CSI: NY fic: Nick Bonasera
May. 30th, 2005 05:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bedlamsbardYou know, I really do think this may be the first chapter of Omerta, barring one scene which I haven't written yet and hopefully won't write until New York Minute is finished. It would be bad of me to introduce Danny and Flack by having them almost get arrested for humping on a bench in Central Park, wouldn't it?
Anyway, more of Nick Bonasera. Carmine d'Alessandro shows up. So does a Patriso hitman. Mafia politics abound, and Danny and Flack are evidently magnets for trouble.
“Bonasera, Nicholas,” the man said, and Nick smiled at him, feeling the thrill run though his body to settle in the pit of his stomach. I’m getting out. I’ll be a free man. I’ll see my daughters.
“That’s me.” He went through his possessions curiously, not really remembering what they were, since it’s been so many years from the day they locked him up. There was a wallet with a flurry of faded pictures there and he spread them out across the table with interest. He, and Odelia, and Christ but they’d been youg then. Pictures of Stella, from the days she’d been born till a blurred snapshot taken at the Central Park zoo, where she’d stood on tiptoe to stretch her hand out toward the baby elephant that had snuffled curiously at them. She giggled as she’d run her fingers over its rough pebbled skin and Odelia had smiled at them, laying her hands protectively over her pregnant belly. There was one picture of Astra tucked amid the stacks of Nick and Odelia and Stella, a tiny sleepy baby with her thumb in her mouth and her eyes screwed tightly shut, lying on a rec blanket patterned with stars like a milky banner of victory. My moon and stars, Nick had joked to his wife, and they’d talked about naming their next child after the sun.
He’d thought about that a lot. Thought about it nights, lying awake in his bed listening to his cellmate snore, thought about when he got so tired of watching his back that he just wanted to say fuck it and let the wolves take him like he knows they want. It was the thought of his wife and his daughters that let him sleep, that let him keep watching his back, that let him wait for the day he came up for parole.
And now he was there, and he stood by the doors and went through the relics of his old life. There wasn’t much, besides the wallet and the pictures. He was wearing a tux the day they took him in, and thirty years later he stood and weighed the bowtie in one hand and thought wow. The bowtie went back in the envelope and the last thing he pulled out was his wedding ring, which he turned over and over before sliding it on. It sat loosely on his finger and he was struck by that somehow, because it used to fit perfectly and now it didn't.
Used to.
Thirty years behind bars for a robbery he admitted to and a murder he didn’t commit. Used to. Used to be a con man, used to be a thief, used to be a husband and a father and Kevin Price’s partner. Now he wasn’t. Now he was just Nick Bonasera, ex-con, ex-husaband, but still a man. Still a father, maybe. Maybe. If he could find his daughters, if Odelia wasn’t lying when she called him up from a fucking payphone in fucking Nebraska, Omaha fucking Nebraska, and told him she’d left his daughters at an orphanage in New York.
His daughters. In a fucking orphanage.
Jesus Christ, and she’d just left them there, like you would a dog youd didn’t like at the pound. His kids, and Nick had thought of abusive foster homes with sick horror in his stomach and signed the divorce papers Odelia had sent him a month later without regret.
“Mr. Bonasera? Your car’s here.”
*
He’d shared a cell with a Mafia don called Luciano Constantine for the past couple years. Lucky Constantine had probably been running cons since Nick was in his cradle, but they’d exchanged tips and tricks, each grateful that they hadn’t ended up sharing a cell with one of the real whackjobs in the prison. Lucky had promised Nick that on the day he got out he’d have someone from the Constantine Family drive down and pick him up. My boy Val’ll take care of you, he’d said. Constantine can always use good men.
Nick had wanted to laugh because it had been like something out of a movie, the motherfucking Mafia, for Christ’s sake. But Lucky hadn’t been joking and Nick knew it was real, something more real and more tangible than the everpresent spectre that had hung above he and Kevin Price when they were running their cons.
The car weaiting for him outside the thick gates of the prison was a slim black Jaguar, but Nick had enver seen one with thick tinted windows like this one, never mind the large dent that marred the left front bumper and the silver scratches that spiderwebbed the front of the car. If it hadn’t been for those flaws, the car would be in mint condition.
The man standing by the front of the car exchanging lazy glares with the security guards was a stranger. He was wearing a sportcut leather jacket over a crips white shirt and black slacks and from the way he moved, Nick was willing to wager he had at least one weapon on him somewhere. His russet red hair was cut incongrously short, so that Nick could see the thick white scar and the neat stithces under it. He turned as Nick came toward him, face creasing in a wary smile that wasn’t entirely unfriendly.
“Hi,” Nick said.
“Hey,” the man said in reply. His eyes flicked curiously to Nick’s wedding ring and then back up to his face, all so quickly Nick wasn’t sure whethere he’d imagined it or if it had really happened. “Nick Bonasera, right? I’m Carmine d’Alessandro.” He held out his hand and Nick took it after a moment.
“Nice to meet you.” D’Alessandro’s grip was warm and dry, with the kind of callouses acquired from years of handling a gun or knife on his palm. “You work for Luciano Constantine?”
D’Alessandro’s face closed off a little, like he didn’t like what he was hearing, and his voice was perfectly neutral as he said, “For Val Constantine. The Old Man’s son.”
“Oh.” Nick didn’t know what to say to that, because when Lucky talked about his son, he talked about Valentine Constantine like he was fifteen and had never grown up. He’d assumed it was Lucky who ran the Constantine Family, even from behind bars. But from the look on d’Alessandro’s face and the way he said Val Constantine’s name, it had been a long time since Lucky was head of the family in anything but name.
D’Alessandro stepped around to the other side of the car and held open the passenger’s door for Nick. “Why don’t you get in,” he said. “I’ll give you a ride back to civilization, and then you and Val can talk business.”
Val Constantine. Again with Val Constantine. Of course. Nick felt his future slipping away like loose sand through his fingers.
*
They were driving down the highway when another car edged up behind them, riding their bumper like cowboys at a rodeo. Nick turned around, half-expecting to see the blue and red lights of a police car signaling them to the side of the road.
It wasn’t. It was a seal-grey Ferrari (Nick hadn’t known they even made them in grey) with tinted windows, and d’Alessandro’s mouth tightened when he saw it. He pulled the Jaguar over for no reason Nick oculd see and st gnawing on his lower lip with one hand slipped up his sleeve and the other down by the edge of the seat. The Ferrari pulled up behind htm, and Nick heard the door bang open and slam shut.
“There’s a Glock in the glovebox,” d’Alessandro said conversationally. He rolled the window down. “Reggie Dukes,” he said lightly. “Fat Freddy send you, or did Blue Eyes do that?”
Dukes popped his gum, snding the scent of cinnamon spiraling through the car. “How’s your head, d’Alessandro?”
“The stitches come out next week. Johnnie Boy out of his wheelchair yet?” Despite his light tone, there was an air of menace underlying his words, and Nick thought of the casual way he’d mentioned the gun, almost like an after thought.
Dukes’ mouth twisted a little. “He died yesterday. Drove his wheelchair off a bridge.”
“My condolences. I’ll sent flowers to the funeral.”
“They say,” Dukes said in a low voice, leaning in closer, “that Johnnie Boy was never going to walk again.”
D’Alessandro’s hand tightened beside the seat. Nick looked and caught sight of a dull gleam of metal. “I’m told a bullet in the spine can do that.”
“Patriso’s not very happy, d’Alessandro.”
“Constantine’s not either,” d’Alessandro replied, “especially seeing as how all of Patriso’s guys still have carte blanche when it comes to Danny Messer and Don Flack.”
“These thing’s happen when people die.”
“Targeting a couple of cops is pretty stupid even for Freddy Patriso.” His epxression was surprisingly predatory. “Especially when one of them is Val Constantine’s nephew.”
“Then maybe,” Dukes leaned even farther forward and d’Alessandro’s scowl deepened, “Messer should have stuck to the cops or the Mob, not tried dicking around with them both.”
“I think you should get out of my car, Reggie,” d’Alessandro said.
Dukes smiled widely. “Make me.” His eyes flicked to Nick. “Who’s your friend, d’Alessandro?”
“Friend of the Old Man’s, just got out of prison. Reggie. Get away from the car.”
“Or what?”
“Or I’ll shoot you on the assumption you’ve spent the last five minutes wiring it with explosives.”
Dukes took a step back, then another. “Be seeing you around, d’Alessandro.”
D’Alessandro gave him a little three-fingered wave with the hand that had been up his sleeve. Metal flashed brightly between his fingers and Dukes flinched back a little, one hand coming up to finger the scars on his jaw. “Stay away from the Crime Lab, Reggie.”
He let Dukes pull into traffic before following him into the highway, eyes flashing an irritated emerald and both his hands where Nick could see them.
Nick cleared his throat, and when d’Alessandro’s eyes flicked toward him in acknowledgment, said, “What was that about?”
“D’Alessandro scowled and beat his fingers on the wheel. “That,” he said, “was Reginald Dukes. Some of the guys call him the Lark, on the grounds he can make anybody sing, but I’ve never called him anything but Reggie Dukes. He’s a hit man for the Patriso Family.”
“Oh,” Nick said, and thought, what the hell have I gotten myself into? It wasn’t like he hadn’t me hired killers in prison, men who boasted about the humber and style of their kills, and even the more ordinary kind of killers, husbands sick of their wives, who’d finally turned upong their loved ones with a cleaver or a handgun, or muggers who’d gone a little too far. He just hadn’t expected to meet them on the outside, although he should’ve known better. My daughters are never going to have to see this sort of shit, he promised himself. Never.
“You picked a bad time to try and join up,” d’Alessandro said, fiddling with the radio dial. “Constantine and Patriso are having one of those kill or be killed family feuds right now, and it wouldn’t be as bad if a couple of civilians were the cause of it all.”
“Civilians?”
“Non-Mafioso. One of them was Mafia, and could be a made guy if he gave a fuck, but he got out yers ago, which is where the problem’s coming from.”
Nick remembered what he’d said earlier. “Val Constantine’s nephew?”
“He and his partner – fuck it, their whole unit’s got a bullseye painted on their pretty little NYPD windbreakers. They’re cops, and so far they’ve been shot, kidnapped, shot some more, run over, shot at, and drowned.” He flicked his eyes over at Nick. It’s a hard life.”
Nick said, “So’s prison.”
“So I’ve heard.” He turned his head aside, looking out the window.
“You ever been inside?” Nick asked with sudden curiosity.
“Never. Neither has Val, before you ask. Been arrested a few times, went to trial twice, but never convicted. Neither has Joey Sforza.”
“Who’s that?”
“Another one of Val’s guys, like me.”
Val. Again with Val. Lucky wasn’t the Constantine don anymore, was he. That position had passed away into the hands of his son.
Anyway, more of Nick Bonasera. Carmine d'Alessandro shows up. So does a Patriso hitman. Mafia politics abound, and Danny and Flack are evidently magnets for trouble.
“Bonasera, Nicholas,” the man said, and Nick smiled at him, feeling the thrill run though his body to settle in the pit of his stomach. I’m getting out. I’ll be a free man. I’ll see my daughters.
“That’s me.” He went through his possessions curiously, not really remembering what they were, since it’s been so many years from the day they locked him up. There was a wallet with a flurry of faded pictures there and he spread them out across the table with interest. He, and Odelia, and Christ but they’d been youg then. Pictures of Stella, from the days she’d been born till a blurred snapshot taken at the Central Park zoo, where she’d stood on tiptoe to stretch her hand out toward the baby elephant that had snuffled curiously at them. She giggled as she’d run her fingers over its rough pebbled skin and Odelia had smiled at them, laying her hands protectively over her pregnant belly. There was one picture of Astra tucked amid the stacks of Nick and Odelia and Stella, a tiny sleepy baby with her thumb in her mouth and her eyes screwed tightly shut, lying on a rec blanket patterned with stars like a milky banner of victory. My moon and stars, Nick had joked to his wife, and they’d talked about naming their next child after the sun.
He’d thought about that a lot. Thought about it nights, lying awake in his bed listening to his cellmate snore, thought about when he got so tired of watching his back that he just wanted to say fuck it and let the wolves take him like he knows they want. It was the thought of his wife and his daughters that let him sleep, that let him keep watching his back, that let him wait for the day he came up for parole.
And now he was there, and he stood by the doors and went through the relics of his old life. There wasn’t much, besides the wallet and the pictures. He was wearing a tux the day they took him in, and thirty years later he stood and weighed the bowtie in one hand and thought wow. The bowtie went back in the envelope and the last thing he pulled out was his wedding ring, which he turned over and over before sliding it on. It sat loosely on his finger and he was struck by that somehow, because it used to fit perfectly and now it didn't.
Used to.
Thirty years behind bars for a robbery he admitted to and a murder he didn’t commit. Used to. Used to be a con man, used to be a thief, used to be a husband and a father and Kevin Price’s partner. Now he wasn’t. Now he was just Nick Bonasera, ex-con, ex-husaband, but still a man. Still a father, maybe. Maybe. If he could find his daughters, if Odelia wasn’t lying when she called him up from a fucking payphone in fucking Nebraska, Omaha fucking Nebraska, and told him she’d left his daughters at an orphanage in New York.
His daughters. In a fucking orphanage.
Jesus Christ, and she’d just left them there, like you would a dog youd didn’t like at the pound. His kids, and Nick had thought of abusive foster homes with sick horror in his stomach and signed the divorce papers Odelia had sent him a month later without regret.
“Mr. Bonasera? Your car’s here.”
*
He’d shared a cell with a Mafia don called Luciano Constantine for the past couple years. Lucky Constantine had probably been running cons since Nick was in his cradle, but they’d exchanged tips and tricks, each grateful that they hadn’t ended up sharing a cell with one of the real whackjobs in the prison. Lucky had promised Nick that on the day he got out he’d have someone from the Constantine Family drive down and pick him up. My boy Val’ll take care of you, he’d said. Constantine can always use good men.
Nick had wanted to laugh because it had been like something out of a movie, the motherfucking Mafia, for Christ’s sake. But Lucky hadn’t been joking and Nick knew it was real, something more real and more tangible than the everpresent spectre that had hung above he and Kevin Price when they were running their cons.
The car weaiting for him outside the thick gates of the prison was a slim black Jaguar, but Nick had enver seen one with thick tinted windows like this one, never mind the large dent that marred the left front bumper and the silver scratches that spiderwebbed the front of the car. If it hadn’t been for those flaws, the car would be in mint condition.
The man standing by the front of the car exchanging lazy glares with the security guards was a stranger. He was wearing a sportcut leather jacket over a crips white shirt and black slacks and from the way he moved, Nick was willing to wager he had at least one weapon on him somewhere. His russet red hair was cut incongrously short, so that Nick could see the thick white scar and the neat stithces under it. He turned as Nick came toward him, face creasing in a wary smile that wasn’t entirely unfriendly.
“Hi,” Nick said.
“Hey,” the man said in reply. His eyes flicked curiously to Nick’s wedding ring and then back up to his face, all so quickly Nick wasn’t sure whethere he’d imagined it or if it had really happened. “Nick Bonasera, right? I’m Carmine d’Alessandro.” He held out his hand and Nick took it after a moment.
“Nice to meet you.” D’Alessandro’s grip was warm and dry, with the kind of callouses acquired from years of handling a gun or knife on his palm. “You work for Luciano Constantine?”
D’Alessandro’s face closed off a little, like he didn’t like what he was hearing, and his voice was perfectly neutral as he said, “For Val Constantine. The Old Man’s son.”
“Oh.” Nick didn’t know what to say to that, because when Lucky talked about his son, he talked about Valentine Constantine like he was fifteen and had never grown up. He’d assumed it was Lucky who ran the Constantine Family, even from behind bars. But from the look on d’Alessandro’s face and the way he said Val Constantine’s name, it had been a long time since Lucky was head of the family in anything but name.
D’Alessandro stepped around to the other side of the car and held open the passenger’s door for Nick. “Why don’t you get in,” he said. “I’ll give you a ride back to civilization, and then you and Val can talk business.”
Val Constantine. Again with Val Constantine. Of course. Nick felt his future slipping away like loose sand through his fingers.
*
They were driving down the highway when another car edged up behind them, riding their bumper like cowboys at a rodeo. Nick turned around, half-expecting to see the blue and red lights of a police car signaling them to the side of the road.
It wasn’t. It was a seal-grey Ferrari (Nick hadn’t known they even made them in grey) with tinted windows, and d’Alessandro’s mouth tightened when he saw it. He pulled the Jaguar over for no reason Nick oculd see and st gnawing on his lower lip with one hand slipped up his sleeve and the other down by the edge of the seat. The Ferrari pulled up behind htm, and Nick heard the door bang open and slam shut.
“There’s a Glock in the glovebox,” d’Alessandro said conversationally. He rolled the window down. “Reggie Dukes,” he said lightly. “Fat Freddy send you, or did Blue Eyes do that?”
Dukes popped his gum, snding the scent of cinnamon spiraling through the car. “How’s your head, d’Alessandro?”
“The stitches come out next week. Johnnie Boy out of his wheelchair yet?” Despite his light tone, there was an air of menace underlying his words, and Nick thought of the casual way he’d mentioned the gun, almost like an after thought.
Dukes’ mouth twisted a little. “He died yesterday. Drove his wheelchair off a bridge.”
“My condolences. I’ll sent flowers to the funeral.”
“They say,” Dukes said in a low voice, leaning in closer, “that Johnnie Boy was never going to walk again.”
D’Alessandro’s hand tightened beside the seat. Nick looked and caught sight of a dull gleam of metal. “I’m told a bullet in the spine can do that.”
“Patriso’s not very happy, d’Alessandro.”
“Constantine’s not either,” d’Alessandro replied, “especially seeing as how all of Patriso’s guys still have carte blanche when it comes to Danny Messer and Don Flack.”
“These thing’s happen when people die.”
“Targeting a couple of cops is pretty stupid even for Freddy Patriso.” His epxression was surprisingly predatory. “Especially when one of them is Val Constantine’s nephew.”
“Then maybe,” Dukes leaned even farther forward and d’Alessandro’s scowl deepened, “Messer should have stuck to the cops or the Mob, not tried dicking around with them both.”
“I think you should get out of my car, Reggie,” d’Alessandro said.
Dukes smiled widely. “Make me.” His eyes flicked to Nick. “Who’s your friend, d’Alessandro?”
“Friend of the Old Man’s, just got out of prison. Reggie. Get away from the car.”
“Or what?”
“Or I’ll shoot you on the assumption you’ve spent the last five minutes wiring it with explosives.”
Dukes took a step back, then another. “Be seeing you around, d’Alessandro.”
D’Alessandro gave him a little three-fingered wave with the hand that had been up his sleeve. Metal flashed brightly between his fingers and Dukes flinched back a little, one hand coming up to finger the scars on his jaw. “Stay away from the Crime Lab, Reggie.”
He let Dukes pull into traffic before following him into the highway, eyes flashing an irritated emerald and both his hands where Nick could see them.
Nick cleared his throat, and when d’Alessandro’s eyes flicked toward him in acknowledgment, said, “What was that about?”
“D’Alessandro scowled and beat his fingers on the wheel. “That,” he said, “was Reginald Dukes. Some of the guys call him the Lark, on the grounds he can make anybody sing, but I’ve never called him anything but Reggie Dukes. He’s a hit man for the Patriso Family.”
“Oh,” Nick said, and thought, what the hell have I gotten myself into? It wasn’t like he hadn’t me hired killers in prison, men who boasted about the humber and style of their kills, and even the more ordinary kind of killers, husbands sick of their wives, who’d finally turned upong their loved ones with a cleaver or a handgun, or muggers who’d gone a little too far. He just hadn’t expected to meet them on the outside, although he should’ve known better. My daughters are never going to have to see this sort of shit, he promised himself. Never.
“You picked a bad time to try and join up,” d’Alessandro said, fiddling with the radio dial. “Constantine and Patriso are having one of those kill or be killed family feuds right now, and it wouldn’t be as bad if a couple of civilians were the cause of it all.”
“Civilians?”
“Non-Mafioso. One of them was Mafia, and could be a made guy if he gave a fuck, but he got out yers ago, which is where the problem’s coming from.”
Nick remembered what he’d said earlier. “Val Constantine’s nephew?”
“He and his partner – fuck it, their whole unit’s got a bullseye painted on their pretty little NYPD windbreakers. They’re cops, and so far they’ve been shot, kidnapped, shot some more, run over, shot at, and drowned.” He flicked his eyes over at Nick. It’s a hard life.”
Nick said, “So’s prison.”
“So I’ve heard.” He turned his head aside, looking out the window.
“You ever been inside?” Nick asked with sudden curiosity.
“Never. Neither has Val, before you ask. Been arrested a few times, went to trial twice, but never convicted. Neither has Joey Sforza.”
“Who’s that?”
“Another one of Val’s guys, like me.”
Val. Again with Val. Lucky wasn’t the Constantine don anymore, was he. That position had passed away into the hands of his son.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2005-05-31 02:07 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-01 12:46 am (UTC)I try to keep the Mafia out, but they just keep crawling in. Those Mafioso, you never know with them, and if you try telling them no, then you disappear forever. Perhaps your bones will reappear someday. Out of the East River.
As I've mentioned, I have terrible trouble with detailed plot of this sort, so am always impressed when I see it done well.
Aw, thanks. I read so much stuff with plot that I just can't keep it out, I suppose.