Relatively Risky

by Pauline Baird Jones

  Ben rubbed his face. Alex wanted to. Ben hefted the wrench and arched a brow.

  “I sold all his tools, but I wanted something—” A smile wavered on her mouth. “I needed to travel light. Who knew it was a family tradition?”

  “We need the police file,” Alex said finally, reluctantly. How much risk was there in trying to get into the files? They needed more than the file, though. Who had died in that car bomb? Who had faked the identification of the bodies? Why had someone tried to kill two wise kids? Who had financed their escape? They’d have needed help to get away so clean, wouldn’t they? Had her parents killed two kids so they could escape?

  “Grannie not-dearest said she tried to help them,” Nell said, as if he’d spoken out loud. “She did not seem that fond of my Mom. Or her mom.”

  “We need our old man,” Ben said, without enthusiasm.

  Sharing his lack of enthusiasm, Alex still nodded agreement. It was Dad or Curly, and Alex didn’t trust Curly. “I’ll go talk to him after I shower.”

  Sometimes the mountain must come to the man. Bettino Calvino didn’t like it, but he didn’t have to like something to do it. It felt necessary. He studied the narrow, shabby street through the tinted protective glass of his Humvee. Calvino wasn’t prescient. He did not have to be to know he might be in trouble. He’d felt the chill of danger down his back, the sense that change was coming even before Phin’s elimination from play. Was it personal or part of something larger?

  Just because he was paranoid, that didn’t mean someone wasn’t out to get him. A lot of someones had motive, he thought with an almost smile. Most of them did not have means or opportunity. He’d have bet the house that Phin was as paranoid or more so. And he’d have lost. They’d been a triangle of power, precariously balanced on that old pact. Twice it had been tested. Twice it had survived. Who had gotten to Phin?

  A new player?

  Or an old one wakened from a long sleep?

  A bear? Did Russian bears hibernate? If Aleksi died next, he’d know. When they’d been waiting on Zafiro to die, he’d wondered why the old man didn’t beg for the bullet. Now he knew why Zafiro had clung so long to his empire. At the time he’d considered it a mercy killing, or that’s what they’d told themselves. Not that they’d needed a lot of convincing. They’d all wanted to live. It was them or Zafiro. Easy choice.

  Calvino didn’t feel old, though his body surprised him at times by reacting old. But inside, where it counted, he didn’t feel different. His mind was sharp, maybe sharper than when he’d been the young wolf. He’d taken his hits, had stood fast when everything almost came apart. He’d had the hard surf of that pound him into iron.

  He thought he’d buried the past and all the people who’d betrayed him. Thirty years. Was it unreasonable to expect the dead to stay dead? Thirty years and he was in, almost, the same place. Almost, he could hear Ellie’s mocking laugh as he reached for the door handle.

  Both body guards scrambled out, flanking him protectively as Calvino emerged into the spring heat. He stood for a moment regarding the modest dwelling, before striding to the rear door. At his nod, one of the men rapped sharply on the wood. After a long pause, the door opened, revealing a severely battered kitchen. And Zach Baker.

  Calvino did not expect surprise and he was not disappointed. One gray brow rose in a query. Calvino matched his brow with the rise of both of his.

  After a long pause, Baker stood back and gestured for him to enter, though he held up a hand when his bodyguards tried to follow.

  “If he doesn’t come out, you can shoot me,” Baker offered, then closed the doors in their faces.

  Alex gripped the steering wheel of Ben’s SUV, his gaze tracking Calvino’s return to his Humvee, the two bodyguards covering his retreat. When the Humvee pulled away, when it had passed him, Alex pulled into the spot they’d left. He wasn’t too shocked to pass up a prime parking spot.

  He got out, but instead of going inside, he headed down the block. If he faced his dad now, he’d know…what would his dad know? What would Zach see in Alex’s face? Alex sure as hell didn’t know what he felt, what he thought.

  He was a guy. They hated feelings. Except being pissed. Okay, so he was pissed. He turned the corner, relieved to be out of sight of the house. He should be pissed. His dad had—what? Alex stopped, looked back the way he came. What had his dad done? Just the facts.

  Calvino had come to their house.

  Calvino had left their house.

  He didn’t know he’d been inside.

  He didn’t know he hadn’t.

  Why would Calvino seek out his dad? He half reached for his cell. Stopped. Started walking again. He reached next corner and turned back in direction of the house. They were grown-ups. He’d ask the question. He’d go inside and say, “You’ll never guess who I saw walking away from our back door.”

  Then his dad would shake his head and say the one thing that would ease the hard knot in Alex’s chest. He was his Dad, so he’d make it…better.

  Alex turned the last corner and strode toward home. He slowed as he reached the rutted drive way with the cement that needed to be broken out and replaced. He knew where to step, where to avoid. He reached the back door. It opened, framing his dad in the opening.

  “Alex? Was just heading your way. Good, you can give me a ride.” Zach pulled the door shut, locked it. “You didn’t need anything in there, did you?”

  Alex shook his head, turned to follow his dad back to Ben’s car, without speaking. He couldn’t with the question—and the knot—stuck in his throat.

  Thankfully for Nell’s sore tush, they’d moved to the smaller living room and softer seating for the next round of discussions. This room was where she and Sarah lived when they weren’t in the kitchen. It had the same, battered comfort of home, unlike some of the more formal rooms left over from the reign of Sarah’s parents. Nell shifted a clutter of pillows to one side and settled in. Despite the gravity of the situation, she didn’t dare look at Sarah when Alex’s dad joined their confab.

  Last night she’d noted that Alex looked a lot like his dad and then tried not to think about him in relation to his dad because, wow, thirteen kids. And yeah, she was back in shallow, but it felt okay. It kept her head above water. Or the illusion that her head was above water. For all she knew, she was about to go down for the third time. And that might be the good news.

  Ben had departed to try and discreetly round up files. It was probably her imagination he wanted to be gone when the dad arrived. She had the odd feeling Alex would have gone, too, if he could have come up with a good excuse. She caught him giving his dad an odd look, a look that vanished when Zach looked at him. Maybe it was a son/dad thing?

  Zach asked for something to drink, a slight frown between his bushy, gray brows. Alex started to get up but Sarah stopped him with a gesture.

  “I’ll get it.”

  Left with the dad and the son, her sense that things were tense ramped up. Had they disagreed about something? Her? Was she inflating her importance? More than likely, she decided. Sarah returned with drinks and a tray of snacks, and then they all settled in for some serious information exchanging. As Zach began to talk, Nell wondered, was it interesting or creepy that the three wise geezers had started out as friends, or as much friends as bad guys could be, all three young goons for this Zafiro organization? Both, she decided. And a bit unreal. She had no way to connect the dots between them and her parents, even with the pictorial evidence.

  “They competed in everything. It was assumed that the final competition would be for total control,” Zach said, “but when Zafiro died…and it was all kind of—”

  “Friendly?” Alex asked with skepticism he did not try to hide. An edge in his voice earned him a hard look from his dad, a look he deflected with an overly bland expression.

  Zach half shrugged. “It was an…orderly transfer of power that law enforcement had not expected. No one was happy it turned into three organizations, but they were gl
ad it didn’t turn into a blood bath. It would have if Zafiro had lived. He liked the violence, the fight.” He hesitated. “Instead, it was…almost civilized. Oh, there was a bit of jockeying, some head bumping, but it was—”

  “What?” Sarah said, curiously.

  “At the time, everyone wondered if it was for show. If they’d come to some private agreement to share power. They still saw each other socially and—” He stopped, his gaze tracking to Nell.

  She didn’t know why, so she arched her brows.

  “Your grandmother.” He stopped again, his look one of a man ordering his thoughts. And then was not happy with the order of them. “It was the three of them and Helenne—”

  “Helenne?” Nell interrupted. “But—”

  “She was a beautiful woman.” No hint of admiration in Zach’s voice, however. “Classy, but—”

  When he didn’t go on, Nell said, “If you’re worried about my feelings, don’t be.”

  His gaze, so like Alex’s, studied her for several seconds, something easing in there. He nodded. “Fair enough. She wasn’t straight, honest. She knew who and what they were and she liked it. Liked the fight, too. Thought she could have her pick of them. Had probably planned to have the one who got it all. But they didn’t fight.”

  “You…didn’t know her?” Surely he was too young?

  “She was five years older than me. Ellie, your grandmother, Eleanor, was a year younger than Helenne.”

  Ellie? Nell blinked, exchanged a look with Sarah.

  “Did you know…Ellie?” Sarah asked.

  This time Zach looked at Alex. “She dated my brother in high school.”

  Alex frowned. “Who? Which one?”

  “Charlie.”

  “But—” Alex stopped. His lips compressed.

  “He had a fight with my dad and disappeared right after he graduated high school,” Zach said. He didn’t look like he wanted to continue. His tone was on the dogged side. “Ellie married Calvino six months later.”

  “What was she like?” Nell asked, finding it even harder to find dots to connect between them. “Was she like—” Helenne was what Nell couldn’t bring herself to say.

  He shook his head. “She was nothing like Helenne.”

  Nell took a cracker and some cheese from the tray and nibbled it. It gave her fingers something to do, while her thoughts spun with questions and images.

  “No one quite got why Helenne took Ellie up as a friend out of high school.”

  If Ellie really had looked like Nell, well, she knew. “She wanted a friend who was no competition with the guys, someone who made her look good, someone she could pretend was a friend.”

  For about two minutes, Nell had wondered if this was why Sarah had picked her as a friend, but Nell had always had a good bitch-o-meter. Grandma not-dearest had definitely set it off. Which didn’t explain how Ellie had ended up married to one of the bad guys.

  “Well, if that’s why, it backfired on her in a big way,” Zach said, grimly. “The story is that they all wanted Ellie.”

  “Sounds more like a fairy tale,” Alex said, his tone amused, his gaze not so much. “They wanted her because the others did.”

  “Could be, though I wondered…” Zach trailed off, his gaze distant.

  “What?” Nell prompted, curious about this woman she shared a face with.

  “She was good.” Zach half shrugged. “They weren’t good, they aren’t good, but they are superstitious.”

  That didn’t seem to add up to three wise guys and a wedding, did it?

  He looked at Nell, sad in his eyes now. “She was too nice to be mixed up with any of them, but too innocent to realize it until—”

  “So she chose…Calvino?” Nell asked.

  “That’s the story,” Zach’s voice went flatter than Kansas.

  “Story?” Alex asked sharply.

  Zach shrugged again. “I was a freshman in high school, more worried about making the team.”

  Four years at that age was like a different lifetime. Had his brother left because of Ellie? Who had broken up with whom?

  “Helenne married St. Cyr the same year, but she had Phil before Toni was born. About four months too soon.”

  “She got pregnant to get him,” Sarah guessed.

  “Could be.”

  “But which one did she want?” Nell wondered aloud. Who’d had the most power? That’s the one the old lady would have wanted. But according to Zach, they’d shared the power equally. The question really came down to who would have won if they had duked it out? And why would that guy have settled for less than all of it? Unless—would Calvino have bargained for Ellie? I’ll share power but I get the girl? Surely not? And yet, her dad had given up everything for Mom and she had the same face as Ellie. But her dad wasn’t a bad guy looking for redemption. He was a good guy who’d escaped hell.

  “Calvino was the front runner,” Zach admitted.

  “She wouldn’t have liked settling,” Nell said. Zach looked a bit surprised, so she added, “She stopped by today.”

  Zach’s gaze arrowed to his son, who went defensive. “I was going to tell you. There’s been a lot going on. And not all of it is need-to-know. You are retired.”

  Nell exchanged a look with Sarah while the two men tested who had the strongest will. It didn’t feel like a concession when Zach said, “So I am.” He turned his attention back to Nell. “I graduated, went to college, met Zach’s mother and joined the force. I used to see Ellie around when my beat brought me into her neighborhood. Toni was maybe, ten or so?”

  He paused to eat a cracker, but Nell had a feeling it was a stall while he decided something. He drank some water and sighed.

  “The thing is, Charlie told me Ellie dumped him. Told him she was in love with someone else. When he took off, well, I had no reason to feel…kindly toward her. But I started to notice she wasn’t happy. Now that might be because she discovered she’d given her life and heart to a scumbag, but I got called to an accident between her car and another. And she,” Zach paused again, his gaze looking into the past once more, “brought the conversation around to Charlie. Something about the way she looked, the way she asked, well, it got me thinking.”

  Nell felt her body turn to ice. “Calvino…coerced her into giving Charlie up?”

  “I don’t know what he said or did, but I drove away thinking it stank.” His smile was on the grim side. “If he did, I don’t think it did Calvino much good. He’d started messing around before Toni was born.”

  And Curly? How did he fit into the story? He was the one carrying around a picture of her mom. “I wonder where that Afoniki guy fits in?” she asked, since Zach and Curly were friends.

  “Afoniki never married.”

  Nell blinked. If the old man was anything like the nephew she couldn’t imagine him nursing a broken heart. A vengeful one? Yeah, she could imagine that.

  “So what happened to Ellie?” Sarah wanted to know.

  “She’s dead,” Nell said.

  “How do you know that?” Zach asked, his tone suddenly hard.

  “Grandma not-dearest told me. Why? Isn’t she?”

  “She disappeared around the same time as Toni and Phil.” He hesitated. “It was generally assumed that she ran off with a lover. Whether they made it...”

  Did one want to know one’s grandma had had a lover? No, one did not. If Calvino had coerced her, then one did not blame her for bolting. If she’d bolted. That would make a good cover story for a creep like Calvino. He’d ruined more than Ellie’s life.

  “Did you ever hear from your brother?” Nell asked.

  Did it seem that Zach hesitated, before he shook his head? Could his brother have come back for Ellie? If life were a gothic romance novel, maybe.

  Zach shifted again, as if his chair wasn’t as comfy as Nell knew it was. “What?”

  “When your dad…when Phil was—” He stopped. Rubbed his face again.

  Nell shot a look at Alex and found him once again giving
his dad an odd, hard stare, with worry mixed in there. Fear did a complicated dance down her spine as the hesitation grew into a long pause.

  “What?” Nell said again. It was becoming second nature to brace for incoming.

  “Around the time it all went pear shaped, there was goon name of Dunstead. Roger Dunstead. He—” Zach paused as if unsure what to say next, “—worked freelance, did stuff for all three of them.”

  “Freelance?” Sarah asked.

  “Stuff?” Nell added.

  “Protection, payment collection, the odd hit.” A pause, then he said, “He worked for Zafiro before he died.”

  That felt kind of random, but Zach’s face didn’t look random. “How did Zafiro die?” she asked.

  “Heart attack.”

  “I didn’t think wise guys died of natural causes,” Sarah said, a bit ironically.

  “Let’s just say the jury is still out on what caused the heart attack,” Zach said.

  It wasn’t like she didn’t know both grandfathers were major creeps, but she still winced a bit. “You think they did more than amicably agree to split up the business?”

  “There was no evidence against any of the three, at least none available to law enforcement,” Zach said. “And no one looked too hard because—”

  “—they weren’t shooting at each other,” Alex finished.

  And back then, some money probably exchanged hands. The NOPD of the past wasn’t exactly known for being squeaky clean.

  Alex frowned. “They wouldn’t have used Dunstead and let him live.”

  “I wasn’t deep enough in to know much. Just that Dunstead contacted the feds and claimed he knew something that could bring all three of them down.”

  “Something?” Nell frowned.

  “Something big.” Zach leaned back, took another sip of the water she’d brought him. “Lots of rumors, wild stories before, during, and after it went wrong.”