The Mission (Clairmont Series Novel Book 2) Read online

  As soon as he opened the nightstand drawer, the girl reverted to surprise. She gasped as Sebastian withdrew a Beretta and tucked it in the back of his jeans. He shifted his shoulders. “Docks can be a bad scene.” For the first time since last night’s game of nine-ball they made real eye contact.

  “I’ll call a cab.” She looked at the phone, the cord ripped from its wall jack. “Maybe you have another one?” She busied herself by stowing away the contents of her purse. “I… I, um, don’t even know what part of Philly we’re in.”

  He hesitated, considering the possible fates she might have met with his part of town. “You should. And you’re probably lucky it was just me.” They traded a look. It was meant to remind her that he was twice her size and that he had just tucked a gun into his pants—a different guy, a different circumstance, and her night might have ended in a bad shit different way. Sebastian shook it off—nameless women weren’t his problem. “Near Whitman,” he said. “Not too far from the docks. There’s another phone in the kitchen.” Sebastian reached into the nightstand again, retrieving some cash. As he passed it across the bed, his glance caught on a black caterpillar. Eyelashes. He plucked the delicate feathery thing from the bedsheets. “Here.” He held out a twenty-dollar bill, gently placing the lost lashes on top.

  She touched her eye, which did look off-balance—one eye dressed like she’d been on her way to Cinderella’s ball, the other offering a glimpse of where she came from. The middle class suburbs of Philly, he guessed.

  “Are you offering me money for…?”

  Sebastian snorted a laugh. He wanted to warn her again—Well damn—fill name in blank—you did go to bed with me after a couple of drinks and sentences. What should I think? “It’s for a cab,” he said instead.

  “Oh.” Sheepishly, she accepted the cash and prop. “Thanks. You, um… you work for him, that man?”

  “Andor? Yeah, I work for him.”

  “Does he always talk to you like that?” she said, finally pulling on her clothes.

  She’d worn no bra. No name, nothing memorable, no personal history, but her ample tits had registered. “Nah, sometimes he can be a seriously mean bastard. In that case, he woulda hit me with the phone.”

  Her expression captioned her reaction—things didn’t go down that way in her middle-class neighborhood. The girl talked as she tugged on a bell-bottom jumpsuit, like perhaps keeping him busy might keep him from shooting her. Sebastian bit down on a smirk as the girl realized the error of her ways—wrong town, wrong man, wrong everything. “So… so why do you? Work for him. I mean, why let him talk to you that way? Where I live, there’s decent work, nicer people. You seem like an okay guy—nicer than some.”

  And there you go. She’d officially moved through all the phases: find him, fuck him, fear him… save him. Like that was possible.

  “Couldn’t you change jobs, get a different boss?”

  Sebastian thumbed over his shoulder. “Well, I suppose I could— get a different job… move, get a different boss. But that wouldn’t do a damn thing about changing the fact that he’s my father.”

  The girl—whose name Sebastian never did recall—didn’t cross his mind again that day. Not until Vinny Danato’s wife showed up at the dock’s edge, Sebastian’s shipmate racing down to meet her. They stood on the cement pier as a kid clung to each of Vinny’s hands. His wife held a baby… toddler… mouth to feed. Having loaded and unloaded freight all morning, Sebastian’s arms ached and he was ready for a break. On the deck, he leaned against crates of cargo. They were bound for the Port of Piraeus that night. He lit a cig, inhaling deeply, and zoned in on the family below. He didn’t know the wife’s name. Damn, did he ever bother to learn any woman’s name? He stared, trying to remember Vinny saying it. Jesus, he talked about her enough. Sebastian narrowed his eyes at the scene. Christ, it was like Little Italy had crashed their South Philly dock, the entire Danato clan hanging out. Wops… Andor was particular about who he hired. He had a problem with most nationalities. Italians were bad, though not as worrisome as thick Micks. Micks went to confession, which meant they talked. “First it’s the priest, gios,” Andor would caution. “Then it’s the cop that comes to Sunday supper.”

  Despite his Italian heritage, Vinny had proven himself by making two undercover narcs who’d worked the docks last summer. This act of loyalty had earned Andor’s trust. Still, if his father had his way, he’d only hire Greeks. But that was tough in a corner of Philadelphia that spun like a miniature globe—Wops, Micks, Pols, Spics, Gooks, Blacks and so on.

  Sometimes Sebastian wondered what they said about the Greeks.

  Vinny’s conversation with his wife grew more animated. Sebastian couldn’t hear, but the Italians talked with their hands, and Vinny’s gestures were increasingly fervent. Sebastian read it as angry. He leaned into the rail and braced for a strike to the face of Vinny’s wife. Years ago, he’d seen his father do it, strike his mother in public. She’d been dead a long time now—an eleven-year old Sebastian finding her that way on the kitchen floor. If Vinny’s wife died, he supposed his crewmate’s reaction would be different than his father’s. “Life is full of hard things, gios… Just take this as proof and move on…” The same voice Sebastian heard in his head boomed from the forward deck.

  “Is everything so loaded, Bash, you’ve got time to stand about?”

  He turned from the railing, Andor approaching. Sebastian stood six-foot three while his father was six-foot four. It summed up his life—always an inch short. “I’m workin’ on it. I’m waitin’ for one more crate to board. The one from Atlantic City. Paulos is bringing it.”

  “Your uncle is delivering the most important one. Make certain no one touches it but you. It goes in the safe, in the belly. Then you lock it.” He poked at his son’s chest. “Nobody but you locks it. Last man out, you understand, gios?”

  “Yeah, I got it. So it’s not cash?”

  Andor’s eyes, which were a shade deeper than his son’s—gios— narrowed. “I thought you don’t like to know. I thought my money-making ways are of no interest to you. Naturally, eating interests you—this is true since you were born.”

  Sebastian heard the harsh Greek accent, words that had filled his head for twenty-four years—guttural consonants and exaggerated vowel sounds. He didn’t have the accent, though his appearance was similar enough—oil-colored hair (Andor’s peppered with gray), imperial noses, the eyes surrounded by thick dark lashes. Shit that seemed to leave women in a puddle. But the mirror-like reflection only left Sebastian leery. How much of Andor Christos was bound to him? Most days he didn’t want to know. Sebastian squinted as if this might alter the fingerprint image. “I’ll watch for Uncle Paulos. You can count on me, Pater.”

  It was only an inch. Even so, Andor had a way of staring down his son. A smile pushed into the hollow of broad cheeks—like airplane wings. He moved closer. Sebastian tensed. The close proximity rarely resulted in anything good. “Our new product line. Heroin was the drug of yesterday—the sixties, still a decent business,” he said, waving his hand in a so-so gesture. “Today these young men and women have jobs. They’re earning money, wishing for a classier high. It’s a new dawn, Bash.”

  “Cocaine,” Sebastian said. The girl from last night had asked if he had any. At the time, he didn’t think so.

  “The finest grade money can buy. The shipment includes both product and profit for our Godfathers of the Night on the other side of the ocean. I believe they’ll be impressed. They’ll want to invest. I could move up.”

  Sebastian nodded, waiting for more. There was always more.

  “If things go well, we’ll be adding a new route to our schedule.”

  “New route?” Sebastian said. For as long as he could recall, a bi-monthly trip to Greece and back had been their bread and butter run.

  “Yes. Our brother godfathers here, they wish us to expand to a southern course—down through the Panama Canal into South America.”

  “What the fuck
are we going to do in South America?” Sebastian didn’t like the sound of that—the routes they sailed were dangerous enough.

  “Like I said, we’re expanding. Our product and our transport. I’ll tell you more when it’s a fact. I’m not getting younger, Bash. You will have to decide. Are you willing to take my place? If you want, you could rise above me. If you don’t,” he said, his drifting gaze moving around the seedy dockyard, “you’ll be a ship’s hand until you die. Tell me… what is your biggest ambition, gios? To collect whores like pennies?” He spit on the wooden deck. “Worthless, both things.”

  Sebastian supposed the girl from last night was a glaring example. That and he did lack true ambition—the kind that took you to college or to trade school. But neither were options Andor had encouraged. It didn’t matter, he thought, glancing at Vinny. He wouldn’t know what to do with that sort of everyday life. “The Godfathers of the Night, Pater,” he said, looking at his father. “It… I’m not sure it’s where I belong.”

  “Where you belong? It’s who you are, Bash.” The way he spoke, it was like saying the sky was blue. “You can’t deny it. What?” he said, peering over the rail. “You think you belong with that, down there? At Sunday mass with Danato and his kind?” Sebastian and his father watched. Vinny patted his wife’s stomach while holding their son in his arms. Sebastian had mistaken joy for anger. He took a long drag on his cigarette, skeptical of both lives.

  “The Wops, they reproduce quicker than the Micks. One son is all a man needs.” A sideways glance cut to Sebastian. “One mouth to feed—as long as he doesn’t disappoint. One woman…” He slapped at Sebastian’s arm and laughed. “Now that’s a different tale. Right, Bash?”

  Andor puffed out his cheeks, lighting a cigar as he strode toward the bridge of the Diamatis. As the dock manager and mid-ranking member of the Godfathers of the Night, it was Andor’s business to oversee the Greek ship’s imports and exports, legal and otherwise. It was Sebastian’s job to make certain his father didn’t fail at the latter. On occasion, depending on the cargo, he’d made the crossing too. Sebastian neither loved Greece nor did he hate it. It was more like relatives—you couldn’t choose your heritage. He’d been to other European ports, not feeling an attachment to any of those either. But looking to the west, he also couldn’t picture sailing to South America.

  As Andor disappeared from view, Sebastian felt a tap on his pea coat. He turned, having to look down. “Bim. I wasn’t sure if you’d show—well, not on deck.” Sebastian shook the slight hand of a man who was the color of coffee.

  Bim worked for the vendor who supplied fruits and vegetables to the ship’s galley. Years before, when the two first met, Sebastian had laughed at Bim’s everyday ambitions. He said he’d come to America to get a college degree. Then, some time ago, Sebastian quit laughing. Not only had Bim finished college, he was now in medical school. But, as incredible as the feat was, a poor medical school student wasn’t in a position to help his family. The one he’d left behind in the Sudan. That’s when he’d approached Sebastian. Cautiously, Bim had asked if the stories were true. Did the dock manager’s son—his friend—run ocean-wide errands for cash?

  It wasn’t untrue.

  “I was fearful the balance of my funds would not arrive in time,” Bim said. “Mercifully, they did. Here—it’s all here.” Anxiously, he shoved an envelope at Sebastian.

  With the stub of the cigarette pinched in his lips, Sebastian thumbed through the contents. One-thousand dollars, just as they’d agreed. “Good. But you’ve got to take care of your end. Have your sister at the dock in Piraeus on the twenty-first. Tell her escort to ask for Vinny. He’ll take her to a safe spot on the ship. It won’t be the Ritz, but if she doesn’t mind crappin’ in a bucket for ten days, she’ll be in America on the other side—no questions, no immigration.”

  “I understand.” Bim continued to nod as if taking copious mental notes. “I’ve used most of the cash to secure safe transport out of the Sudan and into Egypt. My parents, you have to understand— they have no choice. They were to marry Nafy to the son of a neighboring family. In turn, his family would pay my parents’ debt to the warlords. There is nothing these men do not control.”

  Sebastian nodded back. “So marrying her off to the son, that wouldn’t be any better than the warlord option?” He couldn’t absorb it beyond the plot to a movie.

  “My friend, you’ve no idea. This happens every day to women in my village—unspeakable atrocities. Girls no more than twelve and thirteen turned into sex slaves… or resold again. Death, I think, is a better fate.”

  “Twelve and…” Sebastian shook his head. “How old is your sister?”

  “Much older. Sixteen. Even so, the man my parents will marry her off to… These warlords are his cohorts. Nafy, she is smart, so sweet. In this arrangement, the best she could hope for is producing many sons then a swift fatal illness.”

  “You’re kidding, right?” Sebastian waited for Bim to smile, to tell him it was some twisted joke. “That’s, um… some heavy shit. And so you’re gonna do all that for her?”

  Bim’s tiny face grew more curious. “Nafy is my sister. How can I not help her?”

  “Yeah, well… that’s something I wouldn’t know anything about.” Sebastian flicked his cigarette butt overboard and returned to fingering the cash. Warlords and sisters, they weren’t his problem. “Bim… how’d, um… How’d you get this—and the rest, the money to get her out of the Sudan? Poor med students and part-time produce vendors don’t have that kind of bread.”

  “Bread?” he said, his newfound roots had taken, but not the slang. “Dough…” Sebastian sighed when that didn’t register either.

  “Money. How’d you manage so much cash?”

  “Ah!” he said, holding up an index finger. “After being accepted to medical school, I was sent the dowry of my to-be wife, Devi. Her family is wealthy.” He pushed the envelope closer to Sebastian. “There was just enough to pay you after funding Nafy’s escape from my homeland.”

  “Damn,” he said, thinking about Bim’s willingness to invest his last dime. It made Sebastian think of the crate he was about to load and the cash value attached to it—how the money was earned and how it might be spent. “This girl… the one with the dowry. She’s the chick you plan on marrying and you haven’t seen her in four years?”

  “Nearly five. And, yes, absolutely. We are lucky. It was love at first sight.”

  Sebastian’s brain balked at the concept.

  “Nafy—she is not as fortunate. She had no suitors. The men of my village do not care for women wiser than them. Daughters not as clever as Nafy, they are often given to warlords or if they’re lucky, to decent village men. Repayment of debt and bearing children are their only worth.”

  Sebastian inched back. “Jesus… Sucks for the daughters.”

  “Sucks?” Bim said, wrinkling his dark brow. “Perhaps. But sons do not provide what these men want.”

  Sebastian raked his hand through his hair, considering the universal concept—guys thinking with their dicks. He recalled stories he’d heard while getting drunk in the bars near the Port of Piraeus and the Port of Rize in Turkey—a particularly unsavory stop. Young girls traded like livestock, treated worse than chickens in a cage. At the time, he didn’t think the stories were real. “But as long as you get your sister out…” He clung tight to the envelope, shaking it at Bim. “That’s all that matters, right?”

  “For Nafy, yes.”

  “I mean, you can’t save the fucking world.”

  “I suppose not. I mean… correct. Our plan for Nafy is perfect. My family won’t be implicated in her disappearance. The village, the warlords, they will believe she was stolen or eaten. Both can happen.”

  Sebastian nodded vaguely at the grisly fate. “And this Dev…”

  “Devi,” Bim said, a bright smile consuming his face.

  “I’m curious… You’re set on marrying her?” Sebastian waved a hand at the harbor and distant land
and dropped it brusquely. “With all the women on this side of the map? I mean, eventually you’ll be a rich doctor.”

  “This side of the map or that one—there is only one Devi.”

  Sebastian had a better feel for being eaten by a lion. One girl mattering that much? Impossible. “Whatever, man…” Slipping the envelope toward his coat pocket, he hesitated. “The money. Won’t you have to explain what happened to it?”

  “Safe passage for Nafy. That is our agreement,” he said, pushing the envelope at Sebastian. “You’re right. One day I will be a doctor with a good income, and Devi’s dowry will be repaid. This is not for you to worry about.”

  Bim was right and he tucked the envelope away. “Well, I’m a man of my word, Bim. Your sister will be here on the first.”

  “Excellent! It’s going to work out, my friend. This life… this country. My days as a produce vendor are numbered. I could never say that in my country.”

  “I think it’s a lot to say here.”

  Sebastian watched as Bim retreated, the small man and his huge ambition disappearing into the stairwell of the Diamatis. Whatever drove Bim, Sebastian suspected he didn’t own an ounce of it. Ounce… It brought him back to reality and Sebastian went about his business, directing cargo and waiting for his uncle’s delivery. But as he plotted the future of crates bound for distant shores, Sebastian couldn’t shake Bim’s life. He stared east feeling… something. Or maybe it was more about feeling anything. The things Bim had talked about, his family, this Devi. Sebastian shook his head, his gaze set on the horizon. Could be that on his next run, he’d get off the freighter and set down roots in the land of his ancestors. But seeing Paulos’s car turn into the dockyard, the idea short circuited. Nothing would change, even on the other side of the world. A different life required a reason, and that Sebastian couldn’t see.