1929 (Story 2 from the Table Twelve Stories)

1929

           

            The blood was still on him.

            His hands looked clean; but he felt like the blood was still there.

He had washed, bathed and scrubbed his hands until they were raw but Charlie could not get clean enough.

He had not been home since yesterday morning.

Home.

He couldn’t go home; not yet.

He needed to finish this to himself and those he loved safe.  

Charlie Cerone stood shakily in the alleyway beside E. Terrnal’s Café, trying to gain some composure before his meeting with Rocco to update him on the completion of his mission.

The mission.

The thought made Charlie feel light headed and without warning the contents of his stomach rose and he was violently sick beside the filthy dumpster he was leaning on.

Charlie frantically pulled his kerchief from his pocket and wiped his mouth, as something small and sparkling flew from his pocket and hit the dirty ground. He picked it up and saw it was an earring; a large emerald green stone, surrounded by small diamonds, all hanging from a delicate clasp. The sight of the earring filled him with apprehension and sorrow. It was his daughter, Bianca’s, earring. He had brought them for her fourteenth birthday. They had instantly become her favourites and she wore them at every opportunity; but, she was always misplacing one then searching their small, pokey apartment for the other. When she had been frantically leaving for school yesterday morning, Charlie had noticed she had only one of her favourite earrings in her delicate ears, but she had left before he could reunite her with the other. 

So, Charlie set to doing what he had been dreading. He pocketed the earring, put on his tattered navy suit, holstered his revolver and walked three blocks to the payphone on the corner of Elm and Seventh. Charlie had stood for what felt like hours, waiting for the call. When it had eventually come, and he had reluctantly received his instructions, he took a car that had been left for him in the parking lot of the diner across the street. Charlie then drove twenty miles out of town to the Luciano’s Compound and concealed his car in the woods; half a mile to the behind the Compound. Then, he had crept through the woods, snuck into the barn at the edge of the woods and waited until darkness when Luciano was scheduled to appear.

“Hey buddy!” a drawling voice yelled from behind him, shocking Charlie out his trance.

“Buddy, are you ok?” the voice came from a tall, skinny boy, probably in his early twenties with a garbage bag in hand. Clearly, he worked in the Café and was taking out the trash only to see a shifty-looking Mac loitering in the alleyway.

“Yeah, yeah I’m fine,” Charlie finally managed to answer.

I can’t keep stalling, he thought. He needed to go inside the Café and meet with Rocco to put this whole business to bed.

With one final steadying breath, Charlie pocketed his kerchief, Bianca’s earring and walked out of the alleyway, onto the street and into E.Terrnal’s Café.

It was a homely sort of joint; polished wood spread from floor to ceiling, small cast iron tables with red and white chequered clothes littered the space, the serving counter had highly polished white marble counter and what sounded like ‘West End Blues’ by Louis Armstrong was playing on the radio that sat atop said counter.

As Charlie made his way into the Café, sweat began to seep from his scalp and wet his greying dark hair. His tired blue eyes searched the Café, which was quiet for a Friday morning, hoping not to see-

Rocco.

S**t, Charlie thought. The huge mass of man that was Rocco, Salvador Luppi’s right hand man, sat slouching, leafing through the morning paper, across the far side of the Café at Table Twelve.

Charlie’s stomach lurched again and a voice inside him screamed to get home, grab Bianca and run. But he couldn’t. If he didn’t finish this now he would never be free of his debt to Salvador Luppi. 

As Charlie approached the table, Rocco saw him, looked up and a disgusting smile spread across his plump face as he struggled to rise from his seat to greet Charlie.

“Mr. Cerone, Buongiorno to you!” Rocco boomed in his thick Italian accent as he grabbed Charlie’s hand in salutation, “Can I get you a cup of coffee?”

“No, thank you, I’m good. I’d rather get this over with,” Charlie replied.

            “Straight to business, Salvador has always seen that in you, I think he admires it; that is why he has been so good to you,” Rocco rambled.

            Charlie would not have gone back to Salvador Luppi again if he had had any other choice; but, at the time, he had none. His daughter had been sick and he had needed money to pay her rapidly increasing medical bills. Charlie had promised himself long ago that he would never go back to his old ways but, when a man is desperate, it seems old habits die hard.

            “So,” Rocco continued as he took a sip of his coffee, “I want you to level with me. Tell me what happened.”

            “You know what happened,” Charlie asserted.

            “I know, but I want to hear it from you,” Rocco replied and leaned back in his chair.

            “I got to the Luciano compound as you said,” Charlie started, twisting his hands in his lap and feeling revolting as he relayed the events of the night before, “I waited in the barn until nightfall. I heard the car approaching and Luciano was yelling to himself because the car had a flat, like you said he would. He came into the barn, started searching for his tools and I clocked him. I dragged him out the back of the barn and into the car I hid in the woods and I… took him for a ride.”

            It had all been planned so meticulously. Luciano had been followed for over a week by Salvador’s men, so they knew he would have been going to his Compound alone. His car had been sabotaged to ensure Luciano would have to retrieve his tools from the barn. All Charlie had to do to repay his debt was bump off Luciano and give Salvador an envelope that Luciano had received from another of Salvador’s rivals that very afternoon.

            “Atta-boy!” Rocco exclaimed, “and the envelope?”

            Charlie retrieved the envelope from his inner jacket pocket and pushed it regrettably across the table to Rocco.

            “Salvador will be pleased,” Rocco smiled as he examined the contents of the envelope.  

            “That’s it now. I’m done. That was the deal, tell Salvador I want no more to do with him,” Charlie affirmed.

            “Of course,” Rocco sneered.

            Before Rocco had a chance to ask any more questions, Charlie pushed back his chair and readied to leave just as Rocco continued, “just one more thing. What did you do with Luciano?”

            “What? I bumped him off… I shot him,” Charlie chocked.

            “I know that, I mean, what did you do with his body?” Rocco asked calmly.

            Rocco’s question unnerved Charlie. In the old days, no one was ever concerned where the bodies of those who had crossed them ended up. As long as they were out of sight, and some proof they had been dealt with was presented, the boss was happy.

“I… I buried him… In the woods,” Charlie stuttered.

            “Really? Burial. A classic. I’ve opted for that method myself several times. But I have reason to think that you didn’t bury him deep enough,” Rocco smirked.

            The sweat began to pour down Charlie’s cheek and panic began to rise through his chest, “What?”

            “You did not bury him deep enough,” Rocco leaned in, beckoning Charlie to do the same, “because my informants tell me that, in the early hours of this morning, Luciano made a miraculous return from beyond the grave and walked right into his Piano Bar on Fifteenth Street, covered in mud and blood, but very much alive.”

            S**t, Charlie screamed inside. Deep down he knew it would never have worked. He knew it. After he had dragged Luciano to the middle of nowhere and beaten him almost to death, Charlie could not find it in himself to pull the trigger. He had thought of Bianca, and his promise that he would be a good man for his daughter. That thought had rendered him unable to commit the same atrocities he had managed to avoid before. Instead he had scared Luciano shitless, or so he thought, shot him in the leg and arm, thrown him all the cash he had and told him to skip the state and never return. Deep down Charlie had known it would never have worked, but he was a changed man and he did not want a killer raising his daughter.

            “Rocco-”

            “Pipe down!” Rocco spat and grabbed Charlie’s collar, “I knew you were weak, I knew you would double cross us!” Rocco hissed and threw Charlie back into his chair and all the breath left his shaking body.

            “Salvador is deeply disappointed in you,” Rocco continued, “You have let us down one too many times. Salvador knew you would never kill Luciano, so he prepared a little gift that I was instructed to give you when this situation should occur,” out of his pocket Rocco produce a folded kerchief embroidered with red stitching and pushed it across the table.

            “Open it,” Rocco sneered.

            Charlie reached out, his hand shaking, and opened the kerchief. All he wanted to do was run, but that would not help him now. Charlie palmed the kerchief and and as soon as the thing inside glistened green in the morning sunlight he felt gruesome.

            It was Bianca’s other earring; the one she had been wearing the morning before.

            “What have you done!?” Charlie said, almost unable to speak. They had Bianca. He had failed to protect his daughter once again.

            “What you would not… Repay your debt,” Rocco smirked.

            Wrath, panic and nausea rushed through Charlie’s body as he bolted from his seat at Table Twelve, stormed his way out of E. Terrnal’s Café and ran helplessly to save Bianca.

            But, no matter how fast he ran, deep down, he knew he was already too late.  

 

Reviews

[Joyrider]

Enthralling narration. Quit dramatic piece.