Flicker & Burn: A Cold Fury Novel Read online

  “Uh . . . right. The Catacomb Club.”

  “We all know what happened there. What your grandpa Enzo did,” he said with a wink, raising an eyebrow and adding, “allegedly.”

  “Uh . . . right,” I said, keeping my eyes pinned to the ledger.

  Tyler stood and looked over my shoulder, a whisper of lemony cologne reaching my nose. “You’re pretty busy, huh? That’s good . . . hard work keeps a girl honest,” he said, slipping a perfectly tailored jacket over his broad shoulders. “But listen, when you get tired of waiting for Mike . . . Mark . . . ?”

  “Max.”

  “Give me a call. I’ll take you somewhere nice. Ever been to Paris?”

  “Not recently,” I murmured as he left. I made a note in the margin of the ledger (Catacomb Club???) and resolved to track it down in the notebook.

  Sitting in the chair now, waiting for Doug, my mind went back to it—the notebook!

  As Doug entered the room, I remembered the revelation I’d had in the mausoleum about the tattered collection of old secrets. “Hey,” I said excitedly, “I think I know how to figure out ‘Volta’! I’ve been trying to translate it when I should’ve been looking deeper into . . .” Doug spun around with an odd grin, and with speed I didn’t know he possessed, he snapped handcuffs around my wrist and the arm of the chair, binding me tightly. Before I could react, he cuffed my other wrist. “Notebook?” I muttered, but he was snapping a third pair of handcuffs around my ankles to the chair legs. “What are you doing?”

  He took a step back. “Applying restraint. Just in case.”

  “In case of what?”

  “In case,” he said, stepping back, “you think you’re some kind of hard-ass.”

  “Huh?”

  “Sugar Ray Rispoli and her killer left hook.” He chuckled mockingly.

  “What does this have to do with an experiment? What are you doing?”

  “Holding up a mirror. Showing you who you really are, you big . . . nosed . . . geek.”

  “Doug . . .”

  “You breathe out of that thing or sniff for truffles? I’m lucky I don’t suffocate, the way you bogart all the oxygen with that honker!”

  “Bogart?” I said, gritting my teeth. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “At least I can talk!” he shrieked. “You know why that nightmare on your teeth is called braces? Because I have to brace myself every time you open your mouth!”

  “Doug, you’d better . . .”

  “I’d better what? Do whatever you tell me to do and like it? Or you’re going to stare me into submission with that cra-aazy cold fury?” He popped a fist against his palm and said, “Maybe it’s your turn to have your butt kicked. I took a beating for you from that ski-masked freak, Poor Kevin. That was months ago and did you even thank me?” I was quiet then, my whole being aflame, and I yanked at the handcuffs as the metal bit into my wrists. “Did you?” he screamed, throwing a punch, holding it inches from my nose. When I opened my eyes, he grinned again. “Made you blink, hard-ass.” Before I could grab his eyes, he turned away, saying, “Nuh-uh-uh. Dougie no lookie.”

  “Free me now,” I said. “Whatever this is, it’s over.”

  Doug shook his head, strolling the room with his arms behind his back. “It’s over when I say it’s over. By the way, it’s not really an experiment. It’s revenge.”

  “What are you talking about? Revenge for what?”

  “For not appreciating me!” he screamed, punching the air. “For making me your chubby little sidekick, always doing the grit work, the endless research, and for what? O-o-oh, lucky me, I get to be Sara Jane Rispoli’s friend! I guess I should just whistle Dixie out of my butt cheeks every time you throw me a scrap of appreciation, right?”

  “Doug!”

  “I want to be the tragic hero! I want to have scary eye-power! When is it Doug Stuffins’s turn to drive the boat?”

  “Listen . . .”

  “No, you listen! Maybe I can’t hurt you physically . . . maybe you’re too tough. But there are other ways,” he said confidently. He looked out the window at the tops of buildings extending like a checkerboard to Lake Michigan. “You’ve had an exciting couple of days, I know, but it’s not possible you’ve forgotten that school starts tomorrow? Our junior year, day one?” I’d forgotten, all right. Who wouldn’t, after being attacked by red-eyed zombies? I started to reply when he said, “Start of the school year means Max is back. Have you spoken to your boyfriend since he got into town? Actually, the question is, has Gina spoken to you about your boyfriend’s adventure in La-La Land?”

  That stopped me.

  Gina Pettagola, my semi-friend, was the unquestioned gossip queen of Fep Prep. Although school had been out for the summer, she kept her finger on the pulse of everything about everyone that was none of her business. Besides movies, Doug loved nothing more than a scandal; if Gina knew of one, he would’ve heard about it. Now he pumped a fist, saying, “Boom, gotcha! Okay, so there’s a rumor flying around . . . really, I shouldn’t call it that since it’s true . . . about how your loyal, honest Max had a fling in sun-kissed California. Wait, fling implies something transitory. This was a romance.”

  “It’s not true,” I hissed. I’d always had a sneaking suspicion that Max wouldn’t stay with me, and it whispered again now as the blue flame leaped in my gut.

  “I didn’t catch her name, but Gina heard she was tall and blond with two big . . . brown eyes,” Doug said. “And apparently, just the cutest little nose you ever saw. Of course she’s back in California and Max is here, but Gina said . . .”

  His voice was smothered by pounding in my ears as my heart exploded, because I’d lost Max. My brain bulged with that repressed fear as I watched the back of his brown curly head pull away from a laughing blond girl’s face after he’d kissed her—he didn’t turn, but I knew it was Max. The love I had for him was so strong that it made me weak, and my cold fury weakened too, until something danced and crackled through my bones, into my brain. When I looked up, I saw a different Doug than my friend and confidant; instead, he was a bloated bearer of bad news who made it come true simply by delivering it. I tried to free my arms but was cuffed too tightly, so I put all of the murderous voltage behind my eyes. Doug turned and froze, his face a combination of triumph and horror. He’d succeeded in activating the electricity but now his own deep, dark fear stared back, causing a wet spot at the crotch of his pants. I looked into his mind, seeing a film clip of him aimlessly roaming the Bird Cage Club calling out my name and feeling his terror—his only friend had abandoned him. “No,” he said quietly. “Please . . . oh no . . .”

  “Oh yes . . . ,” I said with gleeful hatred, nailing my eyes to his with the need to slit his throat pulsating outward in waves, matching my heartbeat.

  My body jerked against the handcuffs, a loud rattling began, wooden at first and then glassy, and then the universe split and cracked as the wall of windows exploded.

  The shock broke my gaze from Doug’s and he dove beneath the control center, sending books and computers flying. Bound to the chair, all I could do was wait to be cut to pieces, but instead the force blew the glass outward. I watched translucent shards spiral through the air like icy razors, glinting in the moonlight before falling onto the El tracks and surrounding roofs. The Currency Exchange Building was an ancient skyscraper occupying an odd slice of real estate that, throughout the century, had been boxed in by other buildings and the train several stories below; very little glass would reach the empty nighttime sidewalk and whatever did would be blamed on myriad urban accidents. I inhaled deeply, feeling the cold fresh air scrape at my lungs, overcome by an exhaustion that was like being filled with cement. Slowly, Doug climbed out from under the control center and said, “Remind me not to mess with you about Max.”

  I looked at the debris covering the floor and used every ounce of energy I had to say, “What the hell . . . just happened?”

  “You generated a tsunami of electrical current,”
Doug answered, looking around in awe. He knelt down, unlocked the handcuffs with clumsy hands, and said, “Which you then used to try and slice me into meatloaf with your crazy eyes.”

  “For the last time, stop calling me crazy.”

  “I wasn’t. I really meant your eyes. They were glowing.”

  “Please don’t say red,” I said, staggering to my feet.

  Doug shook his head. “Blue, like your normal color but with light behind them. It was pretty terrifying, but damn . . . it was awesome.”

  “Great. My evolution as a circus freak continues. I was perfectly aware of what I was doing, by the way.”

  “Which was what, exactly?”

  “To put it bluntly,” I said, as teensy pops of enervating voltage jumped along my spine and faded away, “I was killing you because you deserved to die.”

  Doug, always analytical, even with peed-in jeans, asked, “Why?”

  “What you told me about Max. Part of me is sure he’ll dump me someday, and you tapped into it and made it real. And then, when I was sure it was over between Max and me—like I’d been sure my family was dead—all of the love I had for him was turned into murderous hatred for you,” I said with a shrug. “You deserved to die.”

  “You know I made it all up, right? To get the electricity flowing?” he said. “The stuff about Max and some girl in California? It was all nonsense.”

  “Yeah, I know now. Good job with that.”

  “Ugh, thanks,” he said with a ripple of fatigue, drawing a hand over his face and sighing. “God, listen . . . all of that shit I talked was to activate cold fury. It definitely has to be rolling before the electrical part kicks in.”

  “Like ‘big-nosed geek’?”

  “Right,” he said sheepishly. “It wouldn’t have occurred to me if you weren’t always bringing it up. Your braces too. I never notice them unless you’re eating, like, corn or something.” He sighed and said, “You know I . . . well, what I mean is, I love being your partner in this thing . . .”

  “I know. I love you, too, Doug.”

  He blushed, looking at his shoes, and then kicked away some books and papers. “What’s this?” he said, lifting the silver ice cream cone dropped by the creature. I’d placed it on the control center for his analysis, and explained how the thing had slurped at it before trying to run me down. Doug held it to the light, reading, “Soy belleza . . .”

  “And beauty is me,” I said.

  He rolled it between two fingers. “Reminds me of a one-hitter . . . the little metal pipe thingies used to smoke dope? My dad used to leave them all over the house.” He looked inside it at the pink, sticky residue and sniffed. “It smells like a chemical.”

  “It was soft serve.”

  “There are tons of chemicals in Mister Kreamy Kone concoctions,” he sighed. “Delicious ones.”

  “Track it down online, figure out what it is. It could lead somewhere.”

  “Give me twenty-four hours,” he said. “By the way, your eyes aren’t glowing anymore. But when the electricity was flowing, man, you should have seen them. They were also projecting these little beams of gold light.”

  Watching Doug push a broom, cleaning up glass, I realized how correct he’d been to try and discover the source of the electricity. If I was forced to shuttle between the remnants of the former Sara Jane, ignorant but happy daughter and sister, and the emerging Sara Jane, counselor-at-large, it was vital to understand what was contained in my brain. Everything nudged me back to the notebook, and now so did that word Doug had uttered—gold. Chapter one (“Nostro”—Us) refers to the Outfit in general and the Rispoli clan in particular, especially an ancient ancestor, an Egyptian tribal leader with gold-flecked eyes.

  I understood then that the notebook was not just a repository of old secrets.

  It was also a living document where I’d find traces of me.

  4

  I ONCE WATCHED A NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC program with my brother, Lou, when he was in his large-animals-that-eat-other-large-animals phase.

  With a combination of awe and horror, I witnessed an anaconda swallowing a deer, and then a seventeen-foot python gag down a startled antelope. In both cases, their respective dinners were enough to satisfy each reptile for days. And then came Carcharodon carcharias, or as generations of terrified beachgoers and moviegoers know it, the great white shark. As the segment began, Lou elbowed me and said, “Pay attention. This monster is never satisfied.” And he was right. The twenty-foot-long floating predator ate tunas, seals, porpoises, manta rays, charming dolphins, inattentive dogs, paddling people, other sharks, surfboards, and then, following a quick nap, started all over again.

  After blowing out the windows earlier in the day (it would be open-air living until they were replaced), I locked myself in the office/bedroom with the notebook on Sunday evening. Hours and chapters later, I put it aside, thinking of the Outfit as a great white shark.

  First, there will never be enough money to satisfy its greed.

  Second, it’s a monster that, through a chilling combination of bland anonymity and appalling brutality, is more terrifying than any red-eyed ice cream creature.

  Its hunger for cash means there will never be enough things to steal and fence, never enough businesses to defraud and extort, and never enough people to betray, exploit, beat, and kill. I read about schemes and tactics great and small, mundane and murderous. One was the “Wedding Party”: Outfit thugs consult the newspaper, pick a wedding reception in a ritzy neighborhood, and hold it up at gunpoint, making off with cash and gifts. There was the “Brick Job,” an act of brutal, simple extortion where, unless a certain amount was paid, a victim is put into the trunk of a car loaded with bricks and driven wildly around a parking lot, being crushed, battered, and cut to pieces by the heavy, sharp stones. Consistent Outfit income was supplied by juice loans (desperate suckers pay astronomical weekly percentage rates on cash loans), street tax (a huge monthly fee paid in order to run a business without interferences such as arson or death), bleeding a business (the Outfit forces itself in as a partner and then slowly liquidates the business for cash until there’s nothing left), and the old standbys of drugs, hijacking, gambling, car theft, and prostitution. I learned that the Outfit financed casinos in Las Vegas and Atlantic City, but over the decades had invested much more into the ownership of politicians and law enforcement (I can’t believe the names I read—mayors, governors, cops and FBI agents, senators, congressmen, foreign heads of state, two former U.S. presidents) in order to protect its businesses.

  The Outfit’s monstrosity is very good for business.

  It’s rooted in the pathological ease with which it kills.

  It will kill to eliminate competition, kill non-payers and underperformers, and, like the great white shark, kill its own out of insatiable hunger.

  The Outfit places no value on people other than as potential, disposable ATMs. It follows no code of moral conduct, has no sympathy or empathy, and is loyal only to self-enrichment; if its members ever had souls, they sold them long ago, stole them back, and fenced them again. I paused at this conclusion, uncomfortably recalling the thrill of inhuman power I possessed (or which possessed me) while in the grip of the electricity, opened to the chapter entitled “Nostro” (“Us”) and flipped to a section that discussed the Sicilian village of Buondiavolo, where my family had come from. In 1906, a team of researchers traveled there to investigate a legend: the remote village was inhabited by ancestors of an ancient, blue-eyed Egyptian tribe that had once been the preeminent fighting unit of Alexander the Great’s army. According to folklore, the tribe’s chief claimed that his people’s power came from eating gold—that over the centuries, the rare salts contained in the precious metal had infiltrated their blood and brains, endowing successive generations with otherworldly powers. I moved on, reading:

  There was a rumor of an even more mysterious property to the phenomenon (ghiaccio furioso). Supposedly, there was one family in particular known for its blue ey
es flecked with the same gold as their Egyptian ancestor. These people were capable, in times of extreme pain or passion, of emitting a charge or spark from that fearful gaze, with the gold serving as an emotional-electrical conductor. While the research team did not witness this attribute, it did note several volatile electrical storms happening in Buondiavolo. It was also noted that every home, without exception, bore a lightning-scarred weather vane.

  I lowered the notebook, thinking of the weather vane atop our house on Balmoral Avenue.

  The night Grandpa Enzo died, I came home to the news in a swirl of wind and rain. My dad, clearly traumatized, opened the door just as a bolt of lightning destroyed a tree. The rest of the evening, while the household mourned and an emotional storm churned within my father, lightning repeatedly struck the old weather vane. Now I wondered, Was it the storm or my dad? Also, the sentence that read “a rumor of an even more mysterious property to the phenomenon” confirmed that cold fury and electricity were interrelated. Those who bore gold flecks in their eyes conducted electricity “in times of extreme pain or passion,” meaning after cold fury had kicked in.

  So now I knew how it appeared. I wondered, then, if its purpose was anything other than lethal.

  Rereading the page, I found the thread of an answer in the first paragraph. “Alexander . . . absorbed the tribe into his army, making it an elite unit, the first to engage difficult enemies.”

  I flipped to the chapter entitled “Metodi” (“Methods”), and traced the page with a finger until I found frighteningly similar words. A note scribbled in the margin read, “Daggers is the first line of defense against our difficult problems.” The chapter discussed notorious Outfit guys with names like Harry “The Hook,” Jimmy “The Bomber,” and Eddie “The Axe,” all of them small potatoes compared to Nicky “Daggers” Fratelli. The others’ nicknames were self-explanatory, and while it seemed as if Fratelli’s was too, it actually had nothing to do with his use of knives; it referenced the fearsome gaze he affixed to his victims, as in “shooting daggers.” The chapter explained how he would start an argument, escalate it to a confrontation, and, when he was nice and pissed off, immobilize the poor mope with his terrifying glare and then coolly murder him.