Grinder

by Mike Knowles

  “No one's coming,” I said. “If they do, I'll just drive us away, so spill it. All of it.”

  When he said nothing I pulled the lighter again and showed it to his eye — up close.

  “All right, all right, shit. I was just thinking, but I'm done. Okay? I'm gonna tell you everything, okay? So knock it off with the lighter.”

  I sheathed the lighter. “Why so co-operative? Shouldn't you put up a fight?”

  “That's what I was thinking about. Way I see it, Luca did something on his own — without me. I'd stick with him on that if it was a job. I ain't no rat, but what he was into . . . He killed Paolo Donati's family. That's a death sentence. I'm not dying for something I had no part in.”

  “How do you know it was Perino who took the boys?”

  “I saw them the night they disappeared.”

  “With Perino?”

  “No, I saw them here. Luca gave me and the other boys the day off. That never happens. But hey, who says no to a day off? I slept in and spent the day playing soccer. At dinner, my mother tells me she lost her rosary.”

  “You live with your mother?”

  Marco looked annoyed. “Don't judge me. Just listen. She lost her rosary and she tells me she needs a new one so she can pray to the Virgin for my Nona, who's in the hospital. So we get into this big fight 'cause I tell her I'll get her one tomorrow when I go to work, but she says, ‘What if Nona dies tonight?' So I finally cave in and I go down to the store to get a rosary. I got a key and I know the security code. It's no big deal. But when I pull in, I see the parking lot is full. Luca's car is there with two others. The BMW that was there was Army and Nicky's.”

  “How do you know?”

  “They had a personalized licence plate on the car so everyone knew who owned it. No one else is riding around with donati on their bumper.”

  “Who owned the other car?” I asked.

  “I don't know. It was a big van, blue, and the bumper was rusty. I knew what those kids said about the boss online. Add that to my day off and there was no way I was going in there. I got the hell away.”

  “What about the rosary?”

  “I got a friend to loan me his mother's.”

  “You ever ask Perino about what you saw?”

  “I know what I saw. What good would asking about it be?”

  I nodded my head as I pulled the tape recorder out of the cupholder and turned it off.

  “Oh shit. You were taping me? You were taping me. I told you everything. You don't need a tape. Come on, you don't need that. I'm dead if that gets out.”

  He stared at the electronic device as though it were a black widow spider. The recorder was much deadlier than any arachnid. There was no anti-venom that could save Marco from the tape; it was a death sentence pure and simple. The rat-faced gangster watched me put the recorder in my pocket. He knew his only chance of survival hinged on what I did with the recording in my pocket.

  “Where were you going just now?” I asked.

  “I was told to go check on Bombedieri. That's where I was going.”

  I pulled the knife from behind my back and watched Marco's eyes open wide. I used the barrel of his Glock to force his head against the dash while I cut the shoelaces and put away my knife. When he sat up, I patted the pocket holding the tape recorder.

  “In about two minutes, people are going to hear what you told me. Understand?”

  He nodded.

  “If you were lying, you just did it to the wrong people. If you were telling the truth, you might have just earned yourself a promotion.”

  Marco actually smiled at me, letting me know he told the truth.

  “Get yourself to Bombedieri's and do whatever you were told to do.”

  “I can go?”

  “In a minute. Get out of the car.”

  I took the keys out of the ignition and got out while Marco stared at me with a puzzled look on his face. When his door finally opened, I closed mine and walked around to the back of the car. Marco closed his door with his foot while he rubbed his wrists. “Fucking shoelaces hurt, man,” he said as he came to meet me behind the car. He shut his mouth when he saw the gun in my left hand, away from the street, pointed at his belly.

  I threw him the keys. “Open your trunk,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “I'm going to give you your gun back. Then you're going to get moving. The gun is going in the trunk. You can get it out when you're gone.” I turned the gun around and held the barrel in my right hand.

  He nodded, accepting what I said.

  “You're really just gonna let me go?”

  “Marco, you're set to inherit this whole place. The boss needs to keep the system working. He needs someone who knows the ins and outs. You and me are done. You got a job to do now, and so do I. By tomorrow your paycheque will be much better; so will your parking spot.”

  He popped the trunk with the key fob and lifted the lid straight up with his right arm. He turned his head to me and laughed, still holding the lid. “I hate this fucking spot. I had to get this car 'cause it was one of the only ones that would fit. If that ain't bad enough, I gotta put up with the boys always asking me if my girlfriend loaned me her car for work.”

  I looked inside the trunk and was happy with what I saw. “You won't have to worry anymore, Marco.” He started to laugh until my left hand grabbed a handful of his shirt. I swung the Glock by the barrel and the butt hit Marco in the centre of forehead like a hammer. He stiffened and began to fall back like a hewn tree. My handful of shirt guided his falling body into the trunk. The open cavity sucked him in head-first.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “You won't be taking over, Marco. You're just at the start of a long night. Some people are going to want to talk to you, so you just need to sit tight.” If Marco heard me, his limp body didn't show it. I pulled his keys off the pavement and fished the wallet and cell phone he was carrying out of his coat. My pockets were full enough, so I threw the phone and wallet in the back seat. Marco didn't move while I opened and shut the door. He didn't even stir when I pulled his hands out of the trunk. I laid his wrists across the edge of the trunk twice, the second time pulling more of Marco out of the trunk so that his weight wouldn't drag his hands back into the trunk again. Once the small hands were resting on the lip of the trunk, I checked the parking lot. No one had come out since I put Marco inside his own car. No one was watching, so no one saw me slam the lid down on the small, limp wrists protruding from the trunk. No one saw me hammer the screaming gangster back into the trunk it erupted from, either.

  Marco was alive but broken in his trunk. His right wrist, still visible on top of his again unconscious body, was dented. The bone ruptured the skin in a sharp point showing signs of a compound fracture. His chest rose and fell evenly as I leaned in and used my fishing knife to cut the glowing plastic seat release cord at the back of the trunk. The shoelaces would not have held anyone in the trunk for long. Two broken wrists and no seat release would hold him there until someone decided to let him out.

  I closed the lid and moved Marco's car out of the small spot into the larger one. There was three feet of space on either side of the car. The little Mercedes would almost be able to open both of its doors all the way without touching another car. The white Escalade would not be able to boast the same feat. It would also not be able to fit into Marco's little space.

  I left the two-door in the parking lot and got behind the wheel of my car. I turned the key and backed up twenty metres to a new parking spot concealed by shadows. It was invisible from Ave Maria, but it would allow me to see the Escalade pull in from either direction.

  I waited, watching the back door of the store. I wondered when the woman behind the counter, who drove the Dodge Shadow, would leave, and if she would hear Marco alive in his trunk when she left. As the hours clicked by, it was a question that came to be all I could think about. I was debating going back to the Mercedes to help Marco sleep again, or sleep deeper, when the whole idea st
opped mattering. A white Escalade took up my entire rearview. The driver's side mirror that showed objects larger than they appeared made the huge Cadillac look like a rolling iceberg. The car drove past me over the curb aiming directly at the huge spot now fifty percent full of Mercedes. The Escalade was so large that it hid both parking spots in front of it. I couldn't see through tinted glass, but I knew who was inside the behemoth.

  The white door opened at the same time as my own. The doors closed in stereo as well. I was jogging towards the tall, thin, olive-skinned man as he shook his head and rifled through a pocket in his coat. As I closed the distance between us, I estimated Luca Perino's height at six and a half feet. He wasn't big — just tall and thin, the kind of thin that mothers everywhere tried to kill with food. His bony shoulders his tented jacket as though the hanger was still inside the fine tailored suit, and his short hair did little to conceal the jutting bones of his skull. His metabolism had probably outrun many plates of food when he was a child.

  When I was less than twenty-five feet away, I stopped running and hit the panic button on Marco's key fob. The Mercedes went haywire, and Luca Perino took his phone away from his ear. He walked around his huge SUV to the Mercedes as I clicked the panic button on and off. I could see him five feet from the car as I got closer to the lot. My approach was concealed from view by the huge car, but that wouldn't last. Perino would see me coming unless I gave him something to look at. I popped the trunk using the keys and watched Perino walk slowly towards it. I rounded the bumper of the SUV trailing in Perino's wake to see him bending at the waist to closer examine the contents of the trunk. There was a moment of realization about what was in the trunk, and then the tall man was accelerating to his full height with the phone in his hand meeting his ear at six and a half feet.

  “Don't do that,” I said, pointing Marco's Glock at the narrow chest of Luca Perino. He had a perfectly trimmed mustache and a vertical strip of hair below his lip. His face had small eyes and a small nose that made him appear childlike. His giant bony fingers, holding the phone next to his ear, ruined the facade. They looked like aquatic predators — all bone and tendon.

  “Put the phone down in the trunk.”

  Luca Perino did not move; instead he spoke. “I remember you. You used to work around here. You didn't have the beard, but the rest of you looks the same.” He pointed at me with a sinewy finger. “You look like shit. Little Marco do all that to you?”

  I felt my back repaying me for the jog. I extended the gun towards Luca's centre using a hand on the SUV to hold me up. “Put the phone down in the trunk.”

  Luca held his ground, and his phone. “A lot has changed in the last few years. I've changed. I'm not some nobody thug anymore. I run this neighbourhood for a big name. Maybe you didn't know that. Maybe you should reconsider what you are doing.”

  He looked confident in front of my gun, towering over the body in the trunk.

  “Say the name,” I said.

  “Who?”

  “The big name. Say it.”

  Luca looked a little unsure.

  “Say it,” I said.

  Luca didn't say a word.

  “You don't know me,” I said. “The fact that you saw me around doesn't mean anything. Things haven't changed that much from where I stand. The city is still run by one man, and I still have to do what he says. Just like it was before, I'm chained to the old man. He's still the same, and I'm back to being what I was. You, you're new but you're not different. I met people like you before. You're taller, but you're the same.”

  “Tell me what I am, tough guy.”

  “You're a big shot running your own turf. You've been doing it a little while now and you're starting to believe the hype. You think you're a big-time player and you're being held back by people with less vision than you. So you, like most before you, did something stupid because you thought it would work out. But it didn't. Just like before, he sent me to find someone like you, and here we are.”

  “You are really fucking far gone. I have no idea what you are talking about. None.”

  “Say his name,” I said, and I took my hand off the bumper. I stepped towards the tall man towering over the trunk like a scarecrow. His bony hands still clutched his cell phone, but his fingers were whiter.

  “Donati,” he said.

  “Now tell me what you think that old man is going to say when he finds out you took his nephews. Do you think all of those changes you went through will save you? Or will it be just like old times?”

  Luca Perino didn't get a chance to answer. A vehicle coming towards the parking lot interrupted us. Headlights shone through the dim evening murk just before the sound of music over a harsh engine caught up with them.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “Phone in the trunk now,” I said as I covered the rest of the space between Luca Perino and me. His huge hands groped for the Glock as it got closer, but they retracted when my steel toe bit into his long shin bone.

  The gun was in his ear as I pulled the cell phone free from his tight grip. I threw the phone into the trunk and shut the lid as music grew louder over the roar of the approaching engine. Through the tinted panes of the Escalade, still diagonal in the lot behind the parking spaces, I could make out a pair of headlights. The car stopped, and doors opened and slammed.

  The engine stayed on and music poured out of the vehicle. I saw a break in the light streaming through the dark car glass — someone had walked in front of the headlights. I grabbed Luca by the belt, pushing the gun harder into his ear. I dragged him back between the Mercedes and the Dodge Shadow. When my back touched the brick of the building, I used my foot on the back of Luca's knee to put him quietly down on the pavement.

  From in between the cars, I could see two bodies at the back door of Ave Maria. In the dim light, I could see that one of the men was tall like Luca, but this one was more solid. Beside him was a smaller figure in a hat that was turned sideways on his head. I could tell without getting any closer that it was Mickey and Ralphy. The two at the door probably meant that Gonzo was the one keeping the music on in the car. He wouldn't be much good for walking in the shape I left his foot in. His presence in the car and the headlights illuminating the lot kept us pinned down.

  The car still belted out music while Mickey and Ralphy banged on the back door. They didn't pound on it with any urgency. Ralphy hit the door rhythmically using both hands and the toe of his shoe. Mickey nodded his head with the beat and then murmured something to Ralphy. He started the beat again with greater intensity, and Mickey bopped his head along with the faster modified drumbeat. The punks hit the door with familiarity — it wasn't the knock of a first-timer. Something was off, those doped-up leg breakers should have been scared shitless to hit a mob door like that, but the two of them showed no hesitation or second thoughts.

  The door never opened. I figured the woman inside, behind the counter, knew to stay away from the back door and the type of customers who would use it. Her job was the front door of the front, and judging by the closed back door, she stuck to it.

  “Why are Julian's guys here at your door?” I said in Luca's ear. He didn't answer, he just shook his head back and forth letting me know he wasn't going to say a word. It wasn't much of a head shake. The gun in his ear made part of the motion impossible.

  “Why are they here?”

  He just shook his head harder. I didn't need him to answer. Julian's guys were here because they were after me. They were here just like they were at Bombedieri's. But something nagged at me. At Bombedieri's they were waiting outside. Here, they were at the door, knocking to get in. Who would let those two into a back room that served as a criminal front? Mickey and Ralphy were street level; there was no way they should be high enough on the food chain to get into a neighbourhood boss's backroom office. They would be met on the street by someone under the boss to keep everything separate.

  Whatever their reason for being at the door, the whole situation was turning to shit around me. Jul
ian was pushing to kill me and he seemed to know everywhere I would be before I did. Julian was two for two in interference, and I couldn't keep surviving our encounters if my hands were tied. I had the info Paolo asked for. I had Marco on tape explaining that Luca was behind what happened to Army and Nicky. It was half of what Paolo wanted; the other half was deniability. Paolo didn't want anyone to know that he was looking into his own people. He especially didn't want anyone to know he was using me to do it. To keep Paolo in the shadows, and get me out of the line of fire, I had to make it out of the parking lot alive.

  With that thought, any instinct to hold off, to try to keep Luca Perino breathing, went out the window. My hands were free of red tape — I was disconnected again, and it felt good. Luca couldn't see me grin behind his back. My face didn't change at all when I pulled the Glock from his ear and buried it in his back — right behind his heart. I pulled the trigger and I was moving before his body hit the pavement.

  The music from the car on the other side of the Escalade obscured the shot, but it wasn't loud enough. The shot was sure to bring Mickey and Ralphy over to investigate.

  I flattened myself on the pavement and slid under Luca's Escalade. The darkness under the SUV was total, and my shadow disappeared once I was underneath. I held the Glock in my right hand and the Mercedes keys in my left.

  I watched from my stomach as two sets of feet walked towards the Escalade. No feet emerged from the vehicle on the street. The music didn't slow down or quiet — it just pumped out a loud, constant drone. It probably made the gunshot non-existent inside the vehicle.

  I opened the trunk with the fob when the two sets of shoes got within feet of the Mercedes. I took deep breaths and visualized what I had to do while I waited for their discovery.

  Ralphy saw it first. “Holy dhit, Mick! Deck it out, dere's a dody in the dunk. Dhit, man, dere's one over dere too. It's ducking Luca P., man.”

  As soon as I heard the recognition, I hit the panic button. The feet beside the SUV jumped and moved around in circles as Mickey and Ralphy looked in every direction. I slid out on the other side of the Escalade and ran at the headlights in front of me. The Glock in my hand fired three times, in a quick burst, at the windshield. In half a second, I put a bullet in the centre of the driver's, middle, and passenger's side of what I finally saw as not a car, but a large blue van.