by B. B. Hamel
“What can I say?” I held out my hands. “That’s the truth.”
“So your family… owns this spot,” she said, trying to keep her tone neutral.
“You could put it that way.”
“Interesting. And all those people?”
“Some of them are in my organization, you know, employees of my various businesses,” I said. “Some of them are important people in their own right and simply worth knowing.”
“And you think you’re worth knowing?”
“Oh, I’m definitely worth knowing.” I grinned at her and nodded at a fat bouncer standing outside of a pulsing nightclub. I couldn’t remember his name, Fat Mikey or Big Tommy or maybe Bulbous Billy.
“I think you’re showing off,” she said, walking a little closer to me as a couple walking their little white dog came strolling past arm in arm.
I gave her a look and slipped a hand across her lower back. She looked surprised as I drew her closer right as the little white dog barked and lunged at her.
“Watch your fucking dog,” I said.
The guy gave me an annoyed look, yanked his dog’s leash, and pulled it along.
“Jesus,” she said.
“I know, fucking people,” I said. “You’d be surprised how many shitty dogs are around here. And the fucking idiots let the dogs do whatever.”
“You saved me from a real beast,” she said, grinning.
“I saved those nice shoes,” I said. “Maybe your ankle, depending on how hungry it was.”
She laughed and leaned against me for a second longer than necessary, then drew away. I let my hand drop from her body, but the feeling of her warmth stuck with me.
“Do you ever miss all this?” she asked. “You know, since you’re in New York now.”
“Sort of,” I said as we dodged a loud group of teenagers.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, it’s like this.” I came up to a stop next to a bench set out in front of a little pizza place. I nodded at the guy working behind the counter, a nice kid named Raul, and looked at Mona. “All this respect? I didn’t build it.”
“Who did?” she asked.
“My father. He built all this.” I gestured around me vaguely.
“But you’re respected on your own though. I mean, these people aren’t coming up and asking about your father. They’re just… greeting you.”
“True,” I said, palms up. “It’s not like I’m just some fucking asshole. But in New York, I’m building my business all on my own. There’s nobody out there to siphon away the glory and nobody to blame when shit goes wrong. Out there, it’s all on my head.”
“And you like that?” she asked.
“Fuck, yes, I like that,” I said.
She looked at me with an odd expression for a long moment then startled as Raul pushed open the pizza place door. He poked his head out and held out a bottle of Coke.
“Hey, Vincent,” he said. “How’s it hanging?”
“Good, man,” I said, taking the drink. “Your mom good? Your sister still in school?”
“She graduated, man,” he said.
“Shit, how old are you now?”
“Sixteen.”
“Keep your fucking grades up so you don’t end up working in this shithole your whole life.”
Raul grinned. “Man, I don’t need grades to become a soldier, just like—”
I held up a hand and cleared my throat. He stopped himself and his smile faltered.
“Not in front of the lady,” I said.
“No, Raul, go ahead,” Mona said. “What exactly is Vincent here?”
“Go back inside, Raul,” I said, my tone gentle. “Thanks for the drink. Tell your mother I said hi and I’ll make sure she’s taken care of.”
Raul nodded quickly then ducked back inside.
Mona gave me a look and tilted her head. “What was that?”
I shrugged and opened the Coke. I took a swig, offered her some, and she took it.
“His older brother worked for one of my businesses,” I said. “But he had an accident and is no longer with us. I take care of his family now.”
“I see,” she said, drank some soda, offered me the rest. I shook my head and she shrugged, capped it, and tucked it under her arm.
“It’s a dangerous line of work, sanitation,” I said.
She laughed. “Sure sounds dangerous,” she said. “How come you don’t want Raul to get involved?”
“He’s a smart kid,” I said, glancing over my shoulder. “Kid could do some shit with himself. Go into med school, become a doctor. Maybe a surgeon. Kid can make a mean pizza dough, probably got good hands.”
She shook her head and gave me another strange smile.
“You’re an odd one,” she said.
“Quit looking at me like that,” I said. “Come on, let’s go.”
I headed down the sidewalk again and she hurried to catch up, the soda sloshing under her arm. I took it back from her, took another sip, and ditched it at the next trash can. I wasn’t much of a soda drinker, but I couldn’t turn the kid’s offering down. I nodded to a few more people, greeted several others, and answered more of Mona’s questions about the neighborhood.
Mostly though, she asked about me, about growing up. I told her as much as I could. I told her about moving up in the world as my father’s business gained more and more power, about feeling lonely and isolated, about being thrust into the heart of things before I was ready. I talked about learning fast, learning how to fight, how to defend myself, how to outthink my opponents when I couldn’t win with my fists.
I learned all that before I was fifteen years old.
I had to learn it. I was the son of Don Leone, and every other fucking kid in the city knew it. They all wanted a piece of me, wanted to prove that they were harder than the Don’s son, that they were better than me. And I had to step up to every challenge, fight every stupid bully that came my way. Sometimes I won, sometimes I lost, but I always walked away giving as good as I got, or at least trying to.
I never stayed down, that’s what my father always taught me.
We paused outside a Mexican place I loved, real authentic Mexican food. I looked inside the window and spotted an empty table toward the back then looked at Mona.
“When I was twelve, I remember this kid,” I said as Mona stood close next to me, close enough that I could feel her arm brush against mine. “He was this big, fat motherfucker, hit puberty like a speeding train before anyone else. Facial hair, acne, like six feet tall, voice deeper than the Mariana Trench.”
“You’re exaggerating,” she said.
“Just a little. Anyway, I was at this sweet sixteen with my father for one of his, uh, employees’ kid. We were having a nice time, drinking soda, swimming in the pool, eating hot dogs, that sort of shit. Then when the kids broke out a soccer ball and started messing around, that monster came after me, hit me hard, threw me to the ground.”
“I bet that was rough,” she said.
I waved that off. “It was fine, but the hard part was my father came storming out onto the field. For a second, I thought he was going to yell at the kid, and I swear that pimpled freak turned pale as a ghost and nearly pissed himself. Instead of smacking the monster bastard upside the head, my father grabbed my arm and hauled me to my feet. My ankle hurt like hell and was swelling up already, but my dad didn’t care. He got in my face, and can you guess what he said?”
She smiled and shook her head. “I can’t imagine.”
“He said, ‘Son, if you don’t get back up after someone hits you, then you’re not worth a damn. That’s all there is, you hear me? Just keep getting back up.’ I never forgot that.”
“It’s good advice.”
I snorted. “Yeah, it is, but he did that in front of every kid out there. I had to fight half of them before the year was over just to get them to stop making jokes behind my back.”
“Must’ve been hard, growing up with a dad like that.”
I cocked
my head and shrugged. “Maybe,” I said. “There were perks too, of course. People tend to remember the hard parts of their childhood.”
“I know what you mean,” she said.
“Yeah, you got a story there?”
“Not really.” A secretive little smile that only made me want to unwrap her even more. “I had a nice childhood. Loving parents. Doting, really.”
“I bet.” I gestured at the restaurant. “Let’s eat here, shall we?”
She shrugged and followed me to the door. Before I could grab the handle and pull it open, a motorcycle came screaming down the road, its engine spitting and barking. It pulled up to the curb, black and silver chrome. The guy riding it climbed off, but didn’t kill the engine, just left it running.
He had a shock of shaggy black hair, wore a dark, beat-up leather jacket over black baggy jeans and brown work boots. His skin was light tan and his eyes were a deep, dark brown. He stared at me with those dark eyes, and I noticed his nose was crooked, just a little bit, as he reached into his jacket.
I reached behind me, gripped the butt of my gun. I was about to draw it, heart racing, a step too slow, when the guy pulled out a box.
I held the gun but didn’t pull. He approached me and I noticed that he looked pale and there was a bead of sweat on his forehead.
“Vincent Leone?” he asked.
“Who the fuck are you?” I said.
Mona shifted close to me. I noticed her staring at my hand underneath my jacket, the one that gripped my Glock, but I didn’t let it go.
He held out the box. “From my boss. For you.”
I reached out with my free hand and took it. He nodded, turned, ran to his bike, jumped on, and sped off.
I stood there, dumbfounded. I looked at the box and finally relaxed enough to release the grip of my pistol. People were staring, and I could see more than a few concerned faces.
I turned away from them and stared at the box in my hands. It was black, about the size of a shoebox. There were no markings, but it looked beat-up and dented, like it’d been used before. The lid fit loose and something inside shifted around.
I went to take off the lid, but Mona put a hand on top of mine.
“Wait,” she said. “Wait, hold on. That could be… that could be a bomb or something.”
I shook my head. “If someone wanted me dead, they would’ve used guns,” I said. “That guy had the drop on me.”
She stared at me, eyes wide with fear.
I stared at the box and lifted the lid.
Mona sucked in a sharp breath and staggered away from me. I stared down at the skeleton of a snake, the spine long and curved, the rib bones sprouting out like so many tiny legs. It was bleached white, perfectly white, and the skull was intact, its jaw hanging open like it was about to strike just before it died and was stripped of flesh.
Beneath the skeleton was a note.
I gingerly pushed the skeleton aside and picked up the note.
Three words were scrawled in black marker. They were shaky, the handwriting awful.
Join and die.
“Vince,” Mona said. “What the hell is that?”
I dropped the note back inside and closed the lid. I stared at the box for a few seconds as my heart slowed back to normal. I looked at Mona and shook my head.
“I have to get going,” I said.
“What?” she asked. “Vince, what’s going on?”
“I need to go talk to my father,” I said. “You can stay and have dinner. I’ll send one of my guys to check on you.”
“No way,” she said as I turned and headed back to my car. “Vince, hold on.”
She grabbed for my arm but I pulled away. I heard her heels clacking on the pavement but she was so far from my mind at that moment.
I was trying to wrap my head around what I’d just been given.
“Vince,” she hissed in my ear and grabbed my arm again.
I stopped and faced her. I stared into her pretty eyes, glanced at her pretty lips.
She had no clue what she’d just stumbled into.
“This box is a warning,” I said. “And not the kind of warning I can ignore.”
“What do you mean? What the hell does that mean?” She shook her head and I could tell the fear was starting to get to her.
“Come on,” I said. “I’ll explain in the car.”
I turned and started walking again. She didn’t follow, not right away. But as I got a few yards away, I heard her heels clacking again as she raced to keep up.
If she were smart, she’d turn around and run away. She should go home and pretend like she never saw anything, never entered into a deal, never met me before in her life.
If she had any clue, she’d get the hell away.
The box was a nuclear bomb, dangling in the air. It was a doomsday weapon about to explode.
It was poison in the veins of the city.
And she was right in the center of it all.
8
Mona
I thought he would take me back to his house, but it became clear that we were going somewhere else. I stared out the window as we pulled into Old City, into one of the most expensive neighborhoods in the city where million-dollar homes were the norm.
I shook my head and tried to get the image of the snake skeleton out of my mind. He’d turned pale when he saw it lying there in the box, the bones bleached white. I thought I saw fear in his expression, but it quickly disappeared, replaced by something different.
Anger, I thought at first, but then I realized it was determination.
“You told me you’d explain,” I said, breaking the silence.
He glanced at me and I could tell he was chewing it over in his mind. I leaned a little bit closer, my heart racing. I was looking forward to our little dinner together, I thought I might be able to get a few drinks in him and maybe pry some information out, but this was better. He was off his game a little bit, and that snake thing was a big deal.
That snake was probably something I never should’ve seen.
“Come on,” I pushed. “This doesn’t have to be in the article if you don’t want it to be.”
“You can’t write about this,” he said, staring straight ahead.
“I won’t then,” I said.
“No, Mona, I’m serious,” he said. “You can’t write about it, not because it would piss me off, but because it would endanger your life.”
I leaned back in the soft leather seat of his fancy sports car and stared at him.
“What does it mean, Vince?”
He grunted and gripped the wheel tighter.
“What do you know about cartels?” he asked.
“You mean, like, the Mexican drug gangs?”
He nodded. “Exactly.”
“Not much,” I said. “Just that they’re big and powerful down there.”
“They’re big and powerful all over the Americas,” he said. “One particular cartel has been aggressive these last few years and has been gaining a lot of ground. They’re called the Jalisco, and we’ve been buying their product almost exclusively since we stole a deal with them away from the Russians.”
I frowned a little. “Drugs?” I asked. “I thought you were a legitimate businessman?”
He stared at me, his expression flat. “You want to fuck around, Mona?” he asked. “This isn’t a fucking game.”
I bit my lip and nodded. “Go on,” I said.
“I don’t know exactly what the box means, but I can tell you that it’s from them,” he said. “That snake is the calling card of the Jalisco. They send it as a warning when there’s something serious going on. When a snake skeleton shows up like that, and you don’t pay attention and do what it says, then someone ends up dead. The Jalisco don’t do second chances.”
I shook my head. “I don’t get it,” I said. “You’re in business with them, right?”
“Right,” he said.
“So why would they want to hurt you?”
“I
don’t think it’s directed at me, exactly,” I said. “And I have some theories about what it means.”
“They should just come out and say what they want.”
He snorted. “Not how they operate,” he said. “They’d rather play games from the shadows, push things this way and that way, cause a little havoc, plant a little fear. That’s what they’re all about.”
“They sound like great people to be in business with.”
“They’re reliable,” he said. “They show up with the agreed-upon quality product, they don’t make last-minute changes, they don’t demand more. We do business and that’s it. But this snake shit…” He trailed off.
I watched him but it was clear he didn’t want to finish that sentence. I sat back and leaned my head against the headrest.
Mexican cartels and dead snakes. This was already so far from what I expected to find with Vince.
I knew he was a gangster going into this. I knew there’d be some violence, maybe a little danger. But the mobs hadn’t been all that active over the years. Gang violence was at an all-time low, and I figured things would stay that way.
But now I realized violence was down only because the pot hadn’t quite boiled over yet.
It was coming, though.
Vince parked in front of a simple brick facade home with a bone-white stoop, black railing, navy shutters, and a black door. He parked and stared at me for a second before clearing his throat.
“You’re about to meet someone,” he said. “Few people in your profession ever get to meet him. I’m warning you right now, if you open your mouth at the wrong time, if you say the wrong thing, he’s going to hurt you.”
I blinked rapidly. “Who are we meeting with?”
“My father.” He turned away and got out.
I sat there in the passenger side seat as he walked around the car. He moved in slow motion, in long, confident strides, and I gaped at him as shock reverberated down my skin.
I never in a million years thought I’d actually get to meet Don Leone in person. I saw him at the party where I met Vince for the first time, of course, but I wasn’t actually meeting him at the time. We just shared a mutual space, that was all.
But this must be the Don’s private residence. This was probably where Vince grew up, full of childhood memories and teenage angst. This was the city’s seedy underbelly, hiding inside a mansion.