Greenmantle (43 page)

“Bennie’s doing what?” Louie demanded. “Hey, since when does Bennie have anything to say about—I don’t give a fuck, Johnny. We’re talking the Magaddino family here, or are you forgetting who pays the bills? I answer only to the
padrone
and my old man—you hear what I’m telling you? This bullshit you’re handing me’s pissing me off. I’m in the middle of something important and I got to—”

Louie broke off and something dark passed across his face as he listened to Johnny Bomps. Earl turned to see what was going on. He glanced at Fingers, who was watching his boss with a worried expression.

“You
sure
?” Louie said softly. “Okay. I hear what you’re saying. Tell whoever that I’m flying in tonight and I don’t want nobody talking about this outside the family—not till I get back. Hey, they owe me that much, Johnny. Just tell them that I’m calling in my favors. I got a little thing to clear up here in the next couple of hours and then I’m flying home. Right. This’ll be one I owe you, Johnny. Yeah, thanks.”

Louie cradled the phone and turned toward the window, not seeing Earl or the view, his gaze fixed on memories.

Christ, Earl thought, looking at him. Ever since these wops blew into town he’d been running around, wiping their asses like some brown-nosing tourist guide. He had better things to do than get involved in some fucking mob soap opera. He should never have mentioned a word about Valenti—let the wops take care of their own problems. He should have just grabbed the money and run. He could have been in Bogota by now, or at least on his way. First class—him and Howie.

Earl frowned, thinking of Howie. Howie had been something of a twerp, but he’d had his uses. What bothered Earl most about the fact that Howie was dead, though, was how the little fucker’d bought it. Somebody’d just punched a hole in him. Earl didn’t feel any particular loyalty to Howie, but you couldn’t let guys go around wasting people that worked for you. It made you look like an asshole. Like you were out of control. And nobody wanted to work for someone who was out of control.

“What happened?” Fingers asked.

Earl looked at Louie. Fercrissakes, he looked like he was gonna cry.

“The old man’s dead,” Louie said. “Him and Ricca—they got hit this afternoon. Johnny don’t know all the details, but there’s some kind of shit going down. Bennie LaFata’s waving around a paper that puts the finger on Ricca for calling the old Don’s hit and the old guard’s got some funny idea about backing him as the new
padrone
.”

“Where’d they get hit?” Fingers asked. “Who did it?”

“Christ, I don’t know. They were in the old man’s office. Somebody just blew ’em away.”

“Papale,” Fingers said. “It had to be the Fox did it. Christ, I’m sorry, Louie. Broadway Joe was the best we had.”

Louie started to nod. “You’re right. It had to be Papale. That gives me two reasons to blow the fuck out of Valenti.”

“What’s going on?” Earl asked. “I had a deal and—”

“My old man’s
dead
!” Louie shouted. “Can you understand that, you dumb fuck? You got nothing now—no deal, nothing!” He started to draw his gun, but Fingers got to him before he could pull it free. He held on to Louie’s arm and turned to Earl.

“You better get out of here,” he said.

For a long moment Earl was ready to face them down. With the deal going down the tubes he felt like showing these wops just where they could blow it, but then he realized that although they might just be a couple of assholes, they were a couple of assholes that were connected. No point in calling the mob down on his own ass. He could wait for a better time.

“Hey, I’m sorry about your old man,” he said. “I just wasn’t thinking. You say there’s no deal, okay. There’s no deal. But cut me in on this Valenti shit—I’ll do this as a freebie with you, just to show my goodwill. What do you say?”

Louie stared him down, glared at him until Earl’s gaze flicked away, then slowly he calmed down. He let go of his .38 and Fingers stepped quickly back, an apology on his lips that Louie waved away.

“That’s okay, Fingers,” Louie said. “You did good.” He turned back to Earl. “So what’s in it for you?”

“I told you straight—goodwill and that’s it.”

Louie shrugged. “I don’t trust you.”

“Okay. Then I’ll stay out of it. Let me just ask you to do one thing—keep my family out of it, all right? I need the kid to hold over my ex’s head and I need my ex to sign over her bread to me. After that, I don’t give a shit what happens to them.”

“Now, that, I can understand,” Louie said. “See, I know you got no loyalty. You don’t understand what we got in the
fratellanza
. But when I know it’s your own profit you’re thinking about, then I can trust you not to fuck up.”

Earl couldn’t believe what he was hearing. It was like these guys took all this bullshit seriously. What the fuck was the mob in business for if it is wasn’t to turn a profit?

“So here’s the deal,” Louie said. “If Valenti’s alone, we take him—me and Fingers. We’re not going to play this pretty anymore. This time we’re going in and we’re going to blow the fuck out of him. If your old lady’s around, we’ll let you talk her out, but just long enough to sign over the bread. After that, she’s got to go. We’re not leaving anything of Valenti’s standing. Not him, not his house, not his women, nothing.
capito?”

“That’s fine by me,” Earl said. And it was. The wops could take turns blowing the hell out of each other for all he cared, just so long as he got to walk away with his bread. “Are we going now?”

“We’re going to need one or two more things,” Louie said. “How long’ll it take you to run us down a rocket launcher?”

Earl blinked. “Hey, come on. What’re you—”

“You don’t understand, do you?” Louie said. “These fuckers killed my old man, not some asshole I never heard of, but
my
old man. I want Valenti and Papale in little pieces. I want to drop their ears on the old man’s coffin when it gets lowered into the ground, you understand?”

“Right. A rocket launcher. That’s gonna cost.”

“Money’s no problem. Fingers, give the man some bread.”

Fingers pulled out a billfold filled with U.S. currency and started counting out hundred dollar bills into Earl’s hand.

“That’s enough,” Earl said when he was holding twenty of them. “If I can’t get it for this, it can’t be got. You want anything else?”

Louie shaped a fist with his right hand and tapped it against his left breast. “Everything else I need’s right in here,” he said.

Earl looked into Louie’s eyes and saw something in them that he found in his own reflection sometimes. It was a piece of madness—not fruit loops, but the kind that could pass for sane, until you check out the eyes. It leapt like a spark from Louie to Earl, and Earl grinned.

“I guess you’re right,” he told Louie.

Fingers Maita stepped back and regarded the pair with misgivings. There was something in the air and he didn’t like it. He knew that neither man cared for the other, but right now it was as though they were brothers. He’d known Louie for a long time, and knew him to get like this once in a while. He was hard to hold down, then. He just went crazy until he levelled whatever was standing in his way. Fingers didn’t give a shit about that. Louie was the boss and what he wanted done got done, but this way of doing it just made things too risky.

The air in the room almost crackled with whatever was passing between the two men. Then just before it broke off, Fingers thought he heard something, a sound like a flute coming from a long way off, but as soon as he started to listen to it, the vague music faded and he wasn’t sure if he’d actually heard it or imagined it. As soon as it was gone, whatever it was that had linked his boss to the Canadian was gone as well. We’re getting into some weird shit here, he thought.

“Give me a couple of hours,” Earl said. “I’ll be back so we can still make it out there before it gets completely dark.”

Louie looked at his watch. “If you’re not back by seven-fifteen, we’re going on without you.”

Not with the honeypot that was gonna bankroll him lying there right in the line of fire, they weren’t. “I’ll be back in time,” Earl said and headed out the door.

Jesus, Howie, he thought as he was waiting for the elevator. Too bad you’re missing out on this. It’s gonna be some party. He grinned. Anything’d be a party compared to the car trunk that he’d shoved Howie’s corpse into, though he wouldn’t mind being there to see the face of the dude who finally opened his trunk when the smell got to be too strong and he found himself staring face to face with Howie Peale and his amazing maggot show.

The elevator arrived with a
ping
and Earl got in, turning his thoughts to the business at hand. Who the fuck did he know that could come up with a rocket launcher in the next hour or so? By the time he was out on the street, he had a destination in mind. He’d just check out the Ottawa chapter of the Devil’s Dragon biker gang. If those suckers didn’t have it, it probably hadn’t been made yet. At least not when it came to handheld weapons. Christ, he’d even seen a full-size cannon out there one time.

5

The top of Wolding Hill lifted a flat granite face from its wooded shoulders. It was a solid expanse of rock, with little vegetation except for an old pine growing out of a fat crevice that time and the elements had filled with wind-gathered dirt. The pine grew in one corner of the summit and had shed a carpet of browned needles that needed sweeping.

Using cedar boughs, Ali and the wild girl cleared the needles away from the area they were using. Throughout the afternoon, they lugged fuel for the bonfire up to the summit, laying it down on the rock. By the time they were finished, they had a tangle of wind-fallen branches, twigs and most of the bones from the skeleton of a deer, which Mally had found, all piled up in a circle five feet across and almost four feet high at the tip of its cone.

Ali sat and looked at it now, poking at the wood with the metal-shod point of her walking stick. She still wasn’t sure that what she was doing was right; she wasn’t even sure exactly what she was
suppose
d to do here. All she knew was that she had to see it through.

She stared at the antler that lay at the very top of the pile. This one was different from the small antlers that had been with the deer skeleton. It was carved with designs and hung with beads and feathers. “They were Old Hornie’s once,” Mally had informed her. The twin to the one in front of Ali should be in her mother’s hands by now, she thought. She wasn’t really sure why she’d sent it along with Mally.

She heard a sound, someone scrabbling up the last bit of bare rock, and turned, almost expecting it to be her mother or Tony, but it was just Mally returning from having delivered Ali’s message. She had a paper bag in one hand, a leather water sack slung over her shoulder.

“’Lo, Ali. Come see what I found.” She presented Ali with the bag, which, when Ali opened it, proved to hold sandwiches. Ali’s stomach grumbled as she smelled them.

“Where did you ‘find’ them?” she asked.

“At Lewis’s cabin.”

Ali started to tell the wild girl that just taking things wasn’t right, but she was too hungry to offer the argument. Thank you, Lewis, she thought as she took the top sandwich out. “What did my mom say?” she asked around a mouthful of bread, sliced hardboiled eggs, cheese and watercress.

“Well, she started out saying no,” Mally replied, taking the other sandwich, “but she changed her mind.”

“What made her change her mind?”

Mally shrugged. “Don’t really know. I think it’s partly because she knows you have to do this, and partly because they’re expecting their own trouble down there and they want to keep you out of it.”

Ali stopped chewing. Trouble. That meant either her father, or the men that were after Tony, or maybe both. She wondered how much Tony had told her mother. He had to have told her about the stag at least, and something about what Ali was doing up here, but what about the men who were after Tony? Had he told her about them and
why
they were after him?

Probably not. She couldn’t see her mother accepting that very readily. It was too bad, though. Ali had been having hopes of maybe getting the two of them together when this was all over. But they were probably too dense to know that they’d make a good couple, and knowing her mother, once she
did
find out about Tony’s past, all bets would be off.

“They both had guns,” Mally said.

“They
did
? Both of them?”

Mally nodded. “Small ones.” She mimicked a pistol with her hand. “And one that was neither small, nor big like a rifle.”

Considering Tony’s background, Ali thought, that could be just about anything. “You sure my mom had one?” she asked again. She just couldn’t believe it.

“Oh, yes,” Mally said. “I saw it, didn’t I?”

Way-to-go, Tony. Turn my mother into a moll. But just remember—she’s not Sybil Danning. Not by a long shot. And those were just movies, not the real thing. Ali wasn’t sure if the idea that her mother had a gun comforted her or not. It was good to know that she’d be able to protect herself, but Ali liked her mother the way she was. She needed to assert herself a little more, especially around men, but this?