A Touch of Torment Read online

  A Touch of Torment

  Gary Ponzo

  Copyright © 2020 Gary Ponzo

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without express written permission from the author/publisher.

  Chapter 1

  Sal Perrino sat in the pew at St. Dominic’s and prayed for a quick death. They’d found his brother floating face down in the swimming pool, while his sister was dropped from a twenty-floor high-rise in downtown Phoenix, five miles away.

  He leaned forward and placed his knees on the padded kneeler. It was 9:30 Tuesday morning and the church was completely empty. He stared up at the statue behind the altar. Jesus was on the cross, His head tilted toward Sal in pity.

  “Please,” Sal said. “Don’t make me wait.”

  The stained-glass windows allowed the winter sun to filter in, reflecting off the gold chalices on the altar. Sal took it as a sign. He lowered his head to confess his transgressions. He was born into a Sicilian family who raised him to be loyal. Loyal to his mother and father, but more importantly, loyal to his syndicate family. The real people who would forge his destiny.

  When he was twenty-seven, he became the boss, taking over for his ailing father who handed the throne to his firstborn son. That was back in Baltimore, forty years ago. Back when the syndicate ran the labor unions and the sanitation department. Back when the families banded together for protection. Before they became targets of the government. Long before they moved to Arizona to lower their profile and try to go straight.

  Now, Sal prayed for forgiveness. He’d been dropped into the middle of a jungle at an early age and there were times he had to fire bullets into the back of someone’s head. Kill or be killed. He had no choice. But now he was speaking to a higher authority and thought he should take some responsibility.

  “Forgive me, Father,” he said, his head down, his eyes shut. “I’ve made some bad choices in my life.”

  His only hope was that his daughter would be spared. The boys could take care of themselves, but Cara was a journalist for the Los Angeles Times and vulnerable to his enemies. Somehow, she had inherited his gift for writing. A talent that Sal kept hidden from his friends and associates. The written word was not met with great enthusiasm among the families. Written words were considered evidence and even though Sal wrote mostly short stories, he never advertised his literary accomplishments.

  Cara was back in Baltimore for a college reunion, and Sal had left strict instructions for her to remain on the east coast and avoid the tyrants who were about to end his life. He didn’t want her rushing out to avenge his death. He’d deserved his penance and it was time to move on.

  Sal rested his elbows over the back of the pew in front of him and silently spewed out his regrets. The time he’d spent away from his family, working, entertaining, sometimes all at once. He regretted the way he’d put his siblings in harm’s way. They were part of the family, sure, but they didn’t deserve their sentence. His decisions had sealed their fate. He alone got them killed.

  Behind him, the front door creaked open and a momentary wave of cold air rushed into the vestibule.

  Sal didn’t turn around. A drop of sweat trickled down the side of his face, while his entire body began to shiver.

  His only thought now was Cara. He prayed to St. Christopher, the Patron Saint of Protection, as footsteps crept up behind him. A war had begun, and Sal hadn’t been prepared. His adversaries were strong and reckless and didn’t follow any Sicilian rules. At least within the families there was a code of ethics, but these monsters knew nothing about morals.

  Sal’s kneeler shimmied as the man plopped down in the pew behind him.

  “I will allow you to finish your prayer,” the man said.

  Sal scrunched forward, his hands clasped tight to his chest. He prayed hard for a solid minute. About as long as he felt he would be permitted. He prayed that Cara would know what to do with the gift he’d left behind. When he was comfortable with his confession, he made the sign of the cross, then sat back and waited. He didn’t want to see it coming.

  And then it came.

  Chapter 2

  Tommy Bracco sat in a leather chair in the Baltimore Four Seasons and clicked the remote to ESPN. He was in the large bedroom of a suite that overlooked the harbor. The sun was down and snowflakes drifted across the window. As ESPN came to life, the seventy-five-inch TV was so vivid he could see the acne on the Boston College quarterback’s face. Three minutes left in the game and somehow Georgia hadn’t been able to put away the pesky Eagles.

  The bathroom door was open and the shower was running. There was a gathering of leggings, panties and a sports bra piled by the shower door with a mist of hot air creeping over the glass partition. Tommy was close enough to see Cara Perrino’s body through the textured glass door, but averted his eyes and tried to focus on the game. Boston College was driving for a score, and Tommy had a lot of action riding on the outcome. His business relied on Georgia’s defense to keep them out of the end zone.

  He glanced at Cara’s silhouette once again and admonished himself. She was a triathlete, every muscle finely toned. But he’d known her since she was a kid. Back when she would ask Tommy to drive her to the mall. This seemed wrong.

  The acned quarterback escaped a sack and threw a wild pass on third and long, finding a receiver near the goal line.

  “Crap,” Tommy muttered.

  His cell phone vibrated and he glanced at the display before he put it to his ear. “Yeah.”

  “You see that pass?” Gino Verrado said.

  “I saw it.”

  “They score, it’ll be a bad night for us.”

  “I can count, Gino.”

  “By the way, Danson wants to put ten large on the Steelers this weekend.”

  Tommy rubbed a hand over his face. “How much is he into us for?”

  “Fifteen.”

  Tommy owned an online gambling service where 80 percent of his business was completely legit and customers paid up front via credit card. However, the 20 percent who didn’t have the credit limit or the money up front still bet the old-fashioned way. They called in their wager and waited for the outcome to pay or get paid. These wagers were usually very large and made up over half of Tommy’s gross income.

  He chose his words carefully. “Tell Howie he’d better bring me an envelope by 9 a.m. the next morning should he lose.”

  “Or what?”

  “You figure it out.”

  “I’ll take his car.”

  Tommy rolled his eyes. “You serious?”

  “What? He needs consequences.”

  “Look, I’m not Don Corleone.”

  “Well, maybe you should be.”

  Gino getting sassy with him.

  Tommy sighed. “Tell him if we don’t get paid the next day, I will talk to Marilyn and let her know what a degenerate gambler he is. I’ll also inform her that it wasn’t the maid who stole those diamond earrings from her jewelry box last year.”

  “Ouch,” Gino said. “Maybe that’s going too far.”

  “Just take the bet,” Tommy said, watching the Georgia defense making a goal-line stand on fourth down and finally put an end to the game.

  “That saved our ass,” Gino said, watching the exact same play. “Made it a plus day.”

  The shower turned off.

  “I gotta go,” Tommy said, then put the phone back in his pocket and returned his attention to ESPN. The players on both teams were m
illing around the goal line, shaking hands and offering their respect to their fellow warriors. In his peripheral vision, Tommy could see Cara coming out of the bathroom way too quickly to have already gotten dressed.

  When Tommy turned, she was holding a white towel around her frame and casually sauntering toward him.

  “Where would you like to go for dinner?” she said.

  Tommy had to work hard to keep his attention on her face and away from those long legs jutting out from under that short towel. “Anywhere,” he said with a skittish edge.

  Cara sat on the bed and crossed her bare legs, keeping the towel loose around her chest, almost as a dare. She produced a tube of lotion and dabbed a spot onto her hand, then slid the lotion onto her legs.

  Tommy had to take a deep breath watching this production like a Spielberg thriller.

  Cara cocked her head. “Are you okay?”

  Tommy clicked off the TV and turned to face her. “So . . . I don’t know, the way you’ve been treating me—”

  “How? How am I treating you?”

  “Well, for starters, you take a shower with the bathroom door open.”

  She shrugged. “What? Were you going to jump me?”

  “Of course not.”

  “So, what’s the problem?”

  “It’s just that, uh,” Tommy stammered. “Well, I used to babysit you when your pop was out of town.”

  “Tommy, I’m twenty-nine years old. I’m a big girl. It’s like you’re . . .”

  Tommy made a circle motion with his index finger. “Go ahead and say it. It’s like I’m family.”

  Cara frowned. She looked out the window, then back to Tommy. “Look, I didn’t invite you here to seduce you. I thought it might be fun to catch up. I missed you, that’s all.”

  She got up and picked up her metal ThermoFlask of water from the dresser. The thing was narrow but seemed heavy. She took a drink, then she went into the bathroom and shut the door.

  Tommy closed his eyes. “Idiot,” he muttered to himself.

  A minute later, Cara came out of the bathroom wearing a modest hotel robe with the belt tightened around her waist. She sat back onto the bed and crossed her legs again. A woman with a mission.

  “When I was fourteen, you would give me piano lessons. Do you remember that?”

  “Of course.”

  “Do you remember me putting my arm around your shoulder? Running my hands through your hair, telling you how thick it was?”

  Tommy nodded, the memory creeping back into his mind.

  “I was smitten,” she said. “But you never reacted. You always made it seem so normal and you never made me feel like I was being naughty or inappropriate.”

  “You were just a kid.”

  Cara leaned forward, her soft cleavage peeking out. “I was fourteen and my body was way ahead of its time and you knew it. I was already getting looks from college boys, making plays for me the moment I was out of adult supervision. You made me feel like it was okay to be sensual without being judged. And you never once returned my advance.”

  “Is that what this is about? A challenge?”

  Cara’s face fell.

  Tommy held up his hands. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. It’s just . . . your father.”

  “My father adores you. Of all the people in the world he would want me to spend time with, your name would be on top of that list.”

  Tommy smirked. “That’s probably true.”

  “Besides, even if there was something between us, you’re only twelve years older, so don’t make this out to be some lurid interlude between a sailor and a nurse in some overseas hospital.”

  Her literary prowess came seeping out of her pores.

  He remained quiet.

  “Don’t make this weird, Tommy. You were the one person I felt I could talk to without prejudice.” Her expression softened. “You know what you are?”

  “A schmuck?”

  “You’re genuine. Everyone else is white noise compared to you. I’ve never met a man who would open a door for me, then tell me to stay away from the Serbian bartender because he slips roofies into girls’ drinks.”

  “That was five years ago,” he said. “Last time I saw you.”

  “That’s right. You were a perfect gentleman. And that’s not because I was,” she made quotation marks with her fingers, “‘family.’ It was because that’s who you are. You look out for the underdog, the kid who gets bullied.”

  “I hate bullies.”

  “Exactly.”

  She looked at him with honest eyes. Nothing but genuine fondness for who he was. Tommy wanted to take her right then and there. Show her just how much she’d meant to him. In that moment of hesitation, Cara stood and went back to the bathroom and quietly closed the door.

  Tommy lowered his head with his elbows on his knees. How could he have missed the signs? Cara knew him better than anyone he’d ever dated. She had him pegged like a detective lifting prints from a revolver. He needed to get his mind right and let her know how he really felt.

  He went over to the bathroom door, opened it and stood in the doorway, watching her look back at him through the long mirror, tugging a brush through her wet hair.

  Cara turned. She was pure and childlike in her innocence, but her eyes were commanding him to make a decision. He placed a hand on her cheek.

  “You are beautiful,” Tommy said. “Inside and out.”

  “I’m glad you noticed.”

  She put her arms around his waist and looked up at him, still making him decide.

  There was no reasonable explanation for Tommy to hesitate, so he didn’t. He leaned down and kissed her. It was a long kiss, wet and warm and flush with the newness of two human beings lusting for each other. Tommy slid his hands inside her robe and down her rib cage to her tight stomach, her soft hips. The intimacy was familiar, as if they’d done this a million times before.

  After a few minutes, Tommy pulled back for air. “Maybe we should order room service.”

  She had to smile at that. The woman coming to the forefront of her face, mature beyond her years. She moved around him and opened the hotel door to place the “Do Not Disturb” sign on the handle.

  Tommy was ready to consummate their newly found desire for each other.

  Cara went over to her purse on the dresser and removed her phone. “I just need to turn my phone back on and make sure there’s nothing pressing at work, then I can relax.”

  Tommy leaned against the bathroom doorway and glanced down at the bulge in his pants. “I’ll try to hold off the launch sequence.”

  She grinned, waiting for her phone to come to life. A brightness to her eyes.

  Tommy walked over to the window and saw the snow accumulating in the parking lot. The cars all sprinkled white. He closed the curtains, then began clicking off lamps.

  He heard a gasp.

  “Oh no,” Cara said, reading messages on her phone.

  “What?” Tommy asked.

  Then her phone rang and she immediately answered. “Shelby? What happened?”

  Tommy could hear Cara’s cousin screaming into the phone, her voice carrying all the way across the room.

  “He’s dead!” Shelby yelled. “They’re all dead!”

  Cara’s eyes swelled up. “Please no,” Cara murmured, covering her face.

  There was a guttural moan and garbled words. Shelby tried to compose herself and explain the situation while Cara morphed from woman to child right before Tommy’s eyes. She collapsed onto the edge of the bed with the phone pressed to her ear.

  Tommy sat next to her, rubbing her back and listening to Shelby explain the carnage that had occurred in Arizona. He heard Shelby refer to Sal and Charlie and Lucy in the past tense. Cara’s father, and his brother and sister. All three were gone. Tommy put it together in his mind. Sal was the patriarch of the family. The boss. Charlie was his right-hand man. Lucy was just part of the hit. And that’s what it was. An old-fashioned Mafia-style hit.

&n
bsp; Even though Tommy hadn’t seen any of them in a while, they were all interlinked. Years of absence couldn’t erase the bond Sicilian families felt for one another. Tommy grew up with the Perrino family, and hearing the grief in Shelby’s voice had Tommy wiping the corner of his eye.

  Cara’s shoulders trembled in Tommy’s fingers as she tried to hold it together.

  There was a loud knock on the door.

  Tommy got up and peered through the peephole. A uniformed attendant stood behind a mobile cart draped with a white tablecloth and topped with a bottle of champagne chilling in a bucket of ice.

  Tommy opened the door partway and said, “Not a good time, buddy.”

  “But, sir,” the room service attendant said, “this is complimentary.”

  “I get it,” Tommy said, Cara sobbing behind him. “But not now.”

  The attendant put his hands on the end of the cart as if to push it into the room. “Sir, this is part of the package. The Harbor Suite guests get chocolate on the pillow at night and complimentary champagne when they check in.”

  “Okay.” Tommy reached for the neck of the champagne and began to pull it out of the bucket, when the attendant grabbed his wrist.

  “No,” the guy said, firm. “I must deliver the champagne to Miss Perrino personally. I’ve had customers complain that they didn’t receive the bottle when I’ve left it with other people in the room. It ends up coming out of my check.”

  Now Tommy scrutinized the guy. He was in his late thirties, maybe Middle-Eastern descent. He looked the part of a room service attendant, but something felt wrong. Maybe hearing Shelby describe the Arizona massacre made him overly suspicious.

  Tommy stepped into the hallway and let the heavy door shut behind him.

  The guy seemed agitated. “Sir, I have a job to do,” he said with a hint of an accent.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Khava.”

  “Is that Iranian?”

  “I’m from Chechnya.”

  “Huh. Where in Chechnya?”

  “Argun.”

  It came right off his tongue, so he was either telling the truth or was very well coached. Tommy had heard of the Argun River, but wasn’t sure where it was.