Isabella tries to look away, but Rossi squeezes her jaw until she fears it will snap.
“I’ll stay behind and do as I am told,” she answers.
“Good girl,” Rossi says. He releases his grip and then smacks the side of his wife’s ass.
“The bombing that I’ve been reading about, that was you?” Isabella asks.
Rossi stubs out his first cigarette, only halfway smoked, and pulls out another from his pack. “The five years we’ve been together, what have I taught you?”
“Not to ask about your business and to do what I’m told.”
Rossi walks to the penthouse window and looks down at the city of Detroit, giving an entire and unabashed full monty to the Motor City skyline.
“I hate this shithole. Detroit’s been nothing but bad luck for me since I was nine years old. It’s cold and rundown, and I couldn’t ever find a decent contractor who could distinguish his ass from his cock. The only good thing that happened here was that Biggs got what was coming to him.”
“So you did kill the Butcher?”
Rossi takes a moment, still taking in the city view, and then slowly turns around to face his wife. He moves toward his wife and she cowers against the headboard, knowing what awaits.
Rossi gives her a hard open-hand smack across her face. Isabella doesn’t cry over the assault. Not anymore. She thinks back to the one person she knows truly loved her once and feels brave for a moment.
“If my father were alive, he’d come after you.”
Rossi opens his mouth wide, showing off his perfect white teeth, and offers Isabella a hard, mean laugh.
“Your father? He didn’t care about you when he was alive. He let you run out to L.A. just to get rid of you. How did the Hollywood thing turn out for you, Isabella, huh? You’re lucky I met you when I did. Otherwise, you’d have wound up doing soft porn flicks just to pay the bills like your sister did.”
Rossi pulls on a pair of tight red bikini briefs and admires his muscular reflection in the room’s full-length mirror.
“You leave tonight?” Isabella asks, and stares hopelessly out at the cold Michigan night.
“Yes, I have to start moving the Detroit operation, and I need freedom from the scrutiny. Tarburton should get me off so I won’t be tried again on the drug and bribery and illegal gambling charges, but I need to lay low until this bombing investigation cools down.”
“What if the police question me?”
Rossi slips on a pair of Italian custom-tailored black slacks and a light pink button-down dress shirt.
“Have I not taught you anything? You tell them nothing. You don’t know about any of my business dealings. Play the stupid bitch that you are.”
“And why am I here instead of with you?”
“Because my nana is sick, and you’re here to tend to her until she gets out of the hospital. Tarburton was smart to bring her here for the trial, but she’s ninety-two. The pneumonia will probably kill her.”
“You don’t care?”
Rossi dons a black suit coat and fixes his already perfect hair in the mirror. “She’s old. People die. You spend too much time worrying or caring about what happens to people, you become weak.”
Rossi leans down and gives Isabella a rough kiss on the forehead. “Now, remember what I said about the cops. I should get you back to California in a week or so. Once the lawyer is killed and I move the majority of my Midwest operation back out West, I’ll send for you.”
“You shouldn’t take out the lawyer. Not now anyway. Give it some time, Nick. You don’t want to make it too obvious that you hired the hit. If he winds up dead, all suspicions will turn to you. And you just got out of jail.”
Rossi’s dark eyes dart back and forth across his wife’s face as if he’s actually considering something she said.
“Maybe. You stay put, though, and don’t mess up again.”
“I won’t,” Isabella says, rolling away from her husband so she can face the wall. “There are some things I would still like to do here in Detroit.”
“Yeah, spend more of my money. Prada this and Prada that,” Rossi says. “Keep your legs closed unless I tell you otherwise.”
“You made me a whore,” Isabella whispers. But it’s too late. Rossi is gone, and Isabella already knows she sealed her fate with him a long time ago anyway.
* * *
Salvatore Gallo declines the offer of a scotch or espresso by his nephew’s thugs and feels the cool steel of his revolver in the pocket of his wool coat. Gallo has no plans on using it against his nephew, but he doesn’t entirely trust the current crew around Nick or the recent business associates he added to Gallo’s once fairly clean operation. Back in Gallo’s day, the unspoken threat of retaliation against a wrongful act was as powerful as a bullet, like a known nuclear capability possessed by a dueling world superpower. In other words, you screw with me, I’ll rain down an apocalypse on your entire village.
Nick Rossi comes out of the bedroom of his penthouse suite looking to Gallo more like a prissy GQ cover wannabe than the head of his family business.
“It’s Easter already? Why you wearing a pink shirt?” Gallo asks.
“This shirt cost five hundred dollars. If you’d let me take you shopping, I’d show you how to dress, Uncle.”
Gallo brushes the fingers of one hand in the air as if dismissing his nephew’s suggestion.
“Come. Let’s sit,” Gallo says, and beckons his nephew to take a seat on the couch next to him.
Nick offers his uncle a strained smile but keeps standing.
“You never were one to obey orders,” Salvatore says, and cocks his head in the direction of the bedroom. “You got one of your whores in there?”
“No. It’s Isabella.”
Salvatore shakes his head, looking suddenly weary and every inch his seventy-two years.
“You need to let that girl go,” Salvatore says. “It’s the right thing to do.”
“You hated her friggin’ guts when I brought her back from L.A. You said she was a gold digger. Now, what, you’re her savior?”
“Whether I like her or not doesn’t matter anymore. You married her and had a child.”
“Our marriage died when our daughter did,” Nick says. “If Isabella hadn’t made the nanny run errands for her because she was too lazy to do them herself, Christina would still be here. Isabella’s lucky I didn’t kill her for what she did.”
“A loss like that, it’s easy to point blame. I could do the same for you, Nicky.”
“What are you saying?”
“You think your little girl’s murder was random?”
“Watch what you say next, old man.”
Salvatore’s jaw sets tight as the patriarch tries to regain control, a position he realizes deep down he lost years ago.
“You talk to me with respect, you understand? I spent years taking care of you, treating you like my own son, and you take my business and turn it into something ugly. My father, my grandfather, we never entered the drug trade. It was dirty. We never stole. And we only fought back when we had to. You kill people like it’s sport.”
“All rumors,” Nick says, looking amused. “You should be grateful. I took your little business and turned it into an empire.”
“Not an empire I ever wanted.”
“Your choice not to take money from the other parts of my business. And don’t worry about Isabella. I keep her on the payroll. She’s still got some use for me.”
“Then do what you want in your personal life. Look, I didn’t come here to lecture you on your marriage. We need to talk.”
“So talk,” Nick says, and pours a shot of tequila.
“We talk alone.”
Nick holds Gallo’s gaze and then dismisses his help.
“You did all right in prison?” Gallo asks.
“I do all right wherever I go.”
“Tarburton got you off. You were lucky. But all eyes are going to be on you now, even more than before. You need to lay
low for a while. Think about selling off the parts of your business that got you in trouble. The Feds get you for hijacking and selling stolen goods, that’ll be the end for you. And the drug business, you’ve got to give that up. Willie Robinson, he’d buy off that portion of your operation.”
“I’m not giving up anything, especially to a nigger.”
“Hey, watch your mouth. I need you to take some time to think about it. Go to my place in Traverse City for a while. Please, Nicky.”
“You worry too much about other people, Uncle. You spend all your time thinking about how someone else feels, that’s less time you’re worrying about yourself. I’m getting out of Detroit. This place’s been nothing but bad luck for me for a while now. I’m heading back to L.A. I’ll be at my place in the Santa Ynez Mountains outside of Santa Barbara first until things cool down. I’ve got a local guy who’ll take care of you if you need anything.”
A look of disappointment creases the etched downturned lines along the corners of Gallo’s mouth. “Who’s that? Jim Bartello?”
“No, Jimmy’s been screwing up. He’s turned into a junkie, and I can’t trust him anymore. I’m going to replace him with my guy from Flint.”
“I won’t see you anymore then if you go back to California.”
Nick puts down his drink and places his hand on his uncle’s shoulder.
“You’re going to miss me? I figured you’d prefer it, me getting out of your town. Tell you what. I’ll fly you out at Christmas.”
“You do what you need to do, then. But Detroit will always be your home.”
Nick sits down on the couch and pats his uncle’s hand.
“Thank you,” Nick says.
“For what?”
“For never making me feel like an obligation.”
Nick gets up from the couch, his swagger fully back after his momentary slip of tenderness, and makes his way to the front door of the penthouse, the meeting now over.
“I see there’s nothing I can do to change your mind. But please, be careful,” Gallo says.
He begins to leave, but then turns around to face his nephew.
“I met with that reporter.”
“The one who’s married to that assistant D.A. guy who was trying my case?” Rossi asks. “What were you thinking?”
“I owed that girl a favor. Her stories got the police off my back. I could’ve faced some serious jail time if it wasn’t for her.”
“Bullshit. I’d have never let it get to that point. Julia Gooden is no real friend to our family. I heard she was sniffing around, trying to peg me for the Tyce Jones shooting. And her husband wanted to get me locked up for good. Your loyalty is with our family, not with some stupid journalist. What did she want?”
“She wanted to know if you were responsible for the bombing. I told her there’s no way you’d be involved. That was it.”
“Jesus Christ. Don’t talk to her again. Whether you think she helped you out or not, if she tries to screw me over, I’ll take care of her.”
“No, Nicky. You can’t do that. I won’t let you.”
“You take everything so seriously,” Rossi says, and slaps his uncle on the back. “There are ways to take care of people without killing them.”
“I’ve covered for you plenty in the past, Nicky. I didn’t like it, but I did it to protect you. You need to be straight with me about one thing, though. Did you order the courthouse attack? If you’re responsible, that’s one thing I couldn’t forgive, not for you and not even for my sister.”
“You’ve always looked out for me, ever since I was a little kid. The bombing? I thought that was you.”
CHAPTER 15
Julia clutches the topaz necklace David gave her just two mornings before and rubs it between her fingers as though it could somehow bring her luck.
Russell and Navarro flank Julia on either side as they ride the elevator up to Isabella Rossi’s penthouse floor in the new luxury residence building that Quicken Loans founder Dan Gilbert purchased and renovated. The building sits directly across the street from his headquarters as part of his continued effort to revitalize the core of downtown Detroit.
“I wonder what the occupancy rate is in this place,” Navarro says as the elevator pauses to let a pair of young professionals off on the concierge level.
“I don’t know, but it gives me a reason to think about getting out of Rochester Hills,” Russell answers. “I keep hearing about how the population is plummeting and the economy is sucking ass in Detroit, but tell that to the commuters on I-75. That drive is as bad into the city as it’s ever been. I was stuck in gridlock traffic this morning for forty-five minutes.”
“Did you get any sleep last night, Julia?” Navarro asks, and unconsciously moves his hand to the small of her back, a long-ago familiar gesture of his when he was worried about her.
“I slept for a few hours in the hospital chair. Thanks for asking.”
“How’s David?” Navarro asks.
“Improving. His doctor thinks he’s going to be fully alert within a few days. Granted, he still may have issues with his vision and speech, but so far he’s made a tremendous recovery considering the extent of his injuries.”
“Yeah, I had a jumper, a guy trying to take his life by leaping off the roof of his building,” Russell says. “The guy was an autoworker who got laid off from Ford and just wanted to end it. Ray and I were trying to talk him down, but the guy jumps anyway and does this belly flop off the building, but his body twists midfall and he lands headfirst on the sidewalk. It sounded like someone took a baseball bat to one of those giant seedless watermelons. Turns out the guy lives, but he had major brain damage from the fall and now he’s a vegetable, just lies around staring at the wall in a diaper, and his poor wife has to take care of him twenty-four seven.”
“Really, Russell?” Navarro says, and tilts his head in Julia’s direction.
“Yeah, nice visual,” Julia adds.
“Sorry. Just trying to lighten the mood.”
Russell pulls out his phone and starts scrolling the local news stories.
“Mayor Anderson’s poll numbers are way up. Take a look at that picture,” Russell says, and shows Navarro and Julia an image of the mayor attending a funeral for one of the bombing victims. Anderson’s arm is around the grieving widow as he faces the camera, his expression somber yet resolute. “Did you read the Tandy Sanchez story? It made Anderson out like he’s so damn perfect he never took a shit in his entire life.”
“I saw an ad this morning on Channel 9 with Anderson hugging people at the hospital,” Navarro says. “I noticed you weren’t in it, Julia.”
“Thank God. I saw the same ad. ‘Mayor Anderson. Compassionate Leader. Detroit Strong,’” Julia comments. “Boyles left me a message asking me to be part of his ad, but I refused.”
“Probably smart on many levels. Mayor Anderson’s campaign finance director was just fired. The chief told me,” Navarro says. “Campaign funds went missing and apparently Anderson’s money guy was dipping into the well. We’re looking into it to see if we can pin the guy, and then he’ll face charges. Gavin Boyles and Anderson met with Chief Linderman this morning to try and make sure it doesn’t hit the press.”
“Good luck with that,” Julia says. “Don’t look at me, though. I’m off the job right now.”
The ride ends finally as they arrive on the penthouse floor, and Navarro takes the lead.
“How should I identify myself?” Julia asks.
“Just be honest. Chief Linderman agreed you could have limited access to the investigation as long as you continue to feed us any information you receive from your source,” Navarro says. “I’m surprised Linderman went for it, but he knows you, and after the bombing no options are off the table.”
Navarro gives three hard raps on the penthouse door instead of using the bell, subliminally already setting the stage for who is in charge.
A good thirty seconds elapse and Navarro raises his hand to knock again when the do
or opens. Isabella Rossi stands in the doorway, looking like some kind of exotic goddess in a loose, white flowing skirt and a turquoise off-the-shoulder fitted top, the early-morning sun casting a warm glow against her golden skin. Isabella is model tall, standing at about five-foot-ten, Julia estimates. She has straight, black hair that tightly frames her face and large, almond-shaped dark eyes. Although this is the first time Julia has met her, Isabella’s face looks strongly familiar, and Julia remembers back to the newspaper photo she saw, picturing Isabella with her husband and the daughter who wouldn’t live to see her third birthday.
“You’re the police officer who called me?” Isabella asks. Her voice is fluid and smooth, without a hint of trepidation.
“Yes, we wanted to talk to you about an associate of your husband’s,” Navarro says.
“I don’t think I can be of much help, but please come in.”
Isabella leads them inside, through an entryway lined with black-and-white pictures of Lake Michigan.
Isabella catches Russell noticing the pictures and seems pleased.
“I grew up in New Buffalo. I took the photos you’re admiring. I always felt if you were passionate about the objects you were trying to take pictures of, you could somehow capture their soul.”
Isabella stops in the living room, which is banked by a wall of windows that overlook downtown Detroit. She takes a seat and gestures for her newly arrived guests to do the same.
Julia watches Isabella appraise Navarro favorably as he sits down, and then she turns to Julia and looks her up and down as well, but this time her face settles into an expression of distaste and irritation.
“Who’s this woman?” Isabella asks Navarro. “I was told only two officers would be here.”
“My name is Julia Gooden.”
“I asked the policeman.”
Navarro gives Julia a quick, sideways glance, and Julia forces herself not to respond, keeping with her promise to Navarro that she will be there in the background only and will not ask or answer any questions.
“Julia is a journalist,” Navarro says.
Isabella crosses her arms defensively, causing the six thin silver bracelets around her slender wrist to make a pleasant chiming sound.
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