Stiletto Sisters (Kindle Single)

by Roger Granelli

  There were no further shots, which was strange for an attempted assassination in Palermo. Usually, the city’s would-be killers emptied their weapons in a frenzy of shooting, relying on quantity not quality to down their target, and not caring if any innocent party was in the way. Leo reached for his cell phone with a bloodied hand to call Carlo.

  ‘Boss, it’s Leo. Guess what, someone just took a shot at me. Yeah, I’m okay, just got caught by a stone chip. It’s only a nick. Okay, I’ll wait for the boys to arrive, and yes, of course I won’t stick my head outside again until they get here. Whoever it was will be long gone anyway. He couldn’t have been much good if he missed someone my size. No, don’t bother to come over, but it looks like things might be getting hot again, boss – what with that Scarlatti thing the other day.’

  ‘Looks like,’ Carlo said. ‘Oh, and now that they’ve promoted me, watch that “boss” thing.’

  ‘Sure, CC. So long.’

  Leo did not feel as cool as he sounded on the phone. His large frame began to shake a little as he realised his job had never got this personal before, and never this close either. Today it had been brought to his door – and his mother’s door, as he still shared an apartment with her, despite Sylvia’s attempts to get him to move in with her.

  Leo went back up the stairs to placate Mrs Bracchi, who was shouting down her concern in rapid Siculu, the indigenous language of the island. She always used it when she was angry, or frightened. Leo would have liked to tell her it was just a car backfiring, but the old woman was far too shrewd for that – and besides, he was bleeding like a pig, and all over his new shirt too. He’d have to listen to his mother’s usual tirade about the dangers of his job before the cavalry showed up.

  Salim Mandretta took care in paring his apple, for he’d always prided himself in his work with a knife. He skilfully removed small pieces of peel with a thin solid-silver blade. It had been a gift from his grandfather, for killing his first man at the age of eighteen.

  From his balcony, Mandretta looked idly out on to the seascape. He was a sharp, sallow-faced man of middle age and middle height, but his taut sinewy frame belied his fifty-six years. He was at his summer place, an eight-bedroom mansion just off the beach at Mondello. It was close enough to see the tourists throng to the wide beach, but far enough away to mask their noise. They said this view was spectacular, one of the best on the island, but Mandretta did not care much about it either way. Nature had never interested him unless it was the nature of men. His grandfather once told him that Mondello had been created out of old swampland, and he liked that. As far as he was concerned, they could concrete over every green place on earth.

  Mandretta heard Gianluca drive up on to the forecourt below, revving that Lambo of his like the forty-year-old kid he was. The man was good at killing, though, which was why he was around. Within a minute, Gianluca had joined Mandretta on the balcony, helping himself to a drink as he did so.

  ‘All well?’ Mandretta asked, without looking up from his apple. He had a husky voice that rarely got much above a whisper, the result of an old knife wound from when a rival had tried to slit his throat.

  ‘Sure, boss. It was funny seeing that tub of lard jump like that. I put a round within inches of his stupid face. He did get a nick, though.’

  ‘A nick?’

  ‘Yeah, a slight ricochet. I saw the claret on his face.’

  ‘But he’s okay?’

  ‘Sure, just like you said.’

  ‘He’d better be.’

  Mandretta waved Gianluca out without another word. His foot soldier would have liked to stay and drink some more, but – like all Mandretta’s men – he knew the finality of that waved hand.

  The apple was ready. It was now a perfectly peel-free sphere. As he bit into its juicy sweetness, Mandretta smiled a little at his skilful work, then his face set again, and his black eyes took on the aspect of a serpent.

  When he was finished, Mandretta tossed the apple core down and a gull seized it before it had even stopped moving. The bird wheeled away with its prize, pursued by its luckless rivals. Mandretta nodded his approval, for all hustlers and deadly predators got his vote. For the seabirds it was the survival of the fittest, a rule he had always followed himself. It did not seem that long since he too had fought for apple cores, growing up in the worst slum in Palermo, amid crumbling tenements which housed the lowest of the low. A race apart, some said – people isolated from the rest of the city by the railway tracks that cut through their hovels.

  By the time Carlo got through the traffic to the central police station, Leo Bracchi had been treated for his small wound – a few dabs of antiseptic and a plaster sufficing for what he was now loudly telling the office girls was a ‘bullet wound’ received in the line of duty. Leo’s verbal gusto was stilled when he took a bite out of an oversized panini crammed so full of salami that the meat looked like a collection of pink tongues poking out of the bread. It was only when the girls returned to their desks that Leo noticed Carlo standing in the doorway.

  ‘Oh, hello, boss. How long have you been standing there?’ Leo said sheepishly.

  ‘Long enough to be bored. In my office, sergeant, and leave your meal outside, please.’

  Leo traipsed after Carlo like a cowed bear, sent on his way by the sniggers of the admin girls, but he still had time for another quick bite before he deposited what was left of the panini on to the desk of the girl who had sniggered the most.

  ‘So, any ideas, Leo?’ Carlo asked as he sat behind the desk of his plush new office. Since his promotion he had moved up a floor and he had taken Leo with him.

  Leo shrugged. ‘Not really, boss. I’ve been shot at before, we both have, but never outside my damn home. Sylvia has been on the phone. She’s with my mother now, probably trying to hatch a plot to get me to leave the police. Sometimes I wish I was single again.’

  ‘Yeah, I’ve been there with Maria.’

  ‘I’m kinda surprised you didn’t chuck it all in after what happened to Piccolo.’

  ‘I gave it a lot of thought, and Maria gave it even more, but what the hell could I do? Work in a library? A school?’

  ‘You have two marriages, boss – one to Maria and one to the job.’

  ‘Don’t sound so smug, Leo. It won’t be long now before Sylvia starts hearing wedding bells, trust me.’

  Carlo enjoyed the crestfallen look that immediately appeared on Leo’s face.

  ‘No need to look so worried, you big dope. It will be the making of you, and the first Mrs Bracchi will be thrilled.’ Getting into his stride, Carlo added, ‘And after that the patter of little feet.’

  ‘Jeez, will you please stop – I need something to eat.’

  ‘Okay. So no ideas at all about who might have done this?’

  ‘Well, it’s pointless going through my list of old enemies – that would be like counting sheep. It could be someone I banged up years ago, someone whose mind has become even more warped from being inside, but there must be a small army of those guys.’

  Leo paused as his eyes flicked towards Carlo’s shiny new coffee machine.

  ‘Go on then,’ Carlo said. ‘And make one for me too.’

  Each man was silent for a while as they sipped their industrial-strength coffee. It was strong enough to give the heart a jolt, and had enough caffeine to keep a cat awake for a week, which is how most people liked it in Palermo.

  ‘One thing I do know,’ Leo said. ‘It wasn’t no pro that took that shot.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Because a pro would never have missed, boss. ’Specially a target like me,’ Leo said as he finished his coffee with a small slurp of satisfaction. ‘Unless of course it was a pro, who was meant to miss.’

  ‘Now you’re getting as devious as your grammar, Leo.’

  ‘Sure, but was there ever a place as tricky as Palermo?’

  ‘So you’re saying that the shot might have been a warning?’

  ‘Could be. A warning, may
be even a signal. I don’t know.’

  But Leo did know. Suddenly it came to him, and he instinctively touched his eyebrow. Salim Mandretta had ordered this. Leo was being prepared for that favour, which must be something special for Mandretta to pull a stunt like this – and that’s why the shot missed. This was a typical Mandretta ploy; that bastard had always liked to play games, and usually deadly ones.

  ‘Leo, you’re miles away,’ Carlo said.

  ‘Yeah. Sorry, boss. Just thinking about those wedding bells. At the moment they sound more like the bells of doom.’

  Carlo laughed. ‘Leo, your pessimism never fails to disappoint me.’

  They subsided into silence again as Carlo got up and went to stand next to the window. Now that he was a floor higher he had a much better view of the city – sixty square miles of rammed humanity, most of it decent enough, but with a malevolent underground that was always trying to take over, an insistent tail that wanted to wag the whole body.

  ‘Hey, looks like you’re settling into the new house okay from what I could see the other day. Maria must love it at Aspra, boss.’

  ‘She does, Leo. But now that we’ve moved upstairs do you think you could make one last effort to stop calling me boss?’

  ‘Sure I can.’

  There was an exchange of dubious glances at this answer.

  It had been raining hard all day in downtown Palermo, an April downpour that had cleaned a lot of the crud from the streets until they looked quite slick under the orange streetlights as night fell.

  Mario, one of the doormen at the Satisfaction club, was damp, bored and wishing for the end of his shift. His size-thirteen feet hurt, his back hurt, and the Glock in its holster under his arm chafed against his too-tight monkey suit. He’d been asking the boss to buy him a bigger one for months.

  This Monday evening Mario had ushered in the usual collection of local dignitaries, politicians and businessmen, bowing and scraping to them like the lackey he was. No clergy though: there was a discreet door around back for men of the cloth. Mario longed to be back out in the field, and dreamed of the days when he was a young buck trusted with much better jobs than this crap.

  A large Mercedes driven by a chauffeur pulled up outside the club with a swish of tyres. Mario braved the rain and hastened from the club’s canopy to open the car’s rear door, and let out a small, round bald man, old enough to be his father. This was another inadequate arsehole looking to fulfil his fantasies, and he had the money to do so. This bastard liked to slap the girls around too, and at Satisfaction anything went. As Salim Mandretta always said: They have their fun and they pay the price. The man shook hands with Mario, slipping a twenty-euro note into his as he did so, and Mario offered his trademark toothy smile in return.

  Mario stepped back under his shelter and lit up a Toscano cigar. He liked them better than tipped cigarettes because he liked to feel the tang of tobacco on his tongue and lips. He dragged in the smoke, sent it around his lungs, and then blew out the grey residue to mingle with the rain and drift up into the night sky. The rain was softer now, and the daylong storm had run out of steam.

  Mario spat out a tiny flake of tobacco on to the sidewalk. He glanced at his ornate Rolex, which curled around his wrist like a thick golden snake. This was the last thing he ever did – because in the next moment he took a round from a .44 Magnum just above his right eyebrow. It took away that side of his head and deposited it against the wall he leaned on. Mario slumped down without much fuss, with a what the fuck look on his face.

  Adelina stood over him, gun in hand; with a silencer fitted on to its barrel, the Magnum looked like a small cannon.

  ‘Chiara, Adriana, around the back,’ Adelina said. ‘You know what to do. Marianna, you stay with me. You watch and learn, and fire your weapon only if you have to. And all of you, make sure your masks stay on.’

  Adelina looked up at the CCTV above the canopy and gave a mock salute. Each woman wore a black leather jacket and matching ski pants so that their gender was obscured, plus masks of famous people. Adelina was Barack Obama, as he was one of her heroes, and Marianna was Berlusconi, because the old politician and playboy reminded her so much of the men who frequented Satisfaction. The fact that those two men would never want to be seen together added to the fun.

  This was a very different Marianna. Since her rescue, she had begun her rehabilitation, plus her initial training, and had been fed well and given hope, respect and freedom by her saviours. She loved her new family, and this night would be her chance for payback, for her to grab a bit of revenge. Adelina had been pleased with her progress and said she had earned this night. With her right hand wrapped around the black plastic contours of her seventeen-shot pistol, Marianna stepped back inside the lurid world of Satisfaction.

  The club was all reds and pinks, and it smelled the same too, a sickening concoction of drink, sweat, greed and, above all, lechery. Marianna knew all the small cubicles that led off from the bar area, for she’d ‘worked’ in every one of them. Another doorman-cum-guard came up to them, smiling as he held up a beefy hand, like a traffic cop stopping cars.

  ‘Whoa, this ain’t no place for fancy dress. What are you – students? You couldn’t afford it in Satisfaction anyway, guys, and how the fuck did Mario let you in here?’

  ‘He had no say in the matter,’ Adelina said quietly, her voice even more rasping beneath her mask.

  Marianna was amazed by how skilfully Adelina produced the Magnum from her jacket and shot this man before he could say anything else. A few drinkers at the bar tapped each other, pointed and laughed, thinking that the guard had tripped and fallen over.

  ‘There’ll be another one around here somewhere,’ Adelina said calmly. ‘They always have three guards here.’

  Right on cue, another man appeared from a side room. Like Mario and the man now sprawled on the floor, he also wore a black suit that could hardly contain his bulging muscles. He frantically attempted to draw his weapon from its holster while trying to understand what was happening. He was quick but not quick enough, and two rounds from Adelina hit him in the heart just as he got his own gun in his hand. The Magnum’s force knocked him backwards into tables, his body crashing to the ground amid a cacophony of smashing glasses and falling chairs. His own gun discharged, a bullet ricocheting off the bar in the corner and instantly causing panic as the customers waiting for cubicles finally realised what was happening.

  Adelina calmly removed the Magnum’s silencer. ‘Time to make a little noise,’ she said. ‘And you can do the same, Mari, if you want. But shoot things, not people – we don’t want to whack any of Palermo’s fine upstanding citizens, do we?’

  Marianna wouldn’t have minded doing that at all, but she obeyed orders as Adelina pointed her own gun to the wall above the bar. The Magnum made a powerful roar as it discharged its deadly load, and shocked drinkers dived for cover wherever they could. The heavy bar mirror with an image of Pan etched on it cracked then shattered, spraying glass shards around the room like missiles. The noise brought startled punters from their cubicles, most trying to put their clothes on as they ran. Then Chiara and Adriana appeared from the rear of the club, copying the actions of their leader, the sharper retort of their Glocks competing with the heavier retort of the last round of the Magnum to create a maelstrom of confused noise.

  Marianna’s finger on the trigger hesitated, for this was a true baptism of fire. Then she started to squeeze, aiming at the garish wall paintings of naked girls – girls like she had been. She loved the surge of power and adrenaline the kick of the gun gave her; it was as if retribution were springing to life in her hand, and she began to enjoy her work. Suddenly a bald man in his sixties appeared in front of her. As he fumbled with his trousers she recognised him. It was that bastard who had liked to beat her up, grunting like a pig as he did so. He was a rich man, an important man. Marianna felt those blows again as she levelled the Glock at his terrified face and was about to fire when her hand was knocked down.r />
  ‘No civilians!’ Adelina shouted.

  The four women stood together in a defensive group, but there was no one else to challenge them.

  ‘Let them all go,’ Adelina said, as a stream of men ran to the entrance of Satisfaction and the club rapidly emptied.

  Adelina raised up her mask for a moment so she could speak clearly. ‘Come on, time to go,’ she said. ‘Our work here is done.’

  As they got back outside a black 4 x 4 pulled up, driven by Gabriella, the fifth woman in the group. The female vigilantes sped off into the wild night, pleased with their work and beginning to rejoice in it. All masks were removed and stowed away, and for the first time since Adelina had rescued her, Marianna saw her saviour smile.

  ‘Very well done, girls,’ Adelina said. ‘Our visit to Satisfaction proved highly satisfactory.’

  Satisfaction was a murder scene when Carlo and Leo got there. Its vivid colour scheme could not disguise what had happened. Pools of congealed blood had spilled on to red carpets, a deeper red now turning to black, and bloodstains were spread everywhere, like the modernist effort of a demented artist. The three slain men had not yet been removed and there was a tent around Mario outside, surrounded by a crowd of thrill-seeking onlookers.

  Leo had to push a path through them, using his bulk to good effect. Carlo noticed that most of the faces were excited and upbeat; they usually were at scenes like this. He knew that a lot of people liked to overdose on the violent deaths of others – if they got the chance – secure in the knowledge that they were safe and displaying the superiority of the living, as his friend Alvarese always liked to say.

  ‘Good God, it’s Mario,’ Leo said, as he examined the body at the entrance. ‘First time that bastard ever stayed dead.’

  When they had looked at all three bodies, Carlo was as convinced as Leo that this had been a hit by professionals on professionals, which would have required complete surprise and excellent timing, plus good knowledge about how Satisfaction was run. There was plenty here to think about.