Inside Out

14

Atlanta, Georgia

Monday

The guard stared out through the bulletproof glass at the attorney as though the latter were a thief come to steal the gold out of his mouth. The man before him wore a bedraggled hairpiece. Bertran Stern had a nose like a parrot's beak and sad eyes. He was stoop-shouldered and his suit coat hung on his lanky frame like a drape. Liver spots dotted the hand with which he pressed his driver's license through the slot.

“Here to see Sam Manelli,” Bertran said.

“You his attorney?”

“I am.”

“Bertran Stern?” the guard read. He looked back up and again at the license, comparing the picture against the real thing.

Stern nodded once.

“From New Orleans?” the guard said as he inspected the Louisiana license.

“Yes.”

“Manelli had another attorney here yesterday.”

“Mr. Manelli has several legal representatives. I am his private counsel.” Stern exhaled heavily. The guards always asked the same questions. He supposed it was some form of harassment, but he didn't care. He was already thinking about the trip back home, knowing he would be resummoned as soon as he settled in. He had never liked traveling and was terrified of airplanes. But he had been flying back and forth from New Orleans, ferrying messages between Johnny Russo and Sam, since the mobster's arrest two weeks earlier. Johnny had been running Sam's crime empire for five years and doing a pretty good job as far as Bertran could tell. Sam seemed pleased with what Johnny was telling the attorney and Johnny liked the messages he got back.

After a few long minutes the solid steel door slid open. A female guard led Bertran to the exercise yard reserved for maximum security prisoners.

Sam was in his early seventies but looked a decade younger. The gangster was a swarthy man, five-six, one hundred and ninety pounds, with jowls like a bulldog. His full head of gray hair was slicked neatly back, which accentuated his square skull. His meaty hands had untanned places where he usually wore his rings, and his nails were still shiny from his last manicure. He was dressed in an orange jumpsuit and plastic flip-flops and had a thirty-dollar cigar clenched between his teeth. He came at Bertran Stern like he was going to stick a shiv into his heart, his intense blue eyes ablaze.

“Follow me!” he growled. Bertran followed.

Sam headed for a concrete picnic table under a small metal shelter, but before they arrived Sam grabbed the attorney's elbow and propelled him to an exposed table standing alone in the yard.

Sam told Bertran to sit on the bench seat and planted himself on the tabletop so he could look down on him, for the psychological edge. In Bert's mind, Sam was ten feet tall.

“Music would be good,” Sam said.

“Oh, right.” Stern took a small radio out of his briefcase and turned it on to a classical station. “I guess I have jet lag. I'm getting a little old for this running back and forth.”

“You want to swap complaints?” Sam said. “I got a list long as a Jew's nose.”

“No, of course not.” Bertran was Jewish.

“You don't want to come here no more, is that it?”

“I like coming here, Sam.” Bertran's fingers were trembling. “To see you.”

Manelli clenched the cigar in the side of his mouth and spoke around it so no one could read his lips, even with binoculars, which the feds would do.

“How's my boy doing?”

“He says business is normal-nothing down at all. He has some concerns if you remain here long, but he says he'll worry about that when he has to.”

“You think he's doing good-on the level?”

“He wouldn't say something unless it was on the square.”

“And he ain't dumb.”

“I haven't seen any evidence of it.” There are far worse things than being dumb.

“Okay. What about the other thing?” Sam asked, pleased at Bert's take on Johnny.

“The guy? Johnny says it's just a matter of time until it's handled. Things are moving.”

“And as soon as it's done, I'm outta here?”

“No one to talk, no evidence but the guy's word. Yes, it's certain.”

“What about her?” Manelli said.

Stern didn't want to give Manelli bad news, but he had no choice. “She was supposed to be back in the country Saturday,” the attorney said carefully. “Johnny was at the airport personally and he said she didn't come out of the terminal and never showed up at her house. He's got someone checking there periodically, but Johnny thinks she got intercepted by the cops and might be with him someplace.”

Manelli growled, “I want her waiting for me when I get out of here. Tell Johnny I said that better be the way it is.”

The mobster's eyes grew hard, his lips rigid with fury. “I got three million reasons why they better get it done. If it don't get done, heads will boil. Make sure the old man knows that if the rat squeaks, history or not, I ain't gonna like it a lot. I want that Mick bastard in pieces so small a skinny crab would have to eat a dozen to keep his stomach from growling.”

Stern nodded solemnly.

“You just remember you said I'd be out in a few days, and here I sit two weeks later.”

“When I said that, I didn't know what they had behind the charges, Sam.” Bertran's palms felt clammy.

“By the way, how's your grandbabies doing?” Sam asked.

Bertran smiled nervously and told Sam they were all fine. Over the forty years they had been doing business, Sam had threatened his family so many times he'd lost count. But no matter how many times he had heard the question, its impact had never lessened. Bertran Stern knew that Sam would not hesitate before having Johnny Russo take a hammer to a child, nor did he doubt that Russo would welcome doing it for him.