Chapter 2 - The Charge of Capital Murder
The silence in the room became absolute. Frankie Vitucci, an underboss who had overseen three decades of dockyard extortions, sat frozen with an unlit cigar hovering half an inch from his open mouth. Beside him, two younger capos from the West Side looked between Vincent and the toddler as though an unexploded grenade had rolled onto the carpet.
Lucy stopped precisely two inches from the cuff of Vincent’s tailored black trousers. She planted her feet wide on the parquet floor, her little belly pushing out the flannel suns, and looked up into the scarred, imposing face of the most feared syndicate patriarch in the state of Illinois.
She did not ask for permission to speak. She did not lower her chin. She raised her left hand, pointing a chubby, dimpled finger accusingly toward the floor beside his chair.
"Mister, put your dog in timeout!"
The command was delivered in a high, indignant treble that rang off the vaulted ceiling and vibrated the crystal pendants of the chandelier.
Two of the associates at the far end of the table swallowed hard, their collars suddenly feeling several sizes too small. In their world, raising a voice to Vincent Calder resulted in an immediate, permanent relocation to an unmarked shallow grave in the Indiana dunes. Men had wept on their knees before that chair, begging for extensions on debts or offering their own relatives as collateral to avoid his quiet, lethal wrath.
Vincent remained entirely motionless. His broad shoulders didn't move; his breath was slow and steady. He lowered his dark eyes from the far wall, his gaze traveling down the lapels of his suit until it settled upon the tiny girl standing at his knee.
Lucy did not retreat. Taking his silence as an invitation to present further evidentiary proof, she hoisted the gray stuffed rabbit with both hands, shoving it directly into Vincent’s personal airspace, mere inches from his open collar.
"He murdered him," Lucy declared, her bottom lip protruding in a pout of righteous outrage that could have moved mountains. "This is serious."
Vincent’s gaze shifted to the victim.
The toy, known throughout the staff quarters as Captain Carrot, was in a state of catastrophic structural failure. Its left ear was completely gone, leaving behind a jagged fray of cotton warp threads. Worse still, its plush abdominal seam had been violently split from belly button to sternum, and a generous plume of white polyester stuffing was protruding like an exploded mattress cushion.
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Behind Lucy, Bishop rose to his feet. The Belgian Malinois did not growl; he knew better than to make a sound in the master's presence. But as the dog stepped forward into the warm daylight, the incriminating evidence was undeniable: clinging to the damp black fur of his lower lip was a small, unmistakable tuft of fluffy white polyester batting.
The dog looked down at the rabbit, then up at Vincent, his brown eyes carrying the guilty, sheepish admission of a warrior caught red-handed in a petty crime.
