by Solomon
Joey could see the recognition in Lonnie’s eyes, and his whole body seemed to collapse in on itself.
“We need someone who can take their liquor, Lonnie. Not weasels who are trying to impress women with their loose lips.”
Lonnie had forgotten that Joey had tied his hands behind his back in the chair, sitting in the middle of the warehouse, because he moved his shoulders as if to raise his hands up and placate Joey.
“Joey, please. Someone spiked my drink. I didn’t know what I was saying. The broad! It was her. She spiked my beer. I saw her, Joey. I saw her. After that I didn’t know what I was saying!”
“The broad spiked your beer?”
Lonnie nodded vigorously, his bloodshot eyes rattling like slot machine cherries. “Yeah. I bet she works for that bitch Reyes. I bet she was trying to get dirt on you, Joey. Let me go, I’ll find her. I’ll bring her here. I’ll get the truth out of her. You bet I will.”
Joey shook his head. “You’re pathetic, Lonnie.”
“It’s the truth!”
Joey punched Lonnie in his ample gut, sending the air rushing from his body like a punctured balloon. “It’s not the truth, Lonnie. It’s not even in the ballpark of truth. The girl you were with was Gail Rodriguez-Salento. She’s on the payroll, Lonnie. I sent her to the bar to hit on you to see if the weasel would squeal.”
Lonnie’s bleary eyes looked up, what color there was in his skin had left completely now. He was translucent. See through. And Joey was seeing all the way through him.
“No one spiked your drink. You spiked yourself with the drink, and you spilled your guts all over the table. If Gail hadn’t been one of ours, I’d hate to think what you may have given away, Lonnie.”
Lonnie began to cry. His lips trembled and fat tears grew in bulbs on the end of his hooked nose.
“I…I…”
“You’re a liability, Lonnie. You know that right?”
It took all of Lonnie to nod his own head.
“Enrico!” Joey shouted through the doorway into the bedroom.
Enrico appeared in the doorway with Gail. She was petite and raven-haired. She’d come to Joey’s operation from Sophia’s side of the deal, and she had proven to be a useful addition to his crew in Miami. She was trustworthy, hard-nosed, and knew how to get what she wanted from a man.
“Hello again, Lonnie,” she said as she and Enrico approached the sobbing man on the single chair, beneath the single light in the ceiling.
Lonnie’s crying was echoing off the walls. He knew it was the end, and he was going to face that end in exactly the way he’d lived his life. Like the weasel he was.
“Is there anything more pathetic than a crying man?” Gail asked as she and Enrico took positions on either side of Joey.
Joey shook his head. “So, who wants to get their hands dirty?”
Gail snorted, but Enrico said nothing. Exactly as Joey thought he would.
Joey turned to Enrico and looked at the man he thought he loved. He pulled a cold pistol from the shoulder holster inside his jacket. Joey held the silver weapon out in the palm of his hand. “Come on, Enrico. It’s about time we blooded you, don’tcha think?”
Enrico’s face was draining of color almost as fast as Lonnie’s had. “I…I…thought…we…” he stammered.
“You thought we were just going to rough Lonnie up, give him a slapping and send him back to Sal?”
“Yeah…I mean…come on…we don’t need to…”
“Don’t we? But he’s betrayed me, Enrico. He’s said things to people out loud that he shouldn’t have. I need men around me I can trust. If I don’t have that trust around me, how can I operate? How can I make the life for myself and you that we want?”
Enrico took a step back, but Joey caught his hand and pulled him back. He put the weapon in Enrico’s palm and closed his fingers gently around the grip. Then he lifted Enrico’s hand so that the gun was pointing at Lonnie’s head.
“Please…” Lonnie whined.
“I…can’t…I….” Enrico said.
“Yes you can, my love. You can put a bullet through the weasel’s skull and then, when you’ve done that, you’ll be exactly the man I want you to be.”
“But…but…” the gun was shaking in Enrico’s hand. His face was white; there were tears in the corners of his eyes.
“Christ, not another crying guy,” said Gail.
Enrico held the gun away from him like it was a venomous snake, which Joey thought was more than appropriate. “You see, what I’m seeing here is confusing me,” Joey began, keeping his eyes tight on Enrico. “You’re a Honduran bad boy. You ran guns for the Sandinistas, and you’ve taken to me like you didn’t have a care in the world.”
Enrico’s hand was shaking so much that Joey was convinced the gun was going to fall from his fingers at any moment. Gail huffed like she was bored and Lonnie sobbed.
The sobbing was getting on Joey’s nerves now. “And here you are, unwilling to off this weasel piece of shit. You know what? That makes me wonder why you’ve become squeamish all of a sudden, Enrico. Is there something you feel you oughta be telling me right now?”
Enrico let the gun slip from his fingers as the terror blossomed in his eyes.
A dark patch of urine appeared on the front of his pants as Joey called behind him. “Paul, you’re welcome to come out whenever you want.”
Paul—Enrico’s Paul, who Joey knew as Mancuso Puglia, one of Sal’s most trusted Cleveland Lieutenants—stepped out from a door that led to the condo’s balcony.
He was calm and cool in his Armani suit, his shirt was unbuttoned halfway down his chest, and Joey admired the glimpse of a powerful physique behind the material. When they were finished here tonight, he planned to take Manny to his bed and get the bad taste of Enrico’s betrayal out of his mouth.
Enrico sank to his knees.
“You wearing that wire now?” Joey asked, stepping forward to pick up the gun from where it lay on the dusty concrete.
Enrico didn’t answer. He was already saying as many Hail Mary’s as he could cram into his lying mouth.
Lonnie, picking up that things were getting to a climax, sobbed loudly now—not trying to suppress the sound, and so Joey shot the top of his head off.
Lonnie’s body slumped in the chair, his brains drooling out of his destroyed skull and slipping past his ear. His eyes were moving, but they were sightless. His shoulders twitched, and his left foot shivered. Like an unwound clock running out of ticks, Lonnie’s body eventually came to a stop, and the only sound in the room was the whisper of prayer coming from Enrico’s mouth.
Joey went over to the man who had sold him out to the cops. He touched his face gently, and then ran fingers through his hair.
“Like Gail was for Lonnie, Paul was for you Enrico,” Joey sighed. “I knew you were pissed about Bianca, but you should have worked harder to get over that. The rewards I would have given you eventually would have made anything else you agreed to with the Feds, pale into insignificance.”
Joey looked up to the ceiling, still cradling Enrico’s head. “You see, the cops you spoke to… They’re my cops. They cost me a lot, but they’re worth every penny to test out those of whom I am suspicious. I wanted to think you were a safe bet, Enrico, I really did. But, like Lonnie the Weasel there with his loose mouth, your loose balls have been your downfall. Right up to the end there, I wanted to believe that you wouldn’t have really gone through with it. But there’s no way you could commit murder, even if you weren’t wearing that wire, huh? That’s the one sure way of me finding out where your heart truly lies.”
Enrico’s whispered prayer ended, and he hissed a tearful “Amen.”
Joey didn’t look down as he broke Enrico’s neck with one savage twist of his hands. The crack of neck bones shattering added a final and defining closure to the sounds in the room.
If Joey listened hard enough, he could hear the cars shushing by on the freeway as the night finally reached the city.
He could still smell the salt in the air.
Present Day, August 1997
The case collapsed there and then.
Joey was freed from the court in a blur of camera flashes, yelling reporters, and dark looks from the court officials. The Prosecutor was hustled away by his team and the cops, as the watchers in the gallery—almost to a man and woman, supporters of Joey Diamonds—began cat-calling, laughing, and jeering. No amount of gavel bashing from the Judge could quiet them down. The uproar continued to ring in Joey’s ears as he was propelled from the court into a waiting limo, where he bounced onto the leather seat, and settled, breathless next to the serene, smiling Te Amo.
The limo slid away from the courthouse like a shark, into the teeming waters of New York City traffic. Joey was still trying to put his thoughts in some order, as Te Amo passed him a flute of chilled champagne and lay back in her seat, laughing.
Joey drank the slow bubbling liquid, and enjoyed the feeling as the cold worked its way down into his belly. It didn’t dampen the fire within, but it was an instructive portent of the cold revenge he would take on those who had put him in this position.
“He’s my brother?” Joey knew saying that was going to take some getting used to.
Te Amo shook her head, “Half-Brother. The Prosecutor Steven Rein, is actually…to give him his full name, Leoluca Cardinale. He was the product of an affair your father had in Calamonaci, Sicily while your mother was nursing you in New York.”
Joey blinked. “This makes no sense.”
“It makes perfect sense. Leoluca was a secret, he was raised a secret. Your father paid for his education, and when the time was right, a new identity. He was brought to the U.S. and sent to the best schools—the best law schools—and he was kept entirely separate from the family. But, and this is the important thing, still close to your father. What better resource to have for one of the five families than a Prosecutor who would work for your best interests? He rose through the ranks, gained a reputation for taking down Mafia soldiers. If you look at his records, the majority of them were from rival families of the Diamantis. Of course your father would throw Rein a succession of low level goons to keep up appearances, but nothing that would affect the upward mobility of the Diamantis.”
The rush from the courtroom to the limo was making all of this hard to take in. Joey’s whole life had been a parallel to Leoluca’s—where he had been schooled in the ways of the Mafia, its rituals, and workings, his half-brother had been guided through the legitimate world to an unparalleled position of influence.
The shock running through him was riding a wave of anger at his father’s betrayal of his mother, as well as skimming across the relief of the court case collapsing in the most dramatic fashion imaginable. Joey was a stew of conflicting emotions, bubbling in every direction.
Te Amo must have seen the complex look of disbelief on his face, because she took that moment to reach across the back seat and kiss him full on the mouth.
Immediately he could taste the tingle of cocaine on her lips, dusted into her lipstick. There was a thin crust of it on her tongue too that was mingling with his spit and the residue of champagne. The burst of it in his mouth lit up his head, and he kissed and pawed at her with all the hunger he could muster. She was grappling with the front of his trousers as their lips were crushed. Breath coming in snorts and grunts.
They were animals, bucking and crashing against each other on the white leather. As Te Amo unleashed Joey’s dick, she hiked up her dress and straddled him without taking her lips from his.
He slid deep into her easily. She was ready, open, warm, and wet around him. She began her rise and fall, biting on his tongue and running her fingers through his hair—yanking on it, tearing her lips away, and forcing his face into her cleavage. He could smell Chanel and fresh perspiration, her hair falling about his ears, her hands pushing his head harder into her body.
Te Amo was back in his arms. Could this day have gotten any more bizarre? He hadn’t seen her for years and thought that part of his life had been over for good after she’d found him with Sophia. But time heals as they say, and she felt good on his dick. Like she had been made for him.
He was lost in her now. All sense and sensibilities were gone in the moment. He could deal with his half-brother later. He could deal with his father later. He could deal with the fallout from the court case later.
Right now, all he wanted to do was deal with this.
“Te Amo,” he said to her warm flesh and caressing hands, “I’m so glad you’re back in my life, and I’m back in you.”
Te Amo giggled, pushed down hard on his lap, and ground her hips from side to side.
Joey was close to the finish now. The sense that a cliff edge was approaching, one that he would willingly leap from and fill her pussy with his seed. He raked at her back with his fingernails, not caring if the material was ripped. He would buy her a dozen more, a thousand more.
It didn’t matter. All that he cared about in that moment was the feeling of her around him, the weight of her body on his thighs and the taste of her body through the coke and the champagne.
It was a moment like no other he had every experienced. It was triumph incarnate. It was winning. It was…
Cold air rushed in the limo with a stink of garbage and a throaty growl of someone bodily exerting himself. A fist came out of nowhere and clattered into the side of Joey’s skull, sending him crashing into the door pillar on the other side of the limo.
Rough hands gripped Joey and yanked him out from under Te Amo.
“Hey!” was all he could manage to say before he was dragged from the vehicle and thrown onto the damp concrete. The place was cold, and in the hot August of New York, a shock to Joey’s body. It wasn’t the welcome chill of air conditioning; it was dank and rancid, like they were underground in a place vagrants might use as a toilet. The concrete beneath him reeked of dirt and piss. There was a sheen across the surface of the thin coating of mud that could have been oil. Whatever it was, it was going to ruin his suit, but Joey had more pressing things to worry about as a boot flashed out of nowhere and caught him in the guts.
The pain was a starburst of agony that rolled him into a ball, expecting another blow that didn’t come. Joey breathed shallowly, holding his arms across his stomach, not daring to look up.
How could he have been so lax?
He couldn’t even remember who had propelled him towards the limo down the steps of the courthouse. His thoughts were so jumbled and incoherent after Te Amo’s revelations and the eruption in the court.
He hadn’t taken in who was driving the limo, his eyes were completely locked on Te Amo on the back seat. And when she’d filled his mouth with cocaine and champagne, he’d lost all sense of where the limo was headed.
With Te Amo across his thighs—pulling his head into her breasts, forcing his eyes against her skin—he didn’t have any sense of the limo coming here, to a place that out of the heat of the day, must have been an underground garage. The echoes of footsteps around him, told him the place was large, but almost entirely empty.
“Open your eyes, you pig.”
It was Te Amo.
Joey opened his eyes, looking up at the woman who just moments before he’d been fucking like a bitch in heat. She’d pulled her dress down, and was pulling her hair back to tie with a band as she looked down on him with utter contempt.
“For a bright boy you can be so stupid sometimes,” she said, letting her hands fall from her hair to fold over her breasts.
Te Amo was so close, Joey could have reached out and touched her, but he dare not. Standing next to her like a wall that had grown legs and stretched a suit across its bricks was Joao. Joao was the bodyguard who had come thumping down the stairs in the yacht when he’d heard the commotion of Te Amo screaming at the sight of Sophia’s ass being pummeled by Joey.
Joao wasn’t armed, but his jacket was off, the sleeves of his white shirt were rolled up, and the top two neck but
tons were undone. His fists were bunched and ready.
“Make one move to get up and I will put you down again,” Joao spat, muscles in his forearms working and pulsing as he bunched his fists.
Joey was in no position to move. His guts were on fire, his head was swimming from where he hit the limo’s door pillar.
“I’ve waited a long time to see you groveling in the dirt.”
A different voice. A woman, her voice smoky and rich. Dripping with hate.
Sophia Reyes.
Te Amo’s mother walked around from behind Joey, all red heels, red dress, and wild hair. Unlike Joao she was armed. A gold-plated Desert Eagle hung in her right hand, her finger in the trigger guard.
“It took us three months to find his body! Three months!”
There have been so many bodies, it took Joey a few moments to flick though his mind’s rolodex to settle on who Sophia must have been talking about. It was obvious once he’d settled on the name.
Enrico.
Joey, Gail, and two soldiers had taken Enrico and Lonnie’s bodies from the condo and buried them in a densely wooded area in A.D. Barnes Park—a sixty-five acre tropical city park in central Miami. They didn’t have time for anything else. Joey needed to be elsewhere fast.
Either Gail or the soldiers had spilled the location of the body. Perhaps through torture, perhaps through traitors. Joey wished he’d put a bullet in all their heads as insurance, but it was too late to worry about that now.
A thick gob of spit hit Joey full in the face from out of the darkness. O’Ryan stepped forward into the pool of light cast by the ceiling fluorescents in the underground garage.
O’Ryan had happily testified to the Prosecutor, and Joey could smell the stink of a grudge about him. Perhaps carelessness on Joey’s part had cost the cop his job and his honor. Perhaps not. But he was here now, and his opening gambit had been to spit in Joey’s eye.
“Turning into a regular get together,” Joey said, looking at the people who hated him.