Find Her a Grave by Collin Wilcox

say—”
    “He looks fine. As good as ever. Better, maybe.”
    “How much longer has he got inside? Nine, ten years?”
    “Something like that, yeah.”
    “He’s—what—sixty-five, something like that?”
    “Yeah.”
    Fabrese looked at the other man, studied the dark, closed face, those black eyes that seemed never to blink. Appearance, he knew, was important. You looked like a mafioso, people paid attention. Never mind Venezzio, who looked like he could be a tailor. Never mind Cella, who looked like he should be teaching school—or hearing a confession. And Bacardo, who looked like a farmer—and thought like one, too. But the old-timers—Luciano and Costello and Anastasia—they looked the part. And, now, Maranzano: another Sicilian who looked the part. And, yes, acted the part. Think big, he’d once read. Think success. Meaning that the way you thought about yourself, your self-image, that’s the way people saw you.
    So here they were: him doing the driving, Maranzano trying out his new job. Maranzano, the family’s newest capo.
    They’d grown up in the same neighborhood, hung around the same places. Pitched pennies together, rooted for the Yankees, chased the girls. Always, from the first, they’d wanted to be what they were right now: connected, part of the organization, their thing. La Cosa Nostra, the papers had called it.
    Except that he’d been ordered to wait in the car, a flunky, while Maranzano, in his new suit and gleaming white shirt and fifty-dollar tie, had just seen Don Carlo.
    Had it been one on one, the don and Maranzano? Had it been—what—a ceremony, congratulations from the big man, something every new capo got?
    Or had it been a job?
    “Bacardo wants to step down,” Don Carlo could have said. “He wants to retire, take it easy, maybe go to Florida, where it’s warm.” And then the question, asked in Venezzio’s thin, reedy voice: “So I was thinking about you, to take Bacardo’s place. I’m thinking new blood, the newest capo, the new number one. What d’you say?”
    Fabrese took his foot from the accelerator, let the car slow for the four-way stop ahead. At the intersection he saw a gas station, a fruit stand, and a boarded-up restaurant. In the desolate, low-lying countryside that surrounded the prison, there were no other structures in sight, no other signs of life.
    As the car came to a stop, Maranzano pointed to the gas station. “Pull in there, see if they’ve got a pay phone.”
    Resentful of the other man’s clipped tone of command, Fabrese answered in kind, short and not so sweet: “Right.”
    “Where’re the quarters?” Maranzano asked, still talking like a capo, not like a friend from the old days.
    “In the glove compartment.” Fabrese brought the car to a stop on the concrete apron of the gas station, close beside a weather-beaten phone booth.
    “Sit tight.” Maranzano put a handful of quarters in his jacket pocket, swung the passenger door open, walked to the phone booth, called Bacardo, who was waiting for the call.
    “Hello, Tony.” To be sure Bacardo recognized his voice, Maranzano spoke very distinctly.
    “How’re you doing?” Yes, Bacardo knew who was calling—and why.
    “I’m fine. We’re all set here.”
    “You know what to do, then.”
    “No problem.”
    “When d’you want to come by?”
    “How about tomorrow morning? Eight o’clock?”
    “So early?”
    “I thought I’d pick it up, then go right to the airport. But if you want to make it later—” He let it go unfinished.
    “No. Eight’s fine. I’ll give you some coffee. And a blintz, too. I’ve got a great bakery for blintzes.”
    Maranzano decided to chuckle, one capo to another, free and easy, trying it out: “Blintzes. That’s Jewish, Tony.”
    “Okay. Snails. Whatever.”
    “I—ah—” Maranzano hesitated. “I was wondering how big it is? How heavy?”
    “It’s about five inches by twelve inches, a tube. The weight—I’m no good at guessing weight. But