Payback is a…
The price wasn’t worth the squeeze
“W—where?” Little Tony asked, looking up into a surgical spotlight shining down into his face. His eyes began to water from the acrid, boiling tar nearby. In a rising panic, he desperately looked around, trying to see where he was. A familiar, accented voice spoke into his ear.
“Mr. Marinaro, it is I, Dr. Mahmut Arslan…”
“Untie me! Hurry!” Tony ordered in a hushed voice.
“Apologies, Mr. Marinaro. I am unable to honor your request. As to your initial query, we are in the Everglades, at your clandestine warehouse. Apparently, I get to live if I assist…”
“Fucking untie me, you fucking Turk, now!” Little Tony saw the growing, evil smile on Arslan’s dark face as he stepped back out of the light.
“What the fuck? Why am I fucking NAKED?” Tony heard a new voice speak.
It was cold as ice, and Tony frantically looked around for the person behind the voice.
“Mr. Marinaro, it is good to see that you have awakened. You wouldn’t want to miss what’s coming…” Ari stepped into Tony’s view.
“YOU!” Little Tony bellowed. “I know who you are now… Ari Ascher! Let me go or you, your soap opera wife, and everyone you know is dead! I swear it on my father’s grave!”
Ari leaned close and smiled silently at Little Tony. Ari’s smile was as wicked as Dr. Arslan’s was evil. Ari then stepped back out of Tony’s view. “Simo? If you would please…” Ari pointed to his bag. “The black lacquered case, if you would.”
Tony desperately strained to see past the bright light as Simo retrieved Ari’s case. With two hands, as if in reverence, Simo handed Ari his case. Ari nodded to the old table, stained with Marty’s blood, and Chen immediately dragged it over next to Tony.
Little Tony turned his head as the table was pulled close.
Tony remembered the table. It was the one that he had staked that bull dyke to death on.
He saw an open laptop, and Ari Ascher set a long black case down beside it, opened the hinged top, and retrieved a Japanese katana sword still in its scabbard.
Ari tapped the laptop, and Tony realized that the laptop was playing the nightly newscast. The scene was of a huge fire burning. Then someone turned up the volume.
“Look closer, Mr. Marinaro…” Ari pointed.
With wide-eyed surprise, Little Tony gasped, “What? You fuckers!” he bellowed. “That’s my yacht! That’s my HOUSE! You fucking, motherfucking cocksuckers!”
“Yes. It… was your home.” Then, Ari suddenly shouted with pure anger, “Every member of your crime family was in your home as well… we decided to let their bodies burn… is that not what you planned for us?” Ari raged.
“You—you! Murderers! You fucking cocksuckers! I’ll kill you…”
Ari interrupted Tony with an angry side-hand strike to his throat, silencing Tony’s anger into desperate gasps for air.
“No, Mr. Marinaro!” Ari uncharacteristically bellowed, and spittle shot forth from his lips as he continued his anger-fueled eruption.
“You initiated all this! You are responsible for many needless deaths. You killed and tortured members of MY family. You caused intolerable grief to my wife… not to mention what you DID to Tammy! The woman whom you had dismembered and laughed at while you did vile and evil things to her… you will reap what you have sowed here, Mr. Marinaro! You will be the example for all who choose to involve family.” Ari angrily gestured to Dr. Arslan. “Prepare Mr. Marinaro!”
Simo saw what was coming, quickly turned to Theo, and whispered into his ear, “Please, Theo, do yourself a favor and wait outside with Becky.” Theo hesitated for a moment, then nodded.
As he passed by Little Tony, he spit in the man’s face and never looked back as Tony spat out epic obscenities at Theo’s back.
“Chen?” Simo asked.
“I will stay…” He handed Simo a pair of earplugs. “Unfortunately, I have seen worse things happen to men…”
“China?”
“Yes. My government can be brutal… more brutal than even Mr. Marinaro. Ari has seen these things as well…”
Simo nodded his understanding and watched as Dr. Arslan unceremoniously jammed an IV into Tony’s neck, beginning the first of Tony Marinaro’s screams.
Ari turned to Chen, still consumed in his rage. “Be ready on the laptop for the information Mr. Marinaro is about to divulge!” Chen nodded.
Tony bellowed, “I ain’t telling you fuckers shit!”
“Shall we start with fingers or toes, Sir?” Dr. Arslan asked, holding up a pair of ancient-looking, pitted steel clippers.
Ari ignored Arslan, stepped close to Little Tony, and stared hard into Tony’s defiant dark eyes.
In one sudden and effortlessly smooth move, Ari’s razor-sharp katana was out of its sheath and arcing through the air across Tony’s body with an evil hiss.
Tony suddenly screamed bloody murder as half of his naked foot was abruptly severed.
“That is where we start!” Ari roared in abject rage and pointed the bloody katana at the boiling tar nearby.
With Tony screaming wildly and bucking in his restraints, Dr. Arslan dipped a large, tar-stained brush into the hot, bubbling, smelly mixture and immediately slapped the blistering tar on Little Tony’s bloody stump, making Little Tony howl, buck, and scream even louder.
It had seemed like hours since Theo and Becky spoke to each other as they waited outside the rusty corrugated warehouse. Tony Marinaro endured over three hours of getting what he had done to Tammy. The last hour of his screams had devolved into raspy, guttural coughs.
Theo turned to Becky and whispered, “Ari is very anger… er, angry. I not ever see him this way…”
“Me neither, Theo.” Becky paused and shivered. She moved closer to Theo and whispered, “I—I… think Annabeth took Christina and left Ari because of what was happening here in Miami.”
“Oh… I see. Ari love his Annabeth and Christina more than life, nea?”
“Yes, Theo. I can tell his heart was broken after Annabeth left…”
Theo nodded, then changed the subject. “Ari do thing like this before? In Los Angeles?”
“Like this? No. He did have to eliminate some very bad people in a bad way… I helped on one job. But the good news is that no one dares to mess with Sagar and Club Aurae now. People know better than to cross Sagar and the peace is kept. Please don’t judge Ari too harshly…
I know it’s utterly horrible and all, but in the end, more lives will be spared.
Little Tony was an evil man… he deserves everything he is getting. ”
Theo shrugged, then shook his head. “Yes, but that Turk. The doctor… I would put a bullet into his brain. I would make no deal with a… uh, bad man like him.”
“The word is evil, Theo. That doctor is evil.”
“Evil. Yes.”
After some time, no more sounds were coming from inside the warehouse.
Theo watched as Simo was the first to come out of the warehouse.
His white coveralls were splattered with blood and black tar.
Simo took off his white painter’s hood and looked pale and tired, as though he had fought a yearlong war.
Chen and Ari didn’t look much better as they followed Simo out.
They all took a few moments to breathe in the stale, humid air of the Everglades as if it were a sweet summer breeze.
Then they began silently stripping off their coveralls, gloves, and hoods and placing them into a nearby burn barrel.
Chen poured gasoline inside the barrel and lit it.
Theo tried to peer into the open door of the dark warehouse. He turned to Becky in confusion. “Where is doctor?”
Becky met Theo’s eyes. They nodded at each other and smiled.
All the way to Dade-Collier Airport, not a word was uttered.
Ari’s private jet was waiting on the tarmac, and only the men boarded.
Becky waved goodbye as the plane began to taxi.
She got into the Expedition, started it, and began her journey back to Miami where she was tasked with helping Miami Club Aurae’s assistant manager run the club until Sagar found a suitable replacement for Tammy.
The mood inside the jet was dark and gloomy. The plane seemed to take its time as it rose to cruising altitude. Once there, Chen opened his laptop and connected to the in-flight Wi-Fi. Chen glanced over at Ari, who seemed lost in deep thought. Chen called out quietly to him, “Ari?”
Ari turned to Chen. “Yes?”
“Shall I transfer all of Tony Marinaro’s offshore accounts now?”
“Yes. Please set up a trust for Tammy’s and Marty’s families.
Place two million in each trust to be divided equally between all close relatives.
Have Miami Aurae’s attorneys manage the trusts and disbursements.
Instruct them to explain it was a life insurance policy that Club Aurae had taken out for Tammy and her partner. ”
“And the rest?”
“One million, as agreed, to our ‘friends’ in Langley for their… assistance. As for yourself, Simo, Theo, and Becky, you all get bonuses for this job.”
“Oh? Amount?”
“One hundred thousand apiece should be adequate for this heinous job, agreed?” Ari glanced at each of them and was pleased to see the pleasant shock on all their faces. “Thank you all for your assistance on this dreadful job. Hopefully, we never will have to endure such horror again.”
“Thank you, Ari,” all three men chimed in.
“Ari, that leaves a total of three million seven hundred thousand and change…” Chen said.
Ari sighed and stared at Chen’s laptop for a long moment.
“Fine. Transfer two million to our general operating fund. Donate the rest anonymously to various charities. Make sure Halo Raines’s charity, The Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles, receives the lion’s share.
Schedule Halo Raines’s charity disbursement immediately after the Fall Charity event at the Beverly Hills Hotel in September.
Keep the money moving regularly in our overseas accounts until then. ”
“Of course.”