EIGHTEEN
WHEN I WALKED in, Grandma was in the kitchen, chopping vegetables for soup.
“Help yourself to coffee,” she said. “Would you like me to make you some eggs? Your mother is at mass.”
“I already ate breakfast,” I said, “but coffee would be great.”
“I guess you’re happy now that Jimmy Poletti’s behind bars,” Grandma said.
“Yep. Briggs is out of my life, and I can afford to get a car of my own. Thanks for helping with the takedown.”
“I got a good start on my bucket list,” Grandma said. “Not that I’m planning on getting planted anytime soon, but I figure why not get all that stuff out of the way, right?”
“There’ve been some rumors that you’re stalking Joe’s Grandma Bella.”
“You bet I’m stalking her. I’m freaking her out. She tried to put the whammy on me a couple times, but I just whammied her back.”
“You know how to do that?”
“I Googled it. I’m pretty sure I got it right.”
Joe’s Grandma Bella is the scourge of the Burg. She looks like an extra from a Godfather movie. Steel gray hair pulled back into a bun. No makeup. Ferocious black eyebrows. Eyes like a fish hawk. Five long black chin hairs. She’s short and stooped and wears black shirtwaist dresses and flat black shoes. The longer she’s lived in this country, the stronger her Sicilian accent has become. And she is feared for her ability to give people the eye. The eye is some weird Sicilian curse that makes your hair fall out, your face break out in warts, your teeth rot in your mouth, and your private parts shrivel. Intelligent people cross the street rather than pass too close to Bella. Grandma prefers to pass as close as possible and double-dare Bella to look at her cross-eyed. And Bella is happy to comply. The result is sometimes an ugly display of old lady bitch slapping. And God forbid they should simultaneously get to the cookie table at the funeral home with just one cookie remaining.
“I know getting the best of Bella is on your bucket list.”
“You bet it is. I’m going to get her good. She’s messed with me one time too many. Remember when she called me an old slut?” Grandma whacked a carrot in half. “Well, I’m not all that old. And she bumped me on purpose with her shopping cart at the grocery store. She said I wasn’t moving fast enough. And then she tried to push in front of me in the checkout line.”
My mom came into the kitchen at the end of Grandma’s tirade.
“She’s a silly old lady,” my mother said. “You could be a good Christian and turn the other cheek.”
“I’m a plenty good Christian,” Grandma said, “but I got it on good authority that God wants me to get Bella for Him.”
My mother made the sign of the cross and wistfully looked over at the cabinet where she keeps her booze. Being a good housewife and Christian woman, she knew it was too early in the day for medicinal help from Jack Daniel’s.
“I have to get to work,” I said to Grandma. “Don’t do anything that’ll get you arrested.”
“Don’t worry,” Grandma said. “I’m going to be sneaky.”
“Wow,” Lula said when I got to the office. “Is that Ranger’s car you’re driving?”
“Yeah, it’s a loaner.”
“You must have done something real good to get that car as a loaner.”
“Sadly, no.”
“I have a new skip,” Connie said. “It just came in. Gloria Grimley. She’s in Hamilton Township.”
“What did she do?” I asked.
“She held up the bakery on Nottingham Way. Armed robbery.”
“How much did she take?”
“No money, but she cleaned out the cannoli display.”
“And she got arrested for that?” Lula said. “That’s just terrible. Obviously the woman needed a cannoli. I don’t know what this world’s coming to when you get arrested for needing a cannoli.”
I took the file, paged through it, and stopped at her picture.
Lula looked over my shoulder. “What’s that on her face in her mugshot?”
“I think it’s chocolate,” I said.