Free Deadly Lullaby by Robert McClure Page B

only in the physical sense, Joe’s size has always radiated from his inside out. One of the top five so-called crime bosses in LA for twenty-eight years, he proved the size of his balls by making a lot of money despite constant investigations and four assassination attempts. His recent relevance, though, and his fortune have dwindled from the expansion of other so-called organized-crime groups and from the natural attrition of his crew. Hence his merger with Viktor Tarasov, who has also been taking it on the chin lately. Other than his height, or lack thereof, Joe’s thick hair is his most distinguishing feature, combed slantwise back and moussed so stiff you would mistake it for a toupee if not for the unmistakable natural part. Though no longer the power player he once was, he still dresses the part of the Mafia don, today wearing a charcoal silk suit and red-and-ecru striped tie, the suit a well-worn one.
    Joe steps forward and shakes my hand as he speaks, his naturally high-pitched voice knocked down an octave from a lifetime of bourbon and cigarettes. “Good work on Macky. How’d you do him?”
    I say nothing, instead casting a fish-eyed stare at the man seated ramrod straight at the conference table, a half-full flute of beer before him. Two open boxes of pizza from The Original North End Pizzeria are on the table.
    “Oh,” Joe says to me. “You haven’t met my new COO, have you?”
    “COO?” I say.
    “Chief of operations, Babe. I’m Ricardo Donsky,” the man says, barely lifting his butt off his seat as he offers me his hand across the table. The name Ricardo throws me off because Donsky appears of Slavic descent, so blonde and pale you might peg him as an albino if he did not have eyes as blue as arctic ice—cool eyes that you just know could become fierce at the drop of a dime. Late thirties to maybe fortyish, he is long and muscled and dressed casually, but well, in faded designer jeans with a white-on-white linen shirt, the tail out, and dark-blue silk blazer. He has an erect military bearing, his hair cut in a high and tight crew cut razored clean on the sides. His features are not diminished by a pocked scar below the corner of his left eye that could have been courtesy of shrapnel or a bullet fragment, and there are women who would say it makes him appear ruggedly handsome. Your average wiseguy would take one look at Donsky and figure him for the kind they would belly up next to at a bar and engage in conversation; your above-average wiseguy—i.e., me—would approach him with caution, if at all.
    Still standing, Joe says to me, “So you gonna tell us how you did Macky or not?”
    I describe in summary form how I did Macky.
    Both men like this, glancing at each other and shaking their heads in bemusement.
    Joe says, “He handle it like a man?” and pats my shoulder as he moves with distinct purpose to the wet bar behind the table.
    “It was not the type of death anyone would handle gracefully.”
    Donsky sips from his glass of beer, says, “More important to me, Babe, is how your son handled it.” Donsky’s voice is baritone and Brooklyn-accented, nasal, without a single
r
sound enunciated in the entire sentence. Word is he and Fecarotta are lifelong friends, and Fecarotta just got here from New Jersey as part of a package deal.
    I say, “I decided against involving my son in the hit. I left for West Covina without him.”
    Donsky frowns into his glass as if a fly is floating on the surface of his beer.
    Joe stops dead in his tracks on the way to the bar, a perplexed expression further creasing his considerably wrinkled brow. “Why the hell did you do that?”
    I shrug as if my decision was a casual one. “We met this morning at my house and I did not like his vibes,” I say, looking at Donsky to say as an aside, “That meeting was our first in over nine years.”
    Joe smoothes his trim mustache, rubs his jaw.
    I sit in the empty chair directly across from his and Donsky’s.
    Nobody