“Tell me ’bout it. But it’s good money, and good reputation. It’s pretty easy shit, too: dry cleaning at Atlantic City and a date with George Laguetta. Says that he and Lev need my silver tongue to butter up the Family, so we’ll cycle the cash, wine and dine them. I’ll get enough money to set me up for the year once it’s all said and done.”
Putting Vassily under all those cameras alongside a known Don and in light of Vincent’s disappearance? “No. Vasya, I have a dreadful feeling about this.”
“Why?” He frowned.
“Because the man Lev has asked me to find and return is the man who arranged this whole cocaine business for Laguetta and Lev in the first place,” I said. “He was supposed to be at a meeting last night and never showed. The whole thing—”
“Smells like shit, yeah.” Vassily cut me off, shaking his head. “But I already gave my word. I won’t lose face to Nic by backing out. And honestly, man, I need the money. The government took all my stocks. I have to get a hold of my old broker and hope he’s willing to work my fake ID and build up my portfolio from scratch.”
I ground my teeth until they creaked and crossed my arms. “Well, if you have to go, I go with you. I’m your bodyman for this event. Let the Laguettas wonder how you’re able to field a spook as personal protection.”
“Even if you weren’t a spook, you’re the hardest man in this crew. Of course I want you there.” Vassily smacked another card down. “And you know what? I told Nic I want Yuri on my other side. You know, Yuri Beretzniy? His old war buddy. He’s like a million years old, but I'm pretty sure that guy eats lead and broken glass for breakfast. Figured that’d remind Nic who calls personnel around here.”
“He’s missing.” I rubbed my face again. The fatigue was eating into my ability to focus. “Yuri, that is.”
Vassily looked up sharply. “What?”
“Missing.” I glanced down at the rows of cards. “He didn’t show for work last night.”
“Yuri? Missing? But I mean… how?”
“Probably the way most men go,” I replied. "By surprise."
“No way. That guy’s a seriously tough motherfucker.”
I looked up at him pensively. “Sometimes it doesn’t matter how tough you are. He’s gone missing with the man I’ve been tasked to find, Vincent.”
“Huh. Maybe Yuri cut some money and ran off with him, then. That happens, even with the old guys.”
Yes, it was possible Vincent was worth enough to the various underworld high rollers that Yuri stood to gain more by handing him over to someone than by protecting him for Lev. But in that case, who? Vincent’s blood family?
“Who is this guy, then? Vincent?”
“One of Manelli’s boys, oddly enough.” I made the decision to talk it out, no matter what Lev thought. If I could trust one person in the Organization, it was the man sitting across from me. “Vincent Manelli.”
“Blood family? Never heard of him. There’s Lou Manelli, Celso Manelli, and his little brother, Joe. They all work out of a big chicken factory over in Jersey. Elite Meats, something like that.”
“Perhaps because he’s the youngest of the sons? He defected to George’s team.”
“No shit? And he went missing on our watch? Well, bad as it sounds, at least Yuri went missing with him. If he fucked up, it’d be more than just his head in line for the guillotine. How much are you getting out of it?”
“Three hundred thousand.”
Vassily’s eyebrows nearly hit his hairline. “Lexi, that’s a lot of cash for one guy. Too much cash.”
The observation sat with me uncomfortably because it was true. It was a lot of money, though I’d managed to rationalize it somewhat. Vincent made the Organization millions of dollars in trade. The Twins hadn’t run shipments to anyone except Mama Perez in Miami until Vincent talked to them.
Vassily seemed to notice my struggle and shook his head. “Seriously. That’s too much. I don’t mean that in the ‘you suck and you shouldn’t be paid that much’ way. I mean in the ‘that’s a lot of fucking money that’s being used to hide something from you’ way.”
“Not compared to what he’s worth.”
“After your car got rigged this morning? I don’t have to be a wizard to work it out, my friend.” Vassily looked away, his jaw working. He was down to only a few spares now. “There’s something we’re not seeing.”
“You’re right,” I said, after a minute or two. “But I want to do it. Lev will put in a word for me to Sergei.”
“He shouldn’t have to. We’re blatnoi, we were made for this. Sergei should be back here and paying attention to his own men.”
“He will be. Lev thinks he’ll be here by the end of the month.”
“And that just makes me twitch harder over the whole damn thing.” Vassily tch’d and opened his mouth to speak again just as Mariya arrived with tea and plates of food.
“Here we go,” she said cheerfully. She’d brought crepes for Vassily, salad and chicken cutlets for me. “You eat everything, now. The pair of you look like you haven’t slept in a week.”
Vassily changed tack, cheerfully masking his fatigue with a grin and a wave. “Sure thing, Mom.”
Mariya slapped him without force, and he sputtered in protest. “Vassily Simeovich, I spent five damn years worrying about your skinny ass. Don’t you give me cheek. What would your grandmother say?”
“She would have said I needed to lay on the bullshit better.”
I made a motion with my hands, silent agreement. Lenina Lovenko had been a fearsome, pipe-smoking Ruska Roma hellcat with more tattoos than her son and grandsons.
Mariya rolled her eyes. “Impossible. Are you two going boxing this evening?”
“I will be going to bed,” I said, as I took up my knife and fork.
Vassily swatted his sister away from his chair. Mariya shoved her brother’s head forward, and he made a rude gesture back at her. She motioned at him with two fingers. Come get it.
“I will. I feel pretty good, actually. It’ll be good to box around a ring without someone huffing over my shoulder.” Vassily chuckled and started furtively on his early dinner, glancing aside at her. “Sisters, man, I’m telling you. Can’t live with them, can’t shoot them.”
Mariya scowled. “I’ll take that plate back, Vivy.”
“The hell you will. These are amazing. Don’t call me Vivy.”
I watched them both contemplatively, folding salad onto my knife and fork. I often envied Mariya her simplicity and strength. She had lost parents, grandparents, and three brothers over the span of a decade. She took charge of her household when no one else could or would, a self-made and self-taught matriarch. As the years had gone by and more Lovenkos had died, she became increasingly fussy over us. Now that I had the time to look at her under yellow light, I thought her deep-set eyes were a little shadowed.
It was good Vassily hadn’t told her about the explosives. And it was good she and Vassily both didn’t know that tonight, I would not be going to bed. Instead, I would be jacking a car, finding a way into Vincent’s house, and looking for clues to his whereabouts.
It was time to begin the hunt.
Chapter 7
Vincent Manelli’s mansion on Turner Drive was faced with high fences that protected lawns so large and lush they looked like golf courses. The pavement here was new and uncracked, the cars clean, and my overall impression was that the whole street was strangely sterile and vacant. Vincent’s house was a huge Colonial villa that loomed over a winding gravel driveway lined with solar lamps. They cast muted light over the empty driveway and the clean-raked paths leading up to the front porch.
B&E is the one time you will ever find me in anything other than slacks and collared shirts. Some men do all black, but it’s a color that stands out under the muggy New York summer sky. Charcoal and brown work better. I like sportsgear for this: riding breeches, a light tracksuit jacket, and shoes with restaurant tread for extra grip. In this wealthy part of town, the o
utfit doesn't stand out too much, either.
I have a toolkit especially for this kind of work, and none of it is particularly supernatural in nature. The problem with B&E is that thresholds of all kind—walls, doorways, and especially circles—have strange power of their own. They are built with the intent to keep outside things out and inside things in. Intent is the basis of magic, and the focus which underlies the construction of any barrier acts as a weak enchantment of sorts. On the physical level, walls and locks don’t mean a whole lot. Without wards, the worst you get is the skin-prickling, uncomfortable sensation which accompanies trespass, the ghostly understanding that you are somewhere you do not belong. However, walls and doors that don’t belong to you make even easy magic harder than it ought to be. Lockpicking, for example: I can pick a practice deadbolt with magic, but not a deadbolt mounted on someone else's door. I’ve never been that good. For this kind of work, I have effective, but mundane tools.
After the drive-by, I parked down the road and covered the distance on foot. The front gate was unlocked, so I let myself in and had a look over the barriers to entry. They were formidable: The front facade was separated from the rear yard by a high brick-and-steel spiked fence. The front door was locked, the windows closed and locked with roller shutters. There was going to be an electronic security system, maybe even cameras.
The gate into the backyard was locked with a classic cylinder deadbolt. I set my messenger bag down there and crouched, removing a ring of keys. They were evenly notched along their lengths, crafted with deep, regular cuts. Three of the keys had small rubber O-rings fitted near the head. To use bump keys, you match a key to the size of the lock and insert it, slowly, while tapping it with a heavy object. I took my knife from my pocket, fixed my eyes ahead on nothing, and used the key to feel for the tumblers and bump them open. One, two, three, four. It clicked, and I was in. Sticking to the shadows, alert for the sounds and smell of dogs, I made my way down the white pebbled path that led into the rear yard.
Vincent’s backyard was a gaudy concrete courtyard full of statues, pots, and cheap-looking - though undoubtedly expensive - Faux-Classical ornaments. A swimming pool lapped and gurgled in the darkness, storm-gray under the heavy, smoggy sky. The night wind had a bitter edge that stirred the hairs on the back of my neck, and I held the knife low, the blade turned away, as I advanced around towards the back door.
The garden bed just next to the attached sunroom was planted with rows of mature angel’s trumpets, and my nose was full of the dizzying vanilla smell of them as I unlocked the door with my bump keys. It was a strange plant to grown in a heavily trafficked place like this. Angel’s Trumpets, Datura, are very poisonous and are used to make one of the more terrifying drugs to come out of Colombia, scopolamine. I knew of it because it was an ingredient used to create zombies: the living slave sort, not the walking dead.
I turned on a small flashlight to scrutinize the second lock on the inside door. It was of better make than the last one, with a heavy bump-proof cylinder. Frowning, I put the keys away and, with the flashlight clutched between my teeth, got out a small tension wrench and picks. After five minutes and two broken picks, I was finally able to press in the trick tumbler and carefully, delicately turn the lock. Done.
I pulled a cap down over my ears, shouldered my tool bag, and padded inside with the knife up and ready, warily navigating the sunroom in the dark. Light spilled across the floor from a door further down. I let my eyes adjust, my breathing harsh in my own ears. The sunroom was pretty enough, like the rest of the house, though the plants that lined the glass sill along the far wall were brown-lipped and dying. Something about the stillness of the air was acutely uncomfortable, an eerie disturbance of the ear like a badly tuned violin being sawed at its highest key. Nothing was visibly wrong, but the place felt... hollow. Wounded and bleeding, like Nacari’s dump site.
The kitchen was expensively furnished, the air of the interior house cool and temperate, but I did not step inside. Every room had a motion sensor, but judging by the sensor lights, only the rooms beyond the kitchen were armed. The control panel was just outside the kitchen door in the sunroom, a ten-digit number pad with newish numbers.
The unsubtle way to deal with any electronic device is to draw a sigil on it and blow it with a push of blunt force power. A more skilled mage could probably do it without setting the wall on fire, but they’d still probably draw the cops. The problem a lot of spooks have is that as a true magus, capable of the Art, they tend to over-rely on their eldritch might. Being caught out by a problem that can’t be solved with magic has been the downfall of many spooks better than me. They have a prison just for us, somewhere out in Wisconsin, and you can bet there are mages in the police force: The Adepts of the Vigiles Magicarum. They track and profile spooks. Legends say that magi are a subtle breed, and it is always good to prove them right.
I took my flashlight and a small mirror and used the intense, reflected light to scan the surface of the keypad. The thing about ten-digit number locks like this one is that the owners very rarely change the numbers. If there are no breakins, they forget to change the code, or they do it infrequently—perhaps twice a year, if that. The codes are always four digits. People also often use their birth day and month or the year of their birth. I knew Vincent’s, but it was important to look and check first.
The light caught the delicate prints and smears of grease on the buttons. I leaned in and exhaled hoarsely against the metal a few times until they could be seen more clearly. To my surprise, only three digits were highlighted: Vincent had better sense than most. Three buttons, four numbers. One of them was a repeat. Zero had the heaviest prints and the most smearing, followed by one and four. I tried it: 0104. When I hit the key button, the sensor lights shut off.
Yes. Good password, but he had greasy hands.
Something clicked overhead. I froze, gut tightening, and only eased down when a puff of cold, crisp air blew against my face from an overhead vent. Air conditioning. There was mail on the kitchen counter, but it was all bills and junk. I rubbed my gloves on a soft cloth, and then started my investigation from the counter outwards. The pantry was stocked with snacks, and the refrigerator shelves were packed full of food of all kinds: amongst them was a box of reasonably fresh pizza with a half-empty bottle of beer beside it. The lit lights, the air-con, the alarms, the lack of mess... everything told me the same story. Vincent’s home had not been invaded and its occupant removed. It had been abandoned.
I trod quietly through the rest of the house, which was unlit, and the lights behind me gleamed off the knife blade. I passed through spills of cold, stale-smelling scent. The air of the den was heavy, humming with faint electrical discharge from the abandoned appliances. Signs of Vincent and Yuri’s habitation remained: impressions of their buttocks on the plastic sheets that covered the Romanesque furniture, an empty bottle of beer on the table, the small flask of cheap Polish vodka beside it. Two half-filled glasses and a stack of video cassettes sat beside the VCR.
Something nagged at me. There was no planning, but also no signs of a hasty, panicked exit. It was like they’d gotten up to go to the store and never returned. I glanced over the shelf of videotapes: half of them were pornography, the rest racing and action movies. The bottom shelf was devoted to videotaped TV shows Vincent had wanted to catch later on, recorded while sleeping or working. I ran a gloved finger over the stickers. The last date was the second day of the month. Vincent recorded the late-night wrestling for the morning.
I eyed the VCR, sitting on its shelf underneath the television. It was still turned on, and a red light blinked fitfully next to its shuttered mouth.
Tape slithered, and the cassette clicked and clacked its way to my hand when I hit the button. The sticker had no date or topic, but the tape had rewound. I pushed it back into the machine and turned the television on, cycling through the channels until I found the one which showed the video. After a flicker came the characteristic fanfare of the WWF the
me music blaring while a wrestler stalked the studio hallways with a scowl. Satisfied, I reached out to turn it off but then paused, hand extended, as the video began to bleed to gray. The image and voices flickered, wavered, and then dissolved into black-and-white snow with an ear-splitting, hair-raising whine. The sound rose and fell, and as I watched, the fizzing snow began to separate and congeal into shapes like crawling insects. Like a carpet of bees. My skin crawled on my flesh, mouth full of the blinding white the sound created in my mouth and behind my eyes. Hastily, I turned it off and backed away. Well away.
The next thing was to see when the wrestling had been on. I took the TV guide to the lit kitchen to flip through it. WWF was on Friday nights, starting at nine p.m. The distortion had begun not five minutes afterward, and the four-hour tape had recorded all the way through to the end of its feed and rewound. My imagination filled in the blanks. Vincent and Yuri, nervously trying to develop some rapport over junk food and alcohol, had settled down to watch the wrestling after a trip out to the store, and then... something happened. Something which removed them from the living room as if they'd vanished.
I pulled my gloves up along my wrists before pressing on deeper into the silence of the house, up the spiral stairs that led to the bedrooms. I was accompanied by an eerie sense of displacement as I trod down the carpeted hallway, opening doors to peer inside. There was a personal gym, a studio, and a monstrously large bathroom. Nothing was upset. Nothing was broken or rushed. There should have been something other than the confirmation that Vincent, and probably Yuri as well, had both gone missing between eight and eleven the night before, but there was nothing. No scattered clothes. No missing toiletries. No sign of violence.
Vincent’s bedroom was easily the messiest room in the house, a tragedy of Baroque lacquered furniture and leopard-print velvet. Dirty laundry was strewn on the floor next to the bed—a silk robe, boxers, and a T-shirt with pizza stains down the front. I dropped it as soon as I picked it up, disgusted. My eyes flicked from the wallet bulging with money that had been left on the dresser, to the picture of a captured unicorn that dominated one wall of the bedroom, to the line of photos mounted on the wall beside it. The beam of the flashlight lit on one of them, an ornate silver frame holding a faded photo of a woman with the dark skin and proud aquiline face of a Sicilian. Even in sepia, her black eyes glittered, full of quiet power. One hand was resting palm-down on an arrangement of large cards on a tabletop, the other held out of sight. Her hair was covered, but what drew my attention were the details of her shawl. It was decorated in planetary symbols. I took the picture off the wall and carefully pried the back off the frame. As I suspected, the photo had writing on it, in Italian. I could discern a name, though, and the date. Drina Mercurio, 1942.
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