Forced Out (10 page)

"Saw your game last night." The kid's hands were so powerful. Like Thurman Munson's before he died in that tragic plane crash. "Two of the best plays I ever saw. The catch in the first and the homer in the ninth. And I've seen a lot of great plays."

"Thanks." The kid stroked his beard, then reached for his beer. "You at tonight's game?" Jack nodded, glancing quickly into Clemant's eyes, trying to get a read without lingering. Just like you wouldn't look into a wild animal's eyes for long because it might set off the beast inside. But it was tough to see anything. The bill of the hat came way down, and the beard made the shadow from the hat seem even darker. "Yup."

"Not quite as good, huh?"

Clemant had gone oh for three tonight--two strikeouts and a pop-up--and he'd made a hideous throwing error. Jack shrugged. "That's baseball." Strange. It almost seemed like the kid had grinned for a second. Like he found his awful performance tonight amusing

--even satisfying--in some way. Maybe that was why his teammates couldn't stand him. Maybe he was one of those guys who didn't care. Which was what athletes hated most in a teammate. And you couldn't teach someone to care. "Some nights that's just the way it goes."

The kid gestured at Jack's hand. "What's with the ring?" Jack held it up for maximum effect. "I was with the Yankees for a long time."

"Doing what?"

"I was on the scouting side." Jack leaned toward the kid. The conversation was going even better than he'd hoped. Christ, from what everyone had said, he hadn't been expecting much. Well, it was time to attack. "Look, I know talent when I see it, and you're it. You got all the tools to make it big in the Show. And I wanna help you get there. You're wasting your time here in Sarasota."

For a long time the kid said nothing, just drew invisible shapes on the bar with his finger.

All right, he'd take another tack. "So, you're from Minnesota," Jack tried. "I read that on the team's website. What's the name of--"

"Mr. Barrett," Clemant interrupted calmly, "I don't care how good you think you are at scaring up talent from small towns and bad teams." He stood up and dropped two tens on the bar beside his ketchup-smeared plate. "If you ever come up to me like this again, you're gonna be sorry.
Real
sorry."

He hadn't raised his voice, hadn't gotten angry. Just said what he had to say matter-offactly. Like he was damn serious, Jack realized.

"Am I clear?"

Jack nodded ever so subtly.

And just like that the kid was gone. Out of the bar and into the darkness. A shiver ran up Jack's spine as the door swung shut. The same way it did when the umpire yelled "Play ball!" at the beginning of every game. Only a few moments with the young man, but in those fleeting seconds he'd come to a vital and indisputable conclusion. Mikey Clemant could end up being one of the greatest baseball players of all time.

Part 2

12

I
T WAS ALWAYS best to get to a loan shark early in the morning, before he had a chance to get out of his house and get moving. Otherwise you'd spend all day birddogging him. Crisscrossing New York City--from the Bronx all the way down to Staten Island--trying to catch up with him because he was constantly bouncing from borough to borough trying to gin up business or chasing down deadbeats. Mostly trying to collect as opposed to lend. Lending was the easy part of the racket. Collecting was the backbreaker.

Which was one of the reasons why the VIG--the vigorish, or interest rate--had to be so steep. To make up for all that running around, which most days didn't net you a dime. That and the risk factor. In the lender-of-last-resort market, you had to assume people were going to disappear on you despite what they knew could happen to them. Despite that scare-the-hell-out-of-them surprise visit you always paid the day after you loaned them the money even though technically they didn't owe you anything back at that point. When you showed them the bloody after-pictures of the last guy who tried to stiff the Lucchesi family.

Johnny knocked three times hard, then stepped to the side. Just in case the man inside the apartment decided the best defense was a good offense and blew a couple of shotgun shells through the door right before sprinting for the fire escape. You could never be too careful, even though Tony Treviso didn't have a reputation for being quick on the draw. In fact, Treviso's reputation was quite the opposite. No one had ever actually seen Treviso draw, which was why the Lucchesi capos called him Timid Tony. He never did the dirty work himself. When somebody fell behind on a payment schedule, he called in the muscle side of the family to chop off a finger or slice an ear. And he didn't usually stick around to watch. Most guys in the family loved watching that stuff. Not Treviso. He just identified the guy and left. And when he had to take the ultimate step, those few times he had to make a mortal example out of a way-past-due credit, he
always
called in the brutes. Loan sharks were supposed to handle their own problems in the Lucchesi family--at least the initial slicing and dicing. But the rumor around was that Treviso didn't have the stomach.

Which meant he shouldn't have lasted long. But he had lasted. And it was because he made so much more than the other guys. He had an uncanny knack for sizing up a mark, for knowing who'd be terrified enough to repay the money--and who wouldn't. Which wasn't to say he didn't suffer his share of losses. Every lender in this market did. But his losses were dramatically less than everyone else's, so his profits were dramatically more, which was why the capos kept him around even though they called him a pussy behind his back, sometimes even to his face. They kept him around because he made them so much money, and, in the end, that was all that mattered. Even if he was a pussy. Yeah, Timid Tony had always been a big moneymaker.

Until that loan to Kyle McLean.

Johnny reached around and knocked again, pretty sure he wasn't going to get the shotgun-blast-through-the-door reception, but forcing himself to be cautious. You never knew how it was gonna go when a man felt trapped. Johnny had learned that one the hard way. He still had buckshot in his left thigh from a guy who'd flipped out on him a couple of years ago.

He'd thought about calling Treviso to let him know he was coming--to avoid a confrontation--then decided against it. He wanted this to be a surprise so he could gauge the gut reactions to the pointed questions, not hear canned responses. And there was this one thing about Tony Treviso. This one footnote that belied the pussy tag the capos had pegged on him. This one story that made Johnny Bondano wary. Two years ago, Treviso was supposed to have murdered a guy he'd loaned fifty grand to--

even though he'd gotten the money back. Then supposedly he'd sent the guy's severed head to his wife by overnight delivery service, with a dead rat stuffed in the gaping, bloody mouth. A few seconds after opening the box she'd collapsed and suffered a nervous breakdown. She was still in the psychiatric ward at Bellevue. Nobody could confirm that Treviso had been behind the ghastly delivery. But when you asked him about it, he smiled in a way that he didn't smile when you asked him about anything else. In a self-satisfied, wicked way that convinced you he knew a lot more about that severed head than he was letting on.

Johnny knocked again. As hard as he could this time.

"Who is it?"

The hesitant, muffled voice was coming from someone who was standing well back from the door. So Treviso was worried that whoever was knocking might blow a couple of shotgun shells into the apartment. "Johnny Bondano."

"I never heard of no Johnny Bondano."

Which was crap. Just a ruse to try to throw whoever Treviso thought might really be knocking on his door off the scent. Johnny and Treviso had been together several times. The last time only a few weeks ago at a bar in Staten Island near where he'd killed the Capelletti guy. That was when he'd personally asked Treviso about killing the guy and sending the hacked-off head to the wife. When he'd seen for himself that strange smile skid across Treviso's thin face. When he'd felt the eerie chill run up his spine for himself. He'd realized then that while most of the time Treviso was incapable of as much as setting a mousetrap, somewhere beneath the guy's pasty, pale exterior lurked a psychopathic switch that could turn Timid Tony into a man the devil would call a friend.

"It's the Deuce, Tony." Johnny tried to make his voice sound friendly--which wasn't easy. "I just want to talk to you, I just want to have a conversation." Marconi might get pissed if he found out about this meeting. He might not accept Johnny's excuse that he was simply questioning Treviso in another attempt to pick up Kyle McLean's trail. After all, if Treviso had any inkling of where McLean was, he would have tried to find McLean himself to get the hundred grand back. But Johnny couldn't just throw out his code. He'd decided that at the cemetery yesterday as he'd run his fingers over Karen's chiseled name. "Now open up. Nothing's gonna happen."

The door cracked a sliver. "I don't see nobody out there." Johnny moved in front of the door and held his hands out to show Treviso he wasn't holding a gun. He could see the chain inside extending taut across the narrow opening. But nothing else. "How about now?"

The door shut quickly, then opened wide and Treviso stuck his head into the hallway. Like a frightened rabbit poking his head out of his hole. He checked in both directions, then beckoned for Johnny to come in. "How are you, Deuce, how are you? Jeez, I'm sorry about all that, but I gotta be careful, you know? You can never be too careful in this business."

Tony Treviso was a funny-looking guy. In his late twenties, he was an inch taller than Johnny but rail-skinny. Like he never ate. Or puked it all back up every time he did. He had thinning brown hair he wore slicked straight back without a part, a long nose, buckteeth, and a large black mole on his neck. He wore a food-stained tank-top T-shirt that was way too big and hung in sagging waves over his sunken chest like a flag on a windless day, exposing a patch of dark hair directly between his tiny pink nipples. And a pair of jeans that bunched together at his waist beneath an old black belt with a large silver buckle.

"Yeah, sure. Everybody's always gotta be careful in our business." As they shook hands, Johnny felt perspiration on Treviso's palm. "Samatta with you?" He knew what was wrong. "You okay?"

"What? Oh,
oooh
." Treviso held up his hand when Johnny nodded at it, then smiled nervously. "Well, it's not like I get a visit from Deuce Bondano at seven-thirty in the morning every morning. Kinda made me wonder what was up. Kinda made me nervous," Treviso admitted. "Know what I mean?"

"Yeah, sure."

Everybody greeted Johnny like this nowadays. Like he was the black plague and they couldn't wait for him to get up on his horse and ride right out of town. Like they were ready to turn and sprint wildly the other way if he so much as reached into his jacket for his wallet. He didn't have any friends anymore thanks to his reputation. Not any real friends anyway, no one he could confide in. He stuck his chin out. It was fine. He'd gotten used to working alone.
And
to living alone. It didn't bother him anymore. Except after a few drinks. Then he started wishing he had someone to care about, someone to love. And if he had too many drinks, he'd start thinking about Karen. So he didn't drink much anymore.

"Yeah, sure," Johnny muttered again, touching his shirt and the two of hearts in the pocket. He heard a baby wailing somewhere in the back of the sparsely furnished apartment as he followed Treviso into the cramped kitchen. "You mind me coming here or something?"

"Of course not. Hey,
mio casa, tuo casa
." Treviso gestured toward a small round table beneath a window with dirty panes. The day's first rays were doing their best to fight their way through the grime. "Sit down. Please. Let's talk." It was amazing how people feared him these days. Treviso was scared for his life right now despite the resident evil buried inside his soul. Johnny could see it plainly in the thin man's expression. And the beads of sweat lining Treviso's hairline were growing larger by the second. Pretty soon a couple of them were going to cascade down his forehead over his narrow eyebrows like tiny waterfalls and embarrass the hell out of him if he didn't do something quick.

"How about some coffee, Deuce?" Treviso asked. He picked up a paper napkin from a plastic holder in the middle of the table and wiped the perspiration away. "Or some water? Anything?"

"Nah."

A young woman balancing a toddler on her hip walked through the doorway on the other side of the kitchen, over by the refrigerator. If she was Treviso's wife, she was prettier than Johnny had expected. Much prettier. A prize, for Christ's sake. The goddamn trophy wife of a Fortune 500 executive. Not the wife of some two-bit Queens hustler. She was petite and exotic with beautiful olive skin and stark, jet-black hair that fell to her bare shoulders. The toddler had a clump of her hair in his cute, tiny fist and he was looking at it inquisitively as he babbled incoherent syllables.

Johnny caught the young woman's gaze for a moment, looked away, then quickly looked back again. "I'm fine," he said, his throat suddenly as dry as a perfect martini.

"Deuce, this is my wife, Karen."

Karen. Somehow he'd known that was going to be her name even before Treviso said it. God sure played some nasty jokes on his flock every once in a while, and this morning it was his turn to be the wool in the crosshairs. Karen. Jesus. Why couldn't it have been anything but Karen?

"Karen, this is Johnny Bondano. But we all call him Deuce. He's a business associate of mine."

She held out her hand. "Hi, Johnny."

For some reason he liked that she called him Johnny, not Deuce. Reluctantly, he took her slim fingers in his, summoning up his courage to gaze into those big brown eyes again. They were surrounded by long, curved lashes, and inside those lashes he saw the same intense curiosity he knew was in his eyes. Sometimes it happened this way. Sometimes two people were attracted to each other right off the bat and there was nothing either of them could do about it. Something nature had predestined, and that was that.