Chapter Twenty

Gabriel

 

I try to breathe as little as possible and just focus on shimmying my way forward through the darkness. Breathing is hard enough up here anyway, with the store-bought mask pulled over my mouth and my shirt pulled up over that for good measure. My eyes sting as the air rushes past me, but I’m wearing goggles to stop the worst of it. I just keep crawling, and most of all, try not to think about what I’m doing. The second I start to think on it, I might realize how fucking insane it is and let the doubts start to creep it. It’s never happened on a job before, but this is something else.

 

As I crawl, I think about Colleen. But that’s not saying much since I’ve been thinking about Colleen ever since I saw her with that bruise on her neck, and again when she stood at her window, looking so beautiful it tightened up my whole damn body. It’s like you can’t know for sure how you feel about a lady until that lady is taken away. Well, they took her, and I plan on getting her back, no question. And I plan on killing that bastard Lorenzo and his pet Samuel, but the main thing is to get Colleen away from those psychopathic parents … how long until they pull some bullshit like marrying her off to some asshole?

 

I grunt, crawl, check the memorized map in my head, and then take the next left, contorting my body at a painful angle. There haven’t been many times in my life when I wished I was smaller, but this is sure as hell one of them.

 

What terrifies me more’n anything is that look in Colleen’s eyes, the look that tells me she might be doubting what we shared. Damn, it’s not like I haven’t wondered if what we shared was real or not. The whole time it was happening, I was doubting it; the whole time I was with her, I knew it wasn’t like me. But those doubts are gone now; a man can’t afford to have doubts when he’s on a job.

 

I crawl and crawl and fucking crawl. I crawl so that my body scrapes against the crammed edges of the ventilation duct. Eventually I come to a small vent which looks down on a storage cupboard, barely visible because of the light that shines underneath the door.

 

As quietly as I can, I unscrew the duct and remove the panel, and then lower myself as far to the floor as my arms’ll take me. I drop to the floor and catch myself from falling. Then I immediately go to work, taking off the mask and the goggles, peeling off the outer layer of my clothes. When I’m done, I’m standing there in a white shirt, a white cap pulled low over my eyes, white trousers, and black shoes (protected by plastic wrapping). I drop the whole mess into a trash can in the corner and run my hand over my clean-shaven jaw. I would’ve liked to keep the beard, to make it harder to spot me, but waiters at events like these don’t have beards.

 

This is it now; this is the stupidest, most reckless thing I’ve ever done in my life. I press my ear against the door and listen to the far-off sounds of people talking, a laugh; a glass clinks. I open the door and walk down a small hallway and then past the kitchen. I steal a metal tray and put some cheese and pineapple sticks on it and then walk toward the sound of the party, the main ballroom.

 

It’s the weirdest damn sight a Family man could ever see: a room full of Irish and Italian, all talking and not killing, some of them even laughing together. I even see an Italian with an Irishwoman on his arm, kissing her on the neck and then laughing deeply when she giggles and pushes him away. It takes all my nerve not to turn around and walk away when I spot Lorenzo and a bunch of men I recognize. That man knows me well, knows my face, knows the way I walk. My only salvation is that what men don’t expect to see, they never normally see. That’s saved my ass on plenty of jobs. A man sees a postman walking on by, he assumes he’s a postman. He never stops to wonder if he’s carrying lead instead of letters.

 

“Hey, boy!” an Irishman barks, snapping his fingers at me. He’s already past drunk, a fat prick with a gut the size of a beach ball and acne all over his neck. “Bring those here, will you?”

 

I swallow my pride and duck my head even lower. It’s a good thing, too, because just as the Irishman takes three sticks, an Italian wanders by, an Italian who’s known me for a few years now. Shit, this whole place is full of Italians who’ve known me for years.

 

I walk the outer edges of the party, spotting Lorenzo, in a different circle now: Lorenzo’s wife, Alma, and Shane O’Rourke in conversation. Shane laughs and Lorenzo claps him on the back, a bunch of old friends having the best night of their life. I need to find Colleen; mission number one is to get her out of here, and if I have to let Lorenzo and Samuel live one night longer … Fine, let those bastards draw a few more breaths. But I need to get to Colleen. This is my best chance; after the night I visited the house, they started laying traps for me all over the place, maybe thinking I was some rookie who wouldn’t spot them.

 

After another circuit of the party, I spot Colleen … standing with Samuel. Not just standing with Samuel, though, walking with him toward the bathrooms. At first it looks like he just has his hand on her back, but when I look closer, I spot it: the glinting edge of a pocket knife. Colleen looks panicked, too, even though I can just see her back; it’s the stiff way she moves, her shoulders rising and falling as though she can’t breathe properly. The bastard is taking her to the bathroom with a knife to her fucking back. He’s going to rape her; that bastard is going to rape her!

 

I circle back to the other end of the party as fast as I can, making straight for the bathrooms. My blood is on fire, my heartbeat a war-drum. I haven’t felt panic like this since my very first job, the first time I killed a man. I was still a boy back then, couldn’t even grow a beard. I thought I was going to die with the panic that gripped me. But this shit makes that look weak. I’m almost at the hallway that leads to the bathroom—the hallway that Colleen and Samuel have disappeared down—when the Italian comes trundling over to me, drunker than anybody else in this place.

 

He’s a thickset man called Matteo, around fifty years old, with two gold watches and his sleeve rolled up to properly display them, displaying some of his arm hair in the process. He waves a hand at me and then jumps into my path, blocking me.

 

“Where’re you going, eh?” He steps wide and glares at me. I bite down on a hundred responses and stare at the floor, knowing that if shit kicks off here, I’m truly fucked. There’s no way in hell I can fight everyone in this room, even with the pistol strapped to my back. The fuck am I going to do, tool up a room full of trained killers? I have to play this out quickly, but I also have to make sure I don’t get spotted. If they spot me … But Colleen, down there, anything could be happening to her.

 

“Eh?” Matteo repeats, wobbling from one foot to the other. “You think you’re a real tough guy, don’t you?” I’ve experienced this shit all my life. Some men get drunk and they want to fight everybody in the room, but Matteo can’t go’n fight anybody in this room. So, like a bully, he picks on a waiter. “I saw the way you’ve been looking at me all night.”

 

“Excuse me, sir?” I say, making my voice higher in pitch. He wants to see a scared waiter, and he’s drunk off his head, so maybe he won’t recognize me.

 

“Excuse me,” he echoes, laughing harshly. “I’m sick’n tired of bastards like you. I’ve gotta say that. I don’t mean no offense by it or nothing, but I’m just sick’n tired of pricks like you looking down on me. Do you have any clue who I am, boy? I could fuck your whole life up.” He grabs the remaining cheese and pineapple sticks, looks at them for a second, and then tosses them to the floor. Then he snatches the tray and drops that, too. Several people turn to look but then they all turn back to their conversations; one man heads toward the don, probably to let him know that Matteo’s drunk again.

 

“What do you think, eh, that I’m some pushover? Is that it?”

 

“No, sir,” I say, resisting the urge to grind my teeth. Everything in me wants to smash this prick right in the face, kick him to the floor, and then take the metal tray and work him over with it. Everything in me wants to beat him until he can’t move. If I don’t kill him, he’ll be eating through a tube for a damn long time. But it doesn’t matter what I want. All that matters is that I get this over with as quickly as possible. “I’m sorry if I caused any offense, sir.”

 

“Oh, you’re sorry? Wait a sec.” He rubs at his squinting eyes. “Do I know you from somewhere?”

 

Luckily, Matteo and I have never known each other well, but that wouldn’t mean shit if he wasn’t drunk. And now he seems to be sobering up in the way only a Family man can. How many jobs’ve been done by drunk Italians? Too many to count, and they usually don’t fuck them too badly either.

 

“I don’t think so, sir,” I say through gritted teeth, my mind going crazy with all the things Samuel could be doing to Colleen right now; probably is doing to her right now. “I don’t think we’ve met, sir.”

 

“No?” He waves his finger at me. “Look at me, boy. I’m sure I know you from somewhere. You ever been downtown way? You fuck little girls down there?”

 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, sir.”

 

“Wait.” His eyes open all the way. He pushes his drunkenness aside. “Holy shit.” Everything about him changes now. He takes a step back, suddenly wary. I might take some satisfaction in that if circumstances were different. “Holy shit.”

 

I dive at him, meaning to clamp my hand over his mouth. But he throws himself back so quickly that he almost falls. “It’s Gabriel fucking Moretti!” he roars at the top of his voice. “Fuck! Gabriel’s here. Skip! Fucking hell!”