Blood and Fire (McClouds & Friends #8)(88)

“I guess not. Tony didn’t talk about stuff like that. But he had to tell me, so I’d know who to send the letter to if they whacked him.”

Everyone was perched on the edge of the cushions, except for Liv, who was still nursing her baby. Even Sean had jolted bolt upright.

“Tell us about the letter, Zia,” Davy encouraged.

She fluttered plump, beringed hands. “Ah, well. Tony knew where a lot of bodies were buried. The hows, and the wheres, and where the money went. He dug some of them holes himself, see. You know how it is.” She glanced around the room. “Well. Maybe you don’t.”

“I do,” said Aaro quietly.

Zia Rosa patted his thigh again. “He wrote it all down,” she went on. “And the deal was, if them Ranieri coglioni whacked Tony, or tried to come after you again, I was to send the letters out. To the press, to the prosecuting attorneys, the DA in Newark, the curr DA, too.” She cackled. “Those guys’d come in their pants if they read Tony’s letter.”

“You never sent it?” Connor said. “You still have it?”

“So far. Tony told Michael that he’d left the copies with a lawyer, who was supposed to mail ’em out if Tony died. But Tony didn’t trust no lawyers. He kept ’em in a safe deposit box. I was supposed to send ’em, if anything happened. But when something finally did . . .” She shrugged, her face sagging with sorrow. “It didn’t have nothin’ to do with the Ranieris. I figured it was over. But I guess it ain’t over.” Zia Rosa dug a tissue out of her purse and blew her nose into it, sniffing.

“Where’s the safe deposit box, Zia?” Connor asked gently.

She dabbed her eyes. “Eh? Oh, there ain’t no safe deposit box no more. I took the letter out after Tony died. I figured, if they was gonna make a move on Bruno, it would be when Tony kicked the bucket. I didn’t want to have to worry about no stupid banking hours.”

“So?” Val was prompting her now. His face, resting on Tam’s shoulder, was keen with interest. “Where is the letter?”

“In my purse,” Zia Rosa said, as if it should be obvious.

Bruno was in front of his great-aunt before being aware of having moved. He sank to his knees and held out his hand. “Let me see it.”

She stared at him, troubled. “Tony didn’t want you to read this letter,” she said. “He didn’t want you to know the bad stuff he done.”

“I would never judge him. He saved my life. Let me see it, Zia.”

She sighed heavily and unsnapped the clasp on her huge purse. The room was silent but for her muttering and rummaging.

Finally, she pulled out a battered envelope and handed it to him.

Bruno pulled out a sheaf of thin, crackling onion-skin typing paper covered with hand-typed, single-spaced words. He felt light in the head. There were about ten pages. He ran his eyes over the first page and could hear Tony’s gruff, smoke-roughened voice in his head.

To Whom It May Concern: This is the true and factual account of Antonio Ranieri, born in Brancaleone, Calabria, Italy, on November 14, 1938, and my dealings with Mafia bosses Gaetano and Michael Ranieri, from the years of 1955 through 1968. This document was made on this day of January 16, 1987, in Portland, Oregon, before witnesses . . .”

Wait. This was off. He read it again.

“No. Zia, this can’t be right,” he said. “This date is 1987, not 1993. The thugs came in ‘93. I didn’t even come to Portland until 1993. Remember? I was twelve when I got here.”

She snatched the letter back and squinted through her bifocals. “No, honey. This is right. This one’s the original, see? In ‘93, he was just sending a photocopy of the one he’d sent before. With the fingers added on. To remind Michael and Gaetano that the bargain was still in effect.”

He was baffled. “What bargain? Why did he send it in ‘87?”

Zia Rosa looked blank, and then her eyes got very big. “O Cristo Santissimo,” she breathed. “You mean, you don’t remember, honey?”

Bruno fought the urge to scream in her face. “Remember what?”

No one seemed to want to breathe. Zia Rosa crossed herself.

“Some bastard took you away from your mamma, when you was seven, honey,” Zia “It took your mamma and Tony over a month to get you back. I figured you was old enough to remember that.”

Bruno shook his head. He did not remember that. But he did not like the way his insides felt, hearing about it. Shivering, cold. Small.

“Magda called Tony for help,” Zia went on. “It was a guy who was in bed with that junkie shithead, Michael. Some drug pusher business partner of his.”

“But who?” Bruno burst out. “What was his name? What the hell did he want with me? It wasn’t like Mamma had any money.”

Zia Rosa shook her head. “Tony didn’t tell me details. He figured it was safer that way. Magda got Tony to write that letter to put pressure on Michael to get you back.”

Bruno swayed there, searching in his memory for something that corresponded to this new information. All he found was a blankness and a creeping sensation of fear. He shook it off. Pulled the letter back.

“But if Tony held this over the Ranieris, then how could they let Rudy kill her?” he demanded. “Wasn’t she protected by it, too?”