“Ryan, we’ve known each other for a long time. Through the years I haven’t done much that we could call, well, crazy.”
He was hoping to convince Ryan of his own sanity. He knew what he was going to say next would sound every bit of insane to his friend. He heard Ryan’s reaffirming grunt on the other end of the line, so Vaughn continued.
“You know my friend Jack was killed last night. I think he got into some business that was over his head. The homicide guys are gonna do their best to figure out who killed Jack. I’m sure they are. But, Ryan, I want to find out first.”
There was a moment of silence on the other end. Then Alex heard a slow breath of air exhale into the phone.
“Jesus Alex,” Slate’s voice was now that of a New York cab driver’s. All semblance of hiding his accent was now gone with the man’s obvious unease.
Alex started to explain himself. “Man, just listen to me for a second, hear me out.” Alex was speaking fast now.
For some reason once he started talking, he couldn’t stop. He needed someone in his corner. As brave as he felt, as brave as he wanted to be, going headlong into the mob was not an easy task and the mere prospect of it was leaving its mark on Alex’s nerve. He poured everything out to his friend. He told him of Jack coming to him for help, Jack’s death, the cigarette, and his decision to go undercover. When it was all over, Alex paused to catch his breath, paused hoping for some sort of response from Slate.
“Alex, I don’t think so. This is too much, even for you”.
Alex felt his heart sink. He had to convince Slate.
“Ryan…”
“No. Find someone else. I’m serious.” He had a sound as if he couldn’t be won over and Alex panicked.
“Ryan, if you don’t help me with this, I’m gonna tell people in the I.A. to take a closer look at you. We both know you haven’t done everything on the up and up. No one undercover ever does.” Alex hated saying it.
“You son of a…”
Alex cut him off. “Listen, I don’t judge. I understand. We all have to do things. But I need you for this. I need your help.”
The reply came after a few heartbeats.
“Okay asshole. I’ll see what I can do. Just one thing though, why not just go and ask the guy at Inhaled Imports who buys Sobranie cigs?”
Ryan was pissed off, but he was also excited. Perhaps this was right up his alley.
“Well, ‘cause Inhaled Imports is run by Old Joe Falzone’s crew. Anyone that snoops around that place is sure to be made. I definitely do not need that kind of heat right now.”
Alex let out a relieved and nervous laugh. He slumped against the wall in his kitchen. His legs felt weak. The severity of what he was about to attempt was catching up to him, and smacking him like a sledgehammer.
“Ah, and you knew I couldn’t do it ‘cause my assignment takes me as close as Joey Ciancetta lets me get. I’m still in the fringe.” Ryan was right on the mark. “Okay man, I’ll do what I can. I’ll let it loose to a few mobsters at the bar, you know Jimmy Taps, that Garducci was due back any day. If they ask me how I know something like that, I’ll chat ‘em up about some cousin of yours that dated my friend’s niece. And asshole, don’t think this is a free one. You could always repay the favor to me by dropping a thing or two about how I’m a good guy, you know, with the crew. Might get me a little bit closer and I might forgive your threat.”
Alex’s relief was now complete. It seemed to him that he had enlisted a valuable ally.
“Alright, but if I do that, we will need to devise a way for Victor Garducci to leave town again in an amicable fashion. That way no one assumes I’m a rat and your cover remains intact.”
Now that he was not alone, Vaughn’s brain was working a mile a minute; things were coming clearer to him.
“I’ll think of a way, you just drop me some help. Let’s talk again tomorrow morning. For now though, I need to get going. Big date at Louie’s. A blonde you wouldn’t believe. She’s a total knockout.”
With that Ryan hung up the phone with a click. Alex, too, hung up the phone. He went into his bedroom. The room was sparse. A nightstand stood on either side of the bed. A walk in closet, the bedroom’s lone redeeming feature, was to the bed’s right.
Vaughn went into the closet and pulled out his Guido uniform. The uniform consisted of a black leather jacket, a slick, dark red button down, black slacks and black leather shoes. His shirt was open at the neck and his gold cross was hanging in the middle of the opening.
He took off his Saint Christopher medallion and slipped it into his shoe, right next to a worn and torn photograph of his wife, Charlotte. As he placed the photograph in his shoe, he thought back to his reasons for keeping it there. When he was lost, he seemed to find comfort in the familiar yet worn ridges of the photo. They took it a dozen years before at a fair and it was one of Vaughn’s most cherished memories.
If only I could turn back the clock.
Alex looked at himself in the full-length mirror on the inside of his open closet door. Something was missing. He walked to the nightstand on the right of the bed and pulled open the drawer. Inside were a gold watch and several gold rings. He slipped them on. Satisfied, he walked back and stood in front of the mirror again.
The transformation was complete. Victor Garducci stared back at him from his closet. He no longer saw anything that remained of Alexander Vaughn. Even his eyes seemed to carry a different presence.
He then glanced to the side and saw the lone picture hanging over the nightstand to his left. He glanced at the smaller duplicate of the picture of his ex-wife and child that was also hanging alongside of his bathroom.
As he exited, he looked back once again at the picture of his wife and whispered to himself, “So this is why you left.”
Alex turned around, and flicked off the light to his bedroom. He patted the Beretta under his left shoulder, and walked outside. Victor Garducci was back on the streets of Buffalo.
Chapter 7
With a subtle shake, he tossed the snow and water from atop his shoulders. Rontego slipped catlike up towards his apartment. As he got the top of the stairs that led to his apartment, he paused. At first glance, nothing was awry. The light gave off a promise of visibility, but nothing more. Rafael’s eyes, however, had already adjusted to the gloom. Not many people were more adept at conducting business as usual in the shadows of the world than Rafael Rontego.
His door was closed, and the assassin inched another step forward. That’s when he noticed it.
In front of his door, sparkling off of the light in the entryway was a puddle. Not much of a puddle, more like a streak of water that followed the noticeable outline of something longer than it was wide. Perhaps a boot print.
Rafael Rontego had not lived for years through some of Buffalo’s most brutal Mafia wars by ignoring his instincts. In fact, it was that very instinct that helped him to survive, and at this moment, the sixth sense of the assassin screamed to be heard.
Silent as a whisper, Rafael took a dime out of his pocket. With a peculiar ease, and standing to the side of the door, he wedged the dime into the peek hole of his apartment door. He waited a few seconds for an internal response, from his room, for whatever awaited him to give itself away. Nothing happened for several long moments.
Rontego, still not satisfied, crossed to the other side of the door, careful to not show his feet underneath between the door and the floor boards. He then proceeded to place his left ear against the door to try and discern what, if anything was inside. He heard everything he waited for. A lone cough, a cough that, to the assassin, was the death toll to whatever awaited within.
As quiet as he slipped up the stairs, he descended. Once outside in the whiteness that matched his descent upon Buffalo, he didn’t hesitate.
Less than a dozen strides brought him around the corner where he pulled himself onto the dumpsters that were used to gather the surrounding residents’ filth. From there, his nimble fingers found a crease in
the brick frame of his building and he slipped up on to a six inch ledge that outlined the entire rectangular structure, its usual purpose was aesthetic. Tonight, however, that precipice served as foothold to the assassin.
A man who did not harness the perfect balance of Rontego might have fallen down to an uncomfortable cement impact on a day when the weather was perfect. But those men would not have survived the life of Rafael. With the ease of a hunting cat, the veteran hit man inched along the ledge until he brought himself to rest against the wall, right next to his window that overlooked the street below.
He looked around the indent that led to the glass of his window. The blinds were shut. Of course they would be shut. Whoever was inside would not want anything that went on to be viewed from the outside.
Rafael reached into his coat pocket while maintaining his grip with his free hand. Like a surgeon, he worked his black-hilt steel dagger, no more than six inches from hilt to tip, in between the frame and the window’s locking mechanism. He waited.
For many minutes, Rafael, indiscernible from the streets below thanks to the blizzard conditions around him, waited perched on that ledge. With one hand on the wall and the other paused between frame and lock, he strained his ears. Then it came. The cough that Rafael waited for, came.
The flu, it’s deadly.
Just as he heard the cough, Rafael popped the lock. It was quiet anyway; mixed with the cough it was almost inaudible. The assassin moved in front of the window to prevent as much of the breeze as he could from entering his apartment and giving away that the window was open. Silent as death, he slid it open.
Hoping that whoever was within had their eyes fixed to his front door, Rafael pushed back on the vertical blinds and slipped into the apartment. A slight rustle announced his arrival but he moved fast and crouched behind the lazy-boy chair to his left. He hid there for a moment so that he could gather himself and take stock of his surroundings.
From his vantage point he could see two men. With a start he realized one was leaning in his chair against the wall right next to the doorway. He was looking right at him. Rafael choked, but began reaching for his pistol. Halfway there, he paused. The man didn’t move. His chin rested against his chest.
Asleep, Rontego thought to himself.
The napping man was dressed for business, Rafael could tell. He wore a long trench coat and black suit pants that bulged on one hip. The man had a piece.
Rafael glanced at the other man. He was leaning with his back against the wall in the assassin’s kitchen. Similar attire and the unmistakable bulge on his right hip, he too was packing heat.
As Rafael was contemplating how he intended to get to either of his victims, a gust of wind swept into the room. He eased further behind the lazy-boy, cursing his bad luck. The man in the kitchen, however, felt the breeze. He walked over towards Rafael. The hit man readied himself for the inevitable confrontation. Every muscle in the killer tensed as the intruder neared his hiding place.
Just as Rontego felt that he would be discovered, the man walked past him, and stopped in front of the window. With a cough, the intruder reached up and pulled the window down. Rontego saw the man reach a hand towards his hip.
The gun.
His back was to Rafael Rontego. The assassin pulled his knife to his front and slipped, still crouching, behind the man. With one clean stroke he sliced.
The knife hit its mark. The intruder never felt it. The cut in his Achilles was clean, the nerves severed before they ever even registered the pain. All he knew was that he was falling.
He grasped upward to find a hold, and found nothing but air. He landed, but not hard. Something stopped him. A pair of arms broke his fall. He looked for the person that caught him. Instead, he saw the blood trailing from the back of his foot and his eye caught the glint of the knife’s blade in the fist of whoever caught him.
He looked up as he was laid down behind the mattress in front of the window. He tried to shout, but a gloved hand clamped firmly over his mouth. He couldn’t brace himself on his foot to push upward against the force of his assailant. He reached upward with both hands and tried to pry off the hand that kept him from screaming for help.
Rafael leaned over him. His hand was like an iron vice. His other hand came swiftly across the man’s throat. At first, there was nothing. The man looked at the assassin, a question forming on his lips, and then realized his doom.
A red line followed the slash that the assassin left in the man’s neckline. At first it looked like a scratch, but the pulse that came next showed the truth. Like the cut on his Achilles, it was clean. He tried to struggle. His hands lost their strength and rested powerless against Rontego’s as it clasped on his mouth.
The blood was pouring too free now. With each beat of his heart, more blood oozed from the perfect line across his Adam’s apple. With each beat of his heart he felt more of his life drain away. He died contemplating that simple irony.
Rontego looked over his shoulder as he held the man down as the last nervous impulses twitched through his legs and arms. When the movement subsided, Rontego eased upward, his dark silhouette outlined against the window frame.
His next victim was still asleep. He walked right in front of the man. His head tilted to the left as he contemplated the man in front of him. He paused as if undecided. Then, having made up his mind, Rontego leaned forward and placed a hand over the man’s mouth while digging the point of his knife into the man’s neck.
The man woke up, his eyes confused. As the sleep ran from him, his eyes opened wide and fright crept into them. He too realized his doom. Rontego leaned forward to within an inch of the man’s ear.
“Listen carefully. I am going to ask you questions and you’re gonna answer. All answers will be done with a simple shake of your head, yes or no. Unless you want to end up like your friend over there. Do you want to end up like him?” Rontego goaded his prisoner.
The man shook his head from side to side.
“Good,” Rontego purred. “Now, is there anyone else with you?”
The man paused. Rafael pushed the point deeper against his throat and a trickle of blood slipped out and traveled down his neck. He shook his head up and down so fast it almost rolled off his shoulders.
“Well, I don’t need you then, do I?” Rafael smiled at the man.
Nothing pleased him more than playing with his victim before ending him. The man began to protest, but again Rafael’s hand muffled any sound.
“Now, that’s not nice! I wasn’t gonna hurt you. But alas, you broke the rules my dear friend. And around here, when you break the house rules....”
With that the hit man leaned forward and with one hand still pressed over the man’s mouth, he pushed in with the other and plunged the knife deeper into the man’s throat.
He smirked with satisfaction as he felt his blade slide against the top vertebrae of the victim’s spinal column and as he retracted the blade, felt the pull as he snapped the final wavelengths that sent all commands to the brain’s epicenter. This one didn’t twitch. The life simply, drifted, away.
Both kills took no more than several minutes. There was one place the remaining intruder could be. His suspicions were confirmed when he heard the flush of his toilet.
So, the bastards found the secret entryway to his porcelain throne room. Not only did they find his bathroom, the fuckers were desecrating it. What kind of person would break into his place, and then, take it upon himself to SHIT in it?
Rontego felt the heat rise to his face.
Disrespect for disrespect.
He slipped into his closet and waited outside for the guy in the john to walk out. He rested his back against the wall to the side of the bathroom and melted into the shadows. He waited as he heard the man turn on the faucet to wash his hands. He waited as the man dried them. Then he waited as the man opened the door and walked past him. He walked past the assassin and paused in the entryway to the closet. There in front of him he saw both of his downed partner
s.
“Aw...Fuck,” the words passed out of the man’s mouth just a moment before the crush of something hard against the back of his skull throwing him into unconsciousness.
Rafael knew the man must have thought death had come for him. When he awoke, he would wish it had.
The assassin rolled the man over and bound his feet and wrists with plastic binds that would tighten but never release unless cut. He then scooped the man up and slung him over his shoulder. He wasn’t that heavy. He probably weighed less than the assassin.
He plopped the man down on the bed and went over to the Lazy-Boy. He sat on the arm of his chair and glanced at the face of the man he just knocked out. The man had an angular chin and cheekbones that jutted out from the rest of his face, giving him a permanent expression that looked as if his jaw were perpetually clenched. Rontego noticed a disturbing scar that ran from his left eye downward to the middle of his cheek.
More disturbing than the scar however, was the fact that Rafael Rontego knew this man. This man was Sonne Pieri, the son of Sal Pieri. He was a small time crew member who was allowed to scrape together a living because Joey Pieri, his uncle, peacefully abdicated from the Buffalo Mafia’s top spot. The only thing that happened to him was the scar left on his face, a scar to remind him of his place.
More disturbing to Rontego was that this guy had been allowed to operate with the exclusive supervision of one man. That one man was Joe Falzone, the underboss for Don Ciancetta.
*
His black slacks and his jacket blended into the night. The few distinguishable features that stood out on Victor Garducci were his necklace and other gold paraphernalia. They glinted off the street lamps, no matter how dim, as he walked with purpose towards Wizeguyz Billiards. This was the local meeting place of Joey Falzone and his crew.
For Nothing Page 5