“I can’t. You heard it right. She had nowhere else to go. She brought me the drive with the info because they were willing to kill to get it. They did kill for it.”
“Jesus, Nick!”
“I know…”
“You don’t know! You don’t get it. That woman has been a thorn in our side since she first stepped out of her stupid Lexus. I wish we’d never seen her. I wish…I wish she’d never gotten out of that goddamn lake, Nick. I wish I’d killed her. I wish she was dead.”
Lupo was shaken by the level of vitriol. And he decided this was no time to tell Jessie he’d let Heather crash at his place.
“We can talk about this later,” he started.
“No, there’s nothing to say.”
“Yes, Jess, there is. This crap she brought me would have found me eventually. I— My name was in the material, Jessie. And yours. They were thorough. I had to read carefully, line by line, to find it. But they’d have dragged us into it eventually. Take my word for it.”
“Well, that’s the problem, Nick. I always do.”
And she hung up.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Bastone
They’d landed at Madison’s small airport and had driven two rented SUVs, Ford Expeditions, up to Vilas County. The GPS had led them to the town, and through it, then up US45 and down a long stretch of 17 heading east, and then finally through narrow blacktopped county roads that dipped and circled around lakes and over channels. Finally they’d nosed onto a deceptively overgrown turnout and circled around a rutted driveway a half-mile up to the house he’d seen in the photographs, which looked like a mansion except it had been fashioned of logs and glass and stone.
Bastone heaved a sigh of relief when he realized that it was a damn sight better than what the driveway had concealed. Maybe it was left that way on purpose, to discourage visitors. His driver had almost missed it.
He had four guys with him, minor muscle, but he’d wanted to have two vehicles on hand. Plus Johnny’s and Rabbioso’s crew—this way they’d have enough fucking cars to get around and spread out if needed. He’d buy some vehicles later on, once he’d cemented his ties with several state dealers. His name still meant something in Wisconsin, but he’d have to jog some memories in order to get some deals on the rolling stock.
Now he stepped out of the Expedition and stood behind the open door, inhaling the pure scent of fresh air and pine or whatever the fuck it was. He just knew it smelled good after the heat stench of Vegas, with its sweaty showgirls and pretty boys.
Although about now he could go for a showgirl or two. Well, they hadda have chicks here, too. Meantime, he had his collection…no, scratch that, he’d have some of it when the box he’d shipped arrived in a day or two. He was told it wouldn’t be smart to put the smut in his checked bags or carry-ons, so he’d had no choice but to ship some over.
“Bruno, get my bags.”
“Yes, sir,” the driver said and went to it.
“Manny, open up the doors and get the cars in the garage. And get in the kitchen—I think we’re gonna need some comfort food. This is home now.”
“Sure thing, boss.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Uh, sure. Pasta okay?”
“Fuck you think I am, Tony Soprano? I want some corn-fed steaks. Fridge should be stocked, if that nut Johnny knows what’s good for ’im.”
Bruno and Manny hopped to their tasks.
“Jingo, get freshened up then head into town and track down Robb and Johnny. Tell ’em to bring the hardware, we’re naked out here.” What the hell kinda name was Jingo?
“Sure,” said the mountain whose name was Jingo. “Get Marty too?”
“Fuck do I care about Marty? It’s Johnny and Robb I want, they’re my lieutenants. Marty’s a lowlife like you.”
Jingo slinked away and Don Bastone felt a little guilty, treating him like that. But shit, that’s what his father would have said. You hadda fill the role, or they’d fill a hole with you. That’s another thing his father had said.
That left Joey without a job to do. “You,” he snapped, “help Bruno with the bags.”
The young Don felt like draping his overcoat over his shoulders like his father would have done, before entering his new castle, but shit, it was almost too hot here even though he’d been told it got cold. Some of the trees around them had shed leaves, but most of the woods looked still green and impenetrable.
So he made do with folding the leather coat over his arm and heading up the cobblestone walk to the main door, which Manny had left wide open. Once inside he took a tour and had to admit it reminded him of one of those luxury condos dotted around the high-roller casinos, except here the atmosphere was more real because the woods came right up to the back end of the house. The drive wound around the house and ended at the double-height garage. The great room was like a hotel lobby except comfortable, with a three-story stone fireplace on one wall and a balcony above, glass facing out.
And at an angle from the rear of the house, a new wooden pier stuck out like a middle finger into one of the elongated lakes that everybody raved about here. He stared out over the water that lapped gently on the pilings.
Fuck, I’m gonna have to get a boat. Hell, two boats. A fast one and one of those floating living rooms.
Bastone grunted with pleasure. He picked a double bedroom—that was a master with its own den off to the side and a bath about the size of another bedroom. The Jacuzzi looked ready for action, and he wondered who he could trust to get him some girls. The goddamn casino he was buying into hadda have some showgirls, right? He’d ask Rabbioso. That fucker would know.
He threw his stuff on a huge desk in his bedroom, loosened his tie, and wished he had some blow. The champagne he’d asked to be placed in the fridge would have to do.
Then later he would decide just how to make sure the fuckin’ Indians down the road knew just who was the new boss.
He figured he’d enjoy that part.
Jessie
Still seething, she entered the casino and was immediately assailed by a giant headache. For once, the constant C Major chord symphony didn’t attract her or make her hands itch. She didn’t feel her player’s card scratching the skin of her thigh through her jeans. She didn’t want to see the red numbers climb or fall with each button push and roll of the cylinders. She wasn’t interested in seeing single, double, or triple BAR BAR BAR flags roll together across the middle of the screen.
She headed straight back, past the theater entrance, past a bank of ATMs, past a caged cashier and a free soft drinks and coffee bar, and then past the back Security counter. She waved at one of the newer guards who knew her but not well, and opened the double doors into the tech office area as if she belonged there, and he let her. She stalked down the hall and reached the main administrative area, with offices and still sparkling-new conference rooms behind glass walls, leather chairs arranged around dark wood slabs with gold highlights and tech hook-ups for laptops and phones and high-tech projectors.
For the first time she wondered how much all this had cost. She wondered how much the tribe made daily. And she wondered how much, once the Mafia stuck their greedy fucking hands in the flow, the tribe would still be able to have.
And Nick had told her to take it easy!
Damn him, and Heather too.
She blew past Donna and entered Bill Grey Hawk’s office.
“Dr. Hawkins!” He’d been huddled over his phone. He hung up and turned toward her.
She stalked up to his desk, which had also cost a pretty penny.
“Bill, Nick tells me to be careful, but you have to realize that there are mobsters in town, and they’re here to take over the casino. Nick is looking into it, and then he’s going to drive up here and we’re going to meet with you and the council, and we’ll—”
“Doctor,” Grey Hawk interrupted, his eyes widening, “Please meet Mr. Rabbioso—” His head indicated a guest she hadn’t seen.
�
��Mr. Robb will do,” said not-Bruce, who stood from where he’d been sitting on the leather sofa in the corner and held out his hand. He looked very dashing in his safari outfit.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, her voice fading. She touched the thug’s hand and it gripped hers nicely, and she stared in his eyes and saw the darkness there, the cold, and it was a mismatch from what his skin felt like, and suddenly she was afraid.
“It’s all right, I was just leaving. Doctor? It’s very nice to meet you.”
“Uh, likewise.” They touched hands briefly and she felt it again.
But what was it?
He took his safari jacket and his not-Bruce looks out of there and she saw that Bill was visibly shaken.
“What’s wrong, Bill?”
“Nothing. Mr. Robb was…nothing, Jessie. We were finished. What can I do for you?”
He turned to face her and she thought he was literally shaking.
Strange that he’d been on the phone while the guy sat on his sofa.
“I just came to tell you that I told Nick about what’s happening. I assume you know this Mr. Robb here is part of the group—more like conspiracy—to take over the casino and hotel. I just want you to know, we’re going to find a way to help.”
She looked around. “Where’s your man, Charlie? He should be in on this.”
“I’ve sent him on an errand down in Wausau,” Grey Hawk said. “Jessie, we’re already starting to draft a response.”
“What the hell, Bill? A response?”
He recoiled from her anger.
“This isn’t a corporate takeover! They might use the same language, but they’re on a whole different level of predator. And you’ve seen what real predators look like, haven’t you, Bill?”
She was referring to what he’d seen on that beach, when Nick and the Wolfpaw soldier turned into wolves and fought almost to the death. That was when Heather, the bitch, had put several silver slugs into her lover’s body. And then she’d become one of them.
But Bill Grey Hawk had seen enough. Though he’d never spoken of it since, his return to the council had been a fragile one, because he didn’t want to know.
And Jessie suddenly figured out what she’d seen in Mr. Robb’s eyes. It wasn’t cold or darkness. She’d seen an amused look, but even more she’d seen a sort of kaleidoscope effect that he attempted to hide by making his eyes twinkle at her.
She had seen a wolf below the skin, crouched there—waiting to spring.
Wolfclaw
Somewhere in Northern Minnesota
Spotlights blazing, the McDonnell Douglas 902 VIP circled the helipad once before settling down. Its quiet twin Pratt and Whitney engines were slowing almost as soon as its wheels touched the concrete.
General Walt Lansing popped the large cabin door, grabbed his leather duffel and a thin briefcase from one of the empty seats, and hopped out with a wave at the pilot.
The general was a ramrod-straight, silver-haired buzzcut cliché of a military man, his uniform fitting the image down to the last colorful campaign ribbon on his chest. Arms swinging, he made his way past the perimeter guards to the main lodge and disappeared inside.
After following a long hallway paneled in knotty pine, he reached his apartment and closed the door, then stashed the briefcase on the desk, the duffel on the bed, and ran the shower. A half hour later he reemerged wearing a khaki jumpsuit, combat boots, and a black beret. Only two insignia, a death’s head on his collar and a stylized red claw on a shoulder patch. A few minutes later, he joined the rest of the assembled group in the two-story library.
A crackling fire blazed in a huge fieldstone fireplace set in the center of the inner wall. Around it, six others clad in similar attire lounged on rich maroon leather club chairs. Satellite butler’s tables held decanters and glasses of golden and clear liquids. Cigar smoke swirled in the center of the room, reaching toward the two walls of stuffed floor-to-ceiling bookcases that faced each other. The room’s outside wall was made of glass and framed the night-washed woods over which the cantilevered section of the house was perched. This portion of the log house was the only nod to modernism—the rest was purely frontier ski lodge in style.
When Lansing entered, the others looked up. No one leaped to attention, for this was a gathering of equals. Their salutes were informal affairs, more like casual waves, and he returned them with a wave of his own.
Across from the fireplace were generals Eammons and LaPorte, both Army. Closer to the bookcases and facing the others were generals Heissen and Johnston, both of the Marines. The other two, huddled over a chessboard table, were generals Pedersen and Torre of the Air Force.
“Gentlemen, welcome,” Lansing said, even though he was the late arrival. He crossed to the well-appointed bar and poured a generous single-malt. “Let us toast our continued good fortune.”
He held up his glass, waiting for the others to follow suit.
“Wolfclaw lives on,” he said. He waited for the others to respond, then drank and enjoyed the smoky flavor of the Scotch.
“Wolfclaw,” they intoned, though a mite weakly.
They drank and he waited.
General Johnston was the first to speak up outside of the toast. Lansing had expected it. “Walt, the board was dissolved, Schlosser is dead, the main compound was raided. Wolfpaw no longer exists. What are we toasting, really?”
Lansing looked around, a cold smile stretched across his face. “We should be toasting the fact that our firewall held, my friend. We should be toasting that no one has broken through. We were to be toasting that no outsider knows the nature of our group, no one knows that the work of Wolfpaw continues without pause. That no one knows we still exist as an entity. And that no one knows we are all gathered here in this place. These would all be good reasons for a toast. But as you know, we have had a leak and we cannot toast our continuing mission—that is, until we take care of our problem. I believe we can still contain it, and then we shall be able to toast the fact that our main goal is still within sight. Does anyone doubt me?” He glanced at each of his colleagues, in turn.
Heads shook, some more convincingly than others. He chose to look on the positive side of things, for now.
“That’s good, very good. We have much to discuss over this weekend, and I appreciate that you’ve all dropped everything to be here. Of course it’s an annual tradition, but we could have gotten that part out of the way tonight and tomorrow. I’m glad we’ll spend Sunday and Monday focused on our business. And in the meantime, our forces will meet their first test by removing our enemies before they can strike out at us. But there is time for everything to be explained and demonstrated. Tonight, however, first we play.”
They drank again.
Lansing added, “And then we feast.” He winked. “Then play again.”
Part Two
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Wolfclaw
Somewhere in Northern Minnesota
General Lansing had changed into his black Wolfclaw jumpsuit. A closer look would have shown that his collar insignia on one side was a stylized death’s head similar to the traditional SS uniform, and on the other a stylized wolf’s head. The red shoulder flash was a set of claws with his general’s stars arrayed in a semi-circle below.
The others had changed into jumpsuits as well, and now all stood casually in the specially appointed bunker below the rear of the lodge house. There were three sublevels, with only the uppermost appearing to be a normal basement. A well-hidden elevator shaft was the secret entrance to the sublevels, and this was a portion of the deepest. The lavish room was accented by fieldstone columns, walnut paneling, and art of a certain type. Indeed, much of the art—which included wall-hanging tapestries, paintings, photographs, and sculptures—depicted sex acts of every description and permutation. Greek and Roman erotica, some of it museum-quality, inhabited sconces set in the walls at regular intervals.
Lansing opened an engraved double door at one end of the chamber, revealing
a small anteroom about the size of a walk-in closet. Inside, two cages faced each other across a slightly tilted stainless steel slab about six feet across. Blood channels set in the sides and lowest edge led to a drain set in the concrete below.
The cages held two animals, a medium-size dog of indeterminate mix on the right and a small goat on the left.
Lansing turned to face his fellow officers. His fellow celebrants.
“Gentlemen, it’s my pleasure to call this annual tradition to order. Let the Lupercalia begin!”
The others intoned a hearty, “Hear, hear!”
With that, General Johnston stepped forward and took the goat, bleating and struggling, from its cage. Meanwhile Lansing reached into the right-hand cage and removed the slightly sedated dog, whose jaws tried to grab its tormentor’s arms but couldn’t. Both men elevated the animals briefly in front of the others, then swung them onto the steel table, which for this purpose served as the chamber’s altar and secured them there with short chains.
The prescribed sacrifice was ready.
Everyone knew what to do, because they had done this every fifteenth of February since they had ascended to their positions.
With little ceremony beyond a quick flourish, both men brandished ceremonial daggers and in a synchronized motion slit the animals’ throats, holding down the thrashing, struggling bodies as they bled out into the stainless steel channels. Heissen and LaPorte stepped forward, golden grails in their hands, and let a stream of each animal’s blood enter the jeweled cups.
The bleating, whimpering animals died quickly, their blood first gushing, then trickling, and finally dripping down into the drain.
Lansing and Johnston left the drained carcasses where they lay still chained to the altar and turned to take the grails, which they held for the others to behold.
Then they took turns anointing each other’s foreheads with a dab of each creature’s blood, as had been done since time immemorial during this ritual.
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