“Carmine,” I said. I shook his hand, went around my desk, took my seat. All the phone lines were flashing. A three-inch-high pile of paper was stacked to my right. My schedule was up on my computer monitor, just waiting for me.
“You’re looking good, Jack. Like you spent the night in a gym locker.”
“Jet lag,” I said, “feels just like that.”
Noccia smiled. He was a handsome guy, midforties, perfect teeth, salt-and-pepper hair, wearing a custom-made suit and hand-stitched Italian loafers.
Carmine was what a modern-day Mafia rock star looked like. You looked at him and saw the Ivy League-educated businessman, not the son of a sitting don, the Mafia capo and killer.
Cody brought in a large silver thermos of coffee and a plate of biscuits, and when he left, I said, “Del Rio told me you had to see me urgently.”
I tried to keep it out of my voice, but what I was saying was, What the eff do you want?
CHAPTER 12
Carmine Noccia said, “It’s a fucking disaster, Jack. One of my transport vans was jacked in Utah. Three of my guys were killed, dumped in the desert. I don’t think the cops are going to help me recover my property-which needed to be done yesterday. It’s a good thing I’ve got you in my corner.”
I don’t do business with mobsters.
Make that past tense. I didn’t do business with mobsters until my identical twin brother, Tommy Jr., racked up a six-hundred-grand gambling debt and I paid it off to keep Tommy’s sweet wife from becoming a widow.
A few months ago, Del Rio and I had flown to Vegas to see Noccia in his over-the-top, Spanish-style manse complete with racehorses and a man-made recirculating river located about five miles from the Vegas Strip.
I’d brought a cashier’s check for the full amount of my brother’s debt, and Noccia and I had exchanged favors. We realized that day that we’d both been in the Corps. As marines liked to say about themselves, “Never a better friend. Never a worse enemy.”