Flicker & Burn: A Cold Fury Novel (9 page)

“The box,” he said, smoke leaking from his nostrils as he lifted bushy white eyebrows. “Maybe you should lock it?”

“Oh . . . right,” I said, hurrying out and turning the key. When I stepped back inside, Knuckles inspected me suspiciously. I looked away, pushing the single button, and down we slid. The chandelier tinkled, flashing as we fell, and then the car shuddered to a stop, doors parted, and we stepped into a foyer. It was pure faded glory, from flocked, peeling wallpaper and worn, fancily patterned carpets to a velvet chair and couch covered in dust. Wall sconces were dark and cobwebbed from age. To the left was a hat-check stand, its sign tersely informing patrons that surrendering “Fedoras and Hardware” was strictly required by management. I looked past the sign to a long metal box sitting on the floor, the size of a small coffin, held tight by a huge padlock. Knuckles buzzed close in his Scamp and grinned with teeth as yellow as a corncob. “That’s where the bouncer stored the Chicago Typewriters,” he said. “But you knew that, yeah? Or maybe your old man never told you about it.”

“Maybe,” I said, trying to get past it. “Come on, let’s get started with the—”

“Chicago Typewriters,” he interrupted, “were the nickname for Thompson submachine guns . . . tommy guns, the weapon of choice for the Outfit in the good old days, when we blasted off thirty rounds to show who was boss. That’s where the typewriter thing came from . . . the
clackety-clack
of bullets being the last noise some mope heard before he met his maker.”

“Right. Now I remember.”

“It’s all coming back to you, huh? Everything your pop taught you before he got . . . sick?” Before I could respond, he nodded at a metal door leading into Club Molasses, with a slot just large enough to peer inside. In days gone by, a pair of suspicious eyes looked out at anyone who approached, waiting to hear a secret term that allowed entry. Knuckles grinned again, jack-o’-lantern style. “You know the password?” His tone was flatly disrespectful, and that was it, I’d had enough.

“Yeah, I know it.
Un stupido vecchio non può riconoscere la morte, ancho quando fissa lui nel fronte,
” I said, blinking once as the cold blue flame leaped furiously and I locked onto Knuckles’s gaze. His face collapsed, and I saw his implacable fear of being cold, dead, and alone. On Doug’s advice, I’d continued studying Italian—it was a solid emotional link to my parents, who’d promised me a trip to Italy if I graduated from Fep Prep with honors. Recently I’d delved into Italian proverbs, and that one had popped into my brain—“An old fool doesn’t recognize death, even when it stares him in the face.” I was staring at Knuckles now, and maybe he wasn’t a complete fool, since he definitely recognized what we were both seeing. I said, “Old man, you will
never
ask me about my dad again. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” he whispered, tears clouding his eyes.

“When you talk to anyone about him, me, or my family, it will be only in businesslike terms and respectful of the office of counselor-at-large. Understand?”

“Yes,” he said in a desolate tone. “Oh God, yes! Please kid . . .
please
 . . . !”

I blinked again, the flame subsided, and I recalled another proverb,
“Burrasca furiosa presto passa”
(“A furious storm passes quickly”). My command of cold fury—how fast I could make it come and go—amazed even me, and I prayed that I’d gain the same authority over the murderous electricity. When Knuckles gained control of himself, we pushed through the door into the club. The entrance was hidden inside the pyramid of molasses barrels stacked along the interior wall. My guess was that it had been the club’s main entrance. The Vulcan was probably for Rispolis only.

Entering and exiting the club reminded me of Harry.

Only months earlier, the Italian greyhound blasted out of the Club Molasses gloom and attached his teeth to Poor Kevin’s butt, saving me for the second time. I’d always wondered how he made his way down here. Besides the Vulcan and garage Capone Door, which accommodated the Ferrari, I’d suspected other secret ways in and out of the bakery existed, and now the alley-vator confirmed it. Still, as smart as Harry was, it wasn’t possible the dog could’ve turned a key and pushed a button. There must’ve been yet another entrance, which led me to a further conclusion—Harry had to have been
shown
the way down here, and there was only person who would’ve done that.

My missing brother, Lou.

Had he known about Club Molasses?

As the only male Rispoli of our generation, was he told about my family’s place in the Outfit? Did even Lou himself keep me in the dark?

The troubling thought that my little brother had a secret life and dual identity of his own was interrupted by a sharp
buzz!
—once, twice, and then a third time, the last a tiny
bz!
—as a red light flashed behind the bar. The brass beer taps were still in place, the top of one glowing crimson. Knuckles cleared his throat and looked at me cautiously. “Two long and one short . . . that’s my guys buzzing from the alley to be let in. You . . . you gotta pull the beer tap handle to send the elevator. But I’m
sure
you knew that,” he said in a tone so deferential it was almost an apology. I looked at the flashing tap handle emblazoned with the words
Club Molasses Special.
A wire connected to it ran under the floorboards, and I thought,
So that’s how customers entered the club. Of course they wouldn’t have keys of their own.
I gave the tap handle a pull, the light stopped flashing, and soon afterward a pair of bent-nose guys entered the club, clearly despising each other.

What happened next was typical of that type of sit-down.

I perched on a tall stool, judge style, higher than those I presided over (borrowed from
A Few Good Men
), while each thug stated his respective grievance. After they’d fouled the air with every combination of expletive in regard to each other and the other’s mother and pets, I called on Knuckles. The old man jabbed his smoking turd-cigar and barked how the
stupidaggine
was costing everyone money. And then I sighed, blinked once, and informed them in a cold and furious manner that their feud had come to an end. They shook and wept while hugging, pledging undying loyalty, courtesy, and every other genial thing I’d ordered into their psyches. Knuckles lingered after his guys had gone, saying, “I gotta talk to you about something, kid. Something serious. You’re being whistled in.”

I paused, wondering if I was being tested again, but I knew our little cold fury session had made a lasting impression. “What does that mean?”

Knuckles cleared his phlegmy throat. “You’re being summoned by Lucky. He wants to talk to you. In person.”

Lucky, the Boss of the Chicago Outfit, whose predecessors included “Scarface” Al Capone, Paul “the Waiter” Ricca, and Tony “Batters” Accardo, and who had to be as sly and deadly as those killers to hold the position. I had no idea what he looked like, how old he was, or where he lived, and that was all by design. After Capone went to prison in 1932, his successor, Frank “the Enforcer” Nitti, streamlined the Outfit along corporate lines, creating divisions (like Money and Muscle) and titled roles (like, of course, counselor-at-large) that helped it evolve into the efficient underworld entity it was today. More important, he devised a way to isolate the Boss (i.e., the CEO) within the dense, multilayered organization, protecting him from the prying eyes of the outside world and the jealous ambitions of the Outfit itself. The Boss is like a spider sitting unseen at the center of a massive web; by the time you figure out where he’s hiding, he’s off spinning new plans. As Boss, Lucky is impossible to find and even more impossible to refuse.

“Why does he want to talk to me?” I asked cautiously.

Knuckles shrugged his massive shoulders. “None of my business. It came down from on high is all I know.” He narrowed his eyes and dropped his voice. “Your dad will tell you, but I’m gonna make the point too . . .
do not
use that Rispoli mumbo jumbo on Lucky. I’ve been around long enough to know he hates if someone tries to intimidate
him.
You stay on his good side because you need him on your side. If not, he’ll give the order for my guys to take care of you.”

I heard myself swallow hard. “Thanks for the warning.”

“It ain’t because I like you. It’s because I need you,” Knuckles said, handing over a sealed envelope addressed to me. With that, he touched his cap and buzzed for the exit. I opened it and removed a typewritten message (no incriminating handwriting samples), providing a date, time, and address. At the bottom, I noticed an additional line:

P.S. Bring three dozen molasses cookies.

I sighed, staring at the note. The Boss of the Outfit had not only whistled me in to an ominous sit-down, but also demanded a type of cookie I’d eaten thousands of times but never learned to bake. Sitting alone, deep beneath the bakery, I realized that what I required most at the moment was precisely what I’d needed since this whole tragedy-on-the-run began—my mom, dad, and brother.

And then, out of thin air, my family appeared.

I RAN FROM ICE CREAM CREATURES AND THEIR
red, dead eyes.

I’d actively avoided the ghosts of the bakery.

But there was just no way I could’ve anticipated the living dead.

After the sit-down with Knuckles on Friday evening, I entered the darkened bakery to find the molasses cookie recipe. Showing up empty-handed would be suspicious; even if my dad were actually sick, he’d at least be able to tell someone how to make cookies. I folded myself into the Vulcan and whooshed earthward, the light flickering as I rose. I stepped into the white-tiled kitchen filled with shadows shifting through the skylight. The long baking tables stretched like empty runways while the round, three-legged mixing machine squatted in the corner, clean and quiet. The only noise was the low growl of the stainless steel refrigerator. I turned on a counter light and my eyes ran across rows of spiral-bound folders and age-creased cookbooks until I came to a spine with the hand-printed word
Biscotti.
I removed it, sat on a stool, and flipped the pages until I came to one that read:

Biscotti di Melassa—Molasses Cookies

Una ricetta di Ottorina Rispoli—A recipe by Ottorina Rispoli

The recipe was my great-grandmother’s, but the molasses had come from Nunzio. He imported it into Chicago during Prohibition, to be distilled into illegal alcohol, with Ottorina appropriating enough to make amazing cookies. The Rispoli
biscotto melassa
was known throughout the neighborhood and beyond as one of the finest pastries in town. In the solitude of the kitchen, I traced my finger down the instructions, reading:

In a large bowl, cream together shortening and sugar until smooth, and . . .

Somewhere, metal rattled against glass.

Beat in eggs one at a time, and then stir in molasses. Next . . .

It was more insistent now, violating the refrigerator’s hum.

Combine cinnamon, allspice, and ginger into the molasses mixture until . . .

I heard muttering voices, closed the book slowly, and rose without breathing. The rattle sounded again, followed by muffled words, and I peeked into the front of the bakery. The display cases crouched in nighttime gloom, the brass cash register yawned with its drawer open. A section of the paper I’d used to block out the windows had come loose and folded back on itself, but the front door was covered, and behind it was the silhouette of a person on the sidewalk—no, three people. It was nine p.m., the bakery was obviously closed, but they wanted inside, and my gut told me to find something blunt to persuade them otherwise. I reached for a rolling pin, feeling its heft, and then thought of one of my favorite movies,
Pulp Fiction,
remembering how Butch prepared to descend into the freak-infested basement. I put it down and lifted a large pot by its handle, the thing heavy enough to crush a skull. And then it occurred to me that three against one required something more lethal. I grabbed the biggest knife in the kitchen, one that could split a melon with a single whack, and slid around the corner.

The handle of the locked door rattled again.

A human outline moved to the window where the paper fell open and a shaft of street light shined inside the bakery.

My dead grandpa Enzo peered inside, waving when he saw my startled face, and I dropped the knife, nearly losing a toe.

It couldn’t be—it wasn’t possible. Yet there he stood, smiling now, tapping the glass—and I realized that unless toupees were being handed out in heaven, it wasn’t him. My grandpa had a fringe of fuzz that encircled his tan, bald skull while the alternate-universe grandpa had a full head of wavy white hair as thick as shag carpeting. And even from across the dim room I could see he was missing Grandpa Enzo’s most distinctive feature—piercing, Rispoli-blue eyes. This little old man blinked at me with a pair that was decidedly brown. My gut blared with warning sirens but I couldn’t ignore him—he looked too much like my grandpa. I crossed the floor, unlocked the door, and stood back as he entered, looking around in wonderment as if entering the Sistine Chapel. His gaze moved to mine, his face stretched in a sad smile, and tears filled his eyes as he said, “I’m home.” And then he was hugging me. His little body felt like Grandpa Enzo’s. It had been so long since I’d embraced anyone in my family that I couldn’t help myself—I hugged back, trying not to cry at the deep, needful sensation of it. We separated, but he held my arms and sniffled, saying, “Who are you?”

“I . . . I’m Sara Jane . . . Rispoli.”

His eyes searched mine, pleased but confused. He turned toward the people behind him and I did a double-take at the one nearest us. As much as the old man looked like my grandpa, the middle-aged woman bore a haunting resemblance to Uncle Buddy. She was as short and thick, and her eyes, also brown, glowed with the same warmth that had animated my uncle’s before he became obsessed with the notebook and its promise of ultimate power. She wore a scarf around her neck, almost to her chin, and turned to the old man, moving her fingers nimbly, communicating in sign language. When she finished, he looked at me and said, “Of course. Anthony’s daughter . . . my brother’s granddaughter.” He drew me into another hug, where I stood limp and confused. “I’m your great-uncle, my dear. I’m Uncle Jack.”

My mind reeled backward, mentally flipping through pages of the notebook until I arrived at the chapter entitled
“Nostro”
(“Us”). Inside is a section called
“La storia della famiglia Rispoli è la storia del Outfit a Chicago”
(“The story of the Rispoli family is the story of the Outfit in Chicago”). I remembered an obscure footnote, how Great-Grandpa Nunzio named the bakery Rispoli & Sons, plural, because Grandpa Enzo had a younger brother whose name and fate weren’t recorded. And who, obviously, was hugging me now. He thumbed at his eyes, gestured at the Uncle Buddy look-alike, and said, “My daughter, Annabelle.” She moved forward without hesitation and I was engulfed in her embrace, actually delighting in it since she smelled like tart lemon meringue and a fresh tray of brownies. Annabelle let me go with a cheek-pinch, and then tapped Uncle Jack’s shoulder. “Of course,” he said, sweeping his arm theatrically at the third person, saying, “Sara Jane, meet Annabelle’s daughter, my granddaughter, and your cousin . . . Heather.”

She stepped forward, extended a hand as gracefully as a deer, and said, “Hey.”

I took it, feeling incredibly homely, and said, “Hey.”

Even an entirely new word, some hybrid of
beautiful, blonde, bronzed,
and
booby
(
booblonzooby
?) couldn’t adequately describe her appearance. Her face was perfectly smooth, proportional, and shimmering, as if it had been freshly clipped from
Vogue
magazine. She was tall, thin,
and
curvy, with a spray of freckles like a field of daisies decorating a nose so buttonlike, you wanted to push it and say “boop.” Her large, wide-set eyes were the type of deep green seen at a Caribbean seashore on a sunny day; it required a force of will not to swoon while gazing into them. All in all, Heather looked as if she were composed of all of the best parts of the thousands of models and starlets that populate the public’s collective consciousness.

There’s a phenomenon among girls where we can be in awe of another girl’s gorgeousness without it being sexual; instead, it’s a deep understanding that in this world, largely ruled by the politics of physical beauty, she is a powerful being. It’s unfair but true, and in general, society does little to discourage it. Hair must be highlighted, lips must be glossed, jeans must be tight, all of which, to me, seems like it should be optional and personal rather than mandatory. I’d just met Heather; I didn’t know anything about her other than what I could see. But after months of searching every strange face for even the flicker of a threat, my ability to take the measure of a person was razor-sharp. What I saw looking back was someone who was aware of the power she possessed. It didn’t make her good or bad, but it did arm her with a strong weapon, which put me on guard. And then there was the fact that she was at least partly Rispoli. I wondered what she knew—what
all
of them knew—especially the man who’d grown up with Nunzio “Blue Eyes” for a father and Enzo “the Baker” as a brother.

That’s when Uncle Jack started talking.

A half hour later we moved to the kitchen, where I made coffee.

When he finished at midnight, it was clear that he’d forgotten more than he knew, and he was forgetting more each day.

For example, he recalled that he was eighty-one years old and had been born Giaccomo Rispoli, but he had forgotten his own mother’s maiden name. He realized that he was in the secondary stage of Alzheimer’s disease and took his medication (something called Remembra) regularly, trying to hold it off as long as possible, but he was aware that it was growing rapidly worse. What he hadn’t known, and what I broke to him gently, was that Grandpa Enzo had died, the surprise on his face shifting to grief. “We used to write regularly. I think I received a letter from him only last year. Or maybe the year before,” he said. “There are so many things I haven’t thought of in such a long time.” He described the function of his mind as a TV constantly changing channels; while his awareness of the present was fairly stable, words and images from the past appeared with crystal clarity for only minutes before flipping away, replaced by other distant scenes. Sometimes, even worse, it was all replaced by nothing but static.

Memories of his long career in show business were more intact than the rest.

He explained how he’d gone to Hollywood in 1956, trading his identity of Giaccomo Rispoli for Jack Richards.

His specialty was TV, where he was known as “the A Plus of B-List Actors.”

Over the years, in hundreds of shows, he played lawyers who lost the case, doctors who broke the bad news, and ex-husbands who saw the kids only on weekends. His were never the starring roles, but the smaller, forgettable ones necessary to a story. His big break came in the seventies on a show called
City on the Make.
It was set in an unnamed metropolis where a tough, squeaky-clean police lieutenant was dedicated to ridding the town of a criminal group called the Organization.

Uncle Jack didn’t play the lieutenant.

Instead, he played the lieutenant’s sidekick, Detective Ned Keegan, an alcoholic bookworm-cop with all the relevant data at his fingertips, along with a glass of whiskey. He supplied the facts, usually drunkenly, while the hero lieutenant kicked down doors. The old man scratched his lustrous head and said, “It’s all mixed up now. I can’t remember what’s real and what got stuck in my brain from that damn TV show.” I waited for him to at least hint at our family’s place in the Outfit, but instead he just sighed. “That’s why I came back to Chicago. I wanted to see Enzo once more before I’m completely unable to . . .” He paused as his eyes grew wet. “Most of my childhood memories are gone, wiped away by time and disease. Only my brother remained. It was Annabelle’s idea—my dear daughter, without whom I’d be lost—to make the trek from L.A. to see Enzo. I wanted to surprise him.” Annabelle drew his attention, speaking with her hands, and I could see he was having trouble following her.

“My mom’s wondering why the bakery is closed,” Heather said. She was sitting on a metal table, sipping coffee, and smiled brightly when I turned to her. “He’s starting to forget sign language. I’m the communication conduit between them sometimes. After all . . . being useful and engaged is vital to sustained inner strength,” she said, as if reciting a mantra. “It’s a rehab theory. And rehab is
very
L.A.”

Before I could ask what she meant, Uncle Jack massaged his forehead and said, “The oven there. I’d swear Enzo and I played inside it when we were boys. But who would play inside an oven? It must be from a TV show. I can’t recall . . .”

Annabelle moved her hands and then put her arm around him as Heather said, “Mom’s right, Grandpa. Don’t worry about it. It’s been a long day.” She lifted the coffee mug toward me. “So . . . fill us in on your family.”

They didn’t seem to know any more about my parents, Lou, and me than what Grandpa Enzo must’ve related in letters—generalities and anecdotes, but nothing about the Outfit. I wondered then if my dad had known that Uncle Jack and his family existed. Grandpa Enzo’s brother was mentioned in the notebook but maybe my dad never noticed it. Or maybe my grandpa brushed it off like one of those past-generation things, where people didn’t discuss sensitive matters; after all, burying secrets was a congenital trait in my family. I didn’t see the risk in telling the same old lie, but with a twist to explain my dad’s prolonged absence. I said he was ill but stable and that my mom had taken him to New York to be treated by specialists. After satisfying their concerned questions about him with a stream of bold-faced whoppers (my easy ability to BS amazed even me), I finished by saying that Lou was at boarding school and I was here, attending Fep Prep.

“Sixteen and home alone?” Heather asked, arching a perfect eyebrow.

“Mature for my age and staying with friends. We locked up our house and closed down the bakery until my parents return,” I said, telling the semi-truth.

“Wow,” Heather said dreamily. “I can’t even describe the party that would’ve happened if I’d ever been left alone for a month. Kids from the valley to the hills would
still
be wasted and
still
be talking about me.” Annabelle’s eyes narrowed and her fingers danced as Heather raised her hands. “Relax, Mom. I was talking about the past, not the sober present. No worries, no parties, okay?” She glanced at the wall clock. “By the way, Grandpa’s Remembra is overdue.” Annabelle made an “uh-oh” face, rummaging through a purse and coming up with a prescription bottle. Heather nodded at the back door. “Alley?”

“Yeah.”

“Smoke break,” she said. “He has to take three ginormous pills, baby-bird style. Gagging, snorting . . . it’s not pretty. Join me?”

I looked at Annabelle shaking out marble-sized capsules, at Uncle Jack’s fretful expression, and said, “Sure.” We pushed into the cool night air, the streetlights dropping puddles of illumination. The Lincoln was where I’d left it, and I said, “That’s mine.”