One Last Kill

by Spenser Warren

  Cal walked through the foyer and into the living room. As he passed, he couldn’t help but notice the portraits of the last five Chicago mafia bosses on the wall to his right, with Alfredo and his father and grandfather among them. Though Cal had lived in the Petrocelli house from the age of twelve to twenty, the portraits always stood out to him among the impressive decor of the home.

  When they reached the living room, a young man with a longish mop of hair pointed toward the open study door, revealing a massive amount of books along the far wall. Cal led the way without a word and forced a smile as he made eye contact first with Alfredo and then Vinnie.

  The pale-blue Oxford dress shirt Vinnie wore appeared out of place underneath a black suit jacket and tucked into a pair of white khaki shorts. A pair of Maui Jim sunglasses tinted his eyes from view, but Cal could still make them out.

  His adoptive brother wasn’t a big guy; he was more wiry than bulky. Cal knew it bothered Vinnie that Cal had grown into a muscular and imposing figure whereas Vinnie had stayed lean and presented a less intimidating presence.

  “Cal, my brotha!”

  Vinnie wrapped one arm around Cal and embraced him in what could only be described as a bro hug.

  Fonzie stepped into the room and shook Vinnie’s hand as Cal made his way toward the large oak desk Alfredo was seated behind.

  “Cal, it’s good to see you.”

  Alfredo’s stiff gaze suggested he wasn’t in the mood for small talk. His thick and wavy graying-brown hair stood atop his head, revealing a forehead creased with wrinkles. If he wore clown makeup and dyed his hair red, he’d be a fine impersonation of Ronald McDonald.

  Unlike his son, Alfredo was strongly built. He used to be a hit man and enforcer as Cal now was, except he’d done it with the knowledge that he would be a made man for his efforts. He only stood an inch taller than his six-foot-tall son but, at around 230 pounds, was much heavier. Most of it was muscle from his days of roughing up those who opposed his father when he’d been boss. Yet, a slight belly protruded above his belt.

  Alfredo sat and motioned toward the two leather chairs across from him. From the corner of the room, Vinnie stared down at his fingernails a little too long for Cal’s liking, as if he knew the next few moments would be filled with tension.

  Alfredo peered at them while pouring a glass of brandy for himself. He tipped the bottle toward Fonzie and then Cal. Fonzie grabbed a nearby glass. Cal thought it was too early for drinking.

  “Tell me about the MacErlean grab,” Alfredo said. “I heard business was taken care of.”

  Fonzie smiled and looked at Cal. He was normally extra talkative, but Cal knew Fonzie was just as scared of Alfredo as anyone else.

  “Yes, MacErlean is dead,” Cal said.

  Alfredo and Vinnie stared at Cal, unblinking.

  “Go on,” Alfredo urged. “Tell us exactly what happened.”

  Cal told Alfredo everything. From the men in tweed jackets approaching him in the theater lobby, to the screaming people outside as they saw MacErlean being forced into the vehicle, to the gunshots, to the fatal stab to the heart that Cal delivered to end the night. The only detail Cal left out was what MacErlean had said about his mother’s accident.

  Alfredo leaned back in his chair, arms crossed. “I assume you asked MacErlean what he told the mayor.”

  Cal nodded. “He said he told the mayor about what he called your ‘grandest secret.’”

  Alfredo raised his brow again, drank a swig of brandy, and tapped his fingers on the desk. He glanced at Vinnie, who shrugged and brushed his bangs out of the way of his sunglasses.

  “What sort of secret did MacErlean say I had?”

  This was the part Cal was afraid of. MacErlean hadn’t provided any details, and Cal had been too quick to kill him after the information he had revealed about his mother.

  “I got a little impatient before we whacked him. He mentioned the mayor was very interested in protecting him. I figured that was enough to confirm your suspicions that the mayor may be a dangerous party.”

  Alfredo rose from his chair and pointed at Cal like a dog owner yelling at his new puppy for peeing on the carpet.

  “Goddamnit, Callahan! You’re the best fucking soldier I’ve got, and you can’t get some basic details out of some punk actor?”

  “You’re right, I should’ve investigated further. I wanted to respect your privacy since I know I’ll never be a made man and there’s certain things I shouldn’t know.”

  Alfredo looked at Cal like he wanted to explode. It reminded him of his father yelling at his mother when the dinner was cold, despite him getting home from work late.

  “Damnit, Cal, do you think I give a shit about that right now? Who cares if you’re not Sicilian? You’ve been a part of the family for seventeen years. A lot longer than your own family. Benetti isn’t made either, and I trust even him with this business.”

  Alfredo stopped huffing and paced toward the front of the room. Cal and Fonzie sat in silence before Vinnie spoke up.

  “The important thing is we know that MacErlean really was an informant for the mayor and that the mayor has highly armed security working for him. Now, let’s think about how this ties back to us, Dad. MacErlean used to be a lackey for Al Meransky, is that right?”

  Alfredo nodded and walked toward the desk.

  “MacErlean was a driver for us, probably four years ago, a slick young guy with greased back hair. I must have seen some sort of potential in the kid. Anyway, I knew he was a rat when some of Meransky’s guys got picked up by the cops for drinking and driving. Instead of piling everyone in his car or calling a cab, he let the guys drive home and called the police. Un-fucking-believable.”

  Fonzie laughed. “The guy sounds like a lowlife snitch.”

  Alfredo sat back down at the desk and leered at Fonzie as if this were the first time he’d seen him that day.

  He turned his attention back to Vinnie. “Yeah, that’s why you shoulda whacked him when you gave him the boot.”

  “My point was,” Vinnie pressed on, “if we knew what MacErlean found out from his time with us, then we could use that to determine how seriously we take a potential threat from the mayor.”

  “He couldn’t have learned much,” Cal offered. He felt like he could use that glass of brandy now. “If he was nothing more than a driver, he wouldn’t have been included in any big conversations.”

  “What if somebody talked? Al’s got a big mouth,” Alfredo said.

  Vinnie rose from his chair in the corner. “What did Al know that might cause Caruso to come down on us in his speech?”

  “Could be nothing,” Fonzie said. “Crime in general has picked up in the city. People are tired of it. He could’ve just been rattling off names.”

  Alfredo shook his head. “If MacErlean was tight with the mayor, he had to know something.”

  “C’mon, Dad, aren’t we grasping at straws here? We have no way of knowing what it is. It could be anything.”

  Alfredo finished his brandy and poured another glass. He didn’t offer Fonzie a refill.

  “Alright, Vinnie. I want you to think on this one. Find out from Al what MacErlean might have picked up on.”

  He pointed toward Cal. “I want you to follow Caruso around for a while. Just like you did with MacErlean. Find out his habits and how many men he’s got. If you discover anything useful, I’ll set up a meeting to see what kind of trouble we’re in.”

  Cal wanted to roll his eyes at the prospect of another surveillance assignment. They were boring, but Cal knew Alfredo trusted him to be discreet without tipping off the target. Still, tailing Caruso was a risk, especially since his men might recognize him. He’d have to think of a way around that one.

  “I’ll get started right away.”

  Alfredo tipped some more brandy down his throat. Cal wondered how many he’d had already.

  “Good, now get out of here. I’ve got a lot of people to see. Let’s try not to have any messes this time, hu
h?”

  Vinnie nodded at Cal and Fonzie as they stood up. “You boys behave yourselves. Let’s hope we can bide some time before the mayor finds out what happened to MacErlean.”

  Cal and Fonzie walked out of the study and back into the living room. Vinnie followed them and closed the door behind them.

  “What’s up with Fredo?” Fonzie asked. “He basically acted like I didn’t exist.”

  Cal shrugged. “Hopefully he didn’t hear you call him Fredo. You know how much he loves that.”

  “Man, fuck Fredo,” Fonzie said in a whisper. “Let’s hurry up and get out of here. I’m getting hungry.”

  They stepped outside and headed for the car. Fonzie’s next question alarmed Cal.

  “Man, have you ever thought about why it is we do what we do?”

  Cal raised a brow in shock. He wasn’t used to thinking about such philosophical questions. He liked to focus on getting the job done. Anything else was a distraction.

  “I guess I haven’t considered it. It’s something I’m good at, and it makes me pretty good money. Isn’t that what a job is supposed to do?”

  They arrived at the car and got in. Fonzie turned the key and backed out of the driveway and into the street.

  “No, I mean it. Killing people, chasing after thugs, beating people up, doing other shit you don’t want to do? Is that how you want to spend your life?”

  Cal couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Everything he knew about Fonzie indicated he loved working in the mafia more than anything. It wasn’t often that a black man was accepted into the mafia, even if his mother was Italian. Perhaps he didn’t know his friend as well as he thought.

  “I don’t know. What else would I be able to do? At least you can sing—maybe your mom can get you on the right track in Hollywood.”

  Fonzie laughed and drummed the steering wheel along to a Drake song. “I don’t want nothing to do with Hollywood, man. Or my mama. What’s she ever done for me?”

  The rest of the ride passed in silence. The question lingered in Cal’s mind, right next to the question of his mother’s accident. He let them roll around his brain for a moment before falling asleep.

  5

  Alfredo had told Vinnie to leave the room and not allow any visitors for a while. He needed more time to review the Caruso situation. It was starting to become a pain in the ass.

  Cal may have taken out Caruso’s slimy informant, but it was time to prepare for the next step. Alfredo had kept things low-key since the mayor’s promise to snuff out crime. He’d ordered his men to go easy on drug sales, prostitution, loan-sharking, and sketchy union contracts. The dial-back had done a real number on the business, and revenues kept going south. Even though he was running an organized crime outfit, they were like any other major corporation—you always had to keep an eye on the profits.

  Alfredo knocked his knuckles on the desk and opened a drawer. He kept especially secret business dealings locked away in a location only known to Melissa. The manila folder he pulled out of the drawer was filled with information on Ross Caruso. Inside, every detail of every campaign donation and favor the mafia had pulled to get him elected was documented. Not only for the mayoral seat, but the Illinois State Senate seat he used to hold as well.

  Alfredo already knew what MacErlean had told Caruso—he just needed to put on a good show in front of everyone else. How MacErlean found out, he didn’t know. Sending Cal to investigate the mayor was nothing more than a wild-goose chase. If he got lucky, maybe Cal would take out some of the mayor’s men along the way. It was yet another reason he was glad he made the decision to adopt him seventeen years ago.

  Cal’s father had been a complete wreck. Tom Boyle worked in a warehouse on the South Side where the mafia kept imported heroin from South America, among other legitimate holdings. In his days as underboss, Alfredo paid special attention to that very profitable line of business.

  One day, Alfredo realized the money wasn’t pouring in as usual. He suspected someone was skimming the profits. The arrangement was that the guys doing the dealing got a percentage, then the capo got a bigger percentage, and the warehouse manager at the time, Gustavo Mariucci, got a slightly larger percentage to keep things running smoothly. The largest percentage, over 50 percent of the proceeds, fed up the chain to the boss, Alfredo’s father.

  Word got to Alfredo that Mariucci was taking a larger share than he was entitled to, and it was up to him to teach the warehouse manager a lesson. It wasn’t the kind of lesson where he would ask Mariucci nicely to stop taking money—it was one that would be taught at the end of a shotgun barrel.

  On the day he planned to kill Mariucci, Alfredo mistook Tom Boyle for the warehouse manager and killed him instead. None of the other workers batted an eye when they found out that old Tom, a roaring drunk who treated everyone rotten, had been shot. The death had even scared Mariucci straight—to the point where he offered to reduce his take on the heroin business. It had worked out better than planned.

  After Tom’s death, Vinnie begged Alfredo to do something about Cal, a real quiet kid who hung around with Vinnie when they were both at the warehouse. It wasn’t the best environment for a kid to be around, but Alfredo had to keep an eye on things, and the boys enjoyed playing together after school.

  Since Vinnie was smart for his age, he knew that Cal and his mother weren’t doing well financially. His mom was a waitress who didn’t make a lot of money, so they relied on the meager amount of government assistance they could get while she scraped around for a second job.

  Like any naive child, Vinnie asked his parents, Alfredo and Susan, to take Cal in because they were good buddies and Vinnie thought Cal’s situation would improve as part of their family. Family was a strong pillar in the Petrocelli house of values, but Alfredo initially felt taking Cal from his mother would contradict his own belief about the importance of family. He didn’t want to take Cal in when he had a loving mother to watch over him, even if living with her wouldn’t provide the best life for the young boy.

  His thinking changed one day at the warehouse when he saw Cal standing on the catwalk above the shop floor talking with another boy. It sounded like the boy was laying into Cal real good, telling him what an awful man his father was. The other boy’s father often complained about Tom’s abusive habits at the warehouse.

  No matter how terrible a man was, the worst thing you could do was tell his son how awful his father was after his death. The boy’s speech made even Alfredo queasy, and he was the one who’d killed the bastard.

  The boy wouldn’t let up. Alfredo saw the anger written all over Cal’s face. He saw his body shake and knew it was pure adrenaline assaulting his veins. The second Cal pushed the boy over the edge and glared at him as he fell to the ground, his head splattering open like a dropped beer bottle, Alfredo saw something in him. Something that could serve him well down the road. He couldn’t put his finger on it then, but he knew he had to protect the boy.

  He ran down the stairs and grabbed Cal. Cal’s mother, Mary, Mariucci, and the other warehouse workers came running in the direction of the shop floor. Alfredo pulled Cal into a closet to keep him hidden. He wanted it to appear like an accident. There were no cameras. No one else would be the wiser.

  He remembered the lack of fear he’d witnessed in Cal’s face. Instead of seeing the tears he would have expected from someone so young who had just committed murder, Cal was expressionless.

  “Hey, kid, what the hell’s the matter with you? You killed that boy, you know that?”

  Cal stared at Alfredo. Even back then, the boy’s eyes were like ice.

  “He made me angry. He kept saying mean things about my dad. I didn’t want to do it, but I couldn’t stop myself.”

  Alfredo wondered how remorseful the boy had felt. All of the best soldiers and hit men had no remorse, or rarely showed any emotions. Good soldiers were difficult to come by, even back then.

  “Now that boy is dead and his mommy and daddy won’t have their littl
e boy anymore, how does that make you feel?”

  Cal wiped his nose on his sleeve as if to signal he could only be bothered with his own needs at that moment. Alfredo shook the boy, hoping for an answer. Part of him wanted the boy to cry in shame and ask for forgiveness. Another part of him hoped Cal would brush it off as if the small boy meant nothing to him.

  “I don’t have my dad anymore,” Cal said. “Sometimes things don’t turn out the way you want them to.”

  Alfredo smiled at the boy. He knew then, under the right guidance, that the boy could be highly useful to him. He thought back to what Vinnie had said. Vinnie had begged him to take Cal in while his mother got back on her feet.

  Would it be worth it for him to take out the boy’s mother for an outside shot at raising a future top-notch hit man? Alfredo figured since he’d already buried the father, what harm was it to bury the mother?

  She could never provide Cal the life Alfredo and Susan could. He’d have a brother in Vinnie to look out for him, and he’d go a long way to filling the emotional void left when Alfredo’s youngest son, Luca, died. He was committed to Cal right then.

  “Listen, kid. I’m not gonna say anything. We’re going to play this off like an accident. When the police come in to question things, I’m going to say I wasn’t around when it happened and discovered the body after everyone else did. You think you can stick with that story?”

  Cal nodded and Alfredo saw the boy relax.

  “Good. You’re gonna go places, boy.”

  Alfredo took another sip of brandy as he recalled that day. The risk he had taken by having Cal’s mother killed in a car “accident” had paid off. Cal was initially devastated but was able to grow up in a loving home and never had to wonder where his next meal would come from.

  Over the years, Alfredo had more than benefitted from Cal’s presence. He would’ve had him made by now had tradition not been such a stickler on reserving the made distinction for men with Italian ancestry.

  Maybe the Commission would go for it this time, seeing all the good that Cal did for the Chicago family. But that would require Alfredo revealing Cal’s greatest kill of all, the very kill he didn’t want Caruso to hang over his head to blackmail him and destroy the powerful crime syndicate he had worked so long to build.