Chapter 3 - The Shadow Over Michigan Avenue
While Mason sat in the gymnasium of St. Jude’s, three miles away in a high-rise office building in the Loop, Frankie Moretti was pouring three fingers of bourbon into a crystal glass.
Frankie was fifty-eight, short, balding, and possessed the bloated, angry appearance of a man who drank too much and slept too little. He was the head of the Moretti crime family—an organization that had been losing ground to Mason Voss’s syndicate for the past five years.
Standing in front of Frankie’s mahogany desk were Sal and his two bruised enforcers.
“He was in the diner?” Frankie asked, his voice rising in disbelief. “Mason Voss was sitting in a two-bit diner on South Michigan Avenue?”
“Yes, boss,” Sal stammered, rubbing his wrist. “He took the Vargas woman’s side. He told us if we set foot on 24th Street again, he’d burn your house down.”
Frankie slammed his crystal glass onto the desk, sending bourbon sloshing over his financial ledgers.
“Why does Mason Voss care about a dead mechanic’s wife?” Frankie bellowed, pacing back and forth behind his desk. “Carlos Vargas was a nobody! He was just a runner who stole two million dollars in bonds from my vault before he got himself killed in that car crash!”
Sal hesitated. “Maybe... maybe Voss was the one who paid Carlos to steal the bonds?”
Frankie stopped pacing. His eyes narrowed into thin, predatory slits.
“No,” Frankie muttered, a slow, malicious grin spreading across his face. “Mason doesn't use petty thieves. But if Carlos stole those bonds two years ago, he didn't have time to cash them. He hid them.”
Frankie stepped up to his window, looking out over the Chicago skyline toward the South Side.
“Carlos didn't have a safety deposit box,” Frankie mused aloud. “He didn't have a warehouse. The only place those bonds could be... is with his wife. Or his kids.”
Sal looked puzzled. “Boss, if Voss is protecting them, we can't touch the diner. Voss has eighty soldiers on the South Side alone.”
Frankie turned around, his smile growing colder and more sinister.
“Voss is getting soft,” Frankie sneered. “He lost his wife and kid five years ago, and now he’s playing white knight for a widow and her four strays. He thinks he’s invisible because he controls the docks.”
Frankie walked back to his desk and picked up his secure satellite phone.
“Call the Russians,” Frankie ordered Sal.
Sal’s eyes widened in genuine fear. “The Bratva? Boss, Sergei Petrov’s crew doesn't care about Chicago rules. If we bring them into Back Bay, it’ll start a full-scale turf war.”
“I don't care about a turf war!” Frankie roared. “I want those bonds, and I want Mason Voss put in the ground! Petrov has ten hitmen straight out of Spetsnaz sitting in a safehouse in Cicero. Tell him I’ll give him half the bonds and two shipping docks if he takes out Voss and brings me Rosa Vargas and her girls.”
Sal swallowed hard, nodded, and hurried out of the office.
May you like
Frankie picked up his bourbon glass, raising it toward the window in a silent, deadly toast.
“Enjoy your lunch, Mason,” Frankie whispered. “It’s the last meal you’re ever going to eat.”
