Burn this City by Aleksandr Voinov
32
Sal managed to catch a few winks on the way to the airport. Though the moment his mind relaxed somewhat, memories flashed by. As they so often did, many of them featured Catia. Not just the awful memories either, the funeral or seeing her pale and dead, almost blue in that tiled room and feeling his sanity slither away at the sight of the head wound. Innocent memories of her grimacing when she untangled her hair, or staring intently at her laptop reading the news. Sometimes, she’d ask his opinion about a nude photo or a film star’s physical attributes, watching him with her wide-set eyes. Those latter memories were well-worn favorites, soft with use and nostalgia.
But there were also very new memories playing in his mind, memories that felt a whole lot more novel and fresh. Jack tied to the chair, tense and defiant. Jack asleep, hands tied. Jack running hard on the treadmill. Jack pushing his head back against the wall, eyes closed just before he finished himself off.
Sal still managed to fall asleep, arms crossed, legs crossed, while Enzo next to him drove the truck. It was several hours before what counted as “morning rush hour” in Port Francis, but that hour-long trip helped to catch up his sleep after a restless night. He felt sharper and more awake as Enzo pulled into the parking space.
The local airport’s domestic connections to all the major hubs were good, which made Port Francis quite attractive for some IT and consultancy companies whose staff had to travel a lot. Consequently, most of the travelers Sal noticed seemed to be young and middle-aged professionals, with only a few families coming back from visits or vacations. He checked the text he’d received against the Arrivals board and motioned for Enzo to follow him to the gate.
With no more baggage than a backpack, their man was one of the first out of the gates. Sal remembered Silvio Spadaro from a short event years back when one of the other East Coast bosses had croaked his last, and Spadaro had been sent to transmit Gianbattista Falchi’s regards. Sal had just moved from capo to underboss, and on that night he’d been otherwise distracted, but he’d still noticed the ripple that went through the assembled old boys when Spadaro made his entrance.
Spadaro was just as eye-catching now in the slim-fitting black suit which he wore more like a model and less like an enforcer. In fact, Spadaro was smaller and slenderer than Sal remembered him—more the frame of a teenager than a man, and he played that up to full effect. That was what disconcerted many; Spadaro didn’t look like a leg-breaker, didn’t even look like he could fight and kill, and yet those who recognized him knew he did both well.
He pulled off sunglasses and there it was, that black stare that Sal remembered. Along with those strangely sexless features and slender build, the unblinking black eyes made him seem a creature all his own. And that was probably how he liked it. Sal nodded toward him and saw Spadaro change direction to walk to him. “Mr. Rausa.” No smile, not much in terms of movement in his face.
“Welcome to Port Francis, and thanks for coming. This is Enzo, my right-hand man. He’ll get you set up.”
“Battista sends his regards.” He reached inside his jacket and took a second to switch on his mobile phone. “Shall we?”
“The car is this way.” Sal turned and led the way, noticing Spadaro like a black shadow walking barely inside his peripheral vision. With that suit, and Sal’s and Enzo’s much more practical clothing, they looked like a couple of mercs or security guards picking up a young investor or internet millionaire. If Spadaro learned to smile, he could make a killing on Instagram as an influencer.
Back at the car, Sal took the wheel, Spadaro settled in on the passenger side, and Enzo went in the back. “Figured we’ll hit my place and order food in. We have a lot of intel.”
“Guns first.” Spadaro half-turned to look at him. “I’ll need a bike too, if we’re hitting that many targets so quickly. I’ve been looking at a map of the city. I’ll have to scout, get my bearings.”
“What are you using?”
“Beretta.”
“Great, we’ll stop at our main supplier. What’s your type of bike?”
“Fast.” Now Spadaro grinned.
“No problem. There’s a dealership in town, we’ll get a bike today. Enzo here will look after you and make sure you’re set. We’ll have to act quickly because I don’t know how long the intel will be good.” Enzo’s silence was very pointed, but Sal was glad his capo didn’t comment otherwise on why the half-life of the information was a lot shorter than ideal. Still, Sal doubted that Jack would be rallying the troops.
It was interesting to see Spadaro pick out his weapons—he didn’t have any exotic requirements, just grabbed two Berettas and a hunting rifle of the same brand, and a couple cases of bullets. Sal noticed that he wasn’t a man for small talk. If anything, he was slightly awkward dealing with the supplier, seemingly frustrated that the man asked any questions at all, as if he’d wanted to just walk in and the supplier should have been able to read his mind. Maybe it was because he was already so focused on the work he was here to do, but there was a lack of visible affect on his features. The black stare never lessened, hadn’t even softened when he’d grinned that once.
After Spadaro had picked up his motorbike, he joined them at Sal’s place. Sal had bought a generous condo in one of the luxury complexes after he’d sold the grander house on the outskirts because everything there had reminded him of Catia. Without her, the place was too large and too quiet, and sometimes he’d woken in their bed, heart thundering in his chest, believing for a hot-cold minute that she’d slipped out to go to the bathroom or grab a glass of water, and he’d hear the whisper of her bare feet on the carpet when she returned to bed, warm and alive. He’d simply been too fragile to live married to a ghost for long without losing the rest of his mind.
The complex had decent security, and neighbors included future tech tycoons, affluent couples, and scions of wealthy families who went to college or university in style here. Above all, though, there wasn’t any Lo Cascio or Dommarco money tied into the development—his uncle had carved this piece of the city out for himself and reserved a few floors for his use and that of his family. All Sal had to do was pay for the interior design and the configuration he wanted. He’d installed some very secure doors whose specs vastly exceeded the kind of thing that was normal for these places.
The security guy didn’t even blink when Sal, Enzo and Spadaro stepped into the elevator—Enzo was a frequent visitor, and Spadaro moved with a confidence that said he had every right to be here too.
Upstairs, Sal showed Spadaro the guest room, and the hitman dropped his backpack at the foot of the bed.
“Come out when you’re ready.” Sal gestured around. “There are a few locked doors. Those rooms are not in use.”
“Keep your dungeon in there?” Spadaro asked without even looking at him.
Sal laughed, surprised. “You think I have a dungeon?”
“Just a vibe.” Spadaro shed his jacket and hung it up in the empty wardrobe. He quickly slipped into the shoulder holster and pushed one of the Berettas inside.
“Takes one to know one, in my experience.” Sal leaned in the door frame, watching Spadaro stash away his purchases.
Spadaro gave him another one of those uncanny stares. “Battista said your wife was a ‘liberated human being’ and considering I’m here to help you place the heads of the whole Lo Cascio clan on her grave, you are too. Liberated. Means kinky.”
“I gathered that.” So Gianbattista Falchi knew a hell of a lot more about Catia than expected. And that, too, placed Falchi into a different light. To his credit, he hadn’t even hinted at it, but it seemed his right-hand man and executioner had less delicate sensibilities. “What about you?”
Spadaro bared his teeth. “Plenty liberated myself.”
Oh. Sal couldn’t sort Spadaro into any preference. Considering how little he gave away, a session with him would be unnerving as fuck. It didn’t make him want to compare notes with Spadaro, that was certain. Not that anything was wrong with him—he was more striking than attractive, but Sal liked to have more of a working idea how to approach the other person and decide together what they liked. Spadaro’s only preference, as far as he could tell, were Beretta weapons.
“While we’re at it, we’re going to kill all members of the Lo Cascio except for one. Jack Barsanti, the consigliere.”
“Any reason why?”
“He’s my guy on the inside.”
“You turned Andrea Lo Cascio’s consigliere?”
“Took some effort, but yeah. I’ll need him alive to complete the takeover.” Wishful thinking, maybe, but if Jack had recovered and was now debriefing Andrea, he’d still want to deal with him in person; he wasn’t going to outsource that part. “Turns out, he wanted to live.”
Spadaro nodded. “I’m ready. Let’s see what you have.”