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 victims.”
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.”
Jimmy could only stare back and nod in agreement.
“Here’s what I’m guessing is the line of shit they sold and you bought with your eyes wide open,” Uncle Carlo said. “That the Russians would steer clear of the terror business if we cut them in on some of our action. And they would let you broker that arrangement. Which would make you a player. You, a kid in a wheelchair, helps broker a peace and bring an end to a war without speaking a single word. After that happens, how could I not make you a boss? Did I land close to the truth?”
Jimmy lowered his head and nodded.
“Now,” Uncle Carlo said, “someone needs to die for what you did, and it is the boss of the family who is the only one who can order someone to be killed. Am I right, Vincent?”
“That’s right,” I said.
“I handed the reigns over to Vincent, let him run things for the organization while I moved back a few feet,” Uncle Carlo said. “But no mistake, I’m still the official boss of this outfit and will be until the day they toss dirt on me. Either one of you feel different on that score?”
I had a gut feeling as to where all this was going and was tempted to step in and see if I could bring it to a stop, but I knew Uncle Carlo, and no words were going to bring about a shift in his thinking. He had made up his mind long before he walked into the library and was set on seeing it through.
“The betrayal happened under my watch,” Uncle Carlo said. “Hell, it happened with me in the same damn house and I didn’t come close to smelling it out. That tells me I’m losing my touch. There was a time I could smell a flip across the ocean, now I can’t even sniff it when it happens down the hall from my bedroom. You look at it that way, then I’m as guilty as Jimmy. I may not have connected with the Russians or whoever the hell he slid information to but I didn’t do anything to stop it, either. Now since somebody’s going to go down for this, then that somebody had better be me.”
Jimmy shook his head and nearly bolted out of his chair, straining to reach his father, hands shaking, veins in his neck bulging.
“I’m the boss and I decide who lives and who dies,” Uncle Carlo said. “But there’s something I want in return from you for my death, and you better damn well give it to me.”
Jimmy jabbed his right hand into his chest, his eyes stained with tears, willing his father to change his mind.
“Yes it was you,” Uncle Carlo said. He was calm now, no need for him to display any show of anger, his words all the force he needed to make his position known. “And you’re going to make it right. My death will settle the score with Vincent. But in return, I want your word, Jimmy, that you will never do anything to bring shame to this organization again. It’s something I helped to build, and I will never allow anyone, blood or otherwise, to do anything to cause it harm. So I want your word. Your word as my son, as a man, and as a member of this syndicate, that you will always treat what I made strong with the respect and honor it deserves. You think you have guts enough to give me that?”
Jimmy struggled to gain his composure, taking slow and deep breaths, ignoring the cold sweat forming across his brow, his dark hair wet and matted to his forehead. He cast a glance in my direction and I looked away. I felt like an intruder on an intense father and son conversation. Though I played a key role in the outcome of the dispute, for the first time since I came to live with them I was an observer and had little say about how the situation would be resolved.
After a time, Jimmy nodded.
Jimmy and I both realized that when Uncle Carlo made a decision, there was nothing that could be done or said to change his mind. He had lived by gut and instincts all this time, surviving in a business where only the toughest and hardest of the bunch are left standing, and he was not about to alter his ways, especially not now, in the face of a betrayal.
“It’s settled, then,” Uncle Carlo said. “Now the both of you can set aside your differences and keep them buried. You have each other, and you have a war to fight, one you need to win, and you’ll need each other to do it. It won’t work any other way.”
He looked at Jimmy and then at me. “I love you both,” he said.
“There anything you want me to do?” I asked.
“You know that spot on the hill, the one just past the house?” he asked. “The place we used to go when you were kids, sneak some wine past Jimmy’s nurses and sit and look at the ocean?”
“It’s where you used to tell us stories about the start of the Camorra and the Mafia,” I said, my mind flashing back on those simpler days that now seemed so deep in the past. “And taught us the difference between Fernet Branca and Averna.”
“That’s the spot where I want you to bury me,” Uncle Carlo said. “Facing the smell and sound of the ocean. That’s the best place to end up for an old hood like me.”
He reached over and grabbed each of our hands and held them tight, his grip still coal miner strong. “Those were happy times, just the three of us, talking, laughing, our own special place,” he said. “But here now, today, seeing the two of you together, is the way I meant for it to be. And that’s the memory I’ll take with me.”