Chapter 7 - The Severed Thread
By three in the afternoon, the Chicago sleet had turned into a full-scale lake-effect blizzard.
The view from the thirty-eighth floor was gone; there was only a howling, white wall of wind that rattled the triple-pane glass with rhythmic, shivering gusts. The city below had ceased to exist, reduced to a muffled blur of yellow sodium lights and the distant, dying wails of ambulance sirens three hundred feet down in the canyons.
Jimmy ‘The Priest’ Rizzolo was not praying.
He was kneeling on a blue plastic tarp that Marcus had laid down over the boardroom rug to protect what remained of the carpet. Jimmy was forty-two, his nose crooked from an old fracture, his scalp shaved clean, wearing a black tactical sweater that had been shredded along the right sleeve where Marcus’s German shepherd had taken hold of him in the parking garage.
His hands were zip-tied behind his back, but his fingers were unbroken. Marcus had followed orders.
On the table between them sat a gray Pelican case containing a military-grade UHF digital receiver and an automated telemetry monitor. The screen was cracked, but the signal analyzer was still glowing green: *RELAY ACTIVE.*
Vincent sat behind his desk. He had changed his shirt; one of the housemen had brought a fresh white spread-collar from the executive bedroom suite down the hall. His tie was straight, his cuffs linked with plain gold ovals.
He looked like a man waiting for a delayed flight in a VIP lounge.
“Jimmy,” Vincent said.
Rizzolo looked up. His eyes had the flat, dead sheen of a man who had cleared rooms in Fallujah and spent the next fifteen years burying bodies for the Detroit Outfit. He wasn't crying like Dominic, and he wasn't begging like DeLuca. He knew what the room was.
“Caruso,” Jimmy said, his voice gravelly.
“Did Sal Donati think six ounces of C-4 was enough to take this desk?”
Jimmy spat a dark coin of phlegm onto the blue tarp. “Six ounces was just to blow your legs off and shatter your pelvis, Vince. The idea was to keep you breathing for about ten minutes while the room filled with smoke. Long enough for Anthony to walk out the fire stair and tell the street you’d had a gas leak.”
DeLuca, still tied to his chair in the corner, let out a dry, rattling moan. He had lost too much blood; his skin had the yellowish tinge of old parchment.
“A gas leak,” Vincent mused. “In an all-electric building. Sal always was an idiot.”
“He had the commission’s blessing, Vince,” Jimmy said, leaning forward an inch. “You think this was just Gary? New York wants the port. They want the rail lines. They’re tired of paying you three points on every container that touches Cook County. They gave Sal the green light six weeks ago. If you kill me, another team comes out of Cleveland on Monday.”
Vincent looked at Michael Russo.
Michael was holding an open satellite phone. “Frank Costello’s people are in the Hammond warehouse, Vince. They took the three Detroit boys out in the alley. The girl is in an ambulance heading for Northwestern Memorial. DeLuca’s people didn't even put up a fight. They ran the second the first van pulled up.”
Vincent nodded once. He looked back at Jimmy.
“Dial the phone, Jimmy.”
Marcus stepped behind the kneeling hitman, pulled a customized titanium burner phone from Jimmy’s tactical vest pocket, and held it in front of Rizzolo’s face. Marcus used Jimmy’s thumb to unlock the biometric sensor, then tapped the single contact stored in the memory: *DONATI - PERSONAL.*
Marcus hit speaker. He laid the phone on the blue tarp three inches from Jimmy’s knees.
The line clicked twice. Then a heavy, wet voice answered, competing with the background clatter of silver cutlery and Italian opera.
“Jimmy?” Sal Donati said. “Is it done? The news hasn't picked up the sirens yet.”
Vincent leaned forward, his elbows resting on the mahogany.
“Sal,” Vincent said.
The silence on the other end of the line was instantaneous. The opera continued—Puccini’s *Tosca*, the third act, the tenor singing about the stars shining before the dawn execution—but the clatter of silver stopped.
“Vincent?” Donati’s voice lost all its greasy, jovial weight. It became thin, reedy, old.
“Your radio has a loose wire, Sal,” Vincent said, his voice smooth as cold cream. “It made a little clicking noise. A three-year-old boy heard it.”
Donati didn't speak for five seconds. When he did, he tried to sound casual, but the rattle in his lungs gave him away. “Vincent… look. There’s been a misunderstanding. Anthony came to me. Anthony said you were sick. He said you were looking to retire to Florida and the family was going to fall apart—”
“Anthony is currently bleeding to death on my carpet, Sal.”
Another pause.
“And Jimmy?” Donati whispered.
Vincent looked at Marcus.
Marcus didn't draw his gun. He simply took Jimmy Rizzolo’s chin in his left hand, his right hand cupping the back of the hitman’s skull, and with a sudden, violent torque of his shoulders that took less than a tenth of a second, snapped the cervical vertebrae with a sound like a dry branch snapping under an iron tire.
Jimmy collapsed onto the blue tarp without a grunt, his limbs sprawling limp, his eyes wide and vacant, staring at the ceiling mold.
Vincent picked up the phone from the tarp. He brought it to his ear.
“Jimmy has retired, Sal,” Vincent said softly. “And by midnight, so will you.”
“Vincent—wait! We can talk to New York! We can split the rail fees fifty-fifty! Vince, my grandchildren are at the house!”
“Then I suggest you send them to the movies, Sal,” Vincent said. “Because the snow is very heavy, and the plows in Lake Geneva are notoriously slow.”
Vincent ended the call. He handed the phone back to Marcus.
“Burn the van,” Vincent said. “Take Anthony down to the incinerator in the basement. He wanted to run the logistics; he can see how the heating system works.”
He stood up. He did not look at Dominic Greco, who was still kneeling by his chair, his forehead touching the mahogany in silent, groveling gratitude.
“Michael,” Vincent said.
“Yes, Vince?”
“Have the car brought around to the underground tunnel. I’m going to Lake Forest.”
“What about the table?” Michael asked, gesturing toward Julian Vance, who was still staring blankly at the wall, and the three empty chairs.
May you like
“The table is dissolved,” Vincent said, picking up his cashmere overcoat from the stand. “From now on, Michael, we don't have captains. We have employees. And employees don't get seats at the desk.”
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