Chapter 13

 

 

After thanking Whitman for coming out to help them with the deputies’ questions and sending him on his way, the two brothers go back to Duilio’s office where they immediately begin to vent their anger over this latest development. Duilio blasts off with, “Damn it! If Nick Petrillo and friends hadn’t interfered with how we were putting pressure on the wineries to sell out, we wouldn’t be having deputies knocking on our door. We were interrupting operations on a subtle, hard to prove basis, low key enough to probably avoid anything but the most cursory investigation of those events by the Sherriff’s Department. But this wasn’t good enough, fast enough, for them. They had to be more blatant, more intimidating, including murdering a field hand for no damn good reason and now we’re being put under a microscope.”

 

Riccardo joined in with, “Their questions definitely gave off an aroma of suspicion about our involvement in things. I don’t think we’ve seen the last of them.”

 

“Aromas can be neutralized with a good air freshener, Riccardo. The one I’m thinking of has a lot of Pb in it.”

 

“Pb? What the hell are you talking about, Duilio?”

 

“Lead, Riccardo, lead.”

 

“That’s crazy, Duilio. Killing cops would definitely not be good for business. That’s an automatic death sentence if we get caught.”

 

“Riccardo, the killing of that field hand makes us accessories to murder for which we could get the death sentence. If these deputies stay on our butts, we may have to do something about that, so you better prepare yourself for the worst.”

 

“Son of a bitch!”

 

“My feelings exactly, but you know that old saying, bro, in for a dime, in for a dollar.”

 

“Yeah, I guess you’re right. When do you think we’ll hear back from Nick Petrillo about our black mail scheme? I think we should lay off with the sabotage for a while.”

 

“I would expect to hear from him sometime today or tomorrow. If I don’t hear from him by then, I’ll call him.”

 

“Okay, I’d better get back to work. I’m in the middle of negotiating some more long-term leases for our new retail outlets on the north end of the Valley.”

 

“I’d better get a move on too. I’m meeting with the attorneys for a potential distributor for our wines in the Portland and Seattle markets in an hour and have some things to do in preparation for that meeting.”

 

Opening the door Riccardo stops, turns to face his brother and says, “I sure hope our new partners don’t do anything else to screw up our expansion plans. I think our chances of achieving our goals are very good if they will just sit back and watch.”

 

“If they don’t, that’s something else we’ll have to take care of.”

 

Riccardo shakes his head and says, “We’d better think real hard about how we go about that. That, too, could lead to a death sentence.”

 

“Riccardo, what it all boils down to is we’ve gotta do what we’ve gotta do if we want a bigger piece of the pie. If we’re not prepared to do that, we’re doomed to failure.”

 

Walking out the door and shaking his head again he mumbles, “I can’t argue with that, but I’d prefer doing that without resorting to your Pb solution. That could get us into a whole lot of trouble.”

 

As his brother leaves the office, Duilio is experiencing his first doubts of his brother’s commitment to stay the course. He’s thinking, “I’m going to have to keep a close eye on him. I can’t allow Riccardo to become my Achilles heel. A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.”

 

Brotherly love only goes so far with Duilio. The man is definitely a piece of work and a half.