Killing The Rat (An Organized Crime Thriller) (8 page)

But instead, he was going to have to see the damage the surgeon had done to him. His heart beat fast, his mouth was dry and his hands shook.

He slowly reached up and found the seam where the bandage had been affixed. The tear sitting at the corner of his eye fell, streaking down his cheek like a downhill skier. Romano ran his hand along the bandage until he came to the clasp. It was a state-of-the-art bandage, with Velcro tabs. He closed his eyes, couldn’t bear to watch. But then, at the last moment, he decided he’d rather watch than open his eyes and see the shocking visual of the scar, the one breast gone, the other man-titty still hanging there.

He would take it like a man, even though he no longer felt like one.

The head of the Detroit mafia watched as the bandage fell away and landed on the marble floor, its reinforced edge karate chopping the top of Romano’s foot. He didn’t feel the pain. Instead, he stood transfixed, looking at his image in the mirror.

The scar was much smaller than he expected, a half-moon stitched directly beneath where his left breast used to be. The scar wasn’t bad at all. He looked at it, fascinated.

His eye moved to his right breast. It hung there, a young girl’s breast. Perhaps pre-pubescent.

Romano’s eye went back to the scar.

Then back to his right breast.

A shudder ran through his entire body. His breath caught in his throat.

He felt like a freak. Not because of the one breast gone. That actually looked okay.

But Romano stared at the one breast that remained.

That was the one that hurt. That was that one that looked freakish and humiliating. He reached up and cupped his one remaining breast and tears now flowed from both eyes. What a fool he’d been. The question popped into his mind unbidden. The solution had been there all along.

Why hadn’t he gotten a double mastectomy?

The head of the Detroit Mafia hung his head and wept.

Several minutes later, someone rapped on the bathroom door. Romano sat on the toilet. The toilet’s lid was down and he was wearing his thick white bathrobe. He stared at the tile on the floor, his eyes roving over the pattern, daydreaming, making his mind think about something else.

The knock came again.

“What?”

“Phone call.” Romano recognized Falcone’s voice. “Says it’s extremely important.”

Romano sighed and heaved himself to his feet. He’d wiped his face and any sign of his tears were gone. It was time to get back to business. He’d had his private moment of shame, now it was time to put things right.

Without leaving the bathroom, Romano stuck his hand through the opening of the door and retrieved the cell phone.

“It’s me.”

One never used names on the phone. It had been like this all his life. Worrying about the Feds, fearing new and better technology for eavesdropping. He was just a businessman. God, he hated the FBI.

He listed to the voice on the other end of the phone. It was a highly paid informant and at times like this, Romano took immense delight in the fact that money – the same money that came from crimes the FBI was trying to stop – could undermine the government’s very own people. The voice spoke briefly, and then disconnected immediately after delivering the requisite information.

Romano looked in the mirror. The sixty year old man looking back at him was tired and nearly beaten. But now he saw a gleam of fire in the eye, and he momentarily forget about the sacrilege that had been exercised on his torso.

He punched in the number that he’d used many times before, but always with great caution.

Romano heard Jack Cleveland’s voice on the other end.

“Yeah,” it said.

“It’s me.”

“Uh-huh.”

“He’s at the Prescott Hotel in Ann Arbor. Room 914.”

“Okay.”

When Romano heard the voice on the other end acknowledge the message, he disconnected immediately. Romano had the house swept regularly for bugs, and cell phones were notoriously hard to eavesdrop upon, but one never knew.

Romano went to the giant whirlpool tub and started a hot bath. He couldn’t get the stitches wet, but he would try to relax. He poured himself a tumbler of 20-year old scotch and sat on the edge of the tub, breathing in the steam from the hot water.

His stress level was at an all-time high right now. He’d been robbed, and who knew what Tommy Abrocci was doing? He was probably running to the Feds, but Romano knew he would never make it.

Jack Cleveland was going to kill him.

For that, Romano raised his glass in a toast.

“Here’s to sending you straight to Hell, Tommy.”

He drank, and felt the warmth spread from his mouth, to his throat down his chest and to his stomach.

The pain around his upper torso momentarily disappeared.

18.

One day, a co-worker mentioned to Loreli that women tend to marry men like their fathers.

The concept had rocked Loreli to her core.

Because she realized that she had simply replaced her father with Ted.

Ted the deadbeat. Ted beat.

She also realized that all of her boyfriends had been deadbeats. Even though she’d met and known plenty of nice guys, she’d always found something wrong with them. Some reason not to get involved with them. They’re too boring. They’re not exciting. Too fat. Too short. Too skinny. Too stupid. Too smart.

That’s what she’d told herself, anyway.

Of course, she had understood it too late.

Liam was two years and old and Ted was out of her life. Sort of. He was gone most of the time. But every once in awhile he’d come back. And Loreli always let him in, both physically and metaphorically.

That was what had really made her sit up and take notice. Because it had reminded her of her own father’s infamous pattern of disappearing and reappearing on a whim. Loreli’s father had often left them. Abandoned them for days, weeks, even months at a time. Her mother, a waitress at a truck stop, had stopped asking when he’d come back. For the longest time, Loreli had believed what her mother said, basically that all men were shit. A fact her mother often recounted night after night when it had just been the two of them, making ends meet. Sitting in the living room, watching t.v. on the little black-and-white with the giant, bent rabbit ears that you had to adjust every time you watched a show on a different channel.

Finally, for money, Loreli learned how to use her taut body and pretty face. It wasn’t long before she was a hit at the topless bars along 8 Mile Road. The money was good, but not good enough. Through the other dancers, Loreli learned of a woman, not a pimp, no one ever used the word pimp, in Hamtramck who hooked up girls with white-collar johns. Johns who paid extra for young, clean girls. In fact, it was a girl in the psychology class who had approached Loreli about the business.

Loreli had been reluctant, but then the girl had offered Loreli five hundred bucks to come to one of her jobs and watch. Apparently the guy liked to have a girl watch. Loreli did, and it was the easiest money she’d ever made. It was a little weird being there, and she was scared, but afterward, she knew she could do it. She had always been good at turning her mind off things. About categorizing, and blocking and filing emotions away when she needed to. There had been times at the dinner table growing up when she’d wanted to strangle her father but instead had smiled sweetly at him. It was a good tool to have.

 She had financed her education that way, dancing and the occasional hooking job. She tried to keep the hooking to a minimum, once or twice a month. But it all depended on how good the dancing gigs were and how short of money she was.

It had turned out to be enough, though. She’d gotten her degree and taken some pre-law courses, hoping one day to be a lawyer. But law school had intimidated her. So she decided to take additional courses to get a job as a legal secretary, and then work her way into a paralegal job before going back to law school. Law school had been too intimidating back then. Holding down dancing jobs and raising a son.

Besides, she had become disgusted with herself for hooking. The dancing wasn’t bad. A bunch of desperate men who half the time didn’t even pay attention to the girl’s dancing. Most of them were torn between the pretty young thing grabbing her ankles on stage, and ESPN’s Sports Center on the television behind the bar.

So she’d graduated, gotten a job at Ryson, Butters & Mahoney, and become a helluva legal secretary. Enough so that she’d been able to get the little house in Warren.

Her taste in men, though, hadn’t improved. She went out with an attorney or two and found most of them were too busy checking themselves out in mirrors or trying to impress her with their Porsches. So many of them were blatantly insulting to her. The dimwit little secretary they expected to be so impressed with their money that she would immediately sleep with them.

The fact was, most of the men she’d turned tricks for had shown her more respect than the lawyers she dated.

19.

The Ann Arbor exit on Highway 14 came up suddenly and Loreli steered the Camry into the sharp curve. The little car’s wheels squealed slightly and the body shuddered at the forces running through it.

She made the curve and straightened the Camry out, then accelerated through the green light at the base of the small bluff overlooking the southern end of Ann Arbor.

Loreli had been here once before. She and Liam had needed a change of pace so they’d come here. Found a nice park with a good play structure. Loreli had chased Liam around the park and then they’d gone out for cheeseburgers and malts.

It had been almost a year ago, but that was recent enough for Loreli to remember how to get to the downtown area of Ann Arbor. She took Reynolds Boulevard until it ran into Division Street, then took that to State Street. There, she followed the signs that alerted drivers to the direction of the University of Michigan campus.

Loreli checked the address on the slip of paper and looked for Harper Street. She passed coffee shops and bookstores, antique shops and furniture stores. It was early on Friday morning. Most of the streets were empty, people at work, students in class.

 She found Harper and three blocks later cruised slowly past the Prescott Hotel.

She parked a block away and shut off the Camry. The silence fell over her and she glanced into the rearview mirror. Loreli dreaded what she was about to do. Cursed her own stupidity for ever getting involved with deadbeat men. The only guys she ever dated, if she ever dated again period, would have to be goddamned Eagle Scouts, or priests. Or former Eagle Scouts turned priests.

Loreli looked at herself in the mirror again. Well, she thought, that wouldn’t do. The expression on her face was murderous. She’d scare the john so badly he wouldn’t want to touch her.

She forced herself to relax. To put on her game face. She had a job to do and by God she was going to do it right. She took out her lipstick and applied a fresh coat. She used her cream to make her skin look smooth and fresh. These guys liked the women to look young. Loreli appraised herself. At twenty-five, she could easily pass for nineteen. She was thin enough, her skin was smooth enough and she just had that look about her.

Loreli opened the Camry door and stepped out. She had on a short black mini-skirt, thigh highs with a black bra and black garters, and stiletto heels. She wore a white shirt and a black blazer. She looked more like a sharply dressed business woman than a part-time hooker.

She took a deep breath and put on her game face.

She went in, took the elevator to the 9th floor, then walked quietly down the plush carpet of the hallway.

It was a nice hotel, that was a good sign. Hopefully this guy had money to burn. Plenty of extra cash. Maybe if she gave him the ride of his life he’d give her more than the $1500 he’d negotiated with her pimp. Loreli figured that if she could take $2500 off him, that would be good- half of the remaining five grand.With the grim determination of a woman forced to endure sex she didn’t want, Loreli Karstens make her right hand into a fist, reached up, and knocked firmly on the door of the Prescott Hotel’s Room 914.

20.

In the end, it was a company called High Speed Access that made Jack agree to kill Tommy Abrocci.

Ordinarily, even though he was a hired killer, he tried not to let money influence his thinking. Yes, he did it for the money. But he’d turned down lots of paying jobs before. Never one that offered this much, but there’d been a few fat paychecks that he’d passed on, and the thing was, he’d never regretted any of the ones he’d passed up.

The ones he’d passed up either involved women or children, a cop, an innocent, or the person doing the hiring couldn’t be trusted, or there wasn’t time to do the job right.

That’s what was wrong with this one.

The ultimate rush job.

Jesus—get a call and whack a guy in an hour or two! It was nuts.

But Jack Cleveland was not only one of the most respected hit men known to the Detroit mafia family.

He was also a serious investor.

And his portfolio was solid. He was diversified, he was international as well as national, and he was a shrewd investor whose portfolio had beaten the S & P eight out of nine years.

But the one thing he wanted more than anything was to invest not in the Internet itself, but in the companies that supported the Internet. They were undervalued, not the high-profile darlings of Wall Street.

Jack Cleveland identified with companies that did a great job without a great deal of fuss.

Enter High Speed Cable. Based in Santa Clara, California, they were destined to become the preeminent source for the Internet via cable television. They were prepared to ink deals with major cable television providers throughout the world.

Jack knew this because he had a cousin who worked for the company and fed jack the information. She thought Jack was a photocopier repairman who dallied in investing.

But Jack knew he was onto something. He’d done the research, found the company’s history, financials, and the personal histories of its officers. The stock was currently at $9 a share. Jack knew it would easily double, if not triple, in a matter of months.