Enforcer: A Prequel Novella to the New Mafia Trilogy (14 page)

Time seemed to be on fast forward and before I knew it, it
was Christmas Eve day and Natalie and I were driving home. She had begged to
stay with me over her holiday break since she had to move out of the residence
hall, but I refused. We had a huge argument, which she apparently still wasn’t
over as she hadn’t said one word to me the entire drive. She kept her arms
crossed over her chest and she glared out the window. This staring out the
window clued me in that she was still pissed because the drive to York was
boring. During the winter it’s a barren with random patches of snow covering
brown grass. Skeletons of leafless trees add to the drab effect. Driving along
I-83S the bland scenery is broken up by construction and agriculture related
businesses that transition to strip malls and fast food chains then fade to trailers
stained orange with rust that mingle with dilapidated homes. I understood where
Natalie was coming from. Once I was out of the house it was difficult to go
back, but there was no way Natalie was staying with me. I ran my hand through
my hair then rubbed the back of my neck, focusing on the road, careful to avoid
patches of black ice.

I pulled into the driveway, my headlights illuminating snow
banks piled up on each side of the entrance. The car was barely stopped before
Natalie was hopping out; she opened the rear passenger door and grabbed her bag
out of the back. She was inside the house before I even got out of the car. 

When I walked in Natalie was being scrutinized. “You really
need to get your hair cut. It’s not flattering when it’s that long and flat.”

          “I know, Mom, I plan on making an appointment
while I’m home.”

The door clicked close behind me, getting my mom’s
attention. “What took you so long?”

I held up the gift bags full of wrapped presents. “I had
shit to bring in.” At the use of a swear word, her lips narrowed into a
straight line. Ignoring her, I set the bags over by the Christmas tree. It was
tucked in the corner behind the sofa and it was bare, with the exception of a
red velvet tree skirt wrapped around the base.

          “You got a real tree?” I asked, surprised. Ever
since my dad had moved out, we always had an artificial one and it was small
enough to place on the coffee table.

          “It’s no big deal,” she said with a shrug. “They
were doing a fundraiser at work and I thought it’d be nice to have a real tree
since you both were coming home. I thought we’d decorate it together.” My jaw
didn’t drop open, but Natalie and I wore identical expressions of disbelief.
“What?” she sounded defensive.

          “Nothing.” I decided to drop it. This was a rare
moment where mom was checked in and present, actually acting like a parent who
cared. I couldn’t help the sense of unease that crept over me though.
Historically, the holidays were a dark time for my mom where the memories of
Christmas past haunted her and she opted to hide in her room after going
through the motions. I glanced over at Natalie and by the pensive look on her
face; I figured she was wondering the same thing: how long was this going to
last?

Natalie and I set about with our own holiday tradition of
baking cookies even though Nat was still angry at me. She took it out on the store
bought sugar cookie dough, beating it into submission with the roller. So I
tossed a handful of flour at her.

She tried to look pissed, but a twitch of her lips gave her
away. Seconds later, I was covered in flour too and Natalie was laughing. Mom
came into the kitchen and saw the mess. Instead of yelling at us she chuckled
and shook her head before leaving us to our antics.

          “What’s up with her?” Natalie whispered.

          “I don’t know.”

          “It’s horrible to say this, but I almost prefer
her the other way. At least I know how to deal with it. This…nice mom is
throwing me off balance. You know?”

          “Yeah, I hear ya.”

That night we decorated the tree and ate cookies paired with
glasses of egg nog. I laced mine with heavy splashes of rum. Natalie put the
Christmas channel on and she hummed along to the familiar music. Even our mom
chimed in. I strung lights on the tree and with me being the tallest, easily
placed the star on top.

I was slowly relaxing and could
see that Natalie was too. Her smiled seemed less guarded. Mom sent me down to
the basement to retrieve boxes of ornaments. I blew dust off the tops, coughing
at the cloud and hurried back upstairs. Mom laughed at me when I squatted,
setting the boxes on the carpet. Apparently I had dust all in my hair. She
brushed it off. This was how Christmas Eve should be, I thought to myself. This
was normal and it pained me to think about all of the shitty ones Natalie and I
endured growing up.

The first box of ornaments was
opened. I handed them off one by one to Natalie and my mom who went to work
placing them on the tree. I moved on to the next box and as soon as I opened
the lid, my heart started pounding in my ears. Before I could close it, I heard
the choked sob. I wasn’t fast enough and my mom saw the ornament lying on top.
It was a small frame that said “Our First Christmas – 1986” and it contained a
picture of my mom and dad. They were standing next to an elaborately decorated
tree, their arms were around each other and they were smiling at the camera.

Just like that our old mom was back. “I can’t do this. I
tried,” she said and left the living room. Her bedroom door shut moments later
and I knew she would be in there for a while.

          “It was too good to be true, huh?” I said and got
up from where I had been kneeling on the carpet. Natalie didn’t respond, just
looked at me. “What?”

          “I am so never falling in love again. It only ends
in misery.”

I knew Natalie wasn’t only talking about our parents, but
her one and only relationship where the dickhead cheated on her.

          “It’s a risk, but you can’t control who you fall
in love with.”

Natalie looked at me with raised eyebrows. “That’s pretty
deep for a player like you.”

I laughed and threw a cookie at her, hoping to lighten the
mood and provide a diversion, but it didn’t work.

          “I hate it here. You know how bad it is when she’s
like that.” Natalie gestured towards our mom’s closed bedroom door. “Why can’t
I live with you until the dorms are open? I’ll stay out of your way - you won’t
even know I’m there.”

Closing my eyes, I sighed and rubbed the back of my neck.
“Why can’t you stay with Chelsea? You were always over her house anyway.”

          “Her aunt and uncle are visiting with their kids and
then they’re going to Virginia to visit her grandparents. What’s the big deal,
Grant? I can tell you’re keeping something from me.” Natalie’s arms were
crossed and she was digging in for a fight. When it came to stubbornness, we
both had a shit ton.

I ran through the logistics in my head. Miranda never came
over and I usually went over to her place since it actually felt like home. We
were in the busy season at Crimson so I would be working all of the time. I did
occasionally get called in the middle of the night to take care of some
business. Never, in all the time that I lived in my apartment, had Marco or any
of the guys been over. The biggest thing was keeping my gun locked up. She knew
I had one, but thought it was just for my job at Crimson. I almost caved and
told her she could temporarily stay with me, but held firm instead. I just
couldn’t take the risk of Natalie finding out or of somehow, inadvertently,
getting hurt. 

They say that hindsight is 20/20, but in this case I’m glad
I had the foresight to leave Natalie in York when I went back to city. New
Year’s Eve was jamming. Crimson exceeded capacity and posts on social media
kept people coming. Whatever brief drop in revenue Lust caused was long
forgotten…by us.

The Saturday night after New Year’s Eve, I was escorting
Miranda out to her car in the parking lot. Marco and Rico were right behind us
followed by Anthony “The Giant” and Joey D. when suddenly we were under attack.
Bullets seemed to be coming from every direction.

          “Get down!” I yelled at Miranda and pushed her
behind a car to shield her from the barrage. Crouching by the rear tire, I
zeroed in on the source of the gunfire. One of the major issues was that the
parking lot was lit up like a stadium, making it harder to see into the outer
ring of darkness and making us too visible. Anthony and Joey D. had Marco and
Al covered, but they were stuck in the middle of the lot. Every time they made
a step towards a vehicle, a bullet hit the asphalt by their feet, corralling
them to stay in one place. Then Anthony was picked off. With a shout, The Giant
collapsed, dropping his gun in order to clutch at his knee. Blood seeped
through his fingers as he applied pressure to the wound. Joey D. couldn’t cover
both men so I ran across the parking lot to help out. I arrived just in time to
take a bullet in my thigh. Adrenaline kept me standing and I ignored the burn
tearing through my leg.

          “There are two shooters!” Rico yelled. He was
firing into the shadows. Between blood thrumming through my veins and the
percussion from so many discharging weapons, I almost didn’t hear the sirens
approaching from a distance.  Two black cars peeled out from across the street.
They had been concealed by a pocket of darkness, but once they moved under a streetlight,
became easier targets.

I focused on one car while Joey targeted the other. Joey
blew out the driver’s side window and I hit the rear tire on my car causing the
driver to lose control enough to hit the median and flip over.  Joey’s car
managed to get away, whipping around a corner just as the cops showed up on the
scene. My leg chose that moment to give out and I landed on my ass.

          “Grant, oh my God!” Miranda yelled as she ran over
to me, kneeling by my side. “You’re shot!”

          “I’m okay, baby.” I caressed her cheek, leaving a smear
of blood behind. Glancing down at my leg, I realized my black dress pants were
soaked through and stuck to my thigh like a second skin. The pain of a million
damaged nerve endings made their presence known as the adrenaline wore off. “Shit,
I got blood on your face.”

          “I don’t care about that,” she said, her eyes
glistening with tears, “I’m just glad you’re alive.”

          “How’s everyone else?” I rose to a sitting
position to see Marco, Rico and Joey D., who were uninjured, getting handcuffed.
All of our guns were placed into evidence bags. EMTs were treating Anthony and two
approached me, wheeling a stretcher. As they were getting us ready for
transport to a hospital, I noticed another set of EMT’s were treating the
people in the flipped over car. I watched as they helped to extricate two men.

After being treated and released for my wound, an officer
read me my rights and took me into custody.

          “Don’t worry, Grant, our attorney is on it,”
Miranda promised. She had stayed with me in the emergency room and had been on
the phone with Uncle Al. Fortunately he had been at Butter that night otherwise
the entire family’s leadership would’ve been in jail.

Jail was exactly how I imagined it to be: a fucking hell
hole. The holding cell was a melting pot of addicts, drunks, married men
weeping because they got caught soliciting a prostitute and then the gangbangers
with their baggie jeans hanging off of their asses who thought they were the
shit. I sat on a bench next to Joey, Marco and Rico. Anthony needed surgery on
his knee so he got to stay in the cushy hospital digs.

We basically had to wait for our preliminary arraignment
hearing since we all were busted with illegal firearms.

          “They’re gonna drag this shit out,” Marco said.
“You watch. I bet they’re digging for anything to throw at me.”

          “Are they going to find anything?” I asked.

For the first time since I’ve known him, Marco actually
looked nervous. He licked his lips and his left leg bounced up and down, making
his protruding stomach and jowls jiggle. “Nah, they won’t get nothin’. I want
to find out who those cocksuckers were that took shots at us.”

          “We’ll find out. I need to repay them for this.” I
pointed at my leg. The blood on my pants had dried, leaving the material tight
and crunchy.

          “You did good tonight, Grant. You really proved
yourself. If you got there two seconds later, I’d have a bullet in my gut.”

          “Just doing my job,” I said.

          “Since you may have saved my life tonight, I’ll
let this whole thing with Miranda slide. You be good to her, though.”

I shook his hand and promised him that I’d be nothing but
good to Miranda. At that point I was so exhausted that I leaned my head back
against the stained cinderblock wall and closed my eyes to block out the
overhead fluorescent lights. There was too much going on in the cell to allow
for sleep, so I kind of drifted in a half-awake state, listening to the chaos
around me as my bullet wound throbbed with a slow, steady beat.

Our arraignment hearing lasted two minutes. One of the
advantages of having deep pockets and judges with dark secrets is that it sped
up the judiciary process. The family’s attorney handled everything. Our
possessions were returned to us, well except for our guns.

From that weekend on Marco stopped sending me on stupid
errands. Apparently saving his life and being arrested together created a bond.
He was still a scary, unstable bastard, but at least he no longer directed his
craziness towards me.

Natalie was busy with the new semester so she had no idea I
had been shot. I’m glad she was distracted with school because 2010 was off to
a bloody start. Through Marco’s contacts in the police department, he found out
the men who tried to take us out were hired by Barker in retaliation for the
fire at Lust. How he found out Marco was behind the fire, we’ll never know.
Barker didn’t live long enough to tell us. He met his demise on a sheet of
plastic spread out on the cracked concrete floor of the power plant. His
mutilated corpse was found down river, tangled up in debris.  Apparently after
we worked Barker over, the cleaners had their turn and then the creatures in
the Delaware River picked him over pretty good, it took weeks for authorities
to confirm his identity.

After Barker was eliminated, Marco started to keep a lower
profile and he didn’t have anyone killed unless absolutely necessary.

          “Some of the guys think your dad’s getting soft,”
I told Miranda one night as we were lying in bed. It was rare day off for us
and aside from working out and showering we had stayed in bed and made love.

          “Really?” she raised her head up from the crook of
my arm, resting her chin on my chest, “Because the body count has dropped? When
did that become a bad thing?”

I traced circles on the small of her back with my
forefinger. “It’s just so sudden that it’s throwing everyone off.” Marco was
usually unpredictable, but crazy unpredictable, this low key Marco made us all
a little nervous. It reminded me of my mom and how at Christmas she put on a
front and tried to be the mom we wanted. “Hold up, I know what he’s doing.”

          “Babe, can you stop obsessing about my dad while
we’re lying in bed naked? The only thing being killed around here is the mood.”
Miranda kissed me, pressing her body against mine.

          “Done, no more talking,” I said with a growl and
flipped Miranda onto her back. She squealed, her laugh turning into a moan when
I sucked one of her nipples into my mouth. We didn’t talk about Marco for the
rest of the night, but I did feel more relaxed after having figured out his low
profile was deliberate and he wasn’t going soft, he was keeping the
organization under the radar.

***

Later that summer we found out why when one of the city’s
biggest gang takedowns in its history occurred. We watched from the sidelines
as the Latin Kings were dismantled. Over 30 members were locked away; the
result of a three year investigation. Reading through the charges they faced
and the connections to other organizations in the city, confirmed my
suspicions. Either Marco’s paranoia had paid off or he somehow learned that the
Kings were under investigation, and he knew how quickly that attention could
have been switched to us if there was one small misstep. With so much media
focus on Pennsylvania and organized crime for close to two years leading up to
and during the trial, Marco maintained a low presence. While La Costra Nostra
wasn’t gone, a lot of people thought we had faded out of existence.