Onyx Webb: Book Three Read online

  This bullet did the trick, and Nitti collapsed in a heap at the base of the chain link fence, the bloody exit wound in the top of the man’s head visible from fifty feet away where Tommy stood watching.

  While Tommy was shocked to have witnessed the suicide, he knew full well why Frank Nitti had just taken his own life. Scheduled to testify the following day, Nitti had only three options.

  The first was to rat out his fellow mobsters to save his own skin. The second was to take the fall for the charges and go back to prison, but since he was severely claustrophobic, the idea of being locked up again was unthinkable. Nitti took the third option—the one he probably considered the least painful.

  In any case, Tommy knew that Frank Nitti’s untimely demise might be his ticket.

  Two hours after Nitti pulled the trigger of a gun for the last time, Tommy Bilazzo walked into The Purple Pig, hat in hand. Only this time it wasn’t his own hat—it was Frank Nitti’s bloody, bullet-ridden fedora.

  Tommy found Sal Tombo exactly where he expected him to be—at the same table in the rear of the bar where he’d seen him last, swirling his fork in a large bowl of fettuccine.

  Chuckie Bags stood up to block Tommy, as usual.

  “It’s about Frank Nitti,” Tommy said. “I know something, something important.”

  “You don’t know shit about shit,” Chuckie said.

  “I know Frank Nitti ate a bullet two hours ago, next to the railroad tracks near Cermak Avenue,” Tommy said.

  “Old news, kid,” Fat Sal said from behind Chuckie. “You wanna impress me, you gotta bring me somethin’ more than old news.”

  “I was there. I watched him do it,” Tommy said.

  “The hell you did,” Chuckie said. Then Tommy raised the bloody fedora, and Chuckie Bags’ eyes went wide.

  “First shot went through the hole on the side, right there,” Tommy said. “Second shot went through his head and came out on top.”

  Fat Sal put his fork down. “Chuckie, frisk the kid and give us a minute, huh?”

  Chuckie Bags stepped forward, gave Tommy a quick pat down. “He’s clean.”

  “Take a seat, kid,” Fat Sal said.

  Tommy slid into a chair opposite Fat Sal and watched as the large mobster examined Nitti’s fedora. It was Nitti’s, Tombo was certain of it. He’d given the hat to the fellow mob boss as a gift two years earlier on Nitti’s fifty-fifth birthday. “So you took a dead man’s hat. That’s what you came here to say?”

  This is it, Tommy thought.

  “There’s something else. Nitti had something in his pocket. A list, with lots of names on it, with dates—where people went, who met with who—you know, things like that.”

  Fat Sal leaned forward. “And this list, you took it?”

  Tommy pulled an envelope from his jacket and slid it across the table.

  “So, kid—why’d you bring this to me?”

  “Because your name is at the top of the list,” Tommy said.

  Fat Sal slid the envelope into the pocket of his jacket. “What’s your name again, kid?”

  “Tommy. Tommy Bilazzo.”

  Fat Sal remained quiet, thinking. The silence seemed like it went on forever. “Chuckie,” Fat Sal said finally.

  “Yeah, boss?”

  “Get Tommy here a hundred dollars from petty cash, and then take him down to Carmine’s and get him some decent clothes. He looks like a rag picker.” Tommy’s diligence had finally paid off. He was officially a member of the mob.

  Now, twenty years later, here he was—Tommy Bilazzo, the kid who grew up penniless in an orphanage in DeSoto, Missouri—wearing a $100 suit and sharing a booth with mafia kingpin Sal Tombo at the Villa Venice.

  “Sammy done a nice job with the remodel, huh?” Sal asked.

  “Yeah, Momo’s head gonna swell so big we ain’t gonna get him through the door,” Chuckie said.

  The Villa Venice opened its doors two years earlier, with the majority of its revenue coming from low-profit weddings and bar mitzvahs. But in the summer of 1962, thanks to a cash infusion from Sam “Momo” Giancana, the Villa underwent a major renovation. This included the construction of canals, with floating gondolas to shuttle people back and forth between the club and an illegal mob-run gambling spot two blocks away. Giancana knew that, while the majority of people would flock to the Villa Venice for the entertainment, the profit would come from the casino, prostitution, and other illegal delights.

  The question everyone was asking was, how did Sam Giancana convince big stars like Frank, Sammy, and Dean to play the Villa? Was Sinatra a part of the mob?

  In truth, Sinatra was not connected—not in any formal sense, at least. But Sinatra had entertained Giancana and his pals at his lavish home in Palm Springs, and Giancana had returned the favor by hosting Frankie and his entourage a number of times at his Vegas hotels. The key word being favor.

  In the mob, as in the world of entertainment, someone always owed someone else a favor. The result was the kind of extravaganza usually reserved for New York or Las Vegas, except this was the boring suburb of Wheeling, Illinois.

  But for Tommy Bilazzo, despite being squished in the booth between Fat Sal and Chuckie Bags, it was the perfect evening. If only his childhood friend, Declan Mulvaney, could see him now.

  Chapter Three

  Lily Dale, New York

  July 10, 2010

  “Do as I do,” Kate Fox said loudly, clapping her hands three times. Moments later, from somewhere in the room, came the response.

  Rap. Rap. Rap.

  Kate’s sister Maggie stepped forward. “Now do just as I do, only this time four.” Maggie clapped her hands together four times, and then waited for the response.

  Rap. Rap. Rap.

  Rap.

  Yes, the dead peddler’s spirit was there with them.

  “We shall now ask a series of questions to which you shall answer by rapping once for no, and twice for yes,” Kate said. “Do you understand?”

  Rap. Rap.

  Kate and Maggie turned and looked at their older sister, who stood there with an astonished look on her face.

  “Do you see now, Leah?” Maggie asked. “We are not lying. We are telling the truth. We are able to communicate with the spirits!”

  The year was 1848, and the three Fox sisters—Kate, age twelve; Margaret, age fifteen; and their older sister, Leah, age thirty-four—were living in a house in the small hamlet of Hydesville, New York, with their parents. Not just any house, mind you, but a house that had a reputation for being haunted.

  Very haunted.

  At least, that’s what the neighbors told the girls when they’d first moved in. As a joke.

  But by late March of that year, the neighbor’s joke had become a prophecy when the two youngest Fox sisters made contact with the spirit of a peddler named Charles B. Rosna, who—through an elaborate alphabet code developed by the sisters—claimed to have been murdered in the house five years earlier and was buried in the cellar.

  Fascinated, yet skeptical, the neighbors dug up the cellar and found pieces of bone. Word of the girls’ abilities spread rapidly, and when the excitement became too much for the small community, Kate and Margaret were sent off to live with relatives in Rochester.

  The rappings followed them.

  Over time the girls developed the ability to conjure spirits other than the ghostly peddler.

  Again, word spread.

  Eventually Leah took charge of Kate and Margaret’s careers, with the three of them enjoying success and celebrity for many years.

  Until the two younger Fox sisters confessed to their deception.

  It had all been a hoax.

  On Sunday, October 21, 1888, Margaret and Kate stood before an audience of two thousand people and demonstrated their sly methods.

  “We used an apple tied to a string and moved the string up and down, causing the apple to bump on the floor, making a strange noise every time it would rebound,” Margaret said. “Mother did not understan
d how it was possible, nor did she think we were capable of such a trick because we were so young.”

  The sisters went on to say they had produced some of the noises through the cracking of joints and clicking of coins. They also admitted many of the rappings were produced by tapping a foot on a loose plank beneath long dresses that went all the way to the floor, feeling it extremely unlikely anyone would dare to demand a bodily examination to expose their fraud.

  Less than five years after their confession—shunned by their once loyal supporters—all three Fox sisters were dead, with Margaret and Kate dying in abject poverty and buried in unmarked pauper’s graves.

  But the story wasn’t over.

  On November 22, 1904, a group of school children discovered a complete skeleton of a man when a false wall fell down in the cellar of the house once occupied by the Fox family. Next to the body was an old tin trunk—the kind once used by peddlers to carry samples of their products.

  In 1915, the cottage the Fox sisters grew up in was lifted from its foundation in Hydesville, New York, and transported to Lily Dale. Unfortunately, the cottage was destroyed by fire forty years later.

  The tin salesman’s sample box, belonging to the murdered peddler, remains in a museum in the tranquil spiritualist community of Lily Dale.

  Well, the usually tranquil community of Lily Dale.

  There were four passengers aboard Koda’s Bombardier BD-700 when it departed Orlando—Koda’s father, Bruce Mulvaney; Tank, Bruce’s bodyguard and limo driver; Robyn, the bartender from DJ’s Chophouse, and Koda himself.

  The plane stopped in Georgia to pick up a fifth passenger—Koda’s on-again/off-again girlfriend, Mika Flagler, who insisted on being with Koda during “such a difficult time.”

  The plane had been in the air less than five minutes when Robyn found herself regretting the decision to accept Koda’s invitation to fly with the group.

  “And how did Dane end up on the tracks again?” Mika asked.

  Robyn’s breath caught and she found herself unable to answer.

  “She explained this already, Mika,” Koda said. “Dane was pushing her and the other girl out of the path of the train.”

  “And the girl was a friend of yours, Robyn?” Mika asked.

  “No, no, I’d never seen her before,” Robyn managed.

  “She was doing what she had to do,” Koda said. “What happened was not Robyn’s fault.”

  Robyn knew that.

  But the human capacity for guilt was amazing. And despite well-meaning words of comfort from friends and family—you were doing what you had to do; it’s not your fault; the key to recovery is acceptance; God has a plan for each of us even when we don’t understand it—Robyn’s feelings of guilt grew greater by the hour.

  Robyn knew she didn’t have to follow the man and woman out of the Lounge at the Orlando Grand Hotel that night—she’d chosen to follow them. And she knew it was Dane’s decision to race out onto the tracks to save them—but if she hadn’t decided to follow the man and woman, they would not have been there in the first place.

  And as far as God’s plan? Well, if this was God’s idea of love and justice, God could…

  “Well, as I always say, you can let situations like this define you, destroy you, or strengthen you,” Bruce Mulvaney said. “Me, I choose the latter.”

  The plane landed at Chautauqua County-Jamestown Airport, where the Mulvaney contingent climbed into a waiting limo for the seventeen-mile drive to Lily Dale.

  Half a mile from their destination, traffic came to a sudden crawl.

  “So much for keeping the funeral a secret and slipping in without the press noticing,” Bruce said, looking through the tinted windows at the sea of media trucks lining both sides of the road. The major networks—CNN, Fox, NBC, ABC, CBS—were all there. As were the various gossip shows, including Access Hollywood, E! Entertainment, TMZ, and even ghost hunter Nathaniel Cryer and his Afro-haired sidekick, Olympia Fudge.

  Not since Woodstock had upstate New York seen anything like it.

  It was bedlam.

  With 160 private homes, two hotels, a post office, a handful of bookstores and shops, two restaurants, a coffee shop, a museum, and a volunteer fire department, the lakeside community of Lily Dale was completely unequipped to handle the enormous influx of people, including thousands of onlookers who’d flooded the area once word got out on Twitter.

  “I don’t understand how they found out,” Robyn said. Of course, Koda already knew the answer.

  Mika.

  Chapter Four

  Crimson Cove, Oregon

  October 17, 1937

  From the very first day they moved into the Crimson Cove lighthouse, Onyx felt like a new person—light and happy, relaxed and renewed, spending her days painting and her nights standing at the top of the lighthouse with the sound of the ocean waves crashing on the rocks below.

  For the first time since leaving the Louisiana bayou, Onyx felt like she was home.

  For Ulrich, however, the time they’d spent since buying the lighthouse from the state of Oregon had been pure hell, having failed to understand the extent of the responsibility involved in Clause 26 of the purchase agreement, which read:

  “Purchaser agrees to provide ongoing maintenance and upkeep of physical structure, land and foliage, in addition to all daily tasks associated with the operation of the structure for its intended purpose.”

  In terms of his daily existence, Clause 26 meant that Ulrich was responsible for painting both the interior and exterior of the lighthouse, and the caretaker’s cottage; caulking drafty windows and replacing broken glass; patching, spackling, and sanding holes in walls; mopping and waxing floors; repairing fences and walkways; mowing the large grass clearing as well as planting, cutting, trimming, and pruning thirty-seven trees and 156 feet of hedges that lined the dirt road. No wonder the state was interested in ridding themselves of the place.

  By buying the lighthouse, Ulrich had unknowingly trapped himself in a grueling, thankless job that provided a laughably meager eighty-dollar monthly stipend to cover his time and effort maintaining the place. He would have been better off and enjoyed more freedom had he been put in prison.

  And if all the planting and trimming and painting weren’t enough, Ulrich was also responsible for ensuring the lighthouse remained lit from dusk every evening until at least thirty minutes past dawn each morning. This required hauling twenty-eight gallons of lamp oil from the storage tank—located next to the caretaker’s cottage fifty yards away—up the 103 steps of the spiral staircase to the top of the lighthouse.

  Ulrich did not possess the math skills to calculate how much he was being paid per hour to do everything that was required of him. All he knew was that, whatever the amount, it was too damn little. Onyx had gotten the life of her dreams, while his life had become the thing of nightmares. He couldn’t even go into town for fear of being seen and having word get back to Faustino “The Owl” Spilatro. Damn it, he deserved better.

  To make his existence tolerable, Ulrich began spending his stolen mob money.

  In the beginning, the purchases were all small: a Gene Autry concert guitar for $9.65, a Silvertone radio for $22.95, a Gladiator shotgun and six cases of shells for $34.50, and a Capehart 500 Series phonograph to replace the old Victor Victrola VV-50 that had been in the lighthouse when they took the place over, all of which had been purchased via the Sears and Montgomery Ward catalogs.

  Onyx began to get concerned when a delivery man dropped a load of expensive-looking pine and roofing material outside the lighthouse. Ulrich had ordered the wood with the intention of building a storage shed. He’d also ordered one of every tool Sears offered with which to build the shed. To complete his circular logic, Ulrich planned to store the new tools in the shed once the shed was built, which in his mind justified the need for the shed in the first place.

  Ulrich also ordered his and hers Fleetwood bicycles, which he also intended to store in the new shed—that he unfortunatel
y never got around to starting—leaving the bicycles outside to rust in the rain.

  “I don’t understand, Ulrich. All these things? Bicycles, wood, boxes and boxes of Levi jeans? Why would anyone need so many pants at one time?” Onyx asked when Ulrich had three dozen pairs of Levi Strauss jeans shipped in.

  He liked the concealed rivets on the back pockets and the belt loops, and he feared they’d change the style the following year, he explained.

  “And a dinner jacket?” Onyx asked when the box from an upscale menswear store in Los Angeles arrived. “Who are we going to see, Ulrich? This is not New York or San Francisco. We live in a lighthouse in the middle of nowhere!”

  And that was the problem. Ulrich was trapped in a lighthouse in the middle of nowhere.

  And it was driving him mad.

  As Onyx’s anger grew, Ulrich changed direction and began spending money on her instead. A Singer sewing machine was the first thing to arrive, followed by art books, paints, fifty-foot rolls of canvas, dozens of pairs of women’s shoes—in random styles and colors—and when she casually mentioned how nice it would be to have a typewriter, Onyx found herself standing on the front steps of the lighthouse signing for a Remington Rand Model-5 and three cases of red and black typewriter ribbons.

  But what could she say or do? Onyx thought. The man worked extremely hard maintaining the lighthouse, and it was his money.

  But then Ulrich did the unthinkable.

  “Here, put this on,” Ulrich said, handing Onyx a blindfold one afternoon when she was up in the lighthouse working on one of her paintings. “Now wait here by the window for me to tell you when it is okay to take it off.”

  “This is ridiculous, Ulrich,” Onyx said, putting on the blindfold and waiting for what seemed like forever. Finally, Onyx heard Ulrich yell from outside, telling her to take the blindfold off.