“She does, though.”
“You’re dead.”
“Kill me later.”
“If there’s anything left after Stevie gets through.”
“Thanks,” I said. “You’re pissa.”
The small house was jammed. Everywhere you looked, you saw a wise guy or a wise guy’s wife or a wise guy’s kid. It was a crowd of crushed velour jogging suits and Champion sweatshirts on the men, black nylon stretch pants and loud yellow-and-black or purple-and-black or white-and-silver blouses on the women. The kids wore mostly pro sports team apparel, the brighter the better, and all of it loose and baggy and uniform so that a Cincinnati Bengals red-and-black zebra-striped hat gave way to an identical jersey and sweatpants.
The interior of the house was one of the ugliest I’d ever seen. White marble steps dropped off the kitchen and into a living room covered in white shag carpeting so deep you couldn’t see anyone’s shoes. Running through the white shag were what appeared to be sparkling pinstripes the color of pearl. The couches and armchairs were white leather, but the coffee table, end tables, and enormous home entertainment armoire were a shiny metallic black. The lower half of the walls was covered by an industrial plastic shell made to look like cave rock, and the upper half 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?”