I drifted over to the side, observing and feeling a little unsure. Part of me felt a sudden, unexpected stab of loneliness. Lara and I didn’t have kids, and her family lived out in the Eastern side of the state, but before that damned hunting trip, Sunday dinner at my dad’s place wasn’t that much different. My mom died when Sean and I were in middle school, but Dad had been a cook in the Army, and he enjoyed a good pot roast as much as anyone. Sure, he could only cook about three different meals and grill steaks or burgers, but no one ever left the table hungry, and his homemade pierogies were to die for.
“Drink up.” Tony pushed a beer into my hand and grinned. “I see Chiara finally dragged you into our dramatic family dinners. God, I hope you took Valium before you left home.”
I took a long pull from the cold beer and sighed in contentment. “I think I’ll manage.”
“Chiara tells us all about you, you know,” Tony confided. “Mama and Papa don’t know about her side business, but we do. Baby Girl doesn’t keep secrets from us.”
I chuckled at the thought that anyone got away with using that nickname for Chiara. Then again, her brothers—even Michael, the prick—seemed pretty hard-core about family. I could respect that. “I imagine she makes it sound much more interesting. Mostly, I end up covered in mud and bleeding like a stuck pig.”
Tony looked like he would have said more, but Jimmy had moved to the end of the dining room table and clinked his spoon against his wine glass. “Dinner’s served!”
Everyone scurried to their places as if the food might run out, although from the bounty of dishes on the table, I couldn’t imagine how we could ever make a dent. It looked amazing and smelled like heaven.
Chiara winked at me and settled in next to Nonno, with Blair to her right. I sat next to Blair. The meal was raucous, filled with good-natured jibes, family gossip, updates on a dizzying number of cousins whom I didn’t even try to keep track of, and some heated banter about the Steelers’ draft picks. I took it all in, shoveling food into my mouth like a starving man, because damn, this was fine fodder. Lucia and Maria Louise noticed and gave me an approving nod. If food was love, then I felt utterly embraced.
Of course, dessert was as magnificent as the meal. The Moretti bakery hadn’t built its reputation for nothing. Plate after plate of fresh-baked treats came from the kitchen, and I might have had to unbutton my pants, but I enthusiastically indulged.
Throughout it all, Chiara and Blair chatted up Nonno Carlo, asking about his weekly dominos game at the Italian Club, and how his friends at the Masons or the Elk Club fared, all the while keeping him plied with wine. Lucia looked on with an eagle eye, not missing a trick, but permitting it to happen. I didn’t want to even start to plumb the complexities of Moretti family politics, but despite her family’s ambivalence about her partner, it was clear that Chiara was the cherished baby girl of the family, a super-power she wielded with clear knowledge of its devastating effects.
Once we were all sated with food and wine, Chiara leaned forward, resting her chin on her interlaced fingers. “Nonno,” she said, “I heard a rumor that back in the day, a stregone whacked a guy out on the old Erie-Lackawanna line. Is it true?”
Carlo leaned back and slid her a sidelong look. “Well now, that’s going back a while,” he said, folding his gnarled hands in front of him. “Not that I know anything I didn’t hear secondhand, you understand—”
“Of course,” Chiara replied with a completely straight face.
“But depending on how far back you go, the only guy I ever heard might have pissed people off enough to call in a stregone would be Vinnie Three-Nuts.”
I nearly choked on my wine. “Did you say—”
Carlo nodded. “Yeah. Might have been because his last name was Trinotti. Or maybe he was just especially blessed. Who knows? But he was brash and loud, always calling attention to himself, getting into trouble.” His voice dropped to a confidential tone. “The bosses, they don’t like that, you know.”
I’d seen The Godfather and Goodfellas. I knew that wasn’t good.
“So what happened?” Chiara asked with rapt attention. No stretch of the imagination to guess she had Nonno wrapped around her little finger. Also no stretch to think perhaps the story might not be as hearsay as the old man wanted us to think.
“Vinnie kept getting in fights, roughing people up who didn’t need it, and the Don finally got tired of it. Because Vinnie, he wouldn’t listen to the warnings, and the Don didn’t like to repeat himself,” Carlo said. “But Vinnie was a hit man, so how do you hit a hit man?”
“With a witch?” I asked.
Carlo pointed thumb and forefinger at me like a gun, and for a second, those watery blue eyes had perfect clarity. I tried not to shudder. “Got it in one,” he replied, and I wondered if he guessed that I had primed Chiara to ask.
“And then what happened?” Chiara prompted, and Carlo’s attention returned to her. I felt like I’d gotten a reprieve.
“Well, it depends on who you hear tell the story,” Carlo replied. “According to what I heard, and this was back around the time it happened, Vinnie went out to do a job on one of the trains that left outta Meadville. Back then, trains were comin’ and goin’ day and night, ’cause of the War, you know? Lotsa places up here made parts for the military or tools or nylon, so the yards were always full o’ trains. So Vinnie goes to do the job, and he doesn’t come back.”
“They ever find his body?” Tony asked.
Carlo shrugged. “A few days later. The Don made sure he had a nice funeral, lotsa flowers, a nice gift to the Church in his name, and a ‘bereavement gift’ to his wife.”
“So the guy who fixed his hit sent flowers to his funeral?” I sputtered.
Carlo looked at me like I was slow. “That’s how business was done. People had class.”
Chiara kicked me under the table, and I took a mouthful of wine. “What happened to the stregone?” she asked, once again diverting attention from my inappropriate question.
“Don’t know. Don’t want to know. Guys like that, you wanna stay as far away from as you can.” He turned to address that last sentence to me. I gulped more wine.
“Why do you ask, baby girl?” Carlo said after a long, uncomfortable silence.
“They’re tearing up one of the old rail lines and making a walking trail. People got telling stories, and I heard bits and pieces. Figured you’d remember,” Chiara replied, managing to look big-eyed and innocent.
Carlo didn’t look like he believed her for one second, but he let it go. “I’ve always been a good Catholic,” he said, lifting his chin. “But in my time, I’ve seen some things that they don’t talk about in church. The stregone, they’re real. Nothing to fool with. Some stories are better forgotten.”
With that, Lucia and Maria Louise rose to get fresh coffee, and I tugged at my collar. The conversation drifted back to local gossip and sports, and before long, Chiara and Blair rose, which was my cue.
“Gotta get back home. Store opens early tomorrow,” Blair said. Chiara gave a round of hugs and kisses to her family, some of whom embraced Blair as well, while others just nodded and kept their distance. Their loss, I figured. I shook hands with the men and complimented the women on the food.
Carlo held my hand a bit more firmly and longer than necessary. “You’re the ghost hunter guy,” he said in a voice pitched low for me alone.
“That’s me.”
“The stregone who killed Vinnie was Johnny Vasili. If he’s still alive, Don Giordano will know. He’d be older than me. But still dangerous, you hear?”
I nodded.
“You didn’t find none of this out from me,” Carlo continued in a smoker’s rough whisper. “But Vinnie was a friend. Batshit crazy, but he did me a good turn now and again. He didn’t deserve what he got from that witch. Send him on, and tell him Carlo said ‘hello.’”
“I’ll do my best,” I replied, hoping I sounded less freaked out than I felt. Carlo slapped me on the shoulder w
ith a big paw that almost made me stagger.
“Good for you,” he said, and then passed by me to go light a cigar on the back stoop.
Chapter 4
What do you wear to meet with the local godfather?
Make that “alleged” godfather.
Simon Giordano ran JASG, Inc., the company named for family patriarchs Joseph, Anthony, and Saul Giordano, from an unassuming brick office building on the outskirts of Meadville. I’d seen his picture in the paper for ribbon-cuttings, charity donations, golf outings, and black tie dinners in what passed for local high society. From the photos, I figured he was in his mid-forties, so the Don who whacked Vinnie would have been his father or grandfather, not him. Still, I figured that if anyone knew more about Johnny Vasili, it would be Simon G.
Chiara, Blair, and I had talked the whole way back to their shop, where I had parked my car, and then we went into Crystal Dreams’ back room, made some espresso, and talked some more. Chiara had found out enough about the strange sigil to know that it wasn’t just used to kill Vinnie—it cursed him. She couldn’t tell how or whether that had something to do with him being a restless—and vengeful—ghost, but it made the whole thing a lot more complicated than the average salt and burn.
By the time I finally headed back to my place, we had talked through the options and decided the best approach might be the simplest. Father Leo would get Sam Roundtree to ask Simon to see me, about “something vital to the project.” Apparently, Tracks to Backpacks was one of Simon’s community causes, and Sam was a golfing buddy. Small towns—everyone knows everyone.
So here I was, tugging on my too-tight tie feeling like a chump in a blazer and khakis, screwing up my courage to go ask the (alleged) head of the local Cosa Nostra how to find a witch-assassin his grandad might have hired.
Awkward.
The reception area had big windows on one side, lots of natural light. A receptionist looked up as I entered, and when I gave my name, she told me I had been expected and led me back a corridor past closed offices to a pair of double doors at the end of the hallway. She opened one of the doors and stood aside, my cue to enter.
“Come in, Mr. Wojcik.”
To his credit, Simon pronounced my name right. I remembered what I’d read about him. Undergraduate degree from Gannon University up in Erie, MBA from Penn State. Came home to run the family business, worked his way up from small operations to bigger ones in the conglomerate of local companies that made up JASG, Inc.
If he was Mob, he was more John Gotti than Al Capone. Slim, tanned, with a haircut that probably cost more than my car payment and a suit that came from New York if not Rome, he could have walked into any big city corporation and fit right in.
“Please, sit down.”
I sat. Simon seated himself behind a massive inlaid wooden desk. I wondered if it was bullet proof, and if he had a gun in the drawer. Even I knew better than to ask.
“Sam Roundtree asked me to see you, told me you were handling a problem that might put the trails project at risk.”
I cleared my throat and tried to find my voice. “Yes, sir. There’ve been disruptions that might slow down or stop the rest of the construction, and Mr. Roundtree hired me to take care of it, because they fall into my…area of expertise.”
“Which is?”
Usually, I have no trouble running my mouth. Ask anyone. Right now, I was spitless. “I get rid of supernatural problems.” That sounded a little classier than “monster hunter,” less sensational than “ghost hunter.”
Simon stared at me in silence, tenting his fingers, considering. I only barely managed to keep from looking behind me, in case any large bodyguards with bulging, ill-fitting jackets had come in to eliminate me.
“Your reputation precedes you, Mark. I can call you Mark, right?” He had the power, and we both knew it. On the other hand, I’d killed wendigo and werewolves, and if he had sources, he knew that was true. That made this the part of the interview where we vied for dominance, like two bucks in rut scraping their antlers on trees. So I squared my shoulders and held my head high. “That’s fine.”
“If you came to me, you have a very specific question in mind. Go ahead. Ask.”
I kept my gaze level, not a challenge, but not backing down either. “Mr. Roundtree hired me because a vengeful ghost was tearing up his worksite and threatening his crew. It’s escalated since they reached the midpoint of the trail—the old Erie Lackawanna line. People have gotten hurt. I went out to lay the ghost to rest and found this.” I unfolded my drawing of the sigil and leaned forward to slide it across the desk.
Simon hid a shudder, but I saw it in his eyes. He recognized the symbol, and feared it. “I think the ghost is Vinnie Trinotti, and I think something Johnny Vasili did cursed him to stay here and now his ghost is insane—and dangerous.”
“If you’ve done your homework, you know Vinnie Trinotti was probably always insane,” Simon said quietly. “He wasn’t a nice man.”
I held up both hands in a gesture of appeasement. “I don’t care what happened or why—but I do care about laying him to rest so no one gets hurt and the project can be finished. To do that, I need to know if Johnny Vasili is still alive, and if so, where to find him.” My voice had gained conviction as I spoke. I’d fought off a fucking Nazi sniper and bagged a Japanese fish-eating monster. I wasn’t going to piss myself over a mobster in a suit—alleged or not.
“You’ve got balls, Mark. I respect that.” He leaned back in his chair and drummed his fingers on the arm. “If you find Mr. Vasili, what do you intend to do? He’s an old man in a nursing home. Staking him through the heart would be…messy.” His lips smiled, but the humor never reached his eyes.
“I’m going to offer him his freedom,” I replied.
Simon’s eyebrows went up at that. “His freedom?”
I nodded. “For a curse to be so potent after seventy-five years means that the witch who worked it sealed the deal with more than a measly spell. I’m betting that Johnny didn’t realize that somehow, he got himself tangled up in the magic, and it’s holding Vinnie here—but it also won’t let Johnny go, either.”
That seemed to mean something to Simon because his eyes narrowed like I’d spoken an unexpected truth. “And you could break that?”
“I’ll do my damnedest,” I said, and hoped that didn’t turn out to be literal. “But I need to know what Johnny did and how he did it. Poking around blind on something like this is likely to get a whole lot of people killed—including me.”
I watched Simon debate with himself and come to a decision. “I have no knowledge about any crime against Mr. Trinotti, nor do I have reason to believe Mr. Vasili is anything other than a respectable senior member of our community,” he said in the kind of voice that carries well at big event speeches. “But such rumors may weigh heavily on a man’s mind, and I would not like to see Mr. Vasili be uncomfortable in the time remaining to him.”
“Meaning?”
“Mr. Vasili is in the Serenity Acres nursing home,” Simon said. “I’m told that his health is fragile, but his mind is still sharp. He’s in his late nineties—quite old for a man in his line of work—and he may be willing to hear you out if it eases his mind.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t be too quick with your thanks,” Simon warned. “Mr. Vasili is in full command of his faculties—all of them,” he added, “though his body is failing him. If he is not amenable to your offer, I cannot be responsible for the consequences.”
Okay, then. I’d just been put on notice by an alleged Mafia Don that an elderly witch/hit man might not be ready to let go of a three-quarter-century-long vendetta, and I might find myself turned into a toad. No pressure.
“I understand. How would you prefer I contact Mr. Vasili?”
“Nikki will accompany you,” Simon said, and I looked to my right to see an extremely large man with no neck and an unmistakable bulge under one arm. “He’ll bring a letter of introduction from me. If Mr. Vasili
declines to see you, there’s nothing I can do.”
“I appreciate your time and your help.”
Simon rose, and I knew when I was being dismissed. “When should I go?”
“I’ll make the call now. They’ll be ready when you arrive.”
I knew the place. Peaceful, quiet. Expensive. Either being a hit man had great retirement benefits, or Vasili’s bills were being paid by a grateful friend.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” Simon turned away. “And Mr. Wojcik? I hope we don’t have to meet again.”
Nikki No Neck drove, and I followed in Elvira because no way in hell was I riding with a Mob enforcer. Serenity Acres was a pretty campus of modern, one-story buildings and lovely gardens that looked more like a resort hotel than a waiting room for the afterlife. Nikki led the way in, and the greeting he got from the ladies at the front desk made it clear he had been here before.
I hung back and observed, also noticing possible exit routes, just in case. Chiara had made me a curse-deflecting amulet and given me other protection charms, which I had hidden in various pockets. Still, as I followed Nikki down the corridor, I tried and failed to sense any bad mojo. Mostly, I just noticed how the place smelled like piss and baby powder.
Nikki’s shoulders practically brushed the walls on both sides. He stopped in front of a door and held up his hand for me to wait outside. A man of few words, that Nikki. He went inside and closed the door in my face. After a few minutes, he opened it again and stepped aside for me to enter.
I expected a hospital bed and oxygen equipment. Instead, I found a comfortable studio hotel room and in a chair beside the window, looking out onto the garden, and a very old man with a fancy crystal glass in his hand, probably full of top-shelf whiskey.
“So you’re the monster hunter,” Johnny Vasili said without even turning to look. “Come to hunt me?”
I stopped a few feet away from where he sat and clasped my hands in front of me. “No sir. I’m here to talk about your release.”
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