Chapter 36
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
G etting home after all that, I’m feeling dislocated. Everything feels odd, like I’m out of place somehow.
In text messages, Jerry is pressing me for an answer. I know the answer that I have to give him, but I’m not ready. I can’t quite bring myself to do it. Not yet.
Don Pucci texts, wanting to meet in a diner.
When I arrive, we’re both wearing running gear. I ran a dozen blocks to get here. By the look of his sweatband, I’d say he ran further.
We sit in a booth at the rear of the bright, fifties style, chrome and leatherette diner.
He tells me, “Chicago approached me with an offer. They want to offer franchising to us. Full recognition. They will recognize us through the Commission. All that they ask for is that I have you removed as the head of the Famiglia Fortuna.”
He watches me as he tells me, but I feel like it shows interest and concern on his part. I’m still on my guard, wondering what his motives might be, but I can’t think what he would have to gain by telling me.
“I’m sure they will have made a similar offer to someone in your family.” He looks up over his coffee. “Not to be indelicate. I’m not trying to pry.”
I press my lips together and nod. “I appreciate you letting me know. Don Romano told me they made an approach to him, too.”
He nods. “I would bet on it. They likely promised that they could be made the head family. Don Romano would head up the the whole region.”
He sips his coffee. “Their representative came to see me. He is not a man you would want to trust. I’m sure he will have made more or less the same offer to all three families. If I’m honest with you, I probably would have taken it.”
“But?”
He shrugs and lowers his eyelids like a cat, “If he made the same offer to all three families — who knows, maybe more besides — then it’s not an offer at all. It’s just a ruse. A scam. A way to get all of us at each others’ throats.”
There’s a pause while we study each other. “I tell you this, though,” he says, “I’d be surprised if Romano doesn’t take the bait.”
“Me, too. Have you given them an answer?”
He says, “My actions would be my answer. Either way.”
I run along Aki Beach for another half hour, trying to get my head clear. The funny thing i can’t shake out of my head is, while I’m apart from my men, it seems like all of the dons in Seattle have something they just have to run by me or try to get me interested in.
Mikey collects me with the limo. Maybe it is time for something else.
As we drive, as usual, he waits for me to talk and in a rush I let it all off my chest
While I’m talking, I hear myself sounding like the world is caving in on me.
Gently Mikey asks me, “Do you want to negotiate with them?”
“What have they got that I want?”
He gives me a long look in the mirror. His jaw works as he looks at me.
“There’s obviously something they want.”
“You’re trying to tell me something, Mikey. Come on. out with it.”
He takes a breath. “You’re not steady, Princess. You’re making mistakes.”
Only Mikey can talk to me like that. If it were anyone else, I might kill them. Hearing it is hard, even from Mikey.
“How can you say that? What I’ve been through the last few days alone, anyone else would be dead. None of the men in my position could stand it without a fucking army around them.”
I’m shouting. “And my army is all either joining the other side or away in fucking hiding somewhere.”
When I see Mikey’s eyes watching me, kind, understanding, indulgent, I know that he understands. It makes me well up.
He’s been in my life forever. He drove me to school, nearly every day. Ever since I was a little girl. All the times I can remember Mom or even Daddy taking me to school it was because Mikey was not available, like one time when he was away a whole month in Europe doing something for Daddy, or when he was in hospital for nearly a week.
Every day I drew him a card for him and took him something to read.
First I call Ester in Italy. Carlo’s birth mother and Bruno’s adopted mother is a woman with incredible resources. I would be surprised if doesn’t know the people I need to get in touch with. Even if she doesn’t, I’m sure that she will know someone who does.
Then I call Daddy.
He answers with a sigh that tugs at my heart. “ Tesoro. You only ever call me when you want to borrow the plane. What’s wrong with all the Fortuna planes?”
“I like our plane.”
He sighs again. He knows I’m just being evasive, but he doesn’t make a fight about it.
“Okay, where do you want to go?”
“I don’t want to tell you, Daddy. Tell the pilot to file a flight plan for Boston. after he’s airborne I’ll send him the destination and he can file a change of plan.”
“ Piccolo cucciolo di orso. What are you getting yourself into now?”
I booked a black Range Rover. Lawrence from the hire company meets me at the baggage carousels in the O’Hare arrivals area. He’s dapper, with a lovely blue suit, a movie-star two-day beard, and a delicious twinkle.
Courteously, he insists on taking my bags to the car, which he’s parked outside.
Driving through the traffic and into the city, I play some old Springsteen and enjoy the sense of control. Assert my position on the road. Weave and dance through heavy morning traffic, toward the hazy, spiky skyline.
It feels good. Liberating. It makes me think I don’t drive enough. Maybe when I get back to Seattle, I’ll look around for a new car.
The meeting ahead — I’m here to ask one question and I think I already know the answer I’ll get. I need to know if Jerry had the backing of the big boys back in Chicago when he came to Seattle.
If I ask directly, they’re bound to say that he does. They’ll stick together. We would do the same. I need a way to frame the question or I’m wasting my time and theirs. And making myself look like an idiot to boot.
The villa I rented on the lakeshore is big and sprawling. Low white wings and big windows under terracotta tiles, all around pools and fountains, with pretty manicures lawns and planting.
It’s a lot for what I need, which is basically a place to change and relax, before the meeting and after, but I’m expecting it to serve another purpose.
Ester texts me with a confirmation. I retrieve the details from an email dead-drop. She and I share a Hotmail address. We both have the password. The address has a few subscriptions, it’s on a number of mailing lists and it receives a lot of spam, too.
When we need to communicate with reasonable security, one of us logs into the account with a burner phone, through a VPN, and writes a message, then saves it as draft. we let the other person know with a text. They log in and read it, then delete it.
The message never gets sent, it’s read and erased almost immediately. It’s not military-grade security, but it’s pretty solid.
Her draft message gives me a location and a time. The location is a jetty on a remote stretch of Lakeshore Drive, and the time is 11:30pm.
I trust Ester completely, but the time and location look like the kind of place the vulnerable heroine in a movie sneaks off to on tippy toes, while the audience is yelling, ‘Don’t go THERE! ’
A cold wind slaps across the jetty. I’m a solitary figure in black denims, boots and a Helly Hansen jacket.
Hazy blue light makes a halo on the saw-toothed rim of the horizon under the heavy sky. Traffic drifts by on the road, but I’m freezing and I feel totally exposed, alone out on the jetty here. I wonder if I should have waited in the car, but the instructions were clear.
The jetty is about twenty feet above the water. From somewhere way out on the lake, a boat makes a low, muffled buzz in its slow arc toward me. Calculating, I reckon that if this were a hit, there are plenty of simpler ways to set it up, and they’d have a more secure approach and getaway if they came from the road.
Still. As Mikey says, I’m making mistakes.
A formidable older man pilots the boat. Two henchmen stand at the stern with long guns in low ready positions. Looking distinguished in a puffy leather jacket, the man at the helm steers effortlessly with his fingers flat against the wheel.
When he pulls up by the jetty, he knots the rope himself and springs up the thin steel ladder.
“Donnas Fortuna? I’m Don Amato. Call me Tommy. Welcome to Chicago. I’m here to take you out to the yacht.”