We were at the park with Eleonora. Alcina wanted to get her out of the house, and since I’d been paranoid ever since Vito, I hadn’t let either one of them out of my sight.
It was the only time I didn’t think about that Machiavellian motherfucker and getting rid of him. Though at night, Vittorio Scarpone’s blood haunted me like a ghost. It taunted and teased me.
I couldn’t even find a picture of the man he once was. Which was fucking strange in itself. We lived in an age when information was readily available at the tap of a key, but there was nothing on the former Prince of New York?
Yeah, I wasn’t fucking buying it. So I got in touch with one of my associates. His kid was on house arrest for hacking into one of the most popular social media platforms. He took down pictures of all the government officials and replaced them with cartoon characters. He got caught because he told a girl he wanted to impress—who happened to be the daughter of an elected official he made into Goofy—that he’d done it.
I checked my watch. He was meeting me at the park in an hour. He said he could meet me without a problem. The ankle bracelet was only an irritant.
I sighed as I relaxed on the bench, making sure the men were around but staying back. I was fairly certain Alcina and Eleonora were going to be safe in this life that I lived now. Most men didn’t fuck with women—the wives and the children. Occasionally we had rogues like Silvio and Vito, and the Scarpones, but usually, we kept it amongst ourselves. If anything, we watched out for each other’s families.
The sun hit me in the eye and I sat up some, grinning as I watched Anna dance around with her camera, trying to make Eleonora smile while Alcina held her.
After what happened, Alcina’s mamma and Anna refused to leave. I could see her mamma was more paranoid, her eyes more watchful of her daughters and granddaughter.
Since Anna refused to leave, too, her husband had showed up.
Fabrizio Pappalardo was not about this life. Not even in Italy. His family did a certain thing—they grew pistachios—and that’s all he was ever expected to do, but when his wife called him and told him she didn’t know when she was coming home, he came to me once he arrived in New York.
“Make me one of you,” he’d said.
I’d sat back in my chair and shook my head without even thinking twice. “No.”
There was more to it than just being made into what we were, but that was beside the point.
He blinked at me for a second before he narrowed his eyes. “Any guy on the street can do it,” he said.
“True,” I said. “But a lot of those guys die for stupid mistakes. You’d have to become something I can sense you’re not.”
“My wife was hurt,” he said. I could see the fire in his eyes, and my level of respect for him went up a notch.
I nodded. “I take responsibility for that,” I said. “I gave my men specific orders, and it was because of that they didn’t know he got in. The alarm didn’t go off. My grandmother gave the code to someone she thought she could trust. It won’t happen again.”
“I will be here for a while,” he said.
“You’ll enjoy New York,” I said. “Spend time with your wife. Take her to the opera. To catch a show on Broadway. You’ll do things. Keep busy.”
“I am not a man to ask twice,” he said. “I can do this.”
“Listen,” I said, sitting forward. “You’re angry. I understand. You have every right to be. But if I take you into this life—” I lifted my finger. “One, the fucker is dead, so there will be no revenge.” I lifted my middle finger. “Two, my wife will never forgive me, because if something happens to you, it’ll come back on me. Your wife will want me dead. My wife will take her side. And that is fucking that. Finito.” Finished.
I relaxed in my seat. “And if you haven’t noticed, my wife has it in for me for something else. And no matter who I am in this life, I might not be able to help you if you do something stupid that will cost you your life. Rules are rules. It’s that simple.”
He thought about this and then nodded. “I noticed you do not get along with too many people,” he said.
I noticed you do not get along with too many people. I had one—one—incident when I worked for him where I knocked a guy upside his head with my bucket because he told me I was working too slow. And I couldn’t get along with people? I was a people-ing motherfucker, as long as you didn’t fuck me over.
“I will have to convince Anna to come home,” he said.
“She will,” I said. “I’m working on Angela, because Giuseppe is giving me hell, too.”
You sing, and suddenly everyone thinks they can fucking push you around. That’s why I always said my cousin Dom was a pussy. He had “handlers” who all thought they could turn him into a singing puppet. He let them.
Fabrizio brought me back to real time when he started making funny faces at my Eleonora. She laughed at him, but she cried for me. That hit a fucking nerve. If he weren’t a man I considered family, I’d probably kill him out of envy. He had something I wanted—a smile from my daughter.
Alcina’s smile grew wider when she noticed the girl from Modica, the same one from The Club, Mariposa, coming up with the boy I had seen with her in Italy. Her son. Her husband hadn’t liked me from the moment he set eyes on me, but who the fuck was he? If I was good enough for his cousin to marry, I was good enough for him to accept.
The little boy in Mariposa’s arms reached out and touched the top of Eleonora’s head. She smiled for him, too. Everyone but me.
It was all so idealistic looking. The mothers. The aunt. The grandmother. The cousin (Brooklyn). The friends. The kids playing in the park.
For the first time in a long time, I realized how far on the outskirts I was of this life, and how deep I was in my other. It was times like these that something hit me worse than jealousy, or even envy, both emotions that Alcina had introduced me to. In that second, I was experiencing something else. I couldn’t put a fucking name to it because I wasn’t sure what it was.
It was what Alcina had explained to me one night. “Like you miss me, too, even though I’m next to you.”
The word “miss” was wrong. That seemed like such a simple, uncomplicated word to describe the mayhem I felt in the center of my chest.
To sum it up. I felt like I had spent an entire lifetime with these people, and every bad thing I ever did they held me accountable for, but loved me despite of them. Then suddenly, I found myself in a separate world, but I could still see them. I was on the inside looking out. It sent a rush of something I had never felt before through me. Panic—maybe. That I might never get to them.
I had never had my heart race. Not even when death was at my door. So maybe panic was the wrong word. Maybe it wasn’t strong enough. Or maybe it was. I didn’t fucking know because this was an entirely new world for me.
One thing was certain, though. The times when I reached them were fleeting. Over too fucking fast. Then my mind went in a different direction, my body following the orders, and the feeling would recede and nothing else registered but the life.
“Hey.”
I leaned forward some, narrowing my eyes at the girl walking out of the sunlight toward me with her son. She took a seat next to me on the bench, like she had known me forever.
I was a people person to a certain extent—I wasn’t fucking lying about that—but not too many people chose to sit next to me. It was usually done for a reason in my world.
The boy sat between us, playing with a toy. For a kid, he had a serious face.
I sat back so I could see her face better. She wasn’t a plain woman, but she wasn’t extraordinary either. It was hard to describe what was attractive about her, and not in a sexual way. She was somewhat regal looking. It was her nose. The way it curved. It gave her something special. Character that I didn’t see every day.
“Mariposa.” I nodded.
“It’s actually Mari,” she said. “My husband is the only one who calls me Mariposa.”
<
br /> Maybe I was reading too much into it, but it was like she was telling me that for a reason. Like she wanted me to know that about her. Maybe she just wanted anyone to know.
“Your husband. The man in Modica. My wife’s cousin.”
“Yeah,” she said. “That’s him.”
“So that makes Eleonora and—” I looked at the kid.
“Saverio,” she said.
I nodded. “Saverio—”
“Cousins,” she finished for me. “It does.”
“It’ll be nice for Alcina to have family so close. Once her mamma and sister go back home.”
She nodded, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “It will be. They can grow up together.” She fussed over her kid’s hair. He had a ton of it. “I didn’t have any family growing up. I was alone most of my life.”
My eyes had roamed over to Alcina again, and at this, I looked at the woman again. Did she need a friend? Because that was something to discuss with my wife, not me.
“I have a ton of family,” I said. “You can have one of them.” I grinned, trying to make a joke, but she didn’t.
She shrugged. “It would have been nice, you know, to just…share something with someone. Something familiar.”
“You mean like blood,” I said.
“Yeah.” She stopped fussing with the kid’s hair and really looked at me. Almost studying me. “Someone with a similar feature or two. Someone who is supposed to be there no matter what.” She nodded toward Alcina and Anna, who were squishing Eleonora between them, before Fabrizio took the picture. “You have a beautiful family.”
I tapped the kid on the head. “I’d say you do, too.”
She grinned this time. “I do.” She hesitated a minute. “Do you have any brothers or sisters?”
I sighed. “No.”
“Oh. You said you had a big family, so I assumed.” She shrugged. “I guess you’re pretty much alone then, too.”
“Define alone.”
“I get it,” she said, smiling this time. “You probably have a lot of cousins. Like Saverio and Eleonora.”
“Ele,” I said. “Everyone else calls her Ele but me.”
Mari’s smile grew even wider. “Ele and I have that in common then. We both have someone special to say our names.” She looked down at her jean shorts, picking at something there. “It’s nice to have a parent that does that. Calls you something special.”
She said the words quietly, but I heard her. She scooped her son up and held him close to her chest, kissing his head.
Alcina came over to us with Eleonora. She sat between Mari and me. She handed me Eleonora. Even though she didn’t cry this time, she stared at her mamma with wide eyes, wanting her. I stroked her head, settling the small tufts of hair she had, while putting my arm behind Alcina’s back. She leaned into me, getting comfortable.
“It is such a beautiful day,” Alcina said, sighing.
I stared at her face. Maybe she believed it, but there was always something underneath the surface lately. She said the words, like she was forcing herself to believe them, even if she didn’t feel they were true. She was battling the demons to get to the place where she could believe and feel it.
“You can’t escape me!” Anna pointed at me. “I know you don’t like pictures, but just this once. I want to get you all together.”
Alcina pulled even closer to me, taking Eleonora’s hand, and then she reached out for Mari.
“Closer!” Anna said, keeping her eye to the camera, using her hand to direct Mari. “He does not stink. I would say he doesn’t bite, but he does.”
Mari looked at me and then settled her son on her lap before she moved closer to Alcina.
“On the count of three!”
On three, I looked to my right when I noticed the kid I was supposed to meet. He was waiting at our agreed spot. After eye contact, he’d go to another secluded area in the park.
“You were looking away!” Anna said, looking at the picture on the screen.
“Good enough,” I said. I kissed Eleonora on the head, handed her back to Alcina, kissed her, and then went for a walk around the park.
Adriano came with me to meet the kid.
He huffed as he tried to keep up with me.
“I smell the pastrami on you,” I said. “You’re fucking sweating it out.”
He looked like he wanted to respond, but he didn’t want to waste his breath. Either way, he would have been. He either took responsibility for his situation or he knew I’d start calling him “Excuses” until he got his shit together.
There was only did or didn’t. Yes or no. Anytime there was a “but” attached, it was a fucking excuse.
“Is that the kid?” Adriano narrowed his eyes, stuck a hand over his eyebrows, and then blew out a hot breath.
I followed the line of his sight. “Yeah, that’s him. He said he’d be wearing a black turtleneck.”
“In this fucking heat?” He scrunched his face up, narrowing his eyes even more. “He looks like a mini version of Roy Orbison. Even down to the glasses and the fucking hair.”
“You going to run out of breath if you keep talking and walking,” I said.
“I’m easily susceptible to things,” he said. “That’s why I have to take steroids sometimes.”
“More of a reason to take care of yourself then,” I said.
“I still can’t get over this guy,” he said, staring at the kid again. “He’s Roy Orbison the remake. CRYING!” he started to sing. “I’m CRYING.”
This fucking guy. I shook my head.
“I bet Bugsy would love to meet ’im.” Adriano wiped sweat from his forehead.
I grinned because Adriano was right. Bugsy would. The fucking kid didn’t even need a costume for Halloween. He channeled Roy Orbison from wherever he had gone.
“You think Alcina is going to wonder why we’re going to meet this kid?”
We were close to meeting up with him. Calcedonio had set it up with his old man, and he was waiting in the exact spot in the park we had agreed on. It was far enough from my wife and family that they wouldn’t come looking for me or overhear anything.
“No,” I said. But after I’d gotten up, so had she, holding Eleonora as she watched me walk away until she couldn’t anymore.
“Dum dum dum,” Adriano sang as we got even closer. “Only the lonely…”
I shot him a look. He made a motion against his lips, like he was turning a key, and as we passed a trash can, he threw it away.
The kid held his hand out when we got close enough. “Gene Champollion, at your service.”
I held my hand up. “We’re good.” I could tell his hand was clammy from wearing a fucking sweater in the heat.
He looked at Adriano and just nodded. Adriano nodded back. “You look just like Roy Orbison,” he said. “I had to tell you that.”
Gene nodded. “I get that a lot.”
“’Cause it’s the fucking truth,” Adriano said.
“Give me what you have,” I said, stopping any further conversation. There was no telling what the fuck Adriano was taking, and it was making him chatty. Usually my men took care of things like this. But this wasn’t business. This was personal.
Gene stood up straighter. “To tell you the truth, sir, nothing.”
“Your old man said you’re the best,” I said. “His exact words to my man were, ‘there’s nothing he can’t find.’”
“In my entire fifteen years, there’s nothing I haven’t found when I looked. Even the government wants me. This is a first.”
I narrowed my eyes at him, and he visibly started sweating even more. He wasn’t hot. He was scared shitless.
“The thing is,” he said, sighing, “I’m pretty sure someone was fucking with me the entire time. I found a few things—a picture, easy shit like that—but when I’d go back, they’d be gone. Poof. Like they never existed in the first place.”
“You couldn’t find one thing on Vittorio Scarpone.”
“Two.
” He lifted two fingers. “He was the son of Arturo Scarpone, and his father allegedly had him killed. The second article was about the slayings of the Scarpone family at a restaurant named Dolce. There were actually a bunch of those, but only one or two actually mentioned Vittorio.”
“No pictures,” I said.
He twisted his cheek and shook his head. “Again, only one. Then it was gone.”
“Describe him.”
“Blue eyes. Black hair. Sharp features. Probably Italian, like you. Real handsome.”
“Your take on this?”
He scratched his head, dusted some dandruff into the air, and then made a face when it sprinkled around him like salt. “I’d say whoever it is knew I was looking. He or she was letting me know he or she knew. I’d get into specifics, but it can get pretty wordy.”
So the Machiavellian son of bitch was a fucking gangster nerd.
It was starting to feel like I was actually up against a ghost. A fucking ghost that was whispering, “Boo, motherfucker, here I am,” every time I got close, and then he’d disappear.
“Oh! I will say this,” Gene said, his voice screeching a little. “I knew of one of his—” He closed his eyes, his mouth moving, but no sound came out. “He would have been one of his nephews. His brother’s son. He was extremely knowledgeable about the same things I am. If you catch my drift.” He winked at me and then made a face, like he couldn’t believe he just did that. “Bad move, Gene,” he whispered to himself. “Bad move.”
Adriano took a few steps away from him.
“I’m not following,” I said.
“He was smart. Like…extremely smart.” He said the word slowly. “So his uncle probably is, too.”
No shit, I was going to say, but he was already looking at me like he was prepared to speak slowly again. He didn’t even say anything technical. He thought he was the smartest guy around, but he was forgetting that he got one-upped by a gangster. Our specialty was the streets, not usually sitting behind a computer. But Vittorio Scarpone had lived an entirely different life for years. It made sense that he would develop skills to help him stay hidden.
Back in the day, it was easier to disappear. Everything wasn’t digital in the old days.
Mercenary (Gangsters of New York Book 3) Page 25