Buffalo Soldiers (An Upstate New York Mafia Tale Book 2) Read online

  BUFFALO SOLDIERS

  AN UPSTATE NEW YORK MAFIA TALE

  Nicholas Denmon

  Buffalo Soldiers

  Copyright © 2012 by Nicholas Denmon

  Cover design by Jesse Horst

  Kindle Edition

  A D-Rated Novelists Publication

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this e-book may be used or reproduced without permission.

  This is a work of fiction. Any similarities to actual persons, alive or dead, are purely coincidental.

  Acknowledgements

  A novel has many moving parts from start to finish, without any of which the work is more than likely doomed to failure. This novel is no exception, and as such I am taking a moment to thank those that helped pull this together through often trying circumstances. As such I would like to thank Jennifer for editing my book and often attempting to edit my life. Thank you Allie, Nicole, and Mark Garrett for your input. My family, without you I wouldn't exist. I mean that literally Mom and Dad. I mean that figuratively when addressing the rest of you lovely heathens; Chris, Rob and Alex.

  A big thank you to Dennis who has never stopped believing that action has a place in our world. To Brian and Sue, who have always indulged long talks about myself, sometimes obnoxiously so. Thank you to those in my day job who suffer me with smiles.

  To my friends, you know who you are.

  To my fans, most of whom took a chance, bought a book, and often times inspired the journey our characters enjoy - or don't.

  Table of 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

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  Rafael Rontego tasted the iron flavor of his blood running over what was left of his cracked lips as the warm liquid filled his mouth. He couldn’t see a thing and he felt a burning sensation on the back of his neck where it pulled against some unwilling tendons. It was unnatural to hang your head so far forward, but Rafael dared not let them know he was awake under the bag obscuring his vision.

  The hood.

  The damn thing smelled like straw, canvas, or dust. Some sort of sack, Rafael mused. It scratched at his cheeks, and if his hands weren’t tied off behind his back he sure as hell would have tried to scratch half of his face off. Or wipe the blood from his lips.

  Or kill the bastards who brought me here.

  He pulled against the binds but they were laced around the back of the chair in which he sat. Rontego couldn’t remember much. He lay down to catch some sleep. Sleep was all he had done it seemed. Don Ciancetta had told him he needed to lay low for a while. The heat was too hot. So he rented a suite at Salvatore’s Grand Hotel.

  He felt the fog lift a bit as he thought of the place with its perfectly polished floors and marble. Marble everywhere. But it was the Jacuzzi hot tub that made him almost smile right there despite the blood running down his face and the hood blinding him. The things he and the blonde had done in there. It was almost unfair to let them ever rent that room out again.

  The room lay right next to the thruway and so had an easy escape route if he needed it. Canada wasn’t far away and there were half a dozen neighborhoods he could disappear into if someone came looking for him.

  The price was right too. The owner knew Rafael Rontego. He knew the hitman, and he knew his boss, Don Ciancetta. Everything was going well. The stories on the news slowly drifted out of circulation. The little amount of evidence the Buffalo Police Department had managed to scrape together had been destroyed, purchased, or gone missing.

  Even scared that cop straight into an early retirement.

  This time he did grin, but the pain of his cracked lips brought him down in a hurry. He had to focus. Everything was so damn quiet. Even though he couldn’t see a thing, Rafael kept his eyes wide and alert. If there was a flash of light beyond his covering he wanted to catch it. Any clue to his whereabouts would be welcome.

  Drip. Drip-drip. Drip.

  The sound was faint but his ears caught it all the same. He prided himself on his hearing. The notion made him grimace. He never even woke up. He never heard them when they grabbed him. He assumed it was them. It must have been well organized because he had lain down… he had lain down… and what?

  What did I do before I lay down. I drank a scotch. I drank a scotch, laid down, and then… and then I was slung over someone’s shoulder and bumping my head on someone that smelled like old cigarettes and sweat.

  The bumping felt like stairs. Rafael vaguely remembered hearing the thud of boots on wood too. Then there was the dripping, the infernal dripping somewhere to his right. Rafael strained his nose to smell past the iron and the damned sack covering his face. It smelled wet.

  Rafael’s heart sank.

  I’m in a fucking basement.

  He knew what happened in basements. He had been on the giving end of a few of those wonderful parties. People died in basements.

  His heart thudded against his chin, threatening to knock through his chest and slap him in the face. It only got worse when he heard footsteps descending.

  Thump. Thump. Thump.

  The first set of footsteps stopped before he heard a second pair follow the first. Then he heard voices. At first Rafael decided he must have been hit harder than he thought. He couldn’t understand anything that came out of their mouths.

  Then it hit him. They were speaking a different language. A language he hadn’t heard much of for the last eleven years.

  They were speaking Russian.

  *

  The corrections officer on the opposite side of the glass eyed him suspiciously, as if he was about to be questioned for a crime instead of getting released. Her lips pressed together in disapproval and she made brief withering eye contact before looking down at the counter on the other side of the bulletproof glass. She rifled through some paperwork and said, “Nivsky. Ivan?”

  Ivan nodded his head.

  She never looked up but her dark skin stretched back over her puffed cheeks as she continued reading the paperwork. “I can’t hear your head nods.”

  There was a time Ivan would have been pissed. But not today. “Yes ma’am.”

  “Yes what?”

  “Yes, I’m Ivan Nivsky.” Ivan kept his tone low. He doubted anyone remembered him on the outside, but he didn’t want to give the officer behind the glass a reason to lock him up again.

  “Eleven years.” She said it like it was nothing.

  “Eleven years, three months, seventeen days.” Ivan said it almost as a reaction. He couldn’t count how many times another inmate went through the usual string of questions. They all said the same things.

  “What ya in for?”

  “What’d you do?”

  “How long you been in?”

  Eleven years, three months, seventeen days.

  She gave him that look again and Ivan thought he heard her give a little snort, b
ut she was back at work behind the counter. Ivan ran his hand along his perfectly shaved head and his eyes darted to the right and left. A guard with a shotgun rested lazily against the wall to his right, talking up some young girl in cleaning garb. Another officer sat with a buddy in blue to his left and he was complaining about the roast beef sandwich his wife made him for work.

  “Ivan Nivsky, here are your things as received eleven years ago.” She pulled up a plastic bag.

  Eleven years, three months, seventeen days.

  “The state of New York returns to you your possessions. We have one stainless steel Seiko wristwatch, inscribed with “Ivan with all my love,” battery dead. We have seventy-six cents in Canadian currency. Passport. Pocketknife. And a personal picture.”

  She slid the bag through a cut out in the glass. The bag was vacuum-sealed. Ivan held it up as the officer pushed some paperwork through the glass behind it.

  “Sign here, here, here.” She said it as she made little crosses in various spots on the paper. The pen was anchored to the countertop.

  They don’t want anything to escape.

  Ivan signed the papers.

  “Mr. Nivsky, you’re a free man.” She smiled for the first time. As if his signature changed everything. Ivan grabbed the bag that contained what was left of his life on the outside. “Officer Daniels, will you please escort Mr. Nivsky to the exit?”

  Officer Daniels disengaged from the brunette near the wall and cradled his shotgun under his arm as he approached. Ivan had been inside these walls for eleven years and had never seen this officer. But then again the inmates were divided into cellblocks and the guards were divided into yard dogs and gatekeepers. Watch towers and sewer rats.

  Officer Daniels led Ivan towards a door directly in front of the counter and opened it. The bright light beyond blinded Ivan for a moment until his eyes adjusted. The lady behind the counter called out. “Ivan?”

  He turned to meet her gaze.

  “I hope I never see you again.”

  Ivan smiled and followed Officer Daniels outside, letting the door slam shut behind them. He heard the automatic lock click. He almost smiled.

  Not yet.

  Officer Daniels said nothing as they walked side by side along the concrete walkway. It could easily hold twelve men abreast, squeezed between the parallel lines of the chain-link fence on either side. Fifteen feet high they rose. A crown of barbed-wire rested casually along the upper most rim in threatening curls of knives. At the end of the row was a steel gate. As they made the long walk out from the front entrance, Ivan felt his eyes drawn upward just beyond the cruel crown. Twin guard towers faced each other less than a hundred yards apart. Their sharpshooters lorded down upon Ivan with fingers that itched to put an inch and a half of pointed lead through his heart.

  In spite of himself, he felt a drop of sweat trickle down his face, starting at his temple and then navigating its way through the low-cut forest of brown and graying stubble on his cheek. Beautiful red and dark brown leafed maple trees greeted him in the distance beyond the gates. It was autumn and the air was crisp and cool.

  Finally, the two of them reached the guardhouse at the front of the gates. An elderly officer who was wider than he was tall greeted them. He yawned, gave a little shudder, and waved Officer Daniels over. “Officer.”

  Officer Daniels handed him the paperwork he brought with him from inside. “Ivan Nivsky, for… re-acclimation.”

  The fat guard glanced over the paperwork, took a stamp from a case on his hip that made Ivan remember fanny packs. It had been ages since he thought of the ridiculous fashion phenomenon. The guard stamped the paperwork with a loud thump. Then with little fanfare and even less enthusiasm, the guard hit a button on the inside of the little four-foot by four-foot structure.

  There was a loud beep and a buzz followed by a red light that clicked over to green at the top of the locked steel gate. A series of mechanisms clicked and the gate parted and followed a track to either side of the walkway, opening the world before Ivan Nivsky.

  On the outside of the gate sat a black luxury vehicle with tinted windows that Ivan couldn’t place. A man stood there, leaning on the hood of the car, wearing a black hat and a black suit, reading a newspaper.

  Ivan stopped and looked at the guard who had opened the gate. He gave an encouraging wave and smirk, as if he were prodding an infant to try out walking for the first time.

  Ivan took a step toward the exit when he heard a low voice behind him. “We will, you know.”

  Ivan stopped and looked at Officer Daniels, who still cradled his gun in the crook of his arm.

  “Will what?” Ivan asked.

  “See you again.” Daniels said it with those cold green eyes of his. For a moment Ivan felt as if the officer had an inside tip on some sort of horse race. He stood there for a moment, sized up the officer and turned towards the gate. As his foot crossed the threshold into the real world, the free world, he shouted back over his shoulder, “Over my dead body.”

  Ivan walked towards the car where the driver now held the door open. The aromatic pine scent of the car freshener greeted him along with a hint of old leather and Armor All. He climbed into what he could now tell was a Lincoln and tossed his vacuum-sealed bag on the seat next to him. The driver shut the door and walked around to the front driver side and sat down, casting a look into the rearview at Ivan.

  “Mr. Nivsky? Where to?”

  The driver had a thick accent, the kind that immediately made Ivan think of enchiladas and margaritas.

  Ivan took a long look out the window at the fortress and the steel gate that was gliding along its track. Gates that had kept Ivan in, and now, kept him out. As the gate came together in the middle, lettering that was split by their partition now settled together with a clang.

  Elmira Correctional Facility.

  “Take me home. Take me to Buffalo.”

  “Si. Right away Mr. Nivsky.”

  Ivan leaned back as the gentle hum of the car’s engine reverberated along its length. The feel of its tremble was unfamiliar to him. Years had passed since he last sat in a car. He had ridden into the penitentiary in the back of a blue painted bus. The bus had smelled of worry and desperation. Sweat and fear mingled with dust and body odor that for the next eleven years would be the smell of home.

  As the Lincoln wound its way down the narrow single lane highway that lead to NY-14, Ivan watched a familiar blue cigar on wheels cart another load of prisoners towards Elmira. Ivan wondered whether or not any of those unlucky souls would be the next tenant in his vacated cell.

  “Poor bastards,” he said.

  “What, Mr. Nivsky?”

  Ivan caught a pair of eyes flash to him in the rearview.

  “Nothing.” Ivan picked up his bag and ripped a hole in it. Immediately the smell of smoke wafted up to him. He couldn’t help but crinkle his brow. By the time he had been processed he hadn’t smoked a cigarette in damn near a month. Nothing in the bag should have smelled of smoke. The bag was airtight. Ivan grabbed up the small picture in the bag, tracking down the source of the smell. He couldn’t help it. He thought of her.

  “Anika,” he said it out loud. The name felt foreign and clumsy as it moved past his lips.

  “What, Mr. Nivsky?”

  Ivan palmed the picture and shuffled it into his pocket.

  “Nothing. How long is the drive?”

  “Just under three hours, sir.”

  “There’s an extra hundred in it for you if you can make it in two.”

  In response he heard the Lincoln’s engine rev and he felt the car pick up speed.

  *

  “I brought in a crew of WOPs straight from Sicily; they should be arriving this week. A couple of the important ones are already here.” Don Ciancetta smiled as he cracked a peanut out of its shell and threw the remnants over the railing of Root Five. The shell fell down into Lake Erie and hung on the surface for a moment before a greedy seagull swooped down and carried it off in its beak.<
br />
  Chris Biela, the Pope, squinted at his friend through the glare of the bright sunlight reflecting off of the rippling surface of the lake. He had aged since college—that was for sure. His hair was thinner, the waist line bigger, and the crow's feet prominent.

  Immaculate fucking suit though.

  The Pope gave a little cough that brimmed with the hint of something greater, but he stifled it with a chortle. He couldn’t blame his friend for showing signs of stress and age. Being the Don came with a price.

  “It’s probably a good idea,” he said quietly. He found that speaking quietly made the coughing less likely. It also hid the hint of his southern accent that he had trouble abolishing. It was bad enough people knew he was half polish, but if they knew he was southern he might lose some of that mysterious nature that kept the guns from being trained on him.

  “Probably a good idea? Better fucking be. It was your suggestion.” Leonard Ciancetta let a brief scowl crease over his green eyes, like he wanted to scold his consigliore, but it disappeared quickly when he looked at the Pope.

  Pity. He pities me.

  He felt like yelling but instead he said quietly, “Well then, it’s a brilliant idea.” He smiled and even though he wanted to flash a toothy grin he felt how wan and small it really was. The Sicilians would be a big help to their depleted ranks. The crew was still reeling from the effects of the mob war with Don Ciancetta’s uppity underboss Joe Falzone.

  Victory too has a price.

  The crisp blue sky came down in the distance just short of Canada on the other side of the lake. The only obstacles were a series of ivory white windmills that lined the north of the lake just to the west beyond the Ford plant and the unions there that had been a large part of the reason the two factions had come to blows.