Page 19

CASPIAN

We always bypassed the boss in Las Vegas and sent cash to Naples, via FedEx, like we were supposed to. We never heard back. Giancarlo always said that was a good thing. You didn’t want to hear from Italy.

I trusted him like I trusted all three of the guys. Enzo, Tony, Giancarlo, and me—we were better than brothers. We almost died for each other more times than I can count.

We fight, sure. Like with this lost crate. Tony wanted to see what we could get for it. Enzo wanted to drive it back to Long Beach and put it on a boat. Giancarlo wanted to hold onto it until we heard from Naples.

The letter to the old country was my idea.

Kellie typed it up and listed everything. It said, We got this stuff. It’s packed as if it’s precious, but it doesn’t look it.

A five-gallon jar of pennies.

A molted snakeskin in a glass case.

A short knife in a velvet bag.

A silver box that won’t open.

A twenty-pound bag of topsoil.

Two box fans.

A table lamp.

Are we tossing it all?

Keeping it?

Sending it back?

Also there was a talking rat inside. It asked where it was, looked around, then stopped talking and started acting like a regular rat.

Please advise.

Respectfully.

I debated mentioning the rat. I didn’t want us to sound delusional. Then I figured if the shit in the box didn’t get them to pay attention, a talking rodent might.

We didn’t hear for a month. We were tripping over the fucking crate.

It was taking up space from other stuff we had to move.

A pallet of PlayStations you could only get in Japan and sets of hand-crafted German tools were all we could fit in there without looking suspicious, and twelve boxes of Mont Blanc fountain pens that had just fallen off a truck were on the way.

I was playing Tetris with this fucking shit and that crate was really getting on my nerves.

But there was always a clear space at my desk.

“Deeper, Cas,” Kellie begged, bent over the desk between the boxes of bird feeders on the left and three cases of French wine on the right.

I obliged her, because she only ever asked for what I already wanted. She was nice like that. Very pretty. Very agreeable. Very married to a guy who’d left his boners in Vietnam.

My crew would get back from lunch soon. They’d hear the wood-on-wood squeaking of desk and floor from the open window.

The rattling from the drawers wouldn’t leave much to the imagination either.

But it wasn’t as if Kellie and I were inventing anything.

The guys knew what was going on and wouldn’t interrupt without a knock, which was why I didn’t latch the door and why I was so surprised when it opened.

“Aye!” I cried, spinning around with my gun drawn and my dick out, standing between two guys in cheap suits and Kellie. “What the fuck?” I aimed at each of them in turn, so if one moved too fast, I got the other.

They put their hands up, but it was casual. It was shoot at us if you want to die, buddy .

“You Caspian Cavallo?” the shorter, older one said, letting his chubby hands drop slowly.

“Who’s asking?”

“You wanna put that down before you hurt yourself?” He had the thick Neapolitan accent of my father.

“Not particularly.”

I felt Kellie slip out from behind me, underpants up and skirt down. The second guy—the one with the mullet and a single gold cross dangling from one ear stepped aside so she could get out. She hesitated.

“Go.” I told her, and she did, leaving the door open. Smart. Whether or not those two goons closed it would tell me a lot about their intentions.

“I’m Nicky Bruno,” Shorty started. “This here’s Agnello. We call him Seven.”

Just then, all three of my guys rushed in like a SWAT team. Enzo clipped Seven at the knees, Tony pushed Nicky face-first into the PlayStations, and Giancarlo strolled in between them, armed with nothing but swagger.

“Let them go.” I put the gun back in my shoulder holster. “They’re from the Quarter.”

That was the Spanish Quarter in Naples. The central nervous system of the operation.

With a look, I told Giancarlo we shouldn’t fuck with these guys, knowing damn well he’d do what he wanted—which was to confirm.

“The Montefiore’s sent you?” he asked.

“Carmine Montefiore himself sent us.” Seven shook off the brief assault. Strangers got handled. That was expected. So was a little deference once the king’s name was mentioned.

Nicky Bruno flicked an envelope onto the desk. “You wrote us about a crate.”

“You got a truck?” I asked, pointing at the coffin-sized monstrosity. “Get it the fuck out of here.”

Seven peeled off his jacket and rolled up his cuffs, revealing a thick scar inside his elbow. Same as mine. “We wanna see what’s in it first.”

“Suit yourself,” Giancarlo said. “It’s all there.”

We’d nailed it shut, figuring it was going back on a boat. Kellie, like the magic person she was, came in with two crowbars before I even had to ask. Seven and Enzo each took an end to pry open. They flung off the lid and let it slide between the crate and the wall.

Kellie looked on wryly as Seven tossed out shredded wood wool, making a mess of the place.

“There was a knife.” Nicky inspected the items Seven was tossing onto my desk.

The locked silver box.

A molted snakeskin in a glass case.

A velvet bag with a short knife.

Seven opened the bag, letting the knife slide out, and handed it to Nicky.

“It’s not the one you’re looking for,” Giancarlo said.

I had no idea what he was talking about. I just wanted those guys out of there. I had a bad feeling.

“Anything you want,” Tony said, “you can buy it back from us.”

Giancarlo shook his head with urgency, saying shut the fuck up . But Tony was just being Tony. Tony was the money. The negotiator. My heart seized, because my partner had been bitching about something for a long time, and I suspected he’d picked today to file his complaint.

“ Scusa? ” Nicky stood half an inch straighter.

“Or we could talk about the fucking tribute.”

A crow landed on the windowsill. I threw a pencil at it to shoo it off, but it was undeterred.

“Jesus, Tone,” Enzo said. “You could bring it up nicer.”

“Tony,” I said. “Later.”

“No. Now. I want to know what we’re paying for. Because”—he directed his anger at Nicky—“we send your take like clockwork and get nothing from you. We got Feds just like you. When shit went south last summer, we got no help. Not a dime for the payoff. Not even a word.”

The crow flew into the room and onto the floor while Tony got angrier. I loved Tony more than I loved any woman, but damn I wished he’d shut up.

“What are you saying, exactly?” Nicky asked. “Please be specific, and careful.”

Tony was not careful. He’d opened a shaken bottle of Coke, and couldn’t hear the warning over the fizz of frustration.

“I’m saying we don’t need you if all you’re gonna do is just collect, and collect, and?—”

“And collect.” The last collect came from a sandy-haired kid, about fourteen, wearing a tailored white suit. He was standing right where the crow had landed, as real as the devil. “Because you belong to us.”

Seven and Nicky stood frozen in place, arms at their sides, heads bowed. Kellie was wide-eyed, half-sitting on the edge of the crate as if she’d faint otherwise.

“What just happened?” I asked Giancarlo, but from his expression, he was as in over his head as I was. I’d never seen him like that.

The kid removed the knife from Nicky’s hand, turned it over, then pocketed it with a sigh. He approached Tony, talking too close—too adult for his age. “You think you can just turn your back on your master?”

Tony should have been as overwhelmed as Giancarlo and me, but he was uncowed. “He turned his back on us, and I’m tired of being a cash cow for a guy I never met.”

“Are you now?”

“You can tell him we said so.”

“Who’s we?” The boy looked at each of us quickly.

I was frozen in place.

“We means…” Tony took a split-second pause as if he had to decide whether to make a mistake or not.

He chose poorly. “All us guys. Every crew, from Bakersfield to San Diego… we’re all talking about the tribute.

We all want to negotiate. But he’s gotta send someone who’s shaved his face a few times, you know? ”

The boy turned even icier. He didn’t break or get angry, but he did not like that at all.

“Now that you put it that way, I need to make more of a point.” Calmly, the boy turned to Kellie. “Sweetheart, open that silver box, would you?”

She picked it up. “This one?”

“Yes.”

“It doesn’t open,” I said.

“Of course it does.” The boy nodded to our secretary. “Go on.” She turned it in her hands. “Don’t worry. You’re fine. Someone needs to stay behind to clean this up.”

“Clean what?” I had turned into pure adrenaline. Fight. Fly. “Kellie, don’t!”

But she was in some kind of trance. She’d do anything he said.

The box opened.

It was empty. But something came out. I didn’t know what. Maybe nothing. Maybe the kid was just doing a pantomime of catching something out of thin air and putting it into his mouth. But it wasn’t like, after that, I had a single brain cell to process what had just happened.