Flicker & Burn: A Cold Fury Novel

by T. M. Goeglein

“A good film is like a well-made clock. All the parts moving in sync. Just like the Outfit. We supply addicts and perverts, and they pay us. We bribe bad cops and crooked politicians to protect us so we can keep supplying addicts and perverts, and so on. It’s the circle of freakin’ life.” He bit into a cookie and paused, looking like he’d tasted spoiled milk. “Except all’s not well in paradise. We got problems with the Russian mob. They’re young, bold, and bloody, and their leader has testicoli of steel. He ain’t shown his face yet, but his guys are encroaching on our turf, kicking inside our business, stealing our daily bread, and busting heads.” He leaned in, the combination of rage and excitement unmistakable. “There’s gonna be a war. Prisoners will be taken for leverage and revenge. You’re gonna use that precious malocchio to get ’em talking—names, locations, stash houses—and then, according to the crimes they’ve committed against the Outfit, you’ll make a crucial decision over and over again.”

  “What’s that?” I said, my throat sandy.

  He grinned with teeth as sharp as broken glass. “Torture or kill.”

  “Torture or . . .”

  “According to my records, in all the months you’ve served as counselor, that’s one judgment you haven’t yet passed . . . the death sentence. Am I wrong?”

  “No,” I said quietly.

  “If I’m gonna order our soldiers onto the streets, I have to know the counselor-at-large will help us win, and that justice will be served,” he said. “Fortunately, we got a test case. We caught one.”

  “One what?”

  “A Russian! Our guy in Melrose Park has been assembling a weapons cache for the war—AKs, nitro caps, plastic X. Last week, he busted one of ’em hanging from the roof, gaping in the window. I don’t know if the freak was doing recon or if he’s a peeping Tom—Johnny Eyeball, I call him—hell, I ain’t even sure he’s in the mob!” Lucky leaned closer, his eyes inky dots behind the glasses. “What I am sure of is that Russians are a tight-knit bunch . . . they always know other Russians. If this SOB has even a shred of information on the mob, you’re gonna get it!”

  “You want me to use ghiaccio furioso?”

  “We’ve cracked his knees, busted his head, but all he does is say ‘I vant go home! I vant go home!’ in that goddamn accent. He fell into our lap, and now I’m throwing him into yours,” he said, nodding almost imperceptibly, although someone somewhere saw it. Seconds later, the sound of chains was followed by Slick and Bullet-Head dragging out a slumping figure in filthy jeans and a shredded hoodie, ankles manacled, head bowed. Slowly he lifted his neck, revealing a face covered in knuckle marks and bruises, but it wasn’t the wounds that stopped me. It was his eyes—one red, the other glassy blue.

  The guy from the church roof who’d hidden among the angels.

  He was in his twenties and deathly pale, raw boned and shuddering with fear. It was plain that he’d been on his way to becoming an ice cream creature. The thugs threw him on the floor, kicking him for good measure as he groaned, eyelids fluttering.

  “Well, what are you waiting for?” Lucky said. “Make him talk!”

  “Now?”

  “Why not now?”

  Because a coincidence being incredible doesn’t mean it’s convenient, I thought. And because, just by looking at the poor half creature, I know he has nothing to do with the Russians but something to do with Juan Kone. If he knows anything about my family, I can’t risk him saying it aloud. Tamping down panic, I said, “Because he’s been beaten too badly. He can’t even keep his eyes open. I can’t do a thing if he’s unconscious.”

  Lucky turned his predator gaze on Slick and Bullet-Head, hissing, “Idiots!”

  “But . . . you told us to,” Slick said feebly.

  “Get the hell outta here!” the old man roared, sending them scattering. He moved his head side to side like a boxer twisting the rage back into place, and said, “You . . . you’re taking him, Counselor! Back to Club Molasses or wherever the hell, and rip any information he has about the Russians right outta his head!”

  “What? But . . .” And then I stopped myself, since it was exactly what I wanted; if I was going to get Johnny talking, it had to be done in private. I also knew that an opportunity like this—a one-on-one audience with the Boss who’d been around forever and knew everything—was rare. “Yeah, of course I’ll take him,” I said, and gathered my courage, adding, “What you mentioned about symbiosis? How we benefit each other mutually? I’ve served as counselor for four months, and I haven’t asked anything for myself.”

  Lucky smirked wearily. “Everyone, guy or broad, young or old, is always working an angle. What do you need? Guns, drugs, or money?”

  I paused, aware that I was stepping into dangerous territory. “Answers to two questions,” I said as calmly as possible.

  The old man clicked his teeth, staring at me. “Ask,” he snarled.

  “Who is . . . or was . . . Weston Skarlov?”

  Lucky’s face was a desert of suspicion, outrage and confusion crossing it like shifting sands. It was plain he had no idea. But as chief spider at the center of the Outfit web for fifty years, he knew that he should, and he wondered if something was being put over on him. Almost grudgingly, he admitted that he’d never heard the name before. And then I asked about the Pure Dairy Confection Company and where its headquarters had been located. “Irving Cohen . . . the bookie with the ice cream business as a front. He owned the goddamn Catacomb Club,” he murmured, eyes going to slits as he peered into the past.

  “There’s a rumor about my grandpa Enzo . . . he cut down all of those people with a tommy gun.”

  Lucky paused, jaws rippling. “That’s what they said.”

  “Who?”

  “They, you fool . . . long-gone Outfitters whose whispers and gossip died with them. There’s hardly anyone left from that time, so what does it matter?”

  He was right, it was dead history, and I asked again, “Where was Cohen’s ice cream factory?”

  “I don’t know,” he replied sharply. “I was just coming up then, making my bones by busting other people’s. Cohen had been banished.” He squinted his fathomless eyes, sucking in light. “That’s it. No more questions. Now you take Johnny Eyeball and claw out whatever information he has. And if it just so happens there’s nothing inside that ugly skull worth a damn? Kill the bastard.”

  “Me?” I asked quietly.

  The old man nodded, his face rigid as stone. “Not that we got a trust issue between us, Counselor, but if so, I want hard proof you did the job,” he said with a grandpa-vampire smile. “I want his red eye as a trophy.”

  I knew I could kill to defend myself; I’d proven it on Lower Wacker Drive. But that was when a creature had been trying to infiltrate my brain. Killing Johnny would be a type of self-defense as well, since failing to provide his eye to Lucky would be suicide. It was my turn to nod, since words wouldn’t form in my cottony mouth.

  “You see that?” he said, jabbing a finger past me. “That’s an express elevator. It’s a straight shot down, like going to hell. So take that freak and go,” he said, speeding away. I watched him leave as something buzzed audibly nearby. My gaze moved across wallpaper decorated with velvety flowers until, squinting into the center of a bloom, I found the lens of a tiny camera. It whirred and dilated and I assumed that I was being observed on a screen in a concealed room. When I turned, Peek-a-Boo stood behind me, smoothing her skirt. “You were watching,” I said.

  “There’s hardly a spot in the entire hotel where someone’s not watching.” She smiled. Her eyes flicked down at Johnny with disinterest and back at me. “You’d be surprised how many crooks never suspect it. Then again, most crooks are really dumb.”

  “How much did you hear?”

  “Your conversation? All of it.” She produced a cigarette like a magician, flicked a gold lighter, and blew smoke between crimson lips. “Lucky has me listen in on all his walk-and-talks so no details are missed or forgotten. He says I have a great pair of ears,”
she said. “He’s wrong, though.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I have a great left ear,” she said, pushing back her platinum swoop, “and then I have this.” The right ear was a ragged nub of flesh, mostly gone, and Peek-a-Boo patted her hair back in place. “It got shot off a long time ago,” she said, lifting an eyebrow.

  I didn’t need any prompting. Knuckles told me that there had been one survivor of the Catacomb Club massacre—a woman who played dead after having her ear removed by the tommy gun. “You were there,” I said.

  “Peek-a-Boo Schwartz and her Feather Dance,” she said grimly, striking a pose. “I was the entertainment . . . me, a few discreetly placed peacock fans, and a snare drum. Stripping, they called it. Pantomime dancing, I called it. Never showed more than thigh-high.” Her eyes fluttered beyond the moment and her chin quivered as she lifted the cigarette to her lips. “That night . . . what I remember is the unending clatter of the gun, and how no one had a chance to scream. Until then, I didn’t know that blood had a smell. I can still smell it. But I never think about that night, I do everything not to think about it, and I wouldn’t have, but you asked Lucky about it.”

  “You saw him. You identified my grandpa Enzo as the shooter.”

  “No,” she said, the steel back in her voice. “I said it was Nunzio Rispoli’s son.”

  We stared at each other for a moment until I said, “Giaccomo?”

  “I was lying on my side as he walked through, kicking bodies, and his bandana slipped. The two of them looked so much alike that at first I thought it was Enzo. Then he put it back in place, isolating his eyes, and instead of cold blue, they were brown and troubled.” She shrugged, saying, “After I said it was Nunzio’s son, the Outfit assumed it had been Enzo, since Giaccomo was a civilian. Before I could correct the mistake, Nunzio and Enzo spoke to Lucky about it. He and Enzo were close allies, and he knew your grandpa would become counselor-at-large someday soon. It was good business to help the Rispolis hide Giaccomo’s secret. So, Lucky told me never to utter a word about it. And I haven’t, until now.” She sighed and said, “It’s a dirty old episode, but you must have a reason for wanting to know. And in this business—hell, this life—if one broad won’t help another, no one will.”

  I knew then why Lucky had blacked out information about Ice Cream Cohen and the Pure Dairy Confection Company; it must’ve contained damning evidence of Uncle Jack’s vengeful shooting. I also realized that history had repeated itself, with Great-Grandpa Nunzio protecting Uncle Jack just like Grandpa Enzo tried to protect Uncle Buddy.

  I wondered if Uncle Jack had suffered the same frustration as Uncle Buddy after being forbidden to be a member of the Outfit; if so, like Uncle Buddy, it made him want it even more. Without Nunzio’s permission, he’d taken revenge against Cohen for the robbery of the Bird Cage Club, making the worst mistake of his young life. Both incidents added up—he’d been Nunzio’s transcriber of “Volta” when the old man was going blind, recording his father’s secrets in Buondiavolese, but barred by Nunzio from any further Outfit participation, which made him lash out in a horrific manner. There was no other way he could’ve known about ultimate power. It also explained his ability to record such a detailed description of the dispute between Ice Cream Cohen and the Rispolis, and the resulting massacre—it was a first-person account.

  Why Uncle Jack concealed it between the pages of “Volta” remained a mystery.

  Was he fulfilling the purpose of the notebook by including every possible Outfit secret—or was it the confession of a guilty mind, hidden where only another Rispoli would discover it? I thought of his battle with alcohol and what I’d overheard between him and Annabelle about “drowning old secrets.” Maybe he couldn’t drown them all, even after going deep into the fictional world of acting. Maybe Giaccomo Rispoli, a.k.a. Jack Richards, a.k.a. Detective Ned Keegan, was unable to forget what he’d done until the gift of Alzheimer’s did it for him.

  “In the viewing room,” I said carefully, “was Lucky . . . ?”

  “Crying?” she said, flicking an ash as a sad smile blipped and faded. “That’s why he watches so many movies. So he can sit where no one can see him but me and blame the story for making him weep like a baby. That old man has an infected soul, shot through by all of the things he’s done. He’s hidden in movies for a long, long time. Most everyone in the Outfit knows about it. Not one of them is dumb enough to talk about it,” she said, as the elevator arrived. “Call it remorse, guilt, or low-grade insanity, but weeping in the dark is the only way he can get any relief.”

  I threw an arm around Johnny, dragged him onto the elevator, and turned to Peek-a-Boo. “Maybe this is an understatement, but he doesn’t seem like the crying type.”

  “Nobody is completely one person, honey,” she said as the doors began to close. “You of all people should know that by now.”

  20

  IT’S A GOOD INDICATOR OF HOW FAR OFF THE rails my life has gone when the most positive thing about my day is that handcuffs aren’t necessary.

  Hours after I’d hauled Johnny up to the Bird Cage Club and snapped an end of one onto his ankle and the other to a radiator, it was plain that restraint was not an issue—he was still unconscious. I knew he was alive because I’d checked his breathing when I put a pillow beneath his head, and again when I covered him with a blanket. I wouldn’t be using cold fury to draw out information about my family or Juan Kone until he was alert. With a sigh, I sat on the couch and sunk into thought—Uncle Jack was the Catacomb Club shooter, and it was shocking, perhaps unanswerable, but at least it hadn’t been Grandpa Enzo.

  In other words, my possession of cold fury did not mean I was predetermined to be a killer. Even gripped by the electricity and the pleasurable endorphins it released, I still had a choice. Thoughts of death and dying made me consider how much damage Irving Cohen had done so many people, and how his grandson was continuing the legacy. Hopefully, by this time on Saturday, either from details gleaned from Johnny or at the Cubs game, I’d come face-to-face with Juan Kone. I imagined what I’d do when I finally got my hands on the bloated monster, and I blinked and yawned. The last thought I had before falling asleep was where the hell I’d ever get a red eyeball to satisfy Lucky.

  I awoke Friday morning, still on the couch, as sun gushed through the windows.

  Snapping to attention, I looked over at Johnny, still amazingly asleep. Harry sniffed tentatively at his face as he groggily lifted a hand, snoring. Doug hadn’t returned the previous evening; I assumed he was with his hockey player, hoped he was safe, and felt an instinctual need to discuss everything with him. I prepared for school quickly and then unsnapped the handcuff from Johnny’s ankle. Before leaving, I scribbled a note indicating the restroom and then made sure to lock the elevator cage behind me. Compared to the other surreal details of my life, having a half-formed creature as a prisoner didn’t seem so odd. A fast train ride later, I hustled up the steps of Fep Prep, swiped an ID card, hurried through a metal detector, and then slowed, watching gleeful, glowing faces bounce by, hearing cheerful chatter, feeling the sugary air vibrate across my shoulders.

  Then came the bared bellies.

  Navel after navel, abs after abs after flab, each girl I passed had her shirt rolled up just enough to show some stomach. It was as if a secret fashion message had been passed to every female in school but me. It was Friday, which meant Classic Movie Club met during first period. I rushed to the theater room, anxious to talk to Doug, and was stopped by high, tinkling laughter. It was followed by a throatier response, and I entered the room cautiously, wondering, could it possibly be—

  “Oh my God, that’s so funny!” Doug roared, squeezing his hands together. Heather sat onstage, long legs crossed, arms thrown back, button nose crinkled, as he beamed up at her like a starstruck fan. “And you’re totally right . . . that’s so L.A.!”

  “How would you know?” I said. “You’re from Lincoln Park.”

  “SJ,” Heather said, sliding from the s
tage, and I saw the Dodgers T-shirt cut high enough to show the wink of a belly button above crenulated stomach muscles. I couldn’t believe it—she’d started a schoolwide trend before first period! “You’re just in time for the film,” she said. “We didn’t think you were going to make it. Did we, Doug?”

  “No!” he said, jumping to his feet, as jittery as a cockroach. The whites of his eyes were pinker and his body was even more shrunken, as if he were wearing a Doug-skin suit. “She is so cool and so funny and so hot!” he said, jabbing a finger at my cousin. “If I had to describe exactly what I wanted to look like, it would be post-rehab Heather Richards! If I were a girl, that is! Or not!”

  “I decided to join the club.” She shrugged, flipping her hair. “I thought I could offer a showbiz veteran’s insight. After all, I spent my formative years being watched by millions of fans.”

  “It prepared you perfectly for high school,” I muttered. “Headache’s gone, huh?”

  “Yeah. I spent some time with my grandpa,” she said. “Funny how the wisdom of an old man can help get your mind right.”

  “Careful,” I said, nodding at her belly. “You don’t want to catch a cold too.”

  “You mean my mini-shirt? Showing a little skin is very L.A.”

  “Dying of exposure is very Chicago.”

  “If knives in the back don’t get me first,” she said sweetly, smiling with eyes that were narrow, sharp, and as blue as a summer sky. Every warning in my body and brain flashed code red and gonged like church bells, pealing “She knows! She knows!” At that moment, the door banged open and Max entered. I was surprised to see him, as if our breakup should’ve voided his normal routine. Timidly I said, “Hey, Max.”

  “Hey,” he mumbled, folding himself into a chair and staring at the screen.

  “Have you guys met? I mean formally?” Doug said, sweeping an arm from Max to Heather.

  “No, but I’ve heard a lot about you, Max. Gosh . . . I feel like I know you,” she purred, turning a poison look at me into a honey-dripping one at him. “We should get together and have a long talk sometime.”