by Mike Slavin
They’re never coming back.
Part III
One Defining Month
7
One Month Later
Las Vegas
June 3, 2018, Sunday Night
“Good night, sweetheart,” Tony Testa said, bending over his daughter, one hand touching her tiny cheek. He gave her a lingering kiss on the forehead and then closed his eyes for a second.
She’s perfect.
Gentleness wasn’t his best friend, not for his business, but with a four-year-old daughter and his family, he couldn’t be that guy.
“Night, Daddy.” Rosie beamed back up at him, her eyes smiling with adoration. If she knew the real man behind the smile, would she still love him? Trust him? Probably, but that knowledge would still certainly change her life’s direction. She’d figure it out one day, but hopefully not soon.
“Kisses, baby girl.” Tony presented her with his cheek. She touched her puckered lips against it, giving him a smooch. Her innocence and love flowed smoothly into him. He knew she loved her daddy. Probably more than anyone in the world, except maybe her older brother.
His two children shared a room, though not because of space. Tony’s house was huge, but his children were small enough that they found comfort sleeping in the same room.
He turned to the other single bed.
“Good night, Tiger.” Tony kissed his five-year-old son, Conner, on the forehead and repeated the ritual he’d just performed with Rosie. His son was just as loving and sweet as his little sister, but already showed he would always be her protector.
Tony knew their mother had already said good night, so he moved to close the door and get a last peek at his children before they went to sleep. He watched them for a few minutes. He realized he was unaware he’d been smiling.
After Tony tucked his children into bed, he walked to the master bedroom. He was forty-five, with prematurely thinning, wispy, blond hair. He was of average height and in decent shape. His wife, Angela, a few years younger, sat up in bed. She was watching TV and holding a glass of white wine.
Tony walked into the bedroom and up to her side of the bed. “I gotta go out for a few hours.” He leaned over and admired his blonde wife’s warm brown eyes as she relaxed in her white nightgown. He loved her, but sometimes wondered if she had the same love for him.
“Ah, now?” Angela asked.
“You understand.” Tony leaned down and kissed his wife. The kiss lingered a little longer than a peck. He tasted the wine on her breath and warm lips.
“Okay, be careful.” Angela gave him a loving look and a smile. Going out suddenly at all hours was nothing new, even on a Sunday night. Angela had learned early in their relationship to not ask too many questions.
On the way out, Tony stopped by his study and picked up a black metal box a little bigger than a hardback novel. Greg Gibson, his longtime bodyguard and most trusted man, met Tony at the front door. Except for a larger head than normal, he looked every bit the part and could back it up. Greg held open the door to the back seat of Tony’s dark Lincoln Navigator, then jumped into the front passenger seat once Tony had climbed in.
“You got it, right?” Tony asked.
“Sure, boss,” Greg replied in his Brooklyn accent. Wearing a white glove, he pulled a revolver out of a cloth bag and showed it to Tony.
“Good.”
“Ready to go, boss?”
Tony nodded. Greg looked at the driver. “Let’s go.”
Tony sat in the back seat, reading a business plan for a new small casino. He seldom looked up. Their uneventful journey into the desert eventually took them to dirt paths.
The Navigator bumped down the dirt road and Tony set aside his reading. Headlamps appeared in the distance.
“Pull up beside them,” Tony said. The Navigator stopped. The tires kicked up a small dust cloud that rolled over the car.
Tony didn’t have to tell the driver to leave the vehicle running or the headlights on. He’d done this all before. Tony, Greg, and the driver got out. Their headlights joined those of the car already there, doubling the illumination on the point of interest.
“Marco, it’s us!” Greg shouted. He walked a couple of steps behind Tony, while the driver was behind Greg. “You got Brody the Thief all ready?”
“All set.” Marco was on the shorter side, with a gut on him from too much Italian food.
Tony walked around the car. The headlights beamed on Brody, one of two new guys who’d been brought on within the last few months. They’d tied Brody’s knees together in a prayer position and zip-tied his hands behind him. He faced a shallow grave. Brody wore damp, bloody underwear and a black bag over his head. Despite the black bag, Tony could tell his chin was down.
Marco and Ken—one of Tony’s new guys—stood smoking a few feet back at the other end of the hole. “We’re all set,” Marco said.
Marco Russo had been handling Tony’s dirty work for well over six years, taking over Greg’s responsibility when he’d become Tony’s bodyguard. He was second only to Greg on Tony’s trust scale. Ken projected a tough exterior, but he had to be tested.
Brody was the test.
“Please, please, don’t kill me,” Brody wailed. “I take care of my mother. I’m all she’s got. I’ll be loyal—I’ll do anything. Anything! Just let me go! I’ll leave and you’ll never see me again. I’m sorry.” Brody’s frantic begging was muffled by the bag over his head but it was still clearly understandable. He tried to stand but fell over.
Marco took one last drag on his cigarette and then snuffed it with his fingers. Ken glanced at Marco, and then did the same with his cigarette.
Brody began sobbing. The cool air of the night may have contributed to his shivering and shaking, but it also could have been pure fear. Tony seldom had to do anything as drastic as this, and never to one of his own guys. Everyone knew trying to steal a drug shipment had lethal consequences. He was glad Brody was a new guy. Nobody cared about Brody the Thief, except maybe Ken, and only because he had been hired at about the same time.
“Show me his face,” Tony said.
Marco walked over to Brody, and Ken followed. Marco pulled off the bag. Brody’s face was beaten up and bloody, with one eye swollen shut.
As soon as the hood came off, he started begging again. “Please, please, no …” Then he stopped pleading. He tried to sit up straight and look around with his good eye.
Brody had been driving one of Tony’s drug shipments in the wrong direction. Tony always put two GPS trackers on any vehicle that was moving drugs for him. It didn’t take long to see this truck was going the wrong way. Tony had the truck cut off and replaced Brody with another driver.
Earlier, Tony had been trying to think of some way to avoid killing Brody, but he knew he had no choice.
Another fuckin’ guy forcing me to kill him.
“You told Marco it was only you,” Tony said to Brody. “You sure no one else was involved? If I find out later you were lying, I’ll kill your mother and anyone else you care about. Do you understand?”
“It was just me, I swear. It was stupid. I’ll never do it again. Please, Mr. Testa. I’ll do anything. Please, please …” Brody kept begging and crying.
“Greg, give ‘im the gun,” Tony said.
“Okay, boss.” Greg walked around the grave and stopped between Marco and Ken, who were standing a few feet from Brody. Greg took the revolver out of the cloth bag and wiped it down one more time, though it was already clean of prints. Still holding the revolver with the cloth, Greg held the gun out to Ken.
Ken’s eyes widened. He stepped back from the gun being offered to him and he raised his hands, palms toward Greg. He looked at Tony. “Mr. Testa, I never killed anyone before. Please, I don’t want to do this.”
Tony looked at Ken with no expression. He spoke slowly and deliberately. “Take the gun and shoot him in the head.”
Ken took a hesitant step toward the gun. “I don’t think I can. Really, I never killed a
nyone.”
“Take the gun and kill him or you’ll be going in the hole with him.”
Ken looked around like he was thinking of running, but both Greg and Marco were holding automatic pistols pointed at his midsection.
Ken took the revolver. When the pistol shook, he put a second hand on it and pointed it at Brody, who’d fallen over on his side, still zip-tied, and was now squirming.
Ken shut his eyes and pulled the trigger. The gun went off.
Brody got quiet. Then he started screaming again.
“You missed. Get closer. Keep shooting,” Tony said.
Maybe I should take care of Ken, too.
“This time, don’t shut your fucking eyes.”
“No! No! Please! Don’t!” Brody begged. It was like he was trying to get out every word he could before he was silenced forever. A sprint to the finish line, the words kept flowing frantically.
Ken emptied the revolver—five more shots without a pause. The third shot hit Brody in the side of the head and shut him up for good. The other two also seemed to hit their mark. He did not fall neatly into the grave.
Greg grabbed the revolver with the cloth before Ken puked in the hole. Greg put the gun into the small black metal lockbox that Tony held. Tony locked it away for safekeeping. Insurance.
“Get rid of him.” Tony looked straight at Marco. Then he walked over to Ken. “You did good, kid. Now get over it—he deserved it.”
8
Tony got home just before 1:00 a.m. Angela was asleep with the lights and TV on. It looked like she’d knocked out a good part of the bottle of wine on her nightstand. Tony showered, turned off the lights, and got into bed. His wife never moved.
He was too wired to sleep, so he lay in bed channel surfing until something caught his interest. Some man was interviewing the author of Kill Crime, a new bestselling book. The guy was talking about how people get away with serious crimes, like murder and rape, all the time.
Yeah, no shit. Just popped a guy in the desert.
Then the guy started talking a little about one of the stories in his book.
No fucking way.
The man being interviewed on TV kept talking. “A man was murdered to prevent his oil and gas lease from being recorded, which robbed the man and his family of the proceeds of a big oil strike. This crime happened in Texas a long time ago, fifteen years ago, but the murderers were never caught. They’re still out there. It made somebody a lot of money.” At the bottom of the screen was his name—Robert Guess, author of Kill Crime.
“How do you know about these cases?” the interviewer asked.
“I’m not revealing my sources. But I guarantee all the cases I describe in my book are based on facts,” Mr. Guess said.
“Shit,” Tony mumbled.
“What’s the matter, darling?” His wife stirred for the first time. Angela was beautiful, with a nice body. She was a good wife and a good mom, mostly. But she wasn’t perfect. She liked her wine a little too much and she flirted a little more than Tony liked.
“Nothing, dear. Go back to sleep.”
Tony planned to get the book the next day to see how much detail was in it. He grabbed his laptop and checked. The earliest any bookstore opened was 9:00 a.m. He put his laptop down, laid his head on his pillow, and turned off the TV.
“Feeling frisky tonight?” Angela asked. She cuddled up to Tony.
“Sorry, dear. I feel a little sick.” He gave her a kiss, turned his back to her, and pulled up the covers. Tony’s stomach really was upset. He hated discovering anything that needed attention at night, knowing he couldn’t do anything about it until the next day. It had happened as he listened to Robert Guess. He really wanted to start resolving this now, but he’d have to wait.
His mind raced as he tried to go to sleep.
He felt blessed for his financial success. He felt blessed for his wife and two children. But what Tony would never admit to anyone was that he lived every day in fear. He wasn’t proud of his involvement in drug dealing and murder.
Every day, Tony waited for the dream to come crashing down. He never wanted to be the bad guy. He wanted to be the good guy, and in his mind, he still was a good guy. Yes, he’d done some bad things, killed a few people, but it was all because of business. No one died who didn’t deserve it.
No one except Sean Fowler.
Tony lay in bed, staring at the red digital numbers on the clock. Didn’t seem to make them go any faster. He was lying on the yellow silk sheets his wife loved. He hated them—they were too slippery. It was extremely early in the morning, but since he was wide awake, he quietly slipped out of bed.
He read some book reviews online. His summation of the book, based on the reviews, was that bad guys don’t always get caught, bad guys don’t always go to jail, and the average citizen should do something. Blah, blah, blah. That was nothing disturbing. But none of the reviews specifically talked about what Tony was interested in. As the family woke up, he tried to act normal, but his mind was elsewhere.
Finally, his driver, Juan, picked up Tony and Greg, and they stopped for coffee before heading to the bookstore. They were there too early. It would be another thirty minutes until the store opened. The parking lot was empty. Tony sat in the back with Greg and tried to do some work. Juan kept the radio on low, listening to a news channel.
When an older lady walked up to the front doors from the inside and unlocked the store, Tony and Greg were the first two through the door. Not six feet from the doors was a center bookstand with stacks of books and a big sign that read, Kill Crime.
“How long’s this book been out?” Tony waved the book at the older lady who’d unlocked the door. She wore reading glasses on a chain around her neck.
“I’m not sure … a couple of months, maybe?” the woman said.
Shit!
Tony bought the book and went back out to the car.
“Where to, boss?” the driver asked.
“The office.” Even before the car started moving, Tony flipped to the table of contents and skimmed. Under Cases Unsolved, he saw Murdered for Oil. Tony flipped to that page and started reading. It was only a few pages, but he saw that the man murdered was Sean Fowler. The story was about how it was suspected that MBA Exploration had something to do with it.
“Shit!” Tony slammed the book shut.
“Everything okay, boss?”
Greg had been with Tony for a long time. “Page 134,” Tony said as he handed the closed book to him. Tony stared out the window with his mind blank for a few moments, waiting for Greg to read the passage.
“Damn,” Greg said. “I thought that was over.”
“Me too,” Tony said.
“But it’s in this book.”
“Yeah, no shit.”
9
Las Vegas
June 4, 2018, Monday
Later that day, Tony made a call to his attorney, Lee Le Blanc.
“I need to see you at my office as soon as you can get there,” Tony said.
“I’m not in court. I can be there in about twenty minutes,” Le Blanc said. “Anything I need to prepare for?”
“No, just get there as soon as you can.”
Le Blanc walked into the penthouse at Bally’s Casino wearing a light blue suit and a bolo tie in silver and turquoise. His alligator cowboy boots matched his briefcase. The short man walked assertively with an over-the-top smile and a hand extended to Tony.
“Mr. Testa, I got here as fast as I could. What can I do for you?”
Tony shook his hand and had to smile back. “Thanks for coming so quickly. Have a seat.”
“Of course. Anything for my favorite client.” Le Blanc was the best criminal attorney in Vegas. He wasn’t cheap.
“Guys, give us some privacy,” Tony said. Everyone left the room except Greg, who never left Tony’s side. Tony started to explain why he’d called his attorney. “There’s a new book—”
“Sorry, but he needs to leave the room. He doesn’t have at
torney/client privilege,” Le Blanc said.
Tony gave his attorney an icy look. Silence hung in the room for a moment. “Don’t interrupt me again,” Tony said quietly. “Greg stays.”
The smile slipped off Le Blanc’s face. “Okay.”
“Like I was saying, there’s a new book out called Kill Crime. One of the stories interests me.” Tony held up the book. “I’m the silent owner of an oil company in Houston. It was meant to be a completely clean company, and it has been except—allegedly—for the first big discovery about fifteen years ago. It was found that there was a large unrecorded oil lease in the middle of a big oil discovery. That was a problem. It would have ruined the company before we ever got started. Fortunately, the problem got taken care of.”
“What do you mean ‘got taken care of’?” Le Blanc asked.
“The guy who said he had the unrecorded lease died, and no one ever found a copy of the lease he claimed to have,” Tony said.
“How’d he die?”
“I heard he broke his neck.”
As Tony and the attorney talked, Greg drifted off into his own world. He remembered the loud, uncomfortable snapping of Sean Fowler’s neck. The remote country house had been so quiet on that dark night in Texas. Sean Fowler had been so pleasant. He had gotten Greg a cup of coffee and the two of them had sat at the table and chatted.
“Can I get you a refill?” Sean had asked.
“Please.” Greg had pushed his cup toward Sean.
Sean had kept talking, turning his back to Greg as he left the table.
Greg had put on his black leather gloves and followed Sean into the kitchen. As Sean talked, Greg had reached up from behind and, with his big hands, firmly grasped both sides of the man’s head. Sean had gasped in surprise, but only for a second. Greg had twisted his head hard.