Betty looked up at Donny. He was sitting opposite her on a chair similar to her own, with nothing in between them. Betty’s eyes were like shards of ice.
“You will die,” she said quietly.
Donald Pinzolo smiled and raised an eyebrow, his cigar in hand. His thoughts though, screamed with anticipation. He wanted revenge. To have been outwitted so many times, and by a woman no less, set his teeth on edge.
Felix stood by Donny’s right hand, his scarred face gloating. As far as he was concerned, the game was already over.
The basement itself was all too familiar. A maze of heisted Army supply crates, old furniture and bric-a-brac were piled to the roof in all directions leaving no space bigger than a few meters wide, with the exception of the center of the room, where they currently sat. Although she couldn’t see it for furniture and stacked crates, far ahead of her, at the opposite end to the stairs, would be the double doors that led outside to a second driveway, where Donny’s heist trucks delivered their stolen cargo. The doors were undoubtedly locked and chained to impede her escape. Donny would have taken every precaution.
To Betty’s left, was the long table the orphans used for re-packaging the stolen military supplies of amphetamines that had been destined for the front. Wake up pills for pilots and soldiers. A dozen unkempt boys had been disrupted from their work, no doubt by her arrival, and now they stood behind the table, their eyes to the floor, too terrified to look up. The whimper on her left.
There was a movement in the maze of boxes somewhere behind her, and Betty closed her eyes. With a huge effort against the pounding inside her head, she pulled the thoughts of the room in from around her. The shufflers. How many?
Seven – twelve – nineteen – thirty – thirty men hidden in the shadows of crates and makeshift furniture around her, all brought in to make sure she never made it out alive. Thirty-two, including Felix and Donny himself. Some were Donny’s usual crew, but others he’d found further afield. Betty felt a swell of vindication in her chest knowing that she’d made such a mark on his soldiers over the past months. His army was dwindling. He was getting desperate.
This time though, he’d pulled out all the stops. Filth. Murderers. Mercenaries. Every one of them deserved to swallow his own bullet.
“Let them leave,” Betty said, nodding toward the group of orphans cowering behind the packing table. “They don’t need to see this.”
Donny’s eyes grew tight in thought and he looked to the boys.
“Maybe they do,” he said, provocatively. “This lot are my finest and smartest – the heirs to my empire, so to speak. You take my own boys away from me – I take them instead.” He stood up, letting his cigar hang from his mouth with his hands in his pockets as he turned toward the orphans, bouncing on the balls of his feet. “Pay attention kids,” he called out to them, his voice laced with dark humor. “Listen to your Uncle Donny. I’m your family now, ain’t I? You had nothin’ before I took over this joint. I’ve been good to you, given you clean sheets and hot dinners and kept the penguins on their toes looking after you. We’re family now, ain’t we?” He swung back to smirk at Betty. “Today’s lesson is about trust, boys. There are consequences for betraying trust in a family like ours.” He lifted his hand and reclaimed his cigar from where it dangled at the side of his mouth, leaving a trail of smoke as he gestured to the boys. “And I’m the only family you’ve got!”
There was a sprinkling of laughter from around the room, but not from the orphans. The gunsels were listening to every word, and apparently found it all very entertaining. Donny smiled broadly, pleased with his unseen audience. “Family is everything, Mrs. Betty Jones,” he said. “Shame. I always thought you had potential.”
Beside Betty, George groaned.
“George?”
He opened his eyes and tried to shift in the chair. Betty saw the moment the panic hit him. He began to struggle against the ropes, his eyes wide.
“Stay still, darling,” Betty hissed. His head turned to her and the blood drained from his face. She could only imagine what a fright she must look, in a crumpled dress, covered in bruises and chained to a chair.
“Betty!” He shouted, jarring against the ropes and rocking on the chair to the point it’s legs might break. “What the blazes is going on?” His head twisted wildly until his gaze fell on Donny.
“You? Pinzolo? What is this!?” he demanded. “Let us go at once!”
Donny watched him, amused. “That won’t be happening, Mr. Jones.”
George’s face turned purple. He was incensed. “Well, you’ll be hearing from my lawyer! This is illegal!”
At this, Pinzolo and his men laughed outright. George turned and twisted, searching for the men whose laughter mocked him, but unable to see them beyond the tall crates dividing the room into pieces.
“Who’s there?” he called out.
“Your lawyer?” Pinzolo repeated. “Boys, he’s gonna call his lawyer.” Again, they laughed, their taunts reverberating off the walls like a cruel echo. Donny drew close to George’s face; his eyes suddenly void of mirth. “I own your lawyer, Mr. Jones.”
“Let him go,” Betty said, dangerously quiet. “He’s nothing to you.”
“Ah, the good wife speaks.” Donny turned to Felix with a nasty grin. “She cooks, she cleans, she gets down on her hands and knees…” Felix sniggered. “A luckier man you won’t find – he told me himself.”
George struggled, full of rage.
“How dare you! Don’t you ever speak about my wife that way!”
“Your wife?” Donny said, playing dumb. “You mean this woman here? Let me ask you something, George the insurance salesman, how well do you know your wife?”
“What are you insinuating?” George growled.
“Should we ask Betty? Or should I say, Susan?”
“Don’t you dare,” she spat at Donny. Betty’s face was white, like marble, but her eyes betrayed her.
“Betty?” George asked, angry and confused. “What does he mean?”
“He doesn’t mean anything,” Betty said, through gritted teeth. “He’s a madman. A killer.”
“That’s true,” Donny said, thoughtfully. “But I’m not the only one, am I little Susie?”
“What is he talking about, Betty?” George looked between them, bewildered.
Betty strained at her chains, then turned to George with a false smile, “Please don’t worry, darling. This is all just a misunderstanding.”
“One heck of a misunderstanding!” George spluttered. “You barely even know him. What’s all this he’s saying?”
Betty took a deep breath and tried to control her voice.
“There are some things about my past, my childhood, that you don’t know. I’ll explain it to you, but not now -”
“I think now is a fucking good time to tell him, Susan,” interjected Donny, walking past her, tauntingly close. “She’s a clever one, this wife of yours,” he said to George. “I figured it out, you see, what this pretty bit of ankle did all those years ago. Impressive, Susie. Making it look like a hit by the Castellano boys. Setting fire to the house – that’s their style. The brass bought it. Until now, we bought it too.”
“Shut your face, Donny,” Betty warned.
Donny ignored her.
“But stabbing your old man in the back? Slicing his throat? That’s fucking sick, sweetheart, even for one of us. Not that I ever liked Roy – he was a boozer and a sap. But still, he was family, right? Our family.”
As he spoke, Betty turned ashen, all pretense of her new life draining away. She began to struggle violently in her chair, yanking her wrists apart in a tremendous effort to stretch the chains that bound them.
“You are not my family, you sadistic bastard!” she spat at him. “I will never be like you – spreading powdered death across the country, getting rich on blood and ruined families.”
“I had my eye on you from the beginning, you know,” Donny continued, ignoring her outburst. “Roy nev
er saw it, he was too stupid. Even Frank never clued in. But I did. You were smarter than the rest, even my own boys, God rest their souls. When they told me you got hit, I wasn’t pleased, Susie. You had potential. You were useful. Like your mother was, before she broke.”
The memories flared up inside her mind, raw and aching, as if only a day had passed since her mother slid down that kitchen bench to the floor, white poison in her veins to replace the voices inside her head. He spoke of her as if she were a used car. Replaceable. Inconvenient. How many more had Donny murdered since then? Betty looked over to the table where the boys were watching them, wide-eyed.
“Well, you’ll find I’m not so easy to break.” Behind her back, Betty felt the metal of the chains stretching as she strained against them. She caught Felix’s eye, and his own narrowed, critically.
Donny tossed his burnt-out cigar on the floor and leaned over her, one hand on each side of her chair, his thumbs pressing against the outside of her legs. When his face was only inches from her own, he spoke again.
His breath was hot and dank on her face and every pore on his skin glistened with sweat.
“And you’ve had the curse on me all these years,” he murmured, with a dark grin. A tiny nerve under Donny’s left eye twitched.
So close.
Betty stared back, unflinching.
“Yes, I did. And I’m going to murder you today, in this room.”
From his chair next to her, George whimpered, an appalled look on his face, as if he was seeing her for the first time.
“Is that any way to speak to your great uncle, Susie?” Pinzolo growled.
Betty took a deep breath and straightened her shoulders. There was nothing for it now. No use trying to hide what George already knew. The damage was done. There was only one thing left to do.
Save him.
A deliberate smile spread across Betty’s face, like a skilled artist painting on a mask.
Radiant. Charming.
Betty’s eyes flashed, a little too bright, as if something inside had suddenly come unhinged.
“I hope you’re ready for that family reunion, Uncle Donny,” she said. “Because I’m ready to give you one.”
With an almighty smash, Betty slammed her head forward, cracking Donny’s skull with her own. The chains from her wrists clattered to the floor.
“I’m hungry,” George Junior pouted, folding his arms across his stomach melodramatically. “I wish momma was here to make us some cookies.”
“If wishes were fishes, we’d all have a fry,” Nancy recited, with an air of superiority, from behind her open book. They were both sitting at the kitchen table with empty milk mugs in front of them. “You can’t just have whatever you like all the time, Georgie, you’re such a baby.”
“I am not!” the little boy cried, indignantly.
“You are. If you want something, you’ll just have to grow up and manage it yourself. I’m nearly twelve, I know these things.”
“Well, I don’t know how to make food yet,” Georgie complained. “And my belly is making funny noises.”
“Mommy and Pop will be home soon, I’m sure of it,” Nancy said, non-committally. She looked up at the crystal clock on the shelf. It was half past five in the afternoon. Her mother had mentioned that she might not be home in time for dinner when she’d left a few hours earlier, but Nancy hadn’t expected her father to leave as well. She supposed he had some urgent business to attend to. The children had occasionally been left alone before, but not recently, and never for this long. Nancy did her best to ignore the gnawing feeling that she should tell someone. After all, her mother had specifically asked her to look after Georgie, so perhaps she’d anticipated they might need to make do alone for a while.
“I’m bored,” Georgie complained again, dropping his head down onto the table with a thunk.
“Read a book,” Nancy said, wisely.
“I’m too hungry to read,” he groaned. Nancy rolled her eyes. Small children were such a bother.
“If you’re so grown up, then you should make the cookies for me!” Georgie said. “Please, Nancy? Or I’ll go and tell Mrs. Porter that no-one’s home and she’ll come over and make you play rummy with her all afternoon.”
“You wouldn’t!” Nancy said, closing her book and jumping to her feet.
“Sure, I would. If it meant making cookies,” Georgie grinned.
“My stars!” Nancy exclaimed with her hands on her hips, in a manner almost identical to her mother. “You’re such a little tattle-tale!” She scowled at her brother for a moment, pondering her options. Nancy had used the oven plenty of times before, but only under the watchful eye of her mother. Still, mommy had said she was getting older and more responsible. And that she would start trusting her with important things. The anticipation of a promised day out in the city discussing those important things, whatever they were, drifted to the front of her mind. If I look after Georgie by myself, she’ll definitely see how responsible I am, Nancy decided.
“Alright, I’ll make you cookies,” she said. “But you can’t eat them all at once or you’ll get a belly-ache and I’ll get in trouble for it.”
Georgie beamed, pushing his nutmeg hair out of his eyes. He dragged a chair across the linoleum toward the bench.
“Can I lick the spoon?”
“If you behave,” said his sister, trying to hide a small smile. She was beginning to like her newfound responsibility. Nancy walked through to the laundry and returned moments later, tying her mother’s apron on over her dress. She pulled a cooking book out of the kitchen drawer and began to flick through the pages. “We’ll leave some extras for dessert, so mom and pop can try them, too,” she said. “Shortening cookies, here it is. We start with a cup of flour –”
Nancy set about the kitchen, pulling out a mixing bowl, sifters and ingredients and piling them on the bench next to her brother. George measured a cup of flour and dropped it into the sifter, shaking it through ungracefully until as much ended up on the bench and floor as in the bowl.
“Now you’ve wasted it, silly,” Nancy sighed, in a vain attempt to dust it from the benchtop back into the bowl. “And you dropped it all over the floor. Here, let me do it.”
“I’m the boss, applesauce,” sang Georgie to her, trying to take the sifter back while simultaneously dancing on his chair.
“Don’t be wise, bubble-eyes,” Nancy trilled back, returning his playground ditty with a laugh, “or I’ll cut you down to peanut size!”
After a minute of stirring butter and rescuing an egg that first fell onto the floor, the sifted flour was added. Nancy retrieved the sugar castor.
“Empty!” she said, disappointed. “Oh no. I should have checked it first.” Sugar rations had recently been cut to only eight ounces a week, and Nancy was sure her mother had been saving up the ration coupons for canning jellies instead of trading them in.
“I know where mommy keeps sugar!” declared George Junior. “I’ll fetch it.” He dashed off as Nancy measured out some Watkin’s Vanilla Extract from a small glass bottle.
“Here it is!” Georgie said, holding up two jars of white powder. “Mommy keeps some in her work bag.” He set them down on the bench.
“That’s bath salts, silly,” Nancy said, frowning.
“It isn’t,” George insisted, opening the jeweled lid of one. “It doesn’t smell at all, see. Bath salts smell nice.” He dropped the lid on the bench beside him and bent down over the jar, taking a great, big sniff. The powder puffed inside the glass and George stood up on the chair again with a wide smile, white powder sticking to the end of his nose. “See, doesn’t smell like anything!”
“Alright then,” Nancy said. She poured it into a small cup to half full, leaving the glass jar almost empty, then tipped the powder into the mixing bowl and began stirring again. She began to sing cheerfully.
“What are little boys made of,
Snips and snails and puppy dog’s tails,
And such are little boys made
of -”
She turned to her brother, expecting him to counter the words of the nursery rhyme, as he always did.
“Georgie? Georgie, what’s the matter?”
The little boy was still standing on the chair beside her, but he was swaying slightly, and his skin was suddenly drained of color. He slowly reached out his hand to grasp at Nancy’s shoulder, then fell, backwards off the chair and thudded onto the linoleum floor.
“Georgie!” Nancy screeched, dropping down onto the floor beside him. “What’s wrong? What happened?” She grabbed at his face, but it lolled like a rag doll on the floor beneath her touch. His eyes were open but his pupils tiny and glazed. Nancy shook him, but there was no response.
“Help! Someone, please help,” she screamed. “What do I do?” His lips were turning blue. The rise and fall of his chest was so slight that it seemed he was barely breathing at all. “Georgie!” she shouted again, shaking him on the floor.
Stumbling to her feet, with tears streaming down her face, Nancy ran to the front door and flung it open.
“Help me!” she screamed, but there was nobody about. Nightfall was creeping, and there were only shadows to hear her.
Mrs. Porter was inside her own home and too deaf to hear, and the Sanders family, who lived on the other side of the fence, were out for the evening. Nancy rushed back inside for the telephone. The handle fell off the cradle onto the floor as her fingers trembled to spin the rotary dial for an ambulance. Suddenly, she heard a loud thud.
Nancy ran back into the kitchen. Georgie was still on the floor, but he’d rolled into the base of the cupboard. His body was rigid now, and convulsing in spasms, hitting the linoleum with stiff arms and clenched fists. His eyelids were fluttering, and his mouth hung open, a smudge of white powder still on the end of his nose.
“Please help!” she screamed again. But no one came crashing through the door. No one heard.
Avon Calling! Season One Page 31
