Lostport

Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Agostino Romano asked Vin where the damn girl was. “Two o’clock she was supposed to be here, It’s two-fifteen now and not a fucking word.”

“You want me to call the agency?” Vin DiBiasi asked. “She can’t make it, they can send another girl.”

“I don’t want another girl,” Agostino said. “She’s the only one does it for me.”

Verona Carver, he meant. A beautiful girl, even though she was black. Tall, slender except for that big bottom she had, with a soothing voice and calm eyes and the hands, the hands, what they did to his body there wasn’t even a word for.

“She must have a cell,” Vin said. “Maybe they have her number. I’ll call over if you want.”

“I just want her to show the fuck up,” Agostino said. “Go watch by the window and let me know when she comes. I got calls to make.”

He went into the main floor parlor that was his office and closed the door. Vin knew a lot about his business, more than anyone else, but didn’t need to know everything. No one did but him.

First he called the real estate agent in Punta Cana, a guy named Pedro who said call him Pete. He asked Pete about the house down there, if the inspector had found anything that would kill the deal.

“Nothing, my friend,” Pete said. “Not a thing. The house is in excellent condition, from the top to the bottom. Also the guesthouse and the pool and everything. “Even the lawnmower works. He said it passed with—how do you say it in English—flying standards?”

“Colors,” Agostino said. “Flying colors.”

His next call was to the agent who was quietly putting out feelers on the Eastport house; no offers yet, and would he reconsider having an open house to generate some interest?

Like hell.

He called the auctioneer over in Buffalo and asked about the materials he had consigned, things his late wife Olivia had prized but for which he had no use. Old stuff, all of it, paintings of saints and sinners, tarnished silver, rugs that were too dark for a big, bright house in the Dominican Republic. The auctioneer told him he thought eighty per cent of the goods would be sold by the weekend, but that the prices might be lower than they’d first discussed. “Money is tight these days,” the auctioneer said. “You know how it is.”

“Just move the stuff,” Agostino said. “I’ll take whatever I get.”

His last call was to the Canadians who were bringing in his prized shipment, flying it out of the Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory in Ontario, using an old airstrip that dated back to the Second World War. He didn’t know what cut the Indians were getting for letting the Canadians use the airstrip and didn’t give the slightest shit. That was off their end, not his.

And what an end it was going to be. One hundred kilos of heroin processed at a lab in Sicily and shipped out of Naples to Montreal. Top drawer stuff, better than any of the Mexican crap that made its way up from Texas and Florida, totally pure, never once stepped on by no one. He had buyers from Niagara Falls practically drooling for it, willing to pay up to fifty grand a kilo. Five million in cash. And that money was leaving with him when he went to the D.R. This was the part he wasn’t telling Vin or anyone else.

It was time for Don Agostino Romano to retire, in style. Seventy-one years old now, in good but not great health, getting up four times a night to piss, bones aching in the cold New York winter, half the time fighting sinus infections and earaches, the other half enduring miserable pain in his back and legs; enough. Surrounded by lawyers advising him on ways to duck RICO indictments, feeling the circle of people he could trust growing ever smaller and tighter; enough. Whatever being head of a family like his had meant at one time—the respect you earned, the wealth it brought—what was it now? Men thought nothing of becoming pentiti, turncoats. The first bit of pressure from the feds and they folded like penny-ante players. The whole RICO thing, Christ, prosecutors could get grand jury indictments easier than buying a morning paper. Even the small vineyard he managed, partly because he enjoyed it, partly to provide a revenue stream he could explain to the IRS, didn’t give him the same pleasure it had when he’d first bought the estate outside Eastport.

Enough.

With this last deal, plus what he got for the house once it sold, the vineyard, what the auctioneer would clear from the contents, what he got for the condo in Miami, he’d be more than set for life on a beach where the average daily temperature was seventy-six degrees, the breezes were gentle, the rainy season was short and the law could be bought and sold in pesos. It wasn’t like he had anyone to leave his estate to. Bad fortune had all but broken his once powerful family. He was the last survivor of four brothers. His first-born son, Tino Junior, was dead six years now, shot down in the same vicious dispute with the Maggadinos that had pushed Agostino out of Buffalo for good. Nicky was in Lewisburg, another dime to go on his sentence for labor racketeering and attempted murder, dumb enough to shoot the head of a carpenters’ local four times and not even kill him. Christina was married to a Jewish radiologist in Boston, go figure, living a different life entirely and able to fend for herself on what the guy made.

It was all for one now.

Which left just one other question: would Verona Carver go with him? He had asked her about it, picturing the two of them at the beach, lying in the sun with Verona beside him, rubbing lotion on his back with those magic hands of hers, wrapping those big lips around a straw and taking a long drink of something smooth, talking to him in her low bass voice and showing her great teeth in a big white smile. For a guy who had never in his life had any use for blacks, other than as consumers of his nastier goods, he found her enormously attractive.

He opened the door to his study and yelled, “Vin!”

“Yeah, boss?”

“What the fuck, Vin, any sign of her?”

“No, boss, I been watching. I woulda told you if—oh, wait a minute. She drive a wagon? What is that, a Subaru?”

“I don’t know what it is, it’s silver.”

“I think maybe that’s her pulling up.”

“Well, get the fuck out there. Help her with her stuff.”

He stood at the window and watched Vin hustle down the walkway to the car; watched Verona getting out, saying something to Vin, her body language all apology. Vin opened the rear hatch and pulled out a big oblong case on wheels. She slung a bright pink bag over her shoulder and slammed the hatch.

Five minutes later, the Don was back in his study, lying on his stomach on her portable massage table, stripped down to his shorts, covered from the waist down in her clean sheets as she warmed her hands and began rubbing scented oil into his aching muscles, those magic hands finding exactly where he was tight and starting him on his way to sweet release.