The Passion of Johnny Vallone

~ 1 ~

There were hardly any cars on the street. It was too early for most people to be up and about, so hardly anybody saw the sleek black Camaro cruising down Yonge Street toward the Catholic cemetery and turning in. 

The Camaro drove deep into the cemetery, mostly shaded by the lush July foliage. After a few moments, the car stopped and a man in his late twenties got out. He was wearing dark glasses and dressed casually in denim and cotton. His hair was long and dark and wavy. His skin was dark, because of his Sicilian ancestry. His body was thin but muscular. In his right hand, he carried a single red rose.

He walked across the grounds until he came to a particular tombstone. It read “Carmine Vallone. Son of Alfredo and Maria, Brother of Johnny and Constance. Gone too Soon. 1997-2021”.

Johnny Vallone laid the rose on the front of the gravestone. He then sat down on the grass and stared at the stone. He removed his glasses to reveal that his eyes were brown with dark rings below them. 

“I’m so sorry Carm.” Johnny said softly. “I’m sorry that I never saw this comin’.” 

Johnny rubbed his face and pushed back his long hair. He shook his head and took a deep breath. Slowly he got to his feet. He leaned forward and touched the gravestone. Then he turned and walked back to his car.

Johnny Vallone was the oldest of the two sons of Alfredo and Maria Vallone. The Vallones were a family who lived in Newmarket, Ontario. Alfredo Vallone was the owner of Vallone Construction, which was one of the area’s largest builders of single-family homes. Their developments were mostly along the section of Yonge Street corridor that ran from the northern edge of the city of Toronto north to Orillia.

Johnny was the oldest and was expected to inherit the family business as soon as Alfredo decided to pull the plug and retire, which was still a good decade away. But Johnny didn’t want to be in the business. His father had gifted him 10% of the company’s profits on his eighteenth birthday and that had paid for his college tuition and then accumulated to the point where he now had a few million being managed by the family’s accountant and investment advisor, Rino Palma.

Johnny attended Ryerson University and majored in English and Journalism and had for the past five years, been freelancing for a publication called Crime & Criminals, where he did a little bit of everything, mostly editing and profile pieces, while he learned how the business worked. His ultimate goal would be to write a best-selling crime novel and join the ranks of the late Elmore Leonard, Michael Connelly and John Sandford. Johnny considered working at the magazine nothing less than practice. But Johnny had another passion as well and it had a lot to do with avenging the drug related death of his younger brother, Carm.

~ 2 ~

Johnny lived in the city in an area called The Beaches, in the second story of a duplex. His downstairs neighbours were a young couple, advertising people, who worked very long hours downtown, so life was pretty quiet in the building.

Crime & Criminals was located on the second floor of the old CITY TV building on Queen Street, right in the heart of downtown, and a fairly quick drive from Johnny’s flat, so unlike most downtown workers, Johnny didn’t have to fight the insane traffic in downtown Toronto, which was fine with him.

When Johnny arrived at the office that day, he saw a message taped to his phone from his editor, Jack Creighton. Johnny went straight to Creighton’s office and sat cooling his heels in the reception area. He was scribbling in a notebook and looking at his watch. People came and went. Suddenly, Creighton, the senior editor, poked his head out of the glass door behind the receptionist’s desk.

“Vallone, get your ass in here.”

Johnny jumped up, crossed the reception area and entered the office. Creighton was already behind his desk. He was a middle-aged guy who was kind of high-strung. He wore dress shirts and suits but never any tie. Most of his hair was gone but he was one of those guys who just shaved it all off instead of looking stupid by trying to comb over what little was left.

There was a thin folder in front of him. Sorry, but this story is unprintable.” Creighton said.

“That’s bullshit.  I can substantiate every line, every goddamn word, I guarantee it.” 

“You can’t kid a kidder, John. There’s just too much hearsay, no sources, nothing but a lot of speculation and urban legend. Now, I’m thinkin’ back to a meeting we had about what, a month ago when you told me all about how you were all over this designer drug thing. How you knew a guy who could get you beside the man. Now that’s the kind of stuff that earns you the big bucks and the big awards, John.  But, I’m thinkin’ eight weeks later and I’m reading this stuff and you know what I’m doin’?

“What are you doin’?”

“I’m struggling to stay awake, John.  I’m thinking, there’s more excitement in the old folks home where my dad lives than there is in the criminal underworld according to Johnny Vallone.”

“Fine, you don’t appreciate all the preliminary spadework I’m doing while I’m busting my ass to get to the source, then screw you. You’re not the only game in town.”

Johnny grabbed the folder and headed for the door. Creighton sat down and rubbed his shaved skull.

“Wait a minute, kid”

“What?”

“I appreciate where you’re going with this story. I really do.”

“But?”

“But you have to admit, it’s taking you quite a while to get there.”

Johnny came back and sat down. “You know, these things don’t happen by some clock. They happen by me being in the right place at the right time. Like with a certain dealer of my acquaintance, who may just be goin’ to a party in the next little while, and may be willin’ to let me tag along.  Maybe, if I’m lucky. You need some cred or some connection to get into these things. ‘Cause the people on the other side are paranoid as hell.”

“Maybe…if you’re lucky?” Creighton said. 

“These people aren’t exactly looking for publicity.”

Creighton leaned back in his chair, exasperated. “You fuckin’ kids are all the same.”

“Look around you, Mr. Creighton.  Us fuckin’ kids are keepin’ the store open.”

Johnny got up and walked out of the office.

~ 3 ~

It was just after dark in Buffalo, New York. Tina Francona and Raphael Sanchez were driving into the downtown area from the airport. 

Tina was a good looking brunette and Raphael, a dark skinned handsome Mexican American.

Tina had picked him up on his way back from Miami. In the backseat was a canvas backpack filled with vials of a designer drug called Hellboy. 

Hellboy was a derivative of OxyContin that produced mild hallucinations. The backpack was stuffed with about 1000 small baggies each containing 120 pills, which Raphael purchased for $1 per pill. He would re-sell them at six dollars each and the poor fool on the street would pay anywhere from twelve to fifteen dollars per pill. 

Raphael’s profit on this load would be $600,000. He made at least twenty trips to Miami a year, which created a gross annual profit of about fourteen million. The cash from his sale was in a large Chubb safe that he kept in a corner of his basement. Every week, he deposited a couple thousand into a chequing account at the Royal Bank in Stoney Creek and used that account to pay his household bills. The safe now had close to eight million in it, and a safe deposit box at a BankAmerica in Miami had another fifteen or so million in cash which he had transferred from Canada, and diamonds and bearer bonds which he had purchased in the US, all of which was not bad for five years of fairly easy work. His only business expenses were the suites at the various hotels where he held his buying sessions, his two bodyguards, and whatever he needed to keep his house and cars going. He was very well organized in that regard.

They stopped for dinner at a nice family restaurant on Main Street, just killing time. They then cruised west toward the river. The sun had set about an hour before. It was mid-summer. The night air was warm on their faces as they drove the Jeep passed the entrance to the Black Rock Rail Yard.  Two hundred yards further down the road, the Jeep stopped and Raphael got out. He hoisted the backpack onto his back. He disappeared into some bushes beside the fence that surrounded the railway yard.  

Raphael made his way into the railway yard through a hole he had cut in the fence five years earlier. In the distance, the sound of a shunting train could be heard.  

Raphael jogged around the perimeter of the train yard, keeping to the shadows. He eventually came to the beginning of a train bridge, and ducked down toward the river to wait for the train to start moving. The bridge spanned the Niagara River from Buffalo to the town of Fort Erie on the Canadian side. He watched two railroad cops as they walked down the line of cars on the outbound freight train. The train began to move. In a quick, easy, well-practiced maneuver, Raphael ran alongside the train and hopped into a gondola car.  The train pulled out of the yard and across the International Bridge into Canada.

On the Canadian side of the Peace Bridge. The Jeep, with Tina at the wheel, passed through the customs booth and turned north into the town of Fort Erie. It picked up the river road, which was called Niagara Falls Boulevard and moved through the sleepy town. It passed under the train bridge and along another hundred yards or so where it turned onto a large pier and parked by the river. Tina got out and waited for the train to come across the bridge.  She lit a cigarette and rolled her neck a couple of times to loosen up.  After she finished her cigarette, she got back into the car. She backed it up to the top of a long steep grade that came up from the river below.

About ten minutes later she saw the train. A few minutes after that, Raphael, puffing heavily, opened the rear hatch and tossed the backpack inside. He then opened the door and flopped into the front seat. Tina started the car and pulled out onto the River road.  They drove through the small town and then picked up the Queen Elizabeth highway which took them home.

“You know, Raffi.” Tina said. “For the life of me, I can’t understand why you insist on doing this yourself. Mules are a dime a dozen.”

“You’re missing the point, Tina. This is the fun part of the operation. The rest is just hard labour dealing with all those asshole dealers.”

“Whatever floats your boat, I guess.”

~ 4 ~

At a restaurant near Coxwell and Gerrard Streets, Johnny sat in a booth, not too near the front, nursing a coffee. On the table in front of him was a small pad with scribbled notes.  He fooled around with his pen and looked at his watch. The waitress came over with a pot of coffee and refilled his cup.  As she turned to leave, a handsome man a few years older than Johnny appeared.  His name was Lou.  He was wearing a tan summer weight suit and sporting a large diamond pinkie ring.  He slipped into the booth opposite Johnny.  He raised his hand to the waitress and pointed at Johnny’s cup.

“Nice suit, Luigi.”

Lou ran his hand along the lapel. “You like it?  I got it over Rocco’s.  Some guys can buy off the rack…me, I gotta have Rocco tuckin’ those darts just right.”

The waitress brought Lou a cup of coffee. He gave her a wolfish smile. Lou was convinced he could charm the pants off any lady he met. “Listen, how’s everybody at your place?”

“Good as can be expected. Connie’s takin’ it pretty hard. Her and Carm were really tight.”

Lou sipped his coffee thoughtfully. “It’s fuckin’ awful thing losin’ somebody close to you like that.” 

Johnny looked down into his coffee cup. “Yeah, it is…but life goes on.” 

“Fuckin’ A.”

“Listen, have you decided on the meeting?” Johnny asked

“You know John. This has been buggin’ me a bit.” 

“What’s that?”

“I dunno. Let’s call it your motivation.”

My motivation? Where the fuck did that come from? You know my motivation. I’m writing a goddamn novel about the drug trade, and the only dealer I know is my suburban guinea cousin who sells to other rich guineas so that they can all get revved up when they’re cheering for the fuckin’ Maple Leafs or Blue Jays or Raptors. It’s not exactly what you’d call glamourous.”

“Hey that’s my life you’re callin’ unglamorous?”

“Nothin’ personal. But it is what it is. Look, Lou.  I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important. How the hell am I ever gonna get to be a writer if I can’t get out there and feel a little of the spice for myself?” 

Lou leaned back in his chair and took a deep breath. “It’s for your book?” 

“Yeah.”

Lou took a deep breath and sipped his coffee. 

“Your novel of fiction?”

Johnny smiled and nodded, definitely relieved. “Yes, Lou. My novel of fiction.”

“Alright. I’ll see what I can do?”

Lou pulled a bill out of his pocket and slapped it down on the table.

“Come on, let’s get out of here.”

The two men slid out of the booth.

  ~ 5 ~

The Jeep pulled up to the gate of Raphael’s estate on the outskirts of the town of Stoney Creek It was at the far end of the megapolis that stretched from Oshawa right around the western end of Lake Ontario to Burlington, Hamilton and then finally Stoney Creek. It was easily the most densely populated area of Canada. 

The gate slowly opened and the Jeep drove up the long entrance road and stopped in front of a large, low, elegant ranch-style house. Tina and Raphael got out of the car. Raphael grabbed the backpack and entered the house. 

From the entranceway, one could see right through to the pool area. The interior was sprawling but sparsely furnished. What furniture was in evidence was elegant and tasteful.  Raphael carried the backpack, walked through the living room and descended to a lower level.  Tina got a couple of bottles of water from the fridge and followed Raphael down the stairs.

The lower level was pretty much a gigantic recreation room. There was an antique 10-foot pool table. Home entertainment toys lined the far wall, adjacent to a large wet bar.  At the opposite end of the room was a large sliding glass door that led out to some steps up to the pool area.  Beside the glass door was the entrance to a ceramic-tiled steam bath and change room. Raphael’s clothes lay strewn on the floor.  Raphael, naked and soaking wet, came out of the shower and immediately entered a steam room grabbing a large bath towel as he did so. Tina stripped out of her clothing. She picked up Raphael’s clothes and dropped them into a laundry hamper.

In the steam room, Raphael sat cross-legged on the highest step.  He was chanting a mantra to himself.  Tina entered a moment later, wrapped in a towel. She sat on the bench below him and handed him a bottle of water.

“I want you to stay home tomorrow,” Raphael said 

“Why?” Tina asked, a little pissed.

“I don’t have to give you a reason.” 

“You don’t have a reason. You just have to be in control all the time and that’s kinda pathetic”

Raphael sighed deeply. “You really don’t get it do you?”

“No I don’t... suppose you explain it to me.” Tina said.

“You start to party with all those guinea scumbags and you’re back at your fucking high school prom...It makes me crazy. Those guys makin’ those greaseball moves on you putting their olive oil hands all over you...just cause I do business with those Neanderthals…”

Tina cut him off. “Jesus Christ… just listen to yourself. You’re living in some kind of Raffi world where everybody’s out to fuck you and me too, apparently.”

Raphael and grabbed Tina by the hair, literally lifting her out of her place. He brutally pulled her head back, forcing her to stare into his face. “Your attitude leaves much to be desired.” 

Tina reached up and dragged her fingernails across Raphael’s face. He shrieked in pain and let go of her. She sprang to her feet and grabbed her towel. 

“You psychotic son of a bitch. What the hell do you think I am?”

Raphael calmly reached up and touched the deepest gash in his cheek. He looked at the blood on the tip of his finger. Then he touched it to his tongue.

“I know very well what you are my dear. You’re just better off than most.”

Tina was enraged. “I’m coming to the city tomorrow. And do you know why? Because if I don’t come, I will stay here and one minute before you come back in this house, I’ll call the cops then blow my brains out. And they will be all over you like a plague of locusts. You know what happens to a pretty little Mexican asshole like you in prison?

Tina glared at Raphael then turned and left the steam room, slamming the door hard.

“I love it when you talk dirty.” Raphael said, to no one in particular.

Tina entered the bedroom from the shower. She climbed onto the bed. She sat watching the reflection of the moonlight on the slightly rippling water of the pool.  Suddenly the tranquility of the scene was broken by a loud splash followed by a scream as Raphael hit the pool.  He splashed around for a moment then hopped out and grabbed a towel.  

Drying himself lightly, off he entered the bedroom, through a sliding door. He walked over to the bed, staring down at Tina.  Slowly he moved toward her. He dropped down to his knees and began to kiss her.  He started with her forehead and works his way steadily downward.  His thumb and index finger squeezed one of her nipples bringing it to taut erectness as his mouth descended upon it.  Tina’s face was a study in contrast as Raphael silently devoured her.  

On the one hand, the ecstasy was delightful to her body. On the other hand was the distinct feeling of repulsion with Raphael. She lay like a helpless victim, writhing in simultaneous ecstasy and agony. Tears of anger welled up in her eyes.

~ 6 ~

Late the next morning Tina sat at the kitchen counter sipping coffee. She stared out the window at the pool area. Raphael was hanging upside down in a gravity inverter.  He sweated freely in the warm summer sun.  Suddenly Tina was on fire with anger and frustration. It was as if the ungodly silence that existed between her and Raphael had forced open a crack in her psyche.  

She started to breathe heavily and pace around the kitchen.  She grabbed a butcher knife sitting on a counter.  She looked at it as if it was her ticket to freedom. She glared out the window at Raphael, so quiet and cool, hanging upside down like a dead chicken in a butcher shop window.  

She started to move toward the door but forced herself to stop.  Out of sheer frustration she turned to the butcher block counter and brought the knife down into it hard.  Her hand, sweaty and tense. slipped down the handle and along the sharp blade, opening up a sizeable gash down her palm.  She opened her palm and watched the blood gush from the cut. It sobered her up a bit. She turned on the cold water and ran her palm under the tap.  The stinging pain of the cold water hitting her frayed and exposed nerve endings caused her to scream in pain.  She looked back down at the palm.  Now that the blood was washed away, she saw that it was not that serious a wound.  She took a clean dish towel from a drawer and wrapped it around the cut. Then she rinsed off the knife and thought about less risky ways to get rid of the bastard she was stuck with.

Johnny, in his black Camaro, pulled up in front of a pool hall/cappuccino place on the Danforth. He got out of the car and walked inside.  Several of the old men sitting and  drinking coffee eyed him suspiciously.  He walked down to the back of the pool hall where a skinny guy named Paulie was playing pool by himself.

“Hey, Paulie.” Johnny said as he leaned on the table.

“Hey flash.  How’s it going?” Paulie said.

“Goin’ just fine.” 

“So, you get to meet the man yet?”

“Lou’s makin’ promises.  We’ll see.”

“You need any protective hardware, you call me, John.”

Johnny walked over to the rack and selected a cue.

“I’ll keep it in mind, Paulie.  Thanks.” He walked back to the table. “So what do you think? Ten dollars?”

“Make it twenty. I got my stroke on today.”

Johnny started gathering up the balls from the pockets and pushed them down to the far end of the table for Paulie to rack them.

~ 7 ~

Raphael walked down the stairs into the lower level of the house with his backpack on his shoulder. He dumped the contents out onto the pool table. He began the process of filling orders by ten vials of fifty pills in each of bags. This is how the pills were sold, in groups of five hundred, on a first come first served basis. Each dealer had a limit of two baggies or one thousand pills, but they would be able to buy more if any dealer in the network failed to show up. Raphael understood that the happiness of his customer base was really all that mattered, despite the fact that he considered them to be the scum of the earth. But Toronto, being a fairly affluent city provided a great market for designer pills like Hellboy, which were highly addictive.

Raphael then packed the baggies into a small soft-sided suitcase and brought it upstairs.

Tina was sitting at the counter sipping coffee.  Raphael entered and put the suitcase down beside the doorway to the kitchen. He and Tina exchanged brief glances. Nothing pleasant was happening there.

Later that evening Tina came out the front door and got into a Jaguar sedan.  A black Lincoln pulled up behind her.  The driver, a huge, muscular football player type, got out. His name was Spencer. He walked over to the Jaguar and leaned into the window.

“You drive carefully now, Tina.” Spencer said.

Tina said nothing as she dropped the car into gear and drove the Jaguar down the driveway. 

~ 8 ~ 

Johnny’s apartment was furnished in a modern spartan manner.  The only place where there was any clutter was in the office area.  A MacBook sat on a table and above it, a series of shelves rose almost to the ceiling.  They were filled with paperbacks, file folders, magazines and mementos in a strange kind of organized chaos. Johnny’s bulletin board was papered with rejection slips from various magazines and publishing houses. 

Johnny entered the kitchen all showered and fresh.  He put on some coffee and walked back to his desk. He opened his iPhone and then checked his phone messages.

Hi.  This is John Vallone.  I’m not 

in right now.  Leave a message.

(beep)

Hi Johnny.  It’s Donna.  Too bad you couldn’t 

make it with Judy.  She said you weren’t her 

type. I find that hard to believe. Call me 

when you’ve got a minute.

(beep)

Hi John.  It’s Myron.  Listen, I need a good 

looking guinea for some test shots-sports 

jackets and suits. Day after tomorrow.

     Call me if you want to do it.

(beep)

Mr. Vallone, this is Grey Aldershot calling from 

New West Magazine in Los Angeles. We’re very 

interested in a short story of yours entitled, 

“A Month of Sundays”. Could you please give 

me a call at your earliest convenience?

With this news Johnny was up and walking around.  He was extremely excited.  Finally, he let out a major whoop.

(beep)

Hey Johnny, it’s Lou.  We’re goin’ to a 

party tonight.  Meet me in the lobby

of the Royal York at 10 sharp.  And I 

want to see you in some classy threads
or you can forget it.

Johnny was walking on air as he went into the kitchen and made some coffee for himself. He walked back to his desk and picked up his cell phone.  He thumbed through it for a moment, found the number he was looking for and dialled it.

“Hello.  Mr. Aldershot please...John Vallone, calling from Toronto...thank you...hello, Mr. Aldershot.”

That evening, Johnny was sitting in Myron Gold’s studio. It was obviously a fashion photographer’s mecca.  Large prints of beautiful women graced the walls.  The colour scheme was all pastels.  The furniture was all leather and chrome. Johnny, wearing his best suit, and his friend Myron sat at the counter which separated the studio area from the office. They were drinking Jack Daniels. Myron was a short, wavishly dressed man around the same age as Johnny. He and Johnny had been friends since public school. And right now they were both a little ripped.

“You know, I just can’t fuckin’ believe it, Myron.  Five years of first-class postage and long-distance calls and they finally want to publish something.” Johnny said.

“You gotta spend money to make money, John. Capitalism one oh one.” 

“Well, we can’t all be overnight sensations now can we?”

Myron chuckled “Overnight sensation sensation my ass. Do you have any idea how many beautiful and talented women I had to fuck to get where I am today?”

The two men laughed and Myron poured out some more whisky.

“Speakin’ of beautiful women, that’s exactly what you look to be decked out for. Hot date with a new Chiquita?”

“Naa, I’m going with Lou to meet this dude who’s moving some souped-up Oxy shit.”

“I assume you have a good reason for doing this.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean they’re not the kind of people that you actually choose to hang out with.”

“I want to see the dealer face to face.”

“Right, then you gonna send him a copy of the expose you write about him too?

“What’s your point, Myron?”

“The point?  The point is simple, John.  You’re walkin’ into quicksand.…messin’ with psychotic people.  People who own guns, have killed other people, and are probably world-class at inflicting pain on anybody who fucks them over.”  

Johnny was stopped cold by Myron’s warning.  For a brief moment, he was lost in thought.  Then he snapped out of it.

“You tryin’ to freak me out, or what?”

“Yeah, maybe I am.  Maybe I’m a little worried about you.  You know, going’ after big time drug dealers, that’s like goin’ after the mafia.  Strictly one-way traffic.”

Johnny took a look at his watch. “I gotta go. Don’t worry Myron,  I’ll be cool.”

Johnny slugged down the last of his drink. He slapped Myron on the shoulder and slipped off his stool.  He walked across the studio. Just before he got to the door, he turned and raised his fist to Myron in a sort of jock-type gesture.  Myron returned the gesture. Johnny opened the door and slipped out into the night.

~ 9 ~

At The Royal York Hotel, Johnny and Lou were shown in and frisked by one of the bodyguards. The main room was filled with well-dressed people, who all seemed to know each other.  There was a strange harmony about this party that was totally out of keeping with Johnny’s perception of what it would be like. Johnny felt quite comfortable here.  He didn’t know anybody but Lou, but he recognized a few of the people from his high school days. He drifted away from Lou, who was hugged by a friend. He wandered to the bar and fixed himself a drink.  He scanned the room.  He followed the walls around to the opposite side of the room, where the bedroom door was visible to him.  It was closed.  He perched on the arm of a chair and sipped the drink he made for himself.  

Soon, the bedroom door opened.  He saw Raphael, or at least that’s who he thought he saw, sitting on the bed. There was a small suitcase open beside him.  Raphael seemed to be talking to someone.  An instant later, Tina was standing in the doorway.  She was wearing a tight black dress. She left the bedroom and closed the door behind her.  Johnny’s eyes followed her. She moved gracefully around the room talking to almost everyone.

As Johnny watched, he noticed that the traffic in and out of the bedroom was pretty constant.

Johnny walked back over to the bar.  He poured himself another drink.  Tina walked up behind him. He turned to look at her. He found her quite captivating. 

“Can I fix you a drink?” Johnny asked.

“Sure. Just some scotch. Neat.”

Johnny poured the scotch into a tumbler and handed it to Tina. 

“Thanks…you know, you look familiar, but we’ve never met, have we?” Tina said.

“Who knows? Maybe in another life.”

“Yeah, another life. What’s your name, soldier?”

“John Vallone.”

“Tina.” she extended her hand which Johnny took.

“Just Tina?”

“Just Tina, that’s right. You aren’t a customer are you?”

“No, I came with a friend. Lou Giannini”

“Lou’s a nice guy. How about you, John Vallone? Are you a nice guy too?”

“I have my moments.”

“I’ll bet you do.”

Johnny noticed the bandage on Tina’s hand. “What happened to your hand?”

“You know, knife fighting. Dangerous sport but a lot of fun if you don’t get cut.”

“Now you’re bullshitting me.”

“No flies on you, John Vallone.”

“So are you just part of the scenery or the boss’ girl?”

“A little bit of both I suppose.”

“You think, once the selling is over, I could get a few minutes with your boyfriend/boss?”

“What for?”

“Just have a few questions about the business.”

“What kind of questions?” 

“I’m writing a novel about the drug trade and I’m just looking to get a little insight into it from the people who do it.”

“Well, John Vallone. I wish you all the luck in the world. Because if I tell the man in the bedroom what you just told me, we’d both be dead meat.

“Well, how about you, then?”

“What you’ll buy me lunch and we’ll have a nice little chit-chat?”

“Yeah, something like that.”

“Let me think about it.” Tina said and she turned to walk away then quickly turned back. “If he says anything to you tonight, you know about our little conversation, just tell him we went to school together in Etobicoke.”

As Tina walked away, Johnny could see Raphael in the bedroom staring at him.

Johnny wandered around the room, listening to bits and pieces of the various conversations going on. He walked back to the bar and poured himself some Coke. Two scotches, on top of what he drank at Myron’s, was way past his limit.”

As he was doing that Raphael appeared beside him and poured a shot of tequila. He looked at Johnny. “You know Tina from back in the day or something?” 

“Yeah, we were in high school together.”

“Then you probably know that her boyfriend is really the jealous type.”

“Yeah, that was made very clear to me”

“What’s your name, sport?”

“John. John Vallone.”

“Well John Vallone. You can leave now. Wait for whoever you came with in the lobby.”

Johnny was no fool. He knew when a threat was being issued.

“Sorry if I did something to piss you off.”

“Apology accepted. Now just get the fuck out of here.” Raphael said with a bit of menace in his voice.

Johnny put his glass down and left the suite. He took the elevator down to the lobby and sat there for about fifteen minutes until Lou arrived.

Johnny got to his feet.

“Are you off your nut, John?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean Tina, man.” Lou shook his head. “This guy Raphael, he’s fuckin’ crazy. Nobody talks to Tina longer than it takes to say hello and goodbye.”

“Well, you could have, told me that before we went up there.”

“Yeah, sorry. Anyway, what’s done is done. You just can’t go back. Like ever again.”

“Jesus Christ,” Johnny spat out the words. “What kind of world do you live in Lou?”

“A very paranoid one, John. Very, very paranoid. You’re lucky he didn’t cut off your nuts.”

The two men started to walk out of the hotel, along with several other people from the party.

Upstairs, Tina cleaned up a little while Raphael sorted out the money. The bodyguards were gone and they were alone. They usually stayed overnight because Raphael didn’t like being in any sort of vehicle at night unless he absolutely had to. His paranoia ran down several different paths.

When Tina came into the bedroom, Raphael said. “This John Vallone guy. You know him from somewhere?”

“Tina shook her head. “Yeah from high school. It was just a little chit-chat. You know, like people do at parties.”

“Looked like a lot more than chit-chat to me.”

“Yeah, well it would, wouldn’t it, Mr. Paranoid.” Tina said. “It was nothing. It meant nothing. It was just bullshit, Raffi. So please, can we move along?”

Raphael said nothing. But the guy was in his head. And he would probably stay there for a while. He cursed his paranoia. But it was what it was.

“OK, yeah. I don’t want to make a big deal out of it. Let’s order some dinner, are you hungry?”

“I could eat,” Tina said. 

“Raphael had finished organizing the cash and dumped it into the small suitcase. He then grabbed the Room Service menu and started to look it over.

Tina sat down beside him and looked over the menu but all the time she was thinking about the guy John Vallone and wondering about a lot of things.

~ 10 ~

The next morning Johnny was sitting in the coffee shop of the hotel. At around 11:00, the elevator doors opened and Tina and Raphael stepped out. Johnny took the stairs down to the underground parking. He got into his Camaro, paid for his parking and left the garage. He went up the street and turned around. A few minutes later, the Jaguar with Raphael in the passenger seat came out of the garage and headed down to the Gardiner Expressway. Johnny followed them as they got on the westbound Gardiner and headed out of Toronto toward Hamilton and over the Burlington Skyway. Three exits later they got off the highway and headed south. Johnny put a little more distance between them. Finally, they turned into Raphaels’s property. Johnny drove by as the gates opened and the Jaguar went through.

Johnny then drove back to Toronto and went to the magazine office. He requested five minutes with Creighton. He told him the story of the party and the substantial crowd of people who were at the hotel to pick up their pills. Johnny also told him that he had a chance to talk to the dealer, but it didn’t go well because earlier in the evening, Johnny was chatting up his girlfriend and the dealer didn't take too kindly to that. Johnny didn’t mention that he had been able to think about nothing but the girl since he first laid eyes on her or that he had followed them home the next morning. 

Creighton just shook his head and said “Well, at least you gave it the old college try, Johnny. Go find a new story that has some sort of ending to it.”

Johnny got to his feet, left the office and drove home. When he got there he checked his messages.

Hi, it’s Tina. From last night. Sorry that 

Raphael gave you such a hard time. 

He’s a genuine prick and extremely 

jealous. A real Latino defect. I’m 

going to be in the city in three 

days, alone, Maybe we could get 

together then. I’ll call you. I know

 you can probably see my number 

but don’t call me, let me call you. 

Johnny sat at his desk for a good long time taking it all in. His writer’s mind was telling him one thing.  And his libido was telling him something else. Maybe he was in for a little of both.

He opened his laptop and started to write the story as he knew it to this point. If he couldn’t write a non fiction story about it, maybe he could spin it into some sort of novel. He spent the next three hours doing nothing but that. When he stopped, he wasn’t quite sure what he had, but that didn’t matter this early in the project.

Three days later, at around four in the afternoon, Tina called. She was calling from a payphone at a donut shop on Airport Road.

“I’ve just put Raphael on a plane to Miami. I don’t have to pick him up for three days. He’s staying down there for some kind of family thing.  So I’m free to get together.”

“OK. Where are you?”

“Near the Airport.”

Ummm. I’m in the Beaches, do you know your way around Toronto.

“Sure. Where are you, exactly?” 

Johnny gave her his address. After a short pause, she told him she could be there in forty-five minutes. Then she disconnected.

Tina parked her car on Johnny’s street and walked up to the front door. What she didn’t know was that Spencer, one of Raphael’s bodyguards, had followed her there, thanks to a tracker he had permanently placed on the Jaguar at Raphael’s request.

He took a shot of Johnny opening the door to let Tina in. He made a note of the address and then headed back to Stoney Creek. The tracker would tell him when she left Johnny’s place. 

Johnny led Tina to the living room where she sat down on the sofa. Johnny opened a bottle of wine and poured two glasses. He then sat down opposite her in one of his tub chairs. He turned on the mike on his laptop which was sitting on the coffee table.

“So you’re from Toronto?”

“Yeah, grew up in Etobicoke. Hated it. Then my parents moved to Stoney Creek. Hated it a little less.  But I finished high school and went to McMaster and got my BA in English. I was gonna teach.”

“So what happened to that?”

Tina tilted her head. “I was doing some shopping one day and I ran into Raphael. We just sort of connected. He seemed like a really nice guy. Suave, well-dressed, obviously rich, very handsome. I was really taken with him. I was still living at home. He invited me to his place for dinner, and I just kinda never left. That was three years ago. I had no idea what he did. How he made his money. I figured he was some kind of trust fund kid. Then about two weeks later, I ended up driving him to the airport in Toronto and then three days later, picking him up in Buffalo.”

“So how does that work, the smuggling?” Johnny asked.

“His connection in Miami is through his family. They run a pill factory, make all kinds of weird designer drugs. They have a huge distribution network in the US. Raphael was sent to explore and open up the Canadian market. He’s found dealers in Vancouver. Calgary and Nova Scotia so far. He gets a commission off that. He’s also grooming some of the dealers here to be wholesalers because this is by far the biggest marketing area in the country.”

“How does he get the drugs across the border?”

“That’s the clever part. He never told me how he figured this out, but there are two bridges between Buffalo and a town called Fort Erie on the other side of the Niagara River. One is for cars and trucks. The other is for trains. Somehow, on line I suppose, he got access to the train schedule. So I pick him up at the airport in Buffalo with the drugs in his backpack, then drive him to this bridge. It’s in an area called Black Rock. Then I cross over into Canada. He hops on a train and hides in one of the cars, jumps out once he’s across the river and before the train stops for inspection. The trains go pretty slowly across that bridge. Then I pick him up and we drive back home. A couple days later he rents a suite at a downtown hotel and sells the drugs all in one night.”

“That’s pretty ingenuous.”

“Yeah. He’s a smart cookie. He’s been doing it for about five years that I know of now and I estimate he’s probably made more than twenty-five million or thirty million.”

“He’s also a pretty jealous cookie. He laid into me after we had our little conversation at the pill party.”

Tina smiled. “Yeah, he’s a genuine prick. It took a while for that to come out but when it did, it never went back in.”

“So what about you?”

Tina laughed. “If I ever said a word about leaving him, I’m pretty sure he'd fuck me up big time.”

Johnny leaned back in his chair and looked at her. “That’s no way to live.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Have you thought about just taking off while he’s down south. You know, disappearing?”

“Oh yeah, I’ve thought about it. But he’s got a couple of guys who keep their eye on me while he’s away.”

“So they know where you are right now?”

“I don’t know. I only know that I wanted to come here. I was pretty careful. But who knows?”

“You know, with what you’ve told me, we could get him busted.”

Tina smiled sardonically. “Yeah, then I’d be dead within a a few days. He can’t have anyone testifying against him. His family will see to that. They’re ruthless bastards. He’s made that very clear to me.”

“So there’s really no way out for you?”

“Believe me I have thought long and hard about that. Trouble is getting away. He’s got a pretty powerful family. If anything ever happened to him that didn’t look like an accident of some kind or a suicide, they’d be up here looking for somebody to kill. He took me to Florida once. There’s like one other brother and the dad and they’re all cut from the same cloth.”

Johnny closed his computer and got to his feet. “Come on, we’ll go somewhere for dinner. Do you like Chinese?

“I love Chinese.”

“Good.”

Tina got to her feet. She walked over to Johnny and threw her around him. She kissed him. He kissed her back and within about thirty seconds they were on Johnny’s bed, tumbling and tossing and undressing and kissing,

Half an hour later they laid on the bed together both naked and sweating.

“Did you say something about Chinese?” Tina asked.

“Yeah. But we got a little off track.”

“I suppose we did. But is the Chinese offer still valid?”

“Sure.”

“Good, because I am famished.”

They gathered up their clothes and headed out the door.

~ 11 ~

Tina stayed the night. She knew she shouldn’t have. But she also knew she would be in just as much trouble either way. It hadn’t come to hard-core physical abuse. But she was pretty sure it might this time and that would give her all the ammo she would need to pack up and head home. She had no idea how Raphael would react to all of this. And as she lay in bed with Johnny that night, she talked a lot about it.

It was at this point that Johnny started to turn a corner in his head that he wasn’t sure he could turn back from. There were no do-overs with what he was thinking. His only hope was that Tina could make a clean break. Because if she couldn’t…

As Johnny lay there in the darkness, wondering about a lot of things he’d never really thought about before, he asked himself what he would be capable of doing for love. He barely knew this girl, but she was everything he’d ever dreamed of and maybe a little bit more. Was she worth taking his life in his hands? Would she be grateful? Did she feel the same way about him? Finally, he drifted off to sleep with a lot of unanswered questions in his head.

Tina left the next day around noon. She drove to Stoney Creek and switched to the Jeep to go grocery shopping. As she was pulling out, Spencer, the bodyguard pulled into the drive and up beside her. 

“Where were you last night, little lady? I came by and there wasn’t anybody home.”

“Just visiting an old friend. You know I did have a life before all this.”

“Didn’t we all?” Spencer said and chuckled as he rolled up his window.

“He fucking knows,” Tina said to herself out loud. Then she dropped the Jeep into gear and took off.

~ 12 ~

Raphael was unusually quiet as Tina picked him up at the Buffalo airport the next day. He was quiet through dinner and quiet while they drove around killing some time before the train was scheduled to move across the border. Tina asked him how everything went and he just said, “Fine.” The longer he stayed quiet, the more Tina’s fear grew inside her. She did her best to act as normal as possible. The last thing she wanted to do was confront him with any suspicions he might have had.

Finally, on the highway heading home, he asked: “Who is this John Vallone? And what is he to you?”

It was all Tina could do to keep control. “He’s an old friend from high school. He just wanted to talk about the old days. It was kinda nice, in fact. We never went out or anything. We were just good friends.”

“Is he gay?”

Tina laughed. “You know, I really couldn’t tell you.”

“So you just went to see him. Had dinner with him and stayed overnight with him.”

“Well not with him. He has a spare bedroom. We got a little drunk at dinner and I didn’t want to risk driving home at night.”

“What does he do, this John Vallone?”

“He’s a writer. Mostly fiction. I think he does a little crime reporting. He doesn’t really have to work. Because he owns a chunk of his father’s business.”

“And what did this writer and you talk about?”

“Well for a little while, we talked about you. He’s very interested in the drug trade.”

“And what did you tell him about me?”

“Nothing he didn’t already know.”

“You know, the thing about this business is that it’s very compact. Very few people know how it works. In Canada, only you and Dennis and Spencer know how it works.”

“What’s your point, Raffi?”

“My point is simply this. If it goes beyond the four of us, that means someone has betrayed me.”

“So do you ask Dennis and Spencer who they talk to after they’ve had a few beers?”

Raphael said nothing. 

Tina got really pissed. “If you think I told him anything about how your business works, you’re nuts. Why the hell would I do that? I don’t have a death wish. But I did have a life before I met you. Johnny was part of it.”

“So, just an old friend.”

“That’s right. Just an old friend.”

The rest of the ride home was silent. But Tina knew that sooner or later something would happen and it wouldn’t be good.

The next morning, Dennis and Spencer showed up and met with Raphael in his office. They talked for about half an hour, and then the two men left. Tina was sitting outside in a lounge chair with a coffee. 

Raphael came out and joined her. 

“What was that all about?”

“Just business is all.”

Tina took a deep breath. “If you don’t want me to come tonight, I’ll stay home. I don’t want to take a chance on pissing you off again. I really don’t. I’m not crazy about your customers anyway. Most of them are kind of boorish.”

“Suit yourself.” he said. Took a last sip of his coffee and got up. “I’ve got to get organized. I’m gonna stay over an extra day. There’s a guy coming from Montreal that I want to meet with.” Raphael leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. Then he got to his feet and headed down to the lower level of the house. Tina breathed a huge sigh of relief.

~ 13 ~

That afternoon, Johnny, Myron, two female models, a hair/makeup person Myron’s assistant and the magazine’s art director were doing a fashion shoot in the alleys around Myron’s building The shoot was over. Everybody was packing up. Johnny and Myron sat on the back steps of his building smoking a joint.

“You know what you were saying about the quicksand?” Johnny said.

“Yeah.”

“There’s a lot of truth in that. But not the way you meant.”

“Psycho drug dealers.  Psycho romances.  All the same bag of shit, John.”

Myron flipped the roach into the alley. The two men got up and started walking back to the studio. 

“Yeah, maybe it is.” Johnny said.

“You gonna be alright?  I mean if it turns out that you can’t have her.”

“I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.”

“It ever occur to you that maybe you have crossed that fuckin’ bridge?”

“Yeah, it’s occurred to me.”

“You know the more I hear you talk about this drug story, the more I start wondering what the real agenda is here. This doesn’t have anything to do with your brother Carmine, does it?”

Johnny shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. Maybe that’s part of it. Or maybe it’s just that I’ve never shied away from a Nantucket Sleighride.”

“Well, that’s a fact.”

Four evenings later, Johnny pulled his car into the trees alongside the road at the corner of Raphael’s property. He turned the car around and pointed it so it was facing the road.  He got out and locked it. He then crossed and started to walk along the fence line. He finally found an overhanging branch that would serve his purpose. He climbed the tree. He shinnied out onto it and dropped lightly down on the other side of the fence.  He then took off in the direction of the house.

About thirty seconds later, Johnny came up to the back of the house.  He noticed the pool lights on, as well as lights in the kitchen. He moved around to the front of the house.  He saw the Jeep taking up the first place in the three-car garage. The Jaguar was parked beside it. He moved to the front door of the house and had a peek inside through the clear vertical window adjacent to the door.  He saw a shadow moving in the hallway that looked like it was coming from the kitchen.  Johnny moved back into the darkness and watched as Tina, wearing a bikini bottom and a cut-off sweatshirt, came out of the kitchen, and into the living room.  She then disappeared from Johnny’s sight. Johnny moved quietly around to the back of the house.  He watched the pool area and the downstairs sliding door, but nothing was happening.  He moved slowly along the back wall of the house, exposed now, and looked in one of the lower windows. He spied Tina, peeling out of her clothes in the changing room.  She then entered the steam room and closed the door behind her.  Johnny quietly slid the back door open and entered the recreation room.  He stripped out of his clothes. He entered the steam room facing Tina. She sat on the highest seat, sitting cross-legged.

“Guess I was right.” Tina said.

“Right?”

“You really are a piece of work.”

“I suppose I am.”

Johnny climbed up onto the first step. He knelt down.  He put his hands on her knees.  He kissed her gently on the mouth.  His mouth moved down to the soft part of her neck and farther down to her breasts.  Her hands moved gently through his hair, then down over his shoulders and onto his hips.  Slowly she brought them around across his abdomen.  Johnny shivered involuntarily.  Tina uncrossed her legs. Johnny worked his way down to her flat belly. Johnny rose up. Tina pushed forward and slid down onto Johnny.  Their lips met again.  This time the kiss was furious, desperate, electric.  Johnny entered her fluidly and they began to rock together to an explosive orgasm.

A little later they were lying on the bed in the master bedroom.

“Why do you stay with him?  I only met him for two minutes and I could tell he was nuts?”

“Questions. Answers. It’s all the same bag of hammers. You don’t know anything about it. Or me for that matter.”

“You know, you’re not as mysterious as you think you are.” Johnny said.

“Oh?”

“Sure. I can tell by the way you make love that nobody’s really made love to you in a long time.”

“Is that right?  Just how do you figure that?”

“Just a feeling. I’m pretty good at sussing out stuff like that.”

“Did it ever occur to you that I may have just been enjoying myself?”

“Yeah.  It occurred to me. And you were enjoying yourself.”  

Tina rolled over away from Johnny. A tear formed in the corner of her eye.  She knew that what he had been saying was true.

“Hey, I didn’t mean to upset you.” Johnny said, touching her shoulder gently. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright, Johnny.”

“You’re right, you know, I don’t know anything about you, or this situation. But I’ve never done anything like this before. I’m a very controlled person, usually. At least I was till I met up with you.  I follow you sixty miles.  I don’t know what I’m gettin’ myself into. Multi-million dollar house, electronic fence, and then you’re waitin’ for me. Doesn’t that all seem a little strange to you?”

“Nothing seems strange to me these days.”

“Yeah, well, I’m evolving a theory of romantic predestination from this event. And I’m also telling you that we’re gonna be together, you and me.”

Tina chuckled a little. “That’s a little doubtful at the moment.”

“At this moment, maybe. But who knows what the next moment’s about.”

Johnny cradled his body against Tina’s, immediately arousing her.  

While all that was going on, a car pulled up to the side of the road where Johnny’s Camaro was parked. The bodyguard, Dennis, got out. He walked around Johnny’s car.  He tried the doors but the car was locked. He walked to the front of the car and took a notebook from his pocket.  He wrote down Johnny’s license plate number.  He then walked back to his car and got in.  He made a u-turn and headed back to the highway.

The next morning Tina was sitting at the kitchen counter in an almost sheer housecoat.  She was sipping coffee and eating a croissant.  Johnny wandered in dressed only in his jeans.  He came up behind Tina and wrapped his arms around her, kissing her neck warmly.

“You have to go.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean you just have to go is all. It doesn’t have anything to do with me wanting you to go.”

“Oh?”

“It’s got to do with the gorilla who will show up here in a couple of hours and decide to eat you for breakfast.”

“They check on you every day?”

“That’s right.”

Johnny poured himself a cup of coffee and wandered out onto the pool deck.  Tina followed him.  He walked around the pool, looking at the house from the far side. “There’s lots of places I could stash myself.” he said.

“These guys are man-eaters, Johnny.  They’ll smell you from the front gate.”

Johnny came back to the chaise lounge where Tina was sitting.  He sat down beside her.  He leaned over and kissed her gently.  Their passion grew quickly, but Tina suppressed hers and slipped off the lounger.

“You’ve got to go, Johnny.  Right now!”

“Then come with me”.

“No.  I’m not comin’ with you.  You’re just a guy who snuck into my house last night, and you’re gonna be dead meat if you don’t get out of here.” Tina said, as forcefully as she could.

“Come with me, Tina. What the fuck is there for you here?  The drugs are dangerous and so is the company. You don’t need that.”

“Oh, Johnny, you just don’t understand do you?…tryin’ to take me out of this place… if you think that can happen without somebody gettin’ killed...

Johnny took Tina’s face in his hands. “Come with me.  Come with me now. Just go pack a bag...it’s easy.”

Tina took a deep breath. “You’ve got to go now, Johnny. You really do.”

Tina broke away from Johnny and ran into the house.

Johnny, in his car, came to the end of the side road and turned toward the highway.  As he passed the front gate of the house, he saw a black car entering.

“Fuck.” Johnny said with a deep sigh and then drove on.

Two days later, Raphael was sitting by the pool. From around the side of the house, Dennis the bodyguard came and sat down next to Raphael at the pool. He pulled a small notebook from his breast pocket and flipped through it. He said something to Raphael. Raphael got to his feet. His body language betrayed controlled rage. He turned to look at the house, then back at the Dennis. He entered the house.

~ 14 ~

It was hot night, three days later. Johnny was sitting at his computer, writing.  Or at least trying to. He kept drifting away from it. He finally slammed his fist down on the keyboard and pushed himself away from the desk. He walked to the window and looked out into the night. He walked to the kitchen, and on his way by, he hit his business phone answering machine. He continued on to the refrigerator where he extracted a beer.  He returned to the living room and flopped back down in his chair.

PHONE APP

Vallone, this is Jack Creighton. Just checking
up on your ass to see how your new story’s coming.

And by the way, I’m one of the thousands who hate these fuckin’ machines.

CLICK...BEEP

This is Lionel Freeman calling. You don’t 

know me, but I have some information that you

shouldn’t take a pass on. Meet me at the Duke 

    of Kent tomorrow night at eleven sharp.

Johnny leaned over and flipped the tape machine onto rewind.  He played the message back again and wrote down the name of the bar.

The next night Johnny cruised by the Duke of Kent pub on Yonge Street in mid-town.  It was a weeknight and things were pretty quiet on the street.  Unbeknownst to Johnny, there was a black Volkswagon, following him at a distance.  Johnny turned around and drove back past the Duke of Kent.  The Volkswagon, seeing that Johnny was turning,  pulled over.  Johnny turned down a side street and parked his car in a metered parking lot.

Johnny turned off the car. Using the roof light, he rummaged around in his glove compartment and fished out his tape recorder. As he left his parking spot, a weaselly-looking guy named Lionel Freeman was peering out from the shadows. As soon as he was out of sight, Freeman, sweating openly, started toward Johnny’s car.

As Johnny walked along, he fiddled with his tape recorder.  He talked into it and played back his test.  It sounded sluggish. He abruptly turned around and headed back to his car.

Freeman walked to Johnny’s car and pulled a long thin piece of metal from his jacket.  He slipped the metal down between the window and the door panel of Johnny’s car.  In a single swift stroke, he managed to unlock the car door.  He opened the door and slipped into the front seat of the car.

At the corner, of the street, Johnny saw the man in his car and stopped to watch what he was doing. 

Freeman pulled a small packet from his pocket. He opened the glove box and slipped the packet under the owner’s manual that was already there. He then got out of the car, re-locking it. 

After Freeman disappeared out the other end of the lot, Johnny approached the car carefully. He opened the passenger door and slipped inside the car.  He rummaged around in his glove compartment and found the packet. He carefully examined it and assumed that it was cocaine or heroin. Johnny walked down toward the pub. As he walked past a trash can, he dropped the packet into it, careful to rub off any fingerprints.

Johnny entered the pub. There was a baseball game on the TV, and a couple of locals playing darts with pints of dark beer in their hands.  There were more males than females.  Johnny took a seat at the bar. He ordered a half-pint of Guinness. nodded his thanks to the bartender, then turned around on his stool. Over at a corner table was the guy he saw messing around in his car.

Johnny slipped off his stool and walked over to Freeman. He pulled out a chair and sat down

“Evenin’ Lionel.”

“Who are you?”

“You know exactly who I am Lionel.”

“Can’t say as I do.”

‘Well, I know who you are. You’re the guy who got paid something, I’m guessing in coke or smack, for planting a couple grams in my car.”

Lionel just stared at Johnny.

“What I need to know… before I open up a can of whup-ass on you is who put you up to this.” 

Lionel rubbed his head like it was really hurting. He took a deep breath. “I don’t know who it was.  A big guy.  Football big. Came to my place this afternoon. I never seen the guy before. But he sure as hell knew me.  He gave me five hundred and the baggie which you obviously found.  That’s all I know man, I swear.”

“What kind of car was he driving?”

“I don’t know. Something big. Something black. I don’t know cars.”

Johnny stared hard at Freeman for the better part of a minute. Freeman was squirmy but Johnny just figured that was natural for him.

“OK, Lionel. I believe you. But I know where you hang out and it wouldn't be rocket science for me to figure out where you live. So if I find out that you’re bullshitting me, I’ll come back and you won’t be a happy camper.”

Half an hour later, Johnny pulled up and parked his car on the street in front of his house. When got out and began to walk toward the house, he looked up and saw a light on in his apartment.  He then saw a shadow pass by the window.  He turned around and headed back to his car.  He opened the trunk, reached in behind the spare tire and pulled out the tire iron. He walked around the back of the house and climbed onto the fire escape.  He climbed up to the second-floor fire escape landing and looked into the kitchen.  He saw nothing.  Slowly, he slid the window open and entered the kitchen.

Johnny stepped lightly through the kitchen.  He crouched down and peered around the corner into the living room.  He saw nothing but the glow from his computer terminal.  He looked down the hallway to the bedroom.  A light came through the partially opened door.  Johnny moved slowly down the hallway.  He peeked inside the bedroom and then slowly pushed the door open.  His eyes scanned the darkness.  Suddenly a light came on.  Tina sat up in the bed.  She was naked. Johnny was frozen in the doorway.

“Hi.”

“Hi.” Johnny said, relaxing his body and putting the tire iron down on a chair.

“What’s the matter?  Haven’t you ever seen a naked woman in your bed?”

“I just...you were the last person I expected to see anywhere, let alone my bed.”

“The world is full of surprises, Johnny.  Come here.”

Johnny was stunned. He moved as if in a trance.  He started to peel out of his clothes. He walked to the edge of the bed.  He stood looking down at Tina for a while.

“I missed you, Johnny.” Tina said. 

An hour later they lay spent and wasted in the dead of the night. The radio was playing an old Eagles song, Witchy Woman. Johnny got up and walked to his office. He then walked down the hall to the kitchen. He poured a drink from a bottle of Johnny Walker that was sitting on the counter and walked back to the bedroom. He sat down in a chair beside the bed, took a sip of his drink and stared over at Tina, who was asleep. He finished the drink, then climbed into bed and drifted off himself as a cool breeze swept through the open window and across the silent room.

At close to ten AM the next morning, Tina and rolled over to find that Johnny was not there. She looked around for her clothes then came out of the bedroom and down the hallway to the kitchen. She saw Johnny at his desk. His back was turned to her. She entered the kitchen and poured herself a cup of coffee. She sat down at the kitchen table sipping her coffee and listening to Johnny through the half-open kitchen door.

“Paulie...hey, it’s John. C’mon it’s ten o’clock for fuck sake...no, no, do you good to be up early in the morning, lots of good stuff goin’ on in the morning...are you finished now?  Good, cause I got a problem and I need your help...yeah, right this lowlife uptown, his name is Lionel Freeman...yeah, yeah, it happens to the best of us.  He tried to turn me last night.  No, it’s not the narcs. That would be entrapment… I know it’s a put up job, what I need to know is who’s puttin’ up.  Who’s after me?  Can you find that out for me ASAP…okay...good. Hey Paulie, keep this quiet as you can, you hear me...thanks pal.”

Johnny hung up the phone and walked into the kitchen.  Tina’s presence surprised him.  He walked over to the coffee and poured himself a cup.

“You got trouble?” she asked.

“Nothin’ unusual.”

“Sounds a little unusual to me.”

“Yeah well…shit happens.”

“You want to talk about it?”

“It’s cool. It’s no big thing.”

Tina stared at Johnny, sensing his uneasiness, wanting to do something to help him.  She got up and put her arms around his neck and kissed him passionately.

“Hey, listen I’m sorry.” Johnny said.

“Don’t apologize.  We all have our hassles to deal with. I understand.”

Johnny chuckled and kissed Tina again.  Desire rose in them both.

“I have to go soon.”

“You just got here.”

“Not right away.”

“Not ever.”

“Take me back to bed.”

“Well, if you insist.”

A little later, Johnny walked Tina down to her car. It was going be another warm summer day.

“So what happened to you last night, Johnny?”

“It wasn’t anything. Just a lowlife tryin’ to do a number on me. It happens a lot.”

“Why don’t you want to talk about it?”

“Cause I don’t want it to be…I don’t want it to involve you. Look, what’s goin’ on here…you and me. It’s got nothing to do with all the bullshit and jive out there.”

“OK Johnny, I can respect that.” 

Tina got into her car and rolled down the window.

“When do I get to see you again?” Johnny asked.

“Who knows for sure.”

~ 15 ~

Johnny took a short walk along the boardwalk. Fifteen minutes later he returned and picked up the mail that was lying on the floor.  He shuffled through it and stopped at a large manila envelope with a New West logo on it.  He dropped the other mail on the couch and opened the envelope…Inside is a copy of his story entitled: “A Month of Sundays”  and a note jotted on New West stationery.  Johnny reads the note aloud, in almost total disbelief.

“Dear Mr. Vallone: It has come to our attention that you are a convicted felon. I refer to the case of marijuana possession in May 2014. Unfortunately, it is a long-standing policy of this magazine never to publish the work of convicted drug offenders. I am therefore returning your story with apologies. Good luck in the future.

Johnny was visibly shaken by the news. Anger welled up inside him like a volcano ready to explode. It wasn’t true. Somebody had been in his flat listening to his phone messages. Somehow he managed to control himself. He took several deep breaths and calmed himself down. But in spite of his attempts, his anger didn’t subside. He’d never been busted for anything least, of all, possession of marijuana. He found himself staring at the letter. He then picked up a copy of the story and looked at it for a moment.  He chuckled a bit to himself and got up.  He walked over to the window.  He took a deep breath and buried his head in his hands. He stood silently for a moment, then with ferocity slammed his fists against the window frame and screamed.

~ 16 ~

Later that day Johnny headed out to his cousin’ Lou’s for dinner. Lou lived in a suburb called Scarborough, which was kind of like a city of its own. 

After the meal, Johnny and Lou stepped out of the house through a set of sliding glass doors at the back. As Lou shut the door behind them, the noise of family and television ended, giving way to an almost tranquil summer evening suburban hum. The two men walked casually out to the deepest part of the backyard. They sat down on a pair of lawn chairs next to a Jungle Jim apparatus. Lou produced a joint.  He lit it, took a long toke and passed it to Johnny.

“I went to a party the other night.” Lou said as he took a deep toke.

“You don’t say.”

“I do say...the host of this party, he was enquirin’ after your health.”

“I must have made some impression on him.”

“You might say that. You might even be correct in assumin’ that he’s got a bit of a hard-on to see you maimed or badly wounded at the very least.”

“He’s got it in for me?” Johnny laughed but there was a bit of a nervous edge to it. “Sure thing, Lou.  I’m a real big deal in his life.

“If you’re fuckin’ his old lady you are.”

“Fuckin’ his old lady?  Come on, I chat the chick up for two minutes. I get nowhere fast. I’m about to walk away and bingo, this arrogant son of a bitch comes up and makes a federal case out of it.

“Hey, Johnny. It’s me, your wise old cousin Lou. I know you’re fuckin’ the chick and so does Raphael.”

“You don’t know shit.”

“I know you’re in way over your head, Johnny boy.  I also know that Raphael’s a madman. He’ll be comin’ after you with everything he’s got...if he ain’t doin’ that already. But that’s not what concerns me.”

“Yeah, well what does concern you?”

“What concerns me, is that a lunatic like this Raphael could all of a sudden decide he doesn’t wanna do business with the guineas that he’s dealin’ with now, ‘cause one of them has a cousin who, although he denies it up and down, is fuckin’ his woman.”

Johnny was not about to honour that remark with an answer. He stayed tight-lipped, but he was fuming.

“Lemme give you a little economics lesson.” Lou said. “It’s strictly a seller’s market out there, Johnny.  He gets a little miffed with one bunch of buyers; he just tells ‘em va fungoo, and he gets a new bunch in. It’s the kind of stuff that causes gang wars, bodies in the river, widows and orphans all over town...and if that ever happens, and we all pray it don’t, because somebody was fuckin’ somebody they shouldn’ta been fuckin’, well you can just imagine what kind of bad news that would be for the fuck-er.”

“I don’t know what kind of drugs you’ve been usin’, Lou, but they’re constipatin’ you man, ‘cause you’re way full of shit.”

Lou exhaled from another hit. “I’m just tellin’ you what I know, Johnny. More for your own good than anything. It was anybody else, any other situation, I couldn’t give a shit. But you’re family, John, and you are in the process of fuckin’ up big time.”

Lou shuffled back to the house, leaving Johnny in a daze.

Johnny drove around for most of the night thinking things through. He didn’t come to any real conclusions. Except that the future didn’t look so bright.

As Johnny entered his apartment later that evening, he almost immediately sensed that something was wrong.  He walked around the apartment, looking carefully, but taking care not to touch anything. He saw that several family photographs had been taken out of their frames.  His framed posters had also been removed.  He looked around the living room and saw that all the personal snapshots had been removed from his bulletin board.

He sat down at his desk. All the files on his laptop had disappeared. His backup hard drive file sat exactly where it always did, but when he opened it up, he saw that it was empty.  He opened one of his drawers where all his interview audio cassettes were stored and it was empty. He opened his file drawer. Every single file folder was in place but they were all empty.  Everything he had ever written in his life had disappeared.  Johnny sat for a moment in a state of total astonishment. The ringing of the telephone snapped him out of his shock. He turned toward the phone but didn’t answer it.  The answering machine came on and blurted out his salutation. After that he heard:

“Look out your back window, Vallone. Go ahead. Go look. I’ll wait.”

Johnny put the phone down and ran to the bedroom. He looked out into the backyard. In the middle of the yard there was an oil drum with flames shooting out of it. Johnny walked back and picked up the phone. 

“Who the fuck are you?” he screamed.

The phone clicked, leaving Johnny stunned.

~ 17 ~

Johnny threw some clothes and toiletries into a large canvas bag.  He zipped it up and carried it out into the kitchen. He opened the refrigerator, then the inside freezer.  He pulled out a half-used bag of Green Giant Frozen Peas.  He opened it and emptied it into the sink. The peas tumbled out, along with a small wad of bills and his passport. He stuffed everything in his bag and left.

Johnny cruised the streets slowly, but his mind was moving a mile a minute. He kept a constant eye on his rearview mirror to see if anyone was following him.  No one seemed to be. He found a payphone in front of an ancient variety store. He jumped out of his car and made a quick call. 

Johnny then drove downtown to a parking garage close to the bus terminal. He drove to the highest level of the lot. He walked down the stairs to the ticket booth.  He talked for a moment to a cashier.  He gave the man his car keys and a fifty-dollar bill. Then he left the lot.

Johnny entered the Dundas Street Bus Terminal.  He went directly to the lockers and put his bag inside.  He then went to the coffee shop and sat at the counter near the door.  He ordered a coffee and sat watching the nighttime people traffic in and out of the terminal, looking for someone who might be looking for him. Johnny finished his coffee and walked toward Yonge Street, where he immediately lost himself in the late-night crowd.

Half an hour later and a little further uptown, Johnny and Myron were sitting in the corner of the Pilot Tavern. The bar was half-filled with older people talking politics and the economy. 

“You really know how to pick the intimate night spots, John.” Myron said blithely 

“It’s the safest place I can think of, Myron.”

“You’re up to your ass in it, aren’t you?”

“You might say that. They’re fucking royally with my career at the moment. It’s only a matter of time before they start comin’ after the rest.”

“I wish there was something I could do for you, man.” 

“Naa. It’s just me and him. Better to keep it that way too. I just came to let you know I’ve gotta get out of the city for a while. I’m gonna go home and talk to my dad…figure things out from there.” 

“Sounds like a plan.” 

“Just do me a favour and pick up my mail for me. I don’t want them to start fucking with my credit or my bank or, you know, shit like that.”

“You think they can’t already do that? Money can buy anything, John.”

Johnny slid his apartment key across the table. 

“I know that. Just pick up the mail, OK?. There will be manuscripts and articles coming back. They destroyed everything I’ve ever written, man. Everything….Fuck!!!”

Myron was not about to tell Johnny I told you so or anything like that. So he said nothing. Johnny regained his composure. He slapped Myron on the shoulder.

“You’re a good friend. Listen, you hang in here for fifteen, just in case.”

“Just in case of what?”

Johnny got to his feet. “See you around, man.” He started to walk away. 

“Hey, Johnny.”

Johnny turned around and came back to the table.  He leaned over.

“What?”

“I hope she’s worth all the shit you’re goin’ though.”

“So do I, pal.”

Johnny walked out of the bar, stopping in the doorway to look both ways. He grabbed a cab to the bus terminal to retrieve his bag and get a hotel room for the night. The next morning he caught the 10 am bus to Newmarket.

~ 18 ~

In Buffalo, Raphael and Tina were sitting in a restaurant off Main Street. The tension in the air was thick. Raphael was acting particularly arrogant.

“I’ve been receiving some distressing reports about you lately.”

“Do tell.”

“It seems you’re being unfaithful…screwing around with that guinea asshole Vallone.”

“Sounds like your bodyguards are trying to justify their overpriced jobs again.”

“Maybe…then again, maybe not.”

“So what if I was?”

“So what if you were indeed? Well, for one it would mean I would have to teach the little dago a lesson.”

“Yeah, I can see that happening.”

“As a matter of fact, I already have.” 

Tina knew what that could mean to Johnny. It shook her up badly, but she refused to let it show.

“You really are the scum of the earth, aren’t you?”

Raphael grabbed her roughly by the cheeks. “Well if that’s true then what does that make you?” Raphael laughed

They both got to their feet and Raphael threw some bills on the table.

An hour later, Tina was leaning on the hood of the Jeep on the deserted pier.  She smoked a cigarette and watched the freight train crawl across the bridge.  As it stopped and started, the shunting sound of the cars echoed through the warm summer night.  A few minutes later. Raphael came puffing up the incline from the river bank.

For a moment, Tina imagined Raphael being suddenly and swiftly cut down by a large calibre bullet square into his chest.  His chest blows apart and he is thrown back several feet by the force of the shot.  The pills in his backpack spew out and are strewn along the cinder path for several feet behind him as he hits the ground, dead.

Her reverie was broken by the sound of Raphael’s voice barking a stern command. “Any time this evening, Tina.”

Tina walked around the car and climbed in, as Raphael got in on the passenger side. His breathing was quite laboured.

“Are you alright?” Tina asked, noticing that Raphael was still quite winded.

“Just fuckin’ peachy.” he said as he lit a cigarette.

The Jeep pulled off the cinders and took off along the northbound Niagara Parkway.

~ 19 ~

The taxi pulled up in front of a large rambling suburban house in Newmarket. It was obviously an Italian house. There was a large peacock on the front screen door, and a burnt wooden plaque on the front lawn that read: “The Vallones”. Johnny got out of the cab. He walked up the front sidewalk and into the house.

A young woman, his twenty-year-old sister, Connie excitedly rose from her seat at the kitchen table to greet him with a hug.

“Johnny! What a surprise.”Connie said. She was wearing shorts and a sleeveless white blouse. Her hair was almost black and pulled up in a large bun at the back.

“Hi, sis.  How you been?”

“I been fine.  What about you?”

“Good, good...hey, where is everybody?”

“Mama’s out the back, weeding the tomatoes. Poppa’s down at the park bullshitting with the old timers.  Are you alright?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. I really just came home for a little break.  Maybe a week.”

“You’re not in any trouble, are you?”

“Naa, I just need to get away every now and then.”

Johnny put his bag down and walked out the back door of the house. He came up behind his mother, Maria, and put his hands over her eyes.  She turned around and they embraced tenderly. They talked briefly, then Johnny went back into the house. 

He grabbed his bag and headed upstairs to his room.

It looked more or less the way he left it when he left home after high school.  Posters of Jack Nicholson, Henry Fonda and Robert DeNiro held seemingly reverent places on the walls. The bed was still covered, ready to sleep in.  On a desk near the window sat a portable typewriter, and on the wall in front of the desk was a large bulletin board crammed with snapshots and mementos of Johnny’s high school days.  Johnny dropped his bag and sat down on the bed, soaking up the memories.

In the park at the end of the block, there were some kids playing in the playground area.  There was a little league baseball practice going on at the diamond, and on the far side of the park, there were several bocci ball courts populated by old Italian men in dark clothes. The men were a sharp counterpoint to the bright summer day.

Johnny walked across the park toward the bocci courts.  Several of the men noticed him and waved. Johnny’s father, Fredo was sitting on a bench facing away from Johnny.  He was engrossed in animated conversation in Italian with several of the other men sitting on the bench and standing around.

Johnny walked over to the bench.  When Fredo noticed him, his face lit up and he jumped to his feet to hug his son.  When he stood up, Fredo revealed himself to be just over six feet tall, considerably younger than the other men and much more stylishly dressed.  He was a real Neapolitan character with a pencil thin moustache and silver-grey hair that swept back in natural waves.

“Well, well, well, if it isn’t my son from the big city.”

“Hi pop. How’s it goin’?”

“It’s goin’.” Fredo said.

The two men embraced warmly. Fredo held him at arm’s length.

“You look good, Johnny. Real healthy.”

“You don’t look so bad yourself.”

“Menza menza. Not bad for an old man, though.”

With that, the other men started to laugh. Johnny and Fredo walked away from the crowd and across the park.

“How’s things, pop?”

“Things are great.  They’re always great.  This is the land of opportunity.”

“How’s business?”

“Business is drivin’ me crazy, but I still build a house and make a buck.  Don’t tell me you came home to help me out.”

“I came home to see you and ma and Connie.”

“Come on, you don’t think I believe that, do you?”

“You can believe what you want.”

“I’ll tell you what I believe. I believe you’re in a little jam again. Kids are all the same. The only time they come home is when they’re in trouble or wanna do their laundry.”

Johnny took a deep breath and sighed. “Guess nobody’s pullin’ the wool over your eyes.”

“Are you kidding? You’re my kid. Give me a little credit.  What do you need?  Money, I’ll write a check.  Time, you can stay forever.”

“I came home 'cause I got some decisions to make.  Important decisions. I came home to talk to you about them.  I...you’re the only one I can trust right now.”

Two hours later, Johnny, Fredo, Connie and Maria were all sitting around the table.  A gigantic Italian dinner had obviously just been consumed, along with a couple bottles of wine.  For a few hours, at least, Johnny had forgotten his worries and was having a good time with his family. Connie and Maria get up and start clearing the dishes. Johnny and Fredo headed out to the backyard.

It was a moonless night.  But a warm breeze blew across the large lawn. Johnny flopped into a hammock and Fredo sat down on a lawn chair.  He lit a cigar.

“You know, I dreamed up my first story, right in this old hammock.” Johnny said.

“You told a lot of lies to pretty girls in it too.”

“Yeah...lots of girls back then.”

“You got a pretty girl now, Johnny?”

“Pop, I got me a real beauty.”

“That always sounds like trouble. She the problem you been having?”

“I’m in love with this woman, pop. But she’s involved with somebody...I know she doesn’t want to be involved with him, but I don’t think she can get totally free either. This guy, her old man, he’s a very heavy dude...he’s found out about us. He’s causin’ me a lot of grief.”

“What kind of grief?”

“He’s been stealin’ things from me, pop. Important things.  My work...my opportunities. He even tried to set me up with the cops to steal my freedom… He doesn’t want to kill me, I don’t think...just kinda make my life miserable.” 

“What about this woman? She must be something pretty special.”

“To me she is. I don’t think she means shit to him.”

“Maybe you don’t know a lot of things. Like how easy a beautiful woman can turn your life upside down.”

“It doesn’t matter.  It’s beyond the woman. It’s me and this guy. If I go back to the city and try to plug in anywhere, he’ll come after me until I’m Jello.”

“Then stay here. Fuck them. Help me run the business. Forget all about it. It’ll go away after a while.”

“No...pop, I don’t live here anymore. I’m hidin’ out here.  And I can’t hide out forever.”

“Then you just answered your own question, didn’t you?”

Johnny thought about that for a few seconds. “Yeah, I guess I did.”

Fredo got up and walked over to a large tree in the yard.  He unzipped his fly and took a leak.  He walked back to Johnny and patted him on the shoulder.

“We all end up between the rock and the hard place sometimes, Johnny. It’s cold and lonely there. But you know what you have to do. I’d suggest you stop trying to put off the inevitable and start to figure out how you’re gonna deal with it.”

Fredo sat back down in the chair. They were both looking up at the stars.

“There’s something else about this, pop. This guy. He’s a drug dealer.”

Fredo cocks a finger at Johnny. “No Johnny. Don’t go there. I know how you feel about Carmine. I know how much you loved your brother. And I know how much you miss him. We all miss him, Johnny. But he was self-destructive. It wasn’t a drug dealer that killed him.” 

“It’s OK pop.” 

“You wanna blame somebody, Johnny. Blame Me. Mr twenty-four-seven on the job, leaving you kids to fend for yourselves.” 

Johnny shook his head. “No pop, that’s not it.”

“Yes it is and that’s my point. It’s everything and it’s nothing all at the same time. It’s the suburbs. It’s the money I gave you instead of my time. It’s peer pressure. It’s everything. You and Connie, you could handle it. But  Carmine…well…” 

Johnny got up along with Fredo. The two men embraced. “Don’t let me lose my other son, Johnny.” Fredo said.

~ 20 ~

Johnny stayed in Newmarket for the better part of that week. During that time he let his beard grow out and had his hair cut very short. Then Connie drove him into the city where he retrieved his car, drove it back to Newmarket and sold it to a large used car dealership there. He then purchased a Honda 750 Motorcycle, a helmet, leather jacket and pants.

A couple of days later he got a call from Tina. She gave Johnny the details of Raphael’s schedule. They talked for a couple of hours after that and by the end of the conversation, they had a plan.

Three days later, he rode down to the city to a billiard club on Danforth Avenue.

His cousin Lou was shooting by himself on a large table in the corner of the elegantly appointed room. Johnny entered, looking strangely out of place in his leathers, with his helmet tucked under his arm. He spied Lou and walked over to the table where Lou was shooting. He put his helmet down on a chair. Lou was barely able to contain his anger. He used the pool playing to keep his body occupied while he talked to Johnny. “I asked you to meet me here, in this respectable place, because I want more than anything in the world to beat the livin’ shit right outta you...If we were in some less respectable environment, I might have just done it and not bothered talkin’”.

Johnny sat down in a lounge chair beside the table. He said nothing. Lou continued.

“You know, Johnny, I really don’t understand you sometimes. Maybe you’re just a hopeless romantic. Maybe you’re just fuckin’ hopeless. But I told you the shit would hit the fan one of these days and you’d be in trouble up to your eyeballs. Well, it’s happened. Maybe fifteen angry dealers. He hasn’t cut us off, but he’s made it clear that unless somebody offs you, he will. If not we will be fucked out of the best connection we ever had, Johnny. That’s a lot of trouble.”

Lou sunk a ball.

“But I’m your cousin, your blood, so I’m givin’ you a little advance warning. Your life isn’t worth the smallest fart in the biggest windstorm right now, Johnny. And the only way these dealers get back on track with their supplier is making sure that you, John Vallone, are dead meat. And the worst part of it all is that there is not a goddamn thing I can do.” 

Lou calmly sunk the last ball. He unscrewed his cue and slid the pieces into his cue case. He tucked the case under his arm and calmly walked away leaving Johnny stunned and sweating.

An hour later, Johnny pulled into the parking lot beneath the Royal York on his bike.  He slowly cruised several of the underground levels until he found the Jaguar.  He parked his bike in a dark corner. He took off his helmet and left it on the seat of his bike.  He made his way cautiously over to the Jaguar.  He tried the handle on the driver’s side. The door opened. He reached into his jacket and pulled out an envelope. The word “Tina” is written on it.  He put the  envelope on the driver’s seat. He quietly closed the door of the car, and slipped back onto his bike.

A little later Tina walked across the garage from the elevators. Raphael was in the bar with a potential dealer from Ottawa. As she opened the car door, she noticed the letter.  She froze momentarily and then after a quick look around the garage, slipped into the car. She held the letter in her hand for a moment, then opened it.

~ 21 ~

The Jaguar pulled into the parking lot of a park in the east end of the city, near the Scarborough Bluffs. Tina got out, wandered over to the edge of the bluffs and stared out at the lake. 

Johnny cruised the nearby streets, searching for anyone who may have been following Tina. Satisfied that no one had, he pulled into the parking lot. He parked on the far side of the lot, away from the Jaguar.  He walked to the other side of the park and Tina.

Tina had difficulty in keeping herself away from Johnny, but on his urging, she restrained herself.  He led her down the wall of the bluffs, to a plateau.  Finally, knowing they were completely alone and out of sight, they dove into each other’s arms.

Johnny walked over to the edge of the bluff.  He spit over the side, down into the lake.  His own inner feelings were a chaotic mishmash of fear, guilt, anger and disgust.  He was in rough shape. Tina came up behind him, careful not to touch him, but wanting to more than anything.

“He’s trying to break you Johnny. He’s trying to make you give it up. But it’s eating him up inside. It’s only a matter of time before he turns on me too. He’s rich and smart and totally mad, Johnny, and he’s out to get us both.”

Tina slowly slips her arms around Johnny’s waist. The realization that he must begin to fight back crystallized inside of him. He turned and embraced her passionately, violently seeking to draw love from her, to draw strength from her.”

“What a fuckin’ dreamer I am to have ever believed that I could get through this life without…”

“It’s war, Johnny.” Tina said. “He started it. Now we’ve got to finish it. It’s a necessary evil, but it’s kill or be killed, I know it is.”

“Well, I’m not gonna be killed, and neither are you. Just tell me this. Tina. Is this what you really want?”

“What I really want is you. I don’t care about anything else.”

At the waterfront later that day Johnny and Myron met up. Myron handed Johnny a stack of mail, which he tucked into his bag.

“Glad to see you’re still alive and kicking.” Myron said

“So am I.”

“Have you decided what to do about all this madness?”

“I have a plan.”

“I’d prefer not to know the details, if you don’t mind.”

“Don’t worry, Myron.  This is top secret business...I just want you to do something for me.”

“Sure.”

Johnny handed Myron a set of keys.

“Sublet my flat...sell off all my stuff, everything. My plan is an all or nothing kind of proposition.”

“Guess we can just refer to you as ‘Danger Man’ from now on.”

Johnny chuckled. “Look at it this way. No more grey area. I’ll either end up on top of the world or in the archives.”

“Wouldn’t it be simpler to just get the fuck out of the picture for a while, instead of all these heavy theatrics?” Myron asked.

“You ever had anybody on your case?  I mean really shovin’ razor blades up your ass?’ Johnny asked.

“Angry landlord is about as close as I’ve come.”

“Well then, you don’t know the feeling...the vice that the hunter clamps around his victim.  I’d rather have a deadly disease than to have to live like this...I’d rather be dead, Myron, I really would.”

“I’ll be rootin’ for you to survive.”

“Thanks.”

~ 22 ~

In a large Catholic church downtown, several older people were scattered throughout, kneeling in the pews. Johnny entered, carrying his helmet under his arm. He walked partway up the centre aisle and took a seat. He carefully put his helmet down on the seat beside him, and pulled himself forward to a kneeling position.  He made the sign of the cross and began to pray.

As he prayed he looked around the church at the stained glass window depicting the way of the cross and thought to himself that maybe everybody was on that same journey in one way or another.

 A little while later Johnny pulled up to a house in Scarborough. It was a bungalow on a small crescent. Johnny parked in the driveway and banged on the side door. Paulie Sacheli came to the door and held it open.

“What the fuck happened to your hair?” Pauli asked as Johnny entered.

“It’ll grow back.”

“You better hope so. This is not a good look for you. I hardly recognized you.”

“Well, that’s kinda the point.”

“Yeah, I hear there’s some turbulence in your life.”

Paulie showed Johnny into the kitchen where the two men sat down.

“So I guess I can figure out why you’re here. What do you need?”

“ I need a 38 or 45 calibre piece, clean as newborn baby and two clips. A blackjack, something heavy and something powerful to keep a guy knocked out for a while.”

“Needle or injector gun?”

“Gun.”

“So that’s it?”

“Yeah.”

“OK. You want a beer?” 

“Sure.” 

Paulie got up and walked to the refrigerator. He pulled out a bottle of Corona and handed it to Johnny. “You know I could make a fuck of a lot more money killing you right now than I could selling you this shit.”

“I’m sure you could.”

“But I met that Spic and the world’s a lot better off without him. Pills or no pills. There will always be a source, John.”

Paulie disappeared into the basement. He was gone for a good five minutes. He came back carrying a shopping bag. He laid everything out on the table.

“Thirty-five hundred.” 

Johnny reached into his jacket and pulled out an envelope. “There’s four grand in there. The extra five hundred is for your radio silence.”

“No sweat, John. We go back a long way. That means something.”

Paulie gave Johnny a little lesson on how to use the injector gun. Johnny caught on fairly quickly. Paulie then packed everything in the bag. “Knock’em dead John. And I really mean it.”

Johnny packed his hardware into his saddle bag and drove back to Newmarket. He entered the den with a bottle of red wine and a couple of glasses. Fredo was reclining in his easy chair.  Johnny sat down on the couch and poured the wine.  On the television was an old Bogart film. Johnny handed Fredo a glass of wine. Fredo took the wine and looked at his son curiously.

“You alright?” Fredo asked.

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

Fredo raised his glass. “Salud.”

“Salud, poppa.”

“You on your way soon?”

“Tomorrow.”

“That soon”

“Doesn’t take long once you get yourself in gear.  I have you to thank for that.”

“Well, you’re welcome.”

“Do you believe there’s such a thing as a perfect crime, pop?”

“Maybe. Depends on the situation. I’ve never actually heard of one, other than in the movies. But I guess there’s always a first time.”

“Yeah, there’s always a first time.” Johnny said.

A silence settled over the room as both men became engrossed in the movie. Fredo looked at Johnny.  He saw a smug sort of confidence in his son that he had never seen before. He shrugged his shoulders and sipped his wine.

~ 23 ~

The next day, late in the evening Johnny pulled up to the front gate of Raphael’s estate. He pressed the buzzer.  The gate opened with a click thunk. He rolled through to the entrance and up the long drive toward the house.  He drove his bike into the open garage door. He walked to the front door of the house and entered.

Tina, in her bathrobe, was standing there.  She looked at him as he closed the door behind him, and dropped his bag on the floor. They embraced, cooly at first, then with building passion. Tina’s frenzy seemed somehow more powerful than Johnny’s. But nevertheless, he followed as she led him back to the bedroom.

Johnny and Tina lay in bed. The moon was visible through the open window.  The sky was clear and the dark air was still.

“What’s the story with Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum?” Johnny asked

“One of them comes in the morning, about ten.  The other later in the day, maybe three, three thirty or four.”

“Can we count on that?”

“They haven’t changed their routine since I’ve known them.”

“Why don’t they come together?”

“Beats me.  It’s not like I have any kind of relationship with them. They’re both pretty creepy.”

“They ever come on to you?”

“Sure, all the time. They’re too stupid to be afraid of Raphael.”

“You ever get it on with them?”

“No. Like I said, they’re too creepy”

“You ever lead them to believe you might want to?”

“Maybe, when I was really stoned or something.”

“Good.”

“Why’s that good?

“It’s a way to get them off balance.  I can’t outpower them, so I’m gonna have to rely on ambush. You’ll be what’s commonly known in the B pictures as a decoy.”

“That sounds dangerous.”

“Only if it doesn’t work.”

Johnny sat up and looked out the window.  Suddenly, he dashed out through the sliding glass doors and flung himself headlong into the pool.

The next morning, Johnny entered the study on the ground floor. The room was sparsely decorated.  There was a long pine antique desk in the middle with a single cane-backed chair behind it. Off to the side of the room was a large sofa and an antique pine wash basin that served as a credenza.  The walls were sparsely decorated also, mostly with European art. Johnny sat down at the desk with a key that he was carrying and opened the top drawer.  Inside the drawer was a 45 calibre revolver with a silencer and a full clip containing several notched bullets. He left the room with the pistol in his hand.

Johnny went into the kitchen. He put Raphael’s gun down on the counter next to the coffee pot.  He poured himself a cup of coffee and walked out onto the terrace.

Tina was sitting on a chaise lounge sipping coffee.  Johnny dropped the key in her lap.  She looked up at him for some sign of tenderness, but was only confronted with Johnny’s stiff-lipped resolution.

“Spencer never comes in the front door. Always walks around the back. Sneaks in through the recreation room. Trying to catch me naked down there I suppose.”

“Yeah? Well, maybe this time he’ll get lucky.”

Right on time the gate clicked open. Johnny was watching through a small monitor in the kitchen, He took the pistol and they both headed down the stairs.

Half a minute later, a dark sedan pulled up in front of the garage. Spencer got out and walked around to the back of the house. 

Tina slipped out of her robe and entered the steam room  Johnny stood at the bar.  As soon as he saw Spencer’s shadow, he crouched down out of sight. Spencer slid the glass door open and entered the rec room. He walked across to the steam room. He could see Tina sitting on the higher bench. He stood and stared at her. Johnny rose up from behind the bar, took aim and pulled the trigger of the 45. The bullet almost silently left the gun and a millisecond later barrelled through the back of Spencer’s skull. He hit the floor one second later. There was actually very little blood. But he was absolutely dead.  

Johnny took a deep breath and walked over to the body. Tina wrapped herself in a towel and came out of the steam room. Together they dragged Spencer’s body into a walk-in freezer in a corner of the unfinished part of the basement.

Johnny was trembling. But it wasn’t from fear. It was exhilaration. “One down and two to go, Tina. We’re in it for keeps now.” Johnny said.

Johnny and Tina spent the rest of the day, packing up whatever Tina wanted to take with her that night, They moved Spencer’s car around to the back of the garage and out of sight. After that, they just sat in the sun and waited for Marvin, the other bodyguard, to show up.

At around 4:15 a smaller Cadillac sedan came through the gate and pulled up in front of the house. Marvin looked around, curiously. His instincts were telling him that something was not right. Not quite certain why, he walked over to the garage and lifted the third door open. He stepped inside and looked around.

Marvin walked past the Jaguar and the Jeep and pulled the tarp off Johnny’s motorcycle. He was puzzled, but instinctively drew a pistol from a holster inside his jacket. He left the garage.

Marvin walked slowly through the kitchen, listening for sounds from different parts of the house. He moved methodically through the first floor of the house searching every room carefully. He headed down to the lower level, tense and primed for action  He opened the steam room.  It was empty.  He opened the door to the storage area of the basement,  listened a moment and heard nothing.  He walked over to the walk in freezer. Just as he was about to open it, however, he heard a noise. He turned away and walked to the stairs.  He looked up and saw Tina, with only a towel around her waist. Tina descended the stairs.

“Hi Marvin. Come to check on me. I’m still here.”

Marvin tucked his gun into its holster.  His eyes were riveted on Tina’s breasts.  He looked away briefly, just long enough to see the barrel of Johnny’s gun pointed directly at him.  Johnny fired a single shot.  The bullet entered his chest and punctured his heart. He crashed flat to the floor. Tina let out a short, involuntary scream.  The pistol hung limp in Johnny’s hand.

A little later, after Marvin’s body had been taken care of, Johnny and Tina sat at the kitchen counter and drank some coffee.

“You said that he keeps his cash in a safe in the basement.”

“Yeah. And he’s the only one with the combination. It’s a long one and his memory is fucked so he keeps it on a piece of paper in his wallet.”

“How much do you think will be in there.”

“Ummm, hard to say. Millions? It’s a pretty big safe.

~ 24 ~

Later that night, Johnny was sitting looking out the bedroom window at the moon rising.

“So you said his family lives in Miami. Where do they make the drugs? They wouldn’t do it on their property so they must have a lab somewhere.”

“I’m not sure where the lab is. But it has to be fairly close to where they live.”

“What happens when we take Raphael out?”

“They’ll likely send someone to take over the business, find out who did him in and kill them, I assume.”

Johnny got up and walked around the room a bit. 

“Are you OK?” Tina asked.

“Getting there. Never killed anybody before. It fucks you up a bit.”

“You want your life back. This is how you do it.”

“I guess.”

Tina slipped off the bed and walked over to Johnny. She wrapped her arms around him and they held onto each other for a long time.

~ 25 ~ 

The next day, Tina and Johnny were driving the Jeep down the Queen Elizabeth highway toward Buffalo. Johnny appeared to be more or less back to normal. 

“Did Raphael ever talk to you about muling for him?” Johnny asked.

“No. He’s got this routine with the train. He doesn’t need anybody to carry for him. Just somebody to pick him up on the Canadian side.”

“What’s his routine in Florida?”

The pills are delivered to him at whatever hotel he’s staying at then one of his family’s people drives him to the Miami, Jacksonville or Tampa airports. It’s different every time. Then he flies up to Buffalo.  It’s very simple.”

“Does he have any more money besides what you know about in the safe?

“Yeah. In the safe deposit box in the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce in Boca, U. S. Bearer Bonds and cash and some precious stones. He likes to brag about it.”

“How much, you know, altogether?”

“Not sure but it’s got to be up towards fourteen or fifteen million. He’s been doing this for five or six years.

“Hard to believe a guy could put that kind of money together just sellin’ pills.”

“He’s was a pretty shrewd investor. He understands the tech and the bitcoin markets. Gets in quick, out quick before they all go crazy.”

“If he’s got that kind of money why does he keep on smuggling?”

“I don’t know. Probably because he’s nuts.  And he knows how to stay alive. He’s an adrenalin junkie in his own weird way. He won’t be easy to kill.”

“Nobody’s easy to kill, Tina. It took almost everything I had to do those two bodyguards.”

“His big weakness is that he smokes a lot, of weed and tobacco. He has to come up a long steep grade to get to the car, and he’s puffin’ like crazy when he gets there. You hit him at the top of the hill. I’ll show you where you can hide.”

It was already dusk when they got to Fort Erie. Tina drove to an area known as the coal docks. They got out and showed him exactly the route Raphael would take once he jumped off the train. All along the way were dense bushes on either side.

Tina got into the Jeep. Johnny leaned in the window. “The Tampa flight gets in late, so I will pick him up and bring him directly to the train yard. Then I’ll come back across the border and park here. About twenty minutes later he jumps off the train. You jump him. right at the top of the grade.”

~ 26 ~

Tina drove to the airport where Raphael was already waiting for her. He jumped in the car and she quickly drove to the train yard, where he got out and she headed back across the bridge.

At the coal docks, Tina backed the car into position near the top of the grade. Johnny was watching the bridge. He saw the headlight of the diesel on the other side as the train slowly started to cross the bridge. Johnny dropped his backpack. He opened the bag and took out his 38.  He shoved it into the front of his jeans.  He took the injection pistol out and cocked it. Finally, he took out the blackjack and securely fastened it to his wrist. He then slid back into the bushes. He took a deep breath and leaned against one of the trees, waiting.

As the gondola car arrived at the foot of the bridge, Raphael disembarked. He hopped over a small fence and scurried down, almost sliding, to the Niagara Parkway, over the small breakwall and down even further on the concrete steps. He then began to run, weaving to avoid sharp rocks, for a good hundred yards all of which was steeply uphill. He was breathing heavily and sweating, but still looked quite alert.  He slowed his pace a bit as he hustled up the bank onto the pier.  

When he arrived at the car, he opened the trunk and began to slip the pack strap from his shoulders.  Suddenly, he was aware of a rustle in the bushes behind him.  But before he could turn, Johnny had sprung out and landed a perfect hit with his blackjack.  For a brief moment, as Raphael began to fall, their eyes met. Raphael was glaring.  A grin curled his lips.  He started to reach out for Johnny, but his motor functions had cut out from the sharpness of the blow and he  crumpled. 

Johnny caught him, breaking his fall, setting him down softly on the stones.  He then bent down over him. He twisted Raphael's head and fired a shot of the powerful muscle relaxant into the vein in Raphael’s neck. Tina got out of the Jeep and she and Johnny lifted the unconscious Raphael into the back of the vehicle. Johnny used thick plastic binders to bind Raphael’s wrists behind his back and his feet tightly together. He taped Raphael’s mouth with duct tape. They closed the back gate and took off.

Two hours later, Johnny and Tina arrived back at Raphael’s estate. He was still unconscious. They carried him to the front door. Tina went into Raphael’s office and got his office chair. They lifted him into the chair and wheeled him into his office. Johnny administered another dose of tranquillizer then cut his bindings and rebound him more securely to the chair. 

Johnny took Raphael’s wallet from his back pocket and pulled out the combination to the safe. He also noticed that there were a couple of passcodes for the bank in Florida. Johnny smiled to himself.

They headed down to the safe and opened it. They filled two garbage bags with the cash that was in there. They carried the bags of cash out and stashed them in the trunk of the Jaguar. Tina’s bags were already in there.

~ 27 ~

It was about 3 AM when Raphael opened his eyes but realized he was paralyzed. Johnny entered the room.  He walked to the desk and perched on it. He leaned over and put his face very close to Raphael. 

Johnny, wearing rubber gloves, wiped down Raphael’s 45 with a damp cloth and then dried it with a clean cloth.

“In about one minute, I’m gonna blow your fuckin’ brains out, burn down your house and leave here with your woman, and all your money too. Your dope, I’m gonna leave here to burn with you. When they sift through the rubble, those clever investigator types are going to deduce that you killed your bodyguards and dragged them into the meat locker. Then filled with remorse and guilt, you set your own house on fire and then put the gun to your own head. They’ll close the book on this one in about five minutes and they’ll never open it again…one less scumbag in the world.”

Raphael muttered something but Johnny couldn’t really understand it. 

“But there’s another reason I’m glad to see you’re checking out.” 

Johnny put the gun down on the table. He reached into his back pocket. 

“He pulled out his wallet and opened it up to a picture of his brother, Carmine. He set it down on the table in front of Raphael  

“This is my brother. He died young and hooked on pills and just about everything else that scum like you sell. So what have you got to say about that, motherfucker? Guy like you fucks up my brother’s life. Guy like me fucks up yours…man. Poetic justice.”

Johnny folded up his wallet and put it back into Raphael’s pocket. He picked up the gun again. He gave Raphael one last shot from the tranquillizer gun. When he was out he cut all the restraints and removed the tape from Raphael’s mouth. He wrapped Raphael’s hand around the gun and raised it to his temple. he then pulled on Raphael’s trigger finger and the gun exploded into his skull, blowing out the bullet fragments out the other side. Johnny then let Raphael’s arm drop. The gun hit the floor and bounced a bit.

Finally, Johnny pulled out a barbecue lighter and made his way through the house setting everything that would burn on fire.

He stood by the passenger door of the car with Tina until they could clearly see flames coming from the windows of the large house. Johnny then got the motorcycle out of the garage and, with Tina following in the Jaguar, they left the burning house.

A few hours later they arrived at a motel on the east side of the city, where Johnny had been staying. Johnny and Tina entered and quietly headed upstairs to Johnny’s room. They took off their clothes and snuggled together on Johnny’s bed.

Just before she drifted off to sleep, she turned to Johnny and said “Thank you for saving my life.”

“You’re welcome.” Johnny said. “Now we only have one more thing to do.”

~ 28 ~

The next day, Johnny was driving the Jaguar. They drove down to Paulie’s house in Scarborough. Johnny dropped off the pistol and the injector gun.

“Turns out I didn’t need the pistol after all, Paulie. But there are a couple more things I could use.”

Johnny handed Paulie Raphael’s phone. “I’m looking for an address that goes with this number.” he said as he pointed to a number in the phone’s directory. 

Paulie looked at it. Then copied it down. “Might take a little time. I’ll take a look and text you with the info.”

Johnny then went out to the car and came back with the two garbage bags filled with cash.

“Listen Paulie. There’s fourteen million, seven hundred and fifty-four thousand dollars in untraceable cash. I want you to use your banking connections to have that money deposited in a current account and then transferred to a bank in Italy.” He gave Paulie the name of the bank and the account number of the bank. The seven hundred and fifty-four thousand is your fee for doing this.

“That’s a lot of money for a relatively small favour, John.” Paulie said.

“Yeah, maybe. But you gotta factor in that I can trust you to pull this off without anyone finding out about it.”

“Guaranteed, John.”

He and Paulie shared a guy hug and Johnny left and got back into the Jaguar, carrying a plastic shopping bag and they headed off to the airport.

~ 29 ~

The next day they drove the Jaguar to a dealer, then flew to Miami and checked into a hotel in Miami Beach. The air was hot and humid, so they stayed in the room until evening, then they headed out to find some dinner. While they were eating, Johnny’s phone beeped. There was a message from Paulie, with an address in South Miami. There was also a confirmation that the money was on its way to Italy.

The next day, Johnny dropped Tina off downtown Boca Raton, agreeing to pick her up in a few hours. 

Johnny drove down to the marina and walked to a restaurant called Cozy’s. He sat outside and ordered a beer. After a few minutes, a casually dressed man joined him at the table. He ordered a coffee. He and Johnny talked for about twenty minutes then the man got up. He shook hands with Johnny and walked back the way he came. Johnny stared out at the ocean, as the pelicans dove for fish.

Downtown in Boca Raton, Tina entered the CIBC Branch and, with all the right paperwork, was shown into the safety deposit vault. The bank employee brought her a medium-sized box and then left her in privacy.

Tina opened the box and emptied out the contents on the table. There was a stack of one hundred and fifty -six $100,000 bearer bonds, and a small bag containing two dozen beautifully cut diamonds and gemstones. There was also the deed to a piece of property south of the city. Half an hour later she was sitting in a cafe sipping a cappuccino and waiting for Johnny, who picked her up fifteen minutes later.

Later that afternoon Tina was lying on top of the bed, asleep. She was wearing nothing but a pair of panties.  Johnny entered the cool, dark room quietly and disrobed.

Tina woke early the next morning to find herself in Johnny’s arms. Johnny was sleeping deeply.  She slid out of the bed without disturbing him.  She put on a robe and went out onto the balcony.  The sun was already midway into the sky. 

Half an hour later Johnny woke up.  He rolled over to see Tina, sitting on a chair beside the bed.

“Hi.”

“Hi, yourself.”

“I went to the bank yesterday.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Uh huh.”

Tina opened her bag and dumped its contents out onto the bed: a bag of gemstones, dozens of bearer bonds, some small precious artifacts in tiny cases and a small pile of American money.

“There’s close to six million in bearer bonds, and who knows what the gemstones and other little bits are worth. Tina reached into the sleeve of her purse and pulled out the deed and a picture of the house Raphael also owned.

“This is the rest. It’s the most beautiful fucking house you’ve ever seen.  Right on the beach, ten miles south of here.

Suddenly a wave of guilt swept over Johnny. He pulled himself up off the bed, backing away from both Tina and the money.

“Johnny. It’s alright.  It’s all over now.  We can be happy.  Just let go of all that useless guilt.”

Johnny was visibly upset. “No...no, that won’t make us happy.  That’s blood money. Blood that I spilled.”

Tina got up and walked over to Johnny and grabbed him by the shoulders. “Johnny, listen to me.” Tina said in the firmest voice she could muster. “This is not blood money. It’s our money. We earned every goddam cent. It’s not blood that you spilled. It’s a war that you won, and you could have just as easily lost and not even be here right now. Did you ever think about that?”

Johnny just stared out the window. He was working hard to come to terms with it. But he could not get the thought out of his head that they were the wages of sin. He had broken more commandments than he ever thought he would. He was going to hell for sure.

He lay down on the other bed. Tina laid beside him. She didn’t say anything to try and cheer him up. She knew he would have to work this out himself. It was just one of those things that he had to do. And she cared enough for him to let him do it at his own speed. 

Johnny slept till later that evening. When he woke up, he looked over at Tina, who was sitting in a chair reading a book on her Kindle.

He looked at her and then took a deep breath. “It’s OK now.” he said.

“Good.”

“Just one more thing to do.”

Tina sighed. “Johnny we’re free and clear right now. Let’s just get the fuck out of here and finish the plan. You can write your stories. I can have babies. We can have the best life imaginable.”

Johnny looked at her, then he reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. He extracted the picture of Carmine and handed it to Tina.

“This is my brother Carm. Was my brother until he got hooked on crack. and got himself killed in a knife fight over some slut who meant nothing to him. The last thing we have to do for him, is to put these people out of business. And then we’ll be free and I will have done what I promised Carm I would do on his deathbed.”

Tina stared at the picture. She was starting to understand what was going on in Johnny’s head. “Okay, Johnny. We’ll do this for your brother. And then we’ll go away and be happy.”

Johnny nodded. “Yeah. We will. We definitely will.”

~ 30 ~

Johnny and Tina, in a rented car, pulled up to the gates of an estate along the coast south of Miami. Tina used one of the keys on the Raphael’s keychain to open the automatic gate.  They entered and pulled up to a large hacienda-style house.

After they entered, Johnny walked through and opened the sliding glass door and stepped out onto the terrace., He was a hundred feet or so from a stunningly beautiful beach. Tina came out onto the terrace. Johnny took a seat and looked out over the ocean.

“I’ve only been here once. It’s absolutely beautiful.” Tina said.

“Can’t argue with you there.” 

“Johnny, I’m going to go into town and pick up some stuff. Walk through the house and open the windows. It’s a little stuffy inside.”

“Yeah, OK. “ Johnny said, snapping out of his reverie.

“Take a deep breath, Johnny. Go for a walk. This is paradise.”

Johnny walked through the house, entering each room, and opening windows. He was astonished at the amount of artwork on the walls and sculptures on pedestals and shelves around the house.

A little later, Johnny came out the rear door of the house wearing a pair of shorts and holding a towel. He walked down to the beach, dropped his towel and threw himself into the gentle surf.

After his swim, Johnny entered the master bedroom from the bathroom. He had a towel around his waist and another rubbing his very short hair dry. Tina was lying on the large bed, sound asleep. Johnny entered a walk-in closet.  

He began trying on some of the outfits hanging there. He was surprised to see that they fit him. He settled on a white suit, with a blood red Hawaiian shirt under the jacket. He left the bedroom and headed out to the beach for a walk.

Johnny, carrying his shoes, his pants rolled up, walked along the beach. He was about half a mile down the beach from the house. The wind was up a bit and the waves smacked lightly against the sandy shore. The breeze carried the faint sound of a marimba band from the hotel further down the shoreline. The sky was a rich blue black, erupting out of a hot orange horizon line.  He walked past an old man, sitting in the entrance to a makeshift cabana, smoking a large spliff.  He looked at the old man and the old man smiled back at him.  His large round eyes and large teeth gleamed out of the shiny black finish of his face. The old man had a timeless look about him.  Yet there was something vaguely familiar about him, at the same time.

“You want to sit and smoke some with me, man?”

Johnny stopped and looked at the old man for a while. There was honesty in his face, Johnny thought, as he sat down beside him. The old man handed him the spliff.  Johnny took a large hit and handed the spliff back to the man.

“That’s a nice white suit you got there, man.  But you don’t look like no white suit fella.”

“That’s right, pop. I ain’t no white suit fella at all.”

“Whatchu doing’ in a white suit, den?”

“Maybe I’m tryin’ to be something that I’m not.”

“Many men try and do dat. Most men unhappy and dat’s de reason. You one doze fellas?”

“Maybe. Maybe, I’m just playin’ a part though.”

“Ain’t no job I’d wanna have, man. Playin’a white suit part. Spose you spill something on dat white suit?  You be in a helluva fix den.”

“I’m in a helluva fix already, man.  Little something on my suit ain’t gonna make a lot of difference.”

The old man passed the spliff back to Johnny.

“No, I spose not.” The old man said.

“You got any of this smoke to sell?”

“Sell?  No, I don’t sell.  You feel the need to get high, you come and see me. I always here. Dis is my place.”

“This is all you’ve got?”

“Dis all I need.” 

Johnny and the man sat and listened to the surf as it started to crash a little harder.

“I used to have a lot.” The old man said. “Many tings. Many people doin’ tings for me too. But den, one day, I wake up with de notion dat these tings, they ain’t doin’ me no good.” 

“So what did you do?”

“I give’em all away.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like dat.”

Johnny and the old man were silent again.

“I know that be hard for a white suit fella to unnerstan.”

“No, I understand. In fact, I was recently liquidated myself.” 

The old man laughed. “Down to de las white suit.”

Johnny chuckled. “Yeah, right down to my last white suit.”

Johnny got up and looked down at the old man. He is pleasantly high. 

“Thanks for the puff, pops. What do they call you?”

“Dey don call me much of anything.”

Johnny nodded and walked back toward the hacienda.

~ 31 ~

The next morning, after they left Raphael’s estate and checked into a hotel in Boca Raton, Tina called Raphael’s father and announced that she was coming to see him. Tina put her arms around Johnny’s neck and kissed him. 

“We’ll get out of this together and in one piece,” Tina said. “Then we can start something new. Sound like a plan?” 

“Yeah, it does.”

Tina climbed into the rental car and left the house.

Twenty minutes later Tina drove into the Sanchez estate. She entered a large library room. Inside the were two very menacing looking Hispanic men in suits. At the far end of the library, Hector Sanchez sat in a wing chair staring out the window at the ocean. He looked to be in his sixties. He had silver hair was cut short and wore a beautiful Hawaiian shirt and slacks with sandals. 

He did not get up when he saw Tina. She leaned over and hugged him, then took a seat opposite him. 

“I assume you have come to tell what you can about Raphael’s death.” Hector said.

“I have. Although I don’t know very much. I was in Toronto at the time and only found out about it when I returned.”

“And this thing. It happened just the way it was described in the police reports?”

“I can’t say for sure. But Raphael was not himself. Hasn’t been for a while.”

“Too much powder?”

“Too much everything, I begged him to slow down, but he didn’t listen. I threatened to leave him but that didn’t seem to matter to him either.”

“He was always a wild boy. When he was younger we tried everything. Psychologists, Anti-depressants. Military school. It was maddening. But through all that, there was never any thought that he would end up…”

“Senor Hector, I am so sorry.”

Sanchez reached out and took Tina’s hands. 

Tina, you’re a good girl. Raphael spoke highly of you. And I appreciate your coming.”

“Thank you, Senor Hector. But there is another matter I wish to discuss with you.” 

Sanchez nodded a go-ahead.

“The business. Raphael’s business was doing quite well. It was growing. And it was profitable. I would like to carry on the business, with your approval of course.”

“By yourself?” Sanchez asked.

“No senor. I would have a partner. Someone who is very well-connected in the market. His name is John Vallone. He’s an old friend from school. I have known him for a long time.”

Sanchez found this all a bit curious. “This is very sudden.” 

“Please forgive me if I sound cold. But business is business, Senor Hector. Raphael taught me that. The longer we delay, the higher the risk we run of losing the business we already have.” 

Sanchez leaned back in his chair. 

“Where is this Mr. Vallone?”

“He’s in Boca. Hoping to meet with you.”

Sanchez got to his feet. He turned and gestured to one of the men at the door. “Emiliano will show you out. Send Mr. Vallone here tomorrow at noon. We’ll talk then.”

 “Thank you, Senor Hector.” 

Tina and Sanchez embraced.

“No, thank you, my dear, for reminding me that, as distasteful as it can be sometimes, life goes on.”

Tina and Emiliano left the room. As soon as Tina was gone. Sanchez walked over to the bar and poured himself a drink. Through the door beside, the bar a man who looked remarkably like Raphael appeared. He was Sanchez’s other son, Eduardo.

“So what do you think?” Sanchez asked.

“I think that her and this Vallone killed my brother and your son.”

“But she says he killed himself. And the police report confirms it.”

“Pardon me father, but Raphael was the most self-absorbed human being I have ever known. People like that do not kill themselves.” 

Sanchez thought about this for a moment. “I trust you have a plan to deal with this.” 

“Yes, father.” 

“You’re a good boy.” Sanchez said, patting Eduardo on the shoulder.

~ 32 ~

In a quiet bar in Boca Raton, Johnny entered and took a seat on a stool at the far end of the long bar. He ordered a beer and sat sipping it rather peacefully. After a moment the man he had met with earlier came into the bar and sat down beside him. His name was Dan Crawley, a DEA agent.

“Agent Crawley.” Johnny said.

“At your service.” 

“OK show me the paper.”

Crawley reached into his pocket and pulled out a business envelope. He handed it to Johnny. Johnny opened it up and read the document. Crawley asked the bartender for a beer. Johnny folded up the document and tucked it into his pocket.

“So the deal is that nothing I say in the meeting can incriminate me.”

“You can confess to kidnapping the Lindberg baby or masterminding the 9/11 attacks and we won’t do a thing.” 

“The Lindbergh baby…I like that.”

“We really appreciate your stepping up to the plate like this. We’ve been trying to penetrate the Sanchez network for years.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but I really don’t give a rat’s ass.”

“Yeah, well be that as it may, we still appreciate it.”

Crawley reached into his pocket and pulled out a small pin. It was painted to look like a Canadian flag.

“This is the mike?” 

“Pretty cool isn’t it? Just stick It in your lapel and you’re good to go. 

“What about scanners? I’m sure they’re gonna have one.” 

“This is ultra high frequency and it’s top secret tech. If he’s got a sweeper that can sniff this, then we’ve got a lot more to worry about than just the drugs.”

The two men sit quietly for a while. 

“I’m a little mystified,” Crawley said, “About your motivation here. If you don’t mind me asking, just exactly why are you doing this?

“It’s a long story.” Johnny said.

“Well then, why don’t we order another beer?” 

“Better still, why don’t we go for a walk.”

A few minutes later. Johnny and Crawley were walking along the beach. There was only a sight breeze and the waves were breaking gently.

“I was in the business, back in the day. Just weed, but I knew a lot of crackheads and cokeheads.” Johnny said.

“Those were the good old days.” Crawley said.

“Yeah well, whatever…When Raphael first came to town, he didn’t go through the usual channels, getting to know the wholesalers etc. He started right at retail--recruiting high school kids off the street. He figured the distributors would come to him, and they did. Out in the burbs where my kid brother Carmine lived, he was one of Raphael’s first and best dealers. He was a great little salesman. But it wasn’t long until he was hooked on three or four different pills. Ludes, then crack and a couple of weird uppers. Eventually, he just hit a wall, ended up getting knifed by another junkie. I made a promise on Carmine’s grave that I would get rid of Raphael and the bigger fish he dealt with. It was the least I could do. ‘Cause before he showed up, my brother was just a regular kid. He probably would have ended up running my dad’s construction business and having a pretty good life. That bastard took all that away from him.” 

“So I guess you didn’t shed a tear when Raphael showed up dead in his burned-down mansion.”

“Yeah, I believe I did. But mostly because I didn’t get the chance to off that motherfucker myself.”

Crawley lit a cigarette.

“Raphael had the kind of personality that could really piss you off.” Johnny said. “I’m sure he pissed off a lot of people. Maybe they all chipped in and bought a hit.” 

“Maybe they did. From my point of view, it’s just one less scumbag to worry about.”

“It is that for sure.”

The two men walked on.

~ 33 ~

The next morning, Johnny left the hotel with Emiliano. They climbed into a dark Lincoln and headed out. 

The car pulled up to the front gate of the large, concrete fence surrounding the estate. Two muscular-looking men materialized from a small gatehouse. They asked Johnny to get out of the car and frisked him thoroughly. They waved a wand over him as well. But it didn’t pick up the signal from the mike he was wearing. They then opened the huge iron gate and the car slipped through.

As they were driving up to the main house, Johnny saw several men with mean-looking guard dogs patrolling the lawn. They all watched the car very closely.  The car pulled up to the front of the large house and Johnny got out. The front door of the house opened and, Eduardo, a man who, to Johnny, looked very much like Raphael, sauntered out. In a holster under his arm was a small cannon. He wore dark sunglasses and appeared to be sniffling with regularity. He led Johnny to the side of the house.

Johnny and Eduardo walked right around to the back garden and pool area, where Hector Sanchez was sitting. He did not rise nor attempt to shake Johnny’s hand. Instead, he gestured for Johnny to sit down across from him. Johnny complied. Eduardo took a seat beside Johnny.

“Who are you?” Sanches said, 

“My name is John Vallone?”  Johnny said.

“And how do you know Tina?” 

“We went to school together. Nothing romantic, just friends and neighbours.”

“And what do you do?” 

“Right now, I’m writing a novel. I own a share of my father’s construction business and it gives me an income, so I don’t have to actually have to have a job.”

“Tina said you are connected.” Sanches asked. “How does that work?”

“I used to deal weed before it got legalized up in Canada. A lot of the guys that Raphael dealt with are former weed dealers. A lot of us had the same supplier. I know most of the people in Raphael’s network.

“How well did you know Raphael?” Eduardo asked.

Johnny looked at him. “Not at all. I knew Tina. I ran into her at one of Raphael’s buying parties. I was there with one of his dealers, a cousin, actually. I saw Raphael at the party, of course, but didn’t talk to him. We didn’t really stay very long. After Raphael’s death, Tina called me. Guess she just needed somebody to talk to. We had lunch. She cried a lot. Then she asked me if I would help her keep the network alive.” Johnny said, playing back the story they had rehearsed ad nauseam.

“So I take it that you are looking for us to advance the drugs to you and repay us after they are sold.” Eduardo said.

“That’s between you and Tina. I’m just there so she doesn’t have to do this all on her own. But no, she doesn’t have the kind of money to buy the drugs from you. After the first deal, however, she should.”

“And you’re just doing this out of the kindness of your heart.” Eduardo asked.

Johnny thought about it for a moment and then said. “Yeah, I suppose I am. I mean, what kind of friend would I be if I didn’t? She has no money of her own.”

Hector took a deep breath.

“Do you believe the police reports of Raphael’s death?”

“Like I said. I didn’t really know Raphael, but from some of the stories my cousin, who was one of his dealers, told me I got the impression that he was very…umm reckless and though he had a high-quality product to sell, hewas not liked or trusted by some of the people he did business with. According to my cousin, Raphael’s death came as no surprise to anyone. Evidently, he was very good at pissing people off.”

The elder Sanchez leaned back in his chair. His face betrayed a genuine sadness. He looked up at Johnny. “Thank you, senor, for being brave enough to speak the truth.” 

“I don’t know if it’s true, sir. It’s just what I heard.”

Sanchez signalled for Emiliano, who was standing by the pool. 

“Emiliano will bring you the pills. Same order as last time. If, between you and Tina, you can keep the network supplied, then that will be a good thing.”

Johnny sensed that the conversation was over. He got to his feet. 

“I’m very sorry for your loss, Senor Sanchez.”

“Thank you, Via con Dios. Emiliano will explain the payment procedure.”

Emiliano led Johnny around to the front of the house. “Consider yourself fortunate. They are looking hard for someone to blame for all of this. They are very proud people.” Emiliano said.

“Well, they are doing Tina a huge favour.”

“Si Senor. That’s very true.”

Twenty minutes later, Johnny was back at the hotel. Emiliano told him to expect a package the next morning.

After Emiliano left, Johnny called Crawley. Half an hour later he was sitting with him in a cafe not far from the hotel. He unfastened the pin and handed it back to him. “The drugs are coming tomorrow morning.”

While Johnny was meeting with Agent Crawley, Tina, who was having a nap, woke up to see Eduardo Sanchez sitting at the end of the bed. 

“You’re a very clever girl, Tina.” he said “You thought of just about everything.” 

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about two brothers who, even though they are separated by thousands of miles, still talk to each other almost every night.” Eduardo said.

Tina was petrified. But she said nothing. 

“How does it feel to have a man who would kill for you? That must be a pretty special feeling.”

“First of all, you have no idea what happened to Raphael. But I do and what happened is the way it was. You can believe whatever you like. It’s not gonna change the reality. I don’t give a shit how he sounded on the phone to you. What do you want?”

“I thought you’d never ask. In a nutshell. I want you to kill your little friend.”

“That’s insane. Why would I do that?” Tina asked.

“Well, there are two reasons. The first is that I want you to feel what it’s like to lose a loved one. I know it’s not a nice thing to want for someone, but there you go.”

“What’s the second reason?

“The second reason is that you get to live. Because someone has to keep the business going and you know all the players. Now how’s that for motivation?”

“This is crazy. Johnny didn’t even know Raphael.”

Eduardo reached into his pocket and pulled out a key. He tossed it into her lap. “This key opens a locker at the bus terminal here. In it, you will find a gun and silencer. Take him down to the beach and kill him. Someone will be watching to make sure you do it. If not, that someone will kill both of you.”

 “Oh my God, you’re even crazier than your brother.”

“Maybe, but that’s how it’s gonna work. Kill him and you live. Don’t kill him and you both die.”

With that, Eduardo got up and left the room.

~ 34 ~

Much later that night Johnny and Tina were walking along a deserted stretch of beach. Following them from a distance was a man named Rodrigo. From his point of view, he saw Tina and Johnny having an animated conversation. They stopped and Tina turned to walk away, leaving Johnny standing on the beach alone, facing her. Suddenly, Tina pulled out the gun from her shoulder bag. She pointed it at Johnny and fired three times. Johnny fell backward hit three times in the chest. Tina stood on the deserted beach, the gun hanging limply in her hand. 

Rodrigo saw the muzzle flashes and Johnny go down on the sand. He approached Tina and the downed Johnny. He walked over to Johnny’s body.  As he did, Tina raised the gun and fired three more shots. Rodrigo went down next to Johnny.

Johnny got slowly to his feet. His chest really hurt from the bullets. He removed his jacket and shirt and took off the Kevlar vest that he had gotten from Paulie. He took the gun from Tina, then he pulled the phone out of Rodrigo’s pocket and handed it to her. They walked down the deserted beach to a pier. Johnny took the gun to the end of the pier, wiped it down with a kerchief and tossed it as far as he could out into the ocean. He tossed the vest into the water as well and it sank almost instantly.

Tina opened up a text file and sent a message in Spanish. The business is complete.

~ 35 ~

Very early the following morning. The DEA and their SWAT teams converged on the Sanches +compound. There was a brief flurry of gunfire with the guards. But the rest of the raid went peacefully as the Sanchezes, father and son, were cuffed and led to a van.

A little while later, Dan Crawley, sat on the hood of his car. He dialled Johnny’s number on his cell. Johnny was sitting with Tina in a DEA safe house. Johnny put the phone on speaker. 

“It’s Dan Crawley. Just wanted to let you know that the raid was successful and the bad guys are all in custody. We also did a deal with one of their guards and got the location of the lab, then raided that. The haul was pretty large. I’ll be in touch regarding your testimony at their trial. You can do it via CCTV, no problem. We have frozen all their assets, so they have no money to come after you with. We can put you in WITSEC if you want. Just make sure you answer your phone next time I call, so I know you’re on board. A deal is a deal, John.”

Johnny picked up the phone. “Thanks Dan. Maybe I’ve watched too many TV shows, but I think we’ll be safer on our own. You have my cell number. Call us when you need us.”

~ 36 ~

It took them a couple of days to get the sale of Raphael’s Villa organized and on the market. After that, Tina flew to Toronto. Johnny packed the gemstones and bearer bonds into a backpack and flew to Buffalo. He used the same methodology as Raphael had used to get it all across the border and into Canada.

With the cash in two accounts in Tina’s name, there was no issue about moving it. The Canadian banking system was very cooperative in that regard. 

They then flew to Italy, where a cousin of his friend Paulie who lived in Palermo, forged new Italian identities for them, complete with Italian birth certificates, driver’s licences and passports.

Before discarding her old identity, Tina, transferred all the money from Florida to an account in her new name at the Naples branch of the Banca Nazionale Del Leaver. She did this all online. Paulie laundered the bearer bonds and sold the diamonds and had all the money, less his 15% commission, deposited into Tina’s account in Naples.

Before they left Canada, Tina had contacted an estate agent who showed them three villas in the Torre del Greco area of Naples after they arrived. They purchased the one they liked best for cash. It was more or less fully furnished. The large terrace of their house both the city and the Mediterranean. 

A few months later, Johnny’s hair had grown back. He had purchased a New MacBook Pro and spent his days on the terrace writing stories, under his new Italian name Frederico Tucci. He also sent a message to his dad in Newmarket.

“Hi pop…It’s Johnny. I’m fine. Hope you 

and everybody else are well too. Tina and I
are living overseas now. Not sure when I’ll 

be back, but I just want to let you know
that I took your advice and took care of
business. And Carmine can rest easy too,
because I took care of that as well. Give
my love to everybody. Oh yeah…you’re
gonna be a grandpa Yeah…little girl
named we’re gonna name Carmella.
I’ll send you some pictures once she
arrives. So long dad…Love you all.”

Johnny got up and walked to the railing of the terrace and looked out over the sea. Down below, Tina pulled into the driveway and got out of the car. She rummaged around in the back seat for a moment and then emerged with two shopping bags. It was obvious that she was several months pregnant. She waved at Johnny and he waved back.

F I N