John Miller - Inside Out

“So, how's things?”

“I had a red thing leak dye in the washer ruined the gowns,” said Johnny.

Sam's heart sped up. Someone was stealing. “Red thing leaking dye” was the code for red ink-someone skimming. Gown was high-dollar prostitution.

“I'm gonna bleach it out tonight.”

“Is the old man cleaning the pool?” He was referring to Herman Hoffman.

“His boys are handling it. Soon as I know how it looks I'll let you know.”

“Good.”

“Can't wait to see you back home.”

“You and me both,” Sam replied grimly. He pressed the END button.

Johnny Russo was family by his marriage to Sam's niece, but Sam had known Johnny for all of the young man's thirty-nine years. He had stood as Johnny's godfather, and even though he wasn't a religious man, had taken that responsibility to heart. Johnny's father, Richie Russo, had been Sam's chief enforcer, a man he had been close to since his childhood. Richie had died in a warehouse fire when Johnny was ten. From that day on, Sam had sent Richie Russo's wife a nice monthly check and called it a pension. It was just a necessary business expense. He had genuinely cared about Richie, but Johnny had not made it into the son-he-never-had category.

When Johnny was fourteen, Sam had hired him to work at one of his amusement companies, beginning with odd jobs and granting him more responsibility as he grew older. Johnny had been a polite kid, a hard worker who never made the same mistake twice. Always smiling, always ready to show Sam that he wanted to learn more. Sam's father had trusted only Italians, but Sam had discovered that limited business. Sam had ways of determining who was trustworthy, who would keep the necessary secrets and remain loyal. “Family” was a relative term, and ethnic lineage didn't ensure omerta. Sam had a system of rewards and punishment, both of which had to remain certainties in an uncertain world.

Johnny ran the rackets effectively, but Sam had stayed on top of the business, making sure things ran smoothly under Johnny's care. The trust Sam had in the young man hadn't come easy. He had set a hundred traps over the years, hoping he wouldn't catch Johnny taking advantage of him, and, to his amazement and delight, he never had. Sam had rewarded Johnny by degrees, turning over more and more of his crime enterprise to his protege, until he was competent enough to handle the day-to-day demands. From the start, Johnny had handled Sam's business and dealt with Sam's enemies like they were his own. Sometimes Johnny could get carried away with the violence, but a man's reputation was what kept people in line.

Sam paid millions each year to the people who would otherwise arrest him and to those who knew when there was an imminent threat from law enforcement. The feds had never found enough evidence on Sam to secure an indictment, and the locals feared losing his largess. The authorities had snagged members of his upper-level management over the years, but between lawyers, friendly judges, missing evidence, witnesses with failing memories, and bribed or frightened jurors, most walked away relatively unscathed. Those who went to jail did easy time, and Sam saw to it that their families never went hungry.

Two years back, Sam had completely turned over the day-to-day operations to Russo, advising him when things started to slip. He knew that, regardless of who was in charge, the business would never be what it had been in his day. But there would be plenty to go around if Johnny could hold off the ethnic gangs and freelance criminals. As long as Sam was the gold backing Johnny's promises, Russo was relatively safe. But alliances like the one with Herman Hoffman that Sam, and his father before him, had forged would end with Sam's passing, and it would be up to Johnny to cut new deals and make his own allies in order to hold on to the rackets.

What nobody except Sam and Johnny knew was that two years before, a doctor had discovered that Sam had cancer in a place nobody should get cancer. It had been growing for a while, and taking it out was impossible. The doctor, a man Sam owned, had explained it in simple terms. The cancer was growing slowly, but with insidious intent. He told Sam that he might live longer with radiation, but he would be bald and feel awful. That was impossible because as soon as Sam's enemies saw him deteriorating, they'd run in and gobble up his empire faster than Johnny could deal with them. Such was the way of nature. Survival would be Johnny's problem alone and he would have to sink or swim. Sam wasn't afraid to die, but the old gangster drew a line at dying in a cage like a rat somebody forgot to feed.

Sam hoped there was a heaven. If there was a heaven, there was a hell. If hell existed, a lot of people he knew would be there. The first thing Sam was going to do when he got down there was hunt down that bastard Dylan Devlin and show those demons running the joint what real torture looked like.

Saint Jean, Louisiana

Johnny Russo had one more thing to do before he could call it a night and be in bed to get his normal five hours of sleep. His driver, Spiro, steered the speeding Lincoln Towncar out of River Road while Johnny stared at the passing white tanks, fifty feet tall and twice as wide. The International Liquid Storage tank terminal operation was completely legitimate and belonged not to Sam but to a consortium of foreign investors. At any given time, there was everything from food-grade vegetable oil to gasoline stored in the tanks. The product was pumped directly from, and into, vessels moored at ILS's dock on the Mississippi River, just over the levee. Their clients paid for storage and, if they somehow failed to pay, the company held the product as collateral against storage costs, and then sold the liquid for a nice profit. Sam Manelli was a consultant. If there was a problem requiring a political or unorthodox solution, Sam saw that it was handled. As compensation for his help, the corporation gave Sam the duck-hunting lease on sixteen hundred acres of swampland behind the tank farm. Sam had built a lodge and boat shed on the property, where Spiro and Johnny were now headed.

Spiro pulled up in front of the shed, where two of his enforcers waited inside beside a naked man whose hands and ankles were lashed together. The man sat in a chair on a sheet of plastic, beside a table whose wood surface had also been covered with the same material. When Russo jerked the duct tape from the bound man's mouth, it took a good deal of his goatee with it. The man took several gasping breaths and his eyes blinked anxiously.

Russo stood over the shivering man and studied him silently. Spiro covered a yawn with his open palm.

“How much did you skim, Albert?” Russo said, finally.

“I di-di-di-didn't… short Sam!”

“Didn't short me, you mean? Do you see Sam in here?”

“I wouldn't du-du-do that, Johnny!” The panicked words tumbled from Albert's mouth, tears streaming down his cheeks.

“Sheri said different, not four hours ago in this very room. She said you took at least ten large from the girls this year that you didn't pass along. She said she begged you not to do it.”

“No, I never!”

“She's your main girl, Albert-mother to your children. Why would she make something like that up?”

“She's l-l-l-lying!” Albert's eyes were fevered circles, futilely blinking back tears.

“That's a problem, because I believe her.”

“Let me talk to her! She's l-lying. Lying. Lying. She'll cu-cu-cu-come clean!”

“Okay, I'll let you talk to her.”

Johnny Russo walked over to the fridge directly opposite the man and lifted out, by its thick black hair, a woman's head. The dry brown eyes were unblinking, the mouth frozen wide open as if in midscream.