Pepperoni_lover:I hear Sandro Castellani has a meeting with PacSyn tonight. Interested in knowing where?
I’ve only been on a reconnaissance myself once or twice. They were the best nights of my life—even better than Miller Beaumont’s pool parties, where a whole clutch of Mob guys hang out, too.
But I’m not stupid. I know it’s dangerous to try to photograph any one of these men.
Still…the chance of getting a new picture of Alessandro Castellani…
Or of seeing him myself…
In theflesh…
GangstaGuy:Hell yeah I’m interested
CHAPTER4
SANDRO
“Bad news travels fast,”Jacopo tells me. “PacSyn wants a meeting.”
“PacSyn?” I give a short laugh. “What do those dogs want?”
“To trade information for an alliance. Or so they say.”
I’ve been up all night and all day taking care of things—paying off some people, reassuring others, doing what needed to be done to cover up my father’s murder. For the good of the Family.
Despite everything those ungrateful old fools said and didnotsay last night, I am still working for the good of the Family. I am sitting at the blood-stained desk of my father, and Jacopo is standing there in front of me with a tired face, as though he had anything to do last night but go home and bed hisputtano.
I’m irritated with everyone, and Jacopo happens to be standing there in front of me, so he bears the brunt.
“Did you get your brains sucked out of your dick before you came over? PacSyn are more likely to kill me than ally with me.” I may have gone too far. There’s a dangerous glint in his eye, and I’m too tired for a fight. “Alright, alright,” I snap. “Just tell me what you know.”
“That’s it,” he snaps back. “I’ve been out all last night and all today with my ear to the ground, and that’s the message that came through. If you’re interested, this is the address—” He smacks a scrap of paper onto the desk. “—and a time. You want my advice, it’s all bullshit, just like you say. But there it is.”
“I don’t want your advice, and I have a Consigliere for when Idowant advice.”
“Oh, yeah? And what’shedone for you since last night, huh?”
It’s a sarcastic question, but I can’t help giving a serious response. “He’s shown me just how far this Family is drowning in bullshit, and that my father, may he rest in peace, had a thousand enemies.”
The Castellani Family has many fingers in many pies, both legitimate and less legitimate, but my father’s interests lay in Hollywood. He threw money at endless productions, most of which fizzled at the box office. I’ve always known that. But Lombardo told me that those losses, combined with the Bernardi Family control of the docks—which makes imports and exports much more difficult than they used to be—means that the Castellani fortune has dwindled. My father’s recent attempts to pull together various organizations in Los Angeles and unite them with him at the head was his attempt to restore his power and wealth. But the only thing this achieved was a further destabilizing of power, widening fractures with old enemies—and increased the danger to my father.
I don’t tell Jacopo all of this, of course, but the sheer honesty of my response pricks the balloon of spite that was building up between us. He sits, uninvited, in the chair opposite me. “Well, you knew that already,” he points out. “Did Lombardo give you anything useful?”
I’m loath to discuss any of this with Jacopo. He’s an excellent hitman, and a very good mid-level Capo, since my father raised him back up in the Family, but he’s still not part of the inner circle. Not one of the men my father—not trusted, no, but the men with whom he was most likely to share his thoughts.
Yet I have no onebutJacopo, and until I resolve this issue, that inner circle will keepmeon the outer.
“The FBI are breathing down our necks,” I tell him.
“They always are,” he says with a shrug.
I pause again, wondering how wise it is to share this. “Remember Frankie Serra?”
Jacopo has to think for a moment. “Skinny guy. Buck teeth. Had a mean streak a mile wide. Haven’t seen him around for a while.”
“And you won’t see him again. He was a Fed plant.”
At that, Jacopo sits up. “Thatsadistic asshole was a fucking FBI plant?”
