Rising Fire

by William W. Johnstone; J. A. Johnstone

  “You think maybe you’d better go along with what Nick wants? He’s not asking for a lot, you know. Just a little higher percentage.”

  That wasn’t strictly true, since Scaramello intended to double the percentage, but that wasn’t much when you were talking about living or dying, was it?

  “Come on, you stupid mick,” Johnny urged. “Tell me you’ll go along, and there won’t be any more trouble. What do you say, old man?”

  Johnny eased off on the pressure so Lavery could talk—just like Pete had let off on his grip on Johnny’s throat earlier this evening. That similarity wasn’t lost on Johnny. He didn’t hold it against Pete, though. A man with power had to use it. Otherwise, what good was it?

  Lavery’s tongue came out. He made some gurgling sounds as he tried to form words.

  The voice Johnny heard, though, came from behind him.

  “What are you doing to my grandfather? Get off him!”

  Johnny’s head jerked around. A woman in a green shirt and long brown skirt rushed toward him through the area behind the counter. She must have been somewhere else in the shop, a back room, more than likely, and heard the commotion.

  “Get off him!” she cried again as she reached for him.

  Without getting up, Johnny twisted toward her and jabbed the shillelagh in her belly, just as he had done to Lavery. That stopped her in her tracks. He leaped to his feet as she staggered back a couple of steps, bent over and moaning.

  Instead of hitting her a second time, as he had done with the old man, he grabbed her arm and forced her back along the counter. They came out at the far end. He pushed her behind a set of shelves with various tools displayed on them. That would help keep them from being seen through the front window.

  A scrabbling noise behind him made Johnny look over his shoulder. Lavery was struggling to get to his feet. Johnny pointed the shillelagh at him and yelled, “Don’t you move, old man! You stay right there if you don’t want this girl to get hurt!”

  “Leave her alone!” Lavery wailed pitifully. “Don’t you have any decency in yer soul, ya young scut?”

  Johnny ignored that question and turned back to the girl. He had taken her for a woman at first because she was fairly tall, but he saw now she was no more than fifteen or sixteen, rawboned and scrawny, all freckles and frizzy red hair and not at all pretty.

  But definitely female. He pressed her against the wall and ran his free hand over her body while he held the shillelagh poised to strike.

  “Don’t fight me or I’ll brain you,” he warned her.

  She shuddered under his touch. Her eyes were wide with terror.

  “Wh-what are you going to do to me?” she asked.

  “What do you think I ought to do?” He leered as he leaned in closer. “That stubborn old grandfather of yours is causing trouble for my boss. Maybe I ought to teach him a lesson by teaching you a few lessons. What do you think?”

  Her lips trembled as she stared out at him. She forced out words. “P-Please . . . no. Please don’t.”

  And just like that, he could hear Serafina saying the same thing. He hadn’t been there on that awful day by the stream, didn’t know exactly what words had come from her mouth, but he was certain it would have been something like the plea this Irish girl had just husked out. His face twisted as he drew back. Was he just as bad as the Capizzi brothers, as Luca?

  Then he remembered what Pete had said about not coming back if he failed again, about running away—but still being unable to escape Scaramello’s vengeance. He thought about money and power and all the doors they would open. A man had to start somewhere. He had already started over more than once in his life, which was why he was Johnny Malatesta now instead of Giovanni. He didn’t want to have to flee for his life again. This time, he might not make it.

  So he just had to accept things as they were. Maybe when he was younger, he hadn’t been as bad as the Capizzis and Luca—but that was then and this was now.

  He rammed his body against the terrified girl and kissed her. She tried to twist her head and get her mouth away from his, but he gripped her chin so tightly it had to be hurting her.

  “Mother of mercy, no!” Lavery choked out. “I’ll do whatever you say! I’ll pay Scaramello whatever he wants! Just leave her alone. Please, I’m begging you.”

  Johnny pulled his head back. His chest heaved as he struggled with the thoughts and emotions whirling through him. Maybe he didn’t have to hurt this girl after all. But the old mick had to pay somehow for defying Nick Scaramello.

  “Stand up,” he told Lavery.

  Shaking, the old man struggled to his feet. He had to lean both hands on the counter in order to keep from falling.

  “Stay there, just like that,” Johnny said. He looked at the girl. “Don’t you move.”

  “Please don’t hurt us,” she whispered.

  Johnny didn’t respond to that. He stepped out in front of the counter and walked along it until he was across from Lavery again.

  “I’m going to leave now,” he said. “When Nick’s man comes around to collect, you give him what you’re supposed to and not a penny less, you got that?”

  Lavery jerked his head in a nod. All the fight had gone out of him in the face of Johnny’s savagery.

  “You don’t mouth off, you don’t argue, you just pay up.”

  Another nod.

  “And in case maybe you forget, this’ll remind you,” Johnny said.

  He slammed the shillelagh down on Lavery’s left hand as hard as he could, breaking most of the bones in there, if not all of them. Lavery screamed as he staggered back and held the shattered hand in his other one, pressing it against his chest in horror and agony.

  “Hey, what are you yelling about? I left you one, didn’t I?”

  He grinned at the girl, who started to rush behind the counter toward her grandfather but stopped short when Johnny looked at her. He motioned with his head for her to go on with what she was doing.

  Then, whistling and carrying the shillelagh canted over his shoulder, he left the pawn shop and strolled along Mulberry Street. A cold wind still blew, but Johnny didn’t feel it anymore. For a moment there, he had almost forgotten that a guy did what he had to in order to survive. But he remembered now, and he was going to do more than just survive. He might be close to the bottom of the ladder right now, but he knew how to climb.

  He brought the shillelagh down from his shoulder, held it in one hand, and smacked it solidly in the palm of the other hand. Those micks might be dumb as dirt, but they knew how to make a pretty good club.

  He was going to put it to good use, too.

  CHAPTER 26

  Johnny’s rise in Scaramello’s gang was dizzying. Within two months, he had risen to a position of authority second only to that of Pete and Anthony Migliazzi. He did this by being utterly ruthless in carrying out every job Scaramello gave him, culminating in the night he had followed one of the boss’s ambitious, would-be rivals and jumped him right on the stoop of the man’s own home. The guy managed one yell of alarm, but by the time his wife stepped out to see what was wrong, she found her husband sprawled on the steps, his brains leaking out of a skull shattered by the shillelagh Johnny had taken from Old Man Lavery’s pawn shop.

  Scaramello had laughed and laughed when Johnny told him about that, then invited Johnny to sit with him at his private table in the restaurant.

  He might not be an important man yet, Johnny thought, but he was on his way.

  As soon as he started making better money—and Nick Scaramello was a generous employer—he began dressing better as well. In Italy, Johnny had developed a flair for dapper suits and good-quality hats. He carried the shillelagh with him when he was working but otherwise left it in the room he rented. A gentleman didn’t carry around a club, and a gentleman was what Johnny had aspired to be ever since he left Sicily.

  When he could afford to dress the part, he frequented the nicer restaurants and saloons. They were still in Little Italy, but th
e best the neighborhood had to offer. The sort of places that catered to well-to-do businessmen and also customers from other areas of New York, the wealthy types who liked to venture down to lower Manhattan on a lark. To them, a jaunt like that was an adventure, something to spice up their lives.

  One evening when he didn’t have anything to do for Scaramello, he was loafing at the bar in Frederico’s, an upscale eating place that featured dining and drinking on the first floor and gambling on the second, when he noticed a group that had just come in.

  There were two men and two women, and from the way they were laughing, they had been drinking already. Both women were blond, as was one of the men. The other man had red hair. It was possible that some of them were Italian, but that didn’t seem likely. They were expensively dressed, so Johnny pegged them for uptown swells who were slumming in Little Italy.

  He turned back to the bar and grimaced as he looked down into his drink. Then, as he sat there, his attitude slowly changed. Instead of the resentment he felt toward the interlopers, he began to see this as an opportunity. He turned his head and watched as the maître d’ seated the foursome at a table. A few minutes later, a waiter brought glasses and a bottle of wine to the table. The group didn’t appear to have ordered any food and just intended to continue drinking.

  Judging by their laughter and loud talk, they were having themselves a good time. Without appearing to, Johnny studied them closely, especially the two women. One was rather vapid-looking and clearly not too bright. The expensive clothes and jewelry and stylish hair failed to conceal her cowlike nature. Obviously she had plenty of money and that interested Johnny, but the other woman looked just as well-to-do and was considerably more attractive.

  She had the sort of brittle beauty many women displayed when they were within shouting distance of middle age. Her sleek good looks had not yet started to leave her—but they were thinking about it. She was with the red-haired man, and as Johnny watched the way he doted on her, it became clear who had the money—and the power—in their relationship.

  Without thinking too much about what he was doing, Johnny let his old instincts take over. He had the bartender refill his drink, then left the bar and sauntered toward the stairs that led up to the gaming room on the second floor. To get there, he had to pass the table he had been watching, and as he did, he pretended to stumble slightly.

  The liquor in his glass went all over the crisp white shirtfront of the redheaded man.

  The man leaped to his feet and cursed loudly. He turned toward Johnny. His fists clenched.

  But Johnny already had his handkerchief out and started patting at the spilled liquor as he said, “A thousand apologies, signore! How terribly clumsy of me. I never meant for this to happen. Please, allow me to clean this up.”

  His Italian accent was perhaps a bit thicker than it usually was. He had learned to speak English quite well as a young man in Italy and could carry on a conversation with either a British or an American accent if circumstances demanded. At the moment, however, he didn’t want to conceal his Italian ancestry.

  “You should watch where you’re going,” the redhead blustered as Johnny dabbed at his shirt with the handkerchief. “And you’re just making it worse!”

  “The maître d’ will be able to clean this. I’ll get him.”

  “You don’t have to—”

  Johnny had already lifted a finger in a signal, though, and the maître d’ was there at the table instantly, almost as if by magic. Everyone who worked at Frederico’s knew who Johnny Malatesta was—and none of them wanted him to leave there unhappy.

  “My friend here has had a small mishap,” Johnny said. “Perhaps you could take him out to the kitchen and help him.”

  “Of course, Signor Malatesta,” the maître d’ murmured.

  “I don’t want to go to the kitchen—” the redhead began.

  Johnny put a hand on his shoulder, and the strength of his grip caused the man to stop talking and take a sharp breath.

  “Please, let me do this for you,” Johnny said. “And I assure you, I’ll see to having that shirt cleaned or buy you a new one.”

  “That . . . that’s not necessary,” the redhead managed to say.

  The maître d’ took the man’s other arm and said, “Please, signore, come with me. Everything will be attended to.”

  “I . . . I . . . all right.”

  As the maître d’ led the redhead away, Johnny turned to the others at the table and said, “My apologies to you, as well, for ruining your evening.”

  “My evening’s not ruined,” the attractive blonde said as she ran her eyes over Johnny from head to foot. The drinks she’d had this evening were making her bold—or maybe that was just her nature. “In fact, I think perhaps it’s just starting to get interesting.”

  “I might say the same thing.” Johnny bowed slightly. “Allow me to introduce myself . . .”

  He almost said the name he was using now. He had believed he was putting that other life behind him, never to be resurrected. But then, on a whim, he realized that maybe it didn’t have to be that way.

  “Count Giovanni Malatesta,” he said. He took the blonde’s hand where it lay on the white linen tablecloth and lifted it, pressed his lips to the back of it. “At your service.”

  The other blonde, the bovine one, tittered and said, “He talks fancy.”

  “Yes, he does.” The first blonde took her hand back and went on, “I’m Mrs. Felicia Brighton.”

  Johnny’s eyes went to her hand again, specifically the ring finger, which was bare.

  “I’m a widow,” Felicia Brighton added.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” Johnny said.

  “Don’t be,” she told him with a shake of her head. “It was a long time ago, and besides, he was a terrible man. Rich, mind you, but still terrible. I suppose money makes a man’s flaws more bearable, don’t you?”

  “Just as beauty has the same effect on a woman’s flaws.”

  Her eyes flashed deep blue fire, and for a moment he thought she was going to be angry with him. But then the fire went away, and her laugh was genuine amusement, not brittle insincerity.

  “No one who’s honest with themselves could deny that.”

  The other man evidently decided that he’d been left out of this long enough. He stood up, stuck out his hand toward Johnny, and said, “I’m Clarence Hamilton the Third.”

  “Count Giovanni Malatesta,” Johnny introduced himself again. He shook hands with Milhorn.

  “And this is Miss Beatrice Sterling,” Milhorn said, gesturing toward his companion.

  Despite the fact that she was nowhere near as beautiful as Felicia Brighton, Johnny didn’t want Beatrice Sterling to feel left out. He bent over the hand she offered him and kissed the back of it, too, making her giggle and blush.

  “You don’t ever do anything nice and Continental like that,” she said as she looked up at Milhorn.

  “I’m not a European.” He looked at Johnny. “You’re Italian?”

  “Sicilian, to be precise.”

  “A beautiful, charming island,” Felicia said. “My late husband and I spent a summer there, many years ago.” She cocked her head a little to the side. “We visited with many of the best families. I don’t seem to recall any Malatestas . . .”

  “Our estate is rather isolated,” Johnny said. “My grandfather was the sort who never enjoyed much company. He was content with what he called his flock. He cared for them, and they depended on him.”

  “It sounds positively feudal,” Milhorn commented.

  Johnny shrugged. “In some ways, my homeland has changed very little in the past five hundred years.” He turned back to Felicia. “But enough about me. Since your companion for the evening is temporarily unavailable, I hope you’ll consider me a suitable replacement. For the time being, of course.”

  “Of course,” she said. “What did you have in mind?”

  Before Johnny could reply, Milhorn said, “I’m sure Ted won
’t be gone long—”

  “I made such a terrible mess that it may take some time to set things right,” Johnny said. Even though he hadn’t been able to talk to the maître d’ and make sure the man understood what he wanted, he had a hunch the redhead would be stuck in the kitchen for quite a while. “Please, I’d really like to make up for any inconvenience my clumsiness has caused you.”

  “What did you have in mind?”

  Johnny inclined his head toward the stairs and said, “There’s a gaming room upstairs, if you’d care to visit. It’s rather . . . exclusive . . . but I’m sure there wouldn’t be a problem if you wanted to go up there.”

  “As long as I’m with you?”

  Johnny spread his hands. “They know me here.”

  “Hang on,” Milhorn said. “We didn’t come out tonight to do any gambling, Felicia.”

  “I think it sounds exciting,” Beatrice put in.

  “And when Ted comes back, if he finds us gone—”

  “There’s quite an easy solution to that, Clarence,” Felicia interrupted him. “You and Bea can stay here and tell poor Ted where I’ve gotten off to.”

  “You mean we can’t come?” Beatrice asked, pouting.

  “Perhaps later, dear,” Felicia said. She patted Beatrice’s hand and then stood up and extended her hand to Johnny. “Lead on, Count Malatesta.”

  “It will be my pleasure,” Johnny said as he took her smooth, cool fingers, and he meant every word of it.

  CHAPTER 27

  Johnny’s affair with Felicia Brighton proceeded faster—and burned even brighter—than his rise in the Black Hand organization. Within days of their meeting at Frederico’s, they were lovers. Within a few weeks, he was spending most of his time at her big house on Riverside Drive, although he kept his rented room to remind him of his adopted roots in Little Italy.

  Of course, he still had to devote some of his attention to his job. Nick Scaramello had proven to be a surprisingly tolerant boss, but there were limits to his understanding and Johnny knew that. Whenever Nick needed something done, Johnny was there to take care of it. But the rest of the time, Johnny and Felicia spent dining and drinking, gambling and taking in shows, making love in the giant, four-poster bed in her bedroom in the big house. It might not be the so-called Gilded Age anymore, but they lived as if it were.