Thomas Perry - Blood Money

He had begun early to construct a culture that would separate his men from the old attachments to particular neighborhoods and the families that had run them for generations. What he had been given to work with was a small cadre of displaced Castiglione soldiers like Caporetto. If he had dispensed with them at the beginning, he knew, he would not have lasted a month. He had needed to find a new way to use them.

He paid them extravagantly, gave them praise and assurances, then split them up and sent them to regions as far apart as possible. He let them recruit new, younger men and assigned the trainees as overseers of his businesses. He rotated the young men regularly from one part of the country to another, the way major corporations did. They never stayed settled long enough in a single city to be tied to it. Within a year or two they knew all the cities well enough to navigate them comfortably, and by the end of the second cycle, they were experts. Each of them had spent some time working for all of Delfina’s underbosses, and their loyalty was to the only constant he permitted them: Delfina.

For Delfina, the scattered and diverse nature of his holdings provided various forms of security. He could count on the predictable, quasi-legitimate profits of his visible companies to pay his people. If one industry or region hit hard times, the others could subsidize Delfina’s stake in it until times changed.

Delfina was part of a new world, but he knew he was not invulnerable to the one he had come from, so he looked for new models of physical security. He had read in the newspapers about the habits of foreign potentates, and studied them. It seemed to him that the most ingenious self-protectors were men like Qaddafi and Hussein. They could have surrounded themselves with thousands of troops and lived in hardened bunkers, but that would have made them bigger targets. What worked for them was a combination of anonymity and mobility. Delfina imitated them. He had no permanent residence. Instead he shuttled about the country, showed up unannounced at each of his businesses in turn, stayed for an hour or a month, and moved on.

As he drove through the dark streets toward the river, the steamy night air noticeably cooled, and big drops of summer rain splashed on his windshield. He turned on his wipers and slowed down. He thought about the two men going out to bury Danny Spoleto, then shrugged them off. They deserved a little discomfort, and the rain would hide any disturbance in the soil. By this time tomorrow they would be in California. They wouldn’t see rain again until November.

He wondered what his life would be like in November. By then he would have had time to get used to having Bernie Lupus’s money, and would have begun to put it to use. All of those cities that he had conscientiously, prudently bypassed in his endless commuting—New York, Chicago, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Pittsburgh—would probably already be his. People like DeLuca, John Augustino, Al Castananza, the Langusto brothers, and Molinari would just be more underbosses he would have to visit now and then. It was almost inevitable. Bernie the Elephant had spent fifty years collecting their money and salting it away and making it grow, and now it was ready for Delfina to take. When he had it, those men would lose control of their own soldiers. The guys who had been making peanuts shaking down mom-and-pop grocery stores for their local bosses would make quiet inquiries to see if there was anything they could do for Delfina. And when that happened, the bosses would come too. He would use the money to attract their allegiance, or finance their retirement, or buy their deaths.

8

As Jane drove along the highway into Illinois, Bernie’s patience seemed to be slipping away. Finally, he asked, “Where are we going?”

“Chicago.”

Bernie said, “I don’t know about Chicago. If Delfina’s started looking for her, the others will be too. There are people in Chicago who have seen her.”

“Really?” asked Jane. “Who?”

“Tommy DeLuca used to send a bagman down about once a month.”

Jane said, “That’s one out of three million. You can wait for me outside Chicago in case he happens to be at the bank. I have some things in a safe-deposit box there that I’ll need.”

“Look, I don’t know what it is, but—”

“Forged IDs that I can work over to fit the two of you.”

Bernie seemed unable to think of a suitable argument, so he sat in disapproving silence. After a few minutes, Rita said, “Anybody mind if I play the radio?” as she turned it on and punched buttons to flood the car with a rhythmic noise punctuated by a man’s voice chanting incomprehensible words. She turned down the volume to keep it from irritating Jane and Bernie.

Jane glanced at Rita. She was chewing gum in time with the music and rocking slightly as she listened. There was a peculiar innocence to the expression, and Jane wondered if kids still had those conversations she remembered about what the lyrics actually were. They must, she decided. “How about you?” she asked. “Are you afraid of Chicago?”

“Nope,” said Rita distractedly. “I’m afraid of the places I’ve been already. Are you sure the music is okay?”

Bernie answered hastily, “It’s fine, kid.” Jane could tell he was lying. “The silence was getting on our nerves.”

Jane told them no more until she had stopped and rented two rooms at a hotel in Frankfort. She brought Bernie and Rita inside the first of the two rooms, put the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door, sorted through her purse at the table, and handed each of them a key.

“Here are your keys. I’m going to be gone for a while.”

Rita asked, “Can I go with you?”

“I didn’t mean an hour or two,” said Jane. “It should be a few days.”

Rita looked uncomfortable. “You’re leaving us here?”

Jane looked around her. “It’s a nice enough hotel. If you do as I say, you’ll be fine. Don’t go out. Order your meals from room service. When the waiter comes, take the tray at the door, sign the bill, and send him off.”

“What’s this about?” asked Rita. “Where are you going?”

“First I’m going to my safe-deposit box, then I’m going to shop for a place that’s safer than this one.”

“How do we even know you’re going to come back?”

“You don’t.” She let Rita get used to the idea, then walked toward the door. “If I’m not back in a week, check out. Rita, you’ll have to do it, I’m afraid. The credit card is in the name Katherine Sanders. It’s on the dresser with the receipt. Make your way to Decatur and check in at the Marriott.”

“You going to meet us there?” asked Bernie.

“If I miss you here, I will. If I’m not there within a week after that, something happened to me. Go to a quiet town somewhere and do your best to make it on your own.”

On the fifth day at eleven in the morning, Jane returned to the hotel. She found Bernie sitting on the bed where she had left him, and Rita curled up in a chair in front of the television set. The set was tuned to a music video station, where a girl who didn’t seem much older than Rita was wearing something that looked like the top of an unflattering suit and the bottom of a bikini, and angrily singing words that she emphasized by pointing fingers with inch-long nails at the camera.

Rita said, “Do you think that’s a real tattoo?”

Bernie answered, “Looks real to me. But I don’t remember it from her last album.”

Jane closed the door, and they both looked at her in alarm. Rita recovered, then pretended it had not happened. “Oh, hi,” she said coolly, and turned her attention back to the screen.

Bernie stood up. “Well?”

“I’ve already paid the bill and checked us out. I just have to drop your keys at the desk.” She accepted the two keys and turned to go. “The car is in the third row from the north end of the building.”