After all,theyloved Angelo, too. They were his Family.
“Stay flexible,” I said, and kissed him breathless.
Chapter One
Several months later
Ciro Castellani’s teeth were wedding-cake white when he smiled at me, pristine in their regularity and color. He looked like any Hollywood player, a producer or a studio executive maybe, so that I had to remind myself of what he really was.
Ciro Castellani was a Mob Boss, and he was currently the only friend Angelo and I had in LA.
Angelo and I had been careful on our way back from New York, because despite the new understanding we’d made with Detective Gina Garcia—soon to be FBI Trainee Gina Garcia—we wanted to make sure we threw off any tails.
Along the way, we’d kept in touch with the Morellis and their situation. The night Angelo had received word of Louis Clemenza’s death, we’d celebrated with champagne and pizza, and then he’d kept me up until dawn, pulling pleasure after pleasure out of me.
I’d never seen him like that before, and I wasn’t sure I would again. But I understood it. I understood that sense of justice being done. I’d felt a righteous sense of it myself when the man who’d killed my family had been blown up in a Chicago office.
So we’d ended up in Los Angeles without a tail, but also without a new lead on Donnie Greco’s whereabouts in that city. For a long time we lay low, trying to track him, but he had connections in LA and a keen desire not to be found, especially after the collapse of the Clemenzas in New York. For the first time, Greco was staying deep in his hole. Eventually, Angelo and I had agreed we needed to seek outside resources.
That need had led us to the Castellani Family. They were a self-contained bunch who kept their business interests specific. And—bonus marks in Angelo’s mind—they weren’t under influence from Sonny Vegas or connected to any Families with anti-Morelli feelings.
Don Ciro Castellani lived in a Bel Air property first established in the early twentieth century. The vast grounds had been cobbled together through passing decades from the surrounding properties, and the whole, enormous estate bore the pretentious name of Redwood Manor
The iron gates had opened to a long and winding driveway that took us past a Redwood grove that I assumed gave the estate its name. Angelo and I had stayed silent during the drive up to the house, which appeared to be a faithful recreation of a French chateau. The exterior was symmetrical, imposing, undeniably beautiful. Row after row of windows leered down at us when we arrived outside in a humble taxi. I’d felt the undeniable sense that someone was watching us from those windows, but the sun glinting off the glass made each of them impenetrable.
“How do you like the weather here?” Ciro Castellani asked me now. We were meeting not in his study, but in a large room that the butler had called “the salon,” which came straight off the foyer. The salon was a large room with double-sized windows, but the sunlight seemed to struggle getting through the opulent silk window dressings. Sofas, seats and coffee tables were strewn tastefully around, and one whole side of the room was taken up by bookshelves. There were several doors, but all were closed. A grand piano sat at the far end of the room, half hidden behind some Japanese screens.
The only decoration of the walls in the salon was a larger-than-life portrait of a beautiful blonde woman in royal blue silk. A necklace set with sapphires the size of golf balls was around her throat, and her blue eyes were pleading with the viewer. Pleading for what, I wasn’t sure.
Under the portrait was a small glass display case that held two things. One was the sapphire necklace from the portrait, even more breathtaking in real life.
The other object was a funerary urn.
“Well, sir,” I replied carefully, bring my attention back to Don Castellani, “they weren’t lying about the weather in LA. It’s spectacular.”
He laughed, although I could see nothing amusing about the weather. “Every day just like the last,” he said, nodding. “We prefer it that way. No surprises.” His eyes went to Angelo. Angelo and I were sitting next to each other on a long sofa. Castellani sat at a right-angle to us in a straight-backed chair that looked more ornamental than comfortable, his fingers stroking the carved ends of the chair arm. “And you, Messina? You like LA?”
“It’s a fun town,” Angelo said neutrally. “But of course, we don’t want to intrude on your hospitality any longer than necessary.”
Normally when we turned up in a new city, this was what each Family Boss was waiting to hear. Anywhere Angelo and I went, our presence tended to raise hackles. Well—Angelo’spresence raised them. The Monster of the Morellis wasn’t someone that other Families liked to have sniffing around. Me, they didn’t care about so much, until they found out I’d once worked for the FBI. Even then, Angelo was the one they watched when we were in close quarters.
They were right to fear him. Angelo still astonished me on a regular basis, and pride in him burned in my belly when I saw Castellani sizing him up once more.
“I hoped you might consider staying around a little longer,” Castellani said to him. “A man with your skills…your reputation…”
I didn’t blink, didn’t speak, played dumb. But I’d never heardanyFamily Boss so far suggest that we hang around their territory any longer than we needed to. I knew Angelo must have been surprised as well, but all he said was, “That’s generous of you, but Bax and I are eager to get home, once we have the man we’re looking for.”
“That’s a shame,” Castellani said with a frown. “Still, it’s good to meet you. Yes, good to meet the man behind the reputation.”
Angelo said nothing, but gave a very small incline of his head. His eyes were watchful.
“Salvatore Rossi himself reached out to me on your behalf,” Castellani went on. “Spoke very highly of you. Sal and I have had some good dealings in the past, and I’m glad to be able to do him a favor…and of course, the Morellis.”
Angelo shifted on the sofa, relaxing now. “I don’t want to give you the wrong impression, Don Castellani. I’m not here as a representative of the Morelli Family. It’s a personal matter, you understand.”
“Of course, of course,” Castellani said, the shark grin splitting his bronzed face with gleaming white again. “But this town is all about back-scratching. I do Rossi a favor, I do you a favor…maybe sometime in the future Don Morelli can do something for me, eh? Friends are important. I know Don Morelli thinks so, too.”
“It’s true that Don Morelli appreciates his friends.”
