Embers & Ash (14 page)

“Oh . . . uh, okay . . . ,” I said.

“Not you-kitten. Me-kitten,” a sultry voice said, and I turned to see Peek-a-Boo Schwartz, Lucky's ex-stripper girlfriend. She was as senior-citizen voluptuous as the last time I'd seen her, blond hair swooping over her face, lips just as glossy. But now weariness dominated her face; she was an old woman caring for an old, dying man. Peek-a-Boo gently pushed Lucky's glasses up his toucan nose, patted his spotted head, and said, “Need anything, killer?”

“Just you, baby doll,” he said. “Everyone needs someone who's unconditionally loyal. Who tells you the truth, no matter what.” He flicked his shark eyes at me; as broken as he was, they remained as black and penetrating as ever. “You better have at least one person like that, girlie.”

“I do,” I said, thinking of Doug, wondering about Tyler.

“That broad right there,” Lucky said, nodding at Peek-a-Boo, “that
lady
 . . . has been my most trusted adviser for a long, long time. She could've been boss—”

“Quit kissing my ass, you old bastard,” she said softly.

“—but no broads in the Outfit, right? Until you came along, filling in for your dad, who's gone . . .”

I swallowed thickly and said, “Sick. You mean, he's sick.”

“I meant what I said,” he murmured, his eyes pinned to mine. “He's gone. The Russians have your family. You've been lying about it the whole damn time.”

I trembled on the inside and my paranoid gut screamed that there was no lie I could tell or excuse I could make that would help me now. I was seized by pure panic, my brain expanding and contracting as I tried to figure a way out of an inescapable situation.

The wall made of glass was all around me.

If I got a running start, I could smash through it and scream for help all the way down before I met the concrete.

In that long moment, it seemed like my last, best option.

“HOW . . . DID YOU FIND OUT?” I SAID.

My words sounded as small and defenseless as they were.

“We'll get to it,” the old man said coldly. There was no
aha!
or accusation; he was all business, which terrified me, since Outfit business included broken heads and severed limbs, and that was gentle. “So this whole time your family has been gone—”

“I've been trying to find them, to
save
them!” I said, feeling my throat catch, failing to hold back a tear. “I wasn't trying to fool you. I was scared that you would think my dad had turned informant . . .”

Lucky shook his head in a weak, barely perceptible back-and-forth. “We got guys inside the FBI. I would've known long before now if he was a rat.”

“I only want my family back,” I said, wiping the moisture from my eyes. “It's been one long, endless nightmare.”

“Welcome to the club, girlie.” He snorted, sick and moist. “You got any idea what was done to my poor sister, how my father died? Or what
I've
done to other people's sisters and fathers and everybody else they loved, in the name of the Outfit?” He pushed himself forward and his voice rose as he pounded the bed with a bony fist. “There are hundreds of Outfit nightmares like yours, and thousands even
worse
!”

“Lucky,” Peek-a-Boo said, laying a hand on his shoulder, easing him back.

The old man gasped for air, biting at it until he'd regained his composure. “Hear me now . . . ,” he wheezed, “I ain't gonna see Jesus until we
crush
those Russians and regain our rightful place in Chicago. It's my last order of business before I check out. That's why you're here.
You're
going to make it happen.”

He flicked a remote. The TV at the end of the bed showed a closed-circuit image.

A guy crouched over a table, face nearly touching it, and when he whipped his head back I saw powdery lines smeared around his nose. He pushed at it with the palm of his hand, sniffing wetly, and then looked directly at us. “Ah . . . I hear camera moving its little eye,” he said. Using his fingers to comb at his stringy hair, he moved boldly toward the camera with a body built from coiled springs and small hard stones. A thick gold chain hung around his neck with an Orthodox cross dangling from it. He touched the cross, smiling with pointed teeth. “You see me but I can't see you,” he said playfully, cracking his knuckles, showing star tattoos. “But if you're out there . . . hello, baby!”

His Russian accent made it sound like,
Halo, beh-bee.

The wolfish smile stayed in place, and I knew he was talking to me. I couldn't help notice his lack of goggles, but his eyes were the same shade of crimson.

Oh my god,
I thought,
contact lenses . . . like Juan Kone's.

“Our hostage, or guest, as the case may be,” Lucky said. “Haven't laid a hand on him, making him think we're reasonable. Besides keeping him locked up, we've treated him like the king of coke, giving him all he wants. The junk burns right into his eyes.”

They didn't get that way from cocaine,
I thought uneasily.

“Tell her what the boys call him,” Peek-a-Boo said.

Lucky grinned, more like a grimace. “Vlad the Inhaler. Get it?”

I nodded, watching the guy pace the room.

“I was about to whistle you in for an interrogation when the creep started blabbing about how they have your family,” Lucky said. “We didn't catch him as much he let himself be caught. That junkie was sent to make a deal. In fact, he hasn't stopped saying it over and over again—the Russians will call a truce if we trade
you
for your family.” He leaned so close I could see spidery veins beneath translucent skin. “We agreed.”

We faced each other, the air dead between us, as my mind went into overdrive.

Did Vlad tell Lucky who his boss was?
I thought.
Did he tell the old man about Elzy's other object of desire, the notebook?

But no—that would undermine Elzy's plan to conquer Chicago. If Lucky knew I had a decades-old record of Outfit secrets and crimes, I'd be strapped to Knuckles's torture chair at this very moment. Instead, I was about to be traded to the Russians, who would do even worse to make me give up the notebook.

With all my might, I kept a blank face and shrugged. “They'll never call a truce. It's a lie.”

“Of course it is,” Lucky said. “You know what I think? The Russians snatched your family hoping the counselor would be a strong bargaining chip with me. Your father's no shrinking violet, though. He would've used ghiaccio furioso on those bastards, but they somehow figured out a way to disable it. Now they know he has that cold blue power, and they must know you have it, too. Maybe your mother caved and told them, or that brother of yours.” His gaze narrowed behind thick glasses. “I believe they intend to use you as a weapon, to flip you to their side and force you to use ghiaccio fusioso
against
us.”

I swallowed once, thickly, feeling how close he was to at least part of Elzy's reason for wanting me. “My dad didn't do it. Why would I?”

“Because you're a girl. They assume you're weak . . . unable to stand up to whatever torture they're inflicting on your father,” he answered. “Anthony Rispoli is a tough son of a bitch. They obviously don't believe you're as tough.”

“They're wrong.”

He shrugged bony shoulders. “It doesn't matter either way. Get this straight—I'm not in the business of saving your family or anyone else's. I'm making the trade for one reason only . . . to find out where the hell their mob . . . their goddamn
boss
 . . . is holed up.” He grunted painfully.

“But why do the Russians
think
you're making it?” I asked, the question slipping out before I could stop it.

Lucky's black eyes were pinned to mine. “Because they believe we're losing the street war. And that we're desperate for their bullshit truce.”

“Well, we are, aren't we?” Peek-a-Boo said. “Losing, I mean.”

The old man faced her, the stoniness in his expression softening slightly. “That's what I meant about having someone close by to tell the truth. Yeah, we're losing the war,” he said, turning to me. “This trade is our best chance, maybe my
last
chance, to end this street war the way I want it to end.”

“How's that?” I asked carefully.

Lucky thumbed the morphine button, slowly lying back. His voice was shallow when he said, “Kitten . . . take over . . .”

Peek-a-Boo's gaze lingered on him until his eyelids fluttered, and then turned on me. “It's the oldest play in the book, honey,” she said. “You're the rabbit. Everyone follows you.”

I'm used to it,
I thought, listening to her.

“We're letting Vlad walk out of here, just you and him, on the pretense that you've been exchanged for your family,” she said, moving away from Lucky's oxygen tank. She lit a cigarette, staining the filter hot pink. “Doubtless, Vlad will deliver you to his boss. A battalion of our guys, the invisible ones, will follow close behind.”

“So they know about the trade? The invisible guys?” I asked, worried as always about the secret of my family's captivity.

She shook her head. “They were handpicked by Lucky. They don't need a reason to obey an order—they follow it, without question, and keep their mouths shut. The only people who know about the trade are you, me, and Lucky. It's no secret that the rank and file, maybe even his own VPs, wouldn't support what he has planned, so to hell with them,” she said, handing me a device. “Take this just in case.”

I looked at the GPS in my hand, thinking of the school buses, scooters, and other anonymous vehicles that had chased me for the past month. “Don't you think Vlad will have men on the street, too . . . waiting?”

“Maybe. It's a chance we're willing to take,” she said. “Besides, our boys will spot them a mile away.”

It didn't reassure me. I bit my lip, saying, “He takes me to his boss. Then what?”

“What do you think? It's not going to be subtle. A bloodbath never is. Your family taught me all about that.” She was referring to the infamous Catacomb Club massacre, when my great-uncle Giaccomo Rispoli—Uncle Jack—gunned down dozens of innocent people, and nearly killed her, too. The Russian mob was far from innocent, but it was plain that Lucky had planned a mass murder of his enemies on an even larger scale.

It also meant that the rabbit would be directly in the line of fire.

“I'm walking in there unarmed. What happens when bullets start flying?”

She squinted through smoke with a grim half smile. “Duck.”

“If by some miracle my family and I make it out of there,” I said, “what then?”

Lucky sat up like a corpse coming to life, pointing a waxen finger. “You
will
make it out of there . . . our boys will see to that. And then, if he's able, your father will resume his role as counselor,” he croaked, as raindrops pock-pocked the dome. “If not, you'll take over for him, permanently.”

“But . . . I'm a woman,” I said. “I thought—”

“You thought
nothing
!” he barked. “Broad or not, we
need
a Rispoli! Besides, no one walks away. Those are the rules . . .” The old man crumpled into the bed, squeezing morphine into his veins, waving me away with a fluttering hand.

The room was silent except for the rain. Lucky's breathing rose, shallow but steady. “Speaking of rules,” Peek-a-Boo said quietly, “you know it's the counselor-at-large's responsibility to choose the boss's successor?”

“No . . . I mean, I do now. Why?”

“Why do you think? Only the counselor can enforce the decision among Outfit members through ghiaccio furioso,” she said.

“But how?” I asked. “The rank and file is scattered all around Chicago. Is enforcement done, like, person by person?”

“The opposite. The entire organization is whistled in to one place at one time,” she said. “They're called and they come. They're ordered to face the counselor, eyes wide open, and they do. Following the rules is their religion.”

“It's hard to believe that no one looks away from the counselor.”

Peek-a-Boo smoothed her hair. “Maybe some do, but the majority do precisely as they're told. They want to be led, like any another zealots,” she said. “By the way, there are only two candidates to replace the boss, based on rank. Either the VP of Muscle or the VP of Money.”

“I guess that will be up to my dad when he's counselor again.”

“If he makes it out of there.”

“Lucky said he would. That my whole family would make it out,” I answered, feeling the sickening truth in her words. In the end, there would be no real guarantee of their safety.

“Lucky's an optimist,” Peek-a-Boo said, glancing at her watch. “It's time. Get Vlad into your car. Our guys are already in position. All you have to do is drive, not too fast, not too slow, wherever he tells you to go.”

I looked back at the old man. “So how long does he have?”

“Days, maybe. He's about to prove himself wrong. There's a way to escape the Outfit, all right, and that's to die,” she said, staring at me. I saw something in her eyes—not sympathy, but more like commiseration from one woman to another, both bound to an organization that resented their existence. “Ironic, hm? The thing that's killing him is doing it the only way the Outfit could ever be destroyed, too.”

“I don't understand.”

Peek-a-Boo looked around at the cameras watching us, and back at me. “Like cancer,” she said, almost in a whisper. “From the inside out.”

The moment passed, her smoking, me thinking about what she'd said. “After he's, you know . . . gone, what happens to you?” I asked.

“I'll be protected until a boss is in place. Then the new regime will squeeze me for the information and secrets I've learned from Lucky over the years. After that . . . ,” she said with a shrug. “All I know for sure is that there's no place in the Outfit for a woman who knows more about their business than they do. I'll be of no use to them.”

“That's not true, not if they're smart.”

“But I am a woman, just like you. They're no different from the Russians, just like Lucky said . . . they think we're not as tough as they are,” she said, opening the door. “Well, are we?”

I stepped outside without a word and the door locked behind me.

Vlad the Inhaler was down there somewhere, waiting to take me to the Russians.

“Let's find out,” I said aloud, descending the spiral staircase.