Irrevocable

  “You drive,” he says to me. “I’ll navigate.”

  Nick climbs into the back behind Jonathan and sits in the middle of the bench seat so he can see up front, and we are on our way.

  “The signal’s comin’ in pretty strong,” Jonathan says. “Maybe she’s heard about Rinaldo, and she’s on her way here.”

  “Could be,” I say.

  The tricky part about all of this is remaining collected and not doing anything suspicious. I left enough evidence with Felisa’s body to point away from me, but I can’t rely on that completely. Saying the wrong thing could tip either one of them off. Jonathan’s a smart guy and really good at putting things together. Nick may be a stoner, but he’s no idiot either.

  I take a couple of intentional wrong turns, but eventually, Jonathan’s tracking app takes us to the side of the road where I know we’ll eventually find Felisa’s body. Jonathan is out of the truck first, and Nick follows quickly. I hang back a moment to light a cigarette before following them into the trees.

  “There’s freshly dug dirt here.” Jonathan shoves the toe of his boot into the soft ground.

  “That’s not good,” I reply. “Is that where the signal leads?”

  “Yeah,” Jonathan says, his voice grave. “Definitely not lookin’ good.”

  “Felisa’s in there?” Nick steps back and forth, shifting his weight from foot to foot and shuffling at the wet leaves. “Like, she’s definitely there?”

  “Won’t know until we dig.”

  “Fuck,” Nick mutters.

  “There’s a shovel in the back of the truck,” Jonathan tells him. “Go get it.”

  “Okay.”

  As Nick leaves, Jonathan turns to me.

  “There’s no doubt in my mind,” he says, and I nod.

  “Someone took her out.”

  “Why her?”

  “To get to Rinaldo,” I say simply. “He’s close to her. Was close to her.”

  My initial use of the present tense is intentional.

  “You gonna call him?”

  “Not yet.” I rub at my chin for a moment. “I have to see her—know for sure.”

  “I gotcha.”

  Nick comes back with the shovel, and all three of us take turns digging. I even get down on my hands and knees at one point when we’re close. The grave isn’t very deep, as far as graves go, and it doesn’t take too long before we find her.

  “Shit,” Nick says as the body is revealed. “Rinaldo’s going to go ballistic.”

  “You think he was that close to her?” I ask.

  “Dude, don’t you pay any attention?” Nick eyes me up and down. “He was all over her all the time.”

  “No shit, Evan.” Jonathan leans against the shovel and lights a smoke. “I thought you saw everything.”

  “Guess not.” I shrug, realizing I shouldn’t have said a word about it. Hopefully the one slip up won’t cost me too much. “Shall we get her out?”

  “Probably.” Jonathan tosses the shovel down, hot-boxes the cigarette, and throws it in the dirt before jumping into the hole.

  He pushes some of the dirt around to get under her shoulders, and I lower myself into the hole to reach her feet. As we get her out of the loose ground, the gun falls from her body to the bottom of the hole.

  “Hey! Give me that.” I point at it, and Jonathan lowers the body long enough to reach for it and hand it to me. “It’s a Ruger.”

  “Like the missing ones?” Nick asks.

  “Yeah,” I say as I turn it around in my hands and rub some of the dirt away, “same type and everything.”

  “Damn, brotha.” Jonathan shakes his head and reaches to the dirt again. He pulls out a filthy, orange shirt. “Check this out.”

  “There’s blood on it,” I say.

  “How could Junko be so stupid?” Jonathan asks. “He’d made peace with Rinaldo, and now this?”

  “I don’t want to jump to conclusions.” I toss the gun out of the hole and grab for Felisa’s legs again. “Let’s get her out and see if we find anything else.”

  We get back to work, and soon the body, the gun, and the shirt are all stacked in the dry leaves near the hole. I sit at the edge of the makeshift grave and smoke a cigarette while Jonathan heads back to the truck with the shovel.

  “You got an extra?”

  I toss Nick the pack and the lighter.

  “Damn,” Nick says as he lights up. “I can’t believe it.”

  “It’s right in front of you,” I reply.

  “I know, but fuck. I still can’t believe it. Felisa was so sweet. Why would anyone do this to her? I mean, there are a lot of potential targets…”

  “It’s all about what kind of message you are trying to send.”

  “What message is this?”

  “Vulnerability.”

  “Does that mean someone else is next?” Nick’s voice is low, as if someone were around to hear it.

  “Not necessarily.” I stand up and brush the dirt from my jeans. “This is also sloppy work—shallow grave, leaving evidence behind—which usually means someone who doesn’t know what the fuck they’re doing.”

  He nods like he knows what I’m talking about. Really, I’m just trying to get him to think in a different direction. One thing I am not is an amateur.

  Jonathan returns with duct tape and a box of big trash bags, and we create a makeshift body bag. With everything gathered up, we head back into the city with Jonathan driving. Nick keeps looking in the back of the truck and then at all the other cars around us. No one suspects there’s a body in the truck’s bed, but they will if he keeps doing that.

  “Will you cut that out?” I turn around and glare at Nick.

  “What?”

  “Looking so fucking suspicious. Smoke some weed or something. Relax.”

  “I don’t have any with me,” he says. “It’s all back at my place.”

  “Just drop him off,” I tell Jonathan, “before we get pulled over for his paranoia.”

  “Will do.”

  With Nick delivered to his apartment, Jonathan and I head out to the warehouse to deal with the body and evidence. I honestly don’t know what Rinaldo will want me to do with it all, and I figure it’s time to let him know what we found. I’m not going to do that over the phone though.

  I call Cody to have him meet us at the warehouse. When we approach the building, I’m surprised to see a gate blocking the entrance to the back lot. When I ask Jonathan about it, he tells me it’s all part of the new security system.

  “I can control pretty much everything from the phone,” he says. “There are still a few bugs to work out, but it’s mostly operational.”

  “Whose idea was this?”

  “Beni’s maybe? Could’ve been Becca’s. Since we store so much here, it made sense.”

  Jonathan taps at his phone, and the gate opens for us.

  “Nifty, huh?”

  “Nifty?”

  “Hey, you get nebbish; I get nifty.”

  “You can just have that.”

  We pull around, and I see all kinds of cameras and keyed entry pads that hadn’t been there before. Jonathan’s talking about how “custom” the system is, but I’m not really listening.

  Why would Beni want security around the warehouse? Yes, it’s used to store merchandise temporarily, but it’s back out of the way, and no one ever comes out this far unless they’re lost. Why invest in all of this hi-tech stuff? It seems like a waste of money to me, but then again, Rinaldo isn’t lacking money.

  Cody pulls up behind Jonathan’s truck. We explain the situation to him, and he helps us unload everything.

  “We can’t leave her here long,” Jonathan says. “She’s already kinda ripe, and there isn’t any refrigerated storage around here.”

  “Yeah, let’s get back to the hospital and find out what Rinaldo wants us to do about it.”

  “Maybe call Beni and let him know?”

  “Fuck Beni,” I grumble. “He can find out through the grapevi
ne.”

  “What do you got against him?”

  I sigh and lean against the passenger door of the pickup. I rub my fingers into my eyes, trying to decide just how much I want to tell Jonathan when I myself don’t know everything just yet.

  “There’s a rat,” I finally say. “That’s the only explanation for everything that’s going on. It’s the only way we could have been ambushed like that, and only someone on the inside would know about Felisa and Rinaldo’s connection.”

  “You’re on the inside,” Jonathan says with a laugh that sends a little chill through me, “and you didn’t figure it out.”

  “I’m a little slow on the relationship thing,” I reply. “Besides, he’s got Lele. What else could he really want?”

  “Felisa had great tits.” Jonathan looks off into the distance, apparently imagining them.

  “They’re a little muddy right now.”

  “True dat.”

  “We need to dig into our own people, Jonathan,” I say. “Someone’s not who we think they are. There might even be a connection to Landon Stark and Seattle. That footage you got from the camera on Marcello? I found one of the guys on it, and he worked for Stark.”

  “Oh yeah? Damn!”

  “His name is Joshua Taylor, and his brother Justin used to do Rinaldo’s books.”

  “Didn’t you off him?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you know then?”

  “No,” I say, “he was just being an asshole. Still, we have to dig deep.”

  “I can’t argue with ya there, brotha,” Jonathan says. “I’m gonna start looking into a couple of people who haven’t been around long.”

  “Look at them all.” I point my finger up to Jonathan’s face. He probably has four inches on me, but he takes a slight step back anyway. “Every single person who knew what was going down today. All of them are potentials.”

  “You really want me checkin’ into Beni and Lucia?”

  “Everyone!”

  “Nick?”

  “I said everyone!”

  “Dude, they’re family.”

  “Families fuck each other over.”

  *****

  “You’re sure it’s her?” Rinaldo’s already pale face goes whiter as I give him the news.

  “Yes, sir.” I look down at the ground and clasp my hands in front of me. “We followed the chip’s signal.”

  He turns his face away from me and stares at the railing of the hospital bed. I shove my hands in my pockets because I can’t seem to control the shaking. I’ve never stood in front of this man and deceived him in such a way before, and his reaction is confusing me.

  I expect anger—fury even. I’ve seen that plenty of times. I know what it looks like, and I know how to react to it, but that’s not what I’m getting. Rinaldo is quiet. Far too quiet. He covers his eyes with his hand, and I barely recognize his voice when he speaks.

  “One of our missing Rugers was with her?”

  “It’s a Ruger,” I tell him. “I can’t say for sure if it’s one of the missing ones. Serial number’s been filed off.”

  “Did you find anything else?”

  “There was an orange T-shirt there as well, but I don’t want to jump to conclusions.”

  Rinaldo nods with his hand still covering his eyes. Again, his reaction isn’t what I expect. I’m waiting for him to give the order to start taking out the gangs, but he doesn’t. He just sits there.

  “Sir?”

  “It’s all my fault, Evan. I never should have let Lele bring her here. I never should have gotten so close. Someone figured it out, and I didn’t think about what kind of danger I was putting her in. I didn’t protect her. It’s all my fault.”

  I swallow past my tightening throat. I have no idea what I should say. I knew he would be upset when he found out, but I hadn’t expected this.

  “She should have had her own security,” he says. “Jesus, Evan, I fucked up. I fucked up, and now she’s…she’s…”

  He can’t continue, and I still have no words. I did it to protect him, not to hurt him. I didn’t realize he’d be hurt.

  Maybe I fucked up.

  “I need you to do something for me, Evan.”

  “Of course, sir. Anything.” I let out the breath I had been holding.

  All right. Back on track now. Send me to take revenge.

  “Get the bank account information that’s in her name. Withdraw all of it. There’s a safe-deposit box as well—get the contents. Once you have it all, bring it back to me.”

  “All right,” I say. “Can I ask why?”

  “Felisa has a daughter,” he says quietly. “I need to make sure it all goes to her.”

  A daughter? Who is the father? Rinaldo?

  I don’t ask. I don’t think I want to know.

  While Jonathan begins his research on the close members of the group, I drive up to Rinaldo’s office to do a bit of my own. All the little, niggling feelings that had been in the back of my head during official meetings were in the forefront of my mind now. I should have trusted my instincts before. If I had, maybe this wouldn’t have happened.

  Ralph has decided to go along for the ride. He follows me up the stairs to Rinaldo’s office and watches as I start looking through his desk. I’m not completely sure what I’m trying to find, but I feel there has to be something to give me some insight.

  “How did they get Capone?”

  I glance up, recognizing the voice but not being able to place it right away. There is no one there but Ralph, and I realize that the voice is technically my own. I just don’t really remember saying the words.

  “Tax fraud. The bookkeeper.”

  Ralph nods slowly as his mouth turns up in a half-smile.

  “Kind of cliché, isn’t it?”

  Ralph just shrugs. I don’t have Jonathan’s laptop to access all the files, so I head over to the main filing cabinet to see what I can find there. Everything inside of it is related to the legitimate businesses, which isn’t a surprise. It’s not like you keep detailed records labeled “meth sales” out in the open.

  I pull out some files on the uniform business, but it’s not very helpful. I do find a passcode to a digital file though and take it over to Rinaldo’s desk and boot up his computer. The file is easy enough to locate, and I wonder if Jonathan knows how unprotected some of the stuff on here is. I make a mental note to have him tighten the security.

  From the computer file, I can at least figure out that the caviar sales are partially driven through uniforms. That leads me to the rest of the caviar sales and the used car lots. One of the lots catches my eye—it’s the same one where I bought the Camaro.

  Caviar sales are tied to all the import cars, ironically enough. The domestics seem to be wrapped around meth distribution. On a whim, I check the sale of my own car. I knew what I actually paid the guy and see the discrepancy between what’s been recorded. I expect that—it’s how money is laundered in the first place. I make note of the exact difference before I dig deeper.

  The ledger containing the meth distribution doesn’t match. It’s only two hundred off, and someone might have excused it as a typo, but it’s enough to make me keep looking.

  “Who do you trust?”

  I glare at Ralph, who is now lounging on the couch against the wall.

  “No one,” I reply.

  “They’re family.” Ralph’s mouth moves, but it’s Jonathan’s voice I hear this time.

  I grab my phone and pull up his contact info.

  “Hey, brotha,” he replies after the first ring.

  “You checking for offshore accounts?”

  “It’s part of the plan, yeah.”

  “I’m looking for small increments,” I tell him. “A couple of hundred here and there.”

  “Someone skimming?”

  “More than one,” I say, thinking of Rinaldo’s little fund for Felisa. “Make sure you look for multiple accounts.”

  “I’m on it.”

  I
hang up and sit back in the chair.

  I don’t care who it is. If I find anyone who has cheated Rinaldo, ultimately leading to him being shot, they’re going to die.

  I feel like I owe it to him now.

  I lean back and close my eyes as I try to concentrate and put everything together. Beni’s working with Taylor in some capacity; I’m sure of that. Chances are, he’s the one taking a slice of the pie, but what’s his endgame? He’s connected to the family back in Sicily, and though greed always plays a part in such things, it has to be more than that.

  Power.

  Rinaldo’s reaching retirement. Lucia is the only logical family heir, but there’s no way Rinaldo will leave it all up to her. Beni’s interest in Lucia is apparent, and I’ve assumed they’ve been sleeping together, but is she involved, too? Does she know what Beni is doing?

  It’s difficult for me to imagine Lucia as a rat. It’s not just a matter of family ties and loyalty—she loves her father. She wouldn’t be involved in something that would jeopardize his life. Beni could be using her though. He could be planning to marry her and take over from that angle, but if so, he wouldn’t be stealing from what he believes will be his.

  There’s more to it.

  Seattle is without organization and leadership. It’s a good time to attempt a takeover. If he had the funds to orchestrate that, and also maintain power in Chicago, he’d end up the most powerful man in the country.

  With numbers and suspicions going through my head, I drive out onto the highway. Picking up Alina is more habit than intentional thought. Of course, I can’t find her anywhere. I have to drive around for an hour looking for her, but about the time I’m thinking about giving up, I come around the block and see her. She’s right there on her corner when I pull up.

  She approaches the car and gets in.

  “Hello, Evan.”

  I glance at her and nod. She stares at me from the passenger’s seat with a wary look, her head tilted a little to the right.

  I realize I need to add one more person to my list of possibilities. I don’t like the idea, but considering how I had been blindsided by the last hooker who had consistently shared my bed, I can’t discount Alina. She hasn’t mentioned me talking in my sleep, but it’s possible.