I hoisted his camera bag onto my shoulder and picked up his tripod. “That’s the spirit,” Ed grinned, showing snaggly teeth that overlapped at the front of his mouth like demurely crossed legs. “If I get a good shot, there’s a print in it for you.”
We rode the elevator down to ground level, crossed Broadview Avenue and walked along the eastern slope of Riverdale Park. People sat along the grassy verge on blankets or lawn chairs, waiting for the sun to begin its dramatic descent. Down the slope near the north end was the main ball diamond, where a co-ed softball game was going on, men and women alike chasing listlessly after balls in the heat.
We walked about two hundred yards south until Ed said, “Here is good.” I set the bag down and let the beauty of the sunset catch and hold me. The sun seemed big as a grapefruit moon in the polluted sky.
Ed coughed a few times and voided something into the grass. “Damn smog kills your lungs,” he said. “But it brings out the best in a sunset.”
“Doesn’t make it too hazy?”
“Not with Kodachrome, my friend. The way the reds and oranges and pinks diffuse will absolutely blow you away.”
As I watched the sun move north and west, a black-clad figure came into my peripheral vision. Dante Ryan was walking down Broadview toward us. He and I made eye contact and he indicated with a sweep of his head that I should join him. I waited until he was down near Dr. Sun’s statue, then told Ed I was going to stretch my legs a little. Ed was glued to his viewfinder and grunted something like “yup.” I followed Ryan down the same path I had bladed down yesterday, past great weeping willows whose fronds hung limply in the heavy air. Ryan walked all the way to the west end of the park where a fence separated it from a brushy slope that led down to the Don Valley Parkway. Dozens of picnic tables had been stacked in large piles for Saturday’s Canada Day festivities. I found him behind a stack that shielded us from the view of anyone on the park slope or the ball field. Pear-shaped swarms of bugs hovered in the humid air around us.
“How’d you know I was here?” I asked.
“I was on my way to see you when you and the photographer came out.” He lit a cigarette and exhaled heavily, as if blowing out more tension than smoke.
“You okay?” I asked.
“Not exactly.”
“What happened?”
“Fucking Marco happened. Made me come in and see him today.”
“Why?”
“Why. So he could fucking check up on me, like I’m some new recruit. Made me go over every dollar coming in. Every fucking dime. The more money he needs, the more he thinks everyone’s holding out on him. Then he starts up my ass about the Silver contract. Where am I at with it? What’s taking so long? The client is calling. He wants it done.” He stopped to draw on his cigarette. “But the good thing about Marco? The madder he gets, the dumber he gets. He talks more than he listens.”
“And?”
“He let something slip.”
“What?”
“I think the hit originated in Buffalo.”
“Go on.”
“Marco’s chewing me out about the call he got from the client. He’s doing his aggrieved thing, saying, ‘Do I need this? Do I need heat from over the river ’cause you have to scout your location?’ In our business, ‘over the river’ means one place and that’s Buffalo. Home of the Bills, the Sabres and what’s left of the Magaddinos.”
“As in Stefano Magaddino?”
“The late, great Don. Since he passed on, I tell you, things have gone downhill there.”
“Why?”
“A, none of your business, B, it’s too long a story, and C, it’s none of your business.” He tried to blow a smoke ring but it came apart in the currents created by the rushing stream of cars racing one another up the Parkway. “So what about you? Find anything on Silver?”
“He’s definitely up to something, starting with the company he keeps,” I said, and told Ryan what happened on the loading dock.
“This Claudio can only be one guy,” Ryan said. “Claudio Ricci. Not many guys look like him. They ever stop making track suits, he’d have to walk around naked. You bounced him around like you say you did, I tip my hat to you.”
“He connected to anyone in particular?”
“He’s in the life, but he’s not attached to any one crew.”
“A Buffalo connection?”
“Nah. Strictly local talent.”
“And Frank?”
“I know at least three Franks who match that description, right down to the cheap suit. There’s Frankie Tools, Frank the Tank…” Ryan was about to rhyme off a third name when his expression changed. I had seen anger in his eyes the night before. I had seen contempt and humour and sadness. Now there was fear. Dante Ryan had just seen something behind me that scared the shit out of him.
I looked over my shoulder and saw two men walking along the fence toward us, both wearing dark glasses. I knew one of them on sight: wiry, with long black hair in ring curls that reached past his shoulders. I was about to ask Ryan what the fuck Marco Di Pietra was doing in Riverdale Park when Ryan’s right fist crashed into my jaw and knocked me to the ground.
The bastard had set me up after all. All the talk about saving a child, saving his soul, the line he couldn’t cross-all bullshit. Dante Ryan had gift-wrapped and delivered me straight into the hands of a man who wished me nothing but an untimely death.
CHAPTER 18
I lay on my back, trying to think. Could I take Ryan out and outrun them to the bike path? Or get over the barbed-wire fence separating us from the Parkway without tearing myself up or rolling down the slope into oncoming traffic?
Then Ryan yelled, “You stay the fuck away from her, you got that?”
Her? Her who?
“Dipshit motherfucker!” He kicked me in the stomach, pulling it just enough that it looked more vicious than it felt. “You go near her again I’ll fucking kill you!” He squared up over me and delivered a kick to my groin that would have crushed my testicles had he hit them. Instead the impact came just to their left, bless him, on the inside of my thigh. It was painful enough, but didn’t extinguish the possibility of fatherhood. I curled into a fetal position and took one more kick in the midsection. His shoe hit my folded forearms, rather than my stomach; still, I was glad his choice in footwear ran to leather loafers, not steel-toed boots.
He stood over me, panting, jabbing the finger down at me. “Get the message, motherfucker?”
Was he selling me out to Marco, out of his mind or running another game entirely? I had no choice but to let it play out. I lay in a tight curl as Marco Di Pietra and the other man came up to Ryan. I tried to keep my face hidden, like when I was a kid, terrified of the witch in The Wizard of Oz, trying to fall asleep with a sheet over my head. If I can’t see her, she can’t see me.
“What the fuck is this?” Marco said.
“Hey, boss,” Ryan said. “Hey, Phil. What’s going on?”
“Hey,” Phil said. His voice was low and raspy, a heavy smoker’s bass. I’d caught only a glimpse of him before Ryan knocked me down: bigger than Marco by a few inches and a good many pounds, with thick dark hair slicked back from a widow’s peak. Despite the heat, he wore a Detroit Tigers warm-up jacket, which likely meant he was concealing a weapon.
“You ask me what’s going on?” Marco said. He spoke quickly like always, with a metallic edge to his voice. “That’s what I came to ask you.”
“You followed me.”
“I had to. You didn’t tell me where you were going.”
“I thought we were done.”
“I’ll tell you when we’re done,” Marco said.
“Whatever you say.”
“So what’s this here?”
“What?”
“The pube at your feet.”
“Just something I had to take care of.”
“Something you didn’t tell me about.”
“It’s personal,” Ryan said. I hoped he looked more confident than he sounded. Or was he showing a little submission to Marco, the way a weaker dog shows its belly to an alpha male?