Carla
When Carla got home, she carefully eased herself out of her dress, wincing and hissing as it dragged across the welts from the whip. Once she was completely undressed, she walked to the bathroom and picked up a tube of ointment Gio had given her. She sat on the edge of the tub, gingerly brushing the medicated gel onto her wounds with her fingertip.
Just as she was finishing up, her phone rang. Once again, she cursed herself for not checking it when she got home. These evenings with Gio—and her conflicted feelings about them once they were over—were distracting her.
She ran into the living room, checked the phone's caller ID, and saw Don's number.
“Shit,” she muttered, pacing around the room nervously. “Shit, shit, shit.” She knew he'd probably called while she was out again, and she dreaded receiving another stern lecture from him, even though she knew she deserved it. She briefly considered letting the call go to voicemail, but she couldn't bring herself to worry Don any more than she already had.
Besides, she'd only be delaying the inevitable.
She accepted the call, bracing herself for his disapproval. “Hi, Don.”
“So what was it this time, Carla?” Don demanded angrily. “Locked yourself in the bathroom for a few hours? Abducted by a damn UFO? I'm waitin' for the next fairy tale from you to explain why you ain't pickin' up when I call! I swear, by the time this case is over, I'm gonna end up with about four or five dozen ulcers from worryin' about whether or not they've killed you.”
Carla squeezed her eyes shut. “I'm sorry. I really, really am.”
“You don't have to be sorry,” Don said. “But you do have to tell your handler—that's me, by the way, in case you forgot—where the hell you're runnin' off to when you can't be reached. I need to know your whereabouts at all times, darlin', or else this whole damn thing won't work an' you'll be on your own if you get into trouble. An' I cannot allow that to happen, understand?”
“I understand,” she answered quietly. She could hear the concern in his voice, and she felt terrible. “But all I can tell you is that what I'm doing is crucial to this case, and for it to work, I can't have my cell phone on me during certain periods. I'm sorry. I'll tell you everything when this is over, I promise. But I can't tell you now. I just can't, or it'll all have been for nothing. I need you to trust me, just for a little while longer. Can you do that, Don? Please?”
There was a long silence from the other end of the phone. Finally, Don said, “I think I have a pretty good idea of how you've decided to handle this thing, Carla. An' I guess we both know I can't come right out an' say it on this call, 'cause it's bein' recorded an' we could both end up in a whole mess of trouble later on. But I'm gonna go ahead an' trust you, 'cause you ain't never given me a reason not to, an' that's a damn sight more than I can say for most people.”
Carla sighed with relief. She knew she should have guessed that Don would eventually figure out what she was doing based on their previous discussions about Patty. “Thank you. I really appreciate it...”
“Well, now, don't go appreciatin' it too much yet,” Don continued, “'cause for this to work, you gotta give me somethin'. I know you can't talk about these secret excursions of yours, but the taped conversations you've sent in from your meetings with Gio an' Mario have given us precisely squat, an' the folks upstairs are gettin' a mite restless.”
Carla raised her eyebrows. “Why the hell would they be getting restless already? Fred was undercover for seven months—I've barely been undercover for three weeks!”
“Yeah, but Fred's career was also a damn sight longer than yours,” Don said, “so he had a lot more credit in the bank where them boys were concerned.”
“Plus he was a man,” Carla pointed out sourly.
“Well, you said it, not me,” Don agreed mildly. “But you gotta give me somethin' I can put in a report, darlin'. Anythin' that makes it look like we might be makin' progress here, so I can get 'em to back off while you're...doin' what you're doin'.”
“It's been pretty tricky,” she said. “Gio's running the restaurant clean, and I can't suggest that he do otherwise without having the case thrown out due to entrapment. He'd made a few half-assed references to collecting money from low-level pot dealers and that kind of thing, but it's nothing any decent lawyer couldn't get him out of if we busted him for that.”
“What about Mario? Have you gotten close enough to get anything on him?”
“Mario's doing a good job of isolating his rackets from Gio's,” Carla answered. “I think he's worried Gio might get sloppy and trip him up somehow. And believe me, Gio knows his dad doesn't trust or respect him, and he resents the fuck out of it.”
“Can we use that somehow?” Don asked. “If Gio ain't a fan of his old man, can we maybe get him to flip?”
Carla thought this over. “It's possible, but it's still a bit of a stretch. Even though Gio hates his father and isn't that interested in the gangster life, with these Sicilians, family is everything. We'd need something heavy to hold over Gio's head to get him to rat out Mario. Unless...”
“Unless what?” Don prodded her.
“Hey, Don, are you in front of your computer right now?”
“Sure,” he said.
“Okay, good. I need you to look into the files on Mario, going back twenty or thirty years. See if you can find anything at all about someone named Salvatore who he'd have been associated with around that time. Personally, not professionally.”
“Good thing you narrowed it down,” Don grunted. Carla heard his fingers clacking on the keyboard in the background. “What's this about, hon?”
“I have no idea,” she said. “But it seemed like it was worrying the hell out of Gio, so maybe it'll give us something to go on. I know it's a longshot, but...”
“Better than nothing, right,” Don agreed. “Good thing the Bureau got around to scanning all these old reports and handwritten case notes last year, or else I'd be up to my elbows in file boxes an' dust bunnies. Even so, this is gonna be like lookin' for a damn needle in a...”
Don's voice suddenly cut off, just as his keyboard fell silent.
“Don't tell me you found something already,” Carla asked hopefully.
“Oh yeah,” he replied. “Turns out ol' Mario didn't have a lot of friends or family named Salvatore, an' the note that one of the original agents clipped to this old file is, wow...kind of a doozy.”
“Don't keep me in suspense,” she urged. “Who was it?”
Don took a deep breath. “Well, according to this, when Mario first got married to his wife Allegra a little over thirty years ago, she wasn't able to get pregnant. Since Mario's old school an' havin' kids is a sign of virility to those folks, he kept it as quiet as possible while they tried to find the right fertility treatments for Allegra. 'Cept in the meantime, Mario goes an' gets some mistress of his pregnant.”
“Jesus,” Carla said. “And since Mario's Catholic...”
“Yep, no trip to the clinic for her,” said Don. “Mario hushes it up, gives her a boatload of money, an' sends her off to raise the kid somewhere far away. He figures that's the end of that, an' after a bunch more years, he an' Allegra find the right doctor an' manage to have a kid of their own.”
“Gio,” she said.
“Give the little lady a cigar,” Don agreed. “But then about four years later, some punk teenager named Salvatore shows up in Chicago an' starts braggin' about how Mario's his father, an' how he's gonna join the Mancinis an' take over for Mario someday 'cause it's his birthright. Looks like Mario tried real hard to quiet the kid down an' make him understand that he wasn't never gonna acknowledge him publicly, what with him bein' illegitimate an' all. But Sal wouldn't listen, an' he even showed up at the house on one occasion...”
“...so Allegra found out,” Carla finished. “Holy shit.”
“The agents who were on the case back then figured it might be worthwhile to keep an eye on Sal, just in case they could find a way to use him against Mario. 'Cept one day, accordin' to the files, Sal just up an' disappeared.”
“Mario killed him,” Carla said. “To keep the secret.”
“Maybe he did, or maybe he just sent the kid away again. No one could say for sure, an' the agents couldn't figure a solid way to use that tidbit in making a case against Mario, so they just made a note of it an' let it drift so it got buried in the files. Meanwhile, Allegra died from cancer five years ago, so since Mario was the only other one who knew about it, the whole dirty secret basically went with her.”
“Until now,” she mused.
“Think it could help?” Don asked.
“Maybe,” she said, thinking it over. “It depends on why Gio suddenly wants to know about it. Thanks, Don. You've been a big help.”
“So what should I tell the guys upstairs?”
“Tell them I'm close,” Carla said. “Tell them if they give me just a little more time, I can give them the whole rotten Mancini operation on a platter.”
“Godspeed, Carla,” Don replied, ending the call.
Carla dialed Gio's number. He picked up almost immediately. “Hey, it's only been an hour. You miss me already?”
“I found out what you wanted to know about Salvatore,” she answered. “We need to meet as soon as possible. Can I come over?”
“Nah, my father's got some asswipe scopin' out my place to make sure we don't do any late-night fraternizing. Meet me at the restaurant an hour before it opens. We can talk there and it'll look legit.”
“As long as you can make sure no one else is around,” Carla said. “Can you?”
Gio let out a low whistle. “It's that serious?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Trust me, it is.”
“You got it, then,” said Gio. “Just us, no one else.”
“Fine,” Carla agreed. “I'll see you there.”
She hung up, wondering how Gio would take the news when she told him. Even with his hatred for his father, finding all this out would certainly come as a shock.
Once again, she found herself feeling strangely sorry for him.