Dead Man's Grip

degree behind him. Although related to a rival New York crime family, during his early years he’d had no intention of entering the criminal world. That changed the night he met Fernanda at a charity ball. He was lean and handsome then, and she’d particularly liked him because he made her laugh, and something about him reminded her of the deep inner strength of her father.
    Sal Giordino had been impressed with Lou’s quietly strategic mind and for some time he had wanted to forge links with Lou Revere’s own crime family. Wanting the best for his daughter, Sal saw the way to do that was to help the man she intended to marry. And then maybe, in turn, the guy could be of use to him.
    Within five years, Lou Revere had become the principal financial adviser to the Giordino crime family, taking charge of laundering the hundreds of millions of dollars’ income from their drugs, prostitution and fake designer goods businesses. Over the next twenty years he spread the money through smart investments into legitimate businesses, the most successful of all being their waste disposal empire, which stretched across the United States and up into Canada, and their pornographic film distribution. He also extended the family’s property holdings, much of it overseas in emerging countries including China, Romania, Poland and Thailand.
    During this period, Lou Revere had cunningly covered his own and his immediate family’s backs. When Sal Giordino was initially indicted for tax evasion, Lou was untouched. A close associate of Giordino, faced with the loss of all his money, did a deal with the prosecutors and spent three months giving evidence against the Capo. As a result, what started out as a historic tax investigation ended up with Giordino on trial for multiple counts of conspiracy to murder. He would be dying in jail, and if that bothered the old monster, he was damned well not admitting it. When a newspaper reporter asked him how he felt about never getting out alive, he growled back at the man, ‘Gotta die somewhere.’
    Fernanda was drunk now. The crew of the Gulfstream jet, chastened by her abuse on the flight over to England, had stocked up with Grey Goose vodka, ice and cranberry juice for the flight back home, as well as an assortment of food which she had not touched. By the end of the seven-hour flight she had finished one bottle and started to make inroads into a second. She was still clutching a glass as the plane touched down at Republic Airport in East Farmingdale at 2.15 p.m. local time.
    Lou helped her down the short gangway on to the tarmac. She was barely aware of much of what was happening as they re-entered America through the relaxed immigration control, and fifteen minutes later she was rummaging in the drinks cabinet in the back of the limousine that drove them the short distance home to East Hampton.
    ‘Don’t you think you’ve had enough, hon?’ Lou asked her, putting out a restraining hand.
    ‘My father would know what to do,’ she slurred in reply. ‘You don’t know anything, do you?’ Clumsily, she thumbed through the Favourites address list on her iPhone, squinting at the names and numbers, which were all slightly out of focus. Then she tapped her brother’s name.
    She was just sober enough to check that the glass partition to the driver’s compartment was closed and the intercom was off, as she lifted the phone to her ear, waiting for it to ring.
    ‘Who you calling?’ Lou asked.
    ‘Ricky.’
    ‘You already told him the news, right?’
    ‘I’m not calling to give him any news. I need him to do something. ’ Then she said, ‘Shit, got his stupid voicemail. Ricky, it’s me. Call me. I need to speak to you urgently,’ she said into the phone, then ended the call.
    Lou looked at her. ‘What’s that about?’
    Her brother was a sleazebag. Lazy, smug and nasty. He’d inherited his father’s ruthless violence, but none of the old man’s cunning. Lou tolerated him because he had no choice, but he had never liked him.
    ‘I’ll tell you what it’s about,’ she slurred. ‘It’s about a drunk
woman driver, a goddamn van driver who didn’t stop and a truck driver who should not have been on the road. That’s what it’s about.’
    ‘What do you want Ricky to do?’
    ‘He’ll know someone.’
    ‘Someone?’
    She turned and glared at him, her eyes glazed, as hard as drill bits.
    ‘My son’s dead. I want that drunken bitch, that van driver and that truck driver who