by Mike Knowles
I reversed the Volvo and backed into a spot that offered a view of the parking lot from a safe distance. No one in the parking lot I was watching would be able to see me inside the dark interior of the car. From Ave Maria, the Volvo would look like just another car taking up a free space on a side road. I unfolded the paper Paolo had given me and took the time to really look at the information on Luca Perino. Perino was in charge of his little world around James Street. His number two was a man named Marco Monaco. The paper gave me the address of the shop, physical descriptions of everyone involved with the business, and a phone number. With the car stopped and no one in sight, I decided to call the number and see what happened.
I eased myself out of the car, being careful not to twist my ribs more than I had to. I opened the trunk and pulled back the fabric covering on the floor. Underneath a spot of blood left by my face while I travelled in the dark was everything I left. I took everything in the trunk and got back into the front seat. I powered up Johnny's phone and dialled the number.
“Ave Maria,” a pleasant female voice answered. She sounded older than her twenties but younger than her fifties. Beneath her words rose the sounds of hymns from a sound system in the store.
I decided to take a shot at it. “Ah, yes, hello. My name is John Clark, and I work for the city of Hamilton.”
“How can I help you, Mr. Clark?”
“Well, you see, this is one of the rare calls I make that I enjoy. One of the calls I make where I can actually help you. You see, the city reassessed your area last year, and somehow in the shuffle we neglected to adjust your property taxes. As a result, we owe you some money.”
“Well, that is a first. The city paying money to the people instead of the other way round.” Her voice sounded very chipper. She was genuinely happy about my lie.
“I need to come in and have some papers signed before I can make out the cheque. Let me check my computer . . . I would need the signature of a Mr. Monaco. I have him listed here as the owner.”
“Mr. Monaco's not the owner, Mr. Per —” She trailed off into a quiet murmur as her mind caught up with her mouth.
“Hello? Miss?” I sighed, knowing she was still on the line. “Darn phone. Hey, Jerry, my line went dead again. Can I use your —”
“No, it didn't. I'm here. I'm sorry, I just got confused. You're right, Marco is the owner.”
“Is that Mr. Monaco?”
“Yes, he is.” Her voice was chipper again. She had decided that although Luca Perino was in charge, his name was probably off the official books. After all, he was a big wheel in the mob. The woman on the other end of the phone wasn't one of those ignorant religious patrons of the store — she knew the score.
“Is he there now? I would love to get this taken care of right away.”
“I'm sorry, he's not usually in until six o'clock.”
The dashboard clock read 4:00. Julian had held me up, but not enough.
“I will have someone walk over the papers then. I'm off at five,” I said.
“I'll let him know you're coming. He'll be so pleased. It's not every day that someone gets money back from the city.”
“No, it's not,” I agreed. “Thank you so much for your help.”
“God bless you, Mr. Clark,” the woman said, and then she hung up.
I closed the phone and shifted to put it away in my pocket. As I arched my ass off the seat to get at my pockets, I felt nothing but a searing pain through my torso. Every part of me burned, and although I was sure there were no broken bones, the pain made me question the health of my organs. I got the phone in my pocket without screaming. I kept my body off the seat so that I could stash the digital recorder in my pants too.
Once I was back in the seat with a new coat of cold sweat on my brow, I leaned over to the glove box and pulled out the cord that came with the digital recorder. I spent a minute testing the cord in each hole in the device before finally managing to fit the cord into its corresponding hole. I had at least two hours before Marco Monaco, Luca Perino's number two, would pull into his small parking space. There was no way I was going to spend two hours with my rapidly cramping body inside my car. I needed to move and loosen up. I got out of the car, taking everything except the rubber bone with me. I checked the parking sign on Hughson, making sure the car wouldn't be towed or ticketed where it was, and walked away.
I walked down Hughson until I hit King Street. King was second only to Main in its possession of legitimate businesses. The stores that lined the roadway were, for the most part, legitimate, successful retailers. The places that worked under the radar and off the books were all on the veins that led into the major arteries of commerce like Main and King. I walked the street in between the numerous bodies of pierced kids and unwashed adults. I passed a strip club and several pizza places, while I scanned the street for an Internet café. I found one on a side street just off King. I walked into the deserted café and paid up front for thirty minutes.
I opened the web browser and pulled up a free e-mail account I kept. I plugged the digital recorder into the computer and listened to the chime of hardware recognition. I clicked the Attach icon and pulled the file off the digital recorder. Once the transfer was complete, I addressed the e-mail to myself and sent it off. The e-mail was in my inbox by the time I had the recorder back in my pocket. I cleared the web browser three times and shut the computer down before I got up to leave.
I walked out of the café without another word to the employee behind the counter and followed my nose onto King Street towards a pizza place I passed on my way to the Internet café.
The pizza place sign just read “pizza” in big, bold, neon letters. The walls of the tiny restaurant had a repeating phone number stencilled all over them with the words “Two for One” added in anywhere they would fit. There was a counter directly open to the street that everyone had to wait in front of for their food. I didn't like being exposed to the entire street, but rusting in the car like the tin man was not an option. I waited patiently and used the constant flow of young women in slutty clothing as an excuse to scan the crowds around me. I was not a man hunting the mob; I was a hungry pervert, like the rest of the men in line.
I ordered two slices of pepperoni pizza and a Coke and waited under a minute for the lukewarm Italian food to get to my hands. I took the food with me across the street to Gore Park.
Gore Park is a small patch of grass in the heart of the city core. It could be walked around in under three minutes, but no one ever did it. The park was like a safari of human suffering. Homeless kids, derelicts, and people on the verge of becoming either were in constant supply. No one stared into the park when they were at the red light on King Street — it just seemed like an invitation for disaster. Seeing everyone look away from the park made it almost magnetic to me. It was a rare find in the city. A place where a person could be invisible while being completely visible.
I walked past the homeless until I found a vacant rock. The pizza bag offered little resistance as I tore through the grease-soaked paper. The right side of my face, on the other hand, put up the fight of its life. I had lost teeth from the side of my jaw, making chewing difficult. I spent half an hour using my tongue to mash the pizza against the left side of my mouth before I swallowed. The Coke's acidity burned the empty sockets in my jaw, so I didn't drink often.
I ate to the point of physical exhaustion. The food felt good in my stomach and it was quickly taking the edge off the pain I felt. I tore the last of the food into bits and fed it a piece at a time to the gulls that had slowly been surrounding me while I ate. The gulls made me think of the island. They made me remember what it was like away from the city. The island wanted me back, but nothing could pull me away. Paolo had anchored me here, tied me to the city I tried to leave behind. I looked at my hand as I threw the last piece of pizza to the birds. My hands were no longer good for tying off knots and setting lures. I was back to what I had been. My hands were gnarled mitts again — useful for beating
and stealing. Each uncomfortable breath made the island seem more like a fantasy and the city a painful reality. Suddenly, the greasy pizza felt like a stone in my stomach, and all I wanted was to be moving.
By the time I slid back behind the wheel, it was 5:15 p.m. I looked through the windshield and noticed that the little space was full. A black, two-door Mercedes was in the lot beside the beat-up Dodge Shadow. Marco was early for work.
I didn't want to go in and repeat what had happened at the cleaning-supply store. There wouldn't be any bleach here, and I wasn't interested in beating up a female employee of a religious store unless I had to. I knew I wasn't going to heaven, but I wasn't so far gone that I was going to start doing the devil any favours. I needed to get Marco out of the store without raising suspicions, so that I could deal with him alone.
My body stayed still in the car as my mind raced over the possible ways to handle the situation I was in. I no longer felt pushed to act right away. I didn't feel apprehension or anger. I searched my mind for the feelings, but they weren't there anymore. The sickness from the pizza had evaporated, and I was left in the car. I was focused without connection. I was my uncle's nephew again.
After two minutes of thought, I arched off the seat and endured the pain of retrieving my cell phone. I dialled Paolo, who answered on the fourth ring.
“I need something,” I said before he could even finish his greeting of, “What?”
“I told you not to call unless you had good news. I told you I would get you some incentive if you needed it. Is that why you're calling? To test me? I can make a call right —”
“It wasn't Bombedieri,” I said.
“How do you know?”
“I asked the right people the right questions the hard way.”
“And you think they'd tell you anything? You have gone soft.”
“I asked real hard. I know I'm right, and you know it too.”
“How do I know?” he asked.
“You brought me back into this because you know what I am. I'm a grinder, I'll find out everything. Bombedieri is only concerned with his turf and bikers.”
“What did you do? This can't come back on me.” Paolo sounded mildly panicked. He instantly knew I had done what I said because I mentioned the bikers. Bombedieri's move against the bikers must have been a real hush-hush job.
“It won't. Now, I've given you your good news. It's your turn to give me something.”
“Give you — give you — You work for me, remember?”
“I'm out of the loop, and things are going to have to start moving faster.”
“Why?”
“Never mind why. It's nothing,” I lied — deciding to leave Paolo in the dark about Julian's misfit crew. Julian would send them after me again. He'd have to; his pride would accept nothing less than me dead in a painful way. He had known I would go after Bombedieri; he would figure out Perino, too, once he was conscious and lucid again. I had to settle up before he was back on me. Knowing I had dealt with Julian and that he was already informed about why I was in the city would put Paolo into damage control. He would have to erase all evidence of everything he had me do. That would include erasing me. He would correct his mistake by killing me, and he'd use Steve and Sandra as bait to get the job done.
“Figlio, don't you lie to me. What happened?”
“Everything is working like clockwork. I just don't want anyone to have the chance to start talking to one another and compare notes. Time has a way of ruining things.”
Paolo seemed to buy my story. “What do you want?”
“I need you to call Luca's number two.”
“Marco? Why?”
“Tell him something happened at Bombedieri's and you need eyes and ears at his place. Tell him you can't get a hold of Perino, and you need someone you trust over there to investigate.”
“Then I'm involved. I told you I can't be involved. What the hell is wrong with you, figlio?”
“Nothing you say will hurt you. You're the top guy in the city. You have eyes everywhere, so you easily found out something was wrong at Bombedieri's. You don't know all the details and you need to find out. All true so far.”
“Stunad! When you grab him, he'll figure it out. You're not thinking.”
“He won't tell anyone anything. In ten minutes you'll call his cell phone again, and he won't answer. Then you send someone else in his place. Marco will get there eventually, but he'll never mention a word about why he was late — not even when you punish him for slacking off.”
“Punish him? Why would I want to —”
“If anyone didn't do what you said right away, what would you normally do?”
Paolo was silent on the phone. His silence was like the sound of a basketball swish. I had scored a point on the old man. I was thinking ahead of him.
“You just do what you would do to any disrespectful hood. Even when you come down on him like a head-on collision, he won't say a word.”
“Why not?”
“I'll make sure it's in his best interest to not say a thing.” I hung up the phone, forcing Paolo to act, because there was no other alternative on the table. He wanted to know who was behind Army and Nicky's disappearance and he had no one else he could use to find out. Paolo had to work with me until he got what he wanted.
Minutes later, the back door opened, and Marco Monaco ran out with his keys in his hands. He was going so fast that he almost missed me leaning on the wall beside the back door. He ran two steps ahead of me before he looked over his shoulder to confirm what he must have thought he saw. He had a hard time seeing me behind the rubber bone swinging at his face.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
I arced the bone high over my head and brought it down like a volleyball spike. Monaco, a small man with ratlike features, didn't make a sound in the split second it took him to notice the bad situation he was in. His mouth formed a small O just as the blow connected above his ear. Then his eyes crossed and closed. His knees went next — all at once.
The keys Marco was carrying were on the pavement beside his body. I bent at the knees, to save my back, and picked up the keys and Marco's wrists. I dragged Marco to the passenger side of his car and opened the door. I bent and lifted the little man's unconscious frame into the car, but it was next to impossible with the shape my back was in. I left gangster on the ground while I went around to the other side of the Mercedes. I lay across the seats and used my upper body to pull Marco's torso into the car. When he was half inside, I got out, went around to the passenger door, and bent to lift his feet in. For a second I thought I wouldn't be able to straighten, but I managed to climb my way to a vertical position using the car as support. With Marco's feet inside the car, I quickly pulled his laces from his leather shoes. I knotted both laces together and used them to tie Marco's wrists behind his back. The rope was thin, but it looped the bony wrists enough times to make a solid binding.
Once Marco's wrists were tied, I got in the front seat beside him. I freed the gun from the holster on his hip and glanced at the Glock 9mm before putting it under my thigh on the seat. The Glock was something I knew. It wasn't flashy and it wasn't the most powerful handgun out there; it was just accurate, reliable, and dangerous.
I started the car and clicked the cigarette lighter down. I leaned in the seat and breathed deep. I tried to relax my back with each breath, but it was slow going. The metallic click of the lighter brought me back to the here and now.
Riding out another spasm, I looked over at the man beside me. His skin was tinged olive and his hair grew straight up from his scalp in a finger-in-the-light-socket sort of way. I looked from the welt on his temple to the acne scars on his face. This little man was part of the puzzle. He was either innocent or guilty, but either way he knew something that I needed to find out, and I was going to grind it out of him.
I clicked the lighter down again and reached over to Marco. I grabbed his bony nose between my thumb and forefinger like grandfathers do when they say, “Got your
nose.” In my case, I actually tried to rip it off by twisting it and pulling it away from his face.
Marco came to just after I heard a wet snap.
“Oh my God! My nose! Stop it! Stop it!”
I stopped and watched as Marco tried to cup his nose only to realize that his hands were not responding. He leaned forward, head against the dash, and strained against the bonds. I pulled the lighter and pushed it behind Marco's ear. The circle of metal burned through the hair growing on the side of his neck and sent his body reeling back off the dashboard.
“What the fuck was that? What did you just do?”
He finally looked at me, and then at his gun. He stopped talking when he saw his Glock pointed at him. His ratty buck teeth bit his lower lip, and his eyes watered. “Wh — what do you want?”
I clicked the lighter back in its space. “Marco, you need to fill in the blanks for me.”
“Blanks? What blanks?” He was already calm. The blow to the head and the burn already seemed distant as he clearly spoke to me.
“I want to know about Armando and Nicola.”
Marco looked at me for a few seconds, then he smiled. “That's why Paolo called me. I thought it was weird that he called me to check on Bombedieri. I said to myself he's probably got dozens of people he could send, but he tells me to go. Why me? But who says no to the boss's boss? Man, I shoulda known. So, how'd you figure out it was Luca P. who did it?”
I didn't let the surprise I felt show on my face. “Every-body talks,” I said. “I just found the right people.”
“You're lying.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because people don't talk about this. Luca P. did it, but he didn't talk about it to anybody. He doesn't even know that I know.”
“If people don't talk, then how did you find out?”
Marco let out a sigh and looked around.