Recall Night, page 5
part #2 of An Eli Carver Supernatural Thriller Series
Lombardi is still on the phone, listening with his brows creased. The bandage on his head remains, the skin around it discoloring yellow and brown with bruising. After a moment he barks, “Then make that happen. This is getting out of hand. And get Stanley back from Miami.” Without waiting for a reply he stabs the end call button then turns a thousand-watt smile to us. “Good morning.”
He gestures to the table. We sit and the woman starts serving. I want to tell her I can do it myself, but the set-up doesn’t allow self-service. “Thank you, ma’am,” I say instead.
She gives me a broad grin and pats my shoulder, then serves Bridget. It smells amazing. Davey comes in and sits down, gets his breakfast served too. “Johnny’s sleeping it off,” he says and Lombardi nods.
“Thank you, Stella,” Lombardi says to the woman serving, then a kind of uncomfortable silence falls.
“Anything else, sir?” Alfie asks.
“I’ll ring.” Lombardi’s smile is plastic. I want to smack it off his face. He’ll ring?
Alfie and Stella nod and literally back out of the room.
“Now that is how you set up your household,” Dwight says, chewing tobacco as he sits in the broad windowsill across the room.
“Fuck you, man,” Sly Barclay says. “You ain’t worth the shit on their shoes.”
“Them?” Dwight barks a laugh.
I catch movement from Michael nearby, nodding toward Lombardi. I turn and he’s watching me closely. I must be frowning, showing some outward sign, as he has a half-smirk twisting his lips.
“Making some assumptions about my arrangements?”
I jab a thumb back toward the now closed door. “Pretty clear how this place works.”
“Is it?”
I stare. I won’t be drawn into his bullshit, he knows exactly how I feel. It would probably have been wise to keep it to myself, but my asshole ghosts giving me away has put paid to that. I let him sit under the weight of my gaze. I’m expecting him to tell me how those people have been with his family for generations or some shit, how everyone is equal and they’re respected and enjoy their jobs. But when one person is waiting on another person, and then has to reverse from the room in silence, there’s no kind of equality.
Lombardi’s smirk stretches slightly wider, then he looks to his food and starts eating. He has confidence, I’ll give him that. Which is interesting, considering he got shot to shit last night. Someone is putting the hammer on him, but he seems less bothered than I might have expected.
The food is amazing and I realize how hungry I am as I start into it. Bridget is quietly putting it away as well. We sit in silence but for the tink of cutlery for several minutes. Once the plates are mostly cleaned out, Lombardi sits back and sips coffee.
“So, we have a situation.”
“We do,” I agree.
“Now, the thing is, we actually have a couple of situations and I think we can scratch each other’s backs.”
Here it is. The quid pro quo. He won’t simply accept that his war cost Bridget her money and do the right thing. He needs to leverage his own fuck up. These people are the worst. I worked for one long enough to know them inside out. Hopefully I know them well enough to leverage right back. “You want to lay these situations out for me?”
“I’ll give you all you need to know. The details aren’t relevant, but the results are.”
The details mean he’s in the shit and probably started all this, then. He doesn’t want to embarrass himself. I’ll let it go for now. “So long as I have enough to work with, I don’t need details.” I do, but I’ll get them later.
“My family and another are at something of an impasse. They have my wife.”
Okay, that I was not expecting. These stakes just skyrocketed. It’s one thing to fight and shoot up a crew. It’s another thing entirely to actually kidnap a capo’s wife. And I have to assume this guy is the capo. “Who are they, Mr. Lombardi?”
“The Andretti family. They’re strong, but they’re arrogant. We’ve been in something of a tug of war for a while now, but when they took Cora, things changed. We hit them hard, several of them died, but Cora wasn’t there. So now they’ve gone to ground and finding Cora is going to be harder than ever. Meanwhile, they’re hitting us at random spots, as you saw last night.”
I think it over for a moment before replying. He’s given me the names, I could walk and investigate this Andretti family on my own from here and find Bridget’s money. Fuck Lombardi and his missing wife and his idiot war. So there must be something else. I can’t see the angle. “What do you want from me?”
He smiles, predatory, his canine teeth showing. “I need you to find my wife, Mr. Carver.”
“Why should I?”
“You think you can go it alone, find the Andretti’s, find your friend’s money?”
I shrug, it’s no secret. Anyone with half a brain would come to the same conclusion. “Sure. Why risk more of my neck?”
“Look out, fool,” Officer Graney says from behind Lombardi, grinning as blood drips from his throat.
I tense, but I’m already too late. Lombardi nods and Davey is up from the table in a flash. He has a 9mm against Bridget’s temple and his other arm locked around her shoulders in an instant.
She lets out a yelp of shock, then, “The fuck offa me!” She struggles and Davey cuffs her across the chin with the gun butt, not hard, but enough to stun.
“Chill the fuck out!” I shout, quickly assessing the room. The door opens and Johnny is there, his gun leveled at me. Lombardi smiles. My assessment is that we’re fucked. Seems Lombardi and his boys made some early morning plans without us.
“You ever hear the saying that a caged animal is the most dangerous, Mr. Carver? I am something of a caged animal right now. My numbers are depleted, my business interests are at risk, and I want my wife back. After last night, I’m under greater pressure than ever. The problem is, all my men are known faces. You, on the other hand, are unknown right now. Which makes you useful.”
Bridget is stiff in Davey’s grip, breathing fast and shallow. Dwight and Alvin are laughing their asses off over by the window, Sly smoking nearby shaking his head. Graney, his police badge reflecting the morning sunlight, stands behind Lombardi, his hands resting on the capo’s shoulder. He smiles and says, “Don’t you just love the criminal underworld?”
Michael steps aside as Johnny comes into the room. He has his injured right arm still in a sling, but seems confident as hell with the gun in his left. Bridget’s eyes are wide, flicking rapidly between me and Lombardi.
“What makes you think I’ll do anything for you?” I ask. “Or her for that matter.”
“I like to think I’m a pretty good judge of character.”
Hell of a ballsy move, but I’m angry he’s right. I won’t let Bridget swing in the wind. Would he really kill her? He might put the hurt on her if I refuse. These guys have no morals, he’ll hurt anyone in many bad ways to get what he wants. “Where do I go?”
His smile is thin, lips only, but it’s wide and genuine. “I’m glad we have an understanding.” He looks up to Davey. “Put her somewhere safe.”
“Eli!” Bridget says. “What the fuck?”
“We don’t have much choice right now,” I tell her, then turn to Lombardi. “You keep her like a five-star fucking guest, you hear me? Not like a prisoner.”
Lombardi nods once. “Davey will take her to another of our houses and she’ll be well looked after, given every comfort. I’m not a monster, Mr. Carver.”
Debatable.
He nods again to Davey and the two brothers muscle her out of the room. As she leaves, she casts me one last beseeching look. Trust me, I mouth at her. I hope her trust will be rewarded.
“I only have two leads left for the Andretti’s,” Lombardi says.
* * *
The streets are busy and the day is getting warm. Springtime heading toward summer, but still cool enough to be comfortable in jeans and a jacket. Which is good, because that makes it easy to conceal the two Glock 17 9mm semiautomatics Lombardi gave me. Not my first choice of weapon, but a good pistol. One in a shoulder holster tucked under my left arm, and the other over my right boot in a calf holster. I finally feel dressed again. It’s been a long time, but it feels right. That should probably concern me, but I decide not to let it.
Lombardi told me he has two townhouses no one else knows about, both in fake names, both completely off-grid. One is where we stayed last night, the other is at a location he plans to keep secret, and where Bridget has been taken. I pressed him for some details and didn’t get much. I know Davey and Johnny will be staying at the other house with Bridget, but I got the vibe maybe some other people might be there as well. Or at least passing in and out. I really need to know where that place is. Finding out is high on my To Do list.
Lombardi called in some others right before I left and three mooks showed up, so there’s at least six people in the Bridgewater house, counting Lombardi and his staff. When he says his numbers are thin, I wonder how thin. I’m clearly being sent in as the sacrificial lamb. He’s hoping I’ll get some intel, maybe even take out a few of his enemies, without him having to risk his own crew. Maybe it was dumb following him back last night, but we had little choice and what’s done is done. It’s clear he’s desperate to risk a play like this. What Mr. Paul Lombardi maybe hasn’t realized is that he’s made me a caged animal now too.
I saw the car that took off from Gino’s last night, so I might have a little more intel than Lombardi knows about. Maybe I can use that. It was a dark blue Lincoln SUV, and I got the license plate: PSN-336. Of course, I have zero contacts in the NYPD and all my old mob connections are fully disconnected, so what can I do with this info? Lombardi can maybe help there, but I don’t want to play that card yet.
First things first. If I want to track down Lombardi’s wife, I need to learn more about Andretti. The two leads he had left for the Andrettis are a restaurant in Greenwich Village they use for a lot of their business meetings—cliché as hell, but I guess you don’t fix what isn’t broken—and a place out in Newark, a warehouse of some kind. I’ll go to Greenwich Village first.
The Falcon is a stupid name for an Italian restaurant, but I’m no marketing exec. It’s just one storefront down from the intersection and diagonally across is a small green space. It’s well into leaf and there are benches along one edge. I cross with the lights and take one of the benches. If I sit a little crooked I can see The Falcon well enough. If this place is a bust, I’ll look into the one in Newark tomorrow. I prefer to take my chances in a much more public location first.
Lombardi gave me a photo of his wife, Cora. She’s quite something, a fierce-looking brunette with green eyes and a slim, graceful build. He also gave me photos of Furio Andretti, the capo up against him in this war, and about a dozen others. Andretti is a suave-looking bastard, square-jawed with a confident demeanor obvious even in this crappy photo.
All the pics are on a simple smartphone Lombardi also gave me. I don’t like the things, never carry one if I don’t have to. But it might come in handy, to take photos as well as store them. The only number in it is a burner phone for Lombardi, but we agreed I’d only use it in extremis. Otherwise, I’ll update him at the Bridgewater townhouse whenever I go back. I think he’s going to dig in there like a tick for the foreseeable future. He’s scared, and that makes him dangerous. It also makes him endangered.
A lot of this stakeout bullshit is sitting around getting bored, but I figure if this restaurant is the main Andretti front, someone in one of the pictures on this phone will show up eventually and that’ll give me a person to follow.
Hours pass and I’ve seen two people from Lombardi’s photos go into the place, but not come out again. They could be there for hours, maybe I should go to Newark after all. I’m about to give up when a blue Lincoln SUV pulls up to the curb, its hazard lights blinking as three people jump out. I stand up to see the license plate and smile. PSN-336. The same one the surviving gunman got rescued in last night. And sure enough, there he is. This is better luck than I’d hoped for.
I check the phone and match his photo: Tony Lebretta. The two other guys with him are hard to see from this far. A fat dude stretching every seam of his dark blue suit and a young guy in a track suit. They stand conversing with the driver for a moment, ignoring the horns and abuse from the traffic held up behind. Then there’s waving and the SUV pulls away. The three of them go inside The Falcon.
Okay. It’s not much, but I’ve got something. Like a single snag can unravel a whole rug, here might be the way for me to unravel this mystery. Nearly 4:00 p.m. That seems like a good time for a beer.
I smile and nod as I walk into The Falcon, ask the maître d’ for a table for one. “Somewhere near the window?” I suggest.
It’s a big place, tables spread across the wide black and white tiled floor. A bar runs half the length of one side, two sets of double doors in the rear wall swing back and forth in and out of the kitchen. It’s half-full, quite busy seeing as it’s not close to dinner time but well after lunch. The three from the SUV are tightly gathered around a table in the back, talking quietly. They have their backs to the wall, of course, and are only a short hop from one of the kitchen doors. Smart positioning. It’s where I’d normally have asked to sit, but I need to stay as far from them as possible. The longer I’m anonymous, the better. I’m pretty sure Lebretta won’t recognize me from last night. I’m in different clothes, and I finally shaved off that annoying beard before I left this morning. I looked like a child, staring back at myself in the mirror this morning, but it’s a relief. My hair still hangs long. I’ll get that cut later. Maybe. I kinda like it.
“Here, sir?”
The table is up against the large plate glass window, The Falcon Authentic Italian Cuisine visible backwards in cursive script. It’ll do. “Thanks.”
“The fuck are you planning to do?” Officer Graney is opposite me, smoking a cigarette as he leans back in the chair. Smoke curls out of the ragged wet hole in his throat. I ignore him.
“Yeah, cocheese. What exactly?”
Dwight, Alvin, and Sly take seats at the empty table beside mine. A gruesome collection of blood and bone, glistening in the afternoon sun through the big window. They lounge around, grinning at each other. I can’t see Michael.
“You think you got any kind of handle on this?” Sly asks. He nods over at the table with Andretti’s guys. “You can’t hear them. If they leave and you follow, they’ll make you. What’s your plan?”
A waiter comes over with a menu and water. But I’ve already seen the specials board.
“I’ll take the osso buco, thanks.”
He nods and leaves, oblivious to my unwanted company.
“You’re wasting time, dickhead,” Alvin says.
They are all making valid points, but I’m in the wind here. Nothing else to go on, so I have to be patient.
An hour later, and one excellent osso buco heavier, the whole thing is a bust. Well, apart from the meal, that was worth the visit alone. But those three sat there talking, two others, one of them recognizable from Lombardi’s rogue’s gallery, came and then left again. And here I still sit, none the wiser. I won’t say my ghosts were right, but maybe they have a point. These guys might sit here directing business until well into the night.
I head over to the bar and order a beer, intending to lean there and drink it, try to talk to the bartender. And from here, maybe I can overhear a little from Lebretta’s table. I keep my back to them.
“Sir, please, let me have this delivered to your table.” The maître d’ is too damned efficient.
I put on my best smile. “I’m too full to sit down any longer. Okay if I have it here.”
He’s clearly uncomfortable about that, but what can he do?
“Certainly, sir.”
He slings a pained looked at the bartender, then hustles away. That gives me an in.
“He always got a stick so far up his ass?”
The bartender grins. He’s young, maybe early twenties at most. And here’s me, a grizzled and world-weary 30-year-old. “He’s okay,” the kid says in a broad Bronx accent.
“You like working here?”
“Sure, why not? It’s a nice place.”
“Yeah, I guess it is. The food is great.”
He puts the beer down and I take a long pull.
“You’re not from around here.”
I smile. “That obvious, huh? You’re right. New Orleans born and raised.” Not entirely true, but close enough. “So who owns this place? Some fancy celebrity chef?”
The bartender laughs. “You don’t eat out much, huh? I mean, sure this place is nice, but it ain’t some Michelin star establishment. Owner is Furio Andretti.”
“He’s not a fancy chef?”
“He ain’t a chef at all, he’s a businessman. The chef is a man called—” He breaks off, his eye caught by something.
I look over and the maître d’ is at the other end of the bar, his face hard as granite. As soon as I turn he switches on the creeping servitude again, but the message has been sent.
“I gotta go do…this,” the bartender says and sidles away, tries to look busy doing nothing.
If I stick around or push any more, I’ll be noticed. And I can’t hear anything from Lebretta anyway. I swallow down the beer and lift the glass. “Thanks!”
“You’re welcome,” the bartender says with a nervous smile.
I nod once to the maître d’, trying not to grind my teeth, and head out.
“You fucking loser, what a waste of time,” Alvin says, laughing like a hyena.
“You’re not really detective material, are ya, Carver?” Graney says.
“Is this what a rōnin would do?” Sly asks. He shakes his head in disdain, the shiny organs in his chest jiggling as he laughs.
But fuck them, I actually learned a lot. Nothing comes in quickly, nothing lands right in your lap. You have to put in the work. I don’t know what I’ll do with these tidbits of information, but it’s all grist for the mill.
