by Sal Bianchi
“I thought it was weird too,” Nick frowned as he took a stress ball off my desk and started to toss it in the air. “I assumed at first that he must have hired a hitman to clip his wife. That made the most sense considering what he said about how nothing was supposed to trace back to him. But then why would he be afraid of her?”
I hesitated for a moment as I tripped over his use of the word “clip” to describe someone being murdered. I didn’t think Nick had even noticed that he’d said that. It was so easy to forget that he’d once been enmeshed in such a dark and terrifying world.
“Maybe she threatened to go to the police too?” I suggested. “If she went down, she’d drag him down with her?”
“I guess,” Nick sighed, though he didn’t sound very confident. “Let’s go talk to him. I think I can convince him to talk.”
“What do you mean, ‘convince’?” I asked hesitantly as I watched him hop off the table.
“Nothing sinister.” He smirked. “I’m just saying, as a ‘civilian,’ I’m not necessarily bound by the law the way you agents are.”
“What?” I balked, nervous about what he was planning to do now. Nick tended to walk the line between what a private investigator was and was not legally allowed to do, and most of the time, I was the one who had to smooth things over, so neither of us ended up in trouble. “You’re more bound by the law than I am. You’re not technically allowed to do anything!”
“When have I ever let that stop me?” He grinned. He was speaking quietly enough that he probably wouldn’t be overheard in the hectic office, but I still glanced around nervously, anyway. Few people had the guts to admit openly they were planning on skirting the law in the middle of a federal law enforcement office.
“Okay, just shut up,” I admonished him as I stood up from my chair. There was little point in trying to stop him, since I knew that he would just do whatever he wanted regardless of whether I was with him or not. Joining him would allow me to mitigate any damage he might cause, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t even a little curious about what his plan was.
He grinned and turned to lead the way out of the office. Before we’d gone more than a few steps, though, he stopped in his tracks. I looked up to see what had caught his attention. It was Director Flint, marching directly toward us.
“Nick, Agent Park,” he addressed us as soon as he reached us. I tensed immediately. Flint was a serious and stony-faced man, but I’d never seen him look as angry as he did now. I glanced at Nick and wondered if something he’d done had finally caught up to us. Nick looked calm, almost indifferent, but I’d known him long enough to know that he was putting up a front.
“I have some serious news,” Flint grumbled. “Ryan Rothschild had just been found dead in his hospital room.”
11
Nick
I was disappointed with how the day had gone. I’d been so pumped this morning to get a call about a new, big SDCT case, but it seemed like everything had rapidly become worse and worse until it all fell apart.
While we were waiting for our opportunity to interrogate him, Ryan Rothschild had been killed in the hospital. Jase, being the loyal friend that he was, had been immediately concerned that I would be blamed for it, since Ryan had been complaining about my rough treatment earlier that day during the arrest. Flint had assured us that there was nothing to worry about, since Ryan’s neck had been slit. It was obvious that this had been a murder and not some aftereffect of an earlier injury. Since I’d been at the SDCT office the whole time, there was no way I’d had something to do with it.
That certainly hadn’t stopped Bette from going off about how she was right to consider me a threat and a liability, though. In the end, I’d decided to just head out to give everyone a chance to cool off and to think about what my next move should be. I didn’t regret what I’d done. Even if I’d bent the rules or broken the law, I’d gotten the result I needed in the end. I just hadn’t counted on someone coming in at the eleventh hour to mess everything up by killing the only lead we had.
Without Ryan, we were literally at a dead end. I hadn’t been able to catch the woman he’d been speaking with, and none of the security camera footage had captured her face. Unless we found something else, we’d have no way of figuring out her identity.
I frowned as I leaned forward to rest my arms against the railing at the end of the South Point Park Pier. Even though the place was a bit of a tourist trap and almost always crowded, it was still one of my favorite spots in Miami. Jase and I used to come here when we were still in high school. Anytime we were feeling overwhelmed by our respective family issues or just felt like ditching class, we’d come hang out here until the sun started to set, like it was now.
The sky was just starting to darken now, which meant that the casinos and bars would start to operate in full swing soon. Most of them never closed, but business tended to be slow during the daylight hours. Dusk was when the city would really start to come to life.
Almost on a whim, I decided to go and see Dante. I’d told Colletta I would this morning, and maybe he could even provide some fresh perspective on the case. The kid was really smart, so if there was an angle we were missing, he might be the one to spot it.
The garage Dante worked at was located in an upscale part of the city, so I wasn’t surprised at how proud Colletta had sounded. Of course, it was owned by the Family, so it was likely that his position had a lot to do with nepotism. Still, it would be unfair not to give Dante the credit he deserved. After all, he’d been the one who had given me the device that allowed me to eavesdrop on people from long distances.
Unlike the Taverna, I had no anxieties about just waltzing into the garage. Although it was owned by the mafia, all the employees were friends of Dante’s, and like him, none of them seemed to really care that I’d left the mafia. In my experience, it was only the older, hardened, more experienced members who were strict about rules and traditions, while the younger generation really only cared about money.
As I approached the garage, I could see from a distance that they had a long line of cars waiting to be serviced. I stepped right past the main office building where clients would usually go and headed toward the actual work area in the back.
“All right,” I heard Dante bellow as soon as I stepped into the concrete-floored work area. “Make sure there’s not a single bolt out of place. If I get any complaints, I’m taking it out of your paycheck, Ollie!”
“Okay,” someone yelled from beneath a car that was suspended on an auto lift.
“Switching out people’s rims again?” I smirked as I snuck up behind him.
“Ah!” Dante yelled as he jumped in the air and spun around to face me. Honestly, with how easy it was to sneak up on him, I seriously hoped he never got on the Family’s bad side. It would be a breeze to take him out. “Nick, don’t do that!”
“Sorry,” I chuckled at the frown on his face. He was eighteen now, but I still saw him as the doe-eyed little kid that used to follow me around, begging me to play with him after school. He still had the same baby face and big eyes, but he’d grown almost as tall as I was, and he’d recently started styling his hair into something that resembled a thick mohawk.
“You should have told me you were coming,” he remarked. “I’m working on this new kind of smoke bomb. It’s laced with a quickly metabolizing drug that’ll knock people out but be undetectable by the time the cops show up.”
“That’s… pretty cool, actually,” I replied honestly. He grinned proudly at my praise. “Maybe don’t go around talking about that stuff so loudly, though.”
“Eh.” He shrugged dismissively. “It’s just the famiglia here. And you, but you technically still count.”
I opened my mouth to reply, but he cut suddenly cut me off with a shout
“Whoa, hey, no! Not that one!”
I jumped at his sudden scream and turned to see who he was yelling at. A man in a pair of oil-stained coveralls was in the middle of removing the rims from one of the cars m
ounted on the lift.
“Leave that one alone,” Dante called from across the garage. “Take the ones from the yellow Porsche.”
“Got it, boss,” the man yelled back before he started to re-bolt the rims into place.
“Wait,” I snorted. “You really are stealing the rims? I was joking. I didn’t think you’d still be doing such small jobs.”
Like most mafia members, Dante had started off as a low-level soldati, in charge of carrying out petty crimes and small jobs, like stealing the rims off cars. Unlike other members, he had risen in the ranks quickly due to his sharp mind and his ability to work with his hands.
“Not just rims.” He grinned impishly. “And I’m not stealing. I’m replacing the parts with ones of… comparable value.”
“Yeah, I’m sure,” I laughed. I probably shouldn’t have found it funny. It was still a crime, after all. Compared to some of the other things the mafia did, though, such as murder and human trafficking, swiping car parts didn’t seem nearly as bad.
“And I don’t do it to everyone.” Dante shrugged. “Just the ones with a lot of money like Mr. Drives-A-Yellow-Porsche. Then I split the profits among everyone equally. Unlike you, we’re not mafia royalty. We still have to work for our money.”
“You don’t have to justify yourself to me,” I replied. I’d done a lot worse in my time with the mafia than ripping off some rich Porsche owner. “And I’m not a part of the mafia anymore, remember? You have a higher status in the Family than I do.”
“Nah.” Dante grinned. “You just keep running into the wrong people. There are a lot of us who don’t care about ‘blood in, blood out’ or about the old traditions or anything. A lot of people still respect you, in spite of what you did. Heck, because of what you did.”
“They respect me because I ditched the Family?” I deadpanned. Somehow, I didn't buy it.
“Because you defied the boss,” he smirked conspiratorially.
“That’s just not done, you know? Unless you want to end up at the bottom of the ocean or buried out in a shallow grave on the side of the highway.”
“Yeah, well, I think a lot of that had to do with who the boss is,” I retorted. “Had the leader of our Family been anyone other than my brother, I probably wouldn’t have gotten out alive.”
“Just think about it, all right?” Dante smiled. “About coming back into the fold, I mean. Not for them, but for us.”
“Not gonna happen,” I scoffed without hesitation. “But thanks for the vote of confidence.”
“Yeah, all right.” Dante sighed with disappointment. “Oh, how’d that new recorder work for you? Have you gotten a chance to test it out yet?”
“Yeah, just this morning, actually,” I replied. “Worked like a charm.”
“I knew it would.” Dante grinned smugly. “So what did you need it for? Some big government case?”
“No,” I chuckled. “Just some scumbag who I’m pretty sure is cheating on his wife.”
“That’s a shame.” Dante frowned. “So you’re not working on anything exciting right now?”
“Actually, I am,” I replied. “That’s part of the reason I stopped by. I wanted to get your input on something.”
“Really?” Dante’s eyes lit up. “Let’s go talk in my office, then.”
He led me past the work area and through a door set into the side of the adjoining building. The office was clean and professional-looking, which clashed considerably with Dante’s wild hairstyle and fashion sense.
“Okay,” he declared as he plopped down into his chair and propped his feet up onto his desk. “Give me the details.”
I gave him a quick rundown of the case, about how the female suspect had gotten away, and about how our biggest lead had been killed in the hospital while we were awaiting a chance to interrogate him.
“Wow,” Dante hummed as he drummed his fingers against his desk. “That’s a crazy series of events. Doesn’t it seem like a message?”
“What do you mean?” I asked. “What seems like a message?”
“Slitting the guy’s throat,” he clarified. “I mean, just think about it. You know there are a lot of other ways to kill people. Cleaner, quieter, more discreet ways. The only reason to off the guy in such a messy and show fashion--”
“Would be to leave a message,” I finished his thought for him. “He was in a hospital. It would have been easier to just smother him with a pillow or inject him with a dose of something lethal. Then everyone would have just assumed that some nurse made a really serious mistake. Instead, whoever did this made it really clear that it was a murder.”
“Bingo,” Dante replied. “Whoever offed the guy wasn’t just trying to silence him. I think this was a warning. You said he threatened that lady with going to the cops, right?”
“Yeah, he did,” I replied. “Right before we arrested him.”
“Well, there you go.” Dante shrugged. “They took him out as a warning to others. Don’t talk to the cops like this dope, or you’ll end up with your neck slashed, too.”
I frowned grimly at his insinuation. Everything he’d said so far was spot on, but if he was right, then that meant there were many more people involved in this. Enough to warrant this kind of warning, at least.
“You know,” Dante muttered, “hearing all the details like this, it almost sounds like something the mafia would do.”
“Yeah, it does,” I replied curtly. I’d been thinking the same thing, but I’d also been hoping it wasn’t connected to the mafia, if only because that would make this entire case infinitely more complicated.
“Then again, we wouldn’t be sloppy enough to kill something that publicly,” he snorted. “Well, I don’t think, anyway. Some of these new guys can be kind of dense. Take Elliot back there, for example, taking the rims off the wrong car. I love the guy, but I wouldn’t trust him with a hit. He’d probably whack the wrong guy.”
I barked with laughter. It felt a little weird, laughing at such a dark joke, but it felt good, too. Dante was one of the only people I could talk to about these kinds of things.
“Well, I think I should get going,” I said after we spent another few minutes talking. “I think you have a good point about the way Ryan was killed being a message. I should talk with my partner about it.”
“All right,” Dante replied. “I’ll let you know if I happen to come by any information through the Family. And don’t be a stranger. You know Ma misses you, right?”
“Yeah, I know,” I chuckled. It was funny how both of them had made sure to remind me to visit the other. “And I’d appreciate that. Just make sure you don’t do anything to get yourself in trouble.”
“I’ll be getting in trouble, anyway.” He grinned. “Oh, and before you go, I have something else I’ve been working on.”
I watched as he bent down to rummage through one of the drawers in his desk. He grinned as he pulled a small USB drive out of the drawer and held it out to me.
“What’s this?” I asked curiously as I took the mall device from him. It didn’t look any different from an ordinary USB drive.
“There’s a special program on it,” he replied. “Plug it into a computer, and it’ll automatically start making a copy of everything on the hard drive.”
“Wow, really?” I asked as I turned the small device over in my hands.
“Pretty cool, huh?” He smirked. “Anyway, let me know how it works. Good luck with your federal mission or whatever, have fun chasing down bad guys.”
“Okay,” I snorted as I got up to leave. I felt a lot lighter after having spoken with Dante. Not just because I now had another clue as to what was happening with the case, but because it just felt nice to be able to talk like old times. There were only a few rays of light left in the sky now, and I wondered if Jase was still at work.
12
Jase
I let my thoughts fade away as I pulled the trigger again, and again, and again, each time striking the paper target directing at center mass. I’d a
lways loved guns, ever since I’d first used one. It was like a puzzle, figuring out just the right angle after accounting for external interference like drag and how much velocity and height would be lost depending on the distance between me and the target. And having to do it all in a matter of nanoseconds unless I wanted to get shot. Out in the field, I didn’t have time to set my position carefully or consider the direction of the wind or calculate exactly how far my target was. Every split second counted.
Here though? Here was different. The SDCT had its own small shooting range in the basement of the office building. It wasn’t the most well-equipped place I’d ever been, but it was close by and convenient. After Nick had taken off, I’d come down here to blow off some steam and clear my head.
“Wow,” A voice yelled behind me as soon as I’d finished emptying the magazine in my gun. I jumped at the sudden, unexpected voice and spun around, careful to aim the gun at the ground even though it was empty now.
“Chloe.” I frowned as I yanked my protective ear equipment off. “You shouldn’t sneak up on people at a gun range.”
“I didn’t,” she replied. “I’ve been standing here for a while. And the gun’s empty now anyway, right? I counted the shots.”
“Still,” I grumbled. I was pretty careful when it came to handling guns, but it wasn’t uncommon for accidents to occur at gun ranges due to people being careless.
“Anyway,” she continued, “that was so cool. You hit him in the bullseye every single time.”
I smiled proudly as I pulled the target back in so I could examine it. My bullets had torn a clean hole through the very center of the figure’s chest. Marksmanship was one of the few skills I didn’t feel any hesitation bragging about. I was a great shot.
“Let me see,” a different voice chimed in as the paper was snatched out of my hands. I turned around to find Bette scrutinizing my work with a scowl.
“Oh, yay, Bette’s here,” Chloe cooed sarcastically.