Who is Lou Sciortino? (20 page)

“No, I didn't starch them, Tony.”

“Because,” Tony said to the girls, who'd come to lend a hand to get ready for the barbecue, “the collar of an Indian silk shirt has gotta be soft.”

“I made them soft for you, Tony.”

Tony first made a face like he was saying,
Good,
then his expression changed abruptly and he asked, “Why aren't these beers in the fridge?”

Cettina looked at the beers.

“Because they wouldn't fit, Tony. The fridge is full of beer.”

“Always ready with an excuse, aren't you? What do you mean, they don't fit? I told you a thousand times, you gotta lay beers flat in the fridge.” With his hands Tony mimed beers lying flat. “That way they go in better.”

“I put them in flat.”

“How flat?”

“Tony, I couldn't find mayonnaise in the kitchen,” Valentina said.

Tony put a hand on his head, like he was trying to keep it from spinning, and ran into the kitchen.

Cettina thanked Valentina for getting Tony out of her hair. And at that moment the phone rang.

*   *   *

“It can explode for all I care, I'm not answering,” Cettina says.

“Maybe it's the
americano
from last time,” Cinzia says.

Cettina grimaces, thinking about the double dose of matchmaking Tony's planning.

“What
americano?
” Mindy says.

“The one you were eating alive,” Alessia says.

“I wasn't eating anyone alive,” Mindy says, her face lighting up.

“Is it true she was looking at him?” Cinzia asks Aunt Carmela.

“If she says she wasn't looking at him, she wasn't looking at him,” Aunt Carmela says.

“
Minchia,
” Rosy says, “if Steve sees something like that, he slaps me around, he's so jealous. I don't get it with Steve, first he wants me to dress feminine, then he slaps me because they look.”

“Yes, Rosy, but you dress too feminine!” Valentina says.

“And you dress like a man!”

There's a noise of broken bottles coming from the kitchen.

“I told you they wouldn't fit,” Cettina says, looking into space.

“Fuck, I nearly cut myself,” Tony says, coming back from the kitchen. Then he stops, listens, looks at the women lying around, and asks, “Sorry to bother you, but point of information: don't any of you hear the phone?”

“We all thought you wanted to answer it,” Valentina says. “You always get pissed off that we don't know how to answer the phone.”

“Of course I get pissed off. Cettina says hello like she's gonna bite off somebody's hand.”

Tony picks up the receiver and says, “Yes?” Then he turns white and hangs up silently. He's facing the women, but it's like he isn't looking at anybody.

The girls and Aunt Carmela look at each other.

“Fuck…” Tony says.

“Fuck what?” Cettina says, shifting the centerpiece on the table, then moving it back where it was before.

“Fuck … it was the
americano…
”

“The
americano?
” Mindy says, getting up.

“He told me he's bringing Leonard Trent … A celebrity, in my house. I can't get my head around it!”

SCIACCA AND LONGO NEVER CATCH A BREAK

Sciacca and Longo never catch a break. The brass on Via Vecchia Ognina always give them the dirtiest jobs, stakeouts, escorts, an endless regimen of shit, with no consideration for length of service and merit.

Sciacca and Longo were drinking an
amaro
at Caprice—they needed a
digestivo
after Sciacca's sister's eggplant pasta and Longo's wife's pasta with sardines—when Via Vecchia Ognina ordered them to pick up the American woman who was having hysterics and escort her back to her hotel.

Obviously, Sciacca and Longo were overjoyed at having to give up their
amaro
to play escort to an American in hysterics.

In the elevator, they're almost falling asleep when Greta starts screaming, calling Longo a
bastard
and Sciacca a
son of a bitch.

It's normal,
Longo thinks.
They just whacked her pimp, and it's a well-known fact that hookers always act this way when their pimps get whacked.

When they reach her floor, Sciacca takes Greta's arm, and the hooker starts screaming, “Don't touch me!”

But Sciacca and Longo still take her as far as her room. Greta looks at them and slams the door in their faces.

On the landing, Longo takes out a little bottle of
sambuca
he filched from the cash desk at the Caprice, and they're blissfully knocking it back when an asshole in a blue jacket and gray pants, with dandruff on his lapels, shows up.

“Good evening,” he says.

Longo and Sciacca look at each other and nod in reply.

The asshole has red hair and a very taut face like somebody who's had plastic surgery. Only this one looks here and there like he's had it one too many times. His face has been lifted so much, his eyes are like little almonds.

“What's going on? First I hear a woman screaming, now there's two cops in the corridor. Nothing to worry about, I hope?”

“Nothing, nothing, just a murder,” Longo says. “The lady was involved. She's still in shock.”

“A murder here? In the hotel?”

“No, outside.”

“Nothing serious, I hope…” the guy says, referring to the murder. “But this lady, was she really involved or did she just happen to be there?”

Longo and Sciacca look at each other again.

“Just keep moving,” Sciacca says, waving the hand that's holding the
sambuca.

“Okay, okay. I was thinking about you guys. If the lady just happened to be there, well, these things happen. But if she's actually involved and she got away, I mean, they're likely to try again, aren't they?
Salutiamo.
”

The guy with the blue jacket and gray pants puts his hands in his pockets and walks away.

“What an asshole,” Sciacca says.

“Face-lift Charlie,” Longo says.

Sciacca and Longo start laughing. Sciacca passes the
sambuca
to Longo, and Longo knocks it back.

“What did the boss tell you?” Sciacca asks.

“
Minchia,
Licciardello was wound up like a violin string! The FBI's been in touch with him, seems one of the two dead guys on Via Crociferi is a big capo!”

“And we gotta stay here?” Sciacca says, putting his hands in his pockets and hunching his shoulders.

“Starting to feel cold, huh? Fucking air-conditioning!” Longo says.

“Fuck, it's like a cold wind came in! Listen, Longo! Did Licciardello say, ‘Take her to the hotel and keep an eye on her' or ‘Take her to the hotel and keep an eye on the hotel'?”

“The second one, I think,” Longo says, laughing.

“So we could go down to the bar and get another Fernet?”

“I'd say definitely yes,” Longo says.

On the stairs, Sciacca and Longo pass the asshole with a face like a Chinaman, on his way back up the stairs.

*   *   *

As usual, Turi's got a tape recorder in his pocket. He likes to play back the victim's whimpers later. Greta comes out of the shower and Turi grabs her by the shoulders, puts his hand over her mouth, lays her out on the bed, and puts the knife to her throat. Turi can feel the whore starting to panic, her heart going boom-boom-boom, her breath coming in little gasps. Then she starts writhing on the bed. Whenever he presses the blade in, the whore screams, when he presses less, she relaxes, when he presses it in again, she tenses again.

Then the whore calms down, like she's trying to make it easier for him. Turi has seen a lot of things in his life, but never a whore with a knife at her throat starting to open and close her ass.

This sends Turi practically into a swoon. The masochistic whore is writhing at a faster rhythm now and Turi is getting aroused, especially as his dick is rubbing against the zipper of his pants.

The only part of Greta's body that's free is her arm, which is dangling over the side of the bed. With the tips of her fingers, she feels the carpet, searching for something, anything, a hair grip, a hatpin. And all she can find are the Prada shoes with stiletto heels that Chaz, on Frank's orders, bought her on Fifth Avenue.

When the edge of the heel hits him on the nose, Turi feels uncomfortable at first. Everything turns white, and then, suddenly, he can feel his nose getting bigger. And he remembers an afternoon when he was still a kid and he suddenly felt his pecker itching and getting bigger and he went into the john to play with it and it was just like when you squeezed your zits and this very white stuff like a kind of pus came out of his hard dick. Turi relaxes, with an almost ecstatic expression on his face.

Greta gathers all her strength, grips the stiletto heel in her right hand, and drives it hard into his eye, then she kneads the heel in with both hands, the way she used to watch her grandmother knead bread on those long Maine afternoons. She hears a noise, not even a noise, a whisper, something like a sigh of pleasure coming out of Turi's mouth. After that, nothing. Only then does Greta look her assailant in the face. And she sees her thousand-dollar shoe embedded in the guy's eye. He's lying still and silent now. From the base of the shoe, a thick blotch of blood starts spreading over a face that's had more lifts than Cher.

TO FIND A NERO D'AVOLA

To find a Nero d'Avola the way Don Lou wanted it (“Don't just buy the first one you find, and not from oak casks, please”), Pippino had to go around half of Catania, because at the Central Palace and around the hotel they had Nero d'Avola, but bottled in Venice, which, Don Lou told Lou, was like buying Murano glass made in Carrapipi. Now, sitting in his armchair in his suite at the Palace, Don Lou is sipping it slowly. “
Minchia,
this is a wine!”

Sitting in another armchair, behind Don Lou, Pippino nods contentedly. He's just started reading a book he heard a lot about in America, and he likes the beginning:
In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice
 … Fuck, his father used to do the same when he was a kid!

“I drank a really good white wine from oak casks, Grandpa,” Lou says, his voice slurred by gin and cigarettes.

Sciortino Junior is sitting on the couch facing Don Lou's armchair, knocking back his third gin and tonic of the day.

“I'm not saying wine from casks isn't good,” Don Lou says, “I'm saying it's a French thing, and the cask affects the taste.” Then, irritably, maybe because his hemorrhoids are bothering him, “But what the fuck are you still doing here? I told you I want people to see you around!”

“Don't worry, Grandpa!” Lou says. “I've been invited to a barbecue by Sal Scali's nephew Tony, with that dickhead Leonard Trent! I'll show up in a red jacket. They'll see me, all right!”

“A barbecue?” Don Lou says. “A barbecue in Catania? Maybe they said a buffet!”

“Barbecue, they said barbecue.”

“So this Tony's an idiot,” Don Lou says. “Better still!” Then, looking toward the window that gives onto Via Etnea, “What's that noise? What is that, a fire truck or the cops?”

“Let me go see,” Pippino says, putting the book down on the carpet. Don Lou nods. Pippino looks around, sees the bottle of gin, puts it back in the minibar—watched by a not very happy Lou—and leaves the room.

“
Minchia,
” Don Lou says, “everything's changed in Sicily! Even the sirens!”

Lou nods, even though he hasn't got a fucking clue what the sirens used to sound like.

Don Lou grips the glass of Nero d'Avola with his right hand and the arm of the chair with his left, and starts tapping the left foot of the chair repeatedly with his right foot.

“I can't get my head around what Sonnino told us!” he says. “Draw your own conclusions. Sergeants getting their heads blown off,
americani
fucking with us and getting killed on Via Crociferi—because it's obvious it was them, a famous producer in full view of a bunch of photographers—a boss has got to ask himself, is that how Virtude controls his territory?
Capish,
Lou? Here they've been using us to fuck Virtude, and in America they want Sicily to fuck us up the ass!” Don Lou slams his fist down on the left arm of the chair.

“And Sal Scali?” he continues. “
Minchia,
he used to be the biggest ass kisser, now look at him feeling his oats! When those dickhead
picciotti
of his dropped the sergeant, the asshole thought he'd put you in the middle. So the whole of Catania started to ask,
Who the fuck is this Lou Sciortino? What the fuck does he want with us?
But,
minchia,
now we're going to fucking show him!”

Don Lou slams his fist down so hard on the arm of the chair that the wine spills on his white shirt, near his heart.

When Pippino comes back in the room and sees the red stain on his heart, he looks so horrified that Don Lou quickly says, “It's Nero d'Avola.”

Pippino coughs and says, “Mr. Trent wants to talk to you. I met him down in the lobby. He knows what's going on, I'm sure of it.”

“Where is he now?” Don Lou asks.

“Waiting outside.”

“So show him in!”

Leonard comes in quickly while Lou is trying to clean the stain from Don Lou's shirt with a wet towel.

“Oh, Lord,” he says, stopping abruptly. “The killer was here, too!”

“It's Nero d'Avola,” Don Lou says irritably. “Now, what's this about the killer?”

“Jesus Christ, didn't you hear? The hotel's turned upside down, ambulances, police, prosecutors!” Leonard sits down on the couch, sighs, and crosses his legs. “Can I have a little of that wine, Pippino?” he asks. “Fuck, I lost my producer—almost lost my producer's lover!”