Millstone - Novel 02 Ch. 02

The balcony had quite a few people, but not like the dance floor. Lounges lined the walls and the opening over the dance floor had a chrome guardrail. I moved through the crowd like a man on the prowl, making a rapid scan of faces, but I recognized no one.

Toward the far end, a crowd had gathered, so I squeezed through and discovered what had drawn their attention. A couple was banging on the crimson-covered corner lounge which sat in a diamond-shaped area of 100 square feet. It had blood-red flooring and matching acoustic panels. Taking it all in, I glanced downward, noticing the row of feet to my left and right, no one would pass beyond the black carpet onto the red floor as though that would breach some unspoken etiquette. It seemed the only other person allowed on the red floor was Sofia's bodyguard. He stood against the wall to keep an eye on the crowd, but even he couldn't help but watch the action. Nice job, if you can get it. Quite a perk, the ability to stand on the front row of every floor show. He, along with all the others, stood mesmerized watching Gerhardt fuck the hell out of Sofia on the red lounge. His pelvis hammered away at her like a porn star on his A-game, and from the sounds she made, she clearly loved it. As I watched them, I thought to myself how he had arrived in Franklin Thursday afternoon, and yet there he was, Friday night, playing the stud for Sofia Fabrioni. He couldn't have met her at the nightclub. Like many nightclubs in Franklin, the Belcaro closed Monday through Thursday. So, where had he met her? It seemed to me that he knew someone in Franklin before he arrived, someone other than his brother Johann, someone in the know.

It looked like Gerhardt and Sofia would play Hide-the-Bratwürst for some time, so I figured I would just leave since I had the information that we came for. I turned to move away from the crowd, and I came across someone who looked out of place. He had a handsome face, appeared somewhere in his early 30s or so, and wore a plum-colored suit. He leaned against the railing surrounding the hole over the dance floor emphatically pointing into the crowd below. I moved to the railing to see what was happening. If I weren't mistaken, Dante was acting on Brice's text message, and security was detaining Iota below us. Once they had him, Dante made one short sharp point upward, and he left for the staircase.

At that point, I texted Max.

Millstone's Sources

After getting hustled by the bartender, Max and I returned to the ground floor. I held his hand, as we stood at the mouth of the Art Deco ballroom listening to the live band, looking exactly like what we were—just a couple trying to make up our minds. The location of the elevator and stairs complicated surveilling the club. We couldn't watch for when Johann's brother Gerhardt left; the few seats within eyeshot were taken, and it would look strange for us to hang about in the hallway half the night. We could only hope that Tucker had found him.

"There's no place to go," said Max.

"Yeah, and we can't sit in our vehicle to wait either; the only parking here is valet."

"What will we do if Tucker doesn't find him?"

"Well...it's not like we have nothing to tell Johann," I said. "We know where his brother went, who he was with, and if Tucker doesn't find him, most likely what floor he's on. Even if we don't know what he's up to, that will have to do."

"How curious are you about what happens on the third floor?"

"I'm reasonably curious, but it could be irrelevant."

Distracted by voices and the movement at the corner of my eye, I turned to see three men pass the velvet rope into the club. The suited one in the back was a heavyweight, the kind one might expect to have the nickname Knuckles. The one in the middle was a handsome young guy, maybe 18 years of age. He had quiff-styled hair the color of midnight, and eyes so dark brown they appeared black. He only wore boots and a pair of faded black, ultra-low-rise jeans on his slender body. A good-looking man in his early forties led the group. He wore an Italian cut bespoke suit the color of caviar. He paused when he saw me, and his clean-shaven face broke into a little smile. When he came toward me, he spoke in an accent that had grown muddled over the years, but he was from New York. "Of all the gin joints, I did not expect to see you here...Mister Millstone."

"Do I know you?"

"Please, forgive me," he said, "I have you at a disadvantage. You don't know me, but I know you." He held out his hand for me to shake, and I did. "I'm Emiliano Vianello, but you probably know of my older brother Nicolò."

"Nicolò Vianello?" At that point, I felt the blood drain from my face. The Vianello family was one of several Italian crime families in New York, and Lev Stepanov, the Russian mob boss I helped prosecute, murdered Ottavio Bruno, the nephew of Nicolò Vianello and of Emiliano, or so it would appear. I was unaware that Nicolò had a brother, but if he lived in Franklin that probably explained why.

"Relax. There's no cause for alarm." Emiliano patted my hand that he held and then released it. "Here, why don't you introduce me to this extraordinary, handsome gentleman with you this evening?"

Vianello had me intrigued and more than a little nervous. Despite my name mentioned in the gossip column and the article associated with the closure of the Haines case, the paper had not published my photo, and yet the guy had recognized my current face almost instantly. So, I needed to know more, but just then, I couldn't ask.

"This is my partner, Max Roche."

They shook hands. "Max...is that short for Maxwell, Maximilian?"

"Maxence," he said. "I'm named after my French grandfather, but most people mispronounce it, so I go by Max."

Vianello nodded and smiled. "Well, you're both welcome to call me Emil." He placed his hand on the back of the young man with him. "This is my son, Bravo Vianello. His mother died two years ago, and he's been with me ever since. He just turned 18, so this is his first night here."

Emil petted the back of Bravo's hair and said, "I still lament that his mother ever got custody."

Bravo shook our hands. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Millstone. I've heard a lot about you."

"Happy belated birthday," said Max.

"Thanks."

The door to the lift opened and a couple exited. The heavyweight prevented the doors from closing, and Emil noted it. "We must go," he said. "We're expected on the third floor. I would invite you both to join us, but it's not for me to decide who can enter Dante's Inner Sanctum. I do wish to speak with you, Mr. Millstone. I imagine that you have many questions. I'll be here tomorrow night while Bravo mingles the techno bar, maybe I'll see you then?"

"I would like that," I said and when I reached into my inside jacket pocket to retrieve my wallet, without seeming too obvious, I opened the jacket far enough to allow him to see that I had no gun. I gave him one of our temporary business cards that I always carry with me. "We'll be here."

"Excellent. You will find me in the Toklas Room of the piano bar at eleven o'clock."

The instant he and his son turned toward the elevator, we spotted at least two dozen scars of various lengths on Bravo's back. They had skips in the contours of his spine. Both he and his father seemed unconcerned that anyone might see them, and he wore them like a badge of honor.

The big, dark-haired bruiser who remained silent and unintroduced throughout followed them inside. He gave us a little smile and a nod as the doors closed to the lift between us. His proximity when they arrived had given me the impression, he wasn't there for Emil but rather to protect Bravo.

One of us received a text, but after what we just saw, we couldn't think about that. We stood there in stunned silence for a moment, and even the music from the ballroom beside us had paused.

"My god," Max whispered, "someone whipped that poor boy."

"How old do you think those were?"

"Over a year, maybe two," he said, "and since he has no fresh ones, it probably wasn't Emil."

"Well, that's something, at least."

"I have a lot of concerns about all that just happened."

"As do I," I said. "Of course, you know to say nothing to Tucker about Vianello just yet. We must discuss it when alone; otherwise, this could get hairy. Had Tucker texted you?"

"Oh!" Prompted, he checked his phone. "He found Gerhardt on a second-floor corner lounge, fucking the hell out of the woman from the Cadillac. He says he has lots to tell us."

"He's fucking the owner's sister? Well, if Tucker's learned all he thinks he can, we should go."

Max texted Tucker, and his reply came quickly. "He's on his way."

A minute later, he exited the stairwell saying, "Whew!" The skin of his muscular torso glistened with a sheen of sweat. "It feels so much better down here. They need to crank up the air conditioning in the techno bar. Most everyone had to take clothes off to keep cool."

"Don't you think that's probably by design?" asked Max on our way out.

"Well, now that you mention it," he said.

The moment we passed the velvet rope, John John the doorman asked us, "Will you leave us already?"

"I'm afraid so," I said, handing the ticket to the valet, "but we can return tomorrow night."

"Please, do! We have our Bare as You Dare Day celebration. So, first impressions, what did you think of the Belcaro?"

"This seems like a great place," said Max. "I wished I knew how to ballroom dance."

"Although the nightclub only opens on weekends," said John John, "if you want to learn ballroom dancing, we have classes here on the ground floor in the evening 6 to 9, Monday through Friday."

"I'll keep that in mind."

John John gave Tucker an intense lust-filled stare. "Mr. MacEach, it's been a pleasure to have you with us. I hope you return tomorrow night for Bare as You Dare Day. I think I might venture to speak for us all and say that we would love to see more of you."

"Thank you, I think I might do that," he said.

When the valet returned with the vehicle, Tucker climbed in, and I opened the passenger door for Max.

"Goodnight, gentlemen," said the doorman.

The instant the doors closed on the SUV, I had Tucker check our equipment bag behind his seat while I looked around the cabin and Max checked the glove compartment. I wasn't paranoid, but in New York, I'd had a run-in with a sticky-fingered valet, so I no longer took their honesty for granted. Fortunately, all was normal.

Settling back into our seats, I put the vehicle into drive, and we left.

"So, what have you learned?" I asked Tucker.

We began our exchange of information, and together, we had what Johann asked of us, so that part went well. We all wondered, how Gerhardt and Sofia had met. He just arrived, and yet he was banging the sister of the owner of the Belcaro, arguably one of the most popular nightclubs in Franklin. We might not have had cause for suspicion, they could have bumped into one another at the local convenience store when he stopped for gas the moment he arrived, or perhaps they met online by chance. But while that possibility existed, I sensed it was unlikely. However, Johann hired us for a specific task, and we had the information he wanted. If he wished to know more, we would have to discuss that with him the next day.

That was our experience the night before the case of blue murder, and a lot happened, much more than I understood at the time. Some of it seemed trivial and other things important, but as with every case it was all about picking through and discarding things to find the relevant pieces of the puzzle otherwise the picture couldn't reveal itself.