Queens/Port Washington, New York
“You do realize the old man didn’t have to ask,” Joe Sharpetti Jr. said. “Especially now he’s away again. These are his good graces I’m conveying here.”
“I appreciate the good graces,” Eddie Senta said, “and no offense, but I’m still pissed off at your father.”
They were having dinner in a connected restaurant on Cross Bay Boulevard in Queens. They were given a private booth in the back with windows facing the water. Sharpetti was the son of Eddie’s former street rabbi with the Vignieri crime family. He was there to make a final offer to Eddie to return to work for the beleaguered crew. Eddie wasn’t interested. He picked at the spicy fried calamari and sautéed scungilli while the wiseguy continued his pitch.
“Yeah, pop said you might be upset,” Sharpetti said. “And he wishes he never did it, that thing you’re pissed off about. Was one of the two people did the job gave him up. The prick even showed the feds where they buried your friend and some other MIAs.”
“Bad karma,” Eddie said.
“Huh?”
“When shit comes back to bite you in the ass.”
Sharpetti looked confused. “Whatever,” he said. “I asked him for names to run this offshore thing and he mentioned you, but then he warned me you probably wouldn’t be interested. I asked him was it worth meeting and he said, yeah, sure, why not, you never know.”
“And here we are.”
“Except you’re turning us down a third time.”
Eddie set his fork down. “Look, I’m forty-eight years old,” he said. “I’ve been legit the last nine years. I’m used to it now. And I still read the papers enough to see your thing is bad news. Why your father is in jail at seventy-two instead of home playing with his grandkids.”
Sharpetti sat back with both arms out. “This another mob is dead speech I gotta here? I hear it from my wife a dozen times a day.”
“Maybe you should listen to her.”
“Yeah, right. The hell else I’m gonna do?”
Eddie picked up his fork and speared a calamari ring. “You obviously didn’t listen to your father,” he said. “I’m sure he didn’t want this for you.”
“No, he didn’t,” Sharpetti said. “And he mentioned that too about you. How you wore a couple different hats. But I’m not a computer guy. All I know is the streets. I don’t have the luxury of changing careers now, not with the way things are. I’m too busy trying to hold shit together.”
Eddie wiped his mouth with a napkin. “Look, don’t get me wrong. I’m probably more boring than not, but there is something to having piece of mind. Coming home nights knowing I don’t owe favors to people I can’t trust. There’s something to that.”
Sharpetti took offense. “You saying you can’t trust me?”
“Kid, I don’t even know you. I trusted your father and so did he trust me. But like I said, I read the papers. I doubt it’ll be long before the mob has its own reality show. Your thing right now, it’s a train wreck.”
Sharpetti’s eyebrows furrowed. “The old man said you didn’t use a filter.”
“I mean no offense,” Eddie said, “but you gotta admit, a lot more guys are making deals than holding their water. Christ, even the bosses flip now. How the hell you supposed to maintain order with that going on? You gotta be suspicious of the clowns you can recruit, the guys claim they want in.”
Sharpetti wiped his mouth and frowned. “Alright, I can see I drove from Manhattan to waste my time,” he said. “Fair enough.”
“Sorry to put you out, but I would’ve told you the same thing over the phone.”
Sharpetti nodded a few times. “These fuckin’ feds,” he said. “They went after the corrupt cocksuckers they work for in government, or those scumbags on Wall Street, they went after them the same way they come after us, this country be a lot better off.”
“Except they’re the ones with the power,” Eddie said. “They aren’t about to go after themselves. It is what it is.”
Sharpetti took a sip of water. “Maybe,” he said. He wiped his mouth with a napkin. “I’ll tell you this much, I had seven hundred billion to lend out, I wouldn’t have let the jerkoffs borrowing it set the terms. This jerk-off president we have. Got nothing to do with his being half a shine either. Motherfuckers on Wall Street, the shit they got away with, and the feds go after us for whacking each other?”
“You guys stay in the spotlight with violence,” Eddie said. “People like the drama. They like seeing headlines, pictures of holes in the ground with a bunch of bodies from ten, twenty years ago. They see that stuff, they ignore the bankers.”
Sharpetti wasn’t hearing him. He said, “Fuckin’ guys ran those banks like a casino, lost their stake and then they got rewarded for it. Seven hundred billion. The moron gave it away like fuckin’ Santa Claus.”
Eddie winked at Sharpetti. “And nobody on Wall Street went to jail,” he said.
Sharpetti’s face tensed. He dropped his napkin on his plate and stared at Eddie.
“It’s the truth,” Eddie said.
Sharpetti frowned again. He stood up and pointed at the table. “You mind picking up the tab on this?” he said. “I already wasted enough time here I could’ve been earning.”
“No problem,” Eddie said. He went to stand up and extend a hand but Sharpetti had already turned his back and was on his way out.
* * * * * * *
An hour later Eddie was reading a book in a coffee shop near where he lived. He’d stopped there to pick up a slice of cake for his wife and saw he was still early. He was going to read one more chapter and head home when his cell phone rang.
Eddie saw it was Diane and answered, “Hey.”
“How’d it go?” she asked.
“It’s over. No problem.”
“He wasn’t angry?”
“Not at all. The kid wasn’t looking to waste time or stroke me. He’s no dope. He saw me for what I’d be, another headache he doesn’t need.”
“Why didn’t you call?”
“You said you were busy until nine. Why I picked tonight to meet with him.”
“Where are you?”
“Coffee shop on Main Street,” Eddie said. “I was reading. Been here half an hour. It’s a good thing I took that book with me.”
“The one I bought you?”
“The Guards, yeah. I’m enjoying it. A private investigator hates his mother, loves his father. The author, this Ken Bruen guy, looks like he can put on a few pounds.” Eddie could hear her chewing. “What are you eating?”
“Licorice.”
“Then you won’t want the slice of cake I was gonna pick up.”
“I keep hearing noises.”
“Probably you’re chewing.”
“No, really.”
“I could skip the cake and come straight home.”
“There it goes again.”
“There goes what?”
“Like glass breaking. Probably the chimes next door. But it sounds like glass breaking.”
“I’ll skip the cake, be home in five—”
“The raspberry chocolate?” Diane said.
“It’s what you like, no?”
“Get the cake. I’ll have it in the morning.”
“Anything else?”
“I’m wearing blue.”
Eddie had named her lingerie by color. Blue was his favorite.
“I’ll get the cake in the morning,” he said. “I’m on my way.”
* * * * * * *
Roger Daltry kept his left hand on Joseph Kincaid’s shoulder to maintain his balance while quietly climbing the carpeted stairway. He held a Glock 9mm in his right hand. The two men had broken into the house a few minutes earlier. It was just past one in the morning.
Daltry wore a full-face ski mask to conceal his identity. He froze at the top of the stairway when he heard footsteps coming from one of the second-floor bedrooms. When he heard a doorknob turn, he extended his arm with the gun pointed down the hall.
The door didn’t open. After a few seconds the footsteps headed away from the door. Daltry stepped onto the second-floor landing and quickly crossed the hall. He pressed his back against the wall and listened again. A night-light in the hallway straight ahead cast a silhouette much bigger than his smallish frame.
Joseph Kincaid, the Native American ex-convict Daltry had brought along to help, moved up onto the landing when Daltry signaled to him with his free hand. Both men heard the footsteps again, then the doorknob turning. Daltry held the Glock up and stepped toward the door.
* * * * * * *
It was to be a surprise for Eddie; the night he learned he would be a father again.
She had been eager to tell him since she first found out earlier in the day. It had been even harder keeping it from her parents and friends.
Earlier she’d picked up a bottle of champagne for Eddie and a bottle of apple cider for herself. She’d also bought two Waterford flutes so they would have something to remember this night forever. If all went as planned, Eddie would be happy to hear the news and they could make love.
He’d been against having another kid while his son from a previous marriage was young, but now that his son was abroad in graduate school, Eddie was more open to being a father again.
She was sure she heard another noise outside the bedroom after she rotated the champagne bottle in the bucket of ice. She crossed the bedroom to the door to listen, then remembered her cell phone was still on and stepped back to the night table to grab it. When she returned to the door this time, she was positive she’d heard something. She opened the door slowly and was startled to see a man in a ski mask holding a gun.
* * * * * * *
“Wash was right,” Roger Daltry said. He was looking at the woman on the bed, half naked in her tiny blue panties. “Except you too skinny.”
“Please don’t hurt me,” the woman pleaded.
Daltry glanced at his partner. “Careful with that,” he said.
Kincaid was drinking champagne from the bottle he’d just uncorked. The bubbling wine ran down his face onto his jacket.
Daltry held out his free hand. “Give some here,” he said.
Kincaid handed him the bottle.
“What you think?” Daltry asked the woman before taking a sip. “We party until the man of the house gets home or what?”
Kincaid stood six foot six, weighed two hundred pounds and had spent twelve of his thirty-seven years incarcerated in correctional facilities in North Dakota and Canada. His face was scarred from self-inflicted burns and cuts. He smiled at Daltry’s suggestion as he stared at the woman.
“Please,” the woman begged. She pointed across the room at a pocketbook on her desk. “I have money in my purse. Take it.”
“I come here for more than money,” Daltry said as he made his way around the bed.
The woman cowered as he approached her. He grabbed her by an arm and spun her sideways on the bed. She tried to cross her legs but he was already there grabbing at her crotch. He tore her panties off.
Kincaid was opening his pants. Daltry saw him and held up a hand. “Get in line,” he said. “Somebody got to stand guard.”
The woman made a move to get off the bed and Daltry kicked her in the stomach. She gasped from the loss of air, then curled into a fetal position. Daltry poured champagne on her.
* * * * * * *
Eddie Senta was nervous when he saw the car with New Jersey plates parked in the driveway. He looked through the driver’s side window and saw a road atlas on the console, Port Washington circled.
When he saw the broken shards of glass in the side door, he removed his shoes and quietly stepped inside the house. He grabbed a baseball bat from the broom closet. Footsteps sounded in the master bedroom directly above him, followed by a loud slap.
Eddie ran for the stairs.
* * * * * * *
Daltry didn’t want to hit the bitch so hard. Hell, he had wanted her awake while he raped her. Then she’d slapped him and he lost control.
He’d used a sweeping backhand punch from left to right with the gun still in his grasp. The butt of the Glock slammed against her head just above her left temple and her head rose a few inches off the bed. She blinked wildly before her head dropped back down and she was unconscious.
Then the bedroom door flung open and a stocky man wielding a baseball bat was attacking Kincaid. By the time Daltry could react, it was too late. The bat caught Kincaid on the left side of his head. One of the Indian’s eyes popped out of its socket.
Daltry shot the stocky man in the chest and got out of there.