Frenzy (6 page)

"I'll do it," Spain said.

"You sure about that? I know you're good but you're very young. It's one thing to stop some punks hurting a friend of yours, another thing to clip somebody cold. If you're not sure, don't take it."

Spain said nothing, but he returned Mr. Ciprioni's stare for a full beat and reached slowly for the envelope. He let him take it and put it in his pocket, and then he told Frank the name and where the man lived. It was a downtown hotel. And that night Frank went down to the Milburn and walked in and took the elevator up to the fourth floor and knocked, and when the door opened, he asked the man if he was who the contract was for, and the guy said he was, and the kid pulled out the hammerless Smith and put a round right in his heart, turning and going down the emergency stairs, deciding this time he'd get rid of the piece himself. And from then on he became Mr. Ciprioni's shooter.

Gaetano Ciprioni was not in Tony Gee's family, which was the St. Louis mob of that time. The boss man explained the hierarchy to Spain.

"This is nothing here. It's shit. All the action is in Kansas City far as Missouri goes, and Kansas City doesn't have shit. St. Louis isn't anything serious in the organization. It's all run by Chicago anyway. The big man there is gonna retire soon. When he does, the man gonna inherit the whole middlewest country is my main man. He is to me what I am to you, you understand?"

"Yeah."

"He's gonna change things. When he does, I'll be moving up to The Council. You don't knew what that is, do you?" Frank shook his head no. "It's the head of all the families.
ALL
the families, even the big New York families. The Council controls everything. I'll be working there. I'm going to be needing someone here I can trust. To do jobs of work for me. Mostly here in the Midwest. The pay will be outstanding, I can promise you."

"Okay."

"Okay, we understand each other." They shook hands. Spain never could get used to how the Italianos liked to shake hands all the time. But one thing about The Man: if he told you something like this, well, you could take it to the bank.

Spain was what his sainted mother would have called a late bloomer. He'd already worked his way to the top level of his chosen profession by the time he met Pat, and his new self-confidence allowed him to approach someone for the first time.

She was an ordinary girl, although he saw her as quite beautiful. Mary Pat Gardner, who worked for his neighborhood dry-cleaner, which — many years later — he wanted to tell her had been a family operation, a family laundry for money as well as clothing, but he never told her about his work. He "traveled." He was in "sales."

One day he walked in and she looked especially radiant and he told her so.

"You look real pretty today."

"Thank you," she beamed. "How's life treating you?" She took his dry-cleaning sack and started writing on a pad. "I'll get your things in just a second."

"No hurry." He'd seen her in there when he brought his clothing in each week for a year or so, and finally he'd worked up enough nerve to ask her out. His speech impediment was almost gone. Frank no longer stammered if he concentrated on what he was saying. He was prepared to say, "Would you like to go to the movies with me Friday night?" That's what he planned to ask her. But what he said was, "Mary Pat?"

And she looked up from the order she was writing and said, "Uh-huh?"

"Would you like to know to the noovie, MOW to the noovie, GO to the MOVIE WITH ME?" Christ christ christ, is there no mercy no justice no rest no slack?

He could still recall how he shriveled with the hopelessness of it as she smiled at him and said, "Sure. When?"

"Mmmm. Okay," he mumbled, starting to pick up his dry-cleaning, so nervous, so blown away by his bungled attempt that it took a few beats before he realized she'd said yes. He couldn't believe it. It was a major victory of his life. The only conquest he could remember being genuinely proud of. More challenging and frightening than a dozen contracts.

She hadn't said "I guess so," even. Nothing tentative or halfhearted. A big smile and a warm, quick "Sure. When?" He loved it. He fell instantly in love with her. To him she was beauty, smoldering desire, femininity, and sex incarnate. And he thought she liked him too.

He proposed to her on their second date, surprising her with a ring he'd been carrying with him. She accepted, surprising both of them, somewhat bemused by the size of the stone, which she suspected was glass. The next day she was walking by a jewelry shop and just happened to take it in.

"Mr. Plotkin?"

"Yes?"

"Remember me? Mary Pat Gardner?"

"Shirley Goodell's cousin?"

"The same. Mr. Plotkin, I want your opinion on a family heirloom." She thrust a hand under his wrinkled puss. "My aunt left me this. I was told it had some value." He screwed something into his eye and peered at it, holding her hand.

"Oi veh.
That's about five karats of perfect diamond you got there, child. Yes. I'd have to say that had some value." He looked again. "Nice color. Not a bubble. Nothing. It's a show-stopper," he said.

They were married not long after. Within a year Spain had fathered a little girl. Outwardly he maintained a family life of seeming normalcy. A salesman or consultant or troubleshooter (he loved that one!), depending on who he was talking to, with a checkable "legend," a complete fake background that had been prepared by experts to withstand fed-level scrutiny, with the appearance of upwardly mobile, upper-middle-class wealth. A typical, if atypically rich, American mercantile transient.

Had he been a normal man to begin with, or even in a normal profession, it might have been different. An accountant with seasonal work overloads, a car dealer with long hours, every line has its occupational drawbacks. But Spain's vocation took him out of the city unexpectedly, sometimes for long periods, and the nature of the business made him secretive.

"You never talk to me," Pat so often would say.

"I talk. I just don't have that much to say."

"I don't even know what you do. Most men share their work with their wives. It can't be that boring."

"Believe me," he say, shaking his head in exasperation, "you don't know how lucky you are. Just be glad I don't bring my work home with me like some guys." Wasn't that the truth? "I decided a long time ago I'd seen too many marriages sour because the guy was always taking his job to bed with him. I leave my work outside. I'll take care of the selling, the money to put the food on the table. You take care of making us a good home." And so on.

And time has a way of passing so quickly. And before you know it, if you aren't careful, you can dedicate yourself to your calling but sacrifice your personal life in the bargain. He let his family slip through his fingers.

"I like a dedicated man. That's one thing about you, Frank," The Man said to him. "And you keep your mouth shut. It's a rare commodity in this day and age. Even my own guys. I hear 'em goin' around putting their mouth all over themselves, callin' each other guinea this and greaseball that. And worst of all, this son of mine talks about
wops,
which is a word sets my teeth on edge. I don't even like to hear the colored called niggers. You — I don't think I ever heard you say dago even, am I right?"

Frank shrugged. "I just don't think like that."

"My son. My youngest. He looks up to you so much. Ever since that time you whacked those boys. It's all I hear. Papa, Frank shot all four of 'em, he'd say. Hit four moving targets and
three head shots.
How many times I've heard that when the kid and I talk about you. You never said shit to me. You never asked him for nothin'. Never asked me for a dime."

"I was glad I was there that day."

"Yeah. Me too," It was a father talking to his son after the baseball game. Telling him how proud he was of the homer the kid clobbered in the bottom of the ninth. And the kind of dedication he gave to The Man was the kind you only give to family. Perhaps, when you think about it, that was his real family. It was certainly the one he devoted his time and energies to.

First, when he failed to hold his wife, it was as if the bedrock on which he was standing suddenly cracked open, and now . . . the thing with his daughter, he felt himself slipping into the abyss.

He was sitting there in the living room in the darkness, waiting for his little girl and thinking about what he could have done to keep Pat, and he heard her coming up the steps and opening the front door.

"You could have had him drive right up. No reason for you to walk all the way from the highway. I wasn't going to go after him with a ball bat. Of course it's not a bad idea."

She didn't even look at him, just started up the stairs.

"That's the last time you'll be allowed out," he said to her. "You get three strikes like everybody else. You've had two. One more and I call the juvenile authorities and turn you over to them. I can't chain you in your room. If the authorities can't take care of you I'll have to hire special guards. Whatever it takes, we'll make sure —" And the sound of Tiff's bedroom door slamming shut on his words put a period to his thought.

Inside her room, Tiff made her decision. She had asked Greg about what they were going to do and he wanted to cut out for Florida. She said, Let's sleep on the idea and they'd talk at school tomorrow. Roger Nunnaly had his fill of school and they could go with Roger in his car. They'd all take off for the South. Lots of fun in the sun. Lots of wild scenes on the beach. It sounded great to Tiff. She started packing and then realized she'd never get the clothes out of the house past . . . him. She dumped her books out of her voluminous book bag and began to pack the essentials into the bag and her biggest purse.

She had some money saved. Quite a bit, in fact. And there was the jewelry. She packed her dowery in silence.

And downstairs, the man who calls himself Spain sits quietly in the shadows.

"Are we really going to leave? I just can't believe it," she had asked Greg, her cat's eyes blinking as she looked at her white knight.

"Believe it," he told her, starting to load the car. Are we really gonna turn out a sweet little pussy like this? Does a snake have lips? he thought to himself, grinning and whistling softly as he packed the last of their meager belongings in Roger's car. He'd put this little fox to work for him.

Within twenty-four hours of the kids' departure everyone involved in the respective families knew they'd left together, including Pat and her insurance lothario, not to mention the cops. Too many people were involved in this. Whole families had suddenly been turned upside down. Spain had ended up having to talk to the police several times, which to him was the equivalent of repeatedly plunging his hands into boiling water, but anathema or not, his daughter had disappeared. He had to find her.

"They'll catch them before the day is out," Roger Nunnaly's father had assured everyone, "that car will stand out a mile."

The private Spain had suddenly become very public, sharing secrets with perfect strangers, not to mention the cops, all of whom were now involved in his personal decision-making.

People he'd never seen in his life were seated in his living room telling him ridiculous things about runaway hotlines and dope and how young girls can use sex to ensare a poor, innocent boy like Greg Dawkins, whom Spain had nailed for what he was first time he saw him, and some kid named Roger who sounded like a crackhead known to everyone but his own parents. And Spain sat there letting it all lap over him as they talked about how his wife and daughter had
both
run away from him, and almost overnight life had become a steamroller that was crushing the shards of what remained of his shattered ego.

But there was no loving wife to take him aside and say, There, there now, honey, it's going to be all right. You tried your best, Daddy. You just forgot that fathering is a skill as well as an art. And it's a skill that demands practice as well as good intentions. And nobody was there to tell him that Tiff was hurting too. That when you're fourteen years old, frustrations and humiliations are deep knife wounds. Wounds that can be fatal if not treated in time.

He was alone to take it all and deal with it. And that next night, after all the Dawkinses and Nunnalys and police and juvenile authorities had cleared out, he sat there in the dark feeling like he was having a heart attack, and it all came to sit on him with its enormous weight of guilt, and he sat there sobbing and hurting in the darkness of his fine home and began paying dues with currency he didn't even know he had.

And he was still there the next morning, sitting there on the carpeted stairway, racked with the dry heaves, on the edge of breakdown, consumed with guilt, nailed by despair, and absolutely, painfully, heartbreakingly alone.

And half of him was sorry for himself and the other half wasn't, and slowly, like the hard, seemingly stout heart of a diseased gum tree, he began to crack apart deep inside.

So Spain sits there on the edge of his reality, in the gathering debris of his life, well and truly screwed, blued, and subdued.

And the shadow of death edges closer.

Eichord fingered the edges of a few cards and scowled slightly. Christian's Cards and the ritzy mall in which it was situated — both brimming with purposeful, moneyed Californians and a smattering of ordinary commoners like himself — were as far removed and remote as the constellation of Andromeda. Another distant and far-removed spot on the planet, Chicago by name, kept nudging him.