Shatter
Steven C. Price

Readers can reach Steven at scp_13@hotmail.com
©Copyright 2001
Steven C. Price

The first thing I did in Vegas was I.D. the corpse. It used to be
Joey Napoli, aka Joey the Nail. I called him Joey the Wail after the
way he’d howled during a bitch slapping I’d given him not long
after arriving in the States. He’d never called me a Frog again.
Someone had gone one better on that beating, and capped it by
slitting his throat. The jagged line running from ear to ear was an
ironic smile, like he was laughing at the punishment his killer would
get from Augustino Vazzupo. Vazzupo hadn’t liked Joey either, but
nobody touched his people. Finding the fifty thousand dollars Joey’d
been carrying to bribe a boxing official came in second to restoring
Vazzupo’s honor.
I signed for the corpse using an alias, then disappeared into the
heat shimmer. Around dark I walked into the bar Lina had made her
second home. It wasn’t much, but neither was Lina anymore. I
ordered a bourbon, lit a smoke, then took the seat across from her
in a corner booth. She should have seen me coming, but her eyes
were lost on the glass in front of her.
“Hello, Lina.” My English was good, but there was still some
Marseilles in it. She looked up with unfocused eyes. The accent was
all she got.
“Oh my god. Marco!”
I gave her a cigarette. “It’s been a while.”
Time is a convenient fall-guy, but it couldn’t take the rap for
Lina’s appearance. She’d put her forty-four years in the hard way,
with plenty of help from a bottle. After she wedged the cigarette
into the corner of her mouth, she wrapped her hands around mine.
There were tears in her eyes, but I had no trouble staring into them.
I was paid for worse. Worse followed me around.
“Been awhile is right,” she said cautiously, not totally lost in the
booze. “You still work for New York?”
“Seen Joey around?” That was enough of an answer.
“Joey? He left town last week.”
I didn’t say anything; just took a long drink and let the silence
work on her. She played her next hand.
“Something happen to him?”
It couldn’t have sounded good even to her. I drained my glass
and put it softly on the table. “Still have that place off Ellis Avenue?”
“Yes.” She managed more tears, probably worried because I’d
taken the trouble to find out where she lived. “Why?”
I figured the tears were real. She ought to be afraid.
“I’ll drop by later.”
I left some money on the table and walked away.
• • •
Life hadn’t always been the shits for Lina Caputo. When I’d first
arrived in Manhattan ten years ago she’d run a private gaming
house for the Vazzupo family. She’d done all right by it, had a
Mercedes and some good clothes and jewelry, and it beat the hell
out of being a whore for one of those fat wise guys that lost money
at her tables.
Augie had brought me over to the States on the say so of a
cousin in Sicily. It wasn’t easy being French and making it with
those guys. You had to be better than good, and they had to need
an outsider. Augie had required someone to handle a power
struggle that had brewed up while he recovered from minor
surgery. A quartet of gruesome corpses settled the coup, and
Augustino Vazzupo was stronger than ever. Manhattan was his, and
his gratitude mine. I walked into Lina’s and caught her eye in a
heart beat.
My accent might have intrigued her, but not as much as my
reputation. It was the day after I’d put Joey the Nail into hospital
and word was out on me; I was Vazzupo’s ace. Lina ate it up.
Too bad not everyone was an Agustino Vazzupo disciple. A thug
called Salvatore Mora was also hitting the tables that night. He was
a trigger man for the Fiori’s, the family that had thrown in with
Augie to keep him at the top of the food chain. Their support had
paid off an old debt, and Augie knew it had come grudgingly. Mora
gave me a few hard stares, but out of respect for Augie I let it go.
Didn’t matter. Fate doesn’t care about respect.
Mora wandered into the back room to play poker, but the game
was winding down. Large piles of chips were stacked in front of me
and the other players were tired of me pocketing their money. I was 
ready to call it a night when Mora took the seat across from me.
“Don’t tell me you pussy’s are letting this Frenchie walk away
with your dough,” he said to the room at large. None of the men
rose to his bait. It was after midnight, and Salvatore Mora was
looking for trouble.
“I guess it’s just you and me, Frenchie.”
Joey had only called me Frog once, but I didn’t want to piss off
the Fiori family. I held out my hand and said, “My name is Marco.”
“I know who you are.” Mora ignored my outstretched hand.
Only Lina remained in the room with us. “For Christ’s sake Sal,
knock it off.”
“Tell this fucken guy to knock it off. He does some dirty work for
that fat pussy Augie, then acts like he owns the fucken city. Yuh
gotta show some fucken respect, Frenchie. Yuh aint been around
long enough for what you’re putting out.”
I shuffled the deck. “What game?”
“I don’t care.”
“You should.” I dealt the cards and bet hard, the only way I
knew. I took the first hand with a full house over his two pair.
He grabbed a fresh deck and dealt. He lost again, this time a with
pair of deuces against three queens, all of them laughing at him.
That was the way it went for Salvatore Mora his last night on earth.
He bet and drank, and lost two hands out of every three. We sat
there for an hour, the three of us, the smoke curling around the
ceiling, the soft scrape of the cards against the green felt table. His
losses mounted, and his temper got the better of him. Finally the
cards came back to me, but instead of dealing, I put the deck on
the table and lay my hands flat on the felt.
“It’s late.”
“What yuh talkin’ about? It’s just after one. Deal the cards, yuh
faggot.”
“No.”
“Don’t you ever use that fucken word on me,” Mora exploded. “I
aint like one of those fucken queers yuh whacked for Augie.”
A big mouth was a sure way to get yourself killed in this
business. I was staring at a dead man. “Shut up, Sal. Go sleep it
off.”
“Fuck you.” Sal hauled himself to his feet in that sluggish, comical
way drunks have. He reached for his gun, but he wouldn’t have had
a prayer sober.
I had left the heavy artillery at home, but I was wearing a .32
Beretta in a shoulder holster. I drew the gun and shot him twice in
the face before his pistol was clear of his waistband. He fell out of
my sight, his body hitting the floor with that unmistakable sound.
Neither Lina or I said a word. Beating up a worm like Joey was
nothing compared to whacking a soldier from another family. 
Vazzupo’s peace hadn’t lasted a month. Lina stared at the corpse for
a second, then went to the phone. It was in the corner of the room,
but I could hear her speaking to Augie. She told him Salvatore Mora
had just tried to rape her.
• • •
Lying to Augie had saved my life, and screwed Lina’s. The rape
story didn’t play for everyone, even though Mora was known for
being rough with women. If Mora hadn’t been last seen with me, I
would have just made him vanish. Even Augie had his doubts, but
he still ordered his crew to dump the body, and then had personally
gone to old man Fiori to explain.
The big problem was Sal’s younger brother Eddie. He had been
up-state on an assault rap, but was released six months after Sal’s
death and wasted no time going after Lina. He caught up with her
in the parking lot of her condo and dragged her into the van he’d
stolen for the job. She’d put up a fight, but Eddie was one of those
big guys who aint a gentle giant. He worked her over like nothing
I’d ever seen before, then dumped her into a puddle of snow melt,
certain she was a dead. She’d laid there for an hour, turning the
water red, until the condo security guard found her.
Not killing her was a mistake, but staying in New York was
suicide, and I hadn’t wasted any time either. By the time I was
finished with him, an I.D. was out of the question. Eddie Mora was
buried in a John Doe plot without a single mourner.
It didn’t help Lina, though. Nothing did. Augie had paid for rehab,
plastic surgery, shrinks, everything he could think of, but it didn’t
matter. Lina had shattered, and most of the pieces got lost. She tried
to hide from it in booze and drugs and acting like a whore,
anything that kept her away from her life. Finally there was a
botched suicide, and Augie had had enough. He shipped her to
Vegas, gave her an allowance and the clear understanding that she
was never to return to New York. Augie didn’t like cripples.
Vegas hadn’t changed her, I figured, because nothing could. So I
sat outside the shitty bar in a rented car and added it up. The
money was always brought down by one of the New York people
because Augie didn’t want the Vegas operation knowing his
business. It was Joey’s turn to make the trip, and he must have
mouthed off about the bribe. Fifty grand would have been an insult
to Lina in her prime, but now it must have seemed like a fortune.
The only question was, who had cut Joey’s throat for her?
A couple of punks went into the bar about an hour later, and one
of them looked familiar. His name was Paolo Minetti, or something
close to it. I vaguely remembered him as a small time player back in
New York. He had skipped town in a hurry after a screwed up 
truck hijacking left the driver dead. He was about the right level of
stupid for this mess. Any doubts were erased twenty minutes later
when Minetti and his partner came out with Lina. They were
arguing with her, and Minetti had a hold of her arm. She shook him
off and ran, but neither of them could be bothered to chase her
with more than a few jeers. Laughing, they sauntered back to their
car.
I followed them to a three story low rise that had no business still
standing. The red tiles on the roof were supposed to give it a
Mexican flavor, but too many had fallen off, further testimony to
what a hole it was. It was a long way from the Vegas in the travel
brochures. If it weren’t for the casino lights in the distance, it could
have been anywhere you didn’t want to be.
I called a contact in the DMV from the car and ran Minetti’s plate.
He hadn’t been bright enough to change his name, but all I wanted
was his apartment number. I didn’t even care who his partner was.
In another few minutes, they’d be dead, and that was all there was
to it.
I didn’t knock on the door, or kick it in. I just shot the hell out of
the lock with a silenced Uzi. The door swung open to the living
room where Paolo was hunched over the coffee table sucking
cocaine through a rolled up bill. I erased him with a short burst that
left his brains spread across the cushions.
His partner stood in the doorway to the kitchen with a beer in his
hand. He turned to run, maybe thinking of the window. He didn’t
take a step before I raked his back. I flicked the machine-pistol to
semi auto and popped them each in the ear at close range. I never
left witnesses; never left guys looking for pay back.
Lina lived in a bungalow less than five minutes from Minetti’s. I
parked down the block from her place and left the Uzi in the trunk.
Crossing Augie Vazzupo wasn’t on my list of things to do, or I might
have helped her. But Augie had been specific, had pressed it into
my brain. Nobody involved lived, or don’t bother coming back. It
had become a test of my loyalty, and Vegas wasn’t far enough away
if I failed. Nowhere was.
The house was dark, but her car was in the driveway. I slipped
the jimmy set from my jacket pocket and went to work on the front
door. She could have been sitting on the other side of it with a shot
gun, but I had faith in the amount of scotch in her system. I pushed
open the door; nothing came out except stagnant air.
I stepped into the house and closed the door without bothering
with the lights because I didn’t want to see her furniture or what
she hung on the walls. I didn’t know her anymore; she wasn’t Lina,
she was just one of the fragments. I slid my old Beretta out of its
shoulder holster.
At the back of the house a single light burned, its thin edge 
visible under a door at the end of the hall. I went down the corridor
with my back against the wall, knowing it wasn’t necessary. Even
drunk, she could have done better for a trap than this. The knob
turned easily and the door drifted open.
Lina lay slumped in the bath, submerged to her chin in pink
water. She seemed tiny, shrunken, like she was still trying to present
as small a target as possible. A razor sat on the edge of the tub,
fresh blood scabbing its blade.
On the counter was a valise with a note pinned to it. It wasn’t
addressed to anyone and just read, “This is my share. I’m sorry.
Lina”
The money was the last missing piece, and my pass back to New
York. I tucked the Beretta away, strangely relieved I hadn’t had to
use it. With the bag in hand I turned for the door, and that’s when I
heard it. The bag fell from my fingers, and I turned slowly, listening
to the water drip from her raised arm. She had done better.
The gun was wrapped in plastic and pointed at my head. Not
even a corpse could miss at this range.
“The water must be cold,” I said. “How long have you been
waiting?”
She answered like the shattered piece she was. Hard and sharp.
“Ten years.”