Matt lets out a whimper.
“Everyone get in the house,” I say. “Nicky, grab the—yes, good.” He’s already moving to pick up the gun Dellacroce dropped. “We were inside, watching TV, waiting for our pizza. We heard nothing. Andifthat’s the cops, no one says a goddamn thing to them except me. Understand?”
* * *
Itisthe police.But they’re easy enough to deal with, and the pizza delivery turning up a few minutes after they do lends verisimilitude to my story. They don’t even ask to come inside, just question me at the door while I accept the pizza and pay for it.
They want to know if I heard anything that sounded like a gunshot. I say no. They leave.
If only the NYPD was so easy. But then, I’d have even fewer billable hours than I do now.
Once the law is gone, Nick takes over again. “The only thing we can do, the only thing that will keep all of us safe, is to get rid of this problem just like I got rid of Gatti. We’re going to make sure he never resurfaces—sorry, kid—”
“Nothing to be sorry for,” Matt tells him, lifting up his chin, his jaw set firm. He’s been quiet since we got into the house. I sent him upstairs to wash his face when the cops arrived, mostly so he’d be out of sight. His eye is closing over, but he hasn’t complained at all.
Nick goes on, “The Alessis will assume it was a hit, but we’ll be long gone. And you, Matt—I’ll get word to Sonny that his problem is taken care of, and that the rest of the Dellacroce family is under Morelli protection. He won’t come for you.”
For a moment I wonder how he can be so sure, and then I get it. Nick will play this out like it was done on purpose. Like he took care of a problem for Sonny, so Sonny can do Nick a favor in return and forget about the remaining Dellacroces—or the Harrises, or whoever they want to be.
“But you’ll have to take care of your family from now on,” Nick adds. “Understand? I’ll give you a nest egg to get you started, but you gotta step up.”
“I can do that,” Matt says confidently.
“Go on out back. Put on some gardening gloves first. There’s a bunch of plastic sheeting, metal offcuts, rocks and shit under the deck. Start dragging some out. Don’t get your prints on them, understand?”
Matt brightens. “For reals? I can help?” He actually sounds excited. Maybe I underestimated the guy. Most people don’t get excited about this kind of thing.
“For reals,” Nick says, somehow keeping his face straight. Once Matt has left the room, Nick rotates his shoulder a few times, hissing as he does. “I’m okay,” he insists again when he sees me glaring at him. “Just need to stretch it out.”
“You know, Nicky,mostpeople don’t have problems that they need to weight down and hide in the depths of the Atlantic,” I say.
“Sorry, Harvard, I know this isn’t really your thing.” He comes over and puts his arms around me and I hug him back as gently as I can. “I’ll keep you out of it. Me and Matt—”
“No,” I tell him. “This is definitely my thing from now on. I told you. To the fullest extent of the law, and beyond.”
“Harvard—”
“I thought you weredead,” I whisper.
“Takes more than that,” he murmurs. “But I’m serious, you let me and Matt take care of this.”
The thing is, I’m already drowning in this whole thing, so it doesn’t make much sense to leave an injured man and a skinny kid trying to do everything themselves. It’s dark, but I’m living in fear that some kind of beach party has been arranged, because wouldn’t that just be our goddamn luck? So despite Nick insisting that I stay in the house and pretend like nothing happened, I won’t do that. That’s the kind of thing my father would want me to do, and I’m not going to play by his rules anymore.
So for the second time in my life, I help to cover up a dead body. It probably won’t be the last time, either. And I’m okay with that.
* * *
Dellacroce’smostdefinitelydead when we get down to the beach. Part of me was expecting him to have disappeared, crawled away still alive, but he broke his neck in the fall, and I have to turn away and take a few deep breaths after I see his crumpled body. We use the beach stairs to carry down some old plastic painting sheets and scrap metal, and I pull the tarp off the old rowboat at the bottom of the staircase while Matt and Nick parcel up our problem. Thankfully the wood of the boat still seems sound, and I drag it to the ocean’s edge.
Nick’s plan is simple. He’s the only one who gets in the boat with the body once it’s wrapped up securely and weighted down. He rows out into the dark sea, using his burner phone’s compass to find his way, and Matt and I stand on the beach watching and listening until the sound of the oars slapping into the water is too faint to discern over the whispering tide.
I send Matt home, back to his brothers and sisters who still need looking after tonight, but I stay there waiting on the beach for Nicky, waiting for my sailor to come in, and when he does, our plastic-coated problem has disappeared.
“It’s done?” I ask him.
“It’s done.”
Chapter Forty-Four
