The short list, p.10
The Short List, page 10
“Boston’s a small town,” Tag said.
He proved his point when we drove back over to the North End in the time it would take me to get a car out of a parking lot in New York. Next stop, a spaghetti joint with red and white checked table cloths and Chianti bottles dripping with candle wax on every table.
People gave us a slanted eye as we walked with purpose around the room, Tag and Boyd brandishing their hockey stubs like hunters, which is what we were, basically.
No Fazzio.
Next up was a more upscale bar a few blocks away. It was close enough to the water that I could smell the rot of seaweed mixed with fuel from the docks and hear the occasional squawk of seagulls.
Tag put his hand on his forehead to shade the glass from the street light glare as he peered in the window. “There he is.”
I stepped behind him to look. Fazzio was at the bar with his two beefy sidekicks beside him. Fazzio Sr. wasn’t there. Charlie, the one who’d dented my nose, was listening to Fazzio tell some story and as I checked out the sheer size of him and his counterpart, I looked back to Tag and Boyd. They were strong, sure, but not like Charlie and friend. But they were all I had.
“All right, fellas,” I said. “Leave Fazzio for me.”
My two cousins high fived and let out a whoop like you’d hear at a Sox game when someone hit a homer. They tightened their grips on the hockey sticks and I let them go first into the fight. I spotted an empty bar stool at the first spot inside the door. That seat was mine. Not for sitting. For using the metal legs to crack some fucking skulls.
18
BRICKS
I’ve been knocked out exactly twice in my entire life.
Both times by men.
Both times, those men were mobsters.
Both times, I came to suddenly and clearly.
Both times, when I woke up, I was tied up.
The world is full of coincidences.
This time, my wrists were bound to the back of the chair with what felt like shoelaces. I couldn’t have been sitting there too long because I could still feel my hands, and the knots felt tight enough to cut off circulation. The tips of my fingers throbbed in protest.
Worse than that, the pain in my head banged and pulsed in counterpoint to the finger throbbing. Vito had clocked me good, right on the jaw. I could feel the stiffness in the skin and the warmth there, so I knew my face was swelling up. If I got out of this one, I’d probably look like Stallone at the end of Rocky.
Getting out. That had to be my priority.
I glanced around the small room. The lights were out but the darkness was more of a grayness. Light leaked in from under the door, and from a small rectangular window up high. I think the window led out to the alley behind the pool hall. My eyes didn’t take long to adjust further, and I scanned the room for an exit. The window was way too small, and the door no doubt led right back into the lion’s den, so neither of them were any good. I tried to spot another door, maybe one that led out to that alley, but all I saw was junk stacked against the walls, and walls.
Only my hands were secured to the chair, so my feet were free. But when I tried move, I discovered immediately that the chair was bolted to the floor.
Uh-oh.
That was no accident. Bolting a chair to the floor is a purposeful act. Vito and whoever else ran this place had used this chair and this room for things like this before. That didn’t bode well for me.
A shadow broke the slice of light coming underneath the door. When the shadow remained still for a few moments, then shifted to my right again, I realized what it was. Someone was standing guard. Vito? Probably not. But regardless who it was, I knew I didn’t have a lot of time. For all I knew, Vito was making sure he had enough shovels and lime to take care of my body, or looking for a nice construction site about to pour cement.
Think!
I tugged at the laces holding my wrists, but there was no play there. I pushed again with my feet, trying to move the chair, but it didn’t budge.
There are always options, I told myself. Think!
My legs and feet were free. That was my greatest advantage. But how to use that advantage? Timing was critical. And positioning. And if Vito were smart—
I stopped. That was my greatest advantage. I was smarter than that motherfucker. He was street-wise and cagey, maybe even more so than me. But in the end, I knew I was smarter, and I had to find a way to press that advantage.
How?
I could get him mad. Rip on his cousin Bruno, tell how I shot him in the eye and spit on his corpse. Maybe then he’d make a mistake. Come close enough to use my legs on him.
I thought about that, but I couldn’t be sure. What if taunting didn’t enrage him? What if it just added to that cold fury he already seemed to possess? That would make things worse, not necessarily create an opening.
What else?
I wasn’t going to beg, I told myself. At least not for real. But what if I feigned begging? Played the weak female part, weeping and pleading for mercy? That might get him close enough. Might give me a fighting chance.
Another shadow blocked out the light under the door. I heard muffled voices, but could only make out a few words, and none of them made any sense. Then one of the voices raised a little, and suddenly I could hear everything he said.
“I know what he fucking said,” Vito barked.
A muffled reply.
“And I won’t,” Vito snapped back. “But I’m the one what spotted her in the first place. And I’m the one whose cousin she wasted. So I got privileges here.”
The tone of the reply seemed beseeching, but I could hear the subtle undertone of submission, even without hearing the words.
Vito laughed. “Soon. Real soon. But don’t worry. I got it all handled.”
I heard the sound of someone clapping someone else on the shoulder, and then the door swung open. Vito’s big, round silhouette filled the doorway. He closed the door behind him and hit the lights.
I blinked against the sudden brightness. As my eyes adjusted, Vito strolled past me and rummaged in a desk drawer. When he found whatever he was looking for, he stepped up behind me and grabbed a handful of my hair. With a jerk, he pulled my head backward so I was staring up at him. His jowly face was even uglier upside down. He’d missed small patches of whiskers the last time he shaved, and there was a clot of something disgusting in one of his hair-choked nostrils. Nostrils that looked like shotgun barrels from the vantage point I had.
Then something glinted off to the side. He brought the knife into full view, ticking it slightly from side to side. His face stretched into a malevolent leer.
“So what do you think, Bricks? Huh? You fucking cunt.”
I didn’t answer. The harsh light from the bulbs overhead danced off of the silver blade in his hand.
“No smart ass comeback?” Vito said, his tone mock-mournful. “I’m disappointed. Bruno said you were good with that tongue. Probably ‘cause of the whole dyke thing, my guess.”
My entire body was rigid. I racked my brain for some kind of play, but got nothing but blankness. All I could do was stare at that knife.
“So maybe that’s where I’ll start,” Vito told me, dipping the point of the blade toward my mouth. “Cut out that sharp little tongue of yours? Or maybe a tit? That’d be good, huh?” The knife drifted up along my face. “Or an eye. That might be the best place to get thing rolling. Slice that fucker right up like a stew onion.”
Think! I screamed inside.
The only reply came from Vito. “Tell you what, champ. I’m a gentleman here, so we’ll do this: you decide. You tell me where to start cutting.”
19
CAMERON
As I lifted the stool I thought to myself: what the hell are you doing?
Revenge wasn’t really my thing, and this hadn’t been planned out at all. I was going in with two guys I barely knew after a trio of men I definitely knew to be hard asses and out for my blood. Then again, in the life I chose, the option to do nothing isn’t really a choice. If you turn the other cheek you can get a shard of glass slashed across it.
Fazzio wanted me dead and running would only make him more annoyed when he had to come after me. I could be found. I’m not in the CIA, for fuck’s sake. It was a lot like the situation we faced with Sal. In order to escape I had to burn the whole damn thing down.
Whether that was doable at all or even slightly advisable remained to be seen. In any case I approached Fazzio and his two sides of beef behind Tag and Boyd.
Tag struck first, pounding the back of the muscle man closest to us. The hockey stick cracked between the man’s shoulder blades and he toppled forward knocking into Fazzio. Charlie was already turning around and I saw his hand go into his jacket for some firepower. Boyd’s stick caught him on the arm and Charlie’s gun clattered to the floor.
A woman screamed, chairs scraped across the floor. I followed up behind Tag and swung my barstool down toward the man sliding off Fazzio. He acted as a buffer between me and my main target, but with my thumping shot to the man’s back he crumpled and fell faster than he had been, leaving Fazzio exposed. I saw recognition flash across his face as he retreated and reached for his own gun. I pulled hard on the heavy stool and tried to lift it over my head again, my wounded arm buckling under the weight. A nine millimeter would be much easier to lift.
Tag slammed his stick into Fazzio’s shoulder, halting his progress in retrieving his gun. Charlie was still up and he took a good old fashioned roundhouse swing at Boyd and caught my cousin with a fist to the side of the head. Boyd reeled and his body fell against the bar.
Around us patrons rushed for the door, one man with a drink still clutched in his hand, his wife still holding her sloshing glass of red wine. Behind the bar the owner started shouting in Italian.
Fazzio had recovered and made another reach for his gun. He was too far away from me to reach so I threw the stool at him, one-handed. It bounced off the forearm he had to put up to block. The chrome legs banged against bone and I heard him grunt over the Dean Martin soundtrack.
I bent down and pawed at the fallen man in search of his gun. I felt a bulge under his jacket, but he was laying on top of it. Above me, Tag swung his hockey stick at Charlie who dodged it. Boyd came off the bar rail and swept his stick at Charlie’s face. Charlie reached out and clamped down his enormous hand on the stick, stopping it in midair with a slap. He twisted and wrenched it from Boyd’s hand, then turned and cracked it over his skull. The stick splintered and Boyd went down, landing on top of the man I was attempting to overturn, adding more dead weight to my task.
Tag bent down and picked up Charlie’s gun off the floor. His face seemed panicked. Holding the sawed off hockey stick had seemed like second nature, but holding a gun frightened him. I didn’t want him to have to know what it was like to pull that trigger while aiming at another man.
“Give it here,” I said.
Tag stared wide-eyed at Charlie as the bigger man squared himself. I knew he could see the fear in Tag’s eyes too. The quick glint of a blade cut the air between them. Charlie had a few tricks up his sleeve even if he’d let his gun get away. Now it became a test of wills between the two men who had the guts to use their weapon first.
I abandoned my hunt for the other gun and stood quickly. Lucky for me, too, because Fazzio had his pistol out and his shot missed me by only inches.
“Give me the gun,” I said to Tag. Not only did I not want him to use it, things were looking increasingly like he wasn’t going to be able to anyway. Charlie tensed to lunge with his knife as I put my body between him and Tag. I knew I wouldn’t have time to grab the gun and turn it on Charlie so I settled for being a blocker. I spun a half turn and felt Charlie’s knife sink into my side right below my ribs. The tip broke skin and I felt every fraction of an inch of the blade as it dove below the surface. My skin sparkled in pain, the muscles were ripped and sent shockwaves through me, parts of my gut I couldn’t name made themselves aware by the sharp stabs of pain they sent to my brain.
Even worse was the blade pulling out.
Tag’s eyes were on mine as my face contorted. I put a hand over the gun and he let it go. I rotated, more of a half fall, and fired at Charlie. Over his shoulder I could see Fazzio trying to get a shot at me past his wide brute of a man.
I hit Charlie in the chest and he turned in on himself. I could tell by the weight of the gun I was holding a full clip—well, minus one now. I didn’t stop at Charlie. I fired over his shoulder at Fazzio, but the shot went high. Fazzio continued his retreat.
I spun a quarter turn and shot the man on the ground, careful not to hit Boyd who was coming around. I lifted the gun again and shot Charlie once more in the chest. By then Fazzio was on the run.
I followed his retreat with a series of misplaced shots that chipped the brick on the back wall of the restaurant, smashed into a poster for the movie Roman Holiday and took out a set of olive oil and balsamic bottles.
The clip wasn’t empty yet, but I was spent. It felt like my whole side had been zippered open as wide as my arm, even though I knew I’d suffered only a puncture.
I had to let Fazzio make it out the back. My arm couldn’t even hold the gun anymore.
I felt Tag and Boyd each put a shoulder under my armpit and start to walk me out. To no one they kept saying, “Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit.”
I checked over my shoulder at my handiwork. Two down, but the big game got away. Less of a bloodbath than usual for me and for the first time, most of the blood was mine.
20
BRICKS
I stared up at the knife in Vito’s hand, his words barely registering. I knew this job was dangerous, but I always thought I’d beat the odds. If I somehow didn’t, I figured I’d get it during a straight up fight. Fall in battle, that sort of thing.
Instead, I was tied to a chair with a knife-wielding lunatic debating about where to start cutting on me. I was going to end up in pieces, scattered around the city in dumpsters and sewers. Or hell, they’d probably dissolve the body parts in acid.
“What’s it to be, Bricks?” Vito asked, tilting the knife. His hard eyes were full of anticipation.
This is the moment panic sets in, I thought. This was when I’d scream and cry and plead, even though I swore I never would. I’d give this fucker exactly what he wanted, and I’d end up dead anyway. It seemed like an inexorable force, this scenario, and I saw it clearly, as if it happened to someone else, a long time ago and in a very distant place.
But the panic never came.
I felt it flutter loudly in the pit of my stomach, like the first puff of the flame that ignites a forest fire, but then it foundered and went out. Instead, a surreal emptiness surrounded me. It wasn’t peaceful, necessarily, but it was calm. I wondered for a second if I was dying. If Vito had already slit my throat and I was bleeding out and just didn’t know it yet. But no, there was the knife, shifting in the light before me, while his ugly, deranged face was still in the background. There was no blood on the blade, either, so he hadn’t used it yet.
The calmness spread outward through my whole body until it enveloped every part of me. I didn’t know how to label it, and at that moment, I didn’t care. There’d be time to decide later if it was a warrior’s mindset or simple acceptance, if there was a later. But for now, my mind suddenly seemed to be working again, and I made a decision.
“Maybe you should start by cutting your own dick off,” I said to him in an even tone.
Vito’s eyes bulged in surprise.
“If you can find it,” I added.
The leer turned into a snarl. “Oh, I am gonna start with that fucking tongue of yours,” he said.
“There’s a mirror in my purse,” I told him, “if you think that’ll help. That little wee-wee’s got to be under all that fat somewhere, right?”
The hand with the knife fell toward me, but it was the butt end that struck my cheek. Flashes of white streaked across blackness, but I shook my head and stayed conscious.
“You like that?” Vito asked. He let go of my hair and moved around to the side of my chair. “Get used to it. You’re going to feel a lot of it for the rest of your short fucking life.”
“What about your life, Vito? Or are you too stupid to see it?”
His eyes narrowed. “Don’t you call me stupid, you twat.”
“If the shoe fits.”
His left shoulder dropped. A split second later, pain erupted in my side. Something between a grunt and a cry escaped my lips. Even through the pain, I had to give the son of a bitch credit. He knew how to punch.
“How’s that fit?” he mocked.
I caught my breath, and swallowed. Goddamn, that hurt.
He leaned menacingly over me, swishing the knife back and forth.
“You remember Abe Fortunato?” I rattled off through gritted teeth.
The knife descended toward my eyeball.
“He’s dead!” I snapped out.
The knife stopped. Vito gave me a perplexed look. “No way.”
“Yes, he is.” The word must not have gotten out yet. I tried to calculate the hours since I’d left the little Greek café, but it didn’t matter. “Him and his bodyguard.”
“Bullshit,” Vito said.
“True shit. Go make a few calls. Check it out.”
He watched me carefully for a few moments, then shrugged. “Maybe I will. But say it’s true. So the fuck what?”
“I’m the reason they’re dead.”
“Bullshit.”
“True shit.”
“You clipped the Italian Ninja? No way.”
Obviously, what happened in Fucale’s when I got the better of Fortunato never made it out to the masses. That was too bad, because it would’ve helped my credibility right about now. “He came there to clip me,” I said. “It was self-defense.”
“Well, good. You can tell that to the jury.” He put a finger to his mouth. “Oh, wait. There ain’t gonna be no fuckin’ jury, is there? ‘Cause you’re finished, Bricks. This is fucking it. And you’re full of shit, anyway.”
