Vespers

by Tom Piccirilli

  “Did he say anything?” the Ganooch asked. “In the end?”

  “He told me to protect la famiglia.”

  “And you do,” the don said, patting my back, pressing the side of his face against my shoulder. “And you will continue to do so.”

  “We all will,” Johnny said. “No matter what. To the last.”

  Don Guiseppe nodded. His made a heavy, half-formed sound at the bottom of his throat. His eyes were clear but his face was drawn, his soft brush mustache silver at the edges, to match his thick hair. He wasn’t quite fifty-five but there was the air of a little old man about him, as if he’d look much more natural in a garden growing tomatoes and squash than the head of a crime syndicate in a time of nameless disease.

  He was holding tight rein on whatever feelings he had concerning the death of his only son. A man in his position couldn’t shed tears in public no matter what happened. I knew that he wanted to bawl over the loss of Niko. But the Ganooch was made of iron. He was something of an interrogator himself. I’d watched him work over men chained to chairs for three days straight. Down deep, where it mattered, he was a glacier. He was ten thousand year old rock. He would never crack, no matter what happened, no matter what was taken from him, what ruin befell him.

  I imagined that when I killed him he would understand. He wouldn’t ask me how I found out the truth about the death of my parents. He would accept his fate and he would be prepared for it.

  A procession led by Ma Ganucci left the room single-file. The nuns and priests chanted, the other doctors muttered to each other about infectious diseases, quarantines, failed treatments, contagion. They left grandma asleep in her chair. The Ganooch and Johnny Tormino joined in at the end of the train and I watched as the group snaked down the steps.

  Portman turned to me with his stoic features almost showing a touch of emotion. He had a weak chin, a prominent freckled forehead, and thinning red hair he combed straight back and tried to hold in place with slathers of mousse.

  He whispered, “You think we’ll be able to ride this out?”

  “We’ve got provisions for a few months, anyway,” I said.

  “You ever hear about anything like this in Afghanistan?”

  “I wasn’t in Afghanistan, but no, I never heard about anything like this.”

  “Fucking Islamic fundamentalists. They’re praying to Allah to destroy America and dumping nerve toxins in our water supply.”

  “The government is fairly certain it’s not tainted water or food. The infection isn’t airborne. It’s probably passed from host to host via saliva or other bodily fluids.”

  “Whatever it is, it’s driving people insane. Kids biting people waiting for communion other in church, for Christ’s sake. They’re vaccinating us for swine flu like that’s going to help.”

  I suspected the free vaccinations had nothing to do with any known flu. The administration were probably experimental treatments. The government was hoping that something would work on some small percentage of the population before the virus mutated and became something else entirely. It was bound to happen.

  “They’re begging in the streets. They’re starting to pile up on our doorstep. They come looking for handouts.”

  “It’s only going to get worse.”

  Portman pushed a finger forward to the center of my tie and tapped my chest twice. For some reason the gesture enraged me. I pictured myself snapping his fingers one by one and hurling him over the second floor railing and watching him hit the tile floor below and bursting like a bag of blood. Portman leaned in to me again and said, “Some of the capos are showing signs of jumping ship. Some of them have heard things are better on the west coast, or in Europe.”

  “They won’t leave.”

  He nodded. He knew our men were all afraid of me. They’d seen me up close in action. They still feared blades and bullets more than mysterious disease. The politics of the syndicate was making everybody nervous.

  He said, “In the meantime… it’s business as usual. You take care of that issue with Finn?”

  “There wasn’t any problem.”

  “Good. Until we know for sure what’s going to happen next, we have to keep up appearances, keep our people in line doing what they do best. The money’s still flowing in from some of our outside sources. Whatever’s happening here isn’t affecting Columbia or Europe much yet. I wish we had more men trained in the military like you. Do what you can to maintain discipline. Make examples of anyone who you think needs it.”

  Grandma cried out in her sleep twice, two throbbing mewls like an animal caught in a trap. I brushed past Portman and walked downstairs. The group had circled the ME’s wagon parked out in the drive. I watched the family in their grief. Ma Ganucci looked like she was hardwired to the third rail. Current seemed to be running through her as she shook and fought to stay standing straight. She was as tough as her husband in her own way, maybe tougher. She had a hand to the back window saying goodbye to her son.

  Nicky’s sister, Gina, had returned home in the interim. She’d been away at Cornell finishing up her junior year. She was twenty and dark and beautiful and her rage and grief made me want her even more.

  We’d been lovers for the summer months and had yet to share so much as a romantic dinner. We had met in the deep night when the family was asleep and the estate guards were prowling the grounds, bored and irresponsibly taking coffee breaks and playing a few hands of poker with the rest of the boys.

  I made the effort to give her all my sympathy in the glance we shared. I didn’t have much to begin with, but what I had I gave to her.

  She made the effort of hugging her mother tightly to her chest, as if the lady was sobbing. She wasn’t. Gina kept saying, “It’ll be all right, mama, it’ll be okay.” Ma Ganucci stood there with a hard face, a little embarrassed by everyone’s weeping. She said something quiet to Gina beneath her breath. Gina moved a step away and wiped her tears away with his thumbs. Ma Ganucci was a little worried that Gina was going to be a weak link. That she was going to want to feed the hungry families outside the gate. That she was going to want to bring his friends into the safety behind the walls of the compound. Ma Ganucci didn’t know her own kid at all.

  The Ganooch said his goodbyes as the placed Nicky’s body in the back of the ME’s meat wagon. It got some of the other relatives crying again too. I checked the gates and the distant walls and got the all clear sign from the various guards we had patrolling the grounds. Gina slid to my side and slipped her fingers across mine. My heart rate sped and began to hammer. Almost nothing else in the world could do that to me. Even now, with one of my closest friends dead, her own brother, she aroused me. Life would always go on. I saw it in the middle of war on the other side of the planet. No matter what horrors we endured, we would do whatever we could to ease our pain and fulfill our purpose. We’d fuck our way out of the grave, if we could.

  The Ganooch blew a kiss after the meat wagon. The procession disbanded. Most of them wandered back into the main house or one of the smaller buildings surrounding us. Others got in their cars and drove out the gates, trying not to run over the needy and sick gathered outside the wall. Johnny Tormino kept his smile going. I wondered if the downfall of society as we knew it was what he needed to make his play. I worried that he might take a run at the don before I was ready.

  The only trouble was, I’d been back from Iraq for six months and still wasn’t sure why I hadn’t killed the man. Every time I prepared myself to do it something seemed to tell me that the time wasn’t right. That the Ganooch would be too accepting of his fate. I was as Sicilian as any of them. I wanted my own dramatics. I wanted fire and lightning. I could knot him inside a vest full of explosives that wouldn’t leave a scrap of skin or a splash of blood behind. There’d be nothing but dust and mist. I had nightmares about the moment. I heard my father hammering the heels onto shoes in my dreams.

  I knew death. I’d been doing this for a long time. I’d made a study of it. I practiced a
t it. I learned from the street, and I learned from soldiers, and I learned from the best. I learned from infiltrating cells of the insanely devout in a land of dust that hadn’t seen peace for ten thousand years.

  The capos and lieutenants would be shuffled around some now that Nicky was gone. For some it would be a celebration, not that anybody could show they were happy about the promotion. They’d want to go out tonight and have a good time. Even with the looting and the economic upheaval, the sick children, and the crematoriums burning like the chimneys of factory smokestacks lined up and down the Hudson, there were always amenities you could count on. The drug trade had become twice as profitable in recent weeks. There were more prostitutes and strip clubs than ever. It was a basic tenant of blood. No matter how much the populace suffered, somewhere somebody was making wads of cash because of it.

  One of the young nuns had held back. She reached out and put her hand lightly on my wrist. “Sister Abigail… she–”

  I waited for her to finish. I knew it was a waste of time. The girl wasn’t going to be able to complete her sentence. She stared at me and her thin lips opened and closed, trying and rejecting various words and phrases.

  I said, “I understand.”

  “She’s spoken your name. Perhaps you should come.”

  “Yes.”

  Sister Abigail was the aunt who had raised me in Red Hook. When I was a kid she started having divine visions and decided to become a bride of Christ. In the years since then she’d been revered as a true saint blessed, or damned, by God. I hadn’t visited her since I joined the army.

  I went to my room in what had once been the servants’ quarters and changed my clothes. I collected another 9mm while I was at it, and a four-inch knife in a sheathe that I placed on my belt at the small of my back. Gina said, “What was that all about? With the little nun? She say she if you saved her from all the social disorder?”

  “No,” I told her. There wasn’t any need to explain further. Gina wasn’t really asking a question. We didn’t converse the way real lovers did. I offered my condolences. They sounded insincere even though they weren’t. “I’m sorry about Nicky.”

  She was her father’s daughter. She was hard, powerful, and never allowed emotion to seep into her eyes. She hadn’t shed a tear for her brother. She looked moderately annoyed by the proceedings and eager to get on to the next thing, whatever it might be.

  I knew she was fucking Johnny too. She’d picked up his bitter curl of a smile from somewhere. I was convinced that you couldn’t learn it from just looking at it. You had to taste his mouth to taste the full wealth of his spite.

  “It was bound to happen,” she said.

  “Was it?”

  “One way or another. At least he didn’t take two in the eyes. That’s something to be thankful for.”

  “You didn’t see him at the end.”

  “Was it as bad as they say? That he looked like an old man?”

  “Yes.”

  “You think burning up from this disease is worse than a .45 in the head?”

  “Yes.”

  She seemed to consider that for a moment, but the moment passed quickly. She eased over to me, her beauty igniting the air as easily as it lit me on fire. I wanted to take her roughly right there on my bed.

  But Sister Abigail had spoken my name. Since she became a nun my aunt didn’t talk anymore. She hadn’t taken a vow of silence, she simply had begun the long step across the veil to another plane. The mother superior and the archdiocese believed it. I supposed that I did too. I had to see her.

  Gina hit me with the sloe-eyed, fuck-me leer, something I’d been missing for months. In a very real way, she disgusted me, which is what I dug about her so much. She licked my throat. It was almost enough to shatter my will. I pressed her aside with my forearm and said, “Go console Petey. I have to hit the streets for a while.”

  She wasn’t offended. She knew how much I wanted her. At midnight I’d be at her door, and she’d keep it locked, and if the lock held she’d laugh herself savagely to sleep, and if it didn’t I’d fuck her insanely. Both options satisfied her about equally.

  “It’s getting crazy out there. Rioting. Fires. Cops beating people up. There’s bottlenecking everyplace, if you’re thinking about heading into Manhattan or over to Jersey. The state troopers had their hands full on the bridges. People trying to get out of town, others trying to get in. The hospitals are overflowing. Everyone is scared, and they don’t even know what they’re scared of.” As she spoke her eyes were aflame with fear and excitement. “Be careful, Tommy. And I know, you’re always careful, but be careful anyway. Visit me tonight.”

  I started for the door and she blocked the way. “Tell me you’ve missed me.”

  “I’ve missed you.”

  “Tell me you’ll visit tonight.”

  “I will.”

  “Maybe I’ll even let you in.”

  “You won’t have any choice.”

  Her laughter followed me out onto the grounds. I walked to the front gate where three family soldiers stood inside a huge security booth of bulletproof glass. I signaled for them to let me out. Instead they opened the booth door and gave me a hard time about hitting the street alone. They were strapped to the teeth. The foot soldiers wanted to chauffeur me in one of the stretch limos, but I wanted to stroll the neighborhood and prepare myself. They didn’t argue with me that much. No one ever did.

  The gate opened just wide enough for me to slip out. The sick and the terrified tried to push their way in. There were dozens of them just standing around, putting more faith in the Ganooch than in the cops or the government or the church up the block.

  The disease looked like some extreme form of cancer. Women held their coughing, hollow-faced babies to their chests. I could see the inflamed vaccination marks on some of their arms. I took out my wallet and handed out all the cash I had. “Bless you! Bless you!” a few of them cried. Paper cash didn’t mean much anymore and would mean less and less in the days to come. I glanced into their hopeless eyes. I watched their teeth. Some of them knew me by name. They begged for my help. They pleaded for sanctuary.

  Our local butcher, Mr. Muller, had a pus-soaked bandage around his wrist. His haggard expression showed an intense knowledge of his own demise, but somehow found a touch of humor in it. He could barely stand on his feet. He reached out for me and I snapped his grip.

  He giggled wildly. I knew I should draw my gun and put one between his eyes. He’d probably been cutting up and selling meats all week long, ill with the virus, infecting hundreds more.

  “God damn it.”

  He said, “Tommy Flowers,” in the same voice that Nicky had used at the end. It came from deeper than his throat. It came from the bottom of a mass grave.

  I nodded to his wrist. “How did that happen?”

  He seemed to be smiling. He did a little shambling, shuffle-dance trying to get his hands on me again. I dodged him. The rest of the group sobbed and held onto the gate, begging to be let inside. The Ganucci foot soldiers stared on impassively.

  I started up the sidewalk. Like just about everyone in our business, in Brooklyn anyway, I was a Catholic who still went to mass every Sunday. I knew the names of all the priests, gave generously to my local diocese, and took communion. Even though syndicate members tended to edit out some of our more heinous deeds in the confessional, we all thought of ourselves as good Catholics. Don Ganucci used to be an altar boy. So had Johnny. So had Nicky. So had I.

  Unlike the others, though, I used to suffer from spells and visions as a kid. I imagined my father pulling innocents from the fire. I pictured him and my mother in that car being shot to pieces. Until I hit puberty I used to have insane hallucinations of angels clinging to the high corners of my bedroom, staring down with judgment and disappointment, aiming fiery swords at my heart. I used to sleepwalk and sometimes wake to find myself barefoot in the cemetery, having walked halfway across town, looking at the names of my parents carved in stone.
<
br />   My aunt nursed me through the horrible headaches. She had them too. Sometimes we’d both lay side by side on the bed, bleeding from our ears. She didn’t pray back then. Neither did I.

  Mr. Muller followed me up the street. He was laughing louder now. The church bells continued to ring. Sirens blared. Cops and ambulances raced around the area. Muller’s voice crawled out of his belly. “Tommy Flowers, what have you been doing? Where you going? Talk to me. What do you know?”

  I knew he was a dead man. His body was rotting, burning out from the inside, his heart still pumping contamination through his veins. He gurgled after me. “She did this. You did this.”

  I turned and he was heading a small pack of the ill after me. They shambled and wept and chuckled to the jokes only the dying can understand. Their lips had skinned back, their teeth gray and slick in the orange fiery light shining down from the skyline of Manhattan. They oozed and bled. I recognized faces and names. I’d grown up with these people, drank with them, shopped beside them, stolen from them. Muller’s seventeen-year-old assistant, Jessie, shouldered his way through the group and faced me. “Why aren’t you helping?”

  “I can’t do anything for you, Jessie.”

  “Why did you do this?” He whimpered, whined, implored, and tittered all at the same time. It was a sound I’d heard before from suicide bombers an instant before they hit the button.

  “I didn’t do this,” I said. “Go to the hospital. All of you, go to the hospital now. Someone will tend to you.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “Stay back.”

  “Tommy Flowers, you’ve always lied.”

  “Back the fuck off of me.”

  Muller guffawed like he’d just heard the funniest thing in the world. Maybe he had. I imagined what kind of parasites might be eating into his brain, what worms were slithering about in his neuro-chemicals. He made a sudden lunge for me and I made an instant decision to draw my blade instead of my piece. I didn’t want a gunshot report echoing all over the neighborhood. Things were quickly shattering to pieces. The rest would fall apart soon enough. I had no compunctions anymore. Brooklyn really had become a city no different than those in the Middle East where women were stoned to death on the street, children fired rocket launchers from behind burned out buildings, and the bodies were piled on the corners like trash.