The Best American Mystery Stories 2012 (58 page)

“Look here, Charlie. Moan a lot, thrash around like you're really hurting, and this will go a lot quicker,” he said in a voice that sounded as if he started each day by gargling broken glass. “I tried to beg off this one, but you know how it is.” He stomped my left hand, ground the bones under his heel, grinned down at me. “You don't recognize me, do you?”

If I'd had the strength to do anything except whimper and cringe and try to remember the words of the Lord's Prayer, I would have told him that I didn't really give a damn who he was. He could have been Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, or the frigging Easter Bunny for all I cared. I just didn't want him to hurt me anymore.

“It's me, Frankie Giageos,” he said. “I guess I put on a few pounds, huh?”

I blinked cold sweat from my eyes, squinted up at his face, and saw a guy I used to know buried beneath a fresh fifty pounds of fat. Frankie Gee. The last I'd heard, he was in federal prison for conspiracy to commit mail fraud.

“You got out,” I said.

“Couple of months ago.”

Then he kicked me again, left side this time, and I felt a rib crack. Say what you wanted about Frankie Gee, he was a professional. Another kick to the solar plexus and then he took a step back and stood looking down at me, breathing hard, the air whistling through his nose and rattling in his chest.

“I'm getting too old for this crap,” he said, gasping for air.

“Me too,” I said.

“That's pretty good, Charlie.” He wiped his face on his coat sleeve and pulled a pack of Camels from his inside pocket. “I got a message for you.”

I coughed hard, nearly passed out from the pain, but felt a little better when I saw that I'd spat out a mouthful of phlegm instead of blood. “Let me guess. Stay away from Parrish Industrial Park.”

He lit a cigarette with a gold Zippo. “You know this stuff already, why am I here?”

He glanced over his shoulder at a silver Lexus parked in a handicapped space. A heavyset man with gray curly hair was sitting behind the wheel, sipping from a Styrofoam cup while he watched us. I recognized him as the man who'd been driving the SUV when Terrell Cheatham was murdered. Seeing him here with Frankie Gee brought his name back to me. Jackie Marconi, a bottom-feeder who'd been doing grunt work for the mob since he was sixteen. It looked as if he'd taken a giant leap up the ladder.

“Jackie Macaroni sits in the car while you're out . . .”

“‘Jackie Macaroni.' That's good,” Frankie said. “Since Tony retired and Vinnie's been so screwed up over his kid, God rest his little soul, things ain't the way they used to be. Between you and me, they ain't right at all.”

“Cardo's calling the shots,” I said.

“And Jackie there is the king turd in the toilet bowl.” He flicked his cigarette away, grunted as he stooped to retrieve the sawed-off pool cue. “Cardo's serious about this one, Charlie. Next time I'll have to put a bullet in your head. Only reason you got a pass this time is because even though Tony ain't the boss no more, his opinion carries weight.” He took another quick glance back at the Lexus. “If he were to make a direct request on your behalf, people would be inclined to listen. You hear what I'm saying?”

“I hear you, Frankie.”

“You listening?”

“I hear you.”

“Same old Charlie R,” he said.

I wasn't expecting the kick in the crotch. It caught me off-guard, sent stars shooting behind my eyes and the bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit I'd gobbled for breakfast spewing onto the pavement. He hadn't pulled the kick or tried to soften the blow. Like I said, Frankie Gee was a professional.

“When you talk to Tony, give him my best wishes,” he said.

I wiped the vomit from my mouth. “What makes you think I'm going to talk to Tony?”

“You're stubborn, Charlie. Not stupid.”

When the Lexus pulled out of the lot, I curled up into a ball and lay on the asphalt, taking deep breaths of cold air until my stomach settled. A few curtains ruffled in the apartments across the way, but no one bothered to come out to help or took the trouble to call 911. Five minutes later, I crawled to my car and drove myself to the emergency room.

 

In a perfect world, his loyalty as an old friend and his commitment to justice, decency, and the American Way would have led Nate Randolph to use his influence to get the department to launch an investigation into illegal dumping and Terrell Cheatham's murder. But no one seemed particularly interested.

“Call the EPA,” Nate said. “They got a hotline for things like this.”

“That's all you got to say?”

“No,” he said, nodding at the can of Tecate I'd set on his new coffee table. “Either keep that damn thing in your hand or use a coaster.”

I reached for my beer, winced from the pain in my ribs. I'd gotten lucky. Only three were broken. The rest of me was so sore and swollen that I felt like I'd been locked into a barrel with a rabid wolverine and pitched over Niagara Falls.

“You've got nothing and you know it, Charlie,” he said. “The word of a couple of street punks? The truck driver's going to deny everything.”

“Frankie Gee didn't pay me a visit just to catch up on old times.”

“Being right don't change anything.” He finished his beer and set the empty back down on a coaster. “Call the EPA. They go in with a search warrant and find anything out of the ordinary, the feds will be on Cardo like stink on an outhouse.”

“And by the time they get around to filing charges, all of the important witnesses will have disappeared and I'll end up in the Mississippi River.”

He gave me a wicked grin. “Not my problem. I'm retired. Remember?”

 

I've seen movies and read books about ordinary people who are willing to disregard their own safety to testify against the mob or reveal the abuse of power by corrupt public officials or blow the whistle on corporate bosses who deny knowledge of the poisons they peddle. These people are real heroes, capable of putting the good of the whole in front of their own self-interest. I've always marveled at their courage and appreciated their sacrifice. But I'm not one of them. No one would describe my life as glamorous, and it's a long way from what I'd imagined it would be when I was a kid, but I was in no hurry to throw it away. Instead of calling the EPA, I called in a favor from an old friend.

The next afternoon I exited the 240 loop at Summer Avenue. At his Uncle Tony's request, Little Vinnie Montesi had agreed to spare me half an hour of his time. I'd expected him to choose one of the half-dozen Italian restaurants he frequented or, if I were lucky, the warehouse-sized gentleman's club he owned on Brooks Road. Instead I'd been summoned to a Waffle House that sat between a run-down motel where half the guests cooked meth in their rooms and a convenience store that seemed to specialize in prepaid cell phones and $3-a-bottle wine.

When I stepped into the restaurant, the hairs tingled on the back of my neck and my pulse roared in my ears. Three broad-shouldered men hunched over coffee cups at the counter. I didn't need to see their faces to know they were Montesi's men, but Vinnie himself was nowhere around. A setup? The thought made my mouth dry and my pulse throb in my neck. It struck me that I was putting a lot of faith in the respect Little Vinnie might have for his uncle. Before his health and his age had led him to a condo in Sarasota, Florida, Fat Tony ran the Mafia in Memphis for twenty-five years. He was greedy, power-hungry, ruthless when it came to competition, but he was also a rational man, capable of great loyalty and occasional generosity when it came to his friends.

His nephew wasn't just Tony's opposite in physical appearance. Around police stations in Memphis, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Alabama, the years since Tony retired and Vinnie took over were referred to as the Cokehead Reign of Terror. Vicious by nature and possessed by an addict's megalomania, Little Vinnie Montesi had set about renegotiating all of the old understandings. Black drug dealers, redneck meth cookers, and point men for the Mexican drug cartels had been turning up in vacant lots, abandoned warehouses, and torched cars for the last six years. Now, looking at those three broad backs and all those empty booths, I wondered if I hadn't made the worst mistake of a life that had been full of them.

Then one of the broad-shouldered men swiveled on his stool to face me, and my pulse and my nerves settled a little. Frankie Gee. I wondered what it said about my life and my chosen profession that seeing the guy who'd broken my ribs, stomped my hands, and nearly kicked my testicles into my sinus cavities was a comfort.

“Last booth,” Frankie Gee said.

 

The seats were empty, but a waffle swimming in blueberry syrup, a half glass of chocolate milk, and a platter of bacon sat on the table. I slid into the side opposite the food and waited. A couple of minutes later, Vinnie Montesi came from the men's room, patting his face with a paper towel. In the movies people are always kissing the rings of Mafia bosses, but he didn't even offer to shake my hand. Instead he slid into the booth and gave me a curt nod. I knew he was younger than me by a good seven years, but today he seemed much older. He was ten, maybe fifteen pounds lighter than I remembered, with dark bruises beneath his eyes and fresh patches of gray in his dark brown hair. His movements were wooden and lifeless, a million miles from the jerky, earthquake-beneath-the-skin manner of a coke addict on a binge. He looked as if his grief for his son had scooped out his insides and left a hollow shell.

He picked up the glass of chocolate milk but instead of drinking it sniffed the rim and then set it back down. “You like milk?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said, and then shrugged. “Not really. I pretty much stick with coffee and beer.”

“I can't stand the stuff,” he said. “Milk, I mean. Chocolate or white, either one. The taste makes me vomit, has since I was a kid.” He picked up the glass again, and his smile was crooked and damned. “Before he got sick, Michael drank it by the gallon. He loved this place. Waffles, bacon, sausage, fried eggs. My wife, she's a health-food addict, always worrying about nitrates and sodium and on and on, but as long as Mikey was up to it, I'd bring him every Sunday.” He shut his eyes for a second. “I thought I'd never want to step foot in this place again, but now . . . now it's where I come to feel peaceful. My wife, she goes to church. I come to this dump and order a bunch of food that makes me sick to my stomach.”

“I'm sorry for your loss,” I said, hating the hollow empty sound of the words as I spoke them.

He waved away my condolences. “My uncle likes you,” he said. “The way he ran things . . . well, they aren't exactly my way, but that don't mean I don't appreciate him. Out of respect for him, I'll listen, but I'm not making promises.”

When I finished telling him what I knew and what I suspected, he nodded to himself. Then he spent a couple of minutes staring at a point on the ceiling.

“I've heard what you got to say.”

“And?”

“Paul Cardo's a businessman, so am I. The way we do things is, he deals with his problems and I deal with mine.”

“You're saying you don't know what goes on at West Parrish Industrial Park?”

“Don't know and don't care.”

“As long as you get your cut.”

His tongue darted over his upper lip. “I have a piece of advice for you, Charlie, and I'm giving it because of your friendship with my uncle. This thing you told me today? You don't want to be telling it to anyone else, especially not anyone connected to the federal government. A thing like that . . .” He shrugged and gave me a rattlesnake's grin. “Well, my affection for my uncle only goes so far.”

I took a deep breath, glanced at the untouched waffle and the half-empty glass of chocolate milk. “What did your son die of? It was cancer, right?”

“Leukemia,” he said, his voice as cold as wind blowing over an iceberg. “Don't push me, Raines.”

“I was in the Med the other day,” I said. “The emergency room . . .”

“I heard about that, too.”

“When they finished with the X-rays and the bandages, I had a little extra time, so I visited a few people, most of them from South Memphis.”

“We're done here,” he said.

I shook my head. “Take a ride with me.”

“You're crazy.”

“Take a ride with me.”

He grimaced. “To the Med?”

“One hour. That's all I'm asking. Then I go away and keep my mouth shut. You don't have to worry about offending your Uncle Tony . . .”

“I'm not that worried.”

“Then it'll save you the trouble of having me killed.”

My heart hammered and a little voice in the back of my head shouted that the only thing I was going to accomplish here was to get myself murdered, but I held my gaze as steady as I could. Then he caught me off-guard.

“Tony says you lost a child.”

Even though all that was over twenty years ago, I felt as if he'd sucker-punched me in the center of my chest. “A daughter. Stillborn,” I said. “It's not the same.”

He nodded more to himself than me. “You ride with us and I'll give you an hour.” Then he grabbed my wrist and leaned across the booth so that a passerby might have thought he was about to kiss me. “And if you ever try to use my son's memory to jerk me around again, I won't bother having someone kill you. I swear to God, I'll do it myself.”

 

It didn't take an hour. After twenty minutes on the pediatrics wing of the Regional Medical Center, he grabbed my arm and stared at me with the wild, trapped eyes of a rabbit caught in a snare.

“I got to get out of here,” he said. “I can't breathe. I just can't get any air.”

Frankie Gee and another, younger soldier who'd come up with us turned to me as Vinnie bolted past them, his head down, his hand clamped over his mouth. When I tried to follow him to the elevator, Frankie blocked my path.