Page 36 of Masked Don

He’s still at his desk at nine p.m. when I walk in. Carmine closes the door behind us and stands in front of it.

Wendt knows my face. Everyone in his business does. He stands up so fast his chair rolls into the wall.

“Mr. Accardi. I… what can I…”

“Sit.”

He sits.

I set one sheet of paper on his desk. Four years of deposits, every one from a Santini shell company. He reads it, and the color leaves his face one line at a time.

“Three companies wanted her,” I say. “You told them no.”

“It was just a favor, I didn’t know she was…”

“Mine.” I let the word sit on the desk between us. “No. You didn’t.”

I take his right hand by the wrist and lay it flat on the desk, palm down, the way you’d lay out a napkin. He doesn’t fight. Men like Gary never do. They’re too busy hoping.

I pick up the pen beside his keyboard. Cheap. Chewed at the cap. The pen he wrote it with.

“This is the hand that typed it?”

“Please. Please, I have a…”

I drive the pen through the back of his hand and into the desk.

The sound he makes isn’t human. Carmine doesn’t blink. I lean down, close enough to smell the fear sweating out of him, and wait until he can hear me over his own breathing.

“This morning I bought the company you work for. When she’s ready to leave my employ, you’ll call those three companies with your other hand and tell them you made a mistake about the best candidate you ever saw. Until then, you’ll keep taking Santini’s money and tell me every time he calls.” I straighten my cuff. “Leave the pen in until you’re done. It’ll help you remember.”

In the car, I wipe the ink off my fingers with a handkerchief.

“The soldier,” I say. “The one who laughed about her at my table on Mulberry Street.”

Carmine doesn’t ask which one. He was there. “Tonight?”

“Tonight. Quietly. Make it look like the grappa finally caught up with him.” I fold the handkerchief and put it away. “I want Santini to wake up tomorrow one man short and spend the rest of the week wondering why.”

“Done.”

A minute later, Carmine looks up from his phone. “Marta wants to know if the boy eats peas.”

I think about Matthew in that chair, swinging his legs, telling me not to draw on my hands.

“Tell her to find out,” I say. “Then tell her to buy whatever he likes.”

CHAPTER 9

STEVIE

As the car pulls in front of the house and comes to a stop, Matthew tips his head all the way back to take in all four floors of the place. “Is this our house now?”

“It’s the house I work at, bub. Big difference.”

“What’s the difference?”

“About forty million dollars, and probably about twenty thousand square feet and an acre of lawn, too.”