Clan Novel Giovanni: Book 10 of The Clan Novel Saga

by Justin Achilli

  Their nails and talons clicked and scraped as they sped inexorably up the stairs, sounding like nothing so much as the chittering chelicerae of hungry insects. A flapping, stinking, hideous form they were, rolling amorphously up the stairs in a scrabble of bent limbs and rail-thin appendages.

  Four floors below the one occupied by their victim’s office, the skeletal crew poured out from the stairwell into an empty office that was the receiving room of a civil engineer’s consulting firm by day. Clearing the desk of papers and detritus, the Nosferatu clambered and clicked onto the top, where they pulled open a ceiling grate that concealed a ventilation shaft. Up the thin pipe they wriggled, using their shoulders and splayed feet to brace themselves against the sides of the tube. No normal man could have fit into the shaft, let alone undulated his body to negotiate his way upward. With the flick of a bare, prehensile foot, the last monster pulled shut the grate, leaving no evidence of their passing except for a wafting scent of rot in the office below.

  Up for four floors they writhed, spilling out at their destination like a noxious puddle of body parts and wattled skin. Cloaking themselves with a suggested mental invisibility, they walked unchallenged past the desk of their victim’s assistant. They pulled the door behind her open ever so slightly, allowing them a quick entry into the office beyond, while they went unnoticed by Benito Giovanni within, as he cursed at his telephones and flailed about in frustration.

  And then, when the moment to strike had arrived, they revealed themselves to their prey. Benito Giovanni and a powerful but seemingly spiteful spirit made a brief but deadly resistance to the kidnapping operation. Benito managed to sound the building’s alarm, but the Nosferatu remained undetected, even under the direct and intense scrutiny of the well-armed security team that responded. No matter. The objective was achieved, even if it did cost them two of their number.

  Wednesday, 30 June 1999, 3:50 AM

  Stardust Hotel, Room 2901

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  A white stretch Lincoln Continental picked up Chas and Victor from the lobby of Caesar’s Palace. Neither thought that Milo would be so foolish as to have them brought to his haven, and Chas wasn’t sure a car would be readily accessible at their rendezvous, so he had told Victor to bring the bag.

  The bag meant that Chas intended to exact vengeance, and it was full of all manner of unpleasant implements. Duct tape, phone wire, and silk cord all served the same purpose: to tie down whoever needed to be restrained. A supply of cutting instruments from the crude to the exquisite could be used to get anyone to talk about anything, as could the claw hammer, the blackjack and the “plumber’s snake,” which left one hellacious welt anywhere it struck naked flesh. The bag normally would have contained a lighter, but Chas figured that the hotels would have plenty of matchbooks on hand. None of it was very necessary in the end, anyway, after the binding material. Any time Chas needed to make anyone talk, tying them up and menacing them with the contents of the bag usually served the purpose. It wasn’t like Chas was a master torturer, anyway. He usually let brute force and raw pain do the work. No, he was certainly no artist, but he got the job done when it needed to be. The whole ugly toolkit had been wrapped in stolen hotel towels, so the bag looked like an overnight duffel full of clothes, instead of a satchel of implements used for hurting people.

  Exactly what Chas’s vengeance was for, he hadn’t figured out yet. Benito Giovanni fit somewhere into the picture, but as to his role, neither Chas nor Victor was sure. Both of their minds scrambled to make sense of the few pieces of the puzzle they had been given, but nothing clicked. Chas kept his mouth shut, making sure to continue the charade he and Victor had put on earlier, just in case the driver was privy to the situation. He pretended to be Victor’s valet and bodyguard, letting the smaller man appear as the one in charge.

  Both Giovanni were surprised to be let off at the front of the Stardust Hotel and Casino. They’d figured that Rothstein surely had a hidey-hole somewhere outside of town and that he’d keep them there as a form of insurance to himself. The fact that he had delivered them to such a public place reassured them, however.

  “Room 2901,” the driver told them as he let them out. Chas quickly checked the license plate as the Continental drove away. Legitimate tag (at least to the naked eye), no rental stickers. That boded well, too.

  They took the elevator to the twenty-ninth floor. As they exited, Chas made a quick reconnaissance of the floor. No uninvited guests lurked in the vending vestibules—just a humming Coke machine. The stairwell was empty, at least on this floor, the one above and the one below.

  Chas knocked at door 2901.

  Milo answered the door, which Chas pushed open and motioned for Victor to step inside. Rothstein looked up at Chas. “A bit presumptuous, perhaps?” but he shrugged it off. The room was not altogether unlike the one they kept at Caesar’s. The forgettable Rothstein from the meeting was also in the room, relaxing somewhat in an overstuffed chair, but the twisted Nosferatu Montrose was nowhere to be seen. On the television, the same Bruce Willis movie Chas had seen earlier played. He was going to make idle conversation about it to set the room at ease, but then he remembered that he was “backup,” at least at present.

  “I trust this room will do for you?” asked Milo. That must have meant that Rothstein planned to let Victor stay here, probably as a favor, as he thought Victor had turned against Frankie Gee. That is, with any luck, he thought Victor had switched sides. It was impossible to tell among the Kindred exactly who knew how much, even when they told you.

  “It’s fine, thank you,” replied Victor. He put the bag down by the side of the bed and sat down.

  “Oh, don’t do that. These bedspreads are filthy,” Milo said, pulling the spread from the bed and shoving it in the closet. “They never wash the things, and I’m sure you know what sorts of filth and excess go on in these suites.” He smiled. Did he know? Fuck it.

  “Well, if it’s anything like what happens in every other hotel room everywhere in the world, I’m sure you’re right,” said Victor. Good. Keep up the chatter. We’re all friends here, you lying fucks, thought Chas. Wait a moment. Lying about what? Calm down, cowboy. No need to go off half-cocked again.

  “Very true. I’m afraid I have to ask, though. To what do we owe this sudden shift in allegiance? Your man,” Milo motioned to Chas (or Earl, as he hopefully knew him), “said that you had an unpleasant telephone conversation?”

  “More or less,” Victor shrugged. The nameless Rothstein turned off the TV and rose from the chair. “I’m sorry, I missed your name at our last meeting.”

  “Benjamin. Or Ben, rather. Ben Rothstein.”

  “Pleasure to meet you, Ben, but I have to say I wish it were under other circumstances.” Victor looked to Milo. “My plans seem to have fallen apart, but I hope I can repay your last-minute and largely undeserved hospitality. If you’ll pardon my gross tongue, I thought I was all but fucked about an hour ago.”

  Milo laughed. Ben took the cue once it was obviously okay to do so and gave a nervous smile of his own. How this dumb little freak ever got Embraced into the clan—if he was a vampire at all—was beyond Chas.

  “Well, it’s never too late to play the game, I always say,” Milo mused.

  I’ll bet you do, Chas thought.

  “But to get back to the matter at hand, I’m still curious why. I don’t need the full story—you can tell me the rest of the details tomorrow night. Well, I suppose it’s actually tonight, but you know what I’m saying.” Milo paced absently at the foot of the bed.

  “Long story short, Frankie wanted me to lean on you guys hard about this Benito character. I said that you obviously hadn’t seen him after a few weeks ago, and that you were already one up on us and why we were here. Any hardball on our part was just going to piss you guys off—again, I’m sorry for the coarse talk, but I’m a little tired—and we’re basically in your back yard. I know the Rothsteins and Frankie have some bad blood in the background, but that’s
not because of me, and it’s not my job to fix it. I think you guys should just kiss and make up, but whatever this is came before me, and I know how this business makes people carry grudges. But Frankie, he’s insistent, and I told him outright that I’m not willing to be the guy who starts a war. Benito’s going to turn up sooner or later, and even if he doesn’t, someone’s going to see him and that’s not worth opening old wounds for, you know? So, then Frankie gets all bent out of shape and I figured it would just be good to keep my options open. It’s not like I’m walking out on Frankie—you know that it doesn’t work like that in our line of business—but I’m not going to burn any bridges if I don’t need to, right?”

  “Very sound reasoning, Mr. Sforza. And I admire your loyalty. It seems that such things become rarer and rarer in these modern nights.”

  Chas smiled inwardly. A good enough story, assuming Milo wasn’t one of the paranoid-just-below-the-surface types. If he was, he was a fucking Oscar-quality actor, because he didn’t have any of the tells, any of the pantomimes that subtly betrayed a lie as it was told or motioned. Victor could be good when he wasn’t blown and fucking hookers.

  “I trust you’ll give us a call when you wake, Mr. Sforza? It’s getting late and we’ll leave this evening without asking any more of your time. Benjamin, would you go ahead and bring the car around?”

  Bang. Just like that. Milo Rothstein’s vanity signed his death warrant. He was so intent on looking like a bigshot in front of his rival’s men he didn’t bother to keep Ben in the room to keep the score even.

  Ben left to have the valet fetch the car. Chas took off his jacket as the door shut behind the exiting Rothstein, noting the mechanical buzz of the electric lock doing its work. He hung his jacket and unbuttoned his cuffs, beginning to roll them upward. Milo noted him with the faintest hint of apprehension.

  That’s right, fucko. Time to die.

  “I’ll take my leave, Mr. Sforza. Feel free to enjoy the casino for the rest of the evening—I’ve arranged a small marker to make your stay more convenient and comfort—”

  “Wrong, cocksucker,” Chas sneered. “You’re going to fucking answer a few questions before you go home.” Victor moved like an old pro. He had the bag open and the phone cord out before Milo turned to look back at him. Chas favored the phone cord, he had told Victor on the flight. It’s tough as all hell to break, and even if someone did manage to burst the strong plastic sheath, it was full of copper wire that cut flesh to ribbons if you tried to force your way through it. The only way to avoid shredding yourself with it was to hope that it burst when and if you managed to break the plastic skin, too.

  Chas took a swing that clipped Milo on the chin, knocking his mouth open and sending him tripping backward. Victor took advantage, looping the wire over Milo’s head and around his arms, pinning them to his sides. This he pulled tight, then looped it twice again around Milo’s body. Victor knew he had to be careful—the Rothsteins were Giovanni after all, and Giovanni Kindred were able to call on inhuman strength. Not that he’d ever seen it before, but if Milo was a hidden powerhouse, he might be able to snap the cord and break Victor’s neck before Chas could subdue him.

  But that wasn’t the case. Victor completed five more loops by the time Chas had dragged the chair from the desk over to where Milo was still standing, bound as he was.

  “Victor, tie him up. Milo, you talk to me and give it to me straight so I don’t have to break anything I don’t need to.” He admired his handiwork. The punch—augmented by Chas’s own appreciable Giovanni strength—had broken Milo’s jaw and a jagged piece of bone jutted through the skin of his chin. Before his eyes, however, the bone submerged beneath the skin and the gaping laceration closed as Milo defiantly healed himself.

  “You might want to save that precious vitae, kike. If you keep acting like that, you’re going to need it.”

  “If I do say so myself, Earl, this is a completely obnoxious way to behave in someone else’s domain.” Milo suddenly didn’t seem the type to give up so easily. Think and keep talking was Chas’s best course of action. If he let Milo fluster him, that would make the whole exercise a waste of time.

  “Okay, Milo. Here’s the rules. Rule one: Unless I ask something of you, you shut the fuck up. You break rule one, you get one of these.” Once again, Chas hammered Milo with his fist. This time, he caught Milo to the side of his left eye, breaking the bone and blowing his pupil. Milo chose not to heal it immediately and winced, his eyes looking wild as the one pupil first shrank and then rapidly grew many times the size of the other.

  “Rule number two: When I’m talking, no interrupting. You break rule number two, you get one of these.” Chas delivered a matching blow to the other side of Milo’s head. This time, however, he didn’t crack the skull, but Milo’s other eye reacted in the same manner.

  “Rule three is I’m the fucking boss. And you don’t fuck with the fucking boss, understood? Break rule three, and you get one of these.” Once more Chas bludgeoned the bound Milo with his fist, this time straight in the face, breaking Rothstein’s nose and showering an explosion of blood down the front of his shirt and jacket.

  “That’s the rules. You got it?” Milo didn’t move.

  “That counts as yes. Good. I like that.” Chas bent down to lick some of the blood from the front of Milo’s ruined face. Kindred vitae—much stronger than the thinner blood of mortals. But Chas reined himself in. He needed to hear what Milo had to say, and if he lost control now, he’d fuck up the whole plan.

  Somewhere in the back of Chas’s mind it occurred to him that he said that to himself a lot lately. He had to talk to the devil to keep it in check, just like he had to keep Milo quiet until it was necessary for him to speak. Or so he figured.

  “So, down to brass tacks. Where’s Benito?”

  “I don’t know,” Milo sneered, eyes moving groggily over Chas’s form.

  “Wrong answer.” Chas slapped him this time, shaking loose a trickle of blood-spit and spraying blood from Milo’s running nose across the room. “Take two. Where the fuck is Benito?”

  “I told you, I don’t know.” Milo looked blearily up at Chas. He almost looked like he was challenging Chas, or perhaps enticing him to ask something more. But Chas wasn’t interested in playing to the crowd. This was his own private hellshow. He was in charge; he called the shots.

  “Not what I wanted to hear, Milo.” Another slap dislodged a coagulating gobbet from under Milo’s nose, which landed on the carpet like a slug dissolving in salt.

  “It occurs to me, Earl, that if you want a specific answer, you should ask the question that leads to it. One does not find the Seven Cities of Gold by asking directions to Detroit.” Detroit? What the fuck did Detroit have to do with anything? Probably nothing. Still, it reinforced the point that Milo wasn’t going to give anything up without making Chas work for it. In his bound state, this was all the Kindred had left.

  Chas looked at his watch. Eight minutes had passed. He figured he had twenty before Ben got curious and mustered the courage to call the room. “You’re right, Milo. But talking out of turn means breaking rule number one. Time to pay the piper.” Once more, Chas rained a blow down upon Milo’s head, this time impacting the top of his skull. Nothing gave, though; Chas still needed to hear what Milo had to say so he didn’t hit him too hard.

  “Jesus fucking Christ, you simpleton! Isn’t it obvious I don’t know? Why don’t you ask Montrose?”

  “Don’t take the name of the Lord in vain,” Chas smiled maliciously, running his left palm over the knuckles of his right hand. “It’s a sin, I think. In fact, I’m sure it’s a sin when a Jew does it. And I already know about Montrose, but we don’t know how to talk to him. We had your phone number. Lucky you. Oh, and stop breaking rule number one and I’ll stop hitting you.” Another massive blow to the face crushed the left side of Milo’s head like a jack-o-lantern. His eye sagged out, his skull bulged alarmingly in a shape that foretold massive trauma, and a well of black head-bl
ood rushed out of his face where Chas’s knuckles had lacerated his skin through sheer force. As much as was possible, Milo bit his lip to remain silent.

  “Say! That’s good! You’re learning. Okay. We’ll take a different tack now. You’ve already given us Montrose, but we knew that, so we need something else. Where’s Montrose?”

  “Fuck you.”

  Wham.

  “Who’s Montrose working for?”

  “Fuck you.”

  Wham.

  “How do you make a Manhattan?”

  “Three parts bourbon, one part sweet vermouth, maraschino cherry.”

  Not bad, but too much vermouth. Wham.

  “You don’t understand, Milo. I’m not going to stop until you’re dead or I’ve got something I can take home, you see? Who the fuck are you working for? What’s the secret that’s so fucking sacred that you’re going to let me beat you inch by inch by fucking inch until I’ve killed you with my bare hands? What’s the fucking story, morning fucking glory?” Chas leaned over to grin in Milo’s face, pressing his forehead to the bound Kindred’s. “What’s the answer to the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question?”

  “You really want to know?”

  “No, shithead, I’m just fucking around over here.”

  “No, I mean you really have to want to know.”

  “What the fuck, Milo, I just told you I’m willing to punch you until you die, didn’t I? You know how serious a motherfucker has to be to punch someone to death? You know how tired I’m going to be tomorrow night when I get up if I have to punch you for three fucking hours? I’m fucking serious as cancer over here.”