Chapter 20: The Gun on the Bumper

Teo's POV

I left her in the sacristy fixing her lipstick and went out the side door into the church parking lot.

Paolo's mother had said a black car, and I knew only one that mattered.

It was a long black sedan, parked in the first slot by the rectory, where it had been parked every Sunday for nine years.

The back bumper sat low.

I walked around it once.

A smear of dried blood shone on the trunk lid, right under the handle.

I took the tire iron from my truck and worked the lock.

It gave on the third try.

Paolo lay curled on his side on the carpet with his wrists taped behind him.

His left eye was swollen shut, and there was a split in his lip, and his shirt was stuck to him with blood.

"Lanza," he whispered.

"Don't talk."

I cut the tape with my knife, ran my hands down his ribs the way I'd done on a hundred men at a hundred checkpoints, and found two that moved wrong.

"Can you stand?"

"I told them I'd keep my mouth shut." He tried to smile and winced. "They didn't believe me."

"You're lying."

"A little."

I got him out and sat him on the bumper.

He was shaking all over.

I had my brother's killer on a bumper in front of a church, and my hands were steady and gentle on his face.

It made me sick.

A door clapped.

I looked up.

Corrado came down the rectory steps with his coat over his arm, in no hurry, and stopped ten feet away.

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