21. Chapter 15
Lorenzo
The Same Day
Most Sundays, I go to Mass. It’s a habit more than a genuine faithful practice, and sometimes it’s a business decision. The Family runs some operations through the church, and Father Alessandro is an integral part of our organization.
Today, though, I skip Mass. I have other, more important plans.
After Wolfe threw Dashiell’s assailant in his truck, he took him to one of the industrial waterfront properties we own, and locked him in a dark, abandoned building with just enough food and water to keep him alive.
I’ve given him several days to get really uncomfortable—and to give my blood time to cool—and now it’s time to pay him a visit.
The building where we’re keeping him sits between two working piers on a strip of the city shore owned by the Family. We use it as a front for our construction companies and import/export businesses. The air here smells like salt and diesel and rotting fish.
Wolfe meets me at the door to the building, wearing a long dark coat and smoking a cigarette.
“How’s our friend?” I ask.
“Quiet for the most part,” Wolfe says with a shrug. He hands me a flashlight, because the building has barely any light on the inside. “He actually asked for a lawyer yesterday.”
“Really?”
“I told him we don’t really work like that.”
That almost makes me smile.
Wolfe unlocks the building and then locks the door again behind us.
Inside, the man is zip-tied to a metal folding chair bolted to the floor.
He’s bald, thick through the shoulders, and pale after several days without proper light.
A single lightbulb hangs above his head, casting him in a sickly glow.
“You,” he says when he sees me.
I pull up a second chair and sit facing him. “That’s right. Me. Do you know who I am?”
He spits on the floor. “Lorenzo Diamante.”
“Good.” I lean forward, elbows on my knees, fingers laced together, and glare at him. “So you know that there’s no version of this where you don’t tell me what I want to know.”
The man doesn’t say anything. His jaw works carefully, but I watch his hands instead of his face. You can learn more from someone’s hands. His are shaking, just slightly, against the zip ties.
“Let’s start with something simple. What’s your name?”
“Go to hell.”
I shake my head. “It’s not my time to pay a visit to that place. Try again. What. Is. Your. Name.”
“Why do you need my name?”
“Because you tried to hurt something that belongs to me.” My voice is dangerously low, and I don’t know if I’m playing a part anymore or not. Dashiell doesn’t really belong to me, of course, but the world needs to believe that he does. But maybe I believe it, too.
“How about the name of the man who called me?”
That gets my attention. “Depends on what name you give me. If it’s interesting enough, that might satisfy me.”
“I don’t know who hired me. That’s not how I do business. I get a call. A job, or target, and what my fee is. That’s all I get. I don’t ask where the money comes from.”
“I’m getting impatient. Who calls you?”
“Reiner,” he says quietly. “He’s a broker. Works out of a shipping office in Fisherman’s Wharf. He books whoever’s got the money with whoever’s doing the jobs.”
“I know him.” Reiner’s a rat. He has no loyalty, takes no sides.
Everything with him is business. He’s survived wars between the syndicates, always making himself useful to whoever has the deepest pockets at the time.
He also runs freight for two yakuza branches out of the Bay Area. A dangerous man.
“Did he give any hint about who might’ve been paying you for the job?”
“No,” the man spits, “especially because I didn’t get paid for the fucking job, because you got me.”
I sit back, letting myself think. My working theory that the Volkovs are responsible for the murder of my father, and the stalking of Dashiell, doesn’t fit fully with the involvement of Reiner.
He isn’t known to often work with the Volkovs.
They have their own people, and don’t need a broker like Reiner.
Of course, it’s possible. But it doesn’t seem likely.
“You might not have a name, but what else do you know?” I ask. “What kind of client, or what was the currency? Were they American, foreign?”
“I don’t know. I swear to God, I don’t know. Reiner doesn’t give out info on his clients, and doesn’t give them my info, either.”
“That’s not good enough!”
“It’s all I have!”
I stand, deliberately letting the chair scrape against the wet concrete floor.
“Here’s what happens now. You’re going to sit here a while longer. I believe you, but I don’t like you and I don’t trust you. You tried to hurt someone who belongs to me, and that means you need to suffer.” I nod to Wolfe. “Feed him, and then let him go in the morning.”
Then I crouch before the man. He smells of sweat and piss. “I need you to understand that you won’t see this sort of mercy again. If you ever so much as think about laying a finger on Dashiell Novak again, or anyone connected to my business, I’ll kill you myself.”
Wolfe and I leave the warehouse and stand outside for a moment, staring up at the gray sky.
“What are you thinking?” Wolfe asks.
“I’m thinking it doesn’t fit my theory about it being the Volkovs.”
He nods, lighting another cigarette. “Reiner doesn’t work with them often, does he?”
“He doesn’t.”
“So who do you think it is?”
“Not sure. But I think I should pay a visit to Reiner and see if I can’t make him tell me.”
After we drop my car off at my apartment, Wolfe drives me to Fisherman’s Wharf. Reiner’s office sits above a bait shop, the kind of place that tourists walk past a hundred times. I wonder if any of them have paused to wonder if illicit criminal activity is happening above their heads.
I go in alone. Wolfe waits in the car, which he doesn’t like, but Reiner deals with information and I’ve heard he doesn’t like it if you bring muscle into his office. He thinks it’s indelicate.
Peeling gold letters on the door advertise a customs brokerage firm, the company Reiner hides behind.
I knock on the door.
“One sec!” shouts a voice from inside.
Crossing my arms, I wait for Reiner to let me in. I only have to wait a minute or so, and then the door opens, revealing a cluttered office that smells like stale cigarette smoke. Reiner is a short, weaselly man with thin hair and a bad suit.
“Lorenzo Diamante!” he says, squinting up at me from behind coke-bottle glasses. “Come in, come in. Can I get you some coffee?”
I spy his coffee pot, which looks like it hasn’t been washed since the Bush administration. The first one. “I’m good, but thank you.”
He sits behind his desk and gestures to a chair in front of it. “Just push the papers off and have a seat. I heard about your father. Terrible.”
“Very.”
He steeples his fingers and looks over them at me. “So. I’m guessing this isn’t a social visit.”
“You’d be right.”
“What brings the new Diamante Underboss to my humble office?”
“I need a name, Reiner.”
“Interesting. You know that names aren’t for sale.”
“Oh, Reiner. Everything has a price.”
He shakes his head vehemently. “I don’t sell names, Lorenzo. That’s how I do business. You think I’d be safe if I sold names? I’m not stupid. One name gets out and I’d be dead before I could find my keys.”
“I could offer you protection.”
“No. But you’ve gotten me curious.” He inspects a coffee cup, hesitates, and then drinks from it, wincing. “What name is it you want?”
“Will you give it to me?”
“No, but you can’t blame a guy for his curiosity.”
“Three days ago, a man tried to take someone off the street. Someone of mine. I got him, and he said he was booked through you.”
“A lot of men get booked through me.”
“All I want to know is who was paying for that job. I’m sure you know what job I’m talking about, because it hasn’t been completed. Surely his patron isn’t very happy about that. Well, that job won’t get finished. I made sure of that.”
“Did you kill him?”
“No. But he knows better than to touch someone who belongs to me.”
Reiner says, “Yeah, I know what job you’re talking about.
And you know that I’m not going to tell you who paid for it.
It’s not personal, Lorenzo. It’s business.
” He sighs. “I liked your father, you know. He was a ruthless man sometimes, but he was fair. He operated under a code, a real man of principle, and I always admired that. We lost a great man when he died. I’m not interested in knowing who killed him—it’s not my business, and I’ve stayed alive this long by not sticking my nose in things that aren’t mine. But I will admit, I’m curious.”
He stands and goes to a little window, stuck with old bumper stickers and smeared with bird shit on the outside. “I brokered another job, not long after your father’s death. Interestingly, it was also related to the target for this failed job. It involved the same mark. Dashiell Novak.”
My body tenses.
“My client wanted someone to drop a message of sorts at this kid’s parents’ house.”
“Same client? Come on, Reiner, that’s not giving me a name.”
Turning away from the window, Reiner nods. “Same client.”
“Listen, Reiner. This is the closest thing I have to a lead on who killed my father. And now they’re targeting someone else who…is becoming important to me. Is there anything you can give me?”
He returns to his desk, sits, and takes another swallow of his coffee. “Ask yourself, Lorenzo, who stood to gain the most from your father’s death?”
The room is silent save for the sound of gulls outside, tourists below.
Slowly, the implications of Reiner’s words sink in.
Who did stand to gain the most from Father’s death?
His enemies, perhaps, but our operations have continued on.
My theory has been that the Volkovs did it, to kneecap our competing operations after their own boss, the Pakhan Yuri Volkov, got sent to federal prison.
This way, both our Family and their syndicate would be run by a younger, inexperienced boss.
Though, Giovanni isn’t that young, nor that inexperienced.
He’s been training to be the Don his whole life. It’s what he was born to do.
What he’s always wanted to do…
Reiner must see it on my face when his words finally register. “Let me be clear,” he says in a low voice. “I’m neither naming a name nor pointing a finger. I’m not accusing anyone. But ask yourself that question and see where it leads you. You might be interested to see what you find.”
I stand abruptly. There’s nothing left for me to say, no more questions he can answer. “Thank you for your time.”
“Give my condolences to your mother.”
Outside, a fog has come in off the water, thick enough that it reminds me of the smoke in Father’s house. Instead of getting in the car, I pace behind it, stuck in my own thoughts.
Who stood to gain the most.
It’s not evidence. It’s not an accusation. It’s just a question. But a pointed question, something Reiner asked me because he knows I’m smart enough to think about it.
Who stood to gain the most?
I know the answer. Of course I know the answer.
I think I’ve known it for some time deep inside me. But there’s a part of me that has always wanted to be a brother before I was anything else, and that part has been looking the other way.
Finally, I get in the car.
“How’d it go?” Wolfe asks.
“Just drive. Going home.” I don’t trust myself to say anything else until I’m back at my apartment.