Howard Shrier - Buffalo jump

“And Stefano?”

“He’s the straight man, as far as we know. Has an MBA and weighs a hundred and forty pounds soaking wet. Vinnie has him handling the legitimate investments, the real estate, the offshore accounts and all that. Wears a nice grey suit.”

“So they’re Regan and Goneril and he’s playing Cordelia.”

“If you say so. Anyway, Vinnie Nickels doesn’t have long to live but he hasn’t named a successor. He’s playing it close to the vest and it’s creating a lot of drama on the street.”

“Who’s the favourite?”

“Vito’s oldest, so he expects to be. Anything less is a slap in the face. But he’s a little dim. No one sees things thriving under him. Marco, on the other hand, is a mad motherfucker: no gift for long-term vision or diplomacy, but definitely has the skillset to run crews.”

“So what’s going to happen?” I asked. “Civil war?”

“Me, I’d like nothing better. Let the mutts take each other out. Marco looks like he’s getting ready. He’s out there muscling up, working his crew, building a war chest. He’s calling in markers, kicking ass all over town, taking a piece of anything he can. If it comes down to him against Vito, he wants people on his side. And that’s going to take cash, ’cause Marco doesn’t have a winning personality. Guy’s a Rottweiler, only not as cute.”

“I need you to find someone,” Dante Ryan said.

“You’re hiring me?”

“Yeah. Except I’m not paying you.”

“Then you’re not hiring me.”

“Okay, then. I’m engaging you. I’m involving you. I told you you owe me, and that’s not a position you want to be in.”

“What am I supposed to do? Find someone so you can kill him?”

“Believe it or not, I’m trying to help someone here. When you have all the information, you’ll understand.” He refilled his glass and held the bottle up in my direction. I nodded and he topped me up.

Ryan lit another cigarette and blew a stream of smoke toward the window. Mr. Considerate. “In the course of my duties,” he began, “if and when I’m called upon to take someone out, it’s usually because he’s ripping Marco off or pissing on his turf or generally displeasing him in some other manner. Like that.”

Just like that.

“But Marco also takes jobs on behalf of other people and subcontracts them to me. The tougher the job, the higher the price. Deals like this, I never know who put out the contract. Marco’s the only one who knows and he doesn’t tell. In theory, it’s voluntary on my part. I mean, I work for Marco but I’m not formally in his crew. So I could say no to a job-in theory. But when Marco really wants something done, you do it. You don’t want him thinking you’re soft and you don’t want to deny him the opportunity to earn. Especially these days.”

Ryan took a manila envelope out of his jacket. He laid it on the coffee table but didn’t open it. “Few days ago, Marco hands me this package and the biggest down payment I ever seen. He’s giving me fifty grand for this job, which means he’s charging a hundred at least, ’cause Marco never takes less than half of anything.” Another drag on the cigarette, two more smoke rings floating toward the window. “I could use the money, Geller, I really could. But I don’t have the stomach for this job. All the things I done in my life, all the guys I’ve done, I can’t do this one. I swear to God I’d lose whatever bit of my soul I have left.”

He took a photo out of the envelope and slid it across the coffee table to me. There were three people on the sidewalk in front of a large Tudor house: a big bear of a man with thinning dark hair, a pretty woman with brunette curls, and a small boy who looked to be four or five. The boy was on a multicoloured plastic tricycle with a long handle at the rear. The man stood behind the bike, handle in hand, ready to push, squinting in a way that made him look worried. The woman knelt by the boy, adjusting a helmet atop his brown curls. He was looking up at her adoringly.

“What did he do to get a contract put on him?” I asked, indicating the man.

“No idea,” Dante Ryan said. “But it must have been bad because the guy who ordered the hit doesn’t just want him dead.” He pointed at the woman in the photo. “Her too,” he said. Then his finger slid over to the boy looking up at his mother with that open look of love. “And him.”

“The kid?”

“Yeah,” Ryan said. “And he’s supposed to go first. The kid, then the mother, then the guy.”

“Then the father is the real target,” I said. “What in God’s name did he do?”

“What I need you to find out,” Ryan said, “is who he did it to.”

T he first bottle was empty and we were making headway on a Cabernet from Australia’s Barossa Valley. The picture of the boy and his parents still lay in front of us on the coffee table.

The man’s name was Jay Silver, Ryan told me, a pharmacist who owned a large outlet called Med-E-Mart on Laird Street just south of Eglinton. He lived in Forest Hill, where even the most humble abodes cost at least a million dollars. The wife’s name was Laura; the boy was Lucas, aged five.

“Geller, I been in this life twenty years, which is like a hundred and forty in mob years. I got no illusions. I’ve done pretty much everything you can imagine and a few things you probably can’t. But one thing I can say is anyone I ever had to take care of, they had it coming one way or another. They brought it on themselves. I’ve done Asian gangsters, Jamaican gangsters, Italians from other crews. I’ve done bikers, plenty of bikers, big hairy motherfuckers that look like they’re one day out of the caves. I’ve done skimmers, snitches, deadbeats.” He looked at me with a wicked grin. “Witnesses.”

“Really? So if the Ensign case had gone to trial?”

“No way that piece-of-shit case was going anywhere.”

“But if it had.”

“You would never have testified, that much I can tell you. Nothing personal, of course.”

“Of course. What about women?”

“Killing them? It’s rare but not unheard of. A talkative mistress

… a wife with an inheritance… a stubborn witness… I’ve never done it myself, which you can believe or not, but it happens. But on my father’s grave, not once in all my years in the business have I ever harmed a child. It’s never even come up. Sometimes you know deep down there’s collateral damage when you off a guy who has kids. You know they’re going to suffer and whatnot. But to actually target a kid,” Ryan said, staring into the dark sediment at the bottom of his glass. “To put him in the sights. What kind of animal puts a contract on a kid?”

“What kind of animal takes one?”

He was up on his feet in a flash, vaulting the coffee table between us and throwing a fast right hand at my jaw. It missed as I tipped my chair backwards, hit the floor and rolled up in a defensive stance. His sunglasses clattered to the floor as he threw a left. I slapped it aside and used his forward momentum to push him up against the wall facefirst and pin him there.

“Marco, I meant!” I said. “Not you, Ryan! Marco!”

“Take your hands off me,” he hissed.

“You going to try to hit me again?”

“I said take your hands off me or I’ll kill you fucking dead.”

I took my hands off him and stepped back quickly. I kept my hands up and stayed on the balls of my feet. If he reached for a weapon I would unload with everything I had. He didn’t. He turned and glared hotly at me. Looking at his flushed face, I could see the man who beat people, broke their bones, killed them for his living. Then the rage seemed to go out of him as quickly as it had come. He pulled down the cuffs of his jacket and walked out the balcony door. I waited a moment, then followed. The sun was down now and the southern sky over the lake was a dark shade of indigo. But not as dark as the look I’d just seen on his face.