Frank Lazzaro was having a bad fucking day.
This goddamn storm was part of it. It had closed down the ports, and without the ports, the arrival of his latest inventory—two hundred kilos of Turkish heroin and Moroccan hashish—had been indefinitely delayed. Plus, it was a serious pain in the ass to deal with high winds and rain and all the shit that came with a hurricane.
And then there was Victoria, who’d been acting up lately. Sure, he could keep her in line with a modest beating or two, administered as needed, like medicine; even so, she didn’t seem nearly as deferential as she used to be. Last week she’d actually had the temerity to drop the D-word—divorce—in his presence, a first for her. Divorce—with two newly minted babies less than a year old. What the fuck was she thinking?
It looked like she was serious. She’d even let it slip that she’d started documenting her cuts and bruises with a cell phone camera, storing the photos in “the cloud,” whatever the hell that was. He thought she’d been talking to her brother again, that putz with the glasses, a lawyer in Hoboken with an Obama sticker on his Prius. Over the years Frank had given serious thought to putting a big hurt on that asshole, but he knew Victoria would pitch a fucking fit, and he’d wanted to keep peace in the household. Now he was thinking maybe he should have taught the cocksucker a lesson. And maybe he still could.
So yeah, he was pissed as he navigated the shopping cart around the A&P, past largely depleted shelves, muscling his way through knots of last-minute buyers like himself. The storm had everybody worked up, and people were snatching at canned peas and boxed granola bars like they were made of solid gold.
Frank wasn’t concerned about simple survival—after Hurricane Irene, he’d installed a generator in his house, hooked up to a gas main, and he kept a subzero freezer well stocked—but according to Victoria, the household was dangerously low on toilet paper, facial tissue, diapers, and other inedible essentials.
So why wasn’t his wife out shopping, instead of him? Lately she didn’t want to lift the god damn finger. He didn’t know what the hell had gotten into her.
Things had been okay between them for most of the five years of their marriage. She was only thirty-two, nearly two decades younger than he was, but the age difference had never been a problem. He treated her good enough. He could’ve gotten himself a little goombata on the side, put her up in an apartment in Hoboken, but he hadn’t. He’d been faithful. Mostly, anyhow. No guy was ever completely faithful. It wasn’t human nature.
Their marriage was a fair exchange. She’d given him babies, two sons, and he’d given her a twelve thousand square foot house in Saddle River—a trophy house for a trophy wife. And so what if he knocked her around a little? Every marriage needed discipline. Jesus Christ, to even think about divorce—
“Hey.”
An annoyed grunt. Frank turned and saw a thin-faced little mook with a spindly pussy-tickler mustache glaring at him through rectangular lenses. On his head rode a baseball cap emblazoned with the words Proud American.
“You banged my cart. Watch where you’re going.”
Frank hadn’t noticed, but he probably had banged Proud American’s cart, not that he gave a crap. It was no part of his philosophy to own up to anything. Somewhere he’d picked up John Wayne’s guiding maxim: Never apologize, never explain.
“Fuck yourself,” Frank said, not really angry, because the motherless cooch wasn’t worth it.
It might have ended there, except as Frank was turning to press forward down the aisle, he heard Proud American mutter one word: “Jerkoff.”
Huh.
Jerkoff.
Frank had been called a lot of names, but he’d never developed much of a sense of humor about it. Besides the John Wayne thing, there was another philosophical lodestar he followed.
Take no shit from nobody. Ever.
Didn’t matter if the shit in question came from a smart-ass ten-year-old or a drooling geezer or the president of the motherfucking United States. Disrespect could never be tolerated, and must always be answered.
He turned and gave the potty-mouthed little prick a long, thoughtful stare.
- — -
Later, when his cart was loaded up with twelve-packs of towels and toilet paper and diapers and assorted other shit, some of which he’d filched from other people’s carts in opportune moments, he stood online in aisle eight, watching Proud American in aisle ten. The kids called it hard-looking a guy. Mad-dogging. An intimidation play.
Proud American, conscious of his gaze, first looked at him, then looked away.
Frank was enough of a student of human nature to know that by looking away, the sad little shit was signaling surrender. Without benefit of words, he was acknowledging that Frank Lazzaro was the alpha dog in this situation, and that he, Proud American, was Frank’s bitch. He also was expressing a wistful hope that bygones could be bygones, past misunderstandings forgotten in a spirit of mutual goodwill and common decency.
It wasn’t going to play out that way.
Frank reached the cashier before Proud American did. Sometimes he flirted with checkout girls, but not today; he didn’t want anybody remembering him. Besides, the checker in this aisle was a butt-ugly sow. He spied an engagement ring on one stumpy finger. Some guy must be really fucking desperate if he wanted to suckle at that pig’s udder for a lifetime.
He paid cash. There would be no credit card entry to place him at the scene.
It was easy to beat Proud American out the door. He even had time to stow his groceries in the trunk of his Mercedes—a black 550, the S-Class model—and to settle behind the wheel for a moment of reflection.
Frank buttoned his raincoat all the way up to his collarbone. He had no intention of ruining his expensive Armani suit and the silk necktie Victoria had given him for his birthday. He had done some business earlier today, and he liked to dress well for his job.
Pulling on black gloves, he reached under the driver’s seat and extracted a hunting knife in a leather sheath. It had a curved six-inch blade, and the mahogany handle was scored with deep notches. The knife went into the side pocket of his coat.
Then he summoned the animal.
That was how he thought of it—the animal, the black beast, sinuous as a panther, hissing like a snake, with evil fangs and cruel talons, a composite spirit of all predators, all natural killers everywhere.
He let it come to him, enter him. The animal took over and he, Frank, stepped aside to let the black beast do its work.
When he left the car, he was not anything human any longer.
The storm spat at him as he crossed the parking lot. Though the downpour had subsided for now, the asphalt was checkered with pools of rainwater. He sloshed through them, indifferent to the fate of his shoes. His world had narrowed to a single focus—the mustached man unpacking his shopping cart by an ancient orange hatchback, the man who had shown disrespect. Shoes cost only money. Respect was beyond price. A man could endure anything, sacrifice everything, take any risk, suffer any punishment, if only he preserved his respect.
Uomini di rispettu—that was how his Sicilian forebears had been known. Men of respect.
Proud American had parked in a corner of the lot, next to a Ford pickup that screened him from the view of anyone in the store. He had just finished transferring the contents of his cart to his vehicle when Frank stepped up behind him, the knife already unsheathed.
“Hey,” he said. “Jerkoff.”
It felt good, using the same epithet Proud American had used on him.
Before the guy could turn, Frank slammed the knife down, gripping the handle in one hand, hammering the pommel with the other. The impact of the blow drove the blade into the gap between his victim’s neck and left shoulder, drilling through veins and arteries.
The man sagged with a groan. Frank shoved him into the rear of the hatchback, where he lay facedown amid the grocery bags.
The trick was to leave the knife embedded until the heart stopped pumping. Pull it out too soon and you’d be splashed by a foaming fountain of arterial blood. That was a lesson he’d learned the hard way.
Frank crawled into the back of the car and flopped his victim onto his back. The little shitbag stared up at him, eyelids flickering, mouth working without sound. A dying man. There was nothing more fascinating, nothing in the world.
“What …” The man’s voice was a croak. “What’re you doing …?”
“I’m killing you, Proud American.” Frank felt his mouth expand in a smile. “If you don’t like it, you got nobody to blame but yourself. Don’t try putting this on me. You made me do it. You fucked up. You pissed me off, so I had to end you. ’Cause that’s the rule, cazzo. That’s how it works.”
It wasn’t Frank who was speaking. It was the animal, with its inbred sense of jungle justice, its instinctual knowledge of the logic of life and death.
He leaned in closer, his mouth brushing the man’s ear. “You’re just lucky I got a lot on my plate right now. ’Cause otherwise, you know what I do? I get your driver’s license, and I go to your house, and I kill your wife, and I kill your kids, and I kill your dog, and I burn the fucking place to the ground. I wipe out everything that’s got any connection with you, so there’s nothing left, and your life is a black fucking hole. Like you was never even born.” Frank straightened up. “You’re getting off easy, shit-for-brains. Too fucking easy.”
He nodded, satisfied that he’d gotten his point across, though his last words had been addressed to a corpse. The spirit, he knew, would hover close to the body for a short time after death, before it was borne away into the next world. And in that earthbound state, the spirit could hear his words.
What the hell. It was never too late to learn.
Frank fisted his hand over the knife handle and wrenched it free. The heart had stopped, and the blood that emerged was sluggish and molasses-thick. It puddled around Proud American’s head, a glossy halo.
He wiped the blade on a headrest and slipped it into its sheath, reminding himself to score a new notch in the mahogany. He checked his raincoat and found it mostly unspotted. Already the beast, having fed, was retreating into its cave, where it would hibernate, waiting with a predator’s infinite patience until it was called again.
Carefully he withdrew from the SUV and surveyed the area, blinking raindrops out of his eyes. Nobody had been around. Nobody had seen a thing.
He pushed Proud American entirely into the cargo area, folding the legs to make sure the body fit, then shut the rear door. With luck, the dumb bastard would remain unnoticed until closing time.
Frank returned to his car, walking casually, unafraid of being caught. Long ago he had grasped a great truth, that anything is possible to a man without fear.
He replaced the knife under the driver’s seat. These days he didn’t keep it strapped to his arm. New Jersey’s statutes on carrying a concealed weapon, even a fucking blade, were the toughest in the country. The authorities already had a hard-on to run him in. He wouldn’t give them a reason.
Before putting the Mercedes in gear, he drew a cleansing breath, collecting himself. As he drove out of the parking lot, he called his nephew again. Still no answer.
It was getting worrisome. The last he’d heard, Alec Dante had been on his way to his cottage on Devil’s Hook, and Frank hadn’t been able to reach him since.