Cold Fury

“You have a weakness, you know that?” She sipped, swished, and swallowed, and explained that no, she didn’t possess ghiaccio furioso, nor did anyone in her family. But she reminded me that her father was from Buondiavolo and had shared an ancient secret with her and Poor Kevin that only people from the village knew-how to avoid the immobilizing grip of cold fury. “Don’t ask,” she said. “What kind of nemesis would I be if I told you? But I will tell you that I have no idea where your family is. Yes, Poor Kevin tried to get his hands on them. .”

“I saw it,” I said, finding my voice. “Frank Sinatra’s head.”

“Ah yes, my darling Frank. I gave him to your parents on the pretext that poor me, the trusted nanny who cared so deeply for their precious children, would soon be dead, and that a nanny cam was an absolute necessity in my absence. I even showed them how to use it and placed it in that central location myself. Of course, my real hope was that they’d discuss the notebook and it would be caught on tape. My intention was to sneak into your house and steal it, but someone was always home-you Rispolis just never went out, did you?” She shrugged and said, “After a couple of years, I gave up on ever getting my hands on it. Who knew your mom and dad would continue to use it? Anyway, Poor Kevin would’ve succeeded if he hadn’t been interrupted. He was this close when-don’t laugh-when a whole caravan of black ice cream trucks surrounded your house, tinkling their merry tune. My nimble brother hid in the basement, and your people have been gone ever since.”

“Ice cream trucks?” I said. “That’s ridiculous. You’re lying.”

“Oh yeah? If I had your family, do you think I would’ve gone to all the trouble with my cops and Poor Kevin trying to hunt you down? I would’ve just sent you body parts a piece at a time until you gave me the notebook.” She paused, smiling serenely, and said, “Whoever has your family or wherever they’ve gone, none of that matters now. What matters is that you have the notebook, and you’re here.”

“Who says I have the notebook?” I said.

She looked at me over the top of her cocktail and said, “Well. . do you?”

I said nothing, trying to assume a poker face.

Elzy grinned and said, “Yeah, you have it, just as I suspected. You know something, you might not believe this, but I always liked you. You were a sweet kid and a straight arrow. . just as bad a liar then as you are now. But you were also a tough little kid, and now you’re a tough young woman, and I say let’s let bygones be bygones. I say let’s do this thing together.”

“What thing?” I said calmly, stifling an urge to punch her teeth down her throat.

“Take over Chicago. It’s our time. Have you read the notebook?”

She knew I had it; it was too late to act as if I didn’t. “Parts of it.”

“I’m curious,” she said. “How much of it explains women’s roles in the Outfit? How much of it talks about your great-grandmother, grandmother, or mother? Where does it discuss the wives, sisters, and daughters of all of those Outfit bosses and thugs?”

“Nowhere,” I said.

“Exactly. Organized crime is a boys’ club, with no position of power or responsibility for a female.” She narrowed her eyes and said, “We’re all God’s children, except a woman connected to the Outfit. Then she’s less than a second-class citizen. She can be a faithful wife who won’t testify, or a goomah on the side, or an Italian mama who cooks meatballs for her sonny boy as he shines his pistol, but nothing else. That’s precisely why I faked my own death. With Poor Kevin back at my side, I was done being little miss Elzy-Do-This- Do-That. With my organizational skills, nerves of steel, and almost complete lack of moral conscience, it was time to be the Elzy I was born to be. . the head of the Outfit.” She sipped her drink and said, “Unfortunately, I was born a female. If I’d openly infringed on Outfit business, the boys’ club would’ve crushed me. My head would be fish food in Lake Michigan and the rest of me scattered in the Sanitary Canal. If I was going to take over, I needed to disappear. . to remove the thought of Elzy Zanzara from anyone even remotely connected to the Outfit, so that I could take it by complete and utter surprise. My work would have to be done covertly and unseen, working in the shadows until I made my move. And for that, I needed an edge.”

“You mean the notebook,” I said.

She stared at the ice in her glass and nodded. “With the information contained between those covers, plus my vision and your gift, we can rule this dirty town. It’s high time that someone who thinks with her brain first is in charge.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head slowly. “Never. It doesn’t matter if it’s a man or a woman. The whole thing has been rotten from the beginning and it will never change.”

“I don’t want to change it, you little fool,” she said. “I want to control it. But okay, fine and dandy, I’ll do it alone. . well, not quite alone. I have Poor Kevin. He’s my ultimate weapon because he loves me and only me, and would happily travel to hell and back at my command. He almost got you the first time, in the basement of your house, if it hadn’t been for that filthy little dog.”

“The basement,” I said, feeling again at my neck. “He almost killed me.”

“He was just trying to squeeze the notebook out of you,” she said, sipping. “I suppose it was a bit painful, but Poor Kevin despises you Rispolis. But then, don’t we all?” And then she lowered her voice and glanced around at her people. “Of course, I never told my officers about Poor Kevin. Better to have them all working independently. That’s good leadership, Outfit style. Never let your employees know exactly what you’re doing, or whom you’re doing it with. Secrecy is the key to success.”

“You mean secrecy plus a masked lunatic, don’t you?”

“Tsk-tsk, sticks and stones,” she said, crinkling her nose. “Poor Kevin is my avenging angel. Nothing short of a Mack truck can stop him.”

“I guess I’ll have to get a Mack truck.”

Elzy finished her drink, patted her lips, and said, “This has been fun, but I want that notebook and I want it now.”

“I’ll never give it to you. Why should I? You don’t have my family.”

“Oh, but I have something,” she said, tossing a pair of books on the table. I glanced at the titles, Roger Ebert’s The Great Movies, volumes one and two, and recognized Doug’s well-worn copies. “Your chunky friend traced Poor Kevin’s devil mask to a novelty store, asked a few questions, and actually tried to catch him,” she said with a small smile. “It didn’t work out too well.”

“Where is he?” I said quietly, using every ounce of restraint not to flip the table and stomp the answer out of her. “I swear to God, if you’ve hurt him. .”

“Don’t swear, and yes, of course we’ve hurt him. All you have to do is trade the notebook for your bloated buddy and Poor Kevin will let him go,” she said, narrowing her eyes behind the cat’s-eye glasses. “Of course, now that you’re here, I could just keep you, couldn’t I? Let Poor Kevin convince you to give up the notebook in his own special way. I have more than enough people here to. .” But she spread her arms at an empty bar. Her officers were all gone, with cigarettes still smoldering and drinks unfinished, as if ripped from their posts by silent, unseen hands.

That’s when one of those hands lit on my shoulder.

Elzy looked behind me and her jaw muscles rippled.

One of Knuckles’s dark and anonymous guys said, “Time to go, girly.”

I rose and saw his two companions, one near the bar, one at the door, and wanted to ask what they had done with Elzy’s people, but it wasn’t a Q amp;A moment. Elzy crossed her arms and said, “I see you’ve learned a couple of things from the notebook.”

“More than a couple.”

“Two hours. Come alone, unarmed, or you’ll have a fat corpse on your hands.”

“Where?”

“Rispoli amp; Sons Fancy Pastries.” She smiled coyly.

The bakery, where her brother lost his face.

Club Molasses, where my family buried its secrets.

Where everything began and where, I realized, she intended everything to end.

An hour and fifty-eight minutes is not much time to speed-read part of a chapter, scribble a list, grab cash from a steel briefcase, drive like a maniac to one store and then another store, and then build a bomb.

Actually, the notebook calls it an “incendiary device.”