Sunburn(49)

The blow did Gino good, seemed to aid his circulation. He turned his head a little, tried to point his toes. "Wouldya take the cuffs off?" he asked.

Pretty Boy shrugged and fished the key out of his pocket. Gino's freed hands fell limp at his sides. He had no feeling from the shoulders down.

"We're gonna walk now, Gino," said Bo. "Ya ready ta walk?"

By way of answer, Gino leaned forward on the edge of the trunk, tried to get his feet out under him, and proceeded to keel over onto the cement floor. The floor was very cold; it stank of diesel drippings and the juice of very stale shrimp. He struggled to his knees. The thugs yanked him upright and now, somehow, he was walking between them.

They walked him up a short flight of steps to the level of the loading platform, then through a broad doorway to the main chamber of the warehouse. It was vast, high-ceilinged, dimly lit by bare bulbs; through its silence there seemed to seep a low and ceaseless ringing as the steel sang against its rivets. Boxes of iced seafood—salmon, flounder, lobster tails—were stacked on pallets fifteen feet up; the place smelled of ocean, dust, and damp cardboard. Far away, down a towering aisle of fish, a yellow light gleamed through Venetian blinds in an office window.

Gino trudged that way, still trying to wake up, struggling to reenter the world and reclaim his own skin. Hands, feet, brain—nothing felt like his any more, it was as if he'd already died. And as if other things had died with him: old loyalties, bonds, his last remaining shreds of decency or caring. He'd died and now he'd been slapped back into being, but not quite as a person, simply as a blob of life, a dollop of animate goo driven solely by the sublimely pointless instinct to preserve itself.

Bo knocked on the office window. Someone used the muzzle of a gun to part the blinds for a look; then the door was opened from inside.

Pretty Boy shoved Gino through. In the yellow light the captive saw three men. Two of them were bullnecked bodyguards in pearl-gray suits. The other was Aldo Messina, new boss of the Fabretti family.

He was a thin, gray, doleful man, quietly, methodically ruthless, a planner and a worrier. His concave face seemed hollowed out with fretting, his cheeks pinched in around his gums, his black eyes threw shadows on themselves. He wore a gray turtle-neck sweater and stood huddled in a corner near a space heater, rubbing his delicate hands together. The heater's coils put a red glow on his face and made him hard to look at. " 'Lo Gino," he said softly.

" 'Lo, Aldo," said the captive.

Messina raised a delicate finger, a pianist's finger. "First mistake," he said. "It isn't Aldo anymore, Gino. It's Mr. Messina. Got that?"

Gino looked down at the floor and nodded.

Messina approached him and pushed his chin up with a lightly balled fist. "So say it, Gino."

The prisoner hesitated, swallowed. This business of a name—it was a small submission but a bitter one. He tightened his face, pulled back as though the other man's penis were being forced into his mouth. "Mr. Messina."

"Better," said the boss. With a ghoulish slowness, he stepped back, brought his bloodless form nearer to the heat. "So Gino, you've been meddling in our affairs in Florida. That isn't smart, Gino."

The captive looked down at his shoes.

"We had a deal down there," Messina said. "It's not like the Puglieses to welsh on a deal."

Gino sniffled, massaged a bruised wrist.

"Your old man, Gino, I have to tell you, I really looked up to him. He was a diplomat, a reasonable person. I can't believe he'd pick such a stupid time and a stupid way to try taking something back from us. I take over. I can't show weakness. That's basic. And he tries to grab a union   from me? Almost makes me wonder if it was really his idea."

Gino shuffled his feet. He wasn't thinking, exactly; what was going on in his reclaimed brain was something more primitive than that, something like the coded firing of neurons that tells a hunted animal when to zig and when to zag. "My old man, truth is, he ain't sharp like he was, he's losin' it. He's old."

Messina rubbed his hands together near the heater and considered. "Possible," he said. "But Gino, scumbag, what's your excuse?"

Gino sucked some air and realized quite suddenly that the office stank of fish. "I ain't got an excuse," he admitted. "What I got is information."

"That's why you're here instead of at the bottom of the ocean," said Messina.

"Where he fuckin' oughta be," blurted Pretty Boy.

Messina softly told him to shut up. "So Gino, let's have the goods."

The captive reached deep for another spoonful of nerve. "First let's talk about what it's worth."