From a Dead Sleep (44 page)

Today hadn’t fared much better for Tony Fabrizio. What was supposed to be an uncomplicated task and a colossal waste of time as far as he and his colleague, Frank, were convinced, had turned into another major shit-storm.

It hadn’t taken long for Moretti to figure out who owned the property at the hand-scribbled address Alvar retrieved from Sean Coleman’s kitchen. What required some more delving into was why Coleman had that address in his possession. According to the Winston newspaper, Coleman had been a mere witness to Kyle Kimble’s suicide. But, the fact that he had Kimble’s belongings and information with him posed questions of what all else the security guard knew. With the ledger missing and Coleman AWOL, Moretti feared that Coleman realized he possessed multiple bank account numbers of a very wealthy man. He theorized that Coleman was trying to figure out how to make a withdrawal from one of those accounts.

Soon after reading of Kimble’s death in the paper, Moretti had a couple of his boys check out his deceased employee’s home in Vegas. The place was neat and his wife was gone, but they had no reason to believe she was out of the state. They checked his computer and file cabinets and found nothing to tie him back to Moretti. It made sense considering the ruse Kimble was pulling with his wife.

Frank and Tony had been sent to Michigan only to cover all bases. With the address turning up, Moretti wanted to know what was there and delivered orders to destroy anything that needed to be destroyed. They never expected to find Kimble’s wife stashed out there, and especially not Sean Coleman.

The series of blunders in Michigan began with the guard at the gate. Frank was supposed to keep him distracted while Tony jumped the wall and checked out the address on Bluff Walk Road. The plan was for him to only call Frank if he needed assistance or guidance. That call to arms came far sooner than expected when Tony scaled the wall about thirty yards short of where Frank had instructed him to. He was nabbed almost instantly.

As penance for his major blunder, Frank took point and coroneted Tony as the beaten security guard’s replacement until he returned back down the hill with the car.

“Just let people in and out, asshole,” Frank had barked. “A child could do it.”

While Frank might have been correct, it was ironically Tony’s youthful appearance that drew undesired attention from a handful of residents that commuted in and out of the enclosure during his watch. Their scrutinizing eyes rattled the less experienced Tony, who cowered in worry over the amount of time Frank had been gone. He became unnerved and abandoned his post to catch up with Frank on foot.

He’d made it to the bottom of the long driveway when he heard a barrage of gunfire erupt from within the house. He’d hoped it was from Frank’s gun, but found out otherwise when he got to the front door.

When he came to after the large man from Colorado had laid him out, he found himself in a heap of battered defeat with a pulsing headache. Stumbling through an empty house with his dead partner sprawled out on a hallway floor, he knew he needed direction.

He caught Alvar on his cell, who worked him through what he needed to do.

Minutes later, he was exiting the gate he’d left opened and following Alvar’s instructions precisely—only one planned stop on his way back to the airport. He was halfway around Platte Lake before he noticed that the blue car that had exited the highway behind him was still there. When he altered his speed, he was sure the car had mirrored the change, and he’d become convinced that he was being followed. It wasn’t until it pulled off the road that he felt comfortable enough to carry out Alvar’s instructions.

An unmarked dirt road that entered a thickly wooded area on his left looked like as good a place as any. It didn’t seem particularly well traveled, which was good.

With his window rolled down, the smell of seaweed and dead fish that poured in seemed like a fitting burial place for the crotchety, old Vegas thug who had often worn thin on Tony’s nerves with his numerous stories about the town’s golden era.

Twigs and some assorted stones crackled beneath the tires of the slow-moving Volvo whose quiet engine let him hear the cries of seagulls in the distance. He scouted for a sufficient spot and found one after a quarter of a mile.

A fence of tall, thick foliage hugged a patch of flatland about twenty yards off the road, and he found that he could easily drive around to the opposite side of it as long as he took things slow and didn’t bottom out.

There was broad daylight above him, but he was certain he and his car were concealed well from any remote chance of a passerby catching a glimpse. He lit up a fresh cigarette that he pulled from a pack on the dash and took a deep drag. He then popped the hatchback and exited the vehicle. He took a moment to leer at the eerie sight of a man’s filled shoes protruding out of a large green, rolled-up poly tarp with two stands of multicolored bungee cords. Tony had pillaged the items, along with the digging shovel that lay beside the body.

He pulled out the shovel by its wooden shaft and winced when the back of the blade inadvertently smacked against the side of Frank’s head. The low buzzing of the ensuing vibration of metal lasted only a second or two. He flipped the shovel over his shoulder and took another comforting drag of his cigarette before scouting the area for a raw patch of dirt. He found one where the earth was soft and the edge of the shovel sunk in easily.

He mused over how he’d graduated from a flunky entrusted with relatively menial duties to playing a role in burying his second dead body in twice as many days. He was certain the size of the hole he was digging would need to be larger than the one used for Arianna.

The sight of the fire in Moretti’s eyes Friday night was something Tony would never forget. He’d thought he’d seen Moretti angry before, but it was nothing compared to the pure rage that fumed through the veins in his head after Alvar had pulled him aside after dinner. If Arianna hadn’t been in the ladies’ room at the time, she would have seen it herself and at least have had a clue of what was about to happen to her.

Tony didn’t know if it was Alvar or Moretti himself that offed her. He and Frank were told to drive ahead and wait for them at the edge of town. The Buick caught up in just a minute or two with only two heads visible through the windshield.

It wasn’t until the next morning that Alvar let it slip in not so many words that she’d supposedly been carrying on an affair with Kyle Kimble, and for some time. If Valentino Greco hadn’t killed Kimble and dumped his body somewhere during his escape, Moretti had fully intended on finishing the job. In the end, Kimble had died at his own hand, which deprived Moretti of the pleasure.

Tony wiped sweat from his brow and planted the blade of the shovel into the ground to admire the sizable grave he’d carved into the woodsy ground. The shovel handle stood behind him and waddled in the light breeze as he walked back to his car. He leaned in through the open window and padded the tip of what was left of his stout cigarette on the metal dish of the ashtray drawer. He then leaned forward and again popped open the backdoor of the car. With a labored groan, he wrapped his forearms around Frank’s feet, pressed the sole of his own shoe along the bumper, and heaved the lifeless body out along the coarse but thin carpet. When Frank’s head reached the head of the bumper, his body found nothing but air beneath it and dropped to the ground with a sick sounding thud. Tony closed the hatchback and leaned forward to get a grip on the tarp that blanketed the body.

The penetrating ripple of a gunshot suddenly sliced open a tear in the tranquility that had surrounded Tony only a moment earlier. The rupture of glass from the back windshield of the car sent shards down across his body as he fell to his rear.

“Holy fuck!” he bellowed.

He hadn’t a clue where the shot had come from. Frank’s gun was in the glove compartment and it seemed a mile away at that very moment. He instinctively crawled for the nearest cover, which was the underside of the Volvo. His elbows dug into the clammy ground as he pulled himself farther under and his heart pounded the hard earth below him. He remembered that he had a butterfly knife in his pants that he had inherited from Frank when it fell from the dead man’s pocket while wrapping his body back at the cottage. However, the quarters underneath the car were too tight for him to retrieve it.

He wailed in terror when he felt a large pair of hands fasten onto his bony ankles. The tips of his fingers clawed the dirt desperately as he was dragged savagely along the ground. A second later, the cover of the car gave way to the unobstructed brightness of the sun. He was yanked up by the back of his collar and felt the underside of the bumper bat the top of his skull. His arms and legs flailed wildly under the barbaric manhandling, and he screamed in protest a mere instant before his head was forced forward into the spiderweb of shattered glass of the back windshield. Excruciating pain radiated from his nose to his chin, and his teeth shook inside his mouth as he was thrown to the ground like a sandbag in the midst of a flood.

“Enjoy the scenic drive, asshole?” he heard a man’s voice say before the heel of a boot slammed into his stomach.

Tony’s body folded and his eyes bulged, but he didn’t see the follow-up roundhouse punch that devastated the side of his head and sent a stream of blood from his mouth across the ground like a wild paint stroke.

“Remember the man that you left on the floor of my apartment? That man was like a father to me!”

Tony flopped around on his back like an overturned turtle before the stiff point of the same boot jolted his ribs and sent him to his side.

“That old, blind dog whose throat you slit had more balls than every one of you!”

Tony shrieked from the biting pain as his body was yanked up by the roots of his hair. Some blood streamed from his mouth, but most of it drained down his throat, forcing him to gag and cough as he was unwillingly guided on unsteady legs away from the car.

He clawed at Sean Coleman’s wrist with one hand while the other jammed into his front pocket to search for the butterfly knife.

“It wasn’t me!” he howled. “I wasn’t even there!”

“Who did it then?” Sean demanded.

“His name is Alvar! He’s one sick mother-fucker, yo! He . . . He does shit like that you know . . . It wasn’t me!”

When Tony found the knife in his pocket, the curl of his wrist snapped it open and he swung it wildly at the shoulder at the large man. He felt it sink into flesh, but there was no sound or recoil from his assailant who grabbed his thin wrist and twisted it backwards until the sound of a sharp snap filled the air. Tony bawled like a sea lion being attacked by a killer whale.

A colossal head-butt caused Tony’s neck to buckle before Sean released his grip on the smaller man and let his body fall backwards into the gaping grave that he had dug in the earth just minutes earlier.

Tony fell in a heap, and Sean watched his wrenched and bloodied face with twisted delight. He sneered at the man lying before him before yanking the impaling knife from his shoulder and dropping it to his side. Blood oozed steadily from the wound.

Sean’s hand disappeared behind his back and it returned with his silver Colt Python whose muzzle he pointed directly at the uniformed thug.

“Where were you headed after this, Josh?” he asked. “Where can I find Alvar and his boss, Moretti?”

He noticed the angst heighten in the kid’s eyes at the mention of Moretti’s name. “That’s right, dickhead. I know who you work for.”

“Don’t kill me, man,” Tony pleaded. “I had nothing to do with any of it. Just don’t kill me.”

“Where are they?” Sean growled.

Tony shook his head in defeat. His head drooped to his shoulder. “Colorado, man. We were gonna meet them back in Colorado.”

“They’re still there? Why?”

Tony said nothing.

“Why?” Sean roared.

“They’re looking for someone. Some guy named Valentino. He stole money from Moretti.”

“Where? What’s the address?”

“I don’t know, man!”

“Where!” Sean snarled.

Tears rolled down Tony’s face over his own uncertainty until his eyes enlarged. “The guy who owns the place!” he yelped out. “I know his name. It’s Ray Sarno! The place is south of Lakeland!”

The name was familiar to Sean. He’d read his name in the paper. A wealthy businessman who owned at least one Lakeland casino.

The distant blare of a police siren filtered its way in through the tension of the exchange. Wincing through sun, sweat, and blood, Tony looked as though he couldn’t tell if the man standing over him even heard the clamor. There was no acknowledgment in the lines of Sean’s face, and his dark, deadpan eyes were glued to Tony’s without a hint of emotion. When Sean’s arm raised a little and Tony’s gaze crept down to the gun, he found himself digging his elbows into the dirt and edging backwards.

“Don’t,” Tony whispered with a resigned plea.

Sean held the gun steadily, making it clear to the man sprawled out before him that his life was in his hands. The sirens grew louder and were accompanied by the coarse screech of a set of tires before the grumble of movement along the dirt road could be heard homing in. Sean was unfazed and lifted his thumb onto the hammer. The click sound that emanated compelled a twitch of Tony’s body.

“Don’t,” he said again, shaking his head.

A growing wet spot was spreading out quickly from the crotch of Tony’s pants.

A monochrome blue Michigan Highway Patrol car with a sapphire shield painted proudly across the driver’s side door screeched to a halt behind the Volvo.

Sean heard a door quickly open and the brisk shuffle of feet before a loud male voice shouted the words, “Freeze! Drop the gun!”

It was a dangerous game for Sean to play, but he wanted the Vegas hood to question up until the very last second whether he would comply with the officer’s command. He ignored the lawman’s repeated calls until another car of the same make pulled up. Only then did Sean let his piece drop from his hand and to the ground. With his eyes still on Tony, Sean’s lips curled and he slowly placed his hands behind his head and interlaced his fingers.