“Mr. Barone is inside,” he said, and then withdrew.
I pushed open the doors. Humidity smashed me in the face as I stepped into the room.
The first thing I saw was green. Quickly I realized that there were plants all over the place, almost like I had stepped into a greenhouse. The path was surrounded by plants, and the room was incredibly humid. The doors shut behind me as I stepped into the room, following the thin path through the thick foliage.
For a second, I thought I might be lost. I had this eerie feeling that I had stepped into another room. The place seemed huge, and the ceiling seemed far away and possibly made of glass. The sun was beating down on me either way. I lost sight of the doors and the walls, and for a second I thought I really was in the jungle.
Who the hell had a greenhouse in the middle of their mansion?
Arturo Barone. Of course Arturo Barone had a greenhouse in his mansion. The egomaniacal bastard thought he was a god already.
For a second, I thought I heard birds in the foliage around me. But no, that couldn’t be real. I shook my head, trying to keep it together.
Arturo was having this meeting in this place just to throw me off. There was no doubt in my mind that it was all designed to make me as pliable as possible. I had to keep myself together.
I stepped around a corner and the path opened up to a clearing. In the middle of the clearing was a large statue of a beautiful woman smiling serenely. I stared at her, trying to place her familiar face.
It hit me suddenly. The woman looked like Louisa, but older. Maybe Louisa in twenty or thirty years.
“What do you think?”
I blinked. I looked down and noticed Arturo sitting at the base of the statue, smiling at me.
“It’s lovely,” I said.
“It’s my wife. She passed a long time ago, but this room is something like a memorial to her.”
I nodded. That made sense. Of course it was Louisa’s mother. The resemblance was really striking.
“It’s a very nice place.”
He laughed. “I come here to think sometimes. To get away from all the idiots around me.”
I walked over to him and stopped, crossing my arms. “Do you have a lot of idiots in your organization?”
He nodded. “We’re the mob. We don’t attract geniuses, for the most part. But the smart ones, they move up, and the dumb ones get killed.”
“Survival of the fittest.”
“Something like that.”
I glanced up at the statue again and wondered how she would have felt about all this. But she had married Arturo, after all. I wondered if she was more like her daughter, or more like her husband.
“Why did you call me here?” I asked. “I just got back into the city.”
“I know,” he answered, confirming my suspicions. “I wanted to follow up on your business arrangement.”
“The drug dealers.”
“That’s the one.”
“What’s the issue? We’ve already convicted some, and more are on the way.”
“It’s too slow. As soon as you grab one, another steps up in his place. It’s not actually hurting them.”
“Of course it is,” I said. “We’re grabbing the smartest ones, and they’re being replaced with lesser versions.”
“I don’t give a shit,” he said. “I want them gone.”
“I’m doing the best I can. This is as fast as we could possibly move.”
“Move faster.” There was an edge to his tone, an impatience.
“Is there something else going on here, Arturo?”
He sighed. “I have business arrangements that are coming through soon. The dealers in the south are in the way of those arrangements.”
My interested was piqued. I came here hoping Arturo would give me something to work with, and suddenly he was already talking about his “business arrangements,” whatever that meant.
But I sensed something. He was impatient and angry, otherwise he wouldn’t have called me in. The prosecutions of the dealers were going pretty well, faster than they normally went. I couldn’t imagine he would have cause to complain.
Unless something big was happening, and he needed the dealers gone.
“Maybe I can help with your issue,” I said.
“You can. Get rid of those dealers faster.”
“You know it doesn’t work like that.”
“I gave you a lot of money, Wyatt. Make it work like that.”
“I spent most of that money bribing people,” I said, lying through my teeth. “You think it’s cheap making the legal system work in your favor? You’re getting the deal of the century right now.”
“It’s not good enough. I need the streets cleared. I have a shipment coming through the docks in three days, and I need that territory if I’m going to move my goods.”