by Zoey Parker
He sinks back down, nods, and gestures me over. “Of course it’s you. Get over here.”
I oblige, go over beside him.
He shoots me a sidelong look. “It’s been a while, ah?”
“I’m sorry Papa, I….”
Unlikely excuses swirl up and down my throat.
I look down at the broken old man before me, and I go silent.
I can’t bear to lie to him like this.
And yet, I can’t tell him the truth either. That this whole place unnerves me, him most of all. That I didn’t come because I feared what I would find.
My gaze sweeps around the room, from the snarling tiger rug I’m stand on, to the bull head mounted on the wall over his bed, to the coil of a cobra on his bedside table.
“You don’t like my decision,” he says and, with a chuckle, adds, “No one likes my decision.”
He sits up straighter, waves his boney hand around.
“Carlos, your brother, he wasn’t ready. Now, after my decision, he’s smartened up, cut down on all the drinking and partying, but before… ah no, he wasn’t ready.”
He turns his head to look at me, says, “Now, however…”
I avoid his gaze, keep mine on the cobra on its erect head, showcasing fangs that are ready to strike. Looks like it will strike if I shift my gaze even for a second.
“But you’re getting better Papa,” I say, my tone so unconvincing it sends him into a painful-sounding bout of raspy laughter.
He waves his hand again, then lets it flop to his lap.
“If this is getting better, I hate to see what getting worse is,” he says, jiggling his hairy caterpillar eyebrows at me.
We laugh together, mine ending in something of a sob.
He pats me.
“There, there. Don’t be sad for a dying old sinner.”
“But Papa,” I say, his kindly face illuminated by my tears, “We don’t have to be. The Piccolos – our family business, our success doesn’t have to be based on… crime – or… sex trafficking at least.”
His hand falls, his face darkens.
“Didn’t take you long to find out.”
Now I take his hand, grasp it.
“Yes Papa, I found out, I found out and I think we should end it.”
He pulls his hand away.
“You don’t understand business. Politics. Money-making. What success really takes. The dirty truth Toni is: our entire empire was built on sex trafficking.”
“I understand more than you think. And I know about other families, other groups who found other ways. Online gambling, real estate, wind power – there’s other options, Papa. Our empire may have been built on sex trafficking, but it doesn’t have to be sustained by it.”
He shakes his hand, his bald patch glinting in the light, his mustache drooping.
“You make it sound so easy, but if you knew, if you’d had to rough it out there yourself, then you wouldn’t think it was so easy.”
He shoots me another glance, then shrugs.
“And the men’ll never agree.”
I shake my head, try to make my voice sound more confident than I feel.
“Don’t be so sure. They said they’ll look into it.”
He doesn’t even bother to respond to that, only shrugs, scratches at a patch of beard that wasn’t there before.
“Papa,” I say softly.
“I don’t think you’re cut out for this, Toni my dear,” he says slowly, his gaze on something behind me.
“Papa,” I say, louder this time.
I turn, follow his gaze to the door.
“But you’re not going to listen to me, are you?” he says, his gaze not shifting, almost as if he’s talking to the door instead.
“No,” I say softly.
I put my hand on his shoulder, and he shrugs me off.
“Papa, I’ve been thinking about Mama. About what happened to her. About her death.”
He jerks, as if I’ve struck him.
“I think you should go.”
His voice is hard and cold.
I stare at him. It doesn’t seem possible that words so crisp with hate could have come from the disheveled old crumple of a man before me.
“What happened?” I say, my own voice growing cold, “Do you know what happened?”
Next thing I know his icy grip is around my hand, and his crackled lips are twisted in a snarl, “Why don’t you wait until I’m dead before you hate me, Toni darling?”
I wrench my hand free, and he sneers, “You won’t have to wait long.”
I stand there for a minute, staring at him, at the man I’ve known all my life, at the stranger I still hardly know now. He glares on back at me, as if I’m the enemy.
“Don’t say that,” I say.
He shrugs, directs his glare back over my shoulder to the door, addresses it, “You should go now.”
I stand there, uncertain: not wanting to go, yet not wanting to stay.
A hundred questions rise to my lips, yet all fall in the open air of his stare.
“You’re going to try to change things, aren’t you?” he asks finally.
“I’m sorry Papa, but I have to. It isn’t right.”
He stares ahead at the door, as if he hadn’t heard me.
“It isn’t right, Papa, and you know it.”
He doesn’t answer for another minute, keeps staring at the door. When he finally does speak, his words are a condemnation, “I think you should go now.”
I leave.
Outside the room, Carlos is waiting for me.
I stare at him for a second. It’s strange seeing him here, on the forbidden floor like this. After what just happened with Papa, seeing him feels like an extension of the nightmare.
“How much did you hear?” I ask him.
His eyes are glittering like the cobra inside.
“You know it’s not going to work,” he snarls.
“What’s not going to work?”
“Changing things. The business. It’s nice and noble for you to go all Superwoman and try to save everyone and “do the right thing,” but it’s not realistic.”
“Other people have done it,” I say.
Carlos shakes his head, his mouth still twisted into a snarl.
“It’s not going to work. You’re not going to be able to pull it off. All you’re going to do is let the Rebel Saints topple us, not to mention alienate most of our lieutenants.”
He steps in front of me, repeats, “You’re not going to be able to pull it off.”
I stride around him, to the stairs.
At the top step, I turn and, our glares boring into each other, say, “Just watch me, Carlos. Just watch me.”
###
I head straight to the basement, to the little den that’s always been my own.
As I approach my usual armchair, Jane jumps down eagerly, grinning at me.
Yes, she would approve of what I’m trying to do.
I sigh as I pat her.
That still doesn’t mean it’s going to work for sure. Though whether it’s a sure thing or not, I still have to try.
My laptop’s already on the side table; I pick it up and get to work.
All I need is Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works Vol 3. playing and Google and I’m good to go.
I search “wind power mafia” and scan through pages about using wind farms for laundering money, threatening landowners into wind farms that destroy the land, wind farms that aren’t even real.
I lean over to pet Jane, who’s settled at my feet. She looks up at me with grateful happy eyes.
As I pet her, I try to get her enthusiasm for myself. But it’s no use. Jane is good and my family is bad. Even my friends are bad; that’s why I haven’t contacted any of them since Papa got sick and I had to take over and hide out here.
I think of them: Anna, Siobhan, Lucy – all family friends. Have they known all this time too?
And this whole wind power thing looks like it’s no good ei
ther, at least not for my kind of people.
Mid-pet, my hand freezes on Jane’s soft gray head.
That’s exactly it – the problem. Not what we do, but how we do it.
We can do wind power right, the proper, legal way. There are other people doing it, so why not us?
I search “how to make money wind power Canada,” and I hit gold. I read about how farmers in Ontario earn more per wind turbine than those in Quebec. I read about how you can earn $5,000-$10,000 per turbine. I read about how we could do it, how we have a chance.
My phone beeps with a message from Gabriel, but I get up without looking at it.
I throw on my coat and glasses, race out to my car.
Gabriel can wait. But this? I have to do this now.
I drive straight to the office, let the boy take my car and stride into the building without breaking pace, without even glancing at Nelson Mandela. I don’t take Jane.
I’m being driven on by an urge, a need, and I can’t stop. I can’t even slow down. Not until I’ve done what I have to.
Lila isn’t at the front desk, but it doesn’t matter.
I knock on Clarence’s door. It responds with giggles.
I barge in.
Lila’s sitting on Clarence’s desk, her fuchsia lips smirking as he pokes her rouged cheeks with his pen.
Both turn to me, irritation flaring in their faces.
“Meeting time,” I tell Clarence, “Now.”
And then I stride out of the room before either of them can reply.
The boardroom door is already open, as if it was expecting this.
In there, seated on the chair at the end, I wait for longer than seems necessary. They’re all probably taking their sweet ass time on purpose. Too bad. The more time passes, the more my determination grows.
By the time the three of them saunter in, looking none-too-pleased to see me, my resolve has reached a roar.
“What have you found?” I ask Clarence.
He stares at me as if I just asked him in German.
I say, “I did ask you to look into other sources of revenue.”
“That was less than a week ago,” he shoots back.
“That’s fine,” I say, “I did some of my own research.”
I address the Award of Excellence over his head, so I don’t have to see the reactions of Clarence or the others.
This time, I’m not going to let anything throw me.
“I found out that you can make $5,000 to even $10,000 per year per turbine. So, if we set up an army of say, 100 or even 1000, well, you do the math.”
I resist the urge to check their reactions and forge on ahead, “Wind power really is viable, at least to start out with. I’m sure we can branch out into other things, like real estate or other businesses, but for now, there’s no real downside. I mean, we’ve got that whole swath of land the Factory’s on, and we just made a killing on our latest shipment. We can start small, with a few turbines, thirty or so, then go from there.”
Again, there’s no response, and, when I dare check, no reaction on the three men’s faces before me.
Anger surges through me.
“This isn’t a choice,” I say, “We’ll use a bit of the money from our latest shipment to buy them, and we’ll have a plan and deals in place by the end of the week.”
And then I walk out of there, the door slamming behind me the period to my sentence.
###
In the shopping complex a few minutes down the road from our office, sitting in my car, I text him back: Yes.
I wait and wait, my anger at myself growing with each passing minute.
Why am I even sitting here waiting? This is Gabriel Pierson, for God’s sake, not just some nobody with nothing to do. He’s probably busy, won’t respond for hours. I’m wasting my time.
But I’m rewarded a few minutes later, when my phone beeps and his message appears: Meet in front of CN Tower 9 pm.
I smile at the text dopily for a minute, before a vague apprehension sets in.
Why the CN Tower of all places? Could Gabriel have found out already? How? I haven’t been going anywhere without my thick coat, sunglasses and scarf. And why not kill me in the motel room, why take the trouble to bring me all the way to the CN Tower anyway?
I text him back: Yes.
Then I slide over to the next seat, check to see that my gun’s still in the glove compartment. Sure enough, my Colt is there, shiny and tiny as ever.
I take it out and slip it in the inner pocket of my coat, the one I had custom-added; where I’ll keep the gun for tonight.
Whatever happens tonight may not be good, but I’m not going to be defenseless when I find out.
Chapter 17
Gabriel
As soon as I get her “Yes” and respond with tonight’s plans, I feel better. But not better enough to stop my surveillance. Jaws has had around-the-clock guys parked out down the street from the Piccolo house for days now, but so far, they haven’t found shit – about Hannah, about Toni Piccolo, about any of them.
So, I made Jaws get an uglier van, and come camp out here with me. And, sitting here in this piece of shit Honda from the 80s, armed with a couple of Glocks and one fat bag of Cheetos, so far, we too haven’t found shit.
No one’s even gone in or out of the house in the past four hours we’ve been plopped here. Nope, the only progress we’ve made so far is on the Cheeto bag, which is now down to a few sad crumbles at the bottom.
“Oy, Boss,” Jaws says, shoving the binoculars at me.
I lift them and, getting out of a red Porsche, see Toni Piccolo. Or some big-coated, big-sunglassed person who for some reason doesn’t want to be seen.
As I watch him close the door, I know. There’s no way it’s anyone else. That, right there, is Toni Piccolo, the man we’ve been looking for all this time, tantalizingly close and yet infuriatingly out of reach.
We can’t get past the 10-foot high gates surrounding the house.
I’ve seen those gates close enough to know that they aren’t just tall as hell; they’re electrified.
“You thinking what I’m thinking?” Jaws says.
I don’t respond, watch as the ungainly figure makes its way from the driveway to the house.
There’s something about this strange bulky figure… Something that seems off. Like the person is wearing a coat that’s way too big for them or something.
But just as I’m about to get it, the figure disappears in the house.
“Shit,” Jaws swears, “It’s like a cookie, rolling right under your nose. Couldn’t we follow the car next time – maybe catch good old Toni unawares?”
I shrug.
“Maybe. All I know is…”
My voice trails off as I see just who’s coming out the door.
That bastard. Tall stooping figure, with a face like he’s constantly been kicked in the balls, it’s him. Carlos. The guy who tricked my sister. The guy who isn’t going to survive tomorrow if he doesn’t give me what I want today.
“Oo, bingo,” Jaws says softly, gripping his gun.
I turn on the car, and wait.
I watch as he slouches to his car and into it.
I watch as the gates creak open and he pulls out of the driveway, his green Mercedes stopping a bit down the road off to the side.
Jaws and I exchange a delighted grin.
It’s as if the dumb bastard’s asking for it.
Slowly, we drive up behind him, stop just at his bumper. Honk.
I stick my hand out the window, shoot off his side mirror. As he spins around, I stick my head out, yell, “What did you do with my sister, fucker?”
He freezes, staring at me, that usual glare impossible to read.
On the other side, Jaws’ head is out the window too.
“If you come quietly, we may think about taking it easy on you,” he yells, shooting me a smirk to indicate that he just lied through his teeth.
Carlos clearly got the hint. Slamming on his gas, he
takes off.
Jaws slams on the gas too, and I start shooting, aiming at both his wheels. The Italian shithead won’t do us any good dead. I need to know what he’s done with my sister.