“Let me get this straight,” Nico said. “Shots were fired, three of our men were down, and you fuckers gave up? You let some random fucks force you to give up?”
All three men looked at each other. Nico could tell there was more to that story. “What?” he asked them.
Pauley and Tagglia looked at Dill. Dill didn’t want to take the torch anymore, but he knew he had to. “They weren’t random, Boss,” he said.
“But we didn’t know it at the time,” Pauley was quick to point out.
Now the meat of the matter, Nico thought. “Who were they?” he asked.
Dill exhaled. “Peltrone’s guys,” he said.
Nico already knew that too. But a part of him didn’t believe it. That was why he had to handle this himself. It could mean war. “Why would Peltrone attack my guys?” he asked. “I’ve had a truce with that man for twenty years, and suddenly he wants to attack my guys? Are you certain they belonged to Peltrone?”
“They had to, Boss,” Tagglia said. “They had to be his men.”
“Why?”
“But we didn’t know, Nico,” said Dill. “We thought he was just some prick trying to be bad ass like the rest of them.”
Nico stared at Dill, a fixed frown on his face. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking Peltrone. The one of theirs we took out was Peltrone himself,” Dill said.
Even Carmine was shocked. “What the fuck?!”
Nico was stunned. “You killed Peltrone?”
Dill looked stressed out as he nodded. “We didn’t know it was him at first. We thought he was just one of the crowd.”
“One of the crowd?” Carmine asked. “Are you out of your fucking mind? You iced a mob boss and you didn’t even know it?”
“How did you find out?”
“We just got the call. From Matty Mapp, his underboss. Screaming from the top of his lungs that we’ll pay for taking out their boss. But we didn’t know it was their boss and I tried to tell that fool. But you know how Matty is.”
Nico took both hands and ran them halfway through his air. He still could not believe it. Those idiots killed a boss!
But he knew he had to move on. He couldn’t change what already happened. He had to think about the ramifications. How was he going to mitigate that kind of damage? Those fucks let three of their men go down, and the one man they did decide to ice was the boss? “Motherfuck,” Nico said again.
“What are we gonna do, Boss?” Carmine asked.
“Get Matty on the phone.”
“And if he doesn’t wanna talk?”
“He’s not talking to you. He’s talking to me.” He handed his phone to Carmine. “Get him on the phone.”
“Oh, if he figure it’s you calling him, his ass’ll talk then,” said Carmine with certainty, as he used Nico’s phone to call Peltrone’s underboss.
“How are we gonna handle this, Boss?” asked Dill. “We didn’t know Peltrone was with his crew. We thought he was just one of the guys making noise.”
“That’s why your ass don’t talk smack to anybody anywhere!” Nico yelled. “Not while you’re working for me. Because you don’t fucking know!”
Then Nico settled back down. “Did the cops show up?”
“No. I mean, they might have shown up, but we got out of there.”
“And you left the dead behind?”
Dill knew it was a major fuckup. “What were we supposed to do? They were shooting at us even as we were leaving. We retreated behind our car, and then we jumped in and took off. What were we supposed to do?”
“Fight like men!” Nico yelled. “Get behind that car and fight the fuck back! What are you retreating for?”
“But the odds were against us, Nico,” Tagglia said. “We didn’t stand a chance!”
“Sometimes that how the fucking cookie crumbles,” Nico said. “But you never surrender!” Nico ran a hand through his hair again and began pacing the room.
Carmine ended the call. “There’s no answer, Boss,” he said. “Matty’s not answering his phone, not even your number.” Then he looked at Nico. “You know what that means.”
Nico stood still, still thinking, still counting up the costs in the long haul. And then he exhaled. It was done now. He looked at his three men. Unlike a lot of mob bosses, he protected his men no matter what. But not without them paying a price. “Go to Memphis and get lost. Keep your noses clean and keep your asses out of trouble. We’ll get you some cash. We’ll let you know when the heat’s off.”
“But, Boss,” Pauley asked, “what about our families?”
Nico frowned. “Your asses better be glad I don’t drop you where you stand. That’s what about your families! Now go.”
“Yes, sir,” Dill said, pulling Pauley along, as all three of them hurried out of the back door that led down the back stairs.
“Damn fools,” Carmine said. Then he looked at Nico. “Matty’s no pussy. He’s coming back hard, Boss. You know that.”
“I don’t think so,” Nico said, still thinking it through.
“What do you mean?” Carmine asked him.
“If he won’t pick up, even from my number, it’s because it’s out of his hands.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Every small mob family had a major mob family as their protector. Peltrone was small, and he was nobody’s fool. Nico knew he had a protector. “Who’s over Peltrone?” he asked Carmine.
“Same man always been over him. Sal Gabrini.”
Nico looked at Carmine. “Are you sure? He was still under Sal Luca’s protection?”
“Where he going, with his small-ass family? Gabrini was still carrying him.”
Nico frowned again. “Damn,” he said.
“Want me to keep trying Matty?”
“Fuck Matty! He’s not answering when he thinks I’m calling? He’s not going to be answering period. Besides, we took out his boss. If they were still under Sal’s protection, Sal will be running that show. And Sal and I don’t exactly get along.”
“Then who do we call?”
“Nobody yet. If I know Gabrini, and I do, once he gets all the facts in, he’ll be calling me.”
“And then?”
“And then we either broker a peace, or we start a fucking war. We’ll do what we have to do.”
And then they heard a sound that, at first, sounded like a car backfiring. Then they realized it wasn’t a car, but shots were being fired.
And Nico and Carmine didn’t delay. Like the OGs they were, they pulled out their hardware and took off through the back door. They ran down the backstairs where Dill and his crew had only moments before hurried down. Then Nico and Carmine ran out of the door that led outside.
What they saw when they got outside, they couldn’t believe. Dill was down. Pauley was down. Tagglia was down. And the man that had gunned the three of them down like dogs in the street was in a car that was speeding away.
Nico, with Carmine at his back, began running after that car, running and firing his weapon as he ran. Carmine was behind him, firing too, but his speed was no match for Nico’s speed. Nico left his bodyguard in the dust as he ran through the bushes behind the warehouse trying to cut that car off at the pass.