The Blood of Saints (Tom Connelly Book 2)

by Nick Dorsey

  “Turn around.”

  There was nobody else on River Road, so Dominic eased off the gas and let the Lexus cruise lazily around a curve. “Now?”

  “There’s no business at the other place tonight. They need some help with the books. Go help him out over there, okay?”

  Dominic rolled his eyes. The other place was the game room, he knew. And they didn’t keep books. What they did was a cash drop, and Sal always wanted two people around to make sure everything was counted and delivered to the car dealership. Very tidy. If Sal wanted him over there, it meant that somebody didn’t show. So here Dominic was, just got his promotion, now he was having to go cover for some dumb grunt and watch Nino count money. He must have sighed or made some small sound because Sal said, “Good Christ, just do it. I already told him about you getting the restaurant.”

  He stopped the car. Just hit the brakes right in the middle of the road. “So, I’m the last to know about my own promotion?”

  “But you’re getting the damn promotion, aren’t you?” Dominic allowed that was true. “Relax. But, still, anyone can see you two got some beef. Something. So he might be a little pissy. It’ll smooth over, right? Because you’re gonna make sure it does. That’s part of the whole thing. Making sure the thing runs smoothly. Managing, uh, what do you call it? Difficult personalities.”

  He hung up. Dominic sat there in the rumbling car until his rearview mirror filled with headlights. The car coming up behind him and lighting the cab of the Lexus up as it braked. Then the horn. Dominic stuck his middle finger out the window and pulled the SUV hard to the left, tires digging into the soft, muddy shoulder as he turned around and went back the way he came.

  When he made it to the game room, the rent-a-cop that was usually perched in the parking lot was gone. So, they did shut down. He went inside and was surprised to find David still hanging around the door. He was wearing a teal Hornets jersey so big it could have been a shower curtain. The big guy’s breathing was even worse with his broken nose.

  “How’s the restaurant? I heard they had a big altar. Bigger than last year.”

  “Yeah. I guess so. You’re the only one here?”

  “Nino’s inside.”

  “And you need me to babysit while you do your job?”

  David just shrugged. “I do what the man tells me to do.” He led Dominic in. Inside, the game room was dead. The only lights were buzzing above the little kitchenette and bar.

  Nino came out of the backroom, the little office they kept back there, with half his face washed out by the kitchen light and the other in complete darkness. He didn’t say hello, didn’t say how you doing , just got right to it. “You’re running the Pan now?”

  Dominic heard the jealousy in his voice and did his best not to smile. “It’s been in the works for a while.” Not bragging, but letting Nino know that he could play the game. He had vision.

  “Yeah. That’s what I heard. Let me grab the stuff.”

  Heavy breathing came from behind Dominic. David was standing there. Dominic said, “You sound like a gorilla. That doesn’t sound right.”

  David shrugged again. The big guy wasn’t looking at him. His eyes were cast down.

  Dominic said, “What’s the deal?” But then David started pawing at his hip and he knew. It was funny because Dominic always thought he would be able to tell beforehand. Like a sixth sense or something. But now here he was, it was happening, they were trying to take him out and he didn’t have any idea it was coming. He could hardly believe it, to tell the truth. He saw the big guy pull the gun, some big crazy looking thing, and he thought, shit, Nino was really pissed about his big promotion. It was the look in David’s eyes that snapped him out of it. That hard, angry look. He stepped into the big man’s reach, passed that scary canon of a gun, and threw his elbow at the Hornets jersey but hitting David was like hitting a sandbag. His elbow bounced right off. David didn’t even have to take a step back, he just wobbled like a giant top, but he was slow. By the time he had his gun up Dominic was already crouched down and running behind the bar.

  “Dom, come here,” the fat man said from the game room. Like he wanted to talk, but also clearing his throat. So maybe Dominic had landed a good one.

  From his spot crouched on the floor, Dominic pulled the little Glock from his ankle holster, the thing looking like a toy in his hand, and fired. He wasn’t aiming. A puff of dust, maybe asbestos poison or some shit, rained down. He hoped the shot was enough to scare David off for a minute while he caught his breath, but he wasn’t going to look over the bar to make sure. David was a big guy but he was slow. Dominic tried to remember if David could shoot, but he didn’t know. He didn’t think the guy had ever been a hitter. Not like Nino, making his bones burying bodies. Speaking of Nino.

  The other man was looking right at him. Nino was surprised, just standing in the doorway to the little office. Standing there in his dumb, off-the-rack suit, waiting for David to do his dirty work. He realized he had a shot and went for the piece in his shoulder holster. Nino grunted and scratched at the gun, but it wasn’t coming. He still had the thing secured. He needed to pop the snap on the leather strap that held the gun in place.

  Beautiful. Dominic sneered and held onto the little Glock with both hands and shot the other man, three whip-cracks echoing in the room. Nino made a sound like he had been kicked in the chest, and his hand fell, his gun still secure in its holster. Nino dropped to his knees.

  There was a sound like a tree trunk split by lightning and something exploded over Dominic’s head. Another and he had to shut his eyes against the glass and vodka that peppered his hair and spread out over the room. He hit the ground and screamed. “Shit! Damn it!”

  The shots stopped. “Got you, you asshole,” David said, practically cheering. He was practically snorting as he moved closer to the bar. Dominic inhaled deeply. If he had been a little more religious, he might have said a prayer. He poked his head out from the side of the bar, feeling like a cartoon character peeking around a door frame. He looked up and David’s form filled the air above him. The little Glock shook in Dominic’s hand as he shot the big man, his teal jersey suddenly studded with dark red pits. David opened his mouth, biting at the empty air. He waved that canon he was holding at the bar. His finger couldn’t find the trigger. After two faltering steps, David’s bulk slammed into the bar and sent dishes, bottles, and broken glass flying.

  The big man grunted there slumped against the bar, still trying to breathe through his punctured lungs and a broken nose.

  Dominic stood and froze, smelling the old firework smell of spent gunpowder. He was dragging in great breaths, just like David had tried to do. He was trying to hear the sound of his own heart past the ringing in his ears. Trying to figure out what he had done wrong. And more importantly, what he was going to do now.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  The early morning was muggy. It hung with some primordial mist Tom had to navigate as if he were the first man to walk over the cracked and canted sidewalk and look for the house on Jefferson Davis Parkway. Rain had slashed through the city while Tom was at the casino, but it stopped and the wind went with it. All that moisture was trapped just above sea level and now the thick, cool air settled over Mid City.

  The same collection of bleary-eyed misfits and buttoned-down day drunks dotted the porch and greeted Tom with uncertain familiarity. Inside was the same as before. Styrofoam cups of black coffee and a ring of mismatched chairs scattered on the hardwood. Once the meeting started, Tom didn’t hesitate. He had too much on his mind to quibble, and he could hear the low din of Bayou Beer Garden down the street or Holy Ground the other way, both still going even in the pre-dawn.

  “I’m Tom and I’m an alcoholic,” he said.

  The men in the room growled a greeting back at him.

  The coffee was too hot but that was okay, it distracted him just enough to be able to talk it out. Speaking at these things was trying to fall asleep, sometimes. It was almost impossib
le if he was focused on the act. He would fumble and forget what he was trying to say and everything would come out wrong, somehow. But if he came at the thing sideways, like reading a book until he passed out, then the words would come in something resembling English.

  “I work the night shift down at the casino and I should be asleep, now. I’ve got a big day ahead of me. Second job and all that. And there’s, uh, a relationship, or something like one. I think. I don’t know. Anyway, I should be asleep but I’ve got all this shit running through my mind. And you know what used to help me sleep?”

  Sympathetic murmurs from the gathered.

  “Right. Like a cure-all, right? You need to focus? Booze. Take your mind off things? Try booze. Clear your head in the morning? Muddy it up before bed? There you go.” Tom gulped some scalding coffee and tried a different area of attack. “I think, beyond all this, there’s a problem I’m working on. A sort of project. And I’m getting close to the end, I think. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. And maybe, just maybe, I think, I don’t want it to end. Because without a project I’m just, I don’t know. Idle. Idle hands, right? And then the light at the end of the tunnel isn’t the sun, it’s a train, and it’s packed with Jameson and it’s taking me places I don’t want to go. So I’m caught, right? What’s out there? The sun or the train?”

  There were more sympathetic mutters and Tom sat to listen to other tales of woe. At the end of the meeting they stood and said a few words together, a chorus of lost and gritty voices promising to try to remember there were some things they could change and others they could not, then offering up a prayer for the wisdom to know the difference.

  The others filled their coffee cups for the walk back home or drive to work and loosened cigarettes in their foil, but Tom was stopped by Jason or James. Whatever his name was. He was especially gaunt this morning in a faded pink Western shirt. His deep frown lines were accentuated by a close shave. As he came closer, Tom noticed a place on his chin where he missed a patch of grey stubble. Time got away from him this morning, maybe.

  “You talked about all this with your sponsor?” He said. When Tom told him he never really did that, get a sponsor, he said, “How about you take a minute to talk with me?”

  A few minutes later they were outside in the fog with Styrofoam cups full of coffee. James or Jason lit a cigarette and when he started talking he was slow, but he built up steam until Tom wasn’t sure where he was supposed to jump in or if the man had tricked him into listening to a lecture.

  He said, “This is all my opinion and what do I know, right? I’ve got a decade under my belt and you know what surprises me every day? How much I don’t know. But I think what you got now, your train problem, that there is like muscle memory. You’re used to having the high with the low. Having yourself a time, then the other shoe drops. Because after the drunk, then comes the hangover. Maybe that’s why your Jameson train is calling you. Sleep, boredom, whatever, maybe that’s it, sure. But then again, maybe you want it now because you think you might be making some right decisions. And that’s different. Wouldn’t it be easy to jump back into that old routine? High and low? Drunk and hangover? Because that’s what you know. I’m not saying it’s a conscious thing. It’s under the surface. You’re maybe just trying to find your way back to that familiar, shitty pattern you were in before.” He paused to take a luxuriant drag of his cigarette. “But if you see that pull, that’s good. That means you can fight it, right? Shit, am I making any sense? All I’m trying to say is, maybe you don’t know what the light is, and that’s okay. Try something different for a change.”

  Tom watched the dawn light try to disperse the fog with little success. “Is that how people do it? How they stay dry? They see the pattern and fight it?”

  James or Jason cackled into his coffee. “Holy shit. I don’t know. Getting sober isn’t a straight line. You go back and forth and all over the goddamn place trying to get sober. And honestly, sometimes it sticks and sometimes it doesn’t.”

  The coffee was too hot when Tom went to drink it and he cursed. He wiped his mouth. “If it’s not a straight line, then what are you talking about?”

  The other man sighed and tossed his cigarette filter into his coffee. “I’m saying, you can at least see where you’re at. At least you know what’s coming might be a train. That’s more than most, believe it or not. And now you’ve got a fighting chance. So fight.”

  Erika insisted they stop at the CC’s on Airline Highway for a frozen coffee whatever, so Dominic pulled the Lexus into the drive-thru line behind all the other working stiffs looking for a little something extra to get them through Friday. He cursed and put the car in park, his headlights lighting up the minivan in front of them. They were still in the pre-dawn gloom, though time was moving faster than Dominic thought it had any right to.

  “Really, you need this now? With everything we got going on?”

  Her scowl highlighted a thin line that ran between her eyes, just over the bridge of her nose. “Are they going to be hiding in a vanilla latte waiting for you? Is that what you think?”

  “I think we need to leave town before they know what happened last night.”

  “I’m going through a lot here. It’s been a very traumatic evening. We’re leaving. I don’t get my Brad Pitt house. All my friends are going to think I drowned or something. So pretty please, just buy me a coffee, okay?”

  “Okay, okay,” Dominic grumbled. “Fine.”

  He glanced in the rearview mirror. The back seat and cargo space were both full of suitcases, shoeboxes, and loose clothing. Anything of value or importance that Erika and Dominic owned was packed in with them. On top of all the essentials and junk were three red duffel bags filled with cash. He was thinking that he should have hidden the duffel bags under the other stuff, just in case. Then again, if Sal or whoever found them, stopped them, then what would it matter?

  The little compact car behind them hooted and Dominic glared at it through the rearview.

  “The line’s moving,” Erika said.

  “Okay. Christ.”

  He put the SUV in drive and moved ahead. Still, Dominic flipped the car off.

  Earlier, after the goddamn riot at the game room, he had to think fast. He put together two things immediately. The hit on him was approved by Sal, there was no doubt about that. The old man himself sent him over. That probably meant the organization somehow knew about him taking out Adelfi. And those two pieces of information meant that his life in New Orleans was over, one way or another. That was just the way it was. He wasn’t going to try and reason with Sal. Not with the two bodies in the game room. So he didn’t call his mother to say goodbye. He got a pair of rubber gloves from the cabinet under the bar and raided the place. He found the duffel bags they used for drops in the office and took all the cash he could find. Small bills from David and Nico, larger ones from the safe in the office. It wasn’t exactly a jackpot, but it was something.

  The next part was a little bit more delicate. Leaving the game room, he drove the speed limit and left the radio off. It was almost dreamy, that drive, with the clouds blocking the moon and the streetlights zipping by. When he got back to his apartment Erika was waiting there and he thought she even looked like a dream. She was wearing the purple lipstick he liked and the jeans with silver dollar-sized buttons running up the sides. Of course, he told her everything in such a rush that the whole dream atmosphere was broken immediately.

  “You’re fucking kidding me,” she said, and Dominic told her he was definitely not, and he threw the duffel bag of cash onto the couch.

  She opened it up and her face changed. Yeah. She knew then he wasn’t kidding.

  “So they know?”

  “They know. You know what that means?”

  Both of her hands crept up to her shoulders and found purchase there. “Oh, God. Oh, God. What are we going to do?” Her eyes were wide and crazed. “Are you going to go after Sal now, too?”

  He laughed. She didn’t think
it was funny, he could tell, but he couldn’t help himself. He cracked up. Maybe it was the stress of the night finally pouring out of him, the gunsmoke and blood and adrenaline stoking him into convulsive peals of laughter. Then he told her what they were going to do was get packing. The two of them were twin whirlwinds, opening cabinets and drawers and filling every bag and suitcase they had with whatever their frightened minds thought they might need. When the bags were stacked against the wall near the front door, Dominic thought he had it figured out.

  “Okay. I think we leave. We go to Cuba.”

  That stopped her cold as she was throwing a pair of shoes into a trash bag. “Cuba? Like the island Cuba?”

  “Obama said he was going to open it up. So, maybe not right away, but as soon as we can.” He gave her a nervous grin. “Together forever. Right baby?”

  She shook her head. “Cuba?”

  “Like I said, yes. Eventually. But we gotta get out of here now. North, I think. I don’t think Sal knows anybody in Arkansas or Kentucky or places like that. Mississippi and Texas are definitely off the table. And hey, Cuba has those bright colors. Pink and blue houses. Just like the Musician’s Village, right? Your Brad Pitt house.”

  “It’s not the same,” she said, pouting. She strutted back over to the couch and peaked into the duffel bag. “That’s the Cuba money? Baby, that’s not like a whole fortune or anything.”

  Dominic admitted that was true. “But we’re making a stop on our way out of town.”

  She was genuinely confused. “Where?”

  He looked at his watch. Past three in the morning. If nobody figured out the game room situation, they should be alright for a while. He found the keys to the Lexus. “Let’s get this shit packed up. We got to be quick.”

  They were. First, they went to the Pan Dell’Orso, and Dominic slammed his hand on the steering wheel when he saw the lot was empty for the night.

  “What? What’s wrong?”

  He grinned at her. “Nothing’s wrong. It’s great. Okay. I’ll be quick.” Not as quick as he wanted to be, though. He brought an empty duffel and when the alarm beeped at him he found the panel in the bar and turned it off. He made a beeline right for Sal’s office, where a security camera would definitely pick him up, but what did he care ? They would know it was him. It’s not like they were going to go to the police, anyway. The safe was on the floor behind his desk, and Dominic knew the code. The cash inside was, again, no great fortune, but he knew it wouldn’t be. It was still more than he had an hour ago.