The Ancient Rain by Domenic Stansberry Page B

This is what you mean, once upon a time?”
    â€œOnce upon a time, this was not permitted. You have to lay down the law.”
    â€œDon’t fool yourself, there’s plenty of beating going on now. Everywhere, people are getting beaten.”
    During this, old lady Besozi was sitting there with her tea, her legs crossed, and that pinched face—but sitting upright, upright as could be, with that same vague smile on her face. Looking right at him.
    He smiled back, but she didn’t respond, and when he swiveled away, her eyes stayed fixed on the same spot.
    The old woman was blind.
    Meanwhile, Pesci asserted himself. He did not mean to let it go. “Blah … you let the world get away with murder, you let them stick a flower up your ass, it’s what you get.”
    â€œWhat’s wrong with sticking a flower up your ass?”
    â€œWhat’s wrong is that stuff is supposed to come out of your ass, not in. You reverse the process, you do things ass backwards, it affects the brains. You get some funny ideas.”
    Marinetti shrugged.
    â€œAirplanes start falling out of the sky.”
    â€œI don’t get the connection.”
    â€œPoison in your mail.”
    Above, the television cut to a picture of Owens in his orange jumpsuit, hands cuffed in front of him, appearing for the arraignment. It had happened several weeks ago now, and the hearing for bail was coming up later this week. Then the image of Owens was gone, off to something else—fighter jets, a girl in fatigues. A car exploding in a market.
    Pesci started to cough. Julia Besozi still grinned her black-eyed grin, and there came the sound of running water again, dishes clattering, and in the back, Stella thumping on her cutting board.
    Sorrentino lowered his head.
    Why am I here?
    The old men were right. Everything had gone wrong, but he was going to straighten it out—his own little part. He had a mission.
    He glanced down the counter and thought of his son’s picture and felt the darkness seize him.
    No …
    The bail hearing for Owens was coming up, and soon the trial itself. As far as the feds were concerned, the case was their baby now. But Sorrentino did not trust them. Arrogant bastards. Especially Blackwell—a spider in his web. You could never tell who the son of a bitch would bite next.
    Regardless, he hadn’t come to Stella’s to hang around at the counter. To fall into this Italian gloom. He had come for a reason.
    *   *   *
    Sorrentino got up and walked into the kitchen. Stella stood there pulverizing chicken with a mallet. There was the smell of garlic and of dough, and of tomatoes in the corner, overripe, and of wine that had been spilled a long time ago, and of kitchen smocks dampened by steam and sweat. Of dishwashing soap. All of the smells of this place were stronger here, and stronger the closer you stood to Stella.
    She was a tough woman, wide ass, tits like a Cadillac, who backed off from no one. Nonetheless she flinched, maybe, just a little, as Sorrentino moved up closer.
    â€œWhat do you want, Guy?”
    She didn’t back off though. He stood up close, and the smell of her was in his nostrils, Stella Lamantia, seventy years old, with hair like a wire brush, unflinching in her flowered dress, with her big breasts and her hands on her hips and sauce on her apron. Ten years ago, one night, after her husband was dead and his own son was in the ground and his wife had thrown him out—that night—he and Stella had had their moment together. He had pulled up her skirt and leaned her against the wall and she’d grabbed his ass with her strong hands.
    Their moment had not lasted long.
    â€œThis,” he said.
    He showed her a picture of someone they both had known some three decades back, a Japanese woman by the name of Cynthia Nakamura—a slight woman with long black hair, maybe thirty-five years old in the picture. She stood with a cigarette