Page 95 of The Furies

If Mattia couldn’t approach Angioni through the usual channels, he was still hopeful of being able to reach some accommodation with him unofficially. Rape would count against Angioni, didn’t matter how much he was bringing in for his bosses. He had a successful career ahead of him, if he could control his impulses. Failure to do so would see him imprisoned or dead, because that was what happened to men with poor impulse control in their line of work. Mattia had met Angioni a couple of times, but always in group situations, where the young cub felt obliged to act up. One on one, without an audience, Mattia believed it might be possible to steer him away from a course of action that could only harm him in the long run.

So he’d asked Leo Sirola to give him a couple of days, telling him that he was convinced he could find a way to ensure Donna’s safety without recourse to putting a hole in Angioni.

“And if you’re wrong?” asked Leo.

“I’ll help you bury him myself,” said Mattia, words that would come back to haunt him.

CHAPTER XXVII

Later Mattia would try to convince himself that he had not traveled to Springfield that night with the intention of killing Alessandro Angioni, and everything he had said to Sirola, and Mattia’s version of what followed, represented the truth. He had been set only on conversation and conciliation, because that was how he preferred to work; and if Angioni could not be made to see reason, Mattia would call in favors from his bosses, favors that would cost him professionally, but might be worth the price. He would even try to frame the trip solely as a reconnaissance mission, with the actual confrontation to come a day or two later, even though he was almost as familiar with Springfield as he was with the North End.

But as the years went by, lending a clearer perspective to Angioni’s death, he became reconciled to a self that was both more and less than he had believed it to be. He grew to accept that from the moment news had reached him of the stalking of Donna Sirola, maybe even from the time Angioni had arrived in Springfield and begun flexing his muscles, he had known how this story would end. Angioni would never be open to compromise, which meant that violence would be required; and since Angioni would, if given the opportunity, meet violence with violence—with the approval of the Genoveses, who would choose, possibly for pragmatic reasons, to regard an assault on one as an assault on all—the response required to deal with him would have to be terminal, and secret.

It was to the misfortune of both men, but more particularly Angioni’s, that Mattia Reggio should have marked his quarry shortly after getting to Springfield, although even this had been to a degree preordained. Angioni, already grown complacent in his fiefdom, had developed routines, one of which was to walk from his apartment on Magazine Street to his beloved Mule, usually via Lincoln and Federal, sometimes by way of State, on those evenings when he was in town. Thus Mattia passed Angioni as the latter neared Magazine Park, giving Mattia time to turn left onto Lincoln and park in the shadows. By the time Mattia walked back to the corner, Angioni was only a few feet away. He glanced once at Mattia, but initially failed to recognize him. Only as he was about to continue on his way did his features change.

“Hey,” said Angioni, “what are you doing here?”

“I was hoping we could talk for a minute,” said Mattia.

“I don’t do business on the street.”

“This isn’t business. It’s more of a personal matter.”

“Then we can talk about it over a drink. Nobody will bother us.”

“I don’t drink.”

“Don’t drink alcohol, you mean,” said Angioni. “You drink, like, fucking water, and soda, right? You’re not made of fucking sand.”

There they were, barely seconds into what was set to be the most important negotiation of Angioni’s life, if only because it would be the final one, and the man couldn’t even keep a civil tongue in his head. Any remaining hope Mattia might have entertained about dealing with the Angioni problem without bloodshed vanished in that instant. He looked around, but the streets were quiet, despite the presence nearby of churches, a high school, and Springfield Technical Community College. Even God, Mattia thought, didn’t want Alessandro Angioni to live for very much longer.

“Actually,” said Mattia, with a flick of his right wrist, “I got a lot of sand.”

He stepped forward, put his left hand on Angioni’s shoulder, and stabbed him hard in the chest. The knife was double-edged, very sharp, and Mattia knew exactly where to put it so it wouldn’t stick. He lodged it deep, twisted once, and pulled it free before hitting Angioni twice more, virtually in the same spot. He had to move his head fast to avoid being hit in the face by a gush of blood from Angioni’s mouth, and could feel his right hand and the sleeve of his coat growing wet and warm. By the time he withdrew the blade for the third blow, Angioni was dying, although he was still on his feet. Mattia slipped his left arm around Angioni’s waist and half-carried him to the car. He saw people approaching down Lincoln, but still some distance away, so he took a chance on opening the trunk and dumping Angioni inside, resting him on the double lining of plastic garbage bags taped to the sides. Angioni shuddered as he died, and Mattia noticed the tears on the young man’s cheeks. In all his time with the Office, Mattia had never seen anyone die violently before. It had never struck him that a dying man might have time to cry.

Mattia dropped the knife on the plastic before removing his coat and throwing it on top of the body, then closed the trunk. He’d kept the coat buttoned in the hope it would catch most of the blood, and it had. He spotted a little on his pants, but they were black cotton and he wouldn’t have noticed the droplets if he hadn’t been looking for them. More blood glistened on the right sleeve of his dark shirt, which was wet halfway to the elbow, and his right hand was entirely red. He could have worn gloves, but he was worried about maintaining his grip on the knife, and felt more secure doing the job bare-handed.

Mattia got in the car. The group of pedestrians was drawing closer now. They were young, and two of them were carrying guitars in cases. Mattia checked the rearview mirror. He could see the blood on the sidewalk. He’d taken Angioni in a patch of gloom between streetlights, but blood was blood, even in the dark, and it had a way of being detected by smell when it was fresh. He wrapped his red right hand in the rag he used to clean the windshield and pulled away from the curb as soon as another car turned onto Lincoln, Mattia falling in place behind it. None of the kids paid him any attention, so caught up were they with one another. One or more of them might step in the blood when they reached the corner, but by then Mattia would be out of sight. He kept an eye on them until he made the next right, then forgot about them forever.

Only as he was leaving Springfield did he begin to tremble. Despite his reputation as a moderating influence, he had, when left with no alternative, delivered beatings, leaving men with cuts, bruises, even broken bones, but he had never pummeled someone into unconsciousness, and had always made it clear to the Office that he wasn’t in the business of killing. No one judged him for it. Mattia Reggio was acknowledged to be a hard man, in his way, and was not alone in distancing himself from wet work. There were others who found murder less distasteful, some who were untroubled by the act, and a handful who actively relished it, although all sane men kept a distance from such individuals. Now, as he drove, a fever sweat breaking on his face and the urge both to vomit and void his bowels verging on the overwhelming, Mattia wondered at how easily and quickly he had moved from being a man who refused to kill to becoming a killer.

The rag on his hand was now soaked through with blood, so he dropped it in one of the poop bags kept in the car for dog walks. He used a bunch of wet wipes to get rid of as much of the rest of the gore as he could before placing these, too, in the bag. He spotted a Starbucks up ahead, pulled into the lot, and headed for the men’s room, a plain black canvas shopping bag in his right hand. He barely made it inside in time to get his pants down, thankful only that the sink was close enough to the toilet that he could also expel whatever was left in his stomach without leaving a mess some poor wage slave would have to clean up. When he was done, he washed his face, took off his shirt with the bloodstained sleeve, and replaced it with a similar clean one from the bag. He then made sure his hair was tidy, sprayed some air freshener, and went to the counter, where he asked for an iced tea that he didn’t want because someone who came into a coffee shop, used the bathroom, and ordered from the menu was more likely to be forgotten than a man who entered, used the john, and left without ordering anything. But the iced tea would also help clear the taint from his mouth, although Mattia thought the tea would have tasted pretty vile to him anyway, even if he hadn’t just puked in a sink. He didn’t get Starbucks, and never would.

Mattia made sure that his lights were working and the tires were still okay before driving away, even though he’d performed the same check before departing for Springfield. It was better to be certain. If he was pulled over by the cops for a busted bulb, and they ran his plate, his name would light up like Christmas. Next thing he knew, some statie in a big hat would be asking him to open the trunk, and Mattia Reggio would be looking at life without the possibility of parole, although with Angioni’s blood on his hands he’d be lucky to survive long enough to make it to trial.

Mattia continued east, avoiding tolls, as on the outward journey, so as to avoid leaving a record of his route. He knew where he was headed, which was back to Revere. He’d passed the building site on his way to the rendezvous with Leo Sirola: a new office block with a couple of retail outlets on the first floor. The Argent, they were calling it. The Office was taking its cut from the construction, the way it did: high-bid contracts, materials redirected and sold on, and a handful of guys on the payroll, none of whom would ever be seen in person. Easy money, some of it even clean. It all added up, with nobody getting hurt and the contractors able to sleep soundly at night knowing there would be no walkouts, no sugar in gas tanks, no cement mixers suddenly going missing, and no fires either during or after the build. Mattia was more aware than most just how much it all added up because he was the one who took care of many of the collections. The foundations at this one were due to be laid the next day, which was conceivably one of the reasons Mattia had decided to go talk to Angioni that evening instead of waiting a while longer, because it was funny the little nuggets the mind stored away.

There was no security guard. The site wasn’t big enough to justify the expense, and the money being paid to those phantom employees also bought a very particular form of insurance, the kind that discouraged trespass. Mattia parked at the rear of the construction project, away from the road, and opened the trunk. He used another poop bag to pick up the knife, removed the duct tape that was keeping the garbage bags attached to the sides of the trunk, and carefully folded the ends over the body after first dousing it in bleach as an extra precaution. He then took the roll of tape and sealed the plastic at the ankles, thighs, chest, and neck, before placing two additional bags over the remains, one from the head down, the second from the feet up, and sealing the join with more tape. Finally, he hoisted the body from the trunk and carried it in a fireman’s lift to the pit at the center of the excavation. The hole was big, with a pool of muddy water at the bottom. The water was just deep enough. Mattia laid Angioni down, produced the knife, and stabbed at the plastic to make some holes in it—and, for good measure, Angioni—to help the body sink faster and stay down once it did. When he was done, he kicked it into the pit. Angioni hit the side once before landing with a splash. The water closed over him, and he was gone. Mattia sent the knife after him.

After that, he didn’t hang around. He returned to his car and drove home, stopping only to consign the shopping bag containing the bloodied shirt, rag, and wet wipes to a packed dumpster that smelled as though it already had at least one dead body of its own inside. When he reached the house, he killed the engine and sat quietly for a while. The shakes were still hitting him, but in receding waves. A part of him, the aspect that remained childlike and always would, wanted to confess to his wife what he’d done. It wanted to be held, consoled, and reassured. But Mattia knew that he could never tell Amara what had happened. Not only did he not wish to encumber her, but also to share would be to involve, and she needed to be kept at one remove. He had no doubt she would have forgiven him; she might well have decided there was nothing to forgive, given Angioni’s nature and what he had intended for Donna Sirola. Regardless, the knowledge would have altered Amara, forcing her to pretend ignorance, to act naturally rather than be natural, and therein lay the risk. Someone like Alessandro Angioni didn’t just vanish without questions being asked, and those sent to inquire would be attuned to dissimulation.

Mattia knew that he would be high on the list of suspects. He had erred in asking that Angioni be warned to back off. Mattia had displayed an interest in Angioni’s fate, and one never displayed that kind of interest. It would have been noted, and would be recalled. The Office would not be sorry that Angioni was gone, thorn in the side that he was. What remained to be seen was how much cooperation the Office was willing to extend to the Genoveses in order to avoid conflict, and how hard the Genoveses might be prepared to push if they felt the Office could be protecting one or more of its own people.

What Mattia had going for him was that, the construction gods being willing, Alessandro Angioni’s body would never be found, and therefore his ultimate fate would remain forever a mystery. Oh, the Genoveses could be reasonably sure that he was dead, men like Angioni not being disposed to go dark voluntarily, either fleetingly or permanently, or not without good cause. But an element of uncertainty would remain, and as long as it did, their options would be limited. Even the Genoveses would struggle to justify avenging a murder they couldn’t prove had occurred, not unless they managed to force a confession out of the culprit.

Mattia’s whole body trembled again. He could take a beating, if it came down to it. As long as Angioni’s body was not discovered, and no witnesses materialized from Springfield, the Genoveses would be left fumbling like blind men.

He unfolded himself from the car, locked it, and went into the house. Amara appeared at the kitchen door and could tell instantly that something was wrong, but she knew better than to try to draw it from him. When he showered that night, the water was at first tinged with pink, but soon ran clear.

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