Brain Storm

2

His name was Remo, and the last thing he wanted was the first thing he got.

The waiter dropped the glass of water to the red-and-white-checkered tablecloth. He did this from at least one foot above the table's surface. Warm water spilled over the rim of the glass and spread in a widening stain across the ragged and faded check-erboard tablecloth. Remo inspected the translucent glass carefully. A brown-crusted residue clung to the lip of the glass. He doubted it was food.

"What is this?" he asked, pointing to the glass.

"What's this?" the waiter mocked in a thick Bronx accent. "What are you, a comedian? What's this? It's water."

"I wanted the rice first," Remo explained.

"You wanted the water, then rice," the waiter replied flatly.

Remo closed his eyes patiently. Though he had kept his breathing shallow since he had first walked through the door to the tiny Manhattan bistro, the fumes from the kitchen were already getting to him.

"Look, I don't care what you think you heard,"

Remo said. "I want my rice, then my water." He pushed the glass away. "And would it be too much trouble to put a little soap in the dishwasher next time?"

The waiter's eyes were angry, but the man didn't say a word.

Instead, he left the glass where it sat, spun on his heel and returned to the kitchen through a battered steel swinging door. A menacing red-printed sign beneath the filthy Plexiglas window warned that this entry was for employees only.

Occasionally a head would pop into view behind the grease-striped glass, and a pair of blurry eyes would peer nervously in his direction.

Remo had been aware of the stares from the back room ever since he had entered the restaurant. Although he was used to hard looks from potential targets when he was on assignment, this time the agitation among the kitchen staff had nothing to do with him. They were staring beyond Remo, at a tiny table set at the very back of the small room.

It looked as if it had been a booth in a previous lifetime, for there was a high-backed parson's bench with accompanying torn and faded vinyl seat cover pressed firmly up against the rear wall. The table seemed to match the restaurant's original decor, but on the nearer side the bench had been replaced with three uncomfortable-looking hard-back chairs. The absence of the bench allowed the occupant on the far side of the table an unobstructed view of the entire interior.

Though the restaurant wasn't large, a generous amount of space had been cleared around this lone table.

Three burly men in ill-fitting suits packed the bench awkwardly, their amply padded elbows jos-tling their neighbors' hands with every forkful of spaghetti that traveled up from their overflowing plates.

As they slurped up generous quantities of sauce-freighted pasta, the men crowding around the table used their vantage point to keep their watchful eyes trained suspiciously on the other bistro patrons as they came and went.

Only one of the three chairs was occupied. One man sat across the table from the others, his back to the rest of the room. His shoulders were broad, though not as muscled as those of the watchers, and they were clad in sea blue fabric that shimmered like silk. The suit jacket was cut perfectly, the matching trousers seeming to have been tailored to his legs where he sat. The shoes were the finest cordovan leather and polished with a shine so fierce that it reflected and amplified the dull glow of the spotty overhead fluorescent lights so that it looked as if the dingy room were illuminated all around with halos of golden fire.

Remo knew the man from various television news programs and newspaper articles. His legal exploits in New York City were grist for all of the late-night comedians.

Don Anselmo Scubisci.

With his back to the room, he exuded a cool confidence that almost dared someone to try to take him on. Of course, it didn't hurt that he had a trio of gorillas in suits staring down every man, woman or child who got within fifty yards of their boss.

Remo had heard that since the death of old Don Pietro Scubisci a few years back, a vacuum had developed in the upper echelon of the Manhattan Mafia.

This was not so unusual. Organized-crime families were reeling nationwide, due to the combined efforts of various law-enforcement agencies. Things had gotten so bad for the Mob of late that no one was moving up in any family for fear that a long-trusted ally could turn out to be a high-level government plant. The dons became fewer and older, the money became scarcer and the power from the old days had just about disappeared.

After the death of the elder Scubisci, there had been a few bloody years when sparring families, intent on getting a piece of the Scubisci Family action, had participated in a violent turf war.

The killing had spread as far in the U.S. as Miami, San Francisco and Spokane. Outside of America, the silent war raged on into Mexico, Colombia and the Cayman Islands. A few bodies even turned up in London and Moscow. But when the smoke cleared, it was the late Don Pietro Scubisci's eldest son, Anselmo, who finally stepped in to fill the void, aided by his ruthless younger brother Dominic.

Remo had identified young Dominic Scubisci as the middle spaghetti-slurping thug, and though he would have loved to finish off the new don right then and there, he was only sanctioned to take out Dominic. Those were direct orders from Upstairs.

Remo's table was closest in the room to the rear booth, and he had pitched an ear to the hushed conversation since he had entered the small restaurant.

"We gotta get the nigga's outta here/' Dominic Scubisci was pleading with his older brother. Flecks of expelled tomato sauce speckled the tablecloth as he spoke, blending with the red squares and marking the already well-stained white.

"Your attitude is not progressive," Don Scubisci said. He spoke precisely, in barely accented English.

But here, as on television, he created the impression that the hood who lurked beneath the flashily dressed veneer would slip to the surface.

"Forget that crappola," Dominic whined.

"They're stealing us blind. They're killin' each other left and right. They ain't reliable."

"Aren't," Don Anselmo corrected. And by the way his brother cringed, he appeared to be used to such grammatical corrections. "They are as reliable as we need them to be. The high mortality rate among our youngest employees is handily offset by the level of protection their ignorance affords us.

With the system we have in place, we are virtually untouchable."

Though Remo couldn't see his face, he could tell by the confident set of the carefully tailored shoulders and the look of defeat on his brother's face that Don Anselmo considered the discussion closed.

"I just don't like them nigga's," his brother said, shaking his head. He attacked his plate more violently.

"Those," Don Anselmo corrected. "Those nigga's."

There was an awkward silence broken by the thug on Dominic's left. "Da gooks is da ones what scare me," he said with a wide-eyed nod not uncommon among those who would have a hard time spelling IQ. The others on the bench all nodded in wordless agreement at this particularly piquant observation.

Don Anselmo didn't even bother to correct the man's grammar.

Remo's attention was drawn from the rear table by the reappearance of his waiter. The squat man held a tray high above his balding head as he breezed up to Remo's table. Before he had even unloaded the contents, Remo knew that the rice was unacceptable.

The stench had preceded him.

The waiter dropped the steaming plate on the disposable paper place mat and stood back, awaiting approval. Remo suppressed an overwhelming urge to retch.

The rice was dripping with clumpy red tomato sauce. Bits of sliced mushroom and chopped peppers peeked out from between the pink-stained grains of rice, and the plate was garnished all around the edges with sprigs of parsley and a lone lemon wedge. Remo might have been able to eat the lemon slice if it hadn't been slathered with the sickly, oily, rancid-smelling sauce.

"What is this supposed to be?" he asked, indicating his plate.

The waiter seemed geared up for an argument.

"Didn't we go troo dis already? You ordered rice,"

he replied tartly.

"Apparently we didn't go 'troo it' enough. I ordered plain white rice. This is not plain white rice."

"Dere's white rice in it."

Because Remo didn't want to get into a fight, he asked the waiter to put the rice in a doggie bag and bring him his water. Plate in hand, the man vanished once more through the scratched kitchen door.

Remo had hoped to have supper before he went to work. Lamentably it was not to be. Rather than wait for a glass of tepid water that probably wouldn't arrive for another half hour, if ever, Remo stood. Cast-ing a mischievous glance at the trio of goons across from Don Scubisci, he casually crossed the area separating his table from the don's.

This stretch of floor had remained vacant the entire time Remo had been in the small restaurant, save for the occasional waiter who brought complimentary food and drinks to the great man. It was as if a hy-pothetical line had been drawn and stepping across it could only be accomplished on pain of death. Even though the rest rooms were in the back near the lone table, not one patron dared breach the danger zone.

Remo made as if he was heading for the bathroom, but at the last minute a twist dropped him into one of the vacant seats beside Don Anselmo.

There was another pair of Scubisci's men sitting at a tiny table near the main entrance, who couldn't have been more obvious if they had Thug 1

and Thug 2 tattooed to their broad foreheads. They rose, looking to Dominic for guidance. The younger Scubisci brother gestured ever so slightly to stay the hands of the henchmen who were even now reaching for their shoulder holsters. It was a surprisingly subtle warning from a man his size.

"Whadda you want?" Dominic asked. He ripped a crunchy slice of fresh Italian bread with his yellow incisors and attacked his plate once more.

Remo said only two words. "Guillermo Murietta."

Three forkfuls of coiled spaghetti paused halfway between table and mouths. Six dull eyes stared menacingly at Remo.

Remo smiled. It wasn't a pleasant smile. It was the smile of a skull.

"Youse better get outta here," Dominic threatened.

"Why?" Remo asked. "Is it time for you to go in the bathroom and untape a gun from the toilet tank now?"

Dominic placed his meaty palms against the chipped and cigarette-scarred side of the table. He was about to shove his way upright—an evolutionary milestone for his entire family—when a ring-laden hand pressed firmly against his thick forearm.

"Don't do anything, Dominic," Don Anselmo, silent until now, instructed softly. As Dominic seethed, the don addressed Remo. "An unfortunate accident, this Murietta," Don Anselmo said, nodding his sad agreement.

Remo looked at him and didn't even attempt to mask his contempt. "That's not what I hear."

"What is dis?" Dominic interrupted. "We're eatin' here. Do you see us goin' over and buggin' you when you is eatin'?"

Remo ignored Dominic. He continued speaking to the don. "There was only one legitimate accident.

Murietta wasn't to blame, the courts decided that.

But you decided he was."

Don Anselmo shrugged. "It's a rough world," he said vaguely. "There are many accidents. Some people are simply unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time."

"You got that right," Remo said, turning back to Dominic.

For an instant their eyes locked, and Scubisci seemed to read the promise of death in the depths of Remo's cold, deep-set eyes. A fat tendril of sloppy pasta hovered immobile before his open mouth as his free hand snaked carefully beneath his jacket. His fingers had barely brushed the steel butt of his concealed weapon when a commotion broke out at the door of the restaurant

There was a single shout of warning before the shooting started.

The table was immediately upended. A flurry of hands, Dominic Scubisci's included, grabbed Don Anselmo and yanked him to safety behind it.

Remo stood, peeved that his moment had been interrupted.

When he turned, he saw a half-dozen men had piled in through the main entrance to the restaurant.

They were exchanging fire with the pair of Scubisci bodyguards who had taken refuge behind a battered steel dessert cart. Occasionally a few shots were directed to the rear of the restaurant, where they plowed into the ancient Formica surface of Don Anselmo's table.

Though bullets whizzed all around him, they somehow seemed to cut a wide swath around Remo.

Remo leaned over to where the four hoods cowered, guns at the ready. He saw that a thick sheet of steel had been fastened to the underside of the don's private table.

"Isn't that cheating?" he questioned. No one answered.

When the shooting started, the restaurant had erupted in screams. Those patrons not hunkered down behind their flimsy tables were fleeing for the tiny emergency exit at the rear of the building.

That was a mistake. Seconds after the initial gunfire began, the rusted metal door exploded inward and three more goons poured into the restaurant, shoving panicked diners aside as they swept the front of the restaurant with fire from their lightweight In-gram Model 11 subguns.

Remo wasn't sure whose side these three were on.

All of these guys seemed to have picked their suits from the Cosa Nostra section of the nearest Salvation Army store. Briefly Remo wondered how wise guys were able to tell each other apart. Looking at all of them bunched together in that small space exchanging apparently random fire, Remo decided that all mobsters should be required to wear numbered and colored muscle shirts over their suits so different fac-tions could be identified.

A moment later, it became clear that these were more of Don Anselmo's men.

"Let's get him outta here!" Dominic shouted from behind the table at the new arrivals. He waved his gun around his head like a cowboy getting ready to rope a calf.

One of the new arrivals nodded his understanding and proceeded to unload a steady stream of slugs into the area around the cashier's desk and into the chests of two of the six armed aggressors.

Chunks of the ancient, cheap plywood exploded in deadly shards around the door as a spray of blood splattered against the smoke-smeared front window.

The men fell in crumpled heaps, one landing against the hostess's desk and collapsing the entire structure in an avalanche of stale mints and laminated menus.

The strategy proved to be a mistake. Until now the bulk of the fire had been directed at the cowering men in the front, but now three of the four remaining gunmen turned their attention to the back of the restaurant, where their ultimate target lay.

Bullets began rattling against the surface of the table with the ferocity of hard-driven rain spewed from the mouth of an angry typhoon. Remo dodged and swirled to avoid the incoming projectiles.

Some latent survival instinct appeared to have surfaced in the mind of Dominic Scubisci. During the thickest part of the firefight, Dominic signaled to his men to lead Don Anselmo from the protection of the table to the rear exit.

The three who had entered from the back provided cover while the three behind the table swarmed around their leader and trundled him toward the door, all the time returning fire themselves with their side arms.

They had made it as far as the rear exit when Don Anselmo made an alarming discovery. Two of his men had just been shot, one critically, and he had to shout over the burp of automatic-weapons fire to be heard.

"Hey, where's Dominic?" asked the capo of the Manhattan Mafia.

"YOUSE IS IN SHIT up to your neck."

Dominic tried to sound tough, but the words lacked their usual conviction. This was probably due to the fact that the skinny guy had plucked him from his brother's flank and carried him through a heavy cross fire as if he were dancing through a field of early-summer dandelions.

They were in the kitchen of the restaurant. The service staff had fled through their own exit, abandoning various boiling pots and flaming pans on the great gas stoves. The war continued to rage in the outer room. Remo had pushed a huge ice machine in front of the door to discourage any of the other mobsters from ducking for cover inside the kitchen.

When they entered, he had placed Dominic's Colt automatic on a nearby stainless-steel counter, ago-nizingly close to the mobster.

The hoodlum eyed the weapon as he sized up Remo's lean frame.

"Dominic Scubisci," Remo said with the dispassion of a teacher reading an attendance sheet. "You are in charge of enforcement for the Scubisci Family?"

Dominic scrunched up his face disdainfully. For a second, his eyes left the abandoned gun. "You a lawyer?"

Remo smiled tightly, ignoring the question.

"In your capacity as enforcement arm, you took it upon yourself to rid the world of one Guillermo Murietta."

"He had it comin'," Dominic growled.

"For crimes against the Scubisci Family," Remo prodded.

"Yeah," Dominic said, jutting out his chin. He edged closer to the gun.

"The specific crime involving Mr. Murietta resulted in the death of one Tony Scubisci, your son."

Remo was putting on his best Perry Mason for Dominic Scubisci.

Dominic felt as if he was in a court of law. He tried to call up the appropriate paternal sadness that he had summoned at the Murietta trial. Now, as then, he didn't quite get it right He was used to being a defendant not a witness for the prosecution.

"He killed my boy."

"Your boy, Mr. Scubisci, was twenty-five years old, a three-time loser who had just murdered a member of the Patriconne Family and had run out into traffic between two parked cars as he was attempting to elude the police. He ran in front of the car operated by Mr. Murietta."

"He shouldn'ta done what he done," Dominic insisted. He took another subtle sidestep toward his weapon. The gunfire in the outer room had dwindled by now to a few feeble bursts.

"He was only driving down the street," Remo argued.

"Maybe he shoulda picked another street." With a sudden movement, Dominic leaped toward the nearby counter. His meaty palm slapped victoriously down atop the gun. Scooping up the pebbled handle in his large hand, he wheeled on his interrogator.

The skinny guy was gone.

Dominic started to turn but felt a sudden pressure against his right forearm. A voice, so close it almost sounded as if it were coming from within his own head, whispered in his ear.

"Murietta had five kids."

Dominic couldn't move. His spine had gone stiff as a board, and it felt as if someone was manipulating him from behind like a ventriloquist's dummy. Gun still in hand, he felt himself being drawn to the stove.

"What? It's my fault he don't know where the drugstore is?" Dominic's words were brave, but his jaw clenched in pain as the pressure on his spine increased. They were at the stove now.

A huge cauldron of spaghetti boiled for customers who had long since fled.

"Dominic Scubisci, you have been found guilty of murder in the first degree. Do you have anything to say in your defense before this court passes sentence?"

"Eat shit," Dominic offered.

To hell with Perry Mason. Remo wrapped his fingers around Dominic's wrist. Though the man outweighed him by a good hundred pounds, he proceeded to force the hand into the pot of boiling pasta.

It was a display of impossible strength, the impressiveness of which was completely lost on the mobster.

Dominic's shriek of pain was almost feminine. He immediately released his gun. It dropped to the bottom of the pot with a muted clang. After a second, Remo pulled the hand free. Dominic was horrified to see that his skin had gone as scarlet as a cooked lobster. Blisters had already formed all around the palm and back of the hairy hand.

He howled in pain and rage, ready to spin on the faggy little punk who had destroyed his gun hand, desperate to vent his horrific rage. But before he had time to react, he felt himself moving up in the air, very lightly. The pain in his hand was constant and fierce, but he couldn't help but watch in wonder as the filthy tiled ceiling of the kitchen grew closer. All at once, he felt himself turning in midair. Blinking in surprise, Dominic found a moment later that he was upside down and staring into the churning, roiling pot of pasta. Steam poured up around his ears, pasting his short black hair to his bullet head. He felt himself being lowered toward the pot.

Utter panic struck him.

"Hold it! Hold it! I know everythin'!" Dominic begged. He tried turning toward his assailant, but found that he couldn't move. Hot steam curled up into his nose and mouth.

"That seems unlikely," Remo ventured. "What's six times seven?"

"What?" Dominic asked. His thick nose hairs were curling.

"See? You don't know everything."

The bubbling water came closer.

"I'll turn state's evidence." Dominic screamed as the pot closed in. "I'll give you my brother Anselmo on a silver platter. Just let me go."

The downward movement arrested. Bubbles of boiling water burst against Dominic's hair.

"You want me to let you go?" The voice behind him sounded puzzled.

"Yeah, yeah. Please."

Behind Dominic, Remo shrugged. "Suit yourself."

None of the members of the Scubisci Family had ever been very well supplied in the brain department, but it had been agreed by the rest of the clan that they could all safely look down on Dominic's limited mental capacity with superior disdain. But in that infinitesimally brief instant before his scalp touched the water, Dominic Scubisci realized that he had mis-spoken.

Before he could speak, before he could shout, before he could take back his ill-chosen words, gravity plunged Dominic's wrinkled head below the boiling water.

He immediately tried to pull himself free. Strong hands were again upon him, holding him in place.

Though he thrashed in place like a large fish in a small boat, his head didn't move an inch from below the burning water. He tried briefly to fight the brilliant pain, but it wasn't long before it proved too great. All at once, he let himself succumb to the exquisite torture, and in that instant it was as though the bottom had dropped from the pot and Dominic felt himself slipping through the boiling water and into a greater, more eternal flame.

The fire here burned brighter and more fiercely hot than anything Dominic had ever imagined, and long after his earthly shell returned to the dust from which it had come, the name of Guillermo Murietta and countless others tormented him in unending flaming anguish.

Setting the timer on the back of the stove, Remo held Dominic in place for a good five minutes. The mobster had stopped wiggling in under a minute. Just like a lobster.

Once he was satisfied the man was done, Remo pulled him out of the water and dropped him back atop the stainless-steel counter.

The skin on Dominic Scubisci's head and neck was so bright it was nearly orange. Stringy bits of flesh hung off in reddish white tatters.

"You look done to me," Remo commented happily.

Milky white eyes stared ceilingward with unseeing horror. For good measure, he pounded a large meat thermometer between Dominic's open white eyes.

"Ooh, mobster head's trickier than I thought."

Remo frowned. "You could have stood another minute or two. I'll have to remember that when it's time to parboil your brother."

Remo found his bag of rice on a table near the door. Scooping it up in his thick-wristed hand, he ducked out the emergency exit.

The scent in the air gave promise of a beautiful day.