David Wolf 01 - Foreign Deceit

by Jeff Carson

  They walked quietly for three or four minutes. Wolf could hear Cezar’s long stride and his energetic throat clearing behind him, and Rossi’s shorter stride and heavy mouth breathing.

  Down and down they continued along twisting and turning narrow streets, through pockets of open sewage smell. Of the few people they saw this far from the piazza, only a few noticed what was happening as they passed. Those that did let out hushed whispers and turned with interest to watch the strange procession.

  They came around a slight bend to Rossi’s Caribinieri Alpha Romeo.

  They reached the door and Rossi turned to Wolf, “Put your hands behind your back.”

  Wolf stopped and looked around, putting his hands on his hips.

  Rossi raised his hand in a fluid motion, pointing his suppressed Beretta at the side of Wolf’s face. “I said put your hands behind your back.”

  Wolf narrowed his eyes. “It was you who killed my brother.”

  Two gargantuan hands gripped his wrists and shoved him up against the side of the car. Steel handcuffs clamped hard and tight.

  Wolf lashed his right heel up and back with as much strength as he could muster, connecting hard with the tall man behind him. Wolf looked over his shoulder to check the damage.

  Cezar was doubled over on the ground grabbing both hands at his crotch.

  Wolf smiled, and then all went black.

  Chapter 46

  Cold water slammed into Wolf’s face, forcing underneath his eyelids. He sat up straight, sucking in a hard breath, blinking and wincing in pain.

  “Ancora!”

  Another cold explosion hit his face, sending his head back with a wide mouthed inhale. He shook the water away and opened his eyes, then shut them against the blinding onslaught of light.

  A bright halogen light on a pole was set up in front of him, shining directly in his face. He tilted his head down and squinted. The first thing he saw was a man sitting cross-legged against a wall to his right.

  The guy had a bloody towel pressed against his nose. He lowered it, revealing a rueful grin.

  Wolf nodded a greeting. It was the guy he had tackled in the garage earlier.

  Next to the man were clipboards hanging on the wall, and a door. Wolf realized he was back in The Albastru Pub’s garage.

  The light shifted upwards toward the ceiling, and Wolf turned to look straight ahead.

  Rossi was lounging on a chair with crossed legs, smoking a cigarette.

  Wolf coughed lightly, lungs itching from the smoke. “Jesus, everyone’s always smoking in this country.”

  Rossi took a long drag and smiled, but it was a different smile than Wolf was accustomed to seeing on the man. His face had changed. His eyes had changed. A cold stare replaced his usual friendly squint.

  “You should have stayed home, Officer Wolf.” He didn’t blink.

  Wolf did a double take to his left. A dead body lay on a sprawled out piece of clear plastic. Nose to chest, he was caked with dark maroon blood. There was a neat hole in his head, and he lay in a large pool of brighter red blood. A pool that, upon closer study, was still spreading slowly. Wolf recognized the man, but couldn’t recall from where.

  Wolf’s head ached. He looked back at Rossi, a movement that sent a pulse of pain bouncing through his skull. “It’s Sergeant Wolf, dickhead.”

  Rossi’s eyes widened with amusement. “Oh. I am sorry.” He pointed to the body on the floor. “The man you murdered tonight.”

  Wolf looked again at the body, then back to Rossi.

  “The man who also murdered you, I’m sorry to say.” He took another drag of his cigarette. “You two shot each other.”

  Wolf leaned forward to sit up, to shake the cobwebs. He went dizzy and fell forward. Subconsciously Wolf assumed he was somehow fastened to the chair, but there was just a pair of steel cuffs on his wrists, so he kept plummeting ahead.

  Rossi caught him. “Whoa, attento, Officer Wolf!” He helped him back into the chair with a lift. “I guess I should not have hit you so hard, you are not doing so well.”

  Wolf remembered the pistol in his face. The side street. Being escorted out at gunpoint by Cezar. The walk. Kicking Cezar in the balls. The phone calls. Wolf smiled at the memory of Cezar buckled over on his side on the damp alley street.

  Rossi sat back and returned the smile with a tilt of his head. “What is it … Sergeant Wolf?”

  Wolf’s smile vanished and he glared into Rossi’s eyes. “I’m going to kill you, Rossi. You were the one who killed my brother, and I’m going to kill you for that.”

  Rossi inhaled sharply and sat back, launching into a lazy overhead stretch with his arms. “I don’t think so, Officer Wolf. Just a few more minutes now, and you’ll be dead.” He smacked his lips and crossed his arms.

  Bouncing light filled the space beyond Rossi, and Wolf realized the door to the garage was wide open behind him.

  Rossi got up slowly, turned around and poked his head out the garage, “Ah, here is your ride right now.”

  A white truck emblazoned with a blue Albastru Shipping Co logo slowed at the door then rumbled past. Reverse lights lit the rear of the truck and a loud continuous beep split the air.

  Rossi slapped the back of the truck. It stopped, and he lifted the rear door.

  Wolf noticed the metal patchwork on the door of the truck, covering the bullet holes from the night before.

  Cezar stepped into view from the driver’s side of the truck, and the thick-necked rhino of a guy stepped into view from the other side.

  Wolf watched as Rossi launched into a speech, gesturing to the guy on the floor, Wolf, and the other guy sitting against the wall. Cezar and Thick-Neck-Tattooed-Bartender nodded their heads, and then sprung into action. They set down a fresh sheet of plastic, moved the dead guy onto it, and then wrapped him up like a burrito. Then they carefully picked up the old blood soaked sheet of plastic from each corner and folded it without spilling a drop.

  Cezar and the bartender moved the body and plastic into the back of the open truck, and then unfurled a fresh piece. Rossi leaned against the wall and lit another cigarette, watching with a hint of a smile on his lips.

  Wolf flexed his feet up and down. Blood was circulating poorly in his legs. Through the numb tingling, he suddenly realized he could still feel the pressure on his inner calf muscles in the tight socks.

  Wolf eyed the plastic sheet with indifference. “So, do you want to know why you’re killing me too late, Rossi?”

  Rossi took the cigarette out of his mouth and narrowed his eyes at Wolf.

  Wolf had his attention. “I know about your dad.”

  Rossi rolled his eyes and tilted his head back. “Please, Officer Wolf. Die with dignity, why don’t you. Your brother did, you know. He died with dignity. Of course, he was unconscious when I strangled him, but—”

  “In fact, I’ve already told other people about your dad,” Wolf said. “People in the Carabinieri. Your days are numbered. Hell, your hours are numbered.”

  Panic flickered for a tiny moment in Rossi’s face, and Wolf knew he’d hit home.

  Cezar saw it too, because the tall man paused in the middle of cutting the sheet of plastic and stared imploringly at Rossi.

  Rossi gave him a sideways glance and glared at Wolf. “What exactly are you talking about, Officer Wolf? What do you think you know?”

  “It’s over Rossi. It’s just a matter of time before they tie you and your brother with the activities going on here. A good forensic accountant will find you out in no time.”

  Rossi stared hard and then shook his head, laughing. “You don’t know what you are talking about, Officer Wolf.”

  “You’re laughing, but you’re going down, and you know it. It’s over. Your life is over. I know that your father didn’t leave you an inheritance three years ago. And now other people, your fellow Carabinieri officers, do too. Tomorrow your job won’t be waiting for you, Rossi. But a jail cell will be.”

  Rossi nodded his head.
>
  “And a coffin is waiting for you, Officer Wolf. Goodbye.” And with that, Detective Rossi turned and walked out of the garage.

  Chapter 47

  Cezar and the bartender followed Rossi out the door and out of sight into the alley.

  Wolf looked to his right. The guy whose face Wolf had smashed into the floor earlier was just a few feet away, still slumped against the wall. He sat was looking eagerly toward the garage door, gently patting the bloodied towel against his face.

  Wolf leaned forward, slid off the chair, twisted one hundred eighty degrees, and rolled along his back to his shoulders, all the while wondering what happening to that man leaning against the wall. Was he not in any better position than Wolf right now? Was he going to be shot in the head like his buddy in the plastic wrapping?

  Wolf brought the handcuffs over his feet in a swift soundless move.

  The man stared as Wolf rolled back to his feet, twisted, and stood.

  The guy dropped his towel and stared at the three-inch kitchen blades Wolf held in each hand. Then he looked up at Wolf and closed his gaping mouth.

  Wolf nodded his head, then kicked the man in the temple with a steel-toed boot.

  The guy slumped over, out cold.

  Wolf snuck to the open garage door, sticking to the wall to minimize his shadow outside. He listened as two men spoke in the guttural tones of eastern European, not the staccato of Italian. Rossi was apparently gone.

  He wanted Rossi. That was the only objective he cared about. There was no sense flicking the ear of fate with two very big guys. The Carabinieri, the real ones, could bust this place wide open later.

  But fate had other plans.

  Just as he began making his way to the door to the kitchen, it swung inward. The nose-ringed waitress stuck her head out, asking a loud question in her native tongue. She was looking straight ahead to a blank spot on the garage wall, as if consciously averting her eyes to any goings-on outside.

  Wolf froze.

  When no one answered her, she turned and saw him. Then she looked at the unconscious figure on the floor, then back to Wolf, who stood with his two knives pointing at her.

  He raised his eyebrows. “Ciao.”

  “Cezar?” She panicked. “Cezar!”

  Wolf turned away from her, rushed to the edge of the garage and put his back to the wall. He tensed and listened for footsteps.

  The bartender came into the garage first, flying past Wolf with animal athleticism. Wolf jumped out an instant later with arms chest high, blades sticking out from the pinky side of his fists, thumbs hooked on each knife handle. Cezar didn’t have time to stop or put his hands up as Wolf planted his feet and drove his arms forward. Both blades pierced Cezar’s chest plate with a thump, and Wolf knew the right blade had hit the heart directly.

  Two hundred pounds of dead weight smashed into Wolf, along with a warm spray of blood, pushing him back into an uncontrolled fall. Wolf pulled the blades out and twisted, bracing for impact. As he fell, he caught a glimpse of the bartender pulling a pistol from his waistband. Wolf hit the floor hard and frantically tried to get under the falling body for protection. A warm gush from Cezar’s chest pulsed on his face relentlessly. The last thing he saw was the bartender bending toward him with his pistol extended. Wolf heard three pops of gunfire, and then he went still.

  …

  There was no pain, just the warm flow of blood soaking his neck and face. Suddenly, the weight of Cezar’s body lifted off him. He sat up as fast as he could, shaking his head and blowing air out his nose to expel the blood that had flowed into it. He wiped his face with his arm and held the knives in front of him, trying to see through the red liquid.

  “David, it’s me!” It was a female voice. “It’s me!”

  “Lia?”

  “Yes, it’s me! Put down the knives!”

  He dropped the knives and wiped his face with his hands properly. He pointed at the door in the back of the garage.

  “Be careful, that girl in the door. Where did she go?”

  Lia stood and turned. Finally getting focus back into his eyes, he saw she wasn’t in her Caribinieri uniform. She was in civilian clothes, jeans and a sweatshirt.

  She walked low with her pistol aimed at the door.

  “Wait a second,” he said. “Unlock me here.”

  Lia took out her handcuff’s key and unlocked him.

  Wolf pulled the pistol from the bartender’s stubby hands. It was an eastern European manufactured CZ-99 ready to go, safety off and round in the chamber.

  Wolf turned the knob, opened it a centimeter, then gently let go, careful not to let it slide closed. He kicked and aimed his gun forward as the door opened and banged against the inner wall. No one.

  He pushed aside the rebounding door and Lia followed right on his heels. The kitchen lights were turned low, and no burners on the stove were lit. The kitchen had been closed down, but hastily so. Pasta sat cold in dishes, bread sat on the counters, and salami slices were abandoned on cutting boards.

  Commotion and mayhem resonated from down the hallway. The bar was going nuts—people screaming, glasses breaking, wood chairs bouncing off hard floors.

  Wolf continued fast down the hallway, and cautiously looked around the corner, then lowered his gun and walked out.

  He saw no employees, only customers, now clumped at the door, pushing hard against one another to get out. A woman looked at Wolf and screamed. The sudden appearance of a man with a gun, drenched in blood, with a gun-toting woman behind him, sent the crowd into a heightened frenzy for escape.

  Wolf went to the stereo on the wall and turned down the music.

  The pub door slammed shut, and they were now in relative silence behind the bar. Wolf watched the commotion retreat outside, then took a look at himself in the mirror behind the bar. His face and chest below were bathed in bright red.

  He put his gun down, grabbed a wet bleach towel from the bar back sink and wiped his face. He dug into the crevices of his eyes, blew his nose, threw the towel in the sink, and got another one and repeated the process.

  “Lascia! Lascia!” A voice boomed from a few feet away.

  Wolf turned just as a pistol clanked on the floor next to his foot.

  Wolf turned to Lia, who was frozen, staring at a Beretta pointed at her from the other side of the bar. She had her hands up in a simultaneous defenseless and what the hell gesture.

  “What are you two doing here?” Rossi said, shifting the Beretta to Wolf. “You’re wanted for murder, Officer Wolf. Officer Parente, what are you doing? Are you helping him right now? What is going on?”

  Wolf shook his head. “You going to play that angle, Rossi?”

  “Get your hands in the air and come out here!” Rossi waved the gun at Wolf. “Now!”

  “I know the truth about your father,” Lia said quietly.

  Rossi gave a quick dismissive look to Lia, “Come out, Sergeant Wolf. Now.”

  Wolf looked over at Lia. Her eyes were wet and her lower lip was quivering.

  Rossi thrust his gun at her and shouted in Italian.

  She shook her head. “He never left you an inheritance,” she continued in English for Wolf’s benefit. “Paulo just told me your dad was killed twenty-five years ago in Sicily. He checked thoroughly. You’ve been lying this whole time?”

  Rossi shouted in Italian again, this time spittle flew out his mouth and landed on the bar counter.

  “Rossi, you don’t want to do this,” Wolf said quietly. “It’s over. We know about you and your brother smuggling drugs in from Africa. Let me take a wild guess. He didn’t get a big inheritance either. You two have been leveraging his position in the Guarda Di Finanza. In Liguria. In Genoa, the place where these shipments are coming in.”

  Rossi shifted his aim toward Wolf. His whole body twitched while he stared through Wolf. He was thinking – calculating. He seemed to come to a conclusion, and looked at Lia.

  Wolf watched Rossi’s gun, which was trained loosely in Wolf�
�s direction, waver for the first time,.

  “Killing us both won’t change anything,” Wolf said quickly. “Paulo knows everything. I told him everything I knew on the phone earlier. He checked out your father, and now it’s just a simple task of looking into finances to prove what you’ve been up to.” Wolf shook his head. “It’s all over. It’s all out in the open. There’s nothing you can do to cover it up now. Killing us both won’t help.”

  Rossi looked at Wolf with hatred, and then tracked his gun to Lia. His face wobbled, and sweat dripped off his face. He was pale as milk and his eyes seemed unable to focus, giving him a ghostly expression. With a suddenness that made Lia gasp, he stepped back, dropped his arm to his side, and looked down at the floor. It was a decisive move, yet if Rossi had indeed aligned his warring thoughts, the outcome eluded Wolf.

  Wolf and Lia glanced at each other briefly, and then Wolf looked down at the back counter of the bar.

  The CZ-99 lay too far away to grab, hopelessly beyond his arm’s reach. Wolf stepped forward, stopping as Rossi’s head jerked up.

  “Is that what you were doing with these guys here in the pub, Valerio?” Lia asked, seeing what Wolf was trying to do. “Did you kill John Wolf? Did you kill David’s brother?”

  Rossi sniffed hard and went perfectly still as he looked at Lia. A quick smile quivered across his face, then disappeared.

  “Did you?” Her look of disappointment deepened.

  “Yes, he did,” Wolf said. “He was there that night at the observatory. With Vlad. He killed Matthew Rosenwald and John.”

  Rossi turned his unblinking eyes to Wolf. He stood motionless, arms still hanging at his side, finger still tense on the pistol’s trigger.

  “They saw something they shouldn’t have. And you killed them. You killed them both. Isn’t that right?”

  Rossi’s lip curled into a snarl.

  “Then you couldn’t trust Vlad anymore,” Wolf said. “After I saw you in the pub here, I realized some things about the last few days. Like, you weren’t roughing up Vlad the other day for my benefit. You were warning him, goading him into saying what you wanted him to in front of Lia and me. You were telling him to cover up the shipment. But you must not have liked the way he was acting.” Wolf turned his head to Lia, keeping his eyes trained on Rossi. “So he killed Vlad, earlier tonight in a way that would implicate me. But even that wasn’t enough. I was getting too close. After he and Cezar found me, they knew I knew too much and must be killed.”