Fade To Midnight by Shannon McKenna Page B

decades before, to the war in Vietnam. He’d never gone back.
    â€œA scientist could hire career criminals to do his dirty work,” Bruno argued. “The mafia aren’t the only ones who can figure out how to hurt somebody.”
    Tony waved that away with a big, bolt-knuckled hand. “He should be looking through military records of special forces troops reported missing in action in August of 1992. Or checking out mug shots of mobsters operating in Seattle. I’m tellin’ you, he was special ops, undercover on a domestic mission. He got on the bad side of some big criminal organization, and they decided to take him out. Simple.”
    Bruno grunted. “Nothing about Kev is simple. I saw what happened when he saw that photograph.”
    Tony made a hawking sound in his throat. “Fuckin’ coincidence.”
    â€œKev was a scientist,” Bruno asserted stubbornly. “Ever seen his bathroom books? Biochemistry, aeronautic engineering?”
    Tony rolled his eyes. “Come on. Give me a fuckin’ break. A fuckin’ scientist, trained in eight different styles of martial arts?”
    This was a decade-old argument, and totally pointless, but Bruno’s innate cussedness made the words pop out. “I know you think any guy who ever went to college is a pussy, but the opposite is just as improbable. It’s as likely that a scientist would learn martial arts as it is that a Navy Seal or a Ranger would study theoretical physics for fun.”
    Tony shook his head. “That kind of fighting ain’t for fun,” he said darkly. “A guy doesn’t train like that unless he has to, to survive. Kev ain’t no fuckin’ dilettante. He was a career fighter. Remember Rudy?”
    Goddamn Tony. Like Bruno’s mood needed another crushing blow. The last thing he needed to think about was the day Rudy had gone after Mamma. He’d gone after her a lot. But that day, he hadn’t stopped.
    That time, she’d died. Head injuries, a ruptured liver, a broken rib that perforated her lung. Other stuff he couldn’t even bear to think about. And Rudy got away with it, on a bureaucratic technicality related to how the evidence was collected. Rudy had connections with the local don. He was protected by corrupt police. He was untouchable.
    But Bruno had witnessed him hitting Mamma on countless occasions, and Bruno was set to testify at the trial. So Rudy and two of his mafioso henchmen had flown out to Portland, to simplify things.
    They’d concluded that the best time to nab Bruno was early morning, at his uncle’s diner, where he went to eat breakfast before school. Nobody on the streets, the uncle asleep in the apartment upstairs. Just the kid, eating his eggs with the fucked up retard who lived out back. The guy who mopped floors and washed dishes for Tony. The one who couldn’t talk. How fucking convenient was that.
    Bruno remembered every minute of that morning with weird clarity. He’d pounded at the door of the diner at five in the morning, until Kev got up and let him in, like always. He’d perched at the counter, talking a mile a minute while Kev cooked and served breakfast. Three eggs, over medium, with lots of pepper, grilled ham, white bread toast with big, gluey globs of grape jelly.
    Then Rudy and the two other guys burst in. They grabbed him off the stool. Rudy wrenched the locket Mom had given him off his neck, the one he wore day and night. He dragged Bruno toward the door.
    What happened after was like an action film sequence, viewed from an upside down artistic angle, bent over, arm torqued, screaming bloody murder. A dinner plate hit one guy with lethal precision on the bridge of the nose like the fucking Frisbee of death, and the man smashed into the curved glass of the pastry counter, ass wedged into the cream pies. Blood, glass, rice pudding, coconut custard everywhere.
    Then Kev flew out, transformed. Bruno was dumped when