The Devil Will Come

by Justin Gustainis

  Burke shook his head. “I’m afraid that’s not possible, Mrs. Latona. We’re on official business, and it’s pretty important. I think you’ll agree about the importance once I explain what brought us here, but if we could do it inside….”

  Her frown deepened for an instant, then gave way to a resigned expression as she said, “Well, if we have to, we have to. Come on in, and let’s get it over with.”

  Burke and O’Hare followed the woman up a short flight of stairs into the kitchen. She gestured at a dinette table that was surrounded by four chairs with armrests. “We’ll talk here, if you don’t mind. The living room is a complete mess, since I wasn’t expecting company this afternoon.”

  The men sat down but the woman remained standing. Putting her large handbag carefully on the table, she asked, “Can I get you guys something to drink on a warm day like this?”

  O’Hare just shook his head, but Burke said, “No, thank you, ma’am. We’re fine.”

  “Well, if this is going to take a while, I want to fortify myself with something cool,” she said. Opening the refrigerator door, she peered inside for a moment before bringing out a quart-size carton of orange juice. From a dish rack near the sink she plucked a short, broad glass. She poured juice and carried the glass over to the table where she sat down.

  Watching her move around the kitchen, Burke was struck by the contrast between what he was expecting and the woman in the flesh. True, no one had given him a photo or description of Angela Latona, but he’d seen plenty of Mafia wives over the years. They tended to run to a type that Burke had privately labeled as dark, dumpy, and dumb. Once they’d passed thirty and given birth to three or four bambinos, the weight really started to build up — along with the growth of dark hair along the upper lip.

  The woman before him, however, was fair of skin, and her hair was light brown verging on blonde — although Burke knew that these days a woman’s hair is whatever color she wants it to be. Although she looked to be in her mid-thirties, Angela Latona had kept her figure trim and well-toned. The hazel eyes had the spark of intelligence in them, and she spoke as if her education hadn’t stopped with high school. This, too, was atypical, since Mafia guys tended to like the expression barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen when it came to their wives. They had little interest in a woman with a mind of her own.

  Maybe I better stop thinking in stereotypes, Burke thought, before it gets me into trouble.

  Aloud, he said, “Mrs. Latona, have you had any contact with your husband recently?”

  She frowned and shook her head. “Not directly. I haven’t spoken to Carlo in almost a year, since after I moved out. But every couple of months, he sends Oreste Castellino, one of his goombahs, to visit me. Orie keeps trying to show me the error of my wicked ways. He goes on about how Carlo is a changed man these days, no more hitting, no more fooling around with the bimbos. He tells me I should come home and see for myself.” The frown was replaced by a tight smile. “He hasn’t been too convincing, so far.”

  “He won’t be coming to see you again,” Burke said. “We believe that your husband’s hopes for a reconciliation have undergone some revision lately.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “He means that Carlo Latona has decided to have you whacked,” O’Hare said.

  She stared at him, her face rigid with shock, then turned to Burke. “Is this for real? Are you serious?”

  Burke nodded slowly. “Yes, ma’am, I’m afraid it is true. The guys in the Organized Crime unit who keep tabs on your husband’s branch of the Terrana family tell us that the contract has already gone out.”

  “My God,” the woman said softly.

  “I’m afraid so,” Burke said. “For some reason, Carlo’s not using any of his own people. Word is, he went outside the family to an independent contractor known as Dennis. This is somebody new to the business, and we don’t have much information about him yet, even his last name. The intelligence agency rumor mill says that Dennis used to do a lot of government work, but our friends at the CIA say they never heard of him. Of course, they lie a lot— it’s part of their job description.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” O’Hare said. If Burke wanted to play “good cop, bad cop” he was happy to play the mean guy of the pair. “If Carlo Latona hired him, he’ll be good. Something like this, it’s a real Hallmark moment, you know? You gotta figure he cares enough to send the very best.”

  The woman looked at O’Hare with distaste for a second, then turned back to Burke. “But why would Carlo want to kill me? Over the separation? I don’t believe it— he still hopes that I’ll come back to him!”

  “Well, he used to,” Burke said. “But that was before he found out that a Suffolk County grand jury is expected to indict him next month for the murder of Frank Brogna. You knew Frank, didn’t you, Mrs. Latona?”

  “They used to call him ‘Frankie the Foot,’ on account of all the money he spent on shoes,” O’Hare said. “Kidskin, ostrich skin, maybe even rhino hide, for all I know. If it was expensive and you could make a shoe out of it, old Frankie would buy it.”

  “You did know Frank Brogna, didn’t you?” Burke said.

  “Well, I’m not sure,” she said impassively. “Carlo has so many ‘business associates, I’m sure I never learned the names of half of them.”

  “Nobody’s asking you to go on the record, Mrs. Latona,” Burke said patiently. “You’re not under oath, and nobody’s wearing a wire. We’re just making conversation here. But the Bureau’s OCU has got video evidence that Frank Brogna visited your house at least twice a week, every week for almost three years. So let’s cut the crap, all right?”

  The woman said nothing.

  “It only makes sense that Frankie should be over at your place a lot,” O’Hare said. “After all, he was responsible for washing most of the cash that came in through your husband’s ‘business interests’— until Carlo caught him skimming.”

  “Why would I know anything about that?” she said angrily. “Do you think Carlo used to discuss business with me? You figure he used to lie in bed at night and talk about how much money the heroin brought in last month, how much from the whores, and whether the union kickbacks were up or down? Is that how you think it works?”

  “No, as a matter of fact, I don’t,” Burke said. “But I’m pretty sure that, even if you didn’t know exactly what Frankie Brogna did for your husband, you knew him by name and by sight.”

  Burke picked up a glass salt shaker from the table and stared into it, as if sodium chloride was the most interesting substance in the world. “Anyway, what I think isn’t really important,” he said, and put the salt shaker down. “It’s what your husband believes that matters.”

  “And what Carlo’s pretty sure of,” O’Hare said, “is that you saw some of his soldiers bring Frankie over to your house, through the back door, on the last night anybody ever saw the poor bastard alive. Nobody’s sayin’ that you were actually down in the basement, watching, while your husband and his pals took Frankie apart, a little at a time— although, who knows? Maybe you get off on stuff like that.”

  “Tom….” Burke’s voice was a warning.

  O’Hare made a shushing motion. “All right, all right. But the thing is, Carlo seems convinced that from the kitchen, you must’ve heard the screaming and pleading and all the other sounds that Frankie made while they were working on him. He also thinks that you might have been looking out the bedroom window later on, and caught a glimpse of what his boys dragged out of the house and dumped in the trunk of a car.”

  “The car that was apparently driven to a landfill in New Jersey, that’s owned by one of your husband’s companies,” Burke said. “The same landfill where an earth mover accidentally turned up a decomposed body a couple of weeks ago— a corpse that has now been positively identified, through DNA and dental records, as the remains of one Frank Brogna.”r />
  “Carlo knows that you’re going to be subpoenaed for the grand jury. And for the trial, too,” O’Hare said. His voice was quiet now, almost compassionate. “He figures you’re going to get up there on the witness stand and send him to prison for the rest of his life.”

  “But they can’t make a wife testify against her husband,” she protested. “That’s the law, isn’t it?”

  “Sure it is,” Burke said. “But the law doesn’t prevent you from testifying, if you want to. And Carlo seems to think that you’ll want to.”

  “Why? Why in Christ’s name would he think that?”

  Burke shrugged. “You left him, right? You must have had your reasons. You said something before about hitting, and about bimbos. And you’ve refused to come home. How long did you say it’s been? Almost a year? That shows that you’re still mad. Maybe mad enough to testify against him— who knows?”

  “And besides,” O’Hare said, “if you decide to go for a divorce later on, having Carlo in prison on a murder rap would give you a hell of a strong case to take in front of a judge. But that only works only if Carlo’s convicted.”

  “But I haven’t decided if I even want a divorce,” she said.

  “Carlo doesn’t know that,” Burke said.

  His words seemed to hang in the air during the silence that followed.

  Finally the woman said, “All right, you’ve delivered your damn warning, and managed to ruin my day. Is that all you came for?”

  Burke shook his head. “Not entirely,” he said. “This is basically a courtesy call, Mrs. Latona. O’Hare and I work out of the Scranton field office. We were briefed late this morning, after our boss got a call from Washington about your husband and his intentions toward you. Our orders were to get out here right away, to apprise you of the danger you’re in, and provide short-term security.”

  “What’s that mean?” she asked. “‘Short-term security’?”

  “It means that we’re supposed to keep you alive until the cavalry gets here,” O’Hare told her.

  Seeing the woman’s puzzlement, Burke explained. “There’s a flight from Washington that arrives at the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton airport at 7:10 every evening. Today, it’s bringing several agents from the Organized Crime Division, along with a couple of people from the Justice Department.” Burke glanced at his watch. “By the time they get organized on the ground and get out here, it’ll probably be around 8:00 o’clock— about six hours from now.”

  The woman took a tiny sip of her orange juice. “So what do all these big important Washington people want with me?”

  “To sell you on the joys of the Federal Witness Protection Program,” O’Hare said with a grin.

  Burke gave his partner an annoyed look. To the woman he said, “They’ll want to talk to you about testifying in the Frank Brogna murder case, and probably in some other matters, as well. And if you agree to testify, there will be provisions made for your security, before, during, and after the trial. Those may include an offer involving the Witness Protection Program—” he sent another sharp glance toward O’Hare “—or it may not. And if it does, acceptance is, of course, up to you.”

  “And how about whether I even testify or not?” she said. “Is that up to me, too? The law says I don’t have to, remember?”

  “That’s right, you don’t,” Burke said. “And if that’s your decision, then you can convey it to the people from Justice when they get here.”

  “How about I just convey it to you right now? Why don’t you just call your important Washington lawyers and all those extra-special agents and tell them I’m not scared by your stories about Carlo and his big, bad hit man, which I don’t believe for two seconds. Why don’t both of you just get the hell out of my face, and out of my life, and out of my house!”

  After this outburst, Burke’s voice seemed very quiet as he said, “I’m afraid you’ll have to tell the Justice Department people yourself, Mrs. Latona, face-to-face. They won’t abort the trip on my say-so. That kind of decision is far above my pay grade Now, if you want us out of your home, that’s your right. We’ll leave. But our orders are to stick with you, so we won’t be far away. We’ll stake out the house as best we can while staying off your property, if that’s the way you want it. And if you go out, we’ll be behind you— at a discreet distance, of course. We’ll do our best to keep you alive in case a killer named Dennis shows up before our people do.”

  “You’re being dumb, lady,” O’Hare said, still in “bad cop” mode. “If you don’t accept protection, you’ll be cold meat within forty-eight hours.”

  It was then that she buried her face in her hands and started to cry, her shoulders shaking with the spasms. The two men exchanged glances but said nothing.

  After a half minute or so, she reached for a paper napkin from the tray on the table and began to dab at her eyes, even though no tears had marred the perfectly-applied mascara. “I don’t know,” she said miserably. “I just don’t know what to do.”

  “You don’t have to make any decisions right now,” Burke said. “Look— take the afternoon, think things over, then talk to the people from Justice when they get here tonight. See what they have to—”

  Her head turned quickly to the left. After a moment, she whispered, “Did you hear that?”

  Burke slowly pushed his chair back. “Hear what?” he asked quietly.

  “From the living room,” she said in a hushed voice. “It sounded like the screen in the window was rattling. But it never does that, except… when you’re taking it out.”

  Burke stood, drawing a big automatic from a holster at his right hip. “Stay where you are, both of you,” he said softly.

  “Probably just the damn breeze,” O’Hare muttered, but did as he was told. The woman stayed still, except for her left hand, which moved to grasp her glass of orange juice, from which she had barely sipped a drop.

  Burke walked softly over to the living room door and stood, listening intently. With his free hand he grasped and turned the doorknob— slowly, to avoid rattling. He took a deep breath and flung the door open, holding the automatic to cover the room.

  If Burke had seen something that fit his expectations, like a man coming in through the window, he would have reacted instantly and effectively. But what he saw instead was a corpse. A dark-haired, rather heavy woman was lying on the floor, surrounded by a blood pool that spread out from her body to saturate the carpet. She appeared to have been shot twice, once in the heart and again between the eyes. Taking in the head wound in a glance, Burke noticed, absurdly, the fringe of dark moustache along the dead woman’s upper lip. It took him perhaps two seconds to realize the implications of what he was looking at. Then he turned, very fast, back toward the kitchen. He was almost fast enough.

  As soon as Burke had thrown open the door, the woman sitting at the kitchen table hurled the contents of her glass, about six ounces of highly-acidic orange juice, right into O’Hare’s face.

  A lot of professional assassins favor a .22 automatic, because it can be silenced effectively — the bigger the caliber, the harder it is to suppress the noise. But a .22 slug doesn’t have a lot of stopping power to begin with, and screwing a silencer onto the barrel reduces muzzle velocity even further. So if you’re planning to kill somebody with a silenced .22, you’d better be a hell of a good shot.

  The woman in the kitchen was a superb shot. She knew that Burke had his pistol already out, and that made him the danger man. He was just spinning to face back into the kitchen as the woman snatched the silenced Browning Buck Mark from her outsize handbag.

  Burke was just bringing the barrel of his weapon into line with the woman’s head — his last coherent thought was, Gotta be a head shot, or she still might have a chance to fire — when the subsonic .22 bullet struck him in the chest, entering the left ventricle of his heart. He jerked with the impact, which gave the woman another preci
ous half-second to fire again, this time putting the bullet just above the bridge of his nose, from which the angle of entry carried it into his brain. Burke was dead before he hit the floor, although the woman, mouth set in a thin line of concentration, had lost interest in him the instant the second shot went home.

  O’Hare’s eyes were in agony from the acid in the orange juice, and his mind was reeling from the shock and incipient panic that came from knowing that he was suddenly in very bad trouble. He had been frantically trying to reach his own weapon, but sitting in a narrow chair with armrests is the absolute worst position for getting at a handgun holstered behind your right hip, especially for a big man. The woman had counted on that.

  Failing to reach his pistol from the chair, O’Hare was frantically trying to reach his feet when the .22 round took him in the stomach. It was a snap shot designed to slow him down, and the woman had made it using peripheral vision only. But now she was facing O’Hare, and her follow-up struck precisely in the center of his forehead. O’Hare fell forward onto the table and slid slowly to the floor, bringing the tablecloth and a tray full of condiments with him.

  None of the four shots was any louder than snapping a pencil. None was heard anywhere outside the house.

  The woman sat where she was for almost a minute, breathing deeply to damp down the adrenaline that was racing through her bloodstream. The hormone is essential for quick action, but it can interfere with clear thinking once the action is over.

  As her heart rate slowed, the ability to think clearly and coldly reasserted itself. When she rose from the kitchen chair, the woman’s movements showed no hesitation or uncertainty. First, she checked the two bodies sprawled on the kitchen floor. The men were almost certainly dead, but old habits die hard. Then she peered cautiously out of each window, to be sure that the FBI agents did not have backup waiting outside. Next, she picked up the four cartridge casings that had been ejected from her automatic and put them in her bag. Finally, she took a dish towel and wiped down every surface that she had touched since coming back into the house with the two Feds. She had already erased her fingerprints from the rest of the place before her abortive effort to leave the first time.