“I need you to find someone,” Dante Ryan said.
“You’re hiring me?”
“Yeah. Except I’m not paying you.”
“Then you’re not hiring me.”
“Okay, then. I’m engaging you. I’m involving you. I told you you owe me, and that’s not a position you want to be in.”
“What am I supposed to do? Find someone so you can kill him?”
“Believe it or not, I’m trying to help someone here. When you have all the information, you’ll understand.” He refilled his glass and held the bottle up in my direction. I nodded and he topped me up.
Ryan lit another cigarette and blew a stream of smoke toward the window. Mr. Considerate. “In the course of my duties,” he began, “if and when I’m called upon to take someone out, it’s usually because he’s ripping Marco off or pissing on his turf or generally displeasing him in some other manner. Like that.”
Just like that.
“But Marco also takes jobs on behalf of other people and subcontracts them to me. The tougher the job, the higher the price. Deals like this, I never know who put out the contract. Marco’s the only one who knows and he doesn’t tell. In theory, it’s voluntary on my part. I mean, I work for Marco but I’m not formally in his crew. So I could say no to a job—in theory. But when Marco really wants something done, you do it. You don’t want him thinking you’re soft and you don’t want to deny him the opportunity to earn. Especially these days.”
Ryan took a manila envelope out of his jacket. He laid it on the coffee table but didn’t open it. “Few days ago, Marco hands me this package and the biggest down payment I ever seen. He’s giving me fifty grand for this job, which means he’s charging a hundred at least, ’cause Marco never takes less than half of anything.” Another drag on the cigarette, two more smoke rings floating toward the window. “I could use the money, Geller, I really could. But I don’t have the stomach for this job. All the things I done in my life, all the guys I’ve done, I can’t do this one. I swear to God I’d lose whatever bit of my soul I have left.”
He took a photo out of the envelope and slid it across the coffee table to me. There were three people on the sidewalk in front of a large Tudor house: a big bear of a man with thinning dark hair, a pretty woman with brunette curls, and a small boy who looked to be four or five. The boy was on a multicoloured plastic tricycle with a long handle at the rear. The man stood behind the bike, handle in hand, ready to push, squinting in a way that made him look worried. The woman knelt by the boy, adjusting a helmet atop his brown curls. He was looking up at her adoringly.
“What did he do to get a contract put on him?” I asked, indicating the man.
“No idea,” Dante Ryan said. “But it must have been bad because the guy who ordered the hit doesn’t just want him dead.” He pointed at the woman in the photo. “Her too,” he said. Then his finger slid over to the boy looking up at his mother with that open look of love. “And him.”
“The kid?”
“Yeah,” Ryan said. “And he’s supposed to go first. The kid, then the mother, then the guy.”
“Then the father is the real target,” I said. “What in God’s name did he do?”
“What I need you to find out,” Ryan said, “is who he did it to.”
CHAPTER 7
The first bottle was empty and we were making headway on a Cabernet from Australia’s Barossa Valley. The picture of the boy and his parents still lay in front of us on the coffee table.
The man’s name was Jay Silver, Ryan told me, a pharmacist who owned a large outlet called Med-E-Mart on Laird Street just south of Eglinton. He lived in Forest Hill, where even the most humble abodes cost at least a million dollars. The wife’s name was Laura; the boy was Lucas, aged five.
“Geller, I been in this life twenty years, which is like a hundred and forty in mob years. I got no illusions. I’ve done pretty much everything you can imagine and a few things you probably can’t. But one thing I can say is anyone I ever had to take care of, they had it coming one way or another. They brought it on themselves. I’ve done Asian gangsters, Jamaican gangsters, Italians from other crews. I’ve done bikers, plenty of bikers, big hairy motherfuckers that look like they’re one day out of the caves. I’ve done skimmers, snitches, deadbeats.” He looked at me with a wicked grin. “Witnesses.”
“Really? So if the Ensign case had gone to trial?”
“No way that piece-of-shit case was going anywhere.”
“But if it had.”
“You would never have testified, that much I can tell you. Nothing personal, of course.”
“Of course. What about women?”
“Killing them? It’s rare but not unheard of. A talkative mistress … a wife with an inheritance … a stubborn witness … I’ve never done it myself, which you can believe or not, but it happens. But on my father’s grave, not once in all my years in the business have I ever harmed a child. It’s never even come up. Sometimes you know deep down there’s collateral damage when you off a guy who has kids. You know they’re going to suffer and whatnot. But to actually target a kid,” Ryan said, staring into the dark sediment at the bottom of his glass. “To put him in the sights. What kind of animal puts a contract on a kid?”
“What kind of animal takes one?”
He was up on his feet in a flash, vaulting the coffee table between us and throwing a fast right hand at my jaw. It missed as I tipped my chair backwards, hit the floor and rolled up in a defensive stance. His sunglasses clattered to the floor as he threw a left. I slapped it aside and used his forward momentum to push him up against the wall facefirst and pin him there.
“Marco, I meant!” I said. “Not you, Ryan! Marco!”
“Take your hands off me,” he hissed.
“You going to try to hit me again?”
“I said take your hands off me or I’ll kill you fucking dead.”
I took my hands off him and stepped back quickly. I kept my hands up and stayed on the balls of my feet. If he reached for a weapon I would unload with everything I had. He didn’t. He turned and glared hotly at me. Looking at his flushed face, I could see the man who beat people, broke their bones, killed them for his living. Then the rage seemed to go out of him as quickly as it had come. He pulled down the cuffs of his jacket and walked out the balcony door. I waited a moment, then followed. The sun was down now and the southern sky over the lake was a dark shade of indigo. But not as dark as the look I’d just seen on his face.
We stood together in silence. The towers of the financial district seemed to rise straight out of the blackness of the tree-lined valley, clustered together in a haze of light. To the north, the sky was a lighter shade of blue. The few stars I could see were bright, though not as bright as the backlit logos of the banks. The banks always win out in Toronto.
“Nice move there, Geller,” he said. “I want to hit someone, I don’t usually miss.”
“You had a few drinks.”
“So did you.”
I shrugged. “What’s his name?” I asked.
“I told you. Lucas.”
“Not him. Your son.”
He didn’t look at me. “Who says I have a son?”
“The way you tried to take my head off. This thing is personal with you.”
Ryan nodded. “His name is Carlo and he’s almost the same age as Lucas. Turned four this winter. Sweet little guy. Must take after his mother.” Behind the pride sounded a note of sorrow or loss. He lit a Player’s and inhaled deeply.
“You see him much?”
Smoke drifted out of his nostrils as he stared out at the skyline. “What makes you think I don’t live with him?”
I shrugged. “Reading people is what I’m supposed to be good at.”
“Okay, Kreskin. His mother threw me out a few months ago. She’s not supposed to know precisely what I do for a living but she knows. She knows. Maybe she can see it in my eyes. Smell it on me. I can only see Carlo at the house when she’s there. And t
hat’s as much as you need to know about my fucking life.”
When he finished his smoke, we went back inside. More Aussie Cab was poured.
“So what happens if I actually find out who took out this contract?”
“I change the motherfucker’s mind. Get him to take the kid off the table.”
“So he can wind up an orphan?”
“That’s out of my hands.”
“Nothing is ever out of our hands, Ryan.”
“Spare me,” he said.
“Why should the woman die? She didn’t do anything either.”
“I never said she did, but I have to provide a level of service.”
I looked at her picture again, this slim dark-haired woman with a son who was five. I didn’t want her to die. Too many people like her were dead already.
“Aim higher,” I said.
“What I’m doing is dangerous enough already.”
“There’s an old Jewish saying,” I said.
“Oh Christ.”
“No, that’s not it. It goes, ‘Where there is no one else to be a man, be a man.’”
“What, like some gunfighter riding in to save the town? Some crazy samurai?”
“Those are my terms.”
“You’re dictating to me now?”
To move forward, sometimes, you have to appear to take a step back. “I’m asking you.”
Ryan stood, swirled the wine in his glass, then drained it in one swallow. “Look, the truth is, in my heart, I agree with you. If the real beef is with Jay Silver, if this is something he brought on himself, he should pay. But all I can promise as regards the woman is I’ll try. The main thing for me is to keep the kid out of it.”
“What if the guy won’t change his mind?”
Ryan smiled, but only just. “One time,” he said, “a guy named JoJo Santini, a bit player in Hamilton, runs a few hookers and street-level dealers, he orders a hit on a friend of Marco’s ’cause the guy’s doing JoJo’s wife. I go see JoJo, tell him this friend has Marco’s protection and he has to call it off. He says, ‘All due respect, Dante, I can’t do that, else people are gonna laugh in my face.’ I tell him, if you’re giving me all due respect, shut the fuck up and do what I say. He starts hemming and hawing and in between a hem and a haw I grab him by the hair and stick a gun in his mouth. Not just any gun. A monster stainless-steel Classic Smith with an eight-and-three-eighths barrel. You cock the hammer on that thing, you give a man religion. Long story short, what do you think happened?”
“He changed his mind.”
“And then his pants. There’s nobody’s mind I can’t change, Geller. Nobody. So find him. Soon.”
“How? If I can’t tell anyone at work, I can’t get any help. I’ll be strictly on my own.”
“Figure it out. It’s not like you were my natural first choice. Normally we got all kinds of ways to find people— investigators, cops, bondsmen—I could find a guy in witness protection faster than you can find clean underwear. But on this thing you’re my first, last and only choice. The only one I trust not to play it back to Marco.”
“You trust me?”
“I fucking well have to.”
“Why not just warn the Silvers?” I asked. “Tell them to get out of town.”
“Because far as I know, the only people who know about this job are me, Marco and the guy who ordered it. If Silver takes off, Marco will know who tipped him. Look, this is a delicate time. Marco wants to be boss when Vinnie goes. He’ll kill his own brother if he has to. I can’t be seen moving against him in any way.”
“What’s my time frame?”
“None. The client wants it done like yesterday.”
“And you come to me now?”
“I’ve never done anything like this in my life,” he snapped. “Taken business outside the walls. If Marco knew I was here he’d kill me with a big fucking grin on his face.”
He pulled a slim prepaid cellphone out of yet another jacket pocket. “You need me, push 1 on the speed dial. It’s a brand new phone, never been used. All the same, for my peace of mind, don’t mention names on the air: mine, yours, Marco’s. If he gets wind, we’re both compost.”
“Don’t worry. As much as I support the environment, I have no desire to be part of it.”
“All right. Keep me posted. And thanks.”
“Don’t thank me, Ryan. It’s the right thing to do.”
“I meant for the wine and cheese. You did a nice little thing on short notice.”
CHAPTER 8
Buffalo: the previous March
Ricky Messina was soaking his right hand in a big glass bowl filled with ice cubes. His left held a heavy glass tumbler filled with Johnnie Walker Black. He was leaning back in his leather recliner, curdled with frustration, waiting for the phone to ring. If it was a local call, it would be the sourpuss bitch downtown, telling him to expect a call from the man in Toronto. If it was the three-ring long-distance signal, it would be the man himself.
Ricky knew he was going to have to eat a certain amount of shit over what had happened and that was all right. Even if none of it had been his fault, he considered himself a professional and a solid management prospect. He accepted that with greater responsibilities came greater accountability. He’d bow and scrape enough to ensure continued employment and good health.
Everything had gone so smoothly at first. Ricky found out everything there was to find out from Kevin Masilek and was just starting to have fun when someone started ringing the bell. Ricky ignored it but the bell kept ringing. Then there was a phone call, then the front doorbell again, whoever it was not getting the message, not going away. Ricky abandoned the knife routine he’d pictured in his head and stuck Kevin straight through the eye, deep into the brain. He threaded a suppressor onto his High Standard Victor, wanting to whip open the front door and shoot the shit out of whoever had ruined his day, bullets hitting them like sharp, deadly punches. Then came a knock at the back door and Ricky almost jumped out of his coat. He said fuck it and stood by the front door with his ear pressed to the wood until he was satisfied no one was outside, opened it, looked around and slipped out. He eased the door shut and walked to his car as slowly as his adrenaline-charged core would allow. He pulled out of his parking spot quickly but quietly, doing nothing to attract the attention of other drivers. He was sure he hadn’t been seen. He drove half a block, checking his rear-view all the way, then parked in the first available space and waited for someone to run screaming out of the house. Only no one had. So he’d gone around the block and parked again where he could watch the house. Follow anyone who came out.
The pain in Ricky’s hand was radiating out of the meaty part below the pinky. The tendons of the pinky and ring finger couldn’t be seen for the bluish swelling around them. One bad punch, that’s all, after Kevin admitted how much money he’d skimmed. Kevin ducked and Ricky’s right hand slammed the back of the chair the miserable fuck was tied to. That’s when Ricky taped Kevin’s mouth and stuck him the first time, using a boning knife from Kevin’s own drawer, watching his eyes widen like some kind of scared pack animal. His mouth strained against the tape but it was past time for words. Past time for money. It was duct tape time. Knife time.
Poor Kevin was on Ricky’s dance card.
Ricky had always liked knives. He had been killing with them since he was eight or nine, starting with frogs in a creek that ran between boulders on a wooded lot in Bethany, where he had grown up, east of Buffalo and north of Attica Correctional Facility. He’d throw his penknife at big bullfrogs, try to pin them to the dirt where they sat. He killed a mouse that got caught in a trap his dad had set in the mudroom, where you always heard them scurrying around in the walls. The mouse tried to fend Ricky off with its ridiculous little paws until he cut them off.
The first time he killed a cat, he didn’t mean to. He was playing with it and it scratched him pretty badly. Okay, maybe he had been a little rough but that was no cause to rake him like that. He stuck the ca
t through the throat with a switchblade an older cousin had brought back from a trip to Mexico. Ricky loved the sound the blade made as it flicked out of the side. Later he learned that stilettos made better work tools because the blade comes straight out of the tip. Palm it, get up close to someone, and snick, there’s a blade at their throat. Their groin. Their eye.
While he respected guns for their utility in work situations, and knew how to care for and use them, he didn’t have the same feeling for them that he had for knives. Knives were quiet. They didn’t send neighbours running to the phone. They were easy to get, easy to hide, and the penalties for carrying them were mild compared to guns. Knives didn’t shatter windows or kill pedestrians if you missed. They didn’t have serial numbers, require ammo or cost a grand on the street.
And he could play with a knife. He could cut a man plenty of times before he killed him, as long as he had a working gag. How could a gun compare to that? A gun put you off at a distance. A knife brought contact and intimacy. It invited you to dance.
He killed his first man at eighteen. After all the frogs, the mice, the cats, the friendly little mutt he’d come across in the Bethany woods, he had to do a person. He had to know what it felt like. He bought a grey lightweight raincoat at a thrift store, matched it with an old cap and runners, and set out looking for a vagrant or drifter no one would miss. He walked around under an elevated section of the New York State Thruway for hours, carrying a bottle of cheap sherry in a brown paper bag, waiting for full dark, watching, scouting, noting who hung in groups and who kept to themselves. What they were drinking, how much and how fast. Who was big and who was small. Who had cuts and bruises on their faces from losing past fights. Who had them on their hands from winning.
Near midnight he found his man: a loner, about sixty, shuffling slowly along in boots that had no laces, heavy duffle bags weighing down both shoulders. The sole of the right boot flapped as he walked. Ricky stayed well back of him, swigging from the bottle every now and then, spitting most of it back down the bottle neck. He wanted to look like he was drinking but didn’t want to be drunk. Whatever happened, he wanted to remember every second.
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