The Vendetta

by Thomas Laird

  “I suppose they’ll do as bodyguards. We were sorta used to looking out for Ben, that’s all,” Charlie said to Carmen. “I wouldn’t want any of that bullshit going down again…I mean what happened to your husband. We won’t let it happen again.”

  “You just take Tony Calabrese off the board and it’ll be fine.”

  They walked toward the door, opened it and walked outside. Cordero and Romano were already posted there.

  “Who told you to set up out here?” Chris asked them.

  “The old lady, Carmen,” Romano answered.

  Cordero had his eyes on the street.

  “Don’t ever call her that again,” Chris commanded. “She’s the boss. She’s the new capo.”

  The two bodyguards didn’t answer either of the twins. They looked a bit confused, but they seemed to accept the new leader of their crew.

  Even if she was just a broad.

  *

  Carmen figured on remodeling the house. She was going to start with Nick’s room. She was going to design it the way it would’ve looked if he’d become a teenager, instead of dying out on the sidestreet.

  There would be no vengeance on Johansen, the man everyone assumed to be the triggerman for Ben. Who else would’ve had the balls to pull off that kind of job with all those assorted hitmen and cops in one room? It had to be the ex-Army guy, Carmen knew.

  He’d done her a favor. Things were headed downhill with Ben as the capo. He’d fucked up every move he tried to make on Calabrese, but now it was Carmen’s turn. If the old goat hadn’t dropped that flute of champagne, she’d already be in line for the new Boss of the Outfit. It really wasn’t so impossible. She knew all the moves. The Outfit was in her bloodline. There were female bosses in Latin America and in Europe, and it was time to make everything a brand- new ballgame.

  She wandered the house naked. There was no reason to get dressed again after she took off the black dress and after she stripped off the underwear, as well. It felt sort of free, and it was the first time in her life she felt unbound by all the men in her life. First it had been her father, and then it was Benny Bats. Her husband. The Outfit captain. The would-be, wannabe Boss of Bosses.

  She was going to live Ben’s dream for herself, but she wouldn’t make the mistakes he’d made. She wouldn’t wind up with half of her head blown off, either. Ben was impetuous. He did silly, unnecessary shit all the time.

  She had something out of the fridge for supper. It was getting late, and it had been a long day already. Carmen was exhausted, spent.

  There could be new lovers, now, without the threat of her husband finding out about her new trysts. Maybe she’d fuck both of the twins. The idea had occurred to her at the wake. It would be exhilarating to take on young men. Ben had lost his virility, even though he could pull off a decent performance occasionally. Her orgasms had always been faked, just before he was wasted at the Ambassador. It’d be invigorating to ball those two young stallions. It might even make her look and feel younger than her age.

  Carmen stretched out on the bed. She didn’t throw a sheet or a blanket over herself. She went out like the legendary light in fewer than ten minutes.

  *

  About two, Cordero and Romano were waiting for their replacements to show up. They were worn out. It had been a long day for the two of them, as well.

  Andy Romano heard the pop before he felt the bullet tear through the middle of his chest. Cordero went for his own piece, but he was too late. There were two more muted explosions, and the bullets caught him in the neck and the head, and he went down right on top of Romano.

  The door was locked, but it was picked and opened in less than thirty seconds.

  A tall man dressed in all black strode through the entry. He wore a black ski mask, and only his eyes could be seen.

  He knew where her bedroom was. He’d been in the house during the wake when no one was around. Breaking in in broad daylight never seemed to bother him because B and E, along with murder, was his trade. Calabrese had brought him in from Belgium, and he was very expensive indeed. But all the talk about him was that he never failed.

  No one seemed to know his name, and that was the way he kept it. He was paid in cash, so he never needed checks to be made out to him.

  He walked upstairs toward the bedroom. He was certain it was Carmen’s because the closets were full of female attire. Apparently, her husband kept his rags in what was probably their dead son’s room. Calabrese had given him the whole story.

  There was no sound of a footfall. He was noiseless on his ascent. He pulled the garrote from his pocket. Then he entered the room.

  He required that they were awake when he attacked them with a noose. It was his payoff, other than the money.

  He saw her naked form on the mattress. She hadn’t covered herself. It was a warm night, he figured. No reason for a blanket or a covering of any kind.

  The body was lush, ripe. He almost regretted what he was about to do.

  But then he lay down on the bed next to her. She purred as if she thought her husband had finally come to bed.

  She turned toward him and opened her eyes. And then she tried to scream.

  His hand was over her mouth in a blur. Carmen could feel the power in his grip.

  With his other hand, he yanked her by the hair until she was sitting up. She struggled quite strongly, he thought, but he got behind her and dropped the noose over her head, and the cord made full purchase upon her white throat.

  When he snapped the cord tautly against her delicate flesh, he positioned his knee against the small of her back. He was in a crouched position behind her, now, and his leverage was lethal.

  Blood streamed down the front of her breasts in the dimness of the bedroom. She could not make a sound because he’d severed her larynx in the next few seconds. Then Carmen Rossi went completely limp, and it was finished. He let go of her and removed himself from behind her, and her sitting-upright body flopped on the mattress.

  The bleeding was copious at first, but it gradually diminished.

  He had another hundred thousand coming, the other half of his fee. Calabrese had instructions on where the drop-off at O’Hare would be, and he warned the Boss of Bosses that Tony C would be next after the capo’s wife if he tried anything cute at the airport, or anywhere else.

  He thought what a pity it was that a prime piece of flesh like Carmen Rossi had to be wasted. Killing women wasn’t something he enjoyed doing.

  Unless the price was right.

  He supposed he could’ve commanded far more from the Outfit Boss, but he didn’t want to create any bad blood with these people. He’d done work for the Italians in Sicily before, and he was highly skilled enough so that they were not prone to try to cancel their debts to him by killing him. They found him useful so they never got aggressive.

  He touched Carmen’s bloodied nipple with the tip of a latex-covered forefinger. He smeared the blood over the front and bottom of the generous piece of flesh.

  Then he went into the john and washed off the blood. He cleaned the noose, too.

  He took one last look at the carnage. He pocketed the garrote and then promptly made his way out of the brick home and walked past the two corpses on the porch and made his way down the street toward his parked Mercedes. It was two blocks south from the home of the better half, recently deceased, wife of Ben Rossi.

  The one-time capo, Benny Bats, was due to meet the bottom of his grave in a few hours.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  EPILOGUE

  The Boss was flying solo, all his capos departed. He’d outlived them all, and it looked like he’d outlive the old lady, his wife, the cranky old bitch with her hypochondria.

  With all his manpower loss he had to recruit and start building a new series of crews to take over for Bonadura and Bertelli and Carbone. And for Ben Rossi.

  He had a sit-down with the Balboa twins on the Boss’s turf in Lake Forest, out in the splendor of the elite suburb by Lake Michigan. The Ba
lboas were impressed by his digs, and he offered them each a Cuban cigar to seal the deal.

  “I want you to rebuild on top of that fucking disaster in Cicero,” he told them as they sat among all his books in the lavish den. “I want you to correct the error I made by letting that weasel Rossi lead your old crew. You see what happens when you think with your dick instead of thinking with the bigger head.”

  They gave him the expected chuckle.

  “You two think you can handle this tall order?”

  “Yeah, sure,” Chris replied with a puff of very expensive smoke.

  “Sure,” Charlie added. He gagged on the cigar. He’d never smoked anything in his life except a little coke and a little weed. He didn’t particularly care for tobacco, but he smoked occasionally because it was the social thing to do, like drinking and drugs.

  “Whatsa matter? No taste in the finer things of life?” the Boss smiled.

  “I’m not much of a smoker, I guess,” he replied.

  “It’s bad for your health…I hear you were both good earners. Is that true?”

  They nodded as usual, together.

  “You’re like mirror reflections, you know?”

  “We’ve been told,” Chris smiled.

  “You’re two good looking boys. Bad business, your old capo, but I ain’t going to talk poorly about the dead.”

  “Yeah. It’s too bad about Carmen, too,” Chris said. “I told her not to let those two bums be her bodyguard.”

  “Yeah…well, it’s done now,” Tony C said. “She’s gone and so is her old man, which paves an opportunity for you two. I hope you’ll take advantage of this chance. You can make a lot of money for me and for you.”

  The interview had ended. Calabrese stood up as if to dismiss his two new capos—they were to be equals in rank. Tony C knew that was the only way it would work with the twins. They might as well have been connected at the hips. They were that close, it looked like.

  The Balboas left the drive, in Lake Forest, together in Chris’s Merc. It was a big old boat of a ride, but Chris loved it. He’d rebuilt it and even put in a new motor. It was the smoothest, most powerful V-8 he’d ever driven.

  As they pulled away from the estate Charlie looked over at his brother behind the wheel.

  “That old motherfucker is first on the list. He’s dead.”

  *

  Jimmy Parisi was doing the laundry in a neighborhood laundromat. His own washer and dryer were on the fritz, and the serviceman wouldn’t be at the house until tomorrow. He watched the clothes tumble in the dryer. It was almost mesmerizing, he thought.

  A little blonde was the only other patron in the place. She looked over at Parisi from time to time, and she smiled once. She was around Jimmy’s age, but she was wearing a rock. She was married, looked like. He had a thing about married women. They were out of bounds, always had been. And he never cheated on Erin. He had never had the desire; that was the extent of his love for her. No one was even in her ballpark. They would certainly still be together if she hadn’t succumbed to the cancer.

  He’d been lucky. He’d been loved by the only woman he’d really been in love with. It figured he had to lose her. Everything you really desired was inevitably taken away from you. That was how it worked. If they found out that you had something or someone who was exceptional, they were taken from you. It sounded cynical to Jimmy, himself, but he really believed that was how things operated in this life.

  The blonde looked over again. She was only sitting about ten feet away.

  “I haven’t seen you before,” she said.

  “My machines are busted,” he told her.

  “That’s too bad…My name is Sally.”

  She was likely in her mid-thirties. She had a pretty face and one of those pixie hair- cuts, extremely short. It looked good on her, though. She had a thin face, but it wasn’t too long. The cut suited her.

  “Oh,” she remarked. She raised her hand and looked at her wedding ring. “I’m a widow. I wouldn’t want you to get the wrong idea.”

  “I’m a widower. I don’t wear the ring anymore. It just didn’t seem right, after she was gone.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. What’d she die from, if it’s not too personal a question?”

  “Cancer.”

  “I’m really sorry.”

  “My name is Jimmy Parisi.”

  “How ‘bout another personal…what do you do?”

  “I’m a homicide detective.”

  “Really?”

  He dug out his badge and ID.

  “You killed anyone lately?” he smiled.

  “No. Not lately.”

  They laughed, even though Parisi knew repartee wasn’t his strong suit.

  “You had lunch, yet?” he asked Sally.

  “No. As a matter of fact, I was going to get a bite, soon.”

  “How about we go together, if I’m not being too forward?”

  “I was wondering if you were even going to talk to me. I know this is kind of awkward. I’ve only been a widow for nine months.”

  “That’s long enough,” he told her.

  “Homicide, huh? Caught any killers, lately?” she grinned mischievously.

  “Lately the bad guys have been killing themselves. Convenient for us, but I rather like to jail them instead of look at them on the floor, somewhere.”

  “I don’t know how you can do that kinda job. Doesn’t it get to you?”

  “Yeah, once in a while. But it needs to be done…your clothes are done in the dryer.”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  She got up and opened the cylinder and began folding the clothes and placing them carefully in her laundry basket. Parisi’s dryer chose that moment to cease and desist and he began to fold his own stuff next to Sally.

  “I’m ready when you are,” she said.

  “About one more minute,” he replied.

  She looked at him as he was finishing.

  “What do you miss most about your wife?” she queried.

  “You name it. Everything.”

  “Me, too, about Bill, my husband. My former husband, I mean. What was her name?”

  “Erin.”

  “I can’t believe I’m asking you all these intimate questions,” she stammered. There was a slight blush in her cheeks.

  “I kinda like it. Don’t stop…you ready?”

  “Where would you like to go?” she asked.

  “I got a place in mind,” Jimmy told her.

  “Make it cheap. I’m living on one paycheck.”

  “It’s on me,” he returned. “And it’s not White Castle or McDonald’s.”

  “I’m not high maintenance. They’re all right.”

  “You ought to be high maintenance.”

  She blushed again. He liked that she had a tell. He liked the way she responded to him.

  “You can leave your car here and I’ll drive, if you trust me enough,” he chuckled.

  “If you can’t trust a cop…I don’t have a car. Too expensive. I’m CTA, a bus person, all the way.”

  They walked outside into the June sunshine. It was in the mid-seventies, and the summer was only just beginning.

  He’d taken the ride with Doc to Cicero when the locals called them regarding Carmen Rossi. It’d been a pro piece of work. There were no prints, no evidence at all. It was the way it had been going as of late. Then he tossed the thought away. No murders today.

  He liked Sally. It was his day off. He would return to his version of the mean streets another day, but not now.

  They loaded their baskets in his trunk, outside.

  “You’re going to like this place,” he told her as they got into Parisi’s car. “Greatest thin crust on the southside.”

  “You must be talking about Carlo’s on 87th Street,” she laughed.

  “You are from the neighborhood. How’d I miss seeing you around?”

  “I could ask you the same thing,” Sally told him with a straight face.

  He really liked
that short hairdo.

  *

  One of the guys brought him the mail. He was in the library making phone calls, but he was between conversations.

  Calabrese reached out and took the letters from him. He couldn’t remember the guy’s name. He figured it was just old age fucking with him. Pretty soon he’d be in some home and his brains would turn to Cream of Wheat. Had to happen sooner or later. Old age wasn’t for sissies.

  He opened the first four letters, and it was all junk.

  But the fifth and final piece of mail was postmarked from somewhere in Idaho. He didn’t recognize the town or the city.

  There was a small lump that he could feel outside the envelope.

  “The fuck is this?” he murmured.

  He opened it.

  He recognized it immediately.

  It was a lone .44 slug. The magnum kind.

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