Page 5 of Burn this City

After the past week, that seemed like heaven. Only, of course, it couldn’t last. He had to come to some final decisions and make a phone call he didn’t want to make. But for today—and maybe even tomorrow, if he pushed it—he could still avoid it. He could still tell himself the same thing he’d told Andrea: that he needed the quiet so he could focus on reviewing the annual numbers.

He’d deal with the personal stuff after that.

3

Salvatore Rausa didn’t think of himself as much of a hunter. He didn’t enjoy crawling through the underbrush or getting eaten alive by mosquitos. But a few hunting trips with Enzo and occasional, but utterly brutal, paintball weekends with some of the other boys, had prepared him as much as possible for this kind of stalking.

Still, did Barsanti have to make it quite so easy?

Sal was tempted to strike now. The bodyguard had left an hour ago and now Barsanti stood alone outside the house in shirt and trousers, door open behind him. What if Barsanti only planned to spend the night here—maybe with a woman?—and left in the morning? They’d miss out on the chance to do it.

That Barsanti had left his usual haunts was already lucky. Separating him from that bastard Andrea Lo Cascio had started to seem nearly impossible, and snatching Barsanti in the city would attract far too much attention. Plus, it would warn the head of the Lo Cascio clan that something was afoot.

Sal might have ignored the Lo Cascio consigliere if the man hadn’t approached him at the wedding last week. Not considerate enough to allow a man to get seriously drunk in peace, Barsanti had dared to walk straight up to him and play at goddamned politics. If not for the alcohol, Sal might have strangled him then and there; he wasn’t going to meet Andrea Lo Cascio for any reason other than to finish him off with a bullet between his motherfucking eyes.

He almost hadn’t recognized Barsanti; he’d been a lean, jackal-faced capo when he’d shown up on Sal’s radar, what, something like fifteen years ago? Now he filled out his frame very differently, though he still looked like he could run a marathon and then climb a sheer rock face without ropes or support.

Over the years, Sal had been aware of him but hadn’t paid him much mind, and certainly hadn’t followed his career—the families in Port Francis only dealt with each other when absolutely necessary. Even Barsanti’s optimistic attempts to get everybody talking after the War hadn’t changed that fundamental truth.

But Barsanti’s ill-considered approach at the reception had given Sal an idea. Enzo hadn’t been impressed.

“What, boss, you’re going to change the plannow?”

“Yes. If it means less blood …”

“Big fucking ‘if’.”

Yeah, well, if crawling around between trees and undergrowth meant he’d end up with even one or two fewer wounded or dead soldiers, then, fuck it, this little “hunt” would be worth it.

Considering Barsanti intended to spend the night in this designer fishbowl, he had the feeling they’d get lucky.

Next to him, Enzo shifted his weight and lowered the binoculars. “I’m starting to see your point.”

Sal cast a glance at his capo. “Right?”

“He seems like a reasonable guy,” Enzo said.

Sal scoffed. “And you get that from what? A nice suit and a terrible grasp on security?”

“No. Books.” Enzo vaguely gestured toward the house. “They look read too.”

Well, those. They weren’t the kind of books rich people bought, like old-school leather-bound encyclopedias or books whose jacket colors matched the interior. There were two high bookshelves in that house and the contents were a mix of paperbacks and hardcovers that seemed well-used and organized in a system that wasn’t by color or size.

Finally, Barsanti seemed to shake himself out of his reverie. Going back inside, and switched on some lamps positioned on small tables and on low shelves. That formal white shirt helped them track him by reflecting even the dimmed light.

“Let’s get the cameras up.”

They continued to monitor Barsanti’s movements in the house as they worked their way around the perimeter, hiding cameras that looked through every window and glass pane—from the bathroom to the office upstairs to the master bedroom and the formal dining room. They couldn’t achieve a hundred percent coverage, but at least they’d always have a very good guess in which room Barsanti was and where he was moving, which was everything they’d need for their purposes.

Everything connected straight out of the box, all the cameras were happy to chat with their mobile phones and their laptop.

“I fucking love plug and play,” Sal muttered when they were back in his Ford F-150 truck they’d parked halfway down a logging road. Enzo grinned at him, balancing the slim laptop on his knees while swiping through the different cameras.

Technology was amazing when it was this intuitive. They could focus on learning the layout of the house and how to follow Barsanti’s movements inside. No need to sit in the man’s garden with binoculars all night, hoping for some revelation that might or might not come.

They watched more or less in silence, interrupted only when they broke out the thermos with coffee and unwrapped the meatball subs Enzo had conjured up in Sal’s kitchen a few hours earlier.

Sitting side by side in the truck, Sal realized again how lucky he was to have a capo like Enzo. He could be both vicious and playful, but he definitely made too much of his Sicilian roots and recently had become obsessed with Ancestry.com. The site had convinced him he was descended from medieval Norman crusaders, which allegedly explained the blond hair and grey eyes running in his family.

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