The Vendetta

by Thomas Laird

  Carmen thought about killing her husband herself, but she couldn’t see murdering the father of her only son. She understood it might be sentimental and weak to let Ben go on destroying their world, but she didn’t have the heart to pull the trigger on the man she lived with, basically, since she’d been a kid. She was a young bride, all of twenty years old. She’d been the dutiful lover and wife and mother.

  But all that time she was living a dream deferred. Why couldn’t she head the family, perhaps even the Outfit? Where was it written that she had to be the dutiful female who, like a child, was to be seen and not heard?

  Carmen thought again about doing to her husband what she so casually did to Joe Bertelli. There was nothing all that difficult about pulling the trigger on the other capo. In fact it was easy. He was a facile set up. Joe thought with the little head instead of the big one when it came to women. He considered Carmen non-threatening, except for her marriage with the batshit Benny Bats. The marriage to Ben was the buzz Joe got for fucking her on the sly. But he never saw it coming, the silencer and the double-tap to the head. The surprise on his face was unmistakable.

  She touched herself. A chill rose up her spine when she remembered pulling the trigger and hearing the muffled popping sound. Then there were the dual streams of blood down Bertelli’s face. Two rivulets ran into his eyes, and then she drove home, calmly changed the license plates, and then made hot love to her unknowing husband after having multiple orgasms with the man she’d killed only a few hours before.

  Carmen could do it. She could kill Ben if she focused on what it would mean if he were out of the way. Calabrese was an old man. He wouldn’t last long. The other two, Carbone and Bonadura, were malleable. She could sculpt those two morons to her will. It could all happen.

  If only she could get past the fact that he was Nick’s flesh and blood. If only she could let her reason take over from her emotion. If it were feminine to feel as she did, she would have to convince herself that hitting her old man was the only sensible thing to do.

  *

  It didn’t take long for Carbone and Bonadura to get back together with the Boss. The meeting in Evanston was Wednesday, and the gathering in Lake Forest was Friday. They met in Calabrese’s favorite part of the estate, the library. The library with the books, most of which he had never read. The table they sat at shone as usual. The dark mahogany was mirror-like in its sheen.

  “We have to let things simmer down until he’s at ease. Then we have to finally find someone smarter and better at his job than those two Sicilian idiots were. The ones that Fortunato blew in two.”

  Bonadura and Carbone smiled because they expected it was what Tony C expected them to do at his mild joke.

  “I don’t want either of you to make a move until we do this thing in concert. It’s going to be a one-shot deal. We hire someone to tap Benny Bats, and when he goes down his whole family crumbles, and the three of us will divide the spoils in equal thirds. Does that sound palatable to you two?”

  They nodded.

  “Are you two mamalukes capable of speech?”

  “Sure, Boss,” Bonadura smiled.

  “Yeah. It sounds like the reasonable thing to do,” Carbone concurred.

  “I don’t like yes-men. You cannot trust them.”

  “If I didn’t mean what I said, Tony, I wouldn’t have said it,” Carbone replied.

  There seemed to be a little anger in his tone.

  “I’m no goddam yes-man, or whatever the fuck,” Bonadura added.

  His face had colored, as well.

  “Take it easy. I just don’t want anybody making any mistakes. What is coming needs to be what those Army guys call a surgical strike. The only target is Ben Rossi, no one else. This is not going to be some goddam bull rush, like the other times. One pop and he’s out of the way. Everybody makes a lot of money, the cops stop breathing down our fucking necks, and those Micks in the city lay the fuck off. Everyone gets happy when Benny Bats is gone.”

  The other two sat pensively quiet.

  “How many fucking books you figure you got in here?” Carbone asked.

  *

  “He’s going to relax you and then he’s going to have you shot. Or cut. Or beaten to death. Or whatever his creative skull can come up with.”

  She’d come on like a tropical storm, tonight. It was raining, thundering and lightning outside, and there were weather warnings about possible tornadoes. He liked having her in this kind of maelstrom. It revved him up. Made him want to punish her, give her some pain with her pleasure.

  For everything he handed out, she came right back at him with fury.

  Then they were both exhausted. Then she gave him the warning.

  “You think I don’t know that whole meet in Evanston was nothing but a setup?”

  Before she could reply, he stared at her glistening body. He couldn’t get enough of Carmen when she got crazy like this.

  She bent over him and kissed him ferociously, her tongue plunging inside his mouth until he almost gagged from the reflex. Ben rolled her onto her back and stroked her wet torso until he heard the moan.

  “The point is, what’re you going to do about it, husband mine?”

  “I think I’ll let you loose on Tony Calabrese.”

  “You mean you want me to seduce the Boss of Bosses?”

  “I mean I want you to make him think you are. You know what’d happen if I caught you with another guy?”

  “Let me guess. You’d become very unhappy. Very disappointed in me. We’d have to see a counselor. Marriage therapy.”

  “Cut the shit, Carmen. I’m serious.”

  “You want me to get close to the old man. And do what?”

  He stared at her coldly.

  “You mean shoot him?”

  “No. You could do it a smarter way.”

  “Like how, Benny Bats?”

  “Stop calling me that.”

  “All right. How would I do it?”

  “They got drugs, Carmen. Stuff that’d make it look like a heart attack or a stroke. You could put it in his drink.”

  “The toxicology people would know it was murder.”

  “Not with this stuff I heard about. It’s untraceable. Very exotic shit. Assassins have been using this shit in China or somewhere since before Jesus, Carmen.”

  “You’re for real about all this?”

  “What do you think?”

  “What happened to barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen, Ben?”

  “I’m like…growing. I heard what you were saying, about being part of the family. I mean the business end of it. You’re smart. I should’ve given you more credit than I did.”

  “What brought all this on?”

  “Results.”

  “Results?”

  “Yeah, Carmen. Results. What’d we get after all those soldiers went down? Manny and everyone. What’d we get out of all that blood?”

  “Christ, have you found religion?” she laughed.

  “You’re the one who told me about tactics and shit. Maybe I don’t learn fast, but I learn. Blood didn’t solve anything. All it did was get two of my best guys killed. We’re still talking about getting rid of Calabrese, don’t mistake me. But we’ll do it with a little more finesse.

  “You certain you want all in in this, Carmen?”

  She watched his eyes. Then she made a feint by licking the sweat off the bottom of his belly. But she came back up. She was nose to nose with her husband. She licked his lips.

  “What do you think? Think I’m capable of killing that old man and handing you the sole reins to the Outfit? You think your petite, feminine wife can handle that?”

  He clutched her by the back of the head and kissed her heatedly on the lips.

  “Is that the kiss of death, husband mine?”

  “Yeah. For Anthony Calabrese it is.”

  *

  The peace droned on through the first half of March. After St. Patrick’s Day and the parade and the emerald green Chicago
River, Carmen made contact with the Boss of Bosses. She set up a meeting with him at some Russian tea room in the Loop. The tea room was said to be run by the Russian mafia, but the Italians had no complaints with the eastern bloc gangsters at the moment.

  Carmen wore a low-cut sweater that gave Calabrese full view of her abundant charms. She wore tight-fitting pants that served as a showcase for everything she had south of the border. Her ass was perfect and round, Tony C observed when she turned around.

  The tea house was small and intimate, and he reserved a table for the two of them at the back, away from the front door. Tony C had two bodyguards with him, but Carmen arrived solo, and Calabrese wondered what the story was.

  She bent over, on her side of the booth, and studied the menu after the young waitress in the authentic peasant blouse dropped the bills of fare off.

  “What are you doing here?” he finally asked.

  “Making a just and lasting peace, Anthony,” she beamed back at him, cleavage on full and ample display.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Calabrese invited her over to his spread in Lake Forest the same evening. He asked Carmen if her husband would wonder where she was going by herself.

  “He’s too busy trying to survive to care what I do. We live together only in name, Tony. Separate bedrooms, you know, the whole nine yards. Ever since our son…”

  “I was sorry to hear about it. Terrible tragedy.”

  He put his hand over hers at the Russian tea room, and they’d departed not long afterward.

  When she got back to Cicero, he was waiting.

  “Well?”

  “He’s a proud old man. He thinks he’s got a fish on his line.”

  Ben smiled.“So when do you see him?”

  “In a few hours.”

  “I’ve got the stuff. Two drops in his drink and he’ll be in the ER by midnight. Make sure you get out of there before it happens.”

  “I have no plans to stick around there very long. I’ll be there just long enough for him to think he’s got something going, but Tony C is not going to cash in and get lucky tonight.”

  “You wouldn’t let him get lucky anyway.”

  She smiled and waited a moment.

  “Don’t play me, Carmen.”

  “I’ve never played you, husband of mine. I’ve been on your side all along.”

  She remembered pulling the trigger on Bertelli. She recalled sending out a shooter to make it look like Calabrese was the target. Everything she’d done was for Benedetto Rossi, her beloved spouse. The thing with Tony C was to make the Boss hear footsteps. Ben wasn’t aggressive enough. He never put the fear of God in the Outfit kingpin. That hit on his bodyguard was to force his hand and to force Ben into acting against Calabrese. It hadn’t worked out the way she’d planned, though. Benny Bats threw his usual tantrum, a few skirmishes had been fought, but her husband didn’t seem to know how to finish the old fuck off. He enjoyed a few fireworks, but Ben never got the job done.

  And now he’d finally come to her to complete the task. It was what she hoped for, but Carmen never really thought he’d ask her to do the wet work on Tony C herself. Maybe her husband really was growing up after all these years of being satisfied to play back up to the old prick in Lake Forest. Perhaps her husband had finally matured.

  And now she’d be a part of everything. No more domestic house slave. No more being someone to keep his bed warm. She was a player, now, a participant. She’d be partners with her old man instead of a piece of furniture here in the house in Cicero.

  In the long run Bertelli and the bodyguard had been worth the trouble, although Carmen wasn’t going to let Ben know it was she who’d got those jobs accomplished.

  Now there was a new task. She was going to take out the Boss of Bosses, and Ben would take over, and she would be a part of his new empire, and an integral part, as well.

  If it hadn’t been for Nick’s death, she might have even thought she was happy. There was no mending that break. Nothing would really put all Carmen’s pieces back together again. Power, hot sex with her old man, money…none of that could replace Nick. None of it could plaster the gaping hole inside her.

  This was a distraction, Carmen understood, but it gave her something to motivate herself away from blowing her brains out with one of those fine weapons that lay strategically placed all over their home. Suicide had arisen in her mind often, even after they’d released her from the hospital. She’d told the shrink what he wanted to hear, but she never let on about the recurrent thoughts of self-destruction. Carmen hadn’t had many dark impulses lately, and she attributed it all to everything that was going on with Ben and herself. She was part of something, now, and she wanted to see how it would all play out.

  She left the house for Lake Forest at eight. She didn’t want to arrive on time. Tony needed priming. His ego was too great for her to appear overly eager. Let him wait. She knew it would only whet his appetite for her.

  And Carmen wasn’t certain he could do anything about his desire, anyway. There were rumors that he couldn’t get it up. There were stories that he liked to watch—young girls in tandem. Some lore had it that he liked young boys, too, but there was nothing solid about those tales of Tony Calabrese’s twisted penchants. Just word of mouth, and you couldn’t trust what people said about other famous and powerful men.

  She’d find out for herself, shortly.

  Carmen pulled the Buick onto his circular drive that lay next to the entrance. She’d never seen the estate before, and Carmen was duly impressed by this mansion by Lake Michigan.

  A young man escorted her inside. Tony was nowhere to be seen, but the soldier told Carmen to have a seat in the foyer.

  He came down the staircase after a five-minute wait.

  “Sorry. I had to get the wife situated for the night. She’s not doing all that well.”

  “You mean your wife is upstairs?” Carmen laughed.

  “Yeah. She lives here.”

  Carmen laughed again.

  “I don’t know, Tony. I thought she was somewhere else. I never thought I’d be in the same house with her. Isn’t that kind of brazen?”

  “Do you care?”

  He took her hands and smiled at her.

  “Well I guess I don’t.”

  Carmen laughed again.

  “She knows I entertain other people here. She stays in her room when I do have people over.”

  He led her to the library.

  “Christ! All the books!”

  Carmen wasn’t faking the awe.

  “You read all these things?”

  “Some. Not all. Who has the time?”

  He led her further, to a table set up with fruit and nuts and assorted other snacks. But it was all expensive stuff. Not a chip or a pretzel in sight. There were several bottles of wine, still uncorked. And a few bottles of the hard stuff with very expensive labels. And, finally, there was a magnum of champagne in a bucket of ice with two glass flutes beside the bucket.

  “You expecting a lot of people?” she asked.

  “Only you.”

  “You must think I’m a lush, Tony.”

  “Let me take your coat.”

  She handed it to him and he took it out into the foyer.

  “Champagne?” he asked.

  “Are you trying to get me drunk?” she smiled coyly.

  “I have a feeling no one foxes you into doing what you don’t want to do.”

  Carmen glanced down at her purse.

  “You want me to put it with your coat?”

  “No. I like to keep it with me. Habit, you know.”

  She placed it on the seat of one of the chairs at the lone circular table in the library. The table top shone with clarity. Everything in Calabrese’s home was immaculate, polished, perfect. She had to hand it to him. He was a classy gangster. He’d acquired valuable things and he displayed them all with obvious pride.

  The Boss opened the champagne with a loud pop, and then he poured both of them a fl
ute. He handed her the glass and they sat down next to each other at the brilliantly finished table.

  “I’m kinda gunshy about all this, Carmen. You know we just made a truce, and here I am with Benedetto Rossi’s beautiful wife. It’s probably bad judgment on my part. I wanted things to cool off, and look where I am now.”

  She smiled demurely back at him.

  “I’ve always dreamed of seeing this place. And I always dreamed about what it would be like to be here with you. You’re a legend, Tony C.”

  “Flattery gets you anywhere you’d like to go.”

  There was a knock on the library door.

  “Shit.”

  Calabrese’s face reddened.

  “I better go see what that’s all about. We weren’t supposed to be interrupted. But I’ll be right back.”

  He went to the door, departed, and shut it behind him.

  Carmen reached for the purse. She found the vial. Ben had told her that the poison came from somewhere in Central America, she couldn’t remember which country. What she did recall was that it had a slow-released chemical that would put Calabrese in Emergency within three hours. He’d get the sweats. And then shortness of breath, and then a convulsion or two. The stroke would overcome him in those 180 minutes. Guaranteed. Or at least that’s what Benny Bats was told.

  She unloaded the elixir into his flute of champagne. She’d just replaced the vial in her handbag about ten seconds before Tony Calabrese came bursting through the library door.

  “I’m really sorry, Carmen. No more interruptions. I promise.”

  He smiled warmly and sat back in his chair. The first thing he did was lift the glass of bubbly off the table.

  “The best stuff has a fragrance.”

  He took a whiff at the wine, and Carmen thought the old prick knew. He smiled over at her. They were seated close together, and he bent over and gave Carmen a probing kiss. There was just the tip of his tongue, too. She returned the favor, and he smiled.

  “There’s also the clarity of its unique color. Sort of a light blond, wouldn’t you say?”

  He’s playing with me, Carmen thought. I’m dead. He knows why I came.

  “There’s a bit of a problem, Carmen.”