After a few long minutes the solid steel door slid open. A female guard led Bertran to the exercise yard reserved for maximum security prisoners.
Sam was in his early seventies but looked a decade younger. The gangster was a swarthy man, five-six, one hundred and ninety pounds, with jowls like a bulldog. His full head of gray hair was slicked neatly back, which accentuated his square skull. His meaty hands had untanned places where he usually wore his rings, and his nails were still shiny from his last manicure. He was dressed in an orange jumpsuit and plastic flip-flops and had a thirty-dollar cigar clenched between his teeth. He came at Bertran Stern like he was going to stick a shiv into his heart, his intense blue eyes ablaze.
“Follow me!” he growled. Bertran followed.
Sam headed for a concrete picnic table under a small metal shelter, but before they arrived Sam grabbed the attorney's elbow and propelled him to an exposed table standing alone in the yard.
Sam told Bertran to sit on the bench seat and planted himself on the tabletop so he could look down on him, for the psychological edge. In Bert's mind, Sam was ten feet tall.
“Music would be good,” Sam said.
“Oh, right.” Stern took a small radio out of his briefcase and turned it on to a classical station. “I guess I have jet lag. I'm getting a little old for this running back and forth.”
“You want to swap complaints?” Sam said. “I got a list long as a Jew's nose.”
“No, of course not.” Bertran was Jewish.
“You don't want to come here no more, is that it?”
“I like coming here, Sam.” Bertran's fingers were trembling. “To see you.”
Manelli clenched the cigar in the side of his mouth and spoke around it so no one could read his lips, even with binoculars, which the feds would do.
“How's my boy doing?”
“He says business is normal-nothing down at all. He has some concerns if you remain here long, but he says he'll worry about that when he has to.”
“You think he's doing good-on the level?”
“He wouldn't say something unless it was on the square.”
“And he ain't dumb.”
“I haven't seen any evidence of it.” There are far worse things than being dumb.
“Okay. What about the other thing?” Sam asked, pleased at Bert's take on Johnny.
“The guy? Johnny says it's just a matter of time until it's handled. Things are moving.”
“And as soon as it's done, I'm outta here?”
“No one to talk, no evidence but the guy's word. Yes, it's certain.”
“What about her?” Manelli said.
Stern didn't want to give Manelli bad news, but he had no choice. “She was supposed to be back in the country Saturday,” the attorney said carefully. “Johnny was at the airport personally and he said she didn't come out of the terminal and never showed up at her house. He's got someone checking there periodically, but Johnny thinks she got intercepted by the cops and might be with him someplace.”
Manelli growled, “I want her waiting for me when I get out of here. Tell Johnny I said that better be the way it is.”
The mobster's eyes grew hard, his lips rigid with fury. “I got three million reasons why they better get it done. If it don't get done, heads will boil. Make sure the old man knows that if the rat squeaks, history or not, I ain't gonna like it a lot. I want that Mick bastard in pieces so small a skinny crab would have to eat a dozen to keep his stomach from growling.”
Stern nodded solemnly.
“You just remember you said I'd be out in a few days, and here I sit two weeks later.”
“When I said that, I didn't know what they had behind the charges, Sam.” Bertran's palms felt clammy.
“By the way, how's your grandbabies doing?” Sam asked.
Bertran smiled nervously and told Sam they were all fine. Over the forty years they had been doing business, Sam had threatened his family so many times he'd lost count. But no matter how many times he had heard the question, its impact had never lessened. Bertran Stern knew that Sam would not hesitate before having Johnny Russo take a hammer to a child, nor did he doubt that Russo would welcome doing it for him.
15
Rook Island, North Carolina
Twenty minutes before the helicopter landed, Greg told the deputies on duty that it was on its way, bringing a physician to the island. Forsythe was up on the water tank. The waist-high safety rail around the tank was made of steel plate. His weapon was a tricked-out. 308-caliber assault rifle with a thicker-than-normal barrel, a thirty-shot magazine, and a scope. The mirrored sunglasses he wore gave him a decidedly sinister appearance.
The helicopter landed, and a casually dressed man climbed down and strode toward the house carrying a black leather bag. Winter led the doctor inside, where he and his bag were searched. Greg asked Winter to escort the doctor to Dylan's room and remain with him.
Though it was open, Winter knocked at the door. Sean Devlin was seated in an armchair, reading. Winter had not seen her since their encounter the night before. She looked up at him with amusement in her eyes.
“Ah,” Dylan said, seeing them. “Here to make me whole again.”
The doctor was all business. He moved straight to the bed and placed his bag on the mattress.
“You put weight on this yet?” He nodded at Devlin's ankle.
“Some,” Dylan said.
The doctor removed the bandage, moved the foot around. “That hurt?”
“No.”
“That?”
“No.”
“Lose the shirt.”
“What, no foreplay?” Dylan said. “You know what foreplay is where I come from?”
The doctor said, “A six-pack?”
“‘Get in the truck, bitch.'” Dylan laughed. “But ‘a six-pack' works for me.”
Sean frowned at the joke.
The doctor cut the tape and bandages away from Dylan's ribs, exposing a yellow bruise the size of a dinner plate. He asked Dylan to stand and walk around the room.
Sean closed her book and watched.
“No pain?” the doctor asked.
Dylan slapped his rib cage hard, then hopped up and down on his unwrapped foot. “Good as new,” he bragged.
“You have an impressive threshold for pain. Those ribs need more time before you go slapping them, so take a few days. Use the crutches if you need to. Any pain medication?”
“I have some, but I can control pain without medication.”
Dylan looked at Winter and winked. “I can start taking walks on the beach now to protect you from my wife.”
Sean opened her book and looked down, perhaps embarrassed.
Winter stared flatly at Dylan, ignoring the killer's mocking grin.
While Winter and Greg were watching the helicopter carry the doctor away and Winter was wishing he was a passenger on it heading home, the Devlins appeared on the porch. Martinez came around the side of the building and stopped in the sand. Dylan reached up, stretched, and inhaled noisily.
“Gentlemen, my wife and I wish to take a leisurely stroll on the beach,” he announced. “Perhaps Deputy Massey would like to accompany us. If he feels up to walking, that is.”
Greg lifted his radio and asked Forsythe for an all-clear. From the water tower, Forsythe leaned the rifle against the rail before him and scanned the water, the sand, and the tree line with his binoculars, then radioed back that the turf was secure.
“Okay, Mr. and Mrs. Devlin, the beach is all yours. Winter, grab a Colt and tag along.”
Winter went into the house and got an AR-15 carbine from the locker in the security room. As he returned, Dylan was saying, “My wife is getting as dark as a Spic. Pretty soon she'll be chattering Spanish at her.” He indicated Martinez.