“I’d heard they were kidnapped as underage girls,” I said.
“Maybe that was Joey’s gig, not mine. I had to clean up his mess, that’s all. The whole thing was Joey’s fault; he brought this guy around and shouldn’t have. He knew too much for his own good.” Wow, I thought. Bruno had a Joey that trusted someone outside their crew with too much info. Max trusted Pembroke with too much of our family business. What a parallel.
“Why’d you kill him, if he was no big deal?”
“He had it coming. I had to make an example out of him and those hookers too.”
“What happened to Joey?”
“You know Joey, huh? His eyes darkened, and his bushy foxtail eyebrows pushed out. “Joey was a punk. When he got the word De Luca wanted a sit down with him, he ran. I told him to get that broad at his boy’s house and bring her to me. I wanted to know what she knew, but Joey hustled her away. Maybe he thought she’d be a bargaining chip or something.”
“So you don’t know where this gal or Joey’s at?” I asked. Of course, I knew Anna was safe, but I didn’t know the details.
“I’ve got eyes and ears out; he won’t be able to stay underground for long.”
His answer was good news. No emphasis on finding Anna. She evidently hadn’t meant that much to him. He wanted Joey for some unfinished business. Maybe Joey heard that Cal told her everything he knew, and he couldn’t afford another set of loose lips. Joey needed Cal’s woman out of the picture, and on ice. So he took care of it, and sent those yahoos I killed to pick her up for him.
“Who gave the order to kill Cal?”
“Nobody has to give me orders. I did what needed done.”
“Come on, who’s your boss?” I asked.
He struggled momentarily with the answer. It wasn’t that he didn’t know; he didn’t want to say. I picked up the single jack, and with a gesture in Bruno’s direction, he was able to articulate an answer, “The guy’s name is Tony.”
“Tough Tony—is he the one that gave the order?” I asked.
He nodded and said, “It was more like I told Tony what the solution to the problem was and he agreed.” He took another drink of water and said, “Pembroke told us all about you guys. You’re going to be discussed at the meeting.”
“What meeting?”
“It don’t matter none. The meeting is going to happen, and you and your crew are the topic. The Boss will call for a stragismo on your whole organization.” Smugness returned to his face. I didn’t care for the look.
“What’s a stragismo?” I said. “If you’re gonna threaten me with something, it’s not very scary if I don’t know what it means.”
“They will make you their life’s work. It’ll be a campaign of terror,” he said. “You will pay dearly. You will pay for everything.”
I didn’t like his attitude. “Where’s this little pow-wow taking place? He got cocky with me and called me some choice names. Bludd and Kuhl strapped Bruno back into the chair, Duct Taped his mouth, tethered one hand and pulled it across the metal desk. That’s where I started. His fingers were first to receive the punishing blows from the single-jack, then to the back of his hand and finally the wrist. Bruno was delirious with pain. Kuhl doused him with water and used his smelling salts. When Bruno gained his awareness, I checked his level of cooperation with a question. He could have responded with a nod or made some gesture, and the punishment would have stopped, but he wasn’t a “wise guy” after all.
Bludd and Kuhl cut the other hand loose and tethered it. Bruno entered a state of shock from pain, and I doubted he would recover with the ability to communicate. If we beat him continuously, it only sped up the process of death. I thought how easy it used to be when I stalked a perp and shot him to death. I missed those days. As I prepared to crack down on Bruno’s other hand, Bludd removed the tape, and I halted my assault.
It took Bruno a minute to gather his thoughts then said, “The Double Decker.” Why he told us now, I didn’t know. It might not have been the truth, and there was no way to prove it. Bruno hung his head. Tired from the ordeal or in shame for not holding his tongue, I couldn’t tell. What I believed was he had lost all hope for his life. He knew he would endure hours and maybe days of torture before he died, and he would not die until we got what we came for. He made the decision to end it. I didn’t fault him. It was the only way out.
“When, what time?” I asked.
“Wednesday…late.”
I glanced at Bludd and Kuhl. It didn’t appear we had any further use for Bruno. Kuhl standing behind Bruno, took the initiative. He pulled out his piece, strapped on the silencer, and fired two rounds into the back of his head. We wanted to ensure he stayed a missing person for at least a few days. Mornings weren’t the best times for dumping a body, so we wrapped him up and stuffed him into the Avenger’s trunk where he’d freeze; then, with the return of darkness, we could offload him with little chance of being seen.
We decided to finish the cleanup, and catch a nap. Then we’d follow up with a call to Anna. It was time for the scoop.
Chapter 16
“This war won’t be about who’s right; it’ll be about who is left”
—Walter
The Quonset hut had been useful. Quiet and remote was to our advantage. Saturday we caught up on rest and jawed about the possible upcoming meeting. There wasn’t much time to prepare for a Wednesday night gathering at the Double Decker. Tentative plans were scratched on a yellow legal notepad and put on the desk for review and input. Bludd talked fluidly about the meeting while I paced the Quonset hut floor and made additional notes on the legal pad. Kuhl busied himself with gadgetry, and distorted the Semtex as if it were Play-doh.
“When are you going to call Max and Anna?” Bludd asked.
“I don’t see the urgency,” I said. “I think the Mob meeting is our highest priority.”
Bludd shook his head, “I think we need to let Maximillian know we are no longer a secret society, mate.”
Kuhl, who hadn’t shown any signs of interest in our conversation, chimed in, “It’s the responsible thing to do. Their lives are in jeopardy just like ours will be if they order a stragismo. We can’t wait until after the meeting to tell them. You never know how the meeting might turn out. We might not survive.” Kuhl’s smile expressed a glint of malice.
I didn’t want to agree, but it made sense, in a practical way. “If it’ll make you feel better, I’ll make the call today,” I said.
It was just after two when I placed the call to Max. He answered, and the usual exchange of cordial greetings followed. “We’d like to meet tomorrow morning at ten thirty. There’s a greasy spoon in Cheektowaga at the Walden Galleria. You and Anna will find the diner without any difficulty. They have a decent breakfast.”
Max agreed.
We waited for nightfall. Under the cover of darkness, we would pay our final disrespects to Bruno’s corpse. From my earlier studies on crime, I’d learned serial killers set patterns. If and when they were caught, it was usually due to one of two things. They either returned to the scene of the crime, or returned to where they’d dumped the body. I wasn’t going to let it be that easy. I’d travel out of my way, a long way, to make sure Bruno was deposited appropriately. A mile or two extra on the Avenger wasn’t going to hurt a thing. Besides, Bludd wanted to get some fresh air. Kuhl, on the other hand, was busy soldering parts together. Every now and then we’d catch him talking to himself while he handled the various instruments of death he had strewn about. Like a little kid with toy soldiers, he’d speak to the pieces, “Die suck’r,” or “Ka-boooooom.” This was frequently followed by eerie laughter.
It was seven fifteen on a Saturday night. Most of my old friends at the aluminum factory would have been ready to party the night away. That wasn’t a bad idea, but before I could get into the revelry mode, I had to take out the garbage. A layer of dark clouds had filled the sky and carried a fresh threat of snow. That wasn’t a negative scenario, but rather a good thi
ng for our plans. The ground had already been covered in a blanket of white; more snow would not make a dramatic change to the landscape. It might, however, conceal a body. Regardless if it snowed or not, we needed to find the right site. We hit the road.
We headed south. The population was spread out amongst a number of small hamlets along the route. Rather than run the Interstate we decided to use the more remote and isolated State Highway system. An hour into the road trip, we’d explored a couple side roads, but nothing had panned out. However, crossing the railroad tracks gave me an idea. We stayed near the tracks and kept an eye out for a remote area that would allow us to drop off Mr. Bruno.
On the northeast side of Irving, New York, where a set of railroad tracks crossed Highway 5, Milestrip Road angled off to the south. According to our map, the road would dead end near Cattaraugus Creek and a railroad bridge. We ventured in that direction. As we approached the end of Milestrip Road, the bridge exoskeleton loomed before us in the darkness. We stopped short of the end of the road, and dragged Bruno’s body from the trunk. The frozen tub-o-lard hadn’t lost much weight. Maybe three liters worth of blood, and that wasn’t much weight at all. I’d wrapped the corpse in a white linen sheet when I’d dropped him in the Avenger’s trunk that I’d lined with plastic four-ply sheeting. It all had to go, and it would come in handy now as a makeshift litter. We drug him up the slight incline that led to the railroad tracks. Neither Bludd nor I wanted to pack Bruno alone, or together, and not far for sure. With the snow cover of six or more inches in depth, and the light dusting that had begun to fall, it made the job easier to slide his body.
It was more than twenty yards we had to pull Bruno to get him up on the railroad ties, but that wasn’t far enough. We pulled him another twenty-five yards to the north end of the bridge trestle. On the metal bridge grating, the snow had fallen through, and we lost footing on the ice that had formed on the grate. We left the body laying flat and parallel to the tracks. If the train hit the body as planned, it would likely tumble and drag it for a long distance.
We left the sheet over the body, as well. With the fresh snow on the white sheet wrapped body, there was a good chance the engineer wouldn’t see the body at all, or tap on the brakes after impact. If, by chance, he did see the body, the cops would have a chore on their hands with a mangled corpse. Identification and cause of death might take the coroner a long time to establish or be forever obscured. If it bought us time, we wanted to do it.
We said goodbye to Bruno, jumped into the Avenger, spun her around in a 180—an easy maneuver in the snow—fishtailed back onto the main road, and headed north toward Buffalo.
“Mate, all the exercise made me hungry. How about we pick up one of those American cheeseburgers?” We pulled into the first fast food joint I found and ordered up at the drive through window. Bludd called Kuhl to see what he wanted to eat, but he’d already downed a couple cans of cold spam. We cruised back to the hut and spent the remainder of the evening in casual conversation while knocking down shots of Jamison’s.
Sunday morning greeted us with fresh snow. It wasn’t a blizzard, and we didn’t have to dig ourselves out, but it was as much of a hindrance as it was a help. The media had declared an “above average” snow fall, and there was no end in sight to the weather pattern. We needed to get this project done and over. I recalled how miserable I was in Texas when I took out the child porn distributor with the Brazilian link. The shoe was on the other foot now. Next time I’d schedule Texas in the winter and New York in the summer.
Max and Anna were first on our agenda for the day. There were questions I needed answers to, and I needed them quick. We had mobsters that wouldn’t wait. Kuhl had more of a one-track mind than Bludd, and me. Gadgetry had consumed his life, and he had a hard time breaking away from his toys, except to deploy them.
The three of us rode together in Bludd’s Tahoe for the half-hour drive to the restaurant. It was a quiet half hour; I felt we were talked out. There were no longer any “what if” scenarios to discuss or be had. All we wanted were answers and to move on with the project. It was ten-fifteen, we were early, and I wouldn’t have had it any other way. We walked inside the diner, and more or less, all chose the same six-foot round table which was nestled into an L-shaped corner. We played musical chairs for a few minutes and jockeyed our positions around until we’d ended the game with all three of us back into the corner. It couldn’t have ended any other way.
Max and Anna entered the diner right at ten-thirty. I considered them late for our ten-thirty meeting. Max was bundled in a heavy down parka and walked with the support of his cane. Anna followed behind Max. She was lovely as usual. Her long red hair had taken on a deeper tone than I’d remembered. Anna chose a seat nearest me while Max had taken a centralized position facing all of us. I’m sure he felt safe.
A young waitress in our area brought menus, water, and a cheerful smile to our table.
“Can we have a few minutes before we order? It’s been a long time since we’ve seen each other, and we’d like a few minutes to catch up on things.” I asked.
“Not a problem, honey. Give me a signal when you’re ready.”
When the waitress had moved away from our table, Max started off the talk with a round of congratulations for smoking out Pembroke. “It was a marvelous job. I must say, each of you performed like an A-team.” It didn’t lead to handshakes or slaps on the back amongst the rest of us. It was the reason we’d come to Buffalo—it was business.
“I owe all of you an apology,” Max said. “Anna, this includes you. I felt a kinship with Talbot Pembroke. I’m sorry I overstepped my boundaries and violated our code. I did so honestly. I wanted to bring him in as a Palatini. It was an error that placed all of you in jeopardy…Especially Anna. For this I am truly sorry.”
“I feel I have an apology to make too,” Anna said. “It might have been a wrong decision to have remained hidden after I escaped my…” Anna began to cry softly. After a moment, she’d regained her composure and collected her thoughts enough to continue. “Cal was a really good man. His heart was in the right place, and I think he was a rare find in journalism circles. We will miss him.”
Max again spoke, “It was obvious we had an inside leak when the kidnapped girls and Cal vanished. Anna had stayed on against my wishes and suffered traumatic consequences. We were very fortunate she was able to get away alive.”
“I knew we had a mole.” Anna said. “What I didn’t know was how much information Maximillian had provided Talbot or I would have suspected him, but…”
Max interrupted, “We’ve covered that Anna.” Then he laid out the story from his perspective. “Anna called me after she had escaped her capture. Once I knew she was safe, I made the decision to have her remain “missing” for her safety. At that point we focused on where exactly the project had been compromised.”
“When was that? At what point did you know Anna was alive and had escaped?” I asked.
“Excellent question,” Max said, “I believe it was late in the evening after we had that nasty confrontation on whether to proceed with the project. Since you were determined to push forward, I thought you might succeed in flushing out the mole. As it turned out, it was a capital idea that panned out rather nicely. Since I feel defensive right now, I might add, I had called for other Palatini to assist you before I knew Anna was alright. I was certain you would find them valuable.”
“Well your decisions and actions cost me more than a little heartache.” I grimaced and flashed a glance at Anna. Our eyes made contact, only briefly before she slowly looked down toward her hands that were folded in front of her on the table. “I was shocked when I heard about Anna. Then I find out weeks later there was no reason to have felt the way I did. You let me needlessly suffer when you were aware she was alive and safe.”
Max tried to cut it, “Yes, well I’ve explained…”
I lifted my hand toward Max with a gesture to stop, “Understand, I’m not crying and whining abou
t anything. It is what it is, but I want you to know this; I’ve lost trust in our Society. When you wanted to shut down the project, I figured you for a coward. I felt betrayed and I questioned my loyalty to the Palatini. I was paranoid when Bludd showed up at my door. I wasn’t sure if I would have to waste him to survive. You didn’t tell me you had put out a call to assist the project.”
Anna piped in again, “Sometimes it is impossible to predict what circumstances will develop or the outcome of the circumstances.”
“Truth would have been inspiring,” I said.
“I did what I felt I had to do to keep Anna protected. It was your decision to continue the project. I might add, against my wishes. All of that was before I had heard from Anna,” Max said.
“My decision was based on your cowardice Max.”
“I made a decision to let the project play out and see where you took us. Anna told me you would display a harsh reaction. I think she said, ‘like a bull in a china shop,’ if my recollection is correct.”
“Here’s the deal, Max. I didn’t sign on to be used like a guinea pig.”
Max rapidly tapped his cane twice on the tile floor which echoed a hollow clacking noise that drew the momentary attention of others seated nearby then leaned into the table and said, “I believe we have here, a case that the philosopher Nietzsche addressed when he said, “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”
Lawless Measures: Vigilante - The Fight Continues Page 26