The Continuing Saga of:
”ICICLE BILL and Tommy Two-Head”

Part Four

Chapter Sixteen: Diamonds and Snowflakes

    James Fingerelli was a fixer. A guy who got things done, no questions asked. He possessed all the qualities necessary to accomplish the difficult tasks; physical strength, mental clarity and none of the troublesome hindrances that might get in the way, such as remorse, compassion or conscience. He was cold-blooded and meticulous. These attributes made him a prized commodity among the wealthy and elite Los Angeles social community. No surprise to know that even up-standing citizens sometimes have dirty laundry or smelly trash that needs tending to.

Fingerelli was known around town as Jimmy Fingers. Not only because of the obvious convenience of name shortening, but also because he had the reputation of leaving a trail of broken fingers in his wake. He found that when dealing with a difficult client, a mangled digit or two tended to move the proceedings along. A lot of his work came from the high-rent ivory towers of the L.A. high-rises and the marbled halls and foyers of Beverly Hills mansions. Movie people, judges, attorneys, bankers...people who could afford to have the more sticky and disagreeable situations taken care of by someone like Jimmy Fingers. He had no aversion to wet work and seldom left witnesses.

One of the prestigious law firms Jimmy occasionally did business with had set him on the trail of a missing accountant who’d absconded with a hefty little chunk of their cash assets. One-hundred thousand dollars. His background in detective work and contacts in the L.A. District Attorney’s office lead him to Las Vegas, where he was now trailing some friends of the original target. He hoped they might lead him to the missing funds. It had been slow going the past couple of days, he was getting antsy. He reminded himself what his old dad had taught him, don’t get ahead of yourself, one shovel full at a time.

Jimmy Fingers transplanted to L.A. from the East Coast and everyone just assumed he was mob-connected. Maybe it was the tailored suits he always wore, or the slight South Jersey accent. His origins, however, weren’t quite that intriguing. His old paps was a hard working Italian immigrant and family man who toiled twelve hours a day in a Philadelphia lead factory for laborer’s wages. When Jimmy’s ma fell ill, paps took a side job as a gravedigger. By age ten, young Jimmy was accompanying paps and helping out in the back-breaking work of hand digging six foot deep trenches in the rich Pennsylvania topsoil. When winter fell, so did the snow. The icy flakes falling fresh and cool on his face as the hard work made him sweat under dirt-stained clothing. Sometimes they’d be out all night digging by moonlight. Twenty dollars a grave. Jimmy would make up fantasies during the endless boring nights, imagining that he and paps were digging for buried treasure, or maybe by chance or luck they’d stumble onto gold or diamonds. At the end of the shifts however, all they earned was however many twenties worth of holes they’d dug...and the sore backs and muscles of course.

By his mid-teens, Jimmy had figured out there was far more profit to be had by selling intact corpses to the Ivy League medical schools in and around Philly (for their anatomy classes and medical research). The best prices were paid for pristine skeletons, flesh and debris-free. Through trial and error he found if he secured a corpse in netting and weighted it down properly in a local river, the fish and elements ate away most of the carcass down to the bone. It was no problem securing bodies, after all, he and paps dug the fresh graves themselves. He simply returned the next night after the funeral, re-dug the grave, removed the body and reburied the empty casket. From being exposed to the dead from such a young age, Jimmy was immune to the usual repugnance one associates with death. He actually found graveyards comforting.

Not only was the surrounding landscape usually well-tended and aesthetically appealing, they always reminded him of the time he and his paps got to spend together. The old man would go about the morbid work with cheer and gusto, at times launching into vibrant Italian opera in a lusty baritone. His favorite was Puccini’s ”Nessum dorma” from Turandot...

”Tu pure, o Princessa,
nelia tua fredda stanza
guardi le stelle che treman
d’amore e di speranza!
But my secret lies hidden within me,
no one shall discover my name!”

When Jimmy’s ma and paps died within days of one another just after his seventeenth birthday, he had them cremated just to be safe. He packed a single suitcase and bought a bus ticket to L.A. Halfway there he met a guy in a cafe in Oklahoma City who convinced him to save the bus fare and cash in his ticket. He told him he was driving out to the west coast anyway and could use the company and someone to share the driving. When the friendly traveler turned out to have ulterior motives near Sante Fe, New Mexico, he became Jimmy Fingers’ first live kill. The years of grave digging had given Jimmy incredibly strong arms and hands. When the pervert made a move, Jimmy snapped his forearm in two and proceeded to strangle him without emotion.

He drove the guy’s car the rest of the way to L.A. and thought it a real shame that a valuable corpse had to go to waste. He discarded various body parts along the way, stopping to view the Grand Canyon as he drop-kicked the head over the railing at an inspiringly lovely look-out vista. He chopped off the guy’s fingers and the trip culminated with Jimmy watching the sunset from the Santa Monica pier, as he fed the last of the leftovers to the seagulls and fish.

When Jimmy was pulled over for a traffic infraction and taken in for questioning regarding where the registered owner of the vehicle was, the Hollywood police decided to detain him to investigate.

He told them that he bought the car for cash outside of El Paso and he didn’t know where the registered owner was. He spent what money he had on an attorney who was representing another prisoner in Jimmy’s holding cell. It turned out to be a good investment, as the attorney, Burl Barnes, successfully argued to the court that no crime could be proven or even charged. Jimmy ended up paying the fine on the traffic violation and was released. The attorney took a liking to the serious, intent-looking young man and let him stay at his office, a converted two bedroom ’A’ frame in the heavily Hispanic Huntington Park section of southeast L.A. Jimmy returned the hospitality by acting as driver, body guard, errand boy, jack-of-all-trades around the office.

Although not formally educated beyond a couple of years of high school, Jimmy picked up invaluable knowledge and experience working with lawyers, investigators and judges. Barnes himself was an up-and-comer and sat as a municipal court judge for night court in Huntington Park twice a week. Jimmy soon learned that it wasn’t so much guilt or innocence that determined if a defendant ended up in jail, but it was more who you know or how much you could pay.

Accompanying Barnes to various functions and parties, he also learned that the ones with the most money and influence were the hardest partiers, biggest freaks and worst criminal offenders. When a particularly raucous Beverly Hills party, attended by politicos and movie industry heads, broke up near dawn and the naked body of a young, beautiful starlet was discovered floating in the phallic shaped swimming pool...more than one Hollywood power broker took notice when it was Jimmy who took charge. He fished the body out of the water and quietly attended to the necessities. After that, it became known in certain circles that if things got messy, Jimmy Fingers was the go-to guy.

As in this case. The pay phone jingled like a slot machine as Jimmy fed quarters into it one after another. He punched a series of numbers and waited as it rang on the other end repeatedly. Finally, a tired voice answered.

”Hello.”

”You know who this is?”

There was a long pause. ”Yes.”

”I’m in Las Vegas. I found something here that might be of interest to you...extreme interest.”

Another pause. ”Relating to our previous business?”

”That’s right. I wanted to confirm how you’d like it handled.”

The voice on the other end of the line was a bit trembly, but otherwise, quite clear. ”Completely.”

Jimmy Fingers allowed a rare smile. ”That’s double time you know.”

”Not a problem, just deal with it. How soon can you fulfill the contract?”

”It’s as good as done.”

As Jimmy Fingers hung up the phone, G Lu and Tommy Two-Head exited the diner and passed by within ten yards. Jimmy pulled his hat down over his eyes. As they walked to the car, G Lu was making fun of Tommy for some private joke they’d shared and laughed out loud. It was a deep, resonant laugh, the kind that comes from someone who needs to let out some pent-up emotional baggage. A sweet melodious carefree exclamation like a nightingale song echoed across the parking lot. It made Jimmy Fingers look twice, to notice closely the smiling face of the woman from which such a rhapsodous sound had come. It was a shame sometimes, the tricks that life played upon the living.

G Lu had no way of knowing at that moment, that this light-hearted laughter was to become as rare to her as diamonds and as fleeting as snowflakes.