Virgin Heat(9)

Though, after the redhead was gone, Ziggy had to admit that he didn't have that much to scheme about. He had his straight job; he had his action; they had both become routine. Was that good or bad? Pacing, he briefly pondered the question till he started to sweat, then forgot about it and blotted his back on the faded cushions of the droopy old couch. He felt muzzy-headed, logy. Maybe it was just the weather, the spongy heat that made vines hang discouraged against the crooked shutters of his bungalow, gave a narcotic heaviness to the smells of frangipani and jasmine that wafted through the ragged screens.

Or maybe it wasn't the weather.

He was anything but introspective; for the most part his inner life was as hidden from him as his asshole. Still, he'd lived thirty-six years, long enough for certain inner terrain to begin to look familiar, for certain signs to register as signs he'd seen before. And one of the few things he'd learned about himself was that, when he had a hard time concentrating, it might just be a tip-off that an upheaval was in the works, that he was nearing the end of something he was used to and approaching the start of something new and weird.

That's what had happened a decade ago, when he wasn't Ziggy Maxx but Sal Martucci. It happened in the weeks before he'd gotten arrested.

Things had been going swimmingly. He was an up-and-coming soldier in the Fabretti family, a trusted hand and a good earner in the crew of capo Paulie Amaro. He was at that intoxicating age when every week he felt a little more confident, a little more established. He'd muscled in on a couple of downtown restaurants; he had guys who owed him favors at the fish market. He'd just recently started buying custom suits; his loins twinged with importance when the tailor tugged the buttery wool to measure cuffs. He got laid at will, and he had started to tarry with his boss's pretty teenage daughter. He didn't dare to pop her cherry, but he liked her, was moved somehow by the chewing-gum taste of her mouth, the delicious unease with which she let his fingertips trace out the lace of her bra. It would not be a sacrifice, he felt, to marry into an alliance through her someday.

Then, in a way that seemed abrupt and mysterious even in retrospect, Ziggy/Sal lost his concentration and it all went down the tubes. Did things fall apart because his attention faltered, or was his attention overwhelmed by the droning approach of unstoppable disaster? Even now he didn't know. He only knew he'd begun to make mistakes. Here he missed an opportunity, there he made an enemy. His mind wandered, he didn't always notice when he was being observed or followed.

And in the midst of his floundering, something crazy, something ridiculous was going on. He was falling for Angelina. Not just toying. Falling. Getting all gooey and gentle, making promises he truly meant to keep. Absurdly, he found himself preferring Angelina's inexpert kisses and circumscribed caresses to the virtuosic strokes and mouth-play of his other girlfriends; to his shock, he came to shun the others. Angelina filled hollows he hadn't known were there. There was something in her violet eyes that would either redeem him or destroy him altogether; the weight of her head on his shoulder was either an insupportable burden or an insupportable hope, he was damned if he knew which.

Had he been thinking about her when he got nabbed? He couldn't recall; the shock of the arrest, its blinding quickness, obliterated everything.

He'd been delivering a hot BMW to the docks in Jersey City, where it would be discreetly loaded onto a ship whose official manifest listed as its cargo cigarettes and medical supplies. The Beemer—like many others, along with Jags and Benzes and Audis—was on its way to pre-Gulf War Kuwait, where it would be landed free of tariffs, stamped with a new serial number, and sold for lots of the same dollars the former owners had paid for gasoline.

Except this car wasn't making it to Weehawken, let alone Kuwait.

This car was ambushed at the Lincoln Tunnel tollbooth, locked in bow and stern by FBI guys in dented Plymouths. There were eight of them, and their dully gleaming pistols were pointed at Sal Martucci's head. For good measure, the toll taker had a bead on him as well.

And that was basically the end of Sal Martucci. They took him in, promised him Attica and not some cushy Federal establishment, and painted him a lurid and highly detailed picture of what happened to handsome young white guys who went to prison without their protectors. Whereupon he turned. It was a much longer story, of course, but, bottom line, he turned, traded in his former life at discount, said a distant goodbye to everyone and everything he knew. Including Angelina, who he never got to see.

The case, from the Feds' perspective, proved to be a disappointment. It didn't lead all the way to the top of the Fabretti family. It didn't bring indictments for murder, just the usual racketeering charges. Paul Amaro and two other capos got sentenced twelve-to-twenty.