Thief (The Glass Family) Read online

  THIEF

  OWEN MULLEN

  CONTENTS

  The Players

  Prologue

  Part I

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Part II

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Part III

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Epilogue

  Postscript

  Acknowledgments

  More from Owen Mullen

  Also by Owen Mullen

  About the Author

  About Boldwood Books

  In memory of Mary Castles

  A wonderful sister and an irreplaceable friend

  THE PLAYERS

  In London:

  Luke Glass – Head of London’s most powerful crime family

  Nina Glass – Luke’s sister and managing partner of Glass Houses and Construction

  Charley Glass – Luke’s sister, the face of Lucky Bastards Club

  George Ritchie – Luke’s right-hand man running the family’s business interests south of the river

  Felix Corrigan – Gang boss in east London and George Ritchie’s second in command

  Calum Bishop – Nephew of Kenny Bishop, who runs north London

  Stevie D – Ambitious drug dealer

  Jocelyn Church – Right-wing political figure and establishment hack

  Rupert Neville – Officially known as Lord Holland, an influential political insider

  In New Orleans:

  Madeline Giordano – Matriarch of the Giordano crime family

  Beppe Giordano – Madeline’s son

  Antoine [Tony] Giordano – Madeline’s grandson

  Bruno Mura – Tony’s lieutenant

  Roberta Romano – Paid assassin, also known as La Réponse

  PROLOGUE

  GARDEN DISTRICT, NEW ORLEANS – LOUISIANA

  Martha wasn’t a Katrina, but she was still a bitch.

  She’d roared off the Gulf like an angry drunk spoiling for trouble and determined to find it, lashing Louisiana with torrential rain leaving lives lost and businesses destroyed in her wake. But in the mansion on St Charles Avenue the naked couple on the bed ignored the 100 mph winds whipping the branches of the live oaks lining the street; they were making their own noise.

  The woman straddled the man’s broad thighs, throwing her long hair over her shoulders in a show of pleasure that was entirely fake. His lips parted in a satisfied grin as swollen fingers searched for her breasts. She stared into the bloated face beneath her, bit back her disgust and started to ride him in time with the banging of a shutter that had broken free of its mooring somewhere in the house. He believed he was dominating her. She’d let him: a necessary deception with a monster who’d sanctioned the killing of more people than even he could remember and would send her to the same fate without a moment’s hesitation.

  In his youth, Beppe Giordano had been slim and athletic. A life of hard partying had thickened his features and left him obese and unrecognisable.

  His partner’s name was Charlene, younger than him by two and a half decades, and by any standards a beauty. On the wall, her silhouette juddered like an old-time movie coming to the end of the reel as she quickened the pace and he moaned deep in his throat. Egyptian cotton sheets and antique stained-glass lamps were inadequate compensation for sex with this grotesque slug. Yet, it wasn’t the worst thing she’d done in her thirty-three years on earth.

  The gangster’s motive was lust. Hers was survival.

  Giordano’s eyes traced the smooth line of Charlene’s bare back all the way to her rump, silently congratulating himself. He reached for the scarlet robe on the chair, pulled it round him and lurched unsteadily across the floor.

  Other men had vices. Beppe Giordano had habits. He’d been smoking since he was eight years old. Lighting a San Cristobal Habana was a reflex, the first thing he did every morning. He poured from a crystal decanter, watching the caramel-coloured liquid fill the glass, and glanced again at the woman. Six months she’d lasted. Longer than most. There was a reason: she was different from the Creole pieces he was used to, so thin he could break them in two like dried sticks – this one had meat on her bones. And she was better. Prime.

  The best.

  Giordano had more enemies than he could count and zero friends. But as long as he had Cuban smokes, fine cognac, and ladies with alabaster skin in his bed, he’d take it.

  The wind howled down the length of a deserted St Charles, where the city’s oldest streetcar line ran from South Carrollton and South Claiborne Avenues to Canal Street, ruffling the tiles on the roofs like a gambler cutting a new deck. Beppe poured a drink for himself but didn’t offer one to her. A reminder of the terms of their relationship.

  She lifted her dress and dropped it over her head; the gangster’s gravel voice admonished her. ‘What the hell’re you doing? Did I tell you to put your clothes on?’

  ‘I thought—’

  ‘You thought? You fucking thought?’ He stabbed the air with his cigar. ‘Next time somebody says, “a penny for them”, do yourself a favour, girl. Sell!’ Giordano laughed loudly at his own joke.

  Sex mellowed most people. Beppe wasn’t one of them; his temper was as legendary as his appetites. He leaned a heavy elbow on the mahogany desk at the other side of the room and got down on one knee in front of the safe his father had built into the wall when Beppe was still a child. The modest exertion left him breathing hard. He felt a sudden sensation in his left arm and ignored it, spinning the tumbler clockwise twice followed by one turn anticlockwise. The lock disengaged and the door sprang open. A wave of nausea washed through him; the robe fell away exposing his massive frame; an invisible vice squeezed his chest under the amber pendant on the gold chain. Beppe realised what was happening and struggled to his feet, one flabby arm flailing wildly before he collapsed on the carpet.

  Charlene smoothed her silk stockings over her legs and didn’t raise her head. When she was ready, she walked unhurriedly to the desk. Giordano was on the floor behind it, his face the colour of wallpaper paste, his lips already tinged with blue mouthing words that refused to form. She hunkered down close enough to smell the cigar smoke on him and see the sweat gathered like tears in the corners of his eyes. Slowly, deliberately, she raked a painted nail over the folds of flesh at his neck through the tangle of tight grey hair to his belly.

  Charlene tapped his clammy temple with her finger. ‘“A penny for them” yourself, you fat bastard.’

  Out in the street, the storm relentlessly bludgeoned the city; glass shattered; a dog barked, somewhere another replied, and inside the mansion the lights flickered and failed, plunging the room into darkness. When they came on again, Beppe Giordano was dead.

  Charlene stepped over his body and bent to examine the safe she’d witnessed the gangster check every day since she’d known him, making sure whatever treasure it held was still there. She’d imagined the dull glow of gold bars reflected in his bloodshot ey
es, or the diamond sparkle of a stolen necklace once owned by the wife of Nicholas II, last Czar of the Romanovs – too hot for the street and likely to stay that way for another fifty years. At the very least, there had to be a fortune in high-denomination bank notes to explain his concern.

  The disappointment when she peered inside was like a blow, and for a moment, Charlene was too stunned to take in what she was seeing: it was almost empty.

  She thrust her hand into the metal box and brought out a wad of money secured by a mustard bill strap signifying $10,000. Towards the back, another dozen like it were divided into neat piles. To a man like Beppe it was scatter cash he’d lose at blackjack in an evening; it didn’t make sense.

  Charlene wanted to cry.

  Her eyes darted anxiously to the door, listening for the armed guards on the other side. If one of them came to check on his boss he’d see Beppe lifeless on the floor, shoot first and ask questions later. Even if he didn’t, Giordano was gone. And what was she but a whore in a city full of them? His mother, Madeline, was a wizened old witch – eighty if she was a day – who’d made her distaste for her son’s tart obvious and had never spoken to her. She’d relish throwing her onto the sidewalk with nothing but the clothes on her back.

  Charlene was smart, yet men – certainly the ones she’d met – were more interested in her tits than her brains. She wasn’t complaining, her impressive breasts had served her well, except her looks wouldn’t last forever – ten years at most, then…

  The decision was easy. She stuffed the money into her purse and zipped it shut. The guards were stocky, crew-cut dullards, who thought with their dicks and lusted after the foxy chick at their corpulent boss’s side. They were used to seeing her arrive and leave – getting past them shouldn’t be a problem. After that, Charlene had no idea where she’d go but her time in the Big Easy was finished.

  The lights dimmed and flickered again: Martha wasn’t close to being done. Another outage might bring Beppe’s two-legged Rottweilers. She had to get clear before that happened. With luck, they wouldn’t find him until morning. By then, if the highway wasn’t washed out, she’d be miles away.

  Charlene towered over her former lover remembering the countless humiliations the animal had made her suffer for his amusement. His rough features were smooth and unlined; death had made him younger. The temptation to spit on him was strong. She resisted and was closing the door on the safe that had promised so much and delivered so little when she noticed the envelope on the bottom with a small black diary secured by a metal buckle next to it.

  Her heartbeat quickened. Beppe had checked and rechecked the safe. Not gold bars. Not stolen diamonds.

  More. Much more.

  He’d been making certain the source of the Giordano family’s influence was still there.

  The photographs were standard 8 x 10 black-and-whites, shots of grinning suits shaking hands in a hotel lobby like old friends. Charlene recognised Beppe’s twenty-eight-year-old son, Tony, his dark hair slicked and combed back, beside a hollow-cheeked third-generation Sardinian called Bruno Mura, laughing with two people from the governor’s office. As she flicked through the pictures, monochrome became colour and the location moved from the hotel to a yacht on a blue sea and males dressed in T-shirts and shorts, toasting each other with the sun slipping over the horizon behind them. Tony and Mura were in every picture: mine hosts, topping up glasses, encouraging their guests to relax and enjoy themselves.

  To all intents, just buds having a good time.

  No foul no harm.

  Except, that wasn’t the reality. The faces Charlene was seeing belonged to politicians and judges, prominent people familiar because of how often their well-fed mugs showed up on the TV news. Add naked young girls to the scene – some of them very young – and what was going down was obvious. Towards the end of the stack the images were raw: men with women who were obviously hookers, men with men, and men with boys and girls: children.

  Charlene turned away, fighting down the urge to be sick.

  The envelope wasn’t empty. A finger-sized memory stick tipped into her upturned palm, no doubt home to yet more perversion. By comparison, the little black book, dog-eared with age, seemed an innocuous collection of phone numbers and email addresses. Not true: it was a list of Giordano’s blackmail victims and a who’s who of the great and supposed good in Louisiana.

  The lights that had been threatening to quit, dipped and finally died, leaving her rooted to the spot with the relentless drumbeat of rain hammering the house. In the darkness, her thoughts raced over the possibilities; none of them reassured her. If she couldn’t get out of New Orleans, for certain, they’d find her.

  Suddenly, a cold hand grabbed her ankle. Charlene covered her mouth, forcing herself not to scream. It wasn’t happening! She’d seen him – with her own eyes she’d seen him. He couldn’t still be alive. Please God, he couldn’t be!

  The next twenty seconds were the longest she’d ever known. When the power came on, she slumped, trembling and exhausted, across the desk. A last desperate attempt to cling to life must have momentarily sparked in the gangster because, on the floor at her feet exactly where he’d been, Beppe Giordano was as dead as it was possible to be.

  Charlene freed her ankle and took a deep breath, opened the bedroom door and smiled at the sullen sentinels with just one job – to protect their boss from the many who would do him harm. She held up a finger and slowly let it droop. They got the joke and grinned. Giordano was a sour bastard with a hot temper; the thugs didn’t have to like him because he paid their wages.

  She went down the impressive staircase under the chandelier, wanting to run, expecting them to come after her. At the front door, Charlene ignored the last of the guards and stepped outside. By the time she’d raced the short distance to the car, she was soaked. She fired the ignition and gunned the Accord Sport into the night.

  The wind had stopped though it was still raining hard. From the bay window Tony Giordano saw the dark-blue Mercedes sweep up the drive and braced for what was to come. When the car slowed to a halt, a guard rushed forward with an umbrella; he needn’t have bothered. The old woman in the back seat irritably waved it away and went through the front door leaning heavily on a cane. Madeline Giordano was tiny – less than five feet tall – a force of nature who rarely smiled and was as mean and unpredictable as any tropical storm, and not for the first time her grandson wondered what life must’ve been like for Beppe growing up with her as a mother. His own mother had died when he was young, a victim of depression, the black dog, and Beppe had been no great shakes as a father. Tony’s upbringing had scarred him, yet he’d choose it any day over the old crone he was about to meet.

  At the top of the staircase the soldiers who’d worked for the dead gangster backed off to let her pass. She wore the traditional Karabela dress of her native island, an off-the-shoulder top, a full-length skirt and a headscarf. All black, a statement that had nothing to do with mourning and everything to do with dominance.

  Tony didn’t turn to greet her. She registered the disrespect and spoke sharply, her lips pressed in a thin line under the sunglasses Madeline was never seen in public without – a trick she’d borrowed from the Haitian dictator ‘Papa Doc’ Duvalier.

  ‘Why are these people here? Get rid of them, Antoine.’

  Everybody else called him Tony.

  He said, ‘All of you fuck off. Except Bruno. I want him to stay.’

  ‘No, this is family business.’

  ‘As far as I’m concerned, he is family.’

  Bruno Mura watched the battle of wills play out in silence: Beppe wasn’t even in the ground and already it had begun. Only one could lead; who, might be decided before they left this room. Mura was a student of history who understood that through the ages the secret of power struggles was to be on the winning side at the end. Madeline was ancient; time was against her. Tony didn’t have her character or her strength – nowhere near it – but he was young; he valued Br
uno. Despite that, Mura’s money was on the old woman: at this stage the trick was to convince each of them he was in their camp.

  He went to the door, closed it and stood back to acknowledge Madeline’s wishes. She ignored the body on the floor and pointed to the safe. ‘Open it!’

  Tony shot a look of disgust at Bruno. ‘Your son is dead and your only concern is—’

  Behind the shades her eyes burned with contempt. ‘Open the fucking safe.’

  Tony did as he was told. And just like that, he’d lost. The tumblers clicked, the final metal rod released and his grandmother heard him gasp. Fired by his error in giving ground, he spun on Mura. ‘You said it was a fucking heart attack.’

  ‘It was. Everything with the whore looked the same.’

  Tony slammed his fist against the safe. ‘What does it look like now, idiot?’

  Bruno stared at the carpet and didn’t answer.

  ‘What time did she leave?’

  ‘Around midnight.’

  ‘Nine fucking hours ago in the middle of the storm. And nobody thought that was strange?’

  Mura regretted not leaving when Madeline had wanted him to. ‘I don’t know.’