At Home in the Dark Read online

  Angelina would be home. He wasn’t angry that her evil eye cure hadn’t worked, but he needed her to come up with a spell or something to keep Vito from giving himself a heart attack over globs of olive oil in a bowl.

  He tailgated a bus in the afternoon idiot traffic, the road clogged with harried mothers in minivans and Q-tip-headed old fucks with boxes of tissues in their rear windows. He kneaded the wheel. His even temper took work.

  His phone buzzed.

  “Terry. Thank you for getting back so quickly.” His overly polite tone begged for discourtesy, so that he could retort.

  “Anything for Joey C. What you need?”

  “What days you pick up on Mulberry, down by the Rock?”

  “Uhh . . .” Paper flipping. “This morning.”

  Fuck. It was his own fault for not checking the trash after Vito said the oven was empty.

  “I need to look in whatever truck picked up Vito Ferro’s dumpster this morning. They still out?”

  Terry huffed, a laugh cut short. “No, they get done by noon.”

  “I need you to get them on the radio before they dump.” Newark had a trash incinerator. Not everything got burned, but once it was in the system to be sorted, he’d have no way of finding their trash.

  “I could try, but . . .”

  “You think I’m asking ’cause I like rooting through other people’s shit?”

  A pause while Terry swallowed the response in his mouth.

  “I’ll radio them right now. What you want them to do?”

  “Have them meet me in the Meadowlands where you dump your hazmat trash when you’re short on the vig.”

  Terry didn’t chuckle at that one. He was into Aldo for six figures for fantasy sports bets. “Can they just dump and go?”

  A Lexus truck stopped to double park. Joey stomped the brake and the Alfa Romeo shuddered. “Your sister’s ass!”

  “I’m sorry Joey. They’re on the clock.”

  “Not you. Some bucciacca cut me off.” He swerved into the oncoming lane and gunned past. “Tell your guys to wait. You think I’m sifting through that shit?”

  In the silence, he saw Terry lick his fat lips.

  “Make ’em punch out. They’ll get paid.”

  “Gimme an hour.”

  “Make it two.”

  • • •

  Joey hit the gym and took a hot shower before he rapped on Angelina’s door. She didn’t come. He flicked open his stiletto and popped the storm door’s lock. He found her sprawled on an easy chair, mouth open, eyes closed. Chest not rising.

  He leaned in to listen for breath. She smelled like sharp provolone. He squinted at the fine gold chain below the marbled wattle of her neck.

  A Star of David dangled on it.

  Joey didn’t know until high school that it was possible to be both Italian and Jewish. He thought his paísans were all Catholics until his English teacher, Ms. Stolfi, mentioned celebrating Passover. He had been incredulous, insisting she couldn’t be both. She made him read Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi, and give an oral report to the class. He’d been so nervous.

  The snort of a warthog interrupted his reverie.

  Joey jumped back from Angelina, knocking an African violet from the window sill. He caught the pot before it hit the floor.

  She squinted at him. “Joey? I fall asleep. I make coffee.” She heaved herself out of the chair and shuffled to the kitchen.

  Over fresh coffee, he told her about Vito and the olive oil.

  “That one? He cursed himself.” She sneered, her face a white prune. “How you think he come here with money?”

  Joey sipped espresso from a tiny cup and let her talk.

  “No one has money. Mussolini, he suck the land dry, sfachim!” She raised a bony fist. “My family, they make Aliyah to the Holy land after the war. Who want to live with ratti who sell you out to fascisti? Nothing to eat, but Vito Ferro, he come to America, build a pizzeria.”

  “Maybe the mala vita?” The bad life.

  Angelina pursed her lips and poked him with a finger. “You ask me?”

  Joey shrugged, sheepish. She was right. Vito paid his street tax, but never bought the olive oil the port boys jacked and sold by the truckload. He stayed clean.

  “The mala vita make money from the war too,” she said. “Blood money. You no come to America with money. You come to make money. You have money, why you leave?” She pointed a gnarled finger and nodded over it, as if answering her own question.

  • • •

  Joey took the bridge over the dirty Passaic and weaved into the Meadowlands, a swamp so clogged with bodies and pollution that if zombies existed they would have risen from its poisoned muck. He passed a tall radio tower with three blinking red lights, then cut down a rutted road hedged by reeds on both sides.

  The Alfa bounced along, scraping on the grass, and stopped nose to nose with a Mack garbage truck. He stepped around the truck and found two men in sooty worksuits spreading the truck’s dumped load over the flattened reeds using long poles.

  “We’re looking for ashes,” he said, and stood back to watch.

  “That’s over here,” the squat bald one said, and jabbed at pile of trash bags that had melted and torn.

  Between the reeds, he caught the afternoon sun sparkling on the water, and the SuperFund site looked beautiful if you ignored the fish and birdshit smell of the flats bared by low tide. The white underbelly of a dead crab raised its claws from the mud like a pair of praying hands.

  His thoughts turned to his father.

  After the beating ruined his Roman nose, Joey had learned to pass among straight men. They weren’t that different, but many would only freely express themselves through anger or desire. If you wanted something from them, you translated your needs into their pidgin.

  He didn’t need to explain himself to the garbage men, they would dig because they feared him. But they would work harder if they imagined he was the devil-may-care, unfaithful piece of shit they wished they could be.

  “We’re looking for my goomar’s chain,” Joey said. “Dumb broad threw it in the fireplace because I’m taking my wife to Punta Cana. Now she wants it back.” He rolled his eyes for the convincer.

  They muttered about girlfriends and wives as they kicked through the ashes, and marsh birds cried and swooped overhead.

  “I got something,” the tall one said, and bent to thrust his gloved hand into the ashes.

  Joey walked closer. The worker brushed soot off the coil in his palm.

  “Thought gold would melt into nothing.” He held up a blackened mess of burn spaghetti.

  Joey took it in his handkerchief. “You think that bucciacca is worth gold?” He snickered.

  The necklaces had melted. Any gold coating was long gone and the amulets were unrecognizable. Gimcrack for a parlor trick to scare an old man. He wrapped the mess into his pocket.

  “Thank you fellas.” He gave them each a hundred.

  • • •

  He pulled into the radio station’s driveway and stared at the dead neon letters of the white WMCA hut and thought about who would want to torment Vito Ferro to death.

  He had killed for business, and for personal reasons. Personal got messy. You wanted them to know why.

  Do things like cut their hands off with bolt cutters and throw them, still zip-tied together, for the crabs to eat in the swamp. Hands that could never hit you again.

  He called the pizza joint in Millburn that the other son had opened.

  “Vito’s Neapolitan Pizza and Italian Specialties,” a young woman answered.

  “Sal please. Tell him it’s Joey Cucuzza.”

  He spent a minute listening to Mario Lanza. No corny Lou Monte for the rich ’merigons.

  “Sal here. Who is this?”

  “Joe Cucuzza. I’m a business associate of your father’s. I need to find his partner, your nephew Peter. He still at home?”

  “Why don’t you call him then?” Cocky.

  “
It would be a lot easier if you told me where he lives, Sal. I’m calling as a courtesy. If I drive out there, maybe those imports you sell get held up in customs until they rot.”

  “Whoa, easy. I’m just protecting my family.”

  “I understand, Sal. He’s not in trouble. He’s the finance wiz, right? He’s hooking me up with some hedge funds.”

  “He’s got a condo in Jersey City,” Sal said. “With his fiancée.”

  Joey committed the address to memory.

  • • •

  Vito’s Original Classic Neapolitan Pizza Pies was nearly abandoned by five o’clock, after the downtown Newark commuters fled and before the gentrifiers came out for dinner. Peter leaned on the counter, playing on his phone.

  The scent of tomato sauce filled the restaurant like a siren song. Joey followed it, snapping his fingers for the kid to follow.

  Vito stirred a huge pot of sauce, a bubbling blood red witch’s brew.

  “Mister Vito,” Joey said, and spun a chair backwards to sit facing the old man. “I’ve found who’s giving you the evil eye. And they won’t be bothering you any more.”

  Before Vito could talk, Joey said, “You have a ghost. And my strega says the only way to exorcise a ghost is to set them to rest. So tell me the real story of how you came to America.”

  The kid put his phone down.

  Vito frowned. “I tell you. I made money in Napoli, everyone know my pizza.”

  “If you were flush, why’d you come here?”

  “It is America. My family was dead.”

  “The country was in ruins, but you were selling pies? Why don’t you tell me where you got the money.”

  “I do not have to explain myself to mafiosi. You bleed us dry!” Vito stood and made a fist. The scarred skin of his forearms stretched over old muscle.

  “Easy, Uncle Veet,” Peter said.

  “I spoke to my strega, Vito. She’s Jewish, you know? We had a lot more Jewish Italians before the war than after it. Their neighbors ratted them out. Took everything they owned. And when the war was over and Mussolini was strung up by his balls, people took revenge on those no-good rat fucks. That ring any bells?”

  Vito shuddered, fists at his sides. “They do not belong there!”

  Peter gasped. “Uncle Vito.”

  Joey shrugged. “Your uncle’s not the nice guy you thought. But you know that already, don’t you kid?”

  Peter let his jaw go slack.

  “Don’t play dumb. Make us a pie. Margherita. And no hot sauce this time.” Joey took a bottle from his pocket and set it on the table.

  Peter stammered. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Houshmand’s NastyVicious Hot Sauce. They make this at Rowan college.” Joey turned the bottle around. “You went to Rowan, didn’t you?”

  “Pietro?” Vito stared.

  “Uncle Veet, he wants to turn us against each other. Take over your business.”

  “Aldo owns the building. It’s in his interest for you to make lots of money, so he can jack up your rent. Try again, kid.”

  “I didn’t do anything.”

  “You two talk this out. That pie had better make me lie back and think of Napoli.” Joey walked to his car and returned holding a young lady by the nape of her neck. “Good of you not to run, bella donna.”

  “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

  The pie was in the oven, Peter cowering as Uncle Vito jabbed his finger and swore. “Vaffanculo! You do this to me?”

  Vito screamed and grabbed his chest when he saw the girl.

  “Meet Peter’s wife-to-be,” Joey said. “I found her in the Jersey City condo she shares with your nephew.”

  Vito scrunched his face. “Peter, you said you live at home, you have no money.”

  “She’s a stage manager. She used Peter’s father’s fireman gloves to scoop the coals. They’re rated for twelve hundred degrees.” A fireman told Joey that once on a date. He nudged her forward. “Give him your best vengeful ghost act, honey.”

  She grabbed a pizza slicer. “I don’t need to act, this Nazi motherfucker robbed my family and sent them to the camps! My nonna remembers you.”

  Vito held up his hands in shock.

  The girl was a ringer for her grandmother. She’d shown Joey the photo while she begged for her life at stiletto point.

  Peter exchanged his dumbstruck act for a sneer of loathing. “Valeria’s grandmother told me everything. How could you do that?”

  “You don’t know what it’s like to starve!” Vito snarled. “None of you.”

  “My nonna does,” Valeria said. “You took her gold necklace. From a little girl! You made them hide in your oven from the secret police. Was that some sick joke? Then you turned them in. She saw a picture in the paper of you arguing with your sons, and she nearly had a heart attack.”

  Joey rapped the hot sauce bottle on the counter. “My pizza is burning.”

  Peter quickly scooped it onto the peel. The cheese bubbled, the edges of the crust were a little dark.

  “It’s all right, I like it blistery,” Joey said, and turned to Peter and Valeria. “Now, what do I do with you? You tried to kill a man under our protection.”

  Joey flicked open his stiletto. The seven inch blade gleamed with the oven’s fire. He waved the tip at Valeria, who set down the pizza slicer.

  Peter held up his hands. “Technically, we’re the ones under your protection, Mister Cucuzza.”

  “How so?”

  “We’ve been paying the street tax,” Valeria said. “Our money. Not his. He’s broke as fuck.”

  Joey slowly closed his stiletto. “This is between you, then.” He took the roller and cut the pizza, folding a slice, taking a bite. “Not bad, kid.”

  Vito growled, “Kill them. He is not my blood, marrying a Jew. We are Italian, Guiseppe!”

  “This is for my nonna!” Valeria snatched the pizza slicer and lunged at Vito.

  He stumbled back. Valeria gave chase, with Peter trying hold her back in vain.

  Joey ate his slice while the three of them disappeared into the kitchen. A loud crash gonged and a scream gargled out.

  More screams. Then the crying gave Angelina a run for her money.

  His phone buzzed. Aldo.

  “How’s my Apollo?” he answered.

  “I hope you liked Napoli,” Aldo huffed. Excited. “You’re going back. They asked for you, said you’re ingamba . . .”

  Ingambatissimo, probably. It meant he knew his shit. Which he did.

  “In Gabbadone!” Aldo laughed.

  Hung like a horse. That was correct, too.

  “Can’t wait. See you for dinner, babe.” Joey finished his slice to the crust and walked into the kitchen.

  Sauce covered the floor, the stove, and Vito. He twitched and bubbled, mouth open and filled with his famous sauce, face unrecognizable with the skin boiled off.

  “We should have stuffed him in the oven,” Valeria cried, hugged to her fiancé’s chest. Peter looked relieved and exhausted, now that the man he’d once idolized had paid for his crimes.

  Joey felt a pang, recalling the feeling.

  “Ciao for now,” he said, and boxed the pizza, took it to his car. The port boys would be grateful. On the drive back, he wondered if the kids could make it work with a death between them.

  Joey patted the gift box with the matching stiletto, and thought of his man using it to cut into a juicy rare steak.

  It took a strong love, but you could do it.

  Cold Comfort

  Hilary Davidson

  The artists at the Humphrey Funeral Home were miracle workers, but even they couldn’t piece Abby Killingsworth’s face back together. In life, she had a curious charisma that was immediately striking in spite of her flaws. It was powerful yet puzzling: her eyes were wide-set and her nose had a bump and her lips were so plump and ripe that they lent her a faintly cartoonish appearance. Yet, when observed together in their heart-shaped frame, a peculiar alch
emy occurred that could render complete strangers mute.

  Abby had been a great beauty in life. In death, she was a broken statue, mere fragments of cold marble. My own heart had cracked in sadness when I first laid eyes on her lifeless body. In the oasis of false comfort that was the Humphrey Funeral Home, with its piped-in violin music, I kept up my unperturbed façade by imagining that Abby was elsewhere.

  “The casket will stay closed,” her mother announced. It was the day before Abby’s funeral, and we stood together in a viewing room at the Humphrey. It was preposterously grand, with a domed ceiling that spoke of aspirations to royal chapelhood. Janet Killingsworth had asked me to accompany her to provide moral support, since her husband had refused to leave the house since his daughter’s death. “I don’t want anyone seeing what that bastard did to her.” She bit her lip. “I’m sorry, Father, I didn’t mean to swear.”

  “Please don’t worry about that.” I struggled to come up with something meaningful to say, anything that could blunt the pain. “Abby is at peace now, you must concentrate on that.”

  “Oh, Father, I try to. But when I think of what that monster did to my baby . . .” Janet’s voice cracked. I put my hand on her shoulder, and she rested her head on my chest.

  “Why would God take my baby?” Janet sobbed.

  Of all the questions asked of me since I’d joined the priesthood, this was the most perplexing. I had no answers, only the same platitudes I’d heard since I was a boy growing up in County Cork. “All I can promise is that there is meaning in everything. It is invisible to us, so we must trust the Lord in all things.”

  Janet inhaled sharply and shuddered. “There’s one other thing,” she said, pulling away. “I want you to perform an Absolution for Abby.”

  I stared at her. Absolution had been removed from the Funeral Mass before I was born. I’d only performed it a handful of times, in unusual circumstances.

  “My daughter may have been . . . involved with a man,” Janet said quietly.

  “What?”

  Janet read the shock in my face, and quickly added. “Abby was such a good girl, and I don’t know if it really counts as an affair, because she was separated from her husband, but . . .”