The short list, p.4
The Short List, page 4
He held his arms wide like he was hugging me from across the room, but he made no move out from behind the desk. “Charlie will get your things.” Charlie, with the crew cut, took my bag before I could tell him I’d hold on to it.
“Sit, sit,” my host said.
The second T-shirted thug set a chair on the rug to face the desk. “Thanks, mister...?”
“Fazzio.” He pointed over his shoulder to the window and his name there. He grinned like a politician.
“So,” I said. “You got a job needs doing.” Small talk is for insurance salesmen.
“I got someone needs to go, yes I do.” He twisted his pinky ring, a habit I gathered he didn’t even notice any more. “And you come with the bona fides I’m looking for.”
“Well, it’s nice to make a new connection. I think this could be a long term partnership unless this is a one-off contract.” I grinned back at him since I was playing the role of actual salesman now.
“Yeah, you did some pretty high profile work down there in the tri-states.”
I know you have to put yourself out there a bit in order to drum up new business, but I didn’t like the idea of this guy knowing too much about my past work. Our broker’s good word ought to be enough. That’s why people in our line use a broker.
“I have experience.” I left it at that, but he didn’t want to let it go. I felt a draft come through the room, but the windows were all closed.
“I’ll say you do. Heard they call you Slaughterhouse.”
This was getting a little chummy for my taste. “Nobody calls me that anymore.”
“No, no, you’re right,” Fazzio said. “Because everybody who did is dead, am I right?”
“I’d prefer to discuss your contract.”
“We’ll get there,” he said. Charlie and his partner flanked the room like the two halves of a vice grip—one on each side of my head.
“If it’s better, I can come back later,” I said. “I still need to check in to my hotel, get settled. I haven’t even taken a piss since I got off the train.”
“Ah, shit. Speaking of which,” Fazzio said. “Can I offer you a drink?” He pointed to an old style drink cart in the corner. An array of booze bottles, a few warm cans of Coke.
“No, thanks. Let’s just talk business and see if we’re able to help each other.”
“What happened to the long term partnership?”
“I don’t even know what this job is and you seem a little reluctant to tell me. Let’s take one step at a time.”
“Sorry,” Fazzio said. He twirled the ring again. I began to wonder if it was some type of signal to the boys behind me. This bastard was making me paranoid. “Kinda like a job interview though, am I right? I need to know who I’m hiring same as you need to know who you’re working for.”
I exhaled. He was right. The strange vibe I was getting could have been the train ride, the strange city, my full bladder. “I get your point. I think the best thing is for you to let my work speak for me, starting with this job. If I do good work, then we’ll work together again.”
“Oh, I know you do good work, Cameron.” His grin was going and that ring spun like he was going for a record. I should have called Guinness. “Like with Rocco. Now that was a job.”
I shifted in my seat, the creak of the leather and the floorboards below me filling the silence. He shouldn’t know about that job. It was my final test to make it into the family full time. It also happened to be my uncle. Fazzio knowing about it was bad news.
“You remember that one, right, Cameron?”
“What is this?” I tried to spot my overnight bag in my peripheral vision. It was against the wall and behind Charlie. Not an option.
“Did you know, Cam, that we’re related? Yeah, it’s true. Third cousins, twice removed or some shit. Distant relations, but, hey—blood is blood, am I right?”
“Is that so?”
“Yeah. Family, Cameron. Nothing more important than family.”
I knew then that this was a set-up. My past had crawled into the room and was about to bare its teeth. Very, very sharp teeth that kill.
“I don’t know where you’re getting your information but—”
Fazzio cut me off with a hand like he was a Supreme telling me to stop in the name of love.
“So if you and me are related, then me and Rocco were related too. Closer than you and me, in fact. Thicker blood.”
Man, I really needed that piss now.
“And the thing about family,” he said. “You never forget. You never forgive.” He stopped twirling his ring long enough to snap his fingers. Charlie and his other half moved like dogs let off a leash. They knew this moment was coming and they’d been ready and waiting. The silent one went behind me and pinned my arms, Charlie came around front and stoically pounded a fist the size and weight of a cannonball into my face.
I toppled back over the chair and fell to the rug. Things had gotten bad and looked to get worse. The only upside for me, not for Fazzio’s rug, was that I finally got to piss.
8
BRICKS
“You want some vino?” Fortunato asked me. “It’s some Greek shit, but what can you do, am I right?” He motioned at the restaurant around us. “Not like these people know wine.”
“No thanks.”
“Some ouzo? They got that, of course.”
I shook my head, adjusting in my seat to push away from the table just a little bit. My feet drifted to shoulder width apart and I pushed down to feel my footing.
“No? Don’t like that licorice taste? Me, neither. How ‘bout some caffè, then, huh? It’s more like Turkish than anything, but again, whaddaya gonna do?”
I started to say no, but then changed my mind. “Sure. Coffee’d be good. But not the Turkish. Americano.”
Fortunato kept his gaze on me while he raised and lowered his hand with two fingers extended. His musclebound bodyguard leaned through the door to the kitchen and spoke in a low voice. I didn’t hear anyone answer.
I matched Fortunato’s stare. I maintained a neutral expression and forced myself to draw long, deep breaths surreptitiously. I needed to think, and depending on how things went, I’d need the oxygen for more pressing matters than that before long.
Fortunato lit a cigarette. His lighter was a gold plated number with some kind of small gem in the center. As soon as he snapped it shut, I pointed to the cigarette pack. “Can I get one of those?”
He hesitated a moment, then reached for the pack. “I didn’t think you smoked.”
I didn’t answer.
He shook free a cigarette. I took it and leaned forward, the cigarette poised near my lips. “I need a light, too.”
He flicked open the lighter and struck the flint in one fluid motion. That was the Fortunato I remembered. All grace and fluidity, if a little overconfident.
I lit the cigarette, using the action to disguise another small slide backwards in my seat. My feet felt solid on the ground. Balanced. To keep him from noticing, I kept my elbows on the table and my eyes on his. “Thanks,” I said, my voice flat.
He put away the lighter with a flourish that he pretended he hadn’t practiced for hours on end. Being a bodyguard can be long and lonely work while you’re waiting outside a door, and anyone with half a brain has to find ways to pass the time. It was pretty obvious what Fortunato did with his.
I blew smoke off to the side. I hadn’t smoked in years. Hell, more than a decade. I hoped my lungs didn’t betray me. The last thing I needed here was to go to a virgin lung coughing fit.
Fortunato was still watching the cigarette. His insincere smile had faded into something closer to a wry grin. On his acne-scarred face, it didn’t look any better than the fake one he’d been sporting before. But truthfully, the only thing that would make him look better was a mask, so what did it matter?
He wagged the two fingers that held his cigarette at me. “You’re a naughty girl, Bricks.”
“I hear some people pay extra for that.”
He let out a short exhalation of smoke in what could have been a laugh. “That’s true. People and their ways.”
“It takes all kinds.”
He took a deep drag and shook his head, then exhaled a long stream of smoke. “Always playing a fucking angle, people, huh?”
“Everyone has an angle.”
“‘Specially in this city,” he agreed.
“What’s yours?” I asked.
“Funny you should ask. What do you think?”
I took a shallow puff on the cigarette, then moved it to my left hand. “Is there an ashtray?”
“Use the floor. This place is half a fucking dive. No one will notice.”
“A dive? You picked this place.”
“Yeah, not for how fancy it was, though.”
“Not quite Fucale’s, huh?” That was a not-so-veiled barb. Fucale’s was a mobbed-up restaurant where Sal used to spend most of his afternoons. That’s where he was when I went to see him after the Tommy Davenport pit bull incident. It’s where I put the boss on his backside. And Fortunato on his face.
A flash of anger seem to flicker behind his eyes, but it was gone so fast that I wasn’t sure I’d seen it. You’d think getting reminded that you got put on your face by a girl would be the kind of memory a bodyguard would get riled about. Fortunato surprised me a little.
“They sold the place,” he said. “Fucale’s.”
“Yeah? The Irish buy it?”
“No. Some Korean family.”
The waiter appeared in the kitchen doorway. He swooped in with his small tray holding a regular cup of coffee and a small espresso cup. I got my Americano and Fortunato his Turkish. I didn’t take my eyes off of Fortunato, but he glanced up at the waiter and gave him the barest of nods.
When the room was ours again, he lifted his espresso. “What should we drink to? Old friends?”
I picked up my cup. “How about to getting to the point?”
“My kind of toast,” he said, and sipped the hot java.
I set mine down without drinking. “Why am I here?”
I already knew the answer, or at least had it narrowed down to two possibilities. He was there to hire me, I hoped. But as an old friend once said, the odds were six to five that he was there to clip me.
Fortunato turned his hands palm up. “You’re in business, right? So I’m here to do business.”
A third possibility occurred to me. Maybe this motherfucker was wearing a wire.
The collapse and splintering of the Giordano family made some minor news to the public at large, but I’m guessing that it caused earthquake-sized tremors in the law enforcement world. While most cops, local and FBI agents alike, that worked organized crime would be happy to give me a hearty thank you for the number I did on Sal, I’m just as sure they’d like to have that conversation while slapping on some silver bracelets.
If they’d manage to pick up Fortunato on some charge and then flip him...
“Who you working for now, Abe?” I asked.
He didn’t reply.
“Because I didn’t hear,” I continued. “I don’t know if you went in with Max DaCosta and the boys that came up from Florida, or if you got snapped up by one of the other families. Hell, maybe you started your own crew.”
He didn’t react.
“Of course, even with your own crew, you’d need someone’s blessing to operate, and you’d have to kick some tribute upstairs for that, so it’d be the same as being part of that family. Maybe you’d make more money, but there’d be more risk, too. And you don’t strike me as someone who takes a whole lot of risk.” I wagged my cigarette at him, miming the gesture he’d used earlier.
“I’m touched you care so much about my livelihood.”
“I don’t care. I couldn’t give half a shit, in fact. But now here we are having coffee, so it makes a girl curious.”
He stared at me for a long moment. Then he said, “It don’t matter how I make my money, or who with. What matters is that I’m sitting here now.”
“Ah. Live in the present. Very Zen.”
He shook his head slowly. “Such a wise ass. Last time I saw you, that smart mouth almost got you killed.”
“And you saw this from where exactly? The floor?”
That made his nostrils flare slightly.
Good.
“You know, the more I think about it, the more I think you gotta be working for DaCosta. Is he a consigliere for that boss, too? Is he still giving you orders?”
Fortunato’s jaw set slightly, then his face relaxed. “Do you want the job I came here to offer you, or not?”
“You mean you’re not here to kill me?”
He flicked his cigarette at my face a fraction of a second before I flicked mine. I aimed for his eyes, and I’d bet he did the same. Both of us missed our targets. His cigarette sailed over my shoulder, dropping a weak trail of sparks in its wake. Mine at least struck him high in the forehead, showering him with ash and embers, and giving me the half second of distraction I was looking for.
“Bitch!” he snarled.
But I was already reaching for the coffee.
9
CAMERON
I had the sense of being moved, but whether down the street or into the next state I had no idea. When I came to I was in a small room, empty of furniture. The walls were brick and the windows blacked out with newspaper pasted down by glue. The floors were wood and the way they creaked, and the way cracks ran down the bricks in jagged lightning strikes, I figured I was still in Boston, or some similarly old city.
Then I smelled pizza. I knew I hadn’t left the North End.
I tried to move, but my hands were tied behind my back. My mouth tasted like blood and I could feel crusted streaks of the dried stuff on my face. I tried to sniff my clogged nose but all I got for the effort was a shooting pain and no air. Probably broken. For sure it was stuffed with clotted blood so I was going to be a mouth breather for a little while.
This Fazzio guy told me we were related, but I’d never heard of him. I didn’t doubt it, though. Most Italian family trees were more like vines spreading out in all directions. Big breeders, the Italians.
So they were pissed about Uncle Rocco. Shit.
This was one thing I’d found about killing—one is never enough. You kill one guy, you gotta kill the witnesses. You go in on a set-up and you gotta kill the others who know about it. The only way to come out clean is to strip it down to the finish. Or in my case to pluck every leaf off that family tree.
They’d dumped me on the floor, not even a chair to sit in. The newspaper on the windows was thin enough I could tell it was still daylight out. There was a light fixture in the ceiling with three bulbs, but it was turned off. Still, I could see just fine in the dim room—not that there was anything to see.
I did notice the paper covering the two windows was the Boston Globe, so my suspicions were confirmed. I was kind of proud of my little detective work, but I wouldn’t let myself be really pleased until I got the hell out of there, and on that front I’d made no headway.
I spun myself on my side and saw the door about ten feet behind me. It didn’t look strong, like I could kick it down if I wanted, but even standing up would be hard with my hands the way they were, and as I pulled more I could feel that they had tied my feet too and connected the two ropes so my wrists and ankles were linked together. Yeah, there would be no door kicking for me. No standing up, either.
At least I’d gotten the piss out of the way.
That smell overpowered the distant pizza wafting in from the street. My legs were cold from where the piss had soaked my jeans.
The only good news for me was still being alive. If they didn’t have some plan for me I’d be dead already. Of course, the plan could make being hog tied in an empty room seem like a vacation. My people were almost as good at breeding as they were at torture.
I lay and thought about that likely scenario for the next hour.
Finally, the door opened.
I saw three pairs of loafers: one alligator and two polished leather. I turned my eyes up even though I figured it might get me another fist to the face, or maybe one of those fancy shoes.
Fazzio and his two crew cuts.
“He’s awake,” Fazzio said. His two mutts laughed. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody go down as fast as you did, Cameron.” Fazzio smiled down at me. “I mean, I heard of a glass jaw, but you got a glass face.”
His audience of two thought he was a riot.
“Untie me and we’ll have another round,” I said. My words were slurred due to the blood in my nose and on my tongue.
“I bet you want me to bring up your bag,” Fazzio said. “Maybe let you lay your hands on that hardware of yours? That more your speed? Huh, Cam?”
“What can I say?” I tried again to snort the plug of dried blood up my nose. No use. “I’m a firm believer in the second amendment.”
“I got someone coming by wants to talk to you,” Fazzio said.
“Yeah?” I said. “Who’s that?” Trying to speak made me figure out I must have bit my tongue when Charlie punched me. One side was swollen and didn’t fit my mouth right. Explained the blood in my throat, at least.
“My pop,” Fazzio said. “He knew Rocco better than me. He’ll want some answers.”
So this Fazzio was one of the and sons.
“You could have asked first, punched later,” I said.
“I had to make sure you’d stick around.” He bent down and sat on his heels closer to my face. The Alligator shoes were his. “And that you’d tell the truth.”
“I don’t lie.”
“You better not.” He stood, snapped his fingers. A chair scraped across the floor. One of the crew cuts must have brought it in with them. Wooden and old, like everything in this fucking town. Paul Revere probably sat in it before me.
Charlie and his pal lifted me by the arms and untied the link between my hands and feet, then sat me down. Well, threw me down with the chair there to break my fall.
“Then what?” I asked.
“After you talk to Pop?”
I nodded.
“Use your imagination.”
