Free The Deed by Keith Blanchard Page A

below. There truly is nothing new under the sun, he mused, thoughtfully swirling the surface of his hot chocolate, where slowly deliquescing puffs of foam, tattered remnants of a once-formidable armada of mini-marshmallows, dispersed their essence in coiled white streaks. No coffee since the goddamned ulcer, of course, not without a Maalox chaser; this humiliating child’s drink was the most caustic thing his jittery stomach walls could handle. Not that anyone in the organization dared to meet his eye and make that particular observation.
    The pooch wagged his tail as he delivered his pungent critique, the inverted triangle of a red bandanna swinging loosely from his fat neck. Ronnie let the slats of the blinds spring back into place and reluctantly allowed the animated voice of his excitable son-in-law to drift back into his awareness.
    Vince Furnio, dapper in off-the-rack Armani, stood with hands on hips, sandwiched comfortably between a project easel (currently featuring a pie chart under the heading “Kids Today”) and a projector painting a PowerPoint presentation on the far wall. Around the overlarge table, backed up nearly to the walls on all sides, lounged a dozen or so business-men and one woman, all casual in attire and attitude, none paying particularly close attention to the demonstration that was, as anybody could have guessed, entirely too good for the room.
    “So I’m seventeen,” Vince was saying. “I want to participate in mobsta culture, but I don’t wanna actually get arrested, or shot, or otherwise screw up my happy little suburban life.” He punctuated his speech with smoothly interpolated hand motions, wrists locked as if in handcuffs, a pair of thumb-cocked finger pistols. “I wanna be a Soprano, not a Gambino.”
    Again with the frickin’ Sopranos, thought Dovatelli, and the bile churned merrily up the back of his throat. Bane of my existence. Kids coming up now didn’t want to hear word one about spreadsheets or management; you could practically hear them turning the music up in their heads. All they wanted was to whack somebody. It was a full-time job just keeping them off each other’s throats. No one coming up through the ranks understood that this was a business; if you didn’t let ’em carry a gun, they’d drift away, and if you did, you had to watch ’em slip their hands into their pants to finger it constantly, rubbing it like a goddamn rabbit’s foot. When his generation handed over the wheel…and it wouldn’t be long…the violence unleashed in the East was going to be a thing to behold.
    He cast his eye over to Gina, his poor only child, Vince’s bride of almost a year. Dovatelli watched his daughter trying vainly to spin a pencil on her finger, staring in cross-eyed frustration at the stick through lashes gummy with mascara, her awkwardly masculine features framed with a dated Jackie O. bob. Gina had come up snake eyes in the genetic crap-shoot, winning Dovatelli’s looks and his wife’s simpleton brain (God rest her soul). It wasn’t hard to see what Vince, the clumsy little machinator, saw in her; his cockiness since marrying Gina made it clear he believed he’d now simply inherit the business from the old man, like an heirloom watch or a blood disorder. What she saw in him, who knew? Maybe just an option. Sorry, kid.
    A glance around his circle of listless pencil pushers reminded Dovatelli that he wasn’t exactly flush with options himself. Maybe he would hand the reins to Vince; the only other candidate, obviously, was Freddie Marone. A hulking giant with dark eyes and a bodybuilder’s tight-lipped smile, Freddie was Dovatelli’s second-in-command, and privy to virtually all the company secrets. Nobody would question his succession…still, his thirst for the dark side of the business scared Dovatelli not a little. He’d watched Freddie position a crying businessman in his office doorway and slam a steel door on an exposed leg hard enough to break it, then