Free The Deed by Keith Blanchard Page B

shift the man, quivering and screaming and pleading, and break the same leg in another spot. That terrible cracking sound, the stench of the piss…and the whole time Freddie’s whistling some goofy song, like a goddamn coal miner on his way back up to the sun.
    No question, the man had an inner psychopath patiently chewing its way out. Oh, the chicks loved him; he was a big motherfucking teddy bear, and it chilled Dovatelli’s blood to see him laughing with some cooing waitress or back-talking stripper, because he’d seen Freddie smile that same broad, farmboy grin while airing out the back of someone’s skull, or knotting a chain around some degenerate’s throat.
    “There is a vast commercial opportunity here,” Vince continued, still tirelessly gesticulating, trying to haul in the crowd with outstretched fingers. “The kids are looking for”—here he trailed off briefly, snapping his fingers twice—“cultural inspiration. And this is a vacuum we can fill. Gentlemen, we are in a position to provide no-risk entrée into the mobsta class, to merchandise where no one else dares to set foot.”
    “Why d’ya keep sayin’ ‘gentlemen’?” Gina whispered, for the second time.
    “Gina, enough already,” said Freddie, from across the table.
    She stared at him, mouth half open in disbelief at his audacity.
    Vince ran a hand through his oiled black hair and flashed his wife a tense smile: Okay, honey, now hush, okay? He reached down by his feet and produced an overstuffed briefcase that he laid gently on the table, spinning it around so the latch faced him before looking up to address the table again.
    Dramatically pushing back the sleeves of his jacket, Vince slowly, as if defusing a bomb, unclasped the case and raised the lid. “Pass these out, sweetheart,” he said to Gina, handing her a stack of laminated pages. “Feast your eyes, gentlemen, on the wave of the future.” He paused to wink conspiratorially at Dovatelli.
    Wearily, the old man took the proffered page and glanced down at an elegantly designed menu. Under an Italian flag shot up with holes, it read, “Mobstateria: Park It Here If You Know What’s Good For You.”
    Look at this shit, thought Dovatelli, closing his eyes. My heart is breaking. There was no denying it anymore; his sixty-plus years had finally started to catch up with him. He was fighting a losing battle just to hold on to his little legacy, the dwindling chunk of territory that remained of his grandfather’s once-rambling extralegal empire, and increasingly the temptation was just to swim upstream to Florida and leave it all behind. Dovatelli rubbed his stomach gently and thought: I do not want to die here.
    “Corleone Cannelloni. Osso Buco Rico,” Vince rattled off proudly. “I’m talkin’ a whole chain of theme restaurants. The waiters are wiseguys. ‘Order the special or else,’ that kind of thing.”
    “‘One Pullet in the Chamber’?” read Freddie incredulously. “You kiddin’ with this crap?”
    “It’s chicken potpie,” said Vince defensively. “The chamber’s the—”
    “Shut up, both of you,” said Dovatelli, instantly silencing the room’s chatter. “A chain of theme restaurants, Vin? That’s your big idea?”
    A crestfallen Vincent simply sat and stared at the still-yawning briefcase.
    “Vin, even people who know how to run restaurants, which we are demonstrably not, can’t turn a profit,” he continued. “We might as well get a contract to build space shuttles.”
    Somebody snickered at this, and Dovatelli came down hard. “You shut the fuck up.” He began slowly circling the table. “In case nobody’s noticed, we’re getting beat to shit out there in the street.” He trailed off and glanced out the window, trying consciously to steady his nerves. “Come on, guys. What we need is some real, new business. High margin, low risk, low cost of entry…real cash-flow operations. Not this pie-in-the-sky shit.”
    “I got just the thing,