Burn this City by Aleksandr Voinov
8
Sal caught himself grinning. He could almost see Barsanti’s gears grinding behind the black hood.
“I can’t work with nothing.”
I don’t want you to “work with” anything. But he didn’t say it out loud. Sitting on the on the armrest of one of the couches, Enzo watched the scene unfold, but he seemed a little confused. Sal found himself enjoying it all more than he’d thought he would. The evening had started strong and was only getting better. Not only had he gained control of his enemy’s queen, but if he played it right, he’d follow up his revenge with a resounding victory.
He’d lived for this for years. Which made him the damn king of delayed gratification.
Sal stepped closer to Barsanti, and punched him in the stomach, hard. The attack had the full benefit of surprise—no tension of muscles that cushioned or deflected any of the force. Barsanti doubled over, spluttering and gasping breathlessly. Enzo was off his perch like a shot, but Sal raised a hand to stay him.
“Does that answer your question, Barsanti? Whether I know who you are and how much I care who the fuck you are?”
Shit, the rage rose like a red wave now that he’d made his move, and the force of it committed him much more than he’d expected. Partly because Barsanti had lived the past few years without even a hint of the pain that had torn up Sal’s life, partly because Barsanti clearly believed he was untouchable, that nobody would ever make him and the others pay for what had happened, and that he’d dare to challenge him while tied to his own fucking chair. If anything, the fact that Barsanti was tied and blinded somehow stoked Sal’s rage even more.
He might have pulled back and regained control of himself if Barsanti had been in a position to fight back, if he’d posed even the slightest—actual, physical—threat. Barsanti tucked in his chin like a boxer to protect his throat, tensed instinctively, pulled his shoulders up, and pushed his knees together, but those defenses were pitiful against the hail of punches.
When Enzo placed a hand on Sal’s arm, Barsanti’s chair had toppled and the man lay on his side, gasping hard and clearly suppressing sounds of distress. Coldly, distantly, Sal remembered that people didn’t cry out when they didn’t expect to attract help or mercy. Men without hope suffered in silence. He hissed out the breath that had got stuck somewhere between his ribs, and stepped back, then looked at Enzo.
“What?”
“Nothing.” Enzo’s eyes lacked all sentimentality. “Figured you still had questions for him.”
Sal gritted his teeth, but Enzo was right. Wouldn’t do to beat the man to shit and inflict wounds that made him useless. He flexed his hands and rolled his shoulders and straightened. “Get him up.”
Enzo duly bent down and tried to right the chair with Barsanti tied to it—a hell of a lot of dead weight, and he might have eventually managed, but Sal lent him a hand. Between them, they got it done.
Barsanti didn’t move. He sat there slumped under the pain as if it were a weight. His panting breaths were the only indication he was still alive and hadn’t passed out either. Sal’s fingers itched to continue the beating, or he was just on edge as years of tension found an outlet. That said, a lot of men would have already broken—for all their hard-ass antics, quite a few members of their specific circles were cowards and perfectly happy to sell their grandmothers if it saved them a minor inconvenience. Barsanti hadn’t said a word after that first attempt to work out who had gotten the better of him.
“Do you know who I am? I can’t work with nothing.”
Well, now Barsanti knew this wasn’t a random attack. And if they were both men of honor, as the misnomer went, he’d also already know how this would end.
Which was the place to pick up their conversation. Sal stepped behind Barsanti and rested his hands on the man’s shoulders, felt their warmth and strength through the shirt. As he tightened his grip, he realized how stiff the muscles were—an attempt to muster whatever physical armor Barsanti had. Pointless. Steel and cordite put the lie to any man’s strength. Fuck, for many all it took was a pair of pliers.
“I can do this the hard way or the easy way,” Sal said. “Personally, I have no preference. Hard might be more fun, easy means I can go home sooner. You understand me, smart boy?” It tickled him to call Barsanti a boy, but he’d have to prod him a while to see how much fight was left in him. Besides, as Enzo had said, any psychological advantage would work in their favor. Hence the hood and ties. And doing this in the man’s own house.
“I understand.” The words were clipped, carefully controlled. Not a hint of begging. Yet. Sal felt the words in Barsanti’s shoulders, as well as the breath he took to say them.
“Good.” He let one hand crawl closer to the hood and cradled Barsanti’s jaw, drawing a full-bodied shudder of revulsion from him, but didn’t allow him to pull back or move his head away—more psychology. Training a man into helplessness was important. “Now that we’re here, having this nice time together, I’ll tell you what I want from you. I’m sure you’re dying to know.” Shifting his hands back, he dug them into the man’s shoulders and kneaded the muscle. Barsanti didn’t like that, and there was no give. “I’m going to take down Andrea Lo Cascio and his whole miserable outfit.”
“And that includes me.” Barsanti’s voice was neutral, a professor adding a footnote to a paper.
“Every one of his associates, soldiers, capos, trusted friends. Lo Cascio is going down.”
“You’re not a Fed.”
“No. Not a vigilante cop either. I’m an interested party.”
“Dommarco?”
Sal bared his teeth, and exchanged a glance with Enzo, who was back on his perch on the couch. “You’re going to help me. You know everything there is to know about his business. You’ll give me everything. Names, addresses, businesses, accounts.”
“Oh Christ.” Barsanti shook his head and that was the first genuinely emotional response Sal had gotten out of him—a kind of despair at the enormity of it. “You’re going to start a war.”
“Don’t worry about that part. You won’t be around to see it,” Sal snapped. “Your choice is—easy or hard?”
Judging from the state of the man’s shoulders, it would be hard. Everything about Barsanti signaled resistance.
“Is Guy Dommarco behind this?”
“I already ignored that,” Sal hissed. “You keep your mind on answering my questions.”
Several seconds passed, but Sal kept his hands on Barsanti’s shoulders, finding that the man’s body was better about communicating what was going on inside of him than his voice or his words. The tension under his fingers ramped up like ropes twisting tighter.
“So?”
“You know I can’t do that.” Barsanti sounded calm, but breathy. “Besides, this could be some twisted test.”
How old school. But then, Barsanti was part of a generation where business was done face to face, and unable to fit this whole event into his neat worldview, he questioned even the most basic choices put before him. Though what an interesting piece of intel. He truly seemed to think that either Dommarco or his own fucking boss might have him snatched and beaten to test whether he’d fold under pressure. Huh.
He had no argument against it. Dommarco might have decided it was time for another war, even though business had been good, and the Prizzi wedding had overall been a demonstration of harmony. And whether Lo Cascio was stupid enough to fuck with his own consigliere—well, Sal reserved judgment on that.
He took his hands off Barsanti and stepped around the chair. If this got him to his goal faster, making the small concession might be worth it. After all, he was playing this little game to save blood and time. He reached for the black hood.
“You sure?” Enzo asked.
“Yeah.” He pulled it off.
Barsanti blinked in the comparatively bright light—that hood was a real bastard, Sal had tested it himself, and after a little while the total darkness inside got disorientating. Barsanti’s hair was a little disheveled, his skin flushed, his lip split. Barsanti must have quietly sucked in the blood and swallowed it, though there was a smear on his chin. His light blue eyes blinked again, and Sal caught all the little, fleeting expressions on his face. Relief. Recognition. Fear. Surprise. Realization.
Now, though, Barsanti gathered himself and regarded him evenly. The skin on his left cheekbone was red and swollen—that looked like it would become a hell of a shiner. The hood had also allowed Sal to forget how attractive Barsanti was—especially without his smarmy salesman grin. His stomach tightened with appreciation.
“No, I didn’t get this sanctioned by either Dommarco or Lo Cascio,” Sal said.
Barsanti looked up to him, nothing but honesty in his eyes. “I believe you.”
Hot fucking damn.
Strip the bullshit from the man, make him hurt and shake that confidence, and there was something underneath that almost shocked Sal. He’d seen that expression on Enzo’s face years ago, when Enzo had dropped his defenses and completely surrendered. Up until then, Enzo had been attractive in an abstract way, but never compelling. It took a masterful hand to reduce Enzo to that point where nothing but honesty remained.
Barsanti closed his eyes briefly. “Shit.” Though Sal felt there was an odd measure of relief in it. “I’m …” He cleared his throat and then looked at Sal, making a show of honesty. “Thanks for … taking the hood off.”
Sal laughed in his face. “Fuck you. You don’t get to thank me, you bastard.” He grabbed Barsanti around the throat. “I’m going to fuck you up and fuck up your whole family and absolutely slaughter your boss—you don’t get to say thank you, Mr. Rausa. You’re dead. Your whole fucking family is dead already.”
Barsanti recoiled and Sal let him go, pointedly. He was of a mind to punch him again, but Enzo was right. He did have questions and just draining some of the rage boiling inside him wouldn’t get them even one step closer to the goal. Which was still to make Barsanti spill everything he knew so they could finalize their plans to wipe the Lo Cascio off the map forever for what they’d done to Catia.
“You didn’t have to take it off, though,” Barsanti said in a low murmur.
“You …!” Sal got right back in Barsanti’s face. The man regarded him unblinkingly. “Fuck you.” But those two words came out without any of the venom from seconds ago. “Fascinating though that you’d think Lo Cascio would do this to you. Why’s that?”
“Maybe he wants to switch me out for a younger model,” Barsanti said with half a smile. “Somebody more in line with his thinking on some things.”
“Such as?”
Barsanti hesitated. “Violence is a young man’s game.”
“Is it?” Sal pulled back. Barsanti might be hiding behind Internet meme quips, but he hadn’t even attempted to paper over the fact that he and his boss didn’t always see eye to eye. Enough that maybe his biggest horror was that his boss had turned against him. Sure, a worrisome development for anybody in their circles, but the extent of that fear intrigued Sal. He himself hadn’t interacted much with Andrea Lo Cascio, but the received wisdom was that Andrea wasn’t boss so much for his talents as for whose son he’d been until his father had died of a stroke in his office. The Lo Cascio might have supported Andrea’s claim in part out of respect for his old man. There must have been more experienced men available, but none of those seemed to have stepped up. Barsanti could have done it—he’d just been made consigliere when it happened, if his memory served.
“Back to the topic,” Sal said. “Hard or easy?”
Barsanti lowered his gaze, and Sal caught himself staring. Fuck, the whole situation, from Barsanti’s clean-cut attractiveness to his strong shoulders to how he sat there, tied up on the chair and considering his options, plucked at strings he’d thought he’d muted. Several of them had been cut, because he doubted that the stars would ever align again and give him somebody like Catia—a person he could trust and love enough to do that kind of play with without all the scars inside hurting like fuck.
“Don’t make me ask again.”