Romeo of the Streets (10 page)

“You got it,” she said and disappeared as Romeo poured a glass of ginger ale and, without asking, passed it over to me.

I looked at it for a second and then snorted reluctant laughter. “You’re unbelievable,” I said, taking the glass and bringing the tip of the straw to my mouth to drink. It was cold, sweet and earthily rich to taste—kind of like how Romeo himself might be, the thought occurring before I had a chance to suppress it.

He shrugged. “Lisa has every right to be upset,” he said. “it’s a shame she had to see us there that night. I don’t want you two to ever come close to that stuff.”

“It’s a shame she had to see you there, or a shame that you were there in the first place?” I asked, leaning forward. I wasn’t going to let him act like the chivalrous hero in this situation, not when he was just as complicit in what had happened that night as the other guys.

“Both,” he said, “if I had my way we wouldn’t have been there at all—but that’s just not the way it is.”

“Yeah, right,” I said folding my arms, “as if you didn’t have a choice.”

Romeo levelled those deep eyes at me and for a split-second I was lost in them. Lost and suddenly certain that there really was more to him than this swaggering gangster persona he affected. “Maybe I had a choice once,” he said, “but that was a long time ago. Now, if I don’t do what I have to do, people get hurt. There is no choice.”

The waitress arrived back with the fries and neither me nor Romeo looked up to acknowledge her, so she left the basket between us without a word, obviously wise enough not to interrupt whatever deep conversation was taking place at our table.

“Hurt?” I asked, reaching out to grab a couple of twisty fries, “you mean like Pete Van Diem and those football players got hurt?”

Romeo smiled. “Oh come on Sandy, don’t tell me you actually feel bad for those guys? They’re drug dealers, they beat people up for a living. I mean shit, I know you’re a gentle soul or whatever, but
those guys
?”

I shrugged. “Fair enough,” I said, “so they’re drug dealers, thugs, whatever… Now how does that make them any different from you?”

“Trust me,” Romeo said, popping a French fry into his mouth, “I’m different.”

“Anyway, I came here to talk to you about Lou—the guy’s completely depressed about Lisa. You have to say something to her. If they don’t spend Valentine’s Day together tomorrow you know they’re both going to regret it.”

I sat back, somehow feeling disappointed that the conversation had moved from me and Romeo back to Lou and Lisa again, not least of all because the last time I myself had had any kind of meaningful romance around Valentine’s Day was the time I got a mystery card in third grade and that had turned out to be from the weird kid at the back of class, the one who smelt like onions and always wiped his boogers on the back of his sleeve. “You know,” I said, “me and Lisa aren’t all that big on Valentine’s Day. I mean when all’s said and done it’s really just a massive marketing scam, right?”

Romeo said nothing, continuing to eye me levelly from across the table, and I sighed, powerless in the face of his dominant, masculine resolve.

“You think she listens to me?” I protested, “I was the one who warned her not to get involved with him in the first place. She didn’t listen then.”

He leaned back a little, once again smiling his trademark ambiguous grin. “Fair point,” he said, “you think you can warn her not to get involved with him
again
then?”

I laughed. “Ok,” I said, “I’ll try my best.”

“Good girl,” Romeo nodded. “I’m actually really starting to worry about the guy.”

I toyed with my straw as I looked over at him. “This might surprise you,” I said, “but even though Lou might act like a real tough guy, deep down he’s actually kind of sensitive.”

Romeo shrugged. “Yeah, I figured,” he said. “In fact you’d be surprised how common that is with guys in this thing.”

“Really?” I asked, surprised and interested, watching him closely.

Romeo’s grin broke wider and he laughed. “Hell no,” he said, “most of em are complete psychos. Jesus Sandy, sensitive guys? Gimme a break…”

I laughed, reaching across the table to give him a playful shove for making fun of me and our eyes met when I did, causing something unexpectedly primal to pass between us in that moment—an animal, vital understanding that I felt certain neither of us wanted to consciously acknowledge.

I leaned back and sipped my drink, eager to change the speed of the conversation before I found myself doing something I might later regret.

“I worry about him too though, you know,” I said, “that stuff, what you guys are into… Just promise me you’ll look out for him, ok?”

Romeo watched me solemnly from across the table and I thought not for the first time how easily and hopelessly a girl could lose herself in those big eyes of his. He reached out and took my hand in his own, his touch smooth and strong and, in my already sensitive and receptive state, somehow achingly exotic in its masculinity. Tingles went up and down my spine as I looked up and met his gaze.

“I promise,” Romeo said and I don’t know why or how, but I knew to the very core of my soul that he meant those words with his every being.

“You’re in deep now cowboy,” Freddy said, “way down the rabbit-hole—so just hold on tight and keep pushing this train forward. With your help we’re going to get these guys, but we need to you to stay strong.”

Romeo picked up the small white cup from the conference table and sipped the coffee they’d provided for him. The morning sunshine glared through the windows, unfettered by any other buildings this high up in the Chicago skyline and therefore completely and relentlessly all-encompassing at this bright hour of the morning. Mafiosi and their accomplices tended to do most of their business at night, preferring the cover of darkness to hatch their schemes, and Sal and his crew were no different. A side-effect of which, meant that Romeo was now totally unused to functioning at any time before eleven am at the earliest.

He looked at the silver-haired Assistant Director sitting at the head of the table, staring back at him with open and un-self-conscious frankness. What was it about these FBI guys and mixing metaphors? Or was it just a family thing? Assistant Director Fredrick “Freddy” Smith was Lana Smith’s uncle—a fact which had surely been an influential factor in her meteoric rise in rank at the agency—and just like her he had a jarring tendency to spew all kinds of ornamental nonsense when speaking. Tactfully, Romeo decided not to mention it.

“Well don’t you have anything to say, son?” Freddy asked, “now’s your chance to talk freely amongst your peers before you go back out there to the field.”

Talk freely? That was rich. These guys—this conference room full of straight-edge, manicured FBI agents, Lana included—were no more his peers than Sal and those guys on the street level were. And consequently, he felt no more himself or at ease in their company. In fact lately there was only one person in the whole world he felt like he could be anything like himself around…

“Don’s not much of a talker,” Lana spoke up from her place a couple of seats down and across from the young undercover cop, “naturally, it makes my job a lot harder when I have to debrief him.”

“Is that so?” Freddy Smith nodded to himself, brushing his thumb thoughtfully along the soft fibers of his grey mustache, “well there’s nothing wrong with that. In fact it’s a virtue for a young man in this day and age.”

“Sure,” Lana shrugged, shooting Romeo a mischievous glance, “but maybe somebody ought to tell him that
Omerta
is their rule, not ours…”

They all had a chuckle at that and Romeo, irritated, glared past them out the window. He couldn’t figure out why they’d even summoned him here today—it was bad enough that he had to meet Lana once a week, let alone come downtown to drink coffee with the rest of these clowns.

“Can we get this over and done with chief?” he said, ignoring Lana, and looking straight to AD Smith at the head of the table.

“Man of few words and straight to the point,” Freddy said, “I like it—makes a nice change.”

That’s what he said, but somehow Romeo (
and yes, he was even thinking of himself by that name now
) figured by looking at him that the opposite was probably true. Freddy Smith could likely blow wind with the rest of them all day and all night and the fact that Romeo now insisted that he get to the point probably made the guy a little uneasy.

“Ok son,” Freddy said, “you want to talk business? Let’s talk business. First up your little friend Charlie ‘Chuckles’ Bonanno has informed his handlers up there in New York that Sal’s people contacted him looking for a reference on you. He told them you were a stand-up guy and he couldn’t vouch for you enough.”

“Which means,” Romeo said, with a sardonic smile, “that if they find out he’s turned informant in Little Italy then I’m as dead down here as he is up there…”

“Always the optimist, right Don?” Lana teased and Freddy Smith ruffled his papers, clearing his throat before continuing.

“Well be that as it may, without Bonanno’s words of praise there’s no way we could have gotten you in as fast as we did. You’ll be amused to learn that one of our other undercovers tells us that Sal’s already brought you up with his superiors. He’s gone on record recommending you as made guy material.”

Romeo leaned forward, an intense frown darkening his brow. “Others?” he said, “you have others?”

“Well duh,” Lana said, “you don’t think we’d have this whole thing resting on a loose cannon like you, do you?”

Romeo ignored her, glaring intently at the Assistant Director at the head of the table.

“Relax,” Freddy warned, “we have other undercovers, of course, but none of them know you’re an agent. Besides, there’s nobody stationed anywhere near as deep as you, so you can rest easy.”

Romeo sat back in his chair but the frown remained. So there were other undercovers? He didn’t like the sound of that. It was one more unknown variable for him to worry about—one more unwelcome surprise that could fuck everything up for him in a cold, dead second.

Everybody at the table was watching him closely, any pretense of common-ground or .camaraderie now having disappeared completely. They were looking at him now like he was no different from those unhinged and dangerous street criminals they’d called him in from New York to investigate in the first place.

“Listen,” Freddy said, “none of the other agents even work for them like you do—at least not in Sal’s crew anyway—that would only complicate things. Hell son, you’ll probably never even meet any of them so don’t let it bother you.”

“Is there anything else?” Romeo asked.

“Yes. We want to know about the Guilianno kids, tell us everything you can about them.”

Romeo stared at Assistant Director Smith. Was he serious? Christ, hadn’t he already told Lana that Sandy and Lou were small fry in all of this? That Sandy was completely clean and Lou was almost the same? But still, just because of their tainted name these FBI assholes felt certain that there must be something going on with them. It made him sick.

“Like I told Lana,” Romeo said, speaking as calmly and deliberately as he could, “there’s nothing to tell. Lou’s as low-level as they come and the girl—well she’s not involved at all. A straight-A student and a law-abiding citizen.”

“Be that as it may Don,” Freddy nodded, “Lana has informed us that your relationship to the girl has grown murky. Yes, for all you know she might be a law-abiding citizen, but there’s a good chance that she could still prove to be an intrinsic part of this case. What if we want to use her as an informant later on down the line?”

Romeo felt his face go red with anger. Just what the hell was this? He was out there every night risking his life with psychopaths and murderers and now these office-jockeys were subjecting him to some kind of coffee-break inquisition? He noticed Lana smirking at him with a deliciously self-satisfied smile and his mood darkened even deeper.

“Just tell me you’re not sleeping with her, are you?” Freddy asked and at that Romeo stood to his feet.

“I’ve had enough of this bullshit,” he muttered and then he turned and walked out of the conference room.

“Romeo!” Lana called, catching up just as the elevator doors were closing, and he winced as she pushed her way through. It was funny, now that the others were out of earshot she’d reverted back to calling him by his alias again, a complete reversal from her earlier professional façade. Sometimes she was such a bitch it drove him wild.

“Going down?” she smiled and tapped the ground-floor button again. The doors closed with a hum.

After a moment’s silence she looked at him, standing with his eyes dead ahead beside her.

“They sent me after you,” she said, “they were concerned about you. So am I.”

“Give me a break Lana,” Romeo muttered.

“I mean it,” she said, “I am concerned. I know what you’re going through out there—you might think I’m just a bureaucrat and maybe you’re right, but I used to be a field agent. I know the danger. Sure maybe not as bad as what you’ve got but I had trouble, I’ve had shoot-outs, bomb scares, you name it.”