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“I’ll start at the beginning. An underboss, Sandro De Luca, was carrying out unsanctioned hits for certain politicians. He was trying to do things with La Familia that were too advanced for the old guard. They paid me to take him out. I did things as they did in those days, you know, good old-fashioned car bomb. Only the dumb putz wasn’t in his car when it blew.”
“Who was in it?” I ask him, but I think I know the answer.
“Poor Mrs. De Luca got into her husband’s car to move it out of her way because he was blocking her car in their driveway. A putz that couldn’t protect his wife by doing the manly, the husbandly thing of not blocking his wife’s car. Anyhow, she went kaboom, and I had to leave soon after that.”
“And Alessandro?”
“Alessandro and I met when he was walking to school one day. Well, I met him, but he ignored me to talk to his pizza, pasta, pesto loving friends. I followed him for a few days, learned his schedule, and grabbed him one day after he got kicked out of his house. He was an entitled little shit, and I aimed to cut it out of him. I wanted the whereabouts of his father. Big Sandro was making moves to take out the old guys and put his buddies, Rossi and Montegna, in place. Looks like the ravioli muncher did it.”
“Okay, that’s very fucking specific. What is your fucking beef with us? What have Italians done to you that makes you this fucking upset?”
“It’s not that you’re Italians. It’s that you’re New Yaawkuhs.” He mimics the signature chef’s kiss hand gesture with a butchered New York accent that makes me want to slug him.
“Oh! That’s valid, but New Yorkers don’t give a fuck about you. We’re an acquired taste, you know? Just mind your business and stay out the way. Don’t walk too slow, and definitely don’t kidnap the daughter of Don Rossi and daughter-in-law of Don De Luca. Ti ucciderò se mio marito non ti uccide prima.”
My warning comes with me spitting at his feet, which angers the guy.
“You’re just like your fucking husband. Since you’re so interested in our history, let me get my knives so I can give you matching scars.”
29
ALESSANDRO
“Play it again,” Lorenzo says to me as Jenkins talks on the phone with Don Rossi, who’s coordinating with his connection in some government agency. I’m not asking any questions since Evelyn’s father’s been a Don for about as long as my father.
“I’m telling you that she’s in the Bronx somewhere near a bus depot. Probably in a scarce area, not a lot of foot traffic, but off the river, maybe?” I rattle off my guesses from her message. “She is oblivious to everything around her, always. Except now, she’s listening to the buses in the background? She said depot first, even though the first word of the instructions was ‘put’. She’s trying to tell us where she is.”
“We already found my truck,” Jenkins murmurs. I can see the frustrated glare in his eyes, the face that says he’s failed her, just like the rest of us. While I was pissed before, having this time to go over how we got here, the deck was stacked against him from the beginning.
“They switched cars near Columbus Circle,” her father says over the car’s speaker. “If I’m following your clues, she’s probably near the West Farms Bus Depot. That’s the closest depot near the Bronx River, fellas. We lose sight of it on the Cross Bronx Expressway. I’ll keep working on it until we bring her home.”
“Wait!” Jenkins swerves to a stop on the side of the road. “The tracker! I fucking forgot with everything happening.”
“Wait? What?” I ask him.
“She wanted to go back to your place but said you were pissed and didn’t want to see her. So she took me to some fucking dry cleaner with a tunnel.”
“Great, now he knows about the tunnel too?” Lorenzo shakes his head.
“Spit it out, Jenkins,” I tell him.
“I wouldn’t let her go if she was going without me, so I told her the only way I’d stay with the car is if she has one of those GPS trackers to stick to your phone, kid, whatever.”
“FUCKING LET’S GO!!” I charge. My adrenaline is pumping, heart beating, and I can’t wait to get my hands on the motherfucker responsible for this. I just hope we’re in time before something irreversible happens.
“Pull up the address,” Lorenzo says to Jenkins.
While they coordinate where we’re going, I’m changing clothes, getting ready for whatever may happen. A bulletproof vest, boots, two guns, and two knives. There are a dozen spots for me to pack extra bullets, but I’m hoping it’s not necessary.
“Ren, send that address to Pop. Tell him to find out who owns it. I doubt this is random, and I doubt some hitman who shows up and lets people know he’s looking for me—wait, how did Rossi’s soldiers find out about the hitman?”
Lorenzo glances at me from over his shoulder in the front seat. “A waiter in some restaurant overheard a conversation about your netting a 500,000-dollar toe tag. He told his cousin, his cousin told someone else, and so on.”
“Get Rossi back on the phone,” I order them.
“Yeah, Jenkins?” He answers the call immediately.
“What restaurant did that tip about the hitman come from?” I ask him.
