181

It’s been a week since thesit-downand we’ve had nothing but radio silence from the other side. It’s to be expected. Chelsea rattled them hard.

She told Don Cassaduchi in no uncertain terms that we’re coming for both him and de Soto. What do you say to that? No boss has ever gone to another boss and said anything like that.

People do shit that’s sneaky and underhanded. They strike from the shadows. No one ever looks you in the eyes and says—I’m going to end you.

What they’ve got to be wondering right now is whether she was serious or not. They’re wondering if they should ignore her, hit us first, stop the drugs from coming in, combinations thereof and probably a thousand other scenarios which will allow them to keep their lives and their money.

It's not a great place to be—mentally.Heck, old man Cassaduchi might just keel over from the stress of it all.

The other thing that’s happening right now is the gossip. You put a bunch of mafiosos in a room and they’re worse than a sewing-circle.

Half of them are talking about the set of balls on Chelsea. The other half are talking about how de Soto fucked up sixteen years ago.

And they’realltalking about what’s going to happen to them and who they ought to be backing.

Are they going to fight for the guy who’s got one minute till midnight in a wheelchair and an oxygen mask?

Or are they going to fight for the screwup who missed a five-year-old girl, sixteen years ago.

Both those guys are scared of Donna Chelsea Lombardo.

Dollars to doughnuts, most of their captains and soldiers are going to want to sit this out and see who’s left standing when the dust settles.

We’re outside in the garden, practicing a hybrid of martial arts that I’m teaching Chelsea. It’s a little bit of Taekwondo mixed with Karate, Kungfu and Jiujutsu.

Chelsea has taken to all this stuff like a duck to water. She has an amazingly strong core and she’s very, very limber. She said she got that way by cleaning so much!

She can throw kicks and punches like she’s had years of training instead of only weeks. It’s like she was born a warrior.I suppose she was.She was a princess, now she’s a queen.

She has the blood in her.

The last Lombardo.

When we first started training weeks ago, I didn’t have to use any protective gear because I was faster than her and she could barely touch me. Now, I’ve got to wear pads because she’s stronger, faster and her strikes land with precision and weight.

She’s built for battle.

“Oof!” I go down hard on the grass from the kick she lands to my midsection.

She’s surprised when she looks down at me, “I telegraphed that a mile away, what’s wrong with you? Where’s your head at today?”

“Day dreaming, I suppose,” I flash her a smile and wink.

She puts out her hand to help me up. I take it and pull her down to me instead. She laughs when she lands on my padded chest, then gives me a kiss. “Let’s show some professionalism please. There are probably fifteen guys watching us right now.”

“You’re right.” I give her a quick kiss before she gets off me.

She bounces away on the balls of her feet and comes to a fighting stance. Once I’m standing, she says, “Ready?”

I nod.

She runs forward and she’s on me before I even know what’s happening! She leaps into the air and lands two kicks to my chest, knocking me back.

Next comes a flurry of punches to my midsection.

I swing high to get her to dodge and she does it with ease, ducking low to deliver two punches to my inner thighs, then sweeps my feet out from under me with her right leg!

I land hard and get the wind knocked out of me.

She somersaults back and lands in a fighting stance once more…a triumphant smile on her face.

I sit up, “I’m done taking abuse for today, you’re getting too good.”

“You think?”

“I know so, but you need to remember, it’s not only about how hard and fast you can hit, it’s also abouttaking a hitand getting up from it so you can keep going.”

“Being able to take a hit only matters if someone can lay a hand on me. I’ll concentrate on being fast. I don’t need to practice getting hit to know that it’s going to hurt.”

“Fair enough,” I get up and start stripping off my pads, “I could use a shower, care to join—”

I don’t get to finish because one of my guys, Tim, comes running up to us like a pack of wolves is chasing him, “Donna Lombardo, Christian!”

“Calm down,” Chelsea says, “what is it?”

“Phone,” he pants and hands it to me.

I look at the caller. It’s blocked. Probably a burner. I answer, “Yeah?”

“It’s me,” Leo Abruzzi, “that thing we talked about?”

“Yeah?”

“It’s happening tonight at ten. Dock eighty-seven.”

“Right.”

*Click*

Wise-guy talk…all code.

I’d reached out to Leo after thesit-downlast week to feel him out. He’s not seeing dick from the cocaine business. He never has. He didn’t agree with the hit sixteen years ago.

I casually dropped a hint that I’d be grateful if he could help me slide this whole thing along.

He said if he could help ease the transition, he would. That’s what this phone call is about.

Chelsea comes to me, “What?”

I toss my phone to Tim and jerk my head for him to leave us alone. When he’s gone, I tell Chelsea, “It’s happening tonight at ten. Dock eighty-seven. They’re going to be collecting fifty-kilos of coke at the port.”

“Good,” she smiles, “did he tell you fifty or are you guessing?”

“Well, that’s the usual amount. It started at ten way back in the old days, but the regular amount is fifty these days.”

“But how do you know that?”

“Guys talk, Chelsea. I mean, only to othermadeguys, but we talk.”

“Very good,” she smiles bigger and turns toward the main house. Looks like we’re skipping the shower.

“What are we going to do about it?” She said to tell her if I got anything out of Leo, but I didn’t know what he’d give me and she didn’t say what our course of action would be.

I hope she doesn’t think we’re going to take twenty-five guys down there and get into a gun battle over this.

“Chelsea?”

“Go shower, I’ll talk to you later.”

“Hey,” I grab her arm.

She raises her brow at me, I need to remember my place. I let go and raise my hands in deference.

“I know you’re the boss but you’re also twenty-one years old and new to all of this. Maybe you’d like to share your thoughts with me on this situation?”

“Okay, what would you like to know?” She gives me a smile like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.

“What are you going to do, Chelsea?” I’m not screwing around anymore, I’m serious.

She calls me down with a finger, then whispers to me, “I’m going to call the DEA.”

“Christ, Chelsea! That’s absolutely out of the question. You’re going to rat them out? That’s rule number one, you just don’t do that. You can’t collude with the federal government to have them take downmadeguys like this.”

She snaps, “Would you calm the fuck down?”

“You can’t do that, Chelsea. We’d lose the respect of everybody. No one would ever work with us again. No one would trust us!”

“I’m not going to rat them out,” she says innocently, “I’m going to rat out the people bringing the drugs in. The Cassian pay the port authority to let them know if anything is off, right?”

“Yeah, so?”

“The DEA would have to wait till money changed hands for the drugs in order to be able to prosecute the Cassian. They’ll be sitting somewhere in the dark waiting for the ship to arrive, correct?”

“Yeah.”

“So, when their inside man at the port sees all the DEA agents and warns off the Cassian, it’ll just be the traffickers that the DEA have to deal with.”

“He’ll warn the ship that’s coming in too, Chelsea. You’re probably only going to end up delaying them by a day or two, nothing more. The DEA isn’t going to tell the port cops to start searching every container on every ship.”

“I know that,” she smiles.

“Also, if you call the DEA now, they’re going to scout the location and set up everything from snipers to plain clothes undercover guys five hours in advance. This is not going to work.”

“That’s whatyouthink,” she taps my nose. “Why don’t you shower, then we’ll go get something to eat and I’ll show you. I’ll meet you at the car in thirty minutes.”

With that, she turns on her heel and she’s gone.

She certainly seems confident. I wonder what she’s up to?

We have dinner at a nice restaurant in the city, an Italian place, of course. The chef is a friend of my father’s. He is very happy to meet Chelsea and they speak for quite some time.

Giovanni makes her feel very welcome and tells her—Your money is no good in this establishment, Donna Lombardo.

Chelsea feels bad so she leaves the waitress a handsome tip.

She also manages to avoid talking about anything related to the drug deal at the docks.

We drive towards the port in silence and she directs me to where she wants to go. It wasnotin the port. After some prodding, Chelsea tells me we’re going to a lookout point on top of a cliff with a fantastic view of dock eighty-seven.

Once I park, Chelsea pulls a pair of binoculars out from the bag she’s brought with her, “You’d be surprised how much you can get done on the internet. Google maps is amazing!” She gives me a big smile and gets out of the car.

It’s nine-thirty. I follow her out and we both lean on the hood of the Maserati. “You want to tell me what’s going on now?”

“Nope. Just wait and see.”

Far below us, it looks like a little city. The port never sleeps. Loading and offloading containers happens 24/7. If it stops, trade stops…which means commerce stops. The whole economy grinds to a halt.

Somewhere down there is someone’s fruits, vegetables, coffee beans, sweaters, furniture, machine parts, computers, you name it—it all comes from right here.

Everything leaves from there too.

There are more docks than you can count.

I hold my hand out for the binoculars, Chelsea passes them to me absentmindedly. Dock eighty-seven is empty, and dark, there seems to be no action at all. There’s a white panel-van parked there though. That’s not the DEA. It looks like the guys who’re waiting to pick up the stash.

“So, you didn’t call the DEA then?”

“I sure did,” she cutely wiggles her nose.

“Then where are they? There’s nothing going on down there.”

“Patience darling.”

We wait…

A while later she looks at her phone for the time—it’s nine forty-five.She pulls an untraceable burner flip-phone from her bag, pushes the call button twice and holds it to her ear.

“Agent Carlson, it’s me,” she whispers, “I was given the wrong information. It’s dock eighty-seven,” then pauses, “yes. Now!”

Chelsea pops the back off the phone, pulls the sim out, snaps it in half, then breaks the phone in two at the hinge and tosses the lot over the cliff.

“Now, watch,” she points below us.

“Chelsea, what the hell is going on? What did you do?”She’s got the fucking DEA on speed-dial?!

“I said—watch!”

Two minutes go by and I see the panel-van start up, turn around and get moving. “Okay, their inside man tipped them. Now?”

“There, she points into the distance.”

There’s a ship that’s suddenly turning away. It’s a container ship, so it’s not the kind of thing that turns on a dime. There’s a chopper headed towards it and several CRRCs—Those little rubber boats.“Okay, explain.”

“I called them weeks ago, anonymously, and told them I might have information about drugs coming in at the port. When Leo called today, I phoned them and told them—Ten tonight, dock twenty-seven.”

“I see.”

“I had them nearby but not too close. Twenty-seven is all the way on the other side. They had plenty of time to set up but they were in the completely wrong place. So, the Cassian and the traffickers are all happy to make their deal proceed as scheduled.”

“Uh huh.”

“I make the call with the correct location, their contact in the port warns the Cassian and they have time to escape, but that ship doesn’t. Stopping and turning was a red flag. Suspicious behavior. Now they’re going to get searched by the port cops and the DEA. No more drugs. See?” She smiles like the logic is bullet proof.

It is…and it’s so obvious I don’t know why I didn’t see it before.

“I’m willing to bet that was a big ass shipment. Their supplier is going to be pissed. It’s going to set them back”

“And they’re going to be angry.”

“Yup.” Chelsea smiles again. “Home, Christian,” she gets into the car.

Yes, ma’am.