Russell Andrews - Hades

"Afraid?" Justin said. "What are you afraid of?"

There was a long silence as Jonathan Westwood seemed to search for the right words. It was his wife who found them.

"We lost our grandchild because of the world you've chosen to live in," Lizbeth said. "We don't want to lose our child."

There was a long silence. Justin tried to pick up his iced tea, but his hand felt unsteady. He was just about under control when Louise stuck her head in the door and said the most welcome words Justin had ever heard: "Lunch is ready."

The dining table was eighteenth-century Spanish. Heavy and ornate and austere at the same time. The twelve chairs that were placed around the table were just as austere. The chair at the head of the table was larger than the others, more like a throne. In all the meals he'd had at this table, Justin had never sat in the chair at the head of the table. That was Jonathan's chair.

Justin had just put a small bite of Louise's perfect roast chicken into his mouth and was nodding with pleasure when his father said, "When I told you that Ronald's body had been found, how did you know where?"

"That place has a history." Justin finished chewing. He quickly cut another piece off the juicy breast and popped it into his mouth.

"What kind of history?"

"A violent one." Justin couldn't help but notice the expression on his mother's face now. Not anger or sadness or even confusion. It was one of wonder. When he finished chewing, he said, "Mom?" and she immediately understood his question.

"The things you know," she responded. "I remember when you used to know toys and TV and rocking horses."

"And business," his father added, "and medicine."

"Now," Lizbeth said, "you know murder. And places with violent histories."

There was a typical Westwood family silence. Justin used it to taste the roast potatoes and garlic, just as delicious as the chicken. He even managed to chomp on a few carrots. Then Jonathan asked, "So what are you going to do now?"

"Finish lunch 'cause it's the best food I've had since the last time I was up here. Then go see Vicky. And Billy. I'm going to do what you asked me to do, which is try to figure out what the hell's going on." And as something occurred to him, when he realized there was something else he needed to do first, Justin couldn't help himself: he allowed the tiniest line of a smile to cross his lips. "But first," he said, "I'm going to see a history professor."

Dolce was a small Italian restaurant in the heart of Providence's Little Italy. The tables all had red-and-white-checked tablecloths, most of the pastas came with a simple red sauce, the cannolis were the best in New England, and the espresso arrived steaming hot and joltingly strong.

As Justin sat toward the back of the room, sipping his second double espresso, he was the recipient of mixed responses from the twenty or so customers idling in the late afternoon. There were several middle-aged couples; one exhausted-looking skinny man in beige Bermuda shorts busily reading a Fodor's guide to Rhode Island; two women who were talking as if there were no tomorrow-both looked as if this was a much-needed hour break from husbands and kids. None of this crowd paid him any mind; they had never seen him before nor heard of him. Others were a little more attentive. Three men sitting four tables away were glancing over with a benign distaste. Justin had put two of them in prison and he'd attended the parole hearing for the third, attempting to dissuade the board from going along with an early release. The third man, whose name was Joey Fodera, had raped and murdered a professor of twentieth-century art appreciation at the Rhode Island School of Design. After she was dead, Fodera-his associates called him Joey Haircut-removed her sexual organs. His defense was that she'd reminded him of his first wife-who had disappeared several years before and never been found. The first wife had been so abusive, the defense attorney maintained, that seeing the professor involved in a heated conversation in a restaurant had triggered something in Joey: the memory of the rage and hatred he'd felt when his wife berated and humiliated him. The jury was hard to read-after four days of trial it could have gone either way-so both sides settled on a plea bargain of murder in the second degree and a twelve- to twenty-five-year sentence. After two and a half years in prison, Joey Haircut had ratted on another prisoner, looking to negotiate his way back onto the street. Justin's argument to the board wasn't enough to override the deal with the local DA and keep Fodera behind bars. Three days after the hearing, another sociopath was free and back at work.

Four or five other customers had also crossed paths with Justin back in the day. They nodded cautiously but respectfully when he walked in or as he sat and sipped.

Justin had just ordered espresso number three when the front door opened and a man who seemed nearly twice the size of anyone else in the room came inside. Along the way to the back of the restaurant, he stopped to shake a few hands. When Joey Fodera's hand met his, it held on a few seconds too long. Fodera quietly said something to the large newcomer, something that did not seem as friendly as, say, an invitation to come over and watch a ball game. The large man drew his hand back slowly and deliberately and he smiled at Joey Haircut. Justin, watching carefully, couldn't help himself. The smile made him shudder.

Then Bruno Pecozzi arrived at his destination. Before he could say a word of greeting, the waiter was at Justin's side and Bruno ordered two double espressos, three cannolis, and one sfogliatelle. Then he turned to Justin and said, "Sorry I'm late. I had to do a little bobbin' and weavin' on my way over here."

"Somebody following you?"

"Hey, it's almost an insult these days if somebody ain't followin' me." He stuck his hand out and Justin shook it firmly. "So to what do we owe the pleasure?" Bruno asked. And then followed up his own question with, "Who am I kiddin'? It takes your fuckin' brother-in-law gettin' whacked to get you back home? What's the matter with you?"

And then Bruno drew Justin closer, dragging his chair along with him, and gripped him in a tight bear hug.

"Who we gotta kill?" the professional hit man said, and when Justin managed to give a quick shake of his head, Bruno looked disappointed. "What, this is just a social call?"

"Why don't you shut up and listen," Justin was able to say.

Bruno released him from the hug. "Good thing I like you," he said.

Justin watched the huge man sit down as his two cups of coffee and several desserts were now placed in front of him. He visualized the chilling smile plastered on Bruno's face when he'd stared into Joey Haircut's eyes.

"Yeah," Justin agreed, and slid his chair back to its proper place at the table. "Good thing."

If someone asked Bruno Pecozzi what he did for a living, he would reply that he was a consultant in the movie business. If that same someone went on to ask on what subject he consulted, Bruno would elaborate slightly and give out the information that he was hired on films that dealt with criminal personalities and their world and that his job was to enhance the reality of that world for directors, actors, and writers. If anyone pressed the giant man further, wanted more detail on Bruno's knowledge of that world, he would simply give a stare that wouldn't quit until the interested party would finally wither under the scrutiny and shrink away in embarrassment. And fear.

Bruno's assessment of his own career was, to a degree, accurate. He'd consulted on four different Hollywood pictures so far. On the very first one he quickly became a legend when the director-a temperamental three-time Oscar nominee who thought he was a genius and went out of his way to be crude and super macho to compensate for the fact that he was only five feet five inches tall-was trying to shoot a scene near JFK Airport in Queens. The scene kept getting interrupted because planes kept taking off and landing, ruining both the aesthetic of the shot and the sound. The director was working himself into a frenzy when Bruno disappeared for a few minutes. He returned, tucking his cell phone into his pocket, tapped the hysterical director on the shoulder, and said, "Okay, you can finish the shot now."