L GUAPO TOLD me on the phone, “Go see Carmine.”
“Carmine Monreale, head of the Bonaventura family?”
“That’s him.”
“When you say, ‘go see him,’ tell me exactly what you mean.”
“You know what I mean. Go do it. Unless the job’s too big for you.”
This El Guapo had sent me to too many places I was likely to get dead. I thought about it. “What happened with Sal?”
“This line’s not secure.”
“We never talk on any other lines. You know there was another party there to meet him.”
“We can talk another time.”
“I don’t see when that will be.”
“Carmine. Big payout. Get it done.”
He hung up. A text message came in with some details. Times and an address.
Carmine Monreale was in what he called his country lodge. On the Internet, I scoped out about a twenty-four-bedroom lodge on four floors. Wide stone steps led up to a classical Greek-style entrance supported by high columns. Tall, red brick walls around the big parcel of countryside had what looked like security cameras every few dozen yards. I suspected there were also a couple of camera drones hidden nearby. Heavily armed goons were bound to be on every floor and there were probably going to be dogs loose in the grounds.
The Honda that I stole to get there exploded about a quarter mile along the wall from the big iron gates and, while everybody ran around, pointed their weapons in every direction, held fingers to their ears and talked into their shoulders, I slipped over a wall on the far side. The dogs came running for the steak and sedative snack that I’d brought for them. Slipping in through a back door nearby wasn’t too much trouble. I had to guess fast where the security room was. That’s where the servers and screens for all the cameras would be.
As I guessed, it was on the ground floor at the back, by the kitchen. There should have been a guard in the cupboard with the nest of video screens, but he’d clearly deserted his post to watch the fireworks out front.
After I knocked out the phone lines and the Internet, and cut the power to the alarms, I slipped back out to scale the back wall, up onto the roof. I’d brought climbing tackle but I didn’t need it as the showy brickwork was easy enough to climb. There was a guy on the roof with a really big gun, but he was at the front watching the fire, too. I relieved him of his weapon and left him napping like a baby. Through a hut on the roof, I made my way down to the second floor. The room with the biggest double doors had two armed men outside.
This was the floor where I guessed the boss man would be holed up. High enough that he could be in command, but still be a tough fight to reach. Crouching around a corner, I rolled a fizzing smoke grenade past the two guards. As soon as they turned to go after it, I slugged the goons and cable tied their wrists behind their backs. One of them woke up while I was trussing them.
Quietly I told him, “There’s no point in you being dead. There are plenty of guys ready to shoot me on the way out. Just chill.”
I shot a hole in the lock on the big door as a precaution. There was no way to know if Carmine was in there on his own or with a battalion or if he’d put the guards outside an empty room while he waited across the hallway. I had the big machine gun from the guy on the roof in my left for noise and show and my own Sig Sauer pistol in my right for anything I needed to actually hit.
From the side of the doorway I shoved the door open, waited a beat and then moved quickly in and across the doorway, crouched down low.
Carmine stood in the middle of the big room. He was big with a shock of thick silvery hair. He had a decent sized gun ready, but he was aimed for me to be standing in the doorway and I’d got in too quickly for him to react. Plus, I had a stick of grenades. Scissors for his paper.
The big guy was dressed like he’d been at a fancy dinner and wore a blue toned gray suit with a gorgeous white shirt open at the neck. I wondered where the other guests were.
My gun was aimed right at his throat. His was pointed at the wall, and the wrong wall at that. Checkmate.
I said, “Maybe we could chat, Mr Monreale.”
“Aren’t you going to kill me first?”
“I’m not going to kill you at all. Not unless you make me.”
His eyebrow raised. “How would I do that?”
“If you move your aim I’d have to fire.”
He looked at my gun. “You have me cold.”
Then he moved to one of the two big chairs. They were ornate gold with red velvet, Louis Whatever or antique Sicilian or something. He lowered the gun and gestured to the other chair. I lowered mine, too and sat across from him.
He asked, “Should I know who you are?”
“No reason you should, no. They call me ‘Horse.’”
“Do they now.” He smiled thinly.
He watched me as he waited.
I asked him, “Do you know who El Guapo is?”
“Interesting question, Horse. I know who he is in the sense that I have had dealings with him. I haven’t ever met him though, and his voice is all that I know of him.”
“You don’t know if he’s with one of the families?”
“He isn’t as far as I know. Nobody has ever mentioned him. Not that they would necessarily.” He paused and looked at me. “An insider wouldn’t be likely to use a Spanish name.”
“No.” I said, “I’d been wondering about that.”
“Why do you ask about him?”
I told him, “El Guapo sent me.”
“First you bring a gun and grenades to chat; now it seems like you’ve come here to make jokes.”
“I’m telling you.”
His eyes narrowed. “Then you know the question you need to ask yourself.”
“Sure. That’s why I came to talk it over with you. I figure it would be in both of our interests to figure it out together.”
“The question being?”
“Who does El Guapo want dead more? You? Or me?”
He shook his head sadly. “You knocked out all the alarms, right?”
I thought about that. I said, “Even so, there must be twenty guys downstairs and still on active service.” Engines rumbled outside the front gates. Voices were raised.
“Sure,” he said, “But you’ve already done the hard part. Getting in now will just be a matter of brute force.”
Outside, it sounded like a lot of people were arriving. A lot of people with a lot of heavy-duty vehicles. “So it could be he wants both of us dead.” Carmine said, “Did you think about that?”
I shook my head. More from frustration, but it was also an admission. No, it was obvious enough, but I hadn’t thought about that.
“And you opened the door for him.”
I said, “Do you have a panic room?” A place this size, a guy like Carmine. He had to have one.
His eyes hardened. “You think I’m going to hide out like a fucking rat in a trap?”
I could see that he was a man who relished a fight, and the bigger the better.
“Mr Monreale, with all due respect, if El Guapo, whoever the fuck he is, wants you dead that badly, then my assumption is that I need to keep you alive, whatever it takes.”
His fingers wrapped around the gun. “That could be a tough call.”
I grinned, “Don’t test me, Carmine. I don’t want to kill you, but I won’t mind hurting you if I have to.”
Carmine was a big man and he had come up the hard way through the ranks of the mob. If he was really determined to resist me and stay out of the panic room, I knew that he could do it without breaking a sweat. So I kept talking, “Mister Monreale, don’t you want to know why I showed up to meet Salazar last night and a massive detachment of the FBI was already there, waiting?”
His eyebrows rose. The noise outside was getting louder. There were shouts and some loud bangs. The tension was obvious and shots would break out soon enough. I needed Carmine out of the way and fast. While he thought it through I told him, “Please. I know I’d have a better chance of dealing with whatever’s out there with you and that big gun, but it’s even more important that I know you’re going to be around afterwards.”
“You planning to hand me to the FBI?”
“They can’t lay a glove on you, can they?”
“Not as far as I know.”
“Then don’t sweat it.” Some shots were fired out by the gates.
Carmine was a fierce old warrior but he could see the sense in what I had told him. He led me quickly down to the basement and opened a steel door thick enough to weaken the knees of a banker.
With Carmine safely behind that door, I headed back up to the ground floor. The noise of the battle was still outside so I took that moment to make a call.
When she picked up I said, “I don’t suppose this would be the number to report a crime in progress.”
“Would that be a crime that you’re committing?”
“Har de fucking har. I’m in Carmine’s place.”
“Carmine Monreale?”
“Yeah, his place on Statten Island.”
“The place he calls his ‘cabin’?”
“Yeah, that’s it. It’s a country mansion about the size of Bloomingdales. Look, it sounds like a Russian war party is forming up outside and we could really do with some help.”
There was a pause. I imagined the sparks of amusement bouncing in her eyes. “The guy who works for the mafia and a top level mafia don want help from the FBI.”
“Think of it as a public order issue.” An explosion shook the ground. It was a little way away, but the fight was certainly coming closer. I ducked into an unlit room at the front of the house and peered out from the side of a window.
“It looks like a goddamned invasion force out there. Look, I think there’s a connection between what you’re investigating and me being sent here.”
“Why?”
“You know, I would love to walk you down the pathways of my thinking and show you all the little treasures in all the cabinets of my mind palace that I collected along the way and take you over notes that led me to this conclusion. I’m sure that’s how we would do it if you and I were Special Agenting together, only, right now, did I mention that there’s a very substantial armed force outside?”
“Mm. You may have.”
“Well, they’re aiming to get inside. Oh, and Carmine doesn’t know I’m calling you.”
“What?”
“He’s kinda locked in the basement.”
“There’s a good reason for that, I’m sure.”
“It’s for his own protection. Plus he thinks I’m trying to kill him.”
“I wonder what could possibly have made him think that.”
“I told him it’s what I was sent here to do.”
Her tone changed. “By the guy who sent you to meet Sal last night?”
“The same.”
Now she didn’t hesitate. I heard her moving as she talked. “We’ll be right there.”