Inside Out

21

Atlanta, Georgia

Sam Manelli had the patience of a python coiled in the shade. He sat on the edge of his mattress with his feet on the floor of his cell. It was cool enough that he had been tempted to drape the wool blanket over his shoulders, but he couldn't let anyone think of him as weak.

Sam had no regrets. Everything he had ever done was necessary to build and maintain his business interests. He had successfully defended his world from any and all comers, and he hadn't done it by showing compassion.

So much for his golden years of rest and relaxation. He had never been as focused on anything as he was on erasing Dylan Devlin from the face of the earth. The 3 million dollars Herman Hoffman had requested for taking Devlin out was chump change considering what was at stake. Sam would have given far more, and gladly. Devlin could steal from him the one thing Sam Manelli valued more than anything-his freedom.

Sam heard the sound of approaching footsteps and braced himself. A young guard with a blond crew cut stopped at the door and peered inside at him. Sam stared back, keeping his expression neutral. The guard took his hand out of his pocket and held out a small black object. Sam slipped from the bed, crossed to the bars, and took it.

“This is yours from midnight until two A.M.,” the guard said in a whisper, even though the cells on either side of Sam were unoccupied. “It's totally safe to use.”

Sam nodded. The guard walked away.

He sat on the cot, punched in the numbers, and pushed SEND. After two rings a familiar voice answered.

“It's me,” Sam said in a low voice. “You sure this thing's clean?”

“Squeaky,” Russo said. Sam didn't believe any electronic conversation was safe. He'd been speaking face-to-face and in code for so long he didn't know how to say anything incriminating.

“So, how's things?”

“I had a red thing leak dye in the washer ruined the gowns,” said Johnny.

Sam's heart sped up. Someone was stealing. “Red thing leaking dye” was the code for red ink-someone skimming. Gown was high-dollar prostitution.

“I'm gonna bleach it out tonight.”

“Is the old man cleaning the pool?” He was referring to Herman Hoffman.

“His boys are handling it. Soon as I know how it looks I'll let you know.”

“Good.”

“Can't wait to see you back home.”

“You and me both,” Sam replied grimly. He pressed the END button.

Johnny Russo was family by his marriage to Sam's niece, but Sam had known Johnny for all of the young man's thirty-nine years. He had stood as Johnny's godfather, and even though he wasn't a religious man, had taken that responsibility to heart. Johnny's father, Richie Russo, had been Sam's chief enforcer, a man he had been close to since his childhood. Richie had died in a warehouse fire when Johnny was ten. From that day on, Sam had sent Richie Russo's wife a nice monthly check and called it a pension. It was just a necessary business expense. He had genuinely cared about Richie, but Johnny had not made it into the son-he-never-had category.

When Johnny was fourteen, Sam had hired him to work at one of his amusement companies, beginning with odd jobs and granting him more responsibility as he grew older. Johnny had been a polite kid, a hard worker who never made the same mistake twice. Always smiling, always ready to show Sam that he wanted to learn more. Sam's father had trusted only Italians, but Sam had discovered that limited business. Sam had ways of determining who was trustworthy, who would keep the necessary secrets and remain loyal. “Family” was a relative term, and ethnic lineage didn't ensure omerta. Sam had a system of rewards and punishment, both of which had to remain certainties in an uncertain world.

Johnny ran the rackets effectively, but Sam had stayed on top of the business, making sure things ran smoothly under Johnny's care. The trust Sam had in the young man hadn't come easy. He had set a hundred traps over the years, hoping he wouldn't catch Johnny taking advantage of him, and, to his amazement and delight, he never had. Sam had rewarded Johnny by degrees, turning over more and more of his crime enterprise to his protege, until he was competent enough to handle the day-to-day demands. From the start, Johnny had handled Sam's business and dealt with Sam's enemies like they were his own. Sometimes Johnny could get carried away with the violence, but a man's reputation was what kept people in line.

Sam paid millions each year to the people who would otherwise arrest him and to those who knew when there was an imminent threat from law enforcement. The feds had never found enough evidence on Sam to secure an indictment, and the locals feared losing his largess. The authorities had snagged members of his upper-level management over the years, but between lawyers, friendly judges, missing evidence, witnesses with failing memories, and bribed or frightened jurors, most walked away relatively unscathed. Those who went to jail did easy time, and Sam saw to it that their families never went hungry.

Two years back, Sam had completely turned over the day-to-day operations to Russo, advising him when things started to slip. He knew that, regardless of who was in charge, the business would never be what it had been in his day. But there would be plenty to go around if Johnny could hold off the ethnic gangs and freelance criminals. As long as Sam was the gold backing Johnny's promises, Russo was relatively safe. But alliances like the one with Herman Hoffman that Sam, and his father before him, had forged would end with Sam's passing, and it would be up to Johnny to cut new deals and make his own allies in order to hold on to the rackets.

What nobody except Sam and Johnny knew was that two years before, a doctor had discovered that Sam had cancer in a place nobody should get cancer. It had been growing for a while, and taking it out was impossible. The doctor, a man Sam owned, had explained it in simple terms. The cancer was growing slowly, but with insidious intent. He told Sam that he might live longer with radiation, but he would be bald and feel awful. That was impossible because as soon as Sam's enemies saw him deteriorating, they'd run in and gobble up his empire faster than Johnny could deal with them. Such was the way of nature. Survival would be Johnny's problem alone and he would have to sink or swim. Sam wasn't afraid to die, but the old gangster drew a line at dying in a cage like a rat somebody forgot to feed.

Sam hoped there was a heaven. If there was a heaven, there was a hell. If hell existed, a lot of people he knew would be there. The first thing Sam was going to do when he got down there was hunt down that bastard Dylan Devlin and show those demons running the joint what real torture looked like.