by Jonas Saul
He found exactly what he needed and ran back to the waiting cab.
Chapter 13
Rosina woke with a splitting headache. She rolled off the bed and got up slowly. The bed had been comfortable, the pillow amazing, but it was the first night since she got married in Rome that she’d slept alone.
That’s enough to give any woman a headache, she thought.
She spied the bathroom door. The house was gorgeous. She remembered not being able to appreciate it as she entered through the front door earlier that morning, Alfred holding her up, as exhaustion had finally won her over.
He’d explained how the house was on a normal city street, surrounded by normal neighbors. She remembered asking him to define normal. He’d ignored her and went on to explain how there were hidden cameras everywhere. There was even one hidden in the clock on the wall.
“Where?” she had asked.
“At the bottom of every number, there’s a little black dot. On the six, that dot is a camera. We’re surrounded by them outside too. In the back, the house is on environmentally protected land. It’s a ravine. If the worst happens, and we’re under attack, we leave through the back and there’s always a car parked for us in a driveway two streets over. We have everything covered.”
“Are we going to be attacked?” Rosina asked. Then she held her hand up. “Wait. Don’t answer that. You said you have everything covered. Did you guys have my husband covered?”
Alfred hadn’t answered her. His phone had rung and he moved away to answer it. She had wandered through the house and fell asleep in the room on the top floor that had an en suite.
Inside the bathroom, she couldn’t find any Advil.
She used the toilet and went downstairs to find Alfred.
He sat in a lounge chair, staring out the front window. He got up when he heard her coming.
“Ahh, you’re up. How did you sleep?”
“Not good. I need Advil and coffee.”
“On it,” he said, and slipped past her.
“Some of my colleagues are coming by soon. They have news and they want to talk to you about stuff.”
“What kind of stuff?” she mumbled, afraid to raise her voice for fear of the throbbing in her head.
“What’s that?” Alfred asked.
She waved him off.
A minute later, the coffee machine in the kitchen sputtered along. He brought her three Advils, and after taking all three, she told Alfred she’d have a shower, and then be down for coffee.
Fifteen minutes after that, she came down the stairs, headache almost gone, ready for a couple of cups of coffee when she heard voices. Three men stood in a semi-circle around Alfred.
“Rosina, these are the men I was telling you about. Get a coffee and come join us.”
She tried to determine if they were the kind of men who come to tell you personally that your spouse had been killed.
She took her time preparing her coffee, dreading to hear the news if it was bad.
Finally, she dragged herself to the living room and took a seat, looking for any sign that this would be bad. One man sported a stupid bushy mustache. The other didn’t know how to tie his necktie. It hung too low with the knot askew. The third man seemed nervous, his leg bouncing up and down.
She decided she didn’t want to know their names. She would call them, Tie, Leg, and Stache.
“Rosina, the information we are about …”
Rosina held her hand up for him to stop. “First, is Darwin dead? That’s all I want to know. We can talk for hours if you want, but first, tell me about my husband.”
Stache looked at Leg and Tie in turn. Then he looked back at her. “No, Darwin is not dead. We have confirmation he’s alive. He talked to one of our agents about an hour ago.”
“Ohhh, what a relief,” she said as she set her coffee down on the table by her knee. She bent at the waist and leaned over, holding her stomach.
No one spoke, giving her a moment to digest the news.
When she sat up, she collected herself, adjusted her blouse and took a sip of her coffee. Everyone in the room remained quiet, respecting the moment she needed.
“How did you receive confirmation?” Rosina asked.
“He called your hotel room at the Quality Suites,” Leg answered.
She raised an eyebrow. “My room at the hotel? Why would he do that? He knew I wouldn’t be there. We were supposed to be transported in separate vehicles to this safe house.” She eyed them all and then asked. “What’s really going on?”
“Well, Mrs. Kostas, that’s what we’re here to talk to you about.”
She set here coffee down. “Go ahead,” she said. “I’m listening.”
“Rosina, have you—”
“Mrs. Kostas, please. That’s my name now.”
The men all looked at each other. Tie pulled a folder out of a briefcase beside him and turned to her.
“Mrs. Kostas, do you and your husband ever watch adult movies?”
“Excuse me? What the hell kinda question is that? How dare you?”
“Ma’am, calm down, please. We have our reasons. We will explain. Bear with us. We have to get through our questions first.”
She pulled her legs up under her and sat with her arms crossed.
Can this circus get any worse?
“Have you ever heard of a man named Frankie Gambino?”
“No. Should I have?”
Tie disregarded her question and asked another one of his. “Have you ever shopped at the,” he stopped to refer to his notes. “Adult Emporium and Toys on the corner of Dundas and Dixie in Mississauga?”
“What the hell is this? Why did you come all this way to ask if I use adult toys? Are you insane? My husband is in trouble and you’re asking how kinky we are as a couple? I’m appalled.”
“Ma’am, please take a look at this photo and tell me if you recognize anyone in it.”
Stache leaned forward and handed her an eight by ten. She took it and gasped.
The photo showed the door to what looked like an adult store. It had a red stop sign on it and the number eighteen. The door was open and a man stood there. That man was her husband, Darwin Kostas.
“What is this? My husband doesn’t shop at these kinds of places.”
She didn’t know what to think. She thought she knew him. A million questions raced through her mind. She’d been with him for years and never seen any behavior that would make her think he would shop at a place like that. She would know. Darwin didn’t even look at other women longer than anything cursory. He loved her and only her. He’d asked her to marry him. He stole her away, and her heart. Seeing him in that picture wasn’t what made her cry. It was the embarrassment of not knowing what he was doing in an adult store with four FBI men looking for answers.
Leg stood up. “I’ll get you a Kleenex.” He stepped away.
When he came back, he handed it to her and sat down. “There are other pictures.”
“Wait,” Alfred said. He turned to her. “Are you okay? Do you want to continue?”
Rosina nodded and wiped her eyes. “I’m ready.”
Stache reached into a folder and produced another eight by ten. He handed it to her.
It was the same store, but this time she recognized Vincenzo Fuccini from all the media coverage of his death and her husband’s heroic, as they had put it, timing with his Ford Mustang.
She handed the photo back. “We all know who that man is.”
Stache handed her another. Again, the same store front, but a man she didn’t recognize. This continued for six more photos, all of them men she didn’t recognize.
Stache put all the photos back in his folder and gently placed them into his briefcase.
“Is anyone going to explain to me what this is all about? I think I’ve been patient enough.”
The men looked at each other again with subtle nods.
“We feel you’ve been telling us the truth.”
“Good. I should hope so. Ho
w about a little truth from you guys?”
Tie nodded at her. “We agree. It is time we brought you in on this because we may need your help.”
“I get it. You give me something if I agree to do something for you? Is that it? You’re no better than the mafia. Do me a favor and I’ll do you a favor. Look, I’m sorry, but I just want my life back. I want my husband back.”
She started crying again. Leg offered her more Kleenex. She took them, mumbled a thank you and settled back in her chair to listen.
“That adult store has been under surveillance for some time now,” Stache started. “We suspect the Fuccini Family use some of their stores as drop points.”
“What’s a drop point?” Rosina asked.
“It’s where payoffs are made. Drugs are distributed too. In an adult store, there are never any kids and the windows are all painted up. No one from the outside can see in. The person making the drop can browse the walls of merchandise and wait until the store is empty. Then he can walk to the counter, drop the message, money, or whatever his purpose is, get paid and leave with a bag full of money. Their bags are always black. You can’t see through them. It’s perfect for what the mob do. That’s why they’re so tied up in the adult business.”
“How does this have anything to do with my husband?”
“It had been rumored for months that the four leading families in Eastern Canada were preparing a meet. Our job was to attempt to find out that location. We have men working undercover but no one knew the exact location. The families all agreed that an outside contractor would be brought in for security during this meeting.”
“I’ll ask again,” Rosina interrupted. “What does Darwin have to do with mobsters and adult stores?”
“That store was the location where the men going to the meet would get their final directions and destination. It happened hours before the meet was to take place. All the men you saw in those photos were representatives of each crime family getting the hangar’s address. You know what happened at that hangar as your husband was also there that night.”
She pulled her face back a bit. “I resent that comment. He wasn’t there as you put it. He was out driving around and saw the fire in the distance. He said it got dark too fast and he ended up taking a wrong turn.” She stopped talking. Faced with the picture she’d seen moments before, it almost felt like she was defending him.
I don’t know what to think.
“That day, we took pictures of everybody leaving that store. We ran all their faces through our system and came up with hits on the crime family pics. Darwin’s face got no hits, so his picture was filed away. When all that happened in Rome, the case of the Hangar Peace Accord, as we call it, was reopened and we started going through everything. Darwin being at that particular adult store on the exact day that directions were handed out, within an hour of the other crime family members, became suspect after knowing he turned up at the hangar.”
“So what are you saying? Darwin, my husband, the man I’ve known for going on seven years now, the man I know better than his own father, is a mobster? Are you saying he’s one of their hit men? I mean, come on …”
Control. Control. Stay in control.
“Bear with us, please. Let us get through this and we’ll make conclusions together.”
She nodded, afraid to say anything.
“When you were landing in Toronto with Greg, we received credible evidence that Darwin was paid off by the Gambino Family for the hit on Vincenzo Fuccini.”
“That’s preposterous,” she almost screamed. Control.
“This came to us from an inside source. Deep inside. It’s sound.”
“So you’re saying you believe this source? You gotta be kidding me. My husband is innocent in all this!” She was near hysterical now.
Alfred laid a hand on her arm. She jerked it away.
“Let them finish,” he said. “Hear them out. When they’re done, judge them then.”
Tie waited, adjusted his stupid tie and then said, “We do not believe the evidence after all. We feel it was compromised.”
“What? So why tell it to me the way you did?”
“We wanted you to see what we were seeing so you’d better understand what we did. You have to try to stay calm to be able to understand everything.”
“I am calm,” she snapped. “Now, tell me, what did you do?”
“We acted on the information like we normally would. We separated you two last night and told Darwin that we felt Greg was working for the Fuccinis. If your husband was, in fact, working for the Gambinos, he would have to make contact. Greg is one of the best agents we have. He has done this longer than any of us and he had Darwin’s confidence.”
“What made you act on the evidence so fast? Yet, now, you don’t think it’s credible?” She mocked their use of the word. “Look, I’m sorry, but you have to understand my side of this. I just got married five days ago. I’m supposed to be on my honeymoon. We were almost killed, more than once, by mobsters and hit men and now the FBI thinks my husband is one of them. The FBI sets us up and then he almost dies in an accident, and no one knows where he is. How do you think I’m supposed to feel?”
“We understand. We really do. But listening to us and getting through this is the way we can get working on bringing your husband home. Okay?”
She nodded, lost for words.
“We thought it was credible given the evidence. If Darwin was sent to kill Vincenzo and then go after the Fuccini Family, it isn’t odd that he would show up in Rome and start hunting them down. Again, if that was what he was hired to do, then he did a great job. Better than expected.”
“We went to Rome to get married,” she said, her voice low, her tone non-threatening. “It was in respect to my parents as they are Italian. We were going to honeymoon in Greece as Darwin’s father is Greek. It was planned as respectful.”
“Okay, but he shows up and takes out Big John. A hundred men have tried that and died. Then he walks a man into traffic and kills him. Greg tells him on the phone to stay calm, be cool. Don’t do anything until Greg gets there. We thought Darwin was calling Greg as a way to show that when he finished with the Fuccini Family, he could get his life back and still play the role of easygoing, calm Canadian boy.
“Instead, Darwin heads to the Fuccini building on Via Roma, a known mafia haven, and succeeds in entering the building, getting to the top floor, after killing even more hired professionals, only to meet the Harvester of Sorrow unarmed.”
She shuddered at the mention of the name.
“You okay?” Alfred asked.
She nodded. “I saw firsthand what evil that man was. I am so happy he is dead.”
“We are too. The only men to compare him to were the Nazi butchers. So how did Darwin do all that, with barely a scratch, if he’s just a writer from Canada? We asked ourselves that question over and over.”
“I’m his wife. I was their prisoner. You do not want to piss Darwin off. Turn out the lights, show him a knife or ask about his stepmother and you will have asked to talk to Lucifer. Trust me.”
They looked at each other. Stache turned to her, a frown twisting his mustache almost sideways. “What was that? Lights, a knife?”
“Nothing. Just go on.”
Leg stopped bouncing his leg and said, “So, since Darwin didn’t fit the profile, we looked at his past and reopened the Hangar Peace Accord file and started looking at everything again. We saw his picture at the adult store and then got a tip that he worked for the Gambino Family. See how it all came together.”
“But you don’t believe that anymore?” she asked.
They all shook their heads. “He never made contact that we could tell. Then we contacted a known family member of the Gambinos and they told us, on no uncertain terms, that they want to distance themselves from anyone like Darwin Kostas. He’s too public, too dangerous, they said.”
“My husband. How sweet,” she said.
“We found out the leak came
from the Fuccini Family. They were trying to get us to move him. We did and they attacked. That’s how the accident happened. There was another car that hit the back of that rig. In it were the two corpses of Fuccini Family members. Greg was located in the dark an hour after the accident. He’d crawled away from the burning car and he was worried other attackers could come. He’s in ICU over at St. Michael’s hospital. He woke up long enough to tell us about the car that rammed them.”
