The Immortal Game

by Mike Miner

  Herb gave a weak laugh. “What investigation?”

  Lonny raised his eyebrows.

  “Fucking men in black took it over.”

  “The Feds?”

  “Fucking A. Got a visit from some dude. You know the drill. Clean cut kid, polite, black suit, black tie. Says, Chief, we’re taking it from here.”

  “No shit?”

  “I got the victim’s family all over my ass, and I don’t blame ’em for a second. Christ, it’s basically a pig fuck.”

  “What about this Billy character?”

  “The butcher? Between you and me, I doubt it, buddy. They were nuts about each other.”

  “Did you know him?”

  “Sure. Nice enough, for a flatlander.”

  “He wasn’t from Vermont?”

  “Nah. Somewhere in Massachusetts, my guess. Had the accent.”

  Lonny nodded, tried to process all the information. “So they shut you down?”

  “In a nutshell.”

  “You find anything out before they showed up?”

  Herb made some noises with his lips as he thought. “Footprints.”

  “Footprints?”

  Herb sighed. “Dylan, what’s your interest here?”

  “I don’t know yet. Might be a link to my client.”

  “Who’s that?”

  Lonny shook his head slowly.

  “Don’t want to share info with your ol’ buddy, Herb?”

  “You’re better off, Herb. And those are the rules. What about footprints?”

  Herb narrowed his eyes at Lonny. “Too small. Looks like a sniper job. Professional hit. Through a window from the woods. It snowed on top of the trail so it’s hard to tell but I haven’t seen feet that small on a killer since the tunnels in ’Nam.

  Lonny knew Herb had been in Vietnam. His father and Herb used to stay up late, drinking Canadian beer and comparing war stories.

  “Your dad wouldn’t have see them. He did most of his fighting in the air.”

  Lonny’s father had been in the First Cavalry. Lonny pictured Herb, tiny but strong, underground.

  “In the tunnels, you’d see these little size six footprints. At first I thought they were kid’s feet, maybe a woman’s.”

  A woman’s, Lonny thought.

  “Can I get a look in that house, Herb?”

  Herb gave Lonny a shake of his head as he reached into a drawer. “Official Federal Investigation now, Dylan.” Herb pulled a key out. “That’s a closed crime scene.” Herb threw the key to Lonny. “Remember to lock up.”

  The taped silhouette of the girl was still on the floor, next to the dining room table. A lot of dried blood. Lonny saw the broken window where the bullet had come through. A tough shot.

  The décor was pretty simple. A few books, Michael Connelly and James Lee Burke. Nothing very distinguishing. Lonny would have bet the pictures came with the place, all local scenes.

  In one of the bedrooms, there was a chess set up, mid game. The black queen was missing. Identical to one of the games in Red Scarlotti’s office.

  A black GMC Yukon flashed its lights behind Lonny when he got back into town. His head was spinning so rapidly, he wasn’t sure how long the car had been in his rearview mirror. He pulled to the shoulder and watched the man in the dark suit and coat hop out and stride to his car. He went to the passenger side, opened the door and hopped in.

  He had the usual look. Just as Herb had described him. Short hair, lean face. Lonny figured him for early thirties. Just the start of the sad cynicism in his eyes, which would only grow if he stayed at this much longer.

  “Agent Riley,” he said, offering a hand. He had a firm grip.

  “Dylan Lonagan.”

  Agent Riley nodded. No doubt, he’d already run Lonny’s plates. “What’s a PI from Boston doing so far from home?”

  “I’ve got family up here.”

  “What were you up to in that house?”

  Lonny shrugged his shoulders.

  “You weren’t there long. Find what you were looking for?”

  “Just who lived there.”

  “I could have told you that. Billy Piccolo.”

  “I bet he looks a lot like Whitey Scarlotti.”

  “Could be. What’s your interest?”

  “Not sure yet.”

  “I’ve got enough to bring you in if you don’t give me something. Tampering with a federal crime scene.”

  “I think there’s a connection to my client. I’m just not sure what.”

  Agent Riley took out a card, handed it to Lonny. “Look, we’ve invested countless hours in this guy, in this case. He can put a lot of bad men away. You still remember what it was like? Putting bad men away?”

  Lonny remembered.

  “You find him, you call me. You get in over your head, you call me. I’d threaten you if I thought it would do any good, but if you get in my way, it will be unpleasant for you.”

  “Why’d he go G?”

  “Scarlotti?”

  “Did he go to you or you go to him?”

  Agent Riley thought. “He came to us.”

  “Why?”

  “I always figured he was in somebody’s crosshairs.”

  Lonny was having trouble imagining Whitey Scarlotti running from any man. Hard to picture him scared.

  “Did you know him?”

  “A bit.”

  Agent Riley nodded. “For a cold-blooded killer, he was all right. Seemed like he was genuinely trying to leave it behind him.”

  “And now they found him?”

  “The bigger question is: will he find them?” Agent Riley opened his door, pulled his coat tighter around his neck. “You get something, call me.”

  Lonny stayed there, his car on the shoulder of the road until after the agent left, trying to do the math. Too many unknowns. One thing he did know. Based on that chess game, Red Scarlotti had known where his brother was, or at least that he wasn’t dead. That deserved a conversation.

  8

  It had made national news, when Whitey Scarlotti had been gunned down while eating at Ida’s Restaurant in the North End of Boston.

  He had been having a plate of their famous veal and eggplant parmigiana (now dubbed the Scarlotti parmigiana) when three men had breezed in and opened fire. The triggermen were never identified, though everyone assumed they worked for the Denatale crime family.

  Except that the execution had been staged by the Feds.

  One good thing came out of it. The lines outside of Ida’s, always long, doubled. People waited even longer to sit at the table where Whitey Scarlotti ate his last meal.

  Now Lonny was back in Red Scarlotti’s office.

  “When’s the last time you heard from your brother, Mr. Scarlotti?”

  “William? He’s dead. I’m sure you heard about it.”

  “I sent flowers to the funeral home. But apparently he’s turned into Lazarus.”

  Red let out a breath. “He’s still alive?”

  “Mr. Scarlotti, do you want him dead?”

  Red grinned. Then laughed. “I can assure you, Mr. Lonagan, I’m one of the few people who doesn’t want him dead.”

  “Well somebody does.”

  “That’s nothing new.”

  “All I care about is finding your son. Why are you sending me to Vermont after wild geese?”

  “What if he thinks I sent someone up there?”

  “You think your brother has your son?”

  “I don’t know. That’s why you’re here.”

  “When you hold information back, it wastes time. I know trust is not how you got where you are, but if you want your son back, you are going to have to trust me.”

  High-heeled footsteps in the hallway echoed outside the door.

  “Your wife is back?”

  Red nodded.

  “How’s she taking it?”

  Red shook his head. The office door opened.

  Mrs. Scarlotti was not what Lonny was expecting. Tall and slender, with str
awberry blonde hair, pale, freckled skin still red from her trip to Florida, and eyes as green as the emerald isle. Her sweater was green cashmere and her khaki slacks billowed around her skinny legs as she marched into the office in brown leather boots. A stunner, that’s what Lonny’s father would have called her.

  He’d been expecting big, dark hair, flashy jewelry, loud clothes. Not Newbury Street boutique.

  Her jaw was stiff, her eyes flashed, first at Red, then at Lonny.

  “Any good news to report?” Her voice was quiet. A slight Mass accent just hinted at the second “r” in report. “Has my gangster husband heard from the gangsters who’ve taken our son?”

  She was trying to be tough, cruel, but the tears that ran down her face told another story.

  Red and Lonny watched.

  She hugged herself. “Where’s my boy?” she said to nobody in particular.

  “I wish I knew, Mrs. Scarlotti.” And Lonny did, very badly. He would have liked to see this beautiful woman happy. These Scarlotti men, Lonny thought, certainly can pick their women. “What makes you say, gangsters?”

  “What?” she said.

  “You said gangsters who’ve taken your son. What gangsters?”

  She seemed to regard Lonny closer now. “I guess I just assumed that it was . . . family business.”

  Family business.

  “What do you think?” she asked him.

  “I don’t know yet.” Lonny did not see a reason to educate the Scarlottis about the monsters who prowl the world for young boys.

  “If it were gangsters,” Lonny asked, “who would it be?”

  Red said nothing.

  “The Denatales,” Mrs. Scarlotti said.

  Lonny knew the history, the feud.

  Red nodded.

  “Anyone else? Anyone new in the area, looking to make a splash? Any old vendettas?”

  “The Denatales would have the most hard feelings,” Red said. “Lately, since the old man’s been in the joint, his son has been running things.”

  A new player with old grudges. But no word yet. No note. No call. Just letting them stew over it?

  Or was it someone else?

  9

  Kat Scarlotti hated waiting. She was a woman of action. Which was why, after Whitey died—or didn’t as it turned out—she kept taking contracts. The action. The rush when she turned out somebody’s lights.

  Ever since that first dead body in Whitey’s apartment years ago, she was fascinated.

  She remembered looking closely at those bodies. Their hearts like clocks that had stopped working. Messy clocks. She remembered the blood, thicker and darker and brighter than she had pictured—and much more of it.

  “Do they always smell like that?”

  “Usually,” he said.

  She would find out later for herself how sometimes they released their bowels, sometimes even ejaculated. She’d find out for herself what a messy business killing was.

  “Maybe you should go home,” he said.

  “I am home,” she said.

  She helped. Helped spread out the plastic, watched him roll one body onto it, then wrap it up. Same with the other. She acted as a lookout, opened the doors for him as he carried the corpses, one at a time, to his Yukon.

  “I’ll be back,” he said.

  “I’ll clean up.”

  She found his cleaning supplies and scrubbed everything down. Whistled while she did it.

  When he got back, she was in the shower.

  “You okay?” he asked, coming into the bathroom.

  “No.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m lonely.”

  He opened the shower door.

  “Come get clean before I get you dirty again.”

  She enjoyed the slack-jawed look on his face. She had never seen it before, the look of a man realizing: this is the one.

  The feel of him in the shower, like slick stone.

  Yes, she was the one. Not some doe-eyed, big-boned farm girl from the north country. Opposites attract. Bullshit. That was why that girl was dead. And any other girls he tried out. Maybe he understood that now.

  So she was waiting. For him or for them. A lot of people were unhappy with her. This was the calm before the storm.

  She heard her nephew walking down the hall. Put her Beretta inside her pants, against the small of her back. Pulled her sweater over it.

  “What’s up, Aunt Kat? Any word from Mom or Dad?”

  She patted him on the head. Normally, she didn’t much care for kids, but she was fond of her godson, Christopher. Sweet and quiet, like his dad and his Uncle Whitey. Fair and delicate like his mother. “Nothing yet, kiddo.”

  He sighed.

  “Hang in there,” she said.

  “What’d you get at the store? Did you get my Frosted Flakes?”

  “I got your Frosted Flakes,” she said, pulling the box out of the grocery bag.

  The phone rang.

  Three times.

  A pause.

  Once more.

  The signal.

  Kat’s Beretta was in her hands. Christopher’s eyes went wide.

  She smiled at him. “Remember the drill.”

  Christopher froze.

  Kat slapped him. “To the bedroom. Then do just what I told you.”

  Christopher bolted to the guest bedroom.

  It was a well-kept secret that there was not a tenant upstairs. They owned that unit too. For just such an emergency. Christopher went into the closet, climbed the shelves and popped open the hidden trap door.

  So it was them, not him. Good. A nice little appetizer for her. She watched the doorknob turn. Slowly. Quietly. The man never knew what hit him.

  She guessed there would be two or three. Figured they’d never expect her to come out the front door after them. So that’s what she did. Crouched low, she ran and slid on the tile floor, gun ready, as she came out the other side. For a second, they were stunned. Which was all the time she needed. Pop. Pop. The fourth one (Goodness, Angelo, for little old me? she thought) fired and missed, then turned and ran. She clipped his arm as he rounded a corner. It slowed him down enough for her to get close, shoot his left leg.

  He went down.

  She stepped close, kicked his gun away. Put her face right in front of his. She liked her pretty smile to be the last thing men saw before they died.

  His eyes hadn’t realized it yet. Hadn’t let go of his life.

  “Denatale?” she said.

  His eyes stopped darting, settled on hers. Saw what was there for him. He nodded.

  She nodded back and turned out the lights for him with a headshot.

  What a mess.

  The boy climbed the fire escape up to the roof. He took in the view. From here he could see the water, the aquarium, Quincy Market. He listened to the sound of Aunt Kat’s gun.

  All Christopher could think: Wow.

  Two more shots.

  So they really were after us, Christopher thought, and suddenly he was worried about his parents. Who was looking after them?

  Aunt Kat’s head appeared at the top of the fire escape. “All clear, kiddo.”

  Back inside, Aunt Kat threw things into a suitcase. “Two minutes. Pack everything you need.” She handed him a duffel bag.

  “For how long?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “The chickens are coming home to roost.”

  10

  The old man was not going to be happy.

  Twice in one week things got all fucked up.

  Don’t shoot the messenger, he thought, as he took the drive to Walpole. MCI – Walpole. Massachusetts Correctional Institute. But it wasn’t Walpole anymore, not like when he did his time there. The town had raised a stink. Now it was MCI – Cedar Junction. Call it whatever you want, Angelo Denatale, Jr., thought; it was still a dungeon that stole years in exchange for nightmares.

  It took about thirty minutes to get there from Bosto
n, depending on when you left.

  Angelo Denatale, Sr., “alleged” head of the Denatale crime family, was awaiting trial. He had been denied bail. For two years, he had run things from the inside, talking to his son three times a week, sending messages, reaching people over the twenty-foot high walls, past the barbed wire and electrified fence.

  Plotting—always plotting—revenge against the Scarlotti family, and searching for the Feds’ mystery star witness, whose grand jury testimony sealed the arrest warrant. Murder, extortion, racketeering, mayhem, the whole nine yards.

  Then they found him. Whitey Scarlotti, not so dead after all. Holed up north somewhere in the Green Mountains of Vermont.

  But that bitch had fucked everything up, intentionally or not, and now she had to go. Gone. Forever.

  *

  Angelo, Sr. knew immediately that it had not gone well. Could tell from the way Junior was sitting that he was frightened of what his father would do. Even through an inch of glass, his son was scared to death of his old man. Senior almost turned and went back to his cell, a private one, where he received private meals, the only real perk available to him. That and the private showers.

  “What happened?”

  His son shook his head.

  “Complete failure?”

  A nod.

  “Christ.” Senior considered punching a hole in the glass.

  Junior was braced for just this reaction. He knew his father well.

  “Have we taken care of the men who failed us?”

  “She did that for us. But Dad, realize that our . . . problem . . . has gone off the grid. Let me push the judge for an earlier trial. Minus you-know-who, they can’t convict. They’ve got nothing. She may have given us just what we needed.”

  “Angelo, you’re a good lawyer but a lousy criminal.” He didn’t know where he’d gone wrong, why his son lacked his own killer instincts, why he never wanted to confront problems, just avoid them, sidestep them. Senior sighed.

  Junior rolled his eyes.

  “Get after the judge. Speed things up. Then get a hold of the German.”

  “The German?”

  Senior nodded.

  Junior gulped.

  *

  The German was not actually German; he was Swiss. But he looked German. He spoke German. The German had spent time in Iraq with the French Foreign Legion, and then later in Afghanistan, the Balkans, Africa. After several tours of duty, the German had settled in Rome and found employment with one of the larger crime families in Italy. After a few years, the German had become quite notorious, as well as quite wanted by the Italian authorities.