Page 98 of The Furies

“I doubt,” said Reggio, “that he’d expect anything less.”

CHAPTER XXXI

The server from the Bear, Lucie Barnes, was certain that she’d managed to stash the cell phone behind the trash cans at Donnie Packard’s place without being spotted by anyone in the house. But as she was leaving the yard, she almost ran into an old woman pushing a small brown dog in a carriage. The dog was missing its right front leg, although the wound was long-healed. It seemed to be perfectly happy where and as it was, as though losing a leg was a small price to pay for being pushed around in a carriage for the rest of its life.

“What were you doing in there?” said the old woman.

“I thought I saw a kitten,” said Lucie, “but it was really a rat.”

“Must have been visiting Donnie Packard, then. Probably a relative. You ought to stay out of there. He’s mean.”

“I won’t be going back.”

“Yeah,” said the old woman, as she recommenced pushing her dog, “that’s what they all say.”

* * *

I CALLED ANGEL AND Louis and told them of the imminent meeting with Dante Vero down in Portsmouth.

“I doubt he’s going to kill you,” said Louis. “That would be an overreaction on his part.”

“It does leave a lot of possibilities between alive and dead,” I said.

“True. If the Office is involved in what’s happening up here, Vero will start by warning you off. If you don’t listen, he may take the step of rendering you unable to intervene. The Office has no shortage of places it can stash someone for a few hours. Best-case scenario, they’ll order in pizza, let you watch some TV, then release you once the money is handed over.”

“Which is why you’re going to come with me.”

“So I can watch TV and eat pizza, too?”

“If that’s what we end up doing, I’ll regard our mission as a failure. But I don’t believe they’ll try that with us.”

“Good,” said Louis, “because we can never agree on toppings.”

The only reason for the Office to target Sarah Abelli would be to establish if she had access to the money stolen by her late husband. But even if she paid the ransom, it wouldn’t definitively answer that question, because the sum being demanded wasn’t sufficiently large and she had access to other funds, thanks to her siblings and the bank. There was a chance that, having forced her to pay once, they might come back for a second attempt, and so prove she had deeper reserves of cash on which to draw, but it struck me as a flawed strategy. Sarah wasn’t stupid. After being ripped off the first time, she’d know there was little hope of retrieving all of her belongings, not unless she was prepared to dangle on a string for the rest of her days, so she wouldn’t pay.

And I was also a factor. I didn’t like what was being done to her, which was why I’d elected to involve myself. I would be reluctant to abandon her. If Dante Vero had any sense—and all indications were that he did—he wouldn’t want me dogging his heels. He’d have to do something about it, but the price he’d pay for any violence would be high, because he knew force would be met with force. That, at least, was my hope.

I told Louis I’d drop by in the next few minutes. Before I hung up, Louis asked if Mattia Reggio had offered to accompany me to the meeting with Vero.

“He did,” I said. “I turned him down.”

“Why? He came through for you.”

But I could tell that Louis had an end in mind here.

“You know the answer,” I said. “He’s not someone I want at my back, especially not if it involves some of his former associates.”

“I asked around about Reggio,” said Louis. “Judiciously.”

“And?”

“You ever hear of a Genovese hood named Alessandro Angioni? He operated out of Springfield, Mass.”

“No.”

“Well, no one else has either, not for a long time. He disappeared over a decade ago, evaporated. There are some who believe Reggio might know what happened to him.”

“Reggio didn’t have that reputation,” I said.

---