“It’s better than nothing, isn’t it?” I said. “At least it was an honest living.”
Elzy snorted, emptied her glass, and said, “Let’s cut the bullshit, sweetie. There was nothing honest going on behind closed kitchen doors at Rispoli amp; Sons Fancy Pastries. From Nunzio’s molasses business to Enzo holding court at Club Molasses to your dad being crowned counselor-at-large, your family was just one big multigenerational lie. And what do you have to show for it? Ninety years of a Rispoli family tradition of crime and that precious little notebook packed full of black secrets.”
Elzy’s speech was poisonous and targeted, but it didn’t hurt-by then I had already been wounded by the truth of my family. Instead, it gave me an insight, and I said, “It was Bobo, wasn’t it? He found out about the notebook.”
“Indeed he did,” Elzy said, grinning broadly.
“Your dad wasn’t just a lousy gambler. He was a disloyal sneak who spied on my grandpa at the bakery.”
Her eyes flashed, as if she hadn’t expected me to hit back so accurately. “Daddy suspected the notebook was hidden in Club Molasses and was caught trying to climb into the oven one night after hours by Enzo the Baker. And your sweet little grandfather, always the soul of charity, called on the Outfit to dole out punishment. Of course he couldn’t admit that the notebook existed, so he told them that Daddy had stolen a large sum of money from the bakery. The Outfit framed Daddy on a trumped-up charge of something or other, and in the blink of an eye, he was sent to prison for life. Except. .”
“My grandpa wouldn’t do that,” I said, not sure of my assertion in the least.
“His sentence lasted only a few weeks before he was stabbed by an inmate. Typical prison death, they said. Murder for hire, I said. Of course, in order to survive, I had to pretend to believe that the absurd frame-up that sent Daddy away was real, pretend to be ashamed of him, and pretend to know nothing about the notebook. Except that I did.” A fresh drink was delivered. Elzy sipped and said, “Daddy told me he’d overheard your grandpa telling your father when he was just a young man that the notebook contained a secret so powerful, whoever possessed it could control the Outfit.”
“What secret?” I said, remembering what Uncle Buddy had told me about potenza ultima-ultimate power.
Elzy shrugged her birdlike shoulders. “He never found out. Your grandpa seized the notebook, Daddy went to prison and then to heaven, and the notebook has been in Rispoli hands ever since. But no matter, my little brother and I decided that we would get the notebook ourselves and tear it apart until we found the answer to that untold secret. So, feigning ignorance and loyalty, I went to work in your parents’ home and my brother went to work at the bakery. While I monitored your family, he would succeed where Daddy had failed by infiltrating Club Molasses and stealing the notebook.”
“I remember you talking about him,” I said, trying to recall his name.
“He was such a handsome youth, a mere twenty-year-old sprig of a man when he began rolling dough in that stinking kitchen,” she said. “He despised your grandfather of course, and your father, but he saved his purest hatred for your uncle.” She paused and her face changed from frosty self-assurance to twitching rage as she spit, “Buddy Rispoli. . Buddy-goddamn-Rispoli! He just desperately needed to boss someone around, and the fat schlub rode my brother day and night. More flour, less salt, roll the dough lengthwise not vertically, until my brother wanted to twist his neck.”
“Twist his neck,” I repeated, feeling my bruises.
Elzy slammed the drink, a fresh one replaced it immediately, and she told me how her brother was working alone in the kitchen one morning. He’d just removed trays of cakes from the oven and was sampling one when Uncle Buddy showed up. My uncle berated Elzy’s brother for using his bare hands, delivering a blistering speech on kitchen hygiene, and her brother flipped off Uncle Buddy and told him to go to hell. That’s when Uncle Buddy made the mistake of shoving him. Elzy’s brother beat him to his knees but my uncle wouldn’t stay down, and Elzy’s face changed to something that was not self-assurance or rage, but horror.
“Buddy was on the ground, struggling to get up, and my brother charged him,” she said slowly, her words tinged with revulsion. “At the last minute, Buddy grabbed his ankle. My brother tripped, lost his balance, and fell face-first onto a white-hot, overturned cake pan stamped with the Rispoli R. .”
Oh my God, I thought, feeling my spine freeze, that means Ski Mask Guy is. .
“Poor Kevin,” Elzy said mournfully. “Half of his beautiful face, his neck, and his vocal cords. It drove him to the brink of insanity and he had to go. . away. Years later, when he escaped from the. . hospital. . I broke out too, from my existence, and we reunited,” she said, blowing her nose into a cocktail napkin. She put on a smile that would’ve startled a snake and said, “And here we are.”
“Here we are,” I said, seizing control of the rapidly rising ghiaccio furioso just as I’d done with Uncle Buddy, trying with all of my strength to focus it across the table. Elzy blinked rapidly behind the cat’s-eye glasses as I said, “But where’s my family? What have you done with them?”
To my great surprise, she ceased blinking and chuckled. “Who knows? Maybe dead in the ground somewhere. Worm food first and then gone forever.”
As she spoke, I felt a little electrical storm break across my head and shoulders.
The cold fury popped and faded, and I was flooded with exhaustion.
I sat back heavily, struggling even to hold up my head.
“I’ll be damned. So you’re the one who got the gift,” Elzy said, staring at me with curiosity. “Even though you and your brother both have blue eyes, I never would’ve guessed it would be you. Amazing how sexist we’re all trained to be. Even I naturally assumed that a man would get the power.” She sighed and said, “By the way, it doesn’t affect me.”
I shook my head, confused, and she sat forward smiling.
“You have a weakness, you know that?” She sipped, swished, and swallowed, and explained that no, she didn’t possess ghiaccio furioso, nor did anyone in her family. But she reminded me that her father was from Buondiavolo and had shared an ancient secret with her and Poor Kevin that only people from the village knew-how to avoid the immobilizing grip of cold fury. “Don’t ask,” she said. “What kind of nemesis would I be if I told you? But I will tell you that I have no idea where your family is. Yes, Poor Kevin tried to get his hands on them. .”
“I saw it,” I said, finding my voice. “Frank Sinatra’s head.”
“Ah yes, my darling Frank. I gave him to your parents on the pretext that poor me, the trusted nanny who cared so deeply for their precious children, would soon be dead, and that a nanny cam was an absolute necessity in my absence. I even showed them how to use it and placed it in that central location myself. Of course, my real hope was that they’d discuss the notebook and it would be caught on tape. My intention was to sneak into your house and steal it, but someone was always home-you Rispolis just never went out, did you?” She shrugged and said, “After a couple of years, I gave up on ever getting my hands on it. Who knew your mom and dad would continue to use it? Anyway, Poor Kevin would’ve succeeded if he hadn’t been interrupted. He was this close when-don’t laugh-when a whole caravan of black ice cream trucks surrounded your house, tinkling their merry tune. My nimble brother hid in the basement, and your people have been gone ever since.”
“Ice cream trucks?” I said. “That’s ridiculous. You’re lying.”
“Oh yeah? If I had your family, do you think I would’ve gone to all the trouble with my cops and Poor Kevin trying to hunt you down? I would’ve just sent you body parts a piece at a time until you gave me the notebook.” She paused, smiling serenely, and said, “Whoever has your family or wherever they’ve gone, none of that matters now. What matters is that you have the notebook, and you’re here.”
“Who says I have the notebook?” I said.
She looked at me over the top of her
cocktail and said, “Well. . do you?”
I said nothing, trying to assume a poker face.
Elzy grinned and said, “Yeah, you have it, just as I suspected. You know something, you might not believe this, but I always liked you. You were a sweet kid and a straight arrow. . just as bad a liar then as you are now. But you were also a tough little kid, and now you’re a tough young woman, and I say let’s let bygones be bygones. I say let’s do this thing together.”
“What thing?” I said calmly, stifling an urge to punch her teeth down her throat.
“Take over Chicago. It’s our time. Have you read the notebook?”
She knew I had it; it was too late to act as if I didn’t. “Parts of it.”
“I’m curious,” she said. “How much of it explains women’s roles in the Outfit? How much of it talks about your great-grandmother, grandmother, or mother? Where does it discuss the wives, sisters, and daughters of all of those Outfit bosses and thugs?”
“Nowhere,” I said.
“Exactly. Organized crime is a boys’ club, with no position of power or responsibility for a female.” She narrowed her eyes and said, “We’re all God’s children, except a woman connected to the Outfit. Then she’s less than a second-class citizen. She can be a faithful wife who won’t testify, or a goomah on the side, or an Italian mama who cooks meatballs for her sonny boy as he shines his pistol, but nothing else. That’s precisely why I faked my own death. With Poor Kevin back at my side, I was done being little miss Elzy-Do-This-Do-That. With my organizational skills, nerves of steel, and almost complete lack of moral conscience, it was time to be the Elzy I was born to be. . the head of the Outfit.” She sipped her drink and said, “Unfortunately, I was born a female. If I’d openly infringed on Outfit business, the boys’ club would’ve crushed me. My head would be fish food in Lake Michigan and the rest of me scattered in the Sanitary Canal. If I was going to take over, I needed to disappear. . to remove the thought of Elzy Zanzara from anyone even remotely connected to the Outfit, so that I could take it by complete and utter surprise. My work would have to be done covertly and unseen, working in the shadows until I made my move. And for that, I needed an edge.”
“You mean the notebook,” I said.
She stared at the ice in her glass and nodded. “With the information contained between those covers, plus my vision and your gift, we can rule this dirty town. It’s high time that someone who thinks with her brain first is in charge.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head slowly. “Never. It doesn’t matter if it’s a man or a woman. The whole thing has been rotten from the beginning and it will never change.”
“I don’t want to change it, you little fool,” she said. “I want to control it. But okay, fine and dandy, I’ll do it alone. . well, not quite alone. I have Poor Kevin. He’s my ultimate weapon because he loves me and only me, and would happily travel to hell and back at my command. He almost got you the first time, in the basement of your house, if it hadn’t been for that filthy little dog.”
“The basement,” I said, feeling again at my neck. “He almost killed me.”
“He was just trying to squeeze the notebook out of you,” she said, sipping. “I suppose it was a bit painful, but Poor Kevin despises you Rispolis. But then, don’t we all?” And then she lowered her voice and glanced around at her people. “Of course, I never told my officers about Poor Kevin. Better to have them all working independently. That’s good leadership, Outfit style. Never let your employees know exactly what you’re doing, or whom you’re doing it with. Secrecy is the key to success.”
“You mean secrecy plus a masked lunatic, don’t you?”
“Tsk-tsk, sticks and stones,” she said, crinkling her nose. “Poor Kevin is my avenging angel. Nothing short of a Mack truck can stop him.”
“I guess I’ll have to get a Mack truck.”
Elzy finished her drink, patted her lips, and said, “This has been fun, but I want that notebook and I want it now.”
“I’ll never give it to you. Why should I? You don’t have my family.”
“Oh, but I have something,” she said, tossing a pair of books on the table. I glanced at the titles, Roger Ebert’s The Great Movies, volumes one and two, and recognized Doug’s well-worn copies. “Your chunky friend traced Poor Kevin’s devil mask to a novelty store, asked a few questions, and actually tried to catch him,” she said with a small smile. “It didn’t work out too well.”
“Where is he?” I said quietly, using every ounce of restraint not to flip the table and stomp the answer out of her. “I swear to God, if you’ve hurt him. .”
“Don’t swear, and yes, of course we’ve hurt him. All you have to do is trade the notebook for your bloated buddy and Poor Kevin will let him go,” she said, narrowing her eyes behind the cat’s-eye glasses. “Of course, now that you’re here, I could just keep you, couldn’t I? Let Poor Kevin convince you to give up the notebook in his own special way. I have more than enough people here to. .” But she spread her arms at an empty bar. Her officers were all gone, with cigarettes still smoldering and drinks unfinished, as if ripped from their posts by silent, unseen hands.
That’s when one of those hands lit on my shoulder.
Elzy looked behind me and her jaw muscles rippled.
One of Knuckles’s dark and anonymous guys said, “Time to go, girly.”
I rose and saw his two companions, one near the bar, one at the door, and wanted to ask what they had done with Elzy’s people, but it wasn’t a Q amp;A moment. Elzy crossed her arms and said, “I see you’ve learned a couple of things from the notebook.”
“More than a couple.”
“Two hours. Come alone, unarmed, or you’ll have a fat corpse on your hands.”
“Where?”
“Rispoli amp; Sons Fancy Pastries.” She smiled coyly.
The bakery, where her brother lost his face.
Club Molasses, where my family buried its secrets.
Where everything began and where, I realized, she intended everything to end.
An hour and fifty-eight minutes is not much time to speed-read part of a chapter, scribble a list, grab cash from a steel briefcase, drive like a maniac to one store and then another store, and then build a bomb.
Actually, the notebook calls it an “incendiary device.”
Chapter six (Metodi-Methods) describes it as ideal for “scare tactics, arson, and safe-cracking.”
It also cautions that it could kill someone, which might be a good thing.
After I aged the brand-new leather notebook I’d purchased by backing over it with the Lincoln and beating it with a hammer, I very carefully wired it with the device. Everything I needed to assemble the little bomb was available at the corner hardware store, which in my former life would’ve been extremely disturbing. My present life was a different story-one that could end prematurely at any time-and I had no moral issue whatsoever about blowing off the rest of that evil sock puppet’s face.
At the hour-fifty-nine mark I pulled up in front of the bakery.
The time for parking down the block had passed.
Leaping roof to roof seemed suddenly ridiculous.
I lifted the notebook, climbed out of the car, and walked through the front door of the bakery, the bell jingling behind me. I’d thought about bringing the.45, but it was bulky and hard to hide, and besides, if my scheme went off as planned I wouldn’t need it. The front of the store was dark and so was the kitchen, but it didn’t matter, I knew where they were, and went straight to the Vulcan. I folded myself inside, whooshed quickly below the earth, and pulled open the heavy steel door of Club Molasses.
It was dark inside except for a single spotlight.
It shone on Doug in the middle of the dance floor.
He was slumped in a chair, chin on his chest, shirt soaked with blood.
I ran to him, set the notebook on the floor, and gently lifted his head. It was impossible not to grimace at his beaten, swollen face. I whispered, “Do
ug. It’s me, Sara Jane,” and he blinked heavily, trying to focus. Quietly, I said, “Where is he?”
Doug worked his jaws, spit out a tooth, and said, “Right behind you.”
There was no panic, only action, and I spun with my right fist curled at my chin and my left fist in front of my right. Poor Kevin bowed like a huge, rumpled maitre d’, emitting a gust of rotten-meat cologne from his melted head. “Welcome to Club Molasses! Table for two?”
“I have the notebook,” I said, vibrating with ghiaccio furioso, feeling it quiver and fade as it had with Elzy. It was plain me versus maniac him, and I said, “Take it and let us go. That was the deal.”
“Let you go? Oh no-no-no!” he trilled, pumping his arms in time to his words like a crazed sports fan. “Not until I inspect the no-no-notebook!”
“You want it?” I said, kicking it across the parquet dance floor. “Go get it.”
Poor Kevin watched it slide like a hockey puck and then looked at me. The pupils of his eyes through the ski mask holes grew larger and smaller, like two crazy cameras trying to find focus, and then he shrugged and shambled after it. And then everything sped up-me lugging Doug toward the door, Poor Kevin picking up the notebook, me bracing for an explosion and then hearing a soft, gentle pop. I turned to him staring at the blank, smoking pages that did not blow up, and then he lifted his horrific head and said as coldly as a frozen knife, “You think I’m stupid?”
“It’s a misunderstanding,” I said, backing toward the door with Doug attached to me like a three-hundred-pound anchor.
“It’s a death sentence!” he squealed, galloping across the floor. I dropped Doug, ducked and moved, and Poor Kevin’s massive fist missed my head by inches. When he turned, I was waiting with a hard left-right combo that stopped him. He shook his head and then went into a fighter’s crouch too, and we squared off on the dance floor. “Hey, this is gonna be fun!” he said as we circled. “Just like the old days when I used to beat the dirt out of that schlub uncle of yours! You Rispolis are all the same, blah-blah-blah, all talk and no. .” and then he had to stop talking because my fist was in his mouth-once, twice, three times-and he skidded backward. Then he charged forward, and I dropped a shoulder and threw my Willy Williams left hook.
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