Find Her a Grave Read Free

stumbled. And fell. Tony G. could have gotten away clean, but instead he’d turned, come back, shouted something in Spanish to the Puerto Rican with the gun. The Puerto Rican had started, staring at Tony G. Then, amazingly, the Puerto Rican had begun laughing, a wild, loud laugh. Then, with the gun, the Puerto Rican had—
    “—something else,” Venezzio was saying. Still he spoke quietly, evenly—all business. Expectantly, Bacardo looked at the other man. Awaiting orders.
    Once more, Venezzio wrote on the pad.
    Janice Frazer.
    Instantly, Bacardo sensed the significance of the two words, written on the same page beneath Tony G. It was the turning point, Venezzio’s final accounting. Kill Tony G., and that point was made.
    Leaving only Janice Frazer, the name that was never spoken, the woman who never was. Janice, and one name more—the name Venezzio was writing now: Louise.
    “Yes,” Bacardo said, “I understand.” As he said it, the memories returned, taking shape and substance: Janice Frazer, the incredibly beautiful peaches-and-cream waitress, no more than nineteen years old. He and Venezzio had been together when Venezzio had first seen her. Venezzio had been twenty-nine, married to Maria for less than a year, with one child on the way. Maria had been nineteen, too, the same age as Janice. But Maria was the daughter of a Mafia don; Janice was a runaway teenager from the Midwest.
    And Louise was the love baby Janice bore—the baby Janice took with her when she left New York.
    At twenty-nine, Venezzio had only been eight years away from the top job, capo di tutti. Luciano couldn’t stop him, and neither could Genovese.
    Only Janice Frazer could have ruined his chances—Janice and her love baby. Louise.
    “We never talked about them,” Venezzio said. “But everyone knew. You, and everyone else. You knew.”
    “I—” Uncertain how to say it, Bacardo broke off. Then: “I saw her a few times, dropped off a couple of envelopes, like that. After she had her baby.”
    “Ah …” Venezzio nodded. “Yeah. Right.”
    “We never talked about her, though, you and me. Not really.”
    Gesturing to Bacardo’s pocket, Venezzio said, “Turn it on.”
    Nodding, Bacardo withdrew the small pocket radio he always brought with him. He found a music station, golden oldies, and put the radio between them on the couch.
    “A little louder,” Venezzio ordered.
    “Say when.”
    “That’s fine.” For a moment they listened to the soft, syrupy strains of “Deep Purple.” Then Venezzio began to speak.
    “I never lost track of Janice. You know that.”
    Bacardo nodded, a slow, measured inclination of his large, rough-featured peasant’s head. “I knew that, yeah.”
    “Until she had the baby, it was all right to have her in New York. But when she had the baby, she started making demands. So I had to send her away. I waited until the baby—Louise—was six months old, but then Janice had to go. Especially when, Jesus, Maria had Carlo Junior just about the same time. Carlo and Louise, they’re both the same age—thirty-five now.” Venezzio shook his head, an expression of memories remembered with regret. “Life’s funny, you know. Very funny.”
    “Funny. Yeah.”
    “Janice took the kid and went out west. She had relatives out there. So every once in a while, I’d—you know—drop in on her, you know what I mean.”
    This, Bacardo knew, was the story no one else had ever heard—the story no one would ever hear again.
    This was a story with a purpose.
    “Maria, you know—” Venezzio drew a deep breath, began to shake his head. “Maria, as soon as she had Carlo, she started laying it to me. I was pretty much—you know—just starting out then, climbing the ladder, and whenever I did something she didn’t like she’d go to her old man. Don Salvatore always spoiled her, I knew that when I married her. I always figured one reason he never got married after Lucia died was because he was hung up on Maria.