
jockey shorts.
Down the hall the door to one of the other suites opened and a pallid
face peered out. The third man raised his shotgun and the face jerked
back in. The door slammed. A bolt rattled frantically.
The first man rejoined them.
“All right," he said. "Down the stairs and out the back door. Let's go."
They were outside and climbing into the parked car three minutes
later. They left the Overlook behind them, standing gilded in mountain
moonlight, white as bone under high stars. The hotel would stand long
after the three of them were as dead as the three they had left behind.
The Overlook was at home with the dead.

J
ohn Bracken sat on the park bench and waited to make his hit. The
bench was one of the many on the outskirts of James Memorial Park,
which borders the south side of Hammond Street. In the daytime the
park is overrun by kids, mother wheeling prams, and old men with bags
of crumbs for the pigeons. At night it belongs to the junkies and
muggers. Respectable citizens, women in particular, avoided Hammond
Street after dark. But Norma Correzente was not most women.

He heard her approach on the stroke of eleven, as always. He had been
there since quarter of. The beat-cop wasn't due until 11:20, and
everything was on top.

He was calm, as he always was before a hit. He was a cold and
efficient workman, and that was why Vittorio had hired him. Bracken
was not a button-man in the Family sense; he was an independent, a
journeyman. His family resided completely within his wallet. This was
why he had been hired. There was a pause in the footfalls as she paused
at the intersection of Hammond and Pardis Avenue. Then she crossed,
probably thinking of nothing but covering the last block, going up to her
penthouse suite, and pouring a large Scotch and water.

Bracken got ready, thinking it was a strange contract. Norma
Correzente, formerly Norma White of the Boston Whites, was the wife
of Vito Correzente. The marriage had been headline material – rich
society bitch weds notorious Vito ("I'm just a businessman"). The Wop.
It was not a novelty to the clan; aging Don marries a young woman of
blood. Murder by contract was not new, either. The Sicilians could put
in for a patent on that if it ever became legal.

The phone call had been long-distance; he could tell by the clickings
on the line.
"Mr. Bracken?"
"Yes."
"I have word from Mr. Sills that you are available for work."
"I could be," Bracken answered. Benny Sills was one of several
contact men who passed information from one end of a potential
contract to the other, a kind of booking agent. He ran a hock-shop in a
large eastern city where he also bankrolled independent smash-and-grab
teams of proven reputation and sold heavy-caliber weapons to dubious
political groups. "My name is Benito Torreos. Do you know it?"
"Yes." Torreos was the right-hand man –
consigliare
was the word,
Bracken thought – of Vito Correzente.
"Good. There is a letter for you in your hotel box, Mr. Bracken. It
contains a round-trip plane ticket and a check for a thousand dollars. if
you are indeed available, please take both. If not, the money is yours for
calling the airport and canceling the reservation."
"I'm available."
"Good," Torreos repeated. "My employer is anxious to speak to you at
nine tomorrow evening, if convenient. The address is 400 Meegan
Boulevard."
"I'll be there.”
"Goodbye. Mr. Bracken." The phone clicked.
Bracken went downstairs to get his mail.
Men who remain active and take care of themselves all their lives can
remain incredibly fit even into their late years, but...there comes a time
when the clock begins to run down. Tissues fail in spite of walks,
workouts, massages. The cheeks dewlap. The eyelids crennellate into
wrinkled accordions. Vito Correzente had begun to enter that stage of
hit life. He looked to be a well preserved seventy. Bracken put him at
seventy-eight. His handshake was firm, but palsy lurked beneath, biding
its time.
400 Meegan was the Graymoor Arms, and the top floor had been two
$1,000-a-month suites which Correzente had convened into a single
monolith, strewn with grotesque knickknacks and Byzantine antiques.
Bracken thought he could smell just a whiff of pasta and oregano.
Benny the Bull admitted him, looking like an overweight pug who had
found his way into his manager's wardrobe by mistake, and he stood
watchfully at the door of the sunken living room until Correzente waved
him away with one driftwood hand. The door closed decorously, and
Don Vittorio offered Bracken a cigar.
"No thank you."
Correzente nodded and lit one for himself. He was dressed in black
pants and a white turtleneck; his hair, thick and rich and the color of
iron, was brushed back elegantly. A large ruby glittered on his fourth
finger.
"I want you to make a hit," he said. "I pay you t'irty t'ousan' before
and twenty t'ousan' after.”
"That's an agreeable price." He thought:
too agreeable
. "You doan
have to make no bones."
"No bones? You said a hit. A hit means I have to make bones."
Correzente smiled a wintery smile. For a moment he looked even
older than seventy-eight. He looked older than all the ages. His accent
was faint, mellow, agreeable, a mere rounding of the hard English
plosive and glottal stops.
"It's my wife. I want you to rape her.”
Bracken waited.
"I want you to hurt her." He smiled. One gold tooth glittered mellowly
in the indirect lighting.
The story was simple, and yet there was a beautiful circularity to it
which Bracken appreciated. Correzente had married Norma White
because he had an itch. She had accepted his suit for the same reason.
But while his itch was for her body, her bloodline, and the heat of her
youth, hers was a much colder thing: money. A seamy compulsion often
forces a seamy liaison, and Norma White was a compulsive gambler.
Doll Vittorio was being laughed at. It could not be borne. The matter
could have been remedied simply and suddenly if he had been
cuckolded by some young tony in tight pants, but to be cuckolded by his
own wealth was more complex and contained a bitter irony which
perhaps only a Sicilian could fully grasp. Her white Protestant family
had cut her off, and so she had joined the family of Vito The Wop.
He had been one of the masters coping easily with the changes from
bootleg to gambling and vice to full white-collar organization, never
afraid to invest where it seemed that investiture would bring a profit,
never afraid to show the iron fist inside the glove. He was a man with a
belly, in the Sicilian argot.
Until now.
He had struck upon the solution because it was fitting. It was pure,
object lesson, and vengeance all in one. He had chosen Bracken because
he was an independent and unlike many hit men, he was neither
homosexual nor impotent.
Bracken took the job.
It took him two weeks to prepare. During the first, he shadowed her
for brief, unconnected periods of time, watching her go to the beauty
parlor, buy dresses, play golf. She was a fine, aristocratic-looking
woman with dark hair, a self-confident way of moving, and sleek body
lines. He took a gestalt of her personality from the way she drove (fast,
cutting in and out of traffic, jumping lights), the way she spoke (clear
enunciation, Back Bay accent brooking no nonsense or waste of time),
her manner of dress, a hundred other personal characteristics. When he
felt that he had her fairly well ticketed, he dropped her daytime
activities and concentrated on her nights, which were nearly as regular
as clockwork.
She left the Graymoor at seven and walked (he had never seen her
take a taxi or bus) the four blocks to Jarvis's, the most opulent gambling
den in the city. She always went as if dressed for a lover. She left
Jarvis's promptly at ten-forty-five and walked back home. She left
checks of varying amounts behind her. The pitman whom Bracken
bribed said that an average week at the tables was costing Vito
Correzente from eight to ten thousand dollars.
Bracken began to think that he had been bought cheaply at that. He
admired Norma Correzente in a personal yet detached way. She had
found her horse and was riding him. She was not cheating or sneaking.
She was an aggressive woman who was taking what she needed. There
were no lies involved. Admiration aside, he prepared to do his job. He
reflected that it would be the first contract in his career where the
weapon would need no getting rid of.
Now, on the bench, he felt a sudden surge of adrenaline that made his
muscles tighten almost painfully. Then they relaxed and all his
concentration focused in white light on the job ahead.
Her shadow trailed behind her, elongating as she left the last
streetlight behind and approached the next.
She glanced at him, not in a fearful way, but with a quick appraisal
that dismissed him as a pointless loiterer. When she was directly
opposite him, he spoke once, sharply: "Norma."
It had the desired effect. It put her off balance. She did not reach
immediately for her purse, where she carried a caliber pistol of Swedish
make.
He came off the bench in an explosion. One moment he slouched, a
sleepy head lost in a heroin haze. The next he had hooked a hard arm
around her throat, choking the yell (not a scream; not her) in her throat.
He pulled her off the sidewalk. Her purse dropped and he kicked it into
darkness. A pencil, a notebook, the pistol, and a few Kleenex spilled
from it. She tried to knee his crotch and he turned his thigh muscle into
it. One hand raked his cheek. He had bent the other back and away.
Bushes. The night breeze made faint nets of shadow through them. He
tripped her and she went down behind them, sprawled in the grass and
gum wrappers.
When he came down on top she met him with a fist. The birthstone
ring she wore gouged the bridge of his nose, bringing blood.
He yanked her skin up. The inner lining ripped. No girdle. Thank God.
She brought her heel down on the muscle of his calf and he let out a
grunt. A rabbit punch caught him. He drove his fist into the softness of
her belly and she wheezed her breath out. Her mouth opened, not to cry
out but to find air, and her shadowed face was an unreal map of eye and
lip and plane of cheek. He tore at her underpants, missed his grip, tore at
them again. They stretched but didn't give.
Fists, feet. She was hammering at him, not trying to yell anymore,
saving her breath. He tried to get her chin with his left and she slipped
the punch. Her dark hair was a fan on the grass. She bit his neck like a
dog, going for the big vein there. He brought his knee up and her intake
of breath became a small shriek.
He grabbed her pants again and this time there was a pop as the
waistband let go. She almost scratched her way out from under and he
drove the top of his head into the shelf of her chin. There was an ivory
click as her teeth came together. Her body went slack and he jackknifed
atop her, breathing in great lurches .
She was shamming. Both hands came down in a clap, catching his
ears squarely between them. Red pain exploded in his head, and for the
first time, he felt the strain of emotion while doing a job. He butted her
savagely, and again...
This time she was not playing possum. Blood trickled slowly from
one white nostril. He raped her.
He had thought her unconscious, but when he finished he saw her
looking up at him in the dark. One of her eyes was rapidly puffing shut.
Her clothes were tattered. Not that he had come out so well; his entire
body felt raw and frayed.
"I am told to tell you that this is how your husband pays a debt to his
honor. I am told to tell you that he is a man with a belly. I am told to tell
you that all debts are paid and there is honor again."
He spoke expressionlessly. His contract was fulfilled. He got up on
one knee, warily, then gained his feet. The cop would be by in seven
minutes. It was time to be gone. Her one open eye glittered up at him in
the dark, a pirate's gem.
She said one word: "Wait."
Her second apartment, the one not even Benny Torreos knew about,
was a walk-down nine blocks away. Bracken had given her his coat to
hide her torn dress. They had only one exchange of conversation during
the walk.
"I will give you twice what my husband paid you if you will do a job
for me. "
"No. You don't have the money, and I have never crossed an
employer. It's bad for business."
"I have the money. Not from him. From my family. And I don't want
you to kill him."
Bracken said sardonically: "Rape is out. "
She found her apartment key after a hunt through her jumbled purse
and let him in. The living room was done in varying, tasteful shades of
green, a low-slung, modern decor that avoided the livid tastelessness of
many trusting places. The only clashing, aggressive note was an
impressionistic painting of a huge, canted roulette wheel which was
hung over the lime-colored couch. It was done in hectic shades of red.
She crossed beneath it, reached into the next room, and turned on the
light. There was a round bed with the covers turned back. When he
walked through he saw that there were a number of mirrors,
She dropped his coat and stood in the ragged remnants of her dress.
One rose-tinted nipple, dumbly erotic, peeped through shattered chiffon.
"Now, she said calmly, "we'll do it in a civilized way.”
After, in the time of talking, she poured out her virulence toward the
man she had married. There was a restful rise and fall to the cadence of
her curses, and Bracken listened contentedly enough, poised on the dark
knife-edge of sleep.
He was a wop, a stinking spic, a lover of sheep, a crude bludgeoner
who went to chic restaurants and ate pie with his fingers; a grabber and
a twister, a black-and-bluer of flesh; a lover of junk shop gimcracks; an
aficionado of Norman Rockwell; a pederast; a man who would not treat
her as a diadem but rather as a brace for his sagging manhood; not as a
proud woman but as a dirty backstain joke to bolster the admiration of
his pasta-eating, sweaty associates.
"A man with a belly," she whispered into the darkness just before
Bracken dropped off, "I am his belly. I am his guts. I am his honor." It
occurred to him, as his mind fled to sleep, that the conflict of their honor
had formed a bridge of hate between them that he now walked on,
across oceans of darkness.
While they sat in the breakfast nook the following morning, eating
doughnuts and watching legs pass in the tiny window above, she made
her proposition: "Make me pregnant. I will pay you to do this."
Bracken put down his doughnut and looked at her.
She smiled and brushed her hair back. "He wants a child. Could he
make one?" She shrugged. "Perhaps lasagna is good for potency. I,
however, take pills. He knows I take them."
Bracken sipped his coffee. "Stud service?"
Norma laughed, a tinkly sound. "I suppose. I go to him today. No
makeup. Black eye. Scratched face. Tears. How I wish to be a good
wife." The, black charring note of score began to creep in. "How I want
to learn the recipe for his favorite greasy noodles. How I want to give
him a son."
Her face had become alive, lovely. "He will be prideful and
forgiving...in short, blind. I'll get what I want, which is freedom of the
tables. And he will get what he wants: which is an heir. Perhaps not."
She was lying, and when she looked into his eyes she saw his
knowledge and smiled with slow, shy guile. "And perhaps, at the right
time, I will kill him with the truth. You won't tell him?"
"Would it kill him?" Bracken leaned forward with mild professional
interest.
"If someone cut open your belly, would it kill you?"
"It would cost one hundred thousand dollars”, Bracken said. "Forty
before conception and sixty after. Have you got that kind of money?"
"Yes."
He nodded. "All right." He paused. "It's a funny hit, you know that? A
funny hit."
She laughed.
He returned to the Graymoor that afternoon and collected the rest of
his money. Correzente was smiling and robust.
Bracken was thanked profusely. More business would be thrown his
way.
Bracken nodded, and Correzente leaned toward him in a fatherly way.
"Can you keep your mouth shut about all this?"
"I always keep my mouth shut." Bracken said, and left.
Benny the Bull gave him a handshake and an envelope containing a
plane ticket to Cleveland. Once there, Bracken bought a used car and
drove back. He took up residence in Norma Correzente's second
apartment. She brought him a carton of paperback novels. He read them
and watched old movies on TV. He did not go out even when it would
have been safe to go out. They made love regularly. It was like being in
a very plush jail. Ten weeks after the contract with Dan Vittorio had
been fulfilled, she killed the rabbit.