Novellas
Man of Honor
It’s 2001, a young Alessandro from Florence is in southern Italy with his mother after his father has abandoned them. A family needs money and the local crime boss offers Alessandro a job, a chance to become a man of honor.
A drop of rain fell, then another and another. On the walk home, he was thinking of snails with their horns out, and what that meant. The road home itself was no different from any of the roads in southern Italy. This road had seen its share of traffic. Unpaved, not maintained, yet trampled upon by farm animals, cars, trucks, and itinerants such as himself. A truck sped past Alessandro, bouncing and kicking up a veil of yellowish dust in its wake. He thought of miners from the sulfur mines nearby. Their faces leathery, their shirts and bodies yellow as bees covered with pollen. He coughed from the dust.
The dirt. Sometimes it was yellowish and other times whitish; it contaminated everything. It was only the start of summer, the end of the school year, and this corruptive element was already a film on windows, an annoyance in shoes, and a nuisance to the eyes and throat.
The Fallen One
It’s 1991 and Silvio is living in Trieste with his mother, who is caring for her elderly father. Family secrets force Silvio to confront Italy’s fascist past and brief role in the Holocaust. When he befriends a deaf witness against the Sicilian mafia, Silvio will experiences first love, a passion for languages and a crusade against injustice.
There she stood, three steps above him, holding the rail. Aria wasted every stereotype he had of Sicilians, from the image of the short dour peasant to the hard, cracked face from too much time in the sun. She had an aristocratic head and cheekbones, jet hair and dark Córdovan eyes from the Moors, but even that was misleading and captivating. The touch of red in her hair and her long torso were gifts from the Normans who had conquered her island home. If there was an iota of the rustic farmer in her, then it was the bare feet. He heard a slight jingle from a charm around her ankle when she moved.
Two Warriors
The Riace Warriors, a pair of bronzes statues, were discovered in 1972. The two sculptures are being prepared for shipment north for an exhibit, but not before the Sicilian and Calabrian mafias try to take advantage of the opportunity. It’s1985, and a young and impulsive cop named Isidore Farrugia plans to stop them.
He settled into some American music. The synth sounds of Duran Duran recalled parties off the base. Girls with glossed lips and guys with outrageous hair. The synthesizer made its appearance again, rolling in this time with Sting’s breathy ditty about a possessive lover, or was it his homage to Orwell? Never mind. He listened to it anyway.
Madonna made him think of music videos. Video Music, the music channel, was the trend for kids now. He’d see them huddled around a television set, eating up Berlusconi’s programing. Dallas and Dynasty—shows RAI stopped televising after three episodes because of their alleged corruptive power. And he hadn’t forgotten how odd, how cool it was, to have commercials interrupt movies. So fashionable, so chic and cool, so very American. So not RAI.
The sea came into view on his right. Blue raced parallel to the car. The Strait of Messina threatened ahead. He thought of the earthquake he had heard about earlier on the radio. Messina was known for seismic activity. “It could have happened here,” he said to himself.
Dance of the Spider
Gennaro di Bello should be at the pinnacle of his distinguished career in law enforcement, but he isn’t in this story, set in the Nineties. Two of his best friends, Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, are dead, assassinated by the Sicilian mafia. His wife, Lucia was murdered by the Camorra, the criminal element in his native Naples. Forced to take a sabbatical, he tries salvage his career by finding a reclusive crime boss.
“You’re going to the Basilicata region per Borsellino’s request.”
“Can you be more specific?”
“Matera and Potenza because the Camorra is active there.”
Images of dry Murge hills and sheep farmers swept through his mind. The region was also known as Lucania, and the mountains there, the Appenino Lucano, left the Ionian coast choking in desert heat and the hinterland, cold as Dante’s hell. The ride there explained the driving gloves. The Fascists had exiled Carlo Levi there, the writer from Turin who would write in his memoir how village life hadn’t changed since Christ had walked the earth.
Five Before Rome
Five men work together in one office. They must solve a gruesome murder, a crime beyond their experience with organized crime, and whose echo threatens to thunder through the halls of the Vatican and shake the seat of government in Rome.
The waiter disappeared and Mona’s father decided to set the tone.
“Accounting is not a bad way to make a living, I suppose. Myself, I was a salesman. I like to roll up my sleeves and get out there and meet people. I guess you can call me an extrovert. I couldn’t stand the thought of sitting behind a desk, but that’s just me.”
Mother butted in with, “Law enforcement? Doesn’t that mean you carry a gun?”
“He’s an accountant, Sofia. Why would he need a gun? He uses a computer and a pencil.”
“I was just asking the man, Albert. Must you make fun of him?”
“I wasn’t making fun of him. Was I making fun of you, Dante?”
Dante had said, “Yes,” and realized his mistake. The gear in his head, the one between the two languages, had jammed. “I mean, no, you’re not making fun of me, but yes, I do carry a gun.”
“You do?” the surprise came from Mona’s mother, eyes like saucers, and in time for the fried artichokes. The waiter set them down and the crunch and munch began. Dante called over the waiter. He asked for wine. The waiter, without missing a beat, looked at him and then at the parents. “A glass or the whole bottle.”
Diamond Dogs (A Grifters Song Book 23)
Newark, New Jersey is nobody’s idea of a vacation.
When an unexpected Nor’easter crushes their holiday getaway and leaves Sam and Rachel stranded at the airport, they befriend a mysterious, sophisticated stranger. They quickly recognize him as one of their own, a veteran grifter who poses no threat. When he extends them the hospitality of his hotel suite, they quickly decide it’s a much better option than sleeping at the airport. But there’s a catch.
There’s always a catch.
Their new friend is a Diamond Dog and he wastes no time asking if they’ll run with him.
EWR
A bell chimed.
“Ladies and gentlemen, the good news is that we have just been cleared to land at Newark Liberty International Airport. Please make sure one last time your seat belt is fastened securely. The flight attendants will be coming through the cabin for a final compliance check and to pick up any remaining cups and glasses. The bad news is that the latest weather report has confirmed a Nor’easter is headed our way, here in Newark. We apologize in advance for any inconvenience that layovers might cause you. Thank you.”
A collective groan rose all throughout the cabin. Everyone reacted to the news, except for one couple. I had spotted them earlier, and they had seen me, too. We nodded to each other, in the way strangers are polite with each other when pressed into the unavoidable situations of modern life. We were simpatico.
Context and circumstances are everything.
Live long enough, as I have, and you learn to take the delays and obstacles in life in stride. Though it was far from being Zen, I had come up with a philosophy, though I don’t claim that it contains a speck of wisdom, and that is there are two kinds of people in Life. First, there are those who live the great adventure in a linear fashion.
Birth. School. Marriage. Children. Divorce. Remarriage optional. Death.
Their lives are like using a blender. They press any button, and the blades whirl around in a safe plastic jar, and they never get hurt. All well and good, but they are incapable of consuming anything but baby food. They have mundane families. They attend mundane schools, often in a small radius within or just beyond their zip code. They work mundane jobs. They marry mundane spouses. They buy mundane houses in the burbs. They produce children with lives that are just as mundane as their own. They retire and move to a gated community with a golf course and die in their sleep, and everyone at their funeral talks about how nice they were because they can’t think of anything more interesting to say.
“Flight attendants, prepare for landing.”
Then there are the others. Instead of a blender, they are born with a drawer full of sharp knives, everything a master chef could need and want. How they use the blades to slice, dice, and disjoint the challenges of life is entirely up to them. The catch, though, is that they can’t leave them in the kitchen drawer. People sense talent, so either learn how to use the knives, or people will use them against you. They can’t help themselves, so if you’re talented and understand all the beautiful knives and what can be done with them, you can’t resist either. You will use the knives.
Put another way, it’s the grifter and mark, winners and losers, or whatever other analogy you prefer. Some people are asleep their whole lives while others are vigilant and seize every opportunity. Some may call what I’ve described predator and prey, or flip it into something positive and say, sheepdog and sheep, as if it’s a choice to be one or the other.
I disagree.
You’re one or the other: one of the boring people, or somebody who takes life by the nuts. Call yourself a sheepdog and I’d say you’re deluded and wearing a collar; that, or you haven’t encountered a sheep so stupid that not protecting them is an act of mercy. Like I said, there are two types of people in this world.
The couple I saw earlier are like-minded.
I could be wrong. Returning to Jersey after a long hiatus could be a mistake, too. God knows the Garden State Parkway has an exit for everything.
The wheels touch earth, there’s that squelch of rubber that makes everything, including bone and metal, shudder. An overhead bin has popped loose. I sense that some passengers have found religion until the final convulsive rattle of this cattle car comes to a complete stop. There’s a prolonged moment of silence, and then the final ding of that chime and the voice from the cockpit.
“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Newark Liberty International Airport. Local time is two forty-five Eastern Standard Time, and the temperature is forty-five degrees Fahrenheit or seven point-two Celsius.
I sit and wait. The couple does likewise. Our eyes meet. I smile. She smiles. He nods.
Seatbelts unbuckle and almost everyone bolts upright at the sound of the last bell. That bell is the closest they’ll come to a boxer’s realization that they have survived a confrontation with mortality. Conformity prevails. Monotony is restored. After they work their belongings in overhead storage compartments free, they’ll stand, meek and mild as schoolchildren, and wait for the door to unlatch and release them into the terminal. They will tread the steep walkway into another self-contained world, not unlike the mall they frequent in suburbia.
The majority of the herd has deplaned when I reach for my carry-on.
I travel light. They travel light also, especially her, which is rare for women. I’ve watched tickets and the tags that say EWR for the luggage carousel downstairs walk on by. EWR is the code for the airport, or Early Warning Report, to someone with a sense of humor.
We move towards the hatch. They go first. Airline personnel repeat the mechanical mantra of ‘Thank you for flying with us, and have a nice day.’ I make it a point to thank each member of flight crew by name since I was at their mercy, all those miles above the earth.
Then it is into New Jersey, a place where people can’t help but be honest, and brutal.