“You’re very pretty, Mrs. A.,” Frank said. “But I gotta go.”
He was turning the doorknob as she said, “If you leave, I’ll tell him you did it. I’m in for a beating, anyway, so I’ll just tell him that you fucked me until I screamed. I’ll tell him you screwed me silly.”
Frank remembered it, what, forty years later, how he was standing there with his hand on the doorknob and his chin on his chest, thinking, What’s this drunken broad saying? That if I don’t screw her, she’s going to tell her husband that I did?
But if I do screw her…
You’re dead anyway, he thought.
Frank felt the panic welling up in his chest as he looked at that hot little number Marie Anselmo standing there with her little black dress half off, holding a lipstick-smudged Manhattan glass up to her bee-stung lips, her perfume swirling around him like a sexy, deadly cloud.
What saved him was the door opening.
She turned from him and got her dress back on just as Momo came into the room.
He didn’t look so good.
They had beaten the shit out of him.
Nicky Locicero shoved him into the room and told him to sit down on the couch. Momo did it because Locicero had a. 38 in his hand. Locicero looked at Frank and said, “Get some ice for your boss.”
Frank stepped over to the ice bucket at the bar.
“Icecubes, ” Locicero said, “from thefreezer, dipshit. In the kitchen.”
Frank hustled into the kitchen, got a tray out of the freezer, and cracked a few cubes into the sink. Then he found a dish towel in a drawer, put the ice in the towel, and wrapped it up. When he got back into the living room, Al DeSanto was there. He had a real smirk on his goofy-looking face.
Marie wasn’t smiling. She just stood there like she was a piece of ice herself. Frozen, stone-cold sober now.
Frank sat next to Momo on the couch and held the ice up to his cut, swollen eye.
“He can do it himself,” Locicero said.
Frank heard him but didn’t listen. He kept holding the cloth up to Momo’s eye. A trickle of blood ran down the towel, and Frank twisted it to keep the blood from getting on the sofa.
“We have some unfinished business,” DeSanto said to Marie.
“No, we don’t,” Marie said.
“I disagree,” DeSanto said. “You don’t play with a man like that, then leave him high and dry. It isn’t nice.”
He grabbed her wrist. “Where’s the bedroom?”
She didn’t answer. He slapped her across the face. Momo started to get up, but Locicero pointed the gun at his face and Momo sat back down.
“I asked you a question,” DeSanto said to Marie, his hand cocked again.
She pointed to a door off the living room.
“That’s better,” DeSanto said. He turned to Momo. “I’m just going to go give your wife what she wants, paisan. You don’t mind, do you?”
Locicero, leering, stuck the pistol in Momo’s temple.
Momo shook his head.
Frank could see him trembling.
“Come on, honey,” De Santo said. He walked her to the bedroom door and pushed her in. He went in himself, started to shut the door, then changed his mind and left it ajar.
Frank saw him toss Marie face-first onto the bed. Saw him grab her by the neck with one hand and rip the dress down with the other. Saw her kneeling on the bed in her black lingerie as DeSanto pulled her panties down and unzipped his fly. The guy was already hard and he shoved himself into her.
Frank heard her grunt, saw her body quiver under DeSanto’s weight.
“You had it coming, Momo,” Locicero said. “You ran your mouth.”
Momo didn’t say anything, just put his head in his hands. Bubbles of snot and blood ran down from his nose. Locicero put the pistol barrel under Momo’s chin and lifted his face so he had to look.
DeSanto had left the door open so that Momo had to see him pulling Marie’s hair back and riding her hard. Frank saw it, too. Saw Marie’s face, her lipstick smudged, her mouth twisted into an expression Frank hadn’t seen before. DeSanto was pulling her hair with one hand and mauling her breasts with the other. He grunted with effort and his glasses were askew on his face as his sweat made them slide down his nose.
“This is what you wanted, isn’t it, bitch?” DeSanto asked. “Say it.”
He yanked her head up.
She murmured, “Yes.”
“What?”
“Yes!”
“Say, ‘Fuck me, Al.’”
“Fuck me, Al!” Marie cried.
“Sayplease. ‘Please, fuck me, Al.’”
“Please fuck me, Al.”
“That’s better.”
Frank saw him push her face into the mattress and lift her ass up so he could drive into her harder. He was really piling into her, and Frank heard Marie start making noises. He couldn’t tell if it was pleasure or pain or both, but Marie started moaning and then yelling, and Frank saw her small fingers grip the bedspread as she screamed.
“Jesus, Momo,” Locicero said, “your wife is a hot little number.”
DeSanto finished and pulled out. He wiped himself off on her dress, zipped his fly back up, and got off the bed. He looked down at Marie, still lying facedown on the bed, her chest heaving. “Anytime you want more of that, baby,” he said, “you have my number.”
He walked back into the living room and asked, “Did you hear the bitch come?”
Locicero said, “Hell yes.”
“Didyou hear her, Momo?”
Locicero nudged Momo with the gun.
“I heard,” Momo said. Then he asked, “Why don’t you just shoot me?”
Frank felt like he was going to throw up.
DeSanto looked down at Momo. “I don’t shoot you, Momo, because I want you to keep earning. What Idon’t want is any more of this San Diego bullshit. What’s mine is mine and what’syours is mine. Capisce? ”
“Capisce.”
“Good.”
Frank was just staring at him. DeSanto noticed and asked, “What, kid, you got a problem?”
Frank shook his head.
“I didn’t think so.” DeSanto looked back toward the bedroom. “You want sloppy seconds, Momo, I don’t mind.”
He and Locicero laughed and then walked out.
Frank sat there in shock.
Momo got up, opened a dresser drawer, pulled out a wicked-looking little. 25 revolver, and started for the door.
Frank heard himself say, “They’ll kill you, Momo!”
“I don’t give a damn.”
Then Marie was standing in the hallway, leaning against the doorjamb, her dress still pulled down, her makeup smeared over her face like a crazy clown, her hair a tangled mess. “You’re not a man,” she said, “letting him do that to me.”
“You liked it, you cunt.”
“How could you-”
“He made you come.”
He lifted the pistol.
“Momo, no!” Frank yelled.
Momo said, “Shecame for him.”
He shot her.
“Christ!” Frank screamed as Marie’s body twirled and then corkscrewed to the floor. He wanted to lunge and take the gun away, but he was too scared, and then Momo took a step away from him, put the gun to his own head, and said, “I loved her, Frankie.”
Frank looked at those sad hound eyes for a second; then Momo pulled the trigger.
His blood spattered all over Kennedy’s smiling face.
Funny thing, Frank thinks now, that’s what I remember more than anything-that blood on John Kennedy. Later, when Kennedy was killed, it didn’t seem like such a surprise to him. It was like he’d seen it already.
Marie Anselmo survived-it turned out that Momo had hit her in the hip. She rolled around on the floor screaming while Frank frantically called the police. The ambulance took Marie away and the detectives took Frank. He told them most of what he’d seen-that is, that Momo had shot his wife and then himself. He left out any mention of Al DeSanto or Nicky Locicero, and was relieved to hear later that Marie had also kept her mouth shut about the rape. And if the San Diego cops were busted up over Momo’s suicide, they kept it hidden pretty well, unless open laughter was what they used to suppress their grief.