Chapter 40
DAMIANO
The meeting is tomorrow night, about twelve hours before Big Gee is expecting me to turn up at the Obelisk on Sunday morning and hand over the Clemenza.
I’m sitting in the great room, looking at the seating plan for the meeting that Caligula asked me to review.
Because Strike Ferraro and his people did what their Don asked, and convinced a bunch more Loyalists to come out of the woodwork.
That means more bodies in my house and more chances for someone to try something stupid.
Rosa brings me coffee, and I give her a nod of thanks, but I don’t look up from the page. And then Caligula walks into the room, and I look up at him. I’m painfully aware that I might not have infinite chances to look at him, so I’m trying to take all of them as they come.
He sits next to me and I shove the paper across the table. “Take a look,” I say. “I’ve flagged a few guys I don’t like.”
But before he can give me any feedback, we hear footsteps, and Sammy appears in the foyer, stopping in front of the full-length mirror to admire himself.
It’s obvious from the posing that he expects an audience. So I look.
And then I stand up from the table.
“What the fuck did you do to that suit?”
His Lorenzo Benedetti suit was delivered yesterday by courier.
Today, the charcoal jacket has a painted red X across the back, and he’s studded a bunch of safety pins and studs down the lapels.
The cuffs are cut off at a deliberate angle so the lining shows through.
He’s slashed the trousers at the knees and sewn them back up with red yarn.
And the shirt underneath is plain white, but there are ink drips all over it—big black splotches that make him look like a fucking Dalmatian.
Sammy looks down at himself with a pleased smile. “Do you like it?”
“That suit cost more than I pay you in a year! Lorenzo Benedetti made that suit! Lorenzo Benedetti, Sammy!”
Sammy’s smile drops.
But I can’t stop myself. “Lorenzo Benedetti made a suit for the goddamn Pope!” I holler at him.
“Well then maybe the Pope will want me to cut his up for him, too,” Sammy says, his voice rising.
I take a breath to keep yelling, but Caligula breaks in casually, “Sammy is an artist, Dami. He took a masterpiece and made it his own. That’s all.”
I turn on him. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
He gives me a look. That’s all he does. Turns his head and looks up at me from the table, chin resting on his hand, those golden eyes steady.
I sit down hard. My hand bangs down flat on the table, and the coffee cups rattle. But I don’t say another word.
Somewhere in the back of my skull, a voice that sounds suspiciously like Seb’s says Oh, is that how it is, and I tell it to fuck off.
“Lorenzo is a brilliant tailor,” Caligula says. “But the man who wears the suit outranks the man who makes it, Sammy. And I bet Ricky will think it’s amazing, too.”
Sammy flushes. I didn’t even know he could blush, but there it is—color climbing up his neck, a grin breaking through his scowl like sun through clouds. He looks down at the suit, at the slashed knees and the studs and the yarn, and something in his face opens up.
I think about those art pieces in his room. The ones made from scraps, from reclaimed trash, things other people threw away.
I understand that urge.
I still think that suit looks like a fucking travesty. But I keep my mouth shut.
“These two,” Caligula murmurs to me as Sammy goes back to preening in the mirror. He taps paper, pulling me back to business. “We’d better put them further apart. I remember their names, and they weren’t exactly friends—” He glances at Sammy and drops his voice. “—in the old days.”
He leaves the room and I watch him go up the stairs, my eyes helplessly drawn to him. Sammy watches him go, too. And then he turns to me.
“What’s going on?” he asks.
“What’s going on? You’re standing there looking like a janky motherfucker, and you’re asking me what’s going on?”
“Between you two.”
“Nothing.”
“You’re doing whatever he says, Dami. You never do what anyone says.”
“That ain’t true. I do what Rosa says.”
“That’s different.”
“And what’s this secret you two keep whispering about?”
I sigh. “Listen, you could do with a night out. Tell that Ricky Benedetti to take you somewhere nice tomorrow night.”
But Sammy is staring at me, eyes narrow. “And now you’re trying to get rid of me.”
“No, I ain’t. You’re the one who wanted to go out with that asshole so bad.”
“He’s not an asshole!”
“Then fucking go out with him! Vito can drive you, make sure you’re okay.”
“I thought you hated the Clemenza,” he says, spitting it out so bitterly that I blink at the tone more than the words. “You don’t hate him. You don’t hate him at all.”
“I told you before, love and hate ain’t got nothing to do with family,” I snap at him. “I told him I’d protect him, and I will, just the same as I protect you. That’s all.”
He turns and stomps out of the room.
Christ. This whole thing is turning into a shit show.
The meeting goes ahead the following night.
Rosa set up the formal dining room for it, the long table extended as far as it will go, and just about every chair in the house has been shuffled into place around it.
There’s a long list of men planning to attend, including Scaglietti, the Morelli rat, and I’m worried there might be an even longer list of those who are just going to turn up unannounced.
Every man who comes through the front door, I pat down.
Jackets off, arms up, ankles checked. Rosa has set up a side table with a big pot of coffee and a tray of homemade cookies in the room.
She offered to cook something special, but I told her no.
I don’t want these assholes making themselves at home, and I definitely don’t want them to have access to silverware. The cookies were her compromise.
Sammy and Vito are long gone, picking up the Benedetti kid on the way. By now, Sammy should be sitting in some restaurant in the Village, wearing that butchered suit and laughing at something Ricky said. Safe, because Vito’s taking a seat of his own nearby to watch them.
Once everyone’s arrived and settled, I head up to the bedroom to get Caligula.
He’s waiting. He’s wearing fucking business casual, and that hits me right in the heart for some reason.
Dark pants. White shirt, open at the throat.
No tie. His hair is combed back and his face is calm, but his hands give him away: he’s rolling and re-rolling his shirt sleeve, unable to decide on up or down.
He shoves them down when I walk in and turns up just the cuffs.
“Any chance I can persuade you to let me be in the room?” I ask.
“Would you have wanted me in that room with Sebastiano Conti the other day?”
We both know the answer to that.
I lead him downstairs. At the door to the dining room, I stop him with a hand on his arm. His skin is warm through the linen, and I’m aware of how close we’re standing, and how many conversations are happening on the other side of that door.
“You need me, you holler,” I tell him. “I’ll be right here.”
He looks up at me. Those eyes. The ones that watched me from a prison, from a bed, from across a kitchen table. “I know,” he says.
I let go of his arm and open the door.
When Caligula walks into the room, the men stand. A few of them need encouragement, but they stand. He doesn’t acknowledge the tribute. He crosses to the side table, pours himself a coffee, and walks to the head of the table.
“Pour yourselves a coffee,” he says. “It could be a late night.”
I don’t love that this first command gets them all up and moving again, but I see the strategy when I watch him watching them.
He’s reading the room. Who moves first, who hangs back, who looks at who.
He’s clocking loyalties, friendships, resentments in real time, and not a single man in that room knows he’s being assessed.
And then Caligula catches my eye from the head of the table and gives me a nod.
The nod means: leave.
I don’t like it, but I do it. I stand at the door for a good half hour, listening to the muffled sound of voices. I can’t make out words, but I can read tone, and the tone is mostly calm. Some laughter. A few raised voices that settle quickly.
I’m tempted to check the video feed.
But I don’t.
I promised Caligula I wouldn’t.
At last there’s a knock from inside. I yank the door open, hand on my gun, and find myself looking down at Caligula’s face.
“We’re taking a break,” he says. “Strike needs the bathroom. Down the hall on the right.”
Ferraro pushes past me. “Where’s the can?”
“That way,” I say, thumbing over my shoulder, because Caligula is still in the doorway and I’m still looking at him. “Well. Looks like everything’s going okay.”
“No one’s tried to kill me yet.”
I give an unwilling half-smile. But then I hear footsteps on the stairs, and both of us turn.
Sammy.
I cross to him as he hits the landing, peering curiously into the open dining room. “Didn’t I tell you to be out tonight?” I say, keeping my voice low. “Where’s Ricky?”
“He wanted to go to a club.” Sammy’s eyes flick to the floor. “After dinner. He wanted to go…”
And I understand. The night I met Sammy was the last time he was at a nightclub, and a group of Clemenzas jumped him out the back and beat him.
“Okay, kid,” I say, softer now. “Where’s Vito?”
“He dropped me back and he’s taking Ricky home.” Sammy’s trying to move past me again, to see into the open dining room door. “What’s going on?” But then he catches sight of someone in the room behind Caligula, and his eyes go wide.
“What is it?” I ask.
But he can’t seem to speak. Caligula and I both follow the direction of his gaze instinctively. He’s looking at Scaglietti.
And then Sammy turns as if to run.
I grab onto his arm before he can, because I need to know what the hell is going on. Caligula has come onto the landing, and he looks worried. “Sammy, what’s wrong?” he asks gently.