Fatal Odds

by John F. Dobbyn

  “The hell. That doesn’t prove I was in on anything.”

  “I don’t want to prove it, Bobby. You and I both know what you did. That’s for you to live with. I just need some information between you and me.”

  We kept up the pace, but he went silent. “I think I know why you did it. I can imagine the threats from the North End. I’ve got something to show you.”

  We walked around the end of the empty stalls. When he saw the two goons on the ground he went snow white. I had all I could do to drag him in front of them. They were still clutching a leg. The curses and grunts were down to moans.

  I rapped each of them on the good leg. They looked up. It was clear that they recognized Bobby as he stood over them in my grip.

  “One last question, boys. Is this one of the jockeys you threatened to get them to fix that race?”

  Their silence meant that I had lost some of the previous momentum. I let go of Bobby and took one of the guns out of my waistband. I was beginning to feel like Wyatt Earp with the unaccustomed leverage of a gun in my hand. I took aim at the good leg of the one who had spoken before. Bobby’s eyes were practically coming out of his head. Even without my grip, he was frozen to the spot.

  “It’s all the same to me, boys, but I’d think you’d want to have one good leg.”

  Nothing. I pressed the gun into the flesh of the good leg of my previous conversant. I began to squeeze. Again, he had no idea of how close my pressure on the trigger was to firing—and neither did I. We were probably both praying.

  The goon broke again before either of us suffered a lifelong wound. “Yeah. That’s him.”

  I pulled back the gun for the sake of both of us. “Good. Then we’re ready for the final question. Let’s pretend you’re both under oath, and you are. Because if I ever find out you lied, we’ll be back in this position. Am I clear?”

  The speaking man on the ground nodded. I looked at Bobby. “I know why you did it, Bobby. I have no interest in causing you more trouble. I just need a straight answer.”

  I looked first at the man on the ground. “Was Victor Mendosa in on the fix?”

  He’d gone this far. There was no need to lie now. He just looked blank.

  “I’ll have an answer. Now.”

  He just shook his head. I thought I had finally made first base until he followed it with “I don’t know.”

  I brought the gun into position again. “One more time.”

  “I swear it. I don’t know. Mr. Caruso had other men on it. I swear I don’t know. Just not by me.”

  I looked over at Bobby and almost willed an answer. He looked totally spent, but he seemed to be thinking.

  “Tell me one way or the other. I don’t care which. I just need the truth.”

  He was almost in tears. I could feel the weight he was carrying because of Roberto’s death.

  “Say it, Bobby.”

  “I can’t.”

  “These two will not hurt you. Or your family.”

  “I mean I can’t. I really don’t know. I only know what they made me do. I don’t know about Mendosa.”

  That was a brick wall. I felt like I had run a marathon, only to wind up right back at the starting line—except at the starting line, I didn’t have Paulie Caruso at my throat.

  NINE

  THE EMOTIONAL HEAT rose to a boil as I ran back to my Corvette. I could sense the growing specter of never knowing for the rest of my life when a bullet from one of Paulie Caruso’s thugs would close the curtain forever. My more rational sense of fear was screaming “flight, not fight.”

  I took every back road toward Boston that would let me keep the gas pedal close to the max without police interference. I even cruised through the tunnel to the North End at close to the same speed. I only knew that I was trying to outrace the cooling of the impulse to leap into the snake pit. Without that propelling impulse, I’d be certain to wimp into a protective cocoon.

  It was nine thirty a.m. when I slant-parked in half a space on Prince Street in the North End and double-timed the walk to D’Angelo’s Trattoria. I was still moving at ramming speed when I went through the door. The only human life inside was a bartender cleaning glasses to the right, and two trim but sizable members of the palace guard who bolted into a defensive line position when it appeared that I was on a direct course to what looked like the office door in the back of the restaurant.

  One grabbed me by the arms and spun me around while the other did a rapid frisking that came to an abrupt halt when he reached the two guns still tucked into my belt. At that point the frisker made a battlefield decision and turned one of the guns on me. I froze the situation with just two words.

  “Paulie Caruso.”

  Only I didn’t say them. I bellowed them at a volume that made both of them jump. I was still hearing echoes when the office door flew open.

  “What the hell’s goin’ on out here?”

  The words came out of the five foot two, balding image of a cannonball with limbs in the doorway. The gun in the hand of the frisker was touching the side of my neck.

  “I’ll take care of him, Mr. Caruso.”

  “Wait a minute. Frisk him.”

  “I did, boss.” He held up the two guns as evidence.

  “Do it again.”

  He did. No new discoveries.

  The cannonball walked slowly to within a few feet while the frisker kept the gun at my neck.

  “You got a death wish or something? Who the hell are you?”

  Under any other circumstances, I’d probably be fluctuating between praying and pleading. But not today.

  “I’m someone with a message that could do us both a hell of a lot of good.”

  He looked at me like some unknown species. “I don’t hear nothin’ from some guy I don’t know his name. Like I said. Who the hell are you?”

  I knew the next two words could buy me time or a bullet in the neck. Either way, the chips were irretrievably down. “Michael Knight. I’ve got a proposition for you, Mr. Caruso.”

  A grin started on the jowled face and just grew as he took a slow reconnaissance lap around me. When he completed the circle, he just looked up at me eye to eye.

  “Would ya look at this, boys? This guy in his nifty dark-blue suit. He walks into my place. He’s got two popguns. He’s gonna make me a proposition.”

  That brought grins from the two-man peanut gallery. I remembered Tom Burns’ description of Caruso as a homicidal lunatic. On the other hand, I was still breathing. Rapidly, but breathing.

  “Bring this guy in the office. Put him in a chair.”

  They did. Caruso stood in front of me, which gave him the advantage of looking down. He crossed his arms with all the swagger of someone with two goons to keep the dark-blue suit in submission.

  “So what’ve you got to say? This better be good.”

  I went to put my right hand in my pocket. Caruso jumped two feet back. The goon on my right brought the gun down in a chop to the soft part of my shoulder. The pain generated stars in my vision, but it was no time to wimp out. I held my right hand open and moved slowly again toward my pocket. This time I managed to pull something out of my pocket. I held it out to Caruso.

  He squinted down at the driver’s licenses I’d taken from the two he’d sent to the track to terminate my existence. The grin was gone in an instant of recognition.

  “What the hell is this?”

  The goon who had frisked me looked at the licenses over my shoulder. “Hey, boss, this is Gino’s gun he had. I know the crack in the handle.”

  One look from Caruso silenced the goon, and his eyes were back on me. It was showtime in spades.

  “I’m afraid the boys you sent won’t be coming to work tomorrow, Mr. Caruso. They’ll be in need of some sick time.”

  He just looked at me for five seconds as if he’d discovered a new life form. “You walk in here and tell me this? Why do I let you breathe for one more second?”

  I held out my open left hand like a magician mak
ing a show to the audience. I slowly moved it into my left suit coat pocket and pulled out a tiny device without which I would not dream of leaving home. I put it on the wooden arm of the chair and touched one of the micro switches. A voice came out of the recording device that was louder than its size would suggest. I replayed my conversation at the stable that morning with the talkative thug who had named Caruso as the one behind the fixed race in which Roberto died.

  I could see tiny beads of perspiration on the bald pate in front of me. It boosted my draining confidence for an instant. In a flash of the temper I’d expected, Caruso’s short arm shot out. He brought a chubby fist down like a hammer on the device. The playback was instantly squashed. The fat face resumed the grin and came within a foot of mine.

  “You got any other cards you want to play before I . . .”

  I was my turn to grin—more of a smile—while I controlled my breathing. “Can you imagine on your luckiest day, Mr. Caruso, that I wouldn’t have made copies? And had witnesses to authenticate it? And made arrangements to get it to the federal and state prosecutors if I leave here with even a crease in this blue suit you seem to admire.”

  I let it sink in during the almost tangible silence that followed. I gave it five seconds, while I tried to forget that no such copies actually existed.

  “I told you I had a proposition that could help us both, Mr. Caruso. Shall we go on playing King of the Hill? Or do we talk business?”

  He turned and walked back to sit behind the desk. I knew his little mind was racing at warp speed to adjust to a situation he’d probably never experienced. He had an unarmed man in his den, with two goons and two guns that could end the conversation as easily as squashing a mosquito. And still he sensed that he was not in control. It threw him, and he could not show it in front of his goons.

  “So what’s this proposition? I’m just listenin’ here.”

  I sat back in the chair like one of two businessmen dealing on equal terms. “Here’s the deal. On my side, I have a recorded statement by your employee that could bring a charge of felony murder against you if it reached one of our eager prosecutors. And I can assure you that it will if you choose to act in an ungentlemanly manner.”

  A good place for a dramatic pause. I saw no need to add that the recording would be inadmissible in any prosecution under the hearsay rule, best evidence rule, right to confront witnesses rule, and probably a dozen more. His silence suggested that that legal nicety had escaped his upbringing. The ground was prepared for point two.

  “That said, here’s the good news. Please take this to heart. I haven’t the faintest interest in your business, your organization, your hobbies, or anything else that seems to keep you on the front page of the Globe. Absolutely none. When I walk out of this room—and that will happen—you have absolutely nothing to fear from me. Do you understand what I’m saying here?”

  He had beady little eyes, and they were in full squint. For a man whose idea of bargaining was “My way or a bullet in a vital organ,” I was truly a horse of a different hue. On the other hand, I was well aware that the toothless bluff of the recording was all that had him off-balance enough to listen, and its shelf life was uncertain at best.

  “Get to it. What do ya want? I’m just askin’.”

  “I want nothing. I want you to know that I am no threat to you. I want you out of my life. No more goons with guns. No threats. Nothing. And the price I pay is that I never use that recording against you in any way. I walk through that door, and we’re out of each other’s lives. Permanently. That’s it.”

  “That’s why you came? That’s why you march in here? I give you my word and you give me all the copies of that thing?”

  “I intend to trust your word as coming from a man of honor. We do this like gentlemen. We shake hands on the promise to do each other no harm. Ask around. You’ll never get a better deal than my word. I’ll put the same trust in yours.”

  I stood. I held out my hand while he grasped for a decision. I was drowning in the realization that I was playing a death scene in the theatre of the absurd. I was exchanging words of honor with a lifetime thug who never made a decision that didn’t flow from the power of a pointed gun. The word “honor” was as alien to his entire life as a unicorn.

  The seconds ticked . . . five . . . ten. What the hell was he waiting for?

  Then it crept into my skull. That was it. No one in his entire life had ever dealt with him as a man of honor. The words “holy crap” were clearly forming in my mind. I looked at him standing there, actually looking maybe an inch or two taller than when we came into the room. He seemed to be growing into the idea, particularly in front of his goons.

  “And you turn over all copies of this thing.”

  “First I want your word. Then I give you all I’ve got. And the promise to stay out of your life. That’s it.”

  I could see him take in the expressions, such as they were, on the faces of his two goons. I think he was reading, at least in his mind, a sort of respect that didn’t come out of the barrel of a gun. It was undoubtedly the first time, and it was a kind of baptism.

  He reached out and took my hand, and the pact was made. I still can’t explain why I felt a ton and a half lift from my shoulders. But I did.

  “Now what about them copies?”

  I was back in the soup. This could unravel the whole deal, but you can’t give what you don’t have.

  “There are no copies, Mr. Caruso. I never had time to make any. I came here right from the track.”

  He looked me in the eye with an expression I couldn’t read at that moment. Then a grin. He looked at the goons when he spoke.

  “Look at this here. This is a piece of work, this guy.” He turned to me. “You know what, Knight? I believe you. Boys, escort Mr. Knight to the door, like a gentleman.”

  It was on shaky legs that I counted every step to the door of the office. Just before I left the room, I heard from behind, “Needless to say, if I ever hear . . .”

  “You never will, Mr. Caruso. You have my word on it. And I have yours.”

  “Yeah.”

  * * *

  I was driving through the city streets of Boston to my office on Franklin Street. For the first time in recent memory, I had no need to check for patrol cars. I was actually within the speed limit. I never even challenged other cars entering intersections, which tended to confuse the other Boston drivers.

  I had just parked when my cell phone came to life. It was the call I’d have been expecting if the morning had not held other diversions.

  “Michael, this is Ramon Garcia.”

  The name called to mind the other harrowing interview I’d experienced lately, this one the previous evening in the housing project center of the Puerto Rican version of organized crime.

  “Mr. Garcia, thank you for getting back to me. You were checking on where I could locate Victor Mendosa. Any word?”

  “I think what we have to say to each other should be done in person. Do you suppose you could meet me at a restaurant in Roslindale? I believe you know El Rey de Lechón.”

  The mere utterance of those words flooded my salivating mouth with the taste of the lechón—the suckling pig. I forced my mind back on the business at hand.

  “I do.”

  “Shall we say around midnight this evening?”

  “Fine.”

  “And, Mr. Knight, just a precaution. Could you park up the block on Cummins Highway and walk? You might come in by the kitchen entrance in the rear. The chef, Benito, will bid you welcome.”

  Why not? It seemed that every entrance through every door I’d made in recent memory had been written by Lee Child for Jack Reacher. I swore an oath to myself that when this case was finally put to rest, I would head up a new “wills and trusts” division of our firm. And I’d enter every building for the rest of my life by the front door, unescorted.

  TEN

  THE LIST OF things to do before sneaking in the back door of the El Rey de Lechón Restau
rant at midnight to meet with Ramon Garcia was beginning to multiply. The purpose of most of them hinged on my eventually finding our elusive client. Part of the tenuousness of every possible move lay in the fact that I seemed to be playing three separate chess matches with three apparently unconnected opponents—the Italian mafia, the Puerto Rican Nyetas, and possibly their deadly enemies, the insectos.

  For the moment, I let myself revel in the hope that I was at least off of Caruso’s hit list. During the meeting with Caruso, the thought had occurred of asking him the burning question—was Victor in on the fixed race? Thirty seconds into the conversation, I concluded that it would not be worth confusing the issue. Caruso would likely not have the foggiest idea. The fixing of that race was a complex masterpiece. He probably ordered it. But the complexity of planning and pulling it off was as far above his mentality as isolating a genome. That plan required a master of the fine art of race fixing. I had one in mind, but that was for another day.

  I was back at the office at 77 Franklin Street a bit before noon. My secretary and right hand, Julie, rose from her chair with arms raised.

  “Can this be? A personal appearance in his very own office by Michael Knight. Heaven is truly smiling on us.”

  I must mention that I suffer Julie’s dramatics with unflustered aplomb. Her only serious flaw is that she is bright, young, and beautiful. I live in constant dread that some knight-errant is going to wise up and sweep her into the arms of matrimony—and out of my professional life. On that day, I’ll probably take up plumbing or landscaping. When one of these all-consuming cases bleeds every speck of attention and energy out of my day, Julie holds the rest of my practice together like a mother hen.

  “Good to see you too, Julie. Any important messages? And by that I mean earthshaking, titanic. Nothing less.”

  “Oh, I don’t know, Michael. If you can find the phone on your desk under the message slips, you might just answer several hundred at random. And keep this in mind. Every one you answer is one less client or lawyer who will not be saying the most distressing things to your sensitive assistant.”