The Spia Family Presses On

by Mary Leo

  He pulled one off the pack and flung it to me. I caught it, opened it and guzzled the entire bottle, letting the glorious overflow spill down my chin.

  “You must’a really tied one on last night, sugar. You sure you’re okay? You don’t look okay, and you certainly don’t look like no bottle collector or free food collector. You look like you’re in the wrong place, sugar.”

  I began to tell him what happened, but he didn’t have the patience to listen to my crazy talk.

  “All I know is, that’s one hell of a place to spend the night,” he quipped.

  “Tell me about it,” I said, tossing the empty bottle into the Dumpster then slipping on my Uggs.

  “Look here, you seem like a smart girl, let me give you some advice. That kinda partying don’t get you nothin’ but sorrow. A drink now and then keeps the blood flowing, any more than that and your life ain’t worth shit. You know what I mean?”

  “More than you know,” I told him as I leaned against the side of the smelly can.

  “You need a lift anywhere or you want me to call somebody?”

  “No, thanks. I’m good,” I said, and took a few steps, my legs almost collapsing under me. I figured I was still a little unsteady from whatever I’d consumed.

  He gave me a little nod. “Okay, Missy, but you think about what I said, all right?”

  “Will do,” I told him and made my way out of the alley to the familiar street in front of me. The piercing high-pitched warning beeps coming from his truck as he backed up did a number on my already aching head and I suddenly felt as if I was going to upchuck again. I told myself to breathe slowly and to put distance between me and the Dumpster, both of which seemed to help.

  My keys were gone and so was Dickey’s ring, but miraculously I still had my phone. A few blocks away, I stopped and called Lisa.

  “I’ve been calling you all night long,” she scolded as soon as she picked up. “You had me worried sick, and you know I gave up worrying about you years ago, but when Jimmy said you’d been drinking I—”

  I didn’t have the strength to get into it. “Can you come and pick me up? I’ll be standing in front of The Steps of Rome.”

  It was way too early for the restaurant to be open, but at least she knew exactly where it was. We’d eaten many great meals inside that place.

  “On Columbus Street? But Jimmy said you—”

  “Just come get me, okay?” And I clicked off. I was feeling a bit sorry for myself and tears weren’t far from the surface.

  As I sat on the sidewalk, leaning up against the building, waiting for Lisa, several people tossed dollar bills into my lap. I tried to give back their money, but no one would let me. I actually scared an older woman when I approached her with the dollar. She yelled that she would call the cops if I came any closer. The final blow came when an obvious homeless man with a missing front tooth dropped fifty cents into my lap and told me I needed it more than he did.

  I figured I had reached an all time low because I took all the money and bought a large bottle of water along with a box of powdered-sugar donuts from a nearby convenience store, sat back down on the sidewalk and ate every crumb. When I finished, I was covered in white powder and proceeded to collect even more money.

  Never underestimate the generosity of the American public.

  Twenty minutes later I was opening the passenger door on Lisa’s brand new red BMW, an exact duplicate of the last one. The girl certainly knew how to work the system to get a replacement car that quickly.

  “We have to go straight to the orchard before he gets away,” I ordered Lisa as soon as I slid into the passenger seat.

  “Who?”

  “The killer.”

  “Jimmy?”

  I shook my head. “Federico.”

  She looked genuinely stunned and pushed back in her seat. “Get out! No way,” she squeaked.

  “Totally way, that’s why we have to hurry, before he disappears like my dad.”

  I reached for the seatbelt and strapped it around me. Lisa made a face. “Good God girlfriend, do you even know how bad you smell? You need a shower, like right now. Shouldn’t I take you to my condo first so you can delouse? You look like hell.” She crinkled her forehead as she pressed a button. All the windows rolled down at once.

  “No. There’s no time.” A sense of urgency swept through me, especially since I named him out loud. It was as if he heard me and was now busy packing his hidden guns for a long trip.

  “If you weren’t my best friend I wouldn’t even let you come near my expensive new car, let alone sit in it. We’re going to my place, or I’m putting you in a cab.”

  “I can’t imagine how much that would cost.”

  “Ask me if I care.”

  She held her nose.

  “You can’t be serious.”

  She raised an eyebrow and I knew she was dead serious. No way was she budging. “Okay, let’s go to your condo.” She had both hands on the steering wheel. “What happened to the sling?”

  “Thumb’s better, especially since I had it re-wrapped.” She held up a thickly gauzed thumb. “And I can even type with this thing, and drive. Be grateful I didn’t have my mom drive me over or there would be no end to her hysteria once she saw you.”

  “That bad, huh?”

  “I wouldn’t look in a mirror if I were you. It could do irreparable psychic damage.”

  She turned over the engine, pulled away from the curb and fifteen minutes later I was standing in Lisa’s ultra modern—with Asian accents—living room staring up at a scowling Nick Zeleski.

  “Holy shit,” Nick said, as he backed away, his index finger under his nose, trying not to look at me.

  “Yeah, I stink. Get over it.” I wasn’t in the mood to be pleasant, especially since Lisa set me up with Nick. I turned to her. “This isn’t fair. You should’ve told me he was here.”

  “You wouldn’t have come.”

  “Like I had a choice.”

  “There are always options.”

  She was right. I probably could have phoned Babe or Hetty, well, maybe not Hetty. Neither one of those women had been behind the wheel of a car in over five years. Lisa was basically my only option, except for maybe Leo.

  I caught a glimpse of myself in one of her many wall mirrors and decided that calling Leo was totally out of the equation. One look and he would need therapy to even consider having sex with me ever again. I looked worse than most homeless people, I looked diseased. And what was that brown stuff stuck to the side of my head?

  “Step away from the mirror,” Lisa said.

  I had no choice but to follow orders because if I didn’t I would certainly toss my donuts all over her professionally decorated condo.

  “Tell me the truth,” Lisa said. “No bullshit. What the hell happened to you last night? Did you tie one on like Jimmy said, ‘cause if you did, I can understand it. Not that I’m condoning it, but I can understand it.”

  I didn’t have the energy to explain. “Do you think I could take that shower first? The smell is making me sick.”

  “Me too,” Nick said.

  Lisa escorted me to the bathroom, walking far enough in front of me so the stench didn’t reach her.

  “Tell me something,” I said as we walked. “Did Federico come to your book signing?”

  “He sure did, but he told me not to tell anyone. That it was our little secret. I didn’t think anything of it because a lot of my male fans tell me the same thing. They don’t want their macho image ruined, I guess.”

  “Thanks, that was the last piece of the puzzle. I had to be sure. I think he cut the rung on my ladder.”

  “What ladder?”

  I’d never told her about what happened out in the grove.

  “Remind me to tell you later. Right now I really need a hot shower.”

  When we arrived at the red bathroom door Lisa turned and said, “This has to be hard for you, sweetie. Federico is closer to you than your own dad ever was.” She walked i
n closer and patted down my mucked up hair, on the cleaner side of my head, and the instant she touched me my eyes welled with tears.

  “Yeah,” I said. “At first I was devastated, but I find it interesting how spending a night in a Dumpster with my hands tied while soaking in my own vomit can change years of adoration into complete loathing. Let’s get the son of a bitch.”

  An hour later, after copious amounts of hot tears, and gulping down three more bottles of water, I emerged from the shower with a new sense of resolve and decided to spill everything to Nick.

  Wrapped in an ultra-soft white terry robe, I sat on Lisa’s cherry red sofa, legs tucked under me, drinking honey-sweetened hot tea, going over everything that had happened leading up to last night. Needless to say Nick was grateful for my honesty. He took notes while Lisa recorded the entire miserable story on a tiny digital recorder.

  “So what happened when you got to Jimmy’s bar?” Nick asked.

  “Not much, but once I took a whiff of Federico’s tobacco, I knew I’d been going after the wrong goomba. I’d walked right into a lion’s den and I wanted to run, but it was too late, so I played the game. Only thing was, Federico knew I was on to him so the bastard must have spiked my Coke.”

  “Can you prove that? I mean you have a reputation and—”

  “Believe me, I know all about that reputation. No, I can’t prove it, but I know I didn’t drink any hard liquor, and I didn’t take any drugs, at least not willingly. Whatever’s floating around my veins wasn’t something I agreed to.”

  “I went looking for you at the bar right after my signing, around eight-thirty, and Jimmy told me you had left with Federico. He said you were pretty well lit.” Lisa said. “I believed him. Sorry. Could he have been in on the whole thing?”

  I shrugged. “Maybe, but I think this was a one-man operation.”

  “Was Jade anywhere around?”

  I thought about it for a long time. “No. Not that I can remember.”

  “You’d think he’d have found someplace other than his own turf,” Lisa said. “Seems dangerous to play it so close to the chest.”

  “Not if he was aiming to pin your murder on Jimmy,” Nick said.

  “Never thought of that one,” Lisa said.

  “Wow, he had it all figured out, didn’t he?” I told them as I rested my now empty cup on the glass coffee table.

  “We still don’t have motive,” Lisa said.

  “I think Federico was Carla’s jealous lover,” I told her.

  “But wasn’t Federico in Texas the night of Carla’s murder?” Lisa asked.

  “He said he was, and he probably had good documentation and a witness to back him up,” I said. “But we’re talking mob. Those guys could prove or disprove anything they want. I have a strong feeling he was right there in San Francisco watching Carla.”

  Nick stood and walked over to the black granite fireplace, which had a lovely gas fire snapping around fake logs. “Right now, it’s still looking as if your mom killed Dickey. All the evidence leads to her. She had motive. It was her gun, and we found the body in her trunk. It’ll be hard to beat all that. And let’s face it, a lawyer would rip your story apart in court, not to mention dig up your past.”

  “I know,” I said. “That’s why I need to show up at their weekly poker game this afternoon to force Federico out in the open. At this point, he thinks I’m dead or at least trapped at the city dump, but thanks to Lisa who continually quotes from her own books and her many fans, namely the Emergency Room doctor, I’m alive. Although, whatever Federico slipped into my drink is still making me a little woozy.”

  I leaned back on the sofa.

  “What you’re proposing is extremely dangerous,” Nick said. “We’d have to come up with something that would keep you safe, but also get him to talk. He tried to kill you once, next time he’ll use deadly force. He won’t take the chance of messing up again.”

  “Deadly force?” I asked.

  “Yeah, a gun or a knife or anything that will cause certain death,” Lisa said.

  How the woman knew all these things was beyond me.

  A sudden waive of nausea swept over me. Funny how that happened when someone told you that the man you thought loved you like a daughter would just as soon slice your throat than see you live another day.

  I shivered. “Just tell me what I have to do.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  Who’s Your Daddy?

  I spent the morning going over a plan with Nick and his team. I didn’t ask too many questions about who these guys were, and no one offered to tell me, so we kept the conversation limited to the sting. At certain points during our rehearsal I felt certain that a camera crew would show up from behind a sliding wall and someone would tell me I needed to go over my lines one more time.

  That didn’t happen and right around two o’clock that afternoon Lisa dropped me off in back of my mom’s house while Nick and his team were hidden somewhere out on the road. I didn’t exactly know where, but Nick assured me that as long as I stuck to the plan, everything would be fine.

  That right there was enough to make me queasy.

  I had one last thing I needed to check in my mom’s house before I walked over to Federico’s house and I was hoping it would still be there.

  The back door was once again unlocked. I was happy about that considering all my keys were in my purse locked inside my pickup behind Jimmy’s bar.

  According to Nick, Uncle Benny had bonded Mom out of jail only a couple hours ago. Nick had warned her to keep her theories to herself and to play along with me. Over the last few days I’d learned that Mom was exceptionally good at game playing, so I wasn’t too worried about any slip-ups.

  Afternoon sun poured in through the front windows of my mom’s living room as I made my way up the stairs and into what would have been Dickey’s bedroom.

  As soon as I walked into his room, I knew my hope of finding his suitcase was unrealistic. The bed was neatly made, the windows and French doors were locked up tight, and the suitcase had disappeared. A good gangster cleans up his mess.

  Still, I had to check the closet, which was empty except for a few plastic hangers. I did a quick check under the bed, but it had recently been swept clean of all dust bunnies. But there was something nagging at me. Something I’d seen before that I was certain I would find if I just looked harder.

  I swept through the closet one more time. Nothing. I opened drawers. Empty. I ripped the bedding off the bed. Again, I came up empty handed. On my second, more extensive look under the bed I spotted a piece of white paper stuck up against the white woodwork. I hunkered down on all fours, dropped to my belly, and stretched out under the bed, grabbing the paper. When I stood up again and took a closer look someone had written Jade’s name on one side and when I flipped it over, those tiny hairs on the back of my neck stood up again.

  It was the same little girl in the picture in my mom’s safety deposit box, only this time she was sitting on somebody’s lap. A woman’s lap, a woman who looked a lot like Carla DeCarlo. They were both smiling those great big happy smiles, like they’d just eaten an entire double-dip ice cream cone and were thinking about seconds. What was even more remarkable was how much those smiles were identical.

  That’s when I knew I was staring down at a picture of Jade Batista and her mother, Carla DeCarlo.

  The motive flashed before me the instant I remembered what Federico had said the night of the party, that “olives never lie. They’re always pure.”

  Carla DeCarlo had lied about her virginity.

  Fifteen minutes later, I was standing on Federico’s front stoop wearing a borrowed Betsy Johnson outfit complete with skinny chocolate jeans, a bright pink ruffled mini skirt, a tight long-sleeved knit shirt complete with decorative roses, and two different jacket type things over the whole ensemble. My legs and feet were covered in over-the-knee suede boots, and I carried an Italian Capisa bag, which was fitted with a small transmitter, so Nick could keep track of me
. I also wore some kind of tiny microphone wire thing inside my bra, which allowed him to hear everything.

  I wasn’t so sure the microphone was a good idea considering there was no telling what my family might say at any given moment that could land one of them back in the slammer for a past dastardly deed. Nevertheless, I was trying to trap Federico and I was hoping I could get him to do most of the talking.

  Lisa had dressed me for action. She said the boots had a heel that could go through bone if I stepped hard enough, plus she dropped pepper spray in my purse and slid a pocket knife down my left boot, just in case. It lodged next to my heel and with each step it reminded me that I was about to turn on a man I’d loved and admired for most of my life.

  It just confirmed what Federico had taught me since I was a little girl: never trust anyone, no matter who they are.

  I swung open the door on Federico’s bungalow, slapped on a happy face and said, “Room for one more?”

  My mom, Benny, Aunt Hetty, Aunt Babe, Giuseppe, and Federico sat around a large oval table cluttered with cards, change, small bowls of green olives, and short glasses of red wine. Cousin Maryann sat on the sofa in the adjoining room fiddling with her accordion, while Zia Yolanda dozed next to her. The kitchen and living area was all one great big room, with a bedroom and bathroom off the kitchen.

  As soon as I entered, everyone welcomed me, except for Federico who seemed to be momentarily put off. There was a subtle change in his eyes, one most people in the room wouldn’t have caught, but I did.

  “Well, it’s about time,” my mom said as she got up from her chair at the table. “Everyone was getting worried. Where were you?”

  I gave her a tight hug.

  “Sorry about that,” I said. “I hadn’t planned on staying out all night. It sort of . . . just happened.” I did my best to color my voice with regret, but I knew Federico could detect the touch of sarcasm.

  “It’s okay. We all fall off the wagon every now and then,” Mom said when we pulled apart. She couldn’t have played her part better if I had scripted it.

  “Yeah,” I said while staring at Federico who stared back at me, deadpan. “A girl can only go so long without a drink, right Federico?” I turned to the others. “He helped me fall. Good thing he was there or I might have fallen right under that damn wagon, hey Uncle Federico?”