“Do you know who I am?” Amerella Capone stomped her foot on the floor of the First National Bank of Las Vegas. Several people standing in line for a teller looked at her. A few pointed and laughed. She lifted her chin and ignored them.
The bank attendant’s face paled. Amerella was not waiting any longer to get into her safe deposit box. “I am the great-great-grandniece of Alphonse Capone. You know? Al Capone.” Even though Al hadn’t taken much interest in Vegas, some of the Capone family did, moving down when other mob families began paying attention to the city.
“Y-yes, Ms. Capone. I’m s-sorry, Ms. Capone.” The poor kid sweated bullets. He couldn’t be a day over twenty. “I’m sure the senator will be done talking with the manager any second now, and he will let you into the vault. In fact, let me go check.” The young man dashed away as quickly as he could without drawing attention to himself.
Amerella plopped onto a hardwood chair in front of a desk, next to the side door that led to the room with the safe deposit boxes. It was already six o’clock, and she hadn’t done any shopping yet. She hated that she had to go to the bank every time she dipped into her savings. Being a trust fund baby wasn’t all it seemed. She had a chain wrapped tightly around her neck, controlled by her guardian, Uncle Giuseppe. In a month, when she turned twenty-six, she would come into her inheritance and be free to do whatever she wanted.
Like buy an island on the equator and disappear.
The glass doors in the lobby swung open, and several men wearing ski masks ran in. The first robber fired a machine gun at the ceiling.
“All right! Everyone on the floor, now!”
On the floor? Was he shitting her? She looked down at her snug, short skirt and high heels. With full breasts, hips, and thighs, she’d never be able to get back up. Luckily, since she was so far to the side of the tellers’ central location, she was hard to see from the lobby. Maybe she could just scoot farther to the side.
She rose slowly from the chair and shuffled toward the door. Right behind her came a squeaky voice. “He said everyone on the floor, lady.” In fact, that was a very familiar squeaky voice. She swiveled on the ball of her foot, and while the robber’s eyes grew large, Amerella’s narrowed.
“Joseph Albert Lanzia. I’m so telling your mother.”
The slim, young robber lowered his hand gun. “No, you can’t, Aunt Amerella. She’ll be so mad at me.”
“And so she should be.” Amerella placed her hands on her hips, careful not to mess up the manicure she had done before this. Even though Joey wasn’t her biological nephew, he’d grown up calling her his aunt. “What do you think you’re doing robbing a bank, Joey?” she whispered. “Do you know how much trouble you can get into?”
Joey glanced over his shoulder, and then back to his aunt. “I know, Aunt Amerella. But I didn’t have much choice.”
“What do you mean?”
The leader screamed more commands and handed bags to the tellers behind the booth. Joey moved in front of her so she couldn’t see what was going on—or to keep the others from seeing her.
“I don’t mean nothing, Aunt Amerella. Just stay hidden.” Joey was younger than the attendant who tried to calm her a few minutes ago. Oy vey. Kids these days. Ha, listen to her—thinking like an old woman when she was practically a kid herself. She’d grown up fast in the last four years.
As the main robber’s voice rang throughout the lobby, Amerella gasped with slow recognition. “No. Is that Cousin Tony?”
Joey sighed and slumped his narrow shoulders. “You can’t tell anyone. He’ll kill you if he sees you.”
She harrumphed. “I’ll show him kill when I tell his father. Uncle Giuseppe is not going to like this. Not one bit, I tell you.” Las Vegas’s mafia king took everything his family did personally. It wasn’t a good idea to piss off Uncle Giuseppe. And a simple thing like a bank robbery would shame him. Now, the three-million-dollar jewel heist pulled off last year by another cousin—that he was proud of.
Tony’s voice echoed to their side of the lobby. “Little Dick, everything okay over there?”
Amerella’s eyes widened. “He calls you ‘Little Dick’? How dare he insult you like that!” She took a step toward Joey, but the kid put his hand up.
“No, Aunt Amerella. You can’t.”
“Joey, he’s being a big dick. I won’t put up with big dicks.”
Tony called again. “Little Dick?”
“Yeah, Big Dick—I mean, Big Dog,” Joey stammered.
Amerella rolled her eyes. “‘Big Dog’? Seriously?”
Joey shushed her and called over his shoulder. “Everything’s fine. Just keeping the crowd quiet over here.”
Fine. Amerella would stand there until she could think of something to do. She could not believe her only nephew had gone to the dark side. His mama raised him right—Amerella would know. Even though she was only six years older than Joey, she partially raised the boy, babysitting for free while his mama worked two jobs on the Vegas Strip.
On the other side of the tellers’ stations, the side door opened. A distinguished-looking man in a suit and tie emerged, followed by the bank manager. Surprise registered on both their faces.
“What is going on—”
Two shots echoed, and the men fell out of Amerella’s sight. Through more automatic gunfire, she was able to make out shouts of “Senator!” and “Call an ambulance!” Sirens finally sounded in the distance. The leader of the robbers—Tony—backed away, only a gun in his hand. He wasn’t taking any money? What kind of idiot robbed a bank and didn’t take the money? Joey moved to follow him.
“No, Joey!” she called out. “Stay with me!”
He turned to her. His eyes, the only part of his face showing, reflected a torn soul: a kid trying to fit in and be accepted versus a kid trying to do the right thing. He glanced back at Cousin Tony watching him. She read Tony’s look. His instant recognition of her was obvious—as was the emanating hate. His eyes glowed red, and then he pointed his gun at her and fired.
Her shock at his garish action stunned her, keeping her brain from reacting in time. Joey spun his body between her and the shooter. He jerked twice: once from firing a bullet, and a second from being hit in the chest.
Then the boy was gone from her sight, and her vision locked onto a bloody splotch on the glass. Cradling one arm against his chest, Cousin Tony dragged himself through the door.
Amerella’s eyes drifted down to the body crumpled at her feet. Blood flowed onto the shiny white tile floor. Barely registering her actions, she fell to her knees and ripped the mask off Joey’s face. He was beyond pale.
“Oh my god, Joey.” She scooped his head into her lap. “Hang on, baby. I got you.” She smoothed back hair from his face. “Aunt Amerella won’t let you go.”
The boy’s eyes rolled up to meet her wet gaze. “I want . . . right thing . . .” he breathed. She shushed him, telling him to save his energy, tears falling onto his baby face. But he went on. “Promise me . . . you . . . stop him.”
She pulled him closer, rocking him. “I swear to you, Joey. I will do everything in my power to make sure he gets what he deserves.”
“He’s . . . demo . . .” No more breath filled his chest. Demo what? Democrat? No, she couldn’t see that.
Amerella didn’t know how long she sat holding her beloved neighbor’s son in her arms. At some point, paramedics pried the boy from her. She glimpsed Cousin Tony being placed onto an ambulance gurney, and the emotional turmoil spinning through her rocketed her out the glass door.
She slipped off one of her high heels and chased after the rolling bed, her body bobbing up and down.
“You goddamned, motherfucking, piece of shit, shit-headed, gangrene-infested, coke-whore bastard!” She reached around the dumbfounded paramedic pushing the gurney and repeatedly beat Cousin Tony upside the head with her shoe.
But that still wasn’t enough for her. No. Joey was gone because of Tony, and she wouldn’t be happy until he was gone, too.
Tony shielded himself the best he could with his arm in a sling. “Somebody get this crazy bitch away from me!”
The EMT grabbed at her, but she slapped him with the purse hooked over her arm. “Don’t even think it, buddy. He’s my family and I can beat him to death if I want to.” Onlookers gathering on the other side of the parked police cars laughed and pointed at her. She didn’t care. Over the past three, almost four years, now, she had lived for two purposes: to show how much she loved her son, and to prove how much she hated her family.
With renewed vigor, she swung at the bastard strapped to the gurney, but someone stopped her. “Ms. Capone, please.” An older, rougher voice came from over her head. She looked up and back to see who the hell stopped her rampage.
His face was familiar. He needed a shave, though. The beard was all the rage lately for men. In her opinion, men with hairy faces shouldn’t mind women with hairy legs. She was all in favor of the sexy five o’clock shadow, but the scraggly pubic hair on the chin? She could do without.
He snatched the shoe from her hand and dropped it next to her foot. “Hey, these shoes cost six hundred dollars. Don’t scuff them.”
“Then keep them on your feet, Ms. Capone,” he said.
She frowned and slipped her foot into the shoe, now standing at the same height on both legs. The paramedics quickly took away their patient while she was distracted. She turned and yelled toward the ambulance. “I hope they get stuck in traffic and you die, bastard!” Cousin Tony flipped her off. She returned him two birds.
“Can’t do that, can you, crip’ asshole?” she hollered.
The man beside her sighed. “Ms. Capone, please.”
Irritated, she pivoted. “Who the hell are you, and why are you bothering me?”
That drew an unhappy face from him. “I’m Detective Freeman with the Las Vegas PD.”
“Oh,” she said. “Sorry.”
“Ms. Capone,” he asked, “were you witness to the bank robbery and shootings inside?”
“Front and center,” she said. “Well, more like back and side, but I did see it all. Most of it, anyway. I know it was Tony who shot the senator.”
“Senator Sherman?” he asked, incredulous. “Our senator?”
“Good god, Detective. He’s the only senator I know. The man came out a side door in the bank and Tony shot him. Then the dipshit started backing out—”
“Which dipshit?” he asked.
“Cousin Tony. That dipshit was going to leave without any money.”
“Was your cousin there to rob a bank or shoot the senator?” he asked.
That was a very good question—but one she didn’t care about as the bank door opened and another gurney, this one carrying a black, zipped body bag, rolled out. After all these years in a mafia family, black body bags were almost a cliché. What other family kept a stock of them in the closet at home?
A hand touched her shoulder. “Ms. Capone?”
She turned to the detective. “Yes.”
“Are you willing to testify as an eyewitness?” Detective Freeman asked. She noted a smile in his eyes. Taking down the son of the local mafia boss would be a dream of any law enforcement official. This was his chance.
Amerella looked around at the growing crowd made up of roaming officers in dark blue uniforms and what looked like reporters trying to get past them. Would she testify against her family? She thought back to a few years ago, right when she was about to graduate college, and remembered what her uncle made her do. Her decision was easy.
“In a heartbeat.”