by S. W. Frank
Alfonzo didn’t have a call, he made one.
Nico came on the line. “Talk fast.”
“Yeah, why’d you call when I’m in a meeting?”
Nico didn’t skip a beat. “Get out of there. We’ve had trouble and you’re being cut-off might be part of the plan.”
Nico asked for the driver’s name and Alfonzo told him in code before saying, “Yeah…hold on a sec I forgot something.” Alfonzo turned to his Capo and spoke swiftly in Spanish asking him to text Lorenzo to bring the car to the rear and keep it running.
Alfonzo’s Capo caught the urgency in his tone and nodded. He leaned against the wall to text his son with a caution; stay cool and casual; nobody realized they had arrived together, and he suggested Lorenzo pretend to go for a smoke outdoors.
Alfonzo smiled, as he returned to Nico. “Yeah, sorry about that, I just remembered my gift for somebody. Now what were you saying…our second cousin died?”
The few guards he had discreetly began to move.
“Kid, I tried calling your driver, he isn’t answering. Shit!” Nico scowled. “Cugino…I’m making calls…just be cool...capisce?”
Alfonzo listened to his cousin, Consigliere and mentor. He slowly stood. “I need to take this call in private. I’ll be right back,” he said to the Don who sat amid the table of observant men.
The Canadian’s eyes followed Alfonzo’s ascent. They narrowed suspiciously as Alfonzo stepped toward the door, casually shoving his hand in his pocket as he talked.
The Canadian hadn’t caught on, yet.
Alfonzo’s driver was dead. Nico didn’t have to spell it out. He was on a brazen Don’s turf, and that bastard planned this hit on his son’s birthday. He should’ve known by the seclusion in the encased room, the small number of females and talk of the Israeli that this was a set-up.
Shit!
He was in Canada, and there’s no way he’d have immediate aid. This was a do or die situation, the test of his will. Alfonzo understood the severity of the dilemma, back in the ‘hood he fought gangbangers alone. The maricón were always turning on a brother. They used numbers to do it. Broken ribs and shit, Alfonzo had that, too.
He scoffed, but these weren’t small-time teens in a gang. These were adults with the means to wipe him out and dispose of his remains.
A small number of bodyguards plus a Capo de Tutti against a club full of armed Mafia.
What are the odds he’d survive?
Slim to none, but he wasn’t going out alone. That’s the sentiment in the 'hood when cornered. Alfonzo sneered. His hand slipped to his waist, unsnapped the holster attached to the soft leather belt.
Fingers coiled around an automatic, a flick of the thumb, unlocked the safety.
Do or die motherfuckers, he thought, I’m ready, are you?
Nico said, “You got this kid….click me off now…stay alert.”
Alfonzo disconnected, shoved the cell in his pocket. Grunt as he began to exit, aimed the gun concealed by the hem of his jacket and blasted the Canadian gangster in the face. The splatter woke up the assholes, who thought Alfonzo was stupid, but they were slow in reaction and that’s how Alfonzo took out the Underboss. He scalped his ass with a bullet, Taino Indian style from a descendant of the Borikén.
Holy hell broke loose inside that room as tables went up; shouts and confusion became delayed reactions. Alfonzo’s cool composure blended with his skeletal crew and they began moving swiftly down the hall. Alfonzo’s guys split in formation and formed a protective box around their leader as they traversed the corridor toward the rear exit.
Hypersensitivity saved Alfonzo’s ass. He had turned sideways when he heard the door and voices just as they reached the exit. Projectiles slammed into the guy in the rear. Bullets pierced the air and a Capo de Tutti and his men returned fire.
Thankfully, the soldier who’d fallen wore his vest. This was a requirement for Alfonzo’s guys, but sometimes a slip up happened.
The foreign attendees cleared the corridor with bullets and cautiously began to file out, during the short reprieve beneath the neonEXIT sign. The sentries scouted ahead, everyone aware there might await an ambush outside. The Capo was on their heels, leaving the minor wounded holding fast to the rear, but Alfonso pushed the injured soldati ahead through the door to back out with his gun drawn when a barrage of shots reverberated.
“Ugh!” The impact slammed Alfonzo’s spine against the metal bar, he toppled sideways as he squeezed off several rounds. His upper extremity hit the ground hard, gravel and pebbles scraped his cheek and his legs were partially wedged at the base of the door.
His Capo appeared, shooting inside as he hovered above Alfonzo until his Boss yanked his legs free and then kicked the door shut.
“Are you alright Boss?” The Capo asked as Alfonzo rolled on his good side as he sucked in the pain.
Alfonzo nodded. He had the wind knocked out of his lungs. The side of his face bled. The heavy liquid ran down his eye and he blinked to see. The SUV was gone and Lorenzo wasn’t there with the car.
“Shit!” The Capo spat, which is what Alfonzo, might have said if his chest wasn’t clamping the air out of his voice as he stood.
The roar of a vehicle signified Lorenzo’s arrival. Alfonzo gestured his guys to the car as he scanned the perimeter for any sign of his missing soldier. The driver had opted to stay with the vehicle. He’s the same guy who asked who partied on a Sunday. Had he come inside, maybe he might have lived but then who’s to say, right?
Alfonzo limped to the car and barely made it inside when the club exit became active as gun toting guys emerged.
“What are you waiting for Lorenzo, fucking drive?” Alfonzo ordered as metal penetrated the vehicle, sprinkling glass all over his suit. The sides of the car were a firework display from Alfonzo’s and the bodyguard’s hot shells.
The guns blazing in rapid succession and the tires screeching were cut from a gangster movie, except the killing was real and nobody jockeyed for lead position. They worked in unison to stay alive.
Lorenzo hit one of those speed bumps and the occupants bounced up as he sped out the club parking lot. Men suddenly appeared in their path before they reached the street. Alfonzo discharged copper straight into the Canadian’s Capo’s chest. He tugged on the trigger. He was out of bullets. But the others weren’t. They continued shooting until Lorenzo was clear of the commercial district.
Sunday night traffic leading to the expressway had thinned significantly. An hour after midnight on a Monday isn’t when traffic is heavy anywhere. People rested in mental preparation to deal with their employers.
Lorenzo handled the car like a pro.
Alfonzo reclined, listening to the Capo instructing his son to decrease his speed to avoid drawing the attention of the cops.
The blood didn’t stop running; Alfonzo blinked.
The suped-up young man’s dream vehicle slowed from 90 MPH to 80.
Wetness clung to Alfonzo’s cheek, and slid down his neck. The tips of his long black lashes kissed skin, shuttering with a fleshy curtain the handsome man’s baby blues.
Like an infant in a cradle his body sank lower in the leather. The wheel’s rotation was an adult’s mobile he couldn’t see but feel. Anybody who has had a knife shoved in skin or a bullet penetrate bone understands the sensation. It’s hard to describe the intense hyper-awareness of the brain or the cheesecloth filter on vision along with the prickle sensation of nerve endings. When a person’s been there, teetering on the cliff more times than normal, he begins to think he’s either lucky as hell or the devil’s spawn.
A combination of the two was Alfonzo’s thoughts as he stared blindly, vocal cord paralysis simply a reservation of energy. Conservation is the hopeful that seeks to slow the pecking order effect occurring within the body. Staring, and nothing spoken occurs, the injury may be life threatening or not. For Alfonzo an instant fatigue occurred, he was bleeding too much.
Lorenzo ga
ve them a wide distance from the club in less than five minutes. The airport under a moderate speed was approximately an hour away. Lorenzo at this rate would get them there in less that forty.
“Bueno, hijo,” a proud father said to the driver.
Alfonzo’s eyes flicked sideways to the man in the middle who no longer moved; a portion of his forehead was exposed. Alfonzo thought of Giuseppe, grateful his brother hadn’t come. He was taking a body home and another soldier was missing. He couldn’t bear the thought of a brother.
Crazy, how adrenalin gives a person the right amount of energy to react to a crisis. Fight or flight, hyperactivity in the brain can jump start all kinds of shit in the body. Then when the danger has passed, the body relaxes, the damage is surveyed and that’s when the enormity of the situation hits.
He’d come with five men.
Two were dead.
He’d come in good health.
Now he bled.
He’d come in good faith.
But now there was hell to pay!
“Stay up Boss…keep ‘em open.” The Capo said when he noticed Alfonzo’s face flush deep red and then an invisible straw drank human wine from his skin until pale.
Alfonzo blinked awake.
Déjà vu?
He’d seen this coming or had he been here before?
The colored lights were blurring. Alfonzo’s hands were sticky, it twitched. Blood is unlike water, unless you add in sludge. There’s a difference between losing small amounts. He’d given liters during a charity blood drive in college once. Some students complained of a light-head but Alfonzo hadn’t experienced the side effect, until today.
Alfonzo battled sleep.
They were almost to the air field when the Capo leaned over the seat and ripped open Alfonzo’s shirt. Two bullets partially penetrated the protective vest. The blood from his head and cheek were caused when he struck the ground. He slapped Alfonzo’s face as he dozed many times. “Wake up, come on, no sleeping Boss!”
Alfonzo tried to focus.
A drugged sensation occurred.
Another blink.
His eyelids nearly closed and he stretched them wide to combat the fatigue.
The co-pilot had medic training. There were supplies on board, including Lactate Ringer’s solution; he just needed to make it to the plane before hemorrhagic shock occurred.
He had seen himself in a coffin.
They say bad people outlive the good.
Is that true, he wondered?
He hoped not, because he knew a lot of good people who deserved a lengthy life.
The blood soon saturated his chest.
“Stay up…that’s right…ten minutes out…just ten minutes.”
Alfonzo fought the numbness. He sighed, counting the minutes in his head as a distraction.
He focused on the faces of his children. Selange talked to him in his hour of waning strength. “Don’t you ever leave us, promise honey,” she said.
Gravity tugged at Alfonzo. The playlist in his head began. He always thought scenes in his life went with music, making the journey a continuous remix. Upbeat tempos to hauntingly beautiful songs flipped like old records on a turntable brain until the lyrics and melody serenaded him to sleep.
Something always brings me back to you.
It never takes too long.
No matter what I say or do I'll still feel you here 'til the moment I'm gone.
You hold me without touch.
You keep me without chains.
I never wanted anything so much than to drown in your love and not feel your reign.
Set me free, leave me be. I don't want to fall another moment into your gravity…
The Capo growled when Alfonzo’s eyes closed. He ordered Lorenzo to floor it. “Hijo, we’re not taking a corpse home. Pretend that’s me in the backseat and you need to get me home alive, comprende?”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Morning arrived.
The bustling activity and change of guards told Selange.
Cramped, hungry and in a solitary cell she slid up, pressed her spine against the hard wall and prayed.
She wasn’t awakened because nobody had visited.
No lawyer.
No family.
Isolation from the world is punishment, especially for a mother who desperately wants to hold her children and hear her husband’s endearments. Her mouth did a quiver. Anita’s breakfast was sorely missed. A request for bottled water received a laugh from the guard and she drank from the taps out of a disgusting sink in the corner.
The pity party ended, it was a temporary lapse for someone who’d been through hell and returned to the glory of family.
I’m not going to crack…that’s what they’re hoping I’ll do, she told herself as she stood, walked to the sink and turned on the faucet. A brownish stream sputtered forth in the scratch steel and she gave it a minute to run clear. This is what detainees experienced when in the government’s care.
One more day…just one more before the hearing. You can do this…you can…you can…do or die…time to soldier up.
“You have a visitor!” A guard shouted.
Selange cheered.
See, somebody’s listening.
It must be the devil because who appeared at the bars was his minion Mr. Johnson.
“Good morning Selange. Are you being treated alright?” he asked.
The fatherly concern in his voice nearly made her cry. She longed for the genuine person with the same blood, but for whatever plan the Almighty held, he had to die.
“I’m good,” she answered and shook the water from her hands before sitting to glare at the duplicitous man.
“Are you hungry?”
“I’m good,” she lied. If disciplined people in prison like King and Mandela can fast for weeks for a cause, then dammit a determined mother who loved her husband and wanted to keep his ass out of jail can survive 48 hours without soft amenities. Right?
Selange sat erect; clarity, focus as if in spiritual meditation is the pose she adapted when the former friend of her dad used subversive tactics.
Mr. Johnson leaned his shoulder on the metal bars, and then peered over his shoulder with downturned lips. “I hate we’re at each other’s throats Selange. There’s a time when we were like family. Seeing you in here bruises my heart because this is not where you should be. You’re not a criminal, just a misguided woman who got lost along the way like so many girls who fall in love with the wrong man.”
“My husband is right for me.”
Mr. Johnson’s tender tone caressed the air. “I know you believe that, but look at all that’s happened. Before you met Alfonzo, he was a bad seed, always in scrapes with the law, in gangs, doing bad things. A boy doesn’t reform because he gets older unless he’s brought to answer for his sins.”
“And who does he answer to, a court of sinners or his maker?”
“Not everybody is out to harm you girl; everyone’s not bad. I’m actually trying to save you from the same fate of your mama,” his eyes were intense, “and by the grace of God, what happened to my daughter.”
Selange could feel the warm burn behind her eyeballs. Mr. Johnson was good. She held her bottom lip in her teeth, biting down the need to cry. It hurt being in the position of a deceased friend trying to stay the course and not bend to the will of others. Bend Shanda did, many times because she yearned for her father’s love and acceptance. The sadness came from understanding how hard it must have been to grow up with parents who never le
t you live your life. The Johnson’s sought to shape their daughter into what they thought they should be. They didn’t care if they killed a part of Shanda’s soul or stifled the woman to the point she discovered her strength shortly before she died.
Mr. Johnson misread her silence as softening of the spirit. He pushed on with what he considered was logical reasoning and not brainwashing. “The Feds are going to bring your husband down, whether you sit here in defiance or not. You can help by protecting yourself and your children Selange. They already have surveillance of Matteo Peglesi and Domingo Diaz along with several others on tape. Alfonzo is innocent; he and his cohorts are supplying the illegal guns and drugs that make their way to the neighborhood where people of color live. He’s helping to kill our kids and none of that stuff you’re doing is going to save them if they aren’t living long enough to get to college.”
She released her lip to speak. “You’re right about the drugs and guns, I’m sick of the killing of our youth.”
Mr. Johnson turned fully and held the bars. “I knew you had sense girl, I knew it.”
Then the man she’d seen with Mr. Johnson came into view. He’d been listening the entire time. When Mr. Johnson introduced him, Selange nodded. A federal agent; that wasn’t surprising.
The agent assumed a lot. Breaking people took experience; but sometimes what’s not taken into account is the staunch loyalty of a woman. He had a folder with pictures he shoved through the bar’s opening for Selange to look at. “Can you identify any of these people?” he asked.
Selange opened the folder. There wasn’t one picture of Alfonzo among the group. She perused the photos at leisure.
Matteo and a profile shot of someone in a yarmulke.
Matteo and an unidentified man in military style attire.
Matteo and a group of Arabs in full garb.
All grainy images; but in each photograph was Amelda’s husband.
She returned the documents to the agent. Yes, she could identify a few of the others. “Can I have some fresh water?” she asked.
“Sure!” The Agent answered. He disappeared and returned like an obedient dog to its master. “Here you go. Now tell me, did you recognize anybody besides Mr. Peglesi?”
Selange unscrewed the cap and drank half. The cool liquid descended and she sighed. “Um, I really wish I could help you. But I don’t know anyone in those photos that you don’t already know. It’s unfortunate that you’d lock an innocent person up on bogus charges just to look at a photo album.”
