AHMM, July-August 2010

by Dell Magazine Authors

  "He must swear that he'll carry her off to Parnassus with his pen—” He thought of the two students. “—and she must believe him, sincerely, with tears in her eyes, biting her nails, just like the two of us did. Except that after awhile, they'll be dragged down by marriage, children, and life itself."

  Loza stuck his head out the window again and saw that the traffic hadn't budged. “Then come the apologies, the loathsome comparisons, the inevitable complaints . . ."

  A car horn startled him and he had to step on the gas to catch up to the car in front.

  * * * *

  As he pushed the shopping cart along, Loza grabbed two rolls of toilet paper, a rye bread, and a tube of toothpaste. Mission accomplished. He planned to go straight to the checkout line. But when he saw a flock of shoppers coming toward him, he told himself it wouldn't hurt to browse around the bookracks. He turned and walked the other way. He saw the book section in the back and started walking faster. He flipped indifferently past a few titles, and suddenly there it was, in a black-and-white cover: The Stranger. Thrilled, he snatched it up and found that it was lighter and thinner than he remembered. He quickly flipped through it looking for the scene that he had discussed that afternoon. He read about how stupid and inevitable it was for Mersault to take that single step forward, as the Arab pulled out his knife and let it shine in the sun, almost blinding him.

  But no. That wasn't the paragraph he wanted. He turned the page and on page 78, at the end of the chapter, the light he was looking for flashed as Mersault threw the whole day off balance, shattering the silence on that beach by firing four times at the dead body, the shots ringing out like four sharp knocks.

  He closed the book happily, and without thinking, shoved it under the shopping bag and held it in place beneath his armpit.

  "So here's the little thief,” said the fat bald man, smiling as they entered the office at the end of the passage.

  "Yes,” the guard answered, watching the fat man spread butter on a slice of bread. “Here he is."

  The fat man placed the knife on the plate and took a huge bite of bread, the smile never leaving his face. He took a sip of coffee and kept chewing, smiling as if someone were tickling his bald spot, or the situation merely amused him a great deal.

  Loza imagined that mouth grinding up meat and felt a sudden fear of the fat man.

  "I beg your pardon—” he said, then stopped abruptly. It was someone else's voice, imploring. Not the grave professor's voice.

  The fat man didn't even look at him. He was too busy with the job of buttering his bread after each bite. For a moment, Loza believed in the miraculous possibility that the fat man had forgotten all about the matter. He sat there licking the tip of the knife, then suddenly the fat man looked up as someone came in the door.

  "Jiménez,” he said. “I see that the threat of dismissal finally got you to keep your eyes open."

  Loza turned around and found himself looking at a little man wearing a paper cap and a matching yellow apron.

  "He must be an experienced thief,” said the little man, avoiding Loza's eyes. “I saw him making the rounds a couple of times today."

  "That's a lie!” Loza protested. “You're mistaking me for someone else."

  "You keep quiet!” the fat man shouted, standing up. “And strip off your clothes!"

  Loza took a step back, as if the fat man's voice had pushed him.

  "But all I took was this,” he said, taking the book out of his shopping bag.

  "I didn't ask you anything,” said the fat man, shaking his head. Then he sat back down and began smiling again.

  "Come here,” he told Loza, as if he were inviting him to sit on his lap. “Take off your clothes and put them on the table one item at a time."

  Loza started to obey.

  "Do you have any identification?” the fat man asked.

  Loza quickly went through his wallet and managed to find the employee ID card from work.

  "I'm not a thief,” he said firmly, encouraged by the hope that he wouldn't have to get undressed. “I'm a professor. A professor at the university, you see."

  "You should have thought of that before you started stealing things,” the fat man answered indifferently, copying the information from the ID card onto a sheet of paper.

  Loza noticed that the fat man had hair growing out of his ears.

  "What are you waiting for?” The fat man raised his head and looked at him. “Get undressed."

  With the horrible sensation that he was sinking deeper into a nightmare—someone else's nightmare—Loza started unbuttoning his shirt.

  With each garment that he peeled off his body as if it were a rough piece of hide, Loza felt all sense of hope falling away. He had been sure that the fat man, upon discovering that he had nothing else hidden under the shopping bag, would let him off with a stiff warning and send him home. Even though he had the shirt, the pants, and the shoes, the fat man said nothing further. Now it was time to shed the toughest and most intimate bits of hide.

  "It's just a book,” Loza whined.

  "Precisely!” said the fat man, angrily. “Do you think I'm lacking all humanity? I understand when someone steals out of hunger, or necessity. But a book—” He smacked his forehead. “That's something else completely!"

  When he took off the last bit of clothing, Loza stood there timidly covering his manhood with both hands. But he no longer felt fear or guilt. Being stripped naked like this left no room for such niceties. What he felt was abandonment, futility, and weariness. The growing desire to pull the trigger or throw the switch, anything to end this nightmare.

  With his head down and his eyes glued to the floor, Loza waited for the pointless examination of his clothes to start. But nobody moved. And the whole office seemed to reverberate with an empty silence. An overwhelming silence, without shape or form. He was only aware of the fat man's close smell, the smell of his own sweat, the general smell of the room which seemed to emanate from the plate with the knife on it. And Loza compared himself with Mersault since he, too, could feel the sweat gathering in his eyebrows. But here, there was no furrowing sea to give life to the scene. There was no bright sky to cast down its fire. There was no hope.

  "I think that should do,” said Loza. “Enough already."

  "Did you hear that?” said the fat man, looking at his subordinates and laughing. “Did you hear what he said?"

  The two guards looked at each other, unsure of how to react.

  "What do you plan to do now?” asked Loza, terrified.

  "To put you on display,” said the fat man, his eyes widening. “So you'll learn your lesson. You said you were a professor, right, Señor Loza?"

  In addition to the shame, and the apparent hate and mockery that this threat carried, Loza trembled because of something even more fearsome and painful: The guilty man had a name. The same name as his father. The same name as his children. And the sweat gathering in his eyebrows began sliding down into his eyes, and he took a step, a single step to the side. And before he knew what he was doing, he took a sudden leap and wrapped his left arm around the fat man's neck while his other hand flew to the plate like a lightning bolt and brought the knife blade up to the man's throat.

  "Nobody move!” he yelled at the guards. “Or I'll cut his throat, damn it!"

  The guards looked at each other, confused.

  "You!” he told the guard, keeping an eye on the pistol strapped to his waist. “Grab my clothes and walk in front of us!"

  The guard didn't move. He questioned the fat man with his eyes.

  "Do what he says,” the fat man pleaded. “For God's sake, do what he says!"

  The guard approached the table.

  "And you, you stool pigeon!” he said to the little man. “Get behind him! And walk slowly!"

  The two men headed for the door.

  "Now it's your turn!” He shoved the fat man with his knee. “Get moving, pig!"

  As they left the office, Loza felt the harsh and unavoidable
shock of two opposing realities: His backside was fully exposed while the fat man covered his chest, absurdly providing him with much-needed warmth and protection.

  "Don't try anything,” he warned them. “Or I'll kill him!"

  Flanked by the dull gleam of the bottles, the two men walked along the passage. In the darkness, Loza was filled with genuine disgust as the smell of the storeroom mixed with the foul breath of the pig he was holding to his chest. He kept walking. A second passageway ran off to the side, ending in some kind of lavatory.

  The guard in front stopped.

  "Get moving!” Loza yelled. “Keep going!"

  The guard obeyed but didn't take his eyes off the lavatory.

  The fat man was breathing hard, and while Loza struggled under his weight, he heard the noise of the refrigerators and saw, just a few yards farther, between the vague silhouettes of the two men in front, the door that he had come through. He shivered. On the other side was the world he had left behind. The world that he no longer belonged to. Because he, too, had shattered the day's stability. Just like Mersault, he had taken a step, a single foolish step that hadn't freed him from anything; it had complicated everything.

  "Wait a minute!” Loza yelled at the men, who stopped in their tracks, trying to buy himself time to think of what to do.

  "You!” he shouted at the guard. But the guard never learned what Loza planned to do because suddenly Loza felt as if the gates of Hell had opened behind him and he had embraced the fire. A painful spasm robbed him of his strength, his legs went limp, and he fell to the floor.

  As soon as his body hit the floor, Loza heard, as if it were coming from a faraway place in slow motion, the dry crack of the gunshot. And, by the absurd logic that was running his life, he realized that this was the plot of the story that he so dearly wanted to write one day.

  "Poor bastard!” said the fat man, rubbing his neck and prodding the motionless body with his foot. “He fell for that gag like a complete sucker."

  Then he turned to his subordinates, who were looking at him.

  "Because it was just a gag! You saw that!"

  The two shadows didn't say a word.

  The fat man turned around and hurried toward the office. He didn't speak to or even look at the other guard, who was coming the other way with a pistol in his hand.

  "Who was he?” said the guard, approaching the body. “Did he want to kill Señor Riquelme?"

  "No, he wasn't going to kill anyone,” said the first guard bitterly, dropping the clothes on Loza's face and groin. “Just some guy who stole something."

  "And what did he steal?” asked the other guard, bending over and lifting the clothes from the dead man's face with the barrel of his gun.

  "A book this skinny!” the little man in yellow interjected, holding up his thumb and index finger pressed tightly together. He smiled nervously. As if holding his finger and thumb together explained it all. As if his thumb and finger were holding something absurd. A worthless piece of garbage.

  Copyright © 2010 Ivan Oñate

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Fiction: THE MOB TAPES by David Braly

  They had to remove his shirts to attach it. The tiny microphone would be taped to the center of his chest, the wire going down to a small battery in his pocket.

  "Don't you got anything smaller?” asked Anthony Ricco. “If they see a bulge, I'm a goner."

  "Relax,” said Pete Victor. “This is the smallest there is. It just seems big to you because you're going to be wearing it and you're afraid. No police agency in the world has a smaller bug than this one. Not even the FBI."

  Ricco, Victor, and William Kavanagh were in Kavanagh's office. Kavanagh had taken care to prevent anybody else from learning of Ricco's presence, such as bringing the two men into his office in the evening when fewer people would be present who might observe their arrival or departure. Although the building should certainly be among the safest in the city, somebody there might be willing to make a phone call, either to secure good will or a cash payment. And for Ricco to succeed, secrecy would be vital. Getting evidence against Lennie “the Icepick” Cartolino would be no easy task. And it would be very, very risky.

  Victor, standing, was working with the medical tape on Ricco's chest. Ricco was seated in an office chair in front of him.

  "Do I gotta press a button or something?” asked Ricco.

  "No. It's voice activated. Anthony, this is the latest state-of-the-art technology. All you've got to do is go to Lennie, hang with him for a few hours like you usually do, and guide the conversation the way we told you."

  "If Lennie suspects anything, he'll kill me on the spot. Just, aha! Something don't sound right. Then out with the gun, and bang! No more Anthony Ricco."

  Kavanagh, seated at his desk watching Victor tape up Ricco, chuckled.

  Ricco looked over at him. “You think it's funny? Huh? You think it's funny, Mr. Columbia Law Bigshot? Lennie didn't get to be number three man in the Giovocchi family by being Mr. Nice Guy. He's killed maybe a half dozen guys, maybe more. He thinks I'm ratting him out in any manner, I'm deader than yesterday's newspaper. Even if nobody there believes he's right, nobody inside the family can protect me. The whole Mafia and the whole New York City Police Department can't protect me. You maybe might punish him afterward, which ain't gonna do me a whole lotta good, but you can't protect me."

  "Calm down,” said Kavanagh. “I know you're taking a big risk, Mr. Ricco. I appreciate it. We all appreciate it."

  "I don't see why you just don't pick up Lennie and question him, you think you got the goods on him. Why do you gotta use me for? I've been with you guys for years. Been loyal and done good work. Now you're risking it all—and me—when all you gotta do is pick him up and question him."

  "Because it's like you said, Anthony. He's the number three man. You just don't pick up somebody like that and expect them to talk by asking them a few gentle questions. And if we were to get a little rough, and he still walks free, there'll be trouble galore."

  Ricco snorted, then turned his attention back to watching the microphone being taped onto his chest.

  "This can't electrocute me, can it?” he asked.

  "No,” said Victor. “It doesn't have that kind of juice."

  "What about a shock? Can it give me a shock?"

  "No."

  "What about if it got wet or something? Like if it rained and the water got through my shirt and my pants?"

  "Anthony, it's perfectly safe. It can't electrocute you, it can't shock you, it can't morph into a magical sword and cut your heart out. It's just a harmless little microphone—a harmless, tiny, itty-bitty microphone—with a harmless, insulated little wire that goes down to a harmless little tape recorder."

  Unconvinced, Ricco said, “It's electronic."

  "So's a transistor radio. Or a hearing aid. Or a cell phone. Believe me, it isn't going to electrocute or shock you."

  Ricco nodded, but the expression on his face indicated something other than satisfaction.

  "There,” said Victor a moment later. “You're all taped up. You can put on your shirts. We'll see how it looks."

  "It shouldn't be visible,” said Ricco.

  "That's what I mean."

  Ricco put on his undershirt, then his regular shirt. Victor and Kavanagh studied him like cats looking at a small hole they'd just seen a mouse run into.

  "It don't show,” said Kavanagh. “Looks smooth. How does it feel, Pete?"

  Victor put his hand on Ricco's chest, drew it up and down.

  "You can feel the medical tape,” said Victor. “But you'd have to feel it; you can't see any bulge."

  "Any bulge,” said Ricco, “I'm dead."

  Kavanagh glanced at his wristwatch. “Lennie ought to be arriving at the Old Country Social Club right about now,” he said. “You get what we need tonight, it'll be all over for Lennie and you'll no longer be at risk."

  "Except from other family members when they find out I'm the guy what hel
ped you get the goods on him."

  "Nobody's going to find out. We know how to keep these things secret."

  "You think!” Ricco started to laugh at the idea, but then remembered his own role in the business and decided it wasn't so funny. “You can't keep no secrets in this burg."

  Kavanagh looked at his wristwatch again.

  "Okay, okay,” said Ricco. “I agreed to do it, so I'll do it. I'll go, okay?"

  He stood, grabbed his blazer off another chair, and shook it on. He ran his hand over his chest, feeling the tape and the bump made by the tiny microphone beneath his shirts. He mouthed a quiet obscenity.

  "Just forget it's there,” said Victor. “You think about it, Lennie will know something's up. Just be your usual self."

  "Uh-huh.” The tone was skeptical.

  "Maybe if you wore a tie."

  "Me? A tie?"

  "Forget it. You don't need it anyway. You're going to be great."

  Suddenly the office door came open. A husky man in his forties, wearing a black dress coat and a gray fedora, walked in, shutting the door behind him. He had the face and suspicious eyes of a bloodhound, the easy pace of a man who knew his own importance.

  Kavanagh had jumped up, almost like an army private snapping to attention, and the other two men had also straightened, looking attentive and sober.

  "He ready to go?” asked the newcomer.

  "Yes, sir,” said Victor. “The mike and recorder are set."

  "Good. All goes well, we should get all the evidence we need on Mr. Cartolino."

  "I didn't know you were coming here, sir,” said Kavanagh.

  The newcomer smiled. “What's-a-matter, Bill? You embarrassed to have me in your big fancy office?"

  "Oh, no sir, Mr. Giovocchi. It's just, well, people will see you here."

  "How many times you appeared in court for me, Bill? A dozen times, maybe, huh? You think anybody in New York City don't know you're a so-called mob lawyer? Get real."

  Joey Giovocchi walked over to Ricco, stood in front of him, studied him closely. Finally, he nodded in approval.

  "I don't see any trace of it,” he said. “As long as you don't make no mistakes, Anthony, you should do fine."