Plastic Smile (Russell's Attic Book 4)

by Huang, SL

  “We knew even before your little ‘peacekeeping’ mission,” Malcolm continued. “The Madre looked into your dealings—Varga, Thach, Ivchenko. She wasn’t pleased.”

  Oh. Shit.

  I’d done a few contracts each for the men Malcolm had named. I knew what he was driving at. “Those jobs were all drugs or guns,” I said. “Not kids.”

  “Good to know you have a line somewhere.”

  “So that’s why Mama Lorenzo’s been blackballing me,” I said. It made a breathtaking amount of sense, now that I stopped to think about it. “Not because of the mess with her niece. Because she looked into me after that and decided she doesn’t approve.”

  I couldn’t help making the word sarcastic. Mama Lorenzo’s usual business might lean toward extortion and racketeering, with bloodiness reserved only for those who crossed her, but we were still talking about a Mafia Madrina.

  Malcolm, however, took my statement seriously. “Like you said, she’s got a code. She cleans up her town.”

  Right.

  An angry, desperate sort of self-consciousness crept around the edges of my conscience. I’d been trying to stop the crime wave. I’d never paused to consider I might be judged on the wrong side of it.

  Sure, I took advantage of the jobs that came up, but I was a cog. Replaceable. If I wasn’t making money off something, someone else would—the only way to stop the corruption was to behead the hydra, not drive myself to the poorhouse.

  General solutions, not particular ones. What I did in the day-to-day had little importance, as long as I fought the bigger evil at its root—right? After all, didn’t everyone do that? If I had a plan in place to blow up an evil corporation’s headquarters, what did it matter if I’d done some shopping at its local big box store first?

  Mama Lorenzo clearly didn’t see it that way. She’d probably deemed me too difficult to off, but she could put a serious dent in my income with barely any effort, just a few words dropped into the gossip chain. I’d stockpiled enough cash that money was less than a non-issue, but the work…if Arthur and I hadn’t started crusading over the past few months, my brain would have turned inside out on me a lot sooner than it had.

  Shit.

  I licked my lips. It was hard to have a bargaining position with a woman who viewed you as the dregs of humanity. “Would Madame Lorenzo be willing to set aside her opinion of me to solve the new crisis we’re about to have?”

  Malcolm still hadn’t lowered the shotgun, and suddenly, without moving, his stance became more aggressive. “What new crisis?”

  I swallowed. “The one that’s going to break out as soon as I put a stop to what’s in the water.”

  Malcolm was way too smart for a hitman. Or maybe I was just that transparent. He paused for a moment and then said, “So that was you.”

  “Put a dent in recruitment, did I?”

  “You’re awfully cocky for someone who just admitted to poisoning everybody.”

  More like I couldn’t help running my mouth off. Fuck. I decided to try for honesty. “It was an experiment. To see if we could turn people from a life of crime. I guess it didn’t work on you.” He had the grace to look a tiny bit amused. “But we’re pulling the plug. The problem is, LA’s become a tinderbox. The minute we stop, everyone draws and fires. That’s not good for anyone.”

  I left out Rio. I wasn’t sure why—his presence and mission would probably only help my objective here. But for some reason, dragging his name into this felt…wrong. I wasn’t going to turn the Mob against him any more than they might already be, even if there was justification for it.

  Malcolm exhaled through his teeth. “The Madre won’t be happy to hear all this. Won’t be happy with you. And you want our help? After you fucked us all?”

  “Yeah.” Maybe he’d respect my ballsiness.

  “With your mess.”

  “It is my mess,” I said. “And I’m willing to pay. Whatever Madame Lorenzo wants.”

  “And if it isn’t money?”

  “What, then?”

  “Maybe all she wants is, you run a job here in town, you clear it through her.”

  “Not a chance,” I said automatically. But why refuse, if you’re only going to walk into the lion’s den after this, and let the lion sculpt you into an entirely different person? Still…I was already giving myself up to one person. I didn’t know if I’d be capable of doing it twice. “Give me something I can work with,” I said to Malcolm.

  He very deliberately lifted the barrel of the shotgun an inch. “Maybe if you don’t agree to our terms, then we don’t got a deal. And maybe this being all your doing, there’s a different exchange rate for you.”

  Malcolm probably wouldn’t be able to kill me here—probably, though I wasn’t sure whether I should bet on the unseen security. Still, it didn’t matter. Mama Lorenzo had put a bounty out on me before, and even considering how hard I was to kill, she had the power to make sure people didn’t stop trying until they finished the job.

  But the fact remained that during this meeting Malcolm hadn’t tried himself yet, and that meant there was still room to negotiate.

  “I’m not going to be her lackey,” I said slowly, more firmly than I felt. “That’s a non-starter.”

  Malcolm didn’t say anything.

  “I’ll stop taking contracts for her rivals,” I offered. “Varga, Thach’s people, the Russians. Fuentes and XG44. Turner and company.”

  “The Grigoryans,” Malcolm said. “The cartels. And the Russians will include Dolzhikov.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Okay.” The Grigoryans wouldn’t have hired me anyway and the cartels only rarely, so those were no skin off my back. But I’d miss working for Dolzhikov. Otherwise, the agreement would cut out my employment with all the biggest crime families in town, but I could live with it—I preferred independent contracting anyway. “She quits it with the blackballing, though. If I stop working for her rivals, I stop hearing other people are afraid to hire me.”

  “And the water goes clean.”

  “With your help.”

  He nodded fractionally. “One last thing. You try any shit like that again in the Madre’s town, you talk to her first. Or your name goes on the other list.”

  I supposed it said something about Mama Lorenzo’s character that she would be willing to forgive me for calming criminal enterprise across Los Angeles—even if it had impacted her—but she was making it a priority to stop me running guns into her city.

  “Understood,” I said.

  “Good.” He swung down the shotgun to hold it competently at his side. “What do you need?”

  “Mama Lorenzo owns Norricom Media,” I said. “They fund KHBP radio. I need time on the air with Reuben McCabe.”

  Malcolm blinked. I’d managed to surprise him. “McCabe? Why?”

  “I need to reach his audience.”

  “Folks aren’t gonna stand down just ’cause you ask them to.”

  “Not because I ask them to, no.”

  Malcolm studied me. “No go without the details, Russell. What’s your plan?”

  “I’ve got a friend who has leverage with the militias,” I said. “And some of the others. If he can give an indication of that with enough people hearing it, they’ll back off. It’ll work.” Assuming Simon would agree to it. Whatever; I would make him.

  “You sure?” Malcolm asked.

  “Yeah. I’m sure. Can Mama Lorenzo get me the airtime?”

  “She’ll get you the meet. McCabe doesn’t like being strong-armed.”

  “I hear Mama Lorenzo’s pretty good at strong-arming.”

  He grimaced. “Free advice, Russell. You want someone’s lunch money, you threaten them. You want someone to work with you, you start off by asking nicely.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “McCabe’s a political power. You get on his bad side, the Madre won’t step in.”

  “Just get us the meet,” I said. “And it has to be tonight. We need to get on air with him first thing in
the morning.”

  It was almost midnight, but Malcolm didn’t object. This was, after all, part of the reason it was a favor.

  “I’ll walk you out,” he said, gesturing at the pedestrian door at the front of the garage. “Stay by your phone.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  He paused and turned back to me, his posture relaxing from its militant formidability. “I hope you do succeed. Whispers the past couple days—we’ve been getting threats. And not from the usual suspects.”

  I started to put it together then, to make the connection, but too slowly. Far too slowly.

  “You pull this off, it could be the start of a working relationship with the Madre,” Malcolm continued. “You’re not bad, Russell. Stay on her good side, yeah?”

  I nodded.

  He nodded back to me and reached out. Grasped the doorknob.

  Pulled open the door.

  The bullet sheared through the right side of his face with so much force it barely spun him, even as it took half his skull with it. His body lost its rigidity a split second later, as if it was only just catching up to the fact that he was dead.

  I threw myself to the side, away from the door and any possible lines of sight, just as a rifle report echoed across the mountains. From very, very far away. Security had taken my handgun, but a pistol wouldn’t reach the distance the shot had come from anyway—nor would Malcolm’s shotgun, lying impotently across his still fingers.

  So still. He was one of the most efficiently dangerous men I’d ever met, and now his body lay crumpled, its joints at odd angles.

  Someone shouted. Another rifle report rang out. I ran for the back of the garage.

  I tumbled through a back door onto a hill at the rear of the property, one that dropped away to reveal a valley of twinkling yellow spread out below me. White lights shone blandly across tennis courts to my right. I wove left, toward the estate house, skidding down the slope to keep my angle below the view of the far-distant sniper. More gunfire echoed, some nearby. A man screamed. Someone else yelled, commands of some kind.

  The alarms at the estate blared out into the night, startling and earsplitting, light flaring suddenly from every corner of the building. I ducked and cursed as the freakin’ alarms muffled the gunfire and interfered with the data my senses could turn into a numerical re-creation of the scene going on above me.

  Still, the numbers had teased out one conclusion, one horrifying, inescapable conclusion: only one person was firing on us.

  One man.

  My mind had been rebelling against what I already knew was true. Irreversible. Uncontainable. The American Mafia had the power of infinite revenge, and no one would be able to hold them back from retribution for an attack at their very heart. Particularly not an attack that assassinated one of their leaders.

  If Rio wanted to start a mob war in Los Angeles, Mama Lorenzo was a perfect target. Take her out, and blame someone else—maybe even the militias, or the police, or someone the Lorenzos didn’t have a usual agenda for tangling with, someone they couldn’t just crush into oblivion.

  We’ve been getting threats, Malcolm had said. It was a setup. The Family would raze Los Angeles to avenge Mama Lorenzo’s death.

  I ran for the house, every thought crystallizing into the brutal, slim hope that I wasn’t going to be too late.

  Chapter 30

  I didn’t know where in the estate Mama Lorenzo was most likely to be—I was guessing bed or her study, and since I knew where her study was, I beelined for the back.

  A troop of private security poured out, weapons drawn. I bellyflopped into the landscaping, hoping they hadn’t seen me. There was no way they’d let me in, and I had to get to her…and without killing any of her own security on the way.

  The troops dashed by with shouts and tromping. I stayed low and sprinted for the door that had disgorged them. Into the estate and to the right; there must be a door to the study here—

  I skidded in, right into the barrels of a dozen assault rifles.

  Thrusting my hands in the air, I yelled, “I’m a friendly!” and turned the skid into a slide, dropping like I was a baseball player just in case. But Mama Lorenzo’s troops were good enough that none of them fired. Yet.

  “I’m here to help!” I shouted from the floor.

  The woman herself rose from behind her polished wooden desk. She was thinner than when I’d last seen her, her face shadowed, almost gaunt. I fleetingly wondered if she knew about Malcolm yet. I’d gotten the sense they were…close.

  “Miss Russell, what is happening?” she said.

  “You’ve got one sniper, eight hundred and seventy-six point four meters away at an elevation of eight point four nine degrees. He’s to the southeast, bearing a hundred and thirty-one point zero three. Your people aren’t going to be able to get him without some serious hardware, and maybe not even then.” Almost certainly not even then, but if Rio was watching through the scope and saw someone setting up to fire back, he might abort. “Get everyone behind cover, to the back of the property.”

  Mama Lorenzo nodded briskly and turned to the bodyguard by her elbow. “It’s possible Malcolm would be able to make a shot like that. Get him to—”

  “Madame Lorenzo—” I started.

  I’d cut in before thinking about it.

  Her eyes flickered to my face. I didn’t know how to tell her.

  But I didn’t need to say anything. She read the news off my expression.

  “Oh,” she said, a quiet, defeated sound as if someone had just knifed her, and her hand caught on the surface of the desk. Then she said, very quietly, “Torvald, do you have anyone capable of taking that kind of shot?”

  I could have done it, but I didn’t volunteer.

  “I don’t know, ma’am, but we’ll put out the word,” Torvald answered, talking fast. “We have to get you to the panic room.”

  “Which way is that?” I said.

  Torvald cast me a black look, his hand on Mama Lorenzo’s elbow.

  “He’s trying to flush you toward the front of the house,” I said. “Madame Lorenzo has to be his true target, but he’s on a timeline. He won’t just wait for her to go outside tomorrow. Now which way is the panic room?”

  Torvald pointed. “The glass in the front windows is bullet-proof—”

  “You mean bullet-resistant,” I said. There was no such thing as bullet-proof, not with enough force. “And are your walls bullet-proof? Because if he sees her, he knows exactly where she’s going to be the next step even if she’s behind a wall. Madame Lorenzo, don’t follow them.”

  “Nobody’s that good,” Torvald said.

  I was. Rio was.

  Mama Lorenzo turned to me. “Miss Russell. What would you suggest?”

  “Ma’am—” started Torvald, but at that moment one of the big picture windows at the front of the house went down in a magnificent crash.

  “Out the back,” I said. “There’s only one sniper, and he’s almost a kilometer away. Go out the back and get away from here.”

  “Ma’am, we don’t know there’s only one—” Torvald tried, but Mama Lorenzo ignored him. She had her little chrome .32 out on her desk already; she tucked it into a purse and strode through her troops toward me, stepping out of her stilettos. “Someone give me your boots. Men’s 8.”

  A couple of the men started scrambling, and by the time Mama Lorenzo reached my side, hands were thrusting a pair of combat boots at her. “Someone give me a weapon,” I echoed her, and Torvald glanced at Mama Lorenzo before signaling the now-bootless guy to pass me his PS90. I slung it on and checked the chamber.

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  “Relay the information we got about the sniper,” Torvald told Bootless Guy, and then the rest of the security force crowded around us, making a human shield for Mama Lorenzo and covering ahead and behind as we hustled out the back.

  Torvald might be an idiot in some ways, but he was decent at his job.

  The drop to the northwest of
the house was near-vertical, so we edged east before hustling down the slope at an angle. The gunfire and lights faded behind us.

  We made it down into a ravine and hiked along the bottom of it. Mama Lorenzo was wearing a high-end black sheath of a dress—I didn’t think I’d ever seen her in slacks—but she kept up with no trouble.

  A flurried rush through the dark later, the guy who had point stopped us with a raised fist. He gestured to indicate upward—a house, and the distant zoom of cars passing. Torvald made a few more hand signals, and three of our escort broke off to scale the slope and scout ahead.

  While we waited, Torvald stripped his own vest and helmet and helped Mama Lorenzo into them. “Do you think this sniper will be able to come around and cut us off?” he asked in a low voice.

  It startled me when I connected he was talking to me. “If he realizes which way we went—yeah, he had the time to make it,” I said, pacing Rio’s ground speed in my head. “And I’m betting he’s good enough. But if he went down to the house first, or looped around to the west instead…” Rio was good, but he wasn’t omniscient. There was no way he’d magically know from the position of his sniper’s nest which way we’d gone, was there?

  Was there?

  I wondered if he knew I’d been at the estate. Probably not—I’d waited on Malcolm for at least forty minutes after arriving, and if Rio had been in place beforehand, wouldn’t he have shot Malcolm when he crossed in the open before our meeting? And after that I’d stayed well out of sight by reflex.

  I probably should have shown myself. Shit. It wasn’t like Rio was going to shoot me, the same way I hadn’t exactly been willing to take up a rifle against his hiding place. And knowing I was moving around in his target zone might have made him a little slower on the trigger.

  Malcolm’s still, faceless silhouette danced across my vision again. Rio had targeted him first on purpose. He would’ve had intel to know Malcolm was one of the Lorenzos’ expert snipers—maybe their only expert sniper. And he’d probably known how much he meant to Mama Lorenzo, too, which meant even if he hadn’t nailed the woman herself, he’d probably still accomplished his objective here: inciting revenge.