Page 33 of The Beast Who Begged Me

Then I walk to the back corner, and my flashlight finds those darker things. Every sick and careful item I put down here to break a man who never owed me a goddamn thing.

“This corner,” I say, no inflection at all as I wave at it, “everything in it gets broken up. Today. And no one but you comes down here until it’s in pieces.”

The guy looks. Sees the chains, the bed, the shower, the toilet. He says, “I’ll do it now, before I meet you uptown.”

When I resurface, the cop has found his spine. “Sir, I can’t let you remove items, this is an active⁠—”

“Investigation. I know.” I stand next to him, not in front of him, both of us looking at the house like two guys at a funeral. “Insurance company’s been out already. Nothing’s leaving here but my own property. And your forensic freaks have swarmed through—right?”

I slide an envelope into his jacket pocket.

He chews his lip while he thinks it over. Then he shrugs and moves off.

I do the rounds of my eyes and ears on the surrounding streets, who have heard nothing about Sebastiano Conti. I tell Shuffles we’re moving to Park Avenue, and he pulls a face. “I like this part of town.”

“Still,” I say. “If you want a change of scenery. That’s where we’ll be.”

He puts out his hand and I shake it. “You take care, Orsini.”

In the car to Astoria, I think about that night, twenty-one years ago. The night my father was killed. The kitchen door. Was it open when I got downstairs, or did I open it?

I don’t know.

Cesario, standing over my father. Standing? Or getting up? Or leaning down?

I don’t know.

Were his hands bloody? I remember them bloody. I’ve remembered them holding the knife and dripping with blood ten thousand times, and that’s the problem. My memory of that night isn’t evidence anymore. It’s a story I’ve told myself over and over until I fooled myself into believing it was the truth.

And look what that so-called truth drove me to…

I pull myself back to the present. My hand is flexing on the car door handle, and I have to actively move it back to my thigh.

Whatever it costs me to stay alive, it’s nothing compared to what I put Caligula through. So I better learn to embrace the pain rather than try to escape it.

I check the unregistered gun D’Amato provided and I think about Seb, because where I’m headed, his memory is fuel. Pep Pardini used to run his crew out of a barbershop, and those stupid fucks are still there when Vito and I drive by on the other side of the road. They’re laughing and smoking outside the shop like nothing has changed, even though I stamped in the face of their leader just a few days ago.

D’Amato himself gave me the hardware this morning before breakfast when I told him what I wanted to do. I’m still getting used to the knife strapped to my ankle in a sheath. Another man’s blade got me out of trouble when Pardini had me tied to a chair. Caligula needed me, and I was dependent on luck. So from now on, I’ll carry my own.

Vito parks a block down and stays with the car. I go in fast and clean, no frills. I keep one alive long enough to find out what he knows about Seb Conti, or the location of his body. I use my new knife for that work.

It’s a good knife. But the guy knows nothing.

Afterward, I hand the unregistered gun and silencer to Vito, who drives off to dump them a few blocks down, while I clean off my blade and wait for the Clemenza men to turn up.

And wait for a sense of justice.

It doesn’t come. These men earned their deaths. But I feel nothing but tired, and my hand hurts, and no number of dead Gees can bring anybody back.

Which means justice was never coming. Not this time.

Not any time…

Even if Cesario Clemenza had been guilty, the basement still wouldn’t have balanced the scales of justice. Even if Caligula’s grandfather ordered that hit, there will be no true justice for it, because he’s already dead.

All I did was break an innocent person. I was acting out of cruelty. Not honor.

My father would be ashamed of me.