They took me to the Questura, the police headquarters in the middle of Florence, and booked me.
Now I sat alone in a tiny interrogation room, sipping on a bottle of water someone had given me.
The water was the first and only good thing the cops had done for me all night.
My right hand was cuffed to an iron ring in the top of a desk that was bolted to the floor, so I wasn’t goin’ anywhere.
The cops had left me to stew for the last 20 minutes, hoping it would soften me up.
Instead, I went through every detail I could think of, trying to figure out my next step.
They didn’t know my real name. My license said Bruno Capaldi, and that’s the name I gave them when they booked me.
They’d fingerprinted me, but I’d never been arrested and my prints weren’t on file. They wouldn’t know who I was unless somebody in their organized crime division recognized me from surveillance on my family. Until that happened, not a problem.
They took my cell phone as soon as they booked me.
Also not a problem. I had all my brothers’ phone numbers memorized.
The cop leading up the arrest – the one who had cranked my arms when he pulled me to my feet, and who had also slammed my head into the doorframe when he shoved me into the back of the squad car – tried to get my phone to open by holding it in front of my face.
Which probably wouldn’t have been admissible in court since he didn’t have a warrant…
But I had a feeling he didn’t care too much about that.
The other cops felt like they were on the level. No abuse, very professional. Assholes, sure, but they didn’t go out of their way to rough me up.
The one guy, though…
He had ‘on the take’ written all over him.
Unfortunately, it was my enemies who were lining his pockets.
Didn’t matter. I didn’t have Face ID enabled on my phone because of this very situation.
He had to have a code to open it, which I wasn’t about to provide.
And if he tried to crack it on his own, a special app on the phone would fry it after three failed attempts.
Before the lead cop put me in the interrogation room, I demanded a phone call.
Once I got in touch with Niccolo, he could pull some strings to get me out. He could also remotely trigger the app to destroy any info on the phone if need be.
But the cop ignored my demand for a phone call.
Instead, he cuffed me to the iron ring and left the room.
I used the time to think.
I hadn’t recognized anybody in the group that arrested me, but I knew every cop on our payroll. I hadn’t just memorized their names and departments, but their pictures, too.
If an opportunity presented itself, I’d try to get one of them alone so I could figure out what was going on.
Unfortunately, if the cops on our payroll had been double-dipping…
If they’d been getting paid off by the Agrellas while they were taking our money, too…
Then I had no idea who I could actually trust.
That could be a problem… but it was a risk I was going to have to take.
I also thought a lot about Bianca.
I hoped that she was holding up okay.
I’m sure it was scary for her to be detained like this…
Especially if they were sweating her and trying to get her to roll over on me.
Of course, she’d faced a lot worse shit over the last 24 hours. She could handle the police.
Cops played by the rules… mostly.
So I wasn’t too worried about them taking a phone book and slamming her in the face.
They might do it to me, but not a woman.
If anything, they would try to screw with her head.
Threaten her with jail… say she was an accomplice… anything to scare her.
Hopefully she would follow my instructions and not say a thing to them, not even her name.
I wondered if they had let her make a phone call…
And if so, who she had called.
Her mother?
Or maybe she’d tried her father again?
If he worked for the courthouse, he probably had some pull.
But if he hadn’t been answering her calls for the last 24 hours, there was no reason to think he would magically start now.
But panic made people make bad decisions.
If Bianca was smart, she’d call her mom. She was staying at our house, after all. As soon as Niccolo found out what was going on, he could set the wheels in motion to get us both out.
So hopefully Bianca didn’t waste her…
…one…
…phone call…
A bolt of insight hit me smack between the eyes.
I was just getting excited when the lead cop walked in and shut the door.
He was about my height, though not in nearly as good shape. He had a gut underneath his white dress shirt. His mustache and hair were flecked with grey, and the lines in his face told me he was on the north side of 40.
I also noticed he still had his gun in his holster.
That concerned me vaguely…
Because cops weren’t supposed to bring their firearms into interrogations.
I looked behind him to see if anybody else was coming in –
But they weren’t.
Then things got worse.
The cop gave me a smug, self-satisfied smile. “Well, well, well… Adriano Rosolini.”
Oh shit.
“That’s right,” he said. “I know exactly who you are.”
Either somebody in the Organized Crime division had ID’d me –
Or somebody else had told him who I was.
Probably somebody who wanted bad things to happen to me.
Hence the gun.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“Detective Moretti.”
“Well, Detective Moretti,” I said calmly, “I want my phone call.”
“You’re not gettin’ it. Instead, you’re gonna tell me what I want to know.”
I just looked at him and waited.
“Where’s the girl’s father?”
So he knew about Bianca.
I looked up at the ceiling. There was a surveillance camera pointed down at me.
“It’s not on, dick wad,” Moretti said. “It’s just you and me.”
“Who’s paying you? I’ll triple it.”
He grinned smugly. After all, he had the upper hand. “You just worry about answering my goddamn questions.”
“The people paying you – do they know yet? Have you told them you’ve got Lettieri’s daughter?”
He hesitated.
I could see an uneasy flicker in his eyes.
So he hadn’t told them – not yet.
He probably wanted to look like a big shot by getting the answer first.
Because once the bad guys knew the cops had her, they would take her, pat him on the head, and tell him to fuck off. Don’t call us, we’ll call you.
Maybe he even wanted to find Lettieri himself so he could negotiate a bigger fee.
When he recovered from showing me his cards, he said, “I don’t think you understand, shithead – I ask the questions, not you. Where’s her father?”
“I don’t know.”
He backhanded me.
SMACK.
It stung, but it didn’t hurt too bad.
Didn’t matter.
I still wanted to kill the bastard –
But then I remembered I’d done the same thing to Massimo in the car last night.
I made a mental note to apologize to him for being a punk-ass bitch.
…if I got out of this.
“Where’s her father,” Moretti repeated.
Suddenly I started feeling extremely concerned for Bianca.
“We were looking for him all day, but we didn’t find him,” I said evenly, struggling to keep control of my temper.
“Then you’re no fuckin’ use to me,” he sneered.
“Who’s paying you?” I asked again. “I’ll quadruple it.”
“You assholes paid me peanuts for 20 years, and now you wanna make it up to me? When I’ve got you by the balls?”
I narrowed my eyes.
I didn’t recognize him from the rosters.
“Yeah,” he said, knowing that I was trying to place him. “They transferred me from Rome two weeks ago, you piece of shit.”
Now it made sense why I didn’t know who he was.
I didn’t know our Rome roster, and his transfer would have been recent enough that we might not be aware it had gone through…
Especially if our enemies had buried the records.
“Who’s ‘they’?” I asked. “Your cop bosses or your real bosses?”
“You don’t need to concern yourself with that. All I need to know is where her father is. Otherwise, I’m gonna have to get reeeeaaal personal when I interrogate her later, if you know what I’m sayin’.”
Rage flared inside me like an atom bomb.
I stood up, ready to kill him –
But I was restrained by the handcuff around my right wrist.
Moretti jumped back and put his hand on his gun. “Sit down… bitch.”
I had no choice.
I swallowed my bile and sat back down.
But he didn’t take his hand off his gun.
In fact, he cocked the hammer.
Not good.
“Last chance, dipshit,” Moretti said. “Where’s the father.”
I took a sip of water and put the bottle back down, but I kept it in my left hand.
I had a bad feeling shit was about to go down…
And I had one chance to make my move.
I had to make it count.
“I don’t know,” I said calmly.
“Then you’re of no use to me. And unfortunately, you got out of hand… and I was forced to shoot you.”
Moretti started to draw –
Which I had anticipated –
And I swung the water bottle at him as I squeezed it.
Water splashed in his eyes, blinding him.
“God DAMMIT!” he roared as he drew blind –
But by that point, I was already moving.
Since Lars had come to work for our family, one thing he’d been insistent on was training us in hand-to-hand combat.
It was something he’d learned in the Special Forces, and he was damn good at it.
I’d taken it to heart and learned a lot –
Which is how I did what I did next.
I vaulted over the desk, bracing my weight on my handcuffed right hand –
Dropped the water bottle from my left hand –
And grabbed his gun.
Lars had taught me that when you’re facing an armed opponent in close quarters, you either deflect the weapon with a forearm strike so the bullet doesn’t hit you –
Or you make sure your opponent can’t fire the gun.
I couldn’t afford to have him fire at all, or other cops would come running –
So I jammed the webbing between my forefinger and thumb into the space between the hammer and the gun.
Moretti pulled the trigger –
But instead of the firing pin striking the bullet, it cut into my skin.
Hurt like hell, but at least the gun didn’t go off.
Plus, I took the pain out on Moretti – with interest.
First I headbutted him – slammed him in the face with my forehead.
I heard a loud CRACK as his nose broke.
He was too stunned to make a noise – yet.
I only had a second before he started screaming.
So I kicked the back of his knee, causing him to buckle and drop to the floor –
At which point I wrapped my thighs around his neck and squeezed.
It was an MMA hold – mixed-martial arts.
Extremely useful for choking somebody out.
Just so happened it was good for keeping them from screaming, too.
Moretti struggled. He looked up at me with wild eyes and tried prying my legs off his neck so he could breathe –
But I was way too powerful for him.
He tried jerking the gun away from me –
But I’d clamped my hand over the pistol, and I pulled it back towards me.
He tried pulling the trigger again –
But the firing pin just clicked deeper into my bleeding hand.
Moretti’s face turned red – veins stood out on his forehead –
And then his struggling weakened…
And he went limp.
I held on a few seconds just to be sure, then released him.
Moretti slumped to the floor, unconscious.
If it had been anybody other than a cop, I would have killed him –
For even thinking about hurting Bianca, most of all.
But there was no upside in killing cops – not even dirty ones.
There were unwritten rules of the Cosa Nostra’s dealings with police.
We could pay them off, and they would do our bidding, up to a certain point…
But as soon as you killed one of them, all bets were off.
Cops had the same ruthless code of omerta as any Sicilian gangster.
Once you killed a cop, you brought the rest of them down on your head – and only blood would satisfy them.
So – as much as I wanted to curb-stomp the asshole – I refrained.
But I had other things in mind.
I pulled the gun from Moretti’s limp hand. The firing pin was still caught in the webbing between my fingers, so I transferred the pistol over to my right hand and extricated myself.
Then I uncocked the gun and set it on the desk.
Next I searched Moretti for his handcuff keys.
Ten seconds later I was free.
I didn’t know how much time I had, so I had to act fast.
I quickly undressed him. It was cumbersome, but I finally got him down to his tightie-whities.
Then I stripped down to my boxer briefs.
I couldn’t have Moretti waking up and making a scene, so I stuffed my wife-beater in his mouth and tied my black shirt around his face to keep it in place.
Hope you like the taste of my armpit, asshole.
Then I cuffed his hands behind his back and hogtied his legs to the cuffs with my jeans.
When I was finished, Moretti was lying half-naked on his belly, a gag in his mouth, and his arms and legs trussed up in the air behind him.
He wasn’t going anywhere or making any loud noises, even if he did wake up.
Then I quickly put on Moretti’s clothes.
He was about the same height as me but with a belly, so the pants were loose. I had to cinch his belt tight to make sure everything stayed up.
Then I put on the shirt. My chest and arm muscles strained at the material, but otherwise it was a passable fit. Same with the sports jacket he’d had on.
The slight hint of BO on his clothes made me grimace.
After the shit we’d bought from the thrift store, and now this, I swore I was NEVER wearing anybody’s but my own clothing again.
Finally I put on his holster and gun. I wiped the blood off the firing pin so the pistol would work if I had to use it. I also wiped the blood from my hand onto the jeans tying up Moretti.
Finally I put on his badge, which he’d worn on a lanyard around his neck.
Now for the moment of truth.
I wasn’t going to fool anybody who looked at me closely – but I had a better shot of getting out of the building dressed like this than the clothes I’d come in wearing.
I turned the doorknob and slowly walked out of the interrogation room, my heart thumping hard.
The department room was huge, with a couple dozen beige cubicles taking up the main floor. The walls had multiple offices and interrogation rooms.
No one was around, and almost all of the lights were out.
I was betting that Moretti had taken me to an interrogation room far away from anybody who might overhear or try to stop him.
As for everybody else, it was after 10 PM on a Friday night, and this apparently wasn’t the homicide division. It was likely that everybody else in the department had gone home several hours ago.
I was hoping that the other cops who had busted me had gone home, too, after I’d been booked…
But I couldn’t be sure, so I kept my eyes and ears open.
I had one huge problem: I had to get Bianca out, and I had no idea where she was.
But I had a plan for that.
