When I was young, I used to sit around with the guys and put a single bullet in the barrel. There’d be six of us, meaning one of us was destined to get hit and the others unscathed. We’d take turns, putting the tip of the barrel to our arm and pulling the trigger.
The longer you made it through the game without getting the bullet, the bigger hand you had in the prize. I always made it pretty far but never got the retribution of the bullet. “Tommaso around?”
“Just had a meeting.” He nodded, and we moved through the hallway and different rooms, and then came to a stop in the drawing room. The fireplace was cold because it’d been a warm week, but it smelled of cigars, like Tommaso frequented this room for meetings. “I’ll tell him you’re here. I would offer you a drink, but the last time someone touched Tommaso’s bar, they got shot.” He grinned then disappeared into the other room.
I helped myself to the bar, made myself a stiff drink with a couple big ice cubes. I admired the paintings on the wall and surveyed the wealth of the room. Cosa Nostra had been in this part of Sicily since the mid-1800s, and they established their own collection of art and history.
Tommaso Sirenuse emerged from the other room, a decade and a half older than me, his T-shirt stressed in the stomach because he enjoyed Sicilian wine a little too much. His skin had a greasy texture, the aftermath of a diet heavy on Italian meats that seeped into his pores. He sauntered into the room as he slid his hands into his pockets. “Constantine, just the man I wanted to see.” He came up to me, and I extended my hand.
“I’m sure.” I took a seat on the couch across from his armchair.
He sat and then looked at one of the two henchmen who followed him around everywhere he went, his personal bodyguards who were present even at his home. “Make me a stiff drink.”
They looked at each other, like they both agreed this wasn’t in their job description, but one of them made a move and whipped up a drink.
Tommaso didn’t reprimand me for helping myself.
When the drink was placed on a coaster in front of him, Tommaso dismissed them. “You can go.”
They looked at each other again, knowing they weren’t supposed to leave his presence.
“I said go.”
Like scared cats, they scurried off.
Tommaso sat with his hands together, not touching his drink. “How’s your family?”
“Good. Yours?”
“Elena says I need to lose weight.” He grabbed the glass and took a drink. “So I picked up a mistress.”
“Very diplomatic.”
“Well, she doesn’t seem to mind.”
“Because she’s getting paid not to mind. And I’m sure Elena just wants you to live as long as possible.”
He gave an irritated look before he took another drink. “You always take her side.”
“I do when she’s right, which seems to be always.”
He glared at me.
I smiled. “How’s business?”
“The same. There’s just been a lot of interference because it’s a jubilee year. Harder to move product with the ferries. Not to mention the influx of tourists here getting in our fucking way. They usually stay in Taormina, but a lot of them have flocked over here.”
“You’ll manage.”
“Easy for you to say when you have the whole country at your fingertips.”
“Not that easy. Taking this week vacation will absolutely bite me in the ass.”
“What’s going on in Rome?”
“Organs hitting the black market, the truce agreement I have to comply with, according to Pope Zephyrinus, the graffiti problem, which annoys me more than all the other issues combined, by the way, and then everything else. President Barsetti has his agenda, and it doesn’t always mesh with mine.”
He gave a nod. “So you’re going to uphold the truce?”
