by Loki Renard
It was true, but that didn’t mean Antonio was buying it. He didn’t understand how the world really worked. He was innocent, naive. He thought if you wanted to stay home and relax all day, you could. And Angelo knew he was enabling that process. Antonio was a kept boy, and a spoiled one at that.
“Keep that attitude up, and I will give you something to pout about,” Angelo purred.
“Like what?”
Several impulses whirred in Angelo’s mind. Like the impulse to turn that perfect ass a shade of red so bright he’d need sunglasses to look at it. He didn’t say so out loud. Antonio likely wouldn’t take that well, and Angelo himself didn’t understand the recurring desire he had to discipline his lover.
He certainly wasn’t going to act on it. Antonio had known enough pain in his short life. A family of assholes who rejected him for his sexuality, sent him onto the streets with more than a bruise or two at the very height of an epidemic which made gay men afraid for their lives.
Angelo knew all too well how he and Antonio and men like him were viewed, as sick, criminal vermin to be killed off least the plague spread. He and Antonio were clean, tested at the local clinic, but there was always the fear that somehow they’d catch what others were catching. Angelo had a crate full of condoms and a virtual vat of lube, but still he worried.
“Just stay home tonight, okay? I’ll try to be back early.”
“Maybe I will, maybe I won’t.”
“You will,” Angelo said firmly.
Antonio’s usually calm eyes flashed with fire. “You’re not the boss of me, Angelo. You can’t tell me what to do.”
Pin him down the voice in Angelo’s head said. Fuck him until he doesn’t dare talk back to you.
Angelo ignored the impulse, as he always did. There was a monster inside him, a beast he didn’t understand, but knew did not belong in this civilized world. Even criminals needed to have their own limits.
“Please,” Angelo said. “I’m asking nicely.”
“And what happens when you stop asking nicely?”
I beat your little ass. The voice knew precisely what to say. But Angelo kept it mute.
“Just stay,” Angelo growled. “I don’t have time to fight with you.”
“You don’t have time to do anything with me,” Antonio whined.
Angelo’s fists clenched, as did his jaw. “I’m earning a living, so we can live.”
“You’re a drug dealer,” Antonio pointed out. “That’s not earning a living. You’re just a criminal thug like all the rest of them.”
The barb hit home, just as Antonio knew it would. Angelo hated what he did to make money, but he was good at it. If he’d had a degree, he could have gotten into business school and gone and worked Wall Street himself, been a high flying business man making money off the incredible boom.
But he’d never had the chance to go to college. He’d been on his own since he was thirteen, and that had meant learning to hustle. He knew the streets. He knew the people, and he knew how to make the kind of money he could never have made anywhere else in a legitimate career.
Antonio was going to have a better life. He was going to start college in the fall. He was going to have what Angelo didn’t have. That was why Angelo was working so hard. He wanted their life to be good. He wanted Antonio to have everything he needed and wanted, and for now, this was how he did it. Antonio’s words hurt, but Angelo had no intention of letting that show.
“I’m going,” he said, grabbing his keys.
“Angelo…”
Angelo stopped at the door, looked back to see Antonio sitting up in bed, the covers around his waist, his hair disheveled from laziness and sex.
“Sorry,” he said.
And there it was, the reason this was all worthwhile. Antonio could be spoiled, but he was sweet. And their lives were going to be good, damn good, once this stage was over.
“Take a shower,” Angelo said with a smirk. “And change the sheets. It’s starting to smell like a brothel in here.”
Antonio waved him off, and Angelo stepped out into the world.
5
Tonight was a big night. A much bigger night than he’d let on, in fact. He had bought and paid for a shipment of enough coke to keep Wall Street running for a month.
This was Angelo’s chance to make some real cash, set himself up in a way he hadn’t been able to before. He’d invested practically every penny, including rent money, in the deal. Tonight, he’d take the pick up, hand it over to specially selected distributors, and tomorrow, the money would start rolling in.
The pick up was down at the docks. He had transport standing by, an old fish lorry. The smell would throw off any tracking dogs, if there happened to be any in the vicinity. He was going to spend the rest of the night dividing up his product and getting it into the right hands. Then the fun would begin. Passive income, baby. Tens of thousands of dollars rolling up from the streets and into his pockets.
The Vito boys had the shipment. Came off one of their cousin’s tubs, straight from Colombia. The real deal. Pure stuff. Uncut. That was the pitch anyway. Angelo had risked a lot on the up front payment, but they were taking risks too.
On arrival at the docks, Angelo started to get an uneasy feeling. He couldn’t quite pin it down. Maybe the moon was a little too bright, casting too much light on what was going to go down. Maybe it was some prickle of intuition which made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.
Vito was where he said he was going to be. Warehouse 7-G. Small one, out of the way. Perfect for this sort of deal. Maybe too perfect.
Angelo glanced around. The concern was always cops. Get caught with as much cocaine as he was buying, spend the rest of your life in prison. There had been busts before down at the docks. Big ones too. But the deals went on, because the demand went on, and Angelo had no intention of missing out on his cut of the pie because of risk.
Vito usually showed up with at most, one other guy. Tonight there were at least ten. The bad feeling deepened and grew. This had all the marks of a set up. There was something even more shifty in Vito’s eyes than usual. The man was a walking sleazeball, an ambulatory collection of humanity’s worst traits rolled up in a guy with a taste for velour jumpsuits and too much product in his hair.
“How’s it going?” Angelo sauntered in casually, hands in his pockets. The left one held a snub nosed 9mm. Not enough to take down ten men, but enough to give him a little extra courage.
“How you doin’ Angelo? How’s the wife?” Vito greeted him.
A snorting ripple of laughter went through the group of neanderthals who thought that was funny.
“We ready to do business?” Angelo kept his cool, kept the meeting on track. The sooner he was out of range of these assholes, the better.
“Trip was more difficult than we thought. Gonna need another ten k.”
So this was what was going on. A shakedown for the product he’d already bought.
“You’ve already been paid,” Angelo said evenly. “We had a deal.”
“Yeah? Maybe we’re, uh, changing the deal. Ten k more, or we keep the product.”
Shit. Angelo’s mind raced, looking for leverage. This was the problem with money up front of course, you could get fucked. But this had been his attempt to secure a regular supplier, make a good faith payment, promise of more down the track.
“You keep the product now, we never do business again,” Angelo said calmly. “You keep the money you already got, but I make sure you never see another fucking dime.”
“And how the fuck you gonna do that?”
This was not a good situation. He had no backup, no muscle. Vito had his entire family behind him. Fuck these guys. These bossed up, super connected straight family fuckers who figured anyone without a Don to go to was fair game.
Angelo fought to keep his head clear, and his temper in check. Couldn’t afford to lose it now. The shit eating grin on Vito’s face spoke volumes. They intended to fuck him. Well, they had anoth
er thing coming, because, as Antonio could have told them, Angelo liked to be the one doing the fucking.
“So what will you give me for my money?”
Vito pulled out a pistol and cocked it. “How about I give you ten seconds to get the fuck out of here without blowing your fag face off?”
Cold anger gripped Angelo. He’d put almost all his money into this deal. This was supposed to be the big one. The payoff. Instead, he was going to come out of it with nothing. Vito had never spoken to him like this before. Angelo had an idea who had been in the man’s ear. Fucking Mario.
When Angelo spoke, it was in calm, controlled tones which showed no fear, no anger, just a mild exasperation. “Vito, we had a deal. I give you money, you give me product. My territory is expanding every day. I have sales channels your corner pushers can’t reach. You sell to ghettos. I sell to the people who own them. That’s the difference. You try to sell this you’re going to spend the next six months having your guys get shot at, getting stiffed, getting dimed out to the cops. So you know what? Keep the chicken feed you got from me. It will be the last dollar you ever see. I’ll find a reliable supplier who can think long term.”
As he spoke, he saw the light go on in Vito’s dull eyes. Whatever Mario had said wasn’t enough to overcome Vito’s natural greed.
“Shit, I was just fucking wit ya. Here it is.”
He pulled the cover off the pallet in front of him and Angelo found himself staring at more potential profit than he’d ever seen in his life.
“Mind if I test it?”
“Go ahead.”
Angelo pulled the top few bricks off in case the outer ones were the good stuff, picked one from the middle, plunged the knife into the guts of it an pulled out a little white powder. This was the part where a lot of guys rubbed the shit on their gums. Angelo had always regarded that as a universally stupid thing to do. You didn’t know if you were rubbing talcum powder or anthrax into your face. Instead he dumped the sample into a small vial and waited for the contents to turn rich mahogany brown. Perfect.
“Alright,” he said. “Get it loaded into the truck and stand by for my next order.”
“Load em up boys!” Vito called out.
One guy worked the forklift while the other nine henchmen stood around and acted like they weren’t now entirely surplus to requirements.
The rest of the night was a long one. Angelo took the van and drove around the city and outer suburbs, making drops to some of the most unlikely places. The thing about cocaine was, it sold itself. But it didn’t sell itself to just anyone. Getting the middle and upper class dealers was the key to long term success, and he was developing a reputation as a reliable, discreet supplier to dealers each of whom had a clientele largely above criminal suspicion. Bankers, police officers, school teachers, lawyers. NYC was awash in coke addiction, and Angelo was well on the way to cornering the most desirable corner of the market, people who paid a premium to avoid the dark, dangerous corners of the world where the drug emerged from.
He arrived back at the apartment brimming with cash, enough to more than pay back the loan he’d taken out to afford the shipment in the first place. Over the next days and weeks, he’d see the additional payments rolling in. His was a simple model. Sell the brick to the dealer at cost - far lower than they could get the stuff anywhere else. Then take an additional 40% of payments once they came in. It was a percentage deal which was growing his network all the time. He’d start dealers off small, make sure they knew the deal. Anyone who didn’t pay, they got cut off. No money lost, no more supply, no need to get into the nasty business of knee-capping people for drug money.
It was a lot later than he’d counted on being. The sun was already rising as he got back home. He opened the door as quietly as possible, not wanting to wake Antonio. After a long night, Angelo was exhausted.
But there was another problem. The bed was empty. It was still a total fucking mess, but it hadn’t been slept in. Antonio must have gone out after all. Apparently he’d listened to literally nothing of what Angelo had said.
Exhausted, and too pissed off to go and look for him, Angelo went to bed.
6
It was mid-afternoon when Angelo woke up, not because he was done sleeping, but because there was a heavy pounding at the door.
“POLICE!”
Angelo stumbled out of bed, pulling on pants and a shirt.
“Coming!”
His heart was pounding. There was a good fifty thousand dollars of drug money stashed under the mattress. Had Vito fucked him over? Had Mario? Did one of his dealers dob him in? His business, which had seemed so secure just a few hours ago, now seemed like sieve full of holes.
Sure he was about to be arrested, Angelo got socks and shoes on. They’d take the laces, but he didn’t want to go into the cells barefoot.
He made sure the cash and his gun were well stashed in the safe under the bed, then went to open the door. What was his lawyer’s number again? It wasn’t coming to him, but he knew he was going to need it.
Angelo took a deep breath, opened the door, and found himself looking into the sombre faces of two police officers.
“Mr Vitali?”
“That’s me,” Angelo confirmed.
“We’re here about a young… associate of yours.”
The pause before associate told Angelo that it wasn’t really an associate. It was Antonio.
“Antonio Carelli,” the cop said. “Have you seen him lately?”
“I saw him last night, before I went out, “Angelo said. “What’s up? Has he gotten into trouble? Does he need bail?
“No, sir,” the officer said. “We need someone to identify him.”
Identify. Him.
With those two words, the world went cold.
Angelo knew what they meant. He just didn’t want to know. He didn’t want to believe it. And until they said it, it wasn’t true.
“Mr Vitali, we understand you and Antonio were close…”
“He’s my boyfriend.”
“I’m sorry to say, sir, he was found deceased in a location near the meatpacking district.”
They’d said the words. The world closed in. Darkness overcame Angelo.
“What happened to him?” The words came out rough and raw.
“It wasn’t pleasant, sir.”
Angelo felt pure rage flaring inside him. “Who did it?”
“That’s what we’re trying to ascertain. Where were you last night between the hours of two and four?”
It didn’t occur to Angelo for a moment what they were asking. He was too busy thinking that he had said he would be home by then, too busy realizing that Antonio must have gotten up and left after Angelo broke his promise. Must have gone out looking for whatever the hell it was a young gay man could look for in the early hours of the morning.
“I was uh, I was out…”
He heard how vague and lame the words sounded. Alibi. He didn’t have one. He couldn’t exactly say well officer, I was out delivering a metric fuckton of cocaine.
“Where were you, sir?”
“Uh, suburbs. I was at a friend’s home.”
“Can we have the details of this friend, sir?”
“Wait…” Angelo rasped. “Antonio’s dead… I need.. I need to see him.”
“If you’d come with us sir, we’ll take you.”
They were professional, but he knew they thought he did it. He was a gay. A deviant. A scumbag. A criminal. Some of those things were true.
Numb to the impending chaos, Angelo turned around to grab the keys he’d tossed on the kitchen countertop when he came in the night before. Suddenly, he saw everything he should have seen last night.
Antonio’s wallet was still on the counter. Angelo picked it up. It still had money in it.
That wasn’t like the boy at all. He never went out without money. When Angelo looked down, he saw Antonio’s shoes were still by the door. The ones he always wore, scuffing his feet into them with the laces stil
l tied. As he looked around, he realized that the apartment wasn’t messy because Antonio had made one of his signature messes. It was chaotic, like things had been thrown around in a struggle.
Antonio hadn’t gone out. He’d been taken.
“Sir?”
Angelo turned back to the cop. Almost said something. Then he shut his mouth. The less police involvement in this the better.
He followed the officers to their car and was driven to the morgue. They tried to ask him questions on the way. He had enough of his wits about him not to answer them. The concept of Antonio being gone was strange. He couldn’t process it entirely. Perhaps they’d got it wrong. Maybe it was some other young man.
The morgue was a strange place. The police visibly shivered as they stepped into it, but Angelo was immune by merit of his deep misery. With every step he took, he prayed to the god he didn’t believe in that he would not see Antonio’s face here.
And he didn’t.
“It’s a difficult case,” the mortuary technician was saying. His voice sounded like it was coming from miles away, entirely underwater.
There was a scent in the air. Like a barbecue. It was unholy and out of place in this steel cavern of the dead.
“Show me,” Angelo said.
The filing cabinet of the dead was hauled open, and the smell grew more intense. Antonio hadn’t merely been murdered. He had been set on fire. Cooked. His face was utterly unrecognizeable, a charred husk missing major features like lips and nose.
The police recoiled, but Angelo stared. Forced himself to look. This was not a sight he could turn away from. If this was Antonio, all he could do now was bear witness. He would not avert his gaze. He would not look away. He would see every burned and battered inch of the boy he had once loved. He would take the image, burn it into his memory, so he might never forget the cost of his incompetence, and his betrayal.