Guarino shrugged. “He’s dead.” He opened the door and went outside. As he walked toward his car, he contemplated the strange observation he had made years ago. He had just seen another demonstration of it, but he still did not fully understand it. He remembered Tommy DeLuca from not that many years ago, when he was just the head of a crew on the South Side. He had been hard and audacious. When things had gotten ugly during the attempted coup in ’87, he had walked the street in a kind of strut, his overcoat open, his hands in the pockets, where he could reach through the lining for the little machine gun he carried. He had been alert and watching—not looking for something he was going to run away from, but something he was going to open up on with that gun.
Guarino had worked for four bosses in his life, and he had seen this happen before. For some reason, after a year or two in power, they began to change. They stopped going out and having fun with the guys, and they stopped smiling. But the less pleasure they got out of life, the more attached to it they seemed to get. It was as though they had won and kept so much money that they couldn’t bear the thought that they might ever die. He had noticed Tommy getting timid a couple of years ago. The few times he had seen Catania, he was always popping vitamins and drinking orange juice or bottled water, and that was a sign too. He wanted to live forever, like some Egyptian pharaoh.
The only exception that Guarino had ever seen had been Paul Castiglione. That was a man who had kept his edge. Even when his try at empire building had been betrayed and his allies killed, he had gone into exile the right way. He had done it like a crocodile backing out of a house. There was no question he was going: the Commission had said he was out. But they knew they had to be satisfied with that, and not kill him, because as long as he was going anyway, there was no reason to get any closer to those teeth.
If Castiglione ever disappeared from Arizona, there would be a number of people in New York, Chicago, New Orleans, Pittsburgh, and a few other places who would find themselves rethinking some of their decisions from those days. There would be a lot of others who would be glad to see those days come back, and Guarino was one of them.
He got into his car and drove off toward the bookmaking service he ran on Fifty-fifth Street. It was the only place he could be absolutely positive had a phone line or two that he could use without being overheard or taped. It had always been one of his favorite places. He supposed that, with a war coming, he would probably have to shut it down in a few days, even though it supplied ten percent of his income. It was going to put a dent in his plan to save for the kids’ colleges, but it was the only thing to do. He wasn’t going to put twenty-seven people, half of them women, in front of a firebomb, at least not for ten percent.
As Guarino drove, he pondered all the calls he would have to make this morning. DeLuca had sent about two hundred and fifty guys out, and each had some people of his own. That had been far too many to have away from home for any reason, and now it just might cost something. He was going to have to make about fifty calls before the sun came up.
Tommy DeLuca sat inside his big brick house, wondering what he should be doing. By noon he was going to be surrounded by soldiers, but now he was in this peaceful, quiet room with nobody to talk to. This was when he could think, and he would have to think. In a few hours, when the guys started gathering around him, they were going to want to hear something that sounded like a sensible order of battle, and a strategy for defending the South Side of the city from … whom?
From Delfina and Catania, certainly, but Delfina was too devious to act without having the numbers on his side. DeLuca thought of the possibilities and felt his chest shrinking inward away from his shirt. Catania had probably brought a few other families with him from the beginning. The only ones that made sense would be a couple of other New York families. He wouldn’t want anyone at his doorstep waiting for a chance to take him out.
DeLuca thought of a few preliminary precautions. He would keep guys at O’Hare. There would be a few people in the arrival areas to spot the invaders, but the real meat of the crew would be outside, where they could do something about it. They would need some way of communicating, so spotters could alert the shooters to targets. Radios? He had a strong suspicion that it was a bad idea. There were so many radios already at work in an airport that somebody would end up telling an American Airlines pilot to shoot the man with the yellow tie, and everybody would go to jail. Cell phones, maybe.
There should be teams along the last stretches of the big highways—Interstate 90, certainly, and maybe one or two others. People should be placed in windows near all of his businesses. He would give them binoculars. There would be a few heavily armed defenders inside to hold off the assault.
That was the anvil. He would have to prepare a hammer for it. He would need to institute a flying squad. Every time the defenders got hit, a ready, massive force would sweep in and smash the invaders from behind. He would probably need two or three squads. Chicago was too big for one group to cross whenever there was trouble.
DeLuca glanced toward the window, and things looked different. After a second, he realized that the pair of security lights on the eaves above the window that went on at night and off at dawn weren’t illuminating the yard. He walked to the window and looked up. Both bulbs had burned out. He sighed in frustration.
He would have liked to have one of the soldiers who came later replace the bulbs. But he couldn’t call in his people for a fight to the death and give them chores like handymen. Besides, by then it might be dangerous. Once he called everyone in, the enemy would know he was on to them. These might be the last few hours when a man going up on a ladder in front of the house would be entirely safe. He decided to forget the bulbs.
He looked out the window at the light fixture in hatred. He couldn’t just forget it. That light was the one that illuminated the thick shrubbery along the house, and the middle section of the driveway. Leaving those areas dark wasn’t safe. They were the spots where a hit team could sneak up to the house.
DeLuca went to the basement and returned with a stepladder, then went to the cupboard in the laundry room and found two new bulbs. He went out the kitchen door with the two bulbs under his left arm and the aluminum ladder banging his knee at each step, and came around to the front of the house.
He set the bulb box on top of the thick hedge, opened the ladder and planted it firmly in the dirt under the eaves, then climbed up to reach the dead bulbs. He began to unscrew the first one, but it came too easily. On a hunch, he turned it clockwise.
The light came on. DeLuca’s heart began to pound. He whirled, and the shot pierced his left eye. He was dead, but more shots came rapidly, punching into his chest, his belly, his arm as he fell, then pounding into the side of the house where he had been, and through the window.
When Di Titulo heard the gun’s
As Di Titulo ducked through the open door to the back seat, he realized he still had the gun in his hand. The car moved off so fast that the door swung shut, then rattled all the way to the corner. When the car bobbed in a half stop before the turn, Di Titulo put the gun in his left hand and slammed the door shut. He felt the gun being taken from his left hand, and turned to look at Saachi.
The thin, cadaverous face was close to his, and the odor of cigarettes was overpowering. The pointed teeth were bared all the way to the gums, and Di Titulo sensed it must be a smile. “You okay?”
Di Titulo felt pressed with claustrophobia. He wanted to open the window, to push the door open and get outside. He wanted the car to stop, and he wanted it to reach the speed of light. He hadn’t understood what Saachi had said, but he knew what it must have been. “That was … awful.”
Saachi nodded. “Don’t worry. It gets easier.”
Di Titulo’s eyes widened. “I thought … I’m not a … I thought it was just this one, because of the bomb in my car.” Saachi looked at him, but his face showed no sign that he had heard. Di Titulo tried again. “I’m a businessman.”
Saachi looked ahead over the driver’s shoulder. “As of two minutes ago, we’re at war. Everybody’s a soldier.” He turned suddenly to hold Di Titulo with his eyes. “This is your job now. Get good at it.”
41
