“SO YOU’LL COME TO the cookout?” Gio asked. They had been driving several minutes in silence. “Next Sunday?”
“Sure,” Joe said.
“Bring Gladys.”
“Right.”
“I’d say bring Yelena too, but I get the feeling she is going to be busy for a while.”
Joe smiled and nodded. “Off to Moscow. On business.”
“They won’t know what hit them,” Gio said. Then he shrugged. “Just as well maybe. The sight of her in a bikini might blow my kids’ minds. But then you’d know.”
“Well, when I saw her, there was a lot more blood than I expect will be in your pool.”
“Right.” He snuck a look at Joe then put his eyes back on the road. “Might be just as well for you too.”
“Probably so.”
Gio had been thinking; they had gathered today to reward Joe and his crew for saving their city, as well as delivering justice for themselves. That’s what Joe had been recruited for and what he’d agreed to do. Nevertheless, this whole thing had ended up working out pretty well for Gio. His enemies had been vanquished and replaced with friends who owed their own positions partly to him and to Joe. His allies were grateful, and his own strength was reinforced. He had never been so rich, so powerful, and, now that accounts had been settled, so secure. Much of this was due to his own cunning. Gio was very smart and very careful. But there was more: he had a gift for playing the game of power, a Machiavellian prince’s instinct for turning crisis to profit, even when he didn’t realize he was doing it. It was in his guts, the legacy he’d inherited from his father and grandfather. But he also had Joe. And that was why he turned to his friend now, as they cruised through the old neighborhood, and said, “I was thinking.”
“Yeah?” Joe turned back from staring out the window, catching the tone in his voice.
“Now that you’ve got this fat nest egg, maybe you want to do something more with it than hide it under Gladys’s bed.”
“I do. I hide most of it in your safe.”
“That’s what I wanted to ask about. What if I helped you do something else with it?”
“Like what? You going to open me up an IRA?”
Gio shrugged. “It’s not a bad idea. But I was thinking more along the lines of a house, for starters.”
“A house? Where?”
“Out on the island. Near me. We could hang out, take the boat out or whatever. Don’t worry, I won’t let Carol bug you too much. This cookout is just a special thing. You won’t be expected to come over every weekend unless you want to. Really it would be for Gladys. She might like a little bit of luxury, you know, some space, a yard, a pool even.”
“I didn’t realize houses on the shore in Long Island were going for two fifty these days. With a pool.”
Gio laughed, then looked shyly out the windshield as they turned down Joe’s block. “I could help out. You know, with the deposit. And with the paperwork to get you a mortgage or whatever. We can run it through the club. Or make you head of security for one of the other companies.” He stopped in front of Joe’s building and put the car in park, then turned to Joe. “I’d be happy to do it, brother.”
Joe nodded. “Thank you, brother. That means a lot.” Then he grinned at him. “But you know Gladys, she’d never move anywhere in a million years. She’ll never change.”
“Right,” Gio said, smiling. “Gladys will never change.”
Joe tucked a large chunk of cash into his own pocket and left the rest in the shopping bag on the seat. “Pop that in the safe for now, will you?” he asked, and opened the door. “And thanks for the ride.”
Gio called after him: “You back to work at the club tomorrow? Or you too rich now?”
“I’ll be there,” Joe said and shut the door. Gio drove away.
Liam and Josh went to see Sean at detox. They decided on the way not to mention the money Liam had just received, since it would just tempt his brother to hit him up for a loan. Nor, it went without saying, did they bring booze. They brought a deck of cards and a box of brownies instead.
“Hey!” Sean shouted when he saw Liam. He still looked a bit shaky, but his eyes were clear and wide open, the pupils a normal size. “What’s in the box? A file I hope? I’m ready to bust out of here.”
“Brownies,” Liam said. “They got any coffee in this joint or is that off limits too?”
“They’ve got it. But you’re a harder man than me if you can drink it.”
“You remember Josh,” Liam said. Josh nodded to him. Sean peered back.
“You the Jew poofter?” he asked.
Liam spoke: “He’s the poof who saved your worthless fecking life. You’d be in a box right now if it had just been me there that night. Serve you right too.”
Sean stared at Josh thoughtfully. “Then I’ve just one question.”
“Go ahead,” Josh said.
“Isn’t it a sin for you to suck my brother’s cock? Tain’t kosher!”
Josh smiled. “I say a special Hebrew prayer.”
“And I sprinkle some holy water on his prick before it goes up me bum,” Liam added.
“Well all right then,” Sean said. “That’s all I wanted to check. Now hand over those fucking brownies, and let’s play some cards.”
The medals were presented at 4 P.M., so Yolanda was able to pick Larissa up from school before coming to the ceremony. Donna had mixed feelings. Of course she was very proud to have her daughter see the mayor, the chief of police, and her local city council member present her with a plaque expressing the city’s gratitude, and the assistant director of the FBI hang a medal on her. On the other hand, she had hidden the fact that she had been wounded and shot at, not to mention the bomb. And then there was Mike. But in the end it was decided that his name would go unmentioned in the public ceremony, and Donna alone would represent the family at Langley, CIA headquarters, when they added another star to the wall that represented those who died in the field, secret and nameless. As for the gory details, the PR people assured Donna that none of the politicians would say anything that a child couldn’t easily digest. No one wanted to needlessly upset the public.
So she stood on the stage, beside Fusco, who was there to accept on Parks’s behalf. It was the sight of Parks’s two young boys, sitting as if stunned in their suits and ties, on either side of their weeping mother, that broke Donna’s heart. The tears that ran down her face when the medal was placed around her neck, and the assembled officers saluted, were for them.
Fusco’s eyes were dry. When he looked down at the plaque and the little velvet box that contained the medal in his hands, he was only thinking of Victoria. “I’ll feel better when I bring them that bitch’s head. They can mount it next to these on the wall.”
“She’s long gone,” Donna answered. “And all we’ve got is a description and a lip print.”
Fusco nodded. “Well, we ain’t the only ones hunting.” He knew that for Gio and the other bosses, she was unfinished business.
“And you’re okay with that?” Donna asked him. “With them?”
“Okay?” Fusco laughed. “They scare me shitless. But I will say one thing, for better or worse. No matter how long it takes, they never let a debt go unpaid.”