Wolf stood up silently, nodding his head, then kicked him in the temple with his right steel-toed boot.
The guy slumped over, out cold.
Wolf snuck to the garage door, sticking to the wall to minimize his shadow outside. He listened hard. Two men spoke in the guttural tones of eastern European, not the staccato of Italian. Rossi was gone.
He wanted Rossi. That was the only objective he cared about. There was no sense flicking the ear of fate with two very big guys. The Caribinieri, the real ones, could bust this place wide later.
But fate had other plans.
Just as he began making his way to the door to the kitchen, it swung inward. Nose ring waitress stuck her head out, asking a loud question in her native tongue. She was looking straight ahead to a blank spot on the garage wall, as if consciously averting her eyes to any goings-on.
Wolf froze.
She turned, saw him, looked at the unconscious figure on the floor, then back to Wolf who stood with his two knives pointing at her.
He raised his eye brows. “Ciao.”
“Cezar?” She panicked hard. “Cezar!”
Wolf turned away from her, rushed to the edge of the garage and backed up against the inside right wall.
Wolf tensed, relaxed his face, widened his eyes, and listened for footsteps. The bartender flew into the garage first with animal athleticism.
Wolf jumped out an instant later with arms chest high, blades sticking out from the pinky side of his fists, thumbs hooked on each knife handle. Cezar didn’t have time to stop or put his hands up as Wolf planted his feet and drove his arms hard forward, both blades piercing the chest plate, the right plunging directly into a chamber of Cezar’s heart.
Two hundred pounds of dead weight smashed into Wolf, along with a warm spray of blood, pushing him back into an uncontrolled fall. Bracing for impact, he looked right, just catching a glimpse of the bartender pulling a pistol from his waistband. Wolf hit the floor hard and frantically tried to get under the falling body for protection. A warm gush from Cezar’s chest pulsed on his face relentlessly. The last thing he saw was the bartender bending toward him close with pistol extended.
Three deafening pops filled his ears, and he went still.
Suddenly the weight of Cezar’s body lifted off him. He sat up blowing air out his mouth hard, spitting wildly to get a breath. He held the knives in front of him and shook his head back and forth, flinging the blood off his face.
“David, it’s me! It’s me!” It was a female voice.
“Lia?”
“Yes, it’s me! Put down the knives!”
He dropped the knives and wiped his face hard with his hands.
“Careful, that girl in the door. Where did she go?”
Lia stood and turned. Finally getting focus back into his eyes, he realized she wasn’t in her Caribinieri uniform. She was in civilian clothes, jeans and a sweatshirt. No wonder he hadn’t seen her in the piazza.
She walked low with her pistol aimed at the door.
“Wait a second,” he said. “Unlock me here.”
Lia took out her handcuff’s key and unlocked him.
Wolf pulled the pistol from the bartender’s stubby hands — a CZ-99. Wolf didn’t have much experience with the weapon, but it was ready to go, safety off and round in the chamber.
Wolf turned the knob, opened it a centimeter, then gently let go, careful to not let it slide closed. He kicked and aimed his gun forward, the door opening and banging against the inner wall.
Entering fast, he pushed aside the rebounding door, Lia right on his heels. The kitchen lights were turned low with no burners on the stove going. It was closed, but hastily so. Pasta sat cold in dishes, bread and salami slices were strewn on cutting boards.
Commotion and mayhem resonated from down the hallway. The bar was going nuts — people screaming, glasses breaking, wood chairs bouncing off hard floors.
Wolf continued fast down the hallway, and cautiously looked around the corner, then lowered his gun and walked out.
None of the employees were in sight. People were lined up, pushing hard out the door, now with renewed fervor with the sudden appearance of a man drenched in blood holding a gun with a gun-toting woman close behind.
Wolf went to the stereo on the wall and turned down the music.
The faulty pub door slammed shut hard, sleigh bell bouncing with a jingle, as the last patron got out with his life. They were now in dead silence behind the bar, commotion retreating outside. Wolf took a look at himself in the mirror behind the scotch bottles and saw his bright red face.
He put his gun down, grabbed a wet bleach towel from the bar back sink and began wiping his face. He dug into the crevices of his eyes, blew his nose, threw the towel in the sink, and got another one and repeated it.
“Lascia! Lascia!” a voice boomed from feet away.
Wolf turned just as a pistol clanked on the floor next to his foot.
Chapter 47
Wolf turned to Lia. She stood dead still, a Beretta pointed at her from the other side of the bar. She had her hands up in a simultaneous defenseless and
“What are you two doing here?” Rossi said, shifting the Beretta to Wolf. “You’re wanted for murder, Officer Wolf. Officer Parente, what are you doing? Are you helping him right now? What is going on?”
Wolf shook his head. “You going to play that angle, Rossi?”
“Get your hands in the air and come out here!” Rossi waved the gun to Wolf. “Now!”
“I know the truth about your dad,” Lia said quietly.
Rossi gave a quick dismissive look to Lia, then inhaled sharply, looking again.
Her eyes were wet, her lower lip quivering.
Rossi shouted loud to her in Italian, thrusting the gun in her direction.
She shook her head. “He never left you an inheritance,” she continued in English, obviously for Wolf’s benefit. “Paulo just told me your dad was killed twenty five years ago in Sicily. He checked thoroughly. You’ve been lying this whole time?”
Rossi shouted in Italian again, this time with flying spittle.
“Rossi, you don’t want to do this,” Wolf said quietly. “It’s over. We know about you and your brother smuggling drugs in from Africa. Obviously he didn’t get a big inheritance either. We know you two have been leveraging his position in the Guarda Di Finanza. In Liguria. In Genoa, the place where these shipments are coming in.”
Rossi shifted, twitching as his eyes went unfocused and calculating. He seemed to come to a conclusion looking at Lia, gun still on Wolf.
“Killing us both won’t change anything,” Wolf said quickly. “Paulo knows everything. I’ve told him everything I knew on the phone earlier. He checked out your father, and now it’s just a simple task of looking into finances to prove what you’ve been up to.” Wolf shook his head slow. “It’s all over. It’s all out in the open. There’s nothing you can do to cover it up now. Killing us both won’t help.”
Rossi looked at Wolf with hatred, then tracked his gun to Lia. He was as unstable looking as it gets, sweat beading on his forehead to add to the rest of the fluids emanating from his wobbling face.
Suddenly he stepped back, and dropped his arm to his side, looking down. It was a decisive move. The
