Death Wish by Iceberg Slim
“You got troubles, big troubles . . . Please let me help you, Giacomo.”
Collucci said, “Papa, thanks for the offer but the biggest trouble I got is going to sleep with a slug in the head within the week and making everybody happy, especially Tonelli.”
Bellini said, “Has the student lost so much respect for the teacher that he insults him with diversion?”
Collucci frowned. “I will always respect you for many reasons, my dearest friend.”
Bellini said, “Do you also trust me?”
“As much as I respect you, I trust you. But why this quiz?” Collucci asked.
They stared into each other’s eyes.
Bellini said, “Then trust me, Giacomo, don’t try to fool me. The trouble I speak of is not outside; it is inside your mind eating like a cancer.”
Collucci said, “Read my mind. Go on. Let me also respect you for that.”
“I saw the proof of your sickness at the table . . . You have lost all respect for the Honored Society I brought you into,” Bellini said quietly.
Collucci turned the ignition key and the engine whispered to life. He said, “I’m sorry, Papa, but you’re reading me all wrong. I’m tired, and so are you. I’ll take you to your car.”
Bellini grunted.
Collucci wondered if Bellini had deserted him. “Papa, dear, you still are my friend as always?”
Bellini shrugged, “Giacomo, what a pity that you must ask. I suspect I will be your friend when you are no longer my friend. Yes, I still love you, Giacomo, but . . .”
Collucci rolled into the service station beside Bellini’s seventy-three Riviera. A grease-stained mechanic was just closing the hood.
Bellini turned the door handle and said, “There was a husband in Sicily long ago with a good but homely wife and a ravishing young sweetheart. All the villagers were certain the beauty owned the heart of the husband. Then one day he came upon his sweetheart astraddle his wife. She was about to plunge a dagger into the wife’s heart. Without hesitation or a word the husband shot the sweetheart through the head. All the villagers were shocked and amazed to learn in this awful manner who really owned the heart of the husband.”
Collucci’s brow wrinkled. “Papa, why the hell tell me a parable that fits nothing that I can relate to? Good night, Papa, good night,” Collucci said wearily.
Bellini got out and went around the back of the car and leaned into Collucci’s face as he was lighting a cigarette. Collucci, startled, recoiled.
Bellini shook his head and held Collucci’s face gently between his palms and said, “Giacomo, please, you must heal your mind somehow and very soon! You worry me very much.”
Bellini sighed deeply, and his eyes became soft. “Dear friend, you must not forget that your Papa Bellini is married to the Honored Society,” he said.
He walked away to his own machine.
Collucci stared at Bellini’s back for a long moment before heading home. He had retraced three blocks past the Tonelli penthouse when he saw Tonelli’s bodyguard, Dinzio.
Collucci pulled to the curb and watched him talking to a tall brunette standing on the steps of a gray stone house. Dinzio gave her a gift-wrapped package and a peck on the lips.
Collucci felt high exhilaration as he pulled away for River Forest. His eyes sparkled as he sang to himself, Dinzio’s got a broad, and when I’m ready, I got the key to hit Tonelli!
14
At the moment that Collucci drove wearily into his River Forest driveway, Mayme Flambert left her apartment atop Mack Rivers’s Voodoo Palace Cabaret.
The winds shrieked and flogged humpy snowdrifts. They resembled, beneath the funeral overcast, rows of tombstones. Christmas lights, in the darkened loneliness of shop windows, made Mayme’s shadow gargantuan as she hunted a second male animal for urgent voodoo rites demanded by the death of her brother, Larry.
A dozen times during the hour and half that she hunted, dark shapes of cats and dogs eyed her with glowing fright and fled before her.
She went down State Street. After several blocks she stood before a fenced-in used auto lot. She cooed Haitian sweet talk at a Great Dane almost as large as a Shetland pony. He leaped and snarled.
She took a plastic-wrapped menstrual pad from a pocket of her fur coat and moved toward the slobbery beast, then she thrust the pad against the fence. He sniffed hungrily at the meld of blood and vaginal slime.
His hind legs quivered, and his crimson dingus eased out. He whined as he licked and gnawed at the corner of the pad through the fence. Finally he could no longer control his passion. He forgot duty and leaped over the fence. He followed Mayme, snuffling his nose against her coat pocket. A block from her apartment his lust overwhelmed him. He knocked her down and daggered air as he humped above her.
She led him up the stairs and into the apartment. He followed her to the closet that she used as a temple for her voodoo ceremonies.
The dog balked at the threshold and growled. His great eyes were electric with intelligence as they followed her every movement. She realized he was trained to kill if attacked. She had to be sure she didn’t miss when she shot for his heart with the butcher knife she scooped up.
She held the butcher knife behind her back and realized that it would be risky to use it on such a large beast. So she lifted the lid of a small silver box containing a variety of deadly poisons. But Mayme slammed the lid down. She couldn’t poison the Dane.
She squatted and inserted a finger deep inside herself, then rubbed the finger against his muzzle. He whimpered and licked his swollen organ frantically, but refused to enter the temple.
She stepped past him, concealing the butcher knife beneath her skirt against her thigh. She pretended to ignore him. The Dane spun and sat on his rump with his tongue lolling out. He cocked his head from one side to the other as he gazed at her back.
Suddenly he lunged to his feet and galloped into the kitchen behind her. She lathered him with sweet talk as she turned away from the refrigerator holding a hunk of ham.
He snorted and leaped upon her. The butcher knife clattered into a corner. She crashed to the floor slightly stunned. The dog growled ferociously and ripped her skirt to tatters with his teeth.
He had pried her bare thighs apart with his paws and muzzle when her head cleared. She rolled to the butcher knife. He lunged and covered her like a blanket in the corner, then humped his wet organ against her thigh and lapped his sandpaper tongue against her neck and face. Mayme lay on her left side with her hand touching the butcher knife beneath her. His hind feet slipped on the linoleum, and he tumbled off her with a thud.
She got to her feet and scrambled to a countertop. Furious, he bared his fangs and gouged furrows into the counter with his front paws as he tried to pull himself up. She stared at the pulsing of his heart against his buff-colored hide. Then she grunted for velocity and backhanded the butcher knife deeply into the center of the pulse beat. He shuddered and fell twitching to the floor, gouting blood. His mouth was agape sucking air.
Within a half hour Mayme had attended to her bruises and lacerations and was intently reading the entrails of the Dane for a lead to Bone’s murderer. Suddenly she froze. A radiant smile lit her coal-black elfin face. She was certain she heard, faintly, the silky whisperings of the Loas.
“Attend the dead! Attend the dead! The murderer later! The murderer later!” she heard them instruct.
Mayme looked at her wristwatch in the glow of the altar. She had given the undertaker a special fee. Yes, it was now late enough to slip into the mortuary morgue and properly release Larry’s spirit.
She called to notify the undertaker she was on her way. Soon, she sat in her parked Mustang near the rear of the funeral home. A moment later, the garage door swung up. She carried a suitcase down the sidewalk. The undertaker led her past several limousines and a hearse, then through a door. The mortuary morgue reeked of formaldehyde.
The undertaker went through a side door. The only light in the room was an overhead s
With a strangled cry she flung herself on the bloated coldness and kissed his hands folded across his chest. She held her face against his for a long while and sobbed uncontrollably for the first time in her life. While she stroked the hideous wounds with her fingertips, she chanted, through bared teeth, a Haitian vow of vengeance.
From the suitcase she took a small urn containing gunpowder. She lit and flung a match. There was a whooshing flash that would drive away her brother’s enemies. She forced a pinch of arsenic powder between his stiffened lips. This to protect his eternal sleep from sorcerers who might awaken him and press him into everlasting enslavement as a zombie.
Then she embraced him and shrilled her vow of vengeance until her voice was a whisper. Finally, she slipped out into the night and drove home heavy with sorrow.
Mayme walked the floor until dawn thinking about Larry and herself as children. She remembered what a harsh lot it was to be the children of lowly peasants, half-starving and half-naked most of the time. But worst of all, for her at least, was the utter facelessness, her tortuous feeling of nonbeing, as anonymous as the insects.
She was having coffee when the phone rang. She picked it up. A Warrior under instructions from Taylor persuaded her to ignore the police theory of Bone’s death. He convinced her it had to be Southside enforcer Collucci who was responsible for Bone’s murder. He assured her that the Warriors were very eager to kill Collucci. Mayme promised to give her life if necessary to achieve their mutual goal.
Then she went into her temple. She gave thanksgiving to her friends, the all-powerful and wise Loas, for revealing Collucci as the murderer of her brother.
15
The day had come to put Tit For Tat Taylor to sleep. Collucci was alone behind the locked door of his study. One wall of the study was a bookcase crammed with works from Shakespeare to Schopenhauer. High up near the ceiling was an extremely well-thumbed volume of illustrated examples of human sex organ deformities and transsexuality. The urgency of removing Tat Taylor had given him no time to open a book in weeks. Not even his favorite.
Now he concentrated on matters that related to the everlasting sleep of Joe Tonelli.
Collucci stood before a mirror, bearded and mustached in the image of Dinzio “The Sphinx.” He mimicked into a tape recorder microphone the mumbly voice of “The Sphinx.” Collucci listened for the dozenth time to the playback and smiled his satisfaction.
Listening intently, he was unaware that Angelo had pulled the limousine into the driveway. Angelo got out and opened the rear door for Olivia and for Bellini, invited to Olivia’s celebrated lasagna on the cook’s day off.
Olivia and Bellini went into the entrance hall. They removed their coats before seating themselves in the living room. After brief chitchat, Olivia went to the kitchen to prepare her specialty.
Bellini listened to the odd sound of Collucci’s muffled rehearsal. He rose and went across a hallway toward the door of the study, then halted abruptly several feet away. He was surprised and shocked to hear what was unmistakably the voice of Tonelli’s most trusted bodyguard, miles from his responsibility.
Bellini’s further curiosity was impelled by the memory of Collucci’s hide-out derringers at the Tonelli conference. He put his ear against the door to hear the repetitious droning. Bellini went quickly back to the living room and pondered the mystery.
Collucci switched off the recorder. He stripped off and secreted the Dinzio beard, Old Country mustache and tape. Then he went into the living room and greeted Bellini with a wide smile and a warm embrace.
Bellini said, “Giacomo, how about letting me pick your pocket for a couple of sawbucks before lunch?”
Collucci bowed extravagantly and flung his palms out toward the study. Every play of the cards was a misadventure for Bellini. He was preoccupied with the mystery of Dinzio’s voice.
At lunch Collucci watched Bellini pick at his favorite dish and said, “Papa, have you found a new great love that steals your appetite?”
Bellini shook his head and said softly, “No, Giacomo, not after my Angelita.” He paused and looked squarely into Collucci’s eyes. “Perhaps even our simple pleasures eventually desert us like false friends near the end.”
Collucci grunted and said as he rose from the table, “Papa, a guy can say hello to you lately and you’re going to bend his ear with a buck and half worth of cracker-barrel philosophy.”
Olivia and Bellini looked at each other as Collucci stomped from the dining room.
Olivia said, “What on earth . . . ?”
Bellini leaned toward her and squeezed her hand. “Don’t be upset, my dear. I was not offended,” he said as he rose from the table.
He stood beside her chair looking down into her upturned face, bright with concern, patted her shoulder, and said, “I am very sorry I could not eat more of your delicious food. I will devour even the plate next time.”
Olivia rose and followed him to the entrance hall coatrack. She said, “Have one more cup of coffee before I ring Angelo.”
He shook his head and slipped into his overcoat with her help. “Angelo said his wife is ailing; let him nurse her,” he said. “Besides, I need the walk to the cabstand.”
She kissed his cheek and said as he opened the door, “I apologize for Jimmy . . . he . . . Well, one of his playmates has probably picked up her marbles and he’ll be uptight for a hot week or so.” Immediately she regretted revealing her bitterness.
Bellini said, “I am afraid his problem is not that simple.”
She said, “Papa Bell, do you know something . . . something about him, some danger or trouble I should know about?”
Bellini embraced her waist. He looked down into her anxious eyes and lied. “I don’t really know anything that you should worry about. Persuade him to take you away for a while to some new, quiet place. Perhaps he can reacquaint himself with you and realize his good fortune. It will be a blessing for his health to escape the pressures of his business and ambition.”
She said, “If there was something bad . . . unpleasant, you wouldn’t spare me? You would have faith in my strength?”
He said, “You are a Tonelli, and I would trust you with my life.” He cupped his monstrous hands. “Since I held you like this at your christening, the Bellinis and Tonellis have comingled their blood and trusts, and for five hundred years before that. Need I remind you my Angelita was sister to your father’s mother?”
She shook her head and said, “I too would trust you with my life, Papa Bell.”
She brushed his cheek with her lips as he turned and stepped away. Then she pushed the door shut. She sensed a presence behind her as she looked through the front window at Bellini striding down the walk. His silky mane of hair was like a platinum skullcap in the sunlight. She turned her head to glance at Collucci’s tight face standing behind her looking past her at Bellini.
Bellini halted on the sidewalk as Petey’s private school bus pulled up. Petey got off the bus and ran into Bellini’s outstretched hands.
She said without turning her eyes from the window, “Jimmy, you were an ass, and you should apologize to Papa Bell.”
Collucci grunted and said, “When he apologizes for his senility. Already he’s reading minds. Next, he’ll have his exclusive hot line to Mars or somewhere out there. Olivia, you stop calling me names . . . talking to me like that, or I’ll swat some tone into that old bouncy butt of yours.”
She turned and gave him a treacherous hooded look. She hissed, “Wretched bastard!” Then she turned to greet Petey with a warm bright smile.
Collucci went to the kitchen back door and put his hand on the doorknob. He turned and went to the dining room. He swept a vase of fresh flowers off the buffet, then went to the breakfast nook where he scooped up a bowl of fruit and went out the back door to Angelo’s apartment.
Angelo opened the door, and Collucci stepped into the neatly
Angelo said, “Maria will be cheered.”
Collucci nodded and pointed to his wristwatch.
Angelo said, “Five minutes.”
Collucci shut the door and went up the stone steps leading to Lollo “The Surgeon” Stilotti’s second-story apartment. Collucci drummed his knuckles on the door. The door opened, and Stilotti’s half-naked bulk almost filled the door frame. Collucci glanced past him at Stilotti’s possum-faced blonde. Her forty-eight boobs spilled into a tray as she munched lunch in bed.
Collucci whispered, “Lollo, I need you . . . in five minutes.”
Stilotti looked petulant and stroked stubble on his jaw.
Collucci intoned, “Five minutes,” and went down the steps.
Olivia was in the master bedroom repairing a broken fingernail when Collucci went to get his black Melton overcoat. She gazed at him and thought how well it went with the dove-gray Brooks Brothers suit he was wearing.
Perversely, she went and plucked a dot of lint off his coat sleeve and said, “Ah! At least there’s a bit of business she won’t perform for me.”
He said, “Madame Paranoia, clean your fucking crystal ball and see it’s your father’s lousy business again. Just for laughs I ought to take you along.” He whirled out of the room.
She hurled at his back, “I apologize if I’m wrong this time, Rubber Dick!”
Collucci scowled and hurried to the limo for the trip to kill Taylor at Rachel’s uncle’s funeral.
Angelo was behind the wheel. Collucci signaled him to remain, then he climbed into the Caddie. Collucci and Angelo laughed to see Stilotti with his collar and tie askew lumber down the driveway and trip on an untied shoelace. Stilotti crashed, bounced, and landed on his rear end. He struggled mightily to rise and then sat there, his outrage and embarrassment twitching his pink face.
Angelo went and helped him to his feet. Stilotti hoisted himself into the front seat, then Angelo backed the Caddie through the electronically opened gate of steel bars.