by Ali Vali
*
Cain led Emma to the new bar and helped her onto a stool. Emerald’s was set to open the following night, so they wanted to enjoy the quiet before the state-of-the-art sound system cranked up. Cain pulled a new bottle of their best whiskey off the shelf, picked up two glasses, and poured a finger of liquor in each.
“Here’s to our success, darling girl.” The clink of their glasses echoed in the empty space.
“That’s a given, honey. This place is beautiful.”
“Not as beautiful as the woman who shares my life, but if the lady doesn’t mind, it’ll be more beautiful because it’ll share her name.” With a quick tug Cain removed the paper taped up to the mirror behind the bar and revealed the name “Emma’s” etched across the middle. “It isn’t much, but I have a lot of birthdays and such to make up for, so it’s a start.”
Emma held her hands over her mouth and gasped as she studied Cain’s offering. “Thank you, love, but it wasn’t necessary.”
“I wanted to do it. Do you know why?”
Emma shook her head and reached for Cain’s hand.
“Because I want to come in here for years and dance with you pressed against me. Because I want everyone who enters this place to know who my heart belongs to.”
“I belong to you as well, and I will for the rest of my life.”
“Thank you.” Cain lifted the delicate hand off the bar and kissed the back of it. “Tonight we finish what we started. The Bracato family will pay for every sin they’ve ever committed against us.”
“Do you need anything from me?”
“An alibi later on tonight,” Cain joked.
“Honey, I’ll be happy to. You never have to ask.”
“Merrick and some of the others will take you home. Go in through the garage like we’ve been doing, and no matter what, don’t leave the house. I’ll be there by ten at the latest, and I won’t be calling. We can’t afford any lucky intercepts now if I’m supposed to be in the house with you.”
Cain joined Emma on the other side of the bar and walked her to the waiting vehicle with heavily tinted windows.
“You do what’s right, Cain, but whatever you do, come back to me.”
“You have my word, love.”
They kissed, and Cain walked to the other side of the bar again.
There, she pulled back one of the industrial rugs to reveal a trapdoor. She’d wanted to purchase the building for so long primarily because of the door and where it led. Now more than ever, she thanked God her grandfather had told so many stories.
After Cain lowered the door behind her, Merrick replaced the rug before she joined Emma. In the rare chance someone investigated the club, the only thing they would find would be the two used glasses on the bar.
Below the building, Cain flipped on her flashlight and stooped to make it through the narrow tunnel, walking along the edge to avoid the inch of water on the center of the floor. A string of old lights was bolted to the wall on the other side, but they hadn’t worked in a long time and she didn’t intend to fix them. She didn’t want to tip off anyone who didn’t need to know of the tunnel’s location.
After thirty minutes, she reached a rusty white iron door and pulled a set of keys from her pocket. Despite the door’s age, the new security lock turned easily, and when she opened the door the dampness of the river hit her immediately, since she was now close to the port. An old beat-up Buick was parked where Katlin had said it would be, and Cain found the key. Her watchers would never notice the car with all the head-banger stickers on the back window.
At that moment the surveillance teams had another problem. Two of their major targets had totally vanished. Gino had left his house an hour earlier and disappeared into the crowd at a local mall. Whoever had helped him escape knew how to spot the feds’ vans, and now the agents were at a loss.
“Houston, we have a problem,” the one in charge of Gino said as he watched two of his men on the sidewalk in front of Gino’s house search for signs of life.
“You locate your targets yet?” the dispatcher asked. He held his phone, poised to dial Agent Hicks’s number.
“Negative. We’re going to circle one more time, then come back here and wait for him.” The two men outside shook their heads slightly. “Does Shelby have her target in sight?”
“They’re in for the night after an early dinner and a stop at the new place before heading back to Jarvis’s,” Shelby reported. She and Claire were sitting in one van, while Lionel and Joe hung back farther down the street. “Do you need me to cut our backup loose?”
“Hold for now, and let me get Agent Hicks on the phone,” the agent at Gino’s said. “Something about this feels hinky to me, and I want to cover everyone’s ass.”
“I’m telling you, all’s quiet here,” Shelby said, “so let us know if you need more backup to canvass where they were last seen. Looks like we’re going to have a slow night.”
Chapter Forty-Two
The old recreational building smelled heavily of mildew and rot. Gino deserved nothing better for what Cain had in mind because of how dishonorably he’d lived his life. Plus, the site was set for demolition in six months to make room for a new federal building. Then they would find the man the FBI was out hunting for. Cain loved irony.
The stench came from the water left in the old pool, now green and slimy from neglect. It had been years since the sound of children playing had echoed off these walls, and the putrid remains of the once-chlorinated water now magnified the sound of Cain’s footsteps.
Katlin stood at the edge of the deep end and nodded in Cain’s direction. Outside, the night quiet was broken every so often by the sound of distant traffic. The area had once been home to some of the city’s most ruthless gangs. Now the old tenement buildings, as well as all the buildings that had once made up the community, were a ghost town awaiting the wrecking ball.
“Beautiful night, isn’t it?” Cain walked to the front of the building as though she were walking beside a pool at an expensive spa.
“Cain, you fucking asshole.” Gino tried to break free of his bindings and the weight tied to his ankles. He stood in the middle of the pool, the water lapping the middle of his chest. Under the water his hands were tied behind his back, and his feet were also bound by the most common rope Katlin could find. When she and Lou had put him in, they’d looped another long piece that she held in her hand. “Once my father hears about this…Hell, I don’t need him. I’ll take you out myself.”
The relaxed Cain peered out over the shallow end of the pool and cocked her head to one side, as if enjoying the positions they found themselves in. “Gino, I want you to listen to me, because I’m only going to say this once.”
“Fuck you!” He tugged on the bindings on his hands again and stopped when the knots tightened to the point of pain. “Get me the fuck out of—”
His scream died in his throat when he saw Cain nod slightly in Katlin’s direction. Katlin pulled on the rope, dragging him farther into the deep end. The outburst had cost him precious inches he could ill afford to lose if he didn’t want a mouth full of the foul greenish soup.
“Ready to listen?”
“What do you want?” When something flitted against Gino’s leg he shuddered and concentrated on Cain to avoid thinking about what could possibly live in this stuff. Trying to stay upright, Gino willed his body to relax and stared up at her.
“I want so many things we’ll be here for a while yet, so hang tight.”
“You fucking suckered me, Casey. Does it feel good to catch someone with their pants down?”
An urgent call from a business associate of the Bracato family had gotten Gino out of the house. After he and his father had dumped Eris’s body, Gino hadn’t wanted to socialize at all. He sat in the den most nights, watching television and holding his son as he ignored the ringing telephone.
“Sort of how you caught my father unawares the night you gunned him down in the street in front of our offices?” The b
ack door where Cain had entered squeaked as it opened again for their last visitor. “Or is it like murdering my mother? What sort of man kills an innocent?”
“I had nothing to do with any of that, so why am I here?” The shallowest part of the pool contained no water, and Gino pressed his hands closer to his back when he saw a large rat standing on its hind legs sniffing the air. Whatever was in the water with him bumped into his thigh again, and he couldn’t help but wonder if rats could hold their breath.
“You’re here because after talking to your brother Stephano…” Cain stooped, took her hand out of her pocket, and laid the signet ring that belonged to the second oldest of the Bracato boys on the cracked cement at her feet.
The fact that it was in Cain’s possession could only mean one thing.
“What are you doing with that?” Gino, starting to panic, rubbed his bound hands together as if trying to make his own ring reappear.
Cain laid an identical one next to the first ring. “Your brother Michael was next, and he folded like a stack of cards in a tornado.” The last ring came out, and she finally looked up. “Unlike you with my sister, I didn’t have the heart to be cruel to Francis, even though he was more than eager to help your father expand his drug empire. He was trying his best to prove he could keep up with his big brothers.”
Gino screamed in outrage and almost fell forward into the slime. “You fucking bitch. He wasn’t even twenty-five years old.” His anger won out for the moment, and he forgot his fear.
“You’re the last of them, Gino, which is good, since I have only one more question.”
“You’re fucked in the head if you think I’m telling you anything.”
Cain put up her hand, her index finger and thumb a hair’s breadth apart.
“Wait!” The word reverberated throughout the area, echoing Gino’s alarm until silence fell again. He tilted his head up and looked at the ceiling, not wanting to know how many more inches he’d lost to pride.
“This is your last chance, so listen carefully.”
“I keep telling you, my father…or should I say if my father had anything to do with the death of your father, he didn’t tell me anything about it.” If Gino had been able, he would’ve held his hands up in surrender to help his case.
“I believe you, Gino.”
His head snapped up, and he smiled. “You do? I mean, of course you do, since I didn’t know.”
“And since you don’t know anything, you’re just wasting my time.” Another nod of Cain’s head and Katlin yanked on the rope again.
“Wait!” Gino yelled again, even more frantic this time. The water was making him itch, and when it reached his neck, Katlin stopped.
“You don’t have many inches left, Gino, and you just said you didn’t know. Why the wait?”
“He ordered the hit after your father slapped him back out of the neighborhoods he controlled. The merchants Dalton did business with started to complain when my father’s pushers started hanging on some of the street corners. Once Dalton was finished, my father lost a handful of good men, and no amount of money on the streets helped my father find the bodies.
“One of the guys we lost was my cousin, but that’s not what motivated my father to kill your family. That was your father’s fault. Dalton wanted to send a message, and we heard it loud and clear. Problem with that was, Big Gino wasn’t about to put up with some Mick telling him his business, so he returned the favor. He hired Danny. Your cousin jumped at the chance to get back at you for giving him every shit job in your organization.”
As Gino gave the ropes one more jerk in an effort to break free, they cut deeper into his hands. “Danny still worked for Dalton back then and knew his schedule. When my father asked, he set up the time and place for the hit.”
“And my mother and brother?”
“Your brother was a hothead, which sealed his fate, and your mother was a bonus. Danny told my father with both of them gone, you’d be easier to break.”
The silence stretched as Cain balled, then relaxed, her fists. Finally, she asked, “Anything else?”
“That’s all I know, I swear it.”
“There’s something else, Gino, and the price will be steep.”
She summoned the newcomer over with a wave of her hand and waited for him to walk the length of the pool before continuing. “The information about the rest of my family was useful, but you haven’t answered for one more person.”
Cain accepted the bundle and kept it hidden from Gino’s view.
Mook’s brother, Patrick, who worked for Vincent Carlotti, stayed close.
“Marie, my sister, is who’s left, Gino, and after my talk with Stephano I don’t need to ask anything else, do I?”
“That was all Danny.”
Dragging him back a few inches shut him up.
When Katlin stopped, Gino was forced to tilt his head back to keep his face out of the slime. “If Stephano told you different, then he’s a lying bastard.”
“The lying bastard was high as a kite when I talked to him, so lying was out of the question.”
Her voice settled around him, making Gino force his head back farther in an effort to see her again.
“That’s the one redeeming factor of the shit you put on the streets. It lowers your inhibitions enough that your answers aren’t important because you don’t fear any repercussions. The high must really be euphoric enough to make you feel invincible, but all it did in the end was snap his brain and his body like a twig.”
Gino stared to the left, and Cain finally came back into limited view, since the only illumination in the dank place was moonlight. The whimper coming from the bundle in her arms made his blood run cold. “Please, God, no.”
“Funny you should say that. I remember uttering that same phrase only three times in my life.” Cain pushed the child’s blanket back. He resembled his mother, the waiflike woman in the restaurant. “I remember all three vividly since I was standing in front of a coffin each and every time.”
“Cain, he’s just a baby.” Gino glimpsed his son’s hand as a little fist came up, almost as if he were trying to entice Cain to play with him.
“Don’t worry. I’ll be much more merciful with him than you were with Marie. She was as innocent as this infant no matter how much longer she had on this earth before you stole her life in the most degrading way your twisted little brain could come up with. Her innocence didn’t stop you, did it?”
“I’m telling you, I wasn’t there.”
Cain’s intense glare made him fight harder to free his hands.
“And even if I was, what does that have to do with my son?”
With one last kiss to the baby’s forehead, Cain handed him off to Patrick. “We were raised by two very different men, but my father always tried to impress one thing upon me.”
“What, to go around and fucking kill little babies?”
“To always live my life so that my sins wouldn’t be visited on my children. Even people like us can live with honor. To have a code means we all promise to consider people like your son and my sister. When someone breaks that code of honor, though, the innocent pays the price of those actions.”
Cain nodded, and from behind Gino came a splash, then an eerie silence.
“No!” It was the last word he uttered as Katlin pulled the final couple of inches needed to get the job done.
Resigned to his fate, Gino locked eyes with his judge for one last moment before the urge to fight took over and he struggled to break free as his lungs started to feel like they would explode from trying to hold his breath. Katlin had positioned him so that just his eyes and forehead were above the water line.
As the reality of his fate dawned on Gino, Cain could see the horror in his eyes and kept looking until all movement ceased.
Then Katlin pulled him farther into the deep end and retrieved the rope she’d used. When the property was razed, Gino would either be part of the foundation, or the mystery of his disappearance would b
e revealed. Either way, nothing at the scene could tie Cain to his demise.
Cain slid the fourth and final ring Giovanni had made for his sons into her pocket as she strode back to the car. “You live like a slimeball all your life, Gino, and sometimes it’ll drown you.”
The jingle of the ring in her pocket assured her that she’d almost won the game. She was missing only one piece.
Chapter Forty-Three
“I know what you said, boss, but I can’t find him.”
Giovanni slammed his hands down on the desktop and glared up at his guard.
“We looked everywhere in town. We even shook down the woman he had on the side, but no one’s seen him.”
“No one just disappears into thin air. Did you go by his house?” Giovanni took his gun out of the top drawer and checked the clip.
“The only thing moving around Gino’s place is the feds parked outside. I sent Chops inside, but the place was empty. Wherever Gino went, he took the baby and packed light.”
When Giovanni stood up, he shoved the nine-millimeter into his waistband at the back. He’d wasted enough time worrying about what had happened to his sons; it was time to start doing something about it.
“The baby’s probably with those women Eris hired, since she’s too lazy to take care of my grandson herself. Come on. We’ll check out some of Gino’s contacts, then go meet with Rodolfo.”
“You got it, boss.”
“And tell the guys when they find Francis, not to let him out of their sight. That little idiot hasn’t come home for the last couple of nights, and his mother’s giving me shit about it. It’s a fine time for him to grow a pair and start venturing out on his own.”
Giovanni flipped the watchers off as he got into the back of his car, where agents observed his growing frustration with the situation through the camera lens pointed at him.
As soon as the small convoy left, the agent in charge called in for backup for the tail, needing to stay behind and wait for the rest of the Bracatos to show up. With all of the sons falling off their radar, the surveillance teams had adopted different modes of operation. Some were watching, and a larger group was out investigating.