Romeo of the Streets (19 page)

He hated this place—had from the moment he’d first set foot in it. The smell of cheap sugary-flavored shots and chemicals from the smoke machine, barely masking the
other
smell of desperation and hopelessness, it made him want to wretch. But for Sal, Ferret and Eyeball—even to Lou—it was like a palace of dreams, the epitome of everything they wanted out of life; money, power, excess, and total domination over others. He’d sworn to himself that he would shut it down forever that first time they’d called him here. Now, he wasn’t sure he’d get the chance.

“I don’t get what we’re doing down here on the main floor?” Lana asked him, leaning over to whisper in his ear in the small, red-cushioned booth they now shared
.
“Doesn’t he usually talk business upstairs?”

“Sure,” Romeo answered, “but why the hell would Sal want to talk business in front of my girlfriend?”

“Because I’m not
just
your girlfriend,” Lana said, “Because I know an angle for you big strong men to make some money off, remember?”

She reached down to straighten out the hem of the slutty lime-green cocktail dress she was wearing and Romeo observed, not for the first time, that she may have been getting more enjoyment from slumming it like this than was professionally required.

“And I told you it was the worst idea I’d heard yet from you FBI hacks,” Romeo replied.

“Yeah, well us hacks are the ones at the wheel here and besides, you owe me one. Now let’s just watch the show. I think I’m actually starting to enjoy this.”

Romeo frowned, taking a slow, labored sip of his ginger ale. His mouth was dry, his jaw tense, and the piquant liquid stung his gums a little as he drank. He looked up towards the VIP balcony. Sal was up there somewhere, he knew, and the fact that he’d left them waiting so long downstairs probably didn’t bode well for their coming meeting. Sal may have been a boorish jackass, but he had a kind of cunning intelligence to him that was bolstered even further by Eyeball’s helpful and sometimes even alarmingly astute interjections. All three of them were up there now and Romeo was certain that they would be talking about him and his girl. Damn it Lana, he thought, why did you have to go and fuck everything up like this?

But he couldn’t blame it all on her, not completely. The fact that Sal and the guys had found out about his “girlfriend” had been more his fault than hers, especially since he was the one who’d asked her to meet him so close to the Orange Grove that day—a risky move when he’d already known that Sal and the others were on their way. But at that point there was nothing he could do, Lou had already held those animals back for as long as possible and if they couldn’t get the money to Gino before Sal got to him first then the gangster Capo would show no mercy in exacting his retribution. Hell, Sal would even expect Lou to take part and Romeo knew that his friend didn’t have it in him. And if Lou defied Sal’s orders then he too would be met with the full brunt of their lust to violence. In the end, the meeting with Lana was a risk that he’d had no other choice but to take.

After Valentine’s Day—after that beautiful, impossible night with Sandy—Romeo had had to face up to some painful truths. There were two incontrovertible things that he knew. The first was that he was falling in love with Sandra Guilianno. The second was that the closer he let himself get to her then the more pain it would inevitably cause. And if there was one thing he wanted even more than just to be with her, it was the burning desire to protect her from harm—emotional or otherwise.

Maybe it was no wonder that he’d been so hurt when she said that she agreed about staying just friends (though somehow a part of him just
couldn’t
believe that), even though he’d known that it was really for the best. After that he’d reaffirmed his commitment to the mission. If he couldn’t be with Sandy, he could at least honor his promise to her that he would look out for her brother and that would mean taking down those other soul-sucking vampires and—eventually—coming clean to Lou about the whole operation and hoping he could be persuaded to do the right thing too. Virtually everything about the life of Romeo Mancini was a lie, but his friendship with Lou was not. He only hoped the other man could grow to understand.

His FBI superiors almost had everything they needed now—certainly they had enough to take down Sal and his two top soldiers—but they wanted to keep Romeo in and build as strong of a case as possible. He still hadn’t had any dealings with anybody else in the Falcone family, at least nobody higher than Sal anyway, and they were holding out for another couple of big catches before they called it quits and took it to the DA. He’d had to really go to the bat when it came to getting them to front the money for Gino and it had taken Lou a couple of seriously tense weeks of holding back Sal’s fury until the old man could pay. Lana, to her credit, had done her part and stood up for Romeo, arguing that if Sal and those guys decided to beat up Gino again it would, in his elderly state, amount to an attempted murder and there was no protocol for that. So either they put in the money to save him or the whole case would have to be pulled—there was simply no other choice.

As for Lou, Romeo told him he could probably get a loan from one of his mob uncles back home, but just had to wait for the cash to come through. On the day Sal decided that he’d waited long enough, Romeo had received an urgent text from Lou informing him that he and Sal’s crew were on their way to the café right that minute and they were going to force Lou to either collect the money or do something much, much worse. One frantic phone call later, Lana agreed to meet him in a diner en-route so she could hand him the cash. And from there it all would have gone off seamlessly if Sal and the guys hadn’t spotted his car and decided to come back for him.

Now circumstances necessitated that a love interest would have to be added to the story of Romeo Mancini and it certainly wasn’t the one that Romeo himself truly desired.

In Sal’s car, Lou had persuaded the Capo to let him and Romeo go into the café alone, insisting that they be allowed the opportunity to prove themselves to the other guys, a request that was certainly congruous with their obvious desire to make the grade and become official
Mafiosi
. Romeo had gone in with the cash stuffed in his pockets, down his pants, under his t-shirt and anywhere else he could keep Sal from seeing it from his place behind the wheel. Inside, they’d quickly told Gino the score and between them the three of them had transferred the money into an old medical bag that the old man had had lying around and then they returned outside to where Sal was waiting, parked up across the street.

Sal hadn’t been able to believe it and as Romeo watched him counting the money he could barely hide his disgust—the Capo seemed almost disappointed to have been paid with money instead of with blood. When the conversation turned to the subject of Romeo’s mystery companion, he further embellished the story he’d concocted en-route about an ex-girlfriend from New York and Lou, muttering simply “I’ve got to go,” had opened the car door and stormed away without waiting for permission. They’d barely spoken to each other since.

It had been pretty clear to Romeo from the beginning that Lou (not to mention Lisa too) had wanted to see him and Sandy end up as a serious item and, normally, that would have in itself acted as something of a deterrent, since Romeo hated it when other people tried to push his emotions in any particular direction. But with Sandy, it hadn’t made a difference. In fact, his growing friendship with her brother made it seem for him somehow even more enticing, almost as if Sandy, Lou and Lisa could be the family that he’d never had growing up. It was only a shame that it was all built on a house of lies—one that could come tumbling down any day now. And maybe even sooner than he’d thought…

He hadn’t heard much from Lou since then and it was Lisa herself who’d called him up to talk about Sandy. As to be expected, Sandy had been pretty distraught to hear about Gino’s involvement with Sal’s crew and not only was she blaming it on Lou, she was also even pissed at Lisa too for getting back with him. Even though he’d known that he should just stay away from her (especially now that he sensed the end so close at hand), Romeo had decided that he had to call over and make her see sense. Whatever way this case ended, they were all going to feel pretty betrayed by the lies his position had forced him to tell, and they would need to be there for each other when that time came. As well as that, he wanted to say goodbye to her, in case he never got a chance to say it again.

It had been a painful visit, but one that was probably for the best. At least Sandy had seemed like she understood how much Lou had really done for Gino after all and would soon forgive him. As for himself, when she found out the truth about
him
he felt certain that she might never forgive
Romeo at all. That was something he would just have to learn to live with, even if it took him the rest of his life. But for now, he had other obligations to take care of.

A couple of days after seeing Sandy, he’d had a meeting with Lana—this time far across town from the Orange Grove, in a KFC out in the hinterlands of suburbia. Even still, he’d worn a baseball cap and sunglasses over a grey hoody—chosen because it was garb that Romeo Mancini would never wear—and Lana had snorted laughter into her hand when she’d seen him, accusing him of being paranoid as he sat down to join her.

“I think I have a right to be, wouldn’t you say?” he asked her, raising an eyebrow.

Sometimes he wondered if she ever truly grasped the gravity of what it was they were doing here. Those Mafia goons would torture and kill them both without batting an eyelid if they found out who they really were. Nonetheless, when he told Lana the story he’d made up about her being his girlfriend, she’d only laughed even harder.

“Oh man,” she said, “that’s classic. Did you tell them my name was Juliet too?”

Romeo stared at her. “You’re unbelievable,” he said, shaking his head. “Do you know how close we came to blowing our cover this time?”

“Oh come on,” Lana replied, “I’m just some chick you’re dating, so what? After all, it’s at least believable that a handsome guy like you could land an upmarket girl like me. It’d be different if it was one of those other schmucks. Imagine if it had been the Guilianno kid—they’d never have bought it.”

Lana started giggling to herself again and Romeo had to stop himself from saying something. Yes, Lou was his friend, but how could he expect
her
to understand that. To Lana, Lou was just another criminal rodent, waiting to be crushed beneath the strong boot of the law.

“Speaking of Guiliannos,” Lana continued, “do those two really not know the truth about their father yet? That’s kind of pathetic, isn’t it? I almost feel sorry for them.”

Romeo winced. That was something he’d wanted to talk to Sandy about, but he hadn’t had the heart to on Valentine’s Day, not when it seemed like she was opening up to somebody for the first time in years, and he hadn’t had the chance to since. In fact, he didn’t know how he’d even begin to explain to her if he ever did, which was becoming increasingly unlikely now…

“No,” he said, “and for some reason Sal hasn’t ever mentioned it to him either. From what I can gather, he bears some bad blood for the senior Guilianno.”

“No shit,” Lana said, “him and every other Mafia goomba from here to Sicily and back.” She took a long, noisy sip from her soda and then smiled, a mischievous little glint appearing in her eye. “What about Sandra?” she asked, “Does she know about the return of Romeo’s real love yet? The poor girl’s heart must be broken.”

“Give it a rest Lana,” Romeo sighed. He had no desire to play this game with her now.

“All’s fair in love and war,” Lana shrugged, affecting a sagely tilt of her head. “That was Shakespeare, right?”

“No, it wasn’t. Are we done here?”

Lana smiled. “Almost,” she said, “you just have to tell me when you’re going to introduce me to your friends. We’ve already been on a dozen dates or more, don’t you think it’s time we took things to the next level?”

It was a bad idea, no matter which way you looked at it, and totally unnecessary at this late stage of the game. Romeo had already worked so hard gaining the trust and acceptance of Sal’s crew that it was irresponsible to an almost preposterous degree to jeopardize that now by introducing a new undercover into the mix. Especially considering Lana hadn’t worked undercover for years and even then it had been some white-collar, office type shit. Romeo had seen “
The Wolf of Wall Street
” and it didn’t look much like the life he was leading out here on the streets.

But he did still owe her for persuading Freddy and the other suits downtown to provide him with the cash he needed for Gino and those guys really didn’t think much of him these days, not since he’d refused to ever come back to the HQ for as long as he was still out in the field. There was no real purpose to those meetings downtown, not as far as he could see, and if some crooked lawyer or bondsman happened to recognize him in the lobby then it would mean three bullets to the back of his head and a trip to the bottom of the lake before he’d even seen it coming—but nonetheless Freddy and his boys hadn’t tended to agree. The downside of which was that Lana was now his only lifeline to reality and if she decided to get reckless then that was something he was just going to have to endure.

So now here they were, an unlikely couple on the oddest date he could imagine, in this seedy strip-club, him drinking a ginger ale and gearing up for trouble and Lana throwing back a strawberry daiquiri as if she needed one more excuse to act crazy.

She’d cooked up some story about how “Sara’s” boss at the bank where she worked had boasted about having passwords to the vault and the plan was for Romeo to tell the other guys that she was willing to seduce their mark to gain access. All they had to do was provide her with somewhere to funnel the cash. Immediately the story hadn’t sat right with him. Romeo was a naturally territorial, possessive kind of guy—something that he hadn’t made any effort at all to eliminate from his cover identity—and he didn’t think those guys would buy the idea of him wanting to pimp out his own girl like that. It just didn’t fit.