by Rob Cornell
“She has her fair share of loyal soldiers. But a large part of that loyalty was bought with the dirt she had on that flash drive. Moretti has wasted little time making it known that he now has the same dirt. But even if he didn’t, he’s still too powerful, too well connected. Mother would be crushed.”
“And you along with her, I imagine.”
He hesitated. “If something happens to Jen, I don’t much care what happens to me.”
There was no conviction in his voice, though. Harrison could hear the man’s raw fear, could feel it like a vibe coming through the phone.
“What do you want from me?”
“What do you think I should do? If I had Jen with me, I’d run off with her. I should have done that a long time ago. But…well, I just couldn’t.”
Because Ona still held the purse strings. After all, hadn’t that been the point of stealing the flash drive from her in the first place? So Jake and his wife could build their own little nest egg via the time-tested method of extortion and get out from under Ona’s thumb?
Harrison didn’t bother bringing that up. He wasn’t the guy’s damn conscience, after all.
“You don’t have any ideas where your mom’s keeping Jen?”
“Mother owns or controls too many properties for me to even begin to search.”
“What about your pal, Arlie Eckman?”
“I don’t know how I could convince him to betray Mother. I’m not certain if you’ve noticed, but I am not the most imposing person. My attempts at forceful persuasion have only ended badly.”
Jake’s level of self-awareness on this front surprised Harrison. Maybe he wasn’t as oblivious as he seemed. Maybe he simply had a bad case of denial.
“Could you appeal to his better side?”
“You assume he has one.”
“He didn’t make a very good first impression with me, I’ll admit. But he didn’t strike me as a sociopath.”
“No. Arlie has a heart. The problem is, Mother holds it in her iron grip. He has a daughter, one we weren’t supposed to know about. But Mother knows, and as long as she is a threat to the child, Arlie will remain loyal.”
Despite Harrison’s intent to avoid Jake and his problems, he found himself drawn in. The last swatches of mind fog had cleared. He was awake, alert, and in full problem-solver mode. Gears turning. Brain humming.
“You said we weren’t supposed to know about her. Does that mean you do? You know where to find this daughter of his?”
“Yes. As a matter of fact, I thought I had figured that one out on my own. I tried to use it against him to get his help when this all started. I found out later, Mother had known, too. She’s already used it to jerk his leash more tightly. Obviously, her threats are more convincing than mine.”
“You’re right.”
Jake snorted. “I don’t need you to rub it in, thank you very much.”
“Jake, you have to stop playing your Mother’s game. You already know you’re no good at it. If Arlie really has a heart, don’t threaten him. Help him.”
Jake gasped. It was, strangely, the most honest sound Harrison had heard out of him. When he spoke, his words poured out in an excited blur.
“I could protect her. Assure her safety somehow. That would surely win Arlie over.”
“Exactly.”
Then, as quickly as it came, the excitement bled away. “But how? I can’t uproot her and her mother, put her in some kind of pseudo witness protection program. I don’t have the resources for that, assuming they would even trust me enough to do such a thing. They don’t know who I am. They would think I was insane.”
He was right about that, too.
Harrison stood and paced the room in his boxer shorts. He ran a hand through his hair and got a whiff of his arm pit in the process. That old musky smell was definitely coming from him. His synapses were firing too fast and hard for him to care, though. He could feel himself on the cusp of a solution. If he could…
Wait.
What was he doing?
Exactly the thing he had determined not to do.
No more unsolicited heroism, remember?
But this wasn’t unsolicited. Jake had specifically asked for help. And if it was any consolation, he could bill Jake for the time. What harm could come from a phone consultation?
“Mr. Hart? Are you still on the line?”
Harrison stopped pacing. “I’m still here.”
“How can I realistically protect the girl from Mother? I don’t see how it’s possible.”
“I have an idea,” he said slowly. The idea was still baking, but he didn’t see many other options.
“I’m listening,” Jake prompted.
A half-baked idea was better than no idea at all, right?
“You’re probably not going to like it.”
Thirty-Four
“You’re certain you can’t come in with me?” Jake felt like a child asking such a question, but he couldn’t help it. “This is your idea, after all.”
Harrison Hart sat behind the wheel of his little Kia sedan—something Jake normally wouldn’t be caught dead in, but these were hardly normal times—giving Jake, in the passenger seat, some obvious side-eye.
They were parked outside a restaurant in Detroit’s Bricktown area called Bella Cucina. Moretti’s main hangout. Everyone knew if you wanted to talk to the boss, you came to Bella Cucina. The food was also supposed to be amazing, though Jake had never so much as set foot in the place. One did not simply dine at the headquarters of your most powerful rival.
“The last thing I want,” Hart said, “is to get tangled up with the Detroit mafia. I have enough problems of my own.”
“But this is your idea,” Jake repeated.
“That’s why I offered to drive. Besides, I would look like hired muscle. You need to go in vulnerable, make him feel like he has the upper hand.”
“He will have the upper hand. What’s to keep him from taking me out back and shooting me in the head?”
“To what end?”
“How should I know? He’s a career criminal.”
“Like your mom. Bitch that she is, does she randomly murder people who visit her in that weird office of hers?”
The knots in Jake’s stomach seemed to double and triple while he sat there. The tiny car triggered an uncommon sense of claustrophobia. Jake had never been bothered by small spaces. Then again, when had he found himself caught in one?
It was all nerves. Nothing more. But he had to get a grip on himself. This private detective had found a possible way out of the madness of the past week. He had to honor that.
He had to finally stop being a coward.
“You look green around the gills,” Hart said. “Please don’t barf in my car.”
“I’m fine.”
“Then I’ll wait for you right here.”
Jake took a couple deep breaths as if prepping for a long dive under water, then he got out of the car.
The evening air was thick and heavy with humidity. The smells of garlic and Italian herbs from the restaurant were almost as thick, awakening hunger pangs that rumbled in Jake’s belly. He had purposely skipped eating so his nervous stomach wouldn’t have anything to churn and threaten to pour out.
The restaurant was designed to look like an old Italian villa. The approach to the entrance was shaded by an arched trellis twined with grape vines. At 5 PM, the sun still had a few hours before it dipped below the horizon. It seemed to sit atop the easterly facing building, forcing Jake to squint until he reached the trellis’s shade.
Strains of violin and accordion greeted him as he neared the entrance and swelled when he pulled the door open. Inside, the austere design of the place surprised Jake. He had expected red and white checkered tablecloths and at least one gaudy mural of an Italian countryside on the wall. Maybe some rustic archways. But the floor plan was open, the tablecloths white linen, the architecture modern. The only cliche was the pair of mustached gentlemen winding their way between th
e tables, one playing the accordion, the other the violin.
A young woman dressed in a dark pantsuit standing behind a podium greeting Jake with a smile. “Welcome to Bella Cucina. Party of one?”
Jake straightened the knot in his tie. It was a comfort to have it there again. “I’m here to see Mr. Moretti.”
Her smile didn’t change, but the look in her eyes did, sharpening, taking him in more deliberately. “Do you have an appointment?”
“I do not.”
“Your name, sir?”
“Seelenberger. Jacob Seelenberger.”
If she recognized the name, she didn’t show any sign of it. “Just a moment, Mr. Seelenberger.” She pulled a phone out from behind the podium and tapped away at the screen with her thumbs at incredible speed. Her message was typed and sent in seconds.
For a short moment, she watched her screen for a reply. Jake heard the phone ding when it came. She put the phone away and smiled at Jake again.
“Right this way.”
Never had three such innocuous words triggered such a riot in his stomach. He hadn’t expected getting in to see Moretti would be so easy. In fact, he realized as he followed the hostess through the restaurant that part of him had hoped Moretti would refuse to see him.
The hostess led him to an entryway at the back of the restaurant, where she stopped and turned to Jake. “Right through here.”
She left him there without another word.
Jake inhaled deeply, then went in.
Thirty-Five
The entryway led into a small private room with only four tables, all of them decked out with linen cloths and glimmering flatware like those in the main dining area. All but one of the tables sat empty, a four-top in the back corner. The tabletop was laden with plates both empty and full and in various stages in between. Pastas with cream sauces and red sauces, a half-eaten piece of veal, an untouched roasted chicken breast, a basket of bread, a tiramisu with a single bite taken out of it, a slice of yellow cake with some kind of glaze yet to be sampled, and more.
Despite the feast on display, only one person sat at the table.
Venezio Moretti.
When he saw Jake come in, he waved him over, mouth full and chewing away.
Jake hesitated a moment, taking Moretti in. The man was close to seventy. He had strands of steel-colored hair slicked back on his scalp thin enough that Jake could see the liver-spotted skin underneath. His mustache matched his hair in both color and texture. His wrinkled face sagged like a poorly fitted mask. But the eyes behind the mask held an mistakable lucidity.
When Moretti returned Jake’s scrutiny, Jake felt like Moretti could see straight through him.
Moretti finished chewing and wiped a spot of tomato sauce off his chin with a cloth napkin. “Come on over. You can see I have plenty to eat here, so I won’t be tempted to take a bit out of you.” He laughed, clearly tickled by his own joke.
Jake gave himself a mental shove and crossed the room to Moretti’s table. He sat across from Moretti at a place with a stack of empty dishes smeared with the remnants of whatever had been on them before Moretti gobbled it up. The mix of sweet and savory smells off all the dishes between them chased away the hunger he’d felt outside. Any one of the items alone might have tempted him, but the sheer amount and variation repulsed him.
“Help yourself to whatever,” Moretti said.
“No, thank you.”
Moretti shrugged and started to wind up some angel hair pasta in marinara onto his fork. “What can I do for you, Mr. Seelenberger?”
“Please, call me Jake.”
“All right, Jake. I like that we’re being friendly. I wasn’t so sure that’s how this would go under the circumstances.”
“Of course. I have nothing but respect for you.”
Moretti chortled. “I can see why your mama sent you instead of talking to me herself. You’re much more polite.”
Jake tried to clear the dry lump in his throat without much success. “Mr. Moretti, my mother did not send me. I’m here on my own business.”
The forkful of pasta stopped halfway to Moretti’s mouth. “That so?”
“Yes, sir.”
Moretti studied the pasta twined around his fork as if it might hold some insight. Jake had surprised the old boss. He allowed himself to take some pleasure in that.
“You have me intrigued, Jake.” Moretti shoved the pasta into his mouth and chewed with the vigor of a man who hasn’t had a meal in days. He spoke before he was quite done with the bite. “Tell me what you want.”
“I need a favor.”
Moretti swallowed and licked his lips. “A favor from me? Now I’m really intrigued.”
“There is a young girl and her mother who are in need of protection. I was hoping I could enlist your help with that.”
“Protection from what?”
“My mother.”
Moretti slowly set his fork down. “Are you playing some kind of joke with me?”
“No, sir.”
For a while, Moretti said nothing. He stared at Jake as if waiting for a punchline despite Jake’s assurance he wasn’t joking. “You know, if one of my boys tried to set Ona against me and I found out, I’d be tempted to kill him.”
“I’m sure Mother would feel the same way if she knew what I was doing. But Mother and I have reached a sort of impasse that doesn’t allow me many other options.”
“I thought this would have to do with my newly obtained financial opportunity.”
“If you’re referring to my mother’s files, it does in a way. I’m afraid it was my fault you were able to get your hands on them in the first place.”
Half of Moretti’s mouth seemed to smile while the other frowned. The effect made him look somewhat deranged. “I wondered how that little prick Jankowski got them. He played real coy with me. I don’t like coy. It’s a sleazy way to do business.”
“I’d expect nothing less from Ken.”
“What in hell possessed you to trust the files with him?”
“It’s complicated,” Jake said.
“Now you’re gonna be coy, too?”
The musical duo out in the main dining area grew louder as they neared the back room. One of them was singing now, his voice on key but strained, as if he could only hit the notes while shouting. It was a cheery tune all in Italian.
“It’s complicated and embarrassing. Coyness is not my goal. Protecting what little dignity I have is. If you want a lengthy explanation, I can bore you with it. The short version is, I foolishly hired Ken to do a job for me. It backfired. Now I’m in a great deal of trouble for it.”
Moretti nodded, picked up his fork, and took a stab at the tiramisu. “Fair enough.” The chunk of tiramisu on his fork looked far too large for a single bite, but Moretti managed it, shoving the whole thing into his mouth.
The sour taste of bile rolled up the back of Jake’s tongue. He forced himself to smile to keep from showing the disgust he felt. If this was the way the man always ate, he should have been a walking tub of flab like his mother. Near as Jake could tell sitting across from him, Moretti had a paunchy stomach, but nothing more.
While Moretti finished chewing, he started spinning more pasta around his fork. Some tiramisu crumbs mixed in with the red sauce. “How long does this girl and her mother need protecting?”
“Indefinitely.”
That stopped Moretti again. “Like, forever?”
In theory, the answer was yes, Arlie would except nothing less than permanent protection for his daughter if Jake expected to win his help. That was the deal Hart had sent Jake into Moretti’s restaurant to offer. The truth, on the other hand, was that he only needed the protection to go for as long as he needed Arlie’s cooperation.
“No,” Jake said. “Not forever. Only as long as it takes for me to accomplish what I need to.”
“And what’s that?”
Jake hadn’t intended to go into details, but he didn’t want to irritate Moretti with any more
“coyness.” “Mother is holding my wife against her will as punishment to me for losing her files. She has threatened to kill her if I don’t return the flash drive. Obviously, you have no intention of giving up the drive, I have no way to force you to hand it over, therefore I had to find another way to rescue my wife.”
Moretti waved a dismissive hand. “Forget it. I don’t want to know anymore. Sounds like a God damned mess. I might start feeling sorry for you.”
For some reason, the idea of having Venezio Moretti feel sorry for him felt like the worst kind of humiliation. His own mother made Jake feel pathetic enough. He did not need pity from Detroit’s biggest crime boss.
“I guess you know my next question,” Moretti said and shoveled in another forkful of pasta.
“What’s in it for you?”
This time, Moretti swallowed without hardly chewing. “Everything’s got a price. And this sounds like a powder keg of the highest order. I’m not sure I want to go anywhere near it.”
“I understand. That’s why…” The cramps that seized his guts felt like a pair of fists bunched up around his intestines. He was damn thankful he hadn’t eaten or he might have ruined another pair of perfectly good silk boxer shorts.
“You all right?”
Cold sweat broke across Jake’s face. This was the part of the detective’s plan Jake abhorred the most. But Jake did not have anything else to offer Moretti. “I’m fine. As I was saying, I understand any reluctance you might feel in agreeing to help me. That is why I am offering…myself…to you in return.”
Moretti’s brow wrinkled. His mouth hung open wide enough for Jake to see the gold crown on one of his molars. “You’re gonna have to explain that, because it sounds like you wanna be my sex slave or something, and I ain’t into that.”
Jake’s face flashed hot. “No. Nothing like that. I meant my services. Mr. Moretti, I have intimate knowledge of my mother’s operations in the Detroit area.” This was ninety-percent a lie, but he was counting on Moretti assuming, like everyone else, that he was as much a part of the family business as Moretti’s own sons were in his.
“You’d turn rat against your own mother?”
