William Lashner - Bitter Truth

Calvi sucked on his cigar for a moment before saying, “Too close.”

Raffaello nodded and gave a grudging smile. “I understand. You need freedom from my influence. You are showing your wisdom as a leader already, Gualtieri. Maybe I’ll go to Boca Raton, in your blessed Florida.”

“Too close,” said Calvi.

“I have relatives in Sedona, Arizona. The desert too can be magnificent on canvas.”

“Too close.”

“Yes,” said Raffaello, nodding again. “This country is maybe too small for us together. I have not been to Sicily since I was a boy. It is time I return. The light there, I remember, was unearthly beautiful.”

Calvi took another suck at his cigar and let the vile smoke out slowly. “Too close.”

“Tell me, Gualtieri. What about Australia?”

“Too close.”

Raffaello leaned toward Calvi and squinted his eyes as if peering at a strange vision. “Yes, now I see. Now I understand fully.”

“You should have killed me when you had the chance, Enrico,” said Calvi. He took a step forward and raised his arms and shouted as if in invocation to the heavens, “A-whore-a!”

I cringed from the fusillade I expected to thunder down upon the four men and the Cadillac but instead of thunder there was a towering silence.

Calvi looked up to the decks of the carriers, first to his left then to his right, again raised his arms and shouted, “A-whore-a!”

Nothing.

Calvi turned to Anton, who shrugged. Peter Cressi, next to me, stepped back and stared up. The Cuban looked around, dazed.

“Now, you idiots!” shouted Calvi. “Now!”

A sound, a dragging scraping sound, came from the flight deck of the Saratoga to our left and when we looked up we saw someone, finally, but he wasn’t standing, he was falling, slowly it seemed, twisting in the air like a drunken diver, spinning almost gracefully as he fell until his body slammed into the cement surface of the pier with a dull, lifeless thud, punctuated by the sudden cracking of bones.

Another scraping to the right and a body rolling off the deck of the Forrestal, like a child down a hill, rolling down down, arms flailing, legs splitting, back arching from the fall and then the cracking thud, followed by another, softer sound from the body returning to the pier after its bounce. And even before that second soft sound reached us with all its portent, another scraping and another body falling, the feet revolving slowly to the sky and the head dropping until its dive was stopped by the urgency of the pier and this time there was no bounce.

From the left another body, from the right another, this one hitting not cement but water, and from the hammerhead crane behind the Cadillac still another, all falling lifeless to the street, with thuds and cracks like chicken bones being broken and sucked of their marrow, or into the river with quiet splashes, and soon it was raining bodies on Pier Four and in the middle of this storm of the macabre, Raffaello, still leaning on his cane, said in a soft voice that cut like the tone of a triangle through the strains of death, “You’re right, Gualtieri. I should have killed you.”

Suddenly a pop came from the hammerhead crane behind the Cadillac and the Cuban’s throat exploded in blood and he collapsed to the cement like a sack of cane sugar. Before I could recover from the sight another shot cracked through the sound of breaking bodies and Anton Schmidt lay sprawled on the pier beside Calvi, the black satchel still gripped in his pale hand.

After the two shots the sounds of falling corpses and breaking bones subsided and there was a moment of silence on Pier Four.

Calvi reached a hand into his raincoat before shrugging. “Maybe the thing on the expressway, it was a bit much, hey, Enrico?”

“You could never have handled the trophy, Gualtieri,” said Raffaello. “You’re too small. You’re a midget. Even on top a mountain you’d still be a midget. But think of it this way, you greedy dog. Whatever hell we’re sending you to, at least it’s not Florida.”

Before Calvi could pull the pistol out of the raincoat, gunfire erupted from the Saratoga and the Forrestal and the crane and Calvi’s chest writhed red as if a horde of vile stinging insects were struggling to escape the corpse as it fell.

I couldn’t even register all that was happening right next to me on the pier before I felt an arm wrap with a jerk around my throat and a gun press to my head. The arm tightened and I was pulled backward.

Peter Cressi, his breath hot and fast in my ear, shouted, “You take me then you’re also taking Vic.”

I was so stunned by the maneuver it took me a moment to realize I couldn’t breathe. I started yanking at the arm around my throat but it was like steel.

“Pietro, Pietro,” said Raffaello, shaking his head. “You never were the brightest, Pietro.”

“He’s a lawyer,” shouted Dante. “A fucking lawyer. You think you can threaten us by taking as a hostage a lawyer?”

Cressi stopped backing up. The arm around my throat tightened. I could feel the blackness starting to expand in my brain even as the gun barrel left my temple and pointed at the Cadillac. I stopped scrabbling at the arm and went limp as I reached into my pants pocket and gripped the handle of the pairing knife. With a last burst of conscious energy I pulled it out and jabbed it as hard as I could into the forearm squeezing my neck.

There was a scream, whose I wasn’t then sure, and I dropped to the pavement, grappling at my throat and letting out a constricted wheeze as the scream raced away from me. Then there were two shots and the whine of angry bees over my head. The screaming suddenly stopped. I heard still another thud of death and the scrape of Peter Cressi’s monster gun skidding freely along the cement of Pier Four.

On my knees, on the cement, my hands still at my throat, I looked up and saw Earl Dante, smiling his evil smile, pointing a gun straight at my head, the smoke still curling upward from the barrel in a narrow twist. And as if that sight wasn’t scary enough, from out of the corner of my eye I saw a dead man rising.

IT WAS ANTON SCHMIDT,rising to his knees, still holding onto the black leather bag with one hand, feeling around the cement of the pier for his glasses with the other. I stared at him in amazement, waiting for a bullet to take him down again as he found his glasses and then his hat and stood, dusting himself off. His thick glasses finally on, he looked around and saw me kneeling on the cement, with Dante’s gun trained at my face. He prudently backed away.

“I received a call last night on my private number,” said Raffaello. “It was from a Morris something-or-other.”

I started to yammer about Calvi coming at me in my apartment and my having no choice but to go along when Raffaello silenced me with his words.

“You gave my private number to a stranger,” he said softly. “You involved a stranger in our business.”

I pressed my palms to the ground and pushed myself to standing. “Morris is absolutely trustworthy,” I said. “I would trust him with my life.”

“That’s exactly what you did,” said Raffaello.

I almost sagged back to the ground with fear before I saw Raffaello smile and Dante lower his gun.

“This Morris person,” said Raffaello, “he told me that you had signaled him that this meeting was a betrayal. That was very brave of you to get out such a signal. As you can tell, I had matters already well in hand.” He nodded toward Anton Schmidt. “But still, such loyalty as you have shown, it touches my heart. Of course Earl, he is disappointed. He so wanted to kill you.”

Dante shrugged as he put away his gun.