“Yeah,” I said back. “Your dad wanted to see me.”
He disappeared from view except for his hand, trailing along the banister above, and then he descended the stairs, his glass-like blue eyes fixed on me. Julian had an unnerving, non-blinking stare that always made me wonder if he saw the world a little differently than the rest of us. Maybe he saw the quantum physics behind it, or the alternate universe copies of us all.
Or maybe he was just wondering about the most enjoyable way to kill me. You never could tell with Julian.
“I haven’t seen you since Angelo was here,” he said.
“Guess…not.” Angelo Messina, formerly of the New York-based Morelli Family, was a dangerous topic with Julian.
Unnervingly, he seemed to follow my thoughts. “You don’t need to worry,” he told me. “I’m quite over all that.”
“You have a little something,” I said, pointing at my own face. Julian had a smear of blood across his cheek.
“Ah,” he said, smudging it casually off. “Thank you.” He stared at me some more, until I wondered if I’d been called here to get picked off rather than to meet the Boss. But then he nodded and turned away. “Well,” he said, mounting the staircase again, “good luck.”
Standing there again in the opulent grandeur of a foyer that was designed to cow me, I began to wonder what the hell Iwasdoing there. Did the Boss finally have a new hit for me? Or was I about to be asked to help out the Monster of the Morellis again? I wouldn’t mind that. It had been a better job than usual. Shakedowns, collections, package running—they let me prove my loyalty, but they weren’tinteresting.
Messina and Baxter Flynn chasing their fugitive… Now,thathad been interesting. But so far as I knew, Messina and Flynn were still snug in San Diego, holed up in their love nest, enjoying married life. Nice for some.
Realnice.
I found myself clenching my hands, open and shut, so I thrust them into my jacket pockets. My knuckles brushed against something crumpled up in there. I pulled out what I thought was a used Kleenex at first, but then I saw the black strokes of a pen, and in my palm I smoothed out the paper napkin from last night.
My squinting, noirish self glared up at me, and I couldn’t help but give a chuckle.
Where was that little troublemaker today, I wondered? I licked my lips, remembering the taste of him, the feel of that wriggling foot against my crotch.
Approaching steps disrupted my thoughts, and I turned to find the butler heading for me. Jeeves, Sandro had always called him, and I didn’t know the guy’sactualname. When he spoke, it was with a plummy English accent that I always wondered about. It was probably real.
Probably.
“Mr. Castellani will see you now.”
CHAPTER6
JACK
I followedthe butler through a labyrinth of rooms along the bottom floor of the house, all connected to each other, and ended up before a closed door that I knew led into Ciro Castellani’s study. The butler knocked three times on the closed door, and, at the answering grunt from inside, opened the door and walked through.
“Mr. Jacopo to see you, sir,” I heard the butler announce loudly, and then he stepped to the side.
I crossed the threshold.
Don Ciro Castellani was a man average in stature, but the kind whose personality filled up the whole room. He was at the bay windows that looked out over the back of his property, his arms crossed, staring out at the view. When I came in, he waited a beat, then turned to me with a warm smile, still hugging his own arms like he was keeping all his secrets safe. He stood and crossed the room, extending a hand like we were old buddies.
“Jacopo. Good to see you.”
The Castellanis had deep roots in Sicily, but the Boss had made his wealth on more than just Mob money, and that was reflected in his air and his manners. They suggested breeding, which he didn’t have, and social standing, which he did, but only thanks to his late wife—hissecondwife. He was Italian-born but American-bred, and after his first Italian wife had been quietly divorced, he’d married again into money, fame, and glamor. Caroline Chalmers had been a well-respected theatre actor and the daughter of a London studio head who had been very famous in his time—or so I’d been told. Caroline Castellani, as she became after her marriage, had stayed involved in theatre as a patron and restorer of the vintage theatre houses around town.
“Come, sit down,” Don Castellani said, leading me over to the antique sofa set in front of the disused fireplace. Over the fireplace hung the portrait of Caroline that was usually displayed in the grand salon, as the Boss insisted on calling it. In the salon, it had hung over a glass case that displayed the same sapphire necklace she wore in the portrait, and an urn that Sandro and I had used to call—disrespectfully and never in Ciro’s hearing—the Caroline Jar. But here in the study, neither the necklace nor the urn that contained Caroline Castellani’s ashes were with the portrait.
“I’ve moved her in here,” Ciro Castellani said, noticing me noticing the portrait, “while the salon is being redecorated.” He offered me a cigarette, which I refused, but he lit one himself while saying, “You impressed me with the work you did with the Morellis recently.”
That was an outright lie. The Morelli thing had been a shitshow from start to finish.
“A shame how it turned out in the end,” he admitted on the stream of smoke that he blew out. Then he dropped his voice so that I had to strain a little to hear him. “And it’s a shame you’re only working crew these days, Jacopo. You were the next big thing until…” He sucked in another lungful of smoke and blew it out again.
I wasn’t going to apologize, not again. It wouldn’t make a lick of difference, anyway. Things were how they were.
