City of the Lost (3 page)
Authors: Stephen Blackmoore
“You’re all I’ve got left, Joseph. I’m depending on you to escort our false Mr. Giavetti out of town before I get back. It’s vital you do this. Probably the most important thing I’ve ever asked you to do.”
He doesn’t have to tell me to get the stone. That much is implied. An old man in a hotel room. Doesn’t get any easier than that.
But why is it so goddamn important?
Chapter 3It’s just Danny and me
standing in the gravel driveway, smoking. We watch as Simon drives off in his black Jag.
standing in the gravel driveway, smoking. We watch as Simon drives off in his black Jag.
“What was that you two were talking about?” Danny asks.
“Giavetti. You were there. You going deaf or just senile?”
Danny laughs. “Speaking of which, he’s gone round the bend, hasn’t he?”
I shrug. “Maybe.” I’ve been thinking since the phone call at the bar that Simon isn’t acting quite right. Not quite Simon. Nothing gets to him, normally. He’s fucking unflappable. His insistence on getting the rock just doesn’t make sense. And now, with this story of Giavetti— “What, you believe him?”
“Does it matter?” Sure, I got doubts, but I work for the man. Worked for him damn near twenty years. If he’s going off the reservation, I’m going right there with him.
Danny thinks about what I’ve just said. “Guess not.” The rear lights of the Jag disappear down a turn.
“Besides,” I say, “if he really believed this was the same guy do you think he’d be sending me to kill him? Come on. Listen to him tell it, this guy’s immortal.”
“You want to look at it that way, sure. I still think he’s off his nut.” Danny takes a drag on his cig, blows out a lungful of smoke.
“My dad went senile,” he says. “We had to stick him in a home. He couldn’t remember who anybody was, shit himself every day. You ever have to deal with that kind of thing?”
“Never met my dad.”
“That’s gotta suck.”
“Is this going somewhere?”
“Simon’s not gonna live forever. Eventually, he’ll do something stupid, and the whole thing’s gonna come crashing round his ears. What then?”
“This a hypothetical?”
“What? Oh, calm down. I’m not trying to fuck him over. He’s as much my meal ticket as he is yours. I’m just wondering what happens when he finally screws up. Or gets old and kicks. The man’s sixty-five, for chrissake.”
I toss my cigarette, grind it out with a heel. He’s right. Simon is getting old. He’s got no kids, no family I’ve ever heard of. What happens when he finally goes? It’s not like I’m getting a pension off him.
“Simon’s not senile.”
“No, he was just telling us some dead mob boss from the fifties has come back from the grave to drive Julio crazy enough to commit suicide. I mean, I’m not saying Julio was exactly stable, but—What? Don’t look at me like that. You’re crazy, too.”
“I just do what I’m told.”
“Yeah,” he says. “You just do what you’re told. You’re just a useful tool, right? See, that’s the difference between you and me. You like taking orders. It frees you up from the heavy thinking.”
I light a fresh Marlboro, blow smoke into the chill air. From where I’m standing I can just barely see a sliver of the ocean down across the lights of PCH.
“I ever tell you I don’t like you much?” I ask.
“Good thing we’re both professionals, then, huh?”
I’ve got a good fifty pounds on Danny. I could make him eat the sidewalk without breaking a sweat. But that’d just piss off Simon. Might be worth it, though.
Danny gets this worried look on his face when I don’t say anything. Like he knows what I’m thinking. I don’t want to be around this sonofabitch any more than I need to, so I drop the half finished cigarette, grind it out with my heel, head to my car.
“Hey,” he says as I get in. “That senile crack? I was just joking. Don’t need to tell Simon that. Right?”
I smile at him, say nothing, and pull out of the driveway. Let him chew on that for a while.
I don’t give a fuck about what he says about Simon. He’s probably right. The thing that’s bothering me is what he said about Julio. About me.
Of course Julio was a little bit crazy. You can’t stick a guy in a trunk and run him through a junkyard compactor if you’re not a little bit off.
But Julio wasn’t the kind of crazy that kills himself. Suicide’s something you do to other people.
And what the fuck was that about being a useful tool? Fuck him. I’m not the one fetching Simon’s drinks. The fuck does Danny think he is? I’ve never liked the guy, now I know why.
Sure, what I do is easier. Follow orders. Do what you’re told. But I’m not a goddamn robot. I do this because I’m good at it. I like the work. I can handle anything that gets thrown at me.
But then, so could Julio.
I push the thought aside, head up PCH with the windows down. Cold air blows in the smell of the ocean. My knee aches past the Advil, so I chew up a couple more and swallow them dry. My stomach will pay for it later.
I call Giavetti’s hotel on my cell, confirm he’s still checked in. I’ll have this sewn up before morning. Head over the hill to Du-par’s for pancakes after.
I hang a right on Topanga, begin the long, curvy wind through the canyon to the 101. My cell phone chirps. I fumble it out of my jacket. It’s Mariel, Julio’s wife. Like I need this right now.
“Yeah.”
“I just got home,” Mariel says. “You called.”
“Have the police called you yet?”
“Police?” she asks, wariness creeping into her voice. “Is Julio with you?”
“No,” I say, not sure how to proceed. “He . . . look, Mariel, are you gonna be up for awhile? I think I should come over.”
A considering silence. “What’s happened to Julio?”
How do you tell someone that her husband ripped through his own throat with a broken bottle?
There’s a noise on the other end. “Hang on,” she says, puts the phone down. A few seconds go by. “God, Joe, you had me scared there.”
“Sorry?” I say.
“Julio,” she says. “He just walked in. You want to talk to him?” Her voice fades in and out as I drive through a dead patch around Fernwood and start to lose the signal. “Honey,” she says away from the mouthpiece, “Joe’s on the phone.”
“Mariel,” I say. “Listen to me. Julio’s not there. He’s not coming home.”
“No,” she says. “He’s right here. He’s—” A pause.
And then she starts screaming.
“Mariel? What’s happening?” If she answers me it’s lost in a burst of digital static. The signal cuts out completely. I throw the phone into the passenger seat, stomp on the gas, and tear through the canyon as fast as my car will take me.
I cut the lights half a block from the house, park behind a pickup across the street. Did Mariel just snap? I never got she was all that stable to begin with. Or is there somebody actually in there? And if so, who is it?
One way to find out. I pull the pistol from under my seat and fit the suppressor over the barrel. Check the chamber, load a clip, rack the slide.
Front door’s cracked open. I can see Mariel sitting on the floor at the foot of the sofa. I ease the door open, step inside.
And there’s Julio sitting on the couch, Mariel’s hand in his, head moving from side to side. He’s got wide eyes, like he can’t remember how to blink, a ragged flap of snake belly white skin and muscle where his throat used to be.
His mouth is working like a grouper, trying to make a sound, but nothing’s coming out, not even a wheeze. Takes me a second to realize it’s because he’s not breathing.
Mariel turns to me when I come in, tears streaming down her face, mascara painting dark lines down to her chin. “Help him,” she says to me. “Oh, God, please help him.”
“Holy fuck,” I say, my voice barely a whisper. I stand stock still, gun tight in my fist. I have no idea what to do. Seems a little late for the paramedics. I step slowly toward them, Julio barely acknowledging me, and touch him. His skin is clammy. I check his pulse. Nothing.
I remember Frank Tanaka’s weirdly intense interest in Giavetti, the detective telling me to call him if I see anything weird. This is definitely fucking weird. But I bring him into this and Simon’s fucked. Maybe me, too.
Julio turns to me, head lolling to one side. Yellow pus oozes out the gash in his throat.
To hell with Simon. All bets are off. This is the weirdest goddamn thing I’ve ever seen.
I dig around in my jacket for Frank’s card. My phone is still in the car, so I grab Mariel’s.
She’s obsessively patting Julio’s hand, rocking back and forth, saying, “It’s okay, baby. It’s all gonna be okay.” Trying to hold things together, but she doesn’t know how. I’m not sure I’m doing any better.
“I heard him come in,” she says, her eyes glued to her husband. “And then I saw him like this. What happened to him, Joe?” Her body heaves with fresh sobs. “I don’t know what to do.”
The phone rings once, twice, then clicks as Frank comes on the line. “Hello?” he says, voice groggy with sleep.
“Frank,” I say. “Joe Sunday. Look. Julio. . . .” I’m not sure what to say. I’ve got a dead man on the sofa, and I need some help. I think Giavetti might have something to do with it, and oh, by the way, my boss thinks he murdered him in London fifty years ago. And did I mention that the dead guy on the couch is still moving around?
What the hell am I doing, calling a goddamn cop?
“What?” he asks.
I take a deep breath. I need somebody who can think straight. Right now he’s the only one who comes to mind. “It’s Julio,” I say. “He’s—” There’s a loud click. I think he’s hung up on me, until I realize I’m not getting a dial tone.
“You can put the phone down,” says a grainy voice, accent like Chicago. Chicago and something else I can’t place. “It doesn’t work, anyway.”
Guy steps out from the kitchen. Tall. Wrinkled and balding. Liver spots on his hands and face.
“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.” The man’s old enough to be my great grandfather, but his hands and neck are all wiry muscle, and he’s standing straight as a marine. Just like the security camera pic Simon showed me. I almost laugh but stop myself.
He may be old, but that Beretta in his hand isn’t. I do what he says, put the phone back in its cradle.
“And the gun, too, if you don’t mind.”
“I think I’d rather not, thanks.” God, but don’t I just love a Mexican standoff.
“Joe, who is this?” Mariel asks. Giavetti smiles at her.
“Sandro Giavetti,” he says. He grins at some inside joke. “You could say your husband and I are close.”
She stands up. Steps into my line of fire before I can stop her. “Can you help him? He came home like this. I don’t know what to do.”
Giavetti moves to the side, each of us keeping our guns on the other. He shakes his head. “No. I was hoping this time would be different.” Mariel looks even more lost than before.
“You did this to him,” I say, more statement than question. It dawns on me that maybe Julio isn’t the only one. “Who else? The two guys who stole for you? You tried to get the other one, but he killed himself before you got to him, didn’t he?”
“I’m not having this conversation. I only want my property.”
I look back at the mess on the couch that used to be Julio, gasping for air that never comes. His property?
“No. You’re not taking him anywhere,” I say.
Giavetti heaves a theatrical sigh. “Is this where you say something like ‘over my dead body’?” he says. “Because we can do that.”
“And what, we kill each other? You shoot me, I shoot you?”
He thinks about this. “You’re right,” he says. “Julio, kill him.”
Julio lurches off the couch with inhuman speed. I spin around. I double tap two bloodless holes in his chest that you could run a train through. The suppressor drops the sound to something like a loud slap. He doesn’t even slow down.
Mariel screams. Runs to him. He backhands her with the force of a bulldozer. She hits the wall like a sack of garbage, bones cracking like glass.
Takes me a second to realize I’ve got my priorities screwed up. I turn to take out Giavetti, but he’s already on me. Old man moves like a goddamn ninja. Sweeps the gun from me with one hand. I take a jab with my left, and he ducks under it like he’s twenty years old.
He delivers a side kick to my bad knee. Tendons shred, the kneecap pops over to the side. I drop in a wave of agony, punching out and clocking him on the side of the face, but by then Julio’s got me by the throat.
He lifts me off the floor. Shakes me, a dog with a gopher. I’ve got no air. Punches are useless. I snag the skin flap at his throat and tear a meaty chunk off, but it doesn’t faze him. He’s crushing my windpipe, and I can’t make him let go.
My lungs are screaming. I can feel my eyes bugging out, blood so tight in my head my face is burning. My entire chest is on fire. I get tunnel vision, shades of gray fading in from the edges. Nothing left but empty gasping as my body tries to get some oxygen.
A thousand miles away, I can hear Giavetti’s laughter.
Chapter 4When the water hits me,
it takes a second to remember I’m not in jail.
it takes a second to remember I’m not in jail.
Back in the nineties I spent three months sitting in county on a weapons beef that ended in a hung jury. Green-gray industrial paint, grimy white tile. When I open my eyes, it’s like having flashbacks.
“Mornin’, sunshine.” Giavetti tosses the empty bucket as I splutter water out of my mouth.
Hands cuffed above my head to half a shower fixture jutting out of the tiled wall. Dirty water dripping from busted ceiling pipes swirls down rusted drains. A single light hangs from the ceiling, throwing out a flickering pool of yellow.
The walls are covered in gang signs, the floor in broken bottles and crack vials. Stink in the air like meat gone too long in an unplugged fridge.
Last thing I remember is Julio crushing my windpipe, squeezing me like an overripe tomato. Breathing feels funny, air not coming in quite right. Something wrong with the sound in the room. Quiet in away I can’t place. Something missing.
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