Page 79 of Burn this City

“Yes.”

“Not sure how much I can be of help, but feel free to come around. I don’t have anything else on my calendar.”

“Appreciate it.”

“You know the room?”

Yes, he did. He’d already sent flowers and a hamper with everything that Vic Decesare liked to that same hospital, along with a hand-written card with measured words of appreciation. “I’ll be there in less than an hour. Do you want me to bring anything?”

“A good bottle of wine.”

“Consider it done.”

After the call, Jack selected a bottle from the specialist dealership down the road. He tried to listen to music to take his mind off everything that had happened, but mostly everything that was about to happen.

The private hospital was the best in the state, and from the outside, it could have been a country club or an exclusive spa.

Jack was on the list of “guests”, so they let him pass through, and nobody commented on the bottle of wine he carried.

Ah, yes, Mr. Barsanti, please follow me,” a nurse said.

Last visit, Vic had received him in what looked like a living room, complete with a flatscreen TV, carpets, and antique furniture. Vic had worn what he’d have worn outside on a good day—formal trousers, a shirt and a woolen sweater, top button of his formal shirt open underneath. So seeing him lying in bed in pajamas jarred Jack, especially with a thin plastic tube snaking into his nose.

Vic wasn’t a year over sixty-five, but he looked twenty years older. His hair had come back after multiple courses of chemo- and radiotherapy, but it was wispy and colorless, and his dark brown eyes seemed washed out, the white yellowed like antique ivory. Jack could see the lines of his skull clearly under the thinning skin.

Jack stepped up to the bed and set the bottle down next to a bunch of fresh flowers that didn’t have a card attached. “I should have come by weeks ago.”

“Ah, no. Sit down.” Vic gestured toward a chair. “It’ll be a nice distraction. How are you doing, son? Who’s beaten you up?”

Jack gave an embarrassed laugh he’d practiced enough by now. “Caught my foot getting out of the Jacuzzi. In my defense, I was drunk.”

Vic’s face lit up with amusement, “You need to come up with a better story.” Jack’s heart skipped a painful beat. “That’s no way to boast about a war wound. You’re always too honest.”

“Andrea said I needed a story about a sparring match gone wrong.” Because in the reality where he was not a traitor, that was what he’d have said. Not that it mattered anymore that Vic believed him.

“Yes, that sounds a lot better.” Vic settled back on his pillow, then clicked some kind of remote control and the head part of the bed rose with an electric hum. “Andrea’s been riding you hard?”

So Vic apparently hadn’t heard anything yet. “Andrea is … Andrea.” Jack shrugged. “He hasn’t been so bad lately, so …” He looked around the room. “I don’t think you’ve told us about the situation here.”

“No point.” Vic looked around with a weak snarl of distaste. “Take a man’s guts out, everything follows. Slice by slice. There’s more of me in the incinerator than left in the bed. Told them they can’t have any more, so they can stop milking my insurance for more money. Fucking vampires.”

“Last doc I met was a drug pusher,” Jack agreed. “But if you need anything …”

“Eh.” The disgust was palpable. “No. Tell me, what do you need?”

“I know we’ve already talked about it, years ago, but I have some questions about Salvatore Rausa. I met him at the Prizzi wedding and something about him makes me nervous. But I haven’t dealt with him much, so I was hoping you have more.”

“Shown himself in public, has he?” Vic Decesare looked down at his hands which were resting on the covers. “Yeah, I have stories. When the War got bad, Sal Rausa went out and killed his uncle who’d groomed him as his underboss. When the pressure on the Rausa got so bad that they were near breaking, he turned against his own, because Mike Rausa disagreed with him on the direction of the family.”

“That’s reckless.”

“Old Mike wasn’t the most effective leader the Rausa have ever had—he was too confident, for one, and thought he was cleverer than he was.” Vic Decesare made a “what can you do” gesture. “That could have worked to our advantage, but it didn’t. Not at first.”

“Please explain?”

“With their leadership in the state it was—young boss just taken over, patriarch sleeping with the fishes—I decided it might be worth it to take out Salvatore too. Have them rip each other apart trying to fill the void, so we could focus on the Dommarco.”

“It didn’t work, though.”

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