Otherwise Occupied

  It was Flannigan who acted when Greco tapped his thick finger on the desk – a prearranged sign.

  I moved without thought.

  Flannigan was going for his gun inside his jacket, and I wasn’t going to be able to both outdraw him like an old western and protect my boss at the same time. Instead, I went with a more melee approach.

  My hand moved out, knuckles forward, and collided with the center of his neck. The choking, raspy sound that emerged from his mouth was accompanied by bulging eyes and a rapidly reddening face. He dropped to the ground, and I kicked out at him while drawing my weapon from the back of my pants at the same time.

  I didn’t bother with the other two men – there wasn’t time to actually shoot anyone. Their weapons were already out and aimed at me. I had to go with a more tactical approach, which meant pointing the barrel of the Beretta at Greco’s face.

  Flannigan heaved in a breath, and in my peripheral vision I could see him drawing his weapon and pointing it towards my head. This wasn’t part of their plan, though, and he didn’t know what to do next.

  With three guns pointed at various parts of my body, I remained completely still. My heart was pounding in my chest, and adrenalin coursed through my system, but I refused to let it show in my face or in the steady way I held my Beretta right between Gavino Greco’s eyes.

  “You know you die if you pull that trigger,” he said quietly. The calm of his voice didn’t match the slight tremor in his fingertips, nor the tiny bead of sweat forming at his hairline.

  “Yes, sir,” I replied.

  “So why don’t I just have them fire?” Greco said with a sly little smile. “You’ll be dead before you can retaliate, and your boss there will follow you into the afterlife shortly.”

  “No, sir,” I said. “If I get hit, even with an instant kill, my finger’s already tight against the trigger. With the angle and the trauma to my system, my finger will pull back in reflex. Yeah, I’ll be dead, but I’ll take you with me. Whatever happens after that…well, honestly? I don’t give a shit.”

  Our eyes remained locked with each other. I could see the man’s eyes as they looked for lies within my face, but he could find nothing. He obviously played more cards than he watched the Discovery channel, and I could see him ask himself – was I holding aces or deuces? Was my knowledge of physiology accurate?

  He had no idea, but he was self-centered enough to not take the chance.

  “A misunderstanding,” he said softly. “I’m sure the Russians must have been behind it.”

  “Let’s put it behind us then, shall we?” Rinaldo’s voice floated from my right, but I could hear the odd tenor in the sound. He still wasn’t sure – he didn’t know if we had won or not, but I knew we had.

  Just the battle, not the war. This was far from over.

  “Put those down, boys,” Greco said. “We don’t want to be late for dinner.”

  Three guns dropped towards the ground, but I didn’t alter my position at all. Even as all four of them backed out of the office, turned and raced for the elevator, the business end of my Beretta stayed trained to his face.

  I did not take chances.

  Never again.

  I stood still as my heart pounded, and the adrenaline in my system started to sour. My eyes stayed locked on the hallway, daring one of them to try to come back. The lighted numbers at the top of the elevator showed their descent back to the first floor, and I still watched to make sure none of the elevators started to rise again. When they didn’t, I listened for the echo of footsteps on the stairwell.

  “I think they’re gone,” Rinaldo said.

  I didn’t move.

  “Arden, they’re not coming back. Look at the security cameras.”

  My fingers twitched on the handle of the gun, and my index finger flexed slightly.

  “Evan.”

  “Just making sure,” I said simply.

  “Well, I’m pretty sure.”

  I nodded, took a step back, and lowered my weapon. When my eyes turned to the monitors, I could see them in a long, black car leaving the parking lot.

  “They knew you were going to be alone,” I said.

  “Yes, I think that’s correct.”

  “Who knew Mario was across town?” I asked.

  “A handful,” Rinaldo replied. “There were six others besides Mario and myself in the room when he had to leave. All loyal men, though.”

  I looked over at him and raised an eyebrow.

  “One of them isn’t.”

  He nodded.

  “Apparently.”

  Rinaldo went through the list of people who knew about Mario’s sudden absence, and it didn’t make me feel any better at all. Two were family in the quite literal sense. Another pair dealt with some of the side businesses – money laundering, mostly. Jonathan and Terry were also on the list

  I couldn’t consider either one as definitely innocent or definitely guilty – I was too biased against both of them, just in different directions. If I found out about Jonathan being treacherous, I’d have to kill him. On the other hand, I wanted to find out Terry was a rat because he was annoying and I wanted him dead, anyway. I’d shoot first, never bother to ask any questions, and then get burned later if I was wrong.

  It was probably best I didn’t get involved in this one.

  “I need you to do a little side job for me,” Rinaldo said.

  He must have been reading my mind, but not in a way I considered favorable.

  “What about Ashton?”

  “When do you plan to take him out?”

  “In Atlanta,” I said. “He’ll be there next week.

  “Ashton can wait,” Rinaldo said. “I need this sooner.”

  Shit.

  His mind was set, and there was no way I was going to change it.

  “Whatever you say, sir.”

  “Do some spying, do some watching – all that shit you’re extra good at. What do you call it? Recon?”

  I nodded.

  “I need your top three picks,” he said. “The top three guys you think might have said something to Greco. I want to know why they’re your top picks, and then we’re going to bring them all together for a little party.”

  “What about family?” I asked quietly.

  Rinaldo’s eyes darkened.

  “Your top three picks,” he repeated. “I don’t care whose cunt they’ve been in or come out of, you understand?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  He turned towards me and placed a hand on my shoulder.

  “I can’t let this go, Evan,” he said. “I need some closure on this one. I can’t take out Greco. I’m not positioned to do that just yet, but I need this – I need this fixed.”

  “Yes, sir,” I replied. “I understand.”

  “You will do this for me?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Now?”

  “Now?” I repeated. The look in his eyes didn’t indicate he was going with the equivalent of sometime soon. “As in, right this moment, sir?”

  “Find the rat scurrying around in my business, Evan. Find him and bring him to me. I don’t care about his relationships or how long he’s been here; I need to know who he is.”

  “Three top men?”

  “You bring them to me,” he said. “I’ll make sure I get the right one.”

  “Today?”

  “Right now.”

  I swallowed, and my still tense body tried to relax enough to think. If this wasn’t a test, I didn’t know what was. This was it though – this was the real way I got back into his graces. I could read between the lines, too. Don’t fuck up, Arden. Not again.

  “I will be counting on you, then, Mister Arden.”

  I nodded, turned, and left the office.

  There was a lot of work to do if I was going to have any chance at coming up with the right three people as quickly as he wanted them. I also still wanted to make the hit on Ashton in Atlanta – I’d already done so much work to get ready for tha
t, and changing the hit to another place was going to make it ten times harder. I’d practically have to start over again, and I hated to waste work.

  I had to move fast, but I had to be careful, too. Bringing in the wrong people would be just as dangerous and career-ending as being late. I had to know I was right, which means I had to go the fastest route possible.

  First and foremost – alibis.

  Usually I would use Jonathan Ferris and his computer skills for such work, but I was going to have to do this one on my own. It wasn’t my strong point, but I had resources people didn’t know about.

  I walked into Walgreens and picked up a pre-paid cell phone which I paid for in cash. I examined the packaging as I headed back outside. As soon as I stepped out of the revolving door, I had to jump back against the building to avoid some guy doing a duck-walk down the sidewalk. He had a cup of something in his hands, which were clasped behind his back. With every step he took, the liquid sloshed out of the cup and onto the cement. A nearly burnt-out cigarette stuck between his lips completed the scene.

  I shook my head and tried not to laugh as I dumped the phone’s packaging into the trash, activated it, and dialed a number from memory.

  “Hey Eddie-boy,” I said into the phone. “It’s Arden.”

  “How goes, LT?”

  “I’m retired, asshole,” I reminded him.

  “You’ll always be my lieutenant.”

  I honestly wished he wouldn’t say that.

  Edward McHenry, or Eddie-boy as everyone called him, was the communications guy during the first mission I commanded and the only mission I commanded that turned out favorably. We bonded just because we both grew up in southwestern Ohio, and his was the first friendly face I saw after I was brought back from the desert.

  “Well, how about you do your friend a little favor?”

  “Anything you want, LT,” Eddie-boy said.

  “Phone records,” I said. “From the past week from six different people. Just numbers and shit will do, but if you got VOIP logs, that would be awesome.”

  “Give me the numbers,” Eddie-boy said.

  I rattled off the phone numbers.

  “I need this quick,” I told him. “Super quick.”

  “You paying super much?” Eddie-boy asked with a laugh.

  “What happened to all that ‘oh, my lieutenant, my lieutenant’ shit?” I asked.

  “You should have gone for the promotion, war hero,” Eddie-boy responded. “It just doesn’t flow like captain does.”

  I sighed.

  “Wire transfer?”

  “Naturally.”

  “On its way,” I said. “Half now, half when your information proves good. Double if you get it in the next hour.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  I could practically see him saluting.

  It cost a shitload of money, but the information received fifty-two minutes later was definitely worth it.

  I checked out Jonathan first and was glad to see that he ordered a pizza on his way out of Rinaldo’s office and spent the next three hours exactly where I would have expected – on the internet, watching porn. I scrolled through the other numbers he’d dialed and other areas his GPS had tracked him, but found nothing the least bit suspicious, and I was glad.

  I took a deep breath and happened to glance up at a shop window across from Millennium Park. In the window was a “Save Ferris” T-shirt from the Ferris Bueller’s Day Off movie. Jonathan always took shit for his last name because of it, but I couldn’t resist the irony, so I popped inside and bought him one. His birthday was coming up.

  For better or worse, Terry was also clean. I had full speech-to-text logs on him going back a month, which was actually kind of handy. He’d gone from the Moretti household to some shit bar by Dearborn Park and hung out with two friends he called along the way. They were still there – or at least his GPS equipped phone was. I wasn’t going to have time to go through all his logs until later, but it would be convenient if I ever needed anything on him.

  The third one I checked was Steven Hobbs. He did a lot of the grunt work when it came to siphoning funds from the world of electronic payments and turning it into cash that could be used anywhere. The man probably had three hundred bank accounts, credit card accounts, and ACH routing numbers in his pocket at any given time. He was paid well for his services, though he could probably just pay himself any time he wanted.

  There weren’t any phone logs, but there was one call that looked a little strange. Someone called him from a payphone across town – not an area of town where my boss’ people were usually to be found. It didn’t make him a rat, but he went to the top of my list.

  I went through the family next with a bit of trepidation. Bad news to a family like the Moretti’s was likely to go from no Christmas card next year to an all out war in just a couple of minutes if the wrong words were said. The last thing I wanted to be was the catalyst for a family war. Fault or not, I’d be one of the first casualties.

  The two in question were second or third cousins to Rinaldo and not close in the family business. Close enough to not be stupid, I would have hoped, but they didn’t have their fingers in all the little pies Moretti had going. They had been at the house to see Luisa – Rinaldo’s fair daughter. Like Jonathan, she had a birthday coming up apparently, and they were all planning a cruise somewhere in the Mediterranean.

  I made a mental note to come up with a suitable gift.

  All the family members checked out, too.

  Even Steven Hobbs’ boss checked out, which left me – interestingly enough – just the one real suspect. I wondered if I might actually get that lucky that quickly. It was possible.

  I needed more intel.

  I called Eddie-boy back and got Hobbs’ location – a bar over on North Michigan Avenue – and quickly made my way over there. I recognized the guy at the end of the bar when I walked in, but he didn’t look up or notice me.

  Hobbs was a chunky guy, mid-thirties with bad skin and greasy hair. He was just the sort that spent his life trying to make up for all the times he was picked on in grade school. I had no patience for the type, but that didn’t make him my traitor. If nothing else, I would have expected him to be a little more nervous. Who would betray a mob boss and then sit in a grubby bar with a Miller Lite in his hand?

  It wasn’t long before a woman joined him. She had short blonde hair, a skinny ass, and ridiculous heels – definitely not my type. She sauntered up to Steven and practically sat in his lap. The music was up a little, and I couldn’t hear her at first. With practiced subtlety, I moved around the bar and sat with my back to both of them where I could hear pretty easily.

  “So, no calls from work?” the blonde was asking.

  “I told you, Maria, I did everything I needed to do earlier,” Steven responded. “Part of what I like about working for Moretti – I get to set my own hours.”

  “He’s a demanding boss, though,” Maria said. “Maybe you’ll get a call about him.”

  She kept asking questions, and the dumb-ass kept answering them for her. At one point, she said the words I needed to hear.

  “So, how is Mario’s mother?”

  “I don’t know,” Stephen said. “Once he left Moretti’s place, I didn’t hear from him again. She went to the hospital in Gary – that’s all I heard. Why do you care so much, anyway?”

  Why, indeed?

  She flirted and kissed on him for a while and then claimed she had errands to run and would meet up with him again later. As she left, I tossed some cash down on the table for my seltzer and followed her.

  She wasn’t all that bright.

  “He hasn’t heard a thing,” she said into the phone as she walked away. “Tell Gavino no one is on to him – we’re good to go.”

  It was all I needed to hear. I didn’t even wait – I just moved up behind her while she was still distracted and on the phone. She hung up and started to rummage around in her purse for her keys. By the time she got the car door o
pen, I was on her.

  An elderly couple and a bum on the sidewalk both watched me as I grabbed her by the arm, covered her mouth with my other hand, and shoved her into her own car. I didn’t care who saw me – eyewitnesses were unreliable at best – and the one person who was sure to remember me later wasn’t going to live long enough to tell anyone about me.

  I also just didn’t care. It wasn’t like I was going to go to prison for anything. If I was caught, I’d either be acquitted or dead. Prison wasn’t going to enter into it.

  Before she really grasped what was happening, I punched her once on the side of the face to stun her, then grabbed her keys and got the car going. By the time I pulled into traffic, I had my gun to her head.

  “No words unless I ask you a question, and no movement – you understand?”

  “Y…y…yes!”

  “What’s your name? And don’t say Maria.”

  She didn’t respond until I touched the business end of the Beretta against her temple.

  “If I hit a pot hole, you’re dead,” I informed her. “You might want to answer my question so I can concentrate on my driving.”

  “Nina,” she said quietly. “Nina Carson.”

  I knew who she was immediately. Killing James Carson is what had me sent to Arizona, and Nina was his sister. Greco was doing her cousin on the side.

  “Take out your phone,” I instructed.

  With a shaking hand, she did as I said.

  “Now call up Mister Hobbs and tell him you need to see him right away.”

  “But…but I just left him…”

  “Tell him to meet you in the parking garage of the Chicago Sun Times.”

  “The garage?”

  “You heard me.”

  She swallowed a couple of times, and I had to wonder what was going on in her head. She wasn’t new to all this, that much was sure. It was entirely possible she knew exactly who I was, but not likely.

  She made the call like her life depended on it, so maybe she did know who I was. She followed directions and told Steven right where to meet us but not why. She gave nothing away and sounded very convincing.

  Proper little liar.

  I pulled her car into a handicapped space in the parking garage next to a small, metal door. I kept my gun at her face, moved backwards out of the driver’s side door, and then brought her through with me.