The Given

CHAPTER NINE

Breaking bread with another person went a long way toward smoothing over old hurts. What started out as a tense reunion between Kit and the two men who had most defined her personal life over the past year gradually eased into an amicable evening. Following up that broken bread with seared filets; fat, round wines; and tableside Bananas Foster settled both bellies and old grudges for good, and Kit smiled to herself as she leaned back in the booth, mentally patting herself on the back.

The stop at the Golden Steer had been a spontaneous but inspired bit of theater. However, her gut had told her they all needed it. There were bad things coming in the next few days—Kit could feel it even without Barbara’s death or Grif’s sudden reappearance in her life—and her gut also whispered that she was going to need both Grif and Dennis working as a team if she was to survive the forces she’d put into motion by visiting Barbara in the first place. There were more balls to juggle now that her unlikely team also included Zicaro and Marin, but she’d acted as ringmaster in this sort of circus before.

And if grilled meat in the belly and burned sugar in the air were needed to keep the lions tame, then so be it.

Otherwise, it was a hell of an almost-last supper.

“Schwear to God,” Zicaro was saying, spilling gin over the lip of his martini glass for a half-a-dozenth time, “I saw Monroe sitting right in this very booth. Saw her with my own eyes. She was with DiMaggio, though they were already divorced. And she was throwing her head back, opening her mouth with that wide, beautiful smile. Showing her neck . . .” He threw his head back to demonstrate. Grif and Dennis both cringed. “But when she stopped laughing with him, man, she was looking right at me.”

“Bullshit,” Grif snorted, looking relaxed for the first time since Kit had seen him. He’d taken off his jacket and hat, and had one arm flung over the back of the red leather booth, his shirtsleeves rolled, candlelight sparkling in his stubble. “You were even a scrawnier sonna bitch then than you are now, and Monroe liked ’em beefy.”

“How do you even know that, Shaw?” Dennis asked, while Zicaro scowled into his drink. Fortunately, Dennis was no longer entirely sober, either, and scoffed as he said it.

“I know that because this old stringer was a reckless fabulist. He’d catch scent of a story and run it down like a bloodhound, often to the same effect.”

“I told the stories everyone else was afraid to tell!” Zicaro said defensively, then waved his spotted hands in the air with practiced drama. “I brought things that were festering in darkness right into the glare of the neon-splattered night!”

Grif raised one dark eyebrow. Dennis just continued staring at Zicaro as he rolled a toothpick between his fingers before turning to Grif.

“Is that why you’re carting him around hours after you were supposed to have returned him to an assisted-care facility where a man the size of a freight train is waiting for him?”

Zicaro, belly full and tongue loose, came to life. Bringing his fist down on the table, and spewing a string of profanity that was nothing short of astonishing, Zicaro alone managed to bring Dennis up to speed. Kit listened, sipping her after-dinner cappuccino.

“Lemme get this straight,” Dennis said, throwing his arm over the back of the booth when Zicaro had finished. “You were taken from your room in the middle of the night, questioned to the point of exhaustion, and then relocated and held against your will by the men I met today?”

“Poor guy,” Kit said, earning a soulful look from Zicaro.

“And they were questioning you about Barbara? Of the old DiMartino gang?”

Zicaro’s thin lips pursed into a solid line at the doubt underscoring Dennis’s words. Sure, the criminal element was alive and well in Vegas. But Italian mobsters? Those days had died with Spilotro . . . and Dennis said as much.

“Here’s what you greenhorns can’t seem to understand,” Zicaro said, and hiccupped before he continued. “A made man can’t just jump into normal life like the rest of us schleps. They operated outside of normal for so long that living by the law would be akin to living on the moon. And that goes for the women, too. The woman who died yesterday was Barbara DiMartino long before she was Barbara McCoy.”

“So?”

“You don’t know anything about the DiMartinos, do you?”

Dennis shrugged.

“They ran the Marquis, best hotel and casino in town. But they weren’t the only outfit here.”

“The Salernos owned Vegas Village,” Grif put in.

“And old Nick Salerno was after more,” Zicaro said, nodding. “He began running chip hustlers and card counters through the Marquis, bragged about it, too. That’s when things got nasty.”

“What happened?” asked Dennis.

“It was never proven, but rumor was Sal DiMartino retaliated by donning a ski mask, walking into the Vegas Village at the height of midday, and holding up the cage himself. But unlike old man Salerno, he didn’t flaunt his take. Instead, he bought his wife, Theresa, a gift with it.”

Dennis held up a hand. “Wait, I thought Barbara was his wife.”

“Theresa was his first wife,” Grif told him. “Love of his life.”

“She died in nineteen sixty-one,” confirmed Zicaro. “He married Barbara in ’sixty-two.”

“Fast,” commented Kit.

“Can I finish my story here?” Zicaro said, glaring until the table was silenced. “So Sal spends every stolen dollar on this necklace he had designed for Theresa. Lemme tell you, it could rival anything in the Queen Mother’s jewels. Three perfect diamonds, each the size of a silver dollar. He then parades her around in it at the city’s annual Fall Festival. Really stuck it to the Salernos, right in public. As you can imagine, this doesn’t go over well with Nick. So Sal DiMartino gets a phone call. ‘You take something precious from me, I’ll take something precious from you.’ “ Eyes gleaming, Zicaro leaned forward. “The call comes at the exact same time DiMartino’s twelve-year-old niece, Mary Margaret, is abducted from his front yard. I believe this is where you come in.”

Feeling Dennis’s frown on him, Grif just shrugged. “Sure, I’ll tell the rest of the story, but it’s real basic. The Salernos kidnapped little Mary Margaret. The DiMartinos got her back. End of story.”

“Except it’s not,” Zicaro argued. “These families are like the Montagues and the Capulets . . . except for the lost love. There’s none of that. But there is a code.”

Grif nodded. “You don’t mess with a Family’s children.”

“So the feud hinges on this: The DiMartinos say the Salernos planned the attack, but the Salernos maintain that someone inside the DiMartino home told them there was a way to get their diamonds back. She—and they were clear it was a woman—told them when to be in front of the DiMartino estate. She said ‘a little doll’ would appear, and to take it. So Mary Margaret showed up, and they did.”

“Who did the DiMartinos trust with their children?” Kit asked, wondering about Barbara. If she married Sal DiMartino within a year of Theresa’s death, then she’d been around before then.

“Just one person. Gina Alessi, Mary Margaret’s longtime nanny. But Gina disappeared right after Mary Margaret’s return, and for years everyone thought Sal showed her the back door . . . and not in a good way.”

“Ugh.” Kit made a face.

“But Barbara didn’t think so,” Grif muttered, closing his eyes to better see the picture that was beginning to emerge.

“Now you’re using your noggin’,” Zicaro said, tapping on his own head and poking himself in the ear. “She was on a cold rant the night she came to see me. Going on and on about Gina. Said she was back in town and that she had one of the diamonds all these years.”

“And Barbara wanted it.”

“No,” Zicaro said simply. “Barbara was after the other two.”

“So why’d she come to you?” Dennis asked.

“Because of one of my old stories. Of a map that’s still out there,” Zicaro said, licking his lips and leaning forward. “It supposedly shows the location of the diamonds. A literal buried treasure. Anyone wanna take a guess as to who she thought had that map?”

“Shit,” Kit whispered, head whipping to Grif.

“Ol’ Griffin Shaw,” Dennis said, aping the way Justin and Larry had so knowingly said his name earlier that day.

Zicaro toasted Grif, and then drained the rest of his gin. “Good ol’ Griffin Shaw.”

Justin called exactly four minutes after the appointed time, and the man—who’d been pacing his room, nearly ready to howl at the full moon—answered immediately.

“The cop’s name is Dennis Carlisle,” Justin said without being asked. It was a good sign. He still knew how things worked. Despite the events out at Sunset, he was still aligned with the man’s greater plans. “He’s a longtime friend of Craig’s, and was a detective up until a few months ago.”

So he had some skills. “Demoted?” the man asked, wondering why a detective would end up pounding the streets again.

Justin made a dissenting sound, and the man could practically see Justin’s giant head swiveling on his neck like a big slab of meat. “Voluntary. He was shot six months back, made some sort of miraculous recovery—”

“I remember,” the man murmured, squinting out the window at the cold night, trying to pull the details from the vast stores of his mind.

“He was investigating the Baptista-Kolyadenko drug war. Apparently took a bullet for Craig.”

“Invested, then.”

“Not likely to turn on her,” Justin confirmed.

The man stopped pacing and closed his eyes, feeling suddenly old. Life was so much simpler back when the boys were running this town. It was easier to tell who to push and where. Men, even cops, could be as easily bought as killed, and the whole town had been smaller. More controllable. Too bad he’d never had any control back then.

He opened his eyes, realizing that he really did prefer things as they were today.

“Okay, here’s what we’re going to do. You stay with them. Did you put the tracker on Craig’s car?”

“While they were at dinner,” Justin confirmed.

“Okay, so lay off. Don’t approach them—”

“But—”

“Don’t fucking approach them.” His voice hardened, like he’d been through fire and was changed at the cellular level. He was certainly a different man than he’d been fifty years prior, that was for sure.

“We can’t go at them directly,” he explained, as he resumed his pacing. Walking, moving around, helped him think. “They’re smart, and there’s a bunch of them working on this now.”

“And the Sunset operation?” Justin asked hopefully. The long-running scam had earned them both a fine amount of money.

“Blown.” And he’d put a lot of time into that one. Those vulnerable trust funds had been ripe pickings for someone who knew how to hide his tracks. And this man did. “It doesn’t matter. If we’re patient and we stay with them, they’ll do all the legwork for us.”

Craig and Shaw would lead them directly to the diamonds.

“Got it?” the man asked Justin. He was going to have to go soon. It was late, and he did need some sleep.

“Yeah,” Justin answered, but there was a note of uncertainty in his voice.

“What?” the man said coolly.

“It’s just that . . .” Justin hesitated, and this time the man could see the dolt scratching the side of that big melon head. “She’s not happy.”

She. She?

“She,” the man said through clenched teeth, “is dead!”

The past, he thought, had chased him long enough, but now it was dying all around him. And she was a part of that.

“All right, all right,” Justin said, and the man fought the urge to put his fist through his bedroom wall. He was not going to let some twenty-first-century meathead make him lose out on his biggest racket yet. Unfortunately he needed Justin’s eyes and ears right now.

The man blew out a long breath, pushing out an anger that’d been building for decades, wondering if Justin felt its singe on the other side of the line.

“All right, then,” he finally said. “Got a pen? Because I’ve got a plan.”

And with Justin’s pen scratching in the background, the man laid out exactly what was going to happen to Kit Craig and Griffin Shaw next.