Grandmaster (59 page)

"I'm calling the police," the manager shouted.

"The fuck you are," said Nick DeSanto, rolling out of the grip of the doorman flat onto his stomach, where he reached inside his jacket and pulled out a .22 Beretta.

A woman in the crowd screamed. The manager dropped to the ground, hands in the air, and the few guests clustered around the doorway darted back inside. The doorman and the valet froze in their positions, eyeing Nick wildly.

"Nicky, Nicky," Joey said, smiling, using his most conciliatory voice. "It's a dumbshit restaurant, no big deal." He stood up slowly, brushing his silk suit with his manicured hands. "Come on. We'll go to '21. The girls'll love it. Whaddya say, Nicky?"

Nick DeSanto didn't move a muscle. For an interminable moment he stayed on his stomach, eyes fixed on the restaurant manager's bald head, finger poised on the trigger of the small automatic. Then, with infinite slowness, he rose and walked over to the manager. The gun was still in his hands; his pace was that of an executioner.

"So you gonna call the police, huh, Pops?"

"No. No," the manager said softly, emphasizing the point with quivering tosses of his sweating head.

"Do you know who my father is?" Nick touched the barrel of the gun to the manager's scalp. "Look at me, you stupid fuck."

The manager looked, jowls trembling.

"I asked you if you knew who my daddy was."

The manager squinted, then opened his eyes wide. "Oh, God. God."

Joey DeSanto laughed. "That's close, eh, Nicky? 'God.' That's good."

"Shut up." He pressed the gun deeper against the manager's head. "We want a table."

"Y—yes, sir," the bald man whispered, nodding frantically.

"Hey, Nicky, we don't need this shit," Joey said. "The girls—"

"Shut
up!
He kicked the manager on the side of his ample stomach. "Get up."

The manager complied.

"And you're going to clear out a room for us. The best room, got it?"

The manager nodded and began stumbling toward the crowd packed inside. Nick and Joey swaggered along behind him.

But just as they reached the doorway, six Japanese men in blue suits spilled out of the reception room like two streams of running water.

Before the two brothers could do anything, they were carried bodily down the front steps of the restaurant building. The gun was out of Nick's hand, skittering along the driveway. Then both brothers were thrown roughly on top of the blue Corvette.

"I'll kill you!" Nick rasped as the car door opened and he was thrust inside, with Joey following. The girls in the car screamed as the two men landed on top of them, sending the silver cocaine box flying in a blizzard of white dust.

"Stupid bitch!" Nick shouted, grabbing at the swirling powder with two hands. He looked back at the restaurant, but the six men had already vanished back inside and the heavy front door was closing behind them.

"God, Nicky, I thought you were both dead," Gloria said. "When they stuffed you in here like that—"

"Just shut your fat flap, okay?"

"Hey, you don't have to get shitty about it—"

Nick punched her in the mouth, then gunned the accelerator and tore out of the parking area with a squeal of burning rubber.

About a half mile away, where Central Park gave way to city blocks, Nick slammed on the brakes. He looked at Gloria, who was weeping loudly. Her hair was disheveled, coated by a veil of cocaine. Her makeup ran down her cheeks in black streams. Blood and mucus poured from her nose.

"Get the fuck out of here," he said, showing her the back of his hand.

Cowering and emitting little squeals of grief, she got out.

"Her too," Nick said, jerking his thumb toward Joey's girl in the back seat. Joey shrugged at his date in explanation. She huffed out, slamming the door.

"Fatassed bimbo," Nick said.

Joey came around to the front seat. "Relax, Nicky, okay? She's just a little teed off. You want me to drive?"

"Get in," Nick said stonily.

Joey got in with a sigh.

"Where's the rest of the blow?"

"I got it right here, Nicky." Joey pulled a glassine envelope from beneath the passenger seat and sifted it expertly into the small silver box. "I even got a nice new bill for you, see that?" He snapped a crisp dollar bill near the windshield. "Hey, you want to go to the Hilton, maybe pick up some fancy gash?"

"We're going back."

Joey smiled nervously as his brother took the car up to eighty. "What, that dump again? Why don't we just forget it, Nicky. Pop'll send Frankie Lupone to talk to the guy. Fat Frank'll see to it that he's real sorry, believe me—"

"Damn gooks."

They rode in silence for a moment. Joey had hoped his brother had been too angry to notice the race of the six men. Nick had hated gooks, ever since his best friend, Hands Aleutta, had died in Vietnam. Hands had taught Nick everything he knew about the business. It was Nick's father's business, the counterfeiting and numbers and dope, but Anthony DeSanto had raised his children strictly, never bringing a trace of the rackets home with him. It was only through Hands Aleutta that Nick even got a glimpse into the powerful fiefdom that his father controlled, and it was through Hands that Nick was arrested for the first time.

Hands had allowed Nick, who was fifteen, to ride along while he drove to Florida with some stolen automobile parts. But they had been caught, and Hands had pulled six months at Lewisburg.

Tony DeSanto got his son off without probation, but he was furious. Nick was restricted to the house for the next year, although during that time he devised a hundred ways to escape and return undetected. What worried him more was Hands's safety. On one of his outings he visited Lewisburg, where he found Hands pale and nervous.

"It's your old man," he said. "He's pissed off. He can have me killed."

Nick laughed. "What? My pop? He wouldn't kill anybody."

"Shit, kid, your pop's so big he don't even have to wipe his own ass, you understand? He wants somebody done, poof, they are gone. Case closed. And I got you arrested, Nicky. I got Tony DeSanto's boy his first mugshot. Christ," he said, running the big strangler's hands that had earned him his name through his hair. "I'm dead."

Three days before Hands was due for release, Nick visited him again and was greeted with new cheer. "I got an idea, kid," Hands said brightly. "Your old man ain't going to get to me, because I got a plan." The man's lips spread in a big, silly grin. A cigarette dangled out of the space left by a missing tooth. "I'm going to join the frigging Army," he said.

"Nobody joins the Army," was all Nick could finally think of to say.

It was true. No one in Nick DeSanto's family, none of his family's friends, none of his own friends that he met through Hands or their fathers, had ever been in military service. It was just not done. The affairs of government were the affairs of law, and the further one stayed away from the law, the better off he was.

But Hands was insistent. He was released, enlisted, and was killed in combat the fourth day after he arrived in Vietnam.

"Hands got shot down by gooks," Nick said, snorting some coke as he steered the Corvette back into the park.

"I know, Nicky."

"Probably some of the same gooks in there."

The car slowed to a halt some hundred yards from the restaurant, obscured from view by some tall bushes.

"What are we doing here?" Joey asked.

Nick didn't answer. He took a pair of gloves from his visor, then reached over Joey's lap to the special shelf he'd had cut behind the glove compartment and pulled out a .38 Browning.

"Hey, Nicky—"

"It's clean."

"What are you—"

"Change places with me."

 

S
usi Haverford Belmont and her new husband stood on the long,
curving stairway to wave good-bye to the wedding guests. As she tossed the bouquet, she saw her brother standing behind the women, his arms folded across his chest, grinning.

"It's for you," she mouthed. "You're next."

Miles shook his head, then blew her a kiss.

It was the last time he saw her alive.

 

T
he bridegroom's car, festooned with tin cans and tissue-paper flowers,
pulled out slowly from the lot in front of the Inn on the Park. Because it was considered bad luck to watch the newlyweds drive away, no one had escorted them from the restaurant building.

John and Susi Belmont were holding hands and laughing as their auto moved slowly down the driveway. The spring day had ended and the mercury vapor lamps were easing on to mark the evening.

Up ahead, they saw a blue car parked between trees alongside the driveway, its nose pointing out to the road. Suddenly they saw a man jump from behind the blue car into the driveway. He raised an automatic with two hands and fired. A bullet struck John Belmont in the eye before he could even slam on his brakes. The car careened off the roadway, jumped a small curb, and hit a tree with a crash that shattered its front windshield.

Susi, covered with her husband's blood, screamed once before the second bullet whizzed through the open window on the driver's side and pierced her brain. She fell forward across her husband's dead body. The impact jammed his foot down onto the gas pedal and the car's motor began to race wildly, its rear wheels biting deeply into the freshly planted damp spring sod.

"Jesus Christ, Nicky!" Joey DeSanto croaked hoarsely behind the wheel of the blue Corvette.

For a wild moment Nick spun on his brother, aiming the .38 double-handed at him through the windshield of the blue Corvette.

"Nicky—Nicky, no," Joey whimpered, slowly raising his arms in the air. "I'm your brother, Nicky."

With a slump of his body, Nick broke his trancelike concentration.

A few shouts came now from the entryway to the Inn on the Park. Nicky DeSanto ran off the roadway, slid into the Corvette beside Joey, and tossed the gun out the window.

"Hurry up," he growled. "Get out of here."

The Corvette squealed backward in a cloud, then maneuvered behind some bushes. It had disappeared the way it had come before the first frantic wedding guests arrived at the scene.

Joey gripped the steering wheel with two white-knuckled hands. "What's going to happen now, Nicky?" he asked. He sounded even younger than he was.

His big brother laughed. "Grow up, Joey. Nothing's going to happen. There ain't nobody in this town big enough to touch us."

When their bodies were found, John and Susi Belmont's hands were still entwined.

 

 

Warren Murphy is the author of the long-running satirical action/adventure series,
The Destroyer
, on which the movie
Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins
was based; the
Trace
series of detective novels which spawned the television series
Murphy's Law
; and a number of other books, stories, and screenplays. His film credits include
The Eiger Sanction
and
Lethal Weapon II.
His work has won a dozen national awards, including two Edgars and two Shamuses.

Learn more about Warren on
www.WarrenMurphy.com
or
www.DestroyerBooks.com

Friend Warren on
Facebook

Follow Warren on
Twitter

Molly Cochran has written and ghostwritten 25 novels and nonfiction books, including the Edgar-winning bestseller
Grandmaster
and
The Forever King
, recipient of the New York Public Library award for Books of the Teen Age, both co-written with Warren Murphy, and the nonfiction bestseller
Dressing Thin.
Her most recent novels are
Legacy
and
Poison
, published by Simon & Schuster.

Learn more about Molly on
www.MollyCochran.com

Friend Molly on
Facebook

Follow Molly on
Twitter

High Priest

The Broken Sword

World Without End

 

Writing as Dev Stryker:

Deathright (Cochran)

Endgame (Murphy)

A  Wilderness of Mirrors (Cochran)

 

By Molly Cochran:

The Third Magic

 

By Warren Murphy:

The Red Moon

The Ceiling of Hell

The Trace series

The Digger series

The Razoni and Jackson series

Scorpion's Dance

Jericho Day

Mis Bidwell's Spirit

Leonardo's Law

Destiny's Carnival

 

 

 

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author‘s imagination or are used fictitiously.

 

Copyright © 1984 by Molly Cochran and Warren Murphy

All rights reserved.

 

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

 

eISBN: 978-1-937776-57-2