by Dani Amore
Amanda got over her surprise quickly enough, and found the humor in the situation. Tommy fucking Abrocci, fugitive from the FBI, running from one of the most feared Mob bosses in the country, just ambles into a hotel in Ann Arbor—the Prescott no less—Amanda saw on the printout she’d been handed, and starts running a tab. She chuckled at the idea. It was one of the best parts of her job. Wiping the smug expressions off of criminal’s faces. She imagined Tommy was wearing a shit-eating grin a mile wide right now. God, it was going to be fun and satisfying to throw his fat ass into the can.
No wonder the prison system was packed to the gills. Most of these guys were incredibly stupid.
Amanda realized she had to get a noose around Abrocci fast. Even though it looked like he was settling in for the night at the Prescott, she wasn’t about to take any chances. It was time to slap this Italian sausage on the fryer.
She was just picking up the phone when Vawter walked in. In his hand was a matching copy of the printout on her desk. She groaned inwardly. Here it comes.
“Fortuitous,” he said.
“Let’s hope so,” she said.
“It’d be a great way to ring in your promotion- bring down Vincenzo Romano, the elder statesman of the Detroit mafia.” His grin was one hundred percent synthetic, as unnatural as a tattoo.
“Something I can help you with, sir?” Rierdon asked, her best efforts to keep the sarcasm from her voice falling well short of their mark.
“You lost Abrocci once, don’t lose him again.”
“Care to detail how exactly I lost him the first time? He bolted, but not while under surveillance.”
“Why not?’
“Sir?”
“Why wasn’t he under surveillance?”
“Put surveillance on a snitch? Doesn’t that defeat the purpose?”
“It’s been done before.”
“Purposely?” The sarcasm was out in full force now. She couldn’t help it. This guy was left over from the old boy system of the sixties and seventies. Like grout on bathroom tile that just couldn’t be removed no matter how much they scrubbed the public image of the Bureau. You just have to rip the tile out at this point.
“Why didn’t you bring him in sooner?” he asked.
“We were about to.”
“But...?” he said.
“But nothing. He was wrapping things up. He had the final set of tapes he’d made and was ready to turn them over. We were supposed to meet and he never showed. The Romano compound looked like a wasp’s nest tipped upside down.”
Vawter shook his head. “What’d he do?”
“No way of knowing until we bring him in.”
Vawter nodded. “Good luck, Amanda,” he said. “A lot’s riding on this.”
“I’ll try to remember that, sir,” she said, but he had already slammed the door shut.
“Screw you, too,” she said.
16.
She drove the Buick because she couldn’t stand the way the others drove. Amanda was a fast, aggressive driver, ignoring the first rule of driver’s safety: never let your emotions affect your driving.
In the front passenger seat was Rupert, who continually leaned his head back as Amanda yelled at traffic on his side of the car, as they usually sped by. Her hot breath licked his face as she screamed obscenities out the window.
Macaleer and Daniels sat in the back seat, quiet as church mice.
“My grandmother died ten years ago,” Amanda said. “The day of the funeral, on the way to the cemetery, we drove about five miles an hour. At the time I thought it was wonderfully appropriate seeing as how that’s how fast Grandma Dorothy drove when she was alive.”
The three junior agents were intently studying traffic. Trying not to bring the brunt of Rierdon’s anger upon them. “I just don’t get it,” she said. “How stupid do you have to be to still not understand the difference between the slow lane and the fast lane? How many stand-up comedians have worn out that whole line of comedy? For years! Jesus Christ!
Vincenzo Romano is getting away with God knows what while I’m sitting out here on I-275 with a bunch of motherfucking assholes who shouldn’t even be allowed to get behind the wheel. They’re not qualified to drive the fucking zamboni at a Red Wings game.”
Amanda Rierdon looked at the line of cars in front of her. They represented a very small portion of the obstacles that were placed before her every day. It was just like the Bureau. You had the incompetent and the written-offs in the slow lane, mixed in with the young and inexperienced. In the center lane, you had the up-and-comers who still had a ways to go, and you had the has-beens who were on their way down.
And then you had the fast lane. Where the superstars traveled, disobeying ordinary rules and regulations, comrades on the way to the top.
Amanda’s lane.
“How did we track him down?” Rupert asked. He asked tentatively. Amanda hated reticence in a man. It was so weak.
“Excuse me,” Amanda said. “Did you say ‘we’?”
Rupert’s retort was to turn and look out the window.
A car cut in front of them. Amanda blasted the horn then swerved around him and blasted the horn again.
“Okay, here’s the deal,” Amanda said, putting her hand back on the steering wheel. “He’s at the Prescott, as you all know. Some uniforms are meeting us there, strictly as backup. You’ve all had a chance to go over the logistics, the layout of the rooms and hallways. We go in hard, we go in fast. Macaleer, I want you covering the back. Daniels, you watch the front. Rupert and I will take him in his room.”
Suddenly, she slammed on the brakes, nearly rear-ending the car in front of them.
Amanda looked at the digital clock on the dashboard, then at Macaleer. “That is, if we can get to Ann Arbor before Abrocci retires to goddamn Florida.”
17.
Vincenzo Romano stood stark naked in the middle of his bathroom. The bright light made his skin look even more gray and unhealthy. He looked at himself in the mirror. He’d seen plenty of dead guys in his lifetime, and right now, he felt like he was seeing another one.
He looked down. His thick, gnarled feet stood in stark contrast to the white marble tile. His toes were gray, the hair thick and black. He could barely see them because his gut stuck out and blocked his view. His entire body was round and curvy, thick with fat and lasagna, pesto and wine, biscotti and espresso. Romano looked back up at the mirror. He had never felt so fat, so old, so ugly.
He tore his eyes away from his own body and looked around the room. It was a huge master bath with a whirlpool, two pedestal sinks and a toilet with a bidet. The walls were wallpapered with a Renaissance theme.
Right now, the wallpaper, the tile, the beveled glass mirror, none of it pleased him, like it sometimes did. He raised his large, heavy featured face to the mirror. A tear pooled at the corner of one eye. A thin drop of nasal mucus appeared at the entrance to his left nostril, like a groundhog tentatively peeking his head out on February 2nd.
Romano looked at his upper chest in the mirror. The thick white bandage was still around his butchered torso, but he would have to remove it in order to wash himself. Alone, his head dizzy with grief, he wished he could be anywhere else, wish he could wake up on a desert island and have his old body back. He’d never really been all that lean, always thick and always solid. But in his twenties, it was mostly muscle. Now, the muscle had turned to fat. He wished he could go have that body again, fly to some island in the Caribbean, swim in the saltwater and sit shirtless in the sun for a few hours.
But instead, he was going to have to see the damage the surgeon had done to him. His heart beat fast, his mouth was dry and his hands shook.
He slowly reached up and found the seam where the bandage had been affixed. The tear sitting at the corner of his eye fell, streaking down his cheek like a downhill skier. Romano ran his hand along the bandage until he came to the clasp. It was a state-of-the-art bandage, with Velcro tabs. He closed his eyes, couldn’t bear to watch.
But then, at the last moment, he decided he’d rather watch than open his eyes and see the shocking visual of the scar, the one breast gone, the other man-titty still hanging there.
He would take it like a man, even though he no longer felt like one.
The head of the Detroit mafia watched as the bandage fell away and landed on the marble floor, its reinforced edge karate chopping the top of Romano’s foot. He didn’t feel the pain. Instead, he stood transfixed, looking at his image in the mirror.
The scar was much smaller than he expected, a half-moon stitched directly beneath where his left breast used to be. The scar wasn’t bad at all. He looked at it, fascinated.
His eye moved to his right breast. It hung there, a young girl’s breast. Perhaps pre-pubescent.
Romano’s eye went back to the scar.
Then back to his right breast.
A shudder ran through his entire body. His breath caught in his throat.
He felt like a freak. Not because of the one breast gone. That actually looked okay.
But Romano stared at the one breast that remained.
That was the one that hurt. That was that one that looked freakish and humiliating. He reached up and cupped his one remaining breast and tears now flowed from both eyes. What a fool he’d been. The question popped into his mind unbidden. The solution had been there all along.
Why hadn’t he gotten a double mastectomy?
The head of the Detroit Mafia hung his head and wept.
Several minutes later, someone rapped on the bathroom door. Romano sat on the toilet. The toilet’s lid was down and he was wearing his thick white bathrobe. He stared at the tile on the floor, his eyes roving over the pattern, daydreaming, making his mind think about something else.
The knock came again.
“What?”
“Phone call.” Romano recognized Falcone’s voice. “Says it’s extremely important.”
Romano sighed and heaved himself to his feet. He’d wiped his face and any sign of his tears were gone. It was time to get back to business. He’d had his private moment of shame, now it was time to put things right.
Without leaving the bathroom, Romano stuck his hand through the opening of the door and retrieved the cell phone.
“It’s me.”
One never used names on the phone. It had been like this all his life. Worrying about the Feds, fearing new and better technology for eavesdropping. He was just a businessman. God, he hated the FBI.
He listed to the voice on the other end of the phone. It was a highly paid informant and at times like this, Romano took immense delight in the fact that money the same money that came from crimes the FBI was trying to stop could undermine the government’s very own people. The voice spoke briefly, and then disconnected immediately after delivering the requisite information.
Romano looked in the mirror. The sixty year old man looking back at him was tired and nearly beaten. But now he saw a gleam of fire in the eye, and he momentarily forget about the sacrilege that had been exercised on his torso.
He punched in the number that he’d used many times before, but always with great caution.
Romano heard Jack Cleveland’s voice on the other end.
“Yeah,” it said.
“It’s me.”
“Uh-huh.”
“He’s at the Prescott Hotel in Ann Arbor. Room 914.”
“Okay.”
When Romano heard the voice on the other end acknowledge the message, he disconnected immediately. Romano had the house swept regularly for bugs, and cell phones were notoriously hard to eavesdrop upon, but one never knew.
Romano went to the giant whirlpool tub and started a hot bath. He couldn’t get the stitches wet, but he would try to relax. He poured himself a tumbler of 20-year old scotch and sat on the edge of the tub, breathing in the steam from the hot water.
His stress level was at an all-time high right now. He’d been robbed, and who knew what Tommy Abrocci was doing? He was probably running to the Feds, but Romano knew he would never make it.
Jack Cleveland was going to kill him.
For that, Romano raised his glass in a toast.
“Here’s to sending you straight to Hell, Tommy.”
He drank, and felt the warmth spread from his mouth, to his throat down his chest and to his stomach.
The pain around his upper torso momentarily disappeared.
18.
One day, a co-worker mentioned to Loreli that women tend to marry men like their fathers.
The concept had rocked Loreli to her core.
Because she realized that she had simply replaced her father with Ted.
Ted the deadbeat. Ted beat.
She also realized that all of her boyfriends had been deadbeats. Even though she’d met and known plenty of nice guys, she’d always found something wrong with them. Some reason not to get involved with them. They’re too boring. They’re not exciting. Too fat. Too short. Too skinny. Too stupid. Too smart.
That’s what she’d told herself, anyway.
Of course, she had understood it too late.
Liam was two years and old and Ted was out of her life. Sort of. He was gone most of the time. But every once in awhile he’d come back. And Loreli always let him in, both physically and metaphorically.
That was what had really made her sit up and take notice. Because it had reminded her of her own father’s infamous pattern of disappearing and reappearing on a whim. Loreli’s father had often left them. Abandoned them for days, weeks, even months at a time. Her mother, a waitress at a truck stop, had stopped asking when he’d come back. For the longest time, Loreli had believed what her mother said, basically that all men were shit. A fact her mother often recounted night after night when it had just been the two of them, making ends meet. Sitting in the living room, watching t.v. on the little black-and-white with the giant, bent rabbit ears that you had to adjust every time you watched a show on a different channel.
Finally, for money, Loreli learned how to use her taut body and pretty face. It wasn’t long before she was a hit at the topless bars along 8 Mile Road. The money was good, but not good enough. Through the other dancers, Loreli learned of a woman, not a pimp, no one ever used the word pimp, in Hamtramck who hooked up girls with white-collar johns. Johns who paid extra for young, clean girls. In fact, it was a girl in the psychology class who had approached Loreli about the business.
Loreli had been reluctant, but then the girl had offered Loreli five hundred bucks to come to one of her jobs and watch. Apparently the guy liked to have a girl watch. Loreli did, and it was the easiest money she’d ever made. It was a little weird being there, and she was scared, but afterward, she knew she could do it. She had always been good at turning her mind off things. About categorizing, and blocking and filing emotions away when she needed to. There had been times at the dinner table growing up when she’d wanted to strangle her father but instead had smiled sweetly at him. It was a good tool to have.
She had financed her education that way, dancing and the occasional hooking job. She tried to keep the hooking to a minimum, once or twice a month. But it all depended on how good the dancing gigs were and how short of money she was.
It had turned out to be enough, though. She’d gotten her degree and taken some pre-law courses, hoping one day to be a lawyer. But law school had intimidated her. So she decided to take additional courses to get a job as a legal secretary, and then work her way into a paralegal job before going back to law school. Law school had been too intimidating back then. Holding down dancing jobs and raising a son.
Besides, she had become disgusted with herself for hooking. The dancing wasn’t bad. A bunch of desperate men who half the time didn’t even pay attention to the girl’s dancing. Most of them were torn between the pretty young thing grabbing her ankles on stage, and ESPN’s Sports Center on the television behind the bar.
So she’d graduated, gotten a job at Ryson, Butters & Mahoney, and become a helluva legal secre
tary. Enough so that she’d been able to get the little house in Warren.
Her taste in men, though, hadn’t improved. She went out with an attorney or two and found most of them were too busy checking themselves out in mirrors or trying to impress her with their Porsches. So many of them were blatantly insulting to her. The dimwit little secretary they expected to be so impressed with their money that she would immediately sleep with them.
The fact was, most of the men she’d turned tricks for had shown her more respect than the lawyers she dated.
19.
The Ann Arbor exit on Highway 14 came up suddenly and Loreli steered the Camry into the sharp curve. The little car’s wheels squealed slightly and the body shuddered at the forces running through it.
She made the curve and straightened the Camry out, then accelerated through the green light at the base of the small bluff overlooking the southern end of Ann Arbor.
Loreli had been here once before. She and Liam had needed a change of pace so they’d come here. Found a nice park with a good play structure. Loreli had chased Liam around the park and then they’d gone out for cheeseburgers and malts.
It had been almost a year ago, but that was recent enough for Loreli to remember how to get to the downtown area of Ann Arbor. She took Reynolds Boulevard until it ran into Division Street, then took that to State Street. There, she followed the signs that alerted drivers to the direction of the University of Michigan campus.
Loreli checked the address on the slip of paper and looked for Harper Street. She passed coffee shops and bookstores, antique shops and furniture stores. It was early on Friday morning. Most of the streets were empty, people at work, students in class.
She found Harper and three blocks later cruised slowly past the Prescott Hotel.
She parked a block away and shut off the Camry. The silence fell over her and she glanced into the rearview mirror. Loreli dreaded what she was about to do. Cursed her own stupidity for ever getting involved with deadbeat men. The only guys she ever dated, if she ever dated again period, would have to be goddamned Eagle Scouts, or priests. Or former Eagle Scouts turned priests.