PEDESTAL (JAKE SCARNE THRILLERS Book 5)
Page 24
Scarne! I’m gonna kill the bastard myself. Cosimo will probably want Loc Moi to do it, but the gook is not going to deprive me of the satisfaction. Cosimo will understand that. He might even respect me for it. And everything will blow over. The family has great lawyers. It will be my word against Weatherly and Landon, and they killed the girl. I didn’t. As for Kummerspeck and the others I blackmailed, well, I may have to cut a deal and testify against them. It’s not like I’d be ratting out the family. I may do some time, but, hell, that will earn me some respect, too. I’m a made man. The Stupachi family will stick by me.
***
Loc Moi answered the door.
“Your uncle is out on the lanai,” he said.
“What kind of mood is he in?”
Despite the pep talk he gave himself in the car from the airport, Desiderio was still nervous.
“Hard to tell. He’s very quiet.”
“I guess he must be angry.”
“I think he’s past that.”
They walked through the house to the lanai. Desiderio could see his uncle in the pool. It was a warm night. He knew that Cosimo’s doctor had urged the old man to swim. It would be good for his arthritis. Desiderio knew he couldn’t show weakness. He strode briskly to the side of the pool, determined to put up a brave front.
“Uncle, it’s me, Anthony.”
He got no reply. He moved closer to the edge. Cosimo didn’t lift his face out of the water. Desiderio was about to shout louder when he noticed the thin red trickle emanating from his uncle’s ear. He grew alarmed. Maybe the old man had a stroke. He turned to Loc Moi.
“Call 911!”
Loc Moi didn’t move. Desiderio’s eyes drifted down to the gun in the assassin’s hand. The thick sausage-shaped silencer was pointed at his chest.
“Hey! What are you doing?”
The Vietnamese killer shrugged slightly.
“If it’s any consolation,” he said with a wintry smile, “your uncle refused to go along with the decision to kill you. So, of course, that meant that he had to go, too. The other families don’t want to get pulled into this scandal.”
“But you work for us!”
Desiderio’s brave front collapsed. His legs began shaking.
“I never worked for you. I was loaned to you. And now the loan has been called.”
“My uncle said you couldn’t trust a fuckin’ gook!”
“He had a point.”
Loc Moi shot Desiderio three times in and around his heart. The mobster fell backwards into the pool with a loud splash. The two bodies started bumping against each other. The assassin walked to the edge, took careful aim, and put another bullet in Desiderio’s forehead.
“Sticks and stones,” Loc Moi said.
The End
***
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lawrence De Maria began his career as a general interest reporter (winning an Associated Press award for his crime reporting) and eventually became a Pulitzer-nominated senior editor and financial writer The New York Times, where he wrote hundreds of stories and features, often on Page 1. After he left the Times, De Maria became an Executive Director at Forbes. Following a stint in corporate America – during which he helped uncover the $7 billion Allen Stanford Ponzi scheme and was widely quoted in the national media – he returned to journalism as Managing Editor of the Naples Sun Times, a Florida weekly, until its sale to the Scripps chain in 2007. Since then, he has been a full-time fiction writer. De Maria is on the board of directors of the Washington Independent Review of Books.