Titans

by Tim Green

  Cook dialed Keel's number and let it ring twenty times on the odd chance that Keel hadn't listened to him and would pick up. No answer. Cook told himself that that was a good sign. As the day wore on and Cook didn't arrive with the cavalry, Keel was sure to get nervous and call. He hung up the phone and made himself some eggs. As he ate, he thought of how he was going to break it to Natasha that they were going to have to spend the day inside when it was so sunny out. He didn't want to tell her it had to do with work again, even though it was true. He needed to be there in case Keel called. He put his plate in the sink and, waiting for his little girl to come home, sat down on the couch with a Walter Mosely novel. He loved the mysteries about the tough, black, private detective, Easy Rawlins, and reading the book, Cook felt sure a solution to the problem of making a good home for Natasha would be possible if he could just nail Tony Rizzo. Tommy Keel's testimony would be key.

  That evening, on the Brooklyn side of the East River, the doorman from India looked up suddenly from his book as a gust of cold spring air swept through the lobby. It was dark outside and he watched Angelo Quatrini's evil smile as the man stomped through the door. The smile was on a cold face. The kind of face that belonged to a man who could hurt you. The doorman smiled.

  "You here yesterday?" Angelo asked in a dull, flat voice.

  The doorman nodded. He couldn't find his tongue to speak.

  "Anyone come here asking for apartment 7E?"

  The doorman nodded again.

  "Was he from the FBI or something?"

  The doorman hesitated. Something flickered in Angelo's eye, and he quickly nodded.

  "You tell someone else as much about me as you just did about him, and I'll come find you."

  Angelo pulled a pistol from his coat and pushed the fat silencer against the doorman's nose. He grabbed the man's hand and yanked it up toward his face. He fingered the doorman's worn silver wedding band.

  "You got a wife, huh?" Angelo said. "I could find her, too. Maybe you got some kids ..."

  Angelo's eyes flickered when he saw the terror on the doorman's face. He let the man's hand drop and made his way to the stairs.

  "Why aren't they here, Tommy?" pleaded Sonya. "Didn't he tell you that they'd be here today? Maybe we should just go."

  "Where we gonna go?"

  "I don't know," she said, touching the swollen purple flesh around her eye. Sonya wanted to understand what was going on. All she knew was fear. She had never been beaten before. She had never been raped. She was afraid both would happen again.

  "When are they coming?" she asked again.

  "I don't know. I don't know! Stop asking," said Tommy. He ran his fingers through his hair, only more slowly than the day before. Now he pulled it nervously. The two of them sat on the sofa. The blinds were drawn and there were no lights on. Only the silent Mets-Dodgers game on the television cut into the gloom. It was still light in L. A., where the game was being played. Tommy wished he was there.

  "I'll call him," Tommy said finally, picking up the phone.

  Cook knocked over half the pieces on the Monopoly board when he scrambled to answer on the first ring.

  'Tommy?" Cook asked as he picked up the phone.

  "Yeah, where the hell are you guys? You told me today, Cook. Today was the latest."

  Cook snaked the phone cord across his apartment and went into his room, closing the door on Natasha and Aunt Esther, who had returned from church and spent the afternoon in the cramped apartment playing board games.

  "Listen, Tommy, I know. I tried to call you."

  "You're the one that told me not to answer the phone, man," Keel yelled. Spittle flew angrily from his mouth and landed on the glass coffee table.

  'Tommy, listen to me," said Cook. "I know. I'm glad you didn't answer. I just didn't want to show up over there again in case someone was watching. Believe me, I've been sweating you all day. I've just been sitting here waiting for your call. I've got a small problem. It's no big thing. I just need until tomorrow to get everything worked out the right way."

  "A small fucking problem. That's just great! Why can't we just leave? All that talk about us being watched. I don't like it. If Tony's got someone watching me, I figure the best thing I can do is run. If no one's watching, then running is still the best thing. I gotta get out of here, man. I don't see any reason why we can't just go out the same way you did, and have you meet us in the back alley with a car. We don't need no team, we can just head upstate and--"

  "Listen, Tommy," Cook said, trying to sound confident. "I know you're scared, and that's OK I'd rather have you scared and cautious than relaxed and careless. But you've got to listen to me. I've got to do things by the book. I can't just take off upstate someplace with you and your girl, and Tony Rizzo on our tail. I need to arrange a safe house to keep you protected until we can get this thing ready for trial. I'm doing this for you. You have to be totally safe, not just for tonight, but for the rest of your life. The best way for me to do that is to follow procedure. You understand that, don't you? It'll only be another day. I promise."

  Keel was silent, thinking.

  "Listen," said Cook, "if I don't get all this worked out by tomorrow at noon, then I'll get a car and pick you up out back myself. I promise you. Just give me until noon."

  "I don't even know you, man," Keel whined. 'The only way I know you aren't working for Tony is 'cause you're black. But just 'cause you're not with him ... I don't know."

  "Hey, Tommy ... I hate to put it like this," Cook said, his voice firm, "but like I told you yesterday, I'm all you got. You just sit tight. I'll be here all night if you need to talk."

  Keel paused for almost a minute. Sonya was staring at him, biting her bruised lower lip. "OK, Cook. OK,"

  "Good," Cook said. "Now remember, I'm right here until seven-thirty in the morning. Then I'm going in to the office to get this all worked out, so if you need me anytime after that, you call me there. If I'm not there, then I'm on my way. Don't worry. You're probably the last thing on Tony Rizzo's mind anyway. Like I said, I'm known for being a little overly cautious."

  When Tommy hung up the phone, he felt a little better. He talked to Sonya until she felt better, too.

  "Look," Tommy said, "we'll call for a pizza and have a few beers, get some sleep and tomorrow we'll be outta here." They kissed each other lightly and Tommy called for the pizza. Then the two of them settled down on the couch to watch the rest of the game.

  When the door to the apartment burst open with a loud crack, Sonya jumped in her seat. The noise itself was enough to make her heart race. Her only thought was that the pizza came incredibly fast. She saw a large figure enter the apartment and carefully close the door he had just kicked in, as if he had done it by accident. The figure turned and she saw Angelo Quatrini's leering face. Sonya felt her stomach sink and twist. She was sick. The big man called Angelo seemed to move in slow motion. She was frozen, as in a dream.

  Tommy sprang from the couch and met the big man halfway across the living room floor. Angelo quickly spun Tommy about, then deftly kicked the back of his legs, bringing him to his knees, facing her. She remained frozen on the couch in a silent scream. Angelo had a fistful of Tommy's hair twisted in one hand and a large pistol in the other. The gun was jammed into Tommy's ear.

  "I'm gonna ask you something, bitch," Angelo said in a low, guttural voice, "and I ain't asking twice. Did some nigger cop come here to talk to you yesterday?"

  Sonya couldn't speak. She only nodded slightly. It was enough. Tommy's head exploded, spraying scarlet bits across the room with a quiet pop. She drew a breath to scream, but another bullet from Angelo's gun hit just to one side of her nose. The explosion tore through her nasal cavity and left her face a mass of pulp that whistled as her lungs emptied one final time.

  Chapter 7

  The next morning, Cook didn't know whether it was a good or bad sign that he hadn't heard from Keel during the night. He had never been in a situation like this before. There were other tim
es during his tenure with the Bureau that he'd felt helpless, but never because a superior had hamstrung him. He stepped into the shower and was dressed in twenty minutes. He took a cab to the office. Even though he knew Fellows wouldn't be there until eight, he was too impatient to take his usual walk.

  To his surprise, Fellows was in and waiting for him. Cook kept his head high as he passed Fellows's secretary and through the solid oak door into his boss's spacious and finely decorated office. He wasn't going to get uptight about a silly mistake, and even if Fellows wanted to blow off some steam about it, Cook would just take it and then move on to the business at hand. He knew something was really wrong even before Fellows spun around in his leather chair.

  "Sit down, Cook," Fellows said quietly.

  Cook sat and held a direct gaze with his boss.

  "You told me that you found a witness yesterday who could de Tony Rizzo to the Fat Man murder."

  Cook nodded and wondered if Fellows might be working up to an apology.

  "During the time of your investigation," Fellows continued in an unnaturally subdued voice, "did you identify yourself to anyone?"

  Cook thought for a moment, then said, "Yes. I showed my badge to an NYPD cop at the scene of Keel's assault, the nurse at the hospital, the doorman to Keel's building, and then of course, to Keel himself."

  Fellows leaned back in his chair and formed a steeple with his fingertips.

  "We have procedures in this office. The Bureau has procedures," he said in a calm monotone. "You have violated some of the most basic ones. You jeopardized a potential witness. That witness is now dead."

  The word hung in the room like pipe smoke. Cook blinked but kept his eye contact with Fellows. His Adam's apple bobbed. His mind whirled with a hundred possibilities, all the things he might have done differently.

  'They were found late last night by a pizza kid. The place was a mess; both of them got .357 dum-dum slugs in the head. Besides your embarrassing behavior at my club this weekend, your record before you came here speaks for itself. I'm not the type of person who likes to see a man with as much experience as you have get tossed out because of one mistake, even if it is a huge one.

  "I want you to finish up your research and begin working on the Mondolffi family, only this time, the right way. I expect from now on that if you so much as decide to sneeze, you'll notify me first. I'm saving your ass, Cook, not because I like you--what you did at my club was stupid and ignorant, and if anything like it ever happens again I won't be so forgiving. I'm saving your ass because you owe me, Cook, and I like things that way."

  Cook stepped out into the street, numb with shock. He wanted to pull his brains out of his head and smash them down on the pavement. He began to walk. He should have known better! He did know better!

  His mind jumped to Tony Rizzo. Rizzo had killed Keel and the girl. The girl was young, as his own wife had been. There was no reason for that girl to have died. It was senseless. Keel, yes. Cook didn't like it, but he could understand it. It was the girl, though, that bothered Cook most of all. His thoughts spun. He knew it would be easy. Easy for him. He knew where Rizzo lived. Even if Rizzo had six of his goons, Cook could do him. He already knew what the hunger to kill a man for revenge was like. Cook thought about that man. He could still see the white fungus that hung between his twisted teeth. He could hear the man's depraved ravings as he leveled the shotgun at his head. He could still see Naomi too--her body had been cold when they pulled open the freezer door and asked him to identify it.

  She had disappeared for three days. He had known that she was dead. Some psycho, a mental outpatient at Atlanta's Grady Hospital, where she'd been a resident, had waited for her in the back of her car. He had brutally beaten and raped her. Then, while she was still alive, with her hands and feet bound by duct tape and her mouth stuffed with her own underwear, he had tossed her off a bridge and into the Chattahoochee River.

  A friend of Cook's, a sergeant with the Atlanta police, had come to him three weeks later. He had found the man who'd killed Naomi, and he offered his whereabouts to Cook, giving him the opportunity to seek personal revenge.

  Cook hadn't done it. He remembered struggling with the idea that it was for the law to serve justice. No one man could ever supersede the law. That idea was what had led him to the Bureau in the first place. It was that idea that had gotten him out of the ghetto. But no matter how hard he clung to it, it hadn't kept him from spending countless sleepless nights wondering and praying that he had done the right thing. Because late at night, when no one else was there, a voice in the back of Cook's mind would tell him that he should have killed the man. The voice told him that if Naomi meant anything to him at all, he would have snuffed the man who'd killed her with his own hands.

  Cook struggled to control himself. He grasped for order. Order, the way things were supposed to be ... he wasn't sure he knew what that was anymore, or if he ever would again.

  In a waterfront warehouse, under the shadow of the Whitestone Bridge, Tony Rizzo closed a case of money and smiled. He was clearing two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in this transaction. It made so much sense. He controlled the docks. The customs officers came cheap. He had ready buyers and eager suppliers. The money came easier than plucking it from a tree. The Colombians were just getting into their car when a black limousine roared into the warehouse and screeched to a stop. They trained their pistols on the car.

  "No!" Rizzo shouted, holding up his hands. "It's my uncle. Just go. Just go!"

  The Colombian leader shrugged and climbed into his car. The three others followed, and their long white car with dark windows drove away slowly. When it finally disappeared from sight, Ears Vantressa and Dominic Fontane emerged from their car, followed by Tony's uncle.

  "Uncle Vinny!" said Tony with a smile.

  Vincent Mondolffi was not smiling. Mike Cometti and two other thugs crowded behind Tony, as if to hide.

  "Tony," the uncle said, ignoring the other men, "we need to talk."

  The older man slipped his arm through Tony's, and they began to walk toward the back of the warehouse. Ears and Dominic followed about twenty paces back.

  "I told you, Tony," said Vincent Mondolffi. "I told you no niggers and no Colombians, and here I find you dealing drugs with those animals."

  Tony knew better than to lie, so he kept quiet.

  "I can't let you go on like this, Tony. Last night I had to have Angelo get rid of your friend Tommy Keel and his girl."

  Tony couldn't help his look of surprise.

  'Yeah," said the uncle, nodding with approval at the younger man's shock. "I am still further ahead of you in this game of life, Tony. Your friend Keel was going to talk to the feds. You took him with you to kill the Fat Man. I had to make a mess before the feds got him out of town. I had to risk losing Angelo, had to have him walk in there and kill those kids like a common criminal. Why, Tony? Why do you do things like that, careless things? That Keel was nothing in this family. You take him to a hit that you carry out yourself, without my authority, then you rape this same man's girlfriend?"

  Vincent Mondolffi slapped the back of his nephew's head hard, causing him to stumble. Tony kept his eyes down. He said nothing. He knew if he retaliated in any way, he would be dead.

  'You act like a goddamned animal! No wonder you're selling drugs like the niggers and the chinks!"

  The older man stopped short and lifted Tony's chin. Tony met his uncle's ice-blue eyes.

  "I'm putting you on notice, Tony. This is the last time I'm going to let you slide. This is the last time blood gets in the way of my business. I'm the head of this family, and I won't have it going into the sewer. I already told you the heat is going to be on us all because of the Fat Man. People are watching! I told you that, and you haven't listened to me, Tony. That's a sign to everyone around that you don't respect me. The next time you get messed up with this kind of shit you'll be gone."

  The word hung in the air. Tony said nothing. His heart had jumped in his
chest when his uncle said "gone." He knew just what his uncle meant. Vincent Mondolffi turned abruptly and walked back to his car. His men followed him inside and the door slammed shut. The long black car pulled slowly away.

  Tony Rizzo stood by himself, cursing. He wondered if he might not be able to kill his uncle. No, the time was not right, not yet. This would set him back. He knew that to take over the family he needed power, and power was money. There was plenty of easy money in drug trafficking. He turned and made his way back toward his men, who were still pale behind their dark glasses. If there was a way to make some big money without pissing off his uncle, he was going to find it. He thought again about Camille and the Titans.

  Chapter 8

  The night was pure, the air fresh and cool. Stars and a crescent moon glowed through wispy clouds. The soft light from the sky was enough to illuminate the gently rolling shapes of the timeworn Appalachian mountains that surrounded the Logan homestead. Hunter could almost imagine what it would have been like to sit on this very same porch, in this very same rocking chair, two hundred years ago. This was the only place he'd been in his life where there wasn't the sound of traffic somewhere. He loved the quiet and peacefulness of these West Virginia hills.

  Then Henry spoke. It surprised Hunter because Henry was a man of few words, and he seldom spoke to Hunter. He was happy that Henry had come out on the porch with him to sit at all. Hunter laughed to himself, thinking about all the bullshit that people said about twins being so close.

  "I said it's late, why don't you stay the night. Why'd you laugh?" Henry said.

  "No, thanks. I wasn't laughing at that. I was just thinking about you and me," Hunter replied.

  "Not much to think about there," said Henry. "You and I are opposites--besides the way we look."

  "That's about what I was thinking," Hunter said.