Page 31

I watch the dot hold still. Not moving through streets. Not going home. In my building. In my club.

I like to know where the boy is. I need to know. It is also a heat I do not have time for. Not now anyway.

I lift my eyes from the screen and look across the water. The city is lit like it has never done anything wrong. It’s angelic. Towers. Bridges. A smear of gold on black.

When I was a boy that view used to put electricity in my blood.

I would sit in the back of my father’s car and feel the whole machine of the place turning for me…

Ships. Money. Men in coats who nodded out of pure respect and honor to my father and the family name.

I thought the city was a promise. A promise of a future. Somewhere along the way it became a blade. Reality hit home.

The city is brutal. Relentless. A deadly weapon. You either hold it by the handle or you find it in your throat.

I lock the phone and put it away.

Elias can wait. And so can my damned melancholy for the past.

The paddle can wait too. If he is stupid enough to lose it, I will know.

Mackensie taps the window. Two knocks. Not urgent but.. final.

“It’s time,” Mackensie says.

I nod, open the door and step out into cold air. Mackensie does not need to say anything else. I do not either.

We both know what is on the pier.

Talk is for men who still think there is another version of the next ten minutes. We walk. Our shoes on wet wood. The water slapping the piles below.

Far off, a container ship moves like a building that learned to swim. But at the bottom of the small pier a man is on his knees…

Shirt dark with blood.

Face already ruined.

One eye swollen shut. Mouth split.

He’s taken the kind of beating that is not rage. It is preparation. Two of my soldiers stand either side of the Lucci man.

When they see me they step away. Not far. Just enough.

The Lucci man looks up. He knows my face. They all do, once it is too late.

“I will spare your life,” I say. My voice carries without effort. The river takes the rest. “Give me Tito Lucci. An address. A bolt hole. A mistress. A gym. The place he sleeps when he thinks no one is watching. He sanctioned the plot against me. I want him. You can walk away from this pier if you give me that.”

For a second, I think the man might even believe my offer is real.

The man works his mouth. Blood and spit hit the wood between us.

“Fuck you. I don’t buy it for a motherfucking second,” he says. The words drag. “You don’t spare lives. Everybody knows. And even if you did, I would rather die than betray my family.”

I look at him. There is a kind of respect in men like this. It is not enough. I shake my head.

“As you wish,” I say.

The gun is already in my pocket. It comes out without drama. I shoot him in the leg. The sound is ugly over water.