Jennifer Crusie - Agnes and the Hitman

“Let it go,” she said, and Carpenter nodded, too, and Agnes swallowed and thought, Well, he didn’t lie to me, and said, “Pineapple-orange muffins for breakfast,” and went back to the house, praying that nobody was going to die, especially Shane.

“Do you know where the Don is staying?” Shane asked, working hard to keep a cap on his anger. He was driving Carpenter’s van, Frankie and Joey in the captain’s chairs behind him, looking like two old extras for some mob movie. Except they were the real deal.

Joey nodded. “Yeah. The Rice Plantation B-and-B. The Don likes quiet, classy joints. The rest of his men are at the Victory Motel with the hookers.”

Shane looked back at Joey. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“If I’d of told you, you’d have gone after the Don and gotten yourself killed.”

“I’d rather have heard it from you than Wilson,” Shane said.

“I was more worried about keeping you alive,” Joey said. “Wilson tells you stuff to control you.”

“Give me the short version,” Shane said as they turned onto the main road out of Agnes’s driveway.

Frankie had been talking into his cell phone, and he turned it off before saying, “I just talked to the broad who runs the B-and-B. She says the Don and another guy, most likely his consigliere, are just wrapping up breakfast. So that’s good. They gotta come this way for the wedding.”

Shane nodded and drove to the B amp;B, following Joey’s terse directions. Half a mile from the place, he pulled the van off the road, then backed into a narrow dirt trail.

“We’re gonna stop the Don’s car and I talk to him.” He climbed between the seats, opened one of the lockers, and grabbed a platter-shaped device and a remote that went with it. Then he opened the side panel and climbed out. “You guys stay here,” he told Joey and Frankie.

He went out to the narrow road and lay the platter down in the center, then grabbed a piece of Spanish moss and covered it.

When he was back in the van, he pulled out his Glock and checked the round in the chamber. Then he said, “Tell me what happened.”

“We came down here for vacations every year,” Frankie said. “Roberto, Michael, me, and Joey. And the families. Your parents went out fishing one day on a small boat, never came back. We got the call from the rental place that the boat hadn’t come back; we went out looking, nothing. No one ever found your parents or the boat.”

“But we know Michael did it,” Joey said with loathing. “He was supposed to be in Savannah when they went missing, but when he showed up again he was different. Confident. Cocky. The son of a bitch.”

“You let him get away with it?” Shane said, disbelief in his voice.

“What was we gonna do?” Joey said. “We had no proof. Everyone suspected, but nobody could say for certain, ‘cause nobody knew nothin’ about it. And I mean, nothin’. And where would a guy like Mikey get that kind of bomb on his own? He had to have help, smart help. And not just that snake of a consigliere of his, although he was down here then, too. We couldn’t figure it out. And we couldn’t whack Michael, or Don Carlo would be all over us. And you were in danger, you were his next hit. So we made a deal.”

“To stay in Keyes,” Shane said. “And keep me in the dark. Give me a different name. Tell me you didn’t know who my father was.”

Frankie and Joey nodded once more, two grim, bobblehead old goombahs.

“That’s how we ended up staying down here,” Frankie said. “Brenda was pissed as hell about that. But I always thought she knew. She offered to babysit you that day, and she never did that before.”

Joey jerked his head up.

Frankie nodded. “Yeah. I never said nothin’ because she was my wife, but that bothered the hell out of me. We fought about it, and she cried, big hysterics, but you gotta wonder why she wanted to take care of a baby just that one day. She didn’t like babies much. But just that one day, she said, ‘Give me the baby,’ and they handed you over and went off for a big romantic day on the water.”

Shane could see them, his dad and his mom on the boat, both of them laughing, probably the first day they’d had alone since he’d been born, a day on the water-

The heat in his head made him dizzy for a minute and then he heard Joey say, “Jesus, she knew. Why-?”

“I think she thought it was gonna move me up in the Family,” Frankie said. “She was gonna be Our Lady of the Fortunatos, open the doors in a big house and invite everybody in, sit at the head of the table, queen of New Jersey.”

The scene played again, but this time it was him, taking Agnes aboard a boat, her laughing up at him… What if I couldn’t get to her? What if she was screaming, in agony, and I couldn’t get to her?

“Maybe we don’t leave her to Xavier,” Joey said.

“No,” Shane said, and Joey shut up. He took a deep breath. “You told me you never saw the consigliere before.”

Joey shrugged. “I was just trying to protect you.”

Thirty-five years ago, Joey was a thirty-year-old widowed mobster looking at a baby he was going to have take care of. Considering his limitations and what he was up against, he’d done a pretty damn good job. The fact that he couldn’t stop now was possibly understandable.

“Okay,” Shane asked. “Wilson. How does he play into all this? How does he know?”

Joey frowned. “I don’t know. But he’s a spook, and spooks and the Organization have worked together before, ever since the big war when the government needed help in Italy. So you’re talking over sixty years. Wilson’s probably got people wired in.”

Literally, Shane thought, remembering the transcript of Don Fortunato’s phone call with Casey Dean. Sixty years. About as long as Wilson headed the Organization.

He heard a car coming and slid out of the van into the shade on the side of the road.

A black Lincoln Town Car came rumbling down the road. Shane waited until it was over the platter, then pressed the remote. The platter sent out a massive electromagnetic pulse that fried all the electronics in the car. The engine died and the car rolled by, slowing to a halt about forty feet down the road.

The driver’s door opened and the consigliere got out, cursing. Shane’s jaw tightened as the passenger door opened and Don Michael stepped out, dapper as all hell. The years had been damn good to him. The consigliere popped the hood and both men disappeared around the front of the car as they tried to figure out what had happened. Shane stepped onto the road, Glock at the ready. He walked to car, then edged around to where he could see the two men. “Don’t move,” Shane said.

They both swiveled their heads and stared at him. Then the Don smiled. “Shane,” he said. “Am I correct?” Shane nodded. “Uncle Michael.” The Don and his consigliere exchanged a glance. “Who told ya?” the Don asked. “Joey?”

“You killed my parents.”

The Don laughed, and Shane’s hand tightened so much on the gun, he realized the barrel was shaking. Not good, he thought.

“You ain’t gonna shoot me,” the Don said. “Not in cold blood. Your father wouldn’t, and you can’t.”

“I want the truth,” Shane said. “About how they died.”

“Wasn’t me,” the Don said. “I was in Savannah. Got witnesses to that.”

“Then who was it?” Shane asked. “Him?” He nodded at the consigliere.

The consigliere’s eyes slid left, almost a twitch.

“Better yet,” Shane said. “Where did you get the bomb? Remote detonated, right? Who gave it to you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the Don said, his face smooth.