Grinder (6 page)

“My nephews are missing.”

“Which ones?” I asked.

“Armando and Nicola.”

“Army and Nicky?” I said. The tone made it sound like I wasn't surprised.

“What?” Paolo asked. I said nothing, so he yelled louder. “What?”

I sighed. “Those two are idiots, Paolo. You know that. Everyone tries to cover up what they do so it doesn't get back to you, but you know about them. They walk around town like big-time gangsters throwing your name and your weight around. I bet they're real scary at that private school they go to.”

“You don't think I know what they do? You think I don't fucking know?” His last words ended with his fist pounding the table. “I know what they are like out there, but they are family, and now they're gone.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“Week ago, their mother called me and said they didn't come home to the house. I said they probably were out with some girls, but they still didn't come back the next day. Their phones were off, their friends hadn't seen them. They were gone. The day after that, we found out Armando's car got towed. No one was in it.”

“Where was it?”

“Outside a club in Burlington,” he said.

Burlington was a city outside Hamilton. The people were richer and the air was cleaner. “You call the cops?”

“The cops got half the resources I got, and no one who knows the boys will talk to the law. The boys are gone.”

“So why call me? I don't even know them.”

Paolo looked me in the eye. “Someone took my nephews. Someone made them disappear. Someone . . .”

As he trailed off, I understood. “You think one of your guys did it,” I said.

He looked away and nodded.

“Why would anyone who worked for you make a move on the boys? It doesn't hurt you or your power base.”

Paolo looked back at me and then at the table. “Lately Armando and Nicola have been using the computer. They put themselves on the Internet on this YouTube. They said some things and some names, and it all got put on the Internet.”

I whistled low and found Paolo's eyes. Naming names could get you killed, even if you were the boss's nephews.

“Do you not like your food, sir?” Yousif was back.

“Not now,” I said.

“Sir, we have many other dishes I can —”

I cut him off. “Not now, Yousif.”

He looked at me, his optimism cracked again. He spasmed, straightened, and then made a slow walk back to the kitchen.

Paolo was still looking at me. “It sounds like they dug their own graves,” I said. “If they put names next to events.”

“I know,” he said quietly. “But they were family.” His words hung in the air between us. They could have ignited the cold plate of food in front of him with their anger.

“You want me to find out who did it?”

“I want to know.”

“You know what Army and Nicky did. They crossed a line. You can't start accusing your own people over two rats even if they have your DNA. If you knew who it was, no one would question your revenge, but to blindly go after everyone? No one will support that. And if I go around looking into it, everyone is going to know who put me up to it. This is going to dangle me in front of the city and hang you out to dry.”

“I want to know.” His voice was loud. Yousif dropped a plate in back, probably terrified of the outburst.

I stared into Paolo's fiery eyes. What he wanted would get me killed, and once people figured out Paolo was using me to look into his own people, he would be finished too. Paolo said family was the most important thing, but if he did this, he would betray his second family. Nothing could save him after that. Every ambitious gangster would pull a piece away from him until there was nothing left.

We shared the silence until Paolo could take no more. “I want you to find out who did this, and then I want you to give them to me.”

“No,” I said. “It's not a smart play.”

Before I could say any more Paolo was talking. “I'm not asking, I'm telling you. You're going to do it, or I'm going to finish things with the bartender. You and him killed Tommy and his family for what? His slut wife? If you're not in with me,
figlio
, then I'll do it alone, but before I go down, I'll make things right with the bartender by first making things right with his missus. Once I use her up, I'll put that Irish dog down in the street. Then I'll find the fuck responsible for my nephews myself.”

My hand pulsated on the gun under the table. I thought about killing Paolo in the restaurant, killing him and leaving, but he would have insurance.

As if reading my thoughts, he spoke. “I got people watching them now. I can do it from beyond the grave if I have to.”

Paolo had me and he knew it. My only connection to the city could still hurt me no matter how far I ran. I rubbed my jaw, forcing the muscles to relax and my teeth to stop grinding. “Who did Army and Nicky name?” I asked.

“Bombedieri, Perino, and Rosa.”

“What did they say?”

“You can see for yourself,” he said, and reached into his pants.

I tensed and he said, “Easy,
figlio.”

He produced a piece of paper folded over twice. He left it beside the cold plate and stood up. “Call me when you have a name. And I don't want none of this to lead back to me. I go down, I'm taking mister and missus Irish with me, and those two have a lot farther to fall than I do.”

He waved goodbye to Yousif, who moved out from the kitchen to hold the door for him. “Nice place you got here,” Paolo said.

“Thank you, sir,” Yousif said timidly.

“You should think about serving some pasta, not this foreign shit. Even the Chinese place over there has pasta; it's covered in their shit sauces, but it's pasta. That's probably why they're so busy all the time.”

“Thank you, sir. Have a good night.” It was as rude as Yousif could let himself be.

Paolo left with a smile. I watched him go, noticing his shoulders were a bit less tense.

I unfolded the paper Paolo had left me. Handwritten in thick black script were three lists under three headings: Bombedieri, Perino, and Rosa. Each list had addresses, names, and descriptions like “#2” written beside the names. I assumed the addresses Paolo gave me were work and not home. I checked the paper over twice, front and back, finding only one address for each name. Paolo certainly had access to that kind of information, but having someone dig it up would surely lead to questions later. At the bottom of the paper was a website URL for a specific page on YouTube. This must have been where all of the trouble started.

The Internet was not something I had used often, but as the world changed around me and threatened to leave me behind, I versed myself in its basic functions. I knew there were people who could swim through the electrical currents of the World Wide Web like a shark, seizing any information that was appropriately juicy. The rapidly advancing technological age created more and more people like that every day, and that would make it harder for me to remain anonymous forever; it would be impossible if, like Army and Nicky, I posted my face and opinions online. The Internet was like a gun. Any random thoughts or comments shot out from a computer keyboard in the form of a binary bullet could not be retrieved. It existed in some form in the ether, and there was no chance of erasing its existence or denying it had happened. I wondered about the bullet Army and Nicky fired on YouTube, and what kind of damage it had caused.

I folded the paper up and put it into my pocket. I paid the tab and waited patiently for Yousif to come out and hold the door for me. As he approached, I saw that his jaw was set. My guest had been rude to him a few minutes ago, and he was finding it hard to remain a good host.

“Goodbye, sir,” he said in a polite, curt way.

“Good luck with the dinner rush tonight, Yousif.”

All at once, his pleasant demeanour broke through. “It will be very busy, sir. Very busy indeed.”

The door swung awkwardly closed behind me as Yousif had another tremor. His arm tightened on the door, and it stopped moving before it formed a seal. I heard him sigh with relief as the spell ended. As I entered the parking lot, I could hear him continue talking to himself. “Very busy soon. No rest tonight.”

He was right, I wouldn't rest tonight — not ever, I feared.

It had been almost two years since I had been in the city. It was possible that the last few Internet cafés I had used were still in business, but it was more likely that they were gone. Most small businesses in the downtown core quickly went the way of the dodo. None of them survived long in the infertile concrete. The city reached out and drained the businesses dry with stagnation, or it started to work on the employees, killing their bodies with pollution or their minds with constant vandalism and robbery. The old places didn't matter. I didn't want to set foot in the downtown core before I had to. Every street corner had eyes, eyes looking to pass on information for a score.

I pulled the car onto Upper James and drove north, admiring the economic prosperity the Hamilton mountain enjoyed. Everything was different a few hundred metres in the air. The cars were sleeker and quieter, and the stores were bright and busy. As I drove closer and closer to the core, the stores got smaller and smaller, as though they were tightening in preparation for the city's assault.

Eventually, as I neared the escarpment access, I found a used computer store that had spawned from a decades old two-storey house. I parked the car on a side street and made my way around front to the door. The original front door had been replaced by a glass door encased in a heavy mesh with thick reinforced bars. The door had “Cam's Computer Den” stencilled at eye level. I pushed it open and immediately felt the heat of multiple computer hard drives and the warm bodies of several cats. The warm stale air rushed at the door like a genie escaping from a bottle.

A voice came out from behind a counter piled up with old computer keyboards and monitors. “Hep you?”

“What?” I said as I approached the counter.

“Ken I hep you?”

I saw a man hunched over a desk; he wore a headband that held a magnifying lens in front of his face. The desk light in front of him beamed an impossibly bright light down on the soldering iron in his right hand. He was a heavy man in the way that refrigerators were heavy. The back of his neck had a roll of fat that bulged out as though it were going to burst. His plaid shirt was a vast tight expanse over his back, stretching the pattern into something that resembled a magic eye poster. He sat on a stool with his legs spread wide apart. I imagined his almost-splits was only possible because it was necessary — he had to have a place for his stomach to rest while he was off his feet. His garbled speech was because of a piece of metal he was holding between his pursed lips.

“I need to use the Internet,” I said.

The man barely turned. “Don't do dat here, I dust fix compuders.”

“You have to have Internet access here. I just need it for a few minutes.”

“Go find an Internet café.”

“Twenty bucks for five minutes.”

He turned all the way around so I could see his face. His goatee pushed itself out of the heavy fat folds in his face. One of his eyes was huge in the magnifying lens. He pulled the piece of metal out of his mouth with a fat hand, its skin straining like a full water balloon.

“You think I'm fucking stupid?”

I stared at him, unmoved by his question.

“I'm not leaving you alone with my equipment so I can be on the hook for whatever shit you wanna download.”

“Listen —”

“No, you listen. Take your money and go look at your sick shit somewhere else.”

I had had enough of the fat man. It may have been sitting with Paolo and taking his threats, or the stunt Johnny pulled on the island. Whatever it was, I was tired of assholes. I walked around the counter towards the fat man and his headband. As I got closer, his magnified eye twitched faster and faster. Finally, he put his hand up to his face and lifted the monacle. His fat hand obscured his vision for a second, hiding my rising palm. I gripped his nose and squeezed. Immediately his eyes watered and his huge paws enveloped mine. The fact that he worked with his hands all day made his grip on my hand like a bear trap. I didn't mind losing my hold on his nose; I let go so I could get my left hand on his Adam's apple.

My fingers dug deep into his fleshy neck, finding the small cartilage box in his throat. His voice involuntarily squeaked, and his huge hands rushed to mine again. His grip was powerful, but mine was better, and this time I had no interest in letting go. All the time spent on the fishing boat made my grip like a pit bull's jaws. The fat man's hands slid came away empty as he pawed at his neck. His hands continued to work at my fist, but they slackened when I applied pressure. The fragile cartilage in his neck bent under the strain, and his throat closed, sending the fat man to his knees. The immense pain was nothing compared to the lack of oxygen. His enormous body required a vast amount of air to stay vertical; I imagined it was supplied in huge gasping breaths twenty-four hours a day. Cutting off the air was a viscous shock to his already weak system.

As his face reddened, I leaned in close. “I'm no pervert, I just need to use the Internet for five minutes. You can stay in the room with me if you don't believe me.”

I let go of his throat and listened to his breathing start again. It sounded like a steam engine starting to move. “Forty,” he said between gasps.

“What?”

“Forty for the Internet. You said twenty. I want forty. Forty gets you the Internet, and I won't call the cops about the choking thing.”

“I could just finish the job and shove a buffalo wing down your throat. The cops would buy that.”

“Then you wouldn't have the password for the Inter-net. You'd have to go somewhere else. Be a pain in the ass killing me and then having to drive around town to find an Internet connection and a buffalo wing to bring back here. All that work for forty bucks.” He seemed to smile under his hands, which were rubbing his nose and throat simultaneously.

I pulled out two twenties and put them on the counter. “Show me the computer.”