up,” Biaggio said, holding up a hand to Frank. This was no surprise. Biaggio’s trailer was parked fifty yards in from the road, on the south edge of the Aberdeen property, and it was, in fact, impossible for anyone to drive up the long driveway to the Bravo house without being spotted by Biaggio, if he was home, which he usually was, and if he was seated on the steps of his trailer, which he usually was. Frank clapped Biaggio on the shoulder, feeling glad, as always, to see him.
Biaggio Dunkirk was one of those West Virginia corn-fed badasses who’d seen the inside of a jail cell more than the high school cafeteria. But by the time he hit forty, lit out for Florida to avoid a petty theft sentencing, and moved into the trailer on the Bravo property, he’d decided enough was enough. He’d settled down to a quiet life of peace and the systematic avoidance of extradition, at least until the statute of limitations ran out. Biaggio earned his living as a self-employed moving man, growing busier by the week as fresh arrivals moved into the new homes and developments springing up around and through Utina. And he enjoyed—if you could call it that—a modestly paid but rent-free position at Aberdeen which he’d brokered with Frank in exchange for keeping a general eye out for Arla, Frank’s older sister, Sofia, and the ongoing decay of the old house, which, as Biaggio put it, was less an actual house at this point and was more a concerted effort of termites holding hands. They’d struck the deal while bobbing down Pablo Creek more than a decade ago in a leaky canoe, a cooler of freshly caught redfish between them, and Biaggio had moved into the trailer the next week. The arrangement was no bargain for Biaggio, if you asked Frank, but Biaggio didn’t seem to mind.
As to Biaggio’s name—now there was a story. He’d shared it with Frank one night on the steps of his trailer. His mother, Mary Lou, had been a sixteen-year-old high school dropout who’d bewitched a thirty-year-old Vietnam veteran named Bodie Dunkirk, a man with a puny conscience but a healthy respect for the American judicial system. Bodie had looked up “statutory rape” in the county library. “Finish school,” he told Mary Lou, “and I’ll take you anywhere in the world.” So she did. The day after graduation they boarded a plane for Italy and set up housekeeping in a one-room Naples apartment with a communal bathroom up two flights of stairs. The morning Mary Lou found a family of rats nesting in her underwear drawer was the same morning she found out she was pregnant with Bodie’s second baby and—coincidentally—the very same morning the romance officially began to lose its luster.
“I want to go home,” she told Bodie, one-year-old Jimmy on her hip and the latest piece of good news hiccupping inside her.
“Baby, now stop that,” he said. “You know we can’t afford to go nowhere.”
But he managed to go a few places himself. Bodie got out a great deal, in fact—down to the piazza bar to drink Campari and get friendly with the local women. So friendly there came a night he never quite made it home, having forgotten himself in the considerable charms of a dainty Neapolitan ragazza on the rebound from a disaffected suitor. Poor thing, he said to her, poverina, belleza , and next thing he knew they were naked and sweating in a twin bed with musty sheets and the sounds of a rollicking street fight on the piazza below.
Well. Mary Lou was not one to be messed with. She took the news lying down, so to speak, in the arms of a dashing Italian gentleman by the name of Biaggio Antonio DiMaria, who bought her a dozen blood roses, served her a breakfast of figs, flatbread, and limoncello, and set up little Jimmy with a Bullwinkle cartoon in the kitchen before carrying Mary Lou, four months and showing with Bodie’s second child, into the bedroom and closing the door. When she and Jimmy returned home that afternoon, Mary Lou was disheveled,
Biaggio Dunkirk was one of those West Virginia corn-fed badasses who’d seen the inside of a jail cell more than the high school cafeteria. But by the time he hit forty, lit out for Florida to avoid a petty theft sentencing, and moved into the trailer on the Bravo property, he’d decided enough was enough. He’d settled down to a quiet life of peace and the systematic avoidance of extradition, at least until the statute of limitations ran out. Biaggio earned his living as a self-employed moving man, growing busier by the week as fresh arrivals moved into the new homes and developments springing up around and through Utina. And he enjoyed—if you could call it that—a modestly paid but rent-free position at Aberdeen which he’d brokered with Frank in exchange for keeping a general eye out for Arla, Frank’s older sister, Sofia, and the ongoing decay of the old house, which, as Biaggio put it, was less an actual house at this point and was more a concerted effort of termites holding hands. They’d struck the deal while bobbing down Pablo Creek more than a decade ago in a leaky canoe, a cooler of freshly caught redfish between them, and Biaggio had moved into the trailer the next week. The arrangement was no bargain for Biaggio, if you asked Frank, but Biaggio didn’t seem to mind.
As to Biaggio’s name—now there was a story. He’d shared it with Frank one night on the steps of his trailer. His mother, Mary Lou, had been a sixteen-year-old high school dropout who’d bewitched a thirty-year-old Vietnam veteran named Bodie Dunkirk, a man with a puny conscience but a healthy respect for the American judicial system. Bodie had looked up “statutory rape” in the county library. “Finish school,” he told Mary Lou, “and I’ll take you anywhere in the world.” So she did. The day after graduation they boarded a plane for Italy and set up housekeeping in a one-room Naples apartment with a communal bathroom up two flights of stairs. The morning Mary Lou found a family of rats nesting in her underwear drawer was the same morning she found out she was pregnant with Bodie’s second baby and—coincidentally—the very same morning the romance officially began to lose its luster.
“I want to go home,” she told Bodie, one-year-old Jimmy on her hip and the latest piece of good news hiccupping inside her.
“Baby, now stop that,” he said. “You know we can’t afford to go nowhere.”
But he managed to go a few places himself. Bodie got out a great deal, in fact—down to the piazza bar to drink Campari and get friendly with the local women. So friendly there came a night he never quite made it home, having forgotten himself in the considerable charms of a dainty Neapolitan ragazza on the rebound from a disaffected suitor. Poor thing, he said to her, poverina, belleza , and next thing he knew they were naked and sweating in a twin bed with musty sheets and the sounds of a rollicking street fight on the piazza below.
Well. Mary Lou was not one to be messed with. She took the news lying down, so to speak, in the arms of a dashing Italian gentleman by the name of Biaggio Antonio DiMaria, who bought her a dozen blood roses, served her a breakfast of figs, flatbread, and limoncello, and set up little Jimmy with a Bullwinkle cartoon in the kitchen before carrying Mary Lou, four months and showing with Bodie’s second child, into the bedroom and closing the door. When she and Jimmy returned home that afternoon, Mary Lou was disheveled,
Similar Books
