Free Island of Divine Music by John Addiego

Rosselli, who’d torpedoed for Capone in Chicago and snuffed more victims in LA for Jack Dragna, and who was rubbing elbows those days with Sinatra, the Kennedy brothers, and Ronald Reagan, waved him over. Aren’t you a friend of Joe Bonanno’s in Frisco? Johnny asked.
    Narciso remembered Joe from the old neighborhood all right. Sure. Played boccie with his pop, Giuseppe. The muscle at the table made room, a half-dozen guys without necks, and Rosselli had Narciso’s ear for an hour while the slow-witted dandy nodded and laughed in all the right places. Drinks, pig’s knuckles, pasta, and calamari, all on the house, were brought to Narciso as he listened to Johnny talk about Hollywood and politics. These fucking politicians, Rosselli said, his boozy breath spraying Narciso’s nose, are the biggest whores of all. Worse than any girls we pimped in Long Beach.
    Johnny, I don’t know nothin’ about politics. I don’t even want to know nothin’.
    Hey! Rosselli slapped his back. You’re smart. The old murderer staggered to his feet. You’re smart. He waved a finger, and he and his entourage made their way to some privileged room beyond the lounge.
    Some time later a guy with a big Adam’s apple was beside Narciso in the gents’. He wore a Hawaiian shirt and the kind of checked slacks popular that year on golf courses, iridescent green and orange. Excuse me. I wonder could you give me some advice, the guy said. Narciso nodded and shook himself at the urinal. You see, I fried my engine coming over the mountains, and I can’t get a cab up here in the boondocks, and all’s I need is to go a few miles to this Travelodge.
    You need a ride? Narciso asked.
    Oh, man, that would be fantastic! I got a woman waitin’ for me in this motel, if you know what I mean. He chuckled, and Ciso joined in. Matter of fact I got two women there, couple of showgirls. Can’t keep the girls waiting, can we? Name’s Charlie Fusetti. I sell cars in Omaha. He offered his hand.
    Narciso Verbicaro, Charlie.
    Charlie, whose real name was Mark Hendley, and whose former occupation was special agent for the CIA, on temporary suspension, directed Narciso to follow the lakeshore into Nevada. Hendley had been suspended for using excessive force, and he had a reputation for the same dating back to his years as a soldier of fortune in Latin America, where he and a partner had committed murder and various acts of torture on banana farmers. He was hoping to take the driver to a motel room which he and the same partnerhad filled with divers instruments of persuasion in order to find out what was in the cigar box Johnny Rosselli had given Narciso, figuring this would put him back in good order with the department, but somewhere in the middle of Hendley’s phony patter about car sales Narciso had made a turn from the lakeshore highway. An hour later they were winding through the mountains, among the flocked pines, and Hendley was giggling nervously.
    You know your way around these woods, Ciso?
    Jesus, these trees just get prettier the higher we go, don’t they, Charlie? His tires hit a patch of snow and fishtailed.
    Think we should maybe turn around? He reached under his garish shirt to touch his .38 revolver.
    Let’s try this. Ciso turned right where the road forked, and the Caddy started winding down the eastern slope. The pines gave way, slowly, to sagebrush.
    Are we lost, Ciso? He laughed. I’m lost, I’ll tell you that!
    Ciso said nothing for a minute, and Hendley’s mind raced with images of desert burial, of his head and hands severed and fed to coyotes while the rest of him was spaded under a creosote bush. I think we’re okay, Ciso said. There’s always some little jerkwater town in places like this.
    Sure enough, a bullet-blasted sign with the name
Genoa
appeared in the headlights, just as Ciso’s Caddy took its last gulps of gas. The nationality of the town’s name didn’t help Mark Hendley’s stomach. He sat on the edge of the seat as