by Zoey Parker
“...been awarded to her pussy instead of her?” Carla finished for him with a smile. She couldn't help but be amused by what a southern gentleman Don was. “Yeah, the FBI was a real good ol' boys' club back then.”
“Take it from a good ol' boy, Carla,” Don said, “it still is.”
“Okay. So you're telling me that if it comes down to it, I shouldn't do what she did, even if it means we might not make the case we need against the Mancinis. Even if it means Fred's killer goes free.”
Don sighed heavily. “Darlin', all I'm sayin' is no matter what decision you make, be sure it's somethin' you'll be able to live with. I'm behind you either way, but you're the one who's gotta look yourself in the mirror when this is all over.”
“Assuming I make it out alive,” Carla said.
“Hell, that ain't much of an assumption,” Don answered. “You're a mighty tough cookie, an' a smart one too. If you can't out-think them Mancini boys, I'll eat my hat with barbecue sauce. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go make sure Louie ain't shavin' his nether regions in there while he's at it.”
As Don put his hand on the doorknob, Carla said, “Hey, Don? For what it's worth, I still think Patty was a hero.”
Don smiled. “Me too, hon.”
Chapter 6
Gio
Gio parked his Corvette in front of the Evanston address he'd written down. He looked up at the sign for The Laughing Fish, a small sushi restaurant with a sign depicting a cartoon fish smiling even as a silver knife chopped its tail into neat sections. Then he looked down at the address again to make sure he had the right place.
Sure enough, this was where Mario had said he wanted to meet, and his champagne-colored Lexus was parked out front with his driver and bodyguard Bobby leaning against the hood. Bobby waved to Gio, who returned the gesture, confused.
Mario had said he wanted them to have lunch together, but why would he choose this place? As far as Gio knew, Mario had never even been inside a sushi joint. He tended to limit his dining to places specializing in Southern Italian cuisine—the kinds of commonplace Chicago eateries with red checkered tablecloths, recorded opera music, and huge platters of sausage and veal drenched in heavy red sauce.
Gio reached for the handle on the front door, then pulled his hand back when he saw the “Closed” sign hanging on the glass pane. Before he could give it too much thought, he heard the door unlock and a hunched, wizened Japanese man with bushy white eyebrows opened it.
“You are Gio?” he asked in a wheezing, tremulous voice.
Gio nodded.
“Right this way, please,” the man rasped, gesturing for Gio to follow him. Gio stepped in and the man locked the door behind them, leading Gio to a private room in the back. He looked around for other patrons or wait staff, but he couldn't see or hear any. There were small potted bamboo plants on the tables, and huge silk fans decorated the walls. Gentle flute music lilted through the sound system, eerie and haunting.
Ever since he'd been waylaid by the men in ski masks when he was 17, Gio had developed an extremely sensitive antenna for potentially dangerous situations. Associates and soldiers in crime families generally had to be somewhat wary in their day-to-day lives, but as Mario's son, Gio knew he was a tempting target for rival gangs who might want to ransom him or use him as leverage. Whenever he got a bad feeling about a situation he was walking into, he tended to trust that instinct.
Gio knew that some people might call him “paranoid.” But he was pretty sure those people had never caught someone taping them with a hidden microphone or been smacked around by a van full of strangers with baseball bats.
Slowly, Gio reached for the gun in his shoulder holster as they approached the door to the back room. The Japanese man opened the door and Gio saw his father sitting by himself at a table set for four. Gio's hand closed over the handle of his pistol—as the door opened wider, he half expected to see men on either side of Mario, holding him at gunpoint.
But the door opened all the way, and aside from Mario, the room was empty.
Mario stood, smiling and gesturing at Gio's hand in his jacket. “Hey, what's this? One day as a made guy, and you're already thinking of whacking the boss and taking over?”
Gio realized he was still gripping his gun and withdrew his hand, returning the smile. He suddenly felt pretty silly for suspecting an ambush. “Nah, I just thought...forget it. How are you, Papa?”
“I'm good,” Mario said, embracing Gio and patting him on the back. “You? Still recovering from your party last night?”
Gio thought about his encounter with Katie and bristled inwardly. “Yeah, thanks again for that,” he replied. “It was a lot of fun. So why did you want to meet me here? I didn't think you ate cooked fish, let alone raw.”
Mario grimaced. “You got that right. If it ain't smothered in pasta, I don't want to hear about it. But I know you're a big fan of all this chopsticks-and-rice crap, right? So I wanted to introduce you to Mr. Schmoozie here.” He pointed to the Japanese man standing in the corner.
“Shimizu,” the man sighed quietly, bowing to Gio.
“Sure, sure,” Mario said dismissively, sitting down again and frowning at the menu in front of him. “Hey, what do you have to drink around here? I can't read a word of this nonsense.”
“Uh, they've got sake, which is like a rice wine,” Gio said, sitting down across from Mario. “And they've also got Kirin and Sapporo, which are kinds of beer...”
Mario waved him off, reaching into his pocket for his billfold and peeling off a fifty. He flapped it at Shimizu. “Hey, there's a liquor store across the street. Why don't you go pick me up a bottle of grappa and keep the change, okay? And keep the front door unlocked. We're expecting two more people.”
Shimizu accepted the bill gingerly with his thumb and forefinger, his mouth tightening in disgust as though it were a square of soiled toilet paper. He left the room, shutting the door behind him.
“Friendly, ain't he?” Gio pointed out.
“He's just pissed because he's been running this joint for twenty years,” Mario said, “and last year, an all-you-can-eat place opened up a couple blocks away and took all his business. Now he can't even afford the rent on this place, let alone the rest of his overhead. That's how I was able to buy it from him for such a low price. He can stay on as the head chef, though, or if you don't like the prick's attitude, you can fire him. Whatever, it's your place now.”
“Jesus, you bought this place?” Gio asked, surprised. “For me? Why?”
“You're a made guy now, kid,” Mario said. “That means that as your boss, I'm gonna need you to kick up eight thou to me each week, which means you're gonna need to start running rackets of your own. As your father, I figured I'd snatch this place up for you and hand it over as an early birthday present, just to get you started.”
Gio shook his head, trying to make sense of this. “So, wait...what, I'm a made guy now and you want me to run a fucking restaurant? And a failing one, at that? What's that got to do with running rackets? How am I supposed to kick up eight K each week slinging green tea in this dump?”
Mario pinched the bridge of his nose, sighing. “Gio, smarten up, will you? How many times have I told you it's not how you make the money, it's how you launder it? Jesus, all those times I tried to teach you the family business, and I may as well have been talking to a block of fuckin' parmesan.”
Gio had often tried to understand the lessons his father taught him about how the Mancinis invested their money, but he found the subject too boring to follow, and he was usually distracted by thoughts of his Special Room and who his next guest might be.
“This place is basically a license to steal,” Mario continued. “You want to make your bones dealing coke or H? You want to start collecting protection money from a few places? You want to get into hijacking, whores, card games, whatever? You can funnel every dime into this place, and it'll be untraceable. It's mostly a cash business, so all you gotta do is write up a bunch of receip
ts for fake meals each week and boom, it goes into the bank just like a normal deposit and you can take out what you want when you want without the Feds or the IRS crawling up your ass. Starting to get the picture now?”
Gio nodded slowly. “Yeah, I think so. Hey, thanks, Papa. This was real thoughtful of you.”
“That ain't all,” Mario said. “Since you're gonna be running your own rackets from now on, you're gonna need your own lawyer to help you manage all this shit.”
“But what about Louie?” Gio asked. “He's always done good work for us before.”
“We gotta keep things separate from now on,” Mario replied. “Or at least, that's how we gotta make it look. Otherwise, the Feds could try to get to you through me, or vice versa. Plus if we both got pinched at the same time, God forbid, there's no way the courts'd allow Louie to handle us both. To them, that's a conflict of interests.”
“But how do you know we can trust this new guy?”
Mario raised his eyebrows. “Kid, I said you needed a different lawyer. I didn't say we were gonna find one for you in the fuckin' Yellow Pages. Louie's got someone he trusts who's worked in his office for a couple years. Officially, she's gonna leave his employ to go into business for herself, and you're gonna be her first and only client.”
“'Herself?'” Gio echoed. “It's a she?”
Mario rolled his eyes. “Yeah, they give law degrees to women now, ain't you heard?”
Gio heard the door of the restaurant open and the sound of footsteps approaching the back room.
“This is probably them now,” Mario said, standing up and gesturing for Gio to do likewise. “And try to watch your mouth around this broad, okay? She's a real lady, not one of those spaced-out bimbos you like to use for punching bags.”
“What's that supposed to mean?” Gio asked.
“Never mind what it means,” Mario snapped, “just behave and keep your hands to yourself, understand?”
The door opened and Louie waddled in, followed by a woman in her mid-twenties. Her auburn hair was impeccably styled, without a single strand out of place. Her suit was sleek and no-nonsense, her high heels looked sharp enough to kill, and her full lips were painted blood red.
But Gio had developed keen instincts when it came to women, and it wasn't her clothes or makeup that hypnotized him as she entered the room. It was the way she carried herself—she looked so proud and confident, so above it all.
Her green eyes projected a fiery independence, like a wild horse that refused to be tamed or saddled. She looked like a woman who would rebel against any attempt to degrade or humiliate her, and the promise of that rebellion made her all the more attractive to him.
Gio had never desired anyone more in his life, and as they shook hands and his nostrils filled with the scent of her perfume, he knew he would do absolutely anything to have her in his Special Room.
“Carolyn Aspen,” she said. “It's a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Mancini. I look forward to working together.”
Chapter 7
Carla
Carla felt a strange sense of surrealness creep over her as she looked into Gio's eyes and shook his hand. She'd only been undercover once before, in a minor role as a drug buyer during another agent's sting operation, and she wasn't used to giving a fake name when she introduced herself.
Also, being in the same room with Gio and feeling his palm pressed against hers after spending so many months staring at his photograph made her world feel like it had turned upside down. Even though she'd dealt with plenty of criminals in her career, she somehow expected Gio to be different—to exude some otherworldly aura of sinister menace.
Now she realized how silly she'd been to think that. He'd killed her partner and he was a bad person, to be sure, but he was still only a person, no more evil than the dozens of lawbreakers she'd arrested before.
The most peculiar thing of all, though, was how much he lived up to the nickname “Handsome Gio” in person. Carla realized that during all those hours obsessing over his photos, her anger and grief had caused her to project a kind of malice onto his facial features. His eyes had seemed cold and dark, and his lips had seemed curled into a perpetual sneer.
But now that the same face was right in front of her, smiling and animated, there was a boyish charm to his features that she couldn't help but find alluring.
“Please, call me Gio,” he insisted, flashing his straight white teeth in a movie star smile. Flirtation danced in his eyes like sunlight shimmering across the ripples of a pond, and if it were anyone else, Carla was sure her own eyes wouldn't have been able to resist flirting right back at him.
Snap out of it, Carla scolded herself. This isn't some magazine model you're shaking hands with. He's a thief and a killer, not to mention a sadist.
She felt torn. If she played it too icy, Gio wouldn't feel comfortable enough to confide in her about his crimes and she wouldn't be able to gather the evidence she needed. If she played it too friendly, he would almost certainly get the wrong idea and she'd find herself dodging his sexual advances, which could get messy in terms of getting the job done.
Inwardly, she bitterly cursed the fact that male undercover agents didn't have to deal with these kinds of problems.
“Gio it is, then,” Carla replied, hoping her smile was professional and genuine without seeming flirty. She sat down, and the others did as well.
“So Louie,” Mario said, “where have you been hiding this bright young woman? How come I've never seen her before?”
Louie's face flushed, and Carla saw his stubby fingers twitch nervously near the buttons on his shirt, as though he wanted to fidget with the mic on his chest.
Goddamn it, Louie, can't you try to keep it together for just a few minutes? Carla thought angrily. You lie in front of judges and juries almost every day of your fucking existence. Can't you muster up a halfway-convincing lie now?
“Uh, well, I've mostly been, y'know, keeping her busy with clerk stuff, filing, typing up motions and complaints and all that.”
Carla saw Mario's eyes narrow.
Oh, you stupid asshole, you're making it sound like I'm some kind of secretary who doesn't know her ass from her elbow, she fumed silently. There's no way they'll want me to work with Gio now. We gave you a very simple cover story, Louie, and now you're wiping your ass with it.
“But, but, um, but she's good, though,” Louie added quickly, swallowing hard. “She's very sharp, she's helped me out on plenty of cases, and she's got, y'know, a brilliant legal mind. She was the, uh, daughter of one of my professors at Stanford Law, Phillip Hackton, and he was one of the most respected criminal attorneys in the country, so...”
Carla tried to keep her expression neutral, but rage erupted inside her like a volcano. She couldn't believe her ears. How could he make up such outrageous lies on the spot like that? All it would take was ten minutes on Google for anyone to see through such transparent bullshit.
She wondered whether Phillip Hackton was even a real law professor at Stanford, or if Louie had simply decided to wing it on that one too. She tried to imagine the look on Don's face as he listened to this remotely.
Mario turned to Carla. “That's some kind of pedigree you got there. What does your old man think about you working for guys like us? He doesn't feel like you're tarnishing the family legacy, or nothin' like that?”
“Maybe that's why she uses a different last name,” Gio pointed out.
Carla registered Louie's slight wince out of the corner of her eye.
Yeah, you couldn't even bother to remember the last name of my alias to make it match your dumbass fairy tale, could you? she thought. If this whole thing goes south because of you, Louie—if Fred goes unavenged because you fucked us here—I swear to God I'll wipe my ass with that guarantee of immunity and make sure you get locked in the most miserable hole the federal penal system has to offer.
“Actually, he died the year before I went to law school,” Carla said. “I decided to use my mother's last name beca
use his tends to cast such a long shadow, and I felt I wanted to succeed on my own merits rather than his reputation.”
Mario nodded slowly. “You wanted to earn your career instead of inherit it. I respect that. I'm hoping with your help, my little Gio will be able to do the same.”
“You don't need to talk about me, Papa,” Gio said tightly. “I'm sitting right here.”
Carla could hear the resentment in his voice, and she noted a subtle, defensive slump in his posture. When she'd first entered the room, he had seemed lively and confident, but the more his father talked down to him and dismissed him, the more he appeared to regress into a sullen teenager.