The Last Days of Il Duce Read Online Free Page B

of a bitch’s hands.”
    â€œWhat son of a bitch?”
    â€œIt’s a done deal. I know it.”
    â€œYou sign the papers?”
    Joe’s eyes gleamed and he waved his arms as if to embrace the world, but there was a darkness beneath his exuberance. They knew my brother up here in the park. Sometimes he would buy a joint or two and sit on one of the benches, sharing the dope with whoever walked by, old hippies or gangbangers or ex-cons tattooed with the image of the Holy Virgin, the air around them thick with the smell of that sweet blue smoke. Though some people might think such low-lifing would get him in trouble, I didn’t have much objection. Because it was not too long ago when Joe frequented the other end of the park, under the pepper trees, where the coke dealers liked to hang out, and he’d about ruined himself there. He’d been running his own crew then too, highballing it on luxury homes out in Woodside; then the money got out of control, and it all came crashing down. He’d even gone to Micaeli Romano for help but the old judge had been unable, or unwilling.
    Joe handed me the joint and I took another hit and the sky seemed suffused with both beauty and danger. Dolores Park is in the shadow of the city’s biggest hill so the fog rolls to either side and overhead there is that clear and startling blue. The sky today was calm in an ancient, dreamy way but I could feel too the violence in that dreaminess.
    â€œI’ll show you the property,” my brother said.
    We drove into the flatlands of the barrio, where the Indians used to hide from the Franciscans, and now the cranksters and the young gangbangers postured up and down Mission Street. Meanwhile, the sisters and mothers of these boys wandered through the zapaterías and grocerías, the streets boomed with the staccato rapping of the lowrider’s radios, the sidewalks blossomed with color, the stench of overripe fruit, perfume, urine and feces, cinnamon rolls in outdoor booths where a little boy held a toy gun in one hand and with the other clutched at his mama’s skirts, hiding himself in her giant haunches.
    â€œWe stopping by your place?”
    â€œNo. Do you want to stop by my place?”
    â€œIt doesn’t matter.”
    â€œThen why do you ask?”
    â€œWe seem to be going that direction.”
    â€œDo you want to see Luisa, the kids?”
    â€œNo. It’s okay.”
    â€œI want to show you this property. It will get dark if we don’t go now.”
    â€œThat’s what want I to do. Let’s see the property.”
    â€œYou don’t like my house? You don’t like Luisa, the kids?”
    â€œStop it.”
    We made a joke out of it but the truth was I was glad not to go by his house. Luisa had been good to my brother but she gave me the cold shoulder anytime I walked through the door. I did not know why, but this was the way she’d always been to me—and Joe seemed to take pleasure in her rudeness. So we drove toward the bay into an industrial district that had been built upon sludge and landfill and through which the Southern Pacific had run line after line of railroad tracks, a switching yard wider across than the Bayshore Freeway. The tracks were still there, though rusted orange with disuse.
    The place was called China Basin because of the coolies who had laid those tracks and lived in shanties nearby.
    â€œThis is it.”
    â€œThere’s nothing here.”
    â€œYou have no vision, Nick. Can’t you see? They’re gonna build condos here, up and down. Office space, housing projects, playgrounds, all up and down. I’ve got a bid on the framing contract, for the residential end. And I’m going to get it. I know.”
    â€œHow do you know?”
    â€œMicaeli Romano’s behind this deal. His law firm, the holding company, they’re arranging the financing.”
    â€œI didn’t know you two were