Bressio Read online

  “Now,” said Bressio.

  “This isn’t your apartment. You don’t pay the rent. The lease isn’t in your name. You can’t come in here if I don’t want you to.”

  Bressio brushed her aside and found Bobbi in the living room. Bobbi was eating an apple and watching Maude. Clarissa waited by the door to the living room, her arms folded, her foot tapping out impatience.

  “Hello, Bobbi,” said Bressio. “I want to talk to you.”

  Bobbi did not take her eyes off the television screen. Bressio turned off the set. Bobbi still refused to look at him.

  “This is probably too important a decision for you to make, Bobbi, but I think you’re going to have to make it anyhow. You can’t stay here any longer, and there are two places you can go. You can go to a home with a bunch of other kids your age, or you can live with a woman who has at least one son about five years older than you. Which would you like?”

  Bobbi bit into the apple, taking a too big bite for her mouth.

  “Where would you like to go, kid?” asked Bressio. “If you don’t make up your mind, I’ll have to do it for you.”

  “She’s just a kid, Al, what the hell do you think you’re asking her?” snapped Clarissa.

  “She might as well make a choice. She’s got to live with it.”

  “It’s you who doesn’t want to make the choice, Al. You’re the one.”

  “Do you talk, Bobbi?” asked Bressio.

  The little girl shook her head. Clarissa had put her hair up in curlers. They bobbed when she shook her head.

  “Who do you want to go with?” asked Bressio, and as the little girl turned to him to bury her head in his massive stomach he was awesomely sorry he had asked that question.

  “I want to go with you,” said Bobbi, and she began to cry and Bressio was beginning to cry, and as if he wasn’t in bad enough shape, Bobbi Cutler Fleish explained she wanted to go with him because he was a nice man.

  “He’s a very nice man, honey,” said Clarissa. “He’s a beautiful man. He’s our man.” And she went to Bressio and Bobbi and made it a threesome by enfolding them with her arms.

  “Rot in hell, L. Marvin,” screamed out Alphonse Joseph Bressio whose arms were so occupied he couldn’t even get to his gun to put a bullet in his own head, even if he wanted to, which he fleetingly considered with a multitude of other current nonopportunities. “Damn you, L. Marvin.”

  And he heard Clarissa confide to Bobbi that he always made a lot of terrible noises, but really he was just one big teddy bear. “You’ll find a lot of people think he’s dangerous, but he’s just a big roly-poly pushover. See. Push here.”

  With great will, Bressio resisted the strong desire to run into a wall, and finally the women let him go when he promised to go outside and bring back a pizza. Both of them were laughing when he left the apartment.

  At the pizza parlor, two big toughs in black motorcycle jackets and black boots, with chains dangling from their wide black belts, wanted their slices immediately before the counterman made Bressio’s pizza to go. There was a minor discussion over this matter, when one Alphonse Joseph Bressio did suffer an assault by said young man, who in front of witnesses did lay hand to arm of one Alphonse Joseph Bressio. In defense of his person, Bressio beat the pair groggy.

  This did not go unnoticed by the landlord, who was passing by for an evening stroll. He commented that Bressio had helped bring a certain peaceful order to the neighborhood, which had been suffering lately from a rowdy element.

  “I am glad that I could be of service, Mr. Felli,” said Bressio.

  The two walked down Queens Boulevard together with Bressio steadying the pizza carton to keep the oil from his clothes.

  There was a matter that Alphonse might be concerned with, said Felli. It concerned the tragedy of Joseph Bugellerio and his poor mother, who was now left with only one son to support her. There was no one, and this should be well understood, who blamed Alphonse for the accident at Pren Street. Yet here was this poor widow who had lost three of her four sons, and Don Carmine was being strapped by his charity. She did not need much of a contribution from other sources for her maintenance. Just a little thing. Twenty-five dollars a week. A little thing.

  “Yes, a small thing,” said Bressio. “The small things.” Bressio noticed that the pizza carton was beginning to sag, so he quickly agreed to make that small contribution, saying he felt better about the tragedy now that he knew his mother’s second cousin was being taken care of.

  “I must run now. With all pardons,” he said. “Please give my respects to Don Carmine.”

  About the Author

  Richard Ben Sapir (1936–1987) was born in Brooklyn, New York, and he graduated from Columbia University. He worked as a journalist for the Associated Press before becoming a fiction writer. He was the coauthor, with Warren Murphy, of the Destroyer series of men’s action-adventure novels, which later became the basis for a movie titled Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins. Sapir’s first hardcover book was Bressio, followed by his favorite, The Far Arena. His novel The Body was adapted into a film starring Antonio Banderas and Derek Jacobi. Sapir’s fourth novel was Spies.

  The author died shortly after submitting the manuscript for his final and highly acclaimed work, Quest, which his editors found to be so well written that no changes were made before publication. It was named an alternate selection for the Book of the Month Club. That same year, the New York Times called Sapir “a brilliant professional.”

  Photo ©Cindy Pitou Burton

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1975 by Richard Ben Sapir

  Cover design by Mauricio Díaz

  ISBN: 978-1-5040-2163-0

  This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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  RICHARD BEN SAPIR

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