The Wolf: A Novel Read online

  “If these missions prove successful, we will be more than hated,” Avrim said. “We will be despised until the end of days.”

  “All the more reason to pray for their success,” Raza said, smiling. “For if I am to be judged, let it be by my enemies.”

  Avrim lowered his head. Then he looked up and stared at the work, relishing each second of pleasure.

  Chapter 41

  New York City

  Big Mike Paleokrassas, the fisherman’s grandson who grew up to be one of the brightest stars in the criminal universe, got behind the wheel of a remodeled and refurbished 1967 Black Mustang, eight cylinders of pure power, built for speed and comfort, and laid his head back against the plush headrest. He had wanted such a car since he first saw the movie Bullitt with Steve McQueen on his tenth birthday, a VHS gift from his father who handed down his love of fast cars to his son. He had to wait eleven years until he found the one he wanted. It was beaten down, engine run to the ground, body ruined by weather and age, but Big Mike knew it was the one, and he took the time and the money needed to restore it to its full glory. As he rose through the ranks of the Greek syndicate, he collected a number of other cars, all copies of those he had seen on a movie screen. These were Big Mike’s real loves—cars and movies.

  “If I had a chance to do it over again,” he once told me over the course of a long dinner at his summer home outside Athens, “I would get on a plane and head straight for Los Angeles. Work in the movie business, and not from our end of it—shakedowns, budget shuffles, blackmail, protection—I mean just make movies.”

  “Why didn’t you?” I asked. “I doubt your father would have stopped you. I never got the sense from him he was that keen on you going into the family business. You could have made the move.”

  “I was thinking about it,” Big Mike said. “Then he got sick and it seemed like every Greek I ever met wanted a piece of his action, and he wasn’t even dead yet. He had built it all from nothing, Vincent. I couldn’t walk away and let it fall into the hands of people who had no business running his business.”

  “Any regrets?”

  “Everybody has regrets,” Big Mike said. “Part of life, I suppose. I may not have lived out my dream but I kept my father’s dream alive. We’re not a big outfit, can’t even compare us to your crew, the Yakuza, the Triads, and forget about the Russians. But we’ve earned our seat at the table and nobody makes any moves on our turf. We’re never under anybody’s scope and that’s a good thing, a very good thing for a criminal organization. I don’t have the pressure on me that you do on a day-to-day. I can’t imagine this is how you pictured your life turning out.”

  “If my parents had lived, the results would have been different,” I said. “My father, especially. Now, he loved my Uncle Carlo, looked up to him and respected him, but truth is he hated what he did for a living. My dad was a hard worker who put in long hours every day for not a lot of money. Guys like that don’t care much for gangsters.”

  “I figured you for law school,” Big Mike said. “You got the head for it and the mind-set. I would have hired you.”

  I smiled and shook my head. “I don’t think so,” I said, “though I wouldn’t mind the billing hours. And they call us thieves. No, medicine would have been the way for me. I was always interested in it, even more so after my mom got sick.”

  “Dr. Wolf,” Big Mike said, laughing. “Has a nice ring to it.”

  “Who the hell are we kidding?” I said. “We were born to be gangsters. I would have sucked as a doctor and you would have made those movies that go right to DVD without sniffing the inside of a movie theater, and we would both have been miserable.”

  Big Mike was on the top floor of a midtown park and lock garage. He looked out at the opening between two thick concrete beams and could see a hard rain begin to fall. He also noticed a second car parked in the large space, big enough to fit eighty to a floor. He didn’t need to look long to catch the make and model of the sedan and see it for what it was, a car on his tail. The windows were up and tinted, so he couldn’t tell how many were in the car, though he figured it to be a driver and three shooters.

  The car hadn’t been there when he had parked his Mustang two hours earlier, prior to his meeting with John Loo and members of his surveillance team, who were getting an update on Raza’s whereabouts and the killing of Santos. He rubbed his eyes, reached for a pack of gum in the glove compartment and rolled three slices of peppermint Wrigley’s into his mouth. He then slipped on a pair of thin black leather gloves and checked his rear- and sideview mirrors. He turned the ignition key and smiled when he heard the eight-cylinder 427 cubics of power he had installed kick over, the inside of the car doing a slow tremble. He turned and saw the driver of the sedan start the late model Mercedes and let it idle, thin puffs of white smoke coming out of the rear dual exhaust. Big Mike figured he could outdrive the shooters, the swerving incline out of the seven-story structure working more to his favor. He knew, however, he couldn’t outgun them. “Well, Bessie,” Big Mike said, addressing the car by the nickname his father had given it when he first saw the then-damaged wreck his son craved, “I always knew you were better than any Benz. Time to prove it.”

  Big Mike released the brake and shifted the car into reverse, its front end now facing the Mercedes. He shifted into first and drove toward the winding incline leading out of the seventh floor, the sedan following him out. As he neared the incline, he switched into second, hit the gas heavy and gripped the steering wheel tighter, moving fast down the thin concrete passageway, careful to avoid the double iron railings on one side and the solid cement wall on the other. The sedan was fast behind him, tinted windows now rolled down, three of the passengers tucking their arms out of the car, semiautomatic guns in hand.

  The left rear bumper of Big Mike’s Mustang bounced against an iron rail as he swerved onto the sixth-floor curve heading down to the next flight. One of the gunmen’s bullets shattered a taillight and a second knocked loose the passenger side mirror. Big Mike shifted from second to first as his front end scraped against the cement wall, leaving a stream of sparks in its wake. The sedan was closing in, its tires squealing against the pull of the curves, the driver choosing to lurch closer to the wall and avoid contact with the railings.

  Big Mike’s Mustang jumped off the landing onto the fifth floor and he swerved it away from the next incline and maneuvered around forty cars parked throughout the space. He checked his mirror and saw the sedan was on his trail, the gunmen hailing bullets his way at a faster, steadier clip. One bullet shattered his back window while another volley tore through the leather upholstery, shredding the seats open as if sliced by a knife.

  One bullet found its intended target.

  Big Mike looked down and saw blood oozing out of a small smoking hole on the left side of his stomach and dripping onto the black mat by his feet. His left leg was turning numb and the burn from the wound caused his eyes to sting. He swung the car around the back end of a white van with out-of-state plates and then slammed on the brakes and carefully guided the Mustang as it did a 180-degree turn to face the oncoming Mercedes, a fuselage of bullets slamming in his direction. Four of the shots cracked the front end, causing a stream of dark smoke to snake its way through the hood.

  Big Mike shifted easily into third gear, feeling the power of the engine come to life, less than twenty feet from the advancing sedan. He knew that if he lost the chicken game and crashed into the Mercedes, he would not survive the hit. He had no driver air bags and had not even bothered to put on his seat belt. His only chance would be if the driver of the sedan blinked and backed off.

  Through the pain in his side and the smoke limiting his vision, he caught the eye of the driver behind the wheel of the Mercedes and smiled. “He’s scared of you, Bessie,” Big Mike said, “as fucking well he should be.”

  The Mercedes hit the brakes and swung away from the Mustang inches before a crash could occur. The sedan skidded to a stop against the open side
of the fifth floor, a two-foot concrete embankment the only separation. One of the gunmen jumped out of the car, a gun in each hand, and poured bullets into the Mustang. One of the slugs clipped Big Mike in the left shoulder and a second nicked his right elbow. He ignored the blood and the pain, jammed the gear shaft into fourth and slammed his foot down on the gas pedal, heading straight for the center of the sedan.

  The crash was sudden and loud, killing the crouching gunman instantly, his body wedged between squealing tires and crushed steel. The blow from the Mustang toppled the Mercedes over the concrete barrier, floating it out into the heavy rain as it crashed into the alley below, landing hood first, tires popping, gas tank imploding, smoke engulfing the front and rear, flames emerging out of the engine.

  The three men inside dead.

  Big Mike’s Mustang was left dangling, the front half hanging over the edge of the barrier, the rear still on solid ground. The car was smashed and riddled with bullet holes, the rubber on its tires down to bare thread, smoke pouring out of the engine, the top of the Mustang torn off and resting against the far side of a wall.

  Big Mike’s head and chest rested on a bed of glass on the front hood of the tottering car. His body was soaked in blood and only one eye was open. He took in slow, shallow breaths, each one as painful as a hard punch. A heavy rain fell on his head and back.

  He took a deep breath, patted the hood of the car as if in congratulations, and then he was gone.

  Chapter 42

  East Hampton, New York

  “What was the promise?” I asked Jimmy. “What could they have offered that would make you turn your back on your family and on me?”

  Jimmy stared at me, his body still as stone. We were in the library of the big house by the beach, surrounded by floor-to-ceiling bookcases filled with everything from the classics to the newest thrillers. In the center of the large room were two large oak tables, surrounded by several handcrafted wooden chairs. On top of each table was a chessboard—one filled with pieces carved from characters taken from Sherlock Holmes stories, the other made up of Italian medieval knights prepped for battle. Jimmy and I had spent many hours in this room with the large picture window looking out at the ocean waves a halfmile away. We read, we played endless games of chess, and we talked for hours on end as I learned to communicate with a disabled boy I had come to think of as a brother.

  “You want me to answer for you?” I asked. “Because I think I know what drove you to do what you did. It had nothing to do with Vladimir or Raza. It wasn’t about any concerns you might have had about the war or anything to do with your family. It was none of that. It was about me. It’s always been about me.”

  I stepped away from the thick wooden chair I had been standing behind and moved closer toward the open double doors leading out of the room and into the lush garden. I stood next to Jimmy’s wheelchair, my hands in my pockets, and stared out at the beach, crowded at this early morning hour with dogs running in and out of the water, chasing tennis balls and Frisbees tossed to them by their owners.

  “I get it,” I said. “I took the one thing you wanted but could never ask for—control of the family. It was your birthright. It belonged to you, not me. You went along with it, pretended all these years it didn’t matter to you which of us was in charge, that all you wanted to do was be heard, your advice given weight, your counsel sought. But all along you wanted to be seated at the head of the table, and I was the one who stood in the way.”

  Jimmy looked up at me and there were tears welling in his eyes mixed with a harsh glare of anger. His upper body trembled slightly and his hands gripped the leather folds of his wheelchair. “It wasn’t my decision,” I said, as much to myself as to him. “Your father is the one who made the choice. Right or wrong, it’s his call. If I had turned him down, he would have gone to someone else, from here or from Italy, didn’t matter. It would never have been you, as much as he wished it could have been. I think we both knew how it was going to play out from the first day I came to live with you. And now I wonder if you planned to betray me from the start, sitting back, waiting for the right opportunity to come along. And then Vladimir comes through with the offer you always wanted—me out of the way.”

  Jimmy shook his head from side to side, shifting the wheelchair with his sudden movements. I moved away from the window, leaned down and pressed my hands against his chest, my face a mere inches from his. “You were willing to let me die to get what you wanted,” I said in a low voice. “That part I can understand. In your place, I might have done the same. But my family, Jimmy. Lisa, Paula, Sandy were murdered, and I need to know and I need to know now and believe it when I hear it—did you have anything to do with what happened on that plane?”

  Jimmy’s eyes widened in horror and he nearly bolted free of his wheelchair, his hands clutching my arms tight enough to cause a bruise, his head shaking violently, his eyes filled with a sadness that gave weight to the pain he felt at their death.

  I released his firm grip and stepped back. “I always felt you loved them as much as I did,” I said. “Glad to see that part still holds.”

  I know the penalty for betrayal. Under any other circumstance it would have been an easy call to make, and one that would not have bothered me in the least. I’ve made such decisions many times in the past, and never have I regretted the actions taken. But now, for the first time since I was anointed the head of our syndicate, I was weighed down with indecision. I loved Jimmy and knew that despite his act of treason he loved me, and I had so few left in my life to love that to lose one more could prove an unbearable weight.

  But to let what Jimmy had done pass without recourse or penalty would be a risk as well as a potentially devastating mistake. Once word got out, it would weaken my position in the eyes of the other crime bosses at a time when I needed a tight hold on their respect.

  I was not the first to be betrayed by someone within his inner circle, and I would not be the last. In my position, you always brace for such an action, anticipate it, look to prevent it before it happens, often predict who it will be and monitor that suspect until he does indeed make the move. I did that with everyone in my group but never thought to look Jimmy’s way. I didn’t doubt there was a level of resentment on his part, toward me, not only in superseding him as crime boss but winning over the affections of his father. But I was dissuaded by Jimmy’s kindness to my own family and by the brave and noble way he handled the harsh reality he faced each day, refusing to be confined by illness and disease, never becoming a slave to his condition, and building a life when the easy option would have been to be dependent and bitter.

  Jimmy reached for his notepad and scrawled a note, tore the sheet off the binder and handed it to me. I took it, read what he had written, and handed it back to him.

  “It’s not that easy,” I said. “You know that as well as I do. There’s only two ways this can go. I give you a pass on what you did, ask for your word that it won’t happen again, and leave here believing you will stick to your promise. The other option and the safer one is to have you taken away and killed. Just as I would any other traitor.”

  Jimmy scrawled another note, this time choosing his words with care, taking his time. He held the pen in one hand and gave me the notepad with the other. I read his words and looked at him and nodded.

  “Is that really what you want?” I asked.

  Jimmy’s look answered my question.

  “Is it because you want me to do it or because you don’t think I can?” I asked.

  Jimmy smiled for the first time that day and made a gesture with his hands.

  “It’s going to be hard to live with no matter who it is kills you, me or someone in the crew,” I said. “You’re the one that gets off easy on this, not me.”

  “Nobody gets off easy.” Uncle Carlo’s still strong voice, shielding a weakening body, came at us from the rear of the room, near the double-oak door that led into it. “Not on something like this. In here, the three of us are victi
ms.”

  I had yet to tell Uncle Carlo the harsh truth about his son.

  I had wanted to talk to Jimmy first and then sort the entire affair out in my mind before I went to deliver the news. But I should have know an old school crime boss like Uncle Carlo has eyes and ears in all the places they’re needed.

  Uncle Carlo walked across the room, his pace slowed by a troublesome right hip. He stopped when he reached Jimmy’s wheelchair and hovered over his son, his eyes filled with an anger I had not seen in all the years I lived under his roof. He lifted a still powerful right hand, leaned over and slapped his son across the face, the blow so hard and so unexpected it caused the wheelchair to lurch. Jimmy, his right cheek now beet red, stared up at his father and shook his head, tears streaming down his face.

  “Yeah, I’m sorry, too,” Uncle Carlo said. “But guess what? In our business, in our life, sorry doesn’t count for shit. It’s what you do, it’s what you say, it’s how you act that matters. The rest is all for show.”

  “He didn’t tip them off to anything major,” I said, feeling I had to say something in Jimmy’s defense. Despite his actions, I hated seeing him cowering and defenseless in front of his father. “Just general information that the Russian probably already knew.”

  “I don’t give a shit if all he gave them was a weather update,” Uncle Carlo said. “It doesn’t change what he did. A betrayal is that, no matter what one side tells the other.”

  Uncle Carlo looked down at his son, glaring into his eyes. “You might understand how to work computers and the rest of the technological crap that’s used today, but you never took the time to understand who the hell we really are and how we do the things we do. That’s why I passed you over and chose Vincent to run the organization. Not because you were in a wheelchair. You’re smart enough and tough enough to figure out ways to overcome that, and you might have been able to take our syndicate in the same direction Vincent has. But your feel for our history would have made you a weak boss, and I don’t need further proof of that other than your act of betrayal.”