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  "... wanted you so long I've ..."

  "Yeah."

  "... I've ... I ... "

  "Oh, yeah."

  "Yes." He was running his soft hands over those little childlike breasts with their small nipples. Little hot circles on the flesh.

  "Ahhhh."

  "You like this."

  "Yes."

  "Oh, yeah, baby."

  "Unnnh. Greg."

  "Kiss. Give me that hot, wet tongue." He speared down into her mouth, tonguing her, frenching her as he slid in and out.

  "God. Oh, I love you."

  "Come on. Oh. Come ON, DO IT OHHHHHHHH-HHH."

  "AAAAAHHHHHH." He was almost laughing into her mouth. Into her hot, wet fourteen-year-old mouth. Burning his cock in that fiery, mellifluous tightness.

  "Awwwww."

  He didn't have to hold on for long. She came like a damn runaway train. God, he loved it all. Everything was coming together, in more ways than one. And they cuddled and snuggled and nuzzled, and before long, he was getting turned on by the situation, by the girl and the legs and the tight pussy and the bloody smear on the old blanket, and he was hardening again, and as he kissed her, he reached for the long, tanned legs and she opened herself to him, wetly.

  "I need you," he whispered, gently, running his hot fingers down the fourteen-year-old chest. She could feel the burning heat all the way to her heart.

  "I need you too."

  "Are you mine?" He kissed her and then she answered.

  "You know I am," she vowed.

  "Tiff, I need to know you love me as much as I love you," he whispered in his soft but urgent way, his fingers moving down to her long, bare legs.

  "I do love you," telling him between the kisses.

  "Show me how much," he said to her. "Do you want me, Tiff?" He was playing Hal Hunk again now and guiding himself back into the cherry bowl.

  "Yesssss. Oh, be easy, ohhhhhh. Oh, God, I'm so hot." Her cat's eyes closed in ecstasy.

  "Tell me. Show me. How much."

  "I want you. Now NOW NOWWWWWWWWWWW-WWWWWW."

  "Say it. SAY IT."

  "NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN." He'd settle for that.

  After the second time. Lying there spent. Soaked. Bodies cooling in the open air. Listening to the muted traffic noise and thinking. Was there anything as good as that nice, fresh fourteen-year-old snatch. Hot damn, Sam. I am jam — and Chocolate Thunder, he said to himself, smiling.

  "What's so funny?" she said, trying to cuddle.

  "I was just remembering something else we could share." And with the big Hollywood grin on his good-looking puss, he brought out his blow. "Ever do any of this?"

  "What is it?" Her cat's eyes open wide again.

  "It's the Real Thing," he sang off-key. He wore a little gold thing on a chain and he used it to take just a little bit out and he said, "Do it like this," and snorted it.

  "I can't do that."

  "You can eat it, too."

  "God."

  "Try it. It's wild. Come on. We're going to share goodies, right?"

  "Right. Okay." He put a little on the spoon and she cautiously inhaled. "Oooooofffff. Oh! GOD, Greg. GROSS! She sneezed.

  "You'll see," he said, one of the only true things he'd said that day.

  And she looked over at her hunk and laughed happily.

  * * *

  Frank Spain, who was then still just a kid named Frank Spanhower, had never been much of a cocksman. His childhood had been typical but sexually neuter. He also had a minor speech impediment that had not been any great asset with the young ladies. And when you're a kid, a speech problem can put you pretty far down in the pecking order. Even the severe acne cases, the freckle factories, the fat kids, the out-of-synch nerds, can look down on somebody with that sort of a defect.

  As he matured, his initial sexual experiences had been embarrassing fiascos. Drawn to girls, he knew he was normal, just inexperienced, and this lack of self-confidence made him unduly shy. The work had a way of changing all that.

  In the beginning he had been a gofer. The mob then operated from the fresh-vegetable storefronts along Produce Row in St. Louis, using their legit fronts to launder racket bucks. Frank started working for Mr. Ciprioni because they liked the kid, felt sorry for him, and had him run errands around the office. The kid knew nothing from mobs. But they paid him well, and he and Vince Ciprioni, the youngest son of The Man, were school chums and fellow gun nuts. Vince was always trying to get him to teach him how to shoot.

  "Damn, you're good with a rifle," he told him one day. Frank had talked his mom into letting him finally junk his Red Ryder BB gun and get a.22, and within a week there wasn't a living shitbird within ten blocks of their house.

  "Not too bad, I guess," he said. He knew he was good. He'd gone to Boy Scout camp one year and beat all the other boys easily first time he'd ever shot skeet.

  He never bragged about it, but when the boys found out they shared a genuine interest in and fascination with weapons Frank admitted to Vince that he'd started packing.

  "You're carrying! In school?"

  "Yep." He explained his cousin had "got beat up real bad" by a gang who ran the streets near his house.

  "They fuck with me," he said, taking care with the difficult consonants, "I'm ready." He patted his pocket.

  Vince's eyes were rivited to the pocket where the hardware rested.

  "Were you in school when Jarrod's revolver fell out in art class?"

  "Yeah. I 'bout shit." They laughed over the kid who'd moved to Missouri from San Berdoo, and who affected the California teen-gang style replete to outmoded D.A. and the much discussed pawnshop.38 he carried with him to class.

  "I don't think Old Lady Shindleford ever even caught it," Vince said, laughing, "the fuckin' thing dropped out like a damn bomb. I'm surprised it didn't go off." They both roared. "Can I see it?" he said with eyes glued to the pocket.

  "Umm." Frank smiled and pulled out the piece. A Smith & Wesson with the short barrel and the hammer filed off.

  "Can you hit anything with it?" Vince asked, aiming the gun.

  "Once inna while," Frank said quietly. And that was the only time Vince Ciprioni ever saw the gun until the day Frank shot the four boys who'd jumped Vince down in back of the Rialto. Four of them. All with metal pipes. Frank shot the four of them deader than dogs right there in the alley down in back of the Rialto. And he didn't know what to do with the gun, so Vince made him give it to him and he took it to his father and told him what had happened and what Frank had done, and his old man just took the piece from him and told the boys never to say anything about it again.

  The Man called Frank in by himself. Frank figured he'd tell him how grateful he was for saving his son's life and that shit, but all he did was say, "You're a good kid. But can you keep your mouth shut?" Frank nodded yes. "Okay," he said, the hard Ciprioni eyes boring into him for a long time until he'd seen whatever he'd been hoping to see. "Take 'er easy," he said, and that was all. No thank you for saving Vincent's ass. Nothing. Ehh. Frank shrugged and went about his business.

  Vincent, on the other hand, couldn't shut up about it. Vince would tell him thanks about five times a day until after a week or so Frank finally had to ask him to please for crissakes shaddup about it. And the event didn't make him feel tough, or recklessly invulnerable, the way it affects some people, nor did he have any desire to clip out the stories about the killings and start a scrap-book. Oddly, it meant nothing to him. He handled it the way some kids would climb a tall tree or knock a softball over the left-field wall. He was a shooter. But soon after the incident he started calling himself Frank Spain.

  Secretly he figured one day he'd be hoisting a box of fresh lettuce and the boss would come up and slip a hundred-dollar bill in his pocket, but it never happened. What Mr. Ciprioni gave him turned out to be something much more valuable. He gave him his trust.

  A few months after the shooting The Man called him back into a storeroom and told him he was having a problem. A gu
y was creating some problems for him. It was a situation that required a solution. A final solution, he said. A piece of work like Frank had done in back of the Rialto. That kind of work.

  "Well, now, then, there," Spain said, in his best James Dean.

  "You understand what I'm saying to you?"

  Frank nodded that he understood.

  "I need somebody good. Somebody who can keep his mouth shut and do a piece of work like that. The money I pay for that is ... " He pulled an envelope out and started counting. He'd never seen so much money in all his life.

  "I'll do it," Spain said.

  "You sure about that? I know you're good but you're very young. It's one thing to stop some punks hurting a friend of yours, another thing to clip somebody cold. If you're not sure, don't take it."

  Spain said nothing, but he returned Mr. Ciprioni's stare for a full beat and reached slowly for the envelope. He let him take it and put it in his pocket, and then he told Frank the name and where the man lived. It was a downtown hotel. And that night Frank went down to the Milburn and walked in and took the elevator up to the fourth floor and knocked, and when the door opened, he asked the man if he was who the contract was for, and the guy said he was, and the kid pulled out the hammerless Smith and put a round right in his heart, turning and going down the emergency stairs, deciding this time he'd get rid of the piece himself. And from then on he became Mr. Ciprioni's shooter.

  Gaetano Ciprioni was not in Tony Gee's family, which was the St. Louis mob of that time. The boss man explained the hierarchy to Spain.

  "This is nothing here. It's shit. All the action is in Kansas City far as Missouri goes, and Kansas City doesn't have shit. St. Louis isn't anything serious in the organization. It's all run by Chicago anyway. The big man there is gonna retire soon. When he does, the man gonna inherit the whole middlewest country is my main man. He is to me what I am to you, you understand?"

  "Yeah."

  "He's gonna change things. When he does, I'll be moving up to The Council. You don't knew what that is, do you?" Frank shook his head no. "It's the head of all the families. ALL the families, even the big New York families. The Council controls everything. I'll be working there. I'm going to be needing someone here I can trust. To do jobs of work for me. Mostly here in the Midwest. The pay will be outstanding, I can promise you."

  "Okay."

  "Okay, we understand each other." They shook hands. Spain never could get used to how the Italianos liked to shake hands all the time. But one thing about The Man: if he told you something like this, well, you could take it to the bank.

  Spain was what his sainted mother would have called a late bloomer. He'd already worked his way to the top level of his chosen profession by the time he met Pat, and his new self-confidence allowed him to approach someone for the first time.

  She was an ordinary girl, although he saw her as quite beautiful. Mary Pat Gardner, who worked for his neighborhood dry-cleaner, which — many years later — he wanted to tell her had been a family operation, a family laundry for money as well as clothing, but he never told her about his work. He "traveled." He was in "sales."

  One day he walked in and she looked especially radiant and he told her so.

  "You look real pretty today."

  "Thank you," she beamed. "How's life treating you?" She took his dry-cleaning sack and started writing on a pad. "I'll get your things in just a second."

  "No hurry." He'd seen her in there when he brought his clothing in each week for a year or so, and finally he'd worked up enough nerve to ask her out. His speech impediment was almost gone. Frank no longer stammered if he concentrated on what he was saying. He was prepared to say, "Would you like to go to the movies with me Friday night?" That's what he planned to ask her. But what he said was, "Mary Pat?"

  And she looked up from the order she was writing and said, "Uh-huh?"

  "Would you like to know to the noovie, MOW to the noovie, GO to the MOVIE WITH ME?" Christ christ christ, is there no mercy no justice no rest no slack?

  He could still recall how he shriveled with the hopelessness of it as she smiled at him and said, "Sure. When?"

  "Mmmm. Okay," he mumbled, starting to pick up his dry-cleaning, so nervous, so blown away by his bungled attempt that it took a few beats before he realized she'd said yes. He couldn't believe it. It was a major victory of his life. The only conquest he could remember being genuinely proud of. More challenging and frightening than a dozen contracts.

  She hadn't said "I guess so," even. Nothing tentative or halfhearted. A big smile and a warm, quick "Sure. When?" He loved it. He fell instantly in love with her. To him she was beauty, smoldering desire, femininity, and sex incarnate. And he thought she liked him too.

  He proposed to her on their second date, surprising her with a ring he'd been carrying with him. She accepted, surprising both of them, somewhat bemused by the size of the stone, which she suspected was glass. The next day she was walking by a jewelry shop and just happened to take it in.

  "Mr. Plotkin?"

  "Yes?"

  "Remember me? Mary Pat Gardner?"

  "Shirley Goodell's cousin?"

  "The same. Mr. Plotkin, I want your opinion on a family heirloom." She thrust a hand under his wrinkled puss. "My aunt left me this. I was told it had some value." He screwed something into his eye and peered at it, holding her hand.

  "Oi veh. That's about five karats of perfect diamond you got there, child. Yes. I'd have to say that had some value." He looked again. "Nice color. Not a bubble. Nothing. It's a show-stopper," he said.

  They were married not long after. Within a year Spain had fathered a little girl. Outwardly he maintained a family life of seeming normalcy. A salesman or consultant or troubleshooter (he loved that one!), depending on who he was talking to, with a checkable "legend," a complete fake background that had been prepared by experts to withstand fed-level scrutiny, with the appearance of upwardly mobile, upper-middle-class wealth. A typical, if atypically rich, American mercantile transient.

  Had he been a normal man to begin with, or even in a normal profession, it might have been different. An accountant with seasonal work overloads, a car dealer with long hours, every line has its occupational drawbacks. But Spain's vocation took him out of the city unexpectedly, sometimes for long periods, and the nature of the business made him secretive.

  "You never talk to me," Pat so often would say.

  "I talk. I just don't have that much to say."

  "I don't even know what you do. Most men share their work with their wives. It can't be that boring."

  "Believe me," he say, shaking his head in exasperation, "you don't know how lucky you are. Just be glad I don't bring my work home with me like some guys." Wasn't that the truth? "I decided a long time ago I'd seen too many marriages sour because the guy was always taking his job to bed with him. I leave my work outside. I'll take care of the selling, the money to put the food on the table. You take care of making us a good home." And so on.

  And time has a way of passing so quickly. And before you know it, if you aren't careful, you can dedicate yourself to your calling but sacrifice your personal life in the bargain. He let his family slip through his fingers.

  "I like a dedicated man. That's one thing about you, Frank," The Man said to him. "And you keep your mouth shut. It's a rare commodity in this day and age. Even my own guys. I hear 'em goin' around putting their mouth all over themselves, callin' each other guinea this and greaseball that. And worst of all, this son of mine talks about wops, which is a word sets my teeth on edge. I don't even like to hear the colored called niggers. You — I don't think I ever heard you say dago even, am I right?"

  Frank shrugged. "I just don't think like that."

  "My son. My youngest. He looks up to you so much. Ever since that time you whacked those boys. It's all I hear. Papa, Frank shot all four of 'em, he'd say. Hit four moving targets and three head shots. How many times I've heard that when the kid and I talk about you. You never said sh
it to me. You never asked him for nothin'. Never asked me for a dime."

  "I was glad I was there that day."

  "Yeah. Me too," It was a father talking to his son after the baseball game. Telling him how proud he was of the homer the kid clobbered in the bottom of the ninth. And the kind of dedication he gave to The Man was the kind you only give to family. Perhaps, when you think about it, that was his real family. It was certainly the one he devoted his time and energies to.

  First, when he failed to hold his wife, it was as if the bedrock on which he was standing suddenly cracked open, and now . . . the thing with his daughter, he felt himself slipping into the abyss.

  He was sitting there in the living room in the darkness, waiting for his little girl and thinking about what he could have done to keep Pat, and he heard her coming up the steps and opening the front door.

  "You could have had him drive right up. No reason for you to walk all the way from the highway. I wasn't going to go after him with a ball bat. Of course it's not a bad idea."

  She didn't even look at him, just started up the stairs.

  "That's the last time you'll be allowed out," he said to her. "You get three strikes like everybody else. You've had two. One more and I call the juvenile authorities and turn you over to them. I can't chain you in your room. If the authorities can't take care of you I'll have to hire special guards. Whatever it takes, we'll make sure —" And the sound of Tiff's bedroom door slamming shut on his words put a period to his thought.

  Inside her room, Tiff made her decision. She had asked Greg about what they were going to do and he wanted to cut out for Florida. She said, Let's sleep on the idea and they'd talk at school tomorrow. Roger Nunnaly had his fill of school and they could go with Roger in his car. They'd all take off for the South. Lots of fun in the sun. Lots of wild scenes on the beach. It sounded great to Tiff. She started packing and then realized she'd never get the clothes out of the house past . . . him. She dumped her books out of her voluminous book bag and began to pack the essentials into the bag and her biggest purse.

  She had some money saved. Quite a bit, in fact. And there was the jewelry. She packed her dowery in silence.