Spin Ruin: (A Mafia Romance Two-Book Bundle) (38 page)

The
camorristi
didn’t answer to Donna Maria, but we didn’t ignore her either. We did our business because if we actually had the desire to band together, it would be more trouble for her to fight us than to take the loss.

The house lay low to the ground with a corrugated tin panel jutting over the doorway. Potted succulents and cactuses covered the cracked concrete and walls. From the outside, with its rows of citrus trees on the right and left and the sweet smell of the olive trees, it felt like being back in Naples.

I got out of the car. The alarm went on with a chirp. Useless automation. There was no safer car in California.

“
Consigliere
,” came a voice from behind me. I didn’t turn around but put my hands out, palms in front.

“Ruggero,” I said. “That’s not my job anymore.”

I felt his hands on me, checking my shoulders, waist, back, and heels. He was a big guy and a pussycat. Even though I faced the other direction, I know Skinny Carlo was next to him. Skinny Carlo was sixty-five kilos, drenched in seawater, but he was responsible for much of Donna Carloni’s dirty work.

“You run around unarmed like one.” Skinny Carlo had a voice like a serrated knife.

“I left it in the glove compartment.” I turned and flipped him the keys. They twirled in the sun a second before he snatched them out of the air. “It’s loaded and cleaned. Treat her nice.”

“We wasn’t expecting you for an hour. She’s not seeing no one,” Ruggero said.

“Right.”

I walked into the house.

Donna Maria was not interested in how things looked. She preferred misdirection. So, her home looked like a Sicilian ghetto house, decorated with faded floral curtains and browned crocheted table coverings underneath chipped porcelain figurines of children. She’d had eleven babies and had shipped them all back to the mother country to be educated.

I walked through the dark house to the backyard. I was convinced she slept in the dirt somewhere on her eight acres.

The sun seemed brighter back there. Not just vivid, but merciless. Stacks of hutches on both sides stretched back into a distant orchard, and in the wood and wire boxes were animals. There were rabbits to the right and, to the left, small creatures with fur so sleek they could only be minks.

In front of me stood a table three feet high with wood sides and wire mesh stretched over the top. The mesh was crusted with black.

The boss of the biggest Sicilian family east of the Los Angeles river was a handful of sticks wrapped around the middle with twine, no taller than five-two and starvation thin with hair that had more salt than pepper. She made her way to us with the surefootedness of a woman whose feet hadn’t bothered with pavement in a while. In her right hand she carried a twitching white rabbit by its hind legs and, in her left, a two-foot shaft of hard wood. As soon as I saw it, I took my jacket off and draped it over the back of a chair.

“
Consigliere
,” she called out. Even though we both spoke Italian, I could barely understand her; the Sicilian accent was as thick as tomato paste. “I expected you.”

“I’m here, but you have no
consigliere
.”

“There are no Italian lawyers to be had. Not for love or money.” She wiggled the rabbit back and forth. It squirmed a little, dropping its ears.

“American ones know the system well enough.” I rolled up my sleeves. This was not particularly messy work, but I still needed to be cautious, and I couldn’t avoid the work altogether. If I demurred, I’d lose the advantage of my lineage and culture.

“I won’t lower my standards.” She handed me the club. It was blacker on the business end and slicked brown and smooth on the grip side. “Americans are weak and mouthy. They don’t show respect, and they die with secrets on the way out of their mouths.”

She held the rabbit out over the wire-mesh table.

“They love life too much, Donna.” I tapped the back of the rabbit’s head, getting my aim right, favoring accuracy over strength. It was the only humane method, and if I hesitated for one breath, she’d notice. This, like everything, was a test.

“And you,” she said. “Do you like running your crew more than sitting by my side?”

“I do.” I brought the club to the back of the rabbit’s head, where the ears met the neck. The death was soundless, with only a hollow thud to alert the universe that it had happened.

“You were doing fine at it, too.” She held out the rabbit and let it bleed out of its nose and mouth onto the black gravel. “Until a couple of weeks ago.” She shook it a little, letting the last of the blood fall away.

“I had it under control.” I took the dead rabbit from her and held it over the grass by its heels as she twisted a valve on the side of the house and picked up a hose. “I admit I failed with Paulie. I didn’t expect him to turn on me.”

“That’s very grown-up of you. And that’s why you made a good
consigliere
. You know when you fuck up.” She hosed down the rabbit until its fur was matted and flat, and there was no blood on the surface. I turned it so she could get the back, letting the fouled water drip onto the gravel until it flowed clean. She shut off the hose, and I put the rabbit on the grate.

Back home, small animals peeked out of the ruined mountains to peck at the garbage and city families were so poor that a piece of meat didn’t get away just because it ran fast. Despite my father’s position, my mother had run the house as a single parent, and rabbit and raccoon were frequently on the menu.

“So,” she said, opening a small knife. “You came early for the rabbit cacciatore, yeah?”

“I came here for an indulgence.”

“Ask.” She passed me the knife by the handle side. She wanted me to do the honors. That was her way of saying I was favored because of my background, and to refuse would be to throw her favor back in her face.

“I have a woman.” I cut the skin inside the rabbit’s thigh and up to the gut.

“I’ve heard.” She smiled and took out a beedie, a short, black cigar with a smell that reminded me of the garbage piled on the side of a Neapolitan highway.

“She’s a good woman.”

“She was in bed with that
sbirro
.”

I slashed inside the rabbit’s other thigh, right through the animal’s penis. “That’s over. She’s loyal to me.” I held the rabbit’s hind legs and yanked the skin off it then looked at my boss with the inside-out animal in my hands. “Once this thing with Paulie is done, I don’t want her looked at or questioned. She’s with me.”

“You say this is a small thing.”

“It is,” I protested.

“In America, yes. You can have your personal life. You marry for love. But that’s not where you’re from. Not with the job you have. You don’t own your life.”

I cleanly slashed the rabbit’s center muscles from gut to neck. Green-grey organs spilled out onto the mesh. I realized I was wound tight from fingers to core. I switched the knife hand and flexed my fingers.

She was a skinny thing, the donna, but she was formidable, ruthless, and protected. Too many men had made the mistake of underestimating her. Even though I knew my fingers could break her neck, those fingers would be attached to a dead man before they even touched her.

“You,
consigliere
, are part of something bigger than yourself.” She picked up the hose. “You are a man of traditions. And you are not just any man in this tradition. You are a prince. Do you think a prince can just marry anyone he wants? He has his king to consider. His country. The blood of his children. His own future.” She sprayed the rabbit carcass down, and the grey entrails fell onto the mesh. “You want some sweet pussy, you keep it. But you don’t marry it. Everyone knows this. You don’t contaminate your family or your business.”

“Let me worry about my business. You worry about yours.”

“I am.” She took the carcass from me. “You’ve heard about my granddaughter and Patalano?”

“Suspected.”

“Well, I wanted to be the one to tell you anyway. Paulie Patalano is taking Irene. He’s going to be a powerful man. You ready for that?”

“I can handle it.” My phone buzzed in my pocket. It was Otto.

“Good. Come inside,” she said.

“
Un momento.”

She went and left me. I picked up. “Otto.”

“I’m sorry, boss. I lost her.”

I closed my eyes. Jesus Christ. Where could she be going? Why would she sneak away? I cursed everything: my vulnerability, my love, my powerlessness. The only thing that kept me from leaving to sniff her out was the knowledge that Paulie wouldn’t do anything while we were supposed to be negotiating a truce.

“Find her. Just find her.”

theresa

he Downtown Gate Club was in the middle of the city, down a turn to the left on Venice Boulevard and a right on Ludwig Street, where the streets took on a little curve, and the trees shading the rare brick row houses stood farther from the curb. A couple of blocks of oddball houses in the last sweet corner of downtown made the perfect enclave for those daring enough to make that neighborhood their home.

A person from the north might pass it by without noticing it. But old-money Angelinos who found Bel-Air tacky, those born into a level of privilege it might take decades to wean from, knew better. They knew to turn down the driveway of a brick building with stonecarved window treatments that sat ten feet from its neighbor. The building had been one of a row of businesses as early as the eighteen-fifties, complete with basements and stone foundations.

“Miss Drazen,” the guard said as he pulled out his clipboard. “You here for the LA Democratic Summit?”

I was, and I wasn’t, but I needed to get past the gate, and if he looked at the clipboard and found I wasn’t there, he’d let me in but not check me into the Heritage Room. “I’m here for Daniel Brower.”

“I just saw him.” He opened the gate.

The DGC was visible on satellite, but from the street, it was surrounded by enough houses and foliage that passersby wouldn’t notice an eighteen-hole golf course. Transplants didn’t know it existed. LA natives knew it was there, but few had been inside. The club didn’t try to go stealth; it simply wasn’t glamorous or flashy. It wasn’t a desirable place to be, outside of certain circles, and the board did everything in its power to stay under the radar.

I left my little blue BMW with the valet. He eyed the dent on the passenger side and said something polite before coasting away. A tall man in a uniform opened the glass and brass door for me.

The Heritage Room was as old as the club, somewhere in the order of one hundred and fifty years old. The walls and floor were stone, and the ceiling crisscrossed with beams the thickness of a ship’s mast. The "Heritage" in question was the heritage of success, which tended to follow all its members. Glass cases held trophies, medals, photos, certificates, and plaques from elite tournaments. When my father had brought me there at the tender age of eight, I’d been impressed by the shiny artifacts, the high ceiling, and the marble. I’d stared at the pictures of my father and grandfather, trying to discern the real men through the oil paint and how their own moods and words came through the canvas. But not much came through. The men were painted to erase their Irish heritage. They looked like mouse-haired WASPs. I hadn’t thought about the dulling of the fire in their hair since I was an adolescent, and seeing it again irritated me anew.

“Theresa!” Gerry came out in a light-grey suit and dress shoes, smiling at the dozen straitlaced politicians dotting the room. Gerry was Daniel’s political strategist. I’d spilled my guts to him one night, when he picked me up from set, and I’d been wondering about the state of my sanity.

“Hi, Ger.”

He kissed my cheek and gently led me to the doors that opened out to the golf course, where we couldn’t be heard. “To what do we owe this surprise visit?”

“Wanted to talk to Dan.”

“He’s in the conference room.” I stepped toward it, and Gerry put his hand on my shoulder to stop me. “Wait.”

“Yes?”

“Let me get him.”

“It’s fine. I know about Clarice. It’s not going to be a scene.”

He twisted his face into a half smile that meant he was going to say something difficult. “I know you’d never make a scene. Neither would he. And Clarice isn’t here yet. But it’s not that.”

I crossed my arms. “Describe it, then.” A fake laugh echoed through the room. I recognized the ex-mayor Rubin right away.

Gerry took a deep breath, calculated to let me know the conversation was hard for him. “Who you’re seeing is going to get out. Eventually.”

“Oh, you’re kidding—”

“You can’t pretend it won’t have a negative effect on his candidacy. And I’d hate to say this thing is in the bag so soon, but if—no,
when—
he wins, it’s going to be a pressure point, even if you don’t keep showing up.”

“Theresa?” Daniel had found me. He put his hand on my shoulder.

“Hi, Dan.”

He kissed me on the cheek, and Gerry cleared his throat, looking around to check if anyone had seen.

“Take it easy, Gerry,” Daniel said, his hand still on my bicep.

Gerry smiled and folded his hands in front of him. “This is lovely. So happy we’re all getting along. Now”—he opened a wooden door with a window set into it and dropped his voice—“get the fuck out of sight.”