Immune (The Rho Agenda #2)(123)

Maybe he should’ve grabbed some of that new juice they were injecting into those poor bastards below Henderson House. Freddy shuddered. No thanks. He’d take his chances with gangrene.

Freddy felt his left wrist for his watch. Gone. Shit, he’d given that to the wino, too. Really hadn’t been in a good bargaining frame of mind when he’d made that deal. He looked around. Judging from the level of activity on the docks, it was somewhere between midnight and four in the morning. Good. That gave him a little time to do what he needed before it got light.

As a kid, he and some of his pals from the neighborhood had often come down to check out the docks after dark. Between that and a couple of news stories that had brought him down here later in life, he had more than a passing familiarity with the area. Although cell phones had killed off the old-style payphones, there were still a few around the docks that the phone company had never bothered to take out. At least that had been true a couple of years ago. If they were still there, if he could get to one, and if it still worked…if, if, if…

For three and a half city blocks, Freddy staggered and swayed through the dark buildings, his near perfect imitation of a drunkard more the result of his bad leg and raging fever than any brilliant acting on his part. Just as despair began to consume what little hope remained, he spotted it. While the chain that had once held a phonebook had long since snapped off, the metal-wrapped cord and handset remained intact.

Raising it from its cradle, Freddy cursed. No dial tone. He jiggled the toggle within its cradle. When the familiar tone warbled in his ear, Freddy gasped with relief. He didn’t know how far it was to the next phone, but he didn’t think he could make it.

He dialed zero and the operator’s voice responded, bright and clear.

“Operator. How may I help you?”

“I want to make a collect call to Benny Marucci.” Freddy recited Benny’s number from memory.

“Who may I say is calling?”

Freddy hesitated. Based upon his experience with the cell phone call, the NSA, CIA, FBI, and every other three-letter agency in the government probably had banks of computers listening to the country’s phone lines for any mention of his name.

Then it came to him. With the popularity of several recent mob-family television series, Italian American slang had gained wide popularity. Old-school Benny Marucci hated that crap with a passion. Of course, that had only made Freddy go out of his way to use the words and phrases in his greetings. It was their game.

“Tell him it’s from his goomba.”

After several seconds, he could hear Benny’s sleep-filled voice answer.

“Hello?”

“This is the operator. I have a collect call from a Mr. Goomba.”

Another pause. “I’ll accept the charges.”

The operator spoke again. “Go ahead, sir.”

“Benny, it’s me.”

“You don’t sound too good.”

“Been better. Hate to call, but you’re the only one I could think of.”

“You sure know how to stir the pot. Where you at?”

“Remember where your cousin Vito got whacked?”

Vito Calini had been a low-level mob enforcer who had gotten the cement shoes treatment back in eighty-eight, right here on these loading docks.

“Uh-huh. Do you see any cranes from where you are?”

“One right in front of me, two more off to the left.”

“Okay. When you hang up, I want you to crawl back into the shadows and wait right where you are. Someone will come for you.”

“How will I know them?”

“You’ll know. Don’t go anywhere, cugine.” Benny hung up without giving Freddy a chance to respond to being called a young tough-guy wannabe.

“Couldn’t if I wanted to,” Freddy said into the dead handset before setting it back in its cradle. Then he staggered back to the side of the building.

By the time the black Lincoln Town Car pulled up beside the telephone, the gray light of dawn was fast approaching. Freddy had already started hobbling forward when two big, mean-looking hunks of mob muscle stepped out and, none too gently, thrust him into the backseat, sliding in on either side of him.

The car was rolling before the doors slammed shut.

Freddy automatically glanced back as the car made its way along the docks, but saw no sign of anyone following them. The driver swung the car around a truck and into a side alley. Immediately, the truck backed across the alley entrance, blocking any access from that direction.

The black sedan turned again, this time down a much tighter alley before swinging into an open-bay door. The driver pressed the switch on a garage-door remote, sending the large, metal door rumbling closed on its track.

“Hey, watch it!” Freddy exclaimed as he was dragged from the car, sending pain shooting through his leg.

Instead of taking it easier, the other tough-guy grabbed his right arm, and together they dragged him down a set of cement steps. Freddy had never been big on ethnic slurs, but these two Guidos were starting to piss him off. They opened a thick door and pulled him into a concrete cellar, closing and bolting the door behind them.

Freddy didn’t like the look of the place, not one little bit. He’d done stories on places like this, places where the mob manufactured fish food. A pair of fluorescent light bulbs burned in a fixture on the ceiling, minus the softening filter of a plastic cover.