was clad in red silk wallpaper. A wet bar, encased in mirrored glass and lit by 150-watt bulbs, was built into the far corner of all that red and cave rock, and painted black to match the armoire. Amid pictures of Stevie and his family hanging from the walls, the Zambucas had placed framed photos of their favorite Italians-John Travolta as Tony Manero, Al Pacino as Michael Corleone, Frank Sinatra, Dino, Sophia Loren, Vince Lombardi, and, inexplicably, Elvis. I guess with the dark hair and the questionable taste in clothing, the King was an honorary goomba, kind of guy you could’ve trusted to do a hit and keep his mouth shut, make you a nice sausage-and-peppers hoagie afterward.
Bubba shook a bunch of hands, kissed a few cheeks, but didn’t pause for conversation, and no one looked like they wanted to engage him in one anyway. Even in a room full of second-story men, bank robbers, bookies, and killers, Bubba sent an electric trill through the house, a distinct aura of threat and otherworldliness. The men’s smiles were fragmented and slightly shaky when they saw him, and the women’s reconstructed faces bore an odd mixture of fear and arousal.
As we neared the edge of the living room, a middle-aged woman with bleached-blond hair and tanning-lamp flesh threw out her arms and screamed, “Aaah, Bubba!”
He lifted her off her feet when he hugged her and she smacked a kiss as loud as her greeting onto the side of his face.
He deposited her gently back to the shag carpet and said, “Mira, how are ya, hon?”
“Great, big fella!” She leaned back and cupped her elbow in her hand as she took a drag from a white cigarette so long it could have hit somebody in the kitchen if she’d turned without warning. She wore a bright blue blouse over matching blue pants and blue open-toed heels with four-inch spikes. Her face and body were a miracle of modern medicine-tiny tuck marks where the jaw line met the ears, jutting ass and breasts an eighteen-year-old would envy, hands as creamy porcelain as a doll’s. “Where you been hiding? You seen Josephina?”
Bubba answered the second question. “She let us in, yeah. She looks great.”
“Pain in my patootie,” Mira said, and laughed through a burst of smoke. “Stevie wants to put her in a convent.”
“Sister Josephina?” Bubba asked with a cocked eyebrow.
Mira’s cackle ripped through the room. “Wouldn’t that be a sight? Ha!”
She looked at me suddenly and her bright eyes dulled with suspicion.
“Mira,” Bubba said, “this is my friend Patrick. Stevie has some business with him.”
Mira slid a smooth hand into mine. “Mira Zambuca. Pleased to meet you, Pat.”
I hate being called Pat, but I decided not to mention it.
“Mrs. Zambuca,” I said, “a pleasure.”
Mira didn’t look all that pleased having a pale-faced Mick in her living room, but she gave me a distant smile that told me she’d bear it as long I stayed away from the silverware.
“Stevie’s out by the grill.” She cocked her head in the direction of streams of smoke billowing by the glass doors that led out back. “Making them veal and pork sausages everyone loves so much.”
Particularly for brunch, I thought.
“Thanks, hon,” Bubba said. “You look dynamite, by the way.”
“Aw, thanks, sweetie. Ain’t you a caution?” She turned away from us and almost ignited sixteen pounds of another woman’s hair with her cigarette before the woman saw it coming and leaned back.
Bubba and I worked our way through the rest of the crowd and out through the back. We closed the door behind us and waved at the clouds of smoke filling the back deck.
Out here, it was strictly men, and a master blaster propped up on the deck rail played Springsteen, another honorary goomba, and most of the guys were fatter than the ones inside, stuffing their mouths even now with cheeseburgers and hot dogs piled high with peppers and onions and relish chunks the size of bricks.
A short guy worked the grill, his jet-black pompadour adding three inches to his height. He wore jeans over white running shoes and sported a T-shirt emblazoned with the words WORLD’S GREATEST DAD on the back. A red-and-white-checkered apron covered the front of him as he worked a steel spatula over a two-tiered grill stuffed from end to end with sausages, hamburgers, marinated chicken breasts, hot dogs, red and green peppers, onions, and a small pile of garlic chunks in a nest of foil.
“Hey, Charlie,” the short guy called out, “you like your burger black, right?”
“Black as Michael Jordan,” a greasy sea of flesh called back as several men laughed.
“That’s some black.” The short guy nodded and lifted a cigar from an ashtray beside the grill and popped it in his mouth.
“Stevie,” Bubba said.
The guy turned and smiled around his cigar. “Hey, Rogowski! Hey, everyone, the Polack’s here!”
There were calls of “Bub-ba!” and “Rogowski!” and “Kill-a!” and several men slapped Bubba’s broad back or shook his hand, but no one acknowledged my presence, because Stevie hadn’t. It was as if I wouldn’t exist until he said so.
“That thing last week,” Stevie Zambuca said to Bubba. “You have any problems?”
“Nope.”
“That guy was talking shit? He give you any headaches?”
“Nope,” Bubba said again.
“Heard that suit in Norfolk is looking to give you grief.”
“Heard that, too,” Bubba said.
“You want a hand with it?”
“No, thanks,” Bubba said.
“You sure? Be the least we could do.”
“Thanks,” Bubba said, “but I got it covered.”
Stevie Zambuca looked up from the grill and smiled at Bubba. “You don’t ever ask for nothing, Rogowski. It makes people nervous.”
“You, Stevie?”
“Me?” He shook his head. “No. It’s old school, far as I’m concerned. Something most of these fucking guys could learn from. Me and you, Rogowski, we’re almost all that’s left of the old days and we ain’t that old. The rest of these fucking guys?” He looked back over his shoulder at the fat farm on his porch. “They’re hoping for movie deals, shopping book ideas to agents.”
Bubba glanced at the men with complete disinterest. “Freddy’s got it bad, I hear.”
Fat Freddy Constantine ran the mob here, but word was he wouldn’t be around much longer. The guy favored to take his seat was currently grilling sausage in front of us.
Stevie nodded. “His entire prostate’s in a biohazard bag at Brigham and Women’s. I hear his intestinal tract’s next.”
“Too bad,” Bubba said.
Stevie shrugged. “Hey, it’s nature, right? You live, you die, people cry, and then they think about where they’re gonna eat.” Stevie shoveled five burgers onto a plate the size of a gladiator’s shield, followed them with a half dozen hot dogs and some chicken. He held the plate over his shoulder and said, “Come get it, you fat fucking humps.”
Bubba leaned back on his heels and dug his hands into his trench coat as one of the blobs took the plate from Stevie’s hand and walked it back to the condiment table.
Stevie closed the grill cover. He placed the spatula on the grill tray and look a long puff on his cigar.
“Bubba, you go mingle, get something to eat. Me and your friend going to take a walk around the yard.”
Bubba shrugged and stayed where he was.
Stevie Zambuca held out a hand. “Kenzie, right? Walk with me.”
We walked off the small porch and down into the yard, made our way between empty white tables and lawn sprinklers that were shut off, down to a small garden encased in brick that hosted a sickly array of dandelions and crocuses.
Beside the garden was a wooden porch swing hanging from metal posts and a rod that had once supported a clothesline. Stevie Zambuca sat on the right side of the porch swing and patted the wood.
“Have a seat, Kenzie.”
I sat.
Stevie leaned back and took a long toke from his cigar, blew the smoke back out as he lifted his legs off the
