Dennis Lehane - Prayers For Rain

For half a second I wondered if Cody Falk’s bodyguard, Leonard, could be connected to this. I’d made him for a North Shore guy, after all. But that was just the panic. If Leonard had enough pull to get Stevie Zambuca to call me to his house, then Leonard wouldn’t have needed to hire himself out to Cody Falk.

This didn’t make sense. Bubba traveled in mob circles. I didn’t.

So why did Stevie Zambuca want to see me? What had I done? And how could I undo it? Quickly. Really quickly. By yesterday, perhaps.

Stevie Zambuca’s house was a small, unprepossessing split-level ranch that sat on the end of a dead-end street on top of a hill that looked down over Route 1 and Logan Airport in East Boston. He could even see the harbor from there, though I doubt he looked much. All Stevie needed to see was the airport; half his crew’s income came from there-baggage handlers’ unions, transport unions, shit that fell off the back of trucks and planes and landed in Stevie’s lap.

The house had an above-ground pool and a chain-link fence surrounding a small front yard. The backyard was bigger, but not by much, and kerosene torches were staked into the ground every ten feet, throwing light on a summer morning made blue by fog and a temperature dip that felt more like October than August.

“It’s his Saturday brunch,” Bubba said as we exited his Humvee and headed for the house. “He does it every week.”

“A wise guy brunch,” I said. “How quaint.”

“The mimosas are good,” Bubba said. “But stay away from the canoli, or the rest of the day your best friend will be your fucking toilet seat.”

A fifteen-year-old girl with a waterfall of orange-highlighted black hair pushed up off her forehead opened the door, her face a mask of fifteen-year-old fuck-you apathy and repressed anger she had no idea what to do with yet.

Then she recognized Bubba and a shy smile fought its way across her dim lips. “Mr. Rogowski. Hi.”

“Hey, Josephina. Nice streaks.”

She touched her hair nervously. “The orange? You like it?”

“It kicks,” Bubba said.

Josephina looked down at her knees and twisted her ankles together, swayed slightly in the doorway. “My dad hates it.”

“Hey,” Bubba said, “that’s what dads do.”

Josephina absently pulled a strand of hair into her mouth, continued to sway a bit under Bubba’s open gaze and wide smile.

Bubba as sex symbol. Now I’d seen it all.

“Your dad around?” Bubba asked.

“He’s in back?” Josephina said as if asking Bubba if that were okay.

“We’ll find him.” Bubba kissed her cheek. “How’s your mom?”

“On my ass,” Josephina said. “Like, constantly.”

“And that’s what moms do,” Bubba said. “Fun being fifteen, huh?”

Josephina looked up at him and for a moment I feared she’d grab his face right there and plant one on his oversized lips.

Instead, she pivoted on her toes like a dancer and said, “I gotta go,” and ran out of the room.

“Weird kid,” Bubba said.

“She’s got a crush on you.”

“Fuck off.”

“She does, you idiot. Are you blind?”

“Fuck off or I’ll kill you.”

“Oh,” I said. “In that case never mind.”

“Better,” Bubba said as we worked our way through a crowd in the kitchen.

“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.”