Atavus (17 page)

The place reeked of a filthy woman; the roaches scattering over her glass table where she left unfinished Chinese food, were the confirmation. He went through a hall to the only bedroom where the renter slept at three in the afternoon. He used her cell to listen whether she was alone and her computer to see inside the home, creepy when you think about it.

Nico lifted her cell, shut it down and slipped it in his pocket to comb through, later. In the bedroom, he spotted a laptop on the dresser and shoved it in his messenger bag. He walked to the side of the bed, reached down with a gloved hand and injected a needle filled with a lethal dose of a chemical that mimicked a heart attack into her neck. He put his hand over her mouth, counted to ten and she went limp without a fighting chance.

Done.

He exited after doing a secondary search and relocked her door.

Outside the police officers were climbing back in their squad car, probably giving a Z-status update; Gone on Arrival. The impending shift change had saved the youngsters from an arrest of some fictitious sort. Most cops wanted to avoid the tedious paperwork for petty offenses. From what Nico could see those cops did the right thing. Every law enforcement person isn’t corrupt.

Chapter Twenty-Two

The images moved across the screen. Actors have familiar faces but they’re strangers. Some people have a hard time separating fake from reality or right from wrong, but Alfonzo didn’t.

Alfonzo rubbed Selange’s hip as she slept. She’d fallen asleep before the movie got underway. He reclined to the pillows with a mischievous grin as Selange breathed hot air straight on his crotch. However, he decided to readjust Selange’s head when the drool dripped too much and ruined his concentration.

Selange claimed to love the Godfather novels but she had never seen the films. She confessed that tidbit before she dozed off. “Que, no?” he had replied, perched to laugh but shook his head instead. As many times as that movie came on, whoa, is all he could think without being judgmental.

Most of the books he enjoyed were better than the film adaptions. The Godfather won a whole bunch of industry awards back in the day. He had to give props to the writer for making the mafia lifestyle palatable and not overly romanticizing the violence.

Anyway, he told Selange once the kids went to bed, he’d hang-out with her to watch the long movie but only if she didn’t fuss about his eating in bed. She didn’t have a problem with the suggestion. He’d gotten his beer, some peanuts and fruit to support his babe’s classic cinema fetish, had put them on the nightstand rearing to go, settled down on the bed and then she went nighty-night on his lap.

Alfonzo reached for a handful of peanuts, tossed them in his mouth and scoffed. “Man…my neña cannot hang.”

He washed the nuts down with a hearty gulp of beer, focusing on the large flat screen on the wall. Actually, he preferred Scarface to The Godfather, maybe because the story centered on a Latino, who knows.

Then he relaxed, preparing for the long entertaining cinematic tale, snickering because the fun had already begun when Michael Corleone, played by Al Pacino answered his vapid date’s question about his relation to Tom Hagen played by Robert Duvall. Michael had recently introduced Tom as his brother to the slow chica he brought to the wedding celebration as his date.

Actor Diane Keaton nailed the ditsy part to a tee. She asked Michael, “
If you’re brothers why do you have different names
?”

“Nah, babe for real, you’re asking dumb questions all ready?” Alfonzo said aloud. Michael Corleone wasn’t going to say, “Babe chill, eat your food and if we get serious then I’ll share.”

Besides, Alfonzo couldn’t separate the fact that actor Al Pacino was the shit as Tony Montana in Scarface. Pacino’s Italian, you’d think he’d kill the role of Michael Corleone, right? Nah, brother possessed more grit in Scarface as a Cuban, go figure.

“
Say hello to my little friend
!” Alfonzo said in a bad imitation of Tony Montana. Selange rolled her cheek right atop his sleeping dick then. “All right nena keep doing that and I’m waking you up.”

Selange must’ve heard because she went limp as a corpse. Alfonzo brows furrowed. Al Pacino also played in another of his favorite films, notably ‘Any Given Sunday.’

“The dude can act,” he admitted and then returned to dissecting The Godfather again like an amateur critic for fun.

Michael Corleone went on to explain that his brother Sonny found Tom Hagen in the street or something like that. Apparently, Tom was an eleven or twelve year-old homeless boy that Sonny brought home to the Corleone family. Sonny didn’t look much older than Tom in Alfonzo’s opinion.

“That part’s weak, for real,” Alfonzo said between another sip of beer.

He tried to imagine his mom’s reaction if he brought a street person home. “Hey ma, look what I found, can he stay, por favor. I know we don’t have much food and whatnot but he may be useful when I grow up and become a big-time mafia.”

Man, his mom would give him the side-eye and then ask a million questions. The bottom line would be, “What happened to his parent’s hijo?”

Alfonzo coughed. For real, what if Tom was a crazy kid and snapped when everybody slept? See, that’s how Alfonzo knew Puzo wasn’t from the ‘hood. Nobody’s that trusting especially not street kids.

He put up his hands laughing. “But hey, it’s all good. I’ll roll with it. After-all it’s not my story Mr. Puzo.”

Anyway, the Tom Hagen person that looked older than Sonny Corleone was given a memorable role in the fictional saga. In fact, Puzo developed Tom Hagen’s character by providing a history on how he and Sonny met.

Hagen’s encounter with a young Sonny Corleone and two older boys occurred when they wandered into a dangerous alley in the Irish part of Hell's Kitchen where Hagen hid. There was a man selling switchblades and they wanted to buy one. The man pulled a knife and dragged Sonny into the alley. The other boys ran, but Hagen goes to Sonny’s aid. He grabs a board with a nail sticking out of it and hit the man in the head with it, killing him. Sonny is saved. Hagen and Sonny look at each other and laugh and then introduce themselves, walk out the alley arms looped around each other’s shoulders and a bro-bond is made.

Sonny asks about Hagen’s parents and is told Hagen’s mother died and his father split. Off to Sonny’s home they go across the broken brick road where Sonny persuades his father to take poor Tom into their family. The Don never formally adopts Tom; he believes that might be construed as an act of disrespect to Hagen's parents. One parent is dead and the other is a drunk who abandoned his child, but okay.

Tom considers Don Vito Corleone his true father and Sonny and Michael his brothers. In many ways, Don Vito's quasi-adoption of the street urchin paralleled how Signor Abbandando had also taken in Vito when he was a child.

“Yup.” Alfonzo nodded. “History repeating itself.”

Alfonzo tried to wrap his head around the plot. So Sonny befriends the homeless boy, grateful he saved his life, brings him home and he’s informally now the adopted son of Don Vito Corleone. Later he becomes a lawyer and Consigliere to the Corleone family. The book had established Tom had German-Irish ancestry, which is why he was precluded from having a formal membership in the Italian Mafia.

“Not surprising,” Alfonzo sneered. “That’s the old school tradition. Turns out our mutt Tom is smart, loyal and levelheaded while privileged Sonny wants to whack everybody…Sonny sounds like my brother’s nutty ass…brilliant writing Mario ‘cause you got Giuseppe down pat…yup…yup!”

“Honey, are you talking to yourself?”

Alfonzo glanced down to find Selange staring at him as if he’d lost his mind. “Nah, babe, I’m talking to the TV.”

She cleared her throat. “What did I miss?”

“Violins, Diane Keaton’s lackluster performance and James Caan and Robert Duvall stealing the show from my man Al Pacino’s who’s too subdued and this role. I like him better in Scarface.”

Alfonzo wanted to add that he also preferred the realistic portrayal of Michelle Pfeiffer as the coke addicted gold-digger who smashed the homie with the fattest pockets as she scaled her way to the top of the headboard in order to have nice things. He knew lots of chicas like that and people sniffing up their profits. Scarface was the textbook story on what
not
to do when you get illegal money and power. People get swelled cabeza; eventually they are popped.

Selange shook her head. The action put pressure to his thighs, which served as stimuli for a horny dude’s dick. “You like the action parts because that’s all you’re about,” she said with a giggle.

“You know it babe,” he answered before taking hold of his wife’s waist and lifting her up to his chest. He leaned forward to plant eager kisses on her neck, simultaneously rubbing her ass while grunting as the erection pushing from his shorts confirmed he preferred real action to the fictional kind any day.

He was in deep, grunting and shit when his cell lit up and the important caller killed his pleasure. It was two in the goddamn morning, why was his mother calling, he wondered.

Selange’s thighs constricted along with a series of vaginal calisthenics that caused his dick to throb so violently from the licks and compressions that he gripped her neck. He pressed her head down so he could orally expel the excess force with decadent French kisses. She groaned, and the sound as he pumped up pushing every seminal drop into her joined in the vocal appreciation with satisfactory grunts.

Damn, he wanted to fuck her to sleep, but his mom wasn’t letting up. Between the children, business and family, jetting off to screw on an island looked enticing. He had to answer, at this time it was probably an emergency, hell, they’d become the norm.

“Neña, I gotta’ get this,” he said to Selange’s parted lips as he reached over and the pouty mouth attached to his chest, and she exhaled, holding him like a glove below that he cautioned her not to move it felt so damn good. “Um, yeah, ma, que?” he said into the phone with his eyes on the top of Selange’s hair, skimming over her figure, crazy in love with his babe, wondering why when it came to her, he’d lost his damn mind?

His mother spoke rapidly in Spanish. She did that when she was upset, “I must talk with you.”

“¿Por qué?”

“Manana, I will be there,”

“Unless you’re coming in three hours, you won’t catch me.”

“This is important.”

Selange wiggled and he smacked her ass. “Mama, are you in el bano?” The acoustics gave away her location.

“When are you returning?”

“Tonight, por que?”

“I will be there waiting!” she exclaimed and disconnected.

Selange’s head rose. “Oh no, honey, she’s mad and I think I know why.”

Selange went to move and he held her firm, he wanted her to remain attached, because he slept better that way. “Que?”

“She’s upset we didn’t attend Domingo’s memorial. She didn’t buy your forgetfulness and I told her Domingo's passing is still emotionally raw for you, that’s why we stayed home.”

Alfonzo frowned. Selange tried to cover his ass, but she didn’t know his mother was a stickler for traditions. It didn’t matter, what the circumstances, family was expected at major events. He had guessed that might be the reason for her call. For her to phone at this hour, signified she was deeply troubled and prayer hadn’t solved the dilemma. His hand rubbed the slope of his wife’s spine, and her firm booty in a circular motion. “All right, I’ll deal with her when I return home, babe. Gracias for trying to look out. Ven y dame un beso.”

“You want a kiss?” she asked with a stripper’s come-hither expression while gyrating on his midsection. “How bad do you want a kiss?”

“Muy…muy mal! “ He responded with a sly grin at her penile stimulation.

She pressed a breast to his mouth and he opened wide, pulling and sucking her nipple. The chica was kind enough to feed him before raising that ass and pumping inward.

She stroked his shoulders, letting him suck away like a baby as she shifted left and right in smooth control as if she was taking corners on a bike.

A colicky kid is what he was when he grumbled, holding the hips of the rider when she went faster.

His mouth detached with a faint smack sound to roll over, pinning her down and popping a wheelie with his body sending more torque to his dick.

“Shit honey…ah…oh…ummm…honey.” Selange moaned during every revolution.

He didn’t have sympathy for the chica; she had made his dick do tricks before he had touched her pussy years ago. Payback for her sexual teasing as a virgin was passionate retribution from her horny husband.