Gaetano Gasso’s silver crochet needle flashed back and forth. He stared intently at the doily he was working on. He was trying a new stitch and it was difficult to pick up the correct thread each time. He had done it wrong three times now and he was beginning to lose his temper. And when Gaetano Gasso lost his temper, people had reason to worry.
He sat alone at a bare desk in the corner of a mammoth warehouse—a warehouse that was stark empty except for one automobile. It was Gasso’s automobile, a 1968 Chevrolet sedan that once was a police car. He had purchased it at an auction for city cars and got it for $5 when the junk dealers who normally bought such cars for $25 all developed serious cases of lockjaw. For another $10 he had had it tuned up at a good garage he knew on Paterson Plankroad in Secaucus; for $10 he had two kids paint it yellow; and for 25 bucks he had himself good dependable wheels. It was good to have a friend in city hall.
It was no use. He could not concentrate on the doily. It was that writer. That smart-ass writer. Well, tonight he would take care of that smart-ass writer, and he allowed himself a smile at the prospect. First he would work him over, find out what he was really doing in town and what had happened to The Duck and O’Boyle and Pops, then he would kill him. He looked forward to the prospect and he rubbed his big hands together. Then he could get that stitch right. Crocheting took concentration. That Remo Barry would pay the price for disturbing Gaetano Gasso’s concentration.
A steel door at the front of the warehouse opened and Willie the Plumber Palumbo stuck his head in reluctantly and called, “Mister Gasso? Mister Gasso?”
Gasso stood up behind the desk in the corner. The Plumber saw him and said loudly, “We got him for you, Mr. Gasso. We got him.” Then Willie the Plumber walked into the warehouse, followed by a medium-tall, medium-husky stranger, who was followed by Steve Lillisio who had a gun poked into the stranger’s back.
Willie the Plumber let the two men walk in front of him, locked the door behind them, then hurried to get back in front of the procession. He smiled as he neared Gasso, who had moved alongside the desk, and hoped to coax a smile in return. Nothing.
“We got him, Mr. Gasso. We got him. Real easy. Just picked him right up off the street. We got him for you.”
Gasso ignored him. Willie coughed. Something came up into his mouth, but he wasn’t sure of Mr. Gasso’s position on spitting so he swallowed it.
Gasso was looking at the man in the middle. Remo Barry. He didn’t look like enough to cause all this trouble. Remo Barry, meanwhile, was looking around him at the warehouse, all around—at the ceilings, at the floors, at the walls. Finally he turned his head to Gasso.
“How you want to die?” Gasso asked.
“What do I want to die for? But I’ll tell you, you keep sneaking up on me like that and I’ll die of shock. You’re enough to scare somebody to death. How do you get that hair to grow all over you? Some kind of plant food, right? Huh?”
Willie the Plumber Palumbo and Steve Lillisio stood there silently. It was not nice to talk that way to Mr. Gasso. They hoped he would tell them to go. They did not want to be there to see what was going to happen to this writer.
The writer was still talking. “Does the Museum of Natural History know you’re here? I mean, it’s just not right to keep Margaret Mead out of this. The last time anybody found something like you, it was in a cave. How come you don’t have hair on your teeth? I saw something in a display case once that looked like you and I would have sworn it had hair on its teeth.”
Mr. Gasso was going to talk. His mouth was moving and Willie the Plumber Palumbo hoped that he would say, “Okay, Willie the Plumber. Go home. You did a good job, now go home and leave me alone with this creep.” But Mr. Gasso talked to the writer instead. “I asked you how you want to die?”
Remo looked down at the desk and saw the crocheting. “Hey, look,” he said, “crocheting.” He picked up the needle and the thread. “That’s pretty good. Really, fella, that’s pretty good. You keep practicing and pretty soon they’ll be able to sell them. It’s good for people like you to make a buck. Makes you feel worthwhile, doesn’t it? Not like you’re a burden on someone.”
He leaned forward toward Gasso. “Come on,” he whispered. “You can tell me. How do you get all that hair to grow? I won’t tell anybody. It’s not a wig, is it? I mean a body-sized wig is too much. Maybe some kind of astro-turf. Does it hurt your knees when you run? Do you have knees? It’s hard to tell. I mean, I can see you don’t have any wrists, but I can’t see your knees. If you have knees.”
He turned back to Willie the Plumber. “C’mon, you probably know. Does this thing have knees? It’s important, so think carefully before you answer. If it doesn’t have any knees, it might be a whole new species. We might make a buck. Imagine, finding a whole new species.”
Of all the things Willie did not want, the thing he did not want most was to be drawn into this lunatic’s conversation. Among the other things he did not want was to show anything that looked like a smile. He did not want to even look as if he had been listening.
So his mind worked fast and finally he said, “Just shut your face. Mr. Gasso asked you a question.”
“Question? Oh yeah, how do I want to die?” Remo turned and looked at Gasso. “Well, guns kind of take the fun out of it and you might get disfigured if we used knives. And I wouldn’t want that to happen, at least not until the museum gets its people over here to look at you.”
Remo shrugged. “Anything you want’s all right with me. How about clubs? Is your species using clubs yet?”
Willie the Plumber watched. Mr. Gasso was about to speak. Maybe he was about to send Willie the Plumber away. Gasso’s mouth moved, but again he addressed his words to Remo Barry. “Last guy talked like that I pulled his arms out. He didn’t make no more jokes after that.”
“Guess not,” Remo said.
“But I got something better for you.”
“Oh? I wonder what it could be?” Remo snapped his fingers. “I know. You’re going to give me a doily. All for myself. Hey, fella, that’s really nice of you too. I know how long it takes you people to do a thing like this, trying to coordinate your fingers and all, and I want you to know I really appreciate it.”
Gasso spoke again. “Willie the Plumber, you can go. You too, Lillisio.” To Willie, he said, “Come back in the morning, so you can pick up what’s left of him and get rid of it someplace.”
He stopped momentarily, then asked, “You checked him for a gun?”
“Yes, Mr. Gasso,” Willie the Plumber said. “He ain’t carrying.”
“Okay. Get out of here now. This comedian’s gonna start talking and he’s gonna tell me who sent him.”
Willie the Plumber and Lillisio set a new world’s record for trans-warehouse flight. When the door clicked closed behind them, Gasso reached into his pocket and pulled out a brass key. “This unlocks the door. If you can take it off me, you win. You can go.” He put the key back in his pocket.
Remo said, “I’m not going to take it off you. You’re going to give it to me.”
“Why?” Gasso asked.
“So that I’ll stop the pain.”
Gasso lunged. His tree trunk arms encircled Remo around the chest, under Remo’s arms.
“First, I’m going to take some of the snot out of you, buddy,” Gasso grunted. “Then I’m going to peel your skin like an orange.” He locked his hands behind Remo and squeezed. He gave it the hundred percent squeeze, guaranteed to crack ribs and bring on unconsciousness.
Remo reached behind him with his hands and encircled the parts of Gasso’s arms that would, on a normal person, be wrists. He concentrated on his hands and blanked his mind so that nothing existed for him but his hands and he remembered one of Chiun’s innumerable chants, “I am created Shiva, the destroyer; death, the shatterer of worlds,” then he began to pull Gasso’s arms apart.
Gasso’s fingers felt slippery and then he felt the fingers began to slide. One hand gave up its hold on the other and his hands separate
d. It had never happened before. He roared and tried to close his arms again, but this punk—this Barry—had him and slowly, like a giant machine, he was pulling Gasso’s arms apart. Then Gasso’s arms were at his sides, then extended out by his shoulders and this Remo punk was smiling at him and still pressuring. Then Gasso felt his shoulder muscles begin to give. They were tearing and the arms were pulling out of the sockets. The pain was excruciating and Gasso screamed, a bloodcurdling scream that resounded through the empty warehouse and then echoed off the ceiling and the walls, fed on its own intensity and carried even to outdoors, where Willie the Plumber Palumbo was just closing the door of his Eldorado behind him.
Willie the Plumber stopped for a moment when he heard the scream, then closed the door. Willie was careful to say the correct thing because he did not know if Lillisio might be the kind of guy to carry stories back. So he said, “I feel sorry for the poor bastard. But he shouldn’t oughta made fun of Mr. Gasso.”
And Willie drove away quickly. He did not want to hear more. He had been told to come back in the morning to dispose of what was left and his stomach was churning at the thought of what that would look like.
Poor Remo Barry.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THERE ARE TWO HUNDRED SIX BONES IN the human body. It was the kind of fact that Don Dominic Verillio remembered, and it was in large measure responsible for the reputation he had among his Mafia underlings for erudition and culture.
Don Dominic also felt he had a logical mind. Since there were two hundred six bones in the human body and since Gaetano Gasso was—despite his appearance—a human being, it therefore followed that Gaetano Gasso had two hundred six bones in his body also.
And every one of them was broken.
Don Dominic Varillio was not a religious man. It is true that he went to church every Sunday and on every holy day of obligation, but he went as a business investment. As a community leader, he must lead a community leader’s life. He must be God-fearing and religious. In his true business as Capo Mafioso, the knowledge among his troops that he was a religious man could often compensate for some particular ghastly thing that Verillio, as the leader of leaders, must do or order done.
So he was not really a religious man. But he now crossed himself as he looked down upon the body of what was once Gaetano Gasso.
The body that only fifteen hours earlier had been a solid lump of muscle now looked like Jell-O slowly melting inside an ill-fitting man-shaped sausage casing. It had been pulverized into a bag of mush.
The arms were flung out wildly and where arms normally transcribed only angles, Gasso’s arms were bent into true curves, which was only possible because the bones that normally lent arms their rigidity, had been broken. And broken. And broken again.
And so had the legs and the ribs and the head. But that by itself was not enough to make Don Dominic Verillio bless himself and make the sign of the cross.
Growing out of the center of Gasso’s forehead like a horrible antenna was a silver crochet hook, driven through the bone, into the brain, by some force that Don Dominic Verillio could not imagine. But that by itself was not enough to make Don Dominic Verillio bless himself.
What made Verillio utter a silent prayer, to whatever god might be out there who was still unattached and could fight on his side, was this:
Gaetano Gasso was naked. A white doily he had been crocheting had been dropped carefully over his private parts. Ordinarily, its white color would have stood out starkly against the black hair that coated Gasso’s body from head to toe. But it did not now because Gasso’s hair was no longer black. The hair on his head, and on his shoulders and chest and stomach and legs and feet and arms was white. Snow white.
And for that, Don Dominic Verillio blessed himself. No one should have to die that way. Not even Gaetano Gasso who specialized in terrible deaths.
Next to Verillio stood Willie the Plumber Palumbo, who had discovered the body that morning and had telephoned Verillio to come to the warehouse. Willie the Plumber was muttering, and Verillio saw that he was fingering a rosary and saying his beads.
He started to interrupt, to tell Willie the Plumber to stop, and then he checked himself. Gasso. And no word from the three men sent yesterday to Remo Barry’s apartment to force information from the old Chinaman.
What were they up against? Maybe Willie was right to pray.
Don Dominic Verillio thought about that as he drove his Lincoln Continental back to the center of town where his office was located in the Chamber of Commerce building.
He was thinking about it as he drove past St. Alexander’s Church, an old Catholic church, whose architect seemed to be trying to tell everyone something by building a Byzantine temple.
When he saw a meter, Verillio pulled over to the curb and carefully parked his car. He put 10 cents in the meter, then walked back to the church. It was cool inside, a blessed change from the heat that pummeled the city, even this early in the morning. Don Dominic Verillio slid into a pew at the very back of the church and kneeled down and stared at the altar which he had purchased for St. Alexander’s Church in memory of his mother.
Old Pietro’s half-witted daughter had warned him. And was she not often right? Did she not say he would marry and had she not said his wife would die. Had she not known about the daughter no one else knew about? And now, she had said he was going against a god. Had he? Was there such a thing as Shiva the destroyer?
He thought of Gasso, white haired and pulp, lying on the floor of the warehouse and his lips began to move in the unthinking words of childhood.
“Our father, Who art in heaven, hallowed be… ” He stared at the altar, his altar, and he hoped that the real God would remember it. He tried to concentrate on the image of Christ there, but his eyes went blank and all he could see was Gasso; then the faces of those other three men who had disappeared yesterday.
“…Thy will be done, on earth…” Thy will? Whose will? Verillio thought of another face, the face of that writer, Remo Barry, smiling and hard-faced. Even if he is a god, he isn’t my God, and it isn’t right for him to be here. What kind of god can he be anyway? Old ladies’ superstition.
But there was Gasso.
“…Our daily bread and lead us not…”
Verillio fixed his eyes on the crucifix behind his altar. Jesus, you hear me now. I may not be the best, but what have you got that’s better? The altar. The summer camp. The carpeting in the convent. There’s more, Jesus, where that came from. More. That’s if things keep going. But there won’t be anything, Lord, if this new guy takes over. If he gets everybody believing that god stuff. There won’t be anything then for you, Lord.
“…But deliver us from evil…”
Don Dominic Verillio looked at the crucifix, waiting for a sign that his bargain had been accepted, but he saw none.
In the rear of the church, the Rev. F. H. Maguire stood, looking over his new church. He had been a curate in four churches now, each more impressive than the next and this one was magnificent. It was strange. The outside world had a view of Hudson as if it were peopled by Mafia thugs, crooks and gamblers. It was unfair, Father Maguire thought.
The people of Hudson built beautiful churches and they filled them on Sundays and holy days. Until anything was proven differently, Father Maguire was willing to take them as they came. Like that man in the last row over there. Obviously, a man of some standing in the community. And probably an everyday churchgoer. Father Maguire tried to read the man by looking at him. Solid, stable, deeply religious—but worried. Yes, there was worry in the crinkle of the eyes. And his lips were moving, but not in ritualistic prayers. He was talking directly to God, and worried men did that most often.
We got a deal, Jesus, or not? You just going to give up and let somebody else move in, masquerading as you? It matters, you know. If you aren’t the man, then a lot of money goes somewhere else. A lot of widows and orphans and poor people are going to be hurt. Because of you. Make up your mind, Jesus. I don’t hav
e all day.
Father Maguire shook his head as he watched the man in the rear pew. His lips were moving now and despite the coolness of the church, sweat was running down his face. He was agitated. Obviously arguing with God. It could be dangerous to the man’s faith and the man’s soul if he were allowed to go on.
The Rev. F. H. Maguire was one of God’s activists. He believed in CYO newspapers, bowling leagues and theater parties—but only as a means to an end, not an end in themselves. The end was the tortured souls of tortured people, like this fine-looking man in the last pew.
Father Maguire walked over, and slid into the pew next to Verillio, folded his hands and put them on the back of the seat in front of him. When Verillio looked at him, he smiled, leaned toward him and whispered, “Do not despair, sir. Though he moves in strange ways, through strange instruments, God accomplishes God’s work. It is not for us to know how. It is not for us to understand all the means. It is enough for us to know that whoever does God’s work stands with Christ, in triumph through eternity, no matter what forces are arrayed against him.
“The good man will crush the evil,” Father Maguire said, and he smiled.
Verillio stared at him. Father Maguire kept smiling, so Verillio rose to his feet, then pushed past the priest and out into the aisle. He walked rapidly. It turned into a run, out across the back and down the broad front steps of the church.
Don Dominic Verillio prided himself on never having been stupid. And as he drove to his office now, he told himself that again. When times changed, Don Dominic changed with them. When it was time to strike, he had struck. But now it was time to flee. He would flee.
He tapped his foot impatiently as he rode up in the uncrowded elevator to his suite of offices in the Chamber of Commerce building, and he tried to seem unconcerned and pleasant as he said good morning to his secretary.
“I’ll take no calls for awhile,” he told her. Inside his inner office, he pulled back a painting on the wall. It was one of Eve Flynn’s. That was one of the reasons to flee and not to die because Eve Flynn gave a vision of life that was worth living for, so he dialed three numbers on a combination safe and opened the safe. But inside there was just another combination safe. Before touching that dial he went to his desk and pressed a switch which cut the electrical power to the safe, then went back to dial the numbers that opened it.
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