For Nothing

by Nicholas Denmon

  Rontego stared at the collection of crap and shook his head. He’d always been told it was rude to not bring a gift when visiting a friend. He had no clue whether or not the Cleaner would be there yet, but Rafael thought a small token of his appreciation is what normal people might do.

  He was about to leave, deciding that the place had nothing to offer, when he glanced at the checkout counter and saw a stack of lighters and magnets. The magnets were ordinary enough, one said “I love Buffalo”, and another had a picture of Niagara Falls on it. But what caught the assassin’s eye was a lighter in the shape of a gun. It was about the size of derringer but it looked real enough.

  Perfect.

  He pulled out ten dollars and told the clerk to keep the change.

  *

  Ryan Slate took a drag on a thin cigarette and the pull caused the ember to flare in the encroaching dusk as nightfall began its hurried wintry descent. The two of them huddled against the wall outside of the station and Ryan was laughing, which caused smoke to puff out of his nose and mouth in tiny clouds of smoke and steam. Again, his chuckle was a bit infectious, and Alex allowed himself a smile.

  Ryan’s mirth defied the seriousness of the situation they just, somehow, emerged from unscathed. Slate shook his head, his eye twinkling in either amusement or amazement, Vaughn couldn’t tell.

  “I have no clue what just happened in there.” Slate breathed in on his cigarette and his usually excitable voice was steady, as if he were viewing things through a different prism.

  Truth be told, Alex certainly was.

  Standard procedure dictated that Alex Vaughn should have handed his badge and gun to the chief until such time as an investigation as to his role could be concluded. At first, everything seemed to be going in that direction. While Alex told the story of the last few days, beginning with Jack’s death and ending with the deaths of two dirty cops in an urban safe house, the chief’s face just got redder and redder. By the end, his garnet colored face outshone the brass name plate that said “Wilcox” on his desk.

  A moment of silence followed that left Alex sitting back in the chair, facing the chief’s desk, his face muscles twitching as he braced for the eruption. Still, the silence continued, and all the while the chief’s face held its garnet hue. Alex wished the man would just speak, if only to relieve the pressure from his head and so that Vaughn wouldn’t get shafted for a cleanup detail when it exploded.

  When Chief Wilcox did speak, Alex was forced down into his seat by the sheer volume of the voice flying at his face. He glanced over at Ryan Slate, who was pressed back into a corner of the room behind him. There was no help coming from that direction, though. Ryan just looked on with wide eyes.

  Alex didn’t even know what the chief was yelling at him. All he heard were snippets of words that had larger meaning. Words like “protocol” and “chain of command” slapped Alex across the face and would have left a sting if he were not so hypnotized by eyes bulging out of their sockets, protruding from a mass of unorganized flesh. Teeth and eyes were amplified by a pure flesh background, as the vein-addled forehead of the chief had no end. With no hair to interrupt the flow of his face, Vaughn could see the vein from Chief Wilcox’s jaw bone run up and along the side of his face and disappear somewhere beyond the imaginary hair line.

  The tirade continued for several minutes and was only interrupted by several downcast glances that teamed with worry and concern, shot Alex’s way by the Chief.

  In those moments, he would shake his head and mutter, “What am I to do? It’s a disappointment really. A disappointment.”

  Those words hurt Alex worse. The Irish temper that flared out from the Midwestern accented Englishman raised in an Irish home didn’t bother Alex as much as disappointing the man who had as many different nationalities in his lineage as an Olympics opening ceremonies.

  As tough as he was, the man was always someone Alex considered to be fair. That was why Alex wasn’t going to make Wilcox ask for his badge and gun. He knew it would kill the old man to have to ask for them, but he would have to. So Vaughn took his gun and badge and laid them on the desk, halting the chief’s berating.

  Silence.

  The chief looked Alex in the eye and put a hand over the gun and badge, his hand trembling with the adrenaline still coursing through his veins.

  Then the door to the office swung open. The chief glanced up, his eyes snapping with a dangerous flare. A slight man shuffled in. His shoulders were rounded and a pair of glasses hung from the tip of long nose. He held a file that he was bent over even as he walked, allowing those in the room a good look at the handful of hairs that adorned the crown of his head. Despite the sparse, chaotic arrangement of his hair, he found a way to part them and comb the strands over from one side of his head to the other. A long, gnarled finger was planted into the book and moved in unison with the gentleman’s eyes as they scanned the file.

  William Spence, Billy, shuffled in and momentarily dislodged his eyes from the file in his grasp and saw the Chief’s hand resting on Alex Vaughn’s badge and gun. He snorted and looked back at the file resting opened in the palm of one hand. He raised the other and waved off the Chief.

  “That isn’t necessary. No, not at all.”

  The Chief, stood statuesque and breathed, “Bill, what are you talking about?”

  “Sir, we have been conducting an, um, well, an audit on Elliot Craft for the better part of three years. Detective Vaughn’s assessments are correct and consistent with our investigation.”

  Wilcox closed his eyes and held them shut for an extended moment. A normal color began to ease itself onto his face, “Why was I not told about this investigation?”

  Billy peered up from his file and looked at the Chief from just above his spectacles. “Internal Affairs business, Chief Wilcox. Surely you understand that we are very careful with who knows what. At any rate, Detective Vaughn, who no doubt deserves a reprimand, probably shouldn’t be forced into resignation. Wouldn’t you agree Mr. Wilcox?”

  The Chief let go of the badge and scratched the back of his head. He let out a deep sigh, and grabbed the gun and badge and started sliding it towards his end of the desk.

  “Perhaps it would still be prudent to have an inquiry.”

  Alex was unsure what was going on and he looked around the room searching for some sort of answer. He looked first at the Chief with his face that was still deep pink, and then looked at Ryan who was still sitting it all out in the corner of the room. Finally, he turned his head and looked at William Spence. The I.A. officer peered back at Alex Vaughn and Alex could see his jaw clench. Something was resolved in Billy’s mind.

  William Spence slammed the folder shut and straightened his hunched shoulders as much as his bent frame would allow. He took one hand and pushed his glasses more secure onto his face and lifted his chin so that he was looking at Chief Wilcox square in the eye.

  “How?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Chief Wilcox, how is it prudent? What I mean by this is how is it prudent to take the only man who knows the location of a known cop killer off of the case? The only man who is a witness to crimes committed by officers of this very department?”

  The Chief placed both hands on the dark mahogany desk separating him from the Internal Affairs officer.

  “I’m not sure I follow you. The protocol is…”

  William Spence took two steps forward and placed the file on the desk. Interrupting, he waved his hand yet again.

  “Bah. I’m saying that you are the Chief of Police. How do you think it will look to the politicians? How do you think it will look to the voting public? The politicians answer to the public. You answer to the politicians. If you take a detective who has witnessed corruption, who has the location of a cop killer due to his investigation, no matter how unorthodox, and sit him on the sidelines….” Spence lifted his glasses and pinched his nose between his thumb and forefinger. “Well, naturally, the question will come up.”

  �
�What question is that?” Wilcox’s face was gaining a red hue again. His voice trembled but whether or not it was from fear or agitation, Vaughn had a hard time telling.

  “What question? Well, who are you protecting, of course? Yourself? For political reasons or for criminal reasons? The corrupt officers? To what end? What dirt do they have on you?”

  Wilcox glared at Spence and his fists curled into balls on the desk. Alex could see the pressure building up there as knuckles turned white. Evidently, William Spence saw it as well and attempted to diffuse the Chief’s mounting anger. He did another casual toss of his wrist and picked up his file.

  “However ridiculous the questions, they will be asked.”

  The Chief sat down. The color drained from his face and he glanced down at the gun and badge. He pushed them across the table toward Alex Vaughn.

  Alex pulled his tattered jacket around to stave off the cold that threatened to seep through the folds. He rubbed his hands together generating friction in order to create some semblance of heat.

  Ryan was still grinning and he muttered something about “lucky bastard”, as he rubbed out his cigarette out on the brick wall of the station.

  Alex smiled at Slate’s assessment but doubted the truth of the words. If luck was having a buddy who was dead, a wife who couldn’t bring herself to love him anymore, a daughter he only just knew, and a body so battered that every ounce of his fiber ached; well then yeah, Alex felt lucky.

  Alex felt his gun dig into his hip as he leaned against the wall. He couldn’t believe he so casually offered up his gun and shield. As he watched the back and forth between Wilcox and Spencer, the whole thing struck him as out of place. It was as if he was watching a movie about someone else’s life. But the whole time, he looked at the shield. There was a time that he would have cut off the fingers of anyone that tried to take that badge from him. It was a thing of honor and symbolic of a tradition of service that extended far beyond the life and times of Alex Vaughn. But now, and in Wilcox’s office, it just didn’t seem to shine as bright as it once did.

  “So not only are you not fired, but now you have a date with the Marshals and the Mounties to go and grab up Rafael Rontego? Man, this bust will be huge. We get him, ain’t nobody safe in organized crime.” Ryan Slates eyes shone with a hint of admiration.

  Most people would have basked in it, but Alex turned his head and looked out into the cold night sky.

  Ryan caught the shift and after studying Alex’s face for a moment asked, “What? And don’t say nothing ‘cause it is definitely something.”

  Vaughn watched his breath run away; it dissipated in to the world around him. It was so important, air. For a moment, it was everything, quite literally, that one needed to survive. But it didn’t matter how much you needed it. Eventually, your body would let it go.

  “You know I don’t want to go. I think I would much rather just go to Charlotte’s.”

  They were probably having dinner right now. She used to make the best lasagna and this garlic bread that would just melt in your mouth. Maybe she was under her quilt at this very moment, the one her grandmother knitted for her as a child.

  “So what are you going to do?”

  Alex hung his head and watched the ground between his feet. Without saying a word he started towards the parking lot.

  Ryan Slate called after him, “Alex! Alex what are you going to do?”

  Without breaking stride Alex Vaughn continued forward. “Do what I always do. I’m going to finish it.”

  Chapter 32

  Rafael Rontego took a look around at the platform as he grabbed the rail that guided him into the belly of the train. The steel on his hand felt cold and slick. He looked at the sleepy train station and felt a wrenching in his heart as he gazed at the few people shuffling around, the wooden benches, and a blue sign with white lettering that said, “Welcome to Buffalo, New York.”

  He studied everything he saw in that moment and he realized it might be his last look at the place he called home for so very long. He felt the weight of the place bearing down on him so hard that he thought the ceiling would collapse on him, and he took a step backward and into the train. The weight followed him as he walked along the aisle and found his seat. He was pushing his bag under the chair in front of him, and it felt like someone was standing on his shoulders trying to push him into the fabric of the cloth seat.

  A porter walked up to Rafael as he struggled to shove the bulky bag under the seat in front of him. He was wearing one of those ridiculous hats that had a white strip around the perimeter and carried a dark navy blue on the rest of it. The hat hung back on the porter’s head and seemed that it would fall off at any moment. He was a young fellow, maybe just over eighteen.

  “Can I help you secure your bag sir? I can put it in the overhead compartment.”

  Rafael leaned back in his seat without looking up at the porter and kicked the bag under the seat in front of him. Still leaning back in his seat, he pulled the brim of his fedora down over his eyes, dismissing the young man. He would have said something, tried to make nice, but the infernal weight threatened to swallow him whole. He couldn’t breathe, let alone speak. He sat there, hiding under his hat, as the train whistle blew, announcing departure.

  The piercing sound didn’t even register as the assassin was exercising every bit of control to keep from hyperventilating. He hadn’t expected this. The gears on the train ground and he felt it jerk forward. As it picked up speed, the pressure seemed to lift off of the assassin. His labored breathing became more regular. He found a measure of control in himself once more.

  Sitting up in his chair, he glanced out the window as snow covered buildings shifted to mounds of white dust and evergreens, until finally, the train was racing past small frozen ponds and scattered cloisters of trees that seemed to have grown snow in absence of leaves.

  All the while, Rafael Rontego continued on his path to normalcy. The weight seemed to fly from his shoulders with each mile left behind him. He took off his hat and ran his fingers through his hair slicking it back. A tiny smile curled out of Rafael’s lips and they trembled with the unfamiliar movement.

  *

  The Pope and Don Ciancetta sat in The Pope’s sedan outside of a house in a Hamburg suburb. Nuncio was manning the front seat, while the two power brokers sat in the rear. The lights to the sedan were off but the car remained on so that the heat could keep the biting cold at bay.

  The tidy rows of houses looked like something out of a snow globe or a Norman Rockwell painting. The nice brick pathways were all equal in distance apart and shoveled of snow. Smoke drifted upward through chimneys that gave off the fresh scent of burnt cedar. Snow fell in swirls in the black sky and blotted what was left of the starry night from view.

  They sat several houses down from a foreclosed home that sprouted a worn and battered “For Sale” sign in the yard. Snow was piled half a foot on the wooden crossbeam that held the sign above the ground. The car was parked along the gutter to another foreclosed home so as to not draw attention to the vehicle in front of an occupied home.

  Even though the heat was sufficient to keep them warm, Don Ciancetta kept rubbing his gloved hands together. His eyes darted back and forth, but the fear that was there earlier seemed to be replaced with calculating eyes that judged the wind in equal measure with the innocuous movements of suburban life.

  The Pope opened his mouth as if to say something reassuring, but was interrupted by the glare of headlights slicing through the snow up ahead. The car pulled against the curb opposite the mobsters, in front of the foreclosed home down the way. The lights went out and the area fell back into gloom, as a solitary streetlight hung off in the distance casted an ominous pall over the new vehicle as several silhouettes emerged from the car. One held open the door for the other. When he emerged, the shadowy figure that held the door open draped a coat over his shoulders. Two more men sat in the car, the driver and another larger fellow. The two shadows shuffled across the y
ard walking up the pathway of the house, then disappeared inside, while the other two remained inside the car.

  The Pope watched it all and glanced over toward Don Ciancetta.

  “You ready?”

  Ciancetta gave his friend a tight grin and nodded.

  The Pope tapped Nuncio on the shoulder and leaned forward in his seat, his heart beat echoing in his ears as the adrenaline flew through his veins.

  “Alright, let’s do this.”

  Chapter 33

  Alex Vaughn turned up the heat in the Crown Victoria that Chief Wilcox issued him for his trip across international borders. The unmarked squad car was a luxury vehicle compared to Vaughn’s Ford Taurus. The fact that it wasn’t rusted out and had steady heat set it apart, but Alex wasn’t enjoying the ride.

  Vaughn’s thoughts were directed inward as boarded up, ramshackle industrial complexes passed by his window and dilapidated buildings watched his progression towards the Peace Bridge which joined Canada with the United States.

  On the other side, there was a U.S. Marshal who would oversee the American part of the arrest and a few Canadian officers who would do the direct takedown. Alex was still unsure what his role in the event would be, but positive identification on a ghost like Rafael was scarce. The only one who was still alive who saw a picture of him, no matter how grainy, was Alex Vaughn.

  Alex stared at the road in front of him. Water traveled past him on either side as he drove up and onto the Peace Bridge. The Niagara River was a murky grey and brown this time of year; there were stretches of the river that were iced over. Lake Erie pressed her frozen lips against the river and its effects trailed outward along the shoreline.

  Ryan was right. This bust had the potential to be a game changer. If this guy was a murderer for organized crime leadership, his testimony could blow the lid off of everything. But testimony meant a deal. A deal meant this guy would get to go on living.