2Donny was doing a lot of walking lately. It calmed his nerves and gave him time to think, both of which helped him sleep at night, and sleep was something he'd been dearly missing. Besides, parking in the city was an overcrowded nightmare, and he hated dealing with it. So, Donny was walking along south Third Avenue this night, hands in his pockets, hood on his head, jeans on his hips, hair in his eyes-a standard American mutt, with just a touch of the exotic in him from his mother's side: he had her black hair but his father's blue eyes. Twenty-five, athletically built, and quietly handsome, he was for all intents and purposes at the top of his game.
Unfortunately, he was also completely isolated-not counting his plentitude of "business associates"-but he didn't give this much thought. Right now, he just worked. That was all he had time for and all he could get away with caring about, and that was good enough for him, he supposed.
He worked for Sammy Montel. That was where he was headed now.
As Donny approached a club on the corner, the bouncer acknowledged him by lifting away a velvet rope. Donny breezed past the long line of rich kids trying to get in with barely a nod of recognition to the bouncer, then bypassed the throng of bumping and grinding singles within to disappear into the VIP lounge in the back. From here, he entered a small alcove containing one elevator shaft and one intercom panel. He punched the button for the elevator, but the call light didn't come on. Irritated, he punched the button on the intercom instead.
"Yeah?" asked a gruff male voice.
"It's Donny," Donny said.
The intercom clicked off, the call light clicked on. When the elevator door opened, he stepped inside and punched the button labeled PRIVATE FLOOR.
Two floors up, the pervasive thumping of dance music was drowned into silence, and Donny stepped out onto lush carpet. Here sat Luca and Paul playing cards, nonchalantly guarding the doorway behind them. Paul, the one who had answered the intercom, looked uninterestedly up at Donny, then back at his cards. Luca, however, lounging suavely in a tailored suit, took a puff from his cigarette and flashed Donny an oily smile.
"Donny," he said cheerily.
"Luca," he replied sedately as he passed them and went through the doorway.
Inside was a lavish lounge, and in the center of it, a giant leather couch facing a big-screen college basketball game. Sammy, a man in his mid-fifties with a red face, broad nose, and thinning salt-and-pepper hair, behaved as if he believed he were a man in his mid-thirties. He was reclining on the couch, wearing a satin house robe. One of his showgirls from the lounge was leaning against him, watching the game, too, but looking bored. Her hand was on Sammy's thigh, his arm around her shoulders.
"Hey, kid," Sammy said as Donny approached. He reached for the remote and muted the TV. "Success?"
Donny reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out a tiny black balloon of heroin.
"Easy," Donny said, handing it to Sammy. The girl watched the exchange interestedly.
"Me too?" she asked Sammy privately, just above a whisper. Sammy ignored her.
Donny shoved his hands back into his pockets.
"So, that it?" he asked.
"You're not stickin' around?" Sammy asked.
"Don't feel like it," Donny said.
Sammy grunted and un-muted the TV.
"You hear Turner's back on the street?" he asked.
"Well, I did now," Donny said carelessly. Sammy chuckled.
"Christ, lighten up, kid," he said. "You look like you're coming from a funeral." Donny just waited, not saying anything. Sammy met his gaze, and the mirth slowly faded from his face.
"Ah, get out of here," he said, waving him away with his free hand. Donny muttered a goodbye, irritated by the hopeful look the girl was giving him, and left.
At home in his apartment, he pulled off his jacket and hung it by the door, dropping his keys onto the hall table, and added to that the handgun he'd been carrying in the waist of his jeans. He went to the living room, leaving the lights off, and fell into his sofa, letting out a breath, glad to be alone.
After a few moments, though, he became aware of a green blinking light emanating from the bookshelf. He looked at it. It was his cell phone, letting him know he had a message waiting. He stared at it, not wanting to get up. He didn't want a message. He'd left his phone behind on purpose. He was sick of being called today.
Finally, after a solid minute of hesitation, he pulled himself up off the couch and picked up his phone. Three messages, it said. He called his voice mail.
"Donny Baby," cooed a sultry female voice at him. "Where are you? I've been thinking about you all day. Call me as soon as you can, OK?"
He deleted it. Next message.
"Donny Baby?"
"Donny Baby."
That was Stella, Sammy's daughter and Donny's de facto lover. She'd been calling since eight, and it was now eleven thirty. Donny flipped his phone shut and tossed it back onto the book shelf. He'd call her later.
He headed to the kitchen and poured himself a glass of milk. Halfway through the glass, though, his phone rang again. Rolling his eyes, he went back to the bookshelf to pick up the call.
"Hey, Stell," he said.
"Baby!" Stella said smoothly. "You've been gone forever. What've you been doing?"
"Working," he said.
"Yeah? What are you doing now?" She was being suggestive.
"I'm just sitting here at home. What are you doing?"
"Waiting for you! I've been thinking about you all day long. Come over."
Donny rubbed his eyes.
"Why don't you come over here? I just got home."
"No, my place is better," she said. "I've got it all set up." She sounded pleased with herself.
He sighed.
"All right," he said. "Be there in twenty."
"Hurry," Stella urged him. "I'm waiting for you."
"I will," he said. "See you in a bit."
"Byyye."
He flipped his phone shut and rubbed the back of his neck. Well, staying with Stella tonight wouldn't be so bad, he guessed. He went to the kitchen, rinsed his milk glass, then took his phone, his coat, his keys, his gun, and proceeded back outside.
The drive wasn't as long as he'd estimated. It was a weeknight, after all, and most people had jobs or school to go to in the morning. It had rained recently, and tail lights, billboards, and skyscrapers glistened on the asphalt of the freeway. When he pulled up at Stella's place, a nice little house uptown, he used his key to get in.
"Stell?" he called, closing the door behind him.
"Donny Baby!" Stella replied, appearing in the kitchen doorway. "God, I missed you!" She slinked over to him wearing a silky black negligee and nothing else, her streaked blond hair hanging around her shoulders. She hugged him, slipping her hands under his shirt and tracing swirls with her fingertips along his back.
"How was work?" she asked.
"Meeting a lot of your dad's new friends, lately," he said.
Stella smiled up at him, a few inches shorter than him and a few years older.
"I like it when you impress people," she said. She kissed him. "You look tired."
Donny shrugged.
"Don't get too tired yet," she said, pulling him across the room by his belt. "Come look what I did."
She led him into her bedroom, proudly, excitedly.
"Wow," Donny said when he caught first sight of it. "You renovated."
The room was completely new, from the carpet to the drapes to the paint to the hot tub set into the floor. Even the bed was new, a huge king-size with red curtains draped around it from the ceiling.
"They finished yesterday," Stella said. "Daddy paid. I spent all day decorating." She crossed to a line of candles laid out on a platter of rose petals by the hot tub. They looked like they'd been burning for an hour already. "Mood lighting and everything," she said. "Let's soak for a while, huh?"
Donny wandered into the center of the room, taking in all the scenery. He was genuinely impressed with the improvement. He'd always thought Stella's taste was a bit gaudier than this.
"Donny Baby," Stella said, and Donny suddenly felt her clutching him from behind. Her hands were already unzipping his jacket, working their way down to his belt. She was pulling him backward toward the tub.
"Stell," Donny said, putting a hand on her wrist. Stella stopped pulling and instead worked his jacket off his shoulders, tossing it to the floor. Donny turned to her. She guided his t-shirt up over his head and cast it off with the jacket, smiling serenely all the while. Donny methodically kicked off his shoes and removed his gun. Stella's hands were back at his belt, simultaneously unbuckling it and pulling on it as if it were the reins of a horse. He was being dragged to the tub again. Stella stepped backward down into the water, her calves white in the underwater glow. She wasn't letting go of him.
"Wait," he said, putting his hands on hers again, but Stella just giggled and looked up at him, pulling him in after her, jeans and all. Donny splashed in up to his knees, knowing it was useless to struggle against her. He reached into his back pocket and rescued his wallet from the chlorine before Stella could drag him all the way underwater.
"They're going to be impossible to get off now that they're wet, you know," he said to her of his jeans.
"That's what you think," she replied.
What Stella started in the hot tub eventually made its way to the bed, where the pair of them stayed until morning.
Donny woke up to the sound of buzzing somewhere in the distance. He blinked his eyes open. Stella was clinging to his leg in her sleep, all of the blankets pushed down to their feet and hanging off onto the floor. Light was glowing in the living room ahead and streaming in, yellow, from behind the heavy curtains of the bedroom window. He glanced at the clock. It was just before noon. The buzzing was coming from somewhere across the room. It was his phone, buried in one of the pockets of his jacket still lying heaped on the floor. He sat up and disentangled himself from Stella.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, he felt dizzy and tired. He rested his face in his hands for a moment before standing up. When he was ready, he crossed the room, naked and unashamed, to dig for his phone, even though it had already stopped ringing. He noticed as he passed that Stella's black negligee was sunken to the bottom of the hot tub. The candles had burned up their wicks and were now misshapen bowls of melted wax. Donny flipped his phone open.
Luca had called him twice this morning, once at nine and once just now. Donny passed a hand over his eyes, groaning internally. It was too early to be getting business calls.
There was movement behind him and the rustling of sheets. Stella moaned a little.
"Come back to bed," she said sleepily, her voice muffled by a pillow. Donny flipped his phone shut, set it on the night stand, made a quick visit to the bathroom, and then returned to the bed as Stella had commanded. He climbed under the sheet with her and she immediately found a way to wrap herself around him again, snuggling to sleep in his side. His head sunk deep into her lovely satin pillows, and he closed his eyes, easily falling back to sleep.
He wasn't sure how long it had been before he heard his phone ring again. Irritatedly, he reached out for it on the nightstand and pressed it to his ear without opening his eyes.
"Yeah?" he said gruffly.
"Donny," Luca's voice answered him coolly, "why are you so hard to get hold of before ten PM?"
Donny didn't feel like dealing with him right now.
"Why are you calling me?" he asked.
"Ah. Have a late night?" Luca asked knowingly.
"Why are you calling me?"
Luca made a little humph sound, like a laugh.
"What are you doing tonight?" he asked.
Donny didn't say anything.
"You and I are going down to Snake Morino's warehouse on Eleventh," Luca continued without an answer. "Sammy wants us to oversee a deal with a few of Snake's guys. Just a small one, so we can work together a bit before the Ngo thing. Meet me there at nine-thirty."
"Luca," Donny said, propping himself up and looking at the clock, "it's fucking one in the afternoon. Why are you telling me this now? Couldn't it wait?"
"Hadn't thought of it," Luca said, and Donny detected a hint of malice in his voice. He scowled, not sure how to take this. Luca had a habit of pushing his buttons.
"So will you be there?" Luca pressed.
"Of course I'll be there," he said deliberately. "That's my fucking job."
"Yes it is," Luca said. "I'll talk to you later, compadré." And he hung up.
That evening, when Donny pulled up to the small collection of cars waiting at the warehouse, Luca was already there, leaning against his silver sports car and smoking a cigarette. He looked at him, coolly exhaling smoke as Donny got out of his car.
"You're late," Luca smiled at him.
"I'm not late," Donny said.
"Well, you're the last one here," he said.
"Has the shipment arrived yet?"
"No."
"Then I'm not the last one here," he said.
Donny walked past him, eyeing the other cars. One was an old white pickup truck, the other a green minivan. The people Snake had working for him clearly weren't as worried about keeping up appearances as Sammy's boys were. Then again, maybe they were just being careful not to draw attention. He looked back at Luca's car, an obvious cry for attention, and suddenly felt a little ashamed of their operation. At least Donny's car wasn't obnoxious—sleek, black, and understated.
Donny saw light emanating from the partially opened door of the warehouse.
"The other guys in there?" he asked Luca.
"Yeah. Shall we go introduce ourselves?" he asked.
"Let's."
Inside were two of Snake's men, hanging out, waiting and doing a crossword puzzle. They were dressed in jeans and flannel coats and mostly needed a shave. Already Donny sensed a definite difference in general attitude between these men and his own fellow crew members. Where Sammy and his guys tended to be flashy and show offish, Snake's men gave off an air of complete casual professionalism. Donny respected them immediately and was inclined to like them more than he did his co-workers. As he and Luca walked through the door, both of Snake's men looked up to greet them. Their pistols, Donny noticed, were lying out on a spare crate on either side of a small duffel bag.
"Gentlemen," Luca said by way of introduction.
The guy holding the crossword book set it down on the crate and approached them for a handshake.
"Welcome to the party," he said sardonically, shaking Luca's then Donny's hand. He looked about forty-five and his hair was tied into a pony tail. His voice was gravelly and tinged with a city accent. "I'm Brian. This is Hank," he said, gesturing to the other man.
Hank lifted a hand in greeting, not saying anything but smiling a bit in acknowledgement. He was the younger of the two, about thirty, and had very short red-blond hair and an even shorter, scruffy beard that couldn't have had been trimmed for a few days. His face was open and honest-looking, possibly owing to his incredibly pale blue eyes. Off the cuff, Donny felt friendlier toward Hank than he did the other two.
Once Donny and Luca had introduced themselves as well, Brian explained, "So tonight's not really a big deal as far as drop-offs go. The reason we're teaming up like this, I think, is just for a little 'henchmen bonding', if you will." He grinned, clapping Donny on the shoulder in jest.
"We're like stepbrothers now," Hank said, grinning too and leaning back in his folding chair.
"Sammy keeps mentioning some deal Snake has worked out with this Vietnamese ring from the west coast," Luca said, folding his arms and looking from Brian to Hank and back again.
"The Ngo deal," Hank said.
"Yeah, but what is it?" asked Donny.
Hank shook his head, not knowing the answer. Brian said, "Snake plays his cards pretty close to his chest. If we don't need to know yet, we won't."
Donny raised an eyebrow.
"Are you serious? You work for the guy, and you don't even know what he's planning?"
"It's a delicate situation," Brian said, picking up the crossword again. "It's not like he does this all the time. Everyday business we know inside and out—like tonight, for example. Just this one thing he's keeping quiet for now. Ask me," he added a bit conspiratorially, "I think he's watching his back for cops."
Hank grunted in agreement.
"Been acting very careful lately," Brian finished.
Donny looked at Luca. He was thinking that this partnership deal might be good for them, might teach Sammy to take a page out of Snake's book. Donny always thought Sammy tended to be a little free with his information and careless with his planning. But judging by Luca's distant expression, he wasn't sure Luca had even been paying attention to the conversation.
There was the rumbling of a car engine outside.
"Sounds like our guys," Hank said, picking up his gun standing up. "You cover them with me," he told Donny while Luca joined Brian for the retrieval. Donny drew his pistol and stood near the door with Hank as Brian and Luca walked out into the darkness toward the generic white van which had pulled up in the lot outside. As they approached, the back doors of the van opened and out poured three well-dressed Mexicans, one of them actually carrying a submachine gun. From this distance, Donny couldn't hear exactly what words were exchanged, but he observed what looked like a typical smooth transaction, as was expected. Brian offered the duffel bag in exchange for a briefcase, and after a few minutes of each party inspecting the other's offering, the two groups said their farewells and the Mexicans piled back into their van and drove away.
"Got it," Brian said easily, briefcase in hand, as he and Luca returned. "A good fucking lot of cocaine," he added.
"Well, that's that," Hank said, putting away his gun. "Thanks for keeping us company, guys," he added, taking Donny and Luca's hands respectively.
"So that's it," Donny asked.
"That's it," Brian said. "We'll be in touch. Once we get this stuff cut and sorted, Snake'll calculate your cut of the profit. We're bound to see each other again soon."
The five of them made their closing remarks, said good bye, and in five minutes were each driving off to their next appointments for the night.
Donny's next appointment consisted of hitting up the toys section of an all-night department store. Tony Demarco's daughter Celia was turning five this weekend, and he needed to buy her a present.
On Saturday, Donny was sitting on the couch beside Tony, quietly observing the herd of screaming kindergartners on the living room floor as Celia, wearing bouncy black curls, tore open her presents. Since Tony's cocaine-addicted wife had run off with their savings a few months ago, Tony had hired a nanny to provide Celia's necessary dose of motherly care, and as such, he and Donny were generally freed from the obligations of supervision during the party.
Celia had already opened the present Sammy had sent her, an overlarge teddy bear now sitting to the side and collecting her many other gifts in its lap. She was now ripping apart the wrapping paper of Donny's gift, a stack of princess coloring books and an art set. Donny watched her beam at the pink, glossy book covers and show them off to the girls sitting next to her before the nanny collected them up and handed over another wrapped present.
Tony was still talking about how hard it was to raise a family these days. Donny, perhaps a bit callously, pointed out that he only had Celia, and she couldn't be that hard to provide for.
"You don't know the first thing about it, Don," Tony said, shaking his head. "The bitch runs off your money and you've got a house to pay for, a nanny, the car, food, clothes, presents. And Celia's in school this year. You know how much private kindergarten costs? Plus the dance lessons. Man, if family wasn't the single most important thing in this life, I tell ya, it almost wouldn't be worth it." He leaned back on the couch, smoking a cigar, his round belly stretching the belt of his slacks. He paused a moment. "How's your family?" he asked.
Donny shrugged, elbows on his knees.
"I haven't talked to my old man in a year," he said.
"Tsk. That's a shame," Tony said. "Ain't nothing more important than family." Then as an afterthought, "Not in this world, anyway."
Donny watched Celia squeal over a pink battery-powered, toddler-sized jeep, and the nanny herded all the kids into the back yard before she would let Celia ride it. He looked up at Tony, wondering if he wanted to go out and watch Celia try out her papa's gift, but Tony was just holding his cigar, fingers to his temple, staring thoughtfully into space.
The next evening, Donny got a call from Sammy telling him to head down to Snake's club on eleventh to pick up the money from the last deal. So Donny headed downtown.
Snake's club, a high-end hang out frequented by minor celebrities and politicians, featured valet parking. Donny had no sooner handed over his keys than there appeared at the doorway Hank, patiently waiting for him.
"Donny," Hank said as Donny approached. "Nice to see you again."
"Hank," Donny said, taking his hand. "You got the cut?"
"No, not me," he said. "Snake's waiting for you inside. He wanted to see you in person." Donny found this only slightly odd, and the twitch at the corner of Hank's mouth told him that the other man thought it interesting as well.
Hank led Donny inside into the dim lights and bumping music. A throng of dancers crowded the hardwood dance floor in the center of the room, surrounded on all sides by candlelit tables. Hank stopped him at the bar.
"Wait here a minute and I'll let him know you're here," he said.
Donny leaned against the bar as Hank disappeared down a side hallway. He looked absorbedly into the crowd of dancers, feeling as if they were a universe away. The music beat in his head until, a few moments later, a voice rose out of the din.
"Hey!" Hank was waving him over from the hallway.
Donny pushed himself up from the bar and rejoined Hank, who apologetically subjected him to a search before holding a door open and showing him into an office. Donny stepped inside, and Hank closed the door behind him, leaving him alone in the room with Snake Morino.
Snake's back was to Donny as he calmly poured himself a drink. When he turned around, it was apparent where he had gotten his nick name. In addition to a well-tailored, open-collared suit and a thoroughly clean-shaven head, the man sported a startling tattoo of a thin, black snake slithering over his right cheekbone and lunging, fangs unsheathed, toward his dark eye.
"So this is Donny Thomas," he said, looking Donny over. "I've heard about you. The word on the street is that you're the Golden Child of Sammy Montel's crew. Everyone who's met you seems to be impressed by you." Donny gazed blandly back.
"I wouldn't really know," he said. Snake regarded him curiously.
"You're younger than I thought you'd be. You even look clean. Is it true, then, that you don't use?"
"Yeah," Donny said, raising an eyebrow.
"You never have?"
"No. So what?"
"Interesting. That's just an odd trait for a man to have in this line of work." Snake's voice was very calm, controlled, formal almost. He had a tight, growling sort of voice which was oddly high pitched. "Honorable, really. Smart. No sense screwing up your mind this early in the game." He walked to the side of the room and sat down behind a large writing desk. "Take a seat," he said.
Donny took the seat across from him, casually leveling his gaze at Snake.
"What is it, exactly, that you do for Sammy Montel?" Snake asked.
Donny leaned back, folding his arms.
"Communication, mostly," he said wryly. This was the answer he gave to people outside of the crime world, if they ever asked him. He hadn't been asked in quite a long time, though. "Delivering messages, packages, picking up orders, that sort of thing."
Snake looked amused.
"Well, that explains it," he said. "You're his front man. I wonder if he knows," he added, almost to himself, "that any prestige his operation has earned lately is largely because of his choice in gofer boys."
Donny didn't know how to take this. He felt that Snake was giving him more credit than was due, and he couldn't even say that the flattery made him feel good about himself.
"And yet," Snake continued, "you managed to put down Lionel Turner just a couple weeks ago." He paused, regarding Donny calmly. "That little incident significantly screwed with a deal I was conducting with his father."
Donny paused, narrowing his eyes.
"Is that what this meeting is for?" he asked.
"No," Snake said, but he still expected an answer.
"Lionel is a bastard," Donny said offhandedly. "A couple days in bed and a black eye isn't half of what he deserves. I don't care if he is Turner's son; a man as stupid and tactless as that reflects badly on his employer, and as far as I'm concerned, if Turner doesn't have the balls to discipline him, Lionel's got a few more beatings coming. I'm sorry if his being out of commission interfered with your business."
"That's all right," Snake said. "I can afford to lose a few thousand every now and again. But I find this all very interesting. Lionel's a tough guy—not much bigger than you, maybe, but tough all the same. So what I don't understand is if you handle yourself so well in the ring, why doesn't Sammy have you doing the heavy work instead of those suits he's got?"
"It's not my thing," Donny said simply. "I'd much rather be sitting here chatting with you than out in a gang fight with some thick-headed cronies."
Snake laughed a little.
"So that's the simple answer, then. You're just too smart for that."
Donny paused.
"If I were smart," he said slowly, "I wouldn't be working for Sammy in the first place."
"Hm." Snake looked at him closely, apparently turning over a puzzle in his head, as if there were something about Donny he still couldn't quite figure out. He took a drink from his glass. "That may be true," he said, and then with an air of changing the subject, "But let's sort out this money thing, shall we? A hundred thousand straight up, your boss splits it as he sees fit." He opened a drawer in his desk as he spoke. "Large bills. We're not petty thieves here, so that shouldn't be a problem." Donny couldn't see why it would be.
Once the money was exchanged, Donny quietly made his way back out to the valet. Hank was sitting at the bar as he passed, and he invited him to a drink, but Donny didn't feel like staying. He thanked him and moved on, but Hank assured him they'd get together in the future.
A few days passed quietly, uneventfully. Stella got mad at Donny for being cold to her, but she forgave him the next night in bed. Life was progressing as it normally did. On Wednesday, Donny walked into Sammy's place and was greeted by the gang; there were five of them all together, not including Sammy—Donny, Luca, Paul, Neil, and Leonard. But things quickly ran off track when the others told Donny something which knocked him for a loop: Tony Demarco was dead. He had stolen half a million dollars from Sammy and tried to run off with it. Sammy caught him, sent Luca after him, and now he was dead.
Donny stood stone still, cold and heavy feeling. His head felt cloudy and thick.
"What?" he asked.
"Fucking took half a mil and shipped it off to Mexico," Neil repeated angrily. "How'd he even get it?" he wondered to the group. "Where the fuck does Sammy keep half a fucking millions dollars lying around so that Tony Fucking Demarco can just waltz the fuck in and dance off with it?"
"Shut your fucking mouth, Neil," Luca said darkly from the corner of the table. "I'm about two seconds away from strangling you. I'm sick of listening to your whiny voice."
"Tony and Sammy go way back," Paul provided more calmly, sagely. "Not your place to question, man."
"Yeah, well who the fuck's place is it, eh?" Leonard said, taking an angry swig from a beer.
Donny just stared at them, not really listening, not really comprehending.
"What happened to Celia?" he asked.
"Who?" Neil asked.
"His daughter, you stupid fuck," Donny snapped.
"What the?" Neil said. "Who the fuck cares, man? We're talking a half a million dollars!"
"Where's Sammy?" Donny asked. Paul jerked his head toward the living room. Donny stalked off in search of him.
Sammy was sitting on the couch, alone, the news muted on the TV, but he wasn't watching it. He was holding a scotch. Donny forgot about any sense of employee-employer propriety.
"What just happened?" he challenged. Sammy looked up at him.
"Is everyone here?" he asked.
"Yeah," he said, "and they just told me Tony Demarco is dead."
"He is," Sammy said, standing. Donny stared him down.
"You ordered a hit on Tony?" he demanded. Sammy looked at him again, this time comprehending the severity in Donny's voice. He leered at him.
"Are you dense in the head?" he asked. "Did you not hear the news? He stole five hundred thousand dollars right outta my pocket," he said. "That mean nothing to you?"
Donny couldn't believe what he was hearing.
"This is Tony we're talking about," he hissed. "Tony Demarco! You just sent his daughter a birthday present, for fuck's sake! You fucking killed him?" His voice was suddenly in a higher pitch.
Sammy jabbed a finger into Donny's shoulder.
"You don't talk to me like that, you piece of shit. Who do you think you are? This is a business we're running here. And I'm in charge. Get the fuck out there and sit down and do what I tell you to do."
Donny took a step back, scowling, fuming, personally hurt by the loss of a personal friend. He had never hated a man so much before as he hated Sammy right now.
Sammy was waiting for Donny to leave the room, to join the others. Forcing himself back into some semblance of composure, Donny slowly turned around and made his way back to the group gathered around the table. He walked right past them.
"Where you going?" Neil asked as he passed.
Donny didn't answer before he closed the door on them.
Walking along the street, he tried to bring his head back to Earth. Tony was dead, his body lying in a ditch somewhere, or tied to a sandbag at the bottom of the river, or stuffed in a trunk, or buried in a landfill; he didn't want to think about it. All he wanted to do right now was get away.
Where was his car? Where was he walking to? He stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, looking around. He'd walked this street a hundred thousand times before, but it didn't feel familiar anymore. He spotted his car across the street, another block away. He headed toward it. Someone honked at him as he crossed the street, a long, sustained beep. He shouted at the driver, the driver shouted back, then Donny passed and the driver drove on. Donny got into his car and drove the opposite direction.
He hadn't gone a mile before his phone was ringing in his pocket. It was Luca. He felt sick. Should he even answer it?
"Yeah," he said into the phone.
"Where the fuck are you going?" Luca demanded.
"Shove it, Luca," he said.
"Sammy wants us to stay here. We're meeting with Snake's guys in an hour."
Donny wanted to scream at him. He wanted to punch him in the face and strangle him.
"I'm not," he said.
"Like fuck you're not."
Donny ignored him. "I'm taking the night off," he said. "I'm going home. I'll see you tomorrow," and he hung up on Luca and turned his phone off, tossing it in the passenger's seat.
Donny had no idea what he was doing anymore. He drove with the flow of traffic without really caring where he was going, weaving between cabs and tour buses, honking at pedestrians, gripping the steering wheel so hard his hands went numb. His gut felt tight and twisted, like it had been turned upside down. His jaw hurt from clenching it. When he found himself driving by a park, he pulled over and got out.
Sammy was friend-killer all of a sudden? Luca was a friend-killer? And Donny worked for him—had gladly worked for him, for two years. He felt disgusting, like he needed a shower, like he'd just gotten off of a violent roller coaster. He walked through the park until he found a bench to sit on.
He couldn't keep his mind from turning to thoughts of the murder. How had he died? A rope around his neck, a single shot to the head, a bat against his skull until his brains speckled the pavement? What was the expression on Luca's face as he did it? What was the expression on Tony's? All Donny could see was Tony staring into space at Celia's birthday party, curls of smoke drifting up from the cigar in his hand.
Donny put his head in his hands and closed his eyes, waiting for his body to stop shaking.
The next night, when he finally turned his phone back on, he had seventeen missed calls from Luca, Leonard, Neil, Paul, Sammy, and Stella, but only one message waiting for him. It was a voice mail from Stella saying she'd heard he'd skipped out on a job. What was unsettling about it was that she was trying to comfort him, telling him she was there for him and not to be worried about the cops because Daddy looked out for his guys. She wouldn't let anything happen to him. He deleted it before the message was even over.
He was lying on his bed, staring at the ceiling, when someone started banging on his door. It was Paul and Leonard.
"Get dressed," Paul said. "We're meeting Hank for a briefing. I'm driving."
"You could have called," Donny said.
"Get dressed."
So he got dressed and let Paul drive them uptown. They parked at the edge of a junk yard in the middle of a run-down neighborhood, turned off the engine and waited. Neither Paul nor Leonard brought up Donny's absence the night before.
After a while, someone emerged from a building across the street. He stood on the sidewalk, smoked a cigarette, and went back inside.
"That's the place, right?" Leonard asked Paul.
"Mm-hm."
Donny sat in the back, arms folded, looking out the window at the building they referred to. It was a mere three stories tall, old, stone, and had some boarded up windows, mostly toward the top. It was stuck between two taller buildings, no empty space separating them, and both of the taller ones were equally as shabby. He'd never seen this place before, and he felt uncomfortably out-of-loop, which he wasn't accustomed to being.
"Snake owns this place?" he asked.
"Yeah," Leonard said.
Donny wondered why. Snake was classy and rich as hell, so why bother messing with something so grungy and out of the way? The only logical reason he could think of was that there was a lot of money in it.
A moment or two later, Hank himself came out of the same door, cautiously and apprehensively. Paul saw him and blinked the running lights once. Hank nodded, made a tiny gesture with his hand, and went back inside.
"That's us," Paul said, opening the door. The three of them got out of the car and made their way quietly into the building. Hank was waiting for them inside the door, as was Brian, sitting at a table and smoking a cigarette. There was no sign of the man they had seen earlier.
"Welcome to the establishment," Hank said lowly.
Donny became aware of a faint crying sound, like a young girl, coming from a floor above them. He darted his eyes briefly to the ceiling, his brows knit, but he didn't say anything.
"How many you got in here now?" Leonard asked, apparently having heard the crying, too.
"Four," Brian said from the table.
"Ngo's bringing six more tomorrow night," Hank explained. "It's a big drop. We'll have seven watch posts stationed all around the block," he said, gesturing in a wide circle above them, "some up high, some on ground level. Snake will be here, Ngo and a few of his boys, Montel, your guys, our guys. We gotta make it quick and quiet."
Paul nodded. Leonard grunted soberly. Donny searched Hank's face, realization seeping into him slowly, hesitantly. Hank looked worn out, a little pale, haggard. He had deep wrinkles in his forehead already, despite being fairly young. He caught Donny's eye. For a moment, some expression twitched across his face, one Donny couldn't quite read. It might have been suspicion, doubt, regret, maybe even something like a wink, like he was reassuring a friend. Donny narrowed his eyes, but Hank had already looked away.
"All right," Brian said, standing up and putting his cigarette out directly onto the tabletop. "Let's get this show on the road. Come here." He led the group into a large room at the back, empty of any furniture, then into another at the back of that. It was a kitchen, a professional kitchen, decades too old and no longer functional, but still housing a row of stoves, a grill, a dishwashing tub, and to the side, a walk-in freezer. Brian opened the door to this and showed them the contents: a small collection of automatic weapons, walkie-talkies, and a single sniping rifle.
"Tomorrow night," he said, "we meet here, we take our weapons, we go to our stations, and we wait for Ngo to drop off the girls. Anything goes wrong, the girls go in here," he jerked his thumb into the freezer. You see a cop a block away, three blocks away, I don't care, you call it in to the rest of us immediately. No shots fired unless you've got no other choice. The last thing we want is to draw attention to ourselves. Got it?"
They all agreed. Donny was a little stricken, but he understood the orders.
"That's it," Brian said forcefully, closing the door to the freezer. "We'll go over it again tomorrow before the deal goes down."
As they made their way back out into the front room, Donny heard the quiet crying again. Hank turned to Brian, "Will you tell him to shut her up?" he asked plainly.
Brian stepped into another doorway to the side, muttered something to someone unseen, and returned to the group. A door opened upstairs, the crying could be heard more clearly, then it stopped. A moment passed and the door closed again.
"What about them?" Paul asked, leaning his head to the door Brian had returned from.
"They'll be locked up," Brian said. "Don't worry about them."
Donny stared helplessly at the empty doorway leading upstairs into old hotel rooms in which four girls were being held against their will. This was sex trafficking. The words rang in his head like a foghorn, made his mind buzz. Is this what he'd become?
Paul and Leonard were moving toward the door. Donny looked once more at Hank and Brian.
"Drive safely," Brian said, touching his knuckle to his eyebrow. Donny nodded and followed the other two out.
They met up with the rest of the crew at Sammy's club penthouse.
"What are you thinking?" Donny demanded of Sammy as the others argued behind him. Donny was enraged, trembling, red-faced, pacing. Sammy stood arrogantly still, hands on his hips, eyeing Donny condescendingly.
"This is fucking crazy," Donny said, turning on him. He pointed fiercely at Sammy. "You're going too far. What's the matter with you? You don't have enough useless junk lying around already?"
"Pull yourself together, kid," Sammy commanded. "What the fuck's gotten into you?"
"Sit down, man!" Neil said, himself seated at the table, arms folded in front of him.
Donny collected himself, stopped pacing, and made fists at his sides.
"I'm not helping you do this," he stated flatly.
"Like fuck you're not," Luca barked humorously. He was leaning against a window pane behind Sammy, legs crossed, arms folded. "You think you got a choice?"
Sammy glared at Donny, as if Luca had been speaking for himself. Donny whirled around to the other guys.
"You're all seriously OK with this?" he demanded.
"Fuck, Don, it's business," Paul said. "What's your problem?"
Donny looked to Leonard, then to Neil. Neither of them seemed to share his misgivings.
"It's sick," he said, turning back to Sammy. "What are they, orphans? Little kids kidnapped from their families?"
"Sold, more like," Sammy said.
"How old are they?"
"How should I know?" he sounded irritated.
"To keep 'em locked up in some dingy old hotel," Donny ranted, his internal monologue only finding voice every now and again. "And…and use them, fucking sell them," he said vehemently, "to people like—" and he stopped, struggling. What was he going to say? People like Snake? Like Brian and Hank? Like Paul? He put a hand over his eyes, turning his face to the ground, angry, lost. "Us," he croaked, out of breath.
"Grow a pair," Luca said meanly from over Sammy's shoulder. Donny looked up, glaring vicious, dangerous daggers at him. "They're just girls who don't speak English," he smirked, "so they can't blab when you can't get it up."
The next moment, Donny was flying across the room at Luca, landing a solid, powerful right hand into his cheek. Luca hit the ground, and Donny stumbled forward, almost falling himself.
"Fucking Christ!" Luca shouted, shielding his face with one arm, but Donny didn't get another chance to attack him. Paul had him in a full Nelson before he knew what was going on, and all of a sudden, Sammy's fist was in his stomach, doubling him up, knocking him completely breathless and disoriented. Sammy grabbed his chin, lifted him back up, and struck him again across the face.
"Sit him down," Sammy shouted, and Neil scuttled up out of his chair as Paul dropped him into another one at the table. Sammy grabbed a handful of his hair and forced him to look at him. Donny didn't struggle.
"Don't act all high and mighty on me, kid," he snarled into Donny's face. "You work for me, got it? You do what I say. Does anyone here," he asked loudly, looking to the other guys, "give a fuck what Donny thinks?" Luca pulled himself up off the floor, and no one said anything. "No," he answered himself, looking back at Donny. "You got that? Fuck your fucking ideals," he continued deliberately. "You ain't got ideals. All you've got is a bunch of scared-ass, pussy-licking, pansy shit in your head, kid. You hear me? One more whiny-assed word out of you or any more twelve-year-old Superman stunts, and I'll send you in with the rest of those Vietnamese bitches so you can all cry over your poor, abused pussies together." He gave Donny's head a sharp toss backward and stood up straight. Donny's head was throbbing. Sammy allowed the silence to settle before turning back to the windows. But Donny was in quite a temper.
"Fuck you," he said.
The reaction was instantaneous. Sammy spun back around, hit Donny, and would have knocked him backward, chair and all, if Leonard hadn't been standing behind him. He pushed Leonard out of the way, slammed Donny's head onto the table, pulled out his handgun, and shoved the barrel into Donny's neck at the base of his skull.
"You say another goddamned word and I swear to God I will blow your brains out all across this table."
Donny felt blood dripping from his nose. He couldn't see clearly out of his left eye. With his temple pressed into the wood, he closed his eyes, grimacing, and didn't say anything.
"I'm warning you, kid," Sammy said dangerously, "this is not the time to be fucking with me." He put his mouth near to Donny's ear. "You think I won't do it? Try me. You cross me now, you're dead. Just like Tony."
Eventually Sammy removed the gun from his neck and took his hand off his head. Donny didn't even move this time, just sat there waiting, helpless, a horrible, ridiculous knot in his throat.
"All of you," Sammy said with authority, though his voice was quivering slightly, "will be there tomorrow. You understand?"
"Yes, sir," Neil mumbled stupidly. Sammy took a breath, paused.
"Get the fuck out of here," he said, and he walked away.
Donny heard a shuffling of feet around him as everyone collected their things and headed toward the door. He put his hands on the table and slowly, gingerly pushed himself up, ignoring the small pool of blood he left behind. Without his expecting it, Paul put a hand on his shoulder and forcibly directed him toward the door, leading him outside without saying a word. When they got to the street, Leonard was waiting by the car, and Donny was using the sleeve of his jacket to stop the flow of blood from his nose. Leonard opened the door for him, and he got in without hesitation. As Paul slid into the driver's seat, he said, "Don't get blood on the upholstery," and that was the end of their conversation for the night.
They dropped him off at his apartment, and Leonard said to him out the window as Donny crossed to the door, "I'll pick you up here at midnight, Don," and Donny lifted a hand in acknowledgement. He'd never been in such a mess before in his life. Two years ago, when he started all this, he felt like he was walking into a canyon, and the further he walked, the higher the walls got around him. He always figured he could just turn back if the walls got too high. He felt, now, like he was in the river of that canyon, and the current was whisking him uncontrollably farther and farther down. The walls separating him from the real world were so tall now that he couldn't even tell how high they reached. Worst of all, he couldn't even recall the exact moment that he had fallen in the water.
He went to his room, tossed his blood-soaked jacket in the trash, took a shower, and collapsed into bed, almost wishing he never had to wake up again.
By the time Leonard picked him up, Donny's left eye was a brilliant shade of blue-purple, and his cheekbone was cut, but at least the swelling had gone down. Leonard made no comment except to say, "Nice shiner."
At the hotel, every collected member of their two gangs slowly made their way—one and two at a time—inside, Donny and Leonard the last of them. There was quite a crowd on the ground floor, twenty men, at least. As soon as Hank saw Donny, he asked, taken aback, "What the heck happened to you?"
Donny made little reply except to clench his teeth and shake his head. He didn't want to talk about it.
The proceedings went quickly from there. Snake, dressed down from the last time Donny saw him, in jeans and a button-up shirt, reiterated the instructions Brian had given them the night before. Weapons were passed out, stations assigned. Sammy insisted Donny and Luca station together, and since Luca was a sharp shooter, they would take the precision rifle and the top floor of one of the neighboring buildings. Luca seemed pleased with his assignment. Donny just went where they told him.
As one o'clock approached, Donny and Luca sat silently in their drafty room, no lights on, the window open, watching the street below. The Vietnamese guys would be driving a black moving truck; the girls would be in the trailer.
Luca leaned against the window, carefully scanning the streets for signs of activity—cops, pedestrians, stray dogs, anything. A couple times he looked through the scope of the rifle, as if taking aim, but he never pulled the trigger. Donny watched him, thinking how idiotic it was that they had this gun in the first place. What did they plan on doing? If the cops showed up, would Luca pick them off one by one until they were all down and the boys could safely drive away? The complete idiocy of it offended him, made him unspeakably angry. He sat in his folding chair, an Uzi on his knees, and stewed.
He couldn't believe he'd gotten here, that he'd allowed himself to get in this deep. Two years ago, he didn't think that he'd soon be a big-time criminal, smuggling stolen Vietnamese girls into an old, abandoned hotel, selling cocaine, carrying a gun everywhere he went. He didn't think much of anything, back then. His mom had just died. He had dropped out of school. He was angry as hell and had no one to blame it on. He found himself brooding one night in a bar, got in a fight, and attracted the attention of Sammy Montel. It had snowballed from there, without his even noticing, without his caring.
He didn't even talk to his dad, anymore. He was a bastard for not talking to his dad. When was the last time he'd seen him? What was the last thing he'd said to him? He couldn't even remember. What on Earth ever made him think that this job was more important than the only family he had left?
Ain't nothing more important than family, Tony had said.
And now Tony was dead. So what was going to happen to Celia? She was practically an orphan now. Would they track down her mom and hand her over to the cocaine addict? Would they put her in an orphanage? Did she even have any other family who could take her in? Donny didn't know, but the whole situation screamed unfairness at him. Who was Sammy to kill the loving father of a little girl? Who was Donny?
"They're here," Luca said at the window. Donny looked up. Luca adjusted himself into a better position for aiming, should the need arise. In the glow of the street lamps below, Donny could see the small bruise on Luca's cheek from where he had punched him last night. Luca grinned to himself, watching the street, and the sight made Donny's stomach turn. He stood up and went to the window, looking down at what Luca saw.
There was the black truck and trailer, stopped just outside the hotel door. The night was very still and quiet, and there was no movement on the street at all. The truck's headlights were out, and Donny could just barely make out a pair of hands on the steering wheel from this height. Sammy appeared on the sidewalk, along with two of Snake's men, and quickly, in perfect orchestration on the part of the Vietnamese, the doors of the trailer opened, a petite girl in a shawl and sweat pants, black hair tied in a pony tail, was lifted down to the street from inside the trailer, and Snake's boys escorted her fluidly inside, as if conducting a dance. The doors of the trailer closed. A car two blocks away passed, squealing faintly. As soon as it was gone, the dance was repeated and another girl escorted in. Two more girls quickly followed before Donny had to put his hand on the window sill to keep himself standing up straight.
He couldn't stand this! Those girls looked thirteen. He kept trying, but he couldn't justify this to himself. Pushing cocaine was one thing—drug use was a victimless crime, he reasoned, as was prostitution—but then he couldn't account for prostitutes who were being held against their will, forced to work and forced to give their money to the men who employed them. Forget their age; it didn't matter; this wasn't what he signed up for.
He scanned the street, hoping futilely for a solution to appear to him. There had to be something out there that could put a stop to this, reverse the deal, convince the guys that this was all a mistake—the wrong night, the wrong hotel, the wrong people. Take them back, Donny thought. Let's go back to the way it was.
What an idiot he was, though. He was acting like a twelve-year-old, just like Sammy said. Who on the street, short of a fucking SWAT team, could make this go away? That wasn't how the world worked. This was how the world worked, with Donny and Luca in this room, covering a bunch of shivering girls with an assault rifle.
Something in Donny's head clicked, snapped, broke.
"Luca," he said, "give me your gun."
"Wha—?" Luca said, darting him a confused look. Donny was holding the Uzi in both hands, gazing coldly, stoically at Luca. In a split second, he shoved the butt of the weapon into Luca's nose, knocked him and his carefully-positioned rifle clattering to the ground.
"The fuck?" Luca groaned distortedly, writhing on the floor, his face gushing blood. Donny felt a thrill of anger rush through him. How many times since meeting him had he wanted to just haul off and punch Luca in the face? Too many to count. He felt like now was the time to make up for all those wasted opportunities. He steadied himself, caught Luca's watery eye, and kicked him hard in the face. Luca made a little grunting sound on the impact and stopped moving completely. For an instant, Donny thought he might have killed him, but his panic subsided as he watched Luca's chest continue to rise and fall with his breathing. Donny rolled him over onto his stomach, out of the way of the window, blood still pouring from his face, and picked up the rifle.
He almost didn't know what he was doing anymore. He had acted as if he had a plan, some logical end he was working toward, but really, he thought, he was just going to be the bringer of chaos. He wanted so badly for the cops to show up, but he'd settle for a diversion, something to cripple this deal and buy him enough time to escape. He put the rifle back on the window sill, pointed it down toward the truck, and looked through the scope. Two shots, he thought, ought to do it.
He aimed and fired, the sound ringing and deafening in the stillness of the night, and one of the front tires of the truck was blown to pieces. He barely caught a glimpse of the guys on the street ducking suddenly, in surprise, for cover. The last girl had just been shown in. Donny aimed again and fired, blowing out the rear tire of the trailer. The guys on the street were shouting now. The truck tried to pull away, but in his hurry and with limited steering, the driver ended up smashing the front end into the car parked a few yards in front of him. Suddenly, from out of the darkness across the street, another shot rang out and the wall of the building beside Donny's window exploded into a little burst of powder.
"Fuck!" Donny said, dropping the rifle on the floor and darting toward the door. He was fucking dead if he didn't get out of there now.
He ran into the hallway and flew down the stairs. He was five stories above the roof of the hotel. If he hurried, he might be able to make it onto the roof and down the fire escape in back before anyone on the ground got organized enough to come after him. One, two, three, he counted.
As he rounded the corner to head down the next flight, though, he heard footsteps below, racing up to him.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck," he said, throwing open a door and running into a hallway. He could see the roof of the hotel from here, two stories down now. This hallway ran along the outside edge of the building, lined with tall, arched windows. He supposed it had once been an office building. It didn't matter, he thought, racing toward the back of the building, toward the alleyway. He had to find another staircase and get out of here.
When he reached the end of the hallway, though, he found himself at a dead end, windows on one side, offices on the other, solid wall before. He spun around, starting to feel truly panicked now, wondering if he had a chance in hell of making it back down the staircase unnoticed. Without having much other choice, he trotted back down the hallway in the direction he'd come, trying to be as quiet and quick as possible.
Four yards away from his destination, the door suddenly flew open and there in the doorway stood Sammy, seething.
"You little fuck!" Sammy shouted, pointing a semi-automatic at him. Donny barely had time to react, hitting the floor as a bullet whizzed by overhead. He scrambled into an empty office as Sammy fired another badly-aimed shot.
"I'm gonna fucking kill you," Sammy declared, following Donny into the room. It was dark, nearly impossible to see in, and there were chairs and boxes stacked in the corners. Donny squatted behind one of these stacks and prayed to God Sammy didn't shoot him.
"Where are you?" Sammy demanded, storming into the center of the room, waving his gun around clumsily in his fury. Donny's eyes were adjusting. He could see the gun in Sammy's hand, the one closest to him. If he wanted to get out of here alive, it was now or never. He shot out from a corner by the door and tackled Sammy to the ground. Another shot was fired, barreling into the boxes from which Donny had just come. He found the gun and wrestled it from Sammy's grasp. Sammy kicked him off, but Donny had the gun and was closest to the door. He scrambled up and back out into the hallway, Sammy not far behind.
Donny ran toward the stairs, but he was overbalanced, his momentum acting against him. He stumbled and nearly tripped over himself, but he made it to the door. As he yanked it open, however, Sammy caught up with him and grabbed him by the collar of his shirt. Without thinking, Donny tossed the gun into the center of the stairwell, down the center of the spiral, sending it sailing into the void, knocking against the railings and clattering down multiple flights of stairs. Sammy pulled him back into the hallway and threw him against the wall.
Donny fought back, swinging at Sammy's head, but Donny was terrified and Sammy was furious, and anger had more clarity. Donny missed his target, and Sammy overpowered him. He pressed his forearm into Donny's throat, pinning him and choking him.
"You're dead, you stupid cunt," Sammy spat at him, then punched him solidly in the face. Donny staggered to the side, free of the wall, but Sammy already had hold of him again. He grabbed Donny's jacket, swung him around, and tossed him, full-force, into the line of windows.
In a moment suspended in time, Donny saw the old, grimy glass rushing toward his face, and he turned away from it, putting his back toward it instead. He felt the glass crack and give behind him, felt Sammy let go of his jacket, and then felt the rush of outside air as he passed through, feet no longer on the ground, a sparkling, ringing shower of glass falling around him. His stomach lifted up into his chest, he reached forward as if to catch himself, kicked his legs as if to find footing, but he was well out of reach of anything that might save him. A second passed, then a half second, and crunch, he landed on the roof of the hotel, his entire body screaming in a pain that made his head spin. With a scrambled roaring in his ears, he would have screamed but instead fell into oblivion.
Some time later, he woke up. He was bleeding, he didn't know from where, but he could feel the wetness of it, the warmth leaking out onto his skin and the cold taking over inside. His leg was twisted painfully, his arm thrown out at a strange and discomforting angle, but he couldn't move or adjust himself because he simply didn't have the strength. His head felt heavy, lolling back onto the floor of the roof. He gazed dumbly up into the smoggy gray haze of the sky, into the silence. After a minute, at the corners of his vision, he became aware of a flashing blue-white-red, blue-white-red cycling and spinning in the dark.
All at once, he realized it was the police. There were cars on the ground, their lights flashing. So they had shown up after all.
"Fuuuck," he moaned pathetically, in agony, pain, and defeat. The police were here? That didn't even make sense. How had it happened, how long had it taken? But his brain didn't want to comprehend. He thought, vaguely, that he wanted to look up and see the black, jagged hole of the window he'd fallen through, but he couldn't find the strength to maneuver through the pain.
He waited weakly in a horrible, unbearable stillness until at last another person appeared—a whole team of them, in fact—crouching beside him, shining lights into his eyes, asking his name, and strapping him onto a stretcher. After that, he was done with consciousness. The EMT's could wrap him up and bandage him all they liked, but he was in too much pain to be awake for it.
The next thing he remembered clearly, he was alone in a room in a hospital bed. His leg was broken, his arm was broken, he was on intravenous painkillers, and he was under arrest. His good hand was handcuffed to the bed.
The police had told him that the rest of his gang had been apprehended. The Vietnamese girls, all ten of them, had been rescued from the brothel and were now safe. Sammy and Snake were both in police custody. Ngo, the Vietnamese ringleader, had escaped, but they had captured most of his men.
"Great," Donny had said. So the police had had a heyday. Congratulations on pulling it off.
Now there was a cop standing over him, very sober, very official, some higher-up guy who was in charge of the case or something. Donny didn't really care.
"Officer Connelly has pleaded your case to us," he was saying, "and spoke highly of your character. You might not know how much of a compliment that is, all things considered," he said.
"Officer Connelly?" Donny asked.
"Hank Connelly," the cop said. "He was working undercover in Snake Morino's gang. He thinks pretty highly of you."
Hank Connelly. Donny couldn't believe it. That bastard was a cop the whole time and never said a word, never once let on, just ran with them and let the whole thing go to shit. So that's how the heyday was instigated.
Donny shook his head, surprised he still had it in him to smile.
"You'd better be giving that guy a fucking medal," he said to the cop.
The cop paused. "We are," he said seriously.
Well, that was good, Donny thought.
"Listen, Donny," the cop said, pulling up a chair and sitting by Donny's bed, "you're in a lot of trouble. You and everyone you know. Snake Morino, Sammy Montel, a dozen of their guys—they're all going to prison for a very long time, I think. And you are, too, unless we can do something about it now."
Donny looked at him.
"What do you mean?" he asked.
"Officer Connelly has recommended you for consideration for the Witness Protection Program. How this works is, you testify for us—give names, information, that sort of thing, in court—and we get you out of town, get you a new name, a new life, and—good for you—no jail time."
Donny stared at the guy, dumbfounded.
"You're serious," he asked.
The cop nodded.
"It's a process," he warned, "and it's a serious commitment. This is for people whose lives might otherwise be in danger. Ngo's still out there, after all, and who knows how many other gang bangers who don't think too highly of you anymore. I don't expect you to be able to answer right now, of course, but you should give it some thought. I'll get some guys in here to meet with you, explain the particulars. But right now, you should be thinking about it. Think of the good you could do, helping us solidify a case against these guys."
Donny didn't know what to think exactly, but it felt like something very much along the lines of yes.
The end.
Thank you for reading.