Cold Fury

by T. M. Goeglein

  Strozzini and Battuta were oil and water and hated each other from the beginning.

  If Battuta’s guys were slow to collect a debt, then Strozzini was slow to pay Battuta’s guys, and then Battuta’s guys exercised their knuckles on Strozzini’s guys, and so on. Nitti was tempted to erase them both and start over, but he had selected them because they were so good at what they did—Strozzini could pinch a penny until it squealed, while Battuta was a born killer with no conscience—and because they commanded the loyalty of large gangs of their own. He needed to get them under control, but if he focused on one versus the other, he would lose the edge of impartiality so critical to his stature—and that’s when he thought of Nunzio. He remembered the little man’s outsized ability to control sour personalities, and while he held no real hope that Nunzio could tame Strozzini and Battuta, he thought it was at least worth a try.

  The end of Prohibition ended Nunzio’s molasses business but he had made enough money to retire from the Outfit and become an actual baker, which he found that he loved. My great-grandmother, Ottorina, ran the front of the store, and with a wink and a nod, they offered a specialty: molasses cookies. Grandpa Enzo was a little kid, already working in the kitchen, and here I learned something strange. Apparently, Nunzio named it Rispoli & Sons, plural, because there had been another son—Grandpa Enzo had a younger brother whose name and fate are not recorded, only the fact that he existed. In any event, Nitti asked Nunzio to intercede between Strozzini and Battuta, and Nunzio agreed. Only he, Nitti, and the two men were present at the meeting. The notebook is vague on details, stating only that Strozzini and Battuta left arm in arm, professing undying loyalty to each other. Whatever Nitti witnessed was enough—from that day on, Nunzio was the Outfit’s official feud breaker and peacemaker. He took the title counselor-at-large and settled disputes at Club Molasses, which evolved from a speakeasy to a quasi courtroom.

  There’s nothing written in the notebook that explains Nunzio’s methods for making hardened criminals make peace and get along. There is, however, a scrap torn from some sort of history book stapled to a page. It’s old and yellow, taped together from many pieces as if someone shredded it, thought about it, and reconstructed it. I could hear my heart pounding in my ears as I read it, because I was reading about me.

  “After a grueling trip, the team of researchers reached the remote Sicilian village of Buondiavolo in 1906, set among arid hills at the southernmost tip of the island, which consisted of the ancestors of an obscure tribe captured in Egypt after Alexander the Great’s troops engaged it in a skirmish. Alexander was amazed to watch the fierce, outnumbered clan fight completely without emotion. There were no battle cries or shouts of anger. Meanwhile, his troops were intimidated to the point of inaction; had Alexander not ordered reinforcements, they would have fallen one by one from sheer fright. Seeing an opportunity, he made peace with the tribal leader, the most vicious yet serene warrior among that people. Alexander was intrigued by the chief’s eyes, which were described as ‘small circles of ice lit by chips of burning gold.’ The chief spoke of how it had passed down from the Pharaoh—that the rare salts found in the precious metal were not only life-sustaining, but bestowed otherworldly powers. Producing a satchel of shining sand, he declared that only the tribal leader had the privilege to eat gold. Alexander made a show of respect for this custom, as he did toward all savages whom he conquered, and absorbed the tribe into his army, making it an elite unit, first to engage difficult enemies. The last place he sent it was Sicily to destroy rebellious Greeks, but then he died prematurely. His empire crumbled, history stumbled forward, and the tribe remained in the place that became Buondiavolo.

  “Researchers found modern residents of the village to be mild and pleasant, even when aroused to anger. One team member, Dr. J. Reginald Huff, inadvertently offended a young man when he failed to remove his hat in the presence of the man’s mother. As Dr. Huff reported, ‘Smiling brightly, the lad explained precisely what he would do to my intestines with a dull fish knife if I did not right the situation. The chill blue of his eyes and serenity of his demeanor terrified me to the point where I would have doffed not only my hat, but any other article of clothing, had he so ordered.’ The team experienced it again and again—calm rage that froze a person in terror, making him utterly complacent. As Dr. Huff noted, ‘I’ve always been terribly frightened of knives. When the young man invoked a fish knife to my belly, it was as if he were reading my fear.’

  “What’s more, there was a rumor of an even more mysterious property to the phenomenon. Supposedly, there was a family known for its blue eyes flecked with the same gold as their Egyptian ancestor. These people, it was said, were capable in times of extreme pain or passion of emitting a charge or spark from that fearful gaze. While this attribute was not witnessed by the research team, it did note several volatile electrical storms happening in and around Buondiavolo. It was also noted that every home, without exception, bore a lightning-scarred weather vane.

  “Over the centuries, residents mixed with a host of conquerors—Romans, Byzantines, Normans—until at last they were Sicilian. This ‘thinning of the blood’ is the basis of the research team’s theory of why not everyone displays the unusual trait; in fact, it is not even consistent in families. One man may possess it while his brother does not. Inhabitants recognize it as something to be feared and respected, and many who have it hold positions of authority. The local term is ‘il ghiaccio furioso’—pronounced phonetically as ‘il gee-ah-cho fury-oh-so.’ In English, it loosely translates to ‘the cold fury.’”

  Which Uncle Buddy does not possess, and neither does Lou.

  Great-Grandpa Nunzio, yes; Grandpa Enzo, check; my dad, for sure.

  And me—oh, hell yeah.

  It’s like I knew what it was before I knew what it was called or where it came from. The first time I experienced it was at age thirteen when Mandi Fishbaum called me a slut. I’ve never forgotten how I radiated that cold fury through my eyes and Mandi winced as if something had bitten her brain. I could feel her terror—I was channeling it—which was horrible for her, but only made me stronger. In fact, the more I thought about it, a strange recollection bubbled to the surface. As I stared at Mandi, a vivid image had appeared between us of her mother connected to a chemotherapy machine—it was as if we were sharing the picture in our minds. In the years since the incident, Mandi’s mom did indeed die from cancer, and it devastated her. I hadn’t seen the future—worse, I had peered into the buried part of Mandi’s soul where terror lived.

  Looking at the notebook, I knew that there was something inside of me that absorbed a person’s deepest fears—the ones kept carefully locked away at the bottom of a soul—and projected them back in psychic HD. The creepy-crawlies normally left free to roam a subconscious were dredged to the top of a person’s brain and projected back from my gaze. Lou once told me that all real fighters have something burning at their essential core, and that it was inside of me too. Remembering it made me realize that, like boxing, I was born with an innate ability that meant little unless I could learn to control it.

  I pronounced the words silently, feeling the truth of them.

  Ghiacco furioso—“gee-ah-cho fury-oh-so.”

  Grandpa Enzo and my dad felt it too.

  According to the notebook, each in turn served as counselor-at-large to broker internal peace for the Outfit. Grandpa Enzo took over after Nunzio died in 1963, just as organized crime was rocked to its roots. A New York gangster named Joe Valachi tried to avoid the death penalty by testifying before Congress about the secret inner workings of the Mafia. He discussed extortion, heroin trafficking, and murder after murder after murder. Before his testimony, the public doubted that organized crime existed; when he was done talking, its rotten underbelly was fully exposed. Valachi committed the cardinal sin of Mafiosi—he ratted—and mobsters across the country came under intense scrutiny. The Outfit receded further into the shadows, growing greedier and more violent among its own a
s it became harder to earn a dishonest living. Grandpa Enzo had his work cut out for him, and it affected him in an unusual way.

  He began to have doubts.

  Some of them are scribbled in the margins.

  He wonders about morality, and “truth vs. loyalty,” and “the future of my family.”

  My grandpa realized that his role in the Outfit would affect the children he would have someday, and it gave him pause. He was still a young man and considered quitting, except there was no quitting—once you were in, you were in. The only ways out were death or talking to the Feds and begging for protection. The Outfit’s attitude toward rats is captured in a newspaper item taped to a page, dated 1969. It details the impending execution of convicted hit man Eddie “The Exterminator” O’Hara, who brutally beheaded an Outfit associate as well as his wife and children. Unrepentant, O’Hara is quoted as saying, “The bum was a rat, and rats breed. You can’t kill just one. You gotta kill the whole damn family.” In other words, turning informant wasn’t a healthy option, and so my grandpa continued on. The notebook makes it clear that my dad and uncle knew about his role in the Outfit, that my dad’s inheritance was evident from childhood, and that he was destined for that role too. The inverse was true of Uncle Buddy. He obviously didn’t possess ghiaccio furioso—in fact, he didn’t possess much more than a loyal nature and the ability to take a punch, and the loyal part was BS.

  Early on, my grandpa and dad began to keep secrets from Uncle Buddy, with the notebook being a prime example.

  My uncle thought they were excluding him and grew to hate them for it.

  They did it to protect him from the Outfit because they loved him.

  My dad’s concern for his brother is contained in a letter to me, folded into the notebook. It’s dated a year before the disappearance, which means he’d been considering telling me about our family for a long time. Its tone is apologetic and vague—he regrets what I’ve probably learned from the notebook but can’t state anything explicitly for fear of the letter falling into the wrong hands. He says that he began as counselor-at-large before my grandpa died (I wondered why he often worked late—who has to work late baking cookies?) and mentions that he and my mom have a plan to “free the family,” which must be a reference to their whispered conversations. He tells me to watch out for Uncle Buddy (good advice) but also to watch over him (not going to happen) and then relates an odd anecdote that I think was an attempt to tell me something without saying it. Apparently, Nunzio had a special way with animals (like Lou with Harry) and kept two unusual pets.

  A pair of rats.

  The big gray type with worm tails that dine and swim in the sewers of Chicago.

  Nunzio called them Antonio and Cleopatra.

  He knew that if he fed them and provided a warm place to live—Club Molasses—they would guard their territory, family, and all things Rispoli with ferocity. Antonio and Cleopatra bred and bred, and soon they and their offspring were patrolling the speakeasy like stealthy packs of tiny Dobermans. I have no doubt it was Antonio and Cleopatra’s great-grandchildren who sensed a Rispoli in trouble and saved me at the train station.

  Antonio—Anthony—is my dad’s name.

  Was he named after a rat?

  Is that what he was trying to tell me—that he had become one?

  So far, it’s a question that even the notebook can’t answer. What endless hours of reading has made clear, however, is that the Outfit has no code of honor, no ethnic allegiance, and no loyalty. There is only the accumulation of power and its twin purposes of making money and destroying people who try to take that money away. I’m sure that’s why Great-Grandpa Nunzio began writing things down—he did it to protect himself, by recording secrets about and evidence against other Outfit members in case he ever needed leverage.

  But then he went further.

  In great detail, he documented the locations of secret escape routes all over Chicago, while also providing the confidential contact numbers for nameless, dangerous allies and the passwords needed to access them, putting a shadow army of homicidal thugs at his fingertips. It was a practice carried on by Grandpa Enzo and my dad; they each updated those invaluable Outfit secrets to their respective generations. And then there’s the last chapter, “Volta,” written in some form of incomprehensible Italian, and the mystery key taped to the inside back cover—I’m sure the power contained in those words and that jagged hunk of brass is considerable. Why else would they be disguised and unexplained? It was that very realization—the cumulative power of its pages—that turned on a lightbulb for me. The notebook isn’t a family history, and it isn’t an archive of criminal evidence.

  It’s an instruction manual for operating the Outfit, from its secretive, singular boss at the very top of the organization, down to its soldiers on the street.

  There is a kind of danger on those pages that can strike and kill quickly, quietly, and efficiently.

  It’s a leather-bound nuclear weapon, and I won’t hesitate to use it.

  17

  AFTER WHAT SEEMED like an eternity of running and fighting for my life, making it back to school was a relief, but also surreal, as if I’d stepped into the calm, orderly existence of that previous Sara Jane. I was standing outside of homeroom, my face knit with hatred as I thought about how I planned to deploy the notebook’s power on that masked, lurching freak, when someone said hi.

  “Hey,” I growled without looking up.

  That was how I said hello to Max when I finally saw him.

  After a whirlwind of fleeing, punching, and reading, I’d cocooned into something slightly less than human—a defensive, monosyllabic armadillo girl, ready to fight or flee at a moment’s notice. But when I looked up at Max’s grin and warm brown eyes, my heart began to beat again. I was so happy to see him that it was almost impossible to stifle a hug. He was too, but not romantic happy; his expression was mainly friendly, and it hurt as much as getting punched by Ski Mask Guy.

  “Jeez,” he said, inspecting my face. “You got hit hard, huh? Is that why you were out for so long?”

  I had already told Max that I was a boxer. He knew I sparred regularly, and I went with it. I told him about a tough opponent I faced at Windy City, how the freak dodged and weaved, but that I intended to take him down in the future.

  “A rematch, huh?” he said.

  “Definitely,” I said. “It’s inevitable.”

  One of the best things about Fep Prep is that it allows my mind to take a much-needed rest from my troubles, and being with Max only made it better. We ate lunch together and talked about nothing in particular—his week, what I missed at school, what we each had planned for summer break. It felt so good, like my brain was purging itself of urgency and fear, and I said, “Hey, what about Ten Seconds to Zero? Did you see it?”

  Max’s face changed. It went from relaxed to concerned, and he said, “Movies . . . that reminds me. Have you talked to Doug?”

  I shook my head. “I haven’t seen him yet. Why, what happened?”

  “Something bad,” Max said solemnly. “Something very bad.”

  He explained how Doug had brought his precious About Face screenplay to a discussion in social sciences class, since, in Doug’s words, the film “offers a succinct analysis of nonviolence that is still applicable to our geopolitical world,” or something. He was crossing campus when Bully the Kid spotted him, and at first it seemed like the same old thing, with Billy calling him idiotic names while Doug went into emotional lockdown and Billy’s entourage of morons stood around yukking it up. But this time was different. This time, for whatever reason—maybe it was confidence from having just discussed About Face or maybe he’d finally had enough—Doug had the nerve to say something. When there was a lull in the taunting, he cleared his throat and said, “Your eyes are really close together.”

  Billy paused, scrunched up his monkey forehead, and said, “Huh?”

  “Close-set eyes,” Doug said. “They’re a genetic indicator of mental disabi
lities.”

  Someone snickered and Billy’s neck turned red. He moved closer to Doug and said, “Mental dis— Wait, are you calling me a retard?”

  “From a cognitive function standpoint, ‘retard’ is an unacceptable term,” Doug said. “But using it as slang certainly applies.”

  Billy’s eyes got smaller as he said, “Is that a yes?”

  Doug said, “Possibly.”

  Billy smiled in a slow, toothy curl and said, “It’s on!” and shoved Doug to the ground. Doug rolled like a human burrito and struggled to his feet. Billy pushed him again, and the screenplay skittered across the grass. “I won’t fight back!” Doug huffed. “Push me all you want! I won’t fight!” But Billy wasn’t listening. Instead he was holding the screenplay, staring at the title page.

  “About Face,” he said, with that same evil lip curl. “A . . . butt . . . face. A butt-face. Hey, is this your life story?”

  “Give it back,” Doug said, lunging at it, with Billy acting like a toreador, stepping aside and shoving the fat, clumsy bull to his hands and knees.

  “A butt . . . ,” Billy said, putting his foot on Doug’s big rear end. “Face!” he squealed, pushing Doug flat to the ground like a puffy starfish. Billy sat on him and turned to the first page. “Chapter one . . . I am born!” he said, mock reading. “The doctor slaps my face, thinking it’s my ass!” While the pinheads laughed, Billy ceremoniously ripped off the first page and threw it over his shoulder.

  “Don’t!” Doug said, struggling to get up. “Please!”

  “Chapter two,” Billy said. “Mom tells me I have shit for brains and I say, well duh! What do you expect? I have a butt for a head!” He dug a handful of pages out of the screenplay and threw them into the air.

  “No!” Doug screamed, writhing helplessly beneath Billy’s bulked-up body. And then there was more laughter, more pages torn out and thrown away, and by the time Billy got to chapter ten, the screenplay had scattered like dry leaves in the Chicago wind. No one could have caught the pages and no one tried, because only Doug loved them. When Billy was done, Doug was done too, unable to hold back tears. It was what Billy had been working and waiting for all year. When Doug began to sob, Billy leaped to his feet, threw his arms in the air, and exploded into a victorious hyena laugh. Doug was an inert, weeping pile, his eyes squeezed tight, and was still lying there when the last gaper finally drifted away.