We ate; I fed Odin, and then I stepped out onto the balcony to smoke after I had cleaned up the dishes. I had to insist on it, telling Lia that the cook didn’t do the cleaning. It was a phrase I had learned in the convent, though I hadn’t used it since then.
Throughout the rest of the evening of television-watching and somewhat subdued fucking—for us, anyway—my paranoia over being followed grew. Lia seemed to sense that I was on edge, but I wouldn’t tell her why. I didn’t want her to worry about it and then not be able to sleep. If she didn’t sleep, I wouldn’t either.
She fell asleep, and I got back up and went out into the living room. I looked around at the handful of still unpacked boxes but wasn’t sure where anything in them should go, so I sat on the couch and watched Odin watch me from his bed.
I tried not to think, but it didn’t work. Memories assaulted me. My mind replayed a vision of myself looking down the scope of my Barrett and squeezing the trigger.
“What the hell was that, sergeant?” My captain’s voice comes from behind me, and I turn to look at him.
“Insurgent,” I say quietly. “I could see the explosives under his shirt—he was heading in our direction. As soon as I hit him, his hand must have release the detonator.”
I feel his hand on my shoulder.
“Keep watch,” he says. “He may not have been the only one. I’ll send a couple of our boys out to check what’s left.”
“Stupid fucking kid. What made him do something like that? They knew we were on the watch.”
Odin’s wet nose came in contact with my bare leg, and he snuffed at me. I reached down and thanked him for his observation skills with a scratch behind the ears.
As much as I tried not to let it seep into me, the stress was just too much. Eventually, I pushed myself off the couch, pulled on a pair of jeans, slipped into my shoulder holster, and tucked my Beretta in it. I grabbed the assault rifle and a magazine of hollow-tipped rounds from the closet. Out on the balcony, I leaned my back against the rails and watched.
It was a quiet night—too quiet for my preferences. I liked the noise of the city, but there wasn’t much to be heard here. Quiet gave me the advantage if someone was approaching, but it also made me a bit jumpy every time a bird landed in a tree. I had a decent view of the river and tried to focus down the rifle’s barrel in that direction, but there wasn’t a scope on it, so I couldn’t see much.
I’d have to get it fitted with a scope.
I sat out there for a long time, just looking down to the street and watching for anything that didn’t look right to me. With my fingers curled around the AR, I felt a bit more in control. In the morning, I’d find Lenny Yates and do a little dirty work.
If I were going to admit it, I would have to say I was looking forward to it, not because of who it was, but because I hadn’t taken anyone out in a while. I was eager to get back to work and to show Gavino I was serious about joining up with him. It would also get me that much closer to getting Trent what he wanted so I could get Lia out of town.
Nothing was going to stop me from getting this job done.
Chapter 14—Heated Argument
On the northwest side of Chicago, next to a low-rent school district’s transportation department, there was a two-story building where Rinaldo’s underlings were often found. The area was used for a variety of activities. There were a handful of ancient, broken down school buses that looked to be long forgotten. They made for quick and easy temporary storage, and the area was an out-of-the-way place to conduct some of the smaller transfers of goods for money. The building also served as an occasional residence for those who didn’t have anywhere else to live.
It was simply referred to as the warehouse by Rinaldo’s crew. I’d never lived there myself, but I’d been there plenty of times. When someone in the organization got out of line, I’d killed there a few times as well. It was right by the river, which made dumping the bodies quick and easy.
From the rooftop of the warehouse, I watched a lot full of parked school buses as the sun rose over the trees and shone down on my back. It was a beautiful summer morning but too early for people to actually be working on the buses in need of repair. That didn’t mean the lot was empty though.
Lenny Yates and a dark-haired, greasy guy in faded jeans and a plain white T-shirt had just entered one of the buses. I didn’t recognize the other guy, but Lenny was easy enough to spot. He was tall, lanky, and was probably recruited for basketball in his younger days. Too bad he had such a coke habit, or he might have been good player. Instead, he worked the shit end of Moretti’s business and snorted most of his earnings.
I was glad my information was still fresh enough from before I had been locked up to remember he had been spending a lot of time at the warehouse, smuggling weapons in the back of the buses. I observed for a while as the two of them unloaded several small crates from the back of a U-Haul trailer attached to a pickup truck and took them through a hole in the fence and into one of the buses off by itself. They were right next to a group of trees lining the Chicago River, which would be convenient enough if I wanted a place to dump the trash when I was done taking it out.
I moved silently to the side of the building and positioned myself behind an air conditioning unit. It was decent cover as long as no one from higher up happened to look down. The air conditioner also provided a little cover noise, but there wasn’t a silencer for the AR, so it wouldn’t make much difference once I fired.
The vantage point from the roof wasn’t a great angle, so I moved quickly to the south side of the warehouse where there were a couple of trees right up against the building. I tossed the AR over my shoulder and reached for the closest branch. It was sturdy, and I gripped the limb tightly as I tossed my leg over the side and shimmied down the trunk.
I looked back over toward the bus, but they were still inside.
The tree right next to me had a nice fork in the trunk, and I jumped up to settle myself in the middle of it. The view was perfect from here and gave me more cover if there was someone in one of the taller buildings nearby. No one would be able to see me where I was.
I reached behind my neck and carefully secured a set of earplugs in my ears. While I looked toward the pickup, I reached to my side with my right hand, grabbed the pistol grip, and brought the assault rifle around slowly. With my left hand wrapped around the magazine, I moved the gun to eye level and lined up the rear and front sights on top of the barrel.
The greasy guy in jeans came out first with Lenny right behind him. They moved over to the side of the pickup truck and right into my line of vision. I breathed in, then let the air out slowly. My finger pulled back against the trigger.
Two blasts.
Two bodies on the ground.
I jumped out of the tree and ran forward quickly. The greasy guy had been a clean shot, but Lenny was hit in the throat and still alive. His eyes widened as he saw me, and he opened his mouth. No sound came from it, but I wasn’t much of a conversationalist while on the job anyway, so I put another shot in his brain with my Beretta. I pulled out an old Polaroid camera from its case attached to my belt, took two pictures, and then quickly hauled the bodies to the river.
I knelt down by a pile of broken concrete blocks and made sure both the bodies were on their way down the river before I shoved myself back up on my feet to make my escape. As I did, I could hear sirens approaching. Someone had heard the gunfire and called it in, but I had plenty of time to get out of the area. My only regret was not having time to check out the weapons in the bus before I had to move on. I ran down the tree line, staying under cover of the thick summer growth. A rental car I had picked up from the airport was parked on a nearby street, and I tossed my weapons in the back, climbed behind the wheel, and slowly drove off down the street.
I looked in the rearview mirror and saw the first of the police cars turning off the main road and onto the side street near the warehouse. With a smile on my face, I drove out of the area, ditched the car, a
nd headed back to the hotel provided by Gavino. I spent about ten minutes yanking little burrs off my boots and jeans—they were all over the place near the river’s edge. I decided to leave the duffel bag there in the room so I wasn’t carrying the murder weapon around so quickly after a hit. I’d come back for it later. If it had been my Barrett, I would have kept it with me, but I didn’t give a shit about these guns.
With the two pictures sealed in an envelope shoved into my pocket, I took a complicated route out of the area. Bus, train, bus again. I grabbed a cab back to Michigan Avenue, and then jumped on the bus to head back home. I got off a few blocks away, preferring to walk the last bit to make damn sure I wasn’t being followed.
Though I’d made the hit at daybreak, it had taken me most of the rest of the day to get back to the new apartment. It was past the usual suppertime, but it was mid-June and the sun was still up. Outside the air was warm and comfortable. The wind wasn’t as bad, either. I was used to a lot of lake wind, but we were a little farther west than my previous place was located where there wasn’t so much of a constant breeze.
When I approached the apartment, Lia was standing in the green space with tears in her eyes, holding onto the end of Odin’s leash. There was an older woman beside her with another dog lying nearby on the ground. The woman was shaking her finger and shouting at Lia.
“You are responsible for your dog’s behavior!” the woman was yelling.
I half remembered seeing the woman before, walking a really big, fluffy shepherd-type dog. I wasn’t sure of the actual breed, but it was big with long, thick hair and coloring similar to a collie. The woman was most certainly of retirement age—well beyond, really—and very small in stature. She looked kind of ridiculous walking a dog that had to be a hundred and thirty pounds.
“I’m sorry!” Lia exclaimed. “I tried to hold on to him—he’s never even tried to get away from me before! I don’t know what got into him!”
“What the hell?” I groaned as I walked up.
Lia’s eyes found me, and the tears started flowing. I looked over at the woman, who was wearing tan slacks and one of those swimsuit cover-ups over her blouse. She had her hands on her hips, and her head bobbed up and down as she talked.
“Your wife has no control over your dog!” she barked.
I raised an eyebrow in Lia’s direction over the marital status assumption but didn’t correct the woman. Lia seemed too upset to notice.
“I tried to hold onto him, Evan—I swear!” Lia started to cry harder. “I couldn’t keep my grip, and he ran off! The next thing I know, he’s…he’s…”
“He violated my baby!” the woman roared as she indicated the well-groomed dog now sitting on the ground next to her, licking at her own nether-regions.
I looked over to my dog, who sat panting in front of Lia’s feet, looking very proud of himself. It wasn’t difficult to assess the situation for what it was, and I had to grin and waggle my eyebrows at my buddy.
The woman continued to fume.
“We couldn’t pull them apart,” Lia said meekly.
“You were hardly trying!” the woman shouted. “It was all I could do to keep Gretta calm!”
“He growled at me!”
“Hey!” I snapped at Odin, who immediately dropped to the ground and put his nose on his paws. I pointed over at Lia. “Don’t growl at her!”
“You should have been here earlier!” the woman said as she turned to me. “He was completely out of control! Do you realize what he did?”
It was pretty obvious.
“He fucked your dog?” I tried to make it sound like a question though I didn’t have any doubt. I folded my arms across my chest and glared at the woman.
“She was supposed to be bred with another Caucasian Shepherd later this week!”
I leaned to the side to peer around the woman at the dog in the grass, who was still concentrating on her own after-care.
“You mean you brought your in-heat bitch out here in the open for any other dog to smell and go nuts about her?” I cocked a thumb toward Odin. “And now you’re surprised he got a little horny?”
“She was on her leash and in my control the whole time!”
“Then why didn’t you stop her from spreading her legs?”
“Don’t be ridiculous!” she snapped back at me. “We were just standing there when your beast attacked!”
“She kinda looks like she enjoyed it,” I pointed out. The bitch was still licking herself but seemed just as happy about the whole thing as Odin did.
Lia was visibly upset; the woman was irate, and I thought the whole situation was hilarious.
I reached out and took Odin’s leash from Lia, then stepped in front of her a bit so I was between her and the woman with the—very likely impregnated—dog.
“You are as insolent as your mutt!” the woman informed me.
“Probably more so,” I said with a nod. “Look, it happened—can’t change that now. If she does have pups, I’ll pay for it, okay?”
“You’ll pay the cost of the litter she was supposed to have!” the woman demanded.
“How much is that?”
“She could have had as many as ten of them,” the woman said with a smirk. “At two thousand a piece, you do the math!”
“Twenty grand for a bunch of dogs?” I rolled my eyes. “Whatever. I’ll pay you based on how many pups she does have.”
“I would have bred her multiple times with the stud dog,” the woman informed me. She gave me a nasty little smirk to go with her attitude. “She would have had more.”
“Then let him fuck her a couple more times,” I suggested. “He could use the action.”
“Most certainly not!”
“Then the deal stands.” I took a step forward and leaned closer to the woman. I made sure I was right up in her face and staring down at her before I dropped my voice low. “I suggest you take it because the humor of this situation is starting to wane a bit. You don’t want me pissed off, or I might decide to just take a clothes hanger and fix the whole situation. Capisce?”
I didn’t tend to use Italian as much as my co-workers, but quite frankly, sometimes it made the point better than English. The woman took a step back as I lifted my eyebrows and stared her down. She obviously picked up on my meaning, huffed her agreement, and then hauled her dog back toward the apartment entrance.
“Jesus, Evan!” Lia whispered as the woman scurried away.
“It’s all right,” I said, trying to sound reassuring. “I don’t know if I could have cock-blocked him under those circumstances either.”
I snickered a little, grinned down at Odin, and started back to the apartment.
“That’s not what I meant,” Lia muttered as she fell into step with me.
“What, then?”
“You practically threatened her!”
I shrugged one shoulder.
“It shut her up, didn’t it?”
“Not the point.”
“What is the point?” I sighed and opened the door for Lia and me to enter with Odin prancing behind me, still looking self-satisfied and downright cocky.
“What if she calls the police?”
“For what? Me offering to pay her for her fucking dogs?”
“No, for threatening to violently abort them!”
“I wouldn’t have done that,” I scoffed. “Besides, at that point, it would be her word against mine.”
“I was a witness you know.”
I stopped for a minute and looked at her.
“Are you saying you’d speak out against me?” I watched her carefully, wondering if she would really do that. I was used to running in the kind of circles where that offense would be punishable by death, and I was a little taken aback that she’d consider it. My skin went a little cold at the idea.
“Are you saying you would ask me to lie for you?”
“Yes.” I kept looking at her, waiting for her to respond, but she just seemed dumbfounded. I was a little pissed but
figured the conversation was over and she understood where I was coming from, so I made my way back to the apartment with Odin trailing behind and Lia remaining silent.
At least, she did until we got inside.
“I have no idea whether you’re serious or not,” she said.
I walked into the kitchen and started to rummage around in the fridge. I didn’t reply to her because I didn’t see any point in answering. The whole conversation was making me mad, and I honestly didn’t know how to deal with it.
My idea of conflict resolution just didn’t fit the situation.
Avoidance was my next best option, but Lia seemed hell-bent on keeping me from doing that.
“You said you wouldn’t really hurt that dog, but then you would expect me to lie for you. How am I supposed to know when you mean it and when you don’t?”
I opened up one of the drawers in the refrigerator, but I only looked in the direction of the food that was in there. None of the actual contents were registering inside my agitated brain. I closed the drawer and then pushed some of the containers around to see what was behind them.
“Are you even listening to me?” Lia asked.
“Yes,” I replied.
“Then why aren’t you saying anything?”
“I’m hungry.”
“Do you think this might be a little more important?”
I backed away and slammed the fridge door hard enough that the contents rattled.
“No,” I said, “I don’t. I think this is total bullshit.”
Lia started to open her mouth, but that’s when my phone rang. I was thrilled for the interruption and grabbed it out of my pocket immediately. I didn’t recognize the number, but I answered just to get myself out of the argument with Lia.
“Yeah?” I said into the phone.
“Open the fucking door,” the unfortunately familiar voice on the other end said.
As if I wasn’t pissed off enough.
Trent stood in the hallway looking like the rat-bastard he was when I opened the door, but I blocked him from coming inside.