Paradise City Page 13

  “What is anybody gonna see that’s got you worried?” Armand asked, his voice steeped in controlled anger and confidence. “Look around you. It’s like a desert around here. Me and you been in this car longer than you were in school and the only people I saw was an old man with a walker and his pissed-off nurse. Besides, by the time anybody sees anything, it’ll all be over. Now load up your guns and make sure you hit what you aim at.”

  “Don’t worry about me, cousin,” George said. “Shootin’ a gun is the only thing I’ve ever been good at and I’m only getting better. You just keep the car moving steady and I’ll take the cop.”

  “You gotta take both cops, Georgie,” Armand said. “Just one is only half the job.”

  “The lady ain’t a target,” George said, looking up from the revolver in his hand. “Or if she was, I didn’t hear about it.”

  “She’s not a target,” Armand said. “She’s a witness. And the worst kind at that. One with a badge and handcuffs. Two minutes ago you were worried about being seen in broad daylight. And now here you are ready to have your mug seen by somebody can put you away for a full load and you don’t seem all that eager to pin her down.”

  “I thought we were only supposed to hit the one target,” George said, sounding defensive, his eyes rotating from his cousin to the front door of the restaurant. “You know how crazy that head case Silvestri gets we don’t do exactly as he says to do. I just wanna do what’s right. For both of us.”

  “Putting both those cops on the ground dead,” Armand said. “That’s what’s right. For you and for me.”

  Lo Manto rested the barrel of the .38 Special against the hood of the unmarked and aimed it at the driver of the car bearing down on them. Jennifer had handed over her drop gun, a second weapon many cops carry, with great reluctance. “If you have to shoot anybody,” she told him, “make sure it’s a clean hit. I’m not supposed to have that gun, which means you shouldn’t be anywhere near it.”

  “I’ll take the driver,” he told her. His mind was already running at warp speed. He was taking in the situation, envisioning any one of four scenarios that could play out over the next several minutes. “You worry about the shooter. Aim for the glass just off to the driver’s left. It won’t be enough to kill him, but it’ll get that gun out of his hands. But that’s only if you hit him.”

  “Worry about your guy,” she said, her back braced against the wall, her feet wedged against the wheel of her car. “He’s coming straight for us. He hits this car and they’ll be able to bury us both in an empty can of tuna.”

  “They’ll ram into us whether we hit them or not,” Lo Manto said. “On my signal, you get off your shots as fast as you can and make them count and then dive clear of the car. With a little luck, we’ll get out of this still able to walk.”

  “Why your signal?” Jennifer asked. “Why not mine?”

  Lo Manto gave her a quick glance and then looked at the car, now less than twenty feet away. “Because I’m your guest,” he said. “And you shouldn’t be rude to a guest.”

  Two bullets chipped the wall above their heads, dust and small chunks of cement dripping down on their shoulders, as the passenger in the backseat took aim and fired in their direction.

  “Take your time with this,” Jennifer said. “I don’t want to rush you into anything you’re not ready for.”

  “Now!” Lo Manto said.

  Jennifer and Lo Manto each unleashed three rapid rounds and then they dove out from behind the body of the unmarked. Jennifer landed facedown on a pile of heavy black garbage bags, her knees scraping against gravel. Lo Manto, on the other side, landed with full force against the back end of the parked Lexus, his right shoulder taking most of the hit, which jarred the gun loose from his hand and sent it flying toward the center of the alley. They both turned their heads when they heard the heavy crash of car against car, metal crumbling, air bags popping, white smoke filling the air around them.

  Jennifer was first to get to her feet, approaching the attack car with careful steps, her gun cocked and held down against her hip. She peered past the smoke. In the back of the car, a man was spread out across the leather seats, his face covered with lines of blood, his body motionless. She gave a quick look at the driver, slumped over the wheel, his head encased in the smashed windshield, his arms spread, engulfed in smoke and blood. She saw Lo Manto on the other side of the car, prying open the back door and reaching in to check on the shooter. She stepped closer to the car, her gun raised, ready to move in the event the man in the back turned on Lo Manto. Around them, a small circle of people had started to form, all eager to see the result of the commotion.

  “We need to get an ambulance here fast,” Lo Manto told her. “This one’s still alive, but he won’t be for long unless he gets some help.”

  Jennifer had a cell phone in her hand as she walked away from the car and toward the small crowd. “This is a crime scene,” she told them. “You need to step back and keep clear of the area.”

  “Who are they?” one of the waiters asked. “The two men in the car?”

  “They’re not anybody you’ll ever have a chance to know,” Jennifer said, turning her back and making the call for a support team and an emergency unit.

  Lo Manto walked away from the smoking car, picked up his gun, and made his way toward Jennifer, who was now leaning against the rear wall of the restaurant. “They should all be here in about three, four minutes,” she said to him. “I got EMS coming for the guy in the back and a black van with a zipper coat for the driver.”

  “Do you want your gun back?” Lo Manto asked, holding out the .38.

  “You hold on to it for now,” she said. “Who the hell knows? A few more of your friends might show up and try to surprise us.”

  Lo Manto nodded and shoved the gun into the back of his waistband. “You did very well,” he said, looking over his shoulder at the damaged cars and bodies. “You hit soft flesh with two of your shots and got very close with the third.”

  “I’m a cop, or did you forget?” Jennifer said, shaking her head. “That’s why I’m the one with the two guns and the shield.”

  She stared at Lo Manto, feeling the yank of the short leash on her temper getting tighter, concerned over the attempt made on both their lives. She had been too angry to ask Captain Fernandez any relevant questions about Lo Manto when she first got the baby-watch assignment, too quick to write it off as another visiting cop who needed someone with a driver’s license to take him around town. She had sulked out of the captain’s office, steeling herself for what she thought would be, at best, a mundane ride-along week. Their morning together had played right into the dull scenario she had so clearly dreaded and envisioned. But it was all a different game now, with shots fired and one guy splayed out across the front end of his car and a shooter lying in a pool of blood in the back, his body stilled by two of her bullets. All of it because some cop from Naples with a New York accent thicker than hers had hopped on a plane and come back home.

  “You hurt?” Lo Manto asked, looking past her as an ambulance and local squad car arrived, each with siren running silent and doors swinging wide as soon as they entered the tight parking area.

  “I’m good,” Jennifer said, glancing at the two EMS workers rushing toward the smoking car. “But you and me need to find ourselves a quiet place where we can sit down and talk all this out. I thought I signed on to be your tour guide. But after this, it looks to me like a bodyguard is more what you need.”

  “What makes you think I know anything more about those two than you do?” Lo Manto asked. “I don’t know your street history. They could have just as easily been gunning for you.”

  “Sell that brand of bullshit on some other corner,” Jennifer said, moving away from the wall and standing directly across from Lo Manto, staring up at him with hard eyes. “It was you that first spotted them, which to me means you knew enough to look out for a tail shaving our backs. It was almost like you were ready for it, expecting the mov
e to come, just not all that sure from which direction. None of that adds up to a cop on a visit here to score a few days of R-and-R with friends from the old neighborhood. It’s more like a cop that’s running toward a case. Maybe it’s the one dealing with that missing niece of yours, I don’t know. But if you and me are going to keep seeing each other, let alone talk to each other, I need to know.”

  Lo Manto stared back at her for several moments, staying silent, strands of his long hair falling over his face. He had made it his business to steer clear of partners for most of his career, preferring to walk in and out of his cases on his own time, letting the suspect and the crime dictate the pace. When he did work with other detectives, in Italy or on joint task forces in New York and London, he would still find the time to veer off course and venture out on his own. He would walk the dark streets of cities both strange and familiar into the early morning hours, working out the moves and the motives of his prey in his mind. He had always believed that the best cops were always the loners, the ones who were tied down neither to the demands of a family nor to the weakness and whims of a full-time partner. But as he looked back at Jennifer Fabini, at her eyes that while blazing with anger also amplified her beauty, he came to the realization that he either needed to trust her or go back to Fernandez and have her taken off his watch. That wouldn’t sit too well with the captain, who would be forced to balance their friendship with the responsibilities of his job. Lo Manto would be left with little in the way of wiggle room and no say in who Jennifer’s replacement would be, assuming it would even get to that point. Fernandez would be well within his jurisdictional powers to restrict Lo Manto’s movements, and might even go so far as to confine him to the cheapest room at the nearest hotel while the search for his niece played out. He couldn’t afford the lost time, waiting out the back-and-forth calls that would take place between Fernandez in New York and Bartoni in Naples, stewing in the precinct while the two men decided in which direction he would be allowed to move. If he was going to have a partner in New York, it would have to be the wired-up young woman glaring at him, her arms folded across her chest.

  “You with me?” she asked, her words ringing with frustration. “Or you already thinking about what to order for dinner?”

  Lo Manto turned away from her and surveyed the scene behind them, where a crowd of police personnel had gathered. Two uniforms and a team of detectives were staring at the body in the front seat of the car, while the EMS crew was slowly easing the wounded man out the rear door. A forensics team was taking photos, dusting for prints, and scanning for bullet fragments. “Unless you do it different here than we do it in Naples, we’re both going to have to spend an hour or so talking to these people and answering all their questions,” he said to her. “Then, I would imagine, back to the house, to answer even more questions.”

  “That’s the picture I’m getting,” Jennifer said, scanning the scene. “On top of that, the shooting happened beyond city limits. I have no police power here, and I sure as hell know that you don’t. Which means we have to answer to cops who might not be as friendly as the guys in the Bronx.”

  “Throw the blame all at me,” he told her. “While you’re doing that, try to find out as much as you can about the two in the car. See if they’re locals or out-of-town hires that were brought in for the one job. The more we know about them, the better we can figure out what our next move is going to be.”

  “How do we handle the little matter that the gun in your hand, the one whose bullets took out the driver, just happens to be mine?” she asked, still dubious as to Lo Manto’s true intentions.

  “It fell out of its holster when you hit the wall,” Lo Manto said. “I picked it up and, given the heat of the moment, there really wasn’t anything you could do to stop me without risking both our lives.”

  “You’re a little too good at this,” Jennifer said. “Lies come shooting out of your mouth faster than you worked that trigger back there. But then, you’ve probably been through this dance a few times before.”

  “I’ve never met a good cop who wasn’t a good liar,” Lo Manto said. “They’re usually the ones that break the rules and they’re the ones with all the valid reasons as to why they had to do it.”

  “I’m walking the edge of the surf here for you,” she said, stepping even closer to him, her voice now almost a whisper. “The worst that can happen to you is someone hands you a plane ticket to Rome and drives you out to the airport. But if I get tagged, I’ll be picking up hot lumps of shit down at the K-9 pound until my retirement party. Before I do any of that, I need to know what it is I’m stepping into here.”

  Lo Manto reached out a hand and rested it on Jennifer’s elbow. “If you want me to trust you,” he said to her in a reassuring manner, “I need you to trust me.”

  Jennifer looked over Lo Manto’s shoulder and saw the two detectives walking toward them, one a woman in a sky blue short-sleeved blouse, the other an older man in a worn plaid jacket with a gleaming head tinged with sweat beads. “I’ll back you up on this,” she said to him. “But if it doesn’t play out fair and you leave me to take the hit, the next time you see me with a gun in my hand it’ll be aimed at you.”

  “Not exactly the most romantic proposal I’ve ever been offered,” Lo Manto said, giving her a slight smile. “But one I’d be a fool to turn down. I’ll take a step back and leave you to handle Will and Grace and the Internal team back at the house. If you’re good enough to get us past them, then I’ll tell you everything you want to know.”

  “What about the captain?” she asked. “He’s your friend, but he’s my boss and he’s a good bet to be more than pissed over this news.”

  “If he’s as good a friend as I think he is, neither one of us should have a problem,” Lo Manto said.

  “And if he’s not?”

  “Then it won’t be just you shoveling shit with the K-9 units,” Lo Manto said, turning to face the two detectives. “I’ll be right there next to you.”

  14

  PETE ROSSI TOOK several long sips from a tall glass filled with espresso and chipped ice, his face a benign mask of indifference. He was sitting across from Silvestri, listening as the older man filled him in on the botched shooting in Eastchester, one of his hired guns dead, the other on a hospital respirator, clutching on to what was left of his life. Rossi had been taught many lessons during his years spent under the strict schooling of the men assigned to instruct him in the ways of the Camorra. No rule was more crucial to his ability to function as a modern day boss than the demand that no betrayal of emotion ever be shown outside his inner circle. Rossi absorbed the lessons that were passed to him by dons as powerful as his father had been and as vindictive as the legendary Carlo Robuto, a ruthless man who controlled the streets of Naples for well over two decades. Rossi had twisted and shaped those lessons to the contours of his own personality, so that now they were as natural to him as breathing.

  He was keenly aware of his weak areas, of the temper that could often flare violently out of control, attacking with a fierce anger all that stood in its groundswell. Rather than bury the temper, he learned to control it, to unleash it when it best suited his needs, allowing it to strengthen, not weaken, his position. He seldom would speak first in any setting, whether a formal business meeting or an informal family gathering. He had learned to treat his day-to-day life as if he were in the middle of a long poker game and all the other players were only interested in the cards he held in his hand.

  “Bottom line is this,” Silvestri said, downing the last of what had been a tumbler filled with scotch and ice. “We took a chance and sent two amateurs out in the ring, hoping they would get lucky and score a knockout. We were wrong and they ended up dead or close enough to it for it not to matter.”

  “They connect back to us in any way?” Rossi asked. He rested the iced espresso on a glass holder, careful not to spill any drops onto the polished veneer of his oak wood desk.

  “Not even in the same area code,”
Silvestri said. “They came to us through a third party. I met with them once and the payout was handled with me clear out of the picture. They supplied their own weapons and they came up with their own plan. None of our people were anywhere near them and wouldn’t know them if they died on their front lawn.”

  “The one in the hospital,” Rossi said. “What odds is he looking at?”

  “You ask me, the kid was half a potato before he got shot,” Silvestri said. “Now he’s looking at total vegetable and that’s only if he pulls through.”

  “I don’t think he’s going to make it,” Rossi said, his voice firm and direct. “Do you?”

  “No,” Silvestri said, understanding that his don was not venturing an opinion but stating a fact. “It don’t look good, no matter which way you turn the dial.”

  “Which leaves us still with an unresolved problem,” Rossi said. “One that’s going to be harder for us to solve the next time.”

  “We need to wait two, maybe three days before we try again,” Silvestri said “Give the situation time to simmer down. Maybe we catch some luck and the people here will be as fed up with him as we are and send him packing back across the ocean.”

  “Their decision won’t matter to him,” Rossi said, settling deeper into his leather chair, his head pushing back against the rest. “Nor, for that matter, should it. He won’t leave without the young lady we’re holding. That means he won’t leave until he figures out where she is and who it is that has her.”

  “How long you think that will take him?” Silvestri asked.

  “Not very,” Rossi said. “He’s held back a bit working minus the freedom he had in his own city, but New York is as much home to him as Naples. He has to be a bit more creative in getting things done, but that’s never been a problem for him. He can adapt to any situation. If things had gone down a different path, he could have easily been raised the same way I was, taught by the same people who schooled me.”