The Mark

39

Angelo “Blanket” Pineiro admired the room, one of the few times in recent memory he’d had time to fully soak it in. He listened closely when their man made contact, but he soon found his mind wandering. He scanned the gorgeous oil portraits of Michael’s family that lined the cherry-red walls, the lineage dating back multiple generations. There was something romantic about them, and Blanket hoped one day he’d be remembered like that, having lived a life worthy of such a painting. Surely he was on his way.

With its high windows, marble columns and authentic Persian rugs, Michael DiForio’s penthouse was truly a museum of modern art. Blanket watched the man himself, sitting in his Salerno leather chair, eyes staring up at the ceiling as if waiting for divine intervention. The voices over the phone were full of static, barely understandable. When the line went dead, Blanket waited for Michael’s response. He received only silence.

“You hear all that, Mike?” Blanket could almost see the gears turning in Michael DiForio’s head. No doubt the police would be at the scene in mere minutes, forget the fact that the goddamn loose cannon Barnes was nowhere to be found. Blanket knew Barnes as well as a man could know a ghost. The killer was a thoroughbred, unstoppable, and a hugely valuable asset when his blinders were on. But somewhere along the line he’d run off the tracks. To Barnes, recovering the package now seemed incidental, and that was the problem.

“Call the Ringer,” DiForio finally said, rising up and striding around the ornate wooden balustrade. “I want to give that asshole one last chance.”

Blanket could see the man’s knuckles were white from gripping the chair. He knew how badly Michael needed that package, how much time and money had been spent accumulating the treasures inside. If it fell into the wrong hands, it could set operations back years, maybe decades. Michael would lose his best-perhaps his only-chance to own this miserable city.

Fucking Gustofson. Guy’d been on his last legs when DiForio bailed him out with that assignment. Then the junkie fuck went and blew it all in spectacular fashion. For whatever reason, the middleman-Luis Guzman-never received the album. Now John Fredrickson was dead and a shit storm the size of the tri-state area looked ready to rain down at any moment.

“Boss, you want me to take some guys down to that building, try to find Parker?”

Michael shook his head, his eyes still closed. “By the time you get there, the building’ll be swarming with cops and Feds. If we just send Barnes, at least there’s a chance for him to slip in and slip out. Your crew? Like a bunch of retarded children trying to work a bulldozer.”

Blanket held his hands out, pleading.

“Mike, I don’t think Barnes still has his heart committed to, you know, the cause. I think he wants Parker dead, and I don’t think our package is on his list of priorities anymore.”

DiForio ran a hand through his hair. Blanket considered Michael’s thoughtfulness a source of pride for the whole organization. To have an impetuous leader was to have a leader without a plan, without a vision, and any organization led by that example was doomed to failure. And Michael, he always had a plan. This situation, though, couldn’t have been foreseen.

The plan should have been foolproof. The Guzmans had never missed a drop. Hans Gustofson was a rung away from the bottom and malleable. John Fredrickson was as loyal an employee as they got. Parker was the wild card they never could have anticipated. And in good wild-card fashion, he’d fucked everything up. A precision watch smashed into tiny bits by an invisible hammer.

Michael’s eyes suddenly locked on Blanket.

“Send four men to that building on East 80th. I want them to do everything possible to get to Parker before the cops do. And tell them to keep an eye out for Barnes. No telling what that man’s capable of.”

“You got it, Mike.” Blanket turned to leave.

“Wait, Angelo.”

Blanket spun around. “Yeah, Boss?”

“Make sure the four you send are expendable.”