The Mafia Trilogy (40 page)

“We still don’t know if he killed feds or if he was acting in self-defense. As far as Bob here goes, anyone could’ve done this. What I’m trying to figure out is who would target Darwin now that Fuccini is dead.”

“None of that matters to me,” Carson said as he picked up his coffee cup. “I’m not the jury or the judge. My job is to arrest people and let the courts figure it out. I hope he gets a good lawyer and if he’s innocent, he’ll go free, but I don’t think that’ll happen. Too much dirt on this guy’s hands for him to be clean. Sorry, I’m not buying it.”

Freska’s body had been removed from the car. Men stood around the vehicle with small brushes, examining it under floodlights. Carson saw Rudy talking to the coroner and waved him over.

“Have they found anything?” Carson asked.

“Nothing whatsoever. His wallet and badge are missing. The car looks clean. This was a professional hit. If Darwin did this, he’s getting tips from Gambino.”

“Everything points to Darwin. He was the last person seen with Bob at the motel.”

Greg pushed off the car and walked around Carson. “What was that about Gambino? Why use that name?”

“Gambino has a vacation home in the area,” Rudy said. “Lately he’s been spending a lot of time down here as his family does their business in Toronto. It keeps him isolated to be this far south.”

Greg looked really pissed. He kicked his foot into the gravel and stepped away, slamming a fist into the palm of his other hand.

“What got into him?” Rudy asked.

“Who knows? He’s been a dick ever since I picked him up at the airport.”

Greg turned back to face them from five feet away. “Are you two clowns saying that Gambino, as in Frankie Gambino, reputed Canadian mob boss, has a residence in this area?”

Carson put up a hand. “Watch how you’re talking. You can’t come down here to collect your boy and trash-talk us. I’m not a fucking clown.”

“Just answer the
fucking
question. Does Gambino have a local residence?”

Rudy stepped forward. “Yeah. It’s about a ten-minute drive from here.”

Greg tossed his coffee cup into the brush on his right and headed for the car. “Let’s go.”

“Where are we going?” Carson asked.

Greg got to the passenger side door and opened it. He stood holding the door. “You serious?”

“Yeah, we can’t just barge into Gambino’s residence. Too much security. We can’t assume just because he has a vacation home in the area that he has anything to do with what’s happening today.”

“You do know the famous shootout at the abandoned hangar in Toronto was reportedly orchestrated by the Gambino Family?”

Carson nodded. “I’ve heard that.”

“They missed Vincenzo that night. Darwin killed him by accident. Fuccini went after Darwin and he paid the ultimate price for that. Wouldn’t you think Gambino wants to know who Darwin is and who he works for? That’s how these assholes think. Fuck,
you
even think Darwin isn’t on the up and up.”

Greg dropped into the car.

Carson turned to Rudy. “Did he just call us assholes too?”

Rudy shrugged. “Not sure, but probably not.”

“Hey,” Greg shouted. “Whose bright idea was it to set up a safe house for a Mafia killer like Darwin only a short drive from Gambino’s vacation home? There are hundreds of places the Kostas could’ve gone. Wait, don’t tell me. Nick Johnson and Lee Michaels, right?”

Carson nodded.
Maybe Greg is on to something.

Greg waved at Bob Freska’s car. “Gambino did this. It’s a message. Darwin doesn’t do this kind of shit. The mob does. Gambino’s too stupid to know we’ll see through it. Bob picked up the Kostas at the Sleep On Inn, and he delivered them to Gambino. Then Frankie did this to make it look like Darwin’s work.” Greg slapped the roof of the car. “Come on. Let’s go pick up Darwin and his wife before they’re killed. If Gambino has them, they’re either already dead or will be shortly.”

Chapter 13

Darwin lifted one leg out of the hole, followed by the other, thoroughly exhausted by the effort. He lay on his back and stared at the stars, thanking them for being lucky and thanking God.

He waited until he got his breathing under control and his body had a short rest. Rosina was still Gambino’s prisoner, and every second counted. He hoped he would make it back in time.

He got to his feet, slipped his T-shirt on, and stumbled away from the unmarked grave.

How could someone do that to another human being?

He rubbed the dirt off his face as best as he could and walked toward the road.

What he had done in the past haunted him. Nightmares were a regular visitor in the night. He had killed people. He’d done it out of anger, but it was always in self-defense. If only he could be left alone, he wouldn’t have to kill, but they kept coming. They came with an unjust belief or notion of who he was or what he had done. They thought he was part of a Mafia group or family. They thought he had ties to organized crime. They even thought he was a hired assassin. But they were all wrong. He was a kind man who only wanted to be left alone to enjoy his new marriage and possibly have kids one day.

Today was the day he would kill again, so the people after him would stop their pursuit. Once Gambino was gone, Darwin couldn’t think of another family boss that even knew his name.

He made it to the darkened road and leaned against a tree to catch his breath. He knees were weak, exhausted after the arduous climb out of the pine box. Rosina was all that kept him upright. Without her, he was dead anyway.

Nothing moved on the other side of the road. He couldn’t see security detail anywhere.

Keeping to the darkened shadows of the trees on the side, Darwin walked parallel to the road, guessing how far to the warehouse where Gambino kept his prized World War II collection of airplanes and artillery.

It was dark. The full dark of at least two or three in the morning, and it didn’t bother him as much as it normally would.

Am I healing? Can a phobia go away? Maybe being in the coffin flooded it.

He seemed to remember a doctor telling him something about flooding years ago, but forgot the exact details. He was past caring. At the precise moment he’d woken up in a coffin six feet underground and had discovered he had been buried alive, he understood just how horrible the world had become. How many people before him had died at the hands of a man like Gambino? How many families had been killed like the people on his giant checkerboard by the pool? People like Frank Gambino shouldn’t be allowed to live, yet he operated above the law.

As far as Darwin was concerned, he died in that grave. The old Darwin, the idealistic one who assumed that there was goodness in everyone, passed away.

Being absolutely consumed with fear, stuck in a small box in a grave with no light, made the darkness under stars bright enough to endure, but dark enough to remain hidden. The dark had become his ally, no longer his foe.

And the blade will become my ally.

He still had an irrational response to things that were sharp or pointy, but that had saved his life on more than one occasion.

The road turned to the right. He stayed ten feet back, deep in the dark shadows of the trees. It was time to start looking for a separate road that would lead to the warehouse. He hoped Gambino frequented the warehouse from a different access point and not just from the main house. What Darwin had planned wouldn’t work if he had to walk by the main house.

He edged to the side of the road and closed his eyes to listen. Nothing moved. The only sounds were the crickets.

He opened his eyes and stepped out of the trees. No one attacked him and no alarms sounded.

He made it to the other side of the road and dropped down to the cover of trees and darkness again where he waited a heartbeat and listened.

His guesstimate of just over a hundred yards had worked. Ten yards in front of him, light glistened off a chain-link fence. Staying in the shadows, he walked around the fence and climbed over a small stone barrier until he landed on Gambino’s warehouse property.

At this point, he expected to see security guards or even dogs, but no one approached.

He kept moving, walking from tree to tree not five feet from the edge of the small gravel road.

The wall of a building came up quick. In the dark he hadn’t been able to see it. Four feet separated him from the corrugated steel wall.

All he needed now was a door and he would be almost there.

He hopped over a fallen tree, landed hard and slipped to the side, falling into dead leaves. He clamped his lips down hard to quell the grunt that escaped him. He waited on the ground to see if anyone heard him and responded.

From inside the warehouse, the rhythmic sound of boots thumped as someone walked not five feet from him on the other side of the wall. He lay flat out on the damp ground and waited until silence returned. Then he slowly got up and continued along the wall in search of an access point.

A twig scraped along his cheek but he held the groan in. The trees thickened at the corner of the building. He needed to walk over a dozen feet away from the wall to get around them. At the edge of the tree line, there was an opening. To his right, an access door.

Something clicked and the door shot open. He stopped and stood still beside a tree, remaining hidden.

A guard held the backdoor to the warehouse open while he puffed on a cigarette. The lights on the inside of the warehouse shone brightly, illuminating the trees Darwin stood behind. The density of the trees blocked the light from getting more than four feet past them.

That was too fucking close. I could have stepped out when the door opened.

He waited, barely breathing, until the man butted his cigarette and stepped back inside.

When the door clicked shut, Darwin bolted from his hiding place and ran for the door. He gripped the handle and turned it, expecting resistance. But the door knob was unlocked.

Of course. Who would attack a known mobster’s house that’s guarded by armed men with the only objective to kill on sight? Then why am I here? Because I’m already dead and the rest of these maggots can go to hell.

He peeked through the crack in the door. The man who had just finished his smoke break retreated to the main offices in the rear of the warehouse.

The door’s hinges were well-oiled as Darwin eased it open far enough to squeeze through. He stepped onto the warehouse floor and stopped as a piece of cold steel pressed against his neck.

“Oh, man, won’t the boss be so happy with me when I show him what I caught trying to break in here. Are you so fucking stupid that it didn’t surprise you that the door was unlocked? We saw your approach on camera and motion sensors, you fucking dumbass.”

Darwin turned enough to see the crazy look on the man’s face. He held an assault rifle, strapped over his shoulder, both hands holding it steady, with the tip pressed into Darwin’s skin.

“You know … I’m wondering something,” Darwin said.

He wasn’t surprised with his immediate reaction to having a loaded weapon pressed into his neck. He was beyond caring because he should’ve been killed numerous times over by now. For whatever reason, he still lived and breathed. Whether he was destined for greater things or just lucky to a fault, he was sure of one thing. The natural fear of death was slowly being beaten out of him.

“What you wondering, asshole?”

“Where do all of you guys come from? Like, do you all have the same mother or something?”

The gun pulled away from his neck. A flash of movement and Darwin felt the sucker punch as it connected with his left temple. His shoulder smacked the doorframe as he lost his balance, fell backwards out the door and onto the grass. The fall hurt more than the punch.

“Damn, that sucks,” he said.

The pain where the rubber bullet had hit him in the forehead had recently subsided, but pulsed again.

“Wha’s that you be saying about us? You wanna talk shit again before I kills ya?”

“Wait,” Darwin said, his hand raised to ward off an attack. The assault rifle was aimed at his face. “I need to know if you all have the same mother because if you don’t, then how does Gambino hire you guys? I mean, it boggles the mind. Does he put out a classified ad in the newspaper saying something about asshole thugs needed to piss and shit all day while looking scary and holding a big gun?”

The guy smiled. “You got some balls, kid. I like that.”

“You’re gay? I would never have noticed. You look too tough to take it in the ass. Are you the wife in the relationship or the husband?”

The guy shook his head to clear it of Darwin’s words. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“You just complimented my balls, so I was wondering if you take it in the ass or give it? Which way does your boyfriend like it?”