I put my hand on his shoulder and give it a squeeze of thanks, then pull out my money clip and count out five hundreds. “Here.”
He shakes his head. “I wasn’t looking for that.”
“I know you weren’t. Take it anyway. And tell anyone else who gets an offer like yours that I’ll double it for them, too. Understood?”
He takes the money, folds it carefully, tucks it deep. “You sure about that? You gonna get a run on folks looking for free money.”
“I’m sure.” Paid loyalty is still better than nothing at all. “Now go tell Rosa that I said to send you out some lunch, and then you find a new place to hang around for a while.”
He nods and shuffles over toward the house, while I get into the car.
A couple of hundred dollars.That’swhat the Clemenza heir’s life is worth to this motherfucker?
That’s an insult, is what it is.
I pull up the camera feeds for the basement, just to see what that cunning little snake is up to. But he’s covered over the cameras somehow, so that all I see is black.
He never would have dared to do that before Luca fucking D’Amato stepped in.
My thumb hovers over the control for the lights. One tap and I could plunge him into darkness, let him panic-breathe his way through the next eight hours while stuffed into that cage. But it’s too petty to be satisfying, and I don’t want him running to Finch D’Amato.
I put the phone away and think about how it felt to have my dick in his throat, his hair twisted up in my hand. “Don Clemenza” took my load and swallowed it all down.
What would Strike Ferraro and the rest of those losers say if they knew?
Nothing today requires much of a workout. At the third stop out in Astoria to check in on a crew running numbers out of a barbershop, a low-level soldier actually asks me if it’s true I bought the Clemenza heir at auction.
His senior cuffs him before I can, but I guess it means that what happened at the Obelisk is common knowledge now.
Then that same kid, rubbing the back of his head, pipes up again. “Hey, you think Seb Conti is gonna make a move? My cousin over in Brooklyn says?—”
“Your cousin in Brooklyn needs to shut his fucking mouth,” I say, stepping close enough that the kid flinches. “And so do you. Big Gee is the Boss. Anyone who says different is going to lose their tongue, just like Vito, here.” I thumb at Vito, who immediately opens his mouth and waggles his tongue-stump at the guy. “We clear?”
“C-clear,” he stammers, going ghost-white.
“The fuck is wrong with you?” the senior soldier snaps at the kid. Then, to me: “Sorry, Orsini. I don’t usually let my people run their mouths. You know I shut that kind of talk down.”
“I know you do, Pep.” Pete “Pep” Pardini is actually a good friend of Seb’s. Solid guy, keeps his crew tight, and he knows that Seb likes to keep eyes focused on Big Gee.
“Kid’s new,” Pep says with a shrug, walking Vito and me back out to the car. “He’ll learn, or he’ll lose teeth. Either way.”
I shake his hand and get back in the car, where I compliment Vito on his back-up show. I’m debating bringing up the cameras in the basement again when I get a text from the man in question: Sebastiano Conti, asking me to meet him later for dinner.
I go as summoned. Seb has already been served his sixteen-ounce ribeye when I arrive at the Family-backed steakhouse on Mulberry Street that’s been feeding wise guys since before either of us was born. Dark wood paneling, white tablecloths, heavy silverware, and generous portions.
I order the veal parm and a glass of red and wait for him to stop chewing long enough to talk. “What the fuck’s going on?” are his first words.
“Meaning?”
“Big Gee’s pissed.”
“He always is.”
“At you. Specifically. For dragging him into some meeting with D’Amato.”
I can’t stop thetchaof irritation. “That wasn’t me. It was the fucking Clemenza.”
Seb stops eating at that and raises his eyebrows. “That needs an explanation, Orsini. What do you mean it was the Clemenza?”
