“What secret?” I said, remembering what Uncle Buddy had told me about potenza ultima-ultimate power.
Elzy shrugged her birdlike shoulders. “He never found out. Your grandpa seized the notebook, Daddy went to prison and then to heaven, and the notebook has been in Rispoli hands ever since. But no matter, my little brother and I decided that we would get the notebook ourselves and tear it apart until we found the answer to that untold secret. So, feigning ignorance and loyalty, I went to work in your parents’ home and my brother went to work at the bakery. While I monitored your family, he would succeed where Daddy had failed by infiltrating Club Molasses and stealing the notebook.”
“I remember you talking about him,” I said, trying to recall his name.
“He was such a handsome youth, a mere twenty-year-old sprig of a man when he began rolling dough in that stinking kitchen,” she said. “He despised your grandfather of course, and your father, but he saved his purest hatred for your uncle.” She paused and her face changed from frosty self-assurance to twitching rage as she spit, “Buddy Rispoli. . Buddy-goddamn-Rispoli! He just desperately needed to boss someone around, and the fat schlub rode my brother day and night. More flour, less salt, roll the dough lengthwise not vertically, until my brother wanted to twist his neck.”
“Twist his neck,” I repeated, feeling my bruises.
Elzy slammed the drink, a fresh one replaced it immediately, and she told me how her brother was working alone in the kitchen one morning. He’d just removed trays of cakes from the oven and was sampling one when Uncle Buddy showed up. My uncle berated Elzy’s brother for using his bare hands, delivering a blistering speech on kitchen hygiene, and her brother flipped off Uncle Buddy and told him to go to hell. That’s when Uncle Buddy made the mistake of shoving him. Elzy’s brother beat him to his knees but my uncle wouldn’t stay down, and Elzy’s face changed to something that was not self-assurance or rage, but horror.
“Buddy was on the ground, struggling to get up, and my brother charged him,” she said slowly, her words tinged with revulsion. “At the last minute, Buddy grabbed his ankle. My brother tripped, lost his balance, and fell face-first onto a white-hot, overturned cake pan stamped with the Rispoli R. .”
Oh my God, I thought, feeling my spine freeze, that means Ski Mask Guy is. .
“Poor Kevin,” Elzy said mournfully. “Half of his beautiful face, his neck, and his vocal cords. It drove him to the brink of insanity and he had to go. . away. Years later, when he escaped from the. . hospital. . I broke out too, from my existence, and we reunited,” she said, blowing her nose into a cocktail napkin. She put on a smile that would’ve startled a snake and said, “And here we are.”
“Here we are,” I said, seizing control of the rapidly rising ghiaccio furioso just as I’d done with Uncle Buddy, trying with all of my strength to focus it across the table. Elzy blinked rapidly behind the cat’s-eye glasses as I said, “But where’s my family? What have you done with them?”
To my great surprise, she ceased blinking and chuckled. “Who knows? Maybe dead in the ground somewhere. Worm food first and then gone forever.”
As she spoke, I felt a little electrical storm break across my head and shoulders.
The cold fury popped and faded, and I was flooded with exhaustion.
I sat back heavily, struggling even to hold up my head.
“I’ll be damned. So you’re the one who got the gift,” Elzy said, staring at me with curiosity. “Even though you and your brother both have blue eyes, I never would’ve guessed it would be you. Amazing how sexist we’re all trained to be. Even I naturally assumed that a man would get the power.” She sighed and said, “By the way, it doesn’t affect me.”
I shook my head, confused, and she sat forward smiling.
“You have a weakness, you know that?” She sipped, swished, and swallowed, and explained that no, she didn’t possess ghiaccio furioso, nor did anyone in her family. But she reminded me that her father was from Buondiavolo and had shared an ancient secret with her and Poor Kevin that only people from the village knew-how to avoid the immobilizing grip of cold fury. “Don’t ask,” she said. “What kind of nemesis would I be if I told you? But I will tell you that I have no idea where your family is. Yes, Poor Kevin tried to get his hands on them. .”
“I saw it,” I said, finding my voice. “Frank Sinatra’s head.”
“Ah yes, my darling Frank. I gave him to your parents on the pretext that poor me, the trusted nanny who cared so deeply for their precious children, would soon be dead, and that a nanny cam was an absolute necessity in my absence. I even showed them how to use it and placed it in that central location myself. Of course, my real hope was that they’d discuss the notebook and it would be caught on tape. My intention was to sneak into your house and steal it, but someone was always home-you Rispolis just never went out, did you?” She shrugged and said, “After a couple of years, I gave up on ever getting my hands on it. Who knew your mom and dad would continue to use it? Anyway, Poor Kevin would’ve succeeded if he hadn’t been interrupted. He was this close when-don’t laugh-when a whole caravan of black ice cream trucks surrounded your house, tinkling their merry tune. My nimble brother hid in the basement, and your people have been gone ever since.”
“Ice cream trucks?” I said. “That’s ridiculous. You’re lying.”
“Oh yeah? If I had your family, do you think I would’ve gone to all the trouble with my cops and Poor Kevin trying to hunt you down? I would’ve just sent you body parts a piece at a time until you gave me the notebook.” She paused, smiling serenely, and said, “Whoever has your family or wherever they’ve gone, none of that matters now. What matters is that you have the notebook, and you’re here.”
“Who says I have the notebook?” I said.
She looked at me over the top of her cocktail and said, “Well. . do you?”
I said nothing, trying to assume a poker face.
Elzy grinned and said, “Yeah, you have it, just as I suspected. You know something, you might not believe this, but I always liked you. You were a sweet kid and a straight arrow. . just as bad a liar then as you are now. But you were also a tough little kid, and now you’re a tough young woman, and I say let’s let bygones be bygones. I say let’s do this thing together.”
“What thing?” I said calmly, stifling an urge to punch her teeth down her throat.
“Take over Chicago. It’s our time. Have you read the notebook?”
She knew I had it; it was too late to act as if I didn’t. “Parts of it.”
“I’m curious,” she said. “How much of it explains women’s roles in the Outfit? How much of it talks about your great-grandmother, grandmother, or mother? Where does it discuss the wives, sisters, and daughters of all of those Outfit bosses and thugs?”
“Nowhere,” I said.
“Exactly. Organized crime is a boys’ club, with no position of power or responsibility for a female.” She narrowed her eyes and said, “We’re all God’s children, except a woman connected to the Outfit. Then she’s less than a second-class citizen. She can be a faithful wife who won’t testify, or a goomah on the side, or an Italian mama who cooks meatballs for her sonny boy as he shines his pistol, but nothing else. That’s precisely why I faked my own death. With Poor Kevin back at my side, I was done being little miss Elzy-Do-This-Do-That. With my organizational skills, nerves of steel, and almost complete lack of moral conscience, it was time to be the Elzy I was born to be. . the head of the Outfit.” She sipped her drink and said, “Unfortunately, I was born a female. If I’d openly infringed on Outfit business, the boys’ club would’ve crushed me. My head would be fish food in Lake Michigan and the rest of me scattered in the Sanitary Canal. If I was going to take over, I needed to disappear. . to remove the thought of Elzy Zanzara from anyone even remotely connected to the Outfit, so that I could take it by complete and utter surprise. My work would have to be done covertly and unseen, working in the shadows until I made my move. And for that, I needed an edge.”