Page 43 of Count Down

I know how much that fucks with you. I can’t be around to see Gina go through that. I’d never be able to let her love me knowing I’m the one she should hate.

I see no easy way out. My entire life has been committed to Mateo, his father Domenico, his uncle Leo. Everything I have and know is because of the Barones. I can’t just back out. If I told them I couldn’t do this, they’d have to find someone else. And it’d be much riskier. If they even got a hint that I’ve fallen so deeply for Nicoletti’s daughter, that I’m not just using her to get close to him… they’d see her as a liability. I hate to think what that would mean.

The best I could wish for, would be for Gina and her family to disappear. If they were willing to go on the run, go into hiding, that could be enough. Nicoletti would be gone. Our deal with the Irish would be moot. Gina wouldn’t have to lose her father.

But we’d never see each other again.

There’s no way to win and I was an idiot to ever think there was another way out. Life’s got a perverse way of fucking with you.

I work on the electronics for a few hours, while these thoughts continue to torture me. It’s a trip-wire system that I can activate from nearby. I can get into the theater and install it in the stairway while Gina has her tech rehearsal the day before the showcase.

I’ll put a servo motor underneath either side of the main stairs. Those will be installed in the closet I found the night of the fundraiser. High-strength fishing line, the kind used for deep sea fishing, will run from one servo, out through the wall, and up over the base of the stair railing. Then I’ll tuck the line into the corner where the back of the step meets the bottom of the next step. Then up over the base of the other rail and back down through the wall to the other servo.

It’ll be mostly invisible. Servos and electronics hidden in the closet under the stairs. Fishing line hidden in the carpet. When Nicoletti goes out late in the performance for another drink, I’ll activate the servos from my phone via Bluetooth. The servos will pull the wire tight, making a trip-wire about a foot above the step. With the brightly patterned carpet on the stairs and the clear fishing line, he’ll never see it.

Nicoletti will catch one of his legs and fall head-first down the steep stairs. I’ll rig it over the 7thstep because if Nicoletti falls from there, it’s the exact distance for his head to hit the marble floor.

I’ve gone over the details several times. The stairs are steep. He’ll be slightly inebriated. I’m about 80% confident that he’ll smash his head hard enough to die or suffer major brain damage. There’s a slight chance he could twist when he falls. I still expect that he’ll break an arm or two, or a hip. No matter what, he’ll die or end up in the hospital. In the US, a quarter million people a year die from accidents inside the hospital. It’d be easy to finish the job there.

There’s one last part of the project. I need another function to dispose of the wire. I’m rigging up a sensor on one of the servos. When the sensor feels a hard pull on the wire, like someone tripping on it, it will trigger two other actions simultaneously. It will cause the arm on one servo to release the wire. It will cause the other servo arm to spin quickly for 10 seconds, pulling the wire out of the stairway and through the hole under the closet. After it spins, the arm on that servo will let the wire go.

Even if someone really dug around after Nicoletti’s fall, which is doubtful, the only things they might find are some unidentifiable electronics and a random spool of wire in an old storage closet with hundreds of other items nobody remembers.

I show up at Dirty Frank’s just after 8pm. The door is on the corner of the building, at the end of a long wall covered with large painted murals. Frank Zappa. Frank Sinatra. Aretha Franklin. Frankenstein’s Monster. A bunch of famous Franks.

It’s a dive bar, long and narrow, no windows. The bar stands in the middle, narrow aisles separating it from the booths along the walls. Two guys are playing darts at the other end, aiming at a board that sits above a large white sign with red letters reading “The Pain Center.”Brandyby Looking Glass is playing on the jukebox. I don’t think I’ve heard anything on that jukebox that wasn’t from the 70s.

This place has been here forever. Rumor is, it opened up a week after prohibition was repealed. It’s half-museum, half dive bar.

But I don’t know of any museum that smells like this. Old tobacco seeps out of the walls and ceiling and stale lager reeks up from the floor. Sniff deep enough and you’ll get a whiff of piss too. Though that might be the bulldog sitting under the bar chewing on a bone. He barely looks up when I pass him.

I see Ethan Pace sitting at a booth, already drinking a Manhattan. I nod to him and he waves back. Before I sit down, I order a whiskey and amaretto from the bar.

“Thanks for meeting,” I say as I slide into the booth with my drink.

Ethan frowns at me, “What’s up?” He’s in his late 20s. A young, ambitious lawyer with short red hair and a well-groomed beard and mustache. He’s got a decent job working in the DA’s office. The problem with Ethan is that he’s a sports fan with a gambling problem. He got himself into a bit of debt with the Barones. More than he could pay off. We made a deal with him a few years ago. He paid back half what he owed. The other half he would work off giving us inside information on what’s going on at the District Attorney’s office.

I cut right to it. I don’t mind talking to Ethan. He’s an alright guy. But the less chance someone has of seeing us together, the better. “I found a PI following someone I know. I suspect Nicoletti might have hired him. I wanted to see if you know of any PIs he works with.”

Ethan nods. “What’s he look like?”

“Mid-thirties. About 5’7. Short brown hair. Drove a maroon Chevy Malibu.”

“Jeremy Edmond.” Ethan replies quicker than I would have expected.

“Do you know if Nicoletti has hired him recently?” I ask.

“Yeah,” Ethan takes a sip of his drink. “He works with the office pretty regularly. I don’t think he’s working on any of our investigations right now. But Jeremy was in to talk to Nicoletti last week.”

“Thanks,” I say. That’s probably all I need to know. I don’t want to ask any more from Ethan. I trust him enough to tell me the truth, but I don’t trust him enough not to ask too many questions.

I stand up and chug the rest of my drink. Ethan looks at me like he’s going to ask if I’m already leaving. He doesn’t say anything, though. Probably relieved I don’t want anything else from him. “You’ve been helpful.”

“Sure,” Ethan replies, staying in his seat. “Anytime.”

I set my glass on the bar and head back outside.

Nicoletti had a PI following Gina. He saw me with her. Nicoletti knows enough about me to know I’m involved with the Barones. He’s going to tell Gina who I am.