Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 76550 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76550 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
“I don’t know. Maybe he was just that desperate, over his head.”
“Or maybe he was wrapped up in some shit we don’t know about,” Massimo said, standing to unbutton his jacket, then laying it across my desk before rolling up his sleeves to get to work.
“What? Like a rival? No one around here would dare come for the docks.” It had been in the Grassi Family for a long time. Everyone had long since given up hope of getting control of it.
“Eh, you never know. These young fucks coming up got too much ego and not enough sense to balance it out. They could make a move. Or they aren’t coming for the docks, per se, but for enough of us that they destabilize the organization, and they can swoop in.”
“But then why get involved with us in the first place? Why owe us that much money that they couldn’t pay back?”
“Nah, you’re thinking too small, Matteo,” Massimo said, nudging Allen’s lifeless foot with the toe of his shoe as he slid gloves on his hands. “Been out of the Family business too long. It would be more likely that Boyle here got into deep shit with us, someone else saw how much he was floundering, knew he could get close to us when we came to collect, then offered him a deal. Take one of us out, and they will give him the money he needs.”
“But it would trace right back to him.”
“If he’s a fucking idiot, yes. Which, clearly…” Mass said, waving around the room. “I mean, you want to kill a guy, you don’t come to his place of business where there are fucking cameras all around. And the rest of the Family knows about the meeting. Amateur shit. That’s why you’re dead, dipshit,” he said, looking down at Allen’s body. “Proud of you though, man,” he said, nodding at me as he pulled a ridiculously long black bag out of the box. “Quick on your toes when you need to be.”
“I got lucky that I saw the flash, or I’d be the body in here tonight,” I admitted, reminding myself that I needed to start to wear my holster again. If I had been one foot further away from my desk, I wouldn’t have been able to shoot first.
“How good is that security system of yours?” he asked as he started sliding Allen’s body feet-first into the giant black bag.
“It’s good.”
“Good as in good-good, or good as in good enough for a banquet hall?” Massimo asked, stopping the bag at Allen’s shoulders, then grabbing a second bag to wrap the man’s head—blood and brain matter and all—into it.
I watched in silence as he grabbed duct tape out of the box of supplies, and secured both bags together before carefully rolling the body out of the way so we could clean.
“Good enough for a banquet hall. If Luca decides something more sinister is going down, I will have to upgrade it. Maybe change the codes. As it is, some employees have the code right now.”
“And we all know how easily employees can be swayed with the promise of a little extra cash into offering someone a code.”
And to come in after-hours without permission and witnessing Family business when they weren’t supposed to.
“Yeah,” I agreed, opening the pack of paper towels, then slipping on my own gloves. I didn’t need to worry about prints in my own office, but I didn’t exactly want to be touching someone else’s blood and bits of brain with my bare hands either.
“Don’t be surprised if Luca sends a guard too. I know you hate that shit, but like it or not, you’d be a high-value target. You’d also make a good hostage. Better to be preemptive about it. Christ, there’s blood everywhere,” he said, matter of fact.
That was a nice thing about Massimo. He wasn’t one to bitch about the job. Not even if it ended up taking us hours to get it clean enough so it no longer lit up under the Luminol spray.
He was particular too. The man went over every square inch of my office afterward, checking in the grooves of the molding, inside the heat and return vents, even in the closed drawers of my desk.
By the time he backed his car up to the back door, and we hauled the body into it, needing to crush it in on itself to fit in the small space, hearing the crunch of bones breaking as we did so, I was sure that there wasn’t a chance of anyone ever finding any evidence to substantiate claims that someone had been killed in my office.
“I will handle the disposal,” Massimo said as he elbowed the trunk closed.
“This is my mess. I should help,” I insisted. Digging a grave wasn’t for the faint of heart. It was a fuck of a lot more work than most people would realize. And I imagined that Massimo went above and beyond about it, digging way deeper than necessary just to make sure it didn’t get found. I once heard Lucky comment that Massimo actually had some kind of process that involved mixing the body with nitrogen-rich composting ingredients to hasten the decomposition process, so that if someone did come across the body, it would be too far gone to find any soft flesh evidence.