“We didn’t stand a chance, Nico,” Dill said. “If you were there you’d understand.”
“Don’t tell that lie,” Carmine the bodyguard said angrily. “Boss would never surrender. And your ass knows it, Dill!”
“Let me get this straight,” Nico said. “Shots were fired, three of our men were down, and you fuckers gave up? You let some random fucks force you to give up?”
All three men looked at each other. Nico could tell there was more to that story. “What?” he asked them.
Pauley and Tagglia looked at Dill. Dill didn’t want to take the torch anymore, but he knew he had to. “They weren’t random, Boss,” he said.
“But we didn’t know it at the time,” Pauley was quick to point out.
Now the meat of the matter, Nico thought. “Who were they?” he asked.
Dill exhaled. “Peltrone’s guys,” he said.
Nico already knew that too. But a part of him didn’t believe it. That was why he had to handle this himself. It could mean war. “Why would Peltrone attack my guys?” he asked. “I’ve had a truce with that man for twenty years, and suddenly he wants to attack my guys? Are you certain they belonged to Peltrone?”
“They had to, Boss,” Tagglia said. “They had to be his men.”
“Why?”
“But we didn’t know, Nico,” said Dill. “We thought he was just some prick trying to be bad ass like the rest of them.”
Nico stared at Dill, a fixed frown on his face. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking Peltrone. The one of theirs we took out was Peltrone himself,” Dill said.
Even Carmine was shocked. “What the fuck?!”
Nico was stunned. “You killed Peltrone?”
Dill looked stressed out as he nodded. “We didn’t know it was him at first. We thought he was just one of the crowd.”
“One of the crowd?” Carmine asked. “Are you out of your fucking mind? You iced a mob boss and you didn’t even know it?”
“How did you find out?”
“We just got the call. From Matty Mapp, his underboss. Screaming from the top of his lungs that we’ll pay for taking out their boss. But we didn’t know it was their boss and I tried to tell that fool. But you know how Matty is.”
Nico took both hands and ran them halfway through his air. He still could not believe it. Those idiots killed a boss!
But he knew he had to move on. He couldn’t change what already happened. He had to think about the ramifications. How was he going to mitigate that kind of damage? Those fucks let three of their men go down, and the one man they did decide to ice was the boss? “Motherfuck,” Nico said again.
“What are we gonna do, Boss?” Carmine asked.
“Get Matty on the phone.”
“And if he doesn’t wanna talk?”
“He’s not talking to you. He’s talking to me.” He handed his phone to Carmine. “Get him on the phone.”
“Oh, if he figure it’s you calling him, his ass’ll talk then,” said Carmine with certainty, as he used Nico’s phone to call Peltrone’s underboss.
“How are we gonna handle this, Boss?” asked Dill. “We didn’t know Peltrone was with his crew. We thought he was just one of the guys making noise.”
“That’s why your ass don’t talk smack to anybody anywhere!” Nico yelled. “Not while you’re working for me. Because you don’t fucking know!”
Then Nico settled back down. “Did the cops show up?”
“No. I mean, they might have shown up, but we got out of there.”
“And you left the dead behind?”
Dill knew it was a major fuckup. “What were we supposed to do? They were shooting at us even as we were leaving. We retreated behind our car, and then we jumped in and took off. What were we supposed to do?”
“Fight like men!” Nico yelled. “Get behind that car and fight the fuck back! What are you retreating for?”
“But the odds were against us, Nico,” Tagglia said. “We didn’t stand a chance!”
“Sometimes that how the fucking cookie crumbles,” Nico said. “But you never surrender!” Nico ran a hand through his hair again and began pacing the room.
Carmine ended the call. “There’s no answer, Boss,” he said. “Matty’s not answering his phone, not even your number.” Then he looked at Nico. “You know what that means.”
Nico stood still, still thinking, still counting up the costs in the long haul. And then he exhaled. It was done now. He looked at his three men. Unlike a lot of mob bosses, he protected his men no matter what. But not without them paying a price. “Go to Memphis and get lost. Keep your noses clean and keep your asses out of trouble. We’ll get you some cash. We’ll let you know when the heat’s off.”
“But, Boss,” Pauley asked, “what about our families?”
Nico frowned. “Your asses better be glad I don’t drop you where you stand. That’s what about your families! Now go.”
“Yes, sir,” Dill said, pulling Pauley along, as all three of them hurried out of the back door that led down the back stairs.
“Damn fools,” Carmine said. Then he looked at Nico. “Matty’s no pussy. He’s coming back hard, Boss. You know that.”
“I don’t think so,” Nico said, still thinking it through.
“What do you mean?” Carmine asked him.
“If he won’t pick up, even from my number, it’s because it’s out of his hands.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Every small mob family had a major mob family as their protector. Peltrone was small, and he was nobody’s fool. Nico knew he had a protector. “Who’s over Peltrone?” he asked Carmine.
“Same man always been over him. Sal Gabrini.”
Nico looked at Carmine. “Are you sure? He was still under Sal Luca’s protection?”
“Where he going, with his small-ass family? Gabrini was still carrying him.”
Nico frowned again. “Damn,” he said.
“Want me to keep trying Matty?”
“Fuck Matty! He’s not answering when he thinks I’m calling? He’s not going to be answering period. Besides, we took out his boss. If they were still under Sal’s protection, Sal will be running that show. And Sal and I don’t exactly get along.”
“Then who do we call?”
“Nobody yet. If I know Gabrini, and I do, once he gets all the facts in, he’ll be calling me.”
“And then?”
“And then we either broker a peace, or we start a fucking war. We’ll do what we have to do.”
And then they heard a sound that, at first, sounded like a car backfiring. Then they realized it wasn’t a car, but shots were being fired.
And Nico and Carmine didn’t delay. Like the OGs they were, they pulled out their hardware and took off through the back door. They ran down the backstairs where Dill and his crew had only moments before hurried down. Then Nico and Carmine ran out of the door that led outside.
What they saw when they got outside, they couldn’t believe. Dill was down. Pauley was down. Tagglia was down. And the man that had gunned the three of them down like dogs in the street was in a car that was speeding away.
Nico, with Carmine at his back, began running after that car, running and firing his weapon as he ran. Carmine was behind him, firing too, but his speed was no match for Nico’s speed. Nico left his bodyguard in the dust as he ran through the bushes behind the warehouse trying to cut that car off at the pass.
Nico was humping as fast as he could. If he could only get that second wind he believed he could cut through just in time. But Nico was no match for that car, and by the time he made it on the other side, the car easily got away.
By the time Carmine caught up with Nico, the getaway car was swerving around a second corner, and then was clean out of sight.
“Who were they? Sal Gabrini’s people?” Carmine was almost out of breath from the run.
“Not Gabrini,” said Nico, who was still trying to figure it out himse
lf. “Sal would have called me first.”
“Then who the hell would have the balls to take out three more of our guys? Matty Mapp? You think he’d go behind Gabrini’s back?”
“We have to work from that proposition,” said Nico. Then Nico exhaled. “How many members in Peltrone’s family?”
“I would say thirty guys tops. Small.”
“They took out six of my men,” Nico said.
“You’re ordering a hit back?”
“What the fuck you think? They already took out three of our guys. Now three more? And all we got is one of theirs? You’d better believe I’m ordering a hit back. This shit is too lopsided. It’ll be open season if we don’t hit back.”
Carmine nodded. “I agree with that! How many?”
“They took out six of ours. We take out sixteen of theirs.”
Carmine was surprised. “Damn, Boss. That’s more than half their guys.”
Nico looked at Carmine. “Does it look like I give a fuck? Did they give a fuck? Do it!”
“And if Sal Gabrini puts his muscle in afterwards?” Carmine asked.
“Then I’ll put mine in. And we’ll have ourselves a motherfucking war that we didn’t start, and that Sal knows me well enough to know that I’ll fight his ass until it ends. And may the best fucker win.” And Nico headed back to his downed men.
Carmine knew it was pure testosterone talking, which sometimes happened with guys like Nico. But he also knew Nico was always right. They couldn’t let Matty or anybody else get away with knocking off six of their guys. Three were bad enough. Now a second hit? They had to strike back.
And Carmine fully understood the rationale why they were hit again. Nico’s crew knocked off Peltrone, their boss. But the Peltrone family compared to the Bacard syndicate was small potatoes in mob land. Knocking off their boss was like knocking off one of Nico’s lieutenants. Still bad. But not worth going to war over.
Unless Sal Gabrini wasn’t seeing it that way, and the war was already joined.
CHAPTER FOUR
I have to leave the country.
Those were the words he said to her that doomed their relationship, even though she didn’t realize it at the time. She just knew they would find a way to make it work. She thought they would not allow thousands of miles and two continents to put an end to a love affair that they both believed was going somewhere. But because of his background, and because of her political ambitions that were completely counter to the only lifestyle he’d ever known, it was a dream unfulfilled. Because he left and never called. Because he never tried to reach out to her in any way. He let her know, by his complete and utter silence, that it was over.
But he never told her so. That was the infuriating part for Kay. He never allowed her to have any closure. He never gave her a chance to throw a shoe at him or to scream at him or to do the things you do to move on from him. And the inability to have that moment, to let him know how much he hurt her, devastated her. For years.
Now it was ten years later and ten days before the presidential election, and her Driver, a Secret Service agent, was opening the back passenger door to let her out. And Rog had the nerve to tell her the very man that had broken her so completely was the only man that could help her now? What did she ever do, she wondered as she stepped out with a cup of warm coffee in her hand, to deserve such karma?
She walked across the sidewalk, waving but ignoring the questions yelled to her from the roped-off press corps, and entered her massive campaign headquarters in downtown Chicago. Roger “Rog” Pettway, her tall, handsome, African-American campaign manager, met her at the door. But not just Rog. Her press secretary, Tammy Morgan, a small white woman, was there as well. Which only made it all the more clearer in Kay’s mind that they had a major league problem on their hands.
As she picked up her mail from the reception desk and spoke to her campaign volunteers who were manning the phones, Rog and Tammy hovered around her as if, by their will alone, they were going to force her to go into her office as quickly as possible. They were just that intense. And although Kay did her greetings to her faithful volunteers, she didn’t delay either. And Rog and Tammy followed her into her office.
And when Kay walked behind her desk, she got to the point. “How bad is it?”
Tammy exhaled. “It may be unrecoverable, I’m afraid,” Tammy said.
Kay didn’t expect that gloomy an assessment. She expected them to say something on the order that it was bad, but here was what they had to do. But to say it was unrecoverable? Kay tossed the mail on her desk. “What in the world is it?”
Tammy looked at Roger. Rog went over to the door and closed it, and then walked back up to the desk. “There’s a video, Kay.”
“Of what?”
“Of you. And a man.”
Kay knew better than that. “Are you telling me there’s some video out there of my college days with some guy I don’t even remember being with? That’s it? That’s their October Surprise?”
“No,” Rog said. Then an anguished look appeared in his eyes. “We wish.”
Kay hesitated. “Then what is it?” she asked.
“It’s a video of you and Michael,” Rog said. “Michael’s the guy.”
Michael was a man Kay met on the rebound that was problem-prone too. “Are you saying there’s a sex video out there of Michael and I?”
“No, Kay,” Tammy said. And Kay realized in that moment just how anguished Tammy looked as well.
“Then what is it?” Kay asked her two top campaign officials. She was anguished because she had no clue what was on that video.
“It’s a video of you,” Rog said. “It’s a video of you . . . killing Michael.”
Kay couldn’t believe it. “What? Of me what?”
“It’s a video of you, with a gun, going over to Michael and putting a bullet through his head, Kay.”
Kay was shocked. “You’re joking. You’ve got to be joking!”
Neither Rog nor Tammy cracked a smile.
“But that’s not true,” Kay said. “That’s not what happened! Everybody knows that’s not what happened!”
“I know that,” Rog said. “And you know that. Even the police, who investigated Michael’s death, knows it too.”
“Then what’s the problem?” Kay asked.
Rog and Tammy looked at each other. And Kay realized it too. “Oh my Lord,” she said.
“We have ten days before election day,” Rog said out loud what all of them were thinking. “Only ten days. There’s no way we can convince the American people that you didn’t murder your abusive ex-boyfriend in ten days. There’s no way.”
“Where’s this video?” Kay asked Rog.
“I don’t have it.”
“Then how do you know it exists?”
Again Tammy exhaled and looked at Rog. Kay looked at him too. “What is it?”
Rog pulled out his cell phone. “They sent me this,” he said, and pressed the Play button on his phone.
Kay watched the video. It appeared to be at Michael’s apartment at the Watergate Hotel in DC. Michael was on the sofa lying down. Kay was sitting at a table. The video was choppy and grainy. But then it appeared as if a hand reached for a gun. And then there was a back shot of her standing over Michael, and she was lifting that gun to his head, and she fired one shot that was so loud it made Kay jump just watching it. And then the tape ended.
She looked at Rog. “What in the world? That never happened! It’s doctored. It’s obviously doctored.”
“Yeah, I know. But it’s not going to matter, Kay. Not ten days before the election.”
“Even if we get the best forensic people on the case, even Quantico,” Tammy said, “the voters aren’t going to care. That video will speak for itself in the eyes of the public. That video will be a viral sensation and there won’t be a damn thing we can do about it. It won’t be enough time.”
“If you’re explaining,” Rog said, “you’re losing. And that’s for ordinary scandals. Bu
t this scandal? Where you would have to come out and say I didn’t murder my boyfriend?” Rog shook his head. “More than half of the public will never believe you. No matter what. And that will spell doom for us in November.”
“Because Kay,” Tammy said, “nobody’s going to vote for a person they suspect could have murdered her boyfriend. Nobody.”
Kay couldn’t believe it. “Has there been any communication with whomever has this video?” she asked.
“We got a phone call, yes,” said Rog. “He said they plan to put it out there in seven days.”
“Three days before the election,” Kay said. “They don’t want us to have any chance to recover.”
“Not a chance whatsoever,” Rog said. “They want to hit the public with this nonsense and hit it hard.”
Kay rubbed her forehead. “Did they give us any options?” she asked.
“Only one.”
“Which is?”
“They want a billion dollars.”
Kay’s eyes stretched larger. “A billion dollars?”
“If we deposit a billion dollars, electronically, in a certain account,” Rog continued, “and we do so before those seven days are up, then that video will never see the light of day. Which may or may not be true. We would have to trust them. And give them our billion dollars.”
“And that’s only if we can get up a billion bucks,” said Tammy. “Which you know we absolutely can’t.”
Kay couldn’t believe it. Was this the way her entire political career was going to end? Over a lie? Over a gotdamn lie?
“But I have a solution,” Tammy said.
“That’s no solution,” said Rog.
“What is it, Tammy?” asked Kay. She’d take any solution other than the one Rog had in mind.
“I say we fight back preemptively,” Tammy said. “I say we inform the public about this fake tape that’s going around over the internet, and that’s the way I’ll phrase it. That it’s an internet thing, and everybody knows you can’t believe everything you see on the internet. That way, when they realize we aren’t ponying up a billion dollars and they put out that video, the surprise element will be gone. We may be able to survive it.”
The President's Boyfriend Page 2
