Repeat Business

By Joe Carufe

Angie Torino is a happy young wife living in upstate New York with two beautiful children and a husband, Gianni, who is her soul mate. She’s also a psychic who sees things before they happen, except when they’re about to happen to her. that’s why she cant foresee the sudden snowstorm that’s about to change her and Gianni&

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stratton Press
• Release date: Jun 3, 2019
• ISBN: 9781643455631

Joe Carufe

Joe Carufe is a freelance writer and landscape contractor in Naples, Florida. Born in 1955 in Cold Spring, New York, he is widowed and has two grown daughters. He has written hundreds of newspaper and magazine features for publications in New York and South Florida, with subject matter ranging from live sports to horticulture, His work has appeared in the New York Daily News and he has been featured on National Public Radio's "All Things Considered." Repeat Business is his first novel.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Darkness descended like a curtain as the snow crunched under Gianni’s feet. A crust of evening ice slowly replaced the afternoon slush as the temperature plummeted, but Gianni barely noticed. He was sweating beneath his olive green field jacket as he continued his slippery but steady climb up the steep mountain path through cold gray stands of bare sugar maples, hickories, and oaks. He had been following a bright red polka dot trail of blood for more than two hours, but his common sense told him that he should head back down the mountain; he could pick up the trail again in the morning. He was after a big buck that he shot with the twelve-gauge his father gave him six years ago for his sixteenth birthday. He could swear that the slug pierced the big buck’s hide just below the left shoulder blade. He had nailed at least half a dozen deer in that same exact spot from the same angle, and they always dropped in an instant.

But this buck just looked over his shoulder at Gianni and stared him down. Gianni Torino had hunted New York’s Hudson Highlands with his old man, by himself, or with his buddies ever since he was a little guy, and he never felt like there was anything wrong with killing an animal for a freezer full of meat. But this magnificent creature fired its own shot into Gianni’s soul from the double barrel of its deep brown eyes. For the first time in his life, Gianni wished that he hadn’t squeezed the trigger. The buck’s stare never wavered, even as he bowed his big eight-point rack and dropped to a foreleg. Just as Gianni was about to squeeze off another round and put the animal down, the deer gave a loud snort and blew a plume of thick white vapor that drifted into the frigid and blustery December air. Gianni froze. The deer struggled to its hooves and stumbled toward the steep, rocky slopes of Bull Hill. Gianni couldn’t believe his eyes when the beast began to move more surely and picked up the pace.

He screamed into the cold twilight, and it echoed back from the nearby outcropping of cliffs and huge black basalt boulders that the deer had disappeared behind.

Gianni shook off his dismay and trudged off after the buck, one crunchy, frustrated step after the other. Logic told him to head home and have a nice hot shower, a cold beer, and then dinner with Angie and their two kids. For a brief instant, Gianni once more entertained the idea of turning back. But then a snowflake fluttered to the ground before him, and then another.

Oh crap, Gianni muttered under his breath as they snow began to fall in earnest. Again he screamed to the wind and moved on after the deer, because if it continued to snow, the trail of blood would be covered. He knew the mountainside well enough to find his way down in the dark; if the deer had collapsed, he’d catch up to the animal and finish it off. Then he could pull the poor creature off the path, cover it with some branches, and come back up in the morning to drag it down the mountain.

It was dark enough now that Gianni could see the twinkling lights of the tidy, historic village of Cold Spring below on the east bank of the Hudson River. Angie was down there waiting for him in their cozy house, and he was up here on the mountain, chasing a deer in a twilight snowstorm. He pondered his predicament as he eyeballed the trail, which climbed steadily around the nearly vertical face of a cliff. Either the buck stopped bleeding or it was too dark to see the blood drops, and the snow didn’t help. Gianni sensed that the big bastard had been here. It was the only way around the cliff, and he doubted that it headed back down the mountain. So onward he climbed, up the steep incline until it began to level off and then circle around behind the top of the cliff. Once he got up there, he saw a seemingly endless meadow of tall, wind-rattled mountain grass and clumps of scrub oaks, a perfect spot for a wounded animal to lie down and die, or at least rest until it moved on again. The snow was coming down harder now, like a frozen cotton blanket settling over him. It was getting darker, and the footing was getting more slippery by the second. The snow was sticking to the feathery tips of the tall grass, which whipped against his legs as he made his way toward the granite ledge that capped the cliff face. It was at least a 100-foot drop to the forest floor below.

He looked around, groaned, and blew air through his lips. No buck in sight; he had almost expected to see it. That big slug must have lodged somewhere near its heart. It ripped through muscle to get there. What kind of super-beast was he dealing with?

Gianni dusted the snow off one of the big rocks strewn around the ledge and sat down on it with a sigh. He flicked the snow off the bill of his woolen New York Yankees cap and reached into the breast pocket of his field jacket for a pack of Marlboros. He had begun smoking when he was fourteen, about eight years earlier, when his buddy Nipsy Joe Russo coaxed him into trying a Marlboro red after altar boy practice. Even though he had coughed at first, it was basically love at first drag, and here he was eight years later, in 1973, faithfully smoking a pack a day. He cupped his hands around the carcinogenic cylinder of select Virginia tobaccos and lit it after several tries. He tapped his right foot nervously as he looked out over the valley. From this 1,400-foot perch, on a crystal clear day, you could look fifty-five miles due south and make out the spire of the Empire State Building, the World Trade Center towers, and the George Washington Bridge. But there was nothing clear about the view this evening, not with the snowflakes coming down fast and furious. The steep, winding path down the mountain was surely a treacherous, icy mess by now. It was high time to get his ass in gear as soon as he finished his moker. That’s what they called cigarettes back in Our Lady of Loretto Catholic School in Cold Spring. He took the shotgun from his shoulder, and he propped it up against a twisted piece of pine. He had no idea that he had just released the safety button at the same time.

Gianni thought about the buck running around somewhere on top of this mountain with a slug buried murderously close to its heart. The poor beast!

He imagined Angie in the kitchen of their Dutch Colonial house, his young daughter Sophie’s flaming little red head bobbing around and drooling on her shoulder. He pictured Angie rubbing the beady condensation from the kitchen window and looking out into the dark as she held their child. Gianni knew that she was somehow projecting the scene into his mind. He had given up trying to figure out how she did it. Was she really a witch? The good people of Cold Spring often asked each other just that question, whether it was whispered in the shopping aisles of the local Grand Union or bellowed over beer at Ollie’s Tavern. When they were drunk enough, Gianni’s compadres would ask him directly whether or not his old lady was a little, you know, spooky. Could she really read people’s minds and talk to the dead? All Gianni could do in response was to shrug his shoulders and grin crookedly. Angie was young, and she was sexy. She was definitely a great wife and a dynamite mom far beyond her twenty years. At times, however, she was undoubtedly spooky.

He shook the snow off his hat again and reached down to pick up his shotgun. It was covered with a coating of puffy white flakes, and the stock was cold and slick. He pushed himself up from the rock he had been sitting on with his left hand and tried to get his right hand through the shotgun’s sling at the same time. But his foot slid out away from him, and he lost his balance just long enough to lose his grip on the slippery gun. It fell and then did a three-sixty and began sliding down the icy ledge.

Idiot! Gianni yelled at himself as he watched the weapon whisk its way toward the edge of the cliff. It hit a bump in the rock and slowed down before it finally came to a stop on a little snag, about six inches from going deep six. Gianni stared disbelievingly at the shotgun. It was too risky to try and inch his way down there to get it. It was about fifteen feet away, and the icy ledge was angled just enough to make it an insane endeavor. The rocks at the base of the cliff were jagged and a long way down, and if he somehow survived the plunge, he’d be one sloppy pile of ground beef.

He sat back down on the boulder. He shook a cigarette out of the pack and fired it up. The big question, of course, was whether he should devise a way to retrieve his shotgun and head on down the mountain, or do the wise thing and leave it there till morning and come back up with a rope. The answer came to him in the form of Angie’s sweet voice, crystal clear in Gianni’s mind. Don’t be a fool! Get your tail down the mountain before the snow turns that ledge into a laundry chute! The stupid gun isn’t going to jump off the ledge! He could see her emerald eyes flashing.

True enough, the gun wasn’t going anywhere. And the snow was coming down like a son of a bitch, which meant that every minute he was up there at the top of the mountain would make it that much harder to get back down. But the fact that it was snowing so hard was all the more reason he wanted to get his old Winchester. He and his old man spent some of their greatest father-and-son moments together with that shotgun in Gianni’s hands. He remembered the two of them going up river to Sandy Beach on a cold March day and shooting at empty cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer for target practice. The following year, on the first day of hunting season, he nailed his first buck, a four pointer, with that gun. Sorry, Angie, he said out loud into the frigid New York night. The shotgun is coming home with me.

When he finished his cigarette, Gianni got back up and began walking around in the snowy meadow behind the ledge. He was looking for a branch or a long stick, maybe about eight feet long. The pure whiteness of the snow was making it bright enough for him to see his way around, the only bonus that this lousy evening afforded him thus far. The stick had to have a nub somewhere near one end so that he could somehow hook the gun and pull it up the hill toward him. He’d work his way carefully down the ledge to where he could get a foothold. Then he’d be about three yards away from the shotgun. If the branch was any longer, he wouldn’t be able to control it. He shuddered as a momentary chill of fear rushed through him, and he tried to fight it off.

Gianni looked up at the driving snow, which was now coming down at a furious pace. He longed to be home with Angie and the brats, but even with the best of luck he was a couple of hours away. He pictured himself and his woman rolling around on the floor with little Sophie and her brother, Stevie, the house warmed by a venison roast in the oven and logs burning in the wood stove. These musings were interrupted when Gianni tripped over a slender fallen oak, its roots upturned by some God-forsaken storm like the one that was brewing tonight. The wind was whipping across the Hudson and blowing up the mountain now. The snow was finding its way down the back of his neck, and he turned up his collar. He got up and dusted the snow off his coat and walked over to the oak tree he had tripped over. There was a branch coming horizontally off it about a foot above the ground, and he jumped up and came down on it. It broke off, and he snapped the brittle branches off the tip, leaving a few jagged stubs that would allow him to snag the shotgun. The stick was at least eight feet long. Perfect.

Gianni wiggled his toes through his army boots and two pairs of sweat socks. Snow was already melting through the black leather, and the tips of his socks were soaked. His size 12 Sicilian gondolas were getting numb, but he gingerly walked back to the ledge with his makeshift retrieving stick. The first thing he did when he got back to the big rock he’d been sitting on was to lower the stick beside him so that he could use it as a handrail. Then he lowered himself onto the ledge. He tucked his left foot under his rear end and extended his right leg all the way out. He inched his way down, his foot barely able to keep him from sliding. The fat end of the branch was wedged up against the side of the big rock and was holding nicely. The foothold was agonizingly close, but he was traveling at a caterpillar’s pace, and it was taking forever. When the heel of his boot finally came to rest on the bump in the ledge, Gianni exhaled loudly, and a long plume of vapor dissipated into the wind. He had been unconsciously holding his breath.

For a brief instant, Angie made another appearance in his psyche, telling him that he had to be out of his mind. She was standing just outside the kitchen door, looking out through the snowy darkness in the general direction of the cliff he was sitting on. She shook her head, her long wavy hair sending off a snowy spray in all directions. Gianni tried to clear Angie’s image from his mind. He got back to the business at hand, carefully freeing up his stick and working it down to where he could maneuver it. He steadied his weight and choked up on the stick, holding it about a foot away from the fat end. He inched the skinny end toward the shotgun, hoping to snag it behind the trigger guard. The shotgun was already covered with a good half inch of snow, making it barely visible. Luckily, he knew that the gun was pointed away from him. Even though the safety was on, he figured, the odds were never very good when you were tempting fate. Gianni managed to get the tip of the stick just past the gun. Then he pulled it back toward him, nice and slow. Finally, the nub took hold, most likely on the trigger guard. He gave a slight tug, and the shotgun slid toward him slowly. Encouraged, he began to whistle Here Comes the Sun by the Beatles. He gave another tug, and the gun moved a little more. It might take a while at this rate, but soon he’d have the shotgun back in his grasp.

But Gianni’s foot had fallen asleep under his butt, and the other foot was numb. He had to work faster. He tugged a little harder this time.

Boom! The blast echoed through the valley below. Gianni let out a yell and then unconsciously let go of the stick. His lead foot slipped off the bump in the rock, and he began to slide down the ledge. He tried to dig in with his hands, but all he could grab were handfuls of snow. He watched the shotgun spin around from the blast, and he groaned as it plunged over the edge and into the darkness. His feet went first, and then his butt, and then he was over the cliff, with nothing between his plummeting body and the rocks below but a sea of swirling snowflakes.

Chapter 2

Angie looked out the kitchen window at the clouds gathering in the twilight. The anemic winter sun managed to shine through a few times that day, but the storm coming at them from the west was gaining ground. The morning news on WABC radio in New York said that there was a slight chance of a dusting that coming night, but they hadn’t counted on the storm tapping into the moisture that was wafting up from the Gulf of Mexico. Now they were saying twelve inches might pile up; it could break the record of ten inches for that date. Angie was listening to Superstitious by Stevie Wonder on the radio, bopping around the kitchen and mouthing the words. It almost kept her from worrying about Gianni. Stevie was in the playpen in the living room chewing on his GI Joe doll, and Sophie was cooing to herself in the little wind-up swing set up in the corner of the kitchen. The click-clock sound of the swing rocking back and forth kept time with Stevie Wonder’s funky beat.

Angie glanced out the window again. The clouds were low and fat now and appeared heavy with snow. They were obscuring the top of Bull Hill, and Angie wondered if Gianni had the sense to come home before the snow began to pelt his thick Sicilian skull. In her mind’s eye, she saw the image of her husband following a buck, chasing it up the mountain like a crazed Bantu tribesman. Angie didn’t know why the images came to her, but she couldn’t escape them, and they were usually on the money.

Angie walked into the living room to check on Stevie. He was suddenly quiet, probably taking a crap. She nervously looked out the picture window into the evening gloom. From between Reilly’s and Russo’s houses across Sycamore Street, she could see that the wind was whipping the choppy Hudson into a frenzy. The crown of Crow’s Nest Mountain on the opposite side of the river appeared to be decapitated at the shoulders. Soon the granite cliffs would tear the dark gray underbellies of the clouds, and they would bleed snowflakes. Angie picked up her chubby two-year-old son with a grunt and held him up for a stink check. The coast was clear, and she set him back down in the playpen. He immediately resumed gnawing on GI Joe’s plastic torso. Stevie was a carbon copy of Gianni, with dark eyes and curly black hair, and he had same crooked half smile that his daddy wore. Angie tousled his hair, walked back into the kitchen, and gave Sophie’s swing a couple of cranks. The baby rocked back and forth contentedly, green eyes glowing just like her mama’s, her curly red hair spilling in ringlets over her ears and forehead.

Angie walked over to the kitchen door, opened it, and stepped out into the cold. A frigid gust of wind rearranged her long wavy brown hair and reinforced the uneasy chill she was feeling. Gianni was in trouble. She could sense it. She hated the winter. She had dreamed about moving to hot, sultry South Florida ever since she could remember. She figured that it would never happen, but at least the thought of it warmed her.

Angie’s tropical reverie ended abruptly when something perched on her eyelash. She blinked it away, and it landed frostily on her warm cheek. She looked up at the leaden sky. Oh, for God’s sake, she said with a sigh. It was snowing, and it was coming down harder by the second.

Come home, Gianni, she whispered into the wind. And then another image came to her. The details were fuzzy, but she saw what appeared to be a shotgun covered with a dusting of snow. Was she seeing Gianni’s shotgun?

Whatever you’re up to, Gianni, let it go until tomorrow, she said aloud. Don’t be a fool.

She wrapped her arms around herself and looked out at the black basalt cliffs of Mount Taurus; they were already frosted white with new fallen snow. She felt a rippling in the pit of her stomach like one would have on a rapidly descending elevator. Her knees buckled, her eyelids fluttered, and then everything went black as she passed out and collapsed onto the new-fallen snow. As she lay there on frozen ground, she had a dream, but it was like none she ever had. Everything Angie saw was through Gianni’s eyes.

Chapter 3

Angie dreamed that Gianni’s last thought before he exited his rapidly descending body was that he would miss her. And then suddenly he was out of his body, floating down among the snowflakes. He watched with detached fascination as his body tumbled end over end like a football. He saw it take a bad bounce off a big boulder jutting out from the cliff face about halfway down to the forest floor. He heard a loud snap as his right leg cracked backward like a door pulled off its hinges, and then the bones in his left arm splintered when they slapped up against the gnarled branch of a massive white oak.

Mercifully, Gianni felt no pain at this point, but the idea of what was happening to his erstwhile body was appalling to him. It dawned on him that he was still Gianni, minus his physical form. As he watched his bloody body being torn to shreds by the jagged icy mountainside, he felt a wave of relief that he wasn’t trapped inside it. Gianni wondered what he looked like outside of his body’s shell. He suddenly realized that his viewpoint could be wherever he wanted it to be, not limited by a pair of eyes. The thought of it was exhilarating. He turned his focus on his form and saw a dazzling ring of swirling light pulsing with spiritual energy. There was nothing physical about him, yet he was quite beautiful.

His morbid curiosity got the best of him, and he turned his attention back on his body, which was still falling. It bounced and tumbled a few more times and finally landed hard on a snowy boulder. It made a sound like a ripe watermelon slamming into a cement stoop. His body was dead, chilling rapidly in the frozen darkness.

Gianni hovered above the scene, feeling guilty that his death didn’t bother him as much as it should have. After all, he just made Angie a widow and left a couple of babies fatherless. The thought of it filled him with overwhelming sadness. He had been a young man with a life full of promise and potential. The timing sucked. Maybe the hardest part of all this was admitting that he had basically died of his own stupidity. To take a dive off an icy cliff while trying a fetch an old shotgun wasn’t exactly a brilliant move.

He zeroed in on his crumpled body to inspect the damage. He marveled that he could be so detached while watching his brains ooze out of his head and stain the snow a nasty pinkish gray. In horrified fascination, he noted that his right leg was behind his left shoulder and his left foot was pointing backward. Blood was seeping through his clothing in various locations and melting the snow