Chapter 6 - The Trap on the Canal
The Calumet River canal at midnight was a landscape of rust, stagnant black water, and the skeletal iron frames of abandoned shipping cranes. The warehouse had once been a salt storage facility, its air still thick with the corrosive, sharp scent of sodium that made the tongue taste like metal.
Two black Suburbans parked inside the cavernous, concrete interior, their headlights cutting through the swirling dust and river mist. I sat in the rear seat until Victor opened the door, my long black wool overcoat unbuttoned, my hands free.
Dominic Calvetti was already there, sitting on a rusted folding chair beneath a single halogen work light hung from the rafters. He looked his seventy-two years tonight. His hair was a thin fringe of white, his breathing heavy through a nasal cannula connected to a portable oxygen tank at his side. But he wasn't alone. Standing behind him, his arms crossed over a designer leather jacket, was his son, Santino.
Santino was thirty-four, possessed of the dangerous, shallow confidence of a man who had inherited wealth but had never had to kill to keep it. A thin, arrogant smirk sat on his face as I walked into the circle of light.
"Alessandro," Dominic said, his voice a dry rattle. He didn't rise. "You look well for a man who hasn't been sleeping. My son tells me your logistics trucks have been rerouting away from the Calumet docks since Tuesday. We thought you were losing your appetite for the shipping business."
"My appetite is fine, Dominic," I said, stopping ten feet from the chair. Victor and four of my men fanned out behind me, their hands clear of their jackets but their weight shifted onto the balls of their feet. "I brought you here to discuss an asset allocation issue. Your son has been spending family money on private investigators in Rosemont."
Dominic’s eyes flicked up to his son, a sudden, sharp flash of irritation crossing his ancient features. "Santino? What is he talking about?"
Santino stepped forward, his smirk widening into a grin that showed too many teeth. "He's talking about his ex-wife, Dad. The beautiful Isabel Archer. The woman he divorced three years ago because he couldn't get her pregnant. Turns out, she’s been living in Lakeview. And she’s got two little boys who look exactly like the Rienzi portraits in the old house on Cicero Avenue."
The silence that followed was absolute, save for the low hiss of Dominic’s oxygen tank.
"You think you're clever, Alessandro," Santino sneered, taking another step toward me, entirely misinterpreting my stillness for shock. "You hid them well. But Leo Archer’s gambling habit gave us the key. You want those docks on the river? You want the council votes for the new distribution corridor? You’ll sign fifty percent of the logistics company over to the Calvetti trust by Friday morning, or those two boys are going to have a very short first year at Holy Trinity."
I didn't look at Santino. I kept my eyes fixed on Dominic, the old man who had watched his own brothers die in the street during the wars of the nineties.
"Dominic," I said softly, the tone almost conversational. "Did you know your son was going to threaten my children?"
Dominic looked at his son, then back at me, his old, withered hands beginning to tremble against the arms of the folding chair. He saw the expression in my gray eyes—the absolute, dead emptiness that meant the calculations had already been completed and the sentences had already been passed.
"Santino," Dominic whispered, his voice cracking with sudden, desperate terror. "Shut your mouth. Shut your mouth right now."
"Dad, what are you talking about?" Santino laughed, turning to his father. "We have him! He’s a sterile freak who finally got a baseline! He’ll sign whatever we—"
The sound of my custom Kimber .45 clearing its leather holster was a whisper compared to the thunder that followed a millisecond later. The round struck Santino square in the center of his throat, obliterating his windpipe and severing the carotid artery before he could finish the word freak.
He stumbled backward, his hands flying to his neck as his eyes widened with a sudden, shocked realization of his own mortality. He hit the concrete floor with a heavy, wet thud, his legs twitching once before his designer leather jacket began to soak in the dark crimson of the Calvetti line.
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Dominic let out a broken, whistling gasp, his body shaking as he looked down at his only son bleeding out in the dust.
"You broke the rules, Dominic," I said, lowering the weapon but not holstering it. "You let your line touch mine. Victor, clear the warehouse. Dominic is going to sign the west side territory over to our captains tonight, or he’s going to join his son in the river before the sun comes up."
