Chapter 1
The second ‘i’ in Pompeii had burned out. Everything else on the sign was still lit up but that one ‘i’, which Adamo had noticed flickering since the start of the summer, had finally bit the dust. Adamo finished his cigarette and exhaled up towards the colorful letters, a too bright crimson like they were engorged, swollen with blood.
There were too many people in the restaurant that night. Obviously, Adamo knew that was a good thing. A nascent rainstorm had held the tri-state area hostage all day and finally made good on its humid threat right as people were sitting down for dinner. Half the back patio of Pompeii’s got washed out like a dam had busted. Adamo and Michael had managed to help the staff move as many tables as could fit under the steel awning that could only do so much for the rain coming in sideways. The lucky handful in the right spots continued their meal al fresco while the rest scuttled laughing and drenched inside to cram in where they fit. Women Adamo had never seen without immaculate make-up and expensive designer clothes were shrieking in a curious delight as they wiped their faces dry then bare of Pompeii’s cloth napkins.
“Well, that’s summer in New York,” one of them said to him, handing him the dirtied napkin as if he was her waiter. “We knew better than to sit outside.”
Adamo excused himself and headed towards the front door of the restaurant, passing the unpopulated patio on his way. Of the few tables that remained, one of them consisted of Carmine Bucco and his wife Rosalie. Carmine nodded at Adamo; Adamo returned the gesture. Carmine had a way of getting under Adamo’s skin pretty badly but he had just taken over as head of the family so Adamo smiled, paid respects, played nice.
But now he was outside in the shuddering world of a heavy rainstorm. Just him and his penultimate cigarette and its smoke getting riddled by wet bullets before it could even snake its way up to the neon Pompeii sign. It was time, Adamo had decided, to go home. He needed to get another pack of Marlboros, he wanted to finish that joint he had at home. The thick damp glow of another night at Pompeii had sucked the life right out of him.
The door opened and Rosalie Bucco exited. She stood right at the edge of the awning, somewhere between the reach of the neon and the heave of the rain. A finger motioned to the cigarette hanging from Adamo’s lips. Nothing else on her body moved.
“Can I have one of those?”
Adamo stifled a sigh and brought the box out. “Yeah, of course.”
Rosalie snagged his last cigarette with a long finger, encircling as if snaring it in a single joint. She held it to her mouth as she waited for Adamo to light it, which eventually he realized she wanted.
“Summers in New York are relentless,” Rosalie said. She exhaled wetly, the mushroom cloud released from her lips pelted by heavy bottomed raindrops until it was dispersed.
“You like summers somewhere else?” Adamo asked and he was met with her sharp, lilting laugh.
Her focus stayed on the curtain of water falling so evenly over the neon sign that the words shivered like a pool of liquid mercury. “I’ve never been anywhere else.” She tossed her cigarette down and ground it out with the very tip of her high heeled shoe. “Take me home, Adamo.”
When he didn’t move right away, she snapped her fingers. Adamo, pausing for a long moment before darting out into the torrent just beyond the awning, was surprised that she knew his name. He hadn’t spoken to the prior don’s wife at all. Rosalie had said maybe five words to him since Carmine had taken up the mantle, which was five more than she said to him when Carmine was a capo and he would practically hold Adamo upside down by his ankles to get every cent Carmine thought he was owed out of him.
Adamo climbed into the driver’s side of his car, dripping onto the vinyl and steaming up the windshield. There was a miasma of stale pot smoke and dirty human sweat held inside the humid container. For the most part, he had gotten too used to both smells but as he closed the heavy door and a fresh rush of wind fluttered his hair out of his face, the aromas were undeniable. He could cover well enough for the latter smell. A young man in his prime was known for being fragrant, especially during the summer, and unless Rosalie was particularly preceptive, she probably wasn’t about to assume that she was sitting in the same seat shared by Adamo’s bare ass less than a day before. She probably wouldn’t assume the smell of living, writhing bodies came from the split legged blonde who straddled Adamo’s lap in the delicate hours of the sticky summer morning, biting his neck as she ground herself onto him. Rosalie would have to be the Amazing Kreskin to land on that conclusion.
The other odor though. That one could cause a problem. A lot of the older guys had a problem with their soldiers getting into drugs. Carmine was the poster child for those older guys.
Adamo dug into the glove compartment and found the little glass bottle some old girlfriend had given him and unscrewed the top so the scent, a clean and spicy one at that, broke the surface of the lingering sins. He threw it in the cup holder, hoping the presence of it wouldn’t stir up any suspicion.
As he pulled up to the front of the restaurant, Rosalie was smoking another cigarette. She was staring off into the middle distance as if her eyes were trying to watch individual raindrops. There was something unsettling in the magnetic pull of her features as if they were all trying to cram closer together into the center of her face. When she noticed the massive red Impala slicing through the neon-lit downpour, her expression relaxed.
Adamo stopped the car, neither of them moving. Only then did he realize she expected him to get the door for her.
“Uppity cooze, this one,” he muttered to himself, swinging his body out into the rain again. He opened the passenger side door with a reverent nod to a Rosalie that he hoped came off as sarcastic. Not enough for her to complain about but enough to make him feel better.
“What kind of car is this?” Rosalie asked as Adamo poured himself back into the driver’s side.
“It’s an Impala. Latest model. A ’77.”
Rosalie’s eyebrow closest to him arched. “You must be doing pretty well.” She reached into the cup holder and lifted out the air freshener. “Did a girl buy you this?”
“Nah, I like when stuff smells nice.”
The eyebrow lowered along with the air freshener. Rosalie nodded then motioned with her hand for him to drive.
It was less than fifteen minutes to get to the Bucco house but every mile stretched longer than the last. Adamo reached over to turn on the radio as the headlights ran roughshod over the wet road flanked by overgrown trees, underbrush so thick that the illumination got trapped inside of it and reverted back to darkness. A song he heard endlessly at the disco came out of the speakers, and Rosalie sighed in response.
“Should I turn this off?” he asked, wondering how fast he could drive without making her nervous. He had been in the car more than a few times with Carmine. That man drove like a senior citizen on his way home from church.
“No, no. I like it.” She ran a lacquered nail down a seam in the vinyl. “I’ll bet it’s fun to be young and rich these days.” The window next to her was too fogged up for her to see out of but she stared that direction anyway. “We never really got to be young, Carmine and I.”
“I’m hardly rich,” Adamo corrected her, though he could tell it didn’t matter. She wasn’t listening to him anyway.
The street lights grew sparser the closer they got to the Bucco house. Less people out this way, less neighbors and cars yet somehow more watchful eyes. It made Adamo feel claustrophobic. Where he lived in Brooklyn, nobody was noticing him coming and going. Nobody was keeping tabs on who he was with and what they were getting up to. He was just another Italian guy snorting blow in the clubs and playing grab-ass late night in the parks. Dime a dozen around there.
At the far end of a cul de sac, the Bucco house rose up out of a miniature forest of pine and oak trees. It was fashioned after all the gold coast mansions further out on the island where back in the day people who made more money and committed more crimes than Carmine Bucco lived in excess and greed. But those guys made it into history books; Carmine got tailed by the FBI.
“Drive all the way up to the front door, please,” Rosalie instructed as if she genuinely thought Adamo was going to drop her at the curb on a night so wet that the shoulders of the road had swollen with class five rapids.
“Of course.”
He parked the car as close as he could to the front walkway then got out to walk Rosalie inside. This time she opened her door before he got to her and was standing briefly in the rain until he ran over.
“Madone, you’re gettin’ all wet.” He tugged at her arm. “What’re ya doin’? Com’on.”
Rosalie’s hand flung out in a straight, abrupt line. Those lacquered nails pressed into the sopping material of Adamo’s shirt, threatening to leave telltale marks in the muscle of his shoulder. The magnetic pull had returned to the center of Rosalie’s face; her features drew together as her eyes found a solace to rest on somewhere in the middle distance just to the left of Adamo’s face.
“What do you mean by that?” she asked. Her tone, her manner, everything about her rode a median that Adamo couldn’t pin down. Maybe angry, maybe unsettled, maybe scared.
Adamo gestured over head. “It’s raining!”
Rosalie released her grip and stared up at the sky. Despite the darkness, the coils and tumbles of storm clouds were evident, internally bright with activity, an intermittent zoetrope playing out for those patient enough to keep watching.
“I’m sorry, Adamo,” Rosalie said up to the pelting rain. “I thought you were being crude. Getting wet.”
She started towards the house without him. No more explanation was needed from her perspective, Adamo assumed. As he followed on her heels towards the ornate wooden door, he began to realize that the tone he was having trouble figuring out was covertly hopeful.
