AFTER BELLA ROSE FROM the wreckage on Terelli’s hill in the Passaic dump, she flew back to the house at the Robertson Scale factory. She shucked her smelly coat and the rest of her clothes and gave herself a quick whore’s bath. Then she cherry-bombed her lips and Maybelline-blushed her cheeks. She slapped on a swing skirt, a tight cotton blouse, a pair of high-heeled shoes, and a fur-trimmed baby blue car coat of Connie’s. Then she hit Van Houten Avenue.
“I’m here to see Dino Montebologna,” she announced after she pounded on the back door of his Elbow Room.
A trio of greasy mooks circled her like small pack of Sicilian sandhogs. They whistled and howled and pawed the ground until the familiar voice of Dino Montebologna called out, “Knock it off, you fucking clowns, and show the young lady in!”
The young capo was parked at a corner table sipping espresso and smoking a cigar under a low-hanging gambling lamp. Polished nails, diamond pinky ring, ink-black hair, plucked eyebrows over sharp eyes, fancy barber’s pomade. A shiny gun was holstered across his chest. His book-loving goon was stationed next to him, his nose buried in a Bible-thick bestseller. Something called Gone with the Wind.
Dino smiled all olive oil greasy. “Well, if it ain’t Miss Belladonna Marie Donato! What brings you to my little den of iniquity? You here to finally accept my marriage proposal?”
“I got a proposal for you myself,” she said.
The goon stopped reading.
“Oh, yeah?” Dino asked. “And what might dat be?”
“I want you to lend me some money so I can open up a little business.”
“What kind of business?”
“I wanna make and sell meatballs.”
Dino was intrigued. So was his goon.
“Where you plan on doin’ dis meatball sellin’?”
“Back at the factory. I got the keys to the old lunch stand my mamma used to run.”
Dino tapped an ash off his stogie. “I know you can cook the crap out of a lasagna Bolognese, but meatballs is different. I once put a bullet in a man for making me a bad meatball.”
Bella eyed the pistol strapped to his chest. “My balls’ll make you want to kill that man all over again.”
“How ’bout you show me what youse can do.”
“Now?”
“Hey, Solly!” Dino called to the bald thug behind the bar. “Show the young lady to the kitchen and get her everything she needs.”
An hour later Bella appeared with a big bowl of steaming meatballs swimming in her tomato gravy. She placed it under the young capo’s nose, along with a napkin and fork and spoon.
The skeptical kingpin lifted the bowl and took a good long sniff. Then he speared a ball and checked its heft. Then he closed one eye and, with the other one narrowed like a jeweler squinting through a diamond loupe, he assessed. Then he opened his mouth and took a bite and chewed.
The goon closed Gone with the Wind.
The bartender leaned in.
Bella bit her cherry-bombed lip and waited while Dino swallowed. “Well, are you gonna give me the money or are you gonna shoot me?”
Dino slammed the table with his fist. Then he stood up. “Son of a bitch! How much cabbage you gonna need?”