Джеймс Паттерсон - The Inn

I waited. Clay lowered his voice to a whisper. “It makes me think they might be on Cline’s books. My guys. That’s ridiculous, right?”

“Clay.” I put my hand on his shoulder. “Just do what you can. Keep working on it from your end. Don’t accuse anyone of anything.”

“I gotta stay calm.” He took a deep breath. “But if you get anything, bring it straight to me, okay? I don’t know who I can trust right now.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

VINNY ROBETTI WAS just where I expected him to be, on the corner of the porch, soaking up the last remnants of fading sun. Siobhan’s first resident, he’d spent three days alone in the house with my wife before I arrived from Boston, where I’d been packing up the last of our belongings.

We were both startled by the sight of each other. I knew Vinny Robetti by his birth name, Leonardo Roberri. In his prime, he’d been one of the deadliest gangsters in Boston history. I’d conducted raids on Roberri’s properties a bunch of times as a patrolman and I’d guarded him on his trips in and out of court for murder charges and RICO violations, none of which ever stuck. I’d responded to the scene when some stupid-ass cugine tried to make his bones with a rival family by shooting Roberri; he’d hit him in the back, paralyzing him from the waist down.

I might have objected to the old wiseguy’s presence in my house if Siobhan hadn’t loved him so much. The two had been like spaghetti and meatballs by the time I arrived. Vinny and I silently decided to leave our prior affiliation unmentioned.

As I neared the old man on the porch, I saw a bucket by his feet and a glimmering knife in his fingers.

“What’s all this?”

Vinny gave that classic Mob-guy shrug. “I’m doing arts and crafts. So what?”

In his big, knobby hands he held a small piece of wood on its way to becoming some kind of four-legged thing, a pig or a bear on all fours. I took the wicker chair next to Vinny and he handed me the item for examination.

“Look at this! This is great,” I said.

“Eh, I do all right.” He took the animal back and started carving it again, catching the little blond shavings in the bucket. “I went to see the doc about my hands. This one’s been broken five times since I was a kid. This one six.” He held up his right hand. “Last guy that got me was Bobby Russo. You know that guy? Smashed both my hands with a club hammer. This thumb nearly came off completely. Guy heard I was stepping out with his gumad .”

I opened my mouth to respond but Vinny kept on. The man liked to talk.

“Maybe I was. Who knows? Long time ago; I can’t remember. Anyway, the doc says I need to do something to strengthen my hands. Suggested I start knitting. What does he think, I’m gonna sit here making little doilies and frilly fucking tablecloths?”

“I think that’s crocheting.”

“Whatever the fuck.”

“You’re pretty good at this,” I noted.

“I know my way around a blade.” He tossed the knife up; it spun three times in the air and landed with a chunk in the arm of his wheelchair. He pulled the knife out and kept whittling like it was no big deal.

“The kid’s supposed to be at work.” He nodded toward the side of the house where Clay and Marni had just disappeared. It was probably Vinny who told Susan that Dough Brothers had called looking for Marni. When I wasn’t around, Vinny was in charge of answering the phone, because he never strayed far from the house.

“Yeah, she didn’t go. I’m worried about her.”

“You and me both,” Vinny said. “Kid told me some fucked-up story yesterday.”

“What was it?”

“Get this.” He scratched at the white streak at his temple with the knife. “It was a story about this farm. Barnyard. Man and his wife, they sell these animals, have them taken away in trucks. Only sometimes one of the animals doesn’t go because it’s fucked up or whatever, like a chicken with only one wing or a cow with a broken leg or a pig with some weird skin disease. So it’s like a reject. The farmer guy plans to whack the animal, but the wife always sneaks up and lets it go, and it runs into the forest behind the farm.”

Vinny shook his head. I waited for more, but he was concentrating on his work.

“So what happens?” I asked.

“Nothin’.” He shrugged again. “The fucked-up animals all live in the forest and they have adventures and shit. They’re all sad about how they never got to go on the trucks but they’re kinda happy that they’re together.”

“I assume the trucks were taking them off to be slaughtered?” I asked.

“Maybe. I guess so. Probably supposed to be irony that they don’t know about it. I don’t know. I’m not a poet. What do you want from me? She was just telling me because she said that’s us.”

“What’s us?”

“The fucked-up animals.” He jerked a thumb toward the house. “You, me, Marn, the sheriff. Everybody who lives here. We’re them. The reject animals who don’t know how lucky they are.”

I thought for a moment, watching the trees.

“Kid’s cuckoo, you ask me.” He tapped his forehead with the tip of the knife.

“While you’re doling out advice,” I said, “can I get some on a different subject?”

“Shoot.”

“What do you do when you’ve got a dangerous new guy on your turf, and you’re not willing to stand by and let him destroy your neighborhood?” I asked. “You probably had stuff like that happen when you were in the …”

“The waste-management business?”

“Sure.”

“Well, way I always saw it, you got three options,” he said. “And those options get steadily less friendly. First, you can divide up the turf. Make sure he stays on his patch and you stay on yours. Charge him something for the privilege.”

“Right.”

“That doesn’t work, you convince him to go somewhere else. Send a guy in talking about how sweet the pussy down in Florida is or something. Grab his gumad and give her a squeeze and tell her if she don’t get her guy to go down there, they’re gonna have problems.”

“What’s the last option?” I asked.

“The last option?” He pointed the knife at me. I watched his lips form the very same snake-like grin I’d seen on Cline. “You blast him and his crew full of holes.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

IT WAS FAST work, but if you had the funds, Cline knew, you could get the job done. The previous night’s fun and games with the Druly woman had filled him with a violent energy, and he’d used that energy all afternoon making phone calls, reading out credit card numbers, watching Squid, Turner, and Bones making their own calls. As the sun set, they started arriving. The caterer came first and took over the bottom floor with six waitstaff. Then there was the DJ, the sound guy, the lighting guy, a team of college kids setting up portable heaters on the patio and cabanas around the heated pool, the firepits. Cline felt like Jay Gatsby watching the lights across the water for Daisy. He kept Squid close at hand. Didn’t want the young idiot to mess this up.

“Is she coming?” Cline asked at six.

“Of course she’s comin’.” Squid held up his phone.

She arrived in the initial rush, a youthful face among a hundred other youthful faces, the desperate and bored of Gloucester, Rockport, Hamilton, all pouring through his doors and flooding into his yard. The big house rattled with bass; the body heat of already too-drunk guests made condensation bead on the windows. Beer pong in the kitchen. Strippers in the pool area. Morons doing backflips off the second-floor balcony into the pool to screams and cheers. Cline watched her picking her way through the crowd, narrow shoulders slicing between big bodies, her tongue nervously worrying that piercing in her lip. The girl called Marni had talked to Squid first, a quick, awkward conversation by one of the bars. And then she was off into the safety of a crew of girls she must have known from high school.