Brian responded quickly and surely: “Cut off the guy’s dick then tell him to open the safe. Saves all the hassle and gets to the point real fast. I can’t think what fella’s going to get argumentative if you’re holding his manhood in your hand.”
“Good point,” said Frank, curling up his mouth in a near smile, “but maybe we shouldn’t replay the Tet offensive.”
“Well, we don’t want to be hanging about,” noted Andrew carefully choosing his words because he didn’t want to annoy or upset either Frank or Brian, “so maybe we threaten the bank manager first of all as that should be the fastest way to get the safe open. If he refuses, we start cutting. If it takes too long, we take a knife to his dick and see if the pinhead will speed our progress out of there.”
Now it was Frank’s turn to nod in agreement as this was probably the most sensible approach.
“And how do we all feel about dragging an acetylene torch and all that gear into the bank?”
“Well,” said Andrew slowly, thinking as he was speaking, “we could have the gear in the car with Pete and bring it in if we needed it. But if we don’t, we won’t be wasting time hauling it in or out or drawing undue attention to ourselves as a result.”
“Makes sense to me,” commented Brian, who almost always liked Andrew’s plans because they were simple and generally worked.
“Is that it, then?”
“Sounds like a plan.”
“Sure does. Here’s to the job. Get in, get out, get rich.”
“Get in, get out, get rich!” and they clinked their glasses, because Finian’s Rainbow only served beer in glasses. It was that kind of upmarket dive.
On that note, they left - first Andrew and Brian with Frank waiting ten minutes before his own departure.
DRIVING BACK, ANDREW turned to Brian, puncturing their silence, and said: “Frank still hasn’t talked about Martin, has he?”
“No, he hasn’t,” responded Brian, deadpan.
“Well, it’s just not good enough. Martin hasn’t gone off to AC and debaunched himself to oblivion. He’s been killed and Pete was the last to see him alive. And I don’t intend to forget that fact.”
“No, but Frank’s not gonna bring it up again and Pete looks like he’s gonna get away with it.”
“Well, let’s not get too hasty,” added Andrew, “all we know is that Martin was with Pete in a bar. Someone could have jumped him after they parted. But as they left out the back door, I agree it sounds as though Pete did for him.”
“So what do you think we should be doing then?”
“Let’s go to Atlantic City. If we don’t find Martin then Pete’s gonna die.”
“Yep,” intoned Brian.
The following day, they set off and Brian drove all the way. They stopped only once, just to stretch their legs, and were in a casino before the sun had set.
Most of the next couple of days was spent either playing Blackjack, Andrew’s favorite card game, and the one-armed bandits, Brian’s gamble of choice - or in a men-only drinking club, which they’d been introduced to by a friend on a previous trip to the city. It was called Birds of a Feather and they’d drink and dance until breakfast time and go into the VIP suite and party on.
This was a totally darkened room where you could see nothing but feel everything. Brian loved it because he felt truly free in there. Andrew was less comfortable with the randomness of the encounters but he always warmed up by the time he’d had his second blow job. Nothing quite as liberating as feeling a stranger’s slobber running down the shaft of your dick and dribbling over your balls.
After they’d refreshed themselves, they were able to start asking their contacts about where Martin could be, if indeed he was in AC in the first place.
From bar to bar, club to club, Andrew and Brian showed their photo of Martin to anyone who would give them the time of day. But three days and two nights gumshoe work had delivered them zip. Nada.
Sipping coffee in some dive bar at two in the afternoon, they sat opposite each other, waiting for the energy to continue. A grilled chicken sandwich and fries had been downed by both of them but the entire meal had tasted of stale grease. They were tired and were no nearer to finding Martin than when they’d first driven into the city almost a week before.
“He ain’t here, y’know that, right?” said Brian, breaking the silence between them.
“Yeah, I guess.”
“You guess? Really man, he ain’t here.”
Brian put his hand on Andrew’s, knowing this meant there was no doubt in their minds that Pete had offed Martin.
“I know. I just don’t want him to be gone.”
“Yeah, well ... he is. And we need to be going now.”
“Sure thing. Let’s leave this town.”
“Shall we go back to the Birds of a Feather for one last night?”
“Nah, take me back to our hotel and show me a good time instead,” smiled Andrew.
“Come on, then,” said Brian and stood up to leave the bar, swigging back the remains of his coffee. Andrew mirrored him and they went back to the hotel room and fucked each other until dawn. Then they had a hearty breakfast in the diner opposite their hotel and headed back to Baltimore. And the ever-present knowledge that Pete was a dead man.
24
LAGOTTI HAD MENTIONED to Frank he should have a chat with Mary Lou as the security was being stepped up in the bank and Frank could see no reason why she shouldn’t brief the big bankroll about the new deal.
So Mary Lou strolled into the repair shop one Tuesday afternoon, just as Paul and Luigi were heading home after a day spent playing penuckle for dimes. Luigi opened the door to Lagotti’s office for her and caught up with Paul, who was already revving his engine impatiently.
As she headed to sit down in the only available chair that wasn’t occupied, Lagotti signaled her with a beckoning hand and she went towards him instead. She had no idea why she did that, but the man commanded the room, even without a word being spoken.
He smiled at her as she stood leaning against his desk but he carried on looking through his girlie magazine for another minute, before opening the top drawer, throwing the picture book inside and slamming the drawer shut, which made Mary Lou noticeably flinch. Ever so slightly.
He smiled again.
“Don’t be alarmed my dear,” he said, “only a drawer.” He laughed for a second, throwing his head back momentarily, and then leaned forward and briefly placed one hand on hers, as Mary Lou was half leaning on the desk using her arms as leverage to half stand with her butt against the edge of the fake oak veneer.
She glanced down at his hand as he patted hers and she saw he was watching her looking at him.
“So tell me about the new security arrangements they are putting in place. My Frank has described the situation to me, but I would like to hear it from the horse’s mouth, as it were.” He patted her hand once more and then proceeded to listen intently as Mary Lou described cameras, doors and reinforced steel to him in great detail.
Finally she stopped talking and Lagotti nodded.
“Can you sketch what the vault room looks like?” he asked, eventually. Mary Lou scrunched her face up quizzically for a half second and then shrugged and said: “Sure.”
SHE TURNED ROUND to face his desk and Lagotti stood up and scrabbled about the top surface and drawers searching for some paper - in the bottom drawer - and something to write with - just by the table lamp, hidden under some receipts.
As Mary Lou started drawing a rectangle to represent the vault room itself, Lagotti stood behind and to one side of her to not block out the light but also to be able to see. The more she sketched and talked, the more he leaned in to see.
By the time she had drawn the bars that separated the safe from the main room and the shelving with the safe deposit boxes, Lagotti was leaning so far in Mary Lou could feel his arm around her neck, lazily hanging there just so he could see the whole sketch, she told herself. He volleyed questions about that vault
at her for another five, maybe ten, minutes. All the while leaving his arm on her shoulder, eventually leaning in so far she could feel his torso against her arm, against her body. Feel the warmth of his body.
“I assume you didn’t just talk with the bank clerk to find all this out? You fucked him, right?”
At this point she decided enough was enough and that Frank Senior had gone too far. Even if he was Frank Senior. So she bent her right arm to make her elbow stick out and gently point into Lagotti’s body.
“Don’t be like that, dear,” he snarled and quickly whipped his arm off her neck and grabbed her hair, yanking her head back and making her let out a muted scream. She knew they were alone and she knew shouting wasn’t going to make things any better.
Lagotti pushed her down onto the desk, all the while her hair was tightly bound in his hand. Face down on the desk, she could feel his other hand jerking down on her pants until they were past her hips and then she heard him unzip his jeans.
The next thing she knew he was inside her, pumping hard and fast, hurting, hurting, hurting her. When he was finished, her pushed her head down against the cold hard flatness of his desk and intoned: “Get outta my fuckin’ sight, you bitch whore.”
Mary Lou sobbed as she pulled up her pants, feeling how damp they were at the back where he had dripped spunk on her clothes as he withdrew. Clinging to herself as she left the room, she didn’t turn round and she didn’t close the door behind her. Then she walked out of the repair shop and ran into the night.
She didn’t let Frank touch her for ten days and it was another week before she’d let herself be naked with either him or Carter.
One thing was certain and she said this to herself every night before she went to sleep for weeks afterwards: “I’m gonna kill that motherfucker.” And she knew she meant it.
MAY
25
THE SUN WAS shining bright and high in the late morning sky. Frank was itching to get the job over and done with so his dreams could become a reality. So he could leave Baltimore behind him and take Mary Lou to Vegas or Los Angeles or anywhere else on the west coast. He wanted to see the Grand Canyon and find some place with a beach and a quiet wood shack to hang out. Most of all he wanted to keep his freedom and he knew the best way to secure that freedom was to hide in plain sight in a different part of the country. And the other part of his freedom was to be secure with Mary Lou, to know she was with him and he could trust her. Because once they left Baltimore, there was no turning back. They’d need each other far more than they did now. In Mary Lou and money we trust.
He was pretty sure he could rely on her, but a couple of months ago he was not so sure. When they got back from Miami, she started blowing cold to him and he couldn’t figure out why, because they had been so hot together in Florida.
In fact, she was so cold she wouldn’t let him touch her for a week. At that point, he thought it was a bad case of the curse but she wouldn’t let him inside her for another two weeks after that. No curse, just misery.
Then Frank got to thinking about where she’d been and who she’d met. Had Carter turned her head? Had she met some new guy?
Frank thought over and over about the events trailing away from Miami. Each conversation with Mary Lou, each touch, each time they’d fucked. Finally, he remembered he hadn’t seen her for two days after she popped over to Uncle Frank to talk through the new security arrangements. He figured she’d just been hanging out with Carter to extract more info.
Then it struck him: when he saw her next, she had changed. That was the turning point. When Mary Lou met Uncle Frank.
And if that was the turning point and Mary Lou wasn’t going to let herself be touched afterwards that meant that Uncle Frank had touched her. Messed with her. Uncle Frank had fucked his girl. His Uncle Frank. His girl. And if that was the case he was going to have to kill that man. Kill his Uncle Frank. Kill the man who’d hurt his girl, his Mary Lou.
AT THIS POINT in his day, Frank left the apartment and went for a long walk. Then Halethorpe seemed too small to him and he got on a bus and headed for Lansdowne where there was a comforting cemetery to sit in. And there he sat for an hour or two, replaying the anger in his mind until he calmed down enough to want a cup of coffee.
Frank walked out of the cemetery, northwards, in the opposite direction to the bank until he bumped into a small diner with no customers and a jug of coffee on the hot plate. He pushed the door open and sat down at the bar, ordered a coffee and slowly stirred the three spoons of sugar and the dash of milk. Over the next nine minutes, he sipped the coffee dry, threw a couple of dollars down on the counter and walked out. He looked up and realized he was only six or seven blocks away from Carter’s house so he decided to pop round and check on what Rita was up to. He hadn’t been there for at least three months.
When he reached the house Frank looked up and down the street before walking over the picket fence into the backyard. Then up his tree to peer into the bedroom window. And there she was, arms behind her head stretched out on the bed. Just like the last time Frank saw her, only this time she was entirely naked and had a man’s head between her legs. And that man was definitely not Carter.
Frank smiled to himself and realized unless he wanted to stick around for his own personal porn movie, there wasn’t much to see here. Move along down the bus everyone.
Five minutes later, Frank crawled down the tree because, despite himself, he couldn’t quite manage to walk away. He was transfixed by what his eyes were showing him. When the guy raised his head to catch a breath, Rita sat up and pushed him down so he was lying on his back and she was licking him and then slid up his body until she was astride him. He pumped hard and she rode him like a rodeo buck. Only then did he turn away.
Down the tree and off along the street, round the corner and a walk back to the bus stop and home to Halethorpe.
THE SANCTUARY OF that small one-room apartment made Frank feel deeply secure. The image of Rita, merging with the imagined fucking of Mary Lou and Uncle Frank, continued to unsettle him to the point where his anger had abated but he was now feeling a sense of loss and sadness. Not so much sadness for himself, but a melancholy for what Mary Lou must have been through and the fact she didn’t believe she could talk to him about it.
Given how turbulent their last few months had been, Frank understood why she hadn’t said anything, but her silence was even more painful to him precisely because how he’d behaved to her since Christmas. If this was how he treated someone who he wanted to share his west coast dreams with then what was he doing? Why was he not able to let her know how important she was to him? Really important to him. Life or death important, you know?
At this point, Frank heard the key turn in the lock, the door opened and there stood his Mary Lou.
“Hiya, hon’”
“Hi babe,” he responded immediately. Frank smiled at her and she frowned, briefly, back at him. An indication of how unusual his smiles were to her. He stood up out of the armchair and made the three paces over to her in time to catch her facing the wall as she hung up her keys on the wall hook. He gently put his arms around her waist and kissed the side of her neck. She giggled slightly and leaned her head sideways to let his lips cover more of her skin with peck-kisses.
“Hey, you. What’s all this about, then?”
Frank stopped briefly, long enough to say: “Just wanted you to know I was pleased to see you. I want you to know I’m always pleased to be with you, is all,” and he carried on kissing her neck while she raised her arms above her head and messed his hair at the back of his head with her fingers, which he liked.
Meanwhile, his hands had moved from her waist. His left hand had gone upwards, stroking her belly and up to squeeze a breast, whose nipple by now was getting quite hard. And his right hand had gone the other way, over her rose and under her skirt to feel her hairs and her moistness within.
“Wait a minute,” she said and she turned around to face him once she’d extracted herse
lf from his octopus arms. She undid her blouse and pushed down her skirt so she was standing in just her undies. Then she undid Frank’s belt and unzipped his jeans, while Frank pulled off his tee shirt. The jeans fell to the floor and he stepped out from the denim around his ankles.
With one swift motion, he swooped one hand under her body and the other under her neck and carried her, Mary Lou giggling all the while, to their bed and deposited her on the sheets as gentle as he could. Then he pulled off her panties and kissing his way to her groin, licking the rose and everything and anything nearby. The giggles stopped pretty quickly at this point and all Frank could hear was the sound of his tongue and the murmurs and moans of his woman.
He smelled her as if for the first time and it was good. Vanilla tones in the perfume and the sweet smell of sex. He was tasting her for the first time too. Really tasting her and he didn’t want it to stop.
EVENTUALLY HIS JAW got tired and he kissed the inside of her thighs and licked the rose again and stuck his tongue in her belly button. Then he moved up her body to find she was still wearing her bra. And then he noticed he still had his shorts on. He lifted his body up so he was kneeling over her on all fours and she took one hand and pulled down on his shorts just long enough for her other hand to grab his dick.
She leant up a bit and pulled herself up enough to be able to hold him with her knees and switch the both of them over so by the end of the maneuver, Frank was lying on his back and Mary Lou was sat astride him. Somehow, at the same time, she had managed to pull down his shorts and, as he looked down his body, he could see her damp pubes hovering less than an inch from his helmet, which Mary Lou still held in her hand, stroking the tip. He watched it vanish inside her and felt the intense warmth of her body. The dampness and her heat combined and he could feel her squeezing from inside her body. Now she had her hands free, she took off her bra, but never reducing the intensity of her squeezes around him. Then she raised herself an inch or two up, just enough for her lips to touch the tip of his dick. Mary Lou hovered there, slightly bouncing on her knees until Frank’s lips and fingertips started to tingle. Then she pushed deep down onto him and pulled up fast, over and over again. The tingles became an intense throb across the whole of his body and he felt a jet force itself out from the end of his penis. Mary Lou continued her movements and Frank thrust until he was a spent force.
The Lagotti Family Series Page 12