Tarantula

by Mark Dawson

  “Signor Smith,” the girl said quietly. “Do you know who owns this bar?”

  “The Camorra.”

  “And you know who they are? What that means?”

  “Yes. My colleague was doing business with them.”

  “And so what could you possibly want?”

  “May I call you Antonietta?”

  “How do you know my name?”

  “I spoke to Mr. Grieve. He spoke very warmly of you.”

  “How so?”

  He smiled, teasing her a little. A pretty woman fishing for compliments? “He said you were very pleasant to deal with. And that you were able to set up the meeting that he wanted.”

  She nodded. Her dark, lustrous eyes flashed and Milton decided that she was very attractive indeed.

  “Do you know what they did to him?” he asked.

  “I do not know the details. They say he was shot.”

  “He was shot. A sniper.”

  “I do not know this word.”

  “A man with a long gun. He was shot from almost several hundred yards away, while he was driving. Near Castellabate. He lost control of the car and drove it into the sea. I saw it on the television and then I went to have a look. It was very well done. Very professional.”

  “And still you come here?” She glanced up at the mirror. “The man at the table. I know you have seen him. Do you know who he is?”

  “One of them, I presume.”

  “He is a soldier. His friend, the man who went outside, he is also a soldier. They are bad men, Mr. Smith. You do not want to cross these men.”

  “Did one of them shoot my colleague?”

  “No.”

  “Then who?”

  “I do not know.”

  Milton sipped his drink and looked into the mirror for a third time. The bigger of the two mafiosi was still there, making no effort to be discreet. There were two possibilities to explain where the other man had gone. He might have gone outside to call for backup. That was the least likely explanation. He could easily have called from the table and, anyway, there were two of them and only one of him, and, what was more, he was not particularly physically imposing. Why would they think they needed more numbers to deal with him? The other reason, the more likely one, was that the man had gone outside to prepare for Milton’s exit. Perhaps he had gone to one of the cars that had been parked along the edge of the road to collect a weapon. A gun, perhaps, or, more likely, the kind of weapon you would use to make a statement. A baseball bat. A knife. Something that would send a message, prevent the organisation that you had just attacked from sending more men to interfere where they were not wanted.

  “Antonietta,” Milton said. “I’m going to leave now. I want you to do me a favour. I assume you are still on good terms with the man you spoke to on my colleague’s behalf?”

  “Yes,” she said, a shiver of tremulousness in her voice.

  “Good. I want you to tell him that I want to meet him. Tell him my employer is not angry at what happened to Mr. Grieve. You can tell him that we’re curious, because we are, but that he can rest assured that we are only interested in profit. The opportunity that my colleague discussed with him and his friends was obviously not attractive enough. Tell him that I am authorised to make it much more attractive. Can you do that?”

  “Yes,” she said. “But, I…” She couldn’t help but glance over at the table.

  “Yes,” Milton said, “there’s one other thing. Tell him that I mean no disrespect for what I’m about to do. But I don’t believe I have a choice.”

  He looked into her face and smiled. It was a bright smile, with lots of teeth, but Milton’s smiles rarely reached his eyes. They burned out at her, icy blue, pitiless, and he could see that, whatever fear she felt for the man at the table and his friend outside, it had just been eclipsed.

  “Yes,” she said.

  Milton stood and settled his tab. He took a napkin from the bar and a pen from a pot next to the till and wrote down his cellphone number in careful, deliberate script. He pressed it on the bar next to Antonietta’s fingers and collected his jacket. He didn’t put it on but held it in the crook of his arm. He walked straight to the exit, noticing in the corner of his eye that the big man had also stood and was picking his way around the tables to follow him. Milton kept walking. The bar had a narrow lobby between the inner and the outer door where there was a cigarette machine and pay-phone. He knew that the first man would have gone through the main door, into the road. There was no space in the lobby for three men. There was barely enough for two.

  Milton was counting on that.

  He opened the door to the lobby and went inside. There was a door that led to the men’s restroom and he opened it and stood just inside, out of sight of anyone who might follow him.

  The door opened again.

  The big man came through. He didn’t see Milton until it was too late, and, by then, Milton had thrown his coat over his head and followed in with a right and a left hook into his ribs and then, the man bending down from the sudden pain, he grabbed him around the head, drew him towards him and lifted his knee, hard, into his covered face.

  Milton released his grip on the man’s head and he dropped to the floor of the lobby.

  Three seconds, start to finish, just like that.

  He retrieved his coat and frisked the man with quick and expert hands. He was carrying a Beretta 96A1, chambered for .40 S&W. Milton checked: twelve rounds in the magazine and another in the chamber.

  Useful.

  He rested his coat over his arm again so that the gun was hidden beneath it, opened the exterior door and walked outside.

  Milton checked his surroundings carefully. He had parked the Ducati twenty feet away, pressed up against the side of the road. There was a line of cars ahead and behind it, and the courtesy light was shining from one of them.

  Milton tightened his grip on the Beretta and walked toward the car. The door was open and the second man was inside it.

  Milton guessed that he wouldn’t have been expecting to see him. His friend should have been more than able enough to take care of him. He was bigger, for a start, and he had surprise on his side. Their plan was probably to let the big man sort him out with the little one staying out here for backup, just in case.

  When the second man did see him, walking purposefully towards him, it was already too late.

  He started to get out of the car, his hand going inside his jacket to his shoulder holster, but Milton grabbed the frame of the door and crashed it back into him. The metal crushed up against his standing leg and bounced off his forehead, leaving a deep cut that immediately started to bleed. Milton yanked the door open, knotted his fists in the man’s jacket and flung him across the sidewalk into the stone wall of the restaurant. He crashed into it, staggering backwards into Milton’s embrace. He looped his right arm around the man’s throat, braced it with his left arm, and started to squeeze.

  “I’ve left a message for your boss, but you can repeat it. Tell him I’m not here for revenge. I know what happened to my colleague and it doesn’t have to be an issue between us. Tell him I want to see him. I can make it worth his while.” He looked back to the entrance. The big man, obviously dazed, had staggered outside. “I’ll be here for my dinner tomorrow evening. Tell him to come and see me. Understand?”

  “Si,” the man choked. “Si, si.”

  Milton released the chokehold and dropped the man to the sidewalk. He put on his coat, shoved the Beretta into his belt, and walked calmly and confidently to his bike.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  MILTON SPENT the day wandering around Naples. He assumed that he would be observed and, if he was, he wanted his observers to report that he was relaxed and unconcerned.

  He got onto his bike as the sun started to dip beneath the horizon and rode back to the bar in Castellabate. He took the same table as the previous night. Antonietta appeared after ten minutes. She was wearing a crimson dress, cut short to just above her knees. H
er expression was haughty, just as before, but Milton detected a nervousness in her posture and the way she aimed repeated glances at the door.

  She left him to wait for another ten minutes before she came over and sat opposite him.

  “Hello, Antonietta.”

  “Good evening.”

  “Have you spoken to them?”

  “Yes. I did. I tell them what you told me to say.”

  “And what did they reply?”

  “They will be here tonight. They will speak to you.”

  “Thank you.”

  She frowned, glanced hurriedly at the door again and, when she looked back at him the superciliousness was gone, to be replaced with concern. “Are you sure, Signor Smith?”

  “Call me John, please.”

  “They will not do business with you, John. Is that not obvious?”

  “They haven’t heard what I have to say.”

  “Your friend tried and look what happened to him. They will shoot you.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “You are as stupid and stubborn as he was.”

  She returned to the bar.

  He ordered stuffed tortellini and ravioli with clams’ meat and drank an excellent glass of wine. He gazed out to sea, listening to the sound of energetic conversation, the clink of cutlery against crockery and the susurration of the waves running up the beach.

  When he looked up, Antonietta was looking over his shoulder towards the entrance. Her face was blank and then, as if at the pressing of a switch, it lit up into a warm smile.

  A fake smile.

  Milton turned.

  A man he had never seen before approached the table.

  “Do you mind?” he said, indicating the empty chair opposite him.

  “Not at all. Please.”

  The man pulled the chair back, took off his jacket and sat down. Milton looked him over. He was a large man, a little over six feet tall but heavyset, overweight, with an impression of thick solidity about him. His face was fleshy and vital and his eyes glittered with intelligence and cruelty. His lips were thin and white and there was something vaguely sadistic about the permanent smile that he wore.

  Two men had taken seats at the adjacent table. “Friends of yours?” Milton asked.

  The man didn’t answer. “What is your name?” he said.

  “John Smith. And who are you?”

  “I am Ernesto Gorgi Di Mauro,” he said. His English was inflected with a heavy Calabrian accent.

  “Thank you for coming to see me, Signor Di Mauro.”

  “You are lucky you have not been shot. You are a violent man, Signor Smith. One of my men has a broken nose and the other one has fifteen stitches in a cut to his head.”

  “I’m afraid they made me feel uncomfortable. Under the circumstances, I thought it better to get my shots in first.”

  “What circumstances are those?”

  “I think you know, Signor Di Mauro. A friend of mine took a dive off the road outside Castellabate.”

  “Ah, yes. You are referring to your colleague. A pity, what happened to him. I thought he was a pleasant man. And so you are here because of revenge?”

  “No.”

  “No, Antonietta says not, too. But she is a woman, and her judgment has proved to be lacking before.”

  “Not this time.”

  “So you say. But you will understand my reluctance to meet you. I very nearly did not come.”

  “Why did you?”

  He grinned. “Because I am not afraid of a single Englishman having his dinner in a restaurant that I own, in a town that I own, especially when I have a semi-automatic pistol aimed at his balls.”

  Milton didn’t flinch. “And your friends?”

  “Yes,” Ernesto said. “They are more formidable than those you met last night.”

  He offered nothing further and seemed prepared to let Milton stew in the silence. Milton did not. He looked at him blandly, perfectly content, happy to let the silence drift on.

  Ernesto cracked first. “You say you are not here for revenge. So what are you here for?”

  “Business.”

  “Really? After what happened to Signor Grieve?”

  “That’s right. My employer doesn’t bear grudges.”

  “I find that difficult to believe.”

  “Would you like me to tell you what I think happened to him? Why you did what you did?”

  “A drink, first. Would you like a glass of wine?”

  “Help yourself.” Milton nodded to the bottle he had ordered.

  Ernesto looked at it and screwed up his face. He looked up and Antonietta, who was hovering anxiously nearby, hurried across. “This,” he said, indicating the bottle from Gredo di Tufo, “is worse than cat piss. Bring us a bottle of Vietto Villero. Two glasses. I will give the Englishman an education in Italian wine.”

  Antonietta took the bottle away and returned with a fresh one. She opened it at the table and poured a quarter glass. Ernesto handed it to Milton and indicated that he should try it.

  Milton did. It was delicious.

  “Do you know Vietti?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t.”

  “It is from the southern slopes of Castiglione. The vineyards are all southern facing and there are remarkable minerals in the soil. It is one of the best wines in all of Italy.”

  Antonietta poured for both of them. Ernesto took his with his left hand and raised it, offered a “Salute,” and sipped. His right hand never rose above the table.

  “Can you smell the cherries? The rose petals?”

  Milton sipped. He was no expert on wine apart from the fact that a couple of bottles would get him good and drunk but even his uneducated palate could detect that it was crisp with acidity and well balanced.

  “Very good,” he said.

  Ernesto looked over at the two heavies, raised his glass and laughed. “Very good, he says. Very good!”

  They laughed compliantly. Milton took the chance to look in their direction, sizing them up. They were big and rangy. Neither man was drinking or eating and they were alert, looking back at him with eyes that didn’t smile. Armed, too, judging by the bulges in their jackets. They looked better than the hoodlums he had schooled last night. Fair enough, Milton thought. It would be very difficult to extricate himself from the restaurant if things took a turn for the worse.

  He would just have to make sure that didn’t happen.

  Ernesto placed his glass on the table and, his right hand still beneath the tablecloth, he looked at Milton with eyes that were suddenly dead and cold. “You were going to tell me what you think happened to your colleague.”

  “Yes. I was.” He placed the glass on the table and met Ernesto’s stare. “We know that the Camorra is dealing with Curtis Patterson. I believe you told Mr. Patterson that my employer was ready to negotiate for distribution into London and he offered you more. A lot more, probably. I suspect he wants to expand his network to the south. I think you decided it was best for business to continue that partnership rather than take the deal that my colleague proposed, and I think Mr. Patterson asked you to have him killed in order to rid himself of the competition.” He paused, holding Ernesto’s gaze. “How am I doing?”

  “Very good, Signor Smith. That is almost exactly what happened. What else do you know?”

  “I know you had him shot. A sniper on the road outside Castellabate.”

  “We did. There is a man we use for such work. A very effective man.”

  Milton nodded and smiled at Ernesto’s high spirits.

  The man sipped at the wine, his right hand still beneath the tablecloth. “But knowing all of that, and especially what happened to your friend, why would you be foolish enough to want to meet me?”

  “Because I think you are a businessman, Signor Di Mauro, in an organisation of businessmen. The Camorra didn’t get where it is today by taking emotional decisions. I think you will do what’s best for business. You will make the most profitable choice.” He leant for
wards. “Tell me. What did Curtis Patterson offer you?”

  Ernesto laughed, shaking his head. “I do not think so, Signor Smith. Some things are not to be shared.”

  “Whatever it was, we’ll double it.”

  Ernesto stopped laughing.

  “But they offered millions, Signor Smith.”

  He didn’t flinch. “I’m sure they did.”

  “And you will offer twice that? Why would you think we would believe you?”

  “Because I’m here. Despite everything, I’m here, opposite you, with a gun pointing at my balls. I know the risk. I know if I can’t persuade you, you’ll kill me.”

  “But here you are.”

  “Here I am.”

  “And you must be either incredibly brave or incredibly stupid.”

  “Neither. I’m just confident.”

  Ernesto stared at him, frowning. This was it: if he decided that Milton was wasting his time, bluffing him, then he knew that the next few minutes would be messy and unpleasant. He was acutely aware of the man’s hand beneath the table, each flinch and flex of his arm.

  He reached his right hand up. He slipped it inside his jacket and Milton saw a spark of light against a metallic object as his pistol was holstered. He stood and smiled down at him. It wasn’t a friendly smile. It was predatory. “Very good, Signor Smith. You will understand that I need to speak to my associates. What you are proposing would amount to a significant change to our business. Such decisions are not taken lightly.”

  Milton pressed home his hard won advantage. “That’s fine. I’d do the same. The offer is open until tomorrow. If you choose not to accept it, we will look at other suppliers. Mr. Patterson, of course, will need to be brought to heel.”

  “Threatening him would be seen as an insult to us.”

  “We would mean no disrespect, but his family is a competitor in a business that we intend to dominate. I know you understand that.”

  Ernesto paused, as inscrutable expression on his doughy face, and Milton knew it could go either way. But then his little porcine eyes glittered with humour and his lips pulled up into a rictus smile.