Burn this City by Aleksandr Voinov
1
The newly minted husband and wife smiled at each other with a devoted warmth that could easily mellow and deepen over the next five or six decades. Only a jaded man would feel differently, and Jack Barsanti wasn’t nearly jaded enough to not suffer a little at how tenderly they held the knife together as they cut the huge white cake. It wasn’t every day that a beautiful heiress married a rich, good-looking man out of love.
It could have been easy to merely calculate how much the bride’s family was worth and whether the value of her family’s construction company exceeded the value of the real estate empire that he already controlled. In terms of synergies, this was Port Francis’ marriage of the year.
Jack reached for another glass of the very drinkable prosecco and watched the crowd mingle in the ballroom around the buffet and a generously staffed bar. Both families had flown in every single relative in good standing, and perhaps some in bad. There were even a few he thought had been coerced into coming through some more or less gentle arm-twisting.
More interesting were those guests who were not related by blood to the bride and groom. First and foremost, the Lo Cascio, the bridal family’s long-time business partners. Jack knew very well just how deep those arrangements went, considering he’d sealed a lot of them with a handshake in the name of the Lo Cascio, as had his predecessor before him. Some might argue whether the family would have been financially better off without that partnership and the fees that came with it. What could not be argued was that this was how things got done here, and the Lo Cascio had always upheld their end of the deal. Jack moved through the crowd, catching fragments of conversation or individual words, but lingering nowhere.
While the bride’s family was tied to the Lo Cascio, the Dommarco had lent their weight to that of the groom. Jack didn’t know the particulars of the relationship, but assumed it looked very similar on paper and in practice. He spotted Guy Dommarco and his wife Sarah chatting with the groom’s parents—four prominent, upstanding members of the community not out of place in the local Rotary Club.
Of course, the happy couple had been forced to invite everyone who mattered in Port Francis—this was a Sleeping Beauty kind of situation: even their wealthy and powerful families didn’t want to piss off one of the fairy godfathers.
Just six years ago, if both crime families had attended the same event, it would have played out very differently; people would have been checking the magazines in their submachine guns instead of texts on their phones. Jack smiled wryly into his drink and checked his own phone, balancing it somewhat awkwardly in one hand. He missed the days when those damn things hadn’t been the size of paperbacks.
“Jack! So good to see you!”
Hearing the familiar voice, Jack smiled and slipped his phone into his pocket. Don Cassaro shook his hand and patted his shoulder with affection, and Jack made sure his nod was almost a little bow, because Cassaro was easily the most well-connected man in the room. After the “War”, he’d kept promising he’d “retire” to the golf course, but maybe Cassaro found it hard to give up his role as the Dommarco consigliere in favor of a younger man. Cassaro knew everybody who was anybody in the city, in the state, and further afield. That well-filled Rolodex made him a force to be reckoned with on his own without having to draw on the authority of his boss.
“Mr. Cassaro.” Jack reached out and plucked a glass of prosecco from a passing silver tray to offer it. “I saw you in the winter garden earlier but didn’t want to disturb you.”
“You can disturb an old man anytime.” Cassaro accepted the glass as the humble offering it was meant to be. “How have you been doing?”
Jack laughed softly, if only for the benefit of anybody watching him talk to Cassaro. He took a few steps to the side, away from the buffet. “I’ve been good. Keeping busy. You know how it is.”
Cassaro smiled, but whether the man genuinely liked him or merely indulged him was up for debate. His gut told him it was the former, but his mind always second-guessed that gut instinct. He had to—it was his job to anticipate the tantrums and violent impulses of other men, and move the china out of the way before they could smash it.
“I do. I’m not hearing much in the way of bad news,” Cassaro said.
“Business is on track. Things are just as calm and peaceful, just the way I like them.”
“There’s that thing about swans,” the old man mused. “They glide along serenely, while paddling their feathery asses off under the water.”
Jack let out a full-throated laugh. “That’s me. Paddling my feathery ass off.” He took a mouthful of the prosecco, noting again that the stuff went down so easily he could get completed wasted from it without feeling it creep up on him. A few people had glanced over when he’d laughed, but this was a wedding reception, and he wasn’t the only guest who was being a little more demonstrative, a little louder, a little brighter. “But it’s all working out, toccando ferro.”
“Walk with me.” Cassaro made a show of taking him by the elbow, serving up a large helping of “kindly uncle”, despite the fact that everybody in the room knew what the old guy was capable of and could even now arrange with a phone call or a nod. Those who didn’t know didn’t count. Jack had found that over the lifetime of a made man, power waxed and waned, but more importantly, it evolved and shifted. Cassaro had been in the life for going on five decades and had likely killed more men than Jack knew.
He walked by Cassaro’s side like a favored nephew, away from the crowd attending to the happy couple, through another huge room where people danced, past buff, hard-eyed waiters, some of them with facial scarring you didn’t acquire during a normal career in hospitality, and out into the carefully landscaped garden and bright early afternoon. Jack found himself drawing a deep breath of the cooler air that no longer carried that cloying mix of perfumes and food odors.
Cassaro led him toward the pond near the eastern wing of the manor. Light filtered golden and reddish through the tall trees, while flawless white and pink lilies sat stark and inviolate between the rich dark greens of their leaves.
“I keep hearing that Andrea is still a loose gun.” Cassaro could have let Jack’s elbow go, but he didn’t, and Jack realized it was meant to fool any onlooker that this was still a chat of no consequence. Yet, with those words, Cassaro had set Jack on edge as if he’d suddenly reached for a gun. He must have jerked, because the old man’s grip tightened. “Can’t be easy. The boy’s got a temper.”
So that was the reason for the friendly chat. Somebody on the Dommarco side was worrying that Andrea might cause trouble. The longer the peace lasted, the more nervous those who remembered the War became.
“I’m not going to dispute it, Mr. Cassaro,” Jack said so low his voice didn’t carry. “But what’s said in private doesn’t have to make it out the door. We’re different people in private, all of us.”
A rumble in the man’s chest could have been a chuckle. Very hard to read his face as they stood side by side, looking at the lilies which, in their purity, seemed incongruous rising from a muddy miniature lake. “I’m also hearing that you are doing a good job keeping your young, impetuous boss on the right track.”
“Oh, I can’t take credit for that.”
“You could, but you don’t, which makes you a good consigliere. Certainly with a boss like that.”
Jack pressed his lips together, thinking for a few moments, trying to pinpoint what exactly had triggered these concerns. They had to be small enough. A friendly chat between consiglieri was a far cry from a formal sit-down. “To my mind, keeping the peace is simply best for business. There’s no reason why the good times shouldn’t last, and if business is good, everybody’s happy.”
A simplification that was nearly criminal in itself, considering how many factors went into maintaining the equilibrium in Port Francis, as well as the constant careful management of those same factors. Andrea Lo Cascio often didn’t take the time to understand such details. He was too preoccupied with his family and his toys—his customized cars, his mistresses, his yachts—and impressing anybody around him who might be useful.
“An old friend of mine used to say ‘peace is a damned sight harder than war’. War is easy. You stick a gun in a guy’s face and—boom. Do that a few dozen times and you got war. Peace now, that’s a game you play in a hundred different ways.” Cassaro tapped his lips with the first and index fingers of his free hand. “You’ve always struck me as a man of peace, but how equipped are you to face another war?”
Maybe those concerns were not so small after all. But such information had to be inveigled from the consigliere. If not timed correctly, outright questions made people uneasy.
“Arguably, you know more about it than I do. Mind you, I’ll do what it takes. I’ve paid my dues; I’ll do it again.”
Above the pond, dragonflies flitted back and forth, here one second, gone the next, no more than sparks of metallic green and blue.
“Jack.” Cassaro changed his grip on Jack’s arm and now took both of his hands in his, which reminded Jack of the way his local priest had often spoken to his parishioners. “Of course. I didn’t say I doubted that.”
“So what’s the problem?” He searched Cassaro’s dark brown eyes for any hint of suspicion and found himself similarly weighed.
“One of our associates has been gone a while. He was mixed up in all kinds of things, and some of those might have involved Lo Cascio interests. We’re still piecing the situation together. Mind you, he might just have grabbed the money and run without telling anybody where he’s headed.”
An associate, so at least not a made man, but in Port Francis, people “vanishing” left a particular taste.
“I’ll take that to Andrea, but I can already tell you that no hit has been sanctioned. I’d know about this.” And if a hit had gotten past him unnoticed, he had much more urgent problems than dealing with a Dommarco-associated lowlife going on the run or dying. “Thanks for bringing this to my attention. And thanks for the caution.”
Cassaro let Jack’s hands go and clicked his tongue in vague acknowledgement, but he didn’t pursue the topic further. Every time they met, Jack was tempted to ask him what exactly had happened during the War from his point of view. Jack had only witnessed the very beginning of it as a freshly made capo. His had been a battlefield promotion because the sheer scale and viciousness of the War between the Rausa, Lo Cascio and Dommarco crime families had taken bigger players than him off the board permanently, and they’d needed to replenish the ranks fast. But how the three-way war had started, or exactly why it had carried on as long as it had was still a mystery to Jack. Everybody’s recollections differed so wildly that he’d never managed to piece it all together.
Navigating the shifting quicksands had been both scary and exhilarating, and still, Jack much preferred the peacetime. When, after six years of bitter war, Andrea’s father had ordered him to broker peace between the families, Jack had at first felt he’d been promoted way beyond his competence. But there had been nobody else left. Jack’s predecessor’s health had already been failing, and there was so much bad blood that the Dommarco refused to even listen to the original Lo Cascio consigliere.
Jack still remembered the day when he, as acting consigliere, had finally managed to get Guy Dommarco to sit down with Andrea’s father, terrified the meeting would just lead to a final flare-up. To his surprise, Guy Dommarco had been reasonable enough, and Andrea’s father had made generous concessions in return for peace. And in that way, Jack’s reputation had been made and his position became permanent. With every year that the peace held, people seemed to respect him more.
“Let’s go back this way.” Cassaro turned, this time without taking Jack’s arm. The slow walk through the extensive park around the manor was enjoyable—the September afternoon was still warm, though not so warm that Jack felt uncomfortable in his formal suit. Across the lawn he noticed a large white tent that would serve as a much more relaxed barbecue area and bar for later in the evening, with staff already setting up.
When the path curved back toward the house, Jack spotted a man he hadn’t seen in years—even rumors of him had been difficult to come by.
Salvatore Rausa sat on a white marble bench. He leaned against the backrest as if he’d been poured there, his only company four crystal tumblers, two of them empty, and two of them filled with an amber liquid. He held one against his flat stomach and stared sullenly into the distance.
Jack cast a quick glance at Cassaro, but if the old fox had led him here on purpose, he didn’t show it.
Salvatore Rausa was the boss of the third crime family involved in the War. Unlike Guy Dommarco, he’d refused to come to the negotiation table, regardless of how many threats were issued, and, in the end, promised generosity. He was still a presence—his family had painted its name in red across the city and the state—but he kept such a low profile he was damn near invisible. As a rule, Jack didn’t like invisible players.
Jack took a step toward the man, and another. “Mr. Rausa?”
Rausa looked up at him with a kind of piercing glower that indicated he still wasn’t interested in talking. Now in his late thirties, Rausa looked confident, healthy, well-groomed, his wavy hair was tousled, and his light hazel eyes were bright and clear. If he’d retired—if he’d stopped being a player—he might not even know who Jack was. Though the fact that the Dommarco consigliere had all but walked Jack directly to him should at least signal that he wasn’t a hapless wedding guest. Rausa studied Jack for a few intense moments, raked him head to toe, then emptied his whiskey glass, leaving the ice cubes to clink together. “Andrea want anything?”
“No, Mr. Rausa. I just wanted to say hello.”
Rausa seemed on the verge of sneering, but didn’t. “Yeah. And hello to you too, I guess. And you, Don. Now kindly fuck off, this is a wedding.”
Jack lifted an eyebrow, but forced himself to smile. “Of course.” He withdrew, deciding Rausa was planning to get drunk, and that was his privilege. Still strange that he didn’t have anybody with him—no capo, soldier, or his own consigliere.
The Rausa had seemingly collapsed at about the same time as the War had ended. People had died and vanished, and Salvatore Rausa, up until then underboss, had become boss without any contest or opposition. Maybe he’d spent the time since on whipping his outfit back into shape or focused on repairing the tremendous damage, but, whatever the case, Jack was pretty sure Salvatore Rausa was the reason the Rausa clan had faded from view.
Jack had already turned back toward Cassaro when he heard Rausa’s voice: “Jack Barsanti, isn’t it?”
Jack hesitated, but turned around again for politeness’ sake. “That’s correct.” And now he felt the full weight of that moody stare. Something was off about Rausa, something beyond lining up whiskey tumblers like shot glasses, and sitting out here while the actual party was still mostly indoors. Fact was, Jack didn’t know enough about Rausa to even guess what the problem was. Though, if he could establish a connection, he might be able to finally get Rausa to the table, and remove one unknown that had, in a faraway corner of his mind, been nagging him for years.
He lowered his hands and angled his body toward the man in a show of openness. “If you want me to arrange a meeting with Andrea …”
“Lo Cascio can get fucked,” muttered Rausa.
Jack turned away with a shake of his head and caught a miniscule twitch of Cassaro’s lips. As casual as this chance meeting had been, it seemed no progress could be made today.
They’d nearly circled the manor when Jack excused himself to check on Andrea. In no particular hurry, he returned to the ballroom, idly scanning the crowd for the face of his boss—or that of his boss’s wife, because she’d know where her husband was.
Petra Lo Cascio stood in a small group of other wedding guests, but seemed to have caught the general gist of his questioning eyebrow raise. She nodded toward the large central staircase, so Jack climbed the stairs with another glass of prosecco he’d picked up on the way.
He found Andrea sitting in one of the rooms open for guests to regroup or make phone calls, which Andrea was ostensibly doing. He was smiling for the camera of his phone and said, “Daddy loves you too,” so Jack stood back and blended into the background.
Of course, the event would go on into the night, so the nanny was looking after the kids. Andrea had his faults, but the birth of his children had turned him into a fiercely proud father—and both his son and daughter were cute kids, as far as Jack was concerned. He himself played a distant role as uncle, and was happy to agree with Andrea’s strong opinion that his children were beautiful and talented. Every father thought so during those years before his children turned rebellious or contemptuous.
“Jack.” Still that paternal glow on his face, Andrea waved him closer. “Had to check in on the kids. Hard not to get fond of the little fuckers,” he said, as if grasping for that much more hardened part of himself. “You should get a couple. Would do you a world of good.”
Jack nodded noncommittally. “I’ll be sure to pick up one or two with a sixpack and a loaf of bread.”
Normally, that would put an end to that particular suggestion. The birth of his son had kicked off an occasional prodding from Andrea, such as telling him that, one day, Andrea’s son would play with Jack’s son, and that they’d be like brothers. When Andrea had achieved the provision of a sibling a year later, he’d teased Jack that he was now “two ahead”. Considering how competitive the man was, Jack had been happy to let him revel in his superior masculine fertility.
This time, though, Andrea’s jaw set in that stubborn way that told Jack he was being serious. “As I said,” his boss said slowly, firmly, as if he were talking to a dumb soldier. “It would do you good.”
Keeping his face blank, Jack nodded, as he usually did when Andrea had a truly awful idea.
“Because, see, you’re family, Jack. You’re the guy I have to trust one hundred thousand percent with my life. With Petra. With my kids.” A noticeable vibrato in his voice on the last word betrayed how much of a gap in Andrea’s emotional armor his kids were—he loved his wife, but he adored and worshipped his children. That slight tremble in Andrea’s voice made Jack’s hair stand up on his arms and on his neck. There was less emotion in a kill order, a lot less emotion whenever he talked about business or vast amounts of money.
“I know you do. And you know I’m loyal.”
“Yeah, listen. I want to think you are. You have a good head, and I need that.” Andrea pushed out a breath that was almost more a hiss. “I have to be able to trust you with my children. You’re their uncle. So …” He grimaced. “I don’t want to think you’re somehow not right when it comes to them, understand.”
Holy. Mother. Of. God.
Jack’s blood ran so cold he half turned away in case Andrea could read the shock on his features. The first thought he could string together was to wonder how long Andrea had harbored that suspicion, and how much damage it had already done. His second thought drew him right back to the darkest hours of his life. The night spent staring into an icy spring-swollen river which had been more inviting than waking up the next morning. He’d battled that black abyss, barely escaping with his life. But it had cost him. He tried to shake off the full-body memory. The thing was, he couldn’t back out of this: unwittingly or not, Andrea had cut off all his escape routes.
“I know you don’t have much of a private life. Petra says the same. You’ve been married to your job, and it’s appreciated. We’re lucky to have you, you hear?”
“I do.” Jack drew a deep breath and faced Andrea again. “Sorry, I’m just surprised. I never wanted to … never wanted you to think less of me.”
“I don’t.” Andrea walked up to him and drew him into one of his fraternal hugs, but Jack’s skin crawled when he felt Andrea’s body heat. Hard slaps between the shoulder blades followed. “Get some of those apps. People meet each other on those dating apps all the time. Worst case, I’ll ask my aunt and she can point you at any number of girls with the right kind of pedigree.” Girls from the right families, those who already knew what was going on and who didn’t have to be brought in or taught not to put their pretty noses in their husband’s business.
“Yeah, you’re right.”
“Of course I am.” Andrea held him firmly by the arms and pushed back to look Jack in the eye. “We all want you happy, okay?”
Jack forced a smile. “Thanks, Andrea.”
Andrea slapped him on the shoulder a couple of times. “Good man. Have you seen my wife?”
Jack forced his mind to work, tried to recover his internal composure, tried to not show how much this short exchange had unnerved him. “Downstairs.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll find her.” Andrea rushed off, giving Jack time to put his game face back on. But it took a while.