“We need to play it cool. Be convincing,” he whispers in my ear. “We’re just a young couple here for a casual evening of dancing. No big deal.”
“How will we know when he gets here?” I ask quietly as Bruno takes hold of my hips and starts to sway with me.
“I’m keeping an eye on the front entrance and the employee’s entrance toward the back. He doesn’t work here but he’s a regular, so he might come in through there to go undetected. But he knows what I look like, and I know what he looks like. We’ll find him, no problem,” he explains.
“What if he doesn’t show?” I ask, biting my lip.
Bruno shakes his head. “He will. Trust me. This guy might be the only person on the planet who hates Price as much as I do.”
We dance together for what feels like hours. I’m beginning to feel hopeless when finally Bruno puts a hand on my arm and nods in the direction of the back of the club. Even though I didn’t know what he looked like before tonight, I recognize him instantly by the world-weary look on his face. He’s a relatively tall man, but he walks with a slight stoop, like he’s perpetually ashamed of himself, trying to make himself look smaller. He has thinning salt-and-pepper hair and deep frown lines on his paunchy face. He looks over and locks eyes with Bruno, both men nodding once in acknowledgement before the ex-cop walks over to a booth against the wall and sits down.
Bruno orders a beer and we head over to the booth where our contact is waiting. I can feel my heart beating fast, but for some reason my mind is totally cool and collected. After spending all this time with Bruno on the run, I think my tolerance for high-stakes situations has gotten a little higher.
We settle into the booth across from the ex-cop and Bruno slides the beer across the table to him. The guy gladly accepts it and takes a long sip before speaking.
“Sorry, I wasn’t expecting you to have company,” he says quietly, his voice a little rough. I can tell he’s probably been a lifelong smoker. Bruno nods.
“This is Serena. And you already know who I am,” Bruno says.
“Hi Serena. I’m Hank. Ex-cop, ex-success story, ex-productive member of society. Nice to meet you,” the guy says flatly, taking another drink of his beer.
“I’m sorry... can I just ask a question?” I begin, leaning forward and lowering my voice. “What made you quit the force?”
Hank sighs and answers, “An operation went foul at the fairgrounds a while back. Found my own neck on the chopping block. Could’ve made some serious waves if I spoke up, but Price would have my head before I even got the words out. So I decided it was best to just cut and run.”
“So, you worked closely with Price?” I press on.
He nods, rolling his eyes. “Oh yeah, Price and I go way back. We were at the Academy together, rose up in the ranks side by side. He got accolades, I got accolades. He got promoted, I got promoted. We were on parallel tracks to greatness, you know. Colleagues working our asses off on the same team for the greater good. Or so I thought.”
“Price used to be on the straight and narrow once upon a time, then?” Bruno suggests.
Hank shrugs. “I don’t know how far back his dirty business goes. He could’ve been scheming since day one at the Academy for all I know. I had no idea for the longest time. I guess that’s part of why I wasn’t cut out to be a cop after all: I just kind of assumed the best of everyone. You can’t do that in my former line of work. Ain’t nobody one-hundred-percent clean. Price was a good cop, don’t get me wrong. He made arrest after arrest after arrest. He shut down gangs and crime syndicates, threw a bunch of small-time dealers in the clink. If the chief had been handing out gold stars, he would’ve been a goddamn constellation. But turns out, he was double-dipping. Got one hand on the badge and the other digging into places he got no business in. Jewel smuggling, gambling rings, even sex trafficking.”
He shakes his head, his fists tightening on the table in front of him. “That fucker was moonlighting for both sides all along, but really it’s not about good or bad. Price doesn’t work for anybody but himself.”
“Are you the only one who knows about this?” Bruno asks.
Hank chuckles, but the laughter doesn’t warm up his cold expression one bit. “Nah. I can think of a half dozen guys on the force who could give evidence about Price’s shady business dealings. I got evidence of my own. But nobody’s gonna speak up.”
“Not even you?” I pipe up. “You’re already off the force. What do you have to lose?”
He stares at me for a moment with narrowed eyes. “You don’t get it, do you? This is bigger than just a stupid job. I got the hell out of dodge because that was the only way I could at least kind of hold onto what’s left of my damn conscience. Price has friends in high places, but it’s his friends in low places you really gotta watch out for. Everybody hates him, but he made damn sure they’re afraid of him, too. We all know what that rat bastard is capable of, and nobody’s willing to risk life or livelihood to take him down. He’s too powerful.”
“The bigger they are, the harder they fall,” I interject. “And if you came out to meet us here tonight, that must mean you haven’t totally given up all hope yet.”
Hank gives me a weak, almost wistful smile. “Hope? Nah. I’m way past hope. Nowadays all I got left is desperation and spite.”
“Well, then maybe you’re just desperate enough to help us,” Bruno says. “You said you have evidence. Good enough to put him away?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. But it wouldn’t make a difference unless we got everybody on our side, and that’ll never happen,” Hank laments. “Look, I feel for you, man. I get it. Price has taken so much away from me, from you, from a lot of people who didn’t deserve it. I admire what you’re trying to do here, but it’s never gonna work out.”
“We can pay you,” Bruno says. “We can get your job back. We can take Price down.”
“Man, it’s not that I don’t wanna help you. It’s just that I can’t. I already lost everything when I quit the force. That job was everything to me, all I ever wanted to do with my life since I was a little boy playing cops and robbers. But that department is all in Price’s pocket nowadays. Ain’t nothing you or anybody else can do about it. The stakes are too high.”
He gulps down the rest of his beer and starts to slide out of the booth, trying to leave. Desperately, I blurt out, “What if we could promise you a new start? A do-over, somewhere far away. Y-You could get away from all this. Pretend it never even happened.”
Hank turns back to look at me with his brows furrowed. Bruno looks at me, too, confused at what I’m talking about. “A new identity. Untraceable,” I go on, glancing at Bruno meaningfully. “We can do that, can’t we? We can get him out of the country.”
Bruno catches on, realizing that I’m talking about the fake passports he had made for us, the ones with the pictures missing. He nods, gesturing for Hank to sit back down.
“Yes. We can promise you safe passage out of here. Consider it a guerrilla-style witness protection service,” he explains. Hank slowly slides back into the booth, looking apprehensive.
“In exchange for your evidence and your assistance, we can get you a new life. A new chance to make something of yourself, without all this baggage weighing you down,” I tell him.
Hank looks back and forth between us, clearly torn. Bruno and I wait silently, impatiently for him to say something.
BRUNO
I feel like I can hear my heartbeat getting slower and steadier as I bring the car to a stop and turn off the engine. It’s a skill I learned in prison. I forced my body to calm down and be ready for anything when having to deal with the police.
Most of all when dealing with Price.
Some close contacts and I set up a meeting with him under the pretenses that he’s meeting his the ex-cop we met at the club. It’s a run-down bar just off the highway on the outskirts of the city where bikers tend to pass through. Not the kind of place you’d expect to be finding a cop, but Price has an under
standing with the owner, and from what I understand, the two have a tenuous alliance, of a sort.
That’s going to be a problem. But this is the one shot I have at getting Price alone, maybe even off-guard. It’s a risk I need to take.
But it isn’t a risk I’m willing to put on anyone else. That’s why I’m out here alone tonight.
I lied to Nico. I told him I’d meet him at the Room With a View to plan a proper setup with all the support I really need for a job like this. But to do that would be to ask too much of a man who’s already given me too much. And besides, if this goes sour, I don’t want him to get his name implicated in something as big as this. It’s a miracle he’s kept himself out of too much hot water so far.
As for Serena, she thinks I’m meeting Nico too. It pains me to keep her in the dark more than anything, but she’s the one person above all I can’t risk getting hurt. Right now, nobody knows she’s been an accomplice to a wanted fugitive. I want to keep it that way.
I feel the little disk in my jacket pocket. It’s one of many copies I made, of course. Our ex-cop friend really pulled through: there are more people willing to move against Price than I ever expected. Most of them are beat cops who are too young to get jaded, but there are a few mid-level people running desk jobs in the force who have been paid to cover up Price’s paper trail of corruption. Just enough to knock him off his high horse.
I push the door to the bar open and step inside to the smell and thick haze of smoke. Old rock is playing while rough-looking bikers hang out around the pool tables or at the bar. I don’t stop as I move in. I’m not planning to stop and chat with the bartender before heading upstairs.
Price’s usual meeting place is the rooftop. The sign on top of the front of the bar makes sure anyone up there has a little privacy from the street view, even though the building is only a story high.
Unfortunately, I see the stairs leading up to the roof are past the bar. I’ll be noticed heading upstairs. No matter. Price still can’t get away.
I head toward the bar, and I’m about halfway there when a voice behind me makes me freeze.
“Hey, think I’d let you go in there alone?”
As I stop, I can’t help the feeling of a smile tugging at the corners of my mouth. “You tailed me. Well done.”
“Learned from the best,” says Serena as she steps up beside me and I look down at her. “Don’t worry, I didn’t snitch to Nico.”
As I see her standing there beside me confidently, I don’t feel any impulse to tell her this is too dangerous for her or too much for her to handle. She has her family’s blood in her, after all. She’s my girl. I should have known that any girl of mine wouldn’t accept anything less.
“Be ready, then,” I say in a low tone, barely audible over the sounds of the bar. “I don’t expect this to go so good.”
“I’d be disappointed if it did,” she says with a wink.
I step up to the bar, and as I start to head to the stairs, the bartender’s eyes snap over to me. He’s a squirrelly little guy with a chin-strap beard and a shaved head.
“That’s staff-only,” he says with a suspicious look.
“I have business upstairs,” I growl, moving past him and taking Serena’s hand as I go.
I don’t hear him shout after us, which tells me something’s up.
“He was texting something on a burner phone last I saw him,” Serena says as we hurry up the stairs. That confirms my suspicions.
“He must be in Price’s pocket,” I say, pulling out a gun and holding it at the ready. “We’ve lost some of the element of surprise, then.”
“Not all of it,” Serena points out.
“No, not all of it,” I say with a smile as we reach the door to the roof. I stop, turn to Serena, and pull her into me to press my lips to hers briefly.
“I love you,” I whisper.
“I love you,” she says back with a smile. “Let’s handle this, together.”
I kick the door down.
My gun is out and ready, but instead of hearing the gunshots I was expecting, I hear the sound of someone blowing smoke.
Furrowing my brow, I look at the figure standing at the edge of the roof toward the rear of the building, his back to me, a glowing cigarette in his hand.
“You move fast, Bruno,” says Detective Price, not turning around to face me. He’s staring out into the woods behind the bar, and I see him slip his phone back into his pocket. “Gotta say, I wasn’t expecting my man to turn me out like this. Well done.”
“What, were you hoping your winning personality would keep him in line?” I ask as Serena steps up beside me, her fist gripping her switchblade.
“Good point,” he says with a quiet, humorless laugh, turning around to face us, “but when he’s found dead in his apartment, I’ll make sure the report says that he was a loyal friend of yours.”
“If you were calling for backup, I’d call them off,” Serena says, and Price raises his eyebrows, amused. “We’ve got something you don’t want them seeing.”
Showing my hand, I carefully remove the disk from my jacket pocket, holding it up for Price to see. A thin smile comes across his lips.
“Get a little dirt on me, did you?” he says, lighting up another cigarette. The smoke swirls around his face as he breathes in and out, cold eyes flitting between us. “Looks like I have some housecleaning to do when we leave here.”
“There’s enough info on this disk to put you away a lot longer than I would have been in prison,” I say, twirling the disk around before putting it back in my pocket. “I would guess there are a lot of boyscout-types on the force who’d like to get their hands on this.” Price is keeping his cool, but I can tell it’s a thin veil. His eyes follow the disk as I put it away, and he isn’t as calm as he was when he would talk to me in prison. We’re getting to him.
Still, he keeps a poker face that would fool most people.
“Come on, you don’t think I’d call the boys in blue to back me up at a place like this,” he says, gesturing down to the bar itself.”
“No,” I agree, “there’s a lot of things here that would be embarrassing to explain.”
“Y’know,” he says, “I’m sure you’re new to the whole ‘whistleblowing’ thing, but usually, you keep things a little more uh, subtle than this.”
“I’m here because this is personal, Price,” I say, stepping forward, my fist clenched. “This is more than just you chasing me down. You’ve made Serena’s life hell. You went after my associates. You tried to kill my uncle!” I bark, and I have to fight the urge to fire my weapon into him right then and there. “We’re past you just stroking your ego or building your spider’s web of corruption in the NYPD. This has become between you and me. Why?”
“Are you serious?” he laughs, flicking his cigarette to the ground and snuffing it out. “Listen, Bruno, you’ve been a lot more pain than you’re worth, but you’ve got guts, so I’ll level with you. Organized crime? That shit is fantastic for me. You mafia families have your factions and your blood feuds and your politics. You’re like little governments flying under the radar. And it just so happens that some of us cops realize, ‘hey, this can work out for us, if we open our minds up a little.’ So I help some Mafioso out here, they help me back. When one family loses power, I shuffle my priorities around, and at the end of the day, I get a nice paycheck. It ain’t pretty, but it works, get it? People like me are what keep the city running. The mafia keeps the streets cleaner than they would be, and I just help the right Mafioso do their jobs and stay in their place.”
He takes a few steps forward, raising a finger and gesturing between the two of us with a hardening face.
“But you two? Some upstart rebel without a cause with a chip on his shoulder and the bratty daughter of a mafia don who should have been killed off with him a long time ago? You two are a threat to all the good stuff we’ve got going on. You outlived your usefulness a long time ago. The Abruzzi family, those guys you call Cleaners? They
’re the future of the Bronx.”
He turns his eyes to me, narrowing them. “And if I’ve gotta kill some useless old man to make that point, nobody’s gonna cry, and it’ll be a lot cleaner than dragging out a bloody mob war.”
“I never asked for any of this, you fucker,” I growl, stepping forward and gripping my gun, but he just smiles.
“Ah-ah-ah, let’s not add cop-killing to your track record now.”
“I don’t have to kill you,” I say, controlling my temper, for Serena’s sake, though each word is laced with anger. “As much as I want to. I want you to disappear, Price. Back off my family, and that includes the Costas. Get a transfer somewhere quiet, and I’ll leave your reputation intact. It’s cleaner that way, like you say. Cross me, and you’ll rot in the prison cell you had set up for me,” I say with finality.
Price stares into me for a moment, then licks his lips and scratches his head. “Hate to burst your bubble, but I already decided how this was gonna go down before you even got up here.”
Before I can ask what he means, I hear the sounds of crashing glass and breaking wood from downstairs.
“Hear that?” Price says with a chipper smile. “That’ll be the bikers downstairs. My bartender friend knows how to get a fight going, and man, some of these gangs get violent.”
In the blink of an eye, Price draws a gun, and mine snaps up to him… but he aims his at Serena, and we both freeze.
“So when they find your bodies,” he explains in a cold, even tone, “you’ll just be two fugitives who were in the wrong place at the wrong time, and by the looks of things, there’ll be nobody else to handle that blackmail of yours.”
We’re frozen for a moment before I hear a creak behind me. Pierce’s eyes move to the door for half a second as the bartender emerges from the stairs with a lead pipe in hand, and I take my chance.
But I don’t shoot. I can’t risk that.
I dive for Serena, and just as my body wraps around her and pulls her to the ground, Pierce fires, and I feel my side burning.
“Kill them!” Pierce shouts, and he dives for cover behind an AC unit as I get off Serena and fire at him.
Bound to the Mafia (Bound to the Bad Boy Book 2) Page 21
