Charlotte, his wife.
She walked up next to him and gazed at the scene playing off of the sea, taking it all in.
Despite the strokes of God‘s paintbrush laid out before him, Alex’s gaze was immediately drawn down to that which she carried. He parted the pink cotton blanket and saw her laying there.
Precious Ella.
Her eyes were closed, squeezing out the bright light allowed in by this intruder. Vaughn didn’t care; he wanted to gaze on her. Her soft cheeks reflected the pink of the blanket and her nose crunched up in dismay as his baby girl thought about crying.
Alex put his finger against her tiny palm. Her tiny fingers clenched shut on his index finger barely able to grasp this smallest part of the giant.
Her giant, Alex reminded himself.
Charlotte smiled as she looked over at father and daughter. But as she watched him marvel, her smile faded and her eyes slowed, and then all together stopped their dance.
“You’re going to miss so much,” she said in a whisper.
Alex took the bite of the remark square on his heart but he dared not show the breadth of the damage caused by her words.
Instead, he fumbled out a reply, half true, half in token response, “I wish I weren’t going.”
Charlotte’s eyes lit up at the opportunity of the statement. “Then don’t go,” she said. “You don’t have to go, just tell them your situation has changed. Look, you have a baby daughter now!”
As if to emphasize the point she held Ella up in her arms and made a bouncing motion that tore at every string of Alex’s heart.
So, just for the night, just to make Charlotte smile, he lied.
“Ok, love. I’ll stay.”
He looked deep into her eyes. She searched his face, hesitant to accept his words. The clouds descended into darkness behind her. Alex’s heart began to race. The darkness consumed them both and a sudden flash of lightning illuminated Charlotte and Ella’s silhouettes.
“I’m so glad you’re staying Alex,” she whispered. His name echoed in the darkness. “Alex.”
Alex.
“Wake up Alex!”
Alex tried to open his eyes. He was lying on the left side of his face and it was numb. The lack of feeling was in stark contrast to the warmth spreading across his right eye, along the jaw line and toward his neck. Alex opened his eyes and let out a moan. He discovered the source of the warmth on his face as his hand wiped across his forehead revealing the all too familiar sight of his own blood.
*
There was a moment where everything in the Universe paused. Rafael took everything in. Twin pistols at the ready he scanned the room, taking advantage of Father Time’s courtesy. Several tough-looking kids were playing a game of cards near the center of the room.
Probably fresh meat, Rafael thought.
Past the kids, in the back of the room, sitting at a booth were the patrons Rafael came to see. Aldo, frail and old as ever, was sitting across from the ox of a man that Rafael once called ‘mentor.’ Muro locked eyes with Rafael for a moment.
Rontego never flinched; instead he drew a slow steady breath through his Sobranie. The black paper flared and came to a crackling burn that told the assassin Time was again on track. He reached into his pocket as he drew in the smoke and pulled the pawn from his pocket. In one swift motion he threw it in the air to Muro. Muro looked like he was going to let it hit him square in the face, when he snapped a hand up and caught the pawn in his fist.
Pandemonium.
Three of the youngsters at the table stood up, pushing back from the wooden slab. The fourth one, wearing a black beanie and sporting an ill-advised mustache, sat still. His eyes widened like saucers and he started to bend to his side. Rontego didn’t have time to worry about reacting to what these kids might do.
Instead, he took two steps towards the group and then sidestepped into a spin, his coat twirled behind him. It caught two bullets from the quickest of the kids.
Rafael’s eyes centered on the gangbanger closest to him. This one liked to eat. Twice the size of the assassin, he was fumbling for his gun, lodged in his waist band.
Kids, scoffed Rontego.
When were they going to learn that packing heat wasn’t for fashion? Guns weren’t accessories like their bling.
Rontego took two more steps toward the large youth and the juvenile gave up on his search for his weapon. He raised his fists and stepped toward the assassin. The goal was easy to discern. He hoped to squash Rontego’s head with his meaty fists.
Not today, however.
Rafael took a pivot step into his adversary and raised the side of his pistol straight into the teeth of his charging assailant. A cloud of blood and teeth puffed into the air and the youth’s fist forgot to find its target. His hands went to his face and covered what was left of his maw.
Eat this, fatty, Rontego quipped to himself.
A whistling sound sped past Rontego’s ear and was followed a split second later by the bang of the pistol that sent the bullet close to Rafael’s head. On instinct, the assassin crouched behind the writhing form of the large youth hunched over in pain. He needed some cover so he grabbed the largest thing in his area.
Coming out of his crouch, Rafael Rontego swung his pistol upwards against the exposed face of his young sparring partner, lifting him upright with a scream. Rontego slid behind his injured enemy and brought one of his pistols to rest against the young man’s head while bringing his other cannon to bear in the direction of the youth who shot up his nice coat.
When things are moving fast, one had only to slow the situation down, thought Rafael Rontego.
He took stock of the situation. Aldo was still sitting in the booth smoking a cigarette, but Muro was gone and the swinging doors of the kitchen advertised his escape route of choice.
There were more pressing issues though.
Besides the kid hiding behind the facial hair who had not left his chair, the other youngsters were on the move. They each drew their pistols and were moving out, one on either side of Rontego, away from the table at the center of the room. They were trying to flank the assassin.
Only one thing to do.
Rontego maneuvered his hefty and whimpering shelter toward the youth on the left exposing himself to the youth on his right. But with his right pistol placed against the back of the head of his cover, he leveled his other pistol at his unsure and inexperienced adversary to his right. The bullet shattered his knee.
The youth hit the deck like fly on a car window, his weapon falling from his grasp and sliding across the slick bar room floor. Simultaneously, the assassin kicked into the back of the fat youth’s legs, dropping him to the floor and leaving his own body exposed.
The enemy on the assassin’s left was quicker than the other youth. Several bullets left his gun, none of which found their mark.
The steady assassin took his time, took aim, and took off the youth’s right shoulder blade, sending blood and pieces of clavicle against the wall behind the young man.
The man wailed as his fingers lost their strength and dropped his gun. He groaned as his legs failed him and dropped him to the floor, incapacitated. Rontego took a second to take out both of Falzone’s soldiers.
He saw a movement out of the corner of his left eye.
The hairy bastard at the table, he realized.
Rontego swirled around pulling both pistols parallel to each other in front of his chest.
The youth discovering puberty had a butterfly knife with the blade pinched between his fingers, arm cocked back to throw. Rontego pulled the hammer of his pistols back generating the unmistakable warning click. The agonizing groans of the wounded continued behind him. The boy pulled up. When a rattlesnake hisses, you take notice.
“You a hero, boy?” Rontego hissed. “Please, be a hero.”
The youth hesitated for a moment and then slammed his knife into the table in front of him. Arms up, he backed away.
Apparently, facial hair doesn’t
make a man, thought the assassin.
Rontego walked to the motionless Aldo. He hadn’t moved except for the increasing ash of his cigarette. “Hello Rafael,” the taut and weathered lips cracked. “Took you longer than I thought.”
Chapter 15
Alex Vaughn was in a dimly lit room. A bed, a nightstand, a dresser, bad carpeting; a hotel room. It was nondescript, but Alex knew this place. It was a safe house used by the undercover units. Vaughn spent many nights here during that first year of narcotics duty.
He sat on the edge of the bed trying to shake the cobwebs out of his consciousness. Ryan Slate came out of the bathroom area and handed Alex a bag of ice.
“Sorry to startle you Alex, but the masks were necessary. None of us feel like getting made.”
Alex pressed the ice to his throbbing head. He was still confused as to what was going on, but all things considered, he was happy it was his side who grabbed him out of the street. But why had they pulled him? Ricky Vincenzio or Ryan Slate rather, promised not to let it leak.
“Who are those guys,” he asked, motioning to the other three men huddled and talking in whispers on the far side of the room.
One of the men, seeing that Alex was asking about them, walked over and extended a hand. Alex accepted the handshake. This was all way too confusing.
“They call me Elliot here.”
“Nice to meet you Elliot.”
Vaughn studied Elliot, his long sideburns and disheveled dark hair looked familiar to Alex. He knew he had seen this man before, but where, he couldn’t tell. It wouldn’t be uncommon in a city as large as Buffalo to come across another officer and not be acquainted. That was even more probable if they were in different divisions.
“Actually, Alex, Elliot isn’t my real name. None of us here use our real names.”
Alex’s radar was going off. What was he into here?
“Well, I don’t talk to people who know my name but won’t give me theirs.” Alex stood up to leave but Slate grabbed his arm.
“Alex, there is a reason, just hear Elliot out.”
Vaughn sat back down on the edge of the bed, as Elliot gave Ryan a glance and took a deep breath.
“First, let me introduce you to the other two. Granted, these are their operating names. This one is J.P. ‘Hambone.’”
The larger of the two men, a real brute of a man with an obvious dislike of shaving tossed a wave Alex’s way but remained where he was, posted up near the blinds with a view of the parking lot. This was a guy on edge. Judging by his corded frame and scarred left eye he was also a real bruiser. Alex recalled having met this guy several times throughout his career. He wasn’t a bad sort, at least as far as Alex could tell. He used his sidearm before, and that was a bonus in the type of operation that Vaughn currently was undertaking.
“And this squirrely bastard is ‘Hi- Def’; we call him that because he runs all the surveillance for our little unit. You see we’re all badges in here.”
Hi-Def was as skinny as Hambone was large. Although he was small, he was not nerdy looking. He was not decked out in glasses and he looked wirier than he did wimpy. There was a tuft of unkempt blonde hair perched atop his head. His ears came out in a prominent fashion. Even if they were not larger than average, juxtaposed as they were against his beady eyes, they loomed large.
He was also carrying various high end electronics. He wore a wireless earpiece for his cell phone and had a computer opened up on the hotel table. Various windows were open and music was humming from the speakers. It looked like something was uploading or downloading at the same time.
Alex leaned forward to get a better look out of curiosity, but Hi-Def locked the screen when he noticed Vaughn trying to sneak a peek.
“Then why all the secrecy with names, and why am I not in cuffs? You guys gotta know I was not authorized to reestablish my cover.”
Alex’s curiosity was piqued at this development. It was also nice to deflect Hi-Def’s slight glare with a new line of thought.
“Jack had more friends than just you,” Hambone made a noise from the window.
Elliot pursed his lips in a half grimace, a bit of his pain at the mention of Jack’s name flashed through.
“We all want to find whoever took Jack out. “
Alex looked around the room at these new friends of his. Some things were not adding up. Ricky Slate was fidgeting in the corner, and seemed lost in his own thoughts.
He was able to discern the need for fake names, after all, no one knew who the rat was that was getting cops killed. But some things needed immediate answering.
“Ok, if we are all here to get the guy that took down my best friend, why the hell did you grab me off the street? If anyone saw that, then I might as well walk away or shoot myself right now because going back under might be seriously fucked.”
At that point, Hi-Def came over and pulled out a tiny digital recorder. “Because if we didn’t keep an eye on you through this then you might have walked right into this mess,” he said.
He could hear chairs in a room sliding around, followed by a shriek of pain and then the unmistakable retort of gunfire blasting out of the speakers. A voice whispered through the ensuing silence.
“You a hero, boy? Please, be a hero.” A few moments later, footsteps were followed by another voice, older. “Hello Rafael. Took you longer than I thought.”
Then there was static and finally silence again.
“Who is Rafael?” Alex had not heard of him.
“A ghost,” Elliot interjected. “Everybody knows of him, but nobody knows him. We were closing in on getting a visual of him thanks to some work Ricky has done infiltrating Ciancetta’s crew. Ricky, why don’t you fill Alex in?”
Elliot sat down and began fidgeting with a small Zippo lighter. He would flick it, igniting a small flame and extinguish it with a flick of his wrist causing the lid to clamp shut around the heat.
Ricky shook off whatever was bothering him and flashed a mischievous grin. He started in on the conversation, as if on cue, with the eager hand waves that fit in with his Long Island accent.
“I don’t know if it was something you said to your guys, Alex or if it’s this war going on, but either way Joey Ciancetta has been opening up to me lately. He isn’t that bad of a guy either, he just gets swept up into what his pops does. Anyway, we are over at his Dad’s place, Rumors, and we’re shooting a little pool. I can kick his ass at pool, but I always let him win. Fucking makes me sick to do that, I don’t know why. Whatever. So he says to me that things are getting nuts. Apparently this war is heating up. He tells me this and that and says something about how a lot of hitters for Don Ciancetta are getting their tongues handed to them, and are disappearing on boating trips and showing up in meat lockers, if you catch my drift. Jesus, one guy all they found was an ear!”
Alex brought a hand up to his ear as Ricky went on.
“But there is this one old school gangster who is still kicking. He not only avoided a hit on him, but took out not one, not two, but three of the hitters in his own apartment. This guy is none other than our guy.”
“Rafael,” Alex interrupted.
Hambone let out a low whistle. “Every time I hear it, I still don’t believe it.”
Ricky tossed them both a look and then continued. “So, anyway, this guy has been sent, solo, to go and deliver a message right into the den of Joe Falzone’s crew at Wizeguyz. Once I heard that, I got on the horn with Elliot here, and we got the team together. Only thing was, we were too late and we saw you right outside of that place. That’s when Elliot decided to make a move to grab you out of there. We didn’t know how to get to you without exposing ourselves and then fortunately, you walked right over to us.”
“That was because I thought I recognized the van, I just couldn’t place it.”
Alex was still a little unclear about why the van looked so familiar. It must be like every other surveillance van he has ever seen, unmarked and ugly.
Hi-Def hit a button o
n his computer, open again on the crude synthetic wood table the hotel provided. Another button later and the computer began to slide a photograph out of a side compartment. He handed a grainy photograph to Alex Vaughn.
“This is the one photograph anyone has been able to get of this guy.”
Alex studied the color picture. It was grainy and the face was obscured by a fedora.
Useless, he thought. “Christ, you might have well shot it in black and white. How is it that this day and age we can’t take a real picture of a known gangster?” Alex looked up from the photograph; he noticed a slight hint of offence creeping up on Hi-Def. “I mean, at least we have this one, but what’s the story?”
“The problem is that this guy just crept up onto our radar. Frankly, it is a bit of an embarrassment. All of the ‘family trees’ constructed of these guys, and this guy never came up. Not once. That means two things. One, he is smart and two, he is smart. This guy has been right under our noses for over two decades.”
Elliot was in awe and frustrated at the same time. It always seemed like guys in this line of work were torn between admiring the fantasy and clinging to their morality.
“What does any of this have to do with who killed Jack,” Alex wondered out loud.
Elliot did that thing where he pressed his lips together again.
“Nothing. Maybe everything. From what Ricky told us, this guy Rafael is known by everyone. They call him “The Ghost” or “Il Fantasma” in Italian.”
“So why are you telling me all of this?”
Vaughn was not against being part of a helping hand to this unit but he did not want to be bound to them either. After all, he was out for blood. He wanted to find the guy that killed Jack, and strike him down with the hand of justice. As he thought, he patted his pistol tucked in the small of his back.
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