Page 101 of Waste of Worth

The mailer he was sending out would not be. It didn’t have his name on it, or even his address.

At the end of the hallway, Dino pulled open the chute that had been installed the year before in the building on every floor. It allowed the renters to drop in whatever they wanted mailed, and it would be sent out before the hour was up.

One benefit to paying high maintenance costs, Dino thought.

He dropped the mailer into the slot, hearing it hit the sides of the chute with loud thumps before it finally came to a stop on the bottom floor’s mailing cart.

Dino only had the time to close his apartment door when he heard the first bang of boots coming down the hallway.

The officials only had to knock once before he let them in.

“DINO DeLuca,” the agent said, strolling into the interrogation room with files in hand. Behind him came another agent, and in his hands he held a familiar garbage can. “How’re you feeling, Dino? Comfortable? Hungry? Cigarette?”

Dino flicked the agent with a disinterested look, and then went back to studying the marks on his wrists from the cuffs being put on too tightly. “Fuck off.”

“That’s not a particularly great way to start this conversation.”

“Please fuck off,” Dino said, not bothering in the slightest to hide his smirk at the anger that flashed in the agent’s eyes.

“The hard way it is.”

Dino had no idea what the fool was talking about, and while he was sure he wouldn’t like it, he wisely chose to stay quiet as the other agent placed the garbage can on the table top. He could see the dusting of ash around the rim, and the marks on the side that said they had tried to get fingerprints off the item.

They didn’t need to bother.

He’d tell them it was his. It came from inside his goddamn office.

It wasn’t news who it belonged to.

The agents—the same ones who had accosted him outside of his club, Courtly and Stanely—murmured back and forth between one another too low for Dino to hear. He was pretty sure they should have got their act together before they came in to question him, but he didn’t care either way.

Finally, Agent Courtly looked to Dino with a smile. “Glad to see they took the cuffs off you.”

“I want my lawyer,” Dino replied unbothered.

“He’s on his way.”

“I have nothing to say until he gets here.”

“We don’t need you to,” the agent stated matter-of-fact.

Wonderful.

“As you can see,” Agent Stanley said, waving at the cold, gray room, “we’ve been lucky enough to have been included in a special task force with the Chicago PD in an effort to lower, if not irradiate, the crime problem in Chicago.”

Dino scoffed. “That bullshit again?”

The agent barely even blinked. “Yeah, this again.”

Agent Courtly patted his partner on the shoulder as he stepped closer to the table. “Fact is, Chicago has been home to the Outfit organization for over eighty years, and over sixty percent of the crime, drug trade, and illegal weapons dealing in this city can be attributed straight back to the mob.”

Dino didn’t like where this was going.

“Let me guess,” he said, glancing up at the ceiling as he placed his hands behind his head, “why bother fidget-fucking with the little guys on the streets when you could take out the big guys and cut the whole problem off at the knees?”

The agent smiled at Dino. “There you go. You’re getting it now.”

He was, unfortunately.