Deadly Lullaby Read Free Page B

the desktop, then snatch the fat envelope of cash resting next to it. I move toward the door with my son in tow, conceal the gun behind my back and grip the doorknob. I pause an instant to think, then whisper, “I’m starving. You are still up for breakfast at La Parrilla, right?”
    His reaction makes it obvious to me that the ball game is out of the question, too.
    —
    About fifteen minutes later we walk into the bright sunlight that bathes the loading dock and find Chief leaning against a support beam. A cigarette dangles from his lips and a crooked length of ash falls to his lapel when his facial muscles attempt to form a smile. The smile, such as it is, dissolves into a bewildered expression when Leo floats past him wordlessly, expressionless, like a ghost in a residual haunting, a mere time stamp on the environment.
    “What’s up with him?” Chief says.
    “Kids these days have no respect. Forget about him.”
    Chief shrugs as if he forgot him already. “How’d it go up there?”
    I stroll toward him. “You know how Macky gets with us Italians. He got all choked up.”
    Chief nods. “Really laid it on him thick, huh?”
    “I left him breathless.”
    “Breathless,” he says and cuts his eyes at me. He squints one eye against a wisp of cigarette smoke, tilts his head as if pondering a riddle, and studies my midsection, where the bodyguards’ pistols tucked in my waistband bulge against my sport coat. “Choked up.”
    He doesn’t get it yet, but he is close.
    I move closer to him and lower my voice. “Say, Chief, how would you like to work for me?”
    He toes out his spent cigarette on the pavement, lips a new one from a pack he pulls from his breast pocket, and fires it up with a vintage
Ronson
lighter. “You,” he says, “not Joe Sacci.”
    “Right. Do not get me wrong. Me and Joe are still all right. It is just we are not joined at the hip anymore. I wanted to be an independent contractor, in a manner of speaking, and he agreed.”
    He nods while he thinks this over, his face simmering with curiosity until something occurs to him. “Say, how come you didn’t ask me to work for you when you got here?”
    “You had an employer then.”
    Now he gets it.
    I smile.
    “I knew you were up to something,” Chief says, takes a nervous drag from his smoke, and tilts his head toward Leo, who is now entering my car. “So that’s what’s eatin’ him.”
    I nod. “He will be okay.”
    “I dunno, bein’ a cop and all…”
    “Chief, I said he will be okay.” I wink. “Trust me.”
    A roll of his eyes heavenward. “Trust you, right…Tell me, how’d you do Macky?”
    I describe how I did him.
    “Oh, yeah, okay, choked up and breathless, sure, now I get it….What the hell did you do with the other guys up there, the bodyguards?”
    “Bound and gagged them very securely. Hope they’re not friends of yours.”
    He shakes his head. “Nah, the pricks treated me like a rented mule….What’s gonna happen to ’em?”
    “Tarasov’s guys will stop by to question them soon, after I make the call. Joe and Tarasov believe they possess information that is crucial to a smooth transition of power.”
    “
Sacci’s
in on this, too?”
    “Does that bother you, Chief? I mean, being that Sacci and Macky were friends and all?”
    Chief shows me his palms in a gesture of submission. “Oh, no, not me, no. I’m just—” He clears his throat. “Look, tell you what, when Tarasov’s guys are finished
questionin’
the assholes up there and, you know”—he slashes his forefinger across his throat—“tell ’em I’ll help…get rid of the bodies, whatever.” He takes another drag from his cigarette and his fingers tremble just enough to be noticeable. “And I’ll answer any question they got about Macky’s operation. I know where more than a few skeletons are buried.”
    “No, it would probably be in your best interest to get as far away from here as you can before the mad Russians arrive.”
    Chief