If At First: Blood Relations, #3

By Howard Weiner

Series: Few challenges prove more nettlesome than a change in family business leadership, especially when the family business is murder-for-hire.

The Carrullo Family is in transition: Father-in-law, family patriarch, lead assassin, is giving way to his new son-in-law. Dad has carried forward the artistry he learned from his father. His new son-in-law was a former special forces operator and sniper in the armed forces trained in speed, stealth, and function.

Four generations living in the same household from the oldest, "Nana," to the recent newborns--all of whom are involved in the family business. Some by choice. Some not.

This Book: Drawn from recent current events, Weiner's latest thriller weaves the threats posed to U.S. democracy in the 2016 presidential election. If at First is the ruthless intersection of a lethal crime family, the intelligence communities of two countries, and the White House with secrets that will prove deadly to all concerned told only as Weiner can.

A mafia underboss escapes a sanctioned act of retribution by his family's patriarch. Rescued by a Russian oligarch with close ties to Putin, the underboss is hidden in a London outpost operated by the Internet Research Agency. This outpost is ground zero for many of the tactics exposed by the American intelligence community: hacked emails of political actors, disinformation campaigns in social media, and targeted ads designed to foment social unrest and disruption to the national political discourse.

The underboss steals this information to secure safety on his own terms. Yet his former boss still wants him sanctioned. The Russian Federation fears premature disclosure of its new form of warfare will destroy its carefully crafted treachery aimed at the heart of U.S. democracy.

Weaving fictional events through Washington, DC, Pittsburgh, London, and Provence, Weiner carries characters known and new to readers of the Blood Relations series into its third installment. You can start the series with any of the three novels but starting with If at First casts recent real-life events in a way that is at once engaging and entertaining.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Howard Weiner
• Release date: Feb 6, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393009436

Howard Weiner

Howard Weiner is a recent addition to the literary genre of fiction. Writing mysteries, thrillers, crimes—with a touch of romance—an approach described by one reader as “one bubble off.” Many authors sharing the genre have characters whose fortune is determined by others. They literally have dodged the bullet that otherwise would have killed them. Weiner’s characters make their own fortune—good or bad—and they live with the results. Weiner’s own experiences are blessed with no small number of noteworthy characters and events. He brings these slightly off-kilter individuals to life, complete with their own stories and dramas. Like the child prodigy in his first novel, It Is Las Vegas After All, who comes to the starting edge of adulthood and then loses the approval of his doting parents, the sponsorship of one of America’s great institutions of higher education, and gains the enmity of his girlfriend’s father—an international arms dealer—to become a home-grown terrorist operating on U.S. soil. A survivor of rich, nuanced bureaucracies in the public and private sector, Weiner writes about characters whose career choices and decisions are morally questionable. A student of personal behavior in complex circumstances, Weiner brings these often cringe-worthy characters to life. Some are amoral, others immoral in a narrow slice of their lives, yet they otherwise look and act like people we all know from work or even childhood. Like one of the female leads in his novel, Serendipity Opportunity, an out-of-the-box thinker who flunks most of life’s basic relationship tests, yet she is someone you never want pursuing you in the cause of justice. There’s a former foreign security official who uses his protected status as a witness for federal prosecutors to provide cover for his own mayhem and murder in Weiner’s third novel, Bad Money. Many of Weiner’s stories are born out of real life events: The mix-up in luggage claim at the airport in, Bad Money, the chronic high school slacker in Serendipity Opportunity whose one stroke of good fortune creates his opportunity to perpetrate a complex series of frauds, or the brilliant student in It Is Las Vegas After All who uses his prodigious talents toward an evil end.

Book preview



If At First

Howard D. Weiner

Copyright

IF AT FIRST. Copyright ©2019 by Howard D. Weiner. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the publisher/copyright owner except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, please contact Howard D. Weiner, 11441 Allerton Park Drive, Unit 213, Las Vegas, NV 89135.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019901477

ISBN: 9781795833974 (paperback)

AISN: B07NDQ6JDG (ebook)

Cover design by SelfPubBookCovers.com/Zendesign

Edited by Wendy F. Weiner

Author’s web site howard-weiner.com

If At First is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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Books by Howard Weiner

FICTION

THE TRIPLE PLAY NOVELS

It Is Las Vegas After All¹

Serendipity Opportunity

The Big Lowandowski

HAIR ON FIRE NOVELS

Bad Money

THE BLOOD RELATIONS NOVELS

One for the Price of Two

Deadly Walkabout¹

If At First

Tell Me No Secrets, I’ll tell You No Lies

The White in the Wind

¹Also available on audiobook

Dedication

Chiclet,

Your companionship is the best. Words I thought

I’d never say.

Contents

Copyright

Books by Howard Weiner

Dedication

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Epilogue

Chapter 1

THE NAUSEA NEVER ENDS.

I’ve been taking Dramamine for the whole damned cruise, for all the good it’s done. The ship’s doctor hands the pills out like candy. Guaranteed to cure what ails you, Doc promised. But here I am, a week later, and the side-effects from those damned pills are worse than nausea. My mouth and nose are always dry. Drinking more water doesn’t help. My ears are still ringing.

When I lay down, my nausea worsens. Sleep is out of the question. The best I can manage is the occasional catnap while sitting in a chair.

I’m a walking zombie.

The label on the bottle warns not to operate heavy machinery. Hell, that’s what I do onboard this floating rust bucket. I run the forklift to move the heavy crates and containers of food from walk-in refrigerators and freezers to the food prep areas and the large waste containers back to cold storage. At the beginning of my shift, I’m like the FedEx or UPS guy who delivers what the chefs need. In the end, I’m the garbage guy hauling away the spoils.

They even have a unique title for what I do. I’m the Galley Steward.

Galley Steward. Sounds special, but it isn’t. Far from it. And yet, the cruise line’s personnel department made me prove I had substantial professional employment experience followed by a month of on-the-job training hauling garbage from the ship to the terminal and the fresh stuff from the terminal refrigerators and freezers to cold storage onboard the vessel.

Talk about boring work.

Right now, that month of probation is looking good, damned good, in fact. I wasn’t seasick and miserable during training. That didn’t happen until training was complete and my first cruise was underway. Now I’m a walking zombie with nausea, dizziness, dry mouth, sleep deprivation, and ringing ears, like all of the time.

But, hey, this was my shot. I’d been waiting for a chance to impress the Don—anything, something to get him to notice me. I knew that if I had a shot, I could end my career as the persuader on collections. Slapping around losers who were slow to repay their gambling debts or the vigorish on their loans wasn’t a job with a future. And it didn’t impress my mom. And my dad? Don’t even ask.

At my dad’s restaurant, I was the sous chef to my uncle—my mom’s brother. The whole damned family worked in that small place.

That’s where my mom and dad met, fell in love, and celebrated after the wedding. As kids, we did our homework in the dining room between the lunch and dinner shifts. No hanging out with friends after school.

My whole early life was home, school, restaurant, home, Monday through Friday. Saturdays and Sundays offered no respite. We left home early for the restaurant and our popular brunch service. Even holidays, my dad insisted on opening the restaurant. Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, Columbus Day—you name the holiday—we were in that damned restaurant helping other people, other families, celebrate.

By high school, I saw my life would be different one day: Home, restaurant, home, restaurant….No more school after graduation. I thought my life was small as a teenager. The prospect of it getting even smaller following high school was just too much to bear.

Being bullied in my junior year was the best thing that ever happened to me.

When my dad saw me enter the restaurant with a black eye, he marched me down the street and around the alley to Whitey Esnault’s gym, The Bayou Boxing Club. Whitey was an ex-Marine who took one look at me and knew what had to be done to toughen me up. From that point forward, it was home, school, Whitey, the restaurant, and what was left of me crawled back to bed, only to do the same thing the next day.

Wash, rinse, and repeat.

I was short and skinny. Whitey could fix one but not the other. Two years and thirty pounds later, I could throw a punch with the best of them. Unfortunately, I was too short to fight professionally, and there was that business with the headshots.

Whitey didn’t have anyone my size in his stable of aspiring fighters. So I took on everyone else no matter how tall. And because I was always the shortest man in the ring, the only real target I offered was my head. Seldom did anyone land a punch in my midsection.

To this day, I can remember the start of every match in that gym. The endings? Not so much. I made my way home with the ringing in my ears and double vision. Most times, I was fine by the next morning, if the headache didn’t count.

Mom wanted me to go to culinary school. The family didn’t have the money for tuition, books, and fees. My uncle taught me everything he knew, and I started to work as the chef for the lunch shift until my dad thought I was ready for dinner.

Dinner was the golden shift. My dad loves me with all his heart, but dinner was money, and he wouldn’t let anyone place the money at risk. Taking over for the dinner shift didn’t come easily or quickly.

My dad was thrifty, but far from cheap. As kids, we always had proper clothing and shoes. We didn’t have toys because there was no place to play in the restaurant after school. It wasn’t until much later I understood the full story.

Since the beginning of time, every restaurant owner paid the mob. My dad paid the carting company to haul away the trash, and he spent even more on the mob to ensure the carting company didn’t have a problem working with my dad. There was a mob insurance program for the butcher, dry goods supplier, fishmonger, and cleaners as well.

It wasn’t enough that he paid the mob whatever they demanded. Mob middle management and higher ate for free. Slowly but surely organized crime was bleeding my father to death. Passing along the costs to our customers wasn’t always an option. We were a local family restaurant, not a tourist destination. When things got really tight, Mom would haul the table linens and kitchen towels home and do the restaurant’s laundry overnight. Even when the cleaner wasn’t doing our linens and towels, the mob still took their cut.

Until one afternoon, when it all came to an end.

⁑ ⁑ ⁑

I DON’T HAVE IT!

My dad always spoke in the soft, welcoming tones of a host. I seldom remember him raising his voice, and never to members of his own family. Hearing him scream while I was prepping the dinner shift in the kitchen had me on the run.

Cosmo, the nattily dressed collector chastised my father, we all gotta earn, we all gotta eat. If I tell my boss I’m short for the day, he’ll find someone else to do this thing I do. But before he does that, he’ll insist on knowing who came up short. Trust me, you don’t wanna be that guy.

By then I recognized all the scum who slowly bled my father week in and week out. This one, Mr. Favino, saw me burst into the dining room. He took particular interest as I carefully but deliberately removed my apron, neatly folded it, and placed it out of harm’s way on one of the chairs.

Who’s this, Cosmo? Is this the son, the new chef, I keep hearing about?

Bruno! my father barked. Go back to the kitchen, now. Get back to the dinner prep!

I would never disobey my father, but I wasn’t myself that afternoon, and these weren’t normal circumstances.

Favino wasn’t stupid—anything but. He watched my deliberate steps in his direction, my focus, and most of all, he saw me clench my fists.

In the end, it took my dad, my mom, and my uncle to pull me off Favino’s bloodied and limp body as it lay where it fell.

There was blood everywhere.

My mom was nervously wiping the blood from my face with her apron. I couldn’t believe Favino was a bleeder. The guy’s pasty complexion belied he had any blood in his body. It wasn’t until I was sitting in the physician’s examining room with his nurse stitching the laceration in my scalp that I realized the blood was all mine.

Favino carried a wooden baton for protection. Before I landed my first punch, he managed to grace a glancing blow along the hairline on my forehead.

I never saw it. I never felt it.

Will this leave a scar? I asked.

You’re fortunate, Mr. Vitelli, the nurse observed. Once this heals, a gal will have to get very close to see the scar, and by then you’ll have your mind on other things.

⁑ ⁑ ⁑

TWO WEEKS LATER, I was prepping for the lunch shift when a guy walked into the kitchen like he owned the place. I thought he might be from the Health Department on a surprise sanitary inspection.

You Vitelli? he asked.

Look around, I replied. Everyone you see here is a Vitelli.

Fair enough, he smiled. Are you the Vitelli who beat the shit out of my collector the other day?

I’m a boxer. I wail on a lot of people.

Do you know who I am? the man asked.

Should I?

After today? Yes, since you’ll be working for me. Come along now, after you take off that apron. No one will take you seriously if you accompany me while wearing that apron.

Why would I follow you anywhere? Why shouldn’t I do to you what I did to your employee?

You could, the man said with great gravity. Of course, there’d be someone after me, and someone after that, and another, and yet another. You prepared for that?

I am now, I answered. Who are you, again?

My name is Dominic Fontello, his extended hand hung in mid-air waiting for a return gesture I didn’t offer.

I am Bruno Vitelli. Why should I leave my father’s kitchen to work for you?

Take a look around, Mr. Vitelli. You can stay here for the rest of your life. What you see here today, this is what you’ll see in ten years, twenty years, maybe even longer. Then one day your own son will stand where you are now, doing what you’re doing now. Is that all you want for yourself? For your own son?

It was good enough for my dad and his father before him.

True, but what about you, Mr. Vitelli?

⁑ ⁑ ⁑

DOMINIC FONTELLO MOVED up to underboss, yet I was still the hired muscle, the persuasion. So, when my current boss, a capo, offered me this opportunity, I reacted the same way I did when I hung up my apron and walked out of my father’s restaurant kitchen.

I interviewed with the cruise line. The first real interview of my life. I was nervous. Beyond nervous, in fact. Too much was on the line. If I didn’t get the job, I wouldn’t work the cruise. And if I didn’t work the cruise, I’d be back as the muscle bleeding small business people, like my dad.

My dad’s shame would continue.

Now, standing in the gangway, I could see Fontello, under an umbrella, leaning on the glass wall overlooking the ship’s fantail, watching the prop wash. He was taking his evening cognac and a Cuban cigar, the weather be damned.

It was raining, and the ship was riding the waves. The effect at the fantail was the worst. It rose on each wave and dropped into the trough on the other side. If that wasn’t bad enough, I was bouncing from one side of the gangway to the other. The dizziness forced me to extend both hands to the bulkheads forming the gangway walls. Anything to keep me from falling to the deck.

I knew the unfavorable weather and seas wouldn’t work to my advantage. Earlier, I doubled up on the Dramamine and didn’t eat anything all day. All that medication and my stomach was still located in my throat. The ringing in my ears crowded out all other sounds. The overwhelming fatigue made concentration difficult.

There was just too much riding on this, my last shot, to ease Fontello’s voyage to the hereafter. The Don wanted this to happen and for me to do the deed. Nothing else mattered. I was determined to gut it out, to make my way up the family hierarchy and the rewards that would inevitably follow.

My plan was simple. I would blow through the doorway like a runner off the starting block. I would stay low as I picked up speed. I’d grasp Fontello around his knees, hoist his body up and over the glass wall and aluminum railing, and launch him like a rocket into the sea below.

The plan was perfect. Was I? It hardly mattered. This was going to happen.

The rain and inclement weather kept most passengers inside and dry. They learned early in the cruise to stay midship during nasty seas to minimize the wave action. Onboard ship if you find the passengers, you’ll always find the crew and staff. They were onboard to serve. Only the crazy moved to the ship’s bow or the fantail in lousy weather, and no one stood outside in the rain and rough seas, except Dominic Fontello.

⁑ ⁑ ⁑

MRS. FONTELLO, LOUISE, where did your husband disappear to?

The last evening of the cruise, the Fontello’s were invited to dine at the Captain’s Table. The ship’s captain made it a point to grace each of his passengers with a share of his attention during and after the evening meal service.

Dominic and his cognac and cigar, she answered shrugging her shoulders.

He’s outside? In this weather? the captain queried.

Where else? she responded.

The captain motioned for his table’s steward to come forward. His directive was quietly spoken, and once delivered, the steward departed.

I’m having one of my crew check on your husband, Mrs. Fontello. An overabundance of caution. Better to be certain he’s safe and dry.

Thank you, Captain, Louise Fontello smiled.

⁑ ⁑ ⁑

FONTELLO DIDN’T MIND the weather and the rough seas. The prop wash and waves created a pleasant white noise that overwhelmed the clamor typical of a cruise. For the first time since they left port, Fontello enjoyed his after-dinner drink and cigar in peace.

The windblown rainfall was breaching the overhead protection of the umbrella. Fontello’s dinner jacket sleeves and hands were wet, and it was more challenging to hold the metal rail atop the glass wall keeping him safely on deck.

The empty glass slipped from his grip and fell to the wooden deck slats. The roll of the fantail caused the glass to roll away from the glass wall.

Fontello dipped to grab the moving glass before it became a safety issue—not that it mattered. There was no one else outside that night. He lunged after the glass as it rolled away from him.

He saw the flash of a staff uniform out of the corner of his right eye. The open arms appeared ready to grab something even if Fontello couldn’t imagine what as the body rose as if lifting something heavy.

What happened next was beyond belief.

The body, now at full speed, pulled its arms toward its chest as if to lock something in its grasp. In one graceful movement, the man—Fontello could now see it was a man—pushed off the balls of his feet and hoisted some imaginary object up and away. Fontello was struck by the similarity an Olympic