settle us up, and Funzi looks at him like he’s out of his mind and then he goes nuts. Tells Roy Dean, Is he fucking crazy?… And then he smacks him around a little, keeps asking where the fuck his money is, and then all of a sudden he just stops. He, uh, tells Gus to take the kid and drive him down to the lake house, you know, where his wife is. And Roy Dean’s looking all happy because, like, he figures Funzi went for it and all, but the second Gus walks out the door with the kid Funzi tells me and Beez, go outside and guard the place and don’t go nowhere until he comes and gets us. So we go out, and it wasn’t more than a minute or two after they locked the doors again, we heard a shot. And I knew Funzi shot Roy Dean.”
Patrick swallowed hard. Stella had a pretty good idea it was the first time Patrick had heard something like that, despite all his swagger.
“Okay,” she said gently. “He killed Roy Dean. Maybe he figured he couldn’t keep him around, knowing where the kid was. What happened to the body?”
“Well, shit, we were like—I mean, Funzi tells me, go get some plastic and a chain saw from Benning, and I, and I, I did that, and Beez stayed and guarded the shed, and when I got back I knocked on the door and gave the stuff to Funzi and then a minute later we heard them fire it up.”
“Funzi and Rollieri…”
“Yeah.”
“Holy mother,” Stella said. “A chain saw, didn’t that make a hell of a mess?”
“Yeah,” Patrick said, his voice a hoarse whisper. Stella noticed a smell coming off him, acrid fear mixed with blood and body odor. “Funzi, uh, didn’t make us help with the, uh, sawing. He told us to stay outside and, you know, we did. But later, when we were cleaning up… Jesus.”
“So you and Beez helped take care of the body when it was done?”
“No. Funzi gave me the chain saw and said, clean it off, and I wiped it down and all that, and Beez went and helped Benning close up and Funzi said, wait for him in the house so we… we, um, did.”
“How long did that take?”
“I don’t know… maybe like… half an hour? More maybe, we were, uh, sitting around at the house, and, and finally Funzi called on the cell. He said for me and Beez to come back up to the shed and, like, the pieces of, of Roy Dean were wrapped in plastic and Funzi told us to carry it all out to the burn barrel. Reggie had headed back to the city, so it was just me and Beez done it.”
Stella grimaced, thinking of the grisly task. Chrissy looked a little green herself. “Where’s the burn barrel?”
“Out behind the shed on the back side,” Patrick said, lifting a limp arm to point back across the property.
“Then what did you do?”
“We, uh, laid in some newspaper and shit to get it started and then we put the, uh, you know, Roy Dean in there. Plastic and all, Funzi wanted it all burned. Poured on the kerosene but we waited until dark to light it up.”
“Did it catch right off?”
“Yeah, but it took all night to burn down. The smell… it nearly killed us. In the morning, there was, there was a few pieces of bone or something with the plastic burned onto it. Gus was back by then, and Funzi made us dig, like, five or six holes and put the shit in.”
“Was it all destroyed? Other than the bone pieces?”
“There was some little bits of cloth around the barrel that must’ve come out of the flames or something. And what didn’t burn… I think there were teeth, like that.” Patrick stared miserably at the ground.
“Could you find those holes again?”
“Yeah. Since I had to do most of the digging. Funzi had me put the dirt back and drive the front loader over the top when I was done.”
“Okay.” Stella sat back on her haunches for a minute, thinking over the story. She glanced at Chrissy, whose anger seemed to have dissipated some, though she kept the gun loosely trained on Patrick. “Patrick, where exactly is Funzi on the old mob totem pole?”
“Kinda low, I guess,” Patrick said. “I mean, he’s got just Gus and Beez and Reggie. And me. He reports up to Donny Calabasas, and then after Donny, it’s Justin Frank—he’s got the whole south end of Kansas City.”
“Okay, I get the picture,” Stella said. “He’s a pissant and Gus and Beez and Reggie are little pissants and you’re just a teeny little baby pissant. That about the size of it?”
Patrick barely nodded. His eyelids were slowly sliding down, and Stella was worried he was about to pass out. “Look here, can you tell me how to get to the lake house?”
“Yeah… it’s the biggest-ass house on the north shore. It’s in that new development down past the U-Store-It where Route 4 hits the shore road.”
“On that private drive they put in?”
“Yeah, there’s maybe six, eight houses on a cul-de-sac.”
“And you’re sure that’s where they got the kid?”
Patrick looked uncertain. “Well… probably. I mean, Mrs. Angelini spends most of the summer there, and now she’s got the kid—”
“
“Sorry… yeah, I’m like ninety percent sure that’s where they are.”
“All of them? Funzi and Gus and Beez?”
“No, Funzi had Gus run something up to the city, some delivery for Donny Calabasas. So it’s just him and Beez.”
Stella still didn’t like those odds. Ordinarily she wouldn’t move until she was certain. But there wasn’t anything she could do about it now.
“How long until someone figures out you’re gone?”
Patrick shrugged. “Depends. If Benning and Larissa are partying, sometimes he don’t even come down.”
“But the rest of the time?”
“The rest of the time he’s down here around eleven, eleven thirty. Midnight maybe.”
Stella checked her watch: ten. Shit. “And where’s Funzi and them tonight?”
“At the lake house, I guess. Unless they went into town, to the bars… I don’t know. They don’t check in with me. Benning would know, but—”
“Yeah.”
For a moment Stella considered heading up to the house and scaring the crap out of Benning and his girlfriend, but that was introducing all kinds of opportunities to fuck things up.
If they left now, there was a chance they could get to the lake house and figure out how to get Tucker without Funzi knowing they were coming.
If Funzi had warning, Stella was pretty sure things would end in disaster. She and Chrissy wouldn’t stand a chance against two armed thugs. Plus Funzi’s wife. She wasn’t sure what the body count would be, or who would be left standing, but she wouldn’t put money on any kind of mother-and-child reunion.
“We gotta move,” she said decisively. “Sorry, Patrick, but you’re gonna have to haul your ass down to the road. We’ll help you, but I don’t want to hear any whining. I’ll get the car and then you’re gonna give Chrissy here the best directions you ever gave while I drive you over to my friend’s house, hear? He’ll take good care of you while Chrissy and I go get the job done.”
Patrick nodded miserably. Stella noticed with admiration that he made almost no sound at all as they helped him stagger to his one good leg and gimp his way to the road.
SEVEN
Stella considered having Chrissy keep her gun on Patrick once they got in the car, but since it was going to have to happen eventually anyway, she decided they might as well take care of him now.
She left the car idling while they got Patrick settled into the back seat. Stella helped hoist his bad leg up on
