Chapter Text
Secondo fed another quarter into the gas station pay phone and stoically soaked up Primo’s admonishments. He’d been saddled with the unenviable task of making the weekly check-in call – something their older brother had insisted on since Vegas – after losing rock, paper, scissors. His younger brothers leaned against the camper, pleased to be out of the direct firing line of Primo’s wrath, though the occasional snippet was audible even from a distance.
It had been wildly optimistic to hope the current Papa would remain ignorant about the events at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In the days since they left Cleveland, the break-in had made national news. Thankfully, there didn’t seem to be anyone pursuing them. In fact, their amateur efforts to rearrange the exhibits had become a sort of joke, a wacky anecdote in the would-you-believe-it segments between the hard news and antidepressant commercials.
Their older brother did not find it amusing, however.
“How did he even know it was us?” Terzo attempted to whisper, then flinched back when the phone squawked in response.
“It was hardly the heist of the century, was it? You left a bunch of Nihil’s old shit and a sample of your handwriting, for Lucifer’s sake. A child too dim to play Cluedo could have put the pieces together! The parking ticket from Cleveland that arrived on my desk this morning merely confirmed what I already knew.”
“Merda,” they all mouthed simultaneously.
There was a prolonged groan down the phone line and Secondo imagined the older man rubbing his forehead in exasperation. He’d observed the gesture many times over the years – usually in response to Terzo’s antics - and knew it signalled his anger was running out of steam and heading to a station called consequences.
“Look, I know some of the things that have happened this summer were beyond your control, but the rest were because of your actions, your decisions. I expect you to take this seriously and yet…It is like you are determined to one-up each other in the stupidity stakes. And trust me, no one wins.”
Secondo bristled, stung by the insult to his intelligence, especially when he had wanted nothing to do with this infernal trip in the first place. Deays of driving while looking over his shoulder, certain they were being followed by whichever authority chased down museum meddlers, had left him mentally and physically exhausted. Sharing the small space with his brothers was rapidly chipping away at whatever emotional reserves he had left.
“Look, the museum wasn’t my idea and-“
“And you did it anyway,” Primo sighed. “Fortunately for you lot, you have a stay of execution. I cannot deal with this right now. Imperator is riding my ass about the upcoming Synod and Father is having one of his episodes where he thinks the whole place is going to burn down.”
“I’m sorry, fratello,” Secondo said stiffly. The concession felt heavy on his tongue but he hoped it might placate him. “For the stunt at the Rock Hall and that you’re having to deal with all that alone. Perhaps if we came home, we could help?”
“No. The best way you can help is by staying out of my already thinning hair and keeping a low profile. Do something low key, eh? See a movie. Go to a sports game. Hell, take a nap for all I care. Anything where you will not end up on national television. If you can manage that for the next week, I might just be able to forget about this latest…incident.”
The three of them made the appropriate noises of contrition and reassurance before their credit ran out and the line went dead.
“So…what now then?” Terzo clapped his hands with a grin. “Where are we anyway?”
“Just outside of Pittsburgh,” Secondo said, replacing the phone receiver wearily.
Copia’s eyes lit up. “Pittsburgh? I might have an idea.”
“You heard Primo. It is nothing too wild?” One of Secondo’s brows arched in suspicion, ignoring Terzo’s muttering about embracing Lucifer’s spirit of rebellion.
“It’s sedate enough even nostro fratello would approve.”
***
“I think I have seen more life in the Ministry’s crypts.” Terzo wrinkled his nose as he peered around the brutalist architecture of Three Rivers Stadium, home to the Pittsburgh Pirates baseball team. The atmosphere was tense despite the upbeat music being piped in. More than half of the plastic seats were empty and the fans that occupied the remainder sat watching sullenly as the team’s mascot - a bird of some sort – pumped his wings in time with 2 Unlimited’s Get Ready for This. He was the liveliest thing in the place and yet, the green fur of his suit looked as bedraggled and unwashed as the rest of the stadium.
They paused on the way to their seats to watch the bird in morbid fascination for a moment, each of them wondering how he managed to keep his energy up enough to look that ridiculous in the face of the crowd’s indifference.
As they resumed edging along the row to their seats, Copia spoke in a voice low enough that the stony-faced fans nearby wouldn’t hear him. “They’re playing the Cincinnati Reds. Apparently, they have this huge rivalry. And they’re not having the best season. I guess that’s how I managed to get seats so close to the field. You could at least try and enjoy this,” he added accusingly at Secondo.
His older brother had been in a sour mood since the call home. He’d expected bitching from Terzo so it came as a surprise when Secondo was the one to complain when they rocked up at the dilapidated stadium. Along with the sulking, hostile fans it was setting him on edge. He’d grossly overcompensated on the snacks as a result, as well as caved in to Terzo’s demand for one of the outsized, foam hands they’d seen in the movies - decisions he regretted when they drew the attention of the stadium’s jumbotron.
The crowd laughed unkindly at the announcer’s patter about their embarrassment of comestible riches as a close-up of the trio flashed up on the large central screens. Copia froze in the row as if this would somehow make him invisible, the carefully constructed Jenga tower of popcorn, peanuts and nachos wobbling precariously. Thankfully, Terzo’s ego came to the rescue – or at least drew attention away from the red-faced teenager – when he blew a kiss in the direction of the camera with the giant foam hand. The shot soon cut to someone else when he started to mime deep throating the hotdog he carried.
Secondo shoved his own hotdog at Terzo with a snarl. “Can you please for once not draw attention to yourself? And you can have this, I’m no longer in the mood for it.”
Copia tried to make peace, though he couldn’t deny he was suppressing his own Terzo-related frankfurter phobia. “Come on, you like sports,” Copia coaxed the elder brother as they finally sat down. They really did have great seats, just above the dugout, and he was killing his buzz.
“I like football. I like hockey. But this? We’re in the ass-end of nowhere to watch what looks like a girl’s game played by men in pyjamas,” Secondo grumbled, slouching on his seat.
Terzo scoffed and prodded him in the chest with the foam finger. “Lighten up, fratello. It is our first sporting event in the US so it is fitting that it is ‘the American pastime’, no?” Copia nodded, grateful for his brother’s support until he opened his mouth again. “And anyway, the players’ asses look magnifico in the pyjamas…”
“For the love of Lucifer, can we please just enjoy the game?” Copia groaned.
Terzo’s retort never materialised as the music cut off and the lights went down, plunging the stadium into the early evening twilight. The announcer’s voice reverberated around the space with a boom the brothers could feel in their teeth.
“Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls! Please rise for our national anthem.”
Secondo leaned across Terzo and tapped Copia on the shoulder as the entire stadium rose to their feet. “They sell beer here, si?”
The youngest brother nodded and Secondo exhaled in relief. He went to fish out his wallet just as a spot lit figure glided across the field. “Good. I’m going to need one. You’re driving tonight, Terzo.”
The raven-haired man shrugged, his mouth too full of hotdog to respond, as the singer started.
“Oh, say can you see?”
Copia tried to arrange his features into the same expression he adopted when served broccoli at a friend’s house. The big, public patriotic displays they’d encountered during their trip were entirely foreign to them. It just wasn’t something you did when your country had had a fairly recent flirtation with fascism. They shared their compatriots’ wariness and unease about the short path from flag-waving to sending the tanks rolling through the capital. And anyway, every Italian knew Italia was the best without making a song and dance about it.
But it felt rude to be as openly dismissive as his brothers when the singer was giving it her all. It might have been a Tuesday night in a half-empty stadium but the young woman belted out the first line like a pop diva desperate for a comeback. His sympathy wavered, however, as she hit the final word in the first line, splitting it into a florid, tremulous symphony in its own right. The three of them winced as the ancient audio system whined and distorted in protest.
“Make that several beers,” Secondo muttered.
***
The game was slow to start. Secondo brooded and sunk at least two beers in the time it took an octogenarian, local politician to send out the ceremonial first pitch. Terzo tossed pieces of popcorn into the air to try and catch in his mouth between bouts of bored fidgeting, much to the annoyance of the fans nearby who got caught in the buttery crossfire.
“It’ll pick up now,” Copia reassured a sceptical Secondo.
The older brother huffed and munched a nacho before pushing them away in disgust. “It is a crime to call that cheese,” he huffed irritably.
Copia rolled his eyes and returned his attention to the first inning.
A few members of the Reds came up to bat without a single hit. Terzo blew out his cheeks and his leg jiggled. “How much longer will this take?”
“Well, it’s not like football,” Copia explained. “It takes as long as it takes to play all the innings.”
Secondo sighed for about the hundredth time that night and shifted in the uncomfortable seat. “How many innings are there?”
“Nine.”
“And we are on what? The third or fourth?”
“Er, no. This is the first,” Copia corrected him then quailed at his brother’s glare – no less blazing even though he was skirting the edges of inebriation – and Terzo’s affronted squeak.
“The first,” the older brother repeated, drawing out each syllable. His glare remained in place for what felt like minutes. Then he rose to his feet and started to edge back along the row. “I’m going to get more beer.”
“You already had three,” Copia called after his back, then shook his head. Secondo’s default drunk modes were melancholy or mean. He was being enough of a cantankerous asshole, without adding more alcohol to the mix.
“He is just sulking because Primo ripped him a new one. He will get over it,” Terzo shrugged.
Copia grunted and stared out at the field. The next player from the Reds approached home plate and lifted his bat, poised to strike. His arms and the bat became a single red-and-wood coloured blur as he sent the ball soaring across the stadium with an ear-splitting crack.
The crowd awoke from its stupor and the cheers of the Away team fans merged with the Home team’s disgruntled heckling into a single wall of sound as the play jogged around the bases. Terzo leapt to his feet and began waving his foam hand around. He whistled and cheered and chanted, emulating the same slightly hysterical style of the average Italian football fan.
He didn’t notice the glowers or angry sneers coming his way until he once again spotted himself on the big screen.
Standing alone, raucously excited in a sea of disapproval.
“You’re cheering the wrong team, idiota. Sit down!” Copia hissed as he slid down in his seat.
“Che cosa?” Terzo asked, bewildered.
“We’re sitting in the Pirates’ stands. They’re the ones in white and yellow. Y’know, like the giant fucking foam hand I bought you…”
“Pah! I do not care; we do not live here and can support who we like, no?”
“It looks like someone is a couple of crayons short of a pack of Crayola!” the announcer’s voice boomed through the stadium and a flurry of catcalls and jeering followed. “I think he might need to head back to kindergarten and learn the difference between red and yellow!”
“Stronzo! Come here and say that!” Terzo yelled at the disembodied voice, jerkily glancing around him as if its owner would materialise to pick up his metaphorical gauntlet.
Copia caught sight of an ESPN crew filming the action and looked around for Secondo in a panic. “Cazzo!” he groaned and tugged at Terzo’s arm. “Sit down. Come on…don’t make it any worse.” The tension started to leave his body as Terzo allowed himself to be pulled downwards.
What happened next only proved Copia’s long-held suspicion that the Dark Lord has a twisted sense of humour. As a child of the Satanic Church, the youngest Emeritus had heard how the Olde One ‘works in mysterious ways’ more times than he could remember.
He supposed you couldn’t get much more unexpected than manifesting through a furry, green bird costume.
The team mascot had spent the game prancing around on top of the dugout, posing for photos and trying to engage the fans with his silly antics. Copia found the costume sort of creepy and the person inside had a manic energy similar to Terzo’s. He was more annoying than anything, though the youngest of the trio had kept a watchful eye on the eight-foot bird throughout the game in case he approached to put one of their heads in his beak. It was his signature move and Copia thought it would be the most mortifying thing that could happen to them.
He was wrong.
The green bulk materialised in front of them and began to imitate Terzo’s excited bouncing and arm-waving, all under the watchful gaze of the jumbotron. His movements became increasingly exaggerated as a hearty laugh rippled through the crowd.
Copia realised he still had hold of Terzo’s elbow and he uttered out of the corner of his mouth. “Just let it go, fratello…”
To his credit, Terzo tried. He smirked and waved his hands dismissively with a “Si, si. Very funny.”
But the crowd’s reaction had gone to the mascot’s head. With the innate instincts of the performer he would one day become, Copia spotted the signs of the artist who had realised it was their time to shine. The bird imitated Terzo’s hand wave, making it decidedly more camp, and then started mincing up and down the row. He paused periodically to throw his best ‘blue steel’ pose – or as much of one as his demented cartoon eyes would permit – to the delighted fans.
Copia groaned inwardly. A homophobic bird. Great.
The raven-haired brother was the charming, bisexual poster child for their Church’s teachings on desire. Within the Church, everyone was encouraged to indulge their urges with whoever they pleased, and Terzo openly and proudly did just that. Copia knew he wouldn’t let this one fly. And part of him couldn’t blame him.
Terzo’s smirk widened into a sardonic smile, which looked all the more sinister as it was replicated on the big screens. “Ah, the joke is on you, amico mio, I am not ashamed to play with balls of all kinds. Go ahead and mock me. I am not concerned about an attention-starved chicken.”
The bird drew himself up to his full height, bothered enough by Terzo’s jab to break character. “I’m a parrot, not a chicken, you fucking moron.”
“Really?” Terzo asked, giving him a onceover and feigning deep thought. “You still look like a cock to me.”
There were cheers, screams and gasps as the mascot dived into the front row from the dugout and the two of them began tussling. Copia felt frozen to the spot. He just gawped, his brain unable to weigh up whether he should intervene in what looked like a scene from a cartoon: a grunting, cursing swirl of black and green with the occasional fist or foot visible on the outside.
“What in the name of Satan’s balls is happening?” Secondo’s voice growled from Copia’s side and he looked up to see his older brother swaying and frowning down at the scrapping figures just as they tumbled over the fence and onto the field with a yelp.
Checking to make sure Terzo was OK – the mascot’s suit seemed to have taken the brunt of the impact – he attempted to shout over the frenzied crowd. “Where the fuck have you been?!”
“I just went to get more drinks! For the love of all that is unholy, can’t I leave for five minutes without him humiliating us?!”
“To be fair, the parrot was being a dick,” Copia conceded. “But we have a bigger problem.” He nodded towards the ESPN crew, which had been joined by a couple of local news people. They all wore gleeful expressions as the cameras rolled, no doubt imagining the miles of column space and film footage this escapade would generate.
“Should we intervene?” he asked his brother. “That guy has, like, four feet on him.”
Secondo emitted a long belch as he thought about it. “No. Terzo is small but he is scrappy, si? And it is damage limitation for when Primo finds out. We can distance ourselves. I’m done taking the heat for that idiota.”
Their eyes flicked to the big screen to find the battling duo had managed to get back on their feet and were hopping around, trying to circle each other and land a blow though they were just too far away to make contact. It reminded Copia of capoeira: part dancing, part martial art.
Terzo surprised them all though when he landed a perfectly aimed punch just below the parrot’s beak. The normally clumsy man’s aim was so straight and true, it must have been a miracle signed off by the Dark Lord himself.
The blow knocked the mascot’s oversized head off in a violent explosion of white powder. It was like someone had filled a firework with talc, appearing on the grainy jumbotron as a swirling, snowy cloud. More of the stuff magically puffed out of the dingy green fur as the bird fell to the ground. A couple of little bags even fell from the costume head as it rolled away.
There was stunned silence as the crowd absorbed the sight before them.
“Is that drugs?” Copia looked to his older brother for confirmation and snorted in response to Secondo’s nod. “OK, well if he outed some weirdo druggie who’s supposed to be entertaining at an event with kids that makes us the good guys, right? Primo can’t be too pissed about that?”
“It depends.”
“On what?”
“On what he does next,” Secondo sighed, resigned to his younger brother’s talent for fucking things up.
Never one to pass up his own moment in the limelight, Terzo sauntered over to the downed mascot and leant down to trace a finger along his chalky cheek. He made a show of licking the digit and smirking.
The technical crew did their best to drown out the chaos with music, but before they could hit play Terzo’s words echoed around the stadium, picked up by the mic of the approaching news crew.
“Dude, no one does cocaine anymore. There’s much better stuff these days.”