There was just no way to make it something it wasn’t.
Chapter 11 – Painful Betrayal
“You better git yer ass over there,” Jonathan informed me. “I didn’t get the deets, but Mario was on edge and Rinaldo wasn’t sayin’ a damn thing. I read through his email but didn’t see nothin’ there.”
“You hacked the boss’s email?” I rolled my eyes at the phone as I slid into the back seat of the bus. “Are you crazy?”
“What? It ain’t hard – the password’s always ‘Luisa’ with a number after her name. He just increments it every month.”
“Why does he do that?”
“I told him it was safer to change it every month instead of leavin’ it the same.”
Another eye roll before I hung up the phone. I could have sworn he did that kind of shit just to prove he could get away with it. I remembered that I hadn’t given him the Save Ferris T-shirt yet and made a mental note to toss it in my car when I got home.
It was the first really hot day of spring, and the jacket I wore to conceal my Beretta was too warm for the afternoon sun. I rolled the sleeves up, but I was still sweaty and uncomfortable. I wished I had driven myself for once, but I jumped off the bus and walked the three blocks to Moretti’s office.
Mario was there and Terry was just leaving. Rinaldo was standing behind his desk, waiting for me. He motioned for me to come in the office, and Mario stood just to one side of Rinaldo’s desk chair. He gave me a nod, which I returned as I stood at-ease in front of them both.
Moretti didn’t waste any time.
“You want to tell me why you decided to take out a pimp on my payroll?” Rinaldo asked simply.
“No, sir,” I replied. I wasn’t surprised by the question – I kind of assumed it was why Jonathan had told me to high-tail it over here. The only real surprise was that it had taken a week for him to call me out on it. I’d made two other kills for him during that time and had been glad to get bac
k to sniping.
“You know his whole stable is all over the place now – a bunch of trained birds scattered to the winds and looking for a cage to nest in. It’s not my favorite line of business, but now some of his property – property I had a vested interest in – is lost.”
I looked up at him carefully but couldn’t see any actual anger in his face or posture. He wasn’t thrilled, but he wasn’t all that pissed off, either. I hadn’t expected him to be, but I had still prepared myself for the conversation.
“My apologies,” I replied. “You want me to pay for it?”
Rinaldo laughed, and the tension in the atmosphere died down.
“No,” he said, “I had another task in mind. Something more along the lines you’re most comfortable with achieving. I’ve received some troubling information that a woman has been giving information about my business to Greco’s men. No one seems sure exactly who she is, and I’ll need you to find that out and take care it doesn’t happen again.”
“Yes, sir,” I replied.
Rinaldo handed me the picture, and I tried not to show any reaction in my face as my mind starting jumping around and doing flips in the air.
“You sure this is the target?” I asked. I tapped the edge of the picture with my forefinger. “This girl?”
“You think my sources are unreliable?”
“No, sir,” I replied. “I’m just…not sure what they’d want with her.”
Rinaldo stared at me through narrowed eyes.
“Evan, do you have something to tell me? You know this bitch?”
I was going to have to play this very carefully.
I kept my expression completely lifeless, shrugged one shoulder one time, and then looked to Rinaldo’s face as I tossed Bridgett’s picture back onto the desk.
“I’ve been fucking her,” I said simply. “So finding her isn’t an issue.”
Rinaldo’s eyes narrowed and his eyebrows tried to meet each other in the middle of his head.