Brain Storm (4 page)

But here, as on television, he created the impression that the hood who lurked beneath the flashily dressed veneer would slip to the surface.

"Forget that crappola," Dominic whined.

"They're stealing us blind. They're killin' each other left and right. They ain't reliable."

"Aren't,"
Don Anselmo corrected. And by the way his brother cringed, he appeared to be used to such grammatical corrections. "They are as reliable as we need them to be. The high mortality rate among our youngest employees is handily offset by the level of protection their ignorance affords us.

With the system we have in place, we are virtually untouchable."

Though Remo couldn't see his face, he could tell by the confident set of the carefully tailored shoulders and the look of defeat on his brother's face that Don Anselmo considered the discussion closed.

"I just don't like them nigga's," his brother said, shaking his head. He attacked his plate more violently.

"Those,"
Don Anselmo corrected. "Those nigga's."

There was an awkward silence broken by the thug on Dominic's left. "Da gooks is da ones what scare me," he said with a wide-eyed nod not uncommon among those who would have a hard time spelling
IQ.
The others on the bench all nodded in wordless agreement at this particularly piquant observation.

Don Anselmo didn't even bother to correct the man's grammar.

Remo's attention was drawn from the rear table by the reappearance of his waiter. The squat man held a tray high above his balding head as he breezed up to Remo's table. Before he had even unloaded the contents, Remo knew that the rice was unacceptable.

The stench had preceded him.

The waiter dropped the steaming plate on the disposable paper place mat and stood back, awaiting approval. Remo suppressed an overwhelming urge to retch.

The rice was dripping with clumpy red tomato sauce. Bits of sliced mushroom and chopped peppers peeked out from between the pink-stained grains of rice, and the plate was garnished all around the edges with sprigs of parsley and a lone lemon wedge. Remo might have been able to eat the lemon slice if it hadn't been slathered with the sickly, oily, rancid-smelling sauce.

"What is this supposed to be?" he asked, indicating his plate.

The waiter seemed geared up for an argument.

"Didn't we go troo dis already? You ordered rice,"

he replied tartly.

"Apparently we didn't go 'troo it' enough. I ordered plain white rice. This is not plain white rice."

"Dere's white rice in it."

Because Remo didn't want to get into a fight, he asked the waiter to put the rice in a doggie bag and bring him his water. Plate in hand, the man vanished once more through the scratched kitchen door.

Remo had hoped to have supper before he went to work. Lamentably it was not to be. Rather than wait for a glass of tepid water that probably wouldn't arrive for another half hour, if ever, Remo stood. Cast-ing a mischievous glance at the trio of goons across from Don Scubisci, he casually crossed the area separating his table from the don's.

This stretch of floor had remained vacant the entire time Remo had been in the small restaurant, save for the occasional waiter who brought complimentary food and drinks to the great man. It was as if a hy-pothetical line had been drawn and stepping across it could only be accomplished on pain of death. Even though the rest rooms were in the back near the lone table, not one patron dared breach the danger zone.

Remo made as if he was heading for the bathroom, but at the last minute a twist dropped him into one of the vacant seats beside Don Anselmo.

There was another pair of Scubisci's men sitting at a tiny table near the main entrance, who couldn't have been more obvious if they had Thug 1

and Thug 2 tattooed to their broad foreheads. They rose, looking to Dominic for guidance. The younger Scubisci brother gestured ever so slightly to stay the hands of the henchmen who were even now reaching for their shoulder holsters. It was a surprisingly subtle warning from a man his size.

"Whadda you want?" Dominic asked. He ripped a crunchy slice of fresh Italian bread with his yellow incisors and attacked his plate once more.

Remo said only two words. "Guillermo Murietta."

Three forkfuls of coiled spaghetti paused halfway between table and mouths. Six dull eyes stared menacingly at Remo.

Remo smiled. It wasn't a pleasant smile. It was the smile of a skull.

"Youse better get outta here," Dominic threatened.

"Why?" Remo asked. "Is it time for you to go in the bathroom and untape a gun from the toilet tank now?"

Dominic placed his meaty palms against the chipped and cigarette-scarred side of the table. He was about to shove his way upright—an evolutionary milestone for his entire family—when a ring-laden hand pressed firmly against his thick forearm.

"Don't do anything, Dominic," Don Anselmo, silent until now, instructed softly. As Dominic seethed, the don addressed Remo. "An unfortunate accident, this Murietta," Don Anselmo said, nodding his sad agreement.

Remo looked at him and didn't even attempt to mask his contempt. "That's not what I hear."

"What is dis?" Dominic interrupted. "We're eatin' here. Do you see us goin' over and buggin' you when you is eatin'?"

Remo ignored Dominic. He continued speaking to the don. "There was only one legitimate accident.

Murietta wasn't to blame, the courts decided that.

But you decided he was."

Don Anselmo shrugged. "It's a rough world," he said vaguely. "There are many accidents. Some people are simply unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time."

"You got that right," Remo said, turning back to Dominic.

For an instant their eyes locked, and Scubisci seemed to read the promise of death in the depths of Remo's cold, deep-set eyes. A fat tendril of sloppy pasta hovered immobile before his open mouth as his free hand snaked carefully beneath his jacket. His fingers had barely brushed the steel butt of his concealed weapon when a commotion broke out at the door of the restaurant

There was a single shout of warning before the shooting started.

The table was immediately upended. A flurry of hands, Dominic Scubisci's included, grabbed Don Anselmo and yanked him to safety behind it.

Remo stood, peeved that his moment had been interrupted.

When he turned, he saw a half-dozen men had piled in through the main entrance to the restaurant.

They were exchanging fire with the pair of Scubisci bodyguards who had taken refuge behind a battered steel dessert cart. Occasionally a few shots were directed to the rear of the restaurant, where they plowed into the ancient Formica surface of Don Anselmo's table.

Though bullets whizzed all around him, they somehow seemed to cut a wide swath around Remo.

Remo leaned over to where the four hoods cowered, guns at the ready. He saw that a thick sheet of steel had been fastened to the underside of the don's private table.

"Isn't that cheating?" he questioned. No one answered.

When the shooting started, the restaurant had erupted in screams. Those patrons not hunkered down behind their flimsy tables were fleeing for the tiny emergency exit at the rear of the building.

That was a mistake. Seconds after the initial gunfire began, the rusted metal door exploded inward and three more goons poured into the restaurant, shoving panicked diners aside as they swept the front of the restaurant with fire from their lightweight In-gram Model 11 subguns.

Remo wasn't sure whose side these three were on.

All of these guys seemed to have picked their suits from the Cosa Nostra section of the nearest Salvation Army store. Briefly Remo wondered how wise guys were able to tell each other apart. Looking at all of them bunched together in that small space exchanging apparently random fire, Remo decided that all mobsters should be required to wear numbered and colored muscle shirts over their suits so different fac-tions could be identified.

A moment later, it became clear that these were more of Don Anselmo's men.

"Let's get him outta here!" Dominic shouted from behind the table at the new arrivals. He waved his gun around his head like a cowboy getting ready to rope a calf.

One of the new arrivals nodded his understanding and proceeded to unload a steady stream of slugs into the area around the cashier's desk and into the chests of two of the six armed aggressors.

Chunks of the ancient, cheap plywood exploded in deadly shards around the door as a spray of blood splattered against the smoke-smeared front window.

The men fell in crumpled heaps, one landing against the hostess's desk and collapsing the entire structure in an avalanche of stale mints and laminated menus.

The strategy proved to be a mistake. Until now the bulk of the fire had been directed at the cowering men in the front, but now three of the four remaining gunmen turned their attention to the back of the restaurant, where their ultimate target lay.

Bullets began rattling against the surface of the table with the ferocity of hard-driven rain spewed from the mouth of an angry typhoon. Remo dodged and swirled to avoid the incoming projectiles.

Some latent survival instinct appeared to have surfaced in the mind of Dominic Scubisci. During the thickest part of the firefight, Dominic signaled to his men to lead Don Anselmo from the protection of the table to the rear exit.

The three who had entered from the back provided cover while the three behind the table swarmed around their leader and trundled him toward the door, all the time returning fire themselves with their side arms.

They had made it as far as the rear exit when Don Anselmo made an alarming discovery. Two of his men had just been shot, one critically, and he had to shout over the burp of automatic-weapons fire to be heard.

"Hey, where's Dominic?" asked the capo of the Manhattan Mafia.

"YOUSE IS IN SHIT up to your neck."

Dominic tried to sound tough, but the words lacked their usual conviction. This was probably due to the fact that the skinny guy had plucked him from his brother's flank and carried him through a heavy cross fire as if he were dancing through a field of early-summer dandelions.

They were in the kitchen of the restaurant. The service staff had fled through their own exit, abandoning various boiling pots and flaming pans on the great gas stoves. The war continued to rage in the outer room. Remo had pushed a huge ice machine in front of the door to discourage any of the other mobsters from ducking for cover inside the kitchen.

When they entered, he had placed Dominic's Colt automatic on a nearby stainless-steel counter, ago-nizingly close to the mobster.

The hoodlum eyed the weapon as he sized up Remo's lean frame.

"Dominic Scubisci," Remo said with the dispassion of a teacher reading an attendance sheet. "You are in charge of enforcement for the Scubisci Family?"

Dominic scrunched up his face disdainfully. For a second, his eyes left the abandoned gun. "You a lawyer?"

Remo smiled tightly, ignoring the question.

"In your capacity as enforcement arm, you took it upon yourself to rid the world of one Guillermo Murietta."

"He had it comin'," Dominic growled.

"For crimes against the Scubisci Family," Remo prodded.

"Yeah," Dominic said, jutting out his chin. He edged closer to the gun.

"The specific crime involving Mr. Murietta resulted in the death of one Tony Scubisci, your son."

Remo was putting on his best Perry Mason for Dominic Scubisci.

Dominic felt as if he was in a court of law. He tried to call up the appropriate paternal sadness that he had summoned at the Murietta trial. Now, as then, he didn't quite get it right He was used to being a defendant not a witness for the prosecution.

"He killed my boy."

"Your boy, Mr. Scubisci, was twenty-five years old, a three-time loser who had just murdered a member of the Patriconne Family and had run out into traffic between two parked cars as he was attempting to elude the police. He ran in front of the car operated by Mr. Murietta."

"He shouldn'ta done what he done," Dominic insisted. He took another subtle sidestep toward his weapon. The gunfire in the outer room had dwindled by now to a few feeble bursts.

"He was only driving down the street," Remo argued.

"Maybe he shoulda picked another street." With a sudden movement, Dominic leaped toward the nearby counter. His meaty palm slapped victoriously down atop the gun. Scooping up the pebbled handle in his large hand, he wheeled on his interrogator.

The skinny guy was gone.

Dominic started to turn but felt a sudden pressure against his right forearm. A voice, so close it almost sounded as if it were coming from within his own head, whispered in his ear.

"Murietta had five kids."

Dominic couldn't move. His spine had gone stiff as a board, and it felt as if someone was manipulating him from behind like a ventriloquist's dummy. Gun still in hand, he felt himself being drawn to the stove.

"What? It's my fault he don't know where the drugstore is?" Dominic's words were brave, but his jaw clenched in pain as the pressure on his spine increased. They were at the stove now.

A huge cauldron of spaghetti boiled for customers who had long since fled.

"Dominic Scubisci, you have been found guilty of murder in the first degree. Do you have anything to say in your defense before this court passes sentence?"

"Eat shit," Dominic offered.

To hell with Perry Mason. Remo wrapped his fingers around Dominic's wrist. Though the man outweighed him by a good hundred pounds, he proceeded to force the hand into the pot of boiling pasta.

It was a display of impossible strength, the impressiveness of which was completely lost on the mobster.

Dominic's shriek of pain was almost feminine. He immediately released his gun. It dropped to the bottom of the pot with a muted clang. After a second, Remo pulled the hand free. Dominic was horrified to see that his skin had gone as scarlet as a cooked lobster. Blisters had already formed all around the palm and back of the hairy hand.