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“File, yes. Necklace in the next hour.”
“Go in the file and look through the photos. One of them will show where they reburied the box. Burn the entire file once you’ve identified that location. Dig up the box and bring it to me.”
“You never mentioned this before I left.”
“Need to know basis, Enzo. I needed to know you were capable of doing this.”
“Have I ever let you down before?”
“That’s not the point.” There’s a gunshot and the screaming in the background stops in a heartbeat.
“Anyone I know?” I ask.
“Kevin didn’t keep up with his payments.”
“You killed him for that?”
“No, but he went running his mouth off about it. Thought I was bluffing. You ever known me to bluff, Enzo?”
“Can’t say I do.”
“Exactly. Had to make an example of him. Listen. Enzo, you and me go way back. I can trust you, can’t I?”
I get the feeling he’s already heard from Dwayne. Hell, the little shit was probably crying down the phone before he got to the end of the street.
“Of course,” I say, wary of where this conversation’s probably going.
“If you’re fucking that girl, get it over with quickly. I don’t want anything that connects her to me and that includes your fucking DNA up her cooch. Understand what I’m saying?”
I loosen my collar. I can already feel a noose around my neck. I’m on the edge of the hangman’s stool and it’s wobbling. One false move and I’m broken necked, swinging with Kevin in the back of the Bistro freezer. “I’m not fucking her,” I say out loud. “I was doing what you asked, making sure she doesn’t know anything.”
“You’ve had long enough. Anyone would think you like hanging around in Hicksville.” He laughs in that way he does, the sound like a snake’s hiss. “I don’t mind you fucking her,” he adds. “What I do mind is you kicking the shit out of Dwayne for no good reason. I sent him to keep an eye on things.”
“He almost blew my cover.”
“That’s not what he told me. Said you attacked him for calling Chloe a bitch. Wouldn’t let him take the necklace from her. No truth in that, is there?”
“None at all.”
“Get the job done and then I want to see you both at the Bistro.”
Only two reasons to get called to the Bistro. Promotion or execution. You never find out which until you get there. No one ever refuses to go. Only one way that leads. And it ain’t promotion.
“How big’s this box?”
“Surely you remember it? It wasn’t that long ago, was it?”
“Remind me.”
“Nothing you can’t conceal about your person. Just find out where they hid the thing and bring it back here. I should never have trusted Jacob with this in the first place. Should never have let him talk me into hiding it out there. Should have kept it in one of my locations. Fix this, Enzo. Fast.”
He hangs up the phone while I walk out of the alley thinking about it all.
All this started when that Tom Blizzard rocked up after all these years. Acted all flustered, so different from how he appears in those TV ads. Begged the Don to resolve it all for him, make the whole thing go away. Wanted to make a deal.
So I’ve got to go dig up the past, claw open old wounds, and bring her into it when she has nothing to do with what happened back then.
That’s probably why I’m getting obsessed with her. I feel I owe her after what happened to her parents. I can’t ever tell her. She’d never forgive me. I could try saying I was just a kid myself and a different person back then but it wouldn’t make any difference. I’m the reason her parents are dead and there’s nothing I can say that will change that.
