Blue Heaven (12 page)

"I'm just teasin' you, baby," said Sammy. "S'none of my business, I'm sure. Gilbert, you're looking very nice yourself. Give Auntie Sammy a kiss!"

Sammy Fabrizio was a large woman in her late fifties. She wore a tight strapless gown of electric blue and earrings which might, on a weaker woman, have caused spinal damage. Her hair was sculpted into a bizarre terraced beehive that made her head resemble an ancient Inca cliff dwelling. Her voice reminded me of a duck, and not a clean-living duck either but one that's been drinking gin and chainsmoking since it was a duckling.

Introductions were made and Lunch, who viewed standing up as a calisthenic, suggested we move to a recently vacated sofa.

Moira once more asked a barrage of questions about her future in-laws, recalling the names not only of Lunch and Sammy's brood but those of their eldest's husband and four children. They were delighted by the swiftness with which she had mastered the complexities of the family tree. Gilbert tried to compete but kept making errors after each of which Moira sweetly corrected him, calling him her "dizzy baby."

Now, at first, listening to this prodigious performance, I felt Moira had gone too far for her own good; that in laying it on so thick she could only raise questions as to what motivated so passionate an interest in people she'd barely met. But Moira, no fool, took care to defuse any suspicions with a poignant homily on the subject of Big Families.

"You see, I was a difficult birth and after me Mummy couldn't have any more. So when Daddy died-I was six-there were just the two of us. Oh, there were cousins somewhere but they were on Daddy's side and they'd disowned him for marrying beneath him. Well, when you only have one person in the whole world, naturally you dream
about having a big family. When I'd see movies like
I
Remember Mama
I'd pretend it was
my
family up on the screen. So now, when I look around here and see all these wonderful people all related to each other . . . well, I could just bust when I think that someday I'll be part of it!"

"You already are, honey," quacked Sammy, wiping a tear from her eye.

"Some girl you got here, Gil," sniffed Lunch.

"So, what about you two?" asked Sammy, turning to Claire and me, "you planning to tie the knot?"

"Yes," said Claire, taking my hand. "We just haven't set a date yet."

"You are?" squealed Maddie, delighted. "Well, I didn't know that! Did you know that Gilbert?"

"No!"

"I guess the cat's out of the bag," said Claire, digging her nails into my palm. "I'm sorry, Philly. You're not mad at me, are you?"

"Of course not, darling!" I said, my head swimming.

"Well,
I'm
not surprised," said Moira. "I could tell all the time."

"Could you really?" asked Claire.

"Of course. Women just know."

"There I go!" said Maddie, tears drizzling down her cheeks. "I see two young people find each other and bang go the waterworks!"

"Oh, Maddie," said Moira. "You're as bad as Freddy."

"Freddy who?" asked Sammy.

"Bombelli," cooed Moira. "Your uncle."

"You know Freddy?" asked Lunch, strangely interested.

"Oh, yes, very well. That's how I know so much about the family. He talks about you all the time. He is just so
proud
of you all."

She explained her job with Freddy, omitting reference to his taste in literature and curious demand for costumed reenactment. Anyone would have come away with the impression she'd been reading
Dombey and Son
to him in a vicarage garden.

"Some fuckin' coincidence," said Lunch, significantly. "Tony's future daughter-in-law working for Freddy the Pooch!"

"A little respect!" quacked Sammy, snatching the glass from his hand. "That's enough for you! Quarter past eight and you're already shit-faced. You watch your mouth in front of the little ones. They know you were Santa."

Twelve

"H
ey speakin' of Lunch playing Santa, Phil here said somethin' that cracked me
up
-"

"Maddie, where's the bathroom?" I asked, rising.

"Go out in the hall, dear, and it's the first door on your left at the top of the stairs."

"Ladies first!" said my fiancee, popping up beside me. "You lead the way so I don't get lost!" She took my hand again.

"Whatever you say, hon!" I grinned and off we went, Maddie's voice trailing behind us.

"Aren't they adorable! Don't you two do anything I wouldn't do!"

Before plunging you into that bathroom and the horrors with which Claire regaled me, I'd better stop and clarify a few points about the basic organization of what I have so far referred to as the Cellini clan. Sorry for the interruption, but this is all pretty essential stuff you'll have to know sooner or later and it'll be easier to grasp if I give it to you in one neat clump.

As you've already seen the "Cellinis" are not all Cellinis. They are, in fact, only one-third of a clan which might most accurately be called the Bombelli family even though Freddy and his widowed daughter-in-law Bruna are the only surviving bearers of the surname. But it's from Freddy and his three sisters that everyone else is descended.

Back in the early twenties Freddy started a little meatpacking business. Before long it had become a very big meatpacking business, owing in part to the silly habit his competitors developed of always having their factories burn down on them. During these happy years of growth each of Freddy's three sisters married. The names of their husbands were Enrico Cellini (Tony's father), Carlo Sartucci (father of Chick) and Tommy Fabrizio (who spawned Lunch).

All three hubbies went to work for their prosperous brother-in-law and as the business grew and diversified each became responsible for a different aspect of it. Enrico Cellini ran the storage and shipping concern, Carlo Sartucci took over the garment factory which a man named Klein had, in a fit of generosity, given to Freddy, and Mr. Fabrizio stayed in the beef biz. He had a growing boy to feed.

Freddy himself married in the late thirties, choosing as his bride Gina Latour (born Rose D'Amiglio), the singing star whose brief
recording career and five-year reign as Queen of the Cayenne Club is remembered only by the most indiscriminate collectors of the chanteuse's art.

Simple enough, right? But now we come to Tony's generation and things get a bit more complex. All the above-mentioned were, whatever their other shortcomings, good Catholics. So take a deep breath, dog-ear the page for future reference, and I'll give you the roster of second-generation Bombellis.

The Cellini wing includes:

Tony Cellini (married, of course, to Maddie)

Steven Cellini (married to Lisa)

Theresa Cellini Pastore (married to Charlie Pastore)

Frankie Cellini (deceased; widow named Connie)

Carlo Cellini (deceased; widow named Marie)

The Sartucci branch includes:

Chick Sartucci (married to Rosa)

Manny Sartucci (and his wife Liz)

Sister Deena Maria Sartucci (Our Lady of Fatima)

Joey Sartucci (the minestrone fatality; widow named Anne)

The Fabrizios are:

Lunch and Sammy

Aggie Fabrizio (divorced)

Eddie "The Sausage" Fabrizio (and his lovely wife Mona)

Father Eddie Fabrizio, S.J.

Big Jimmy Fabrizio (deceased, never married)

As for the Bombellis, they are mercifully few. Freddy, like his siblings, longed for a large family but was blessed with but one son, Harry "Gotcha" Bombelli. Harry grew up and married Bruna. Of the clan, as I said, only Freddy and Bru remain, Freddy's wife having died in the sixties and Gotcha having gone to his reward two years before our story begins.

Now this second generation is comprised of men and women in their forties to sixties. They, in turn, have children of their own. But this next generations needn't concern you. They pop into things
here and there but we'll deal with them as they do. The House of Bombelli is highly traditional as regards respect for seniority. Authority trickles down from the top so a basic grasp of the executive level is all you need to follow the motives informing the drama into which Gilbert and I, like a latter-day Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, were thrust.

As soon as Claire and I reached the bathroom she fixed me with a furious grimace similar to the one Sister Joselia had offered years ago when
Ranger in Paradise
fell out of my bookbag. My heart rose well into my throat for there could be no mistake as to what was behind so fierce a scowl.

"You can tell
already?"
I asked.

"Of course I can! And I could have told you two weeks ago if you'd bothered to give me any pertinent information!"

"I told you everything I knew. Is this why we're suddenly engaged?"

"Yes. They mustn't figure out what Gilbert is up to, and if they realize he's gay that's a good first step."

"What has that got to do with me?"

"Well, Philip, you are his best friend. If they know about you it might cast suspicion on him. How many straight boys have gay best friends? Some do, I'm sure, but if you'll forgive me for being blunt, Gilbert's performance as a lustful heterosexual is hardly so masterful that it could withstand the weight of much contradictory evidence."

"You're
that
convinced they're Mafia?"

"Philip, how naïve can you be! Dickie Fabrizio? And Moira suddenly best friends with Freddy the Pooch! Why didn't you
tell
me!"

"I never heard of Lunch till tonight. And Freddy I told you about."

"You said Freddy
Bombelli,
not Freddy the
Pooch.
It's like Jimmy the Greek. You only know him by the nickname."

"Well,
I
don't know him! Who the hell is Freddy the Pooch?"

She gave me the Sister Joselia look again.

"Philip, when you buy the
Times
what do you do, just incinerate everything but Arts and Leisure?"

She proceeded to inform me that Freddie the Pooch was one of the most legendary mobsters of the forties, fifties and sixties. There was scarcely a crime on the books for which he was not, at one point or another, indicted, but no DA ever managed to make a single charge stick. Witnesses against him were notoriously capricious, forever
surrendering to bouts of wanderlust or hitherto unsuspected suicidal tendencies.

Early in Freddy's career one such witness, who was later to leap from his window after typing a self-critical note, told a reporter that those who crossed Freddy had been known to find a resting place inside a can of K9, the popular dogfood processed at Freddy's meat packing plant. The witness didn't last long but the sobriquet, Freddy the Pooch, stuck.

"If he's so goddamned important how come I've never heard of him?"

"Well, he hasn't been in the headlines for quite a while. They finally got him on tax evasion in the late sixties and he got a long jail sentence. I don't suppose he's been out now for more than a few years. I had no idea he was still alive. He was already old when they sent him up."

"Yes, and I was about ten, so excuse me for not having followed it all in the
Times."

"Well, you weren't ten three years ago when Big Jimmy Fabrizio was indicted!"

"Huh?"

"You're hopeless! That whole FBI sting! They had him on videotape offering fifty thousand dollars to Senator Fowler if he'd agree to find no evidence that the B&F Meat Company was the front for a narcotics ring."

This rang the vaguest of bells.

"Oh, right. What happened?"

"It got thrown out of court-some technicality over the way evidence was obtained. Big Jimmy died about a year and a half ago. Car accident."

"How do you know these are the same Fabrizios?"

"Well, considering that their uncle is Freddy the Pooch I'd be surprised if they weren't!"

There was a loud knock at the door. We both froze in panic. I think for a moment we truly expected the door to be flung open by some roscoe-wielding plug ugly in a zoot suit who'd sneer and say, "So yez figured it out, didja?"

"Just a moment please!" said Claire.

"Have you got Philip in there?"

"Gilbert!"

"Come in!" I called.

He sauntered in and regarded us with raised eyebrows.

"Well, isn't
this
cozy!"

"Gilbert we have to talk."

"No kidding! What's all this stuff about you two being engaged?" he asked cautiously, unsure how much Claire knew. "Is it some kind of joke or what?"

Claire immediately laid this question to rest, informing him exactly why she felt it prudent that I acquire a fiancee.

Gilbert stood there dumbstruck for a moment, then spoke.

"Philip, you
told
her!"

''And a damn good thing I did."

"How
could
you! You promised me under no-"

"Gilbert, you fool," said Claire sharply, "that is entirely beside the point, which is that you're trying to swindle some extremely dangerous people!"

"Oh, please! Not this Mafia business again! I don't know why-"

"You certainly
don't,
so shut up and I'll tell you."

She repeated the story she'd told me, and by the time she'd gotten around to Freddy's unique place in the history of canine nutrition, Gilbert had taken on that pale, doomed look you often see in dental reception areas.

"You're making this up just to scare me."

"Gilbert," I cried, "wake up and smell the dog food! What we're doing here is
really dumb."

"Yes," said Claire, "and it would be insane enough to do on your own. But to pick Moira as your partner! Do you trust her for a moment? Just look at the way she's sucking up to all of them! She's practically Freddy's mistress and she has the rest of them eating out of her hand. Why, if anything went wrong, what would she do? She'd play the injured lovesick woman seduced into crime by the slick gay con man to whom she'd lost her girlish heart. She'd throw the two of you right to the wolves!"

These words had a powerful effect on Gilbert. If before he'd looked like a man awaiting a dental appointment, he now resembled one awaiting a dental appointment in a clinic run by the Three Stooges. It was at this happy moment that we heard another knock on the door.

"Ye-es?" warbled Claire.

"Hi, hon," said Maddie, "are you all in there?"

"Yes, Mom!"

Maddie burst cheerfully in, clutching a crystal punch cup brimming with eggnog.

"I thought you might be. I don't know why it is but whenever I throw a party the young people spend the whole night going to the bathroom in groups."

Claire, with her usual presence of mind, explained that Gilbert had drawn us aside to ask our advice on what he might give Moira for Christmas.

On returning to the party we saw that Moira had shifted into high gear and was standing by the piano leading a group in Christmas carols. We noted grimly that she'd learned the Italian lyrics to "Frosty the Snowman."

Scattered about the room now were some dozen waiters instantly recognizable as employees of Marvelous Parties, the season's hottest caterer. They were all possessed of those attributes which were MP's trademark: thick wavy hair, jaws you could cut yourself on and a certain icy hauteur that made them seem less like waiters than unusually polite storm troopers.

Maddie left to greet some new arrivals and the minute she was gone Gilbert's stiff smile vanished.

"Oh, God, all the caterers in the world and she had to book them!"

"What's wrong?" asked Claire.

"Let's just say my past is catching up with me."

"Oh, dear! You had a romance with one of these men?"

"No," said Gilbert, gazing around. "Three of them."

The situation our little trio now faced was, you'll agree, a stressful one. And stress is a funny thing. People deal with it in different ways. Gilbert, as I mentioned earlier, sulks and eats Früsen Glädje butter pecan. I tend to unplug my phone and lose myself in the pages of a good mystery, taking solace in the knowledge that, whatever my problems may be, I haven't just been found bludgeoned to death in a locked library no one could possibly have entered or left at the time of my death. But ice cream and mysteries are solitary comforts and not much good in situations where one must deal not only with stress but public scrutiny as well.

In these situations Gilbert and I usually cope in the same way: we clown. A psychiatrist, I suppose, would say that our anxiety induces
great insecurity which can only be eased by massive doses of approval, and who the hell cares? Whatever the reason, we don the caps and bells and do our damnedest to be bright and charming and witty.