Only the Details

by Alan Lee

  Carlos answered, “Don’t got a choice.”

  “Carlos, you been?” asked Marcus.

  “Ten years ago, working for hombre in Mejico.”

  “That’s absurd,” said Veronica. “Darren never mentioned it’s a blood sport. Gabbia Cremisi translates as Crimson Cage. How is there no outcry about this atrocity? It’s essentially a human version of a dog fighting?”

  “Essentially.” Marcus nodded.

  Carlos said, “Tournament lasts a week. He wins, he fight next guy.”

  “Certainly the tournament is not a televised event,” said Veronica. “It can’t be public knowledge.”

  “Nah, but it ain’t a secret. Naples is a different type of city,” said Marcus. “Gotta know that to understand. It’s like an annual party for the criminally wealthy. Naples be a place where anything goes, you got enough scratch.”

  Veronica said, “Marcus, you’ve never been?”

  “Not a big fan of violence. Avoid it when possible.”

  “But you’re invited.”

  “More or less.”

  Manny and Veronica shared a look. A glance that asked the question—are you in? Searched the other’s eyes. Of course I am.

  Veronica pulled her purse close and took out her iPhone. “I’ll book a flight.”

  “And I’m feeling feverish” said Manny. “Might call in sick couple days.”

  Marcus placed a large hand on Veronica’s phone. “Book a flight to Naples?”

  “Obviously.”

  “To watch the Gabbia Cremisi?”

  “To bring Mackenzie home,” she said, a trace of anger and hurt between the syllables.

  “And I am going to kill all the Camorra,” said Manny.

  “I get it,” said Marcus. “I ain’t happy either. But you two be Bonnie and Clyde against the entire mafia. That’s a machine can’t be beat.”

  “Pack your bags, Marcus,” said Veronica. “You’re going too. I need a way in. You’re my date.”

  Even though nothing about him seemed to move, Marcus expressed displeasure. A muscle in his jaw bunched.

  She said, “Marcus, you remember the poker game.”

  “I do.”

  “Mackenzie went there. For me. Knowing full well he could be killed. He’s on his way to Naples because of me. I won’t sit here and hope. This world isn’t enough for me without him in it. He’s the best of us. And I just got him and I can’t lose him.”

  Marcus poured another glass of scotch and immediately drank it. Set the glass down and picked up the bottle again. He didn’t pour, though. Just held it.

  Manny said, “Señor, you saved Mack’s life in that train yard. Said you liked this world better with him in it.”

  “I remember.”

  “Nothing’s changed. We need him back.”

  “We can’t bust him out, Manny.”

  “Mack, he is not like other men. He might escape without our help.”

  Marcus rumbled, “You two kids be young and carefree. Still babies. Me? I got a wife. Got a kid. I know I’m in the underworld, but I stay on the safe side."

  “Marcus, I need you. Just get me in,” said Veronica. She grasped Marcus’s hand with both of hers. “Nothing dangerous about that. Please.”

  Manny grinned to himself. No man, not even happily married Marcus Morgan, was impervious to the powers of Veronica Summers.

  Marcus said, “And then what.”

  “I’m not sure. This is happening quickly. I need more information.”

  He asked, “What about Kix?”

  Sheriff Stackhouse elbowed Timothy August and she said, “My gorgeous boyfriend and I will watch him, naturally. You go get Mackenzie.”

  “Damn it,” said Marcus. “Wednesday was gonna be nice. Got a tee time at the lake, one more round before it get too cold. Mackenzie still being a pain in my ass. Sure you want to do this?”

  “Of course. He’s my husband.”

  Manny made a gasping sound. “Tu marido?”

  Timothy stood a little straighter. “Husband? Beg your pardon?”

  “Hold up,” said Ebony watching this from beyond the huddle. “This guy, he’s you husband, but you ain’t screwing?”

  Veronica winced. “Oh right, I forgot about Ebony. Her pimp threatened to kill her. Can she stay here for a day? Maybe two?”

  “Um, well…” said Timothy.

  Stackhouse grinned. “Absolutely. That’s what the sheriff is for.”

  “You the sheriff? Hold up,” said Ebony again.

  23

  Veronica raised hell and fury, and found several jets but no pilots at the Roanoke airport. Instead she and Manny and Carlos and Marcus raced to Dulles in Marcus’s black Lexus LS, making the trip in three hours because Manny drove. He played Sinatra and podcasts about economics the whole way.

  “Sinatra, he’s the king,” said Manny. “Me and him, fine Americans.”

  En route, between calls to the airport, Veronica moved money around bank accounts using her phone in the backseat.

  She said, “Private flights are absurd. A year ago this would’ve bankrupted me. Good thing I shot my father.”

  Manny laughed as he rocketed past an eighteen-wheeler. “Inheritance, a beautiful thing.”

  “I’ll pay half,” said Marcus, working on his laptop from the passenger seat. “This trip gonna cost more than you think.”

  An associate of Marcus’s met them at the international airport’s parking lot at four in the morning. He wordlessly set a black backpack on the trunk of the Lexus. Marcus zipped it open while Veronica and Manny shivered and stamped. Inside, he found four burner passports, four international phones, stacks of euros, and two new credit cards registered to each passport.

  Marcus nodded to himself. Set a small diamond into the man’s hand. The diamond’s culet glinted red. The man turned and walked away without a word, shoes echoing off the concrete ceiling.

  Veronica asked, “Who was that?”

  “One of the nameless dudes keep this whole show running smooth.”

  “You gave him aurum? The red diamond?”

  “Yep. A currency only us lowlifes use.”

  “One of Darren’s buddies offered me a fistful of the red diamonds to marry him,” she said.

  Marcus paused, mid-zip. “A fistful?”

  “Should I have been flattered?”

  “Make you one of the most powerful women in the American underworld.”

  Manny made an appreciative grunt. “Maybe I marry him.”

  Thirty minutes later they bypassed security and boarded an HA-420 HondaJet. The private jet was not ideal—smaller and slower than what they’d prefer, but last-minute options were limited this early.

  At 5:15 a.m., almost exactly twelve hours after Mackenzie had taken off from Reagan National airport, they were wheels-up and pursuing him across the Atlantic.

  24

  Veronica woke as they refueled in Bermuda, an extra and necessary stop for their smaller private jet, a stop Duane’s Gulfstream didn’t have to make. It was noon, local time. Marcus quietly typed on his MacBook Air. Carlos and his biceps took up two seats across from them. Manny was asleep next to her, beautiful in repose. She took his hand and squeezed. It wasn’t sexual or romantic, or even friendly. It was familial and she needed it.

  She woke again in Portugal, this time for good.

  The stewardess, unable to stand fully upright, brought them fruit and champagne. She tried and failed to not ogle Manny, whose pale blue shirt was only half buttoned.

  Veronica noted it was Burberry and probably cost three hundred dollars. There was more to Manny than carefree Hispanic marshal, she knew, and some time in the future, on a calm day, she would pry.

  She held a crystal bowl in one hand, a dainty fork in the other. She speared a pineapple bit. “Tell me about the tournament.”

  “I been doing research,” Marcus said. “Kings never been, so I don’t know everything. The fights are an excuse for the mafia bosses to drink and gamble and fuck and
buy product, I know that.”

  “Product?”

  “Girls, ice, guns, security, luxury cars, yachts. You want it, Naples can provide it.”

  Manny yawned and stretched. Finished his champagne in one swallow and the stewardess immediately refilled it. “The Kings, they do not attend. Porque?”

  “Got something to do with old and new money. The Kings are fairly new. Started taking over power from the Sicilians in the eighties, everywhere but New York City. Some of the more powerful Kings, they ain’t secure in they manhood yet. New money. Worried about hobnobbing with the world’s biggest swinging dicks. The Russians or the Colombian or the Yakuza, that’s old money. Generational billionaires. The Kings don’t wanna swim with bigger fishes.”

  “Tell me about the tournament,” she said again.

  Carlos responded. “Eight contestants paired off. Four fights, first night. Winners fight again two nights later.”

  “A fight to the death?”

  “Sí.”

  Veronica said, “I cannot imagine Mackenzie being forced into the ring and killing a man.”

  “Simon,” said Manny. “But imagine him losing? No way, Jose.”

  “What if we don’t release him in time? What will Mackenzie do?”

  “Better question,” said Marcus. “Is how you plan to release him.”

  “I have no idea.”

  25

  Their trip took four hours longer than Duane’s. They landed at the Naples international airport instead of the small private strip. An associate of Marcus’s welcomed them, took them around customs, and delivered a rental Fiat. The four of them, stiff and tired and grouchy, squeezed in, closed their car doors, and cranked the air conditioning.

  “Look at this,” said Manny, slapping the steering wheel. “Ay dios mio, what junk. See, this is what’s great about America. We have real cars.”

  “Have you secured tickets into the Gabbia Cremisi?” Veronica asked Marcus.

  “No. Ain’t so easy. Teatro di Montagna is booked solid and you gotta be a resident of the hotel to attend the fights.”

  “Translates as Theater of the Mountain?” she asked.

  “Something like that. Big damn place, apparently. We on standby.”

  “Standby is unacceptable.”

  “I got us rooms at the hotel next door. These stupid motherfuckers kill each other with some regularity, so I hear. My source expects a room to come open soon,” said Marcus. He entered the name of the hotel on his phone and directions appeared. Manny glanced at them, nodded, and eased the car out of the parking lot, muttering about driving a toy car.

  “Your source? Can’t you tell them that you’re with the Kings?”

  “Could, but then Duane find out. Be an issue. Need to stay hidden from him. For a while.”

  “So we aren’t here as Americans,” she said.

  “Nope. We here because of Manny. He a rich-ass investor from the Caribbean and I be his best friend from South Africa. We’re rooting for the Zeta champion. Carlos be Manny’s walk-around guy. We just hoping nobody recognize Carlos.”

  Manny nodded approval.

  Veronica said, “And me?”

  “Arm candy from Switzerland. To put it politely,” said Marcus.

  “My alias is that I’m a girlfriend.”

  “Keep in mind, these people ain’t as sensitive and woke as us. This still a man’s world.”

  “Not for much longer,” she said. “I might kill them all.”

  26

  Rioters swarmed their car at an intersection, slapping their hands against the windshield and windows. At the next, they dumped soda bottles on the roof. Furious Neapolitans shouted through their tinted windows.

  “The fuck they doing,” said Marcus.

  Manny laid his .357 sideways across his lap. “Losing your deposit, amigo.”

  Veronica translated as best she could. “Something about crime and a man named Rossi…and the tournament. I don’t understand some of the local lingo.”

  “It’s the Camorra and their amateurish clan wars. You want criminals running the city? No you don’t. They make a mess.”

  Due to frequent stops and reroutes, their trip up Vomero mountain took three hours. Even with Siri constantly correcting them they got lost in the maze of tight streets.

  “All these buildings, they look the same,” complained Manny. “Cities in America way better than this.”

  They arrived at the underwhelming hotel at midnight, local time. Went to bed exhausted.

  27

  They woke up the same way—exhausted. Veronica had no idea what time it was on the East Coast.

  Coffee o’clock, she knew that.

  They drank caffè and ate fette biscottate in a shady palazzo in front of their hotel. This high in Vomero the air no longer stank of sewage. They listened to competing minstrels on the far street corners and inhaled the scent of sizzling sausages.

  “According to my sources,” said Marcus Morgan, reading off his phone. “This part of the city is called Magliari. Means cheating merchants. It’s a kangaroo court for the Camorristi. Summers, what the hell is a kangaroo court?”

  “Means anything goes,” she said, dipping a corner of her bread into a mug of coffee. “No one is really in charge, and those who try are incompetent clowns.”

  Manny nodded appreciatively.

  Marcus continued, “No police in this part of the city. It’s the wild west. And that is the Teatro di Montagna.”

  He pointed down their street. At the far end, seven blocks removed, an enormous structure glimmered in unbroken sunlight.

  “That’s the hotel?” said Veronica. “I thought it was a royal palace. It looks as though the Artist formerly known as Prince designed it on a Bill Gates budget.”

  Carlos said, “The tournament. It used to be different. In Secondigilano.”

  “That hotel, ay caramba,” said Manny, nodding his head down the street. “We can walk in?”

  “Not recommended. One of the most heavily guarded places on planet Earth at the moment,” said Marcus. “By eight powerful mafias. Without a reservation? We be escorted out pronto.”

  “No rooms have come available?” said Veronica.

  “Not yet.”

  “Soon,” said Manny and he finished his coffee, drunk with heavy whipping cream and butter. “I got a good feeling, migos.”

  “First things first,” said Marcus. “We need to look the part.”

  “Clothes,” said Ronnie. “Yes. I brought nothing befitting that hotel.”

  They navigated the crowds on Pavone Vicolo, which Veronica told them translated as Peacock Alley. They passed wine shops, bakeries, upper crust cocaine dealers, small grocers, brothels, casinos, banks, and everything else.

  Veronica made a small gasping sound and hurried to the glass display window of a couture boutique. “Omigosh. It’s a Lela Rose.”

  Manny followed her, hands in his pocket. “Huh?”

  “It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” said Veronica reverently, resisting the urge to place her fingers on the glass between her and the blue evening gown.

  “It’s a blue dress, señorita. You have at least one, I seen you wear it.”

  “This is a Lela Rose, Manny. Just look. Off the shoulder neckline, a-line cut, fold-over bodice, and—”

  “And Italian materials, my love,” said a man hurrying from the storefront’s open door. He looked maybe seventy, a hard etched face, wore a vest, and sported a gorgeous head of silver hair. He took Veronica’s hand and kissed it twice. He smelled like whiskey. “You two are the most beautiful people I have ever witnessed. Did Valentino send you?”

  Veronica smiled. “Only in my fondest dreams would I be sent by Valentino. We’re mere patrons. You’re English!”

  “I am, and with Her Majesty’s blessing I would arrange a ménage à trios with both of you two ravishing creatures if I had time. You need clothes.”

  “We do.”

  “Come into my store this instant so
I can get my hands on you. You must,” he said. He took Manny’s hand too and drew them into his place of commerce, called Sa Majesté.

  Veronica was breathless at the designers she saw waiting on mannequins.

  “Who are you, I must know,” said the proprietor and haberdasher. He ran his hands around Manny’s neck and then across the shoulders, whispering to himself. Then he did the same to Veronica’s waist and bust. The tailor’s young assistant listened attentively to the man’s mutterings and made notes on a pad. “I must know, tell me everything, and I will dress you like the Maharaja and concubine you are.”

  “We…ah…” said Manny. He screwed up his face in thought. “I forget. I’m from South Africa, maybe.”

  The tailor smiled a wicked smile and said, “That, my love, is balderdash.”

  Their voices sounded hushed, the noise soaked by the stacks of cloth.

  Marcus, standing at the doorway, uncrossed his arms. He made a noise, somewhere between a sigh and a grunt. He set two stacks of Euros on the marble counter, and then deliberately placed a red-tipped diamond on top. “We need to look good,” he said. “And we from nowhere. This the place for us?”

  “Indeed, indeed.” The tailor gave them a slow nod. “Say no more, my black pillar of strength and sex. I dress the champions myself, for the second fight, so I can handle you.” His assistant whisked away the money and diamond, and vanished into the back room. “Are you remaining for the entirety of the week?”

  “Hope not.”

  “What a bizarre answer! You four are trouble and I love it,” said the man. He was rubbing his thumb and forefinger across his chin, pinching at it. “You won’t blend in, even if I dress you in rags. What’s your story?”

  “Manny, he’s rich and here to bet on the fights. From the Caribbean. I be equally rich, from South Africa. Carlos, behind me, the muscle.”

  Veronica said, “And I am sexual recreation.”

  “My god, and you’re an absolute Lamborghini, I’m positive.” He clucked his tongue a few times, running his eyes around the store, cluttered with fashion, dripping with excess. “Okay. How soon?”