The Vendetta

by Thomas Laird

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  If he’d told Rossi about the tap on Dan Tobin’s phone, the capo would’ve gone nuclear that Mark Johansen had a head’s up that someone was coming up behind the ex-Green Beret. But Serpella knew that Johansen wouldn’t bolt. It wasn’t in his makeup. He’d stay and wait, try to finish things. Because running was not an option for an assassin. David understood him. He’d wait and try to eliminate the problem; he would not run away from it.

  Johansen would also understand that Serpella would not inform Rossi of the Greenie’s location. Rossi would likely then take matters into his own hands, thus relieving David Serpella of his wages of sin.

  No, Johansen would stay in place, but he had likely moved the woman and the two girls to a place of safety. It was a relief to David if he had relocated all three of them. He wasn’t inclined to kill a woman and children, no matter what the Outfit capo had ordered. He could always say he dispatched the operator and the other three and that he’d disposed of the bodies in Lake Michigan, which was handy to their whereabouts. Either way, Serpella would collect.

  He had his winter gear stowed in the Jeep. A blizzard was brewing, but he might make it to Sawyer before it really developed. Then the roads would become impassible. There were eleven inches forecast for the evening. He hoped to reach his target before it came down in white torrents.

  It was already flurrying when he reached the Michigan border. He thought he might be wrong about the Green Beret. Maybe he had become involved with David Johansen’s family. He was uncle to the girls, after all. It would be a surprising move, though, and Serpella felt confident that the one-time hit man for Uncle Sam was still in place, waiting for him.

  When he was within a mile of the isolated cabin, he pulled the Jeep to the side of the road. He got out of the vehicle and went to the hatchback and opened his duffel and retrieved his winter whites. The coat had a white hood, and the pants were snow-white, as well. The boots were the same lack of color, and Serpella would be difficult if not impossible to spot against the half-foot of white stuff that already lay on the floor of this mini forest.

  Even the AK-47 had its white covering. The only thing that didn’t blend in was the front tip of the rifle barrel, but that would be difficult or impossible to pick out from a distance.

  Serpella figured the Greenie would hold up in his cabin. There were likely enough windows to detect someone trudging through all this snow, and now the flakes came down harder. The storm was indeed gathering and on the way. The most difficult part of this assignment would be to get away in the mess that was surely arriving shortly.

  Snowshoes might have been helpful, but the snowfall hadn’t been that deep, as yet. His Jeep might have difficulty navigating these backroads on the way out, but Serpella thought he’d deal with all that when the time came.

  He saw the plumes of smoke coming from a chimney that might have been a quarter mile ahead. He still couldn’t see the cabin through all the white-laden branches of the evergreens. He had enough ammo for a siege, if it came to that, but he wanted to put Johansen down with a single round if he could. Time was short before the weather became a very intimidating player.

  And there was Margaret to return to. She was the kind of complication that he had not allowed in his life, but she interrupted his well-laid plans for early retirement to a secluded, solitary life. Women could be bought if you had to have companionship for the purpose of sex, but Margaret had fouled up his scheme and now there was no turning back, no running away from her. She was unlike any other female he’d ever encountered, and Serpella had the insane notion that he needed her. It was a weakness he never thought he’d have to endure. He anticipated every meeting with this thin, graceful, green-eyed beauty, and it was hopeless to think he could toss her away.

  The white descended in thicker ropes on the forest floor. The evergreen branches were beginning to sag under their burdens. David could hear the crackling of the overweight limbs.

  He was within three hundred feet of Johansen’s outpost, and now he could see the horizontal logs of the cabin. It looked as if it belonged in the late Nineteenth Century, something out of James Fennimore Cooper and The Last of the Mohicans. Perhaps Johansen likened himself to Hawkeye, to Natty Bumpo.

  Serpella tried to keep himself behind the pines as he advanced. He didn’t see anything protruding from the two front windows, and there was no one on that roof. There was too much snow on top, anyway, and there were no prints that he could see. There were no footprints anywhere in front of him or behind him or on either side.

  The quiet of the snowfall was a bit unnerving. Everything seemed mute.

  Maybe Johansen had left the field. It probably would’ve been the intelligent thing to do, but that wasn’t how these operators figured. If you killed your enemy, he could not pursue. If you left him alive, he would just keep on coming.

  David wondered why Johansen hadn’t gone for Ben Rossi. He certainly knew the capo gave the order on his brother the baker. There was his brother’s wife and two daughters. It was a blood relationship, and sometimes biology made you do the stupid thing. Sometimes you started coveting your own life. The fear of death preyed on you, and the fear of misfortune on those you cared about complicated everything. Johansen wasn’t in the jungle, anymore. He had dependents. So he might have just taken off. He was exceedingly skilled at hiding.

  Then Serpella came out from behind this last copse of evergreens and stood twenty feet from the cabin.

  The boom shattered the silence. David Serpella looked at the bloom of red on his chest. There was a hole with his own blood cascading down the front of his winter warfare gear. He fell to his knees and tried to stanch the flow, but it was hopeless. He fell face first into the mound of pristine snow.

  A figure arose from a pile of whiteness, thirty yards to the right of Serpella’s motionless corpse. It shook the debris from itself, and as it became erect, the form of a man appeared. He was all in white, as well, from his hood to his boots. And the hunting rifle was jacketed in the same camouflage.

  *

  Mark pulled the body toward the evergreens off to the left of the cabin. Then he covered it with loose branches from the firs around him, and finally he piled snow over the branches and the body. He went back to the cabin.

  He was worried about frostbite. He had been beneath his cover of frozen white for hours. There was a time when he thought no one was coming. He wanted to retreat to the cabin, to the warmth, and then perhaps use his place as a final fortress. Johansen knew that to put yourself within walls was to limit your mobility, however. So he laid the trap and hoped his target would finally arrive before the blizzard hit.

  He’d been lucky. Parts of his face and extremities had become numb. Johansen had been in frigid climes before. Up in the mountains in Spain, for example. In the mountains of Afghanistan, too. Cold could greatly hinder your body functions, and it could freeze your brain, as well.

  He could not have held out much longer, in any case, so he was lucky this gunman had arrived before he had retreated indoors. Before he hid the corpse, he’d relieved it of a wallet and his weapon and ammunition. But he left the man’s cash behind, stuffed inside his bloody jacket.

  This guy was a pro. He didn’t recognize the name on the ID, which might very well be false and probably was. But there was more than twenty thousand in big bills, so the cash told Mark that he’d been a contract player, probably ex-military, especially with the white mountains garb.

  Rossi wouldn’t know about the cabin because the hired man under the branches and snow would never have shared the information. A man like Rossi would’ve shot the assassin after he knew about the cabin and kept the fee for himself and Rossi would’ve come to Sawyer himself and done the wet work on his own. That was how the capo operated. So the man outside, face down in the cold, wouldn’t have shared the intel.

  Mark felt a little safer when all that came to him, but if one man had found him, others could also, and Sawyer was no longer safe
for him or Marilyn and Elizabeth and Morgan. They’d have to take off for a new home, somewhere, in parts unknown.

  Johansen loaded his vehicle with everything Marilyn hadn’t taken to the hotel in Sawyer where he’d placed them. The furniture and all the rest would have to stay until he could sell the cabin. He knew a real estate salesman in town, and he’d call him after the blizzard depleted itself. Until the snows ceased, supposedly tomorrow afternoon, he’d have to stay with Marilyn and the kids in the Edmont Hotel in town.

  He'd been waiting for three days. He knew he couldn’t have tolerated much more. Mark was used to waiting for targets, but he was getting older, now, and being out in the cold was different from camouflaging yourself in warmer climates.

  The cabin had been rigged with all kinds of warning devices, from tin cans to light bulbs. Every window and both doors to the cabin were set up with noise-makers. He had to sleep, over those days of waiting. Johansen expected him to come at him in daylight. The environment was too new for this Outfit shooter, so he wouldn’t want Mark to have an advantage. No, he’d come in daylight.

  Mark watched the road to his place. It was the only entry road for the log cabin, and he made passes down the covered-over blacktop, and finally he heard someone coming through the crunch of snow on the third day. He’d barely had time to hurry back to his house and bury himself in the snow off to the side. He’d heard the shooter before he saw him. Then all it took was one shot.

  The third day of waiting would have been his last. He would have gone back to town and collected the three of them at the Edmont and then taken off west, maybe to somewhere like Montana or Utah. Somewhere where there was a far smaller population. A place where they could hide out until Rossi sent another goon after them.

  *

  He made his way through four fresh inches of snow into Sawyer and slid through the Edmont’s parking lot but managed to park his vehicle. Mark stomped off the snow, and then he went to the elevators in this 1890s landmark hotel in the downtown sector of Sawyer.

  When he got to the room, the girls were on one of the king-sized beds watching television, and Marilyn rushed him and grabbed hold of him. She kissed him hard, and he had to laugh in surprise at her aggressiveness.

  “Is it safe?” she asked him, her eyes bubbling with tears.

  “Yes. I think it is.”

  The girls never looked at them, their eyes attached to the TV screen.

  “But we’ll have to move as soon as this weather calms down.”

  “When will that be?” Marilyn asked him.

  “Tomorrow, from what they’re saying.”

  “Mark…what happened out there?”

  He looked toward the girls, and then at her.

  “You’re sure we’re all right?”

  “This’ll slow him down. Yes. But I don’t think he’ll stop coming.”

  The tears pulsed down her cheeks. He wiped them with his icy fingertips. Marilyn flinched from his touch.

  “You’re like ice,” she told him.

  “I was outside for a while. It’s bad.”

  “You’re going to make puddles if you stand there much longer.”

  He took off his leather coat and then his boots. He left them lying by the door.

  “Go and get in a hot shower and get your body temperature back up,” she told Johansen.

  “I’ll be all right.”

  “Will you? Will we?”

  He motioned toward the girls, but they were entranced with something on the screen.

  “We’re still alive. I’m still alive. It’s an ongoing thing, Marilyn. You don’t realize how temporary any of this is until someone comes along and tries to stop it.”

  He walked into the bathroom, and soon after she heard the water running from the showerhead and she saw the mist from the steam escaping underneath the bathroom door.

  *

  Forty-eight hours passed and there was no word from Serpella. Then two more days went by and there was still silence.

  Finally, Ben Rossi looked at the postcard that was postmarked from Sawyer, Michigan. It had just arrived in the mail, and Carmen handed it to her husband.

  There were four words printed on the back of the postcard with a picture of a sand dune named Mount Baldy on the front. On the back was inscribed:

  HE ISN’T COMING HOME.

  “The fuck is this?” Benny Bats asked Carmen.

  “How the hell should I know?”

  She walked away from her husband and into the kitchen.

  Ben turned the card over and read the message again.

  Then he knew who wasn’t coming home again.

  *

  The Italian cop was showing up a little too regularly in Rossi’s life. And so was the taller cop who just got off sick leave. Parisi called him Doc, Benny Bats remembered.

  It wasn’t bad enough that Serpella had got himself shot in some Michigan shithole. The cops had found his carcass after a guy walking his dog had come upon the remains. The pooch got inquisitive about a pile of snow and branches, and then the owner spied a boot sticking up, and the cops did the rest. Serpella made the papers, and Benny was still looking over his shoulder for that son of a bitch Green Beret.

  The guy was a spook. He was a ghost. And he didn’t seem to want to die and make Rossi’s life just a little bit easier.

  Then there was this brink of war thing in the Outfit between Ben and Calabrese and everybody else, not to mention this prick Parisi who kept inserting himself into the Cicero capo’s existence. The guy really was a bulldog, and Rossi started thinking about how he could make the Italian cop dead. All conventional wisdom told him that you didn’t pop a policeman, especially a detective, but Rossi wasn’t sure how to achieve closure with all these shit storms raining down on him.

  February was in its death throes, and March was happening this week. So Ben Rossi informed the old lady that they were taking an impromptu trip to Hawaii to get away from everything. Surprisingly Carmen didn’t bust his balls about the trip.

  They packed their bags and went to O’Hare at two in the morning, and Rossi informed his bodyguards that their services would no longer be required until their return. He didn’t tell his associates about his tropical destination, but he warned his soldiers they’d better not follow him and that he’d shoot them in the face if they did.

  Off they went to the airport, and Benny Bats didn’t see a soul on his tail, all the way to O’Hare. The streets were unnaturally deserted at 2:30 A.M. The snow had all been cleared away two days ago, and the ride was a breeze.

  *

  They landed on Maui about twenty hours later. Ben couldn’t sleep, he was so excited. He was like a kid on an adventurous holiday, say to Disney Land or some resort location. But Maui was nothing like the fucking Dells or any of those other Midwestern tourist traps they always went to before. Or Florida, which to Rossi was a patch of shit surrounded on either side by an ocean and a Gulf.

  He felt a little naked because he hadn’t taken a piece with him on the trip, but he didn’t want the hassle of dealing with some hardon at the airport who might catch him with a weapon. Their abrupt departure had worked, anyway, and there was no trace of a cop or an Outfit button man or some crazy-assed ex-Army guy who had just wasted a top tier assassin who had twenty Gs of Rossi’s money on his body when the cops discovered him in some bumfuck spot called Sawyer fucking Michigan.

  “Relax,” had been Carmen’s comment when Ben stretched out on the mammoth bed in the primo hotel where they registered for two weeks.

  “I could get used to this,” she told her husband as she peered out of the sliding glass window down at the pool behind the hotel.

  She was already naked. She stood there with her powerfully sexy profile, Ben thought. Her tits hadn’t sagged much after all these years because she’d taken care of herself.

  Carmen swept a hand across her breasts and smiled at her husband. He was still fully clothed. She went over to the bed and pulled down his fly.

  “
That didn’t take long,” she smiled.

  “Who’re you, lady? Do I know you?” he laughed.

  “I know you, Benny Bats, and that’s all that matters.”

  She zipped him back up.

  “We’re going to the pool. Sunlight’s burning, husband of mine. Get your trunks on.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  He remembered the first time he had to go out to eat alone. He supposed he could have called Doc, but Gibron had a private life of his own and Jimmy didn’t want to intrude on the few hours his partner had away from him on the job. They were close, but enough was enough.

  Erin was always with him on his days off. Everywhere they went they went together. Sometimes he thought she’d tire of him, and sometimes he asked her about it.

  “Don’t you have any friends you’d rather be with?”

  They were at Venture looking for socks for Jimmy and underwear for Mike. Mary had to pick out her own personal stuff, young as she was. Fruit of the Loom was good enough for father and son. Socks were socks. Mike didn’t care where they came from.

  It was Sunday after mass, he recalled. That was their time together. Eleanor had the kids and they were going out to lunch at the Evergreen Mall in Evergreen Park. It was their time, but it didn’t seem to matter where they were as long as they were in proximity of one another.

  “That’s silly, Jimmy.”

  “No, it isn’t. You never have time with your friends. I’m with Doc at work all the time and I see him off hours, too, but you never seem to hang with other women.”

  “Maybe I’m not a fan of women.”

  “I don’t buy it. I’ve seen you with those other teachers. I know they like you, and they admire you, too, Erin.”

  “Teachers are the most boring human beings on the planet. All they want to talk about is their kids in class or their kids at home.”

  “You don’t talk about your students?”

  “I leave them where they belong, Jimmy. In the classroom.”

  “All I talk about is Doc and work.”