felt. “You go near her again I’ll fucking kill you!” He squared up over me and delivered a kick to my groin that would have crushed my testicles had he hit them. Instead the impact came just to their left, bless him, on the inside of my thigh. It was painful enough, but didn’t extinguish the possibility of fatherhood. I curled into a fetal position and took one more kick in the midsection. His shoe hit my folded forearms, rather than my stomach; still, I was glad his choice in footwear ran to leather loafers, not steel-toed boots.
He stood over me, panting, jabbing the finger down at me. “Get the message, motherfucker?”
Was he selling me out to Marco, out of his mind or running another game entirely? I had no choice but to let it play out. I lay in a tight curl as Marco Di Pietra and the other man came up to Ryan. I tried to keep my face hidden, like when I was a kid, terrified of the witch in The Wizard of Oz, trying to fall asleep with a sheet over my head. If I can’t see her, she can’t see me.
“What the fuck is this?” Marco said.
“Hey, boss,” Ryan said. “Hey, Phil. What’s going on?”
“Hey,” Phil said. His voice was low and raspy, a heavy smoker’s bass. I’d caught only a glimpse of him before Ryan knocked me down: bigger than Marco by a few inches and a good many pounds, with thick dark hair slicked back from a widow’s peak. Despite the heat, he wore a Detroit Tigers warm-up jacket, which likely meant he was concealing a weapon.
“You ask me what’s going on?” Marco said. He spoke quickly like always, with a metallic edge to his voice. “That’s what I came to ask you.”
“You followed me.”
“I had to. You didn’t tell me where you were going.”
“I thought we were done.”
“I’ll tell you when we’re done,” Marco said.
“Whatever you say.”
“So what’s this here?”
“What?”
“The pube at your feet.”
“Just something I had to take care of.”
“Something you didn’t tell me about.”
“It’s personal,” Ryan said. I hoped he looked more confident than he sounded. Or was he showing a little submission to Marco, the way a weaker dog shows its belly to an alpha male?
“There is no personal, Ryan,” Marco said. “There’s only business. And anything that is business, you share. Otherwise, you’re holding back from me.”
“Come on, boss. You think I hold back from you?”
“I go by what I feel, not what I think,” Marco said. “And something didn’t feel right tonight. Right, Phil?”
Phil said, “Right.”
“I had this instinct, didn’t I?”
“You did,” Phil said.
“I said, What’s with Dante? It’s like he didn’t want to be around me. He couldn’t wait to leave. Isn’t that what I said?”
“Word for word,” Phil said.
“So I act on my instinct. We follow you down here and what do I find? You doing business you didn’t tell me about. What did I say, Phil? People turn on you, I said.”
“Right,” Phil said. “I remember.”
“I said, people turn on you for the least incentive. Wave anything at them-cash, pussy, a new gun, a ride- they’ll sell you out on the spot. Right, Phil?”
“Verbatim,” Phil said.
“So who do we have on the ground here?” Marco said.
Oh fuck. I thought. Here it comes.
“A little business on the side? Maybe something for my brother?”
Ryan said, “No, boss, it’s got nothing to do with Vito. I haven’t even seen him since his daughter’s confirma-”
“Did I ask when you saw him last? Did I?”
“No.”
“It would be strange if you haven’t seen him, even if it’s true, because I heard he’s been trolling around everywhere, flaunting cash at people, trying to buy them over to his side.”
“He hasn’t tried it with me,” Ryan said.
“Why? You’re not people?”
“He knows better than to try.”
“Oooh. He knows. How the fuck would you know what my brother knows? He’s so stupid even he doesn’t know what he knows.”
“Well, he hasn’t tried.”
“What if he did?”
“I’d tell him to stick it.”
“Sure you would, Dante. Sure you would. So if this douchebag on the ground here has nothing to do with Vito and nothing to do with me, then who the fuck you working for? Buffalo now?”
“It’s strictly personal, boss.”
“Is he fucking your wife?”
“Come on.”
“Is he eating your wife’s pussy?”
“Hey!”
“Hey what? If he isn’t fucking your wife or eating her pussy then it isn’t personal and don’t say that to me again.” Then Marco said to me, “Stand up.”
I stayed where I was and groaned softly.
“Stand him up,” Marco told Phil.
Phil pulled me to my feet. I kept my head down, clutching my stomach as if in great pain. Marco walked over and grabbed my chin and lifted it. He was wearing black pants and a tight-fitting black shirt with orange-and-black flames reaching up as if consuming his upper body. If only.
I hoped he wouldn’t recognize me; he’d only seen me the one time outside the District Court. But he said “Son of a bitch” softly, and raised his sunglasses up onto his forehead. The asshole had actually added a few blond highlights to his long black curls. “If it isn’t Mr. Undercover.”
I’ve never seen the eyes of a shark six inches from my own, but they couldn’t have been more lifeless than the ones that stared at me now.
“You know him?” Phil asked.
“Fucking right I know him. Jonah fucking Geller. Sawed-off Jewish prick who played me for a fool, got me paraded around in court. Cost me over a million cash.”
I could smell his breath, feel his spit against my face. I could feel my own anger surging through my limbs. I had never wanted to hit anyone as much as I wanted to hit Marco Di Pietra in that moment, lay him out for what he had ordered to be done to the Silver family. A lot of people probably felt that way about Marco, which is why he had men like Phil around him. Men like Dante Ryan.
“What’d he do?” Phil asked.
“A few months ago, we had a tobacco job that went bad. You were still in Millhaven.”
“Oh, yeah,” Phil grinned. “We heard about that one.” He stopped grinning when Marco turned the shark eyes on him.
“Ten million cigarettes up for grabs,” Marco said. “Half a million packs. I had guys lined up to buy them three bucks a pack, could sell them for five and still beat the retail price by a mile. Everyone makes money. I would’ve cleared a million-two, maybe more, till the undercover kike turned up.”
Marco grabbed my ears and pulled my face even closer. “You know how bad I could use that money now?” he hissed. “You know how many friends a million bucks could buy?”
Marco let go of me and turned on Ryan. “You said this was a personal matter? What the fuck personal matter
