Read Online Badfellas by Tonino Benacquista Emily Read - Free Book Online Page B

to enrage my father? No, I joined the family firm, and what’s more I did it of my own free will, nobody forced me, I was proud to. “You only have one life,” Uncle Paulie had said when he gave me my first gun. I know now that he was wrong: you can have a second one. I just hope he can’t see me from wherever he is, sad fucker that I’ve become .
    At that precise moment, he was no longer acting a writer and playing to the gallery; he now felt that he had completed the very first stage of a job that might make sense of everything he had been through, everything he had suffered, and made others suffer.
    “Go and see what your fucking father’s doing!”
    Belle ran up to the veranda, where she found Fred sitting still and silent, bent over the typewriter. For a moment she thought he was dead.
    “Dad, we’re waiting for you. Are you going to light the barbecue, or what?”
    He emerged from his trance, and drew his daughter to him, hugging her in his arms. Writing that last page had drained him, and left him vulnerable, and for the first time in ages he drew a curious kind of comfort from the embrace of such innocence. They emerged, Fred beaming, with his arm around his proud daughter, and all heads turned towards them. He greeted his guests, apologized for being late, and said a few words to put everybody at their ease. He went over to the barbecue, where he was given a glass of Bordeaux, which he sipped delicately as he prepared the fire, surrounded by a handful of men there to lend their support. In three quarters of an hour, all the meats would be cooked and the rush would start.
    Word had spread throughout the whole neighbourhood, and the freeloaders kept on coming – it was beginning to feel like a village fête. Lieutenants Di Cicco and Caputo rang Quintiliani on his mobile before taking any private initiative. The boss was on his way up the motorway from Paris and swore he’d be there within the half-hour. Meanwhile he instructed them to go over and join the gathering. So they abandoned their observation post and mingled with the guests – nobody paid any attention to them. In order to blend in, Richard grabbed a plate and started to eat, without the slightest embarrassment.
    “Are we allowed to do that?”
    “If you hang around like an idiot with your arms dangling, you’re bound to get spotted.”
    The argument was carried and Vincent elbowed his way towards the ziti.
    Malavita, too, was tempted to make an appearance. She was curious about all the noise that was reaching her through the basement window. She appeared tothink for a moment, sitting up, her eyes wide open, her tongue hanging out. But then she decided after all to go back to sleep, because all that noise could only mean something disagreeable.
    The rest of the evening might have carried on in a peaceful and happy atmosphere, with nothing to disrupt it, if Fred hadn’t suddenly started having regrets. About everything.
    Five characters, all male, stood in a semicircle around the fire, their eyes fixed on the coals, which were refusing to light, despite the dry weather, despite the sophisticated equipment and all the efforts of the master of the house, who was, after all, an old hand when it came to barbecues.
    “That’s not the way to do it… You need more kindling, Mr Blake, you’ve put the coal on too soon.”
    The speaker had a cap on his head and a beer in his hand. He lived two doors away, his wife had brought an olive loaf, and his children were running around the buffet screaming. Fred gave him a cold smile. Beside him the bachelor who ran the travel agency in the middle of the town took up the ball:
    “That’s not the way to do it. I never use coal at all, I do it like an open fire – it takes longer, but you get much better embers.”
    “That’s not the way to do it,” added an eminent local councillor. “You’re using firelighters – they’re poisonous, and that’s no joke. And anyway, you can see it doesn’t even