loosely translates to ‘the cold fury.’”
Which Uncle Buddy does not possess, and neither does Lou.
Great-Grandpa Nunzio,
And me-
It’s like I knew what it was before I knew what it was called or where it came from. The first time I experienced it was at age thirteen when Mandi Fishbaum called me a slut. I’ve never forgotten how I radiated that cold fury through my eyes and Mandi winced as if something had bitten her brain. I could feel her terror-I was channeling it-which was horrible for her, but only made me stronger. In fact, the more I thought about it, a strange recollection bubbled to the surface. As I stared at Mandi, a vivid image had appeared between us of her mother connected to a chemotherapy machine-it was as if we were sharing the picture in our minds. In the years since the incident, Mandi’s mom did indeed die from cancer, and it devastated her. I hadn’t seen the future-worse, I had peered into the buried part of Mandi’s soul where terror lived.
Looking at the notebook, I knew that there was something inside of me that absorbed a person’s deepest fears-the ones kept carefully locked away at the bottom of a soul-and projected them back in psychic HD. The creepy-crawlies normally left free to roam a subconscious were dredged to the top of a person’s brain and projected back from my gaze. Lou once told me that all real fighters have something burning at their essential core, and that it was inside of me too. Remembering it made me realize that, like boxing, I was born with an innate ability that meant little unless I could learn to control it.
I pronounced the words silently, feeling the truth of them.
Ghiacco furioso-“gee-ah-cho fury-oh-so.”
Grandpa Enzo and my dad felt it too.
According to the notebook, each in turn served as counselor-at-large to broker internal peace for the Outfit. Grandpa Enzo took over after Nunzio died in 1963, just as organized crime was rocked to its roots. A New York gangster named Joe Valachi tried to avoid the death penalty by testifying before Congress about the secret inner workings of the Mafia. He discussed extortion, heroin trafficking, and murder after murder after murder. Before his testimony, the public doubted that organized crime existed; when he was done talking, its rotten underbelly was fully exposed. Valachi committed the cardinal sin of Mafiosi-he ratted-and mobsters across the country came under intense scrutiny. The Outfit receded further into the shadows, growing greedier and more violent among its own as it became harder to earn a dishonest living. Grandpa Enzo had his work cut out for him, and it affected him in an unusual way.
He began to have doubts.
Some of them are scribbled in the margins.
He wonders about morality, and “truth vs. loyalty,” and “the future of my family.”
My grandpa realized that his role in the Outfit would affect the children he would have someday, and it gave him pause. He was still a young man and considered quitting, except there was no quitting-once you were in, you were in. The only ways out were death or talking to the Feds and begging for protection. The Outfit’s attitude toward rats is captured in a newspaper item taped to a page, dated 1969. It details the impending execution of convicted hit man Eddie “The Exterminator” O’Hara, who brutally beheaded an Outfit associate as well as his wife and children. Unrepentant, O’Hara is quoted as saying, “The bum was a rat, and rats breed. You can’t kill just one. You gotta kill the whole damn family.” In other words, turning informant wasn’t a healthy option, and so my grandpa continued on. The notebook makes it clear that my dad and uncle knew about his role in the Outfit, that my dad’s inheritance was evident from childhood, and that he was destined for that role too. The inverse was true of Uncle Buddy. He obviously didn’t possess ghiaccio furioso-in fact, he didn’t possess much more than a loyal nature and the ability to take a punch, and the loyal part was BS.
Early on, my grandpa and dad began to keep secrets from Uncle Buddy, with the notebook being a prime example.
My uncle thought they were excluding him and grew to hate them for it.
They did it to protect him from the Outfit because they loved him.
My dad’s concern for his brother is contained in a letter to me, folded into the notebook. It’s dated a year before the disappearance, which means he’d been considering telling me about our family for a long time. Its tone is apologetic and vague-he regrets what I’ve probably learned from the notebook but can’t state anything explicitly for fear of the letter falling into the wrong hands. He says that he began as counselor-at-large before my grandpa died (I wondered why he often worked late-who has to work late baking cookies?) and mentions that he and my mom have a plan to “free the family,” which must be a reference to their whispered conversations. He tells me to watch out for Uncle Buddy (good advice) but also to watch over him (not going to happen) and then relates an odd anecdote that I think was an attempt to tell me something without saying it. Apparently, Nunzio had a special way with animals (like Lou with Harry) and kept two unusual pets.
A pair of rats.
The big gray type with worm tails that dine and swim in the sewers of Chicago.
Nunzio called them Antonio and Cleopatra.
He knew that if he fed them and provided a warm place to live-Club Molasses-they would guard their territory, family, and all things Rispoli with ferocity. Antonio and Cleopatra bred and bred, and soon they and their offspring were patrolling the speakeasy like stealthy packs of tiny Dobermans. I have no doubt it was Antonio and Cleopatra’s great-grandchildren who sensed a Rispoli in trouble and saved me at the train station.
Antonio-Anthony-is my dad’s name.
Was he named after a rat?
Is that what he was trying to tell me-that he had become one?
So far, it’s a question that even the notebook can’t answer. What endless hours of reading has made clear, however, is that the Outfit has no code of honor, no ethnic allegiance, and no loyalty. There is only the accumulation of power and its twin purposes of making money and destroying people who try to take that money away. I’m sure that’s why Great-Grandpa Nunzio began writing things down-he did it to protect himself, by recording secrets about and evidence against other Outfit members in case he ever needed leverage.
But then he went further.
In great detail, he documented the locations of secret escape routes all over Chicago, while also providing the confidential contact numbers for nameless, dangerous allies and the passwords needed to access them, putting a shadow army of homicidal thugs at his fingertips. It was a practice carried on by Grandpa Enzo and my dad; they each updated those invaluable Outfit secrets to their respective generations. And then there’s the last chapter, “
It’s an instruction manual for operating the Outfit, from its secretive, singular boss at the very top of the organization, down to its soldiers on the street.
There is a kind of danger on those pages that can strike and kill quickly, quietly, and efficiently.
It’s a leather-bound nuclear weapon, and I won’t hesitate to use it.
17
After what seemed like an eternity of running and fighting for my life, making it back to school was a relief, but also surreal, as if I’d stepped into the calm, orderly existence of that previous Sara Jane. I was standing outside of homeroom, my face knit with hatred as I thought about how I planned to deploy the notebook’s power on that masked, lurching freak, when someone said hi.
“Hey,” I growled without looking up.
That was how I said hello to Max when I finally saw him.
After a whirlwind of fleeing, punching, and reading, I’d cocooned into something slightly less than human-a
