CHAPTER 1
Benito
I sipped slowly on my whiskey, appreciating the fine richness of the flavor, and the dry, woody aftertaste of it long after being swallowed; this was true liquor for the connoisseur, and I was enjoying every last drop of it. Tony was enjoying it too – perhaps a little too much. While I was only on my third glass, Tony was on his sixth, and he was reaching over to the bottle to pour himself another glass.
I watched closely, focusing an intense gaze on his hand, which was trembling slightly as he reached for the bottle. My other capos, Tino, Giovanni and Fat Eddie had all been joking and laughing, but as they saw this particular look enter my eyes they all fell silent.
Tony paused as silence fell like a fog in the small, smoky office, his half-smoked cigar hanging limply from his lips. He looked up at me from beneath heavy eyelids, with eyes that were already beginning to glaze over with drunkenness. His black hair, streaked liberally with gray, was already becoming disheveled, with a few loose, greasy strands hanging over his round face with its smoothly-shaven bulldog cheeks. His bulbous nose was even redder than usual, and as his eyes met mine, I saw a look that was both anger and guilt staring back at me.
We looked at each other for a while, and the tension began rising in the air like steam from a hot road. Tony was thirteen years older than me, at forty-nine years old, but I was his superior, a fact that he had always resented. I remembered him hanging around our house when I was a kid, how he used to bust my balls and send jabbing insults my way, thrown like precisely-aimed darts. He was a young man then, young, rash and arrogant, having just become a made man, and he thought that he would one day have true power.
An addiction to alcohol got the better of him though, and while he had seen his peers rise in stature in our organization, he had remained a mere soldier for a long time, having only very recently been promoted to the rank of caporegime, a title which he didn't really deserve, but which we had decided to bestow on him more out of pity than anything else.
“You're feeling thirsty tonight, ain't you Tony?” I asked, speaking softly.
Everyone in this room knew what sort of mood I was in when I started speaking softly, and I could see Tony cringing. Still, he was drunk, and a certain boldness began to enter his veins. A boldness that was both out of place, and very unwise to implement considering who he was talking to.
“Yeah so? It's good whiskey. The taste, it really lingers on the palate, know what I'm saying?”
The expression on my face remained cold and stony.
“Yeah . . . it's good liquor, it's real good liquor, ain't it boys?” I asked, looking around at my other capos, now cracking a smile.
They looked back at me and nodded, smiling cautiously. They knew where this was going.
“Real good stuff,” said Giovanni. “Beautiful, perfect vintage. What is it, eighteen years old, single malt?”
I nodded.
“That's right. Single malt, eighteen years old.”
All the while, I kept my eyes locked in Tony's, increasing the invisible pressure I was putting on him with every passing second. I saw a bead of sweat trickling down his brow; he was feeling it alright. But right now, there was no escape for him.
“What do you think, Fat Eddie?” I asked, speaking to Eddie, who was seated to my left. I kept my gaze focused unwaveringly on Tony though, not even for a split-second removing the barbs that held my eyes locked into his.
Fat Eddie's reply was cool and casual, with him appearing extremely laid-back, as he always was in almost any situation. He shifted his sizable bulk in the chair – he wasn't called “Fat” Eddie for nothing – as he replied.
“Lovely stuff,” he said in his somewhat high-pitched voice. “Supreme flavor, and just enough of a subtle woodiness to it, yeah. It's real classy whiskey, Ben.”
I nodded.
“That's right. It's real classy whiskey. It ain't ten-dollar hooch from the twenty-four-hour liquor store, is it Tony?”
Tony shook his head nervously. The bravado that had entered his veins had now left as quickly as it had come.
“No, uh, it ain't,” he replied uneasily.
“So, tell me then Tony,” I said, my voice only barely clearing a whisper now, “why the fuck it is that you're drinking it as if it's ten-dollar hooch?”
He slowly drew his hand away from the bottle.
“Sorry Ben,” he mumbled. “I was, uh, I was just getting' carried away there.”
“Yeah. You was just gettin' 'carried away'. Now how about you stop gettin' carried away, huh? I'm on my third glass, as is everyone else around this table. You? You're on your seventh. Have some class, Tony, huh? How about that? Have some damn class when you're with us. We ain't hood rats drinkin' on a street corner, and we ain't no damn frat boys chugging beer funnels at a keg party. We're better than people like that – or at least some of us are.”
“I'm . . . I'm sorry Ben,” muttered Tony. “I was just-”
“You're gonna stop drinking now, Tony,” I said, my voice cold as ice. “You can have another glass when the rest of us catch up to you, whenever that might be. But until then, you can satisfy your thirst by suckin' on some damn ice cubes.”
He nodded nervously, but I kept staring at him, letting the weight of my authority linger. Finally, after a few more seconds of uncomfortable silence, in which I spread my authority like an invisible mist around the room I smiled and chuckled.
“Alright boys,” I said, speaking in a much louder tone of voice now, “let's get on with this game of poker.”
The tension was lifted from the air immediately, and we resumed our game of poker. Before we could get too into it though, my elder brother Primo poked his head through the door, and gave me a subtle nod. There would be a matter that he and I would need to discuss, when the rest of these guys were gone. I nodded back at him, and no words needed to be spoken between us; we both understood the plan. With that he left as silently as he had come, and I knew that once the others had left he would return, and then we'd be able to get down to whatever serious business was at hand.
Fat Eddie ended up winning the poker game, and took the thousand-dollar total. I was upset – not about the money I had lost, but simply the fact that I had lost. I didn't enjoy losing anything, whether it was poker or bets or even video games, which I played with my nephew, my sister's eight-year-old kid Donny. I grinned when I thought of Donny, and it helped to alleviate some of the built-up tension I felt about losing the game. He was good kid – no, a great kid – real smart, a whiz at math and science, and we all knew he was destined for great things. I wanted to make sure that he stayed out of the family business; he was destined for greatness as a scientist or inventor or something one day, and he didn't need to get involved in this mafia business. Me though? I hadn't done too well at school. It wasn't that I wasn't smart, it was just that I found school so boring. I had gotten far bigger kicks out of boosting cars when I was in my adolescent years than anything I could have done in school. When I had actually sat down and worked and studied for tests, I'd gotten straight As, but those occasions had been few and far between, because of my interests in . . . other things.
But Donny – he was a good kid, and like I said real smart, and I didn't want him getting involved in this stuff. It had worked out well for me, but it was a risky business, and often it didn't work out well at all for those who got involved.
As I poured myself another glass of whiskey – watched keenly by Tony, who was staring at the liquor with puppy-dog eyes – I turned to Giovanni, the youngest capo at twenty-eight years of age.
“What happened with that sushi restaurant? What was it called again?”
“The Rising Sun Sushi Restaurant,” replied Giovanni. “Well boss, there was a bit of trouble there.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“Trouble, huh? Tell me more.”
“I went to speak to that old Japanese guy, the owner, Yamamoto.”
“That's not the person I spoke to,” I said. “I talked to a guy called Kawasaki. He didn't seem that old, maybe in his forties or something. And he didn't talk like no Jap, he talked like someone born and raised right here in Detroit.”
Giovanni shook his head.
“No, Kawasaki is just his nephew, he's the manager, he doesn't have any real authority there. The old man, he's full-on Japanese, I think he only came here a couple years ago, he don't speak English too good.”
“Alright, so the old guy, Yamamoto, he's the man in charge. And what did do when you asked him to pay up?”
Giovanni chuckled.
“Oh, he got real mad alright. Couldn't understand half of what he was saying. I don't think his nephew explained to him the terms of our arrangement. In fact, I don't think his nephew said much of anything about our arrangement at all to the old man.”
I nodded.
“So why didn't you just go and talk to the nephew again? If he's Detroit born and raised, he'll be much easier to communicate with.”
“Well he wasn't there when I went to collect the money. Only the old guy was there, along with some workers who were painting the place and cleaning things up – and they were outsiders, they didn't have anything to with anything.”
“So . . . did you get the money from the old man?” I asked.
Giovanni suddenly looked very nervous. I noticed his feet shifting under the table, and he looked away from me, unable to meet my gaze.
“No Ben . . . I didn't get it.”
Anger ripped through me like gunpowder igniting.
“You didn't get it?!” I roared. “And you waited this long to tell me! That was this morning, Giovanni, this morning! You've had all day to tell me! Why the hell did you wait this long?!”
“I'm sorry Ben,” he mumbled, still unable to meet my gaze. “I wanted to tell you, really, I did, I just . . . I was . . .”
“Stop mumbling like a damn retard and just tell me what happened!” I demanded. My fists were clenched tightly, and the white of my knuckles was pressing sharply against my skin.
“The old guy went into the back, right,” began Giovanni, “and like, I thought he had gone in there to get the money, like his nephew, that Kawasaki guy, had promised me. So, I was standing there, all casual like, waiting for the old guy to bring me the dough. Except when he comes out of the back room, he isn't carryin' the bread.”
“Well what the hell was he carrying?” I asked.
“He had a freakin' samurai sword!” exclaimed Giovanni, his eyes wide with fright, as if the incident had just happened. “He came at me screaming in Japanese and swinging a damn samurai sword at me!”
Despite my anger, the humorousness of this image immediately alleviated the tension, and we all burst out laughing.
“So, so what did you do?” asked Fat Eddie, who was laughing loudly.
“I freakin' ran, man! What the hell else could I do? I didn't wanna shoot the poor old bastard, but he was crazy! It was either shoot him or run – so I ran!”
We all laughed loudly and boisterously, all of us except Giovanni, who seemed pretty shaken up.
“Hey, it wasn't funny!” he protested. “He could have taken my head off or something!”
“Yeah, and that would have been real funny!” laughed Tino, slapping his huge thighs with his massive arms as he laughed. Tino spent a little too much time working out in the fitness club below us, the fitness club we owned as a front to cover for our other . . . less legal activities. Tino had also been using steroids for a long time now, something of which I strongly disapproved. Look, I worked out hard as well, and had bulked up considerably over the last five years of fitness club ownership, but I wouldn't put any of that crap in my veins. It was a drug, like any other, and I didn't like drugs one bit. Besides, in my opinion – and in the opinion of many other people, men and women alike – Tino looked like a freak because of all his steroid abuse. Still, I didn't prohibit him from using the 'roids because it was useful to have someone who looked like him on our side; a human Pitbull. He was useful for visual intimidation, and often his mere presence prevented things from escalating into fights.
After the laughter had died down, I spoke.
“Well, I guess we'll have to send some boys over to this Riding Sun Sushi joint, to have a few words with this Kawasaki idiot. If he thinks he can get out of having to pay his 'rent' to us, he's got another thing coming.”
“And get 'em to teach that crazy old Jap bastard a lesson too,” muttered Giovanni, his pride obviously gravely wounded after being chased off by the old man.
I shook my head.
“No. The old man was just doing what he thought was right to protect his business. He didn't know about the terms of the agreement we had come to with his nephew. The blame for what happened rests solely on Kawasaki. The old man stays out of it. We'll get the boys to teach Kawasaki a lesson, but I won't have them laying hands on the old guy. And that's my final word on the matter.”
Giovanni nodded, reluctantly agreeing.
“Good, so that's all sorted out,” I said. “And now, are there any other orders of business that you clowns have neglected to tell me about?”
Everyone shook their heads.
“Then gentlemen, I think we can call it a night. It's already past midnight, and I dunno about the rest of you, but me, I got things to do tomorrow.”
We all said our farewells, and then the guys left, taking their hats and coats and walking out of the smoky office one by one until I was left alone. I was only alone for a few seconds, however, for just a few moments after Fat Eddie, the last of the capos to leave, had shuffled out of the room, Primo came walking in.
“Big brother,” I said to him, raising my glass of whiskey in a salute.
He walked over to the table, took a clean glass and poured some whiskey into it, which he then raised up as a salute to me.
“Little brother,” he said. “There's some business that you and I need to discuss.”
“Well sit down then, and let's talk,” I said, pointing to one of the empty chairs.
He pulled out one of the chairs and eased himself into it. Primo and I looked very much alike, so much so that people often thought that we were twins. There was, however, a three-year age gap between us, and since I had gotten into working out over the past few years, I had a lot more muscle on my frame now than Primo did, as he wasn't into the whole fitness thing much. And while my hair was still uniformly dark as mahogany, a few gray hairs hand started to show up in Primo's hair. Still, when I looked at my brother's face with its strong jawline, tall, proud Italian nose and his large eyes, almost obsidian in color, set beneath thick, dark eyebrows, it was almost like looking in a mirror.
“What's up for discussion?” I asked him.
“I would think you'd already know, since you're so interested in this particular affair.”
I nodded; it was as I suspected: the Chimato situation.
“Sal has been dead for a month now,” said Primo, “and I think that that's enough time for his step-daughter to have gotten over his passing, and to have gotten things in order at their diner. One of my soldiers has been watching her closely every day.”
“Lucky bastard.”
Well, that's what I wanted to say, but I didn't, not out loud at least, only in my head. Sal's step-daughter, Bethany, was absolutely gorgeous. Not in the conventional manner, no, she wasn't a catwalk model or anything like that. No, she possessed an altogether different kind of beauty; hers was the beauty of a pinup-girl from the forties; she was voluptuous and had generous curves in all the right places, and was just the sort of woman I fantasized about having all to myself, to do with whatever I wanted . . .
“Well what do you think?” asked Primo. “Is it time to make our move?”
I nodded.
“It's time.”
“How much did that old bastard end up owing us?”
I thought about it for a while.
“Eighty-seven, or was it eighty-eight?”
Primo whistled slowly through his teeth.
“Eighty-eight thousand dollars. We were far too generous with him. We should have known he wouldn't, and couldn't pay us pack.”
“It doesn't matter,” I said. “All the profits from the diner are ours now.”
“The diner profits are worthless to us,” muttered Primo. “And even if we took over the whole place, cleaned it up and sold it, we'd still get less than half of what that prick owed us.”
“Well you are forgetting the other half of what he promised us.”
Primo shook his head.
“What he promised you, Benito. The woman is of no use to me. I mean sure, she's smokin' hot, and she'd be a fun plaything for a while, but is she really worth forty thousand freakin' dollars?”
“She's worth a thousand times that to me,” I said. “Ten thousand times that much.”
Primo looked at me with an expression that was half amusement, half incredulousness.
“You're serious? You're really serious? You, Benito Sciotti, this one girl is worth that much to you? You, the guy who can have three different women in a night and be bored of all of them by the time the morning comes around? Is this the same Benito I know the Benito I grew up with? Because you sure don't sound like him, you don't sound like him at all.”
“There's something about her,” I countered, “something about her that . . . that fascinates me. I can't pin it down, I can't define it – but it's there, and it goes way beyond the way she looks.”
“Well you've always had a thing for blonds with blue eyes,” he said, rolling his eyes. “But something tells me that this goes way beyond just a 'thing', huh?”
“It's far more than that, Primo, and you know it. Our soldiers have been watching her for months, and making detailed reports to me. And she's more, she's so much more than your average broad. Like I said, I can't stop thinking about her, I just can't get her off my mind.”
“And it was enough for you to allow that prick Sal to use her as collateral for what he owes us? I really don't think that that was the smartest deal you ever made, brother. Forgive me, but to be honest, I think it was a huge mistake. We should have cut off his credit when it reached the value of his shitty diner's profits. Including the step-daughter as part of the collateral, that was just unwise business practice.”
“It doesn't matter, Primo. She's mine now – she'll be all mine.”
“You're forgetting a little something, Benito,” he said with a wry smile.
“Oh yeah, and what's that?” I asked.
“She didn't agree to be part of this deal. She doesn't even know about the damn deal. How do you think she's gonna react when she finds out her step-father used her as collateral to secure cash loans from us? Do you think she's just gonna fall into your arms?”
He paused to chuckle.
“Seriously Benito, is that how you think this thing is gonna go down? Of everything we've learned about her over the past few months, one of the major facets of her personality is that she's feisty, real feisty, and she don't take crap from nobody. Good luck telling her about the deal that her step-father made, and the fact that she belongs to you now. We'll see how that goes.”
I opened a drawer in my desk and pulled out the contract we had drawn up with Sal.
“Look there – there's the bastard's signature. And it says right here that he's signing her over to us if he can't pay his debts. Well, he's dead, and he can't pay his debt to us, so now we have the diner's profits, and we have her.”
“Well like I said, good luck explaining all of this to her,” he muttered. “She ain't gonna take it lying down, I guarantee you that.”
“We'll see about that, Primo,” I replied.
“Yeah,” he said, getting up from his chair, “we'll see alright. Good luck with that tomorrow, little brother – you're going to need it!”
He shook his head and chuckled as he left me alone in the office, and closed the door softly behind him.
Now I was alone, and although the hour was late, I was feeling wide awake and wired. Thoughts of Bethany consumed me, and the hours that stood between this point in time and meeting her in the flesh seemed like an eternity. I wanted her now, I wanted her right here, right now – but that was, for the moment, an impossibility.
Someone else would have to do – another female body that I could use as a substitute for Bethany's, until I had her in my arms.
Well, luckily for me, my fitness club was a twenty-four-hour establishment, and there was no shortage of willing and nubile female bodies for me to enjoy. One particularly eager and flexible young woman came immediately to mind. I reached over to the office phone and intercom on my desk, and I made an announcement through the speakers in the yoga area.
“Could Trainer Janet Smith please report to the manager's office immediately. I repeat, could Janet smith report to the manager's office immediately.”
I put the phone back down and leaned back in my chair. Despite the fact that a beautiful young woman was coming up to my office right now to pleasure me, all I could think about was Bethany. The hours before I would finally be able to see her seemed as if they would feel like years . . .