Devil's Food

by Anthony Bruno

  “They did. Two of ’em. A fat-assed bitch whose face I’d like to slap and some guy named Marvelli.”

  “Marvelli?” Joe saw red.

  “Yeah. Marvelli. You know him?”

  “Oh, yeah. I know him.” He’d like to rip Marvelli’s grease-ball head off and use it for a bowling ball.

  She stuck her hands in the back pockets of her jeans, cigarette clenched between her teeth. “I wanted that little bitch Martha Lee dead so bad, but they’re gonna get to her first. Shit!” She kicked the dirt.

  “Hold on there. We’re not talking about Federal Express, Ricky, we’re talking about the state. You think they’re gonna hustle their butts down to Florida just to grab Martha Lee on a parole violation? I don’t think so. Too many doughnut shops between here and there.”

  “I don’t know about that. The woman seemed pretty anxious to get her.”

  “Bullshit. I’ll get down there and have Martha Lee talking to the angels before Marvelli and his pal finish putting through the paperwork for their plane tickets.”

  Ricky pouted. “Yeah, I doubt it.”

  “You don’t think so? You’re talking to the best, woman. The best.”

  “You may be good, Joe, but I still don’t think you can do it.”

  He stared at her nipples pressing through that black leotard top she was wearing. “You don’t believe me, you can come with me. I’ll show you how good I am.”

  She took one last drag and flicked the cigarette into the grass. “I know what you want to show me, and I don’t want to see it. You can just forget about that.”

  He shrugged and stepped closer. “You sure about that, Ricky?” He stepped right up to her and looked down into her cleavage. There was no sign of the derringer anywhere in there.

  “Yeah, I’m sure.” Her eyes were narrow. She looked suspicious.

  He reached around her and gently pulled her hands out of her pockets, examining the rings on her fingers. There were a lot of them, but he didn’t see anything that looked like a wedding ring. “Not married?” he asked.

  She whipped her hands out of his and sneered at him. “None of your goddamn business.”

  “Are you single and lonely, Ricky? Is that your problem?”

  She stuck her face in his. “No, it is not. I have a boyfriend . . . if it’s any of your business.”

  “You two aren’t serious, though.”

  “Serious enough. He drives a rig, and he’ll kick your ass if he catches you here.”

  Joe grinned. “Will he now? Go call him up. We’ll see who kicks whose ass.”

  “Can’t. He’s on the road.”

  “When’s he coming back?”

  “Couple of weeks. He’s gone to Montana.”

  “Oh, really. Hell, we can make it down to Florida and back in half that. I can do up Martha Lee, and we’ll still have time for a little fun.” He reached around her and grabbed his own wrist behind her back. Big woman, he thought. Firm, too. No jiggle. He liked that.

  “Forget it,” she said.

  “We can use the down payment. Rent us a nice room. It’ll be fun.”

  “Forget it.” But she was grinning like she wanted to.

  He bent his head down and pressed his tongue against his bottom lip so that his little braid stuck out. He slowly outlined her eyebrows with it, then brushed down the slope of her nose and started tickling her upper lip, moving real slow, making sure she felt just the very end of it.

  She grabbed the little braid between her thumb and forefinger. “You’re bad, Joe,” she said. She was grinning like the she-devil on her arm.

  “Tell you what,” he said. “You come down with me, I’ll show you how I work. Maybe even set it up so that you pull the trigger. How would you like that?”

  She was tugging on his braid. “I don’t know, Joe. I don’t think I should.” She wasn’t letting go, though.

  “Well, it’s up to you, honey pie. I’m not gonna force you. But I’ll tell you right now. I’m not doing Martha Lee unless you come with me. So you make up your mind.”

  She didn’t answer. Instead she pouted her lipstick lips and shrugged, looking up at him from under her eyebrows. She leaned in, and he thought she was fixing for a kiss, but he was surprised when she pulled out his paper clip with her teeth instead. She spit it out on the ground and grinned at him.

  “Do I take that as a ‘yes’?” he asked.

  What do you mean, ‘he got away’? How?” Marvelli was up on his feet, having a bird.

  Loretta watched him from the dark brown couch in Julius Monroe’s office back at the Jump Squad. Julius was behind his desk, cradling his flute like a baby. Loretta wasn’t saying anything, but she was getting antsy because they weren’t sticking to the subject at hand. They were all worked up about Torpedo Joe Pickett, but Loretta had to get them back on track with the Martha Lee Spooner problem, which was going to be her problem if they didn’t bring her in.

  “How could this have happened, Julius?” Marvelli was rapping his knuckles on the file cabinet. “I don’t get it. It’s not like Joe Pickett is easy to lose. You know what I mean?”

  “Someone screwed up on the paperwork, O marvelous one,” Julius said with a frown. “Someone who was supposed to get Pickett’s file out of his car and bring it to me but forgot to do that. Guards came down before lunch to bring the jumpers we had here up to the county lockup. I wasn’t here, and they didn’t find any paperwork on old Joe, so . . .” Julius dangled Torpedo Joe’s black leather vest by one finger. “I guess old Joe’s a pretty good thespian. He told the guards he was a DEA undercover trying to work one of the other guys we were holding. The guards bought it and let him go.” Julius held the vest by the shoulders, showing the patch on the back—crossed torpedoes, one red, the other blue. “No paperwork, O marvelous one.”

  “That’s no excuse,” Marvelli snapped. “They should’ve left him here if they couldn’t find his paperwork.”

  “Coulda, woulda, shoulda,” Julius said. “That’s the purgatory cha-cha.”

  Loretta was ready to jump out of her skin. Marvelli hadn’t told Julius what Tom Spooner, Jr., had told them, that Torpedo Joe had been hired to kill Martha Lee. And Loretta knew why Marvelli wasn’t telling him, because he was dead set against going down to Florida. But, Christ almighty, they couldn’t keep this to themselves. Even if Martha Lee was a perfect size 6, they couldn’t just let her die. Besides, what was so important here in Jersey that Marvelli couldn’t spare a few days to prevent a murder? And salvage Loretta’s job.

  No, this was too important, she decided. Too bad if Marvelli was a homebody. A sleepover would be good for him. Good for her, too, maybe. She cupped her chin to cover the grin.

  She looked up at Marvelli. “So you gonna tell him?”

  He gave her a dirty look. “Tell him what?”

  She rolled her eyes. “That the sky is blue,” she said. “Or how about that Joe Pickett is on his way to Florida to ice Martha Lee Spooner? Julius, you think you’d want to know about something like that?”

  He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Tell me more.”

  “Not much else to tell—”

  “Loretta,” Marvelli snapped, but she ignored him.

  “The Torpedo is on his way,” she said. “But we could stop him if we hurry.”

  “Oh, no, we can’t.” Marvelli was shaking his head, arms crossed over his chest.

  “Marvelli, we’re talking about a homicide here—”

  “I don’t care—”

  “Silence!” Julius shouted. He pinched his nose and laid the end of his flute against his forehead. He was thinking. He looked like a snake charmer conferring with his snake. “Not good,” he finally proclaimed. “Not good. Two jumpers from Jersey down in Florida spilling blood. Not good.”

  “We know where he’s going,” Marvelli said. “Just call the sheriff’s department down there and let them pick up Joe.”

  Julius tugged on his beard and nodded. “Yes, we can do it that way,” he said. “But the �
��but’ is a big one here.”

  “What do you mean?” Loretta asked, about to be offended.

  “We can have the cops in Florida do our dirty work for us, sure, but. . . the paperwork will eventually lead back here to Joe Pickett’s file, which you left in your car, O marvelous one, which will mean your J-O-B if Torpedo Joe hits his target before he can be stopped. And it will mean my J-O-B, too, for embarrassing the department across state lines.”

  And it’ll mean my J-O-B for not bringing Martha Lee in on time, Loretta wanted to add, but she kept her mouth shut.

  Marvelli was adamant. “I cannot go down to Florida, Julius. I can’t be away that long.”

  Julius brought the flute to his lips and tooted a short note. “What about the benies, O marvelous one? No job, no benefits. Will you be able to deal with that?”

  That shut Marvelli up, but Loretta was confused. What was so important about Marvelli’s benefits? Was he sick?

  “Look, I’ll make this easy for everybody,” Julius said. “You two go down to Florida and grab Martha Lee Spooner before she gets dead. Call me as soon as you’ve got her, and then I’ll call the boys in blue down there, tell them all about Torpedo Joe. Let Joe get used to that cracker hospitality down there.”

  “But, Julius, I cannot leave for that long—”

  “If you hustle like good little worker bees, you can do it in a day, one-night stay-over at the most.”

  “But, Julius—”

  “Please don’t make me act like a boss, Marvelli. It is such a drag.”

  “Come on, Marvelli,” Loretta urged.

  He stared at the floor, looking grumpy. “I can’t,” he grumbled.

  Julius suddenly turned serious. “Benefits like you’re used to from the state will cost you big time. If you can find a company to cover you. They don’t dig preexisting conditions.”

  Loretta screwed up her face. What was he talking about, pre-existing conditions? Was there something wrong with Marvelli? She hadn’t even had a decent fantasy about him, and now she finds out he’s damaged goods.

  “Can’t you send someone else?” Marvelli pleaded.

  Julius pointed out his door. “You see anyone out there when you came in? We’re shorthanded as it is, and your old partner just went out on sick leave. There is no one else. You are the someone else.”

  “Come on, Marvelli,” Loretta said. “We’ll catch a plane tonight, grab her in the morning, and be back before dinner tomorrow. What do you say?”

  Marvelli still looked grumpy. “I don’t know. I can’t think,” he said.

  “Why not?” she asked

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m hungry.”

  Julius looked at his wristwatch. “If I were you, I’d boogie, children.”

  Marvelli jerked his thumb toward the front room. “Are there any buns left?”

  Loretta rolled her eyes. God, help me.

  7

  It was just getting dark as Marvelli pulled into his driveway. The neighborhood was ur–Jersey shore, Loretta thought. Split-levels and ranch-style houses, nearly all of them aluminum-sided. Every third house, including Marvelli’s, had beige pebbles raked across the lawn instead of grass. Marvelli was growing some serious weeds on his.

  A maroon Buick Regal was already parked in the driveway. Loretta was surprised. She’d expected the Marvellis to have a Trans Am.

  Marvelli shut off the engine and put the transmission in park. “Okay, I’m just telling you,” he said. “If we don’t get Martha Lee Spooner by noon tomorrow, I’m coming home. You can stay down there and arrest her by yourself, but I’m coming back.”

  Loretta nodded. “Yes, you told me.” She restrained the sarcasm for a change because she was thinking about tonight, about sitting next to him on a plane down to Fort Myers, then going to a motel with him. Who knew what could happen?

  “Loretta? You coming?”

  “Hmmm?”

  Marvelli was already at the front door, waiting for her. The door was open, light from inside spilling out onto the porch. “Come on in,” he called to her, then stepped inside.

  She followed the concrete walk and went to the door, expecting Marvelli to be there to show her in, but he wasn’t. He was in the living room, screaming at a busty redhead in her late sixties.

  “Annette, I don’t have any choice,” Marvelli was yelling. “I have to go.”

  The woman bunched up the fingers of one hand and shook them at Marvelli, doing that Italian gesture. “What do you mean, you have to go? Who do you think you’re kidding? You want to go.”

  “Dad! Grandma! Don’t yell!” a little girl yelled from the back of the room. She was about ten or eleven years old, Loretta guessed, that in-between age between kid and preteen. Her hair was long and red, but a natural red—unlike her grandmother’s hair—and she had Marvelli’s sloped-back eyes. She was sitting on the end of a couch, watching TV. Loretta didn’t notice right away that there was someone lying on the couch with the girl, someone covered in a blanket. Loretta couldn’t see the person’s face, though, because the arm of the couch was in the way. “We can’t hear the TV with you two yelling,” the little girl yelled.

  “Be quiet, Nina,” the grandmother shouted. “We’re discussing something important over here.”

  “Don’t yell at her,” Marvelli shouted. “She didn’t do anything.”

  The woman’s eyes bugged out of her head. She shook a threatening finger in Marvelli’s face. “Don’t you tell me not to yell. I’m not yelling. You’re the one who’s yelling. And you’re yelling because you feel guilty.”

  “Guilty about what?”

  “Going to Florida?”

  “I have to go. I told you. It’s for work.”

  “Yeah, sure.” The woman crossed her arms under her heavy bosom.

  Marvelli balled his fists. “Annette, I love you for all that you do for us, but sometimes I could kill you. You know what I’m saying?”

  “Don’t try to butter me up, mister. I know what you’re up to. My Leonard—God bless his soul—used to try to pull the same kind of crap on me. I know what you’re up to.”

  “You know nothing! That’s what you know!”

  “Dad! Grandma!”

  “Don’t tell me I don’t know nothing, mister. I’ve been around. I know plenty.”

  “Oh, yeah? What do you know? Tell me what you know.”

  “I don’t have to tell you” the woman yelled in a huff, flipping her hand in his face.

  As this dragged on, Loretta realized that they weren’t really fighting about anything. They were just yelling for the sake of yelling. And in a way, Marvelli and this woman named Annette seemed to be enjoying it because every so often Loretta would catch crafty grins flashing over their faces. There was no real anger here. It was more like some kind of family blood sport.

  “You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, Annette,” Marvelli shouted with a sly smile.

  “Oh, yeah? We’ll see, Mr. Know-It-All.”

  “Dad! Grandma!”

  “Be quiet, Nina! We’re talk—”

  Suddenly a dinner plate flew across the room from the couch and hit the wall next to the television. The plate was plastic, so it didn’t break, but from the scarred condition of the wall, Loretta assumed this wasn’t an isolated incident. Maybe it was part of the family sport. But all of a sudden everyone shut up, and only a sitcom laugh track could be heard. Marvelli, Annette, and the little girl exchanged silent glances.

  “Enough,” a feeble voice rasped from the couch.

  “Sorry, Mom,” Nina said.

  Marvelli and Annette rushed to the couch.

  “You okay, baby?” Marvelli asked, sitting down on the edge, suddenly hushed and concerned.

  “What is it, sweetheart? What is it?” Annette fretted. “What can I get you?”

  Loretta could see that she wasn’t going to get an introduction, so she walked into the living room and inched toward the couch,
waiting to be noticed. She was shocked, though, when she saw the person on the couch. Loretta suddenly felt like an intruder.

  The woman lying on the couch was wearing a New York Giants sweatshirt, a wool blanket pulled up to the middle of her chest. Loretta thought she might be in her thirties, but it was hard to tell because she looked so awful. Her skin was gray, and there were heavy bags under her dark eyes. Her below-the-shoulder-length hair was tangled and very dry, almost black, with a lot of silver sprouting from the temples. She had a Roman nose, and her lips were full but pale. She had probably been considered petite once, but now she looked emaciated. But despite her condition, her face was still beautiful.

  The woman noticed Loretta standing there. “Hello,” she croaked.

  “Hi. . .” Loretta tried to be friendly, but she felt very out of place.

  Marvelli banged his forehead with the heel of his hand. “Oh, jeez! I forget all about you, Loretta. I’m sorry. This is my family. My daughter Nina. My mother-in-law Annette. And my wife Renée.” He was holding Renée’s hand, his thick fingers interlaced with her frail, bony ones. His other hand was carressing her hollow cheek. They were all smiling at Loretta.

  Loretta coughed. “Nice to meet you all. Marvelli, maybe I should wait in the car while you . . . get ready.”

  “No, don’t be silly. Sit down. Make yourself comfortable.” Marvelli turned to his family. “Loretta’s my partner this week. We’re working a special case together.” He pressed his lips together and looked down on his wife. “I gotta go down to Florida tonight. But I’ll be back by tomorrow. I promise.” He tilted her chin up with his finger and kissed her on the lips. Not a French kiss, but not a honey-I’m-home kiss either. When he pulled away, he gazed into her eyes for a long time as if no one else were in the room.

  Loretta wished she were somewhere else.

  “Can I fix you a cup of coffee, honey?” Annette asked Loretta. “How about some macaronis? I got some baked ziti all made. I’ll just heat it up.”

  “Oh, no, please,” Loretta said. “I’m fine.”

  “Oh, just a taste,” Annette insisted. “I make ’em really good. I mix it up with ricott’. They come out beautiful. You’ll see.”