The Frenchman's Revenge (61 page)

The men were
tall, well muscled
,
and all were carrying guns. They had hoods over their heads and all you could see were their eyes and mouths.

The
biggest one stepped toward Baggo and Angelo and
,
while they couldn’t see his grin, you could sure as hell hear it in his satisfied voice.

“Well, well, lads, don’t tell me that fuckin
’
A
ldo is so confident
that
he’s only got you
four shites handling all this swag?
“

The man next to him
guffawed
.

“Don’t forget them bleedin’ arseholes we took down at the road.
Sure ‘en I ain
’
t seen so many crooked coppers since we shagged that Wop wedding party.”

“Well, now that they’re all knockin
’
on St. Peter’s door askin for directions to hell, can’t assume they’re crooked no more. Along with those
fuckin’ little clackers Aldo calls guards.”

Two more gunshots brought Baggo and Angelo to the groun
d. M
inutes later
,
stacks of dead men lined the warehouse walls,
eighteen in total
,
counting the cops on Aldo’s payroll.

Pawing through
the crate
, t
he tall masked man said with a grin, “Looks like
Sal’s
estimate was
off.
Even without the stolen museum necklace, th
is
crate
’s got over a
million dollars of
loot
,”

His cohort chortled, “This has gotta be the
largest take by far in Aldo’s
operation.

Jesus, just think. F
ifty one gangs contributed
their hard earned cash
to make that asshole rich.”

“Yeah, but I can promise you one thing,” his tall friend guffawed
,
“
tomorrow at
the very least
Aldo
Marcello
’s gonna
have fifty
-
one
very pissed off
colleagues.

Several hours later,
as dawn was breaking,
Tom Caldwell answered the door to his high rent apartment in the heart of New
York
’s
financial
district. He opened the door and nodded to the five masked men on the porch.

“Good
evening,
or perhaps good morning is more accurate
. How did it go, Quitin?”

“The way everything
does
when Bai and Wyatt plan it.
Flawlessly.”

Tom smiled and nodded to the five Chinese men as they removed their hoods.

“Please come in.
The safe is in my office.
My cook prepared a light
meal
for you and I have some of the finest brandy you are likely to drink
i
n this lifetime waiting for you. Congratulations. Job well done, men.

“
O
ne more question.
How many d
ead
”

Manchu smiled
,
knowing what Tom was asking.

“Sixteen all together.
We only wounded the other two.
”

Liang
’s face split in a wide grin.
Assuming his best Irish brogue, he added, “Sure’en we needed to l
eave a couple lads to give witness to the nature of the
bleedin’
perpetrator
s
.
Be Jaysus, s
ure
‘
en
y
e wanna give
proper
credit
where credit is due
.
”

Tom shook his head and grinned
at the incongruity of the Irish nonsense coming out of the mouth of the young Chinese man
.

“Goddamn, I
’m
glad I
’m on his team.
Bai knows how to twist a knife from t
hree
thousand miles away
. F
riend or foe needs to be wary.”

Chapter 28

Aldo Marcello
swore
that
if it was the
last
goddamn fuckin
’
thing he did, he was going to kill
t
he Frenchman. He sat
at his desk, his eyes blazing with anger
,
staring at the note from Rory Calhoun
.

You’ve been had asshole.
You should
of
know
n
better than

to
take
on
t
he
Frenchman.

Aldo
lost three days
chasing
after the fucking
Irish
,
three days that allowed every goddamn gang leader in the
syndicate
to
discover
their money was gone.
But that
son of a bitch
Calhoun convinced the other gangs
he
w
as in
nocent and that Aldo had stolen their money.

Somehow the
fuckin
’
Mick
got hold of
Sal’s manifest logging
in Friday nights
’
payments from each of the gangs.
That fuckin’
Calhoun was waving it around
,
crowing that
as
sure
the hole in your arse, that gobshite Marcello
had stolen their money. And goddamn if th
ose cocksucking
gang leaders didn’t believe
the Irish prick
and were out to get
Aldo.

The threats had gotten personal, graphic
.
Aldo considered making good on the money the
gangs lost
,
but to his horror
discovered
he couldn’t repay them if he
w
anted to. Every one of
his
crooked bankers had closed their doors to him
,
as though
he was
the
Grim Reaper
rather than
the
man who made them rich.
N
o
amount
of
screaming
fits or threats crashed
though
their wall of silence.
It was as though a fucking powerful someone put up a
wall
that
Aldo couldn’t
scale
.

L
ater that day
Marcello learned
that his erstwhile banking buddies were cowering behind
their
closed doors
afraid of more than
him
.
Each of them received a
letter
detailing their transactions with Aldo
.

An accompanying invoice gave
them five days to pay the amount
they had
received from their illegal
dealings with Marcello
to
a bank in Switzerland
:

Capital
F
inancier
I
ntégré

D'attention: Le
Français et a
l

The coppers he
owned
were as bad as the bankers. No one w
ould return
his calls and the men he
sent to
round them up
came back empty handed. One of his men told him there was
a
rumor going around City Hall that the
p
olice
c
ommissioner received an anonymous note with a list of cops who were on
Marcello’s payroll.
The investigation turned the
normal
corrupt workings of the police force ass over elbows
and everyone was running for cover
.
There wasn’t a
soul left who would acknowledge
his
own mother
,
much less
his
relationship with Aldo.

It was a
s
though someone had
yanked
out
the
keystone of his organization and the whole
god
damn thing was crumbling
,
brick by brick.
Worst of all
,
and
what
had Aldo sitting at his desk drinking alone
,
was the reaction of his men
,
fucking
ungrateful bastards that they were.
Half his gang hadn’t shown up in the last three days and those who did had a funny look in their eyes
.
S
omething was missing
and n
o amount of whiskey could
keep
Aldo
from seeing
what it was
. His men were no longer afraid of him.

There was a knock on the door and Aldo looked up
,
assuming it was Carlos
,
surprised he’d knocked
.
Aldo had
started locking the door
and given Carlos the only other key.
He shouted out for him to come in and heard him say something about misplacing the key. Jesus
f
ucking Christ, Aldo thought as he padded to the door, was everyone around him as stupid as shit? With an annoyed growl, he
reached the
door and unlocked it.
Before he could turn the knob
,
the door slammed open and two masked men burst
in
,
knocking
him to the ground.

Aldo crawled back and screamed, yelling for Carlos.
One of the men grabbed him by
the
neck and
smashed
him against the wall.
The other
man
ca
sually locked the door
and turned
back to face Aldo
. He
took off his mask
and
,
to
his
shock
,
Aldo
saw that he was Chinese.
The
man holding him
dropped him
and
took off his mask
, another goddamn Chink!

“Good evening, Aldo
.
My name is
Liang
and the man holding his gun on you is
Manchu
.
We are here to bring you a message and to help you prepare for this evening.”

Aldo hovered on the floor
,
terrified
,
struggling
to get control of himself. He
had to get to his gun in the desk drawer and
somehow hold them off until Carlos and his men could help him. He forced himself to
get to his feet
and glared at them as fiercely as he could.

“You…you don’t know what you are doing, you fucking assholes.
You g
oddamn Chink
bastards
!
There are twenty armed men in this building and as soon they realize
I haven’t called for
my
dinner, they’ll be here and your goddamn yellow blood will be flowing like piss across …”

The
rest of the
words stuck in his throat when the man called
Manchu
backhanded him across the face with the butt of his gun and knocked him to the ground.

Liang
shook his head and grinned at his colleague.

“Feisty little prick
,
isn’t he? You
think he actually believes that he has twenty men left in this world loyal to him instead of being the last man standing?
”