Damn, his fiancé’s got him good.
“Now I know who wears the pants in the relationship,” I mutter.
Marco flips me off before pointing at an uneven patch of soil under a group of trees where Carlo and Jo are standing. My boots sink a little into the mucky ground as I make my way to the “fucking mess” he was talking about.
It’s a corpse, kind of fresh by the look of it. A couple of days tops. The upper part of the torso is peeking out of the soil. The rain must have exposed it from its half-assed burial.
“Lieutenant Casper called an hour ago,” Marco tells me. Casper is one of the many guys in law enforcement that we have deep in our pockets. “A jogger found the body and called 911.”
“And why isthe bodyour problem?” This is our turf, but not all murders happening here are caused by our family.
“Recognize him?”
I look at the corpse’s ashen face. It has dirt all over and fresh scars, but I can’t get a clear view. No visible tattoos or accessories that could help me identify him.
Marco gets fed up. “It’s Coretti’s right-hand’s son.”
“Giorgio Doppi’s son?” He’s about, what? Eighteen?
“He started working for the Corettis a couple of months ago. Doing small errands, dropping off products, nothing major,” Marco lets me know.
I crouch down to stare more closely at the dead boy again. He has no clothes, at least not on the parts exposed from the soil. Most of his fingers were cut off. There are stab wounds and long and round slashes on his arms and chest, just like on his face; someone carved them deeply into his skin. It almost reminds me of my interrogating MO, although I usually use a bigger blade.
“It looks like he was tortured,” I muse.
“His neck was twisted.” He points at the bruise around the boy’s neck.
“You thinking it was one of ours?” I ask as Carlo and Jo start pulling the body out of the ground.
“I think that whoever did this wanted the corpse to be discovered on our turf to make it look like…we did it,” he hisses.
Fuck. Thoughts start flying inside my head until everything halts as I look at the knife wounds again. “You mean to look likeIdid it.”
Marco lets out a sigh that confirms my suspicions. In the criminal world, there are the so-called message jobs, in which a person is killed in such a specific way to send a message to a family or to that person’s crew. It could be done by placing a bullet in a particular area of the body—Marco seems to prefer the eyes and mouth. For me, knives are the weapon of choice when torturing, stabbing, and removing parts. I’m notorious for that, and the killer seems to have used it against me.
I’m pulling myself up when a glare coming from something on the ground hits my eyes. I slide my yellow pocket square out of my suit jacket and use it to pick the small shiny object from the ground. It’s a gold horn pendant, a traditional Italian amulet worn to protect against bad luck. This one has a cross carved on it.
“What is it?” Marco asks.
I hand it to him. “Ever seen this before?”
“Could be. Italian-Americans are a superstitious bunch.”
He’s right. It could belong to a wide range of people. Marco himself has custom-made gold knuckles with crosses carved on them, a present from Don Massimo.
“Let me see,” Seb says, remaining on the cemented path and waiting for Marco to walk to him—he hates getting dirty. His grizzly locks shine under the light. They started turning white in his twenties, premature gray, a genetic trait he took from his father. It sure emphasizes his icy demeanor and stony appearance.
“The carving could narrow the search. Tell your men to ask around,” he orders us as he looks at the horn.
I nod. Carlo and Jo move the dead body onto a black plastic sheet, and I look down at it. I’ve seen too many corpses to be affected anymore—some caused by my hands. Most people in the mob don’t live a long life. Doppi’s boy was born into it, so he knew the risks. Usually, a couple of bullets is how we expect to go. Torture could definitely happen, but in this case, the killer seemed to have enjoyed disfiguring the boy. There are more, similar scars on this waist and legs.
“We need to find out who did this before Coretti gets a whiff of it,” Marco states, interrupting my pondering.
“It has to be Enzino!” I snap. “He’s the only one who would start a war between us and Coretti in such a ruthless way.”
Marco shakes his head at my conclusion. “He’ll get extra firepower, Coretti’s shipping company, and with that, control over almost all the docks after Art marries his daughter. Why would he try to jeopardize the merging of the two families by starting a war between Coretti and us now?”
I head toward them. “We are on shaky ground here since Seb rejected Coretti’s marriage proposal. The relationship between our families has become strained. This would definitely make Coretti lose his shit.”