“Why?” As soon as the question escaped his mouth, Evan pulled it back. He slipped the shirt over his head.
“You recognize?” Antonio said. “That’s the shirt for the national futbol team of Italia. ”
Evan didn’t care. He didn’t even know that they played football in Italy.
Antonio pointed to a spot on the floor in front of the picture. “Stand there.”
Evan did as he was told while Antonio produced a little camera and a newspaper from the padded envelope. The paper was called Il Golfo, and it featured a picture of a man Evan had never seen before.
“Hold the paper up next to your head and smile,” the man commanded.
Evan remained stone faced.
Antonio’s expression grew colder. “Mister Evan Guinn, we do not know each other good yet, but in the coming years, we will get to know each other very good, and as we do you will find that I am not a nice man. I am a mean man who does not mind hurting people. I do not mind hurting you.”
Evan’s stomach iced over. Did he just say in the coming years? Could that possibly be true?
“Evan Guinn, you will smile for this picture one way or the other, but I promise you that it is far harder to smile when you are in pain.”
Evan stood tall, raised the paper next to his head, and smiled.
The camera flashed a total of five times as Antonio took the same picture again and again.
When he was done, he slipped the camera back into the envelope, and he snatched the newspaper out of the boy’s hands. “Give me back the shirt,” he said.
Evan nearly asked why, but stopped himself. He retracted his arms from the sleeves, then slipped the neck ring over his head and handed it back.
“Very good,” Antonio said. He carefully folded the shirt and eased it back into the envelope, which he then placed on a nearby table.
“It’s good to have that done,” Antonio went on. “Now we put you to work.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Mitch Ponder ordered a Modelo beer to go along with his fourth club soda and lime. With his guest running late and the restaurant filling up around him, he figured he had to order something with a price tag just to keep from getting thrown out.
The fact that he hadn’t yet heard from Jose meant that the man had either had a change of heart, or he had gone to the other side. Either way, his family would be dead by morning. A promise is a promise, after all, and actions must have consequences. Mitch wouldn’t handle the details himself, of course-finding street thugs willing to kill was not a challenge in this godforsaken country-but they would be handled. Mitch intentionally did not immerse himself in the minutiae. Whatever itch he had for taking lives was more than adequately scratched by people who were willing to pay for the service.
Continued good pay, however, required continued competent service, and by any measure he’d come up short of that on the Lincoln Hines hit. Who knew that something that happened so long ago could have legs for so many years?
It wasn’t even a complicated hit. Sure, it was high-profile, the guy being a Senate wannabe and all, and the guy who paid for the hit was naturally the first suspect, but engineering a fake suicide was the easiest thing in the world. You plant a few distressed e-mails in the guy’s past, establish a tawdry double life he never had, and then make sure that someone finds the bogus blackmail letters that drove him to do the dirty deed. With the pieces in place, you follow him closely enough to know when he’s going to be alone, and then you pop him. People find the body, they find the fake evidence, they force two and two to equal four, and you’re done.
The fact that the financier-Jacques Leger, in this case-was such an obvious suspect actually worked in his favor in the end. Everyone assumed that no one would be foolish enough to bring that kind of attention down on himself.
Mitch had been doing this shit for years, and he was damn good at it. Good enough that on the rare occasion when things went wrong, he readily and easily cleaned up after himself. Where third parties were involved-like today, for Jose’s family-the hoods who jumped at the opportunity to work for El Matador were so paranoid about ending up on Mitch’s shit list that they would figure out a way to violate the laws of physics and chemistry if they had to, to make sure that nothing went wrong.
Mitch had worked long and hard to establish his reputation as a harsh master. In his business, fear kept you alive. That universal business truth explained why he’d always been comfortable working for Sammy Bell and the Slater family. People were at least as afraid of them as they were of Mitch Ponder. With fear up and down the chain of command, things worked like clockwork.
Given all the moving parts that are involved in a hit, who would have ever thought that a smooth operation would break down at the payment phase? What special breed of idiot would a person have to be to abscond with money from a crime family on its way to a hired killer? And who would ever have guessed that that special breed of idiot could actually get away with it?
The Slater organization made good on covering the debt to Mitch, of course, but it was a stupid career decision on the part of the lawyer who took it. Bruce Navarro.
Except Navarro wasn’t the thief.
The real thieves were Navarro’s secretary and her boyfriend. Some bitch named Schuler. Mitch had deduced that connection within an hour of hearing that she’d turned up dead. The boyfriend killed the secretary and got away with the cash. In Mitch’s book, the buck twenty-five wasn’t nearly enough dough to sentence yourself to a life of looking over your shoulder, but he had to admire the boyfriend’s originality. It was a pretty slick move how he pinned the murder on the husband. Damn good job, too, all things considered. Hubby got sentenced to death, for God’s sake. How much better could you get? Having gotten away with murder, all the boyfriend had to do was try his best to prevent his own.
From Ponder’s perspective, the whole cluster fuck had evolved into an amusing stability. Navarro kept his head down because of the active contract on it, the boyfriend was living the high life on the run, and Schuler’s husband was going to be offed by the state. Jacques Leger’s involvement was protected by an armored shield of secrets. Everybody could relax.
And then Arthur Guinn got himself arrested.
Good God almighty, of all the shitty luck. When old man Slater passed away in the late nineties, and Sammy Bell ascended to the throne of the organization, Arthur ascended to number two, the position originally held by Sammy. That made him heir apparent, and the fact of his arrest sent Sammy into a panic. He put out a contract on Guinn within two hours of him being taken into custody, but by then the window of opportunity had slammed shut. The FBI knew what they had in Guinn, and they knew how many people were gunning for him, so they made him invisible. When he moved from one place to another, the security was like something you’d expect for the president of the United States. They even shut down airspace, for God’s sake.
Mitch had done a lot of business with the Slater family over the years-as he had done business with their competitors and, once upon a time, for the federal government-but he’d never seen Sammy Bell as shaken as he was in the months following Guinn’s arrest. The details were none of Mitch’s business, but it was clear that Guinn knew everything.
The silver medal for panic response came from Senator Leger. When you’re a powerful man and you hire powerful criminals to do your dirty work, you expect absolute confidentiality. Mitch was sure that Leger paid dearly and regularly for that kind of confidence. It was no wonder that he went into orbit when he learned that Guinn was in custody.
But then absolutely nothing happened.
After the initial panic had gone unrequited, and no one else had been arrested in the next twelve months-and then twenty-four and thirty-six months-Sammy had begun to relax. He’d talked himself into believing that maybe Arthur would honor his friendships and keep true to his loyalties. Mitch had tried to believe it, too, even though he knew from experience what hard time can do to a man. Mitch had known all along that it was just a matter of time.
