He turned to her. “What’s it look like?”
“Why do you have a gun?” She looked scared.
“Charlie’s a killer,” he said. “As far as I know he’s trying to help me, but like you said, he’s one of them. If this is some kind of setup, I don’t want to go in empty-handed.”
“If you think this is a setup, then let’s just leave.” She dropped her hand to the gearshift.
Ray shook his head. “It’ll be all right.”
“You sure?”
He just nodded as he opened the door.
The fire poker made a wet THUNK as it caved in Charlie Liuzza’s skull. He lay on his side on the floor, still taped to the chair, a hunk of Tony’s ear clamped between his teeth.
After Charlie bit Tony’s ear and the two of them toppled to the floor, Tony had scrambled out from under Charlie and the chair. He snatched up the poker. Charlie was helpless. Tony loomed over him, screaming, “Fuck you!” as he brought the fire poker down onto the side of the older man’s head.
Tony dropped the poker and ran into the bathroom. He looked at the side of his head in the mirror. A piece of his fucking right ear was gone. Blood streamed down the side of his face, soaking his shoulder. He jerked a hand towel from a ring mounted to the wall and pressed it to his shredded ear.
“What do we do now, Tony?” Rocco stood in the bathroom doorway. “The old guy didn’t tell us shit.”
Tony spun on him. “How the fuck do I know?” With both hands jamming the towel against his head, Tony started kicking the bathroom door and shouting, “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” Rocco just backed away.
After Tony’s tantrum subsided, he walked back into the living room, still holding the towel against his ear, and looked at the overturned chair and at Charlie’s bloody body. He was going to have to answer for this. The Rabbit was the boss’s man-his fixer-and Tony had just killed him. Beaten him to death with a fire poker after Joey raped and strangled his sixtysomething-year-old wife.
How the fuck am I going to explain this?
Old Man Carlos had said to do whatever he had to do, but Tony was pretty sure he hadn’t meant it was okay to kill Charlie. And Tony was positive the boss hadn’t meant Joey could rape and strangle Charlie’s wife.
Tony stepped into the kitchen doorway. Mrs. Liuzza’s body lay on the linoleum floor. The floor was smeared with her blood. The old lady’s face was blue and her eyes bulged from their sockets. Around her neck were bright red ligature marks from the lamp cord. The blue print dress she wore was bunched around her hips, and a pair of ripped cotton panties lay three feet away. Her crotch was smeared with blood.
This was going to get Tony killed.
He had no idea what to do.
Someone knocked on the front door.
Tony spun and stared at the door. The pain he felt from his torn ear was instantly washed away by another feeling-panic.
Ray saw two cars in the driveway, a black Cadillac-mob guys love their Cadillacs-and a Toyota Camry that probably belonged to Charlie’s wife. As he passed between them he touched the front grille on each. Both were cool.
The Rabbit’s house was a 1970s ranch-style with a two-car garage. The garage door was closed so Ray couldn’t see what the Rabbit kept inside that was so important he kept his cars outside. Probably set up as a workshop; old-timers loved their woodworking.
From the top of the driveway Ray stepped onto the railed porch and walked past a couple of wooden rockers sitting in front of three big windows. He knocked on the door.
No answer. He knocked again. The light shining behind the curtains of the three big windows suddenly went out. Usually when you knocked on someone’s door the lights came on. Maybe Charlie was just extra cautious, but maybe something else was going-
The door flew open. A dark shadow loomed there for just a second; then hands grabbed Ray and yanked him through the door. He stumbled over the threshold and almost fell, but the hands held him up. Something hit him in the ribs. Then something else cracked against his left ear. Inside his head, Ray heard something go pop. Then he felt a piercing pain, like an ice pick shoved into his ear. Behind him the door slammed shut. Hands pulled him up straight. Then someone slugged him in the stomach.
The Smith amp; Wesson thunked against the hard tile floor of the foyer.
“He’s got a gun,” someone shouted.
“Pick it up.” It was Tony Zello’s voice.
Metal scraped against the tile. “I got it.”
“Get the light.”
“Huh?”
“The fucking light, you moron. Turn it on.”
From behind, an arm clamped around Ray’s neck, pulling him backward, arching his spine.
The lights came on.
Ray blinked as he found himself looking at Tony Zello and Joey. Tony held a bloody towel to the side of his head. Ray clawed at the arm around his throat, the arm that was squeezing off his air supply. It was thick and hard, hairless like a bodybuilder’s. A bodybuilder like Rocco.
Tony grinned. “I been looking for you, Ray.” He held up the stainless-steel pistol. “What were you going to do with this?”
Ray wheezed as his vision started to fade.
“Don’t kill him,” Tony said. “Not yet.”
The pressure on Ray’s windpipe eased, and he managed to suck in some air. Tony Z. stepped aside, then turned and pointed with the gun to the living room floor. Ray looked down and his stomach heaved, kicking up bile into the back of his throat. Charlie was on the floor, taped to an overturned chair, his face a lump of hamburger. The side of his skull was cracked enough so that through the bloody hair Ray could see the soft pink of Charlie’s brain.
Tony turned back to Ray. “I was just talking to your friend Charlie. He said he didn’t know where you were.”
Ray wasn’t looking at Tony. He couldn’t take his eyes off the bloody thing on the floor. Charlie’s head rested on the carpet, his face white with that pasty look of death that Ray had seen so many times before, on the street and at autopsies, but it was different when it was someone you knew. The carpet had soaked up most of the blood, leaving a red halo around Charlie’s head.
Joey held out a roll of duct tape to Tony. “We need to get out of here.”
Tony stuffed the pistol into the back of his pants, then grabbed the roll of tape. “Get the car.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Jenny parked three houses down from Charlie Liuzza’s, on the opposite side of the street. From there she had a clear view of the house. Two cars sat in the driveway, and no one was out front. Ray had disappeared through the door while she was moving her car.
She looked down at her phone, checking to make sure it was on. She hoped Ray called before he came out. That would give her time to move. He would be pissed if he came out and found her parked so close.
When she looked up again, she saw Joey-the same Joey who worked for Vinnie and Tony-step out the front door of Charlie’s house. Not that unusual since all these wiseguys hung out together, but for some reason it gave her a bad feeling. She thought that Ray was meeting with just Charlie. As Joey neared the end of the driveway, Jenny scrunched down in her seat, afraid he would see her. At the sidewalk he turned right, heading up the street and away from her. Charlie’s was the fourth house down from the next street. At the corner, Joey turned right again and disappeared.
Not more than two minutes later, Jenny heard a car start and saw the spill of headlights from around the intersection, then a dark green Lincoln-Tony’s dark green Lincoln-whipped around the corner and nosed into Charlie’s driveway.
Tony Zello stepped out the front door. Jenny sunk lower in her seat as her heart started to pound inside her chest. From the top of the driveway Tony gestured toward the Lincoln, holding one hand in the air and spinning it in a circle. His other hand looked like it was holding something to his ear. The Lincoln’s reverse lights came on. The driver backed out into the street, turned around, then pulled tail first into the driveway. Tony gave one-arm hand signals until the Lincoln stopped just inches from him. He pounded on the trunk until the driver popped it open.