Smoke, p.14
Smoke, page 14
“You make it sound onerous,” Moretti said.
“Don’t you think so? Any tentative relationship is now unnecessarily burdensome and complex. Muddied by undefined and uncertain sensual intentions. Or desires. By what the other person might or might not actually be looking for.” He flicked the shredded paper onto the table. “I think we need to tread carefully, to be wary in any interaction and how it might be interpreted or misinterpreted beyond mere friendship.”
“Are you sure you don’t need a martini?”
Smoke shook his head, deep in thought until Moretti gripped his shoulder and pulled him from his reverie.
“If it’s any consolation, Tommaso, I consider you my friend, and I have no desire to fuck you. Or fuck you over.”
“Thanks.” Smoke chuckled. “I appreciate the clarification, buddy. But you recall I almost killed you, right?”
Moretti shrugged. “I’m ordering that martini.”
The bartender iced the cocktail glass in front of them, poured and stirred the Grey Goose and vermouth in the shaker, shaved and twisted the slim rind of lemon.
Smoke was thankful at his first swallow. It was exactly what he needed as his mind flicked, minute by minute over his interactions that day. Despite Andrea’s consoling words, he still thought of Rafaella as no less than a fucking hideous creature.
“You were at the Little Island gala with Rafaella,” he said. “What was her understanding of you being there? Of my being there?”
“A few years ago,” Moretti said, “I ran her security detail for several weeks, when she’d attracted unwanted attention in Italy. She was aware of my skill set and commitment to the family and had no questions when the unwanted attention disappeared. It was a valid and verified kill sanctioned by Palazzo Pitti—the Italian equivalent of the House.”
“But why were you there that night?” Smoke asked.
“My handler and I didn’t know the full scope of the situation here in New York. We had no time to coordinate the operation and were coming in almost blind. I’d seen the surveillance of your townhouse but had no intel where you were and had no other leads on how to make contact. Given the high profile of the event on Little Island, and Rafaella’s attendance, I advised her of my presence in New York in case my help was required.”
Smoke detected no lie indicators in Moretti’s expression or demeanor. He wanted to trust him. Needed to. “Rafaella seemed to know of the twins’ intention to kill me,” he said.
Moretti reached for Smoke’s martini and took a sip. “There had been escalating concern over the twins’ flamboyance with their trust funds. Their oblivious spending habits had attracted attention throughout the Riviera di Levante.”
“Around Genova?” Smoke queried.
“Si. Their acquisition of several palazzos along the coast on the same day had caught the media’s eye. We still don’t know how that blatant risk exposure relates to the hit on you and Gabrielle, other than it does. And we have no confirmation yet whether either Palazzo Pitti or the House officially sanctioned it. There is some, how you say, confusione. Some back and forth between the two.”
Smoke pulled the martini from Moretti’s lips and tipped it to his own, taking a hefty gulp. “Which brings us back to Rafaella.”
“She was aware of the situation with the boys in Italy and also that they’d struck a deal requiring them to come to New York. To make restitution. But she’d no details of their actual task until you let it slip that you were their target and that they were dead. She made the connection. Your revelation of their deaths was certainly a shock, even to one as callous as Rafaella, who is well aware of sanctioned retirements.”
Smoke tried to make sense of Moretti’s words. It didn’t make sense to him.
“Surely, if Gabrielle and myself had been sanctioned targets they would have sent someone like you or me, not a couple of party boys making amends. I—”
The massive cinema screen across the park suddenly flashed white. It looked as if it was ripping as the film stock shuddered across the fluorescent fabric. The soundtrack slowed, jerking to a dull reverberation before popping and halting altogether. Both the screen and speakers were dead. The uproar from the crowd was immediate, a deafening crescendo. The wail of approaching sirens compounded their upset. A piercing doppler echoed amongst the tall office buildings surrounding the parkland. White and blue police lights strobed through the trunks and canopies of trees and shrubbery, glanced off fountains and memorials, and reflected across the acres of steel and glass, granite, and marble, stretching up into the night sky. A fleet of police and SWAT vehicles coursed along the perimeter streets, screeching against the curbs to blockade all sides of the green space. Black, military-looking Humvees thudded over the sidewalks and bounced up the steps to the higher terrace levels. People yelled and scattered.
Two of the bulky vehicles swerved through the center of the park, flinging picnic blankets and clods of dirt and grass. Cracking and ripping up stone pavers. Lights and sirens blaring. They skidded to a halt in front of the café bar.
Directly in front of Smoke and Moretti.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Smoke could only guess at the number of weapons trained upon him, Moretti, and the clientele of the café bar. From behind the glare of high beams at least three-dozen submachine guns and assault rifles were held at close range. Plus an uncountable cache of NYPD sidearms aimed by New York’s finest. Massive truck-mounted lights were reversed into position along 42nd, their brilliance lighting the park as bright as day. Smoke could make out more armed vantage points along the rooftops of the older low-rise structures of 41st Street. Snipers. The lit silhouette of the Empire State Building rose behind them to the south, its upper tiers pulsing a menacing red in the darkening sky.
The panic and dissonance amongst the crowd oscillated with the unexpected onslaught and confusion. Partially blinded by the Humvee overheads, Smoke craned his neck and shielded his eyes, noting the bulk of the crowd was being ushered from the main lawn out onto 6th Avenue. They probably already knew the ending of the movie, he thought.
Automobiles and trucks blared at the disruption of their flow up-town and cross-town. Commanding voices barked orders above the disorganized fray, bullhorns amplifying indistinct words as police helicopters dropped between the neighboring skyscrapers to hover mere feet above the tree line, their clamor brash and choppy. Two of them landed on the cleared lawn. Their searchlights highlighted the café bar and the marble bulk of the library behind it. There was no out for Smoke or Moretti. None.
“Hands above your heads!” The words came distorted through a bullhorn. “No movement without my direct order! If any of you have any type of weapon on your person, drop to the ground immediately!”
Two men at the far end of the bar dropped to their knees.
“Face down! On the ground!”
The two men sprawled prone across the pavers, arms and legs outstretched, visibly shaking.
Smoke side-glanced at Moretti, then down at the bag of weed he had kicked to the side.
“All men! Down on your knees! Women! File toward 42nd! Slowly! Slowly!” Dark figures on either side of the Humvees motioned wide with their arms, directing the women toward the street. Separating them from the remnants of testosterone kneeling or spreadeagled on the pavers.
“Do you have your EU identification?” Smoke muttered out the side of his mouth. Moretti nodded, only a slight incline of his head. “They may not know we’re acquainted. Do you understand?” Again, Moretti nodded, turning his body away from Smoke toward the patron on his other side. He shuffled subtly closer to the other until they were shoulder to shoulder. The unknown patron trembled in terror.
Uniforms escorted the last of the women from the terrace.
Fifty or more men remained on their knees amongst the high-tops, the two with weapons prone upon the pavers, perhaps seven yards from Smoke and Moretti. Two black-clad tactical teams rounded the Humvees and ran up the stairs onto the terrace. They spread out, weapons drawn, their backs to the high-powered beams continuing to blind those scattered around the bar. They barked orders as they grouped and split up the men, manhandling those not in Smoke and Moretti’s group away from the terrace.
They then split those remaining a second time. SWAT dragged the two prone men with weapons by their feet across the pavement, thudding them down the stone stairs and into the shadow of the military vehicles to be processed. They were not the authorities’ primary concern.
More choppers now hovered above Times Square, a block to the west, searchlights sweeping and Smoke recognized the media emblems on their sides.
The flagstones were hard beneath his knees and shins, more bruises to add to those already coloring his flesh. He held his hands above his shoulders, one hand shading his eyes from the glare.
And that’s when he spotted Lucy.
She stood beside the SWAT team, similarly clothed in black, her weapon drawn and pointed.
Not at him, but at Moretti.
She glanced at Smoke with neither alarm nor recognition before pushing back a stray lock of hair and placing a finger briefly against her lips.
He got it.
He hunched his shoulders, raised both his hands above his head, affecting a tremble to those observing, and tilting his face from the light.
SWAT pulled the remaining men from the ground, one by one, loud and boisterous, jerking them to the side to be shoved behind the line of authority.
Then they circled Moretti and the man on his other side, threw them down roughly onto their chests, and cuffed their wrists at their backs. After binding their ankles with zip ties, they methodically patted them down. Moretti took it in silence, his new companion not so much.
Smoke remained immobile, his face held low, until someone manhandled him to his feet and rushed him from the bar, across the terrace, and out onto 42nd Street. It wasn’t until his boots hit the pavement of one of the most famous streets in the world that he realized it had been Lucy frog-marching him across the distance. Her grip was firm on his waistband and around his wrist. No doubt another bruise.
“Madison Square Park in four hours,” she said before running back toward the Humvees and, maybe, to Moretti.
Smoke released his breath through pursed lips.
Perhaps he did have a friend he could trust.
Perhaps.
Chapter Thirty-Three
The sky split open. A drizzle at first, then a steady rain as thunder reverberated amongst the high rises, the weather announcing the evening’s true intent. It took Smoke an hour to walk through the Tenderloin of Manhattan to Madison Square Park. Not because it was so far, but because of the confusion and street closures and re-directs around 42nd. The pedestrian overflow from the disrupted Bryant Park event staggered scattershot throughout the city with no mind to traffic or signals or direction. The upset had also spread to those not immediately affected. Rumor told of armed serial killers on the loose in Midtown; of a terrorist attack without a specified location. The cacophony of sirens barreling throughout the grid of streets and avenues only compounded those rumors.
And no one seemed to want to use the subway.
Not tonight.
The rainfall was heavy by the time he reached Madison and 26th. The slender angled silhouette of the Flatiron building loomed tall against the dark, roiling clouds. But it wasn’t the weather that worried Smoke.
He flipped up the collar of his shirt and jacket as he entered the park and made himself comfortable on a bench. The seat was huddled amongst shrubbery, protected by an overhang of elm, dogwood, and oak. But even with the thick canopy, it wasn’t long before he was soaking wet, his sockless dress shoes filled with water, his suit sticking to his skin. The weather and the rumble of his empty stomach suited his mood, which had been tanking since his body count had escalated. Since Gabrielle, since Rafaella, since Capitano Cioni, since Harry met Sally. It was an hour before the rain slowed to a comfortable drizzle, and he shared the bench with an unknown companion in the quiet and deepening shadows of an otherwise empty park.
He was a homeless guy, pallid and grungy with thatched unkempt hair, who might have been similar in age to Smoke. It was hard to tell. He wore multiple layers of thread-bare suits, held secure by a shabby, soiled parka. Grime embedded his bare hands and feet. His ripped nails were long and tarnished black. And even in the mist, he stank. The putrid stench that came with living on the streets without sanitation or care. Bile surged in the back of Smoke’s throat and he swallowed hard to keep it down, then quickly stood to leave.
He made it only as far as the wrought-iron gates before he hesitated. With his own life devolving into its current state, he could see how one might easily continue down the dwindling spiral to end up with nothing. To end up on the streets. On that bench. Perhaps that was better than being dead. Perhaps. He scrutinized the homeless guy a moment more, then left the park. Twenty minutes later, he returned with boxes of barbequed chicken and slaw, a six-pack of water, and another of beer.
The guy’s name was Nate and, contrasting his disheveled appearance, Smoke found him to be personable and intelligent. A gentle, beguiling man. They settled into a cautious conversation as they ate, the rain beating down upon the flagstones at their feet.
Nate had lost his career, his rental, his friends, his girl.
“It hurt to lose my analyst job, but it was the last one that destroyed me,” he said, shucking the lids off two of the beers and handing one to Smoke. “Has it got any better out there, or is the world still fucked?”
“Still fucked,” Smoke said.
“Hmmm.” Nate fingered through the box for a wing, then skimmed it through the mash and gravy. “And you? You don’t look like you should be out here with me. Not in that suit. And not in this weather.”
Smoke slouched against the bench, pulling the skin from a chicken leg before discarding it in the box with a flick.
“There must be something good in your life. Something in this city that makes the fight worthwhile,” Nate said. “Please, at least tell me that’s true.”
Smoke sucked on his beer, knowing the answer but reticent to say it out loud.
It was something he never shared. Not with friends, not with acquaintances, not with anonymous liaisons. Just in case. Something he hoped even the capitano was unaware of. It wasn’t in that document that outlined every blemish and brazen pleasure of his life. And without it, they’d never know who he truly was. Who he truly loved.
He looked at Nate, who’d had the rug ripped out from beneath him—one of the 100,000 New Yorkers gutted and cast aside by this fucking city, onto its streets and into its tunnels. Smoke knew he’d never see him again. There was no link between them. No risk. And somehow, he knew that under his current circumstance, it would feel good to talk about the one person he loved without question.
“I have a son,” Smoke said. “His name is Theo. A three-year-old chatterbox with baby blue eyes and an adorable, very kissable pot belly.” He smiled his real smile to himself for the first time in many days.
“Why are you here, then?” Nate asked, stripping the meat from the wing with his teeth.
“He lives with his moms in Park Slope. Normally I sleep over once or twice a week. I get the top bunk. But recently everything’s gone to hell. I haven’t had the time to spend with him.” He sank into his thoughts, wondering when, or if, it would be safe to see his son again.
“Sounds like Theo’s pretty lucky. Two moms, plus you.”
Smoke brushed the box of chicken aside. He settled into the comfort of the beer, gripping it with both hands. His eyelids were heavy as he imagined Theo sleeping securely in Brooklyn, on the other side of the East River.
“Were you ever married?” Nate asked.
Smoke was abruptly pulled back into the uncomfortable cold wetness of Madison Square Park. “You know the questions to ask, don’t you, buddy?” he said. He tipped the bottle and took a deep draft. Nate had zeroed in on a part of his life he’d long suppressed, and had never wanted to confront or talk about. He studied his companion across the lip of the bottle. And suddenly he was glad he had someone to talk to. Someone who wouldn’t look down on him, who’d most likely even understand. Who’d been there. Who wouldn’t judge him when he dared to spill his guts.
“It was true love,” Smoke said. “The very idea of her took my breath away. Sucked it from my lungs. We were inseparable, our moments together tender as we shared our dreams, our hopes, our fears, our love. Some weekends we’d just lie naked and cuddle amongst boxes of takeaway and casks of cheap wine. Laughing, giggling, or crying, but happy.” He fell silent for a moment, memories sweeping. “It was our second summer. July twenty-ninth. An evening I’d meticulously planned. A late supper in the garden of Tavern on the Green followed by a stroll through the pastures of Central Park, the towers of the city gleaming around us. A hired photographer surreptitiously capturing the moments. I’d booked a horse-drawn carriage through Midtown to propose at the top of the Empire State. But I couldn’t wait. I’d never been so excited. I dropped to my knee at the crest of the Bow Bridge in the middle of the park and asked her to marry me.”
Nate lowered his bottle of beer without taking a slug.
Smoke drew in a loud and profound breath and threw his attention into the sky, past the slim omnipotent bulk of the Flatiron building, blinking rapidly and glad it was raining.
“She—”
His face was wet, his breaths deep and shuddering.
“She—”
Nate reached for Smoke’s arm but hesitated and pulled back without making contact.
