The Wolf (16 page)

I smiled. “About what?”

“Maybe I shouldn’t tell you,” he said.

“Now that you put it that way,” I said, concerned about what was on his mind, “you have no choice but to tell me.”

“You keep secrets,” Jack said. “Why can’t I keep some, too?”

“Tell you what,” I said. “Fill me in on one of your secrets and I’ll do the same with one of mine.”

Jack crinkled his brow and narrowed his eyes. He was a handsome boy and had many of his mother’s mannerisms, which were both painful and wonderful to see. “How about you go first?” he said, not bothering to stifle a giggle.

“Dads always go last,” I said. “Especially when it comes to secrets.”

“Says who?”

“It’s in the dad book of rules,” I said, “which you only get to read when you become a dad.”

“I think you just made that rule up,” Jack said.

“Maybe, maybe not,” I said. “But until you can prove otherwise, you go first.”

“I’m worried, Dad,” he said.

His serious tone caught me short. The boy was only a few months removed from losing his mother and sisters in the most horrific way he could imagine. I had sent him to see a therapist I trusted, which helped as much as that sort of thing ever helps. Jimmy took him under his wing and in a few short weeks had Jack playing chess at an advanced level. They almost never missed a Yankees home game and Jimmy made sure Jack and his friends not only had a good time but were heavily guarded as well. He also made sure none of the boys—and especially Jack—didn’t notice the extra security. I had entrusted David Burke with the security hires and he brought in top-level pros as adept at not being seen as they were at protecting their charge.

But I knew I’d been away too long. I was deep in the weeds of the job, but at the expense of time with my son, my only remaining child.

“What about?” I asked.

“You,” he said in a voice barely audible above the heavy midtown traffic.

We turned left on 52nd Street and stopped in front of a hot dog cart, a middle-age man working the wagon, ignoring the steam coming up from the tins and warm coal fire near his waist. “You still like your pretzels hot and with plenty of mustard?” I asked Jack.

“Yep,” he said, “same as you.”

“Give us two,” I told the man, “the darker, the better. And two cold bottles of water.”

Within seconds the man handed us each a hot pretzel covered with yellow mustard followed by two sweaty bottles of Poland Spring. He palmed a fistful of thin napkins and passed them to me. I dropped a twenty on the slot next to the mustard and nodded my thanks. “Keep the rest,” I said to him.

Jack and I stood against the wall of a large office building, eating our pretzels, drinking our water, and watching the faces of the crowd rushing past us. “They always taste better off the cart,” I said. “Better than at a ballpark or at the Garden.”

Jack nodded as he wiped a line of mustard from his lower lip. “Mom liked them, too,” he said. “Remember?”

“I remember,” I said.

I swallowed a long cold gulp of water. “You don’t want you to worry, Jack,” I said.

“Mom worried,” he said.

“I know,” I said. “And I told her what I’m going to tell you. I may not have been the best husband or father. I may not have always been there when you guys needed me to be. And I’m sorry for that.”

“Mom was always cool about it,” Jack said. “It bothered Paula and Sandy a lot more, I think. They missed having you around. Me, too.”

I closed my eyes for a moment, the pain of the truth spoken as sharp and as sudden as the blade of a knife.

“I did my best, Jack,” I said, holding my composure, not wanting to expose the boy to my grief and guilt. “You need to believe that.”

“I know, Dad,” Jack said.

“But where I never come up short, where I never drop the ball, is with my work,” I said. “I am very good at what I do and there’s no need for you to worry about me when it comes to that. I can take care of myself and I will take care of you. I went against my gut with Mom and the girls and let them talk me into something I felt wasn’t right. That will never happen again. Nothing is going to happen to you. You have my word on that.”

“But something can happen to you,” Jack said.

I nodded. “It’s the world I live in, Jack,” I said. “But it’s a world I know well, and I’ve survived in it for a long time. It’s going to take a lot to keep me from coming back and being with you.”

Jack stared at me. The pretzel and the water were long since finished and his small body was shielded by the shade of the imposing building. We ignored the passersby and bumper-to-bumper traffic. None of that mattered now. It was just the two of us.

“You have my word, Jack,” I repeated. “You will be safe.”

Jack held the look for a few seconds and then put his small arms around my waist and hugged me. I bent forward, lifted him into my arms and held him close, as tight as I could. “I love you, little man,” I whispered into his ear.

“I love you, too,” he whispered back.

“We good?” I asked.

Jack nodded.

I put him down, his right hand buried inside mine, and we started walking toward the theater to see a matinee of Jack’s favorite Broadway musical,
The Book of Mormon.

“You know who does need to worry?” I said to him.

“Who?”

“Your Yankees,” I said. “No bench, weak outfield, no A-Rod, old rotation, even older bullpen. Maybe you should think about rooting for another team.”

“I never worry about the Yankees, Dad,” Jack said, shrugging aside the teasing. “They’re gonna be fine.”

“Okay, “I said, “then you’re worry free.”

Chapter 27

Naples, Italy

The restaurant at the heart of Forcella was half filled with late evening diners. The four young men at a corner table relished the fine food, drinking more than their share of high-end red. They grew louder as the wine continued to flow, on occasion even drowning out the middle-age woman in a form-fitting dress singing Neapolitan ballads from a small stage next to the bar a few feet from the narrow entrance.

Two men sat at the bar, quietly nursing glasses of Fernet Branca with ice and a lemon twist. The taller and younger of the two, Luigi Manzo, was in his early thirties and a member of the Camorra since his late teens. In that time, he had worked as a runner, a driver for Don Vittorio Jannetti, and as a loan collector, up to his current position as one of the Strega’s most trusted triggermen. In his free time Manzo collected vintage Fiats and portraits of the streets of the toughest and poorest city in Europe. He was trim, hard-wired, and slow to anger but quick to act.

The man next to him was older and calmer but equally as dangerous. His name was Bartolo Vinopianno, but he was known to all the locals as Brunello, due to the fact that he owned a piece of a vineyard in the North that produced his favorite wine.

Manzo gazed up at the large clock above the bar and noted the time. “Lock the front door,” he told Brunello. “We don’t want any late night arrivals. Have the waiters let the ones at the tables know it’s closing time. And do it without attracting attention.”

“All of the tables?” Brunello asked, catching the eye of the headwaiter.

“All but one,” Manzo said.

“And what are we going to do with that one?” Brunello asked.

“Offer them an after dinner drink,” Manzo said. “And leave the bottle.”

“I was wondering when she was going to make her move,” Brunello said. “At least they got to finish their meal.”

“That’s when she’s at her best,” Manzo said. “After dinner.”

Within fifteen minutes the restaurant had emptied. The departures were evenly spaced out and seemed nothing more than a normal end to an evening meal at a favorite local restaurant. The four men at the corner table, immersed in their drinking and storytelling, barely took note of the patrons leaving. They were probably younger than they appeared to be, aged somewhat by the full beards on three of them and a scruffy growth on the one with the loudest laugh and high-pitched voice. The clothes didn’t help either—knockoff designer jeans topped by wrinkled J. Crew long-sleeve T-shirts and ankle-high boots with worn-down heels. They barely acknowledged the waiter as he placed four frosted glasses in front of them and a bottle of Limoncello in the center of the table. “With our compliments,” the waiter said.

“Clear out the staff,” Manzo said to Brunello. “She’ll want to be alone with them.”

“You’re not worried they’ll pull a gun on her if they feel cornered?”

“These are not the guys who strap on guns,” Manzo said. “These are the ones who strap on bombs and blow themselves up. That’s all they know. But tonight they are bomb free.”

Brunello made eye contact with the headwaiter and gestured for him to leave, along with the kitchen staff. The waiter nodded and walked through wooden double doors into the near-quiet kitchen.

“Make a pot of fresh coffee,” Manzo said. “Bring out a large cup and leave it on the table to their left. Then, take a seat on the other side and keep your eyes on all four.”

“You’ll be here?”

“I’ll be where she needs me to be,” Manzo said.

Brunello started to walk toward the back, stopped and turned to face Manzo. “I always forget,” he said. “How does she like her coffee?”

Manzo smiled. “Dark and bitter,” he said, “just like you.”

Angela Jannetti stood next to the table and smiled at the four men still talking and drinking. The bottle of Limoncello was now empty, and the weight of the drink along with the bottles of wine that preceded it were taking their toll. Their voices were hoarse, their words slurred.

“I hope you enjoyed your dinner,” Angela said to them.

They looked up at her and smiled. “Are you here to dance for us?” one of them asked.

“Not the way you like,” Angela said.

“Maybe you can do more for us than dance,” the oldest said, wiping his mouth with the back of his right hand. “Something we would all enjoy.”

“If there’s any fun to be had here tonight,” Angela said, “I assure you it will be on my part.”

“Who are you?” the one with the scruffy growth asked.

“You’re sitting in my restaurant,” Angela said, tossing a quick glance toward Brunello. “In my neighborhood, in a city I control.”

The four men chuckled. “Is that supposed to scare us?” one asked.

“It would,” Angela said, “if you were bright enough.”

“I’m afraid to disappoint you,” the oldest said, his voice coated with anger. “But where we come from, we fear no one, especially a woman.”

“That’s a mistake,” Angela said.

The thin blade slid down Angela’s right arm and her fingers wrapped themselves around the black handle, gripping it tight. She kept her arm down low and stepped closer to the table, standing now between two of the men, a smile still on her face. “Are any of you armed?” she asked.

“We would be as stupid as you think we are if we answered that,” one said.

She moved with professional speed. Lifting the head of the man closest to her, she swiped the blade across the length of his throat in one rapid movement. She let the man go and watched as he fell flat against the table, the white cloth and the wood floor now coated with his blood.

She moved behind the dying man and kept her eyes across the table at the other three frozen in place. She didn’t blink as the bullet from Brunello’s weapon tore a hole through the eye of the young man with the scruffy growth, killing him instantly.

Manzo stood behind the two remaining men, Brunello keeping his place at a nearby table. Angela stepped around the two dead men, her eyes on the ones across from her, walking with a confident stride. “As you can see, there are some similarities between my group and yours,” she said. “We have no trouble shedding blood to find answers to our questions.”

“You didn’t ask any questions,” one of the two managed to say. “You just talked about our dinner.”

“I’m asking now,” Angela said. “You are members of Raza’s cell. There is much street talk about an attack here in Naples and somewhere else in Italy in the coming days. I would like to know where and when those attacks are to take place.”

“You will kill us whether we tell you or not,” the more brazen of the two said. “So why should we tell you anything?”

“Because there are many ways for someone to die,” Angela said. “Quickly, as you have just witnessed with your two partners. And then there is the other way. Your choice to make.”

“We are not high-ranking members of the cell,” the other man said. He was young and frightened. “There is only so much information we have access to, and none of it might be any help to you.”

“I’ll decide that,” Angela said, “as soon as you tell me what it is you do know.”

The younger man glanced over at his friend and waited until he looked his way. “We have no choice,” he told him. “Tell her.”

“I will tell this Italian bitch nothing,” the man snarled. “And neither will you, coward.”

Angela looked up at Manzo and nodded. Manzo wrapped a thin, double-coiled rope around the angry man’s neck and braced his right knee against the wooden brackets of the chair, keeping his prey in place. The man’s hands rose in a meek attempt to avoid the inevitable, his lower limbs trembling, thin lines of white spittle running down the edges of his mouth. Manzo’s strength was too large a hurdle to overcome, his skill far exceeding his target’s abilities to fight him off. It took less than twenty seconds to snuff the life out of the terrorist who only minutes ago was savoring the last of an excellent Italian meal.

Angela waited until the man’s body slumped in his chair and Manzo pulled his rope off his neck and placed it back in the front pocket of his jacket. She then looked at the remaining terrorist. “It should be easier for you to speak to me now,” she said.

The young man scanned the three dead bodies surrounding him. His hands shook and the lines of his face trembled. His eyes were rimmed with tears, more out of fear than sorrow.

Angela looked at Manzo. “Get him a glass of water and something strong to drink,” she told him. She kept her eyes on the young man while Manzo went to the bar.

“Do you intend to kill me even if I tell you all I know?” he asked.