Warpath

by Ryan Sayles

  Sal gave me a frank, even stare. “I’m asking you to do this. Because of your old man and mine, truth be told.”

  “And because I always deliver.”

  “And that.”

  “Well, I guess that settles it, then.”

  Sal flashed his insincere smile again. “I knew I could count on you. Max will be in touch with the details in a day or so.”

  I stood up. So did Max. Sal didn’t.

  “This has to be taken care of as quickly as you can,” Max said quietly. “We can’t begin our downsizing measures until all three issues are resolved.”

  “I understand.”

  Max gave me a look I couldn’t quite interpret and didn’t really like. Then he escorted me to the door, and I found myself standing next to Bruno the mouth breather again.

  Bruno asked me something about eating pussy, but I didn’t catch all of it and didn’t answer. Instead, I made my way back the way I’d come. It was much easier leaving than it had been arriving.

  TWO

  Cameron

  I remember the first time I got past the second set of doors. It was my first meeting with the big man, Saverio. The day I was invited in.

  It helped that my Uncle Rocco was high in the ranks of the organization, but I swear that wasn’t the only reason they took me in. Since that day more than ten years ago I’ve proven myself, same way I had for seven years before that meeting.

  Shit jobs, boring jobs, muscle jobs, whack jobs, even. I do it all. I’m a triple threat. The all-arounder. The utility man.

  Christ, it gets goddamn tedious sometimes.

  But now I was being invited back inside. To the room where good things happen. Promotions. Sure, Saverio is long gone, but if I made it past the outer set of doors, something was up.

  Little did I know.

  The regular guys were there. Mikey and his cousin Leo. Everyone called him Big Mike, but I’d known Mikey since we were both virgins on the prowl so I never called him anything but. Even when he started giving me the orders. And now he was sitting in the big office? What gives? I knew it didn’t mean he’d jumped up the ranks that high. He was a guest here. Holding meetings in the safest place there was. Away from prying eyes, bugs, and snitches.

  It didn’t bode well for whatever this meeting was about, but all I could think about was how it was Mikey and not me sitting behind that desk. I guess being a nephew of Rocco’s only got me so far to the front of the line. And in this business, blood is thicker than just about anything. Even Rocco’s own wife’s gravy.

  Leo, he never says a thing. Just sits there while Mikey gives me my assignment. So Mikey does all the talking again. I think he could see the disappointment on my face. Soon as I saw him and not someone higher up, I knew this wasn’t my big break.

  “It ain’t good news, Cam,” he said.

  No shit.

  “Why? What’s up?”

  “Things...” He sighed and leaned back in his borrowed chair like the weight of the world was on him. “Things ain’t what they fuckin’ used to be.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  I was trying to keep it light. Mikey was sitting there like two tons of bricks.

  He told me why. Things were ugly up top. Somebody broke ranks. One of the bigs.

  “He turn states or something?” I asked.

  “Worse,” Mikey said.

  He flipped sides. Took a dozen guys with him and all the business they ran. Florida guys. Bastards. The short story was that things were tough all over. The shit had hit the fan and all of us in that room were standing downwind.

  “So what do we do about it?” I asked.

  “Cutting back,” Mikey said. “Big time.”

  I swallowed but it got stuck halfway down my gullet. “I’m fired?”

  I was about to protest, “But I’m blood, Mikey,” when he stopped me.

  “You ain’t fired. In fact,” he leaned forward on the desk. “I need you to do some firing for me.”

  I couldn’t help a smile crossing my face. I felt the new sweat on my forehead start to cool as the blood flowed out of my face and back to normal. I’d been spared.

  “Whatever you need, Mikey. You know that.”

  Mikey smiled. Pained and weak, but it showed I was one of the last people he could trust. I wondered where the really top guys were. Mikey’s bosses, and their bosses. How bad did this get and how high did it go? Not for me to wonder, I guess.

  “It’s gonna mean some gun work,” he said.

  I nodded. “You know I’m good for it.”

  “You’ve always done right by us, Cam. Always.”

  “Hey,” I said. “I’m family.” Subtle reminders never hurt. Sometimes I wonder if Mikey remembered. Not like I was on his Christmas card list or anything.

  And a hit? Yeah, I’d done that before. Twice, in fact. It had been a while and the others weren’t exactly my best work, but when the coffin lid closes nobody cares how a guy died, only that he did.

  Mikey stood, international symbol for ‘this conversation is over.’ A guy like him is all about the subtleties of body language. This business is all about it. Who shakes hands with who, and who goes first. Who stands when you enter a room and who waits until it’s time for you to leave. How big is the pucker when you kiss somebody’s ass.

  “I’ll send over your first assignment tonight, okay, Cam?”

  “Okay, Mikey.”

  He took my hand. For a minute we were old friends again. Lifting cases of booze off trucks, working a guy over for a missing payment, sweating our balls off to get with Marie Fitzano.

  “You do this well for us, we got more,” Mikey said. “You help us clean up the mess, and there’s a spot for you here. On the inside. For keeps. You get it?”

  I smiled. “I got it. I’m your man.”

  “’Cause you’re family,” he said.

  I never felt more like it.

  Gave my whole goddamn life for this family. I grew up hearing my mother bitch and moan about no good shiftless bastard Uncle Rocco. Why was he walking around like the king of shit mountain while my dad is dead in some army helicopter crash off some Pacific island? She hated Rocco and everything he stood for on his whole side of the family.

  This was a guy I had to meet.

  I started riding my bike across town to sit with him and his pals outside of a sandwich shop that served meatball grinders Rocco said would, “Make your dick hard, your arteries harder and your stomach solid steel.”

  I got him and the boys coffee. I bought him his paper. I’d go down to DeLuca’s and get him the cannoli he liked special.

  How could he not bring me in?

  So that was the first sacrifice. It wasn’t even my dignity and pride at running errands for him like a slave right off the ship, it was my mom. She said if I kept on working for the man I’d be dead to her. I called her bluff, but she was dead fucking serious.

  I tried to call a few times, even stopped by on Christmas Eve, but she left me on the porch with snow falling down my collar while she turned up the volume on her favorite holiday record—the one of the dogs barking out Jingle Bells.

  Never saw her again.

  Then there was Tia. Lovely Tia. Two years younger than me, but smarter by a mile. Tight little body. Dark brown hair, dark eyes. Full lips and a smile that showed her crooked teeth and, man, did that slay me.

  The minute I saw her I stopped chasing tail with Mikey. I had a purpose. I didn’t want to just get this girl in the sack. That’s how I knew it was different. I knew I’d fallen in love.

  Say that word and you get your ass kicked by the guys I run with, but I didn’t care. I went to the bookstore and tore out pages of Shakespeare and copied it down for her. I swiped roses by the dozens off the carts those Korean guys run uptown.

  Then the job started getting more serious. I had my first muscle job and came to her afterward to get my knuckles bandaged. And my nose. And my ribs. My muscle job days were a slow start. I went in with my f
ists, but often met up with guys who fought back with shit like baseball bats and steel pipes.

  She started to say things. Not like my mom kind of things, ultimatums and stuff, but she was worried. She told me she loved me too, and she didn’t think this was a good path I was on.

  I told her it was the only path I knew, then I quoted Robert Frost about two paths in the woods and I figured she’d think I was smart. She said all that meant was that I chose wrong.

  Then came the first hit.

  I told Tia everything about my jobs. I couldn’t not tell her. So I did. She told me if I did the hit that she’d leave me. Made me choose.

  Now, I’m not the kind of guy—but I know a lot of them—who would tell his girl to shut up. Remind her that he’s the man. She was my world, but the family—the job—that was my life. How do you choose?

  So I called her bluff and guess what? I’m two for two. She moved out. Changed her number.

  A bunch of the guys said I should go get her back. That it’s my call when things are over, not hers. But if she didn’t want me, I wasn’t gonna force her.

  I told the guys if you love something, set it free.

  They beat the shit out of me. I stopped reading poetry after that.

  THREE

  Bricks

  I slid my key into the lock, gave it a nudge. First up, then over, then a slight drop. Honestly, this old lock’s idiosyncrasies are worth more than three extra deadbolts. You gotta have a precise hand to get it to open up. A lover’s hand.

  I’ve been using it for three years now, and know its nuances well enough that I can open it with just one hand while holding bags of groceries, or while drunk and fumbling.

  It’s my door.

  I get it.

  It gets me.

  I wish the rest of my life was that easy.

  Once inside, I put the deli sandwich I picked up at the Korean place in the fridge next to the two bottles of Peroni beer already there. They weren’t just for show. I liked beer even better than I liked vino, which was cause for suspicion about your heritage among many Italians. So while birra Italiana isn’t the best brew in the world, I made a habit of drinking it anyway. When you’re only half Italian already, and the half is on your mother’s side, you need every advantage you can get to fit in with the family.

  The family. La famiglia. When you think of that word, you’d like to think of large dinners, loud discussions, loving arms. Ever since my pops died, though, it’s been none of that.

  Truth be told, it really wasn’t like that before, either. About once a month, my Aunt Marie will invite me over for Sunday dinner but I don’t go two times out of three. It either turns into a grief session over Pops, with Marie leading the charge until my cousins get whipped into enough of a frenzy to join in, railing against the cops and the government and especially “them goddamn rats” that were all responsible for him ending up in prison. Or him getting cancer. I’m not sure which.

  If it ain’t a Popsfest, then it’s Ma’s turn and we get the subdued, unspoken, talk-around-it bit. That’s where they pretend my ma didn’t bail on Pops and the famiglia during the first year he was in the joint. She ran off with some guy who was a doctor down at the free clinic.

  Some black guy, to be more accurate.

  I always thought it was funny how the biggest shame most people in the family felt about the situation wasn’t that Ma had no loyalty when the chips were down. Or that she cut and run, and with another man, too.

  Nope. All my cousins, Aunt Marie, the whole family? They were most upset that Ma went with a black guy.

  “Fucking mulignan,” my cousin Peter said at one dinner shortly after Ma bolted. “They oughta stay with their own kind.”

  “Watch that talk,” Aunt Marie told him, but without the customary sharpness usually reserved for profanity at the Sunday dinner table. That was her way of expressing agreement, I guess.

  “I’m serious,” Peter said. “We oughta file a missing person’s report or something. Not like any self-respectin’ Italian girl would go wit a moolie. Not on her own. It’s fuckin’ kidnappin’.”

  “Here’s an idea,” I told him. “How about you file a missing persons report on your fucking brain?”

  “Oh!” came the hue and cry from all assembled.

  But it worked. We never talked about it again, at least at the rare Sunday dinners I attended. But the tension in the air? Thicker than Aunt Marie’s gravy. Yeah, Ma didn’t get talked about but what didn’t get said was a lot.

  Thing is, I don’t blame Ma.

  Much.

  I knew the doc. I went down to the clinic for a broken finger once. Nice guy. Had an air about him that just put you a little bit more at ease, even if you were hurting. He had a warm smile, too.

  So I don’t blame her. She had her shot at happiness and she took it. She was born into this life. She married a man who was waist deep in it when they met and neck deep by the time he went to prison. But honestly, I don’t think she ever wanted to be a part of it.

  Listen, any mafiosa who can fill a journal about love and life, especially in ways pretty much nobody in this family could understand, is not really the best fit for this life. And if leaving it all behind means her and the doc had to go into some kind of self-imposed witness relocation program or something, my bet is that for her, it was worth it. Love was worth it.

  But sometimes I feel a little itch to be pissed off at her. I mean, she left me, too, right? And now I get to deal with all of the not talking about it that goes on at family gatherings, and the mild stench of suspicion that her actions draped onto me.

  Yeah, sometimes I get a little bitter. But then I say fuck it. What’s the point? She’s gone and life is life.

  I realized I was standing at the refrigerator with the door open, lost in thought like some kind of moron. I closed the fridge and walked into the living room. I took a deep breath, inhaling the smell of home.

  It had become a different smell these last few weeks. My apartment was returning to normal, I guess. When a lover moves out, their scents are the last thing to go, hanging on for days and weeks as a reminder. But in this room, at least, all the remnants of Jesse were gone.

  I should have known it wouldn’t work. Call Jesse my latest mistake in a long list of them. Usually I figure it out sooner, though. But with Jesse, I thought maybe things were different.

  But they weren’t.

  As the song says, I guess winter just wasn’t my season.

  Or hell, maybe I’m winter and that wasn’t Jesse’s season.

  I sighed in frustration. All this bullshit reverie was shaping up for a shitty night of feeling sorry for myself, and that’s a monumental waste of time.

  Instead of the past, what I should be thinking about is the future. The contracts Sal was giving me. The chance I had to secure a solid place for myself. Pops and his omerta did plenty to offset Ma’s actions, but for all the talk of famiglia and taking care of people, this business was a whole lot of what-have-you-done-for-me-lately, motherfucker? This was my opportunity.

  I couldn’t do anything until Max called, though, I reminded myself. So relax. I needed to get buried in a good book, but the novel I was reading now was mediocre to crap, so I had to hope there was something good on TV.

  Yeah, right. That was happening.

  The rustling, tapping sound from the bedroom was faint but I still heard it. A spike of adrenaline fired through my chest and into my head. When it cleared a moment later, I was already crouched next to the small couch with my gun out. Thank God for instincts.

  I leveled the pistola at the bedroom door. It stood open a few inches, but no light streamed through the crack. Whoever was in there had to know I was here. I’d flipped on lights. Gone into the kitchen.

  Jesus, I’d been a sitting duck while I stood at the fridge like a zombie.

  I shook away the thought. Slowly, I rose to a low stance and moved toward the bedroom. I kept a sight picture on the door, waiting for it to swing open. I f
ully intended to blast whoever came out.

  Wait.

  What if it was Jesse?

  I clenched my jaw and exhaled slowly.

  Okay. Be sure of the target.

  But be sure fast.

  Wait. Why was the light turned off? If it was Jesse...asleep, maybe?

  I hesitated. My gut told me no. It wasn’t Jesse. And from what I heard today in Sal’s office, I had to wonder if that whole goddamn meeting had been a ploy to get me relaxed so that some mope could clip me in my own apartment.

  They always come as your friends, Pops had warned me once from behind thick glass. His voice always had a tinny sound coming through the phone receiver. In this life, you always gotta be aware.

  Not standing around mooning over lost mothers and lost lovers.

  I narrowed my eyes at the door. Two feet now. Then one.

  I paused.

  He knew I was home. A dark room works to his advantage. If I open the door, I’m backlit in the doorway. Perfect silhouette, just like a shooting range target.

  I considered for another moment.

  I stood to the side of the door and listened.

  Another tapping sound, just like the first noise I heard.

  I let go of my gun with my left hand, holding it only in my right. With my left, I snaked my fingers around the door jamb and through the cracked door. In the second and a half it took me to find the light switch, I hoped no one was close enough to kick the door shut on my wrist.

  My fingers found the switch. Without hesitation, I flipped it. In the same moment, I booted the door open and swung low around the door jamb, button-hooking into the room. My back against the wall, I swept my gun across the breadth of the open space, looking for the intruder.

  No one.

  My bedroom was a mess, though. Drawers pulled, items tossed. The doors to my wardrobe stood open. I checked it quickly for anyone hiding, but found only my sparse collection of clothing inside. A quick look under the bed revealed no one.

  The bedroom window was wide open. A breeze fluttered through, gently swaying the wooden handles of the shades. The rustling, tapping sound they made was the same one I’d heard from the living room.