Brothers and Bones (34 page)

“Oh, piece of cake then.”

“That’s what I’m saying.”

THIRTY-SIX

The Prince of Italy, on Prince Street in Boston’s predominately Italian North End, was a smallish restaurant, maybe twelve tables in all. We walked past it, took in the powerful and mouthwatering aroma of authentic Italian cooking wafting from the door, and glanced in through the windows as we passed. We figured if we moved quickly, we wouldn’t arouse the suspicion of anyone watching the place. Not that they’d be watching for us in particular—I mean, how stupid would we have to be to walk right into a mob-owned joint with Siracuse looking for us—but they might have lookouts posted watching for signs of any trouble with members of other crime families or to warn of the approach of cops. Our quick glance revealed that most of the tables were occupied, but none by any mob guys either of us recognized. We slipped into an alley running alongside the restaurant and found ourselves in a tiny parking lot behind the building, just big enough for a Dumpster and what I remembered from the file to be Sweet Sal Barrone’s big, black Cadillac Seville.

“He’s here,” I said.

“Good. You know the layout inside?”

“No. Just that Sal has an office in the back somewhere.”

Bonz nodded, pulled his gun, and tugged on the handle of a rusted metal back door. Locked. Then he tapped his gun against the door, waited a few seconds, and tapped again. I began to wonder if there was some secret knock that would open the door for us, maybe to the rhythm of a Sinatra tune, but then there was the sound of a heavy bolt sliding back inside. The door opened out half a foot and a swarthy face appeared.

“Who the fuck are you?” the face asked.

I held my breath.

Bonz jerked the door hard and the swarthy guy, who still gripped the handle inside, was yanked, off-balance and stumbling, out of the restaurant. Before he could regain his footing and straighten up, Bonz brought the butt of his gun onto the back of the guy’s head, dropping him hard to the pavement.

Bonz stepped lightly over the unconscious thug and into the restaurant, with me close behind. Bonz pulled the door almost all the way shut behind us, leaving it open just an inch.

We were in a short hallway, maybe twenty feet long. There were two doors on our left, one on our right. I expected all three to open at once, spewing forth a stream of wiseguys with blazing guns. But the restaurant was noisy, the sounds of talking and clinking silverware drifting all the way back down the hall to us. It seemed that no one had heard our entrance.

Bonz strode down the hall without hesitation. I followed quickly, feeling terribly vulnerable. Bonz glanced at the doors on our left and kept walking. Restrooms. At the end of the hall, a waiter carrying a tray appeared from the right and walked off into the restaurant without looking our way. Kitchen must have been around the corner up there.

Bonz slowed as he approached the door on the right. A sign on it read Office. Bonz turned to me, nodded, and turned back toward the door. I held my breath again. Bonz looked like he was about to kick the door down when, almost as a second thought it seemed, he reached down and tried the knob. It turned and he pushed the door open, stepping quickly into the room. I let out my breath and followed.

In the office was a desk, a couple of filing cabinets, a sofa, and a table with five guys sitting at it in their shirtsleeves and shoulder holsters, suit jackets hanging over the backs of their chairs. They looked at us, saw Bonz’s gun, and one of them said, “Who the fuck are you?” I recognized square-faced Sweet Sal Barrone and couldn’t for the life of me imagine how he’d gotten his nickname.

“That’s what the mook at the door asked us,” Bonz said. “But do I really need to tell you? Close the door, Charlie.”

I did. Sal looked confused for just a second as he looked from Bonz to me. Then his eyes widened.

“Mother of God. It’s you.”

And they all reached for their guns. I tensed, ready to dive out of the way of the bee swarm of bullets about to start buzzing around the room, when Bonz took two long steps forward, pointing his gun right at Sweet Sal Barrone’s forehead.

“Nobody fucking moves, Sal. Not a finger twitch.”

Everybody froze.

“If I wanted to kill you,” Bonz said, “I’d have walked in shooting, right?”

Everyone stayed frozen except for Sal, who nodded. “Easy, boys,” he said.

“Hands on the table,” Bonz said.

The four other guys, each with a face meaner and colder than the guy next to him, placed their hands on the table, palms down. Sal’s eyes flicked to the door behind us.

Bonz said, “Nobody coming through that door to save your sorry asses, Sal. I left your doorman sleeping in the alley.”

“Charlie, get their guns. Put ’em in one of those file cabinets.”

Because we never knew whether we’d be able to go back to a place we’d been, whether it was a motel room or a vehicle, I’d taken to carrying our backpack of supplies over my shoulder everywhere we went. I let it slide down my arm and to the floor, then stepped up to the table. I tried to breathe with controlled, unpanicked breaths, fought to ignore the timpani solo my heart was playing in my chest, and went to each man and slid his gun from his shoulder holster. As I did, each gave me a look that, I imagined, was the last thing ever seen by most people who saw it. Most of the faces were familiar to me. I probably had files on these guys. Joey Randazzo was one, I think, and across from him was Anthony “Big Pants” Pantuso, whom I remembered sending up for a three-year stretch for assault while I was with the DA’s office. When I had an armful of guns, I walked over to the file cabinet, tugged open a middle drawer, and put all but one of the guns carefully inside. The remaining gun I stuck in my jacket pocket, hoping it didn’t go off by accident and blow a hole through the lining of my jacket, and then my stomach.

“Look under the table,” Bonz said.

I did. No guns taped there.

“Check their ankles and the smalls of their backs.”

Ignoring the malevolent stares of five hardened Mafia men, I patted each of their backs, finding no guns, and lifted their pant legs, one at a time, finding no ankle holsters.

“No hidden guns,” I said. I kept my eyes on the wiseguys. I waited a few seconds while nothing happened. Finally, I said, “Bonz?”

Bonz said nothing. I looked over at him. He was staring at the table. On it was today’s newspaper. My face stared back at me in black and white from the front page. That wasn’t surprising. What I found disturbing, though, were the dozen or so photographs of me scattered around the table. Candid shots, taken of me on the street, outside my apartment, in my car, in front of my office building, walking alone, walking with Jessica. They looked like they’d been taken over a long period of time. There were also notepads on the table. I leaned closer, ignoring the angry aura thick as fog emanating from the two goons I leaned between—or maybe it was the cologne these guys apparently showered with. On the notepads was written my name and information about me—my address, a description of my car, a list of my friends, what I presumed was a list of the places I was known to frequent. There was also an old photograph of Bonz, the way he looked, I guess, before Hammer Grossi had turned him into a walking scar, probably back when he worked for Siracuse. The notes about him were brief and to the point. They mentioned his military training and his known skills, the fact that he’d been interrogated by the mob thirteen years ago, and that he was extremely dangerous.

“What’s it say, Charlie?” Bonz asked me.

“Says here you’re extremely dangerous.”

Bonz seemed to like that.

“What the fuck do you want?” Barrone asked Bonz.

“You boys were coming looking for us tonight?” Bonz asked.

Barrone said nothing. Bonz reached across the table and punched him in the face. It was a solid blow, one I felt from six feet away. Barrone’s head snapped back.

“Jesus,” Barrone said. “Fuck! Fuck you. You got any idea how much trouble you’re in, you fucking douche bag, coming in here, waving a gun, punching me in the face? You know who I am?”

“You know who I am?” Bonz asked.

Barrone said nothing and Bonz curled his hand back into a fist. Reluctantly, Barrone nodded.

“How about the rest of you? You know who I am?”

They nodded, too.

“Then you know what they fucking did to me years ago. What that fat fuck Siracuse did to me.”

More nods, reluctant ones.

“You must know how much that pissed me off. How mean it’s made me. How much more dangerous it makes me.”

They didn’t bother to nod.

“Were you gunning for us tonight?” Bonz asked Barrone again.

Barrone hesitated only a moment, then nodded.

“And you think I’m in more trouble now because I punched you?”

Barrone said nothing.

“You were supposed to kill us?”

Barrone hesitated and Bonz hit him again, even harder this time. Still, I had the feeling Bonz was holding back. He didn’t want to kill the guy, at least not yet, and he didn’t want to knock him unconscious—again, at least not yet. But he did want him to talk, and it seemed to be working, albeit slowly.

“We’re only supposed to kill
you
,” Barrone said. “Him, we grab.” He nodded in my direction without actually looking at me.

“Are you guys the whole hunting party?”

Barrone said nothing. Bonz looked like he was going to punch him again, and Sal said quickly, “Yeah, just us, just us.”

He was lying and everyone in the room knew it.

“One more try. How many others are out there looking for us?” Bonz asked. When Sal didn’t respond, Bonz walked over, clamped a strong hand on his shoulder, and placed the muzzle of his gun on the back of Barrone’s hand, which was still resting palm down on the table. “How many others?”

Barrone exhaled loudly and said, “Shit, I don’t know. A lot, I guess. Couple dozen, I think.”

Jesus. Two dozen Mafia killers roaming the city looking for us. They’d kill Bonz, kidnap me, torture me like they had Jake and Bonz, then, when they realized I knew nothing, they’d execute me and dump my body in a ditch.

Bonz took two steps back from Sal’s chair and pointed his gun at him.

“Come with me, Sal,” he said.

“No fucking way.”

“I’m not gonna kill you.”

“Bullshit.”

“I have no reason to kill you.”

“I was gonna kill
you
if I found you,” Sal blurted candidly. “That’s reason enough, right?”

“I won’t kill you, Sal, unless you
don’t
come with me.”

“Fuck you.”

“Sal, I need information and you’re gonna give it to me. I just want to ask you some questions.”

“So fucking ask ’em here. I’m not telling you anything anyway.” His eyes roamed the faces of the other Mafia guys at the table. It wasn’t a look of bottomless loyalty and trust.

Bonz sighed as if Sal were being unreasonable, which, under the circumstances, I didn’t think he was. But the sigh seemed forced, a little fake.

“I’ll tell you what, Sal,” he said. “I’ll take you somewhere private and you’ll answer my questions. Then you can come back in here and lie, right? Tell everyone how tough you were, how you spit in my face, didn’t tell me shit, and I didn’t have the stones to whack you. How’s that sound?”

I noticed that sometime during over the past few minutes Bonz had slipped into mob-speak. Barrone said nothing.

“So get the fuck up and go to the door,” Bonz said.

Barrone glared at Bonz as he rose to his feet. He wasn’t a tall guy, maybe five-nine, but he was thick and muscular. He walked toward the door with Bonz three steps behind him, gun pointed at his back.

“Uh, Bonz?” I said.

“Yeah?”

“What about me? And, uh, these guys?”

“Point a gun at them—two if it’ll make you feel better—until I get back. I’ll just be a minute.”

Before Bonz could get out the door, I yanked the handgun out of my pocket, fumbled for the safety, switched it off, and aimed the weapon at the four guys at the table. I thought they might have been smiling at me a little. The door closed and I was alone with them.

“I remember you, Counselor,” Pantuso said. “You’re fucking dead.”

Files lying open on a desk in my mind. Anthony “Big Pants” Pantuso—late thirties. Suspect in three executions, all committed
after
he got out of the joint where I put him seven or eight years ago on assault and illegal gambling charges. Joey Randazzo—suspect in two killings and two, no wait, three arsons. Smaller stuff, too. I shifted my gaze to the third guy. Dark skin, graying hair, early forties, long scar on his neck. Vincent “Vinnie C.” Colangelo. Possibly involved in two murders, plus a host of other bad things. I looked at the fourth guy. Handsome kid, maybe twenty-two, with a sharp little goatee. No file on him yet, but I was sure there would be one within a year or two. An unspoken signal seemed to pass between them and they looked like they were about to stand up.

“Sit down,” I commanded.

They looked like they weren’t going to obey my command.

“Stay the fuck down,” I said as menacingly as I could.

My tone of voice actually gave them pause, which shocked me.

“You won’t shoot, you pussy lawyer,” Colangelo said. His voice was wheezy and scratchy, like it had been scarred by whatever blade had once sliced open his neck.

“You think I won’t?” I said. “You scumbags were coming after me tonight. You ruined my life, set me up for murder, killed my brother. Fuck you. I dare you, you pieces of shit. Stand up and see if I won’t shoot to defend myself. Otherwise, keep your hands on the table and don’t move a fucking muscle.”

I spoke with conviction. I’d already shown myself that I could pull the trigger if I had to, which I’d done while pointing that gun full of blanks at Grossi in my apartment. Perhaps because I believed myself, they believed me. They no longer looked like they were going to stand up. I felt relieved, but I didn’t relax for an instant. The gun began to feel heavy in my hand. I realized I was sweating profusely. I heard a thump against the wall to my left. My instinct was to turn my head in that direction. I fought that instinct, not wanting to take my eyes off the extraordinarily dangerous men in front of me for even a fraction of a second.