Circling the Runway (Jake Diamond Mysteries Book 4)

by J. L. Abramo

  Rags’ jaws tense. He leans forward, inching the pistol’s muzzle closer to my heart. “One way or the other,” he says, “I’m getting—”

  I follow Rags’ worried gaze toward whatever has distracted him.

  It’s Luis, my friend and favorite all-time greatest bartender, sliding a waded towel across the bar toward Rags. I don’t see how a towel is going help much until the black business end of a large caliber pistol peeks from the soiled material. Luis’ interruption comes to rest inches from Rags’ ribcage, the bartender’s forefinger pressing against a strategic spot in the towel.

  Luis is all smiles. “Please lay your weapon gently on top of my bar, near this rag.”

  None of us move. I’m sure my nutty ex-sales manager is going to kill me. The restaurant presses on, oblivious and noisy while Rags seems to think over his situation in more detail. What’s to think? Is he going to shoot me or not? You would expect the man to do what Luis says, guns being pointed the directions they are now, the look on Luis’ face. But I know Rags is crazy enough to shoot anyway, take a bullet from Luis. Inside my cold skin, a frightened heart beats mambo time.

  Luis leans closer to Rags. “If I am successful in targeting your spine, this forty-four magnum will cut you in equal halves.”

  Rags works his jaw like he’s chewing gum. One beat. Two. Finally air hisses between his teeth. Submission. He takes his finger off the trigger, slides the lady-size automatic onto the bar beside the towel.

  I take my first breath in thirty seconds.

  Luis waves his bartender wipe-cloth like a magician—one swipe and everything disappears below his bar.

  Luis and I glare silently at him until Rags takes an angry first step toward the front door. But he stops and turns. “One way or the other, Carr, I’m getting the stock back. And I’m not the only one who wants what you took.”

  “Oh yeah? Who?”

  “Mr. Vic and his mother, for starters.”

  “Mama Bones?” I say. “Are you kidding? She loves me.”

  THREE

  Ignoring her cell phone chimes—bells recorded for her at the Vatican—Mama Bones Bonacelli slips the old skeleton key into the lock. A twist, a familiar click, and the half-ton basement door glides open with a gentle push. Aunt Maria’s old bronze and wrought iron entry swings easy now that Gianni installed those six barrel hinges with ball bearings and grease fittings. Mama Bones can get inside her hideaway smooth and fast now, quicker even than her dead husband Domenic in bed. Ha.

  Inside, Mama Bones flips the new light switch. Overhead fluorescents blink on one at a time, clicking and clacking like cans of tomatoes rolling off a cupboard shelf. She shuffles across the newly refurbished second kitchen, her sneakers pushing ripples on the dirt floor. Her husband Domenic wanted to lay tile down here when they bought the place thirty years ago. He was from California and didn’t understand about second kitchens in the basement—where Italian families like Mama Bones’ killed chickens, boiled and preserved bushels of peppers and tomatoes, or cooked up forty, fifty quart jars worth of red gravy for freezing. Enough food to last a winter.

  “You gotta have the dirt down here, Domenic,” she whispers now, three decades later. “Notta the fancy tile.”

  Domenic. She doesn’t miss or talk to him much anymore. He’s been dead too long. She is too busy. But now, with her own comfortable space down here to sit and remember the past, who knows. Maybe she’ll bring down that picture of Domenic from upstairs, the one of him in the tux, set him on one of the olive oil barrels.

  Ignoring the phone again, she opens the giant Kenmore refrigerator, reaches for an opened jug bottle of Gallo Brothers Paisano. Nice boys, those Gallo Brothers. So are Gianni and Tomas nice brothers, Mama Bones’ nephews who fixed up her old basement this summer. All new appliances, the refinished table with a desktop computer, electricity, a clean new pallet for her jugs of olive oil, drawers for her gang’s hand-written-only revenue and expense books. And now today, with those six new hinges, Mama Bones can get in and out of here easy. Do some cooking, have a glass of California wine, even play with Aunt Maria’s old book of magic spells for fun. Relax a little. This is the new Mama Bones’ private getaway. And who knows, maybe she’ll have time to talk again to her ex-husband Domenic.

  Probably not much, though. He was a mean son of a bitch.

  Her cell rings again. These new telephones, you can see who’s calling, decide if you want to talk to the person or not. Oh, Vic again. Her son really gets himself worked up about Austin Carr, that Carr Securities sign on Vic’s old place of business. Wonder what happened with her son’s big insider trading scheme. Said he was going fix things.

  Mama Bones pours a glass of wine, sits down at the nice round table Gianni and Tomas bought her. Smooth dark wood. Her handsome nephews treat her well. Whereas her son, Vittorio, or Vic, not so much.

  “’Allo, Vic. What’sa the matter now?”

  “Oh ditch the accent, Ma. You don’t have to pretend you’re stupid with me.”

  “You sure? I want to make the conversation easy for you.”

  “Ha ha.”

  “Ha, yourself. What do you want, huh? You been calling all day.”

  “You know why I’m calling. We’ve waited months, like you said. Tell me why you won’t take care of the guy who’s torturing me.”

  She swallows a mouthful of wine, clears her throat. “I’m not asking for a hit on Austin. He doesn’t deserve it. He didn’t do nothing bad. Truth is, Austin’s smarter at business than you. You left the country, remember? You left Austin all alone to deal with Bluefish. His friends took care of it, too. The place would belong one hundred percent to New York if it wasn’t for Austin. So why you want to kill him?”

  She can hear through the phone her son don’t like what she’s saying. Too bad. The truth hurts.

  “This is our stock and bond business,” Vic says. “You and Daddy helped me start Shore Securities thirty-five years ago. You going to let some big mouth, fast-talking prick like—”

  “Watch your mouth.”

  Vic sighs like a girl. “Okay, forget about having him killed. Talk to him. Rough him up some, explain he has to sell me back Carmela’s and Walter’s stock at a fair price.”

  Mama Bones sips her wine. “I thought you were going to set him up for insider trading. You know, get rid him that way. Cost him his Series Seven license.”

  “I could, and maybe still will, but I’d rather not. It would be a lot easier—and a lot more profitable—if my Austin Carr problems went away so I could use Patricia’s information all for myself.”

  “Listen, you want Austin beat up, you do it. But you’d better watch out. The man is trickier than Bugs Bunny. You try to push him over a cliff, you’ll end up with a giant carrot up your ass. Who knows what it’ll cost you this time.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I have to spell it out? You left him to deal with Bluefish, he ends up with a majority share of the company.”

  “Jeez, Ma. Why do you talk like that to me? You want Austin to steal all of our business? How do you feel when you see that giant Carr Securities sign Sunday when you go to church?”

  Mama Bones sets down her wine, opens the three-holed notebook centered on the round table—her collection of Aunt Maria’s spells. “Okay, Vic, I tell you what. I gotta an idea that maybe will help. We’ll have some laughs with Austin, get him in trouble. How’s that sound, huh?”

  “No magic spells, okay? Gianni told me the way you’ve been fooling around with your aunt’s magic again. Reading that book of hers. He says it makes the crew wonder if you’ve got all your marbles.”

  Holding the phone to her ear, Mama Bones searches the shelves near the table, checking the contents of one dusty cigar box after another, then a series of sealed ceramic jars. Various ingredients for Aunt Maria’s recipes stare back at her, offering memories and smells from the past. Lavender. Garlic. Unborn mice. Finally, her fingers pinch inside a jar of cranberry pits.

  “Don
’t you worry,” she says. “This’ll work.”

  It’s true the magic Mama Bones learned from her Great Aunt Maria often fails. So far the potions have offered what Vic, the smarty pants, calls a “low rate of return.” But this time, Mama Bones is pretty sure the magic spell is going to work great. Past performance indicates success. Ha.

  “Ma?” Vic says. “No magic, okay? Promise me.”

  “You wanna make a bet this potion works?”

  “Oh, jeez. No, no, no. Please.”

  “You wanna bet it works or not?”

  Vic sighs again like a girl. “O-kay. Five thousand says Austin Carr doesn’t feel a thing. Whatever it is you give him.”

  “Make it twenty grand, smarty pants. I wrote down the ingredients for this spell extra carefully fifty-two years ago, and it already worked once. I was a teenager, and guess what I wanted? What do all teenage girls think about, huh?”

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