Chapter 29

 

Carla

 

As Carla ended her phone conversation with Don, she realized that her cell phone's battery was about to die. She chided herself for not keeping a closer eye on it.

 

At least this whole thing's almost over, she thought. From this point forward, there's no reason to believe anything will go wrong. All I have to do is go to Gio's place, pick him up along with the journals, and drive him to the field office.

 

She got behind the wheel of her car and started the engine just as her phone rang. She checked the caller ID and saw that it was Don again. She wondered why he'd call her again so soon and hit the green button to accept. “What's up, Don?”

 

Her phone was silent. She took it away from her ear to look at the screen and saw that it was dark. The battery had conked out just before she could take the call.

 

Carla suddenly had an ominous feeling. She briefly considered going back to her place to charge the phone, just so she could call Don and find out what he'd wanted. But she knew that if she did, she'd be late for her meeting with Gio—and based on their earlier conversation, Gio seemed so conflicted and emotionally vulnerable that she didn't want to risk it.

 

If she didn't show up on time, Gio might assume something had gone wrong or that she'd hung him out to dry, and then what? He might try to run, and their whole case against the Mancinis would be kaput.

 

Just forget about the phone and make sure you meet Gio on time, she thought to herself. I'm sure there's nothing to worry about, and the bad feeling I'm having right now is just jitters from being so close to making my first major bust. Besides, Don was probably just calling to tell me to be careful for the thousandth time, and if that's all, then won't I feel pretty silly for having jeopardized the entire case over it?

 

Carla drove to Gio's house, parking in the driveway behind his Corvette. As she did, she remembered he'd previously mentioned that one of Mario's guys was watching the place to see if she came over to—how had he put it?—“fraternize” with Gio. She wondered whether she should be concerned about that, and decided against it.

 

As far as Mario and his men knew, she was still Gio's attorney, and there were about a hundred different legitimate reasons for her to meet with her client at his house. Besides, the two of them would be leaving together a few minutes later, so she clearly wasn't coming over for sex.

 

As she walked to the front door, she resisted the urge to scan the area across the street. She knocked on the door.

 

A muffled voice answered, “Come in, it's open.”

 

Carla froze in her tracks. She couldn't be sure, but that voice didn't sound like it belonged to Gio.

 

Her mind raced. What if Mario had somehow figured out that Gio was about to double-cross him, and he'd been waiting for Gio to show up with the journals? What if he was inside with Gio right now, ready to kill them both?

 

With her phone dead, she had no way to call for backup. Her mind screamed for her to turn around and run away, rather than walking into a trap.

 

But then what? If Mario killed Gio and took back his journals, then there'd be nothing left for the Bureau to nail the Mancinis, and it would all have been for nothing.

 

She'd be the agent who turned tail like a coward, forfeited a mountain of evidence, and allowed a valuable informant to get murdered, all because she was too scared to make the bust on her own. Worse, if Mario decided to look through Gio's cell phone and found the topless photo of her, then Gio's threat about shaming her in front of the whole world would become a very real possibility.

 

And there was something else. She'd assured Gio that she could keep him safe if he cooperated with her, and he'd agreed. She'd made assurances that they'd have more time to be together, not just because she knew it was what he wanted to hear, but because it was what she wanted too. She'd meant it when she said that she saw him as more than just a mindless thug and that she wanted him to have a chance at a better life.

 

How could she live with herself if she turned her back on him now?

 

She bent down and withdrew her gun from her ankle holster, keeping it ready as she turned the doorknob. She'd brought it just in case there were any last-minute complications, but she hadn't expected to use it.

 

Carla stepped into the living room, pointing her firearm in a two-handed stance to scan every corner for intruders. A second later, she saw a dark shape emerge from behind the door in her peripheral vision.

 

She pivoted to aim at him, but the hulking gangster was moving toward her too fast—he grabbed both her wrists with a single huge hand and jerked her gun to one side as she pulled the trigger. The shot went wild, burying itself in an easy chair.

 

With his other hand, the gangster raised his own gun, a massive .357. He slammed it against Carla's face, stunning her momentarily. She felt him trying to pull her gun away and tightened her grip.

 

He pistol-whipped her again, this time in the temple, and she saw tiny pinwheels of light dancing at the edges of her vision. Something wet was trickling down the side of her face, and she knew it was blood.

 

Before he could hit her with his gun a third time, Carla kicked him in the groin with the pointy tip of one of her high heels. He made a broad whuff sound like a carpet being beaten, and his grip on her wrists loosened.

 

She yanked herself out of his grip and shot him between the eyes. His rough, lumpy face had an almost comical look of surprise as he dropped to his knees.

 

“Nice shot,” he commented.

 

Then he slumped over onto his side, dead.

 

Before Carla could call out to see if Gio was there, she heard a gunshot, then another. She felt a light pressure in her right shoulder, almost as though someone were gently pressing on it with a fingertip. When she looked down at it, she saw that she'd been shot twice—once high in the shoulder, and once in the chest.

 

Mario stood at the top of the stairs, pointing his gun at Gio as another gangster aimed his smoking pistol at her. The gangster had a huge can of kerosene at his feet. In his other hand, Mario held a shopping bag that looked like it contained the journals.

 

“You killed Julius, you fuckin' bimbo!” the gangster yelled, his face contorted with rage.

 

Carla tried to level her gun at him. Instead it slipped nervelessly from her hand, clattering to the floor. Her arm dangled, limp and useless.

 

The brachial nerve, she thought. Shit.

 

“See, this is exactly the kind of scene I was hoping to avoid,” Mario said, shaking his head sadly. “Now we need to leave in a hurry. I'll keep an eye on Gio and the broad. You start dousing the place, and do it fast.”

 

The gangster nodded dutifully and picked up the kerosene, sloshing it on the walls and floor. Mario grabbed Gio by the ear and twisted it savagely, pulling Gio down the steps as he kept his gun trained on Carla.

 

“You stupid Feds,” Mario said. “You pick men like Louie Grammatica to lean on because they're weak and easy to scare, and then you wonder why they don't keep your secrets better. You never learn.”

 

“You're calling me stupid?” Carla asked. She was scrambling, trying to come up with anything that would buy her some time. “Thirty years of murder and racketeering, and you wrote everything down. You kept journals, for God's sake. Your ego was so inflated that you thought no one would ever find them or be able to translate them. You have to be, without a doubt, the dumbest son of a bitch in the history of the mob.”

 

“Insults, insults,” Mario sneered. “I've heard them from so many people right before I've shot them. Believe me, all the nasty names in the world won't make you bulletproof, so you can save your breath.”

 

The sloshing noises upstairs slowed to a halt. The gangster with the kerosene appeared at the top of the steps a moment later with a frown of confusion. “What's she mean, you kept journals?” he asked Mario. “What the fuck is she talkin' about? You wrote shit down?”

 

“It's nothing, don't worry about it,” Mario said, waving him away. “Just go back to soaking the place in gas, and we can be done with this.”

 

But the gangster merely continued to stare at Mario in disbelief. “She's lyin', though, right? You'd never keep notes on all the stuff we did, would you?”

 

“Of course he would, Bruno,” Gio said. “He wrote it all down, every deal, every heist, every murder. It's all right there in those diaries he's carrying in the bag.”

 

“Shut your rat mouth, you punk,” Mario snarled, twisting Gio's ear again.

 

“There's stuff in there about me an' Julius, too?” Bruno asked, setting the kerosene down. “Jesus, what if the Feds had found those books, huh? We'd have been fuckin' ruined.”

 

“It's bullshit,” Mario insisted. “There's no journals. I never wrote down nothing about you or Julius that could get us arrested. Now pick up that can and get to work.”

 

Bruno raised his gun, pointing it at Mario. “Show me,” he said, his voice shaking. “If it's nothin', if you didn't write nothin' down about us, then hand the bag over to me so I can see for myself.”

 

“Jesus, Bruno, if you want to see so bad, I can show you after we're gone from here!” Mario yelled. “But with the gunshots, there's no way of knowing when the cops are gonna arrive, so...”

 

“No. Now.” Bruno cocked his gun. “I wanna see it now. All these years, all the loyalty Julius an' I showed you, all the stretches I did in County an' upstate to protect you...if you did this to me, if you stabbed us all in the fuckin' back like this, then I wanna see it. Right fuckin' now.”

 

“All right, fine,” Mario sighed. “If you're gonna be like that about it, here, take 'em and look over 'em. Quick, so we can still get outta here.”

 

Mario held out the shopping bag. Bruno lowered his gun and reached out to take it.

 

Mario pointed his gun at Bruno's face and pulled the trigger.

 

Bruno's hands went to his ruined face, blood spurting between his fingers. He let out a wet squeal and then tumbled backward down the stairs. When he hit the bottom, his lifeless body crumpled into a heap.

 

“You see this?” Mario said, his gun waving back and forth between Gio and Carla. “You should both be glad you'll never live long enough to have children. All they ever do is ruin everything. Now there's gonna be two charred corpses in the house when it burns down, and how the fuck am I supposed to explain that away, huh? I gotta pay even more to the fire inspector, I gotta pay off the coroner's office now...more hundreds of thousands of dollars pissed away, just like when I had to pay off the private schools to let Gio in because of his shitty grades. And the whores I bought for him, and the car, and the house, and the restaurant. All those years, all those gifts, all that money, all of it wasted on an ungrateful fuck of a son!”

 

Mario bunched up the shopping bag, tucking it under the arm that was holding the gun. Then he reached into his pocket with his free hand, produced a Zippo lighter, opened it, and flicked it. A small blue flame danced on it and he threw it upstairs. It caught the kerosene instantly and the second floor flared into a crackling blaze.

 

“First we're gonna lock Carolyn—or whatever the fuck her real name is—in the trunk of your car,” Mario told Gio. “Then you're gonna get in the driver's seat and drive us all down to the woods so we can end this nonsense once and for all. I swear to Christ, my own son betrays me, I lose two of my best guys...worst fuckin' day of my life. Open the door and let's get outta here.”

 

Gio turned the handle on the front door, pulling it open to reveal roughly two dozen FBI agents in a semicircle out front with their guns drawn. Don stood with them.

 

“Mario Mancini, you are under arrest,” Don announced clearly. “Throw down your weapon an' place your hands on top of your head.”

 

Inwardly, Carla cheered. She didn't know how Don had known to come to their rescue, but she was glad he had.

 

Mario let out a squawk of shocked laughter. His face was covered in a sheen of sweat, and his eyes were bulging with surprise and disbelief. Suddenly, he tossed the shopping bag over his shoulder into the burning house.

 

“So what?” he screeched, his voice cracking. “What have you got left without that, huh? Some half-baked charges, with most of the evidence muddled by a fire? My son, who's so goddamn stupid he couldn't even understand most of my business, let alone testify about it? I'll hire the best lawyers an' I'll be out in a year or two tops, just like always! You got nothin', understand? Ugatz'. None of you fuckers can touch me. You never could, an' you never will!”

 

“If'n you're so sure of that, Mario, then how 'bout you just go ahead an' come along quietly, huh?” Don asked. His tone was mild, but his steely gray eyes were locked on Mario and every muscle in his body was tense. “Just let those two go an' drop your gun, if you know you got us beat.”

 

But as Carla stole a glance backward at Mario's face, she could see that he wasn't so sure at all. His bloodshot eyes were flickering from her and Gio to the FBI agents, and his gun was wavering.

 

“Fuck you!” Mario screamed. He pushed Gio off to the side and seized Carla from behind, pressing the barrel of his gun to her head. “You put your guns down an' let me go right now or I'll drill a hole through this Fed's skull!”

 

“Easy,” Don urged as the agents behind him bristled. “Just take it easy, okay? Here, me an' my guys are gonna put our guns away so we can talk this over like civilized adults.” Don holstered his pistol, then turned to the other agents and yelled, “Well? Put 'em away, now!”

 

“I'll do it,” Mario hissed urgently. “I'll kill her, I mean it!”

 

Slowly, the other agents holstered their weapons, following Don's lead—even though most of them seemed uncertain of why they were being ordered to do so.

 

“Now, that's just the kind of thing you don't wanna do, okay, Mario?” Don reasoned, putting his palms up imploringly. “You put the gun down an' let her go an' like you said, your hot shot attorneys'll probably dig you outta this without a hassle. You murder a federal agent in front of a million witnesses an' it ain't gonna matter if you got Jesus Christ an' the heavenly host representin' you in court...they're gonna lock you away forever, guaranteed.”

 

Mario's gun shook in his hand as he considered his options, breathing hard. The barrel lowered several inches, drifting away from Carla's face. His grip on her began to relax.

 

“That's right,” Don drawled. “Just put it down an' let's sort all this out.”

 

Mario's eyes suddenly flashed with insane anger, and Carla felt his entire body tense up again as he raised the gun toward her head once more.

 

He's going to do it, she thought. He's going to pull the trigger, he's going to shoot me, this is it, these are the last moments of my life, but at least it'll be enough to put Mario away forever and Gio will finally be free, so at least it wasn't for nothing...

 

The gunshot thundered and Carla squeezed her eyes shut, bracing for the bullet slamming through her brain, the final sensation she'd ever feel before darkness and whatever followed it. But after a moment, she felt the blood running down her arm from her previous gunshot wounds and she realized that she was still breathing, still alive.

 

She opened her eyes as Mario's grip on her slipped away. There was a neat red hole just below his left eye. A high-pitched whine escaped his lips and his eyes went glassy as he fell to the ground on his back, lying still.

 

Don stood with his smoking revolver in his hand and a faint smirk on his lips. “Don't you never try an' out-draw a Texan,” he said. “Even with a head start, you'll lose every damn time.”

 

Carla started toward the burning house, but Gio stopped her. The first floor had become a roaring inferno, and pieces of the ceiling were falling like flaming comets. “What are you doing?” Gio asked. “Are you crazy?”

 

“The journals!” she yelled. “I need those notes! To bring down the rest of them!”

 

Gio looked at the fire and took a deep breath. “You're hurt,” he said. “I'll do it.” Before Carla could stop him, he ran directly into the blaze.

 

Carla stood on the lawn helplessly. Each second that passed with him still inside seemed like an eternity, and Carla wished she hadn't tried to get the journals after all. Even if they didn't have enough to go after the other families, even if they had to settle for Mario's dead body, it wasn't worth Gio's life.

 

It wasn't worth their chance at a life together.

 

Finally, Gio emerged from the flames onto the front stoop. His face was smeared with soot, and smoldering debris clung to his expensive suit as he cradled the notebooks protectively. “Here you go,” he said to Carla, forcing a charming smile and trying to catch his breath. “These oughtta be worth a promotion or two for you, huh?”

 

Before she knew what she was doing, Carla threw her working arm around Gio and kissed him. The journals fell to the lawn as Gio embraced her, returning her kiss.

 

Carla heard Don's voice call out warningly. “Carla...”

 

Yes, I know this looks weird, Don, she thought, continuing to kiss Gio. I've got a lot of explaining to do, I realize that, and I know we're standing too close to the fire, but please, just let me have this one moment first and then I'll...

 

She heard a hoarse cry of pain and rage a split-second before she felt strong arms wrap around both of their legs, tackling them to the ground. She smelled sweat and cigars and heavy cologne as Mario's large body crawled on top of them both, his fists pounding at them. The blood from the hole in his face—and the much larger hole at the back of his head—sprinkled down on them both as he punched at them wildly.

 

“Took my son you took him you took everything I'll kill you I'll fucking kill you both you rat bitch Fed...” Mario jabbered madly, spittle flying from his lips. His meaty hands wrapped around Carla's throat.

 

As she struggled with Mario, Carla saw Gio reach over, his fingertips clawing for Mario's dropped gun. Don and the other agents were moving toward them, but before they could pull Mario off of Carla, Gio's hand wrapped around the handle of the gun. He raised it, emptying the entire clip into Mario's head.

 

Mario slumped forward, dead.

 

Don looked from Carla to Gio to Mario, then back to Carla again, astonished.

 

“Well, this sure has been some kinda day, hasn't it?” Don observed, tucking his gun away. “I dunno 'bout you two, but I could sure use a drink.”