Chapter 4 #2
The apartment was what I had expected from a boy. One bedroom. One bathroom. A scarce mattress without a frame, a desk with a lamp, and clothes scattered from one end to another. He had just spritzed cheap cologne on himself, and it hung in the air.
“A suggestion,” Mac said, using a pencil to pick a stiff sock up from the floor. “Don’t touch anything.”
The lights turned out, and Mac scanned the entire place with a forensic light. The entire place seemed neon with bodily fluids.
“Tell me, does he not know how to control his cock.” Romeo’s voice seemed to float in the darkness. “It seems as if his cock is wild and untrained—it sprays as a masterless hose would.”
“It could be blood.” Mac moved the light around the room once more before he turned the main lights back on.
“I do not believe it is.” Romeo’s eyes scanned the areas where the fluid had been the strongest.
“Me either,” Mac said, going for the closet. He pulled gloves on before he opened the door.
All the men seemed to stand up straighter.
A collage of pictures had been tacked to the backside of the door.
All of my wife.
He had taken them without her knowing. It was clear by the position of her face.
Most of the time she was looking away or down.
A few times he had captured her straight on, but she had been in motion.
Going toward her car, her Nonna’s arm in hers.
Helping her Nonna inside of it. Shutting the passenger side door.
Sticking something in the pocket of her jeans while she moved around the car to the driver’s side.
Opening the door. Climbing inside. Starting the car.
Checking the rearview mirror before she pulled away from the curb.
“He’s fucking obsessed,” Brando said.
“There is something blood-chilling about photos a man takes of a woman without her knowledge,” Guido said.
“Turn the lights out again, Guido.” Mac’s eyes ran over the photos again.
Guido slipped a pair of gloves on and did as Mac had said. The apartment went completely dark, but I already knew what we were going to find when Mac ran the fluorescent light over the pictures. The photographs glowed as if they were made of an alien substance. Mostly my wife’s face.
My men’s eyes turned to me. Violence moved inside of me, as hot as Stromboli before an eruption, but I contained it in my bones.
My muscles ticked with the almost uncontrolled rage.
If I had not been trained as I was, all my life to control my strength and unleash it at the most opportune time, I would have killed every man in the room with me.
My rage ran that hot. Even my brothers felt the heat.
This was why we were spread out. No man wanted to set me off.
Every one of my men knew and understood.
This situation went beyond personal.
This was a boy poking the beast inside of my chest with an ice pick. The only weapon he could handle.
The room grew still as the sound of pounding footsteps echoed up the stairs and reverberated in the narrow stairway. The boy did not come alone.
Without speaking, my men and I moved to the opposite side of the room. When the boy opened the door, he did not see us.
“What the fuck?” He charged toward his open closet door.
This was when Guido stepped behind the boys who followed him and shut the door behind them. None of them noticed the closed door, Guido standing in front of it, arms crossed, until I moved, and they all seemed to startle.
It was the boy, Remy Mestengo, who went off at the mouth—threats, so many threats.
I was one step away from him when he seemed to remember he had a weapon and pulled it on me.
He did not have time to pull the trigger.
My hand wrapped around his throat before he could compute what was happening.
He clawed at my hand, kicking his feet, while I lifted him in the air and sat him down on the chair before his desk.
He kicked at the ground when his culo touched the seat.
He was wheezing, trying to scream at me, and moving his feet in wild ways, as if that would help him catch his breath. I had barely exerted any pressure.
Brando kicked the seat with wheels toward me. I caught it and took a seat on his desk, my legs stretched out before me. I released the boy to the seat then. He attempted to catch his breath while he looked between my brother and I, eyes full of frantic panic.
His friends were backing up slowly, their eyes on us, their hands up in surrender. All their backs were stiff against the wall. As if that would save them. We did not shoot men in the back. We faced them.
Dario nodded to the bed and addressed them. “Take a seat.”
The one who seemed to be the most brazen glanced at the bed and then met Dario’s eyes. “If it’s all the same to you, sir, we’d rather stand.”
“I would rather this, as well, if I were you.” Romeo’s eyes slowly ran down the brazen boy’s throat to where his heart pounded three times as fast as it should, then his eyes slowly rose. When he met the brazen boy’s eyes, he smiled. “I will allow this.”
The one in the middle made the sign of the cross, closed his eyes, and started to pray silently.
This was when the boy, Remy Mestengo, caught his breath and decided to sing as a canary would at a view of freedom.
“Look.” He raised his hands. “I never touched your girl. In fact, I wasn’t even sure if she was into guys.
That was how detached she was. I tried to hold her hand once, and she made up some lame fucking lie about her fingers being insured or some shit and she couldn’t take the chance of the insurance company seeing that she was doing something dangerous with them.
Hahahaha.” He laughed, mimicking a woman.
“She’s lost in her head a lot. Not really present.
A dreamer. That’s why I figured she was good at the writing thing.
But she wasn’t even writing at the time. Her fingers were in no danger.”
He took a deep breath, as if he might go on, but when I lifted up and removed a stack of letters from my back, setting them on his desk, his entire demeanor changed. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and shook his head.
“Okay,” he said. “I’m obsessed with her. She’s the first chick to deny me—anything.”
“Liar,” Brando said.
My men stood up taller at this. In our world, this would be considered enough slander to war over.
However, this boy could not understand honor even if it was a hot-blooded woman in his hands.
He only shrugged at my brother’s high insult.
But it was Remy Mestengo who had been writing the threatening letters to my wife the entire time.
He had sent my frightened heart straight to my arms.
Lucky for him.
He had earned a bag of blood for that.
“I had no clue she would bail, man. I thought she would come to me for help. Tell me how scared she was and shit. I was going to tell her I’d take care of it, and when the letters stopped—voilà. I’d be the hero.”
“Your boss,” Mac said, changing the subject.
The boy blinked at Mac, and when he seemed to bring him into focus, his head came back as if Mac had gotten into his and said boo. Mac had been standing in the closet and had appeared out of the darkness. He was known to do this.
“You got any more men in there?” the boy asked me. “This is a lot of heat for one guy.”
I stuck my foot underneath the chair, sitting up just in time to catch it before it crashed to the floor. He was stuck midair, staring into my eyes.
“All right,” he whispered. “My boss’s name is Dennis Fyodorov. He runs one of the docking companies along the river. I’m sure you know New Orleans is a port town and we have our fair share of longshoremen. Always have. That’s why I connected with Ar—”
I allowed the chair to slip some, refusing him the right to say my wife’s name. Even his mouth was not clean enough to speak her beautiful name. He did not seem like a smart man, but he was smart enough to feel the threat coming for him.
“That’s why I connected with your lady. Her old man had been snooping around.
Got wind of the new drugs that were being imported from somewhere overseas.
My boss got wind of this. Someone higher up had read Stefano Simonetti’s first book.
” Stefano Simonetti was my father-in-law’s pseudonym.
“My boss is of the opinion that most of Simonetti’s books are based on true crimes.
Your lady’s old man goes and dies, but suddenly, there’s a book out.
A book that my boss’s people are telling him hits too close to home, understand what I’m saying here? ”
“Your boss sends you to get closer to her.” This from Mac.
“Wasn’t a hard job.” He shrugged. “Not the getting close to her part, but the job itself. I just had to convince her I was interested in her. Get her comfortable. That part of the job was hard. She’s locked up tight, except for when the letters started to arrive.
She must have cracked some. She told me she wrote the book from an idea her dad gave her.
And bang! I knew. That admission with her skittish behavior added up to the truth.
Her old man either told her the truth or a version of it. ”
“You tell your boss this?”
The boy’s eyes almost rolled, trying to find Mac.
“Yeah,” he said. “I did. But I also told him she bailed. Gone like the fucking wind. I didn’t think she knew anything beyond what was in the book— killer book, by the way.
I couldn’t put it down. She has a way with words.
But the boss lost interest in her after that.
She’d gone to the police before she left, I found out, but they ignored her.
Well, her information. She’s a hard woman to ignore—”
My foot released the chair, and he crashed, his head cracking against the wooden floor. He was becoming too lax with his word choice.
“Ah, shit!” He grabbed for his skull, pulling back a smear of blood. “My head is busted!”
“Your boss forgot about her.” Mac.
“Yeah.” He hissed, touching it again. “Until she showed up with her new husband. The boss figured she was long gone, and the book lost steam after a while. She hasn’t put out another.
I can’t speak for my boss, but I can say this—knowing who she’s married to, it changed his perspective a bit.
I guess you men are known as a force, dealing with the criminal world yourselves.
He’s not too worried about her ratting anymore.
His operation here is a small one. I doubt he’ll get much help from his uppers if you men decide to crush his warehouse. ”
He lifted his hands. His palm was stained with blood. I almost ticked my mouth. He needed every drop.
“And whatever I have here in drugs, you can all have. That’s how the system works. I buy the drugs from the boss. I sell the drugs for a higher markup. Just in case you were interested in that aspect of all this.”
“We appreciate this, king,” Guido said, almost sneering at him.
Dario and Romeo were still staring at the boys with their backs against the walls. One of the frightened boys had pissed on the floor, and it was starting to run toward Remy Mestengo’s head.
Remy Mestengo narrowed his eyes at Guido, realizing Guido was fucking with him, but he did not open his mouth. He was too busy applying pressure to his head.
“You did not help her with her things,” I said.
No matter what his response to this was, he was going to suffer for it. No one touched what was mine, but no one ignored what was mine—a woman should not carry such heavy burdens. This was why a man was created. This was why I was created for my wife.
He blinked at me. “You mean when she left? Man, I couldn’t.
I watched her the entire time, even chilled at the storage place while she unloaded all the old junk.
She didn’t see me, but she knew someone was there.
It upped her fear. Which was a good thing.
It sent her running away from my boss, didn’t it?
It all worked out in the end. No harm. No foul. ”
“This wasn’t your intention in the beginning,” Mac said.
“No,” he said. “Not in the beginning. I had no fucking clue how the situation was going to play out. I’m not trying to play devil’s advocate here, but being a part of the criminal world yourselves, you should know how it is.
No criminal wants a crime to be linked back.
” His eyes flashed to the side. “Can I be brought up now? That piss is getting mighty close to touching my head, and it’s open. That might cause an infection.”
Grinning at him, I brought him up by the shirt. Brando picked the seat with wheels up, and kicking it hard enough to send it flying, rammed Remy Mestengo in the back of the knees. He dropped into the seat as if he were a stone.
Mac handed me a box from his shoulder bag.
He dug in his bag once more, setting a sterile tube, cannula, bag of blood, tourniquet, and a cauterization tool of some sort on the desk.
He looked at the three shivering mice, the “friends,” standing against the wall.
“That might help. It might not. Do what you will with it, but I’d make it fast. It’s his type. ”
“Left or right,” Brando said.
“What?” The boy looked at Brando, sweat pouring down his face. His foot started to tap as fast as a rabbit’s.
“Tell me, Remy Mestengo, do you ever give the women that deny you a choice,” I said, lifting the knife from the box. It was clean, sharp; it could slice right past bone with the right hand directing it. It was an old knife that had belonged to Uncle Tito. It had been used for thieves.
“Ah,” Brando breathed out. “Good point. You decide for him, fratello.”
Not even the music coming from downstairs could hide the high-pitched scream of Remy Mestengo as he lost the hand that attempted to hold my wife’s. The same hand he had raised to me in a toast meant to be disrespectful.