Page 45 of The Kingpin's Call Girl

There are five other men at this table besides Orton and me. My top brass. Two of them were my brother’s top guys—the only ones out of his whole crew I deemed trustworthy. The other three I handpicked.

They know to ignore us.

Storm eats alone at the bar because he rarely joins the group; he’s too far gone to be anywhere but on the fringes.

I turn back to her. “I will find you. You think I can’t?”

She pretends to beconfused.

West pockets his phone. “Florian’s coming. He’s shook up about something.”

I exchange glances with Orton.What now?

Florian arrives a few minutes later, looking stressed. He puts his palms down on the table. “Bloody Lazarus might bealive.”

I straighten. “Bloody Lazarus? Not possible. He got blown up. There were witnesses.”

“And did they find his body?” Florian says. “No.”

“Because it was incinerated,” I say. “Aleksio and his brothers saw it themselves.”

“They never found the body, though, did they? Nobody found that body. This is Lazarus we’re talking about.”

Orton narrows his eyes. “Bloody Lazarus? Are we talking about that psychotic enforcer for... who was it?”

“Aldo Nikolla, the Chicago kyre,” I say to him. “Lazarus and Aldo did a big, bloody massacre twenty years back, just before I was sent down to Tucumayo. You were already down there, but man, it was fucked up. They slaughtered the Chicago Dragushas and took a lot of territory. Two decades of darkness and violence. And then the Dragusha boys came back for vengeance...”

People fill him in on the more gory details, which ended in Lazarus being incinerated in a Hummer “with enough C-4 to take down a football stadium.”

“Well, apparently, Lazarus survived that incineration,” Florian says.

My East Side guy, Cards, isn’t convinced. He thinks it’s bullshit.

Orton sits back. “I’ve learned not to believe a man is dead until I see the body and maybe poke at it.”

“Did somebody actually see him? Did somebody talk to him?” I ask. “Who is this coming from?”

“Aleksio Dragusha,” Florian says.

A hush falls over the table.

“There was a murder out in the Poconos with Lazarus’s signature,”Florian continues. “Aleksio went down there himself. Got some criminologists or profilers or whatever involved. They’re all pretty sure. I didn’t get all the details, but...”

“Fuck,” somebody whispers, speaking for everyone.

Lazarus is back?

Cards’s expression darkens. “Nobody wants Lazarus dead more than those Dragusha boys. There will be blood.”

I can feel Edie’s interest. It’s strange. I turn to her. “You got something to add?”

Her eyes widen. “No! This guy sounds... twisted.”

I grunt. The chat rolls on with people saying where they were during the war that broke out after the Dragushas were hit all those years ago.

We fall silent as the second course arrives.

“Eat. Go ahead.”

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