When Umberto/Humphrey returned to Italy in 1972, to bury his father, the village was no longer a village. It had survived the invasion of the Eighth Army, but not the automobile, television, and prosperity. “Only the Church endures,” the old priest had assured him, but Umberto DiEbola thought that another durable institution, La Cosa Nostra, might rival the Church. He was no longer so sure of this.
Even the name Humphrey hadn't lasted for long. As young and clever DiEbola rose in the mob hierarchy in Detroit, he had come to be known simply as Fat, or the Fat Man. That was the doing of his best friend, Carmine. If Carmine called you Fat, everybody else called you Fat. In time this cruel epithet had taken on a kind of dignity, even respect, because of the man behind it and the man behind him. Then one day, in the space of an hour, Fat became Humphrey again. And now, since no one remembered the ridiculous comic-strip character, the name had even more dignity and respect than Carmine. Because it was soon apparent to all but a few disappointed Carmine followers that Humphrey was the man who should have been running things all along.
Yes, it was just one day, a matter of seconds. Carmine was riding in the backseat of his dark brown Cadillac, on his way to work, when the unthinkable happened. The regular driver was sick, so Guiliano Valentia was told to drive. He had recently immigrated and didn't know the city at all, had hardly been out of the compound at the Krispee Chips factory where he was living in the dormitory with the other young immigrants, but he was reputed to be a good driver. The street on which the factory was located was narrow, with parking on both sides, which meant that the Cadillac traveled a narrow single lane. The block was very long, and they had barely entered and started down this narrow lane when a van pulled out at the last minute and Guiliano swerved to crash into a parked car. They weren't going very fast, of course, and the damage was not significant, nobody was hurt, but when Carlo, the bodyguard, angrily leaped out of the front seat, he was immediately cut down by a shotgun blast.
Guiliano tried to scramble out his door, but the Cadillac was too close to the car it had struck, and he couldn't get the door open far enough. Someone fired a shotgun into the front seat, hitting Guiliano, literally blowing him off the seat so that he fell down and was jammed between the partially opened door and the front seat. Then another blast was fired into the backseat, and someone actually got into the car and leaned over the seat to shoot poor Carmine again and again, the car rocking and thundering from the blasts. Then the assailant ran away.
Guiliano survived. Having instinctively raised his right arm and then falling half out of the car and into a kind of protective crevice where the killer couldn't easily get another shot at him was what had saved him, although he lost his right eye and the hearing in his right ear, and his right arm was practically useless. He insisted that the killer was a rat, a small man wearing a rat mask and a hat. At first he said that it was the rat from Carmine's office, which was a cunning man-sized steel sculpture of a shotgun-toting rat—a piece of modern art that was at once humorous and mocking and strangely powerful. Carmine's wife had bought it for him from a well-known artist, a man who went by a single name: Jabe.
Guiliano's confusion was understandable, in a way. He was not a sophisticated young man. He had seen killers in the old country who carried shotguns on slings, bodyguards actually. And he had seen the rat statue on his single visit to the boss's office. It had frightened him, or at least had caught his imagination. Where he came from, statues were sometimes reputed to have magical, or religious, powers; they wept, bled, and performed miracles. Another witness on the street, however, had told the police that he thought the killer was a woman, wearing a Mickey Mouse mask and a fedora. “Ran like a girl,” said the witness, one Markis Belgravy, a resident of a house close to the scene. “She run and jump in another van, headed in the other direction, toward Jefferson. Then they hauled ass.” The van that had caused the accident was abandoned, of course, and it had been stolen just an hour earlier, not a mile away.
Carmine had been dead for twenty minutes when the Fat Man was told. One of the secretaries at Krispee Chips had called him. The men who should have called him, Carmine's other bodyguards and assistants, were being questioned by the police and otherwise too rattled to act with judicious dispatch. Fat heard the news on the phone in the breakfast room of his home in Grosse Pointe. He was having a kind of second breakfast, a midmorning snack, of menudo and crusty Italian bread. His cook, Chef Pepe, made a very good menudo, although he disapproved of his employer's instruction that he must use the various chilies sparingly. Fat was very fond of doctoring the menudo himself, with bottled sauces. Currently, he liked a piquin sauce from Mexico, called Salsa Picante de la Viuda, which he referred to as “the Widow,” his soft baritone lingering on the final syllable in a whispery mock horror-movie style while he widened his eyes theatrically. He also liked a habanero sauce that came from Costa Rica, a small bottle with a humble brown paper label and a tiny opening—a surefire sign of volatility in the Fat Man's estimation: “They don't dare let you put too much on; they could be sued.” This sauce was undeniably more flavorful and much hotter than “the Widow,” but Fat was a man of loyalty, and he wasn't going to drop his old flame, as it were, overnight.
Many of his associates had remarked on DiEbola's taste for Mexican and/or Latin American cuisine, seeing it as a kind of betrayal of their native Italian cuisine, but here the Fat Man's loyalty divided. Like many otherwise intelligent people, he had an irrational fear of doctors and medical practice generally, and he had developed his own complex theories, almost a philosophy about his body and his health. The principal focus in this theory was the war on fat, a war that he reasonably saw as handicapped by the ingestion of pasta, not to mention olive oil. Spices were good, because they were not in themselves fattening and could satisfy the appetite. Italian cuisine was spicy, but not spicy enough. But most important, he deeply believed, deep down in the lardy nucleus of his being, that chili peppers burned off fat. He had read it in a women's magazine in the checkout line of the Wrigley's supermarket. Just the mere ingestion of vegetable fire consumed calories. The Latin American cuisines were heavily dependent on the chili, and so now was Señor Fat (yet another nickname, never used to his face). Since he loathed exercise and had never in his life actually performed anything that could even remotely be called labor, the chili was his only faithful ally in the war on his own relentlessly multiplying flesh.
The secretary from Krispee Chips had addressed him as Mr. DiEbola when she gave him the bad news about Carmine. She had always previously called him Fat, in a cheery familiar way, but for some reason she had adopted the formal usage now. He immediately countered by saying, “Thank you, Miss Gardino. As soon as Mr. Rossamani is available, will you ask him to call Humphrey?”
“Humphrey?” Miss Gardino said. He visualized her eyebrows lifting straight up.
“Me,” he said, and he went back to his menudo. It was a very good menudo, the tripe particularly meaty and the sauce thick rather than watery. It took the habanero sauce well. He, the man who feared pasta, slathered butter onto the Italian bread and soaked up the juice after he had eaten all the chewy stomach lining and the nutty garbanzos. It was very good, and he felt exhilarated and not too stuffed, though he was a little sad about his old friend Carmine.
But he was philosophical. It had been a long time since Carmine had actually run the show. Basically, what Carmine had done of late was alter and delay Fat's schemes and machinations, thereby creating a worse situation than if he'd made his own decisions and plans. Whenever Carmine had moved against DiEbola's advice, it had gotten him in trouble. A significant instance was the matter of Big Sid Sedlacek. Several years back, Big Sid had skimmed a quarter of a million dollars off the mob's take on numbers, loans, women, and so forth. Carmine had wanted to knock Big Sid, but he had allowed himself to be convinced by the Fat Man simply to slap him around a bit and put him out to work his way back into favor. DiEbola still believed that this had been good policy. Big Sid
had been a useful, amiable man; he projected a positive image for the mob, and his theft had not been major. Why alienate a lot of Big Sid's many friends and dependents, if not in fact fire them with revenge, by hitting this friendly goof? Really likable people were more than a little thin on the ground in the mob. A man like Sid, who brought a smile to the faces of everyone from shoeshine boys to hardened whores the minute he hove into sight, was worth a lot to the mob.
What Humphrey had not approved of was Carmine's putting Big Sid in charge of the street drug scene, once he had seemingly rehabilitated himself. In fact, Humphrey had not approved of going back into the street drug trade once they had pulled out. He hadn't approved of pulling out in the first place, either, but that had been argued to death on higher levels, councils where Humphrey DiEbola hadn't been heard, yet. The council had decided to abandon the street trade, at least on the retail level, because they foresaw huge amounts of federal money being spent on eradicating this trade, and they wanted to avoid damage. But, of course, on every local scene, the mobsters began to sneak back in. The sneakback in Detroit, however, was Carmine's idea, as was the idea of using Big Sid. Carmine's angle was that it could be done without the council knowing ("Hell, they're doing it themselves, Fat! You know they are!"), and if they found out, it could all be blamed on Big Sid, who was a known backdoor man anyway.
Well, Carmine had been almost right—a condition which Humphrey considered as fatal as macaroni and cheese. Big Sid had skimmed, or rather shoveled away, millions this time, but the councils had not learned that it had been Carmine's doing. (Or had they? Could they be behind this hit? DiEbola didn't think so, but he didn't rule it out either.)
A key player in the Big Sid matter had been a freelance mob investigator named Joe Service. He worked on contract for everybody, across the country. Humphrey had a lot of respect for Joe. The young man was, in his eyes, smart, efficient, amoral, and, most important of all, avaricious to a wise and judicious degree. He was also loyal to a gaugeable degree: i.e, if you didn't screw over him he would not screw over you. Carmine, the consummate cynic, did not believe this and had systematically tried to cheat Joe on every single contract he had taken on for them over the years. Service had complained, as had the Fat Man—who thought it was stupid to hire good help and then when they did their job to try to renege on the contract—but he had faithfully carried out Carmine's wishes in this as in all things, once he saw that his counsel couldn't sway the boss. Service, for his part, as Humphrey saw it, stayed more or less loyal because he always foresaw that he would have a subsequent chance to mend his fortunes. Well, Joe Service was right. Humphrey knew that he would definitely be needing Joe's services now.
When Rossamani, one of Carmine's more useful minions, called DiEbola shortly after the secretary had, he hesitantly said, “Humphrey? Rossie. You heard about Carmine? What do you think?”
DiEbola was gratified. By this simple statement he knew two important things: The guys had instinctively assumed that he, Humphrey DiEbola, was the boss now; and he knew he would never be called Fat again. Who knows? It might even help him lose weight. A positive state of mind is essential for great undertakings. But these were fleeting thoughts.
His first order was for Rossie to get hold of Joe Service. They were both under the impression that Joe was still in Detroit, still working on cleaning up the Big Sid mess, but no one had seen him in days. They would have to contact him in the usual way, through an answering service in San Francisco. Joe always called back within hours, or no more than a day. DiEbola believed this service passed the message to another service, which passed it to another service and that to another. How long this chain was, he didn't know, but it was normally efficient. Only this time nothing happened.
What could this mean? Was Joe Service involved in the murder of Carmine? Was he acting at the behest of other bosses, perhaps annoyed at Carmine's disregard of the council ukase on the street trade? DiEbola's first impulse was to call his confidential contacts in the other mob satrapies around the country, feel it out. He might be able to get a hint that one or more of the other bosses were behind this. But then he decided no. It wouldn't do, in these first few days in office, to betray this kind of alarm. No one in Detroit had argued against DiEbola's assumption of power, but this was not necessarily true elsewhere.
Instead, he called in the man whom Guiliano had replaced as driver, one Peter Merino, a middle-aged man who had driven for Carmine for many years. He was a cousin of Carmine's wife.
The interview took place in Carmine's old office, at Krispee Chips, under the eye of the rat. Peter was very nervous. He had called in sick the morning of the killing, he said, because he was sick. Not only that, his whole family was sick—his wife and his two kids. They were sick to their stomachs.
“What is this, food poisoning?” Humphrey asked with horror. In his mind nothing could be more evil than food poisoning. If you couldn't trust your food, what could you trust?
“Bad milk,” Peter said. “I'm sure it was the milk. The kids was throwin’ up, the old lady was throwin’ up, I was heavin’ my guts—an’ all I did was put a little in my coffee! The kids had it in their Froot Loops! It coulda killed ‘em!”
“What did you do with the milk?” Humphrey wanted to know.
“The old lady threw it out,” Peter said. “I was mad as hell, I was gonna sue the dairy, the store, everybody. But she's that way, she poured it down the drain before anyone used any more of it. Hell, the fuckin’ cat threw up and shit all over the house!”
This was ominous. Humphrey called on the widow of Carlo, the bodyguard. Had Carlo been ill that morning? No, she said, but maybe he was a little sleepier than usual. She had been sleepy too, even though they'd had coffee together, as usual. She'd gone back to bed, which she never did.
Humphrey visited Carmine's widow, the beauteous art collector Annamaria. She said she had noticed that Carlo seemed a bit slow when he came by with Guiliano that morning. When Carmine asked why Guiliano was driving, Carlo had just yawned and said he didn't know. Carmine was annoyed but that was all.
Humphrey didn't find out any more than that, but it was enough. Someone had been diabolically clever, he saw. A faithful, competent driver is sick; a bodyguard is a bit slow; not enough to raise the alarm, but enough to lower the defenses and increase the odds for a successful hit. A very daring and flamboyant hit, practically on the boss's threshold.
So, a clever killer and at least one accomplice to drive. A small person. A very smart person, bold and ruthless. If you knew Joe Service at all, you knew he was small, very clever, bold, and ruthless. When Humphrey didn't hear from Joe Service in the next few days, he was forced to make a reluctant connection.
This information had to be passed to the rest of the leadership around the country. It was a little sticky at first. But Humphrey was able subtly to communicate the idea that it was the fault of Carmine, who had evidently alienated Joe Service and then enlisted him in some unknown enterprise—Humphrey hadn't known a thing about it, or so he said. Mitch, from New York, was helpful. He reported that Carmine had asked for a hitter to take out Service just a week or so before Service had done the number on Carmine. Then Carmine had put the hitter on hold. Now, if Humphrey liked, Mitch would gladly supply the hitter. Humphrey liked. He had liked Joe too, once, but that was once. A guy who would poison food . . . who would have thought?
Mitch's hitter he didn't like, not even for a minute. He was a prick. He called himself Mario Soper. Self-important—you couldn't tell him anything—and he didn't talk. He just sat and looked at you with dull eyes and a slack mouth, like he wanted to pull the trigger on you, too. Maybe he thought that was a good tactic; it kept everybody on their toes. But Humphrey thought it was bullshit. Now, Joe, he was arrogant too, in his way, but he was funny, he was human. This turd . . . Humphrey couldn't stand him. He was perversely pleased when the jerk didn't find anything. Everybody in Detroit was glad when the prick left after a few days. He'd managed to piss everybody off.
And then, of course, just when everything was settling down and business was back to normal, Humphrey's least favorite cop, Mulheisen from the Ninth, started nosing around.
Mulheisen didn't look so tough at first glance. He wasn't a big man, but big enough. He might be known on the street as “Sergeant Fang,” but he really wasn't unattractive; many women liked him, some of them quite a bit. His friends didn't just like him, they were devoted to him. But he had enemies and they loathed him. It didn't seem to bother Mulheisen, one way or the other. He wasn't one of those men who cares what others think of him.
One afternoon, not long after Carmine's death, Mulheisen had dropped into Humphrey's office at Krispee Chips, accompanied by his young assistant, Jimmy Marshall. Tall, dark brown, sometimes wearing glasses, sometimes wearing contact lenses, Sgt. Marshall was in some ways more menacing than Mulheisen. As Marshall had gotten older (he was about thirty), he had filled out a little, he looked stronger, and he was. He cultivated a kind of Malcolm X clean-cut look, complete with enigmatic smiles. He could make one believe he was looking right through one and didn't like what he saw.
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