The man's emaciated body jerked as its spine squirmed and twisted like an electric arc sizzling between contact posts.
Using both hands, Chiun plunged his nails deeper into the sickly greenish flesh.
And into the patient's ear, he whispered a delicate warning.
"Fight for your life, lazy one. Or I will take it from you."
Harold Smith turned away, his teeth set, his eyes closed. In his mind's eye he saw ten eruptions of blood. One for each of the Master of Sinanju's remorseless fingernails.
The next phase of Smith's plan depended upon bringing his patient back to health.
Chapter 33
"In onore della famiglia, la famiglia a abbraccio," intoned Don Carmine Imbruglia in a corner office at LNG headquarters, lit by sullen candlelight.
"I don't know what the fug it means," he said ruefully, "but they always talk that kinda crap at one of these things."
"What things?" asked Tony Tollini, looking at the dagger and pistol that lay crossed on the table before him. For some reason, the windows were obscured with black crepe.
"Baptisms," said Don Carmine.
"Oh. Is someone being baptized?"
"Good question. You are."
Tony Tollini's eyes bugged out. "Me?"
"Don't be modest. You done good for LCN. We're gonna make you one of us."
Tony started to rise, saying, "I don't-"
Bruno the Chefs meaty hand pushed Tony Tollini back into his seat.
"Show some respect," he growled.
"What . . . what do I do?" Tony asked, weak-voiced.
"Almost nothin'," Don Carmine said casually. "Here, gimme your hand."
Tony Tollini allowed Don Carmine to take up his shaking hand. Don Carmine lifted the silver dagger off the table with the other.
"Okay," said Don Carmine. "Repeat after me, 'I want to enter into this organization to protect my family and to protect all my friends.' "
" 'I want to enter into this organization to protect my family and to protect all my friends,' " Tony repeated in a dull voice.
" 'I swear not to divulge this secret and to obey, with love and omerta.' "
" 'I swear not to divulge this secret and to obey, with love and omerta,' " Tony added, wondering what an omerta was. It sounded like a weapon. Maybe a Sicilian dagger, like the one Don Carmine was waving before his eyes.
A quick pass of the glittering blade, and the tip of Tony's index finger ran red with blood.
"Okay, I cut your trigger finger," said Don Carmine. "Now I cut me." Don Carmine sliced the tip of his trigger finger and joined it to Tony's. Only then did it begin to sting.
"Somebody gimme me a saint," called Don Carmine.
"Here," said Bruno the Chef, pulling a laminated card from his suit pocket.
Don Carmine looked at the face. "I don't know this one," he muttered.
"Saint Pantaleone. He's good for toothaches."
"Toothaches! What are we, dentists now?"
"I got a busted biscuspid, boss."
Don Carmine shrugged like a small bear with an itchy back. "What the fug. A saint is a saint, right? You, Tony, repeat after me," he said, touching a corner of the laminated card to the sickly yellow candle flame.
" 'As burns this saint . ' "
" 'As burns this saint,' " said Tony, watching Saint Pantaleone begin to darken.
" 'So burns my soul. I enter alive into this organization and I leave it dead.' "
"Do I have to say that last part?" asked Tony, watching the card blacken and shrivel, giving off a pungent stink.
"Not unless you wanna enter the organization dead," said Don Carmine blandly. "In which case that's how you will leave it. The river runs only one way. Get me?"
Gulping, Tony Tollini finished the oath of allegiance.
Beaming, Don Carmine dropped the card into a green glass ashtray, where it curled up like a grasshopper in its death throes.
"Congrats!" he said. "You are now one of us! With all the rights and privileges of bein' a made guy."
"Thank you," said Tony Tollini miserably. When he had entered the corridors of IDC a decade ago, he had never imagined it would come to this.
Don Carmine spanked the table hard. "Bruno, get us some wine. Red. While I think up a new name for Tony, here."
"I have a name," protested Tony, looking at his Tissot watch.
"What, you in a rush? This is a sentimental moment. Me, when I think back on my baptism, I get all choked up. You, you look at your fuggin' no-numbers watch. That's it!"
"What is?"
"No Numbers! That's what we're gonna call you. No Numbers Tollini."
"Hey, I like that, boss," said Bruno the Chef, setting down several glasses and beginning to pour blood-colored wine from an oblong green bottle.
"No Numbers?" said Tony (No Numbers) Tollini.
"You'll get used to it. Now, drink up."
They drank a toast. Tony thought the wine tasted a little salty until he realized he was bleeding into the glass. He switched hands and started sucking on his trigger finger, which really tasted salty.
It was then that Don Carmine grew serious.
"No Numbers, on account of your quick rise in our organization, we're gonna give you a very important job to do."
"Yes?"
"One that's gonna help you make your bones."
"Please don't break my bones!" No Numbers Tollini said tearfully.
"I said make. That means you gotta kill somebody."
"Oh, God. Who?"
Don Carmine Imbruglia leaned into No Numbers Tollini's melted-by-fear features and exhaled sweet wine fumes.
"Don Fiavorante Pubescio, the rat," he whispered.
"My uncle?"
"He's screwin' us. He's gotta go."
"I can't kill-"
"What 'can't'? You took the oath, same as me. Same as Bruno there. If a made guy don't do like he's told, other made guys have to discipline him. It ain't pretty, either. It usually means expulsion from the organization."
"Does that mean . . . ?" Tony gulped.
Running a finger across his throat, Don Carmine nodded sagely. "This ain't IDC, kid. Remember that oath."
Tony swallowed. He tasted the blood on his trigger finger. His blood. He decided too much of it had been spilled already.
"Whatever you want, Don Carmine," Tony (No Numbers) Tollini said hollowly.
Chapter 34
Antony (No Numbers) Tollini parked his red Miata on Canal Street in lower Manhattan, where the scent of tomato sauce from Little Italy and soy-sauce aroma wafting up from Chinatown commingled into a breathable cholestoral-MSG mix.
He got out, buttoning the lower button of his Brooks Brothers suit to conceal the silenced .22 Beretta that Don Carmine had presented to him with words of fatherly advice.
"It's very simple, kid," Don Carmine had said. "You walk up to the hit, tell a few jokes, make him feel good, and whack him out while he's laughin' with you. He'll never know what hit him."
All during the ride down from Boston, Tony Tollini rehearsed how it would be. He would meet his Uncle Fiavorante in the walnut alcove where he held court. He would surreptitiously pull the Beretta from his belt and fire from under the table. He had seen it done that way in dozens of movies. Uncle Fiavorante would never know what hit him. The threat of the deadly weapon would be enough to get him out of the building alive.
Tony Tollini turned onto Mott Street, nervously wiping his sweaty palms on his gray trouser legs. He had never killed a man before. At IDC he had stabbed a few in the back, corporately speaking. But that was different. It was business. There wasn't any blood.
Tony Tollini decided that he would approach the task before him in true IDC fashion, forthright and unflinching. It would be no different than an employee termination. Besides, how much blood could there be? The bullets were .22's.
Resolutely Tony knocked on the blank panel that served as the door to the Neighborhood Improvement Association. It opened quickly and the blue-jawed tower of bone and muscle asked, "Yeah?"