On his knees on straw. A pistol to his head. ‘Your daughter’s inside,’ Willy said.
‘My youngest. You know where my eldest is.’
‘For shooting a cop, yeah. Light sentence, though, right? You worked that one.’
‘Maybe I did.’
‘Your grandkid’s in the house.’
‘Wasting. My. Time. Willy.’
‘No, no, not wasting, not wasting. Wondering, is all.’ Willy was reminding him that he had family in the house, including the mother of a baby boy who might not be accustomed to a man being murdered in the barn by her dad. He took the boss’s silence to indicate that he might have tweaked that nerve. Willy remained on his knees, his back to the man, head exposed to an angry bullet.
‘Wondering something myself, Willy. Do I stick a slug in your right ear or your left? Any preference?’
‘If you want it that way, sure, the job’s done. Still, can’t a man ask himself how come? Out of his natural curiosity? I’m asking, how did this happen overnight? I go from doing my job to finding out I’m worm-food to you. Why so different so fast in your eyes?’
‘Talk, I told you. I said nothing about asking questions.’
‘You’re right. Sorry about that, boss.’
‘I can shoot you through the head, Willy. One and done. Or I can shoot you slowly.’
‘Slowly? You mean—’
‘Work my way up. By the time I do, you’re begging for the end. Tell me you know what I mean.’
‘I got an inkling, yeah.’
‘A what?’
‘I know what you mean, boss. No questions. Whew. I know what you mean.’
‘You better.’
‘You don’t want to do it on your farm, though, right? With your grandkid around. You’ll wake him. I hope you think so, anyway.’
Willy rocked on his knees a moment, to both reconfigure his posture, his arms pinioned behind him with his own belt, and to parlay his time to properly finagle his redemption.
He kept talking. ‘So fucking fast, the way things go down, hey? The Dime blows up. A bomb in his TV. I mean, who can watch the news anymore, catch a ballgame, without first you flinch? Like you gotta shut your eyes when you turn the knob. It’s a reflex. Not necessarily you. Me, I mean. Anybody. We flinch.’
‘You’re telling me what I already know. You think I got time on my hands?’
‘Course not. Putting this together is all. The Dime blows up. Then Nic gets whacked.’
‘Unrelated.’
‘Some say, yeah. Supposed to look that way anyhow.’
‘Meaning?’ For once, Ciampini conveyed genuine interest in what Willy was saying.
‘Suspicious, no? But you get it. The punk, released from the can. A little early somehow. Something strange there. Same night, he takes out Nic Jobin.’
‘Nic was screwing his girl. His decision. Old news.’
‘Right. Still, here’s a guy who’s never done nothing except jumpstart a few cars. Suddenly, he’s driving around with a thirty-aught-six? I mean, I’m the guy who supplies the weapons around here. I should be the one who’s upset. Somebody cut in on my action? Not that I’m unhappy to be high and dry on this one. I mean, the kid, just out of the slammer, no clue where to find a gun, not only finds a rifle but picks a fight with cops who are waiting for him – waiting for him – outside the bar. Jobin gets whacked. His killer, too. Convenient, no? If somebody wanted a convenient kill, that plan worked out fine.’
‘Interesting. Still leaves you with a hitman in your closet.’
‘That bothers you why? I don’t see it. OK, either you were trying to kill me, and I might never find out why, or somebody else was out to get me. After today, I’m thinking it was you. You sent Teddy. You sent out Le Gris to confuse the issue. You sent Massi The Coat to finish the job. Pretty obvious you want to do me in. But the first time, I had to ask if that was you or somebody else. Because if it was somebody else then I see the pattern.’
The boss’s voice was low and a little weary, as though he wanted to get on with shooting him. ‘What pattern?’
‘Nic Jobin. Killed by the Bondar kid. We think it’s a boy-and-girl thing, right? Jealousy. But what if Bondar was sent there? Sent. His job: kill Jobin. Make it look like a love triangle thing. Same with me. Kill me, but make it look like an outside gang was killing one of yours. That way, you think I’m doing something with an outside gang that’s worth finishing the job for them.’
‘We’re aware, Willy,’ Ciampini said.
‘Aware of what?’
‘You’re the mole.’
An undercover cop who’d infiltrated the mob might be called a lot of names by a crime boss, but Willy didn’t think ‘mole’ would be one of them. They were confusing him with somebody else.
‘What mole?’
‘We have a mole.’
Not somebody reporting back to the police. Somebody reporting to another gang, maybe?
‘You think it’s me?’
‘Odd stuff is happening with you, Willy. Killing that hitman like you did. Made us think we don’t know you. The Willy we know would’ve had a hard time taking out a spider with a broom. The Willy we know tracks our shipments, hocks our guns, keeps our books. Knows too much, maybe. Who’s he been hanging with lately? He have enemies? Who’s he been talking to? What’s he doing our enemies want to smack him dead? He’s not hardcore. Our Willy’s the kind of guy you have a cappuccino with, gives OK advice from time to time. Keeps things rolling. He don’t act tough or talk tough, too smart for that. If he acted tough, we’d laugh. The Willy we know, he don’t slam a sickle through a man’s skull and pin his head to the wall.’
‘Butcher’s knife. A long one, I admit. Not a sickle. Through the throat.’
‘A machete, a sickle, a cleaver. Head. Throat. Do I care? I give the order to dig your grave and you put two of my best guys in it. Who did that? Not my Willy. I’m not saying you didn’t have cause, you had cause. Teddy woulda offed you. The plan. But where did you find the stones for it and how did you off him? Confess, Willy-boy. Come clean. I’ll let you go out with dignity if you confess to me. That’s all I care about when you talk. Your confession. I’ll give you a quick one, for old time’s sake. Nothing prolonged. Because I care.’
You’ll chop my legs off then my arms. You won’t sharpen the axe, neither.
‘One favor, boss. The fucker who let all that suspicion fall down on my head? Now’s the time – let suspicion fall down on his head. Let it rain right down. I’m nobody’s mole. That’s airtight. I’ll take it to the grave and you can, too. Give me a slow death, crack my balls in a vise. I’ll scream, I won’t like it, I’ll beg for your good mercy, but that don’t change the honest truth. If you had a mole, you still have a mole. Only he’s deeper and better hid after I’m dead and presumed to be the rat when I’m not. I won’t plead for my life, boss. No point. Don’t want to waste your time. But whether you off me or not, promise me you’ll keep looking for your mole. Because I’m not the guy.’
‘Why we listened to your good advice sometimes. You had good talk in you.’
‘Want to know how I see it? The Dime gets blown up. I heard people whisper, maybe it was Nic Jobin. The Dime’s been tasting the candy for years. Spends his days doing the girls instead of running them. So Nic maybe had a good thought to take over. Nic was good pals with Massimo. Massi’s old man has a TV store. That’s where The Dime sent his set for repairs. Boom. Like that. So we think, was it Nic? With help from Massi?’
‘I heard those stories,’ Ciampini said.
‘Nic gets whacked. Why? Love triangle. OK. Call it that.’
‘You don’t?’
‘Somebody tries to do me, I see it coming, turn it around. Why me? Somebody thinks I’m useful to you. But you think, what’s up with Willy? Stuff is happening with Willy. You order me dead. While you’re at it, you order Massi put down. For the TV set, maybe. But now we’re killing each other. Forgive me, boss, for speaking plain, but now’s the time – what you don’t see, we’re getting picked off one by one. Like we’re in a war, except nobody’s calling it a war. We got excuses for everybody. But what if that’s the plan? What if this is a war? Doesn’t look like it, so you don’t declare one. You don’t retaliate. You don’t call New York for reinforcements. But maybe somebody wants you to keep New York out of this.’
Willy fell silent. Still on his knees. His arms strapped behind him, his boss with a pistol. He was desperate, but he had to give his speech time to sink in. He was feeling more alive than dead now. Shaking inside. Suddenly, he wanted to live. He tried to suppress it, but he couldn’t deny the feeling. Now that he might live, he was suddenly afraid of death. He was wanting to live and didn’t welcome the emotion. Wanting to live did him no good. This is what hope did to a man, it messed him up.
‘Who’re you putting behind this big plan?’
His boss’s tone of voice indicated that he was not convinced.
‘Who’s been learning at your feet, boss? Last couple of years? You needed more muscle. You went out, you hired more muscle. But this muscle has brains.’
Rather than answer, he let the notion float in the air. He wanted the boss to figure it out for himself. He was more likely to be convinced that way.
‘The Hells?’ Ciampini asked him. The question sought confirmation, yet his skeptical tone was gone once he said it aloud himself.
‘I know, boss. We think they’re thugs on bikes. Ugly hair. Tattoos. The whole bit. But they been learning. You hire them to be your muscle and you got what you want. But they see you as weak when you hire them to do the dirty work. They fear you less. They hang around. Do what you want. Get close. The whole time they watch. They learn. When they put a plan into action, guess what? Nobody thinks it’s them because nobody thinks they have the smarts for a plan. So, yeah, if you want my opinion, it’s the Hells. I’ll tell you one thing, I’d sure like a chance to find out.’
He didn’t appreciate the ensuing silence.
‘Something else needs saying,’ Willy added.
‘What’s that?’
He was hoping for that question.
‘You know who’s who in the Hells. You trust the guys you brought in. The leadership. But in your life, men tried to take you out. You put them down. But if men try, from inside the Hells, to take out their top guys, you will see a new regime. Then who do you know inside the Hells? Then who do you trust, if the ones you trust are dead?’
Not hard to sound convincing when he was telling the truth from the ground up. He knew more of what was in the air and on the ground than any kingpin. For its part, the mob had a grievance against him but not the one they imagined. He’d said his piece. He’d shown he had value. Willy adjusted his weight on his knees, took a deeper breath. Perhaps his last. He didn’t know. He waited.