“Uncle Buddy,” I said, feeling the blue flame flicker and ignite, filling me from the pit of my stomach to the tip of my brain with a cold fury that strongly advised a bullet to his booze-blasted skull. The ghiaccio furioso was so powerful and alive that it threatened to take me over completely, sending sharp little electrical volts to urge on my trigger finger. Maybe it was because I’d once loved Uncle Buddy and now hated him, or because the terror he’d caused me now seemed so small and cowardly, but this time I held on to the cold fury and focused it behind my eyes, controlling it rather than being controlled by it. I said it again, “Uncle Buddy,” and when he looked up at me, what he saw looking back registered on his puffy face in an awful way.
“No, please,” he said, shaking his head. “Not you too.”
“Where are they?” I said, moving toward him. He shrunk back into the chair, cowering, until I was standing over him. “Look at me,” I said. “Look at me right now and tell the truth. You don’t have a choice.”
“I don’t know,” he mumbled at the table. “That dog, what’s-his-name. .”
“Harry?”
“He was here, hanging around, like he was waiting for Lou.”
Or me, I thought, and I’d suddenly had enough of this mumblefest. I grabbed a handful of greasy hair and yanked it back until his unwilling eyes, wide and wet, locked on mine. “Where are they?” I said, so calmly that it sounded dead to my own ears.
He stared at me, and I saw what he feared most.
It was himself, not old and alone, but worse-young and alone.
It was Uncle Buddy, not hated, but forgotten.
He paused, jaw trembling, and said, “I swear I don’t know where they are! I swear to God!”
“What about the government? Did my dad make some kind of deal?” I said, remembering Uncle Buddy’s confrontation with him, how he’d implied that he had spied on my father’s voice- and e-mail.
Uncle Buddy was crumbling under my gaze, looking paler and more translucent by the second. His mouth was wet and sloppy when he said, “I picked up the other line at the bakery. There was a woman on the phone, real official sounding, saying something to your dad about ‘coming in safely’ and ‘guaranteed anonymity.’ And the letter. . the letter was just a list of towns and cities. .”
“Where we could relocate,” I said to myself.
“But the government?” Uncle Buddy stammered. “The government doesn’t take in witnesses by tearing apart a house like I found this place.” He was shaking now, sucking air like a beached whale, and said, “Please. . I don’t know anything.”
“You know about the notebook,” I said, feeling frost on my tongue.
“My pop and Anthony, they used to have this weird language, like a pig Latin that wasn’t English and only sort of Italian,” he said, swallowing thickly. “They’d use it when they didn’t want me to know what they were talking about. Except one time, right before my pop died, I was hiding in the broom closet. And I overheard him and Anthony talking about it in plain old Italian, explaining that it contains potenza ultima. . ultimate power.”
“What does that mean? Ultimate power?”
“I don’t know!” he cried. “Anthony was telling my pop he wanted nothing to do with it! But whatever it was, I wanted it! Oh God, I wanted it so badly!”
“So badly that you turned on us, even though we loved you,” I said. “You took over our home. You tried to take over our lives.”
Uncle Buddy stared with his mouth open and then said softly, “I wanted what Anthony has. Not just a family and a home, but power. . what you have. . the ghiaccio furioso. I thought the notebook would. . that maybe it could. .” And he paused, licking at his dry lips. I let him go and he slumped back, whispering, “I still want it.”
“What about Detective Smelt?” I said. “What about the freak in the ski mask?”
“I don’t know about any cop or freak. I’m the only freak I know.” Something clicked in his muddled mind, and he said, “Sara Jane. . are you in danger?”
It was the first time I laughed in weeks.
The sound of it rolling from my mouth was strange to me.
There was no joy in it, only tired irony.
I wiped at my eyes and looked around the kitchen at filthy dishes, scummy counters, and molding food. The line of blood where Harry dragged himself into the basement was still there, dried brown on the tile floor. My uncle, who had once been my buddy but was now my personal Judas, took a swig of vodka and said, “Whoever they are, it must have been my pop’s death that brought them out of the woodwork.”
It was the first relevant insight he had. “Go on,” I said.
“That means they must have Outfit connections. My pop was ‘Enzo the Baker,’ ‘Boss,’ and ‘Biscotto’ to the mob, but to the rest of the world he was just a little Italian pastry maker down the block.”
Following his line of thought, I said, “Only someone who knew Grandpa was counselor-at-large would have known my dad was next in line, and that he would inherit the notebook.”
“Next in line, yeah. Notebook, I’m not so sure,” he said. “I didn’t even know it existed until I overheard Pop talking about it. I finally confronted your dad. .”
“At Grandpa’s funeral,” I said, remembering my dad dropping Uncle Buddy with a lightning left hook.
He rubbed his jaw absently. “Your dad admitted it existed. He told me Nunzio started it, Pop continued it, Anthony added to it, and that it was a Rispoli family secret, full of secrets. He was clear that no one else in the Outfit knows about it.”
“Unless someone does,” I said. “Who would it be, if someone did?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Like I said before, I don’t know anything.”
“Uncle Buddy, look at me,” I said, and when he did, he winced in pain but was unable to turn away. “Who would it be?”
“I. . I don’t know,” he said. “Please believe me!”
Actually, I did. As he gaped up at me, I saw Uncle Buddy for what he was-a two-bit schemer who, through bitter jealousy, had helped tear my family apart. I was gripped by a pity that was equal to my anger, and I pushed him away, taking a final look around. “I’m leaving now. Either clean this place up or burn it down.”
“No, wait!” he said, lunging for me, grabbing at my arm. “I can help you, Sara Jane! Give me the notebook! If that’s what they’re after, I’ll be the target! Please!”
“Let go, Uncle Buddy,” I said, trying to pull away.
“Give it to me, goddamn it!” he shouted, tightening his grip and rising from the chair. “I want it! I need it! It’s my goddamn turn! It’s my-” And before he could tell me what else was his, I spun and cracked the gun against the side of his skull.
Uncle Buddy sat heavily in the chair and went face-first into his Froot Loops.
I lifted his head out of the bowl so he wouldn’t drown in sticky milk.
I hate him and hope I never see him again, but after all, he is my uncle.
21
So now I knew that Detective Smelt and Ski Mask Guy were somehow Outfit connected. But I also knew (with Uncle Buddy as a prime example) that a connection doesn’t make a person part of the Outfit.
As counselor-at-large, I was learning that, besides being a violent criminal organization, the Outfit was also a gossip factory that put Gina Pettagola to shame. The most hardened thugs whispered cattily about one another and to one another like a bunch of gun-toting grandmothers. If the people that mattered within the Outfit knew what Detective Smelt and Ski Mask Guy knew-that my family was gone-there’s no way the word wouldn’t have gotten around and that I, a Rispoli, would have been allowed to serve as counselor-at-large, much less exist with legs unbroken, or worse. By now, I was chillingly aware of what happened to suspected rats and their suspected rat children. Whatever knowledge or inside information that Smelt and Ski Mask Guy had gained, whatever their ultimate goal, they were not operating inside the organization. What I didn’t know was how that connection had been made; how did they learn about the existence of the notebook?