Zane
“Jake, you got any news for me?” I leaned against the counter and eyed my best friend. “I’m hopin’ to hear somethin’ good.”
Jake shook his head. The light reflected off his greased-back hair. “I ain’t heard nothin’,” he said. “Sorry to disappoint.”
Shoving my hands in my pockets, I turned away from the counter. I’d been trying to set up a big coke deal for over a month now. My father, Lionel, had tasked me with it and I knew his approval was waiting on me getting the job done. Until I could fix this, I had no chance of taking over after him one day. The coke deal was going to be the biggest the family had ever organized. I was supposed to arrange for over a ton of cocaine to be trafficked into New York, all from humble little Morris, New Jersey. It was a deal that was really going to put me on the map, and I couldn’t wait to be involved.
“So, you know when you’re gonna hear something?”
Jake shook his head. “Sorry, man, I can’t tell you. I don’t know.” He shrugged at me and I felt a fresh wave of irritation pass over me.
“If you can’t get this shit straightened out, Lionel ain’t gonna pass the business into my hands.”
Jake nodded. “I know your pa’s the boss, but if I can’t make it happen, I can’t make it happen.” He shrugged at me again. “Try again in a few days.”
Muttering angrily under my breath, I kicked my boot at the scuffed linoleum. Jake worked part-time in an auto parts store off the main highway outside of Morris. He supposedly had some Russian contacts who were looking to unload a few kilos of cocaine, and we were supposed to grab as many as possible for the big drop. But now I wasn’t even sure that was a possibility. After all, if Jake wasn’t gonna deliver, the deal was off.
My mood got even blacker as I slid behind the wheel of my car and drove to my father’s house. Lionel Ricci, lived in a big house outside of town. My mom died back when I was a little kid, and Dad never remarried. He had girlfriends who hung around; after a few years, he’d switch the current girl out for someone younger. But right now, I didn’t care about how he let my mother’s memory disappear. Right now, I was only concerned with the future.
Lionel had been sick for almost a year now. I suspected he had some kind of bad cancer — he had a lot of doctor’s appointments and almost never seemed to look better. But he didn’t talk to me like that; we didn’t have that kind of relationship. Even though I’d grown up in his house, he hadn’t been the one who raised me. He’d always hired people, nannies and tutors and shit. And then when I was old enough, he sent me off to boarding school in Upstate New York. So, I hadn’t been around the man in my formative years. I never talked to him about how it felt to get drunk for the first time, or how it felt to stick my fingers inside the lacy cups of Mary Prezzioso’s bra and feel her hard nipples. No, that kind of talk was saved for my buddies.
Jake and I had gone to school together but he’d dropped out after his own father died. He couldn’t afford tuition anymore so he’d come home and gotten a job. Lionel had taken pity on him and paid for the rest of his schooling. I couldn’t ever admit it, but part of me always resented Jake for that. My papa seemed to love him more than he loved his own flesh and blood. Jake was a good guy, but sometimes I had doubts about him. Sometimes I wondered whether or not he was going to try to take over. The way Lionel favored him, well, it wouldn’t exactly have come as a shock.
Jake had been my best friend, but now I wondered if he was trying to become my enemy. And now, part of me couldn’t help but wonder if he was trying to fuck me on this coke deal. It would have been easy for Jake to lie. For Jake to get the coke from his Russian buddies, then to stash it and wait for me to be ousted by my own father. Then Jake could go up to my old man and say he had the stash, just say the word. I shook my head. I knew it was useless thinking like this, but I couldn’t help it. This whole situation had put me in one hell of a rut.
My father’s house was a grand Colonial-style. It would have been a real classy place aside from the lawn furniture that was scattered across the front lawn. An almost-naked brunette girl was stretched out on a chaise lounge with a pink drink in her tan hand.
“Hey, boy,” she called. “It’s been a while, Zane!”
“Hi, Terry,” I said.
The brunette girl rolled her eyes. “It’s Theresa,” she said pointedly. “No one calls me Terry anymore.” She flashed me a bright-white smile and rolled over on her belly, squeezing her tits together with her arms. “You wanna have a drink with me?” Her skin was so brown that she almost looked native.
I rolled my eyes. Ignoring her, I stepped into the house. “Pa?” I called loudly. “You in here?”
“I’m upstairs,” Lionel roared back. “Come up here, Zane.”
I let the glass partition door slam to a close behind me and took the steps up two at a time.
“Hi, Pops,” I said as I slid into his bedroom. “How ya feeling today?”
Lionel coughed. When my eyes focused on him in the semidarkness, I could barely restrain myself from gasping. Lionel looked horrible. He was both emaciated and shrunken, with his skin in loose flaps all over his body. He’d been dark like me, but in his old age, he was looking increasingly pale. He was almost bald, except for a few greasy black strands that were clinging to his scalp. I shuddered as the smell of old person hit me — like mothballs that had been stored in a closet. He smelled like he was rotting from the inside out.
“Not good,” Lionel said. “Sit down, boy. Talk.”
I flopped into a chair at the foot of the bed and tried to keep my face neutral as I stared at the skeleton that had once been my father. “Jake still doesn’t have any intel,” I said carefully. “I checked again today and he said he ain’t heard nothin’.”
Lionel shook his head. He opened his mouth to reply but a loud cough came out instead. I waited patiently for his fit to subside. When he looked at me again, he was red in the face from the effort of his illness.
“I was worried you’d say that,” Lionel said drily. “He doesn’t have any idea when those Russians are going to come through?”
I shook my head. “It could be a week; it could be another month,” I said with a sigh. “I’m going to start looking for another source. I know a few dealers in the area who might like to step up to the challenge.”
Lionel shook his head. “I want this done through the Russians. They’re the most professional out of everyone. You know it’ll be done clean. We have the funds, right? What’s the hold up?”
A man never felt powerless like he did when he told his father that he didn’t know. “No idea,” I admitted. “I know it’s not what you wanna hear, Pops.”
“You’re damn right it’s not what I want to hear,” Lionel grumbled. “I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel comfortable leaving the family business to you when you can’t even pull off a simple deal like this one. Men in my day used to get things done. We didn’t sit around on our asses and fuck women all day instead.”
An insult about Theresa was on the tip of my tongue but I didn’t say anything. Theresa and I had gone to high school together; she was a year or so younger than me. And now she was my dad’s newest plaything, a sort of live-in girlfriend who could cook and clean for him. She looked like she was having fun but I never asked her how it really felt to take care of such an ailing geezer. Lionel was a temperamental old man. I couldn’t imagine they’d sit around playing bingo or some shit like that. And judging from her antics on the lawn, I had a feeling she was probably pretty fucking bored.
“Pops, I do the best I can,” I snapped. “I’ll get this fixed. Trust me.”
Lionel eyed me with surprising intelligence for someone who was so clearly ailing. “I’ll trust you when I see the stuff. You plan on showing that to me soon?”
“Soon as I get it,” I said. I could feel my blood pressure rising by the second. “I got another meeting with Jake tonight. If he doesn’t say shit, I’m going to the Russians myself.” I paused. It was a bold statement. “I’ll make something happen, Pops. Just you wait.”
“I been waiting a month now,” Lionel snapped. “And good. You handle it yourself if you want to make sure it gets done. I told you that years ago, boy. You never listen to me.”
“I got to go, Pops,” I said, stepping forward and leaning down to kiss Lionel’s cheek. He smelled like bathroom cleaner and mold. “Have a good day, you hear? Be good to Terry.”
“She’s getting old,” Lionel said in a distasteful voice. “Can’t you find me another girl? A good cook this time. She burns everything. I have to tell her I want the damn food raw for her to cook it good!”
“All right, Pops, I’ll tell her to stop,” I said.
Lionel looked away and I knew that was my cue to leave.
“Wait, Zane,” Lionel said. He let out a heavy breath. “There’s one more thing. Come sit.” He patted the bed next to him. I walked over and sat down. “I have some news.”
“Yeah?” I looked at him. “What is it, Pops?”
“Gianni has a daughter,” Lionel said shortly. “A grown daughter. Probably close to your age. And we gotta find her.”
I frowned. “What the fuck. He had a kid? I never fuckin’ knew that. That old dog!”
Lionel actually laughed. “He had a wife, too. Can you believe that shit? Kept it a secret for so fuckin’ long. And we thought he was a homo!” He started laughing again until tears were running down his dry, wrinkled face. “Poor Gianni, rest in peace, you bastard.”
I blinked. “So…her last name would be Bianchi,” I offered.
Lionel nodded. “Right, somethin’ like that. I don’t know what happened to his wife. I never bothered to ask. But I found out about the daughter today. Gianni must have loved her — he left her everything. And someone’s gonna come sniffing around for her now that the news is out.”
I shifted uncomfortably on the bed. Suddenly everything from that night started to make sense. Why Isabella said she hadn’t grown up with her father. How she and her mother had always been poor. Why she had that great last name and she was still working as a waitress. “I think I found her,” I said. “Her name is Isabella.”
“Good,” Lionel said. He didn’t even seem remotely surprised. “Gianni always wore this.” He dipped his hand into the night table and came back with part of a gold necklace. “If it’s her, she’ll have the other half.”
He handed me the locket and suddenly a heavy memory from the night with Isabella came rushing back to me, flooding my senses. I shuddered. It was like she was in the room with me.
“I got it, Pops,” I said to Lionel. “I’ll find her.”
Lionel nodded. “Soon, boy,” he added. “She’s in danger, and it’s growing every day.”