Judge & Jury - James Patterson [59]
“Congratulations. We’re golden,” he called back. “By this time tomorrow you’ll be out of the country.”
“Good.” Cavello lifted himself out of the compartment. “In the meantime, there’s been a change of plans. There’s something I have to take care of first. A debt I have to pay.”
Chapter 73
THEY DROVE WEST to Paterson, New Jersey, on Cavello’s instructions—a tree-lined neighborhood of middle-class homes. Nordeshenko pulled up in front of a modest, pleasant, gray-and-white Victorian. It was April, but a Nativity scene was still there from Christmas, center stage in the small front yard.
“Wait in the car,” Cavello said, tucking the handgun he had taken from Nordeshenko into his belt.
“This isn’t what you’re paying me for,” the Israeli said. “This is the kind of thing that can get us killed.”
“In that case,” said Cavello, opening the door and turning up his collar, “think of it as on the house.”
He went around the side and pushed open a metal chain-link fence leading to the backyard. He was excited now.
He kept his promises. That’s what made him who he was. People knew, when the Electrician promised to do something, it always got done. Especially this promise.
He walked up close to the house until he came to a porch in back, screened in by wire mesh. Then he stopped. He heard the sound of a TV inside. A children’s channel. He listened to the singsong voices and some happy clapping. He saw the back of a woman’s head. She was sitting in a chair.
Cavello climbed the porch steps and opened the screen door. He had to laugh. Nobody needed alarms in this neighborhood, right? It was protected. It was protected by him! You pull something in this neck of the woods, you might as well keep on running for the rest of your life.
“Rosie, how do you like your tea?” a woman’s voice called from inside.
“A little lemon,” the woman in the chair said back. “There should be some in the fridge.” Then, “Hey, look at the little lamby, little Stephie. What does a little lamby say? Baaah . . . Baaah.”
Cavello stepped in from the porch. When the woman in the chair saw who it was, her face turned chalk white. “Dom!”
She was bouncing a baby girl, no more than a year old, on her lap.
“Hi, Rosie,” Dominic Cavello said, and smiled.
Panic crept over the woman’s face. She was in her early fifties, in a floral shift, with her hair up in a bun, a St. Christopher medal around her neck. She wrapped her arms around the child. “They said you’d escaped. What are you doing here, Dom?”
“I promised Ralphie something, Rosie. I always keep my promises. You know that.”
There was a noise from behind them, and a woman walked in carrying a tray with tea on it. Cavello reached out his hand and shot her with the silenced gun, the wound opening where her right eye had been.
The woman fell over, and the tray hit the floor with a loud crash and clatter.
“Mary, Mother of God.” Ralph Denunziatta’s sister gasped. She hugged the child close to her breast.
“That’s one cute kid there, Rosie. I think I see a little of Ralphie, with those fat little cheeks.”
“It’s my granddaughter, Dom.” Rosie Scalpia’s eyes were flushed with panic. She glanced at her friend lying on the carpet, a red ooze trickling out of her eye. “She’s only one year old. Do what you came here to do, just don’t hurt her, Dom. She’s Simone’s daughter, not Ralphie’s. Please, do what you have to do. Just leave my granddaughter alone.”
“Why would I want to hurt your little nipotina, Rosie?” Cavello stepped closer. “It’s just that I owe your little prick-faced brother a favor. And there’s nothing we can do about that.”
“Dom, please.” The woman looked terrified. “Please!”
“The problem is, Rosie, even though I wish your little granddaughter here a long and healthy life, after I square things a little.” He leveled the gun in the woman’s face. “Truth is, hon, you just never know.”
He pulled the trigger,