An Offer You Can't Refuse: A Miami Mafia Crime Thriller

by Sal Bianchi

  “They might dislike me,” Nick jeered, “but at least I’ve never threatened the family of a fellow member or attacked an innocent kid. You’ve inadvertently replaced me as enemy number one.”

  Lorenzo swallowed nervously, and his eyes began to dart back and forth.

  “Of course, there might be a way we can help you out.” Nick hummed. “The SDCT has the ability to offer protective custody for those who are believed to be in danger. You’d still go to jail, of course, but you’d be alive. That’s more than I can say for what might happen to you if you try to return to the mafia.”

  “How do I know you’re not bluffing?” He growled.

  Nick turned to look at me. Up until now, I’d been watching silently, curious about what Nick intended to do and content to let him continue so long as we got Lorenzo talking.

  “He isn’t lying,” I assured Lorenzo. “Regardless of who you are or what prior crimes you may have committed, the SDCT has a duty to ensure the safety of its informants. Now that we know that your life is in danger, we can’t just stand back and let the mafia do as it pleases.”

  That seemed to pacify Lorenzo somewhat, and the defensive snarl on his face slowly melted away. It wasn’t a lie, either. Even if he was a piece of criminal scum, we couldn’t just look away if we knew that his life was in real danger.

  “All right,” he sighed in resignation. “What exactly do you want to know?”

  “How about you start by telling us about the death of Senator Alexis Rothschild?” I replied. Now that Nick opened the line of communication, it really made more sense for me to do the bulk of the interrogating.

  “She was one of the hits we arranged,” Lorenzo admitted. “I wasn’t involved personally, of course. I hardly knew who she was. All I did was find someone to do the deed.”

  “So you admit that you were the one behind this entire chain of hits?” I reiterated. The more clearly we got his confession, the easier it would be to proceed. “Explain to me how this all started.”

  “Ah, well, let me see,” Lorenzo mumbled. “I suppose it all started about a year ago, really. I used to be a hitman for the Family. I bought that old motel as a way to launder money. Worst decision of my life. That old pile of crap ended up costing me more than I was making.”

  “We noticed that all of your bills were suddenly paid in full about three months ago,” I replied. “Does that have something to do with this?”

  “Yeah.” Lorenzo nodded. “I started to do a little extra work on the side, outside of what I was ordered to do by the Family. It was risky, though. Jobs with the mafia are one thing. I have protection if things go wrong. On my own, though, I was taking on all the risks. So I thought: why not get someone else to take the risk for me?”

  I could see where this was going, and my stomach churned as I thought about how sick Lorenzo was for even coming up with something like this.

  “I see,” I replied curtly. “So you were taking on hit requests but making other clients do them for you?”

  “Yeah.” Lorenzo smirked. “Pretty smart, huh? This way, everyone gets what they want, and no one can snitch because they’re all guilty of taking out someone else. Everyone had an alibi because they all made sure to be seen publicly somewhere else at the time of the hit. Best of all, if things did go wrong, none of it could be traced back to me since I never put my hands on anyone.”

  “Well, that obviously didn’t work out,” Nick scoffed. “Since you’re sitting here right now.”

  Lorenzo tossed him a sour look. It was probably a bad idea to provoke him when we were finally getting somewhere, but I couldn’t blame Nick for wanting to get a dig in. I was having a hard time stomaching the smarmy look on his face as he talked about how smart he was for coming up with this heinous idea.

  “Who else were you working with?” Nick suddenly asked suspiciously. There was a look of frustration on his face, and I couldn’t tell what he was thinking.

  “What do you mean?” He raised an eyebrow at Nick. “It was just me. Well, and that little snitch Samuel.”

  “No.” I frowned. “Anyone could tell what a moron you are after spending just a few minutes speaking with you. You’re not smart or disciplined enough to have come up with this on your own. Not that it’s a particularly well-executed plane or anything, but it’s still more than some second-rate hitman like you could pull off.”

  “It was just me,” Lorenzo growled. It was the hint of anger in his response that tipped me off that he was lying. Confusion I could understand, but what reason would he have to be angry about Nick’s accusation?

  “Whoever you’re trying to protect, you might as well forget it,” Nick scoffed. “I already told you that the Family turned its back on you. Why are you still being loyal?”

  Lorenzo blinked at Nick in surprise before contorting his features into an expression of rage.

  “You know what?” He chuckled bitterly. “You’re right. I don’t know why I’m loyal to someone who’s clearly willing to side with some little snitch over a loyal man.”

  “What are you talking about?” Nick asked, and my eyes widened as I realized what Lorenzo was saying.

  “It was Alessandro,” he sneered. “You’re right. I’m not smart enough to have done this on my own. I came up with the basic idea, but the boss was the one who sorted out all the details. He found out about what I was planning pretty early on. I thought I’d be in trouble, but to my surprise, he was okay with it. All I had to do was hand over a cut of every payment, and he said he’d look the other way. He must have thought it was a pretty sweet deal since the Family got a cut without actually offering me any protection.”

  I couldn’t read Nick’s expression, which was a little troubling. Nick tended to wear his heart on his sleeve. When he was happy, he got arrogant and annoying about it, and when he was upset, he sulked or lashed out. The fact that he was just staring at Lorenzo blankly was alarming.

  “You’re lying,” Nick hissed, his jaw clenched.

  “Ha!” Lorenzo jeered. “You really have no idea what a monster your brother is, do you? He’s twice as ruthless as Marco was. A lot has changed since you left the Family!”

  Nick got up and stormed out of the room without another word. My immediate impulse was to follow him, but I still had to finish this interrogation. I’d have to wait to check on him until later.

  “Who was the woman who killed Alexis Rothschild?” I asked. Out of everything else, this was the more pressing piece of information we still needed.

  “Oh, her?” Lorenzo muttered. “What was her name… Oh, right. Hannah Styles. She was the one assigned to kill that senator. Completely screwed it up too. She got caught by the client’s son.”

  “You mean Josh Rothschild?” I clarified. “You weren’t worried that he’d say something and sink your entire operation?”

  “Of course I was,” Lorenzo scoffed. “Stupid girl. She had one job to do, and she couldn’t manage it. She even had a key and the security code for the front door. She called me crying in the middle of the night, whining about how the little boy had seen her. I asked her what she did about it, and she said she just left him there! Can you believe that?”

  “What were you expecting her to do?” I glowered at him.

  “Whatever she had to in order to make sure she didn’t go down and drag the rest of us with her,” Lorenzo spat. “I told her she should go back and get rid of the kid too.”

  “Get rid of--” I gasped. “You told her she should kill a kid? Are you insane?”

  Lorenzo leveled a dismissive glare at Jase before responding.

  “What’s insane,” he smirked, “is bludgeoning someone to death and then leaving behind a witness. It’s nothing personal to the kid. It’s just business.”

  “You’re a monster,” I sneered at him, unable to hide the revulsion I felt.

  “I’m a businessman,” he retorted. “You’ll never make it anywhere in life if you aren’t willing to get your hands dirty. Take that little moron, Hannah. Sh
e started whining about how there was no way she was going to kill some little baby boy.”

  He pitched his voice up as he mocked Hannah’s words, and I had to clench my jaw to maintain my composure.

  “So what did happen?” I asked as calmly as I could manage.

  “I called Ryan to let him know that his kid had seen it all go down,” Lorenzo responded. “In the end, I decided that it might not be a good idea to kill the kid after all. Ryan might have squealed to the police then. He wanted to talk to Hannah about what exactly his son had seen. Normally, I wouldn’t have allowed two different clients to interact like that, but I needed to get this under control fast, so I asked them both to come and see me that same night.”

  “How did Ryan react when he heard you wanted to kill off his son?” I asked.

  “He was outraged, of course,” Lorenzo replied calmly, as though he was completely unaffected by the topic of killing a kindergartener. “It’s not like he could do much, though. If he talked, he’d be exposing his own part in his ex-wife’s death. I told them both to just keep their mouths shut and lie low.”

  He grimaced and shook his head before continuing.

  “I should have just killed them both right then. It would have saved me a lot of trouble.”

  My blood ran cold at the casual way he spoke about taking people’s lives, even an innocent child’s. Then again, he had taken a little boy hostage during his confrontation with Nick at the motel, so maybe I shouldn’t have been all that shocked.

  “Who did Hannah want killed?” I asked, getting back to the main point of my question.

  “Her own mom,” Lorenzo grunted. “Pretty cold-blooded, but you’d be surprised how many people take hits out on their own family.”

  “Do you remember the mother’s address?” I pressed him.

  “Yeah.” Lorenzo nodded. “I can’t remember the number off the top of my head, but I remember the street.”

  “Write it down,” I commanded as I pulled a small notepad from my work bag and slammed it on the table in front of him. He took the pen tucked into the notepad’s rings and wrote down the woman’s name and the parts of the address that he could remember. I was certain that Stein could figure out her exact address in no time.

  “There you go,” he grunted as he pushed the pen and notepad back toward me. “The guy assigned to kill her is Emmet Mayfield. I dunno if he’s done it yet.”

  I took the pen and notepad back and hastily left the room. It had been several days already since Alexis Rothschild was killed, so it was certainly possible that Mayfield may have already carried out the hit on her mother. We didn’t have any time to waste in trying to find her before she was killed.

  38

  Nick

  My mind was reeling as I sat on one of the overstuffed chairs in the SDCT break room. I wasn’t under any illusions that my brother didn’t do bad things. He was a mafia boss, after all. It was a given that he would be involved in crime. I’d made the conscious effort to just not think about it without even realizing it. Everything had come crashing to the surface with Lorenzo’s words, though.

  It was hard for me to accept that Alessandro had not only been aware of what was going on but actively profiting off of it. In hindsight, it made more sense now why he and Franco had made such a strong effort to get me to stop investigating. I still sometimes thought of Alessandro as the twelve-year-old boy who’d once assaulted a cop in order to defend me when the two of us were on our own, but it was time to face reality. We weren’t kids anymore, and it seemed that Alessandro had turned into someone I didn’t even recognize anymore.

  I got back up and stretched. I felt a little embarrassed at how I’d just bolted from the interrogation room. I could tell I was just a few seconds away from losing my temper, though, and I thought it would be better to just leave before I did something I regretted.

  I was about to leave the breakroom and head back to the interrogation room at the other side of the office when Bette walked in.

  “Why are you always just hanging around?” She huffed. “Weren’t you supposed to be doing an interrogation with Agent Park? If you’re done, then go home, or go do whatever it is you do when you’re not here. You’re not an SDCT agent. You can’t just hang around on your off time.”

  “Why are you so mean?” I asked her point-blank.

  She froze and stared at me, wide-eyed. Normally I just brushed her harassment off with a shrug or a smile, so she must have been shocked to hear me respond seriously.

  “I helped the SDCT investigate a case against my own former Family,” I continued. Now that I’d started, I felt bolstered to continue. “I could have gotten killed for doing that, but you still seem to think I’m a double agent or something. I don’t get why you have it out for me so badly.”

  She stared at me in disbelief and opened her mouth, ready to retort. Before she could speak, though, Jase burst into the break room and interrupted us.

  “There you are!” he yelled. “Come on. We gotta go. I got an address from the next potential victim. We need to hurry and try to get her to safety.”

  “Right.” I nodded with determination. This was no time to sulk or squabble with Bette. I needed to get my head back in the game.

  Jase left the room without another word, and I followed after him, leaving Bette to stand there alone. We hurried down the elevator and out into the parking lot.

  “The address isn’t far from here,” Jase informed me as we got into the car. “We should be there in about twenty minutes.”

  The drive was nerve-wracking. It had been a week since Hannah had fulfilled her obligation to kill Alexis Rothschild, which meant that the next client, Emmet Mayfield, had seven days' worth of opportunities to have killed Hannah’s mom. It was very possible that all we would find at Mrs. Style’s home was a dead body.

  We pulled into the little ranch-style house a short while later. The grass was a little overgrown and there appeared to be a lot of mail in the mailbox. Those were definitely bad signs, but I kept my hopes up as I got out of the car and headed toward the front door.

  I raised my hand to knock, too antsy to wait for Jase to do it like we usually did. As I was about to, I noticed that the door wasn’t closed all the way.

  “It’s open,” I called to Jase as I pushed gently on the front door. It gave way easily, but I couldn’t see anyone inside. I turned to look at Jase, and then we both pulled our guns from our holsters and stepped inside. Since the door was ajar and we had reason to believe someone inside might be in danger, we didn’t need a warrant before coming inside.

  I nearly jumped when I turned the first corner out of the main foyer of the house. There was a man kneeling in the center of the living room. He was wearing dark clothes and muddy shoes, and there was a wild, murderous look in his eyes. An old woman was lying on the ground in front of him, a long, thin length of cord wrapped around her neck and currently being pulled taut by the man behind her.

  “Stop!” I roared as I lifted my gun and pointed it at the man.

  The man looked up at me as I yelled. He obviously hadn’t heard us come in because he looked surprised to see us standing there. He let go of the cord and put his hands up slowly.

  “Back away and get on the ground,” Jase commanded beside me.

  The man did as he was told and moved backward a few steps. He didn’t get on the ground, though. Instead, he began to look swiftly around as though looking for an exit. Suddenly, he reached behind his back.

  Jase and I both reacted immediately at the glint of a firearm. We fired our guns almost in unison, and both of our shots landed. The man fell over with a pained grunt, and Jase rushed to the man’s side to retrieve his weapon. As soon as he’d thrown it to the other side of the room, I fell onto the ground to check on the woman.

  Her face was purple, and she wasn’t moving. I quickly turned her over and nearly gasped at how blue her lips were.

  I positioned the woman flat on the ground and tilted her head back before I started
to do chest compressions. There was no telling how long she had gone without oxygen, and brain damage or even death could occur after just a few minutes. The man had still been strangling her when we arrived, though, so I could only hope that we’d gotten here in the nick of time.

  I counted forty and then gave the woman two rescue breaths before resuming the chest compressions. My arms were aching, and I was sure that I was going to break this poor old woman’s fragile rib bones, but I had to keep going.

  “He’s not breathing,” Jase called as he examined the motionless suspect. “I’m going to call nine-one-one. Are you okay on the compressions?”

  “I’m okay,” I replied through gritted teeth. CPR was a physically stressful and painful process, but I couldn’t give in so quickly.

  I had lost track of how many times I’d administered the chest compression when the woman suddenly coughed and gasped for air. She opened her bloodshot eyes and looked around the room wildly. I collapsed backward in relief and allowed myself to rest for a moment.

  “Don’t move,” Jase spoke to her gently as the woman began to scramble around and croak. “Try to remain still and not talk, okay? Your throat is very swollen, and you might have some internal injuries. I’m Agent Park with the SDCT, and I’m here to help you, okay? Can you take some deep breaths with me?”

  Jase began to breathe in and out in an exaggerated manner. The woman tried to mimic his actions, but I could tell she was struggling to draw a full breath.

  I moved over to the suspect to check on him while Jase stayed with the victim. There were two bullet wounds in his chest, and he was completely still. He wasn’t breathing either, just as Jase had said.

  “Damn it,” I hissed as I looked at the man’s motionless body. It was a good shot since he had been about to shoot us, but either way, it was never ideal when a suspect was killed on the scene. The paperwork alone was a nightmare.