Sweetheart by Andrew Coburn Read Free Book Online Page B

through the night with a soft and silent motion, well behind the Thunderbird, which traveled at breakneck speed, its taillights diminishing licks of fire. “They always drive like that,” Scandura said over his shoulder. “Idiots.”
    Gardella was agitated. “We’ll lose them. Catch up!”
    “There’s a fork up ahead,” Scandura said equably. “If they go left, means they’re heading home, except they won’t go in the house right away. They’ll go in the barn.”
    “What if they go right?”
    “I’ve got a good idea where they’ll be.”
    They went right and vanished.
    The Cadillac followed and soon made an effortless turn onto a road that rose. The sky seemed to spread, revealing more stars than before. Rita O’Dea detected a great sadness in her brother’s shadowed features and sensed an impatience greater than hers. His relief was enormous when they came upon the Thunderbird. Lights out, motor idling roughly, it was parked in a clear area right off the road where the snow, pounded down, glimmered in the metallic gloom of the moon and drifted off toward an abyss of darkness. Gardella thrust himself forward. “What’s out there?”
    “Nothing,” said Scandura as the Cadillac crept to a stop at a right angle to the Thunderbird. “Town trucks dump snow off the edge. It’s a hell of a drop, lot of boulders at the bottom.”
    “What are they doing here?”
    “Boozing.”
    “Stupid place to do it.”
    “Maybe they jack off,” Rita O’Dea said in a deadly sweet voice.
    “You guys just going to sit here?” Gardella said, and Augie opened his door and got out. As he did, he brushed something into his mouth and swallowed hard. Gardella saw him do it but said nothing. Outside, Augie shivered. Ralph joined him and whispered, “Don’t shit your pants, kid.” The Cadillac purred in place, glued to its lights. Augie and Ralph lifted the hood. Within seconds the doors of the Thunderbird winged open, shedding a weak light, and the Bass brothers showed their faces. Ralph called out in apparent perplexity, “You guys know anything about engines?”
    The brothers shuffled forward, flaccid, carelessly bold. Their arms hung long. The bigger of them, Leroy, said, “We don’t get our hands dirty for nothin’.”
    Ralph said, “We’ll give you something.”
    The brothers angled their way between Augie and Ralph. “Looks like a hearse,” Leroy said thickly. His brother Wally couldn’t speak. His nose was full. Leroy plunged his head under the hood and then backed away fast. “Hell, it’s runnin’. What more do you want?” Ralph smiled, his sack of a face illegible. Augie shifted close to Wally, who suddenly was nervous. Leroy, on guard, glanced sideways and said, “Who are those people?”
    Scandura, Gardella, and Rita O’Dea had emerged from the Cadillac and lined themselves in a row, Rita O’Dea in the middle. Bearlike in her fur, she was smoking a cigarette; Gardella stood very straight. Scandura smiled, his teeth glittering, some more than others. He said, “I’m nobody, but these people recently buried their parents, Santo and Rosalie Gardella. Maybe you remember them.”
    Gardella and Rita O’Dea uttered oaths in Italian. The brothers did not know the words but were terrified by the sound. Leroy Bass rose on his toes and froze, while Wally failed to react, as if he did not know how. Ralph and Augie dredged up long objects from their coats in almost a benign way. The brothers did not respond; they felt as if they were hallucinating.
    Victor Scandura said, “Good-bye, boys.”
    Ralph swung his tire iron and broke the flesh in Leroy Bass’s face, and then he swung again and destroyed the skull. Augie’s aim was off, and he merely fractured the younger brother’s shoulder. Ralph completed the job for him, each swing of the iron progressively emphatic, until there was not a whimper left.
    Rita O’Dea said, “Leave something to spit on.”
    Afterward Scandura made a quick gesture. Ralph and