Complete Corruption (Corruption #1-3) (80 page)

My father would never have tolerated this nonsense. If he let them live, they’d be doing it with one or two limbs less. A crew was a marriage. Worse. Better. It was a blood bond, and they were breaking it.

The thought of it.

I realized my fists were tight when I started pounding the railing and the vibrations rattled my knuckles. I’d lost half my crew after nearly killing Bruno Uvoli. I never knew if I’d lost them because I went off half cocked over Theresa, or because I was too soft to wipe him from the earth. Maybe neither. Maybe both. But I’d been blinded by two things: the fact that my vendetta for my sister’s rapists was satisfied, and desire for Theresa filling the place where the desire for revenge had resided.

That moment, looking at Bruno with blood running down his face. He’d tried not to cry. I remembered that, because that was what changed me. I had no need for revenge, only a need for her. And his efforts to be tough and not cry or beg? I’d felt myself feeling pity for him, and if I hadn’t known it that night, I knew it standing by the water. She’d been chipping away at my command from day one.

I didn’t want to kill my crew, but I felt obligated to. The weight was my anger, yes, but the need to do something about it was the burden. What if I didn’t do anything about it? What if I got angry without turning the anger into physical action? What if my anger didn’t have consequences?

I’d be killed, for sure. I’d be weak, then dead, because a boss never forgets and only forgives for a price.

I walked back to the house lighter but no wiser. I’d decided nothing but what not to do. The last of my crew was safe from me until I got Valentina.

Theresa and Otto were in the front. He had his phone out, and they watched the screen. Her brow was knotted, and he was rubbing his pinkie space with his thumb. Theresa saw me when I was halfway down the block, and she ran to me, siren hair flying behind her.

“Contessa?”

“They’re saying you shot Paulie,” she said. “Your face is all over the news.”

“Daniel?” I spit the name. “That motherfucker.”

I looked at my watch but didn’t see the time. How foolish would it be to survive all this and end up in prison? I put my hands to my mouth, imagining being separated from her when we’d worked so hard to be together.

She took my wrists. “Let me see if I can take care of it.”

“You? Just you?”

“You can’t go anywhere in daylight right now.”

“Then neither can you. I never told you, there’s a quarter million out for your life.”

“That’s it? I'm insulted.”

“It’s not something joke about.”

“They don’t want me. They have Valentina. It’s probably safer for me away from you.”

She was wrong. Nothing about this world was safe whenever she was out of my sight.

“She’s right,” Otto interjected. “They got Tina, and they’re all holed up in Sequoia watching her.”

“Fuck you, Otto,” I said.

He shrugged. Somehow I’d been overruled.

I took her in my arms and held her. My damnation and salvation. My spark of change, dragging me into the light, kicking and screaming. She took my sins and made them her own. If only I could save her before she consigned herself to hell.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “We’ll make it out.”

I buried my nose in her hair and breathed her in. I didn’t have a plan or a crew. I had nothing. Yet I sat on a throne before a kingdom of possibilities.

theresa

 called Dan from Antonio’s burner and got him to meet me in a corner booth at the Nickel. At eleven in the morning, most of the red vinyl booths were empty and the tabletop jukeboxes were silent. I slid in next to Daniel, who regarded the menu as if he didn’t know he was getting the same thing he always got. BLT. Lightly toasted. Extra mayo.

“Theresa, where have you been?”

I propped the big plastic menu in front of me as if I didn’t know what I was ordering. Nothing. I didn’t have an appetite. “How did you get the duct tape glue off your face?”

“Nail polish remover. Did you find Valentina?”

“Yes.”

“Is she safe?”

“No.” I put down the menu. I saw the TV behind the bar, and Antonio’s face on it. “We located her. We don’t have her.”

“Where is she?”

“Why do I see Antonio’s face on television?”

“We’d pressured his doctors to declare him dead under the Determination of Death Act, and to be honest, your family pushed it.”

“What? Why?”

“He’s got a functioning heart and the same rare blood type as your brother. This turned into homicide this morning, and my staff pushed through the indictment while I was busy hanging from a ceiling.”

I flipped the songs on the little jukebox, trying to separate my feelings from my strategy. The pink tabs flipped. I knew all the songs yet couldn’t place them. “Do you have change? I’m out.”

“What’s with you?”

I held out my hand. “Ambient noise.”

He stretched, reached into his pocket, and came out with a handful of change. I plucked out four quarters.

“You’re a wild card, Daniel.” I put fifty cents in the jukebox and played some random ballad from the seventies. I rubbed the other two coins together. I liked the way they scraped and slipped at the same time. “One minute I think you’re going to do right by me—”

“I told you I’d keep LAPD off you yesterday so you could find Valentina. And I did, but you didn’t get her.”

“We found her, but no. We didn’t get her. Not yet.”

“I can only go so far. I have a job and a department full of people with their own minds.”

“Right now, he’s stuck. If he can’t move, he can’t get Valentina. And if you think you can get her, forget it. She won’t tell you crap, and you know it. She’ll swear whoever’s holding her are her cousins. You know it’s true. He’s the best chance she has and the only chance I have. So make it go away.”

He leaned forward to make his point and to keep his voice low. “I can’t hold back my entire staff. I actually kind of like the guy, but the entire Los Angeles justice system knows Antonio Spinelli shot Paulie Patalano.”

“He didn’t.”

“Well, who did?”

I didn’t say a word. I didn’t breathe. I just looked the district attorney in the eye until he leaned back.

“Jesus Christ, Theresa.” He knew. I didn’t have to say it, and he knew. “Jesus, Jesus… why?”

“You understand what’ll happen if you allow this to continue. All roads lead to Rome. If you’re all right with that, then I have to be.”

I didn’t wait for an answer. I just slid out of the booth. It wasn’t until I reached for the keys to the Porsche that I realized I still had those two quarters between my fingers. I slipped them into my front pocket and drove back to Antonio.

I was a killer. For real and for sure. I couldn’t hang on Paulie’s working lungs and heart anymore. It was homicide because his death was inevitable. And still, I didn’t feel as bad as I thought I would.

Maybe I had been born for this. Maybe it was in my blood. Which gave me an idea. A disturbing idea, but one that might work. I pulled up to the safe house convinced it was our only option.

Antonio met me on the porch.

“You’re supposed to stay inside,” I said as I stepped up.

“It’s too nice a day,” he lied. It was clammy and cold.

“Do we know if Valentina’s still at the hospital?”

“She is.”

“I thought of something,” I said. “Remember what you told me about my family? Our history? Who we are?”

“Yes?”

“I think I can get us in. But I don’t know if it’ll come with a way out.”

theresa

o radio,” Antonio said, snapping it off. I’d heard his name and turned up the car stereo. It had started pouring on the way to Sequoia, and the
pat pat pat
on the roof and
puh puh puh
on the windows was going to drive me nuts. It was dusk already.

“They might be saying something we can use,” I objected but didn’t try to turn the radio back on.

What was it like to have your name all over the media in connection with something as evil as murder? I didn’t know. I only knew what it was like to be the actual murderer. I put my back to the passenger door and slipped out of my shoes. Antonio had driven, even though it was Otto’s car. We’d parked in the outdoor lot across the street from Sequoia and were waiting for Antonio’s only loyal friend to appear with the one person who could help us get in.

“Trust me,” he said, “I’ve done this before. Those reports aren’t doing anything but worrying you. Half of what they’re saying is lies, and the other half are things we already know.”

He was right. I’d been intimate with the media and what they fed to the public.

He took out his pack of cigarettes and shook out the last one. I reached for it, slipping it out before his lips got on it. He raised an eyebrow at me.

“Light me up, Capo.”

He clacked open his lighter and I dragged on it until it was lit. I handed the cigarette back to him while blew out the smoke. I hadn’t smoked since high school, when I wanted to impress Rachel, who was so cool she seemed other worldly.

Antonio took the cigarette, regarding me before putting it in his lips. I liked everything about the way he did it. The placement of the cigarette between his fingers, the shape of his lips as he pulled on it, and the snap as he removed it.

“How can you look so relaxed?” I asked, taking the smoke from him.

“I can ask you the same.”

“I’m worried about Otto.” I flicked the ashes in the tray.

“He can do more with eight fingers than most men can do with twelve.”

I cocked my head at him. He just looked out the window, touching his lower lip before it stretched into a grin. I jabbed his knee with my foot.

“You’re better than that joke.”

He put his hand on my foot and ran it up as far as my pants would allow. “No, I’m not. Do you think you can live with a man who makes jokes like that for the rest of your life?”

“I think there’s a regular comedian in there.” I handed him the cigarette, flame side up. “We just have to draw him out.”

“I wish I could laugh.” He shook his head a little, still smiling slightly. “I met your father a long time ago, while I was consigliere for Donna Maria. He was building something in our territory. There were union issues. He might remember me.”

“This should be a fun get-together then.” I wasn’t surprised my father had worked with the mob. I was pretty sure that wasn’t his first business deal with them, or his last.

“I’m wondering, should I ask him for your hand tonight? Or wait until we’re both in jail?”

I took the cigarette from him. It had gotten short and hot, like my temper.

“I don’t think you can ask while you’re legally married to someone else.”

He smiled ruefully and rubbed his eyes. “What a mess.”

“They’re here,” I said. I rolled down the window a crack, as if I was still in high school getting caught being a bad girl.

Antonio looked up, hand reaching for the key. Otto and Declan Drazen, each carrying an umbrella, walked out the sliding doors. Dad looked no worse for the wear in a sport jacket and sweater. He barely looked both ways when crossing, as if a car wouldn’t dare try to occupy the same space as him because he was entitled to the world at large.

Or at least that was how I saw it. We all saw him differently, and we were all correct. He was an exacting judge, a paymaster, evil incarnate, a master controller, a father whose only concern was the ten people in his family and their legacy. Only Jonathan had failed to disappoint him, and he was the child who hated him the most.

The back door clicked open, and my father slipped in. Otto closed the door behind him, staying outside to watch.

“Hi, Dad,” I said.

“Theresa. Mister Spinelli. Good to see you again.”

Antonio reached over the front seat, and they shook hands. “Sorry about the circumstances.”

“My daughter explained it.” He was talking about Margie, who I’d called first. “Quite involved, this whole situation.” In the window behind my father, Otto’s cigarette smoke drifted by, unaffected by the rain. “Theresa was always the one who caused no trouble at all.” He looked at me. “Guess you were saving it up.”