by Jeff Carson
Chapter 41
Wolf got off the ticking scooter and eyed the Albastru Pub across the piazza. It was lively, chock-full of patrons, with laughter gushing from the pub doorway as it opened and closed with coming and going patrons.
He walked to the front of the pub and studied inside the large windows. A thick and solid bartender worked behind the counter. His huge arms were heavily inked, pulling taps and pushing mugs to people crowded around the bar. A young waitress with a face that sparkled with piercings weaved in and out of standing customers, expertly balancing an impossible number of drinks on a tray.
A group of young men wearing soccer jerseys charged out with cigarettes in their mouths and sloshing mugs of beer in their hands. They were raucously arguing, probably about the soccer match on the televisions inside.
He dug in his pocket and pulled out a cigarette from the pack he’d borrowed from Cristina. In his experience, a box of cigarettes was a prop with many uses. Never mind the toll his lungs would pay. “Excuse me, do you have a light?” He flicked his thumb, ignoring the lighter in his pocket, which he’d borrowed as well.
Two of the bigger guys turned toughly, eyeing him up and down. “Yes, I have one!” Another guy stepped forward with a friendly smile and extended a lighter. “Where are you from?”
Through the window Wolf saw Cezar’s tall head bobbing behind the bar, high above the other patrons. Wolf took the lighter and turned his back to the building.
“Tijuana.” Wolf lit his cigarette, tossed the lighter back without looking, and walked away.
“Che cazzo?” the man asked.
Wolf hung a left, walked thirty yards and took another left onto a cobblestone road, and then took the next left into a dark rain-soaked alley that looked like it led to the rear of the pub.
He made his way through a slot canyon of thousand-year-old buildings. They were seamlessly connected, each with unique, and dark, arching stone doorways.
Ahead was a blind curve. Beyond it, a bright glow that reflected off the wet ground. He tossed the cigarette in a puddle and walked ahead, stopping when he saw two men standing in a brightly lit garage doorway, sucking on cigarettes of their own.
The two men were wiry, much like Cezar, as if they didn’t eat much or had the metabolism of ferrets. They didn’t look particularly dangerous, being neither tall nor muscular, but they’d likely been raised on the streets of a country he had no knowledge of. Whether from Italy or Romania, he didn’t know the skills these guys brought to the table. They were heavily tattooed, and his gut told him they weren’t just a couple of dishwashers out for a smoke break.
The shorter of the two guys was telling an animated story while the other one stood still, chuckling silently, looking self-consciously at the cigarette in his hand. Neither looked to have weapons.
They finished their cigarettes, tossed them onto the wet street, and stayed there, like they were going to wait for something. Then, after a minute, they walked inside the garage.
Wolf put another cigarette in his mouth and walked toward the bright garage.
As he got closer, he heard two men jabbering in Romanian.
He walked into the light blazing out of the door and squinted a look inside. The bright interior of the garage was large enough for one American SUV, or two Italian cars. Boxes were stacked along the walls of either side. It looked to be used as a loading dock for food and supplies. Here they would be offloaded from a truck, stacked, and brought into the restaurant, through a door on the back-left corner wall that probably went to a kitchen, judging from the clanking sounds that came from within.
The two men were hard at work, pulling full boxes from a haphazard area in the middle of the garage, taping them shut, and stacking them along the walls.
The boxes were brown, of the same dimension he’d seen in the back of Cezar’s truck the night before, and, just like the night before, they were filled to the brim with what looked to be stolen electronics.
One of the guys did a double take when he saw Wolf, who was now standing in the garage doorway with a cigarette in his mouth, digging in his pocket with a frustrated look.
They both stood with wide eyes and walked to Wolf, chests out, heads leaned way back and to the side.
“Excuse me,” Wolf said. “Do you have a lighter?” He flicked his thumb.
The shorter guy on the right took the lead, skipping in front of the other guy. “No, no, no, no.” He wagged his finger as he approached Wolf.
Wolf took his left hand out of his pocket and pulled the cigarette out of his mouth with his right. Then he splayed both hands out in a defenseless gesture. “No, sorry, I’m just looking for a lighter!” He pointed wildly to his cigarette.
The small guy put his right hand on Wolf’s chest and pushed gently.
Wolf kept his hands up and shuffled backwards out into the center of the alley, a look of horror now displayed on his face.
The short guy laughed and patted Wolf’s chest a few times, pushing him back further with each smack. The guy looked him up and down, like he was creepily sizing up a woman, then launched into an amused conversation, looking over his shoulder to speak to the man behind him.
Wolf snapped his left hand forward in a blur, landing a knuckle punch to the man’s temple, and followed with a right elbow to the middle of the man’s face a fraction of a second later. The first punch had been enough, knocking the man out instantly. The elbow was just to make sure the man wouldn’t be getting back up, and to serve as a lifelong reminder to be warier of men bigger than he was.
The taller guy spat out his cigarette with wide eyes, ripping his hands from his pockets.
Wolf stepped over the crumpling body , watching the other man weigh fight against flight. Flight won out, but not nearly fast enough.
Wolf, in full stride, easily closed the distance between them, put his shoulder down, and tackled him from behind, just underneath the waist, landing on him hard, driving the man’s chest and face into the smooth concrete floor with a slap. He bounced up onto his knees, grabbed two fistfuls of the man’s greasy hair, and slammed his head down. The man went limp beneath him.
Turning back to the alley, the first man lay motionless with twisted legs.
Wolf got up and pulled the man he was on top of out into the dark, leaving a long red smear on the smooth concrete floor. He flipped him over onto his back to remedy the situation, feeling a slight twinge of pity for the man as Wolf studied the damage he’d done to his face.
Within a minute, he had both guys stowed up against a dark doorway in the alley.
He hurried back into the open garage and began rummaging. Boxes—some open, some shut—were filled with electronics. A stack of the white EAS logoed boxes was piled along the right wall. He lifted one. They felt the same as the night before, heavy and densely packed.
Clipboards hung on the wall. He pulled down the first board and studied the papers clipped to it. It was an original bill of lading from an Italian shipping company. The dark print was all in Italian, making it illegible to Wolf, except one line that said Genoa, Liguria, Italia. Wolf recognized it as the port city of Genova on the west coast of Italy. The line before it read Tenes, Algeria.
A shipment from Algeria? North Africa?
Sheet after sheet was the same. Genoa, Liguria, Italia and Tenes, Algeria. Another line item on the paper stood out, being that it was the same on each and every sheet. Fratelli Importatori.
A loud clang of a pot or pan from inside the door jolted him into quick action. He set the clipboards back on their hooks and ran out of the garage, careful to step over the darkening blood streak on his way out.
As he turned the corner, he heard the door inside the garage open with a squeak.
He ran quietly down the road and around the bend.
Chapter 42
Wolf ran down the alley, to the right, to the right again, and up to the front of the pub. He walked inside, nodding to the man he had bummed a light from earlier.
The man
nodded with a resentful eye as he sucked on his cigarette.
The pub thumped with dance music, too loud for anyone to speak over. The televisions were all on the same channel, playing a soccer match that drew the eye of every male in the room. It was hot and steamy and smelled like he was wading in a soup of cologne and sweat.
Wolf looked for Cezar, but didn’t see his head towering above the crowd anywhere.
Wolf weaved his way to the counter and found the stocky guy with the tattoos alone behind the bar.
He nodded and leaned an ear to Wolf, looking with beady pollution-brown eyes.
“Stella Artois!” Wolf screamed over the music.
The man twisted to the glasses and swiftly poured him a beer from the tap.
Wolf took a sip, paid the behemoth, and sauntered behind a line of standing patrons to the right side of the bar, which gave him the best view into the back hallway.
The hallway ended in a kitchen where two employees were pacing back and forth. Beyond them was a brightly lit doorway, wide open to the rear garage.
Wolf watched as Cezar appeared in the open doorway and then stepped into the kitchen. He slammed the door and leaned against it, then turned and marched through the kitchen toward the bar. He was gritting his teeth and flexing both fists as he glided forward on his long legs.
Wolf grabbed his beer and threaded through the standing patrons, wincing at the various cheap colognes and bodily emissions as he made his way through the room. There was an open small table next to the front window, so he took it.
The waitress was quick to arrive. She had a half-circle piercing dangling from the center of her nose, a couple lip rings, and three neck tattoos. Her blue spiky hair was shaved on the sides with stripes exposing the white scalp underneath, much like a 1980s NFL football player, Wolf thought.
She asked something he didn’t understand, then looked at the dumb expression on his face and smiled. “Would you like a menu?”
“Yeah, that would be great,” he said.
She looked him all the way down and up, then left with a mischievous smile.
He watched her shapely body go for a second, and then took a sip of his beer. Tipping the mug back, he watched Cezar, who was now behind the bar and bending in toward the thick-necked guy’s ear. He was yelling over the music, snapping his head sharply as he did so.
The bartender nodded toward the front window, just to Wolf’s left. Cezar stood up straight and looked, eyes hardening. Wolf froze, the beer pouring down his throat slowly. He stopped drinking, letting the beer rest up against his closed mouth, and breathed through his nose, hoping the mug of beer was concealing his face from recognition. Then he realized they were looking at the front door as a warm, smoky breeze hit his face and a fully clad carabiniere walked in.
Wolf set the beer down on the table and bent down to his boot. He fondled his laces as if tying them and looked sidelong toward the red stripe of the carabinieri uniform pants. The officer was poised right inside the door for a few seconds, then turned and stepped away from him.
Wolf straightened in his seat and strained to see through the throng of people. He spied Cezar, who was wide-eyed and looked to be turning pale. His Adam’s apple was bobbing up and down fast as he swallowed, like he desperately needed a drink of water.
Cezar seemed to be shitting himself, and he should have been, Wolf thought, with the stuff he had sitting a few feet away in his garage.
Wolf stood and shuffled through the crowd to get a better look, his curiosity piqued. Had the carabinieri begun their investigation into the shady dealings of the Albastru Pub?
The waitress with the piercings cut him off. “You not going to eat after all?” Her bottom lip was out with a pouty look.
“Uh, yeah, sorry. I think I’m just going to go up to the bar.” He pointed past her, and then stopped abruptly, accidentally juking the waitress into bumping straight into him.
She laughed excitedly, placing her tiny hand on the small of his back. “Oh, sorry!” she giggled, pressing into him a little too hard.
He ignored her, because he was still looking at Cezar, who had made a subtle move that didn’t make sense. Cezar had just nodded his head toward the far end of the bar.
Wolf looked to the carabinieri officer, who changed the direction of his approach, following the nod.
It was an odd interaction. It was like Cezar was calling the location of the conversation, which he was, or else he wouldn’t have nodded his head. It was too familiar a gesture, as if they were friends.
The officer reached the end of the bar, plopped his hat down and leaned over onto his elbows.
Cezar reached him and leaned down, launching into a conversation in the officer’s left ear. The carabinieri officer turned his head to his right, revealing the unmistakable profile of Detective Valerio Rossi. Cezar gestured behind himself with a thumb, and then also sat his elbows on the counter.
Cezar was looking at Rossi with raised eyebrows, looking like he was waiting for some kind of an answer from the carabiniere.
Rossi stood slowly and stared at his hat on the counter, contemplating something. Then he looked around, down the length of the bar, then at the mass of people.
Wolf’s heart skipped. Something wasn’t right.
He looked down at the waitress, who was pulling her hand back and moving on with her life. As she shuffled past, Wolf twisted away from the bar to follow her, then gently pulled on her arm.
She turned back with a puppy-dog look of curiosity.
He bent and kissed her, and she returned the gesture eagerly, clicking her tongue piercing against his teeth. Wolf opened his eyes and searched the reflection in the front window while they kissed. Rossi was walking straight toward him.
He stopped kissing her and breathed in her ear. “Sorry, no. I won’t be eating tonight after all.”
“That’s too bad.” Her breath was hot, her lips flicking his earlobe. “Well, we could always eat together later.”
“What’s that?” he said, pointing at his ear, keeping his head down. She repeated herself as Rossi pushed past Wolf’s right shoulder, brushing right up against him, and out the front door.
Wolf stood and watched Rossi leave. Rossi walked out in a fast march, took a left down the road, and went out of sight.
Looking in the window reflection again, Wolf saw Cezar turn the corner back into the rear of the pub.
Wolf pushed past the waitress and walked to the door.
“Fucking American piece of sh—” the waitress’s voice was snuffed out by the door as it shut.
“Goodbye, asshole.” The soccer fan with a lighter raised his beer to Wolf as he walked past.
Chapter 43
Wolf drove the scooter back to Cristina’s parking spot and headed into the piazza. He threaded his way into the crowd, all the while keeping an eye on his brother’s apartment three floors up. The lights were blazing inside, and a plain-clothes officer stood on the balcony looking into the thrumming Friday night crowd below.
Wolf stopped and watched. The officer looked to the northwest corner of the piazza, then, raising a radio to his mouth, turned to look directly at him.
Wolf flinched as static erupted just a few feet away, and a tinny voice spoke through a radio.
Without looking at who it was carrying the radio, he slalomed through the crowd and made his way to the side shops, then ducked into a narrow street. He lit a cigarette and puffed, surveying the piazza from behind the thin smokescreen.
Scanning the crowd, he shuffled the events of the past week in his mind.
Rossi was everything. And Wolf needed to be careful, or surely he’d be spending the rest of his life in an Italian prison for the murder of Ferka Vlad. Either that, or going home in a box right behind his brother.
Wolf dropped the cigarette and walked downhill along a side street, working his way right, then right again, into a pulsing artery of people that flowed back into the light of the piazza.
Wolf centered himself within t
he flow of people and shuffled forward, surveying ahead. He saw the familiar face of Tito, just inside the entrance to the piazza along the left side, talking conspiratorially on his cell phone. Wolf made his way toward him.
A few moments later he made his way to the edge of the river of humanity and stood near a wall watching Tito. Waiting.
As the young officer finally ended his phone call and was pulling out a cigarette, Wolf approached him. “Can I get one of those, Officer?”
Tito’s eyes widened as he froze.
Wolf nodded and stepped close. “How’s it going? You looking for me?”
Tito’s mouth sagged open, dropping the unlit cigarette from his mouth. “What are you …” Tito stopped talking when Wolf walked around him and applied pressure sharply to the small of his back. Wolf waited patiently for Tito to fumble with his empty holster, look down, and finally realize that his own Beretta was being held on him.
“Don’t you dare make a move or a sound,” Wolf said in Tito’s ear. “I’ve got nothing to lose here. If I have to kill you to get away, that’s no problem with me.”
People streamed by, each person pushed forward by the current of humans behind them, none seeing the situation for what it was.
Wolf jabbed the barrel up into the back of his ribs. “Give me your phone.”
Tito pulled it out, and Wolf took it. Capitano Rossi was displayed on the screen as the last call made.
“What was Rossi telling you?”
Tito arched his back at the gun’s pressure and winced.
“Relax, Tito.” Wolf stepped in front of him and removed the radio from Tito’s chest clip. “Just relax. You stay right here as if all is fine.” Wolf put the radio and phone in one of his sweatshirt pockets, and pointed the gun at Tito’s belly through the fabric of the other. “Otherwise, I’m going to shoot you.”