Chapter 3 - BLOOD ON THE LEDGER
By Thursday, the mansion had established a new, volatile equilibrium.
Fay Willis did not learn how to tiptoe. In a house where Mrs. Gable glided like an apparition and the guards moved with the heavy, silent caution of predators stalking an unstable terrain, Fay walked with heels that struck the hardwood with brisk, unapologetic thuds.
She arrived at seven in the morning. She set down a tin thermos of black coffee—not the French press chicory Mrs. Gable prepared, but industrial diner roast that smelled like asphalt and burnt sugar.
“Drink it,” she said, setting the thick ceramic mug on the low table beside my chair. “It’s stronger than that mud they make downstairs.”
I didn't touch it until she left the room. Then I drank the entire cup. It was scorching, bitter, and the best thing I had tasted in six months.
At nine, the business came to the bedroom.
I refused to use the ground-floor study. That room had French doors opening onto the terrace where I used to smoke cigars with politicians; it had high leather armchairs that I could no longer sit in without two men lifting me by the armpits like an invalid. So the business moved up to the third floor, crowding into the space between my four-poster bed and the rain-streaked windows.
Carmine entered with a thick leather folder tucked under his arm. His face was gray, the lines around his mouth carved deep by three days without sleep.
“Lucian Valenti called twice this morning,” Carmine said, ignoring Fay, who was in the corner methodically dusting the mahogany bookshelves. “He wants a sit-down at the warehouse on Forty-Fourth. He says the port authorities are holding three containers of optical lenses from Hamburg. He claims our customs broker lost his seal.”
I set my reading glasses on the arm of my chair. “Our broker didn't lose anything. Valenti paid the dock master to flag the manifests. He’s testing the perimeter.”
“If we don't go to the warehouse, he takes the cargo,” Carmine said. “If we do go, he expects to see you.”
The room went cold.
The last time Lucian Valenti had seen me, I was walking out of the Plaza Hotel with a hundred-thousand-dollar watch on my wrist and two city councilmen laughing at my jokes. If he saw me now—bound to this leather seat, wrapped in a blanket to hide the wasting of my calves—the war wouldn't be fought with customs brokers. It would be fought with hollow-point rounds in the driveway of this very house.
“We send Leo,” I said.
“Leo is twenty-two,” Carmine countered. “Valenti will take his skin off and send it back in a parcel. Dominic, the street knows you haven't been seen since the docks. The rumors are turning into bets. The Greeks are holding back their tribute. The Colombians are asking why their shipments are sitting in Bayonne for four days instead of four hours.”
“Let them ask!” I roared, slamming my fist against the armrest. The leather gave a muffled, hollow thud. “Let them come here! Let them see what’s left!”
In the corner, the soft rhythm of Fay’s dusting cloth stopped.
She turned around, holding a feather duster like a weapon. She didn't look at Carmine; she looked straight at me.
“You’re shouting again,” she said.
Carmine’s jaw tightened. He turned his head slowly, his hand drifting toward his lapel out of pure muscle memory. “Miss Willis. This is private family business. Leave the room.”
Fay didn't budge. She looked Carmine up and down, unimpressed by the custom wool or the gun beneath it. “The doctor said his blood pressure can't spike past one-forty without risking an ocular hemorrhage. His left pupil is already dilated.” She stepped forward, pointing the duster at my face. “Take three deep breaths through your nose. Now.”
“Get out, Fay,” I grated through my teeth. “Before Carmine forgets you’re a woman.”
“Carmine won't do anything,” Fay said, her voice dry as tinder. “Carmine looks like he hasn't slept in three weeks, and if he shoots me, he’ll have to clean the rug himself, and he doesn't know where the solvent is.”
A strange, strangled noise escaped Carmine’s throat. It might have been a suppressed cough; it might have been the first laugh the man had experienced in ten years.
Before either of us could answer, the brass intercom on my nightstand buzzed with three short, frantic bursts.
Carmine hit the speaker button with his thumb. “Speak.”
Mrs. Gable’s voice came through, high and ragged with panic. “Mr. Carmine. There are three black Cadillacs at the lower gate. They didn't wait for the callbox. They rammed the crossbar.”
Carmine was already moving toward the window. He parted the heavy velvet curtains with two fingers. Down at the end of the long, winding asphalt drive, three black Escalades had breached the perimeter gate. They were moving at forty miles an hour, tires kicking up sprays of wet gravel, heading straight for the circular drive in front of the portico.
“Valenti,” Carmine whispered. “He didn't wait for the sit-down. He brought the war to the house.”
He drew the .45 from his armpit with a silky, metallic hiss. He hit the wall button that sounded the silent alarm throughout the estate, then turned to me.
“We have four men downstairs. Leo and three others. The rest are at the docks.” Carmine’s voice had changed; the tired administrator was gone, replaced by the lieutenant who had earned his bones in the South Bronx turf wars. “I have to go down. Dominic, lock the reinforced door. Don't open it for anyone except my knock—three long, two short.”
“Give me a gun,” I said.
“Dominic—”
“Give me a piece, Carmine! If they come up those stairs, I am not dying like a trapped dog in this fucking chair!”
Carmine hesitated for half a second. Then he reached behind his back, pulled a compact Glock 19 from a holster at the small of his spine, and laid it on my lap. He racked the slide back half an inch to verify a round was chambered, then let it slam forward.
“Three long, two short,” he repeated. Then he sprinted out the door, leaving it open an inch.
The house below erupted.
A sharp, splintering crack echoed through the vents—the heavy oak front doors being kicked off their hinges. Then came the shouts, harsh and guttural, followed immediately by the staccato, deafening roar of automatic gunfire inside an enclosed marble foyer.
*Pop-pop-pop-pop!*
The concussive force vibrated through the floorboards, traveling up the metal frame of my chair and rattling the teeth in my skull. Someone screamed—a high, wet sound that cut off abruptly.
I looked at Fay.
She was standing against the wall, her hands flat against the wallpaper. Her face was chalk-white, her eyes huge. Her knuckles were pressed against her mouth, but she wasn't crying. She wasn't hyperventilating.
“Under the bed,” I ordered, cocking the Glock with an ease that felt like greeting an old friend. “There’s a steel panic crawl space beneath the mattress frame. Slide under, pull the latch on the left, and don't make a sound.”
She didn't move. She was looking at the door, then down at the gun in my lap.
“Fay! Move!”
Heavy footsteps pounded up the stairs. Not Carmine’s measured, rhythmic tread. These were heavy, frantic, two men taking the steps three at a time.
A voice yelled from the landing: “Third floor! Check the master suite! The cripple is up here!”
The word *cripple* hit me like a splash of lye.
I wheeled myself behind the heavy oak writing desk, angling the chair so the solid four-inch timber protected my chest and useless legs, resting the barrel of the Glock across the green leather blotter. I lined the front sight up with the center of the doorway.
The door was kicked open.
A man stepped through—young, wearing a black nylon tactical vest, an MP5 submachine gun swinging from a single-point sling around his chest. He was scanning the room, his eyes wild with adrenaline, the barrel of his weapon tracking toward the bed.
He hadn't seen me behind the desk yet.
Before I could squeeze the trigger, Fay moved.
She didn't run. She didn't scream. She grabbed the heavy crystal water carafe from the side table—three pounds of leaded glass filled with two quarts of water—and hurled it across the room with everything she had.
It didn't hit him in the head. It struck him square in the collarbone, shattering in an explosion of water and jagged crystal.
The man grunted, stumbling sideways, his gun swinging toward her. “You bitch—”
*Crack.*
The Glock jumped in my hand. The report inside the high-ceilinged room was deafening, a hammer blow to the eardrums.
The round took him high in the chest, punching through the nylon vest at the seam. He slammed back against the doorframe, his weapon discharging a wild three-round burst into the plaster ceiling. White dust rained down like snow.
He slid down the doorframe, leaving a broad, wet red smear against the white paint, his legs kicking once before he went limp.
Through the clearing gunsmoke, I saw a second man appearing behind him on the landing, raising a shotgun.
I fired twice more through the open doorway. The drywall blew apart in jagged chunks. The second man screamed, dropping the shotgun, and tumbled backward down the flight of stairs, crashing heavily against the landing below.
Silence fell over the third floor, punctuated only by the ringing in my ears and the smell of sulfur and wet plaster.
I kept the gun aimed at the empty doorway, my forearms rigid, my heart hammering against my ribs like a caged beast. My breath came in ragged, burning gasps.
Fay was still standing by the side table. Her hands were dripping with water from the shattered carafe. A thin sliver of glass had nicked her cheek, and a single, bright bead of blood was rolling down toward her jawline.
She looked at the dead man on the floor.
Then she looked at me.
Her chest rose and fell rapidly. Slowly, she walked toward the body, stepped directly over the spreading dark pool of blood on the parquet floor, and kicked the man’s fallen submachine gun into the hallway, out of his reach.
Then she walked over to my desk, picked up a clean linen napkin from the tea tray, and wiped the blood from her cheek.
“You’re bleeding,” I said, my voice shaking with an adrenaline rush I hadn't felt in six months.
“It’s a scratch,” she said.
She looked down at the gun in my hand, then at the empty brass casings rolling across the floor.
“Carmine’s knock is three long, two short,” she said quietly. “Don't shoot him when he comes up.”
She turned around, picked up her cellulose sponge from the bucket, and began wiping the plaster dust off my bedspread.
May you like
My hands—hands that had strangled men in back alleys, hands that had signed death warrants without a tremor—began to shake violently. Not because I was afraid of the men downstairs, but because I was looking at a five-foot-four girl in cheap sneakers who had just watched me kill a man and was now dusting my pillows.
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