Deep Dark Night

by Steph Broadribb

  He needs her to stop. Doesn’t like having to restrain a woman. Never has. But he’ll do what’s necessary to stay safe and get back to Lori. He uses the smallest amount of force necessary. Carmella might have killed Johnny, but he doesn’t want to hurt her. There’s something else going on here, something he doesn’t know, and he wants to find out what.

  Carmella struggles against the hold. Tries to lash out at him, bite him. ‘You’re just like the rest. You’re selfish, evil. You deserve to die the same as them.’

  JT holds her still. ‘The rest?’

  ‘Cabressa, Johnny, Carl and the others – all those men at the game; they deserve everything they got tonight.’ She spits the names. Glares at JT. ‘It’s taken months to engineer that game, with those players, and then Cabressa insists that woman Lori plays tonight, and the pair of you stroll in and almost ruin everything.’

  ‘Ruin what?’ asks JT. But as he asks the question he already knows the answer. ‘The lockdown, the recorded message and decontamination protocol – that was you?’

  Carmella shakes her head. Doesn’t answer. But she’s smiling – grinning. That’s enough, JT thinks. She did this. ‘Why?’

  ‘I told you. They don’t deserve to live. After what they did … and you and the woman, Lori, are part of their world too, so you’re just as bad as them.’

  ‘But you and Thomas, you were inside the penthouse. We were all running out of air.’

  Carmella tries to jerk away from him. Fails. Speaks through gritted teeth. ‘Thomas was stealing from me. He deserved what he got.’

  JT remembers Carmella’s distress when Thomas was injured and then killed. How she cried and looked beaten. He realises she’s one hell of an actress. ‘There was no guarantee you’d get out alive.’

  ‘What happened to me wasn’t important. I wanted those men to die in the penthouse. As long as that happened I’d have achieved my aim.’

  Everything that happened inside the penthouse suite was pre-planned. JT looks into Carmella’s eyes. She looks calm, totally rational. ‘Why would you want that?’

  She shakes her head.

  He feels her body tense.

  ‘Enough questions,’ she says. She kicks back against him. Throws herself to the right, trying to wrench herself from his grasp.

  It doesn’t work. JT holds her firm. ‘You’re wrong about us. Lori’s with the FBI.’

  ‘No,’ says Carmella, shaking her head. ‘You’re lying.’

  ‘It’s the truth,’ JT says. Adjusting his grasp so he can hold Carmella in place and reach a hand into his pocket, he pulls out the crumpled sheet of paper that Monroe had them sign before the night started. He shakes it open so that the FBI logo is clear in the centre of the page, and holds it in front of Carmella. ‘I’ve got proof.’

  Carmella reads it. As she does, her stance softens. She drops the Taser. Looks at JT. ‘You’re not part of Cabressa’s organisation?’

  ‘Never have been.’

  ‘Then how did you get Cabressa to insist you were invited to the poker game?’

  ‘A confidential informer to the FBI got us a meeting, vouched for us. From there it was set up. The first time we met Cabressa was tonight.’

  Carmella’s shaking her head. ‘I didn’t know, I didn’t want to hurt any innocent people, it wasn’t supposed to—’

  ‘There’s no reason you should have. It was a sting operation. The FBI have a hard-on for Cabressa. The plan was to get proof of him handling stolen goods linked to a multiple homicide. Those chess pieces were the bait. Once he was in custody a whole bunch of people were ready to testify about the rest of his criminal activities. All we had to do was get him off the street.’

  Carmella narrows her eyes. Looks doubtful.

  ‘A lot of people have died for those pieces over the past few years, and a lot of lives have been ruined because of them. Lori nearly lost her life. So did I.’ JT rubs his hand over his jaw. ‘Cabressa needed to pay for what he’d done.’

  ‘Getting arrested isn’t justice for that man.’ Carmella scowls. ‘It doesn’t come halfway near it.’

  ‘It’s the right thing.’

  Carmella shakes her head. ‘You don’t know what he’s done, what he’s capable of. Even death is too good for him.’

  ‘Is that why you removed the oxygen from the penthouse. You wanted him to suffer?’

  Carmella meets his gaze. Holds it. Says nothing.

  JT shakes his head. ‘Look, I’ve been around mobsters before. I know what they—’

  ‘No, you don’t know.’ Carmella’s voice is louder now, passionate. ‘You don’t know about Cabressa. He’s evil. The things he’s done are…’

  ‘You’re right, I don’t know,’ says JT. He takes a step down, closer to Carmella. His eyes are on her, but he keeps the Taser in his peripheral vision. ‘So tell me what he did.’

  56

  There are no guns, no spotlights, no SWAT team. No sign of Monroe. The back exit of the building is deserted.

  I swallow back my frustration. Try to act normal, or as normal as is possible when there’s a mobster holding a gun to your back.

  ‘Which way’s the hotel?’ Cabressa asks.

  I scan our surroundings. We’ve come out onto a narrow concrete path that seems to follow the outside perimeter of the building. Ahead of us is a high metal fence with razor wire at the top of it. Through the slats of the fence I see more buildings – apartment blocks and hotels, I’m guessing from their design. All of them are cloaked in darkness.

  I don’t recognise this area. We must have come out around back. I turn to Cabressa. ‘I need to get to the front of the building, I know my way from there.’

  Cabressa cusses under his breath. Prods me with the gun. ‘Move then.’

  I do as he says. Follow the narrow path around the building.

  In the distance I hear the wail of a police siren, shouts and screams, and the sound of glass shattering. There’s an unmistakable smell of burning in the air. I can imagine what’s happening – there’ll be looting and riots, and worse. The power outage has brought out the crazy in the people of Chicago. Blackouts always do.

  We reach the front of the building. Earlier, when me and JT arrived, the place was lit up with spotlights. Now the metal-and-glass frontage looks dull and uninviting. I peer into the lobby. There’s no one inside.

  I turn at the entrance to the lobby and go down the steps to the street. I scan the area for a van that could have the SWAT team in, but I see nothing. There’s no one here. The unlit sidewalks are empty. The buildings all around us are shrouded in darkness. The street has a desolate feel to it, like we’ve stepped onto the set of a post-apocalyptic movie. As we walk in the direction of my hotel the burning smell grows stronger, and the screams and yells louder. I look back at Cabressa. ‘I think this is a bad idea.’

  He scowls. He’s walking fast, but with a strong limp. ‘This is my city, I’ll go where I want in it.’

  ‘I don’t think we should—’

  ‘Enough talking,’ he says, pushing me in the back with the gun. ‘Take me to the hotel.’

  I keep walking. Listen out for the shouting, the smashing and the cheering. Try to weave a path through the streets to avoid them.

  We travel a few blocks, dodging into smaller alleys, taking short cuts between the larger buildings, avoiding the main streets. Cabressa pushes us faster. He might talk a good-enough talk, but I can tell from his expression that he’s worried. We’re alone out here and our phones are dead. He doesn’t have the protection of his security and his generals. All he has right now is me.

  And I, for sure, do not have his back.

  Keeping low, we hurry along the sidewalk towards the river. I look back at Cabressa. ‘We have to get across.’

  He nods. Grim-faced.

  I follow his gaze. See the problem.

  There’s a burning mass forming a makeshift barricade across the bridge. I slow my pace and squint towards it, trying to work out what it is. The closer we g
et, the more the stench of petrol fills my nostrils. The fire crackles and pops, and through the flames I see the burning shells of two cars that have been flipped onto their sides and set alight. The city is in chaos, and we are in the thick of it.

  Left with little choice, I hang a left at the end of the block, start down the main drag alongside the river. The skyscrapers lining the water stand in the darkness like silent sentinels witnessing the city as it loses its mind.

  This isn’t where I wanted us to be. It’s too exposed. Too damn dangerous.

  Up ahead I see shadows moving in the darkness. Further still, the reflections of the blue lights of police cars kaleidoscope in the mirrored glass of the building’s windows.

  I break into a run. Clutch my arm around my ribs, trying to stop the worst of the pain. It doesn’t help much. But I grit my teeth. Push forward. Cabressa follows, and as I glance back over my shoulder at him, I notice his limp is more pronounced at the faster speed.

  ‘We need to find a way to cross,’ I tell him. ‘There’s a footbridge a little way along this street I think.’

  ‘Few hundred yards,’ he says. ‘We need to get onto the other side of the street.’

  I nod and dart across the empty road. Cabressa stays with me. We sprint along the sidewalk, then hang a right at the sign for the footbridge and follow the narrow path between buildings to the river. We emerge from the path at the water’s edge and halt. Ahead is the footbridge. It looks deserted – no burning cars, no human-shaped shadows. I glance at Cabressa. ‘You ready?’

  He nods.

  ‘Okay then,’ I say. Then I start running across the narrow bridge.

  The wind is stronger on the bridge. The stillness of the streets replaced with persistent gusts. I pump my arms faster. Keep running. Behind me Cabressa does the same.

  We make it to the middle of the bridge before our luck runs out.

  57

  They stand on the twist of the stairs, the wind gusting around them, sending Carmella’s long black hair swirling around her face. JT doesn’t think she’s a threat to him, but he wants to know more about what she planned and why she did it. He wants them to keep moving too. Needs to get to Lori. He lets go of Carmella, gestures towards the stairs. ‘I need to get going.’

  He steps down onto the next flight and Carmella follows. They climb down in silence for a few levels. Then, as they pass the thirty-third floor, he looks back over his shoulder. ‘You say I don’t know how evil Cabressa is, why he deserved everything that’s happened tonight. Tell me; help me understand.’

  Carmella doesn’t reply at first. Their footsteps clank on the metal treads. The wind gusts around them. Minutes pass, and JT figures she’s not going to tell him. Then she starts to speak.

  ‘I was young when it happened. It was three days after my fourteenth birthday.’

  JT slows his pace, letting her catch up with him. Nods.

  ‘I was telling the truth earlier when I said that I’d lied to the players about where I grew up. I never lived in New Jersey. I was born here in Chicago. Carmella isn’t my real name either. I changed it a long time ago. After everything that happened back then, and before I started preparing for what would happen.’

  ‘Back in the penthouse you said you ran away from home at fourteen – was that true?’ JT’s wondering if Carmella had fallen in with the wrong people – easy to do if you’re living on the street and desperate. She could have been pulled into working for Cabressa through one of his seedy businesses. Maybe that’s why she holds the mobster responsible.

  Her expression darkens. ‘My home was destroyed when I was fourteen, and my family was too. I didn’t run away – there was nothing left here for me.’

  JT keeps his voice soft. Tries to coax the story from her. ‘Did you need money. Did the mob find you and force you to work for them?’

  Carmella stops partway down the flight of stairs. She spits out the words like they’re poison. ‘I’d never, ever work for Cabressa … that bastard’s the reason I lost everything.’

  JT wants them to keep moving, but he needs to know why Carmella wanted to kill the men in the penthouse too. He stops and turns back to face her. ‘What did he do?’

  ‘My papa was a good man. He’d worked construction his whole life, and helped our community in his free time. Everybody loved him. One of the things he did was run the residents’ group for our apartment building.’ Her expression hardens. ‘And it got him killed.’

  JT stays silent. Waits for her to tell him more.

  ‘When the city issued the compulsory-purchase orders he knew something wasn’t right. They said our building was riddled with rot and the brickwork was crumbling. That it couldn’t be saved. But Papa had worked construction over thirty years and he knew that wasn’t true. He understood how things worked, and so when he went to City Hall and looked up the plans for our neighbourhood – the site of our apartment block – he realised things weren’t right. The more he investigated, the more he spotted discrepancies that others had missed. He tried to make appointments to see the city planners and the development syndicate who’d be awarded the contracts for redeveloping our block, but they avoided him. He looked up the people who’d signed the paperwork on the syndicate’s behalf but they refused to meet.’ She shakes her head. ‘So he lodged complaints. Got the other residents behind him to fight the development syndicate. Started to talk to the press. And so they had him killed.’

  ‘Over a real-estate project?’

  Carmella nods. ‘It was a multi-million-dollar development that made all its investors a lot of money.’

  JT leans back against the railing. ‘And you know for sure they killed him?’

  ‘I found his body.’ Carmella takes a breath. Closes her eyes. ‘The charred remains of it, anyway. They’d taken him on his way home from work. Forced him down into the basement of our apartment building, put a tyre around his neck and filled it with gas before setting it on fire.’ She opens her eyes. Blinks back tears. Glares at JT. ‘He would have died in agony.’

  JT’s heard of the practice – it was in Monroe’s briefing notes on Cabressa. He knows it’s a way of getting rid of enemies that the Cabressa crime family picked up from the cartels. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Yeah, me too,’ says Carmella. She looks away. Wipes her eyes. When she turns back to JT her expression has hardened. ‘That’s why every person in the development syndicate had to die. They ordered his murder, or they stood by and did nothing. They let their desire for money overrule any decency they might have once had. After Papa died the residents group gave in. There were threats of more violence if we didn’t comply. We had to move away. People did the best they could, but my mom never recovered. She hung herself from the bathroom door the day before the enforcement order was to take effect.’

  ‘That’s real tough. I’m sorry.’

  ‘So you said. But sorry isn’t enough. For years I tried to forget, to put what had happened behind me, but I never truly could. I needed closure, and the only thing that could come close to that was to get revenge. So I made that my mission. I went through all of Papa’s papers and researched the development syndicate and the person in the mayor’s office who signed off the compulsory purchase order. It took over a year but I found out each and every one of their names. I found out their flaws and weaknesses, their dirty little secrets, and thought about how I could make them my advantage. Take Cabressa and Mikey, for example, they’ve had a special arrangement going between the mayor’s office and the mob for years, but they know they’re getting older, and challenges are likely to be made for their kingdom. So I used their paranoia about young-blood threats and created Herron – a gangster set on taking over the city. But he never actually existed. It wasn’t hard: myth and rumour spread fast in worlds like Cabressa’s. Anytime a stash house got raided, or some mob guys got beat on, I put the word around that it was Herron. Pretty soon the rumour took on a life of its own.’

  ‘I don’t understand how you could have known about
this,’ JT says, pointing over the railing, towards the city in darkness.

  ‘I didn’t just know about it. I caused it.’

  ‘How the hell did you—’

  ‘I wasn’t alone when I found Papa’s body. There were five of us kids hanging out that evening. My nickname was Hawk back then, because I always led the way. That evening we all went down into the basement. All of us saw what was done to Papa, what the development syndicate did. We don’t know for sure who carried out the hit on him, but from the way they killed Papa we all knew it was Cabressa who gave the order. Necklacing – that’s his signature move. Everyone in the neighbourhood knew that. After Papa was murdered and the residents’ group fell apart everyone was forced out, my friend’s families included. They never got the full compensation they were promised – the compulsory purchase price was way below the market – but they were running scared, afraid if they complained they’d end up the same as my papa.’ She shakes her head. ‘Those apartments had been home to their families for generations.’