“Why would that man be giving me his number? Of course I don’t know! Call Teddy. He’ll know.”
“Right,” Ashley said and quickly called her cousin Teddy. When Teddy gave her Monk’s number without asking too many questions, she phoned Monk as soon as she ended the call with Teddy. And placed it on Speaker so that Donald could understand that she was nobody’s whore. And then she waited, with bated breath, while it rang.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Monk was in the backseat of his SUV heading to a motel when his cell phone rang. He looked at the Caller ID. When he saw that it was Ashley, he answered quickly. “Hey,” he said.
“Why?” she asked him.
“I said hey,” he said again.
“Hey. But why, Monk? Why would you give me this kind of money?”
“Whatta you mean why? You said you needed twenty grand, right?”
“Yes, that’s what we calculated we would need to stay afloat.”
“Then use it. Stay afloat. Do what you gotta do.”
“You don’t know what this means to us, Monk. I mean our shelves are practically empty and we didn’t know what we were going to do. I just don’t understand why you would do this for us.”
“I don’t know about us. I’m doing it for you. And you know why.” Monk wasn’t the kind of man to beat around the bush, and he wanted Ashley to understand that.
She understood it. “Thank you so much. You just don’t know what this means to us. To me.”
“It’s okay.”
“I’ll pay you back every coin. I promise you I will.”
“Dollar,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“You’re pay me back every dollar. I’m not interested in your coins.”
Ashley realized what he meant, and laughed. “Okay, okay, I get it. Not coins, but dollars. I hear you.”
“Now hear this,” Monk said. “You don’t owe me a dime. I did what I did because I wanted to do it. You needed help, and I could help you. That’s all that’s about. So don’t worry about it.”
Ashley wondered how he would know she was worrying. “We’ll see about that,” she said. “We’ll talk about it when I see you again.” It was a veil reference to the fact that she really wanted to see him again. “Whenever that’ll be.”
“It’ll be a while,” he said. “I’ve got a lot going on here.”
Ashley glanced at Donald, who was staring at that check. She felt a little embarrassed, like he gave her that money to get rid of her. But damn, she thought. If he didn’t want to take it any further, and didn’t want to have anything more to do with her, he didn’t have to bribe her. She was used to rejection. She would have left for free. “Got it,” she said.
“Unless,” Monk said, “you can come here.”
Ashley was surprised. Donald was too. He looked up. “There?” Ashley asked. “In New Jersey?”
“Yes.”
Then she realized he might have not meant it that way. “Or I could stay at my Uncle Mick’s hotel in New York.”
“No, you’ll stay here in Jersey,” Monk said.
“When?” Ashley asked.
“When can you come?”
Donald touched her and mouthed the word, today!
Ashley mouthed what about the store.
“I got you,” Donald whispered back.
Ashley was excited, but she wasn’t sure if Monk wanted to see her that badly. But she gave it a try. “I could come . . . today,” Ashley she said. “I could drive down there today.”
“Today sounds good,” Monk responded. “But that’s a long-ass five-hour drive. I don’t want you tired out when you get here.” He was going to do that himself, he thought. “I’ll send my plane.”
Donald was shocked. Ashley was too. “Your plane?”
“That’s right. I can have it there say around four this afternoon?”
Ashley smiled, but then she looked at Donald. Donald nodded. “That would be perfect,” she said into the phone.
“Good,” Monk said. “That’ll give me a chance to clear my schedule for this evening. See you then,” he added, they said goodbye, and Ashley ended the call.
“Wow,” said Donald.
But Ashley looked at him. “Why would you want me to go to New Jersey to be with a man you just called bad news not ten minutes ago?”
“Because that was before he gave you twenty grand. That was before he agreed to send his plane!”
“So just because he throws around money to get himself a woman for the evening, he’s alright now?”
“Ashley, let me tell you something about men like Monk Paletti. They don’t have to throw money to get a woman. He’s throwing money around to get himself some Ashley. Now why he wants you, I can’t say. But he wants you, Ash. Not just some woman. That man wants you!”
“And that makes it okay in your book?”
“No,” Donald said. Then he sighed. “He’s still going to break your heart,” he said.
Ashley felt a big letdown. And she knew Donald had more to say. “But?” she asked him.
He picked up that check and smiled. “But we’ll still have this store to soothe the pain,” he said, and they both laughed.
“I’ve got to go or Ma’s gonna kill me,” Donald said. “Put it in the bank and we’ll work out a strategy for spending it the right way.”
“Agreed,” Ashley said, and Donald took off.
But when the bell clanged at the closing of the door, Ashley leaned her head back. And exhaled. Donald joked about him breaking her heart, but it was no joke to Ashley. Because she saw it last night. She saw how she could fall hard for a man like Monk. And all she had to rely on was her past relationships. And each and every one of those relationships taught her the same thing. She was about to go on a ride that wasn’t going to end well.
But he was sending his plane for her. She was about to put twenty grand in the bank thanks to him. He’d been nothing but kind to her, something she wasn’t used to at all.
It was still a risky ride, alright. But it was a ride, she knew, that could end up being well worth the risk she’d have to take.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Monk didn’t like the optics. Down a long, isolated, narrow road, around a manmade retention pond, and then up to a line of one-story motel rooms seemingly unoccupied except for Vinny’s room.
“Stop here,” Monk said as soon as he saw the line of motels in the distance. The convoy of SUVs, led by Monk’s SUV, came to a sudden stop.
Monk was on the backseat of his SUV, while Lanny Bovo, one of his lieutenants, was on the front passenger seat. Jaws Macardi was his driver. They were the two men he most trusted in the organization. “I count six units,” Monk said.
“Six units,” said Lanny into the walkie talkie. He was notifying the members of the team in the SUVs behind them.
“All appear unoccupied, except Vinny’s,” Monk said, and Lanny relayed that intel too. “But that could be a trap,” Monk added, remembering how he and Teddy were blindsided in Quebec. “Me and you, Lanny, will handle Vinny. Tell everybody else to take a room, and I mean turn those suckers upside down. Tell them their asses better not assume shit. Vinny’s a slick bastard if he’s anything. Assumptions can get them killed.”
“Yes, sir, Boss,” Lanny said, and relayed that message too.
Then Monk checked his weapon and exhaled. He really hated this shit. And he had a really bad feeling about this one.
“Anything else you want me to tell them, Boss?” Lanny asked him.
“Yeah. Tell them to be careful,” Monk said, and he got out of his SUV.
“Be careful, guys,” Lanny said into the walkie talkie, tossed it onto the seat beside Jaws, and got out too.
While Monk and Lanny ran toward the middle motel room, which was the only one with lights on, the other members of his crew got out of their SUVs, too, and fanned out toward the other five rooms. When they all were at the doors, they looked to Monk. Monk put up three fingers. When he put down the third finger, they all ki
cked their respective doors in, with guns locked, loaded, and aimed.
Monk kicked that flimsy door in so easily that the door nearly shut back in his face. But Lanny kicked it back open and they saw Vinny, lying in bed with some woman, frantically reaching for his gun on the nightstand.
“Touch it and you’re dead!” Monk yelled out.
Vinny Blanks, knowing full well what Monk Paletti was capable of, lifted his hands in the air instead. The woman in bed with him sat up with a blanket covering her naked body.
“What do you think you’re doing, Monk?” Vinny asked. “What are you doing?”
“Your girlfriend?” He asked Vinny.
“Her? Get real! She’s a trick. What you think? But what’s with the kicking my fucking door in bullshit, Monk? What’s with all this shit?”
“Lose the broad,” Monk said.
Vinny, not accustomed to being ordered around, nonetheless nodded to the woman. She quickly got out of bed, grabbed her clothing that was scattered on the floor, and took off out of the motel room. Lanny went to the door, to make sure she got lost.
“Get up,” Monk ordered Vinny as Lanny searched the kitchenette and bathroom too.
Vinny slowly threw the covers off of his body, a body clad only in a pair of boxers, and sat up on the side of the bed. “Are you gonna tell me what’s going on? What’s your problem drawing a gun on me like that? Like I’m some stranger. All you had to do was knock.”
“Where’s Beau?” Monk asked him.
Vinny looked at him hard. Beau was his kid brother, a kid brother Monk and Teddy iced. “Your ass know where he is.”
“Yeah, I do, don’t I? Is his body still in Canada, or have you made arrangements to ship it here?”
“Fuck you, Monk!” Vinny yelled.
Monk’s out-of-nowhere anger flared and he rushed Vinny, grabbed him up from off of that bed, and slammed his back against the wall so hard that Monk’s hat fell off of his head. “Sure you wanna fuck with me?” he angrily asked him, pinning him against that wall by the throat. “Sure about that, boy?!”
Vinny knew he had no card to play but the mercy card. Monk was known for showing guys mercy. “I was just running my mouth, Monk,” he said. “Relax. You know how I am. I’m grievin’ here! My brother was important to me. He was my kid brother, Frankie, how you expect me to act? How would you feel if Mikey got iced like that?”
“Your kid brother tried to take me out,” Monk made clear. “What the fuck you think was gonna happen? I stand back and let him?”
“No,” Vinny said. “He had it coming. Yes, he had it coming. But it still hurt, you know?”
Monk stared at Vinny. They went way back. But he knew game when he saw it. “Where’s the girl?” he asked him.
“Whatta you mean where the girl at? You just kicked her out,” Vinny said.
Monk frowned. “What? Your ass know I’m not talking about that trick! Where’s the girl, Vinny, now don’t fuck with me! Where’s the girl?”
“What girl? I don’t know nothing about no girl!”
“Quit fucking with me!”
“I’m telling you the truth! I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“Boss. Boss!” It was one of his crewmembers at the door of the motel room.
Vinny was going to grab his gun off of the nightstand as soon as Monk turned to the sound. But Monk didn’t turn. “What?” he said, still holding Vinny. Still staring at Vinny.
“We got her,” his crewmember said. Even Lanny took note of that. “We found the girl, Boss.”
Monk was pleased to hear it, but he never dropped his guard. “Let’s go see the broad you don’t know anything about. Funny she should be hanging out right here, where you’re hanging out. Bring your ass on!”
Monk picked up his hat and put it back on his head, and then pushed Vinny away from the wall. Lanny took over, holding Vinny at gunpoint as they made their way to the motel room just next door from Vinny’s room.
“Where?” Monk said as he entered the room.
One of his men pointed toward the kitchenette. Monk went into the kitchen inside the room and saw that the stove was moved away from the wall. He looked behind the stove and saw a white woman who didn’t appear to be much older than eighteen or nineteen, her mouth gagged and her hands tied to the stove.
He knelt down and carefully removed her gag. She let out a hard breath of relief. And then he pulled out a knife and cut her rope. What shocked Monk wasn’t that she was younger than his father let on, but that she looked so familiar. “Do I know you?” he asked her.
She stared at him. “Fais-moi sortir d’ici,” she said, pulling on his suitcoat. “Cet homme va me tuer!”
Monk frowned. “What?”
“Fais-moi sortir d’ici!”
She was hysterical and Monk could feel her fear. He stood her up. “How many people have been around you?”
She did speak English, and she spoke it with a heavy accent. “Just one man since they moved me. A really creepy man. The things he made me do!”
Monk showed her the men in the other room. “That guy?” he asked her, showing her Vinny.
She began to cry, and nodded her head. “Get me out of here. Get me away from him!”
Monk placed his arm around her. “I will,” he said. “I promise you that.”
But just as he was about to escort her out of that place, gunfire erupted outside, and one of his crewmembers ran in. “We got company, Boss!”
“Who?” Monk asked.
“Don’t know yet!” he yelled, but just as he yelled it, he was shot in the back.
Monk was stunned. He looked at the girl. “Get back behind that stove and stay there!” he ordered her, as he hurried toward the living room.
The gun battle was massive, as Monk and Lanny slammed the door shut and took up position on either side of the windows.
Vinny, thrilled to have backup, reached for the pistol he kept in the inside lining of his boxers. But everybody knew that Monk’s eyes were so big that, as the legend went, they reached to the back of his head.
But however Monk saw it, he saw Vinny reach for that gun. And he turned around and shot him dead just as Vinny was pulling it out.
Lanny was stunned. “How did you see that?” he asked.
Monk turned back around and broke the glass of the window in the kitchen area. Lanny, following suit, broke the glass in the other room, and the two of them began firing back, helping to give cover to their guys.
And the gunfight was joined. But Monk’s crew was more exposed, and took the vast majority of the casualties. Monk knew he had to put a stop to that.
“Cover me,” he yelled to Lanny, and ran outside firing as he ran.
Half of his men were down, and the other half were in retreat. To Monk’s shock, the enemy was in one car, and the car began driving backwards when the driver saw Monk, as if they had strict orders who to fire on, and who not to fire on.
But when the guy on the front seat, who had to be the crew chief, saw that Monk wasn’t satisfied with their retreat and continued to run toward their vehicle, firing as he ran, he leaned out the window to fire back. But as soon as he leaned out, Monk took him out. Then he took the driver out too.
When that happened, Monk and the rest of his crew outside began running toward the car. Lanny stayed where he was, as backup.
But when they got to the car, Monk saw that everybody inside was dead. But he also saw that the guy he had shot, the crew chief, was no crew chief at all. He was much more than that.
“Damn, Boss,” one of Monk’s men said when he saw him too. “That’s Tally.”
Monk exhaled. Tally was no crew chief. He was the underboss, the second in command, in the DeGarno crime family out of New York. Monk had just killed their underboss. And he still didn’t know why!
Then Jaws drove up in the SUV. It was bullet-ridden. It had been in the battle too. But Jaws was okay.
“Get the girl,” Monk said to his man standing with him. “We need to
get her out of here.”
“Yes, sir,” his capo said, and hurried to the motel to get the girl.
Monk made his way to his SUV and got in on the backseat. “You okay?” he asked Jaws.
“I tried to take out one or two of those bastards,” Jaws said. “But they were coming hard, Boss. So I knew what to do.”
Jaws job was to leave the scene if it got too hot, and then double back to pick up any crew that might need an escape. He had just doubled back. “It got real hot,” he said.
Then he looked at Monk. “Who were they?” he asked.
“Looks like DeGarno’s guys.”
Jaws turned around. “Sammy the Ox DeGarno? What the fuck he got to do with this?”
“Hell if I know, but if his guys are in it, he’s in it.”
“Damn, Boss.”
Then he saw his capo running out of the motel without the girl. Monk hurried out of the SUV. “What is it?” he asked him.
“They knocked off Lanny, Boss.”
Monk was upset. “What?”
“And they took the girl. She’s gone!”
Monk couldn’t believe it. He ran back into the motel room, with his capo and others following him. He first saw Lanny dead by the window, shot in the back of the head, which angered him mightily. Lanny was one of his best men. But that girl was missing!
He ran to the kitchen, and saw that it was true. She was no longer behind the stove. “How the fuck did she get out?” he yelled.
“Here, Boss!” another one of his guys yelled from another room.
Monk ran to where the voice was coming from: the bathroom. And that was when he saw the bathroom window. And that it was open. And that it appeared to be a plausible escape.
“Get a crew to search every inch of this area,” Monk ordered as he ran toward the exit.
“Yes, sir, Boss,” the capo replied, and began barking out orders.
Monk ran to his SUV. She couldn’t have gotten too far on foot, he decided as he jumped in and ordered Jaws to drive around in search of the girl.
Jaws did as he was ordered, but all to no joy. They searched and they searched, but they did not see the woman who had looked so familiar to Monk. They saw no trace of her. It was as if she either disappeared into thin air all on her own, or was picked up.
Monk Paletti: Taming Ashley Sinatra Page 9
