Final Page: Vito Schillaci
In the third instalment (see previous instalments here) of my ‘Final Page’ series, I now present the last page of my Mafia novel ‘Vito Schillaci’. Though critical response was muted when first published in 1987, the mafia did visit my home, and in my absence, beat my grandmother into a coma. I always felt vindicated by their violence. Enjoy!
VITO SCHILLACI
By
Flann O’Coonassa
Page 344 of 344
…..buttabing, buttabang, bing-bang, bong-bing, eh?” said Vito.
“He’s right,” replied Tony, rising from his chair and beginning a slow-clap that would quickly gather pace until every crook in the assembly was applauding and cheering. No mobster had ever spoken such eloquence and truth. Grown murderers wept openly. Excited hoodlums fired their weapons into the air (much to the chagrin and death of some upstairs tenants).
Hush was only restored when Don Luigi rose slowly from his seat, chewing a mouthful of salami. Like a Roman emperor deliberating on a gladiator’s faith, nobody ever knew the Don’s mind. He walked to Vito and eyeballed him Italianly. All around fell silent.
The Don lifted his hand and smacked Vito’s cheek playfully, but with enough force to leave an imprint from which a palm reader could easily ply their trade. He then pinched the same cheek with the force of a disgruntled lobster, causing Vito’s eyes to water. Lastly, the Don kissed Vito asexually on the lips for a minute and a half.
“What am I gonna do with this guy, eh? You mamaluke, you.” said The Don.
Crippling tension was once again replaced with rapturous applause and cheering.
“Vito’s words,” continued the Don, “have brought peace to the five families. As head of the Luciano family, and leader of this council, I vow that I shall not break the peace that we have created here today.”
“Here, here!,” cried Harry the Homicider, a good-natured homicidal maniac from the west side. Don Luigi immediately took out a revolver and shot Harry in the face eight times (he had to reload after the first six bullets).
“A man who interrupts another man when he’s talking about peace?” said Don Luigi. “Such a man has no respect. And I cannot respect a man who shows no respect in such situations as the one described just moments ago. Such disrespect is not to be respected. But nor is it to be disrespected, because that would makes us hypocrites. Capiche?”
“Wise words, Godfather,” said Tony.
After the removal of Harry’s carcass from the hall, each mobster queued single-file to pinch Vito’s cheek and kiss him asexually on the lips. When all had paid their respects, Vito’s mouth was dripping with the saliva of fifty men and his cheek bone was fractured in four places. Regardless, his expression never flickered.
“And to think,” said the Don, placing a friendly arm around Vito’s shoulders, “I once thought this guy was an undercover cop.” The Don melted into convulsions of laughter. Everyone else followed suit, until the loud crackle of a walkie-talkie quietened the assembly.
“Come in Delta Bravo,” came a muffled voice from Vito’s pocket. “Delta Bravo, this is Charlie One. Hello? Calling Vito. Hellooooo. Come on Vito, it’s me, Mike, down at the precinct. Want to grab a brewskie tonight? Come on buddy, The Policeman’s Ball only comes around once a year? And it’s the ten year anniversary of our graduation. You know, from the academy? The police academy, I mean? I don’t know why I said that. What other academies have you graduated from, eh? Come on buddy, come for a beer tonight. You’ve been working too hard lately. As an undercover cop. Yep, the old undercover cop-aroony. Doin the copin. Under the old cover-aroonies. Hello, Vito? You there? Oh wait…shit, are you doing that Mafia counsel thing tonight? Cough if you can’t talk.”
Vito coughed, but it was too late.
“Eh, eh, eh,” he remonstrated as several goons seized him and unburdened him of some fresh salami he’d been hoping to bite into. Tony frisked Vito’s pin-striped suit, removing from various pockets the culprit walkie-talkie, a police badge, a gun, a membership card for the police sport & social club, a wallet containing a picture of Vito in his police uniform with the caption ‘Cop of the Year 1984’, and a standard issue police truncheon.
“It’s not what it looks like,” said Vito.
“I loved you like a son,” said Don Luigi.
“We only met forty minutes ago,” answered Vito.
“Well it feels longer. And your disrespect? It cuts me. Cuts me deep in the buttabalingas. And now I have to kill you.”
Vito smiled.
“No, you won’t kill me Don Luigi. You know why? Because deep down, I see good in you. I see a man whose heart beats with the love of…”
Don Luigi took out his revolver and shot Vito in the face fifteen times (two reloads). His carcass was found in the East river by a police-trained beaver. The beaver gnawed away over a kilogram of flesh from Vito’s neck and chin before his handler arrived on the scene, leading to the permanent termination of the disastrous Police Beaver program.
The NYPD tried to find homes for the sixty odd beavers in their charge, but most were too battle-hardened and disturbed to be reintegrated successfully into the wild, or beaver sanctuaries. Most were euthanised with pitchforks or sold to glue farms, but two escaped into the city sewers and briefly terrorised lower Manhattan before they were shot and killed by an off-duty Canadian Mounty outside a pizzeria in Little Italy.
THE END
(dedicated to every beaver who died in the line of duty during the existence of the Police Beaver program)
Ah, I remember this one, Flann. I know you state here that critical response was muted, but you’re too modest. I recall one reviewer’s calling it “long-winded, meandering waffle masquerading as some sort of pointless challenge to Mario Puzo; peel back its slithery skin and you’ll see it for what it really is – a 350 page essay chronicling the author’s obsession with beaver.”
Truly, your grasp on metaphor and fable almost blind-sided all of us. Even less-than-kind reviewers eventually understood your dedication to the little furry things.
I believe that particular review was in the New York Times Sweary. Being compared negatively or positively to that scribbler Mario Puzo always sickens me.
We were friendly in the 60s, and I edited an early draft of The Godfather. I had to talk him down from having the titular character be a mechanised droid — and this is pre-Terminator franchise, when mechanised droids were even more preposterous than today.
Also, in that draft’s denouement, Puzo had the Corleones doing combat with a giant crab in The Falkland islands. Again, I had to convince him that such absurdities worked against the natural grit of a Mafia tale.
Criticism levelled at me over beaver-based incursions into my novel have been unfair. There were no beavers in my first draft. There were tonnes of otters, but no beavers. It was my slimy agent who convinced me to swap the mammals, saying it would “…take my career to the next step”. Mercifully, he was killed in a car crash the year after publishing.
You mean you prevented any chance of the world’s watching Al Pacino do battle with a giant crab on the silver screen?
You, sir, are a monster.
Back then, there was no talk of film adaptations Sweary. And even if there was, what kind of giant crab would have been rendered by the shoddy special effects of the day? I refer you to films such as Jason and the Argonauts for reference.
Besides, Pacino went on to act opposite Keanu Reeves in The Devil’s Advocate, and I’ve always found Reeves to be crustacean-like in the depth of emotion he brings to his roles.
Unputdownable. Unlike Vito. Or the beavers.
Drink a toast to the dead beavers Galwaywegian. Or honour them by dousing the floor with a beer this weekend, even if it annoys the proprietor of the establishment.
Love the book ‘Vito Schillaci’, but the entire, 52-page chapter on the nuances of how and when to use the phrase ‘furget-bout-it’?….doesn’t really work on paper lad.
Also whats with your constant and never-ending ‘Jason and the Argonauts’ bashing Flann? The CGI in it is quite simply staggering……then again I’ve only just come out of a coma I’ve been in since 1963…..but i still fail to see how they could have ever surpassed the sheer realism of skeletons with swords…….
You missed the point VinnyK. The 52 page chapter is not about when to use the phrase ‘furget-bout-it’. It’s about when NOT to use the phrase ‘furget-bout-it’.
For example, using that phrase in the presence of the senile, forgetful parent of a Godfather is regarded as a great insult. Unless you’re a ‘made man’, such a slight will most likely see you shot twice in the head, as a warning about your future conduct.
Also, on your coma VinnyK, may I be the first to say welcome to the world of the future. I’ve got some bad news though. Remember that talented kid you last saw fronting The Jackson Five. I’m sorry man. He didn’t make it.
Little Mickey didn’t make it?
What could have happened?
Ah this is heartbreaking, kids loved him and he loved playing with them….although i’m sure he grew out of that as he got older. Still I’ll have always have the image of that cherubic, slight-tubby black face to remind me of him….
He changed quite a bit over the years, since you last saw him VinnyK. For example, he moved from Indiana to California, and I believe he turned vegetarian. Also, he lost his love of the clarinet. They were subtle changes, but noticeable nevertheless.
Yeah subtle enough changes alright.
I always thought with his high profile and the way people of all colours and creeds adored him that he would become a great leader and when I came out of the coma and someone told me the US had a black President I thought for sure it was him.
Still I’m sure the music did all this talking and that no-one ever talked bout the colour of his skin.
Truly, it didn’t matter whether he was black or white.
And Flann, say what you like about Keanu Reeves’ hard, red shell and soft, sweet inside, but he was more M&M than you’ll ever b…
I think I’m going to go lie down for a bit.
VinnyK, there were an isolated few murmurings about his occasional dalliances in the world of child molestation charges, his mild shift from chocolate brown to albino white, and the endless surgical reshaping of his African American male features into those of a white woman’s. But sure you’ll always get nit-pickers.
Sweary, I ain’t got no beef with Keanu Reeves. He’s the actor Pat Kenny could have been, had the call of hard-edged current affairs not seduced him.
Wonderful. Touching. Moving.
One beaver made it, Flann. One did. And it… No, that’s all I may say.
If a beaver did indeed survive Meadow, rest assured a Canadian Mountie will hunt it down. There is nothing on this earth more ruthless, nor more determined, than a Canadian Mountie.