What had once loomed large in the eyes of a child was now just...bulk. Giancarlo Derasmo was an old man, softened on the outside from time, dirty deeds, and too much pasta, but his eyes still carried a deadly sharpness. Time couldn't soften that particular edge. It was rare that he,
God's Replacement, made a house call, but apparently, desperate times called for desperate measures. Silence filled the room save for the sound of the two men puffing on their respective cigarettes.
"I told you," Caspari repeated with a shake of his two-toned head, "that's not my game anymore. Whatever you've got going on with these guys, that's none of my business."
"
Guns aren't your business?"
A plume of smoke preceded a frustrated snort, "that's different." Caspari lived and worked above his own gun shop, and had for the last several years since taking the chance to leave the organization. There was that old joke about his type going straight, making a clean living, but it turned out to be his reality. "What?" he followed up, "you wanna buy something?"
"I want you to put a bullet in this motherfucker's head!" Giancarlo stabbed his cigarette into the arm of the chair with extreme prejudice, his pudgy cheeks red with a growing frustration. "I'm not asking you. I'm telling you."
The war between pseudo-father and streetrat son was long and paved with small defiance. A naive part of Caspari had believed that he could wash the past off of his hands and never look back, like there wouldn't always be a laundry list of bodies as long as his arm tied to him like an anchor. Sweet freedom would always be a fantasy. "When?"
"Tomorrow." Pleased, Giancarlo eased back into his seat, the veins in his neck no longer pulsing quite so violently. "Our boy Jimmy left this prick a little present outside his club. He'll be ready, but he won't be expecting you."
"Your boy," Caspari corrected just to be waved off. He finished his cigarette, putting the butt out in the nearby ashtray like a
civilized person. "Are you going to give me a picture? A name? I'm just supposed to guess and pop whoever looks like he's ripping off your territory?"
With a grunt and a little bit of effort, Giancarlo got to his feet. His leather shoes managed to shine in the dim lamplight, and he straightened his tie before speaking, "you'll know him when you see him."
"That's not vague at all."
Smiling his pleasant smile, charming as ever, the boss closed the space between them and took him by the back of the neck, forcing eye contact that Caspari would have liked to avoid. "Do what you do," he insisted, "make me proud of you again."
The goons Giancarlo brought along to protect his massive ass didn't flinch when Caspari jerked away. He didn't acknowledge the three as they left, closing the door as quietly as they'd opened it half an hour ago. A light flicked on down the hall, followed by a lithe shadow and the creeping of careful feet.
Who was that?
Caspari scrubbed a hand over his whiskered chin before reaching for another cigarette to cover the sickness in his stomach. "No one," he said blandly. "Go back to sleep."
He caught one hell of a glare from the kid.
Bice was no longer a snot-nosed brat trying to steal the rims off of his car, but a well-adjusted sixteen year old with a built-in bullshit detector after years of watching it up close. "I'm not stupid."
"I know."
—
From the high vantage point during the small hours of the morning, Caspari watched the comings and goings of the night club across the street until well after last call. The parking lot at the back of the building grew emptier by the minute as the bartenders and waitresses called it a night, followed by the DJ shuffling his equipment into a grey SUV. A politician's daughter was carried out by a bouncer who surely didn't get paid enough, and a group of unhelpful but slightly less drunk girls. They were loud.
So loud.
If they knew how much attention they drew to themselves—if anyone knew—they'd never feel safe again.
Traffic started to dwindle until there were only a few cars left. Caspari had been set up for hours now, lying on his stomach after getting rhythmically, methodically, setting up his gear. Work was old hat, and although Caspari sold guns instead of shot them these days, he'd never quite lost his touch.
"Come the fuck on," he mumbled to himself, frowning at a cold and particularly breezy gust of wind. The sooner this job was over with, the sooner he could go back to believing that he was just a normal guy.
The door swung open again, and Caspari watched a pair of well-dressed men exit the building. Through the scope, he could see them in perfect detail—the diamonds in their ears, the black and grey tattoos that crawled out of their collars and up their necks—he could even tell which needed a better barber.
The second one.
Obviously.
But neither of these guys were the target. They couldn't be. They didn't have the look of someone arrogant enough to fuck with the oldest outfit in the city. That look would have been ambitious. It would have been ruthless. It would have stuck out in a crowd no matter how hard it tried to walk in shadow. Caspari would know it when he saw it; he'd snuffed enough of them out.
It was fifteen minutes before another sign of life. Just five or so cars left in the parking lot, only one worth six figures. Giancarlo's bane was framed in the scope perfectly,
in oculis dei, just as beautiful and horrible as the last time they'd been face to face. "...Jackson," Caspari exhaled, his finger shaking alongside the trigger.
Before he knew what he was doing, or what was good for him, Caspari was packing his gear at lightning speed. He snapped cases, hoisted bags and flew the down back down the stairwell as fast as his inked legs could take him. His hand slid down the railing, his palm sweaty and sticking to the door when he finally shoved it open. He had to get to his car, he had to follow Jackson and just...make sure he wasn't seeing things.
And if he wasn't, then he had to find out what was going on. Because couldn't just
shoot him. Not Jackson.
His hands were still shaking when he got the key in the ignition of his black SUV and peeled out of the parking lot. Lucky for Caspari, Jackson hadn't gotten far.
Unluckily for him, traffic was sparse at this hour and he didn't have much cover. If Jackson was still as shrewd as he'd always been, he'd know he was being tailed, but there was little he could do about the inevitable. Caspari just hoped he could say a few words before the bullets started flying.