Sometimes a Halloween Treat
Can turn out to be nothing but a bit of
trickery; Sometimes the finest meals
Can leave you wanting something that's
a little more . . . familiar . . .
By
William E. Wallace
The ’99 Crown
Victoria might as well have been a coroner’s wagon considering that its
passengers were mostly dead or dying. Louis Padrano in the back seat hadn’t
taken a breath in twenty minutes. Mickie "Click" Kelly was sprawled
in front, the gurgling rasp in his lungs making it clear he’d soon join Padrano.
As for the
driver, Sal Lunardi, a nine-millimeter slug was wedged in the meaty part of his
bicep and his life’s blood was spilling out of it so fast that it made his head
spin. If the slug had hit the big artery in his upper arm, he’d already be
dead.
Kelly struggled for
air as life pumped from his chest.
"Sal,"
he croaked, "paper in my coat: my family's home address. Take me there,
please, dead or alive. They'll know what to do."
"Sure,
Click," Lunardi said, groping through his mortally wounded partner's
jacket with one hand. He pulled out the wad of paper and glanced at it. The
address was in Clifton, a town of about 30,000 people an hour south.
"Who do I
talk to there?" Sal asked, stuffing the note in his own pocket.
"My
ma," Kelly said. "Her name’s Bronagh. She knows what I do.
Promise?"
Lunardi watched his
partner tremble. Click's teeth clattered uncontrollably and his eyes were filmy
with shock.
"You got
it, man," Lunardi said. "But just hang in, okay? You're gonna be
fine."
It was a lie and
both of them knew it. Click would soon be as dead as St. Dominic Savio; a good
deal less innocent, perhaps, but just as dead.
Despite the pain
from his arm, Sal gritted his teeth and forced himself to watch the white line
disappear under the Ford while he relived the evening's disaster in his mind.
The underboss Angelo
Carlotti had sent him, Kelly and Padrano to crash a meeting with Ricardo Cortez,
a Mexican Mafia soldado with control
over the Tijuana Cartel’s assets in California.
The subject of
the conference was control of Harbor City, the crown jewel of organized crime
in the Golden State. The city’s merchants were openly extorted by gangsters and
cops, drugs were sold everywhere and much of the town was a red light district
catering to perversions the Marquis de Sade could only have imagined.
Cortez was
already handling Harbor City’s Mexican brown, cocaine and crystal meth, but he
wanted the rest of the action, too. The problem was, Carlotti had already glommed
two-thirds of Harbor City, including all the whore houses. Carlotti called the sit-down
to keep the territorial dispute from ending in open warfare but Lunardi and his
compares were supposed to raid it and
leave Cortez dead.
That was the
plan Carlotti explained to Dom, anyway.
But both knew the
only thing keeping Carlotti and Cortez from simply dividing the vice action in
Harbor City was Alphonso Romano, the godfather in San Francisco. If Romano's
people were out of the picture, Carlotti could do whatever he wanted.
And Romano’s
people were Lunardi, Padrano and Kelly.
By the time he
reached Clifton, Lunardi was certain that he and his crew had been set up by
Carlotti to get them out of the way.
***
About fifteen
miles from Clifton Lunardi heard a rattling wheeze he recognized as the sound
of The Irishman taking his last breath.
Click’s death left
Lunardi chauffeuring a pair of stiffs. Sal could dump the two dead men
alongside the road, but he’d made a promise to Kelly and he intended to keep
it. In addition, he was bleeding too much to make it to San Francisco and he
damned sure couldn't go back to Harbor City. The only thing waiting for him
there was a bullet.
The address Click
gave him in Clifton was a three-story gingerbread Victorian that had probably been
built in the nineteenth century when lumber was the main industry. He parked
the Crown Victoria in front while he knocked on the door.
Sal had been
expecting a square-jawed washer woman type, but Click's mother Bronagh was slim
and petite with straight black hair that fell to her waist. Her blue eyes were
so pale she looked blind from across the room. Her skin was like fine China,
the kind you only break out for special guests.
"Mrs.
Kelly?" Sal said uncertainly. "My name is Lunardi. I worked with your
son and we ran into some bad luck. I'm afraid he's dead."
Her face
registered anger, though she didn’t seem surprised at the news. "Shite!”
she muttered, keeping her voice low. “So where’s his body, then?"
Sal motioned
toward the car. "The passenger seat," he said. "You may not want
to see him . . . like this," he added weakly.
She snorted, her
delicate nostrils flaring. "Bollocks. Our family’s been at war since the
17th Century,” she said, the lilt of her words marking her as a Gael
as surely as the pale green Celtic harp and wreath tattooed on her right arm. “We’ve
stacked up corpses like firewood in our time. For the Kelly family, death holds
neither mystery nor horror. As we are, they once were; as they are, we will be."
Crossing her
arms under her small breasts, she moved to the car and opened the door. She put
her hand on Click and said some quiet words in a language Sal guessed was
Gaelic, since the Kellys had emigrated from Ireland when Mickey was three.
By the time she
had finished, a heavy-set girl with matching black hair and a redheaded man who
looked like an older, meaner version of Click appeared on the porch. Bronagh crossed
herself and returned to Sal.
"We've a
place for him in the cellar," she said. “The other fella, too.”
"Thanks,
Mrs. Kelly," he said. "I appreciate it."
"You can
call me Bronagh,” she said. “Most do. Click said your name is Salvatore. That’s
‘Savior’ in Italian innit? Are you a savior Mr. Salvatore?”
Sal winced. “I
wasn’t able to save Click, I’m afraid.”
Bronagh’s eyes
were frosty, her jaw as hard as alabaster. “He was a sweet lad, but he walked a
narrow path,” she said. “Nevertheless, he thought very highly of you. I thank
you kindly for bringing him home to his family."
Lunardi inclined
his head. He felt a little faint.
She nodded at
the girl. “Mr. Lunardi, this is my daughter, Caitriona, and my son over there
is Seamus. You, Click and the other man seem to have been rather unlucky. I can
see you've taken a bullet yourself. Give your keys to me. After the dearly
departed have been taken from your car, Seamus will pull it 'round to the rear and
hide it in the carriage house. We'll decide what to do with it later. As for
you, you'd best come inside and sit down before you fall down."
She gave him a
grim smile as she took his hand and led the way.
"We've no
objection to assisting the dead," she said. "But we'd prefer the
quick would make their own way."
***
Inside, Mrs.
Kelly had Sal strip to the waist so she could examine his shoulder wound. “It’s
nasty," she said, her lips pursed, “but I’ve seen worse. Cait, get my stitchery
If you’d be so good.”
The girl
disappeared momentarily. When she returned she carried a wicker basket. Sal was
surprised to see it actually contained sewing supplies.
The black-haired
woman held Sal’s arm up against the fading light from the window and as he grunted with agony she gingerly
felt the flesh under the bullet hole. She picked up a small-bladed knife
and twisted her head, signaling her daughter to pay heed.
“Get me the
clear that Seamus stilled from the last of the single-row, Cait. Step lively,
girl.”
The girl fetched
a squarefaced bottle of liquor so pale that it looked like water. When Bronagh
uncorked it, the pungent aroma of alcohol drifted through the room. Whatever
was in the bottle was strong enough to make Lunardi’s eyes water.
She poured a
little into the gaping hole in Sal’s arm, then dipped the knife blade into the
liquor and made a little cut directly on the other side of his bicep.
“This will hurt,
I’m afraid,” she said, dipping a long metal knitting needle into the bottle and
shaking off the excess. “Can’t be helped, though.”
With a grunt she
pushed the needle into the hole and put her weight into a downward thrust until
it punched through, pushing the slug out the other side.
There was a
thunk as it hit the floor.
It was the last
thing Lunardi remembered before he blacked out completely.
*
* *
The sky was foggy
and tinged with chill when Lunardi woke up the next day. He stumbled downstairs
feeling dull-witted and yawned his thanks as Click’s mother filled a mug with
strong tea and set it in front of him.
“Hungry?” she
asked.
He drank a slug
of the brew and nodded. “Starving!” he said. “Last time I ate was breakfast
yesterday.
She filled a
bowl from a lidded saucepan on a back burner and put it in front of him with several
slices of dark bread and a spoon. “Sláinte,”
she said.
In the light of
day, Lunardi could see the mixture was meat, carrots, potatoes and turnips that
had been cooked for hours in a brown gravy.
“This is just
delicious,” he said, wolfing down the spicy stew with a soup spoon. “What is
it? Pork or something?”
She smiled and
he noticed her teeth were small and even, but came to a slight point.
“Something,” she
said. “It’s an old family recipe, though it’s probably too fatty to be popular
in today's modern world. I’m glad you like it.”
Lunardi put two
bowls of the delicious concoction away like a starving man, wiping up the last
of the sauce with bread. The bread tasted particularly good to him, dark and
nutty like pannetonne, the Christmas treat
his nonna made every year, only
without the dried fruit and not so sweet. He dipped chunks of it in his tea to
finish his meal, thinking that the slurs he’d heard about Irish cooking seemed
to be as wrongheaded as the American belief that every Italian was a Mafioso.
Just the ones he
knew, he thought.
As she poured
fresh tea, she sat down opposite him and slung her arm over the back of her
chair. “If you don’t mind sharing, how did Mickey come to die?” she asked.
He took a breath and released it in a weary sigh. “Our immediate boss Mr. Carlotti sent
us to settle up with a rival, but our target had been tipped off. We walked
straight into a trap. The shooting started before we even got our guns out.”
“Sounds like
your boss isn’t to be trusted,” she said.
“I’ll say,” Lunardi
laughed grimly. “The sonofabitch set us up. Seems to me he planned to take the
three of us out all along.”
“Why do you say
that?”
He shrugged. “The
set-up was all wrong. You want to kill one guy, you don’t send three people --
if your shooters are worth a good goddamn in the first place, one’s enough. And
you don’t do it at a sit-down announced ahead of time. That gives the guy time
to get his own crew together and shoot back. With one shooter? He sets the time
and place where it happens.”
She raised an
eyebrow. “Sounds like you have some experience at this sort of thing,” she
said.
Lunardi shrugged
again. “Been doing it for twenty seven years,” he said. “But I got sloppy this
time, let somebody else set things up. Big mistake. Two men got dead behind it.
Like I said, I never should have trusted Carlotti in the first place,” he added,
his face grim.
She sipped tea
thoughtfully. “So how do you mean to atone for your error?” she asked.
Lunardi smiled.
“I’m going back to Harbor City and whack Ricardo Cortez. But this time I’m
going to do the job right. And I’m also going to do Carlotti, the guy who set
us up.”
“While you’re
busy killin’ these folk, would you be willing to do a mother a favor?” she
asked, looking up at him innocently through eyelashes so long they seemed to
nestle on her cheeks.
“What’s that?”
“When you’ve
settled with them, would you be so kind as to bring their bodies back here?”
Lunardi was
surprised at the request.
“What are you
going to do with them?” he asked.
“I’m not able to avenge Mickey’s death myself,”
she said. “But we have a tradition of disposing of our enemies in the Kelly
clan that goes back to the Seventeenth Century. You bring me their corpses and
I’ll do the rest.”
As she spoke,
her voice was as cold as black ice on a country road and there was an inhuman
gleam in her eye. Sal remembered reading somewhere that the Irish were
descended from some of the most barbaric people in Europe – fierce nomads who were
painting themselves blue and living in caves when his own forebears were
building a global empire. Sal suppressed a shudder. At that moment Bronagh
Kelly seemed a woman capable of almost any sort of cruelty. He hated to think what
sort of 300-plus year old vengeance she might have in mind.
Instead, he mulled
over her request. Carting a pair of bodies down the Northern California
coastline didn’t appeal to Lunardi much. On the other hand, that was exactly
what he had done less than 24-hours ago after the shootout in Harbor City.
“Do you think
you can find a van for me to use?” he asked finally, pouring another cup of tea.
***
It took Lunardi three
hours to find Carlotti in Harbor City but only 30 minutes to find out where
Cortez was hiding: a box knife is good for extracting information. When he was
done, Sal put Carlotti’s severed fingers and left eye in a zipper bag and
tucked them under the underboss’s corpse in the back of the van; he didn’t know
what sort of ritual Bronagh planned, but he wanted to make sure she had all the
pieces she needed.
He located
Cortez at the second place Carlotti had mentioned. The drug dealer wasn’t expecting another attack so his five
Mexican Mafia gunmen were playing cards on the ground floor of a warehouse near
the waterfront when Sal caught up to them with a Colt M4 submachine gun. Two
fifty-shot magazines left the gunmen strewn in steaming pools of their own
blood and shit.
Afterward,
Lunardi worked his way through the warehouse with a full magazine, clearing
each room as he went, military-style.
When he finally located Cortez, the drug dealer was hiding under the
sink in the bathroom, kneeling in a puddle of his own piss. Lunardi ripped him
to pieces with
two bursts of 5.56 millimeter slugs, then finished him with a shot through his
forehead.
When he had shrouded
Cortez’ body in a vinyl bag and nestled it into the rear of the van next to
Carlotti’s, Sal used the phone in the warehouse to call Romano in San Francisco
and tell him what had happened.
“Come back home
then,” the elderly don said. “We’ll be taking down the rest of Carlotti’s outfit
and I know you’ll want to have a hand in settling up for Louis and Click.”
“OK, but I can’t
say exactly when I’ll get there,” Lunardi replied. “First I have an errand to
take care of up here.”
“What’s that?”
Romano asked.
“Click’s mom
asked me to bring the bodies’ of Carlotti and Cortez to her on my way back,” he
said.
“What does she
want with those two assholes?” Romano asked. “I could see cutting or strangling
them if they were still alive, but there doesn’t seem to be any point with them
dead.”
“I dunno, boss,”
Lunardi said. “All I know is, I promised her I would do it, just like I
promised Click I would take his body to her. I owe her that much.”
Lunardi covered
the bodies of Cortez and Carlotti with a tarp and used back roads to drive back
to Clifton, staying well within the speed limit and keeping his eyes peeled for
cops all the way. When he reached the Kelly house, he was exhausted and the
pain in his arm was excruciating.
Bronagh had her
son and daughter get the bodies out of the van while she led Sal up the stairs
and helped him climb into the freshly made bed. He was asleep in seconds.
He didn’t even
wake up when she stripped naked and climbed under the covers beside him. When
she wrapped her lithe body around his and began to stroke him between the legs,
he thought it was just a dream.
***
On waking, the Kelly
house was full of the sweet, charcoal aroma of roasted meat. It reminded him of
the spiedini that his family prepared
when he was a kid – chunks of pork, spit roasted over an open fire until they
glistened and sizzled with paralyzing goodness.
He glanced at
his wristwatch and saw it was a little after noon. He’d slept nearly eighteen
hours.
Yawning, he
dragged himself out of the Kelly’s spare bed and splashed cold water in his
face to wake up. Somewhat revived, he put on his shirt, shoes and socks and
found his way down the stairs, still tying his necktie.
The table in the
dining room groaned under the weight of food: whatever sort of ritual Bronagh
was planning obviously involved a celebratory feast. There was more of the
cake-like bread, carrots, peas, mashed potatoes and a gravy boat full of thick
brown sauce so rich the fat was already starting to separate from the solids.
Two large garlic-studded roasts were arranged in the middle of the table, glazed
to a rich brown that charred their fat and rind of skin.
Salvatore’s
mouth watered. He’d put nothing in his stomach since his “hunting” expedition
in Harbor City. He was ravenous enough to eat room-temperature road kill.
“I imagine
you’ll be getting’ back to San Francisco today,” Bronagh said, entering the
room in a long-sleeved black crocheted dress that dusted the floor. “That’s a
long drive on an empty stomach. It seemed you might like a decent meal before
you leave.”
He inhaled deeply
and his eyes rolled back in his head. “Christ that smells good!” he said. “I’m
starved. But isn’t it a little early to eat the major meal of the day?”
“When you work the land, you usually eat the
main meal at lunchtime,” she said.
Almost as if
they’d been called, Caitriona and Seamus entered from different parts of the
house. Bronagh clasped their hands and Dominic found himself holding the girl’s
in his left and her brother’s in his right.
Bronagh’s head
inclined and she said a brief blessing in what sounded like the same language
she had used at Click’s side two days before. She finished in English, though,
and it sounded something like this:
Bless us, God,
Our food and our drink.
As you redeemed us
and delivered us from evil,
You let us share in this food,
So may you let us share in eternal life.
Bronagh seated Sal
at the head of the table and asked him to carve and serve. They set to with
enthusiasm, quickly making mounds of the food disappear. It was one of the best
meals Sal had ever tasted.
“So what’s the
occasion?” Sal asked as he took seconds and spooned gravy over the food on his
plate.
“What do you
mean?” Bronagh asked, cutting a small piece of meat and putting it into her
mouth.
“You folks don’t
have a meal like this at noon every day, do you? How the hell can you afford
it?”
She smiled. “No,
we only eat meals like this on special occasions, like the death of an enemy,”
she said. “Doesn’t that seem like something worth commemorating?”
“You mean Cortez
and Carlotti?” he asked, working his way through meat, potatoes and gravy. “I
suppose so. So what’s the roast we’re enjoying here as we celebrate their deaths?”
Her smile
widened. “Cortez and Carlotti,” she said brightly.
Sal, caught in
mid-chew, stared at her.
She sipped water
from a crystal goblet. “I told you we’d had this tradition since the 1600s,”
she said. “We were Ulstermen and our lads fought on the side of Hugh O’Neill –
may he sit at the Lord’s right hand – against the English.”
“The English wasted
our homes, burned our fields and killed our cattle. But people have to eat, Mr.
Lunardi, even in the midst of war. So we Kellys ate what we could forage. When there was naught to forage, we ate the
bodies of our fallen enemies -- and sometimes, each other.”
“The practice
continued through the great famine of the 1800s, the An Gorta Mór, when more
than a million people died of starvation,” she added. “And it continues right
up until the present day.”
Sal put down his
flatware, staring at his nearly empty plate. The color had drained from his
face leaving it as pale as the mashed potatoes.
“Are you all
right, Mr. Lunardi?” Bronagh asked with concern.
“I’d like to get
back to the Bay Area while it’s still light out,” Sal mumbled as he pushed his
chair back and stood unsteadily. Dropping his napkin on the table, he added, “Thanks
for everything, ma’am. I hope you’ll excuse me.”
She shrugged and
resumed eating. “Suit yourself, Mr. Lunardi. Suit yourself.”
As he reached
the door, she called after him: “Are you certain you don’t want me to pack some
of this roast to take with you?”
Lunardi ran for the
Astra, barely able to hold back the bile rising in his throat.
End
