by Ws Greer
Tommy eyes me briefly before returning his gaze to the road. He wants me to work his agenda for him. He wants me to convince Dominic, the love of my life, that he should go against his gut and do what Tommy wants—what Tommy and Frankie both want. He wants me to work for him like I’m his.
I am not his to command. I do not work for Tommy Caprio, and I will never, ever, go against what Dominic wants. The fire inside me has grown to an inferno under the fuel of his words.
“You know what?” I begin, feeling hot all over. “I think I do understand, actually. I understand that Dominic shouldn’t be suspicious of his family. Take Dan for example. This guy isn’t even made yet, but there he was taking a bullet to the neck to protect Raphy and the money that was supposed to go to Victor. Then there’s Raphy, of course, who died trying to protect the money. Obviously, those two can be trusted. Well, only one of them can now. Then there’s Jimmy, who was on video working at the carwash while the hit was being carried out on Raphy and Dan. Frankie was at home, like you said, and John and Big Sal were at River City, which is also on the surveillance video from the casino floor. So, I understand completely that everybody has an alibi for that night, except you.”
Tommy’s eyes flash to me for a second, then back to the road again. His knuckles tighten around the steering wheel and his body tenses up. I struck a nerve. No going back now.
“You never told Dominic where you were when all of this went down,” I continue, making sure to never take my eyes off of Tommy. “I was right next to Dominic when he called you and asked you where you were the morning Dan and Raphy got shot, and you told him you were on your way to the hospital to go see Dan. But when we got there, you showed up after us and were arguing with the nurse about who could go into Dan’s room in ICU. You obviously hadn’t been there before that moment, otherwise you would’ve already known you weren’t going to get past the waiting area without Mrs. Stanza’s approval.”
Tommy doesn’t say anything. He just keeps driving, staring straight ahead like he can’t get to his destination fast enough. I don’t even focus on where we’re going at this point, I just know I can’t take my eyes off of him.
“I also understand that you’re obviously trying to pin all of this on Victor Fronzo,” I continue. “Somehow, you and Frankie have managed to come up with the exact same conclusion about Victor. They say great minds think alike, but I don’t think either of you has a great mind, so you wouldn’t have come to this conclusion without talking to each other about it. Like the two of you are working together on this whole thing. I don’t know why you would do it, but I know you are doing it. I know it’s the two of you.”
He still won’t speak. He glances over at me again, his forehead scrunched so tight I know it’s giving him a massive headache. Nonetheless, he remains silent, so I go in for the kill, releasing my final piece of evidence.
“I also know that Dan put up one helluva fight the night he was shot. He took a bullet to the neck, yet still managed to get out of his car and fire off a few rounds. I’d say whoever shot him in the neck thought he was dead, and was a bit surprised when he got out and started shooting again. Probably even took a bullet. I’d say, from the way you favor it, it looks like he got you in the shoulder.”
I hear him let out a pained exhale as he closes his eyes like their weight is too much for him to bear. He starts shaking his head, as though he can’t believe I’ve put it all together. I can’t believe it either, but I’m feeling more and more pissed with every passing second he sits next to me. He isn’t even denying it. He betrayed Dominic.
“I remember how upset Frankie acted when I came back to St. Louis. He didn’t like that Dominic was spending time with me, and when you got shot in the back by Abram Baskov, you started to resent Dominic too. Both of you went along when Leo named him his successor, but you had another plan for the future, didn’t you? This is about removing Dominic from power so Frankie can be the boss, right? You want Dominic out so Frankie can take his place. Or, maybe it’s you who wants to become the boss. Either way, I know you want Dominic out. Just like you said about my distrust being written all over my face, your guilt is written on yours, Tommy.”
As I finish my speech, feeling good about how I solved the puzzle, Tommy slows the car to a crawl, and then to a complete stop. He pulls up on the parking brake just as my phone chimes with a text message. I look down to see that it’s from Dominic, and my heart races as I read.
Dominic Tommy shot Dan. Killed Raphy. Don’t say anything, just get away from him. Now! Where are you?
I already knew this was true, but seeing it coming from Dominic does something to me. I’m immediately filled with worry and fear as my assumption about Tommy has turned into a reality. My thoughts are so out of control that I barely notice when Tommy gets out of the car.
I look up and am shocked to see that we’re nowhere near River City. In fact, I don’t know where the hell we are. Directly in front of us is an abandoned house, with the windows shattered. The building looks like it has been set on fire and left to rot into nothingness. Where the hell has Tommy taken me?
In full panic mode, I grab my phone and start to text Dominic back. The plan is to tell him I never made it home, that I’m at some abandoned house, but I never get to type the letters.
Before I can type my first word, the window next to me shatters. Glass goes flying all over the place, shards hit me in the face and land violently in my lap and on the floor of the Suburban. When all the commotion stops, I look outside to find Tommy’s nine millimeter pointed directly between my eyes. He looks down at my phone, and without saying a word, commands me to drop it. I know he’ll kill me if I don’t, so I oblige.
“Well, you’re just too smart for your own good, aren’t you?” he growls as he grabs the handle and opens the door from the outside. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this, but I don’t have a choice now, do I? Get the fuck out of the car.”
“Hello?”
“I’ve got a problem.”
“Why are you calling me so late, Tommy?”
“Because I’ve got a fucking problem! Did you not hear me the first time?”
“Alright, calm down, please. Geez, I thought you were more stable than this. What’s the problem this time?”
“It’s Alannah.”
“Okay, what about her?”
“She started putting things together. A lot of things. She fucking caught me up and I had to take action before it got back to Dominic.”
“Wait, what? Let me sit up, because for a second, I thought you said you had to take action in regards to Alannah, and I know that can’t be right.”
“That’s exactly what I said. She started putting pieces together, and I had to act, or else she would’ve told Dominic, and I’d be getting fucking clipped in the very near future. So, I did what I had to do.”
“What the fuck does that mean, Tommy? Oh my god, did you kill her?”
“What? Of course not. At least, not yet.”
“Okay, well then where is she?”
“She’s here with me. Tied up.”
“Are you out of your mind? That’s almost as bad as killing her! Hell, it basically is killing her, Tommy. You can’t tie up Dominic’s girlfriend and then let her go later. She’s probably not gonna give you a pass on that, you know. He’s gonna find out, and when he does, you better be out of the fucking country.”
“I didn’t have a choice, alright? It’s like a switch went off in her head and she became Rain Man. She started putting pieces together about Raphy and Dan, and everybody’s alibi that night, and I just snapped. I knew she could read my face. If I would’ve taken her home and dropped her off, Dominic would’ve been on my doorstep tonight. He wouldn’t give the contract to somebody else, either. He’d do it himself, up close and personal.”
“There’s no guarantee that doesn’t still happen, Tommy. Damn it, how could you let this get so far out of hand? It was never supposed to be this dramatic”
“Well,
what the fuck did you expect?”
“I expected you to have a better handle on all of this. When I came to you, I thought you’d be the best bet to help me carry this out, but you’re losing control. You lost your temper, and now you’re in a situation you can’t get out of, Tommy. You were never supposed to involve Alannah. This dramatically raises the stakes. If you thought killing Raphy was bad, you’ve really done it now.”
“Yeah, I know that! That doesn’t help me right now.”
“Well, I don’t know what else you want me to say.”
“You gotta help me! What am I supposed to do, sit here and wait for him to figure out where we are? You think I wanna die like this? Well, I got news for you, I have no intention of dying because of this shit. You got me into this, now help me get out of it.”
“You asshole. You royally messed this whole thing up, and now you bring it to me and ask me to get you out of it.”
“I wouldn’t be doing this if it wasn’t for you! You planted this seed in my head about getting rid of Dominic, and now look where I am. So yes, I’m bringing it to you. Your bright idea got me into this shit, and now I need you to help get me out of it, because I don’t know what the fuck to do.”
“Yes you do.”
“What?”
“You know what you’ve gotta do, Tommy. You’ve got no other options right now.”
“ . . . what? You’ve gotta be kidding.”
“Yeah, because this is the perfect time to kid around, right? Stop fooling yourself, Tommy. The only way you get out of this thing alive is to kill her.”
“What!”
“Kill her, get rid of the body, and blame her disappearance on Victor Fronzo. That’s your only option. Otherwise, you may as well kill yourself right now, because once Dominic finds out about this, nothing will stop him from killing you.”
“You’re insane. That’ll start a fucking war.”
“Maybe so, but it’s your only way out. It’s the only way you live.”
“I can’t fucking do that. I can’t kill her. It’d be like setting off a fucking atomic bomb in the Midwest. The violence between the families would be too much. Nobody would be safe, especially Dominic. It would change everything for the worse—much, much worse. I can’t do that.”
“Then kill yourself.”
“Fuck you.”
“No, fuck you! You ruined this whole thing. We could’ve both gotten what we wanted, but you went too far, you didn’t think all of it through, and now it’s blowing up in your face. It’s blowing up in both of our faces. So, I don’t give a fuck what you do. I don’t care what happens to Alannah. Either way, I’m done.”
“What? What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m done, Tommy! It’s over.”
“You can’t fucking back out. You started this mess! This whole thing was your idea!”
“It was never my idea for people to wind up dead! Nobody was supposed to die. Raphael is dead, you shot that other poor kid in the neck, or some craziness, and now here we are with Alannah. It’s too much, and I don’t want any part of it anymore.”
“Bullshit. What about your plan to get Dominic out? What about the reason this whole thing started?”
“That’s what I wanted—it still is what I want. But I understand now that you can’t get out of this life without ending up dead. Maybe I was too naïve about that before, but I get it now. He’ll be the boss until he dies, and that’s something we’ll just have to deal with.”
“Goddamn it! Why couldn’t you have come to that conclusion before all this shit got started—before you called me in the middle of the night and had me meet with you last year? Now you wanna have an epiphany? After all that’s happened, now it becomes clear?”
“You wouldn’t understand, Tommy. You could never understand.”
“Oh, bullshit. I understand plenty. This is insane. You can’t leave this all on me. You can’t do me like this after getting me in this deep.”
“You took it too far, Tommy. The fact that you have that girl tied up somewhere is proof that all of this has gotten way out of hand. You put us both at risk with this stunt. So, that’s it, I’m done.”
“No you’re not done! Don’t you dare fucking hang up on me.”
“I don’t care what you do anymore. I don’t care what happens to Alannah. I don’t care about anything at all. I’m done. You’re on your own, Tommy. I hope Dominic shows you mercy.”
“Mercy? What are you, crazy? This is La Cosa Nostra, there is no mercy! Hello? You there? Goddamn it!”
Dominic
I have nothing in my head but a series of questions and statements that run on repeat in a continuous loop. How could I just leave her with him? What was I thinking? I should’ve known better than to trust him—than to trust anybody. Alannah was right the entire time, but I didn’t listen. What the fuck was I thinking? Repeat.
I knew to only trust people who’d earned it, and I thought Tommy was one of those people. We’ve been through so much together—countless scores, countless fights with small-time guys, countless sit-downs. We have more memories together than I care to count, and I never thought for a second that he’d be the one to betray me—to betray the Family.
What vexes me most is the why. Why would Tommy turn his back on me? Why would he kill Raphy? He was a made guy, and I know Tommy didn’t go to the Commission and get approval to clip him, so why would he risk getting whacked to kill Raphy? It just doesn’t make any sense for him to do this? Seeing as how he took Victor’s money, the only reasonable explanation I can find is that he’s working with Victor. Maybe the common denominator between Victor and Tommy is that neither of them want me to be the boss. Maybe that’s enough to make a guy like Tommy be a turncoat.
I don’t know the answers to most of this stuff, but I know enough to be irate. I know enough to feel my blood boiling beneath the surface of my skin as I push the gas pedal of my Challenger into the floor like I’m trying to break through. I know enough to know that Tommy’s murder of Raphy was an unsanctioned hit, and the Commission will give me the greenlight to kill him. But there isn’t a fucking chance in hell I’m going to wait for the Commission’s approval. Killing Raphy and shooting Dan is one thing, but fucking with Alannah is another.
Every man who’s truly in love with a woman knows there’s an ultimate line that should never be crossed. You can insult me, threaten me, and mock me if you want to. While those are all extremely bad ideas, the second you do any of those things to the woman I love, the rules to the game change dramatically. You’ve committed the ultimate offense, the deadliest of sins. You can sentence yourself to death with nothing more than a whisper about her. So, the fact that I’ve texted Alannah four times, only the first of which actually went through, lets me know that Tommy has done much more than whisper. He has taken her.
The wheels on my car are still rolling a little when I pull up to the entrance of River City. The valets look stunned when they see me drive up in such a rush, but they take a step back all together when I scream at them.
“Don’t fucking touch it!” I snap as I run past them, through the lobby, and to the elevator.
I slam my fist on the button over and over again, as if breaking the plastic covering will make the elevator come down faster. Once I’m inside, I repeat the process, pounding my fist on the button until I reach the top, and the doors open to the hallway of my home. Our home.
“Alannah!” I shout as I run inside. My eyes dart around, hoping to prove my mind wrong. I know she’s not here, but I want to see her so badly that I keep looking anyway. I run through the penthouse like a madman, praying she’ll be safe inside one of the rooms, but it ends the way I knew it would. Alannah isn’t here. Tommy never brought her, and he turned her phone off, which is why my last three texts to her failed. He has her. That traitor has my Alannah.
I feel a cloud drift overhead and swallow me whole. It’s like I’m having an anxiety attack as I think about it all, and I have to sit down
on my couch to steady myself.
Tommy killed Raphy, tried to kill Dan, stole the money I owe to Victor, and now he has Alannah. What if he hurts her? What if he already killed her? What if what if what if!
He took Alannah from me!
Tommy Caprio.
Tommy motherfucking Caprio took Alannah.
All the thoughts and emotions stir inside my head and come to a boil. My heart races like I’ve been shocked by a defibrillator, and the mixed emotions combine to form one thought, one feeling, one emotion.
Rage.
My skin crawls with a heat I’ve never felt before. My breathing becomes heavy like I’m doing cardio, but I’m just sitting on the couch. I feel like I’m about to explode into a giant fireball and bring the entire casino down around me.
He took her.
Alannah.
I snap. As if I’m having some sort of out-of-body experience, I feel myself lift off the couch and run into the bedroom. Our bedroom. I couldn’t stop myself if I wanted to. Underneath the bed is the duffel bag I took with me when I went to go have the sit-down with Victor. Without hesitation or a moment to reconsider, I snatch it up, open it, and take inventory of the weapons inside: two nine millimeters, a Three-Fifty-Seven Magnum, and a shotgun, just as I left them. I close the bag and run to the elevator.
As I take the ride down, I think of how the moment is symbolic. I push my emotions deeper and deeper down, just like this elevator. I bury it all, until I feel nothing. No remorse, no regret, no sympathy, no fear. I no longer have use for any of those things.
I hear the doorbell chime from outside. It’s one of those dumb rings that sounds more like a drawn out ringtone than a doorbell. It plays some annoying song that seems to go on forever before I finally see a figure stepping towards the door through the decorative glass.
