by Sal Bianchi
“You were lucky.” The doctor informed me as he pointedly attempted to ignore the tapestry of scars woven across my body. He was doing a poor job of it, as most people did. It was just another reminder of my former life with the mafia. “The bullet only grazed your shoulder, so the damage was all superficial. It’s a pretty deep laceration, though, so you should try to rest that arm in order to avoid popping the stitches. If you do, the injury might become infected and get worse than it is now.”
“Got it.” I smiled cheerlessly as I buttoned my shirt back up. The left shoulder felt uncomfortably hard now that the blood had dried against it.
“I’ll give you a prescription for the pain,” The doctor continued as he clicked a few keys on the computer. “You should make an appointment to come back in two weeks for a check-up and to get the stitches out, but other than that, you should be good to go.”
“Thanks,” I replied as I got to my feet and headed straight out the door. I wanted to get away from the harsh fluorescent lights and the scent of antiseptic as quickly as possible. I only stopped at the check-out desk for a moment to grab the prescription before heading straight for the entrance.
The darkness that enveloped me as soon as I stepped through the doors felt soothing against my eyes. I took a few steps into the parking lot before pulling my phone out of my pocket to call Jase.
“Hello?” he answered right away.
“Hey,” I sighed tiredly. “I’ve been discharged. Come get me.”
“I’m already here,” he replied. “I’m in the main parking lot, all the way in the back.”
I looked up into the sea of cars in front of me. Even though it was pretty late at night, there were still dozens of cars in the lot. As I was scanning over them, one at the very edge flashed its lights twice.
“Do you see me?” Jase asked as he continued to flash the lights.
“Yeah,” I replied as I ended the call and headed for the car. As I got closer, I could make out Jase’s form in the driver’s seat. I was confused for a moment because I didn’t recognize the car he was driving. Then I remembered that his regular car had just been shot to pieces.
“Why’d you park so far?” I grumbled as I opened the passenger side door and climbed inside.
“It’s easier to find parking out here where there are no other cars.” He shrugged as he started the ignition and pulled out of the spot. “And it’s closer to the exit.”
“So you made an injured person walk all that way,” I shook my head in mock disappointment, “just so you wouldn’t be inconvenienced.”
“I’m sorry,” Jase scoffed. “I could have sworn it was your arm that got shot, not your legs. And weren’t you the one whining about how you didn’t want to go to the hospital and kept insisting you were fine?”
“Fine, fine,” I replied in surrender. “Forget I said anything. Anyway, what’s going on? Can we interview the suspect?”
“Yeah.” Jase nodded. “Flint pulled a few strings and arranged it even though it’s past one in the morning already. The guys at the station weren’t pleased about it, but Flint explained that time was of the essence.”
“Good,” I replied with relief. Ryan Rothschild had been killed in the hospital before we got a chance to properly interrogate him, and a fake lawyer intercepted Ian Brooks before we could speak to him as well. There was no telling what the mafia might do to keep the suspect silent, so it was imperative that we move as quickly as possible.
I was jittery for the entire drive over to the police station. I was itching to come face to face with the man who had shot me.
I unbuckled my seatbelt even before Jase had fully pulled into the parking spot outside the police station. I threw the door open and stepped out quickly before turning around to wait impatiently for Jase to get out too. As soon as he’d locked the doors behind us, I turned around again to head into the station.
I spotted Flint as soon as I stepped through the doors, sitting in a plastic bucket chair near the main reception desk. I was more surprised to see Agent Stein sitting next to him.
“Agent Jase, Nick,” Flint looked at each of us in turn as he stood up to greet us.
“Good evening, Director,” Jase replied politely. “And Agent Stein.”
“Heck of a time for you two to drag a guy out of bed,” Stein chuckled. “Anyway, I’m here because I found something yesterday that might be relevant to you for your investigation. I was going to let you know about it tomorrow since I knew you two were busy doing your stake-out tonight. Though I guess it technically is already tomorrow, right? Anyway, the director thought it might be important, so here I am.”
“What is it?” I asked as patiently as I could. Stein was a good buddy, but his rambling could get trying.
“Right.” He cleared his throat. “I went through that list you gave me. You were right about there being all sorts of suspicious transactions and inconsistencies in their records. Unfortunately, it wasn’t anything concrete enough for us to really pin them with anything. I suppose they wouldn’t have lasted very long as the mafia if it were that easy, though, right? Anyway, there was something that stuck out as odd in particular with this one motel out by Route Sixty-six.”
“A motel?” Jase muttered.
“I had a little look into their banking records,” Stein replied vaguely. I tensed as I wondered if it was okay for him to admit to this in front of Flint. It could take weeks or even months to acquire a subpoena to look through a business’s banking records and actually receive the information. Since there was no way that Stein had done that, he was practically admitting to having hacked his way into obtaining the information. I glanced surreptitiously over at Flint, but he didn’t seem affected by the announcement. “Turns out this particular motel was having a lot of trouble paying their day-to-day bills. Utilities, property taxes, it was all in the red until about six months ago when they suddenly paid all their overdue balances.”
“That’s some pretty suspicious timing,” I scoffed. “So far, we’ve traced the murder chain back about three months. I wonder if we’ll keep finding new cases all the way back to last March.”
“I was thinking the same thing.” Stein nodded. “Which is why I dug a little bit deeper. It turns out that the owner of the motel has been receiving sporadic five-thousand-dollar payments since just before their overdue accounts were cleared. There isn’t any pattern to when the payments come in, either.”
I almost wanted to laugh at how sloppy it was. It was hard to believe that someone from the Family was behind such a poor operation. Not spacing the payments out regularly was the first mistake because now they couldn’t even claim that it was from a side job. The second mistake was choosing such a glaringly conspicuous number like five-thousand, and every single time to boot. This seemed like the work of an amateur, but there was no doubt my former Family was involved after my meetings with Franco and Alessandro. There was something I was missing.
“Let’s go speak with the suspect.” I turned to look at Jase. “We might scare him into talking if we bring up the fact that we know about the motel.”
“His name is Samuel Russo,” Flint informed us. “Police ran his prints and discovered he has priors for assault and possession. He hasn’t said anything since he arrived, not even to ask for a lawyer.”
His record made sense to me. If my hunch was correct, then Russo was probably a low-level grunt like Domenico and Sergio, whose job was to carry out small, petty crimes. This way, the members in a more powerful position in the Family’s hierarchy wouldn’t have to get their hands dirty. Whoever was really in charge had probably sent Russo to kill me on his behalf.
The police station was nearly empty this time of night. Only a few officers remained overnight just in case something happened, and it was one of these officers who led us back toward the interrogation room at the rear end of the station.
She stifled a yawn as she led us down through the hall. She looked young, probably a rookie fresh out of the academy. Usually, it w
as the newer officers who were tasked with the unappealing night duty, and I felt a twinge of sympathy for her as I took in the dark circles under her eyes and the slight hunch in her shoulders.
“I’ll be up front,” she informed us as she unlocked the door to the interrogation room’s viewing gallery. “The door locks automatically, so at least one of you should stay on the outside so you can let the other ones out. Just push this button by the door. Call me if you need anything.”
“Thank you,” Flint replied, but the officer was already trudging away slowly. She should have stayed to observe since we were only borrowing the police station’s interrogation room, but she was obviously too tired to care about proper procedure. All the better for me, though, to have fewer witnesses around.
The viewing gallery looked into a small concrete room about half the size of the gallery. Through the two-way mirror, I could see that there was nothing inside the room aside from a plain metal table and two metal chairs. I frowned when I noticed that a camera was mounted on one corner of the room. They were standard for all police interrogation rooms, but some places were too cheap to install them or to fix broken ones. It would make it more difficult for me to get the result I wanted, but I would just have to make do.
Russo was sitting stoically at the table, staring straight ahead. His expression was completely void of emotion. Grunt or not, he was at least a decent enough mafioso to hide his true feelings, I had to give him that.
“You ready?” I asked Jase as I reached for the button beside the door.
“Yep,” he replied easily.
I unlocked the door and stepped inside with Jase right behind me. I watched carefully for any change in the suspect’s expression or body language, but to my disappointment, he remained annoyingly calm and collected. It wasn’t until I fell heavily into the metal chair in front of him that he even bothered to look up at me. He finally reacted as he realized who I was and tossed me a disdainful sneer.
“Who sent you to have me clipped?” I asked right away. I wanted to know for the sake of the case, of course, but I also just wanted to know for myself who I needed to be wary of.
Russo just scoffed with contempt.
“You think anyone would waste time putting a hit out on you?” he sneered. “All I was doing was taking out some trash that had been left out for too long.”
“Oh, Russo.” I smirked scornfully at him. “We both know you aren’t bold or smart enough to do anything on your own, so why don’t you just stop with the games and tell me who sent you.”
“Ha!” He suddenly barked so loudly that I nearly jumped in surprise. “You’re a little snitch that plays with the feds, and now you think everyone will turn as easy as you? Some of us actually know what loyalty means. The Omerta says that we keep silent about our Family.”
“Right,” I sighed impatiently. “Agent Park, could you please go get the suspect some water to drink?”
I turned to look at Jase, who blinked at me with wide, confused eyes. Russo, too, seemed puzzled about my sudden request.
“Sure,” Jase replied hesitantly a moment later before turning to leave the room. I turned back to look at Russo. The cameras were still on, and I couldn’t be sure that someone aside from the SDCT members was listening on the other side of the two-way glass.
“Do you think this is a game?” I murmured as I leaned in close to Russo, quietly enough that the camera almost certainly wouldn’t be able to pick it up. “It seems to me that you’ve forgotten who I am.”
I grinned when I saw Russo’s face turn a shade paler at my words. He gritted his teeth and stuttered through his response.
“You’re nothing but a--”
“A what?” I interrupted. “A traitor? You all listen to Alessandro because you’re afraid of what he’s capable of, but it seems none of you remember that there was a time when I was supposed to be the one to succeed my father as the head of the Family.”
Russo's mouth opened and closed like a gaping fish, shocked at my threatening words.
“I could kill you right now,” I muttered darkly, “and make it look like an accident. Hell, I could make it look like a suicide. I’d get away with it, too. The feds are my friends. You said so yourself, right?”
His bravado was quickly diminishing, as I’d suspected. Despite all his talk about loyalty and the Family, he was just a weak and disposable pawn in the end.
“You’re bluffing,” he hissed at me, his voice trembling.
“You can think that if you want.” I shrugged. “Though, I would like it if you could tell me more about what’s happening at the Cactus Motel before I kill you.”
“What did you say?” he gasped.
“Oh, did I not mention it before?” I feigned ignorance. “We already know about what’s been going on there. I just thought I’d give you a chance to fess up before we took everyone down. As a courtesy, since we’re Family after all.”
I’d expected him to react to my bluff with disbelief or anger or fear, but I hadn’t expected him to burst into tears. I stared at him in shock as he proceeded to sob pathetically, tears rolling down his blotchy, red face.
“You can’t do this,” he pleaded, his hands clasped together on the table in front of me. “Please, they’ll kill my family if they find out I failed. If you show up at the hotel, they’ll have my Mia and my two baby girls killed. “
I stared down at Russo in shock as I listened to what he was saying. It could have just been a ploy to catch me off guard and play at my sympathy, but the fat tears rolling down his face didn’t seem fake.
I bit my lip in frustration as I quickly tried to figure out what to do. This man had tried to kill me. Hell, I had the stitches in my shoulder to prove it. Still, I couldn’t help but feel pity for the hysterical man hunched over in front of me. I smiled bitterly. My father had always said he’d chosen Alessandro over me in the end because I was too soft.
“Tell me what I want to know,” I stated calmly, “and I’ll make sure to get your family somewhere safe.”
Russo looked up at me in disbelief.
“How will you do that?” He scoffed incredulously. “You know better than anyone how powerful the Family is. You really think you can put them somewhere the mafia won’t reach.”
I gritted my teeth at his question. Unfortunately, I did know all too well just how difficult it was to ever really escape from the mafia. Our circumstances were different, though. The family of some low-level soldati would have a much easier time hiding than a former underboss.
“My friends will help,” I assured him. “The government has special protection programs for people in these kinds of situations. They’ll be put somewhere far away, with new names and identities. Even I won’t know where they are.”
Russo looked up at me, hope shining through his watery eyes.
“Okay,” he sniffled. “I’m going to put my faith in you, Nicolo DiFiore.”
“Tell me who’s behind all of this,” I commanded.
“His name is Lorenzo,” Russo sniffled. “Lorenzo Russo. He’s my uncle. He’s the one who’s behind everything. I don’t know any of the details. He doesn’t trust me enough to divulge any of that to me. Heh, I guess he was right not to, in the end. Anyway, he’s the one who sent me to take you out. He told me you’d probably be stopping by the old bar again soon and to wait there until you showed up. I was surprised when you came back the next night.”
“How d'you spot us?” I asked purely out of curiosity. We’d made sure to park far away and in the shadows.
“Seriously?” Russo chuckled. “Unmarked black sedan with tinted windows. Older model but without a speck of dust or damage. I could spot a cop car from a hundred miles away.”
I frowned in response. I’d have to speak to Flint later about updating the company cars to keep a lower profile.
“I’ll make sure your family is safe,” I promised as I looked directly into Russo’s eyes. “Before I do anything else, I’ll keep my word on that.”
Ru
sso looked like he was about to cry again and reached across the table to grab my hand. I realized what he was about to do a split second before he did it and yanked my hand away before he could kiss it.
My chair scraped loudly across the floor as I stood abruptly. There wasn’t a snowball’s chance in Hell I was about to let that happen. It was a common sign of respect to give to the boss of a mafia family, but I was here as a consultant for the SDCT, not as a mafioso.
“Just tell me where they are right now,” I demanded, perturbed by the unexpected action. As soon as he was finished telling me the address, I turned and strode to the door. Someone on the other side pushed the button to unlock it as I did, and I stepped back outside of the room without another word.
Flint, Stein, and Jase were all watching me with unreadable expressions.
“What did you say to get him to react like that?” Jase broke the silence. “We couldn’t hear you when you leaned in to whisper to him.
“Good,” I thought. Threatening suspects was very much illegal, so the less they knew, the better.
“Don’t ask questions you don’t want to know the answers to,” I grumbled in response. “You heard what he said about his family, right? That needs to take priority.”
“Of course.” Flint nodded, his expression still grave.
“Let’s go then,” I declared before turning to leave the police station. I intended to keep my word. Russo had committed a cardinal sin by snitching on the mafia to the feds. I needed to hurry and get his family to safety before anyone in the Family realized what he’d done.
34
Jase
The atmosphere in the car was tense. Even as I drove, I kept going over what had happened in the interrogation room after Nick had asked me to leave to get the suspect something to drink. I knew right away that it was just a ploy to get me to leave the room, so as soon as I was outside, I’d turned to watch the pair through the two-way glass.