The Spia Family Presses On

SIX

La Famiglia

“Tell me you didn’t just throw my phone, with all my contact information, and my notes for my next book into a vat of olive oil.” Lisa stood with her arms akimbo, mouth tight, eyes narrowed, head tilted as if her brain had suddenly gotten heavy with thought.

“You gave me no other option,” I told her.

“There are always options. You simply chose to ignore them.”

“We can’t call the police.”

“Fine, but did you have to destroy my phone in the process? Do you have any idea what a nightmare that little act of defiance is going to cause me?” Her voice went up an octave.

We heard the soft clunk of the phone hitting bottom. She winced.

“I’m sorry, but my mother is not going to prison for something she didn’t do. I already lost one parent to this damn family, I won’t lose another.”

Her face softened. “Ah, now I get it. Why didn’t you tell me this sooner?”

“I wasn’t conscious of it until this very moment. I just knew my mom wasn’t guilty and you were getting ready to call the police and I simply reacted. It was a gut level thing.”

“Next time your gut wants to tell you what to do would you please ask your head if it agrees?”

“That’s not always an option, but I’ll see what I can do. So, any suggestions?”

She eyed the futso. “You think the three minute rule applies to phones floating in olive oil?” She bent over and peeked into the open thirty-liter futso, then slowly knelt next to it trying to get a good look inside, careful to place the long black screw down next to her.

“That’s the three second rule, and it only applies to food you drop on the floor. This is an entirely different animal.”

“I’m going in,” she said and plunged her hand into the olive oil, our Italian Blend, made from a combination of Frantoio, Leccino, Moraiolo and Pendolino olives. Not for the timid. This oil was pungent and spicy.

Half her arm disappeared inside the futso. She began to cough as the scent of the oil caught in her throat. “There’s . . . something . . . else…”

But her coughing stole her voice. She retrieved the phone and held it over the futso so the oil could drip back in from both her arm and the phone. A somewhat startled look spread across her otherwise tranquil face.

“What?”

She tried to speak, but still couldn’t. Instead, she pulled a handful of tissues out of her shoulder bag to wipe off the glistening olive oil from her arm and phone, careful not to let any of it drip on the table or on her clothes. Neither one of us wanted to contaminate the crime scene if we could help it, but that was probably a moot point by now.

In the meantime, the little problem of one dead mobster still haunted my thoughts and the more we stood there, the more panicked I became that someone would walk in on us. “Hurry,” I told her. “We need to get out of here and lock this place up while I think of what to do next.”

Lisa finally gained control of her voice. “There’s a handgun in there,” she said in even tones as if finding the gun along with her phone was a natural occurrence. “I’d say there’s a relatively good chance it’s the murder weapon unless this is some new way of storing the family weapons.”

I gave her a wry look. She didn’t flinch.

“Why would the killer leave the weapon where anybody could find it so easily? It doesn’t make sense.”

“Does any of this make sense? I don’t know. Maybe he or she thought the police would never look inside these things, or at least not right away and that would give them time to remove it. I think we interrupted the killer before he or she could make a clean escape.”

“But we never heard a gun shot.”

“It could have happened right before we came in and the killer didn’t want to take the chance of leaving with a smoking gun, so to speak.” She focused on polishing her phone. It looked dead, but I could tell she was hopeful.

She said, “Or the killer wanted it to be found. Tell me your mom doesn’t own a handgun.”

“Is it one of those automatic things?”

She glanced back in the futso. “No, so that’s good, right?” She smiled as if everything would be fine now. “It’s a small revolver, with a mother-of pearl handle.”

For some reason her teeth looked as if they could glow in the dark, or was that just my imagination playing tricks with the mother-of-pearl image playing inside my head. “Then I can’t tell you my mom doesn’t own a handgun.” It sounded exactly like the one my dad gave her as an anniversary present when I was a little girl. The evidence was beginning to pile up. “Just tell me one more thing. Does it say anything on the handle?”

She moved to get a better look inside while I made excuses for the handgun. After all, a lot of people owned guns with mother-of-pearl handles. It didn’t have to be my mother’s gun, at least I hoped it wasn’t. “I can’t tell. There’s not enough light.” She twisted herself and backed up a bit. I held my breath. “Wait. There’s something, L-U . . .”

My heart skipped a beat. “ . . . C-I-L-L-E,” we said in unison. She looked over at me. “It was my grandmother’s name, and her weapon of choice. Some families pass down jewels, my family passes down handguns.”

“You want me to fish it out?”

As if on cue, the back door creaked open and a voice echoed through the barn. “Hey, Dickey, you in here?”

It was Uncle Benny. Lisa quickly stood up without retrieving the gun, took a step back, caught her foot on the edge of the overturned olive mill, and nearly tumbled on top of it. I grabbed the back of her sweater and pulled her upright just in time. “No, Uncle Benny. It’s just Lisa and me,” I yelled. “We’ll be right out.”

“I’m right here,” he said behind me. His baritone voice startled me and I let go of Lisa who instantly lost her balance and fell on top of the stone, which caused it to tilt to one side allowing Dickey to pop out like a golden lupini bean bursting out of its shell.

Uncle Benny yelled, “Marone! What the f*ck!” and took a couple steps back losing his balance due to those boxes I had moved earlier. He began to fall backwards as he spun around grabbing at air, then for me. I tried for stability by leaning forward. Big mistake. We landed only inches away from Dickey.

On the up side, we didn’t hit our heads on the stone mill. On the down side, between the three of us, we had sufficiently contaminated the crime scene so that the police would now believe we were somehow all involved.

As Uncle Benny and I lay there, holding onto each other, staring into Dickey’s blank eyes—he was now facing us—I realized that Dickey smelled a little sweet. I took another whiff. Definitely berries. Or was that Uncle Benny who smelled like a ripe berry?

“Are you wearing cologne?” I asked, my face only inches from his.

“What the hell kind of question is that?” When he spoke I caught the scent of tobacco not berries.

He moved away from me in a flurry of frustration and pushed himself up to stand next to Lisa who had managed to get off the millstone on her own. I remained on the floor, and slid in closer to Dickey and there it was again . . . berries. I eased myself up a bit, the stone mill pressing in on my back. That’s when I spotted Dickey’s left hand pressing up against the millstone—obviously an attempt at stopping the stone from crushing him—twisted abnormally flat against his chest. His perfect manicure now ruined with broken nails and traces of blood.

I stared at his hand for a moment thinking something else was wrong with it. Then it came to me. The horseshoe pinky ring I’d given him was missing. And not only was the ring missing, but his pinky was covered in glistening olive oil that pooled on his suit coat and stained his golden shirt. I didn’t have to get closer to know it was our Italian blend, the same oil my mom’s handgun was now floating in.

Dickey had said the ring was going to give somebody heartburn. Could that heartburn have turned into murder?

Uncle Benny leaned over toward me. His graying hair slicked back with olive oil, no doubt, and his black, trendy Italian-framed glasses sliding down his Roman nose. “Get the hell out of there, will you? I do not like you lying with that piece of shit. It ain’t right. What are you doing? The man is dead.”

I grabbed Benny’s arm, slid out from under the millstone and stood. “Sounds as if you didn’t like Dickey much.”

“Too hungry for power. I have no use for that kind of person. Plus, he killed a woman. Murder is one thing, but killing your own woman, that is something I do not condone.”

It was comforting to know Uncle Benny’s murder limits, just in case I ever stumbled on a dead girlfriend of his. At least I could cross him off the list of suspects.

“But wasn’t he just cleared of that murder?”

He smirked, as if I should know better. “Let us just say he was cleared of being in close proximity when the event took place. That does not mean he did not have anything to do with the event.”

I hadn’t thought of that, probably a good thing.

“What’s going on in here?” Jimmy asked, appearing behind Uncle Benny.

“Dickey’s dead,” Lisa announced as she brushed herself off and carefully checked her hands and face for injuries.

“No shit. Want I should clean it up?” He looked at me when he said it.

“No. We’re calling the police,” I told him. He took a couple steps back, as if he was getting ready to bolt.

Jimmy had that innocent, freshly-washed looking face, bright amber eyes, perfectly shaped nose, high cheekbones, and creamy skin that always had a hint of a shine. Not an oily shine, more of a clean glow. Other than my dad, he was by far the best looking man in the family, and he knew it. He went through women like a kid goes through crayons. He even dated Lisa for about a minute a few years ago, but she figured him out before their second kiss and dumped him. Lisa was always better at dating than I was. She could spot a truly bad boy just by the way he stood or laughed.

I, on the other hand, could always pick them out in a crowd, but instead of walking away, I would be dawn to them like a masochistic moth that can’t seem to avoid the flame. Case in point: Leonardo Russo.

“Hey everybody, party’s outside. Whoa!” Uncle Federico spotted Dickey and his eyes bugged for a moment, then he looked away. I almost detected a slight grin, but it vanished as soon as it appeared. “This looks real bad. Tell me it was some kind of accident.” He stopped just inches behind Uncle Benny and Jimmy.

And I had so hoped Lisa and I could keep this to ourselves for awhile.

Who was I kidding?

“Not an accident,” Lisa said, shaking her head.

“You mean somebody whacked’ em?” Uncle Ray asked. I hadn’t even seen him come in. It was as if he just materialized out of the shadows. His large frame dominated the cramped space we were standing in.

“Bullet in the left temple.” Lisa delivered the news like a pro, indifferent and to the point. “At close range, I’d guess.”

“Poor bastard. Not out more than twenty-four hours and somebody takes him out,” Federico groused. “You’d think whoever did this could have waited ‘til Dickey left the orchard. This is a problem for the family, especially Gloria.”

My thoughts, exactly.

Federico didn’t like anything even slightly off-color happening on the land, at least nothing that attracted the police. He was a tightly wound man and except for his weekly poker games with my mom and whoever else was willing to try their luck—Federico always seemed to win—the orchard was his only interest.

Suddenly the sound of sobs echoed through the barn. Zia Yolanda had arrived on the scene. “Somebody get her outta here,” Uncle Ray ordered.

Jimmy said, “I’ll do it.”

“Good, and keep the rest of the women outta here.”

Jimmy nodded and took off. Zia Yolanda’s sobs drifted off leaving a strange sort of echo inside the barn. Normally, her sobs didn’t bother me, but the lingering echo of genuine heartfelt weeping was enough to make me sad for Dickey’s demise, a man who probably was responsible for more human misery than I could ever imagine. That right there produced goose bumps, along with a few shivers for added emphasis.

“You girls should go. We’ll take care of this.” Uncle Ray liked giving orders, and most of the time I would follow them, but not this time.

I shook my head. “No. This family doesn’t cover up a murder anymore. Remember? We’re honest, law-abiding citizens now.”

“Tell that to whoever shot Dickey,” Uncle Benny said, chomping on his unlit cigar. Uncle Benny always carried a fat stogy. When it wasn’t peeking out of his shirt pocket he held it between his fingers or it dangled from the corner of his mouth. He was trying to cut back on his tobacco addiction, so he only lit up twice a day, but the habit of playing with a cigar was too imbedded in his psyche to abandon.

“Somebody shot Dickey?” Aunt Hetty’s voice rang through the barn. She walked up to us with Valerie, an overly fit redhead, mid-fifties, piercing green eyes, and an old scar that ran along her otherwise delicate jawbone. Valerie liked to say she got the scar in an old biker accident, but we all knew her first husband gave it to her one night during a battle over the correct way to prepare shrimp. Now Valerie was married to Uncle Ray, a man who had an unnatural aversion to anything that lived in water.

Aunt Hetty nudged Uncle Ray to the side, giving him one of her hard looks. He moved out of her way. “Is the horny devil dead, or do we have to call an ambulance? The son of a . . . probably doesn’t have any insurance and we’ll get stuck with the bill. Well, you can bet that I won’t be making any contributions. I’m done with this devil.”

No one said a word as she walked up to Dickey, crossed her arms in tight under her breasts, leaned in closer and said, “He looks dead to me. Ha! Finally you guys did something right. Dirty bastage should’a been knocked off years ago.” She stood up again, turned toward me and I noticed her moist eyes.

What was that all about?

Val said, “Babe can finally be free of the cheating, murdering louse.”

“I’ve been free of the louse for a long time, doll. I don’t need nobody to kill him on my account.” Babe’s husky voice rose from the shadows. “Especially not tonight.”

“Where the hell is Jimmy? That kid never could take orders,” Uncle Ray groused.

“Give it a rest, Ray. I’m a big girl. I can handle it.” She peered down at Dickey. “I was kind of hoping he’d stick around for awhile for old time’s sake.” She struck a pose—one hip cocked, fluffed the bottom of her golden curls with her hand—then she spoke to Dickey. “Too bad it had to end this way, big guy. I was just gettin’ in the mood.”

In the mood for what, I wondered.

She turned and strolled away from the group, heels clicking on the tile in a slow rhythm that kept the men silently yearning until the sound of her shoes faded into the still night.

This was getting interesting.

Then Maryann, with her ample body and curly auburn-colored hair, steel-blue eyes and a sardonic outlook on life, showed up and made everyone guilty for our general lack of respect for the dead. She told us the story of how Dickey had paid for her accordion lessons when her own family didn’t believe the accordion could do “diddly squat” for a heroin addiction. “The accordion saved my life,” she said all teary eyed. “Dickey even wrote me letters of accordion encouragement from prison. He was good to me, and you people should respect that.”

Uncle Benny lit up his stogy.

“We should call Angelo Conti over at Conti’s funeral parlor,” Aunt Hetty said. “They do a nice job on a body, even one with a bullet hole in its head. I bet if we slipped Angelo a couple extra grand he wouldn’t say nothing about that bullet hole to the cops. Times are tough these days in the funeral business. People are going eco friendly and cremating their loved ones or burying them in biodegradable coffins they buy at Wal-Mart. Not much of a profit in a biodegradable coffin.”

“We’re not calling Angelo Conti,” Uncle Ray declared. “This is a family matter. The Contis aren’t family. Can’t trust ‘em.”

“Let’s just call the police,” I said, finally ready for this to be over with. Of course, there was one minor thing I had to do before they arrived . . . remove my mom’s handgun from the futso. I justified this little act of felony with the absolute certainty that she had nothing to do with his murder and would only put the police on the wrong track.

Uncle Ray said, “The cops’ll think it was a community killin’ or something equally as stupid and it’ll ruin everything we’ve worked for. Hell, the newspapers and cable news might get wind of this and some of our old enemies could crawl outta the woodwork lookin’ for a little revenge. Then where will we be? No, the best thing to do is to bury the bastard and be done with it.”

“I agree with Ray,” Uncle Benny said. “Cops will just bring trouble to the family, and the one thing we do not need is more trouble. I vote we get a place ready under that big olive tree next to the barn.”

“One thing’s for sure,” Uncle Ray said as he hunched down to get another look at Dickey, “none of us here clipped the bastard. We ain’t stupid enough to shit where we eat.”

“Not unless one of you wanted to get even and set somebody up,” I said.

Federico looked over at me, his face in a bunch. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. Nobody here would do that. We’re family.”

Uncle Ray stood. “I’m getting’ a bad feeling about this. We need to move him outta here. Now.”

“But wouldn’t you like to know who killed him?” Lisa asked.

Okay, not the best thing to say, at least not in this crowd. If one of their own clipped him, then let sleeping dogs lie would be their motto. If that person didn’t want to come forward and turn themselves in, which was highly doubtful, or disappear on their own, then so be it. The problem was if any of them learned who did it, then they’d have to turn that person in or risk their own freedom. No way did any of these born-again angels want to take another trip on the dark side. They were into the legitimate business of olive oil now, and they intended to keep it that way.

The silence was palpable. No one moved, or breathed for that matter. Lisa was an outsider, and even though she’d been my best friend practically since I took my first step, an outsider didn’t interfere in family business.

With those few words, it was as if my family finally realized her presence, as if all this time they hadn’t completely focused in on her. But now they did, and from the look on their collective faces, I could tell they wanted her gone and fast.

It was my turn to say something. “Lisa’s right. And besides, she’s the one who found Dickey first, so her DNA is all over this place. She’s a stand-up girl, you all know that, and now she’s just as much of a suspect as the rest of us.”

I looked around for a nod of acceptance, a wink of hope, something that told me they weren’t going to unilaterally shun her for the rest of time, but all I got were blank stares. No expressions. No tells. Not even a twitch, which, for my family, wasn’t completely bad news.

She leaned in and whispered, “Thank you for that. Up until now I thought I was merely an eye witness to the aftermath of a crime, but now that I’m a suspect I’ll sleep easier.”

“Sorry, but I had to defend you,” I told her.

“Is that what that was?”

I nodded, shrugged and gave her a little smile.

Uncle Ray said, “I only talked to Dickey once all night when he was lookin’ for a wine opener. He told me he couldn’t stick around long. He had one thing to do and once that was done he was headin’ back to the city in the morning.”

“What time was that?” I asked thinking I should get some kind of timeline going.

“I don’t know. I gave up watchin’ the clock when I retired,” he growled. “But I was glad to hear it. I didn’t want him hanging around here any longer than necessary.”

“Are we talking daylight or night?” I asked.

“Still daylight. That I can say for sure. Those little lights wasn’t on yet, ‘cause I remember lookin’ at ‘em thinkin’ how we should hang some more.”

“I opened his wine bottle. Russo’s Pinot Noir,” Aunt Babe said, the sound of her heels clicking up behind Uncle Ray. “Poured out two glasses, one for him and one for me. I was figuring on getting him to spill on what he wanted by coming here, but all he could talk about was how sorry he was for two-timing me. Crazy to see him so sappy over the past. Never thought the day would come.”

“How long did you two chat?”

“Two glasses worth. Honey, when a goodfella is spilling his guts a dame aughta listen.”

“That bastard was playing you, Babe. Men like that ain’t never sorry about what they done,” Valerie said. “I saw the two of you talking and I knew just by watching the prick that he didn’t mean nothing he was saying. He was born mean, and there wasn’t nothing that could change that. Don’t forget he bit off his own mother’s nipple when her milk went dry. He was bad to the bone, Babe, and all that sorry shit he was feeding you was just bullshit, plain and simple.”

“You’re still carrying your own grudge against him, Val. Won’t do you any good now. He’s dead,” Aunt Babe said.

“About time. I was thinking about burning him myself, but somebody beat me to it. Good thing, too, ‘cause I wasn’t looking forward to makin’ that decision.”

“What was the grudge?” I asked Val.

“That’s something better left with the dead,” she answered, tossing me a dismissive look.

“Don’t tread on the past, Mia,” Federico warned in a quiet voice, leaning into me. “It can lead where you don’t want to go. Especially in this family.”

He gave me a wink and a friendly smile, but I couldn’t make out if he was talking about our family or giving me some kind of warning about Valerie.

Then just when I was about to ask Benny about the evening, my mother’s voice rang through the barn. “Mia, honey,” she yelled sounding phony sweet. “You might want to come out here, like right away. Leonardo is here and he brought that nice young man from the Sheriff’s Department, Nick Zeleski.”

“Cops!” Uncle Ray spit out, and my family scattered like roaches in a spotlight, each taking their own route to the nearest exit.

My stomach clenched and I actually contemplated running out with them. Lisa grabbed my arm, firmly. Her eyes went wide, the only indication that she might be anxious. “We need to remember to breathe,” she said, taking in a deep breath then slowly letting it out. “In times of strife it’s best to remain calm.”

“Are you quoting yourself?”

“Yes. The introduction to my first book: your survival depends on a clear head, and you can’t have one if you don’t take in enough oxygen.”

We filled our lungs with a combination of cigar smoke and fear. The toxic combination caused a chain reaction and we both coughed at the same time as we quickly headed toward the opposite door from where my family had escaped from, toward my mom, Leo and Nick Zeleski—the mouth of the dragon.

“Mia, did you hear me, dear? Are you coming out soon? Because the boys are coming in if you don’t?” I could hear the edge to my mom’s voice.

“No!” I squeaked out. “We’ll be right out. We’re on our way right now.”

Lisa followed close behind me as we hurried to the door. “Wait,” she said pulling on my arm. “Mia, we forgot your mom’s gun.”

Dread raced through me. How could I have been so stupid! “I’ll run back and get it. Stall them,” I told her.

“How? I don’t even like Leo, remember?”

“Just tell him I’m bringing out a few bottles of oil for him, or tell him about your latest book. I don’t know. You’re the writer. Make something up.”

She cocked her head, shrugged and spun around towards the door.

I started to turn back, but it was too late.

“Hey, kitten,” Leo said, suddenly appearing in front us, his voice all sexy and low, reminding me of how much I missed him.

And that’s when it hit me—when I saw Leo standing next to a tall, curly haired stranger with the sapphire blue eyes. I flashed back on that afternoon, seeing Leo standing out on his veranda with another man, an older man, a man in a golden shirt, the man who had slapped Leo’s hand away. That man had been my cousin Dickey.

The stranger said, “You hiding something from us in here or what?”

Fainting is a curious thing. It comes upon you in a rush of darkness and in that instant before you lose consciousness you’re absolutely sure somebody has turned out all the lights.





“Don’t! Stop! Don’t! Stop! Don’t stop! Don’t stop!—Olive Oyl, Gym Jam