Chapter 10 - Fire on the Calumet
The Grand Penthouse at the Drake was secured, but the night was far from finished.
The true poison of Leo Carbone’s betrayal was already moving through the industrial arteries of the city.
Before Leo had arrived at the Drake, he had dispatched his two remaining cousins to the Calumet freight yards with five gallons of industrial accelerant.
If Leo couldn't possess the terminal, he was going to burn the master manifests and the shipping cranes to the ground, leaving Dante with a pile of smoking ash and forty million dollars in uninsurable federal liability.
We didn't wait for the commission to finish interrogating Bernardo.
We left the old Don sitting in his chair under Carmine’s armed guard, took the service elevator back down to the subterranean garage, and tore out into the blizzard in Dante’s armored Cadillac.
The storm had reached its peak over Lake Michigan.
Snow was drifting three feet deep across the South Expressway, the wind screaming through the steel girders of the bridges like a banshee.
Dante drove with grim, furious precision, his knuckles white against the leather steering wheel.
Beside him, Frank was binding his shoulder with fresh electrical tape and gauze, groaning every time the vehicle bounced over frozen potholes.
I sat in the back with Rosa’s Bible wrapped in a dry woolen blanket, staring out at the red glow of the industrial flare stacks along the Calumet River.
“If those cranes go up, the port authority automatically revokes the maritime license,” Dante said through clenched teeth.
“Vance won't be able to protect us, even with the blackmail.”
“The federal receivership will step in by morning and freeze every account tied to La Poma Holdings.”
“My grandmother didn't keep those books for fifty years just to watch a pair of cheap car thieves burn them,” I said, leaning forward between the front seats.
“Where is the main control office?”
“Pier Seven,” Frank wheezed, pointing through the swirling snow.
“The old two-story brick customs shed right beneath the primary gantry crane.”
The Cadillac smashed through the rusty chain-link gate of the terminal, sending wooden warning signs flying into the drifts.
Ahead of us, through the blinding sheets of snow, Pier Seven was already flickering with unnatural orange light.
Two black pickup trucks were parked near the fuel storage tanks, their tailgates open.
Two men in heavy insulated coveralls were dragging heavy plastic fuel drums toward the wooden decking of the loading docks.
They had already smashed the front windows of the customs shed, and thick black smoke was pouring out into the freezing air.
“Carbone’s cousins,” Dante muttered, slamming the transmission into park fifty yards away behind a row of rusted shipping containers.
“They’re going to blow the fuel depot.”
“Frank, stay in the car,” Dante ordered, pulling a fresh magazine from his coat pocket and snapping it into his weapon.
“Like hell I am,” Frank grunted, trying to push his door open.
“You’re bleeding through your third shirt, Frank,” Dante said firmly, shoving him back into the seat.
“Keep the engine running. If we don't come back in ten minutes, drive this car through the shed wall.”
Dante kicked his door open and slipped out into the blizzard, keeping his silhouette low against the corrugated steel of the shipping containers.
I didn't stay in the car either.
I grabbed an iron tire iron from the rear floorboards, kicked my door open, and followed Dante’s tracks through the snowdrift before Frank could grab my jacket.
The cold air hit my lungs like inhaled needles.
The roar of the Calumet River, churning with chunks of black ice, sounded like a grinding freight train fifty yards to our left.
We crept around the corner of a rusted yellow container marked ROMANO FREIGHT CORP.
One of the cousins, a thickset thug with a ragged beard, was pouring a stream of gasoline along the wooden pilings beneath the crane.
The second cousin was standing by the door of the brick office, flicking a brass Zippo lighter with gloved fingers.
“Stop!” Dante shouted over the howl of the wind, stepping into the open with his automatic raised.
The bearded man dropped his fuel drum, reached into his coveralls, and pulled a short-barreled revolver.
He fired wildly, the bullet ricocheting off the steel container beside Dante’s head with a high-pitched scream.
Dante returned fire instantly.
Two shots cracked through the blizzard, and the bearded man dropped into the snowy sludge, clutching his thigh with a scream of agony.
The second man by the door panicked.
He dropped the Zippo into the fuel trail and bolted toward the open edge of the pier.
A whoosh of orange flame erupted across the snow, the fire racing along the line of gasoline straight toward the wooden pilings of the office.
Inside that brick shed were sixty years of original paper bills of lading—the physical evidence needed to prove to the federal court that the Romano and Bellomo heirs were the legitimate owners of the terminal.
Without thinking, I lunged forward through the snowdrifts, brandishing the heavy tire iron.
The escaping arsonist saw me, his eyes widening in shock as a female shape emerged from the blinding blizzard.
He swung a heavy brass wrench toward my temple.
I ducked under his wild swing, feeling the freezing wind of the metal graze my woolen hat.
With all the strength built from ten years of hauling twenty-pound oval serving trays through crowded dining rooms, I brought the tire iron down across his shin.
Bone cracked beneath the denim of his coveralls.
The man shrieked, his leg folding beneath him, and he collapsed headfirst into an eight-foot snowdrift at the edge of the dock.
Before he could recover, I brought the flat of the iron down across the back of his neck, knocking him cold into the powder.
Behind me, the flames were licking up the wooden stairs of the customs office.
Dante was already there, ripping a heavy chemical fire extinguisher from the wall of the outer shed.
He pulled the pin with his teeth and unloaded a cloud of yellow retardant foam over the blazing fuel trail, smothering the fire before it could reach the secondary kerosene tanks.
The hissing of the dying flames mingled with the howling wind from the river.
Dante stood in the drifting snow, covered in yellow fire-suppressant dust, breathing heavily through his nose.
He looked down at the unconscious arsonist in the snowdrift, then looked at me standing over him with the tire iron clutched in both hands.
The orange glow of the harbor lights reflected in his dark, assessing eyes.
“Remind me never to complain about the service at Trattoria Napoli again,” Dante said, his voice carrying clearly over the gale.
“I told you,” I panted, dropping the tire iron into the snow, my breath coming out in huge clouds of white steam.
“Minimum wage buys minimum enthusiasm.”
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“You’re getting a raise, Clara,” he said, a genuine, undeniable smile breaking across his handsome, soot-stained face for the first time since we met.
“A very substantial raise.”
