The Ortega Gambit: A classic crime thriller

by J. Palma

  She stood erect before the bathroom mirror with Maria's words replaying about her posture. Athletic and broad shouldered, she had one breast a cup size larger than the other. She thought she had a long torso and short legs. Her hair, eggplant black, was too straight and she had bangs. No one here in New York wore bangs. Her eyebrows were too masculine. She put her thumb in a slight cleft in her chin and wondered what she would look like with curls or highlights.

  In the shower she spent almost twenty minutes experimenting with the various shower settings available on the detachable showerhead. Afterwards, she wrapped her head in a towel like a turban and sat on the window dormer seat counting the boats anchored in the Sound. She changed the radio station until she found something she liked. She shoved the dress and the hideous brown shoes she wore earlier in a trash bin beside the desk. She went to the bathroom, cleaned her ears with Q-tips and inspected what she found. She stepped on a digital scale positioned beside the toilet. She weighed 147 pounds naked and felt healthy and capable of whatever her new job threw at her. She returned to her perch at her dormer seat, and pulled her legs up. She sat for a long time before she dressed.

  Ready to start her new life as a nanny, she put on jeans, a thin white ribbed turtleneck and a pair of knee-high black boots. As she finished dressing, a knock sounded at the door.

  Lucina's heart quickened.

  She opened the door and found Mr. Howell holding a bottle of wine and two glasses. Though softened by his smile, she found his presence threatening. Age spots blotted his skin, a pair of bloodshot eyes stared at her.

  "I was picking a bottle for dinner tonight and I'd thought I'd come up and see how things are going and if you would be interested in a glass of claret before dinner. Is it alright if I come in?"

  "Please," she said amicably, belying her wariness.

  He took a seat at the table, setting down the bottle, corkscrew, and glasses before he sat.

  "I see Albert made sure you got settled and settled you are! You need anything?"

  "No, Mr. Howell."

  "Please, just call me Will. Would you like a glass? I hope you like red. I switched to wine since we're out of beer and Dot won't let me keep beer in the house."

  "Sure. If Mrs. Howell…"

  "Dot. Everyone calls her Dot."

  "But she said…"

  "She says a lot of things. But please remember, her bark is worse than her bite."

  "If Dot doesn't mind, a glass would be fine."

  "Dot doesn't have to know everything if you catch my drift." He uncorked the claret and poured two glasses.

  She took a seat at the window, half her butt on the dormer seat, and sipped her wine, eyeing him from above the rim of her glass.

  "You like the wine?"

  "Very much."

  "There's a wine cellar with over a thousand bottles. And I'm doing my damnedest to drink them all."

  They both laughed.

  "I want to give you a heads up for dinner. Dot is making a big spread in your honor. And since she's a vegetarian, then I'm a vegetarian, you're a vegetarian, and everyone in this house is a vegetarian. Am I making sense?"

  "No."

  "There will no beef or fish or chicken at the meal. But I'm having the cook make a little something special for when Dot retires for the evening. She always knocks out early. She's an early riser though. Be warned. Anyway, he's going to marinate tri-tip. How does that sound? You'll thank me later."

  "Fascinating."

  "What's that?"

  "The lengths you will go because you will not stand up to your wife."

  He hesitated. She had caught him off guard, but hadn’t intended to insult him. He flashed a helpless smile. Her statement caused a look of embarrassment to cross Will's face. Sometimes she spoke impulsively, and now there was a chance she had crossed a line.

  "Dot just likes to get her way." He sat there in awkward silence and picked up the framed picture of her parents for a few seconds before he put it down without comment.

  "Sitting here listening to you, at first I thought it was your accent that was so charming. I was mistaken. It's your voice." She had a raspy voice that men, since she could remember, always misconstrued as sexual. Her eyes narrowed, suspicious. Before the conversation progressed any further, her bedroom door burst open and Charles raced into the room, a plastic sword in hand. Shirtless as before, he wore only Superman underwear.

  He raced into the room with astonishing speed. Moving in a path like a spinning top, he bounced off the bed, to the table. Simultaneously, he knocked over a glass of wine and Lucina's framed photo. Bits of glass shot across the floor. Wine puddled beneath the table.

  On her feet, she shouted, "Charles, stop. There's broken glass!"

  Ignoring Lucina's warnings, he swung at her head, striking her above the ear with a dull thwap. She had no time to defend herself. Her right hand rushed to the point of contact.

  Whatever energy he had when he entered the room was now lost at the sight of Lucina's eyes. Charles tried to jump back, away from Lucina. But her right hand struck out and seized him by the back of the neck. The sudden quickness of her strike startled him into submission and she steered him out of her room.

  In his bedroom he screamed incoherently and raised the sword over his head, ready to strike again. She wrenched the sword from his hand and tossed it on the bed.

  She shouted, "You better calm down."

  He raised a fist. His face scrunched into a series of folds and he lunged at her.

  She smacked him with an open hand across his face. He staggered backwards and froze. Briefly, his breath left him. His eyes widened as he rubbed his cheek. His face blasted with a look of shock and disbelief, but he remained undeterred and charged again. And again, she rebuffed his attack with a loud crack across the face, her stroke like a tennis forehand crushing an incoming ball. Clumsily, he retreated to his bed, crying, nursing his reddened cheek. He rolled over and gave her his back.

  With her arms akimbo, she stood in the center of the room. "You don't behave like this. Look at me. I said, look at me."

  He sat up, his head bowed.

  "Don't you ever raise your hands at me again. And you do what I say." She waved an index finger at him as she spoke. "Don't you move."

  Back in her room, she found the mess still there. Will had the decency to take the wine with him, but left behind the corkscrew, glasses, and spilled wine. If Will overheard the exchange between herself and his nephew, he pretended otherwise.

  As soon as she collected the broken glass, she mopped up the spill with an extra towel she found in the bathroom and put the corkscrew in her back pocket. She hung the towel, dripping with wine, in the shower. Somehow the picture avoided any damage and was still intact. The broken frame she tossed in the trash.

  Lucina found Charles sitting in his bed, his eyes red from crying, massaging the side of his head. She said, "I shouldn't have hit you like that. I'm sorry. I just lost my temper."

  "You don't know what you're doing, do you?"

  "Why do you say that?"

  "Darlene used to say it was illegal for the help to spank children."

  "Darlene, she was the nanny before me?"

  He snorted something that sounded like yes.

  "That picture is special to me. Like you, my mother and father left me a long time ago."

  "You mean they're dead. Dead, dead, dead."

  She gave Charles a long look. For a moment, she pitied the small child, alone in this giant house with no one to give him any love or attention. "Yes. You are right. I cannot bring them back. No one can. They're dead. Life moves on. One day, your heart will stop beating and you'll be dead too. Until then, you have to get dressed. You cannot run around in your underwear. Now, what shall we wear?"

  "I eat in the TV room and I always wear my pajamas."

  "Do you ever eat with Mr. and Mrs. Howell? I mean, Will and Dot?"

  "No. They don't stay here much."

  "Where do they stay?"

/>   He shrugged.

  "Then who do you eat with? Who do you share meals with?"

  "It used to be Darlene. But she's dead."

  "And Darlene would eat with you in the kitchen?"

  "Yeah."

  "Who were you eating with since Darlene died?"

  "I told you, I eat in the TV room."

  "Alone?"

  "Yeah."

  "It stops tonight. I have to eat a very fancy dinner with Will and Dot but after that, it will always be the two of us. For every meal. How does that sound?"

  "Whatever."

  "I can help you get ready."

  "Do I have to take a bath?"

  "Yes."

  "I don't want to take a bath. Darlene didn't make me."

  "I'm not Darlene."

  "I wish she was here."

  "But she's not. She's dead. Now get ready for your goddamn bath before I lose my temper again."

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  AFTER VINCENZO AND Nino claimed their tools from a contact in the Bronx, they drove northbound in a stolen metallic gray Audi A6 with changed plates.

  Stuck in traffic, this was not the America the brother assassins had imagined. They pictured large estates, shiny new cars, and beautiful blonde women—a place where everything was served on silver platters. Fancy restaurants on every corner, big clean avenues lined with leafy trees, mint green lawns, and designer boutiques. The Bronx did not have such things. Instead the brothers found the area noisy and dirty, and the sidewalks clogged with people who it seemed all spoke Spanish.

  Driving along Broadway in Westchester, Vincenzo said, "I think I'm getting sick."

  "You look fine."

  "I can feel it. Ever since we arrive. I just have this headache and my throat—it feels like I ate sand. This is no good."

  In traffic, Vincenzo remembered a girl he once met outside of Naples three years earlier.

  He had spent a few hours at a bar, drinking pints of beer until he met Veronica, an Australian exchange student with big green eyes, a whiny voice, and a stupid laugh that made him wince. Unprompted, she told him stories of art school in Florence, of studying at the Sorbonne, of backpacking through Europe. Her father had told her, she explained, she needed to embrace her reckless phase, but soon she would grow up and do something meaningful with her life. Her Italian was better than most exchange students and impressed Vincenzo. He believed he had found the one. He was twenty-one, she was twenty. She said it was a sign both their names started with the letter V. She spoke a mile a minute and said she loved this song that came over the speakers. After the song finished, he settled his tab, she told her friends not to wait up, and together they left.

  Outside, with his arm around her shoulders, he whispered things in her ear, kissed her neck, and then found her lips. "You like dancing?" he asked.

  "What girl doesn't like dancing?"

  "I have an invitation to a special party at an exclusive club. Very, very special. We can dance there until morning. Would you like that?"

  He took her by the hand and escorted her to a street corner where he told her to wait. A few minutes later, he returned on a stolen moped. She hopped on the back, straddling the seat, slipped her arms around his waist and hugged him tight, pressing the side of her face against his back as they sped through the labyrinth streets for what seemed like an eternity.

  He stopped and pointed at a nightclub across the street. A blue neon sign marked the entrance. This was a decisive moment, recalled Vincenzo. She stared at him with a plastered expression and he remembered fearing she was too drunk for what would come next.

  When he told her the party was just through those nightclub doors, she brightened. He told her he would meet her inside. But first he had to make a phone call. Full of lust, he watched her stagger towards the club, swaying with each step. But soon her confidence returned, and her slender legs navigated the cobblestone street with surprising skill and sexuality. At the club entrance she spoke to a pair of black-shirted bouncers, then disappeared inside.

  Five minutes later, the same bouncers prevented Vincenzo from entering. Invite only, they said, and waved him away.

  "But my girlfriend is in there. An Australian. You just let her in." This went on for a few minutes. Vincenzo pleading with the men, and the bouncers remained unmoved. Not until Vincenzo produced an American hundred-dollar bill did he catch their attention.

  Each bouncer looked at the other.

  One snatched the bill from his hand. The other, touching the side of his nose, said, "We didn't see you." Almost immediately, Vincenzo was patted down, and directed through a metal detector.

  Inside, incessant loud music oozed from everywhere. He found Veronica on the dance floor. The flashing bright lights, the swirling cigarette smoke, well-dressed people dancing almost in unison gave the place a weird, abstract vibe. Green lasers cut through the smoke. A waiter passed him and dropped his chin almost imperceptibly. Their eyes locked. The signal registered with Vincenzo.

  After dancing to a few songs, Vincenzo and Veronica returned to the bar. He ordered two whiskey sodas. Slick with sweat, their bodies pressed against each other while they made out at the bar. Unable to keep her hands off him, she pushed her hips against his. "Do you live far from here?"

  "Why do you ask?"

  "Let's go to your place."

  "I must do something first. Wait here, okay?"

  In the restroom, the music lost its edge. In the first stall he knowingly removed the lid from the water tank above the toilet. Inside, he found a black plastic bag cinched with a thick rubber band. He removed the band and unfolded the bag and pulled out a pistol and an unattached silencer. He inspected the pistol. It had a ten-round magazine with a bullet already chambered. Eleven rounds total. He threaded the silencer into the barrel of the pistol. With the attached silencer, he examined the sights.

  He pushed his way across the dance floor, with the pistol close to his thigh. The VIP section behind gold rope was guarded by a pair of men, each fitted with earpieces. Beyond them, his target, a fat man in a white kimono stretched on a divan. Flutes circled a bottle of champagne on a low glass table. The target wore his hair slicked to the side, held a glass of champagne in one hand. With the other hand, the fat man put a cigar in his mouth while someone else held a lighter until the end glowed cherry red.

  Vincenzo approached the bodyguard on his right and asked to enter.

  The man drew close and started to reply. Vincenzo shot him in the stomach and used the man's massive frame as cover, then shot the other bodyguard twice in the head. He kept the dying bodyguard upright as a shield. Before he fired on his target, he shouted, "Federico Senna, this is for the Lazzaroni." Senna somehow heard this over the din, looked up, mouth agape, hand holding his fresh cigar. Vincenzo shot the man on the divan five times. The pungent twist of gunpowder popped into Vincenzo's nostrils like a drug. He shoved his human shield to the floor, spun on his heels, and disappeared into the crowd.

  Someone screamed and someone returned fire. Muzzle flashes lit the place up in orange and yellow stripes. People dropped to the floor around him. Bullets splintered the bar. The dance floor cleared and the music continued and people knocked each other over for the exit. There was a break in the firing replaced with screaming and shouting. Vincenzo shoved the pistol in his waistband at the small of his back. He found Veronica crouching beneath the bar top, her hands over her ears. He grabbed her by the arm and pulled her outside. On the street, people panicked and ran. Armed men rushed past them in the opposite direction.

  Hand in hand, Vincenzo and Veronica sprinted down an alley and turned down another. A yellow Fiat with the engine running waited at the end.

  He stopped.

  Absently, she had said, "What was that?" She laughed, giggled. She was nervous, he recalled, as though suddenly aware of her situation, her fate, which he had decided hours earlier in the bar before they exchanged a single word. She turned her head, focusing on the Fiat, confused.

  Nino, his br
other, a leg out of the Fiat, yelled, "What are you waiting for? Let's go."

  Still she stared at the waiting Fiat. She turned. Her eyes fell to the pistol now inches from her chest. Vincenzo had extended his pistol until the tip of the silencer was inches from her heart. Under the harsh streetlight, her face remained pale and expressionless. Her eyes steady on him. Her mouth began to stretch, a question on her painted lips. Before terror registered in her eyes, he fired once. He stood over her crumpled body, fascinated with the details of death. Her eye whites expanded and then hardened and grayed. The life drained from her body until her skin was lifeless as stone.

  Unhurried, he dragged her body by the ankles into a pile of trash against the alley wall and rearranged the refuse, concealing the body. He climbed into the waiting Fiat.

  Now in New York, Nino watched the traffic outside his window and shook his head in disgust and said, "This traffic is hell. Not even Naples is this bad."

  While driving, Vincenzo couldn't remember why he shot Senna. Why did he take his life? But that was never part of the job. Four people died that day because he was ordered to kill Senna. He just did what he was told and never asked questions. This job would be no different.

  For the rest of their drive, he was silent. Beyond the windshield, there was everything about America jammed into a single landscape, a new world he would have to navigate skillfully. But the details of this foreign land terrified him. He wished to think about other things, happier things, because the more he thought about the job, the more he worried.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  LUCINA ENTERED THE gigantic dining room a few minutes late. Dot, authoritative in a black dress, sat at the head of the table, reading with her glasses perched on the tip of her nose. Beside her, the familiar sight of Will with a bottle of wine within reach.

  "Lucy, so good of you to join us." Dot stopped reading and removed her glasses.

  The usual place settings of silverware, crystal drinking glasses, bone china serving plates, and linen napkins set for three invoked a surge of anxiety in Lucina. Such a formal table setting had previously only existed in fashion magazines or TV. Lucina watched the table, noting what each of the Howells did with their hands. Distracted by thoughts of how she lacked any formal etiquette, her attention returned to her own place setting. Her eyes swelled at the small gift-wrapped package placed on her serving plate.