“You will die, Talbot,” Natalie said. “That is why the decision behind which painting you choose is so critical. It must be your very favorite, the one that holds the greatest meaning. For it is that painting that will be placed over your body and buried with you.”
Talbot turned away from Natalie and looked over at Boomer and the rest of the Apaches. “I misjudged you,” he said. “I felt you would veer from the rules of your previous profession, but never abandon them completely. It was foolish of me to read a situation so completely wrong.”
“You were the one that broke the rules, Talbot,” Boomer said, “not me. You went out and touched my family, and then you reached down and touched my friend. That was what led you to wrong. And, in your case, that meant dead wrong.”
4
The Boiler Man was in the center of the bed, his pants undone, his shirt and jacket hanging across the back end of a wooden chair in the corner of the dimly lit room. He had his hands folded and tucked under his neck, a glass of bourbon resting on the small end table to his right, eyes closed, body in full relax mode. It was late in the afternoon of a windswept spring day, overhead clouds bordering on menace, heavy rains taking a long, slow path from the Midwest skies toward the tristate area.
The knock on the hotel-room door was soft and quick, knuckles barely making contact with the thick mahogany. The Boiler Man didn’t flinch, the gun jammed under his pillow still in place, the switchblade strapped to his right ankle within easy reach. “Use the key,” he said.
The lock snapped open and the young woman walked into the room, stopping only to latch the door shut, deadbolt firmly in place. She turned and stepped farther into the room, her head down, her slender body partially hidden by heavy shadows. The Boiler Man, his eyes still shut, manner calm and controlled, spread out his arms and rotated his shoulder muscles, easing out any tension that might lay hidden. “There’s bourbon and gin in the mini,” he said. “Help yourself to whatever you like, short of calling room service.”
The woman swung open the door of the small fridge, bent down, and picked up a dwarf-size bottle of vodka. She snapped open the top, letting the red lid fall to the carpeted floor. She took the drink in one swallow, rested the empty bottle next to a Zenith flattop, and walked over toward the right side of the bed.
The Boiler Man opened his eyes and looked into the woman’s face. He smiled. “I knew we would eventually meet,” he said to her.
“I’m surprised you recognize me,” said Ash, her mind flashing on the fire that killed her mother and her grandfather. On the man who set the blaze. And she felt grateful once more for Natalie Robinov’s tip on the Boiler Man’s whereabouts. “I was a kid back when it happened, and a lot has changed since then.”
“Yes,” the Boiler Man said, “and I’m aware of most of it. I’ve kept tabs on you best I could all these years. It was all new to me back then. My timing was off. You were meant to die that day as well.”
“It didn’t need to happen,” Ash said. “They didn’t need to die the way they did.”
“It had nothing to do with them,” the Boiler Man said. “It was about a building that someone felt had to be burned to the ground and was willing to pay for that to happen. Besides, some good came of it all. You found a profession in which you excelled, until the flames of another fire brought that to an end.”
“It was your only fire,” Ash said. “So why?”
“The money was more than enough for my time and efforts, but I found the method to be too impersonal,” the Boiler Man said, reaching his right hand out for his glass of bourbon. He took several swigs, his eyes on the woman a quick reach away from his bedside. “I prefer the more direct approach when it applies to my victims. I found a great deal more satisfaction in being an assassin than in being an arsonist. And greater financial rewards as well.”
“Do you ever think of them?” Ash asked. “Your victims? Are they anything more to you than a paycheck?”
“I thought of you,” the Boiler Man said. “But you were a victim of a different stripe. I obviously didn’t kill you. Instead, you must live with the memory of those who did die.”
“Did you know I would come after you?” she asked.
“In my line of work, you are not allowed the luxury of surprises,” the Boiler Man said. “I figured you would one day make a move against me.”
“Did you give any thought to trying to stop me?” Ash asked.
“No,” the Boiler Man said. “I felt the first move in our little lethal dance belonged to you. I assume this is it. Unless, of course, you do indeed work as a high-end Upper East Side call girl.”
Ash shook her head slowly. “Not too many men would be willing to pony up two thousand an hour for a woman with burn scars,” she said.
“I’m sorry for what happened to you back then,” the Boiler Man said. “I want you to know that before I kill you.”
“Take your apology with you to hell,” Ash said.
The Boiler Man sat up in the bed, the .44 pulled from under his pillow and in his right hand, cocked and ready to fire. Ash did a roll-and-tumble toward the door, snapped open the deadbolt, and came up with a .38 in one hand and a small detonator switch box in the other. She caught the surprised look in the Boiler Man’s eyes and smiled. “The device is in the fridge,” she said, the anger in her voice audible. “Take it as a lesson: Never offer a lady a drink until you know her true intentions.”
Ash took advantage of the slight pause and got off the first rounds, popping three slugs in the Boiler Man’s direction. Two dented the headsboard and sent a thick cloud of old wood chips into the dry air. The third nicked the Boiler Man in the muscle end of his shoulder. Ash swung open the door and leaned against it, one foot in the hall, one finger on the detonator button, her eyes on her enemy. “You should have killed me,” she said to him. “You should have hunted me down and killed me.”
“It’s never too late,” the Boiler Man said.
He jumped off the bed, his feet flat on the carpeted floor, arms held out, gun aimed in Ash’s direction, and pulled off three quick rounds. Ash dived into the empty hallway and landed with her back to the flower-print wall, her gun by her feet, both hands holding on to the small detonator. She pressed down on the button and threw herself to the floor, face rubbing against the thick carpet, eyes closed, images of her mother and her grandfather clear in her mind.
The Boiler Man lowered his weapon and waited for the truth that each man who devotes his life to murder must eventually face.
His own demise.
The blast shattered the windows that looked out onto Fifth Avenue and crumpled the bed and the chairs. The walls folded in from the heat, and both the television and the fridge melted from the intense explosion. A ball of flame followed by a thick wave of smoke flew out of the room and raced down through the hall, rushing over Ash’s still body, her hands masking her eyes and mouth.
The Boiler Man was no longer a ghost for her to hunt down.
5
Angel leaned against a yellow wall next to the blackboard of a third-floor classroom in an empty public school. It was a sunny Sunday morning, and the street outside was lined with the silent elderly, loud children, and tired couples making their way to the nine o’clock Mass at the Catholic church across the way. Taped to the blackboard, starting on the left with Boomer and ending on the far right with Buttercup, were head shots of the Apaches. Angel looked down the rows of chipped and stained desks, set in a line of four, six to each, and glared over at the Gonzalez brothers, each one jammed inside a seat meant for a twelve-year-old. “This situation has to be brought to an end and fast,” he said to them. “You know it and I know it. Our differences aside, this is one we should handle working as one.”
“They’ve only picked our pockets,” Hector Gonzalez said. “Meantime, they cleaned out your bank account. Doesn’t speak well of your street talent.”
“It only started with me,” Angel said, ignoring the slight. “But you’re in their scope just as
much as my crew. We’re linked together in this, like it or not.”
“For that they need to have found themselves some heavyweight help,” Freddie Gonzalez said. “I don’t give a virgin fuck how Hall of Fame good these six badges are, they don’t have the manpower to deal with one crew, let alone two.”
“Before they made move one, they lined up with Tony Rigs,” Angel said. “He fronted them some seed money and helped them set up shop. Far as I can tell, that’s where his deal started and ended, no men of his own thrown into the deal.”
“They would have needed more than Tony Rigs to reach Jonas Talbot,” Freddie said. “That fucker was covered tighter than a mummy, and they walked right up to him like he worked in an outside parking lot. Got rid of him nasty, and wiped out his art collection in no time flat. Now, Rigs has a good crew, but they ain’t nowhere near that fuckin’ good. Besides, the only painting that old Guido knows about involves Benjamin Moore and a roller.”
“Then who do you think it is?” Angel asked. “Who not only could get to Talbot but has the talent and the connections to move anywhere from forty to eighty million worth of art on both the open and the black markets? I can swear on a stack of dead bodies I don’t have those worldwide hookups and I know that the two of you don’t, either.”
“The Russian,” Hector said without hesitation, looking first to his brother and then up to Angel.
“Good answer,” Angel said. “She has the necessary means and the required motives to come in, clean house, and walk away with the proceeds from Talbot’s stash. On top of which, any damage or delay to our operations done to us by this group of piss-poor cops, no matter how inconsequential, is sure to put a warm smile on such a pretty face.”
“We had a meet with her not too long ago,” Hector said, stretching out his legs and folding his arms across his chest. “Told me she was in New York only to strengthen the Russian beachhead and keep the profit flow from their porn operations running at full tilt.”
“And did you believe her?” Angel asked.
“Had no reason not to,” Freddie said. “Her people never stepped on our toes before this, and they always do a back turn when it comes to our line. I’m not saying they don’t move shit, but they stick to pills—Triple Ex, Up and Downs, Speed Racer, like that. They like the money our action brings in, but not the natural-life prison run comes with it you get caught with your pants down and a couple hundred kilos inside a leather.”
“We’re not a threat to her end and she’s no threat to ours,” Hector said. “This city is one big fuckin’ hot pie, and there’s more than enough for us all to dig in and get fat. I don’t see her hungry for a tangle with the G-Men.”
“Perhaps you were too busy listening to the woman talk to hone in on what the gangster was thinking,” Angel said. “Which is exactly what she wanted you to do.”
“If we have to go into a hand-to-hand with the Russians, then we got ourselves a bigger problem than five gimpy cops and a dog with a limp,” Freddie said. “You toss Tony Rigs on top of her pile and we’re staring out at a two-out-of-three-falls-drive-the-loser-to-the-morgue death match.”
“That’s the inevitable we face and the final results won’t bode well for us, not unless we unite and move into this battle as one,” Angel said. “And we head up the ladder one step at a time, starting with these flies-on-shit cops.”
“Why them?” Freddie said.
“It sends out a signal,” Angel said. “We know they’re linked to Tony Rigs, and we have strong suspicions that the Russian is helping guide their actions. And there’s our ladder. We start with the cops and then move to Rigs and then, finally, to the Russian. We need to make some noise, show these crews that we’re not here just to move in coke and cut up the cash. Let them know without any doubt that we will kill anybody who won’t make room for us at their table. And that starts with those fuckin’ cops. They need to die.”
Angel turned toward the blackboard and pulled down the pictures of the Apaches that were taped there. He stacked them in a neat pile and tossed them into a brown wastebasket. He then tore a sheet of yellow paper from a notebook resting on a teacher’s desk. He pulled out a lighter, snapped on the flame, and put it to the paper. He held the burning paper for a few seconds, looking up at Hector and Freddie, then tossed the sheet into the wastebasket. He watched the fire smolder for a few seconds, flames burning through the photos and sending a line of smoke up toward his face and over to the open window at his back.
“Those cops need to die now,” he said.
6
Dead-Eye stood on the subway platform, a creased and folded newspaper in his hands, halfway through a back-of-the-book story about the newest player to wear a Yankees uniform. The Upper West Side station was well lit and filled with an assortment of lunchtime commuters, many heading back to their cubicles to finish off a day’s work, a few students and a handful with nowhere to go, really, and all the time to get there. He heard the rumble of the downtown IRT chugging through the tunnel and into the station, tossed the newspaper into a bin, and walked closer to the edge of the platform, hands at his sides.
He had spotted the three men on his tail as soon as he stepped out of the coffee shop on Amsterdam. He had spent most of his adult life needing to be aware of any activity that took place around him, the faces that belonged and those that didn’t, the fast movements of the suspicious, the hard glares of those on the prowl for prey. It was all very much second nature to Dead-Eye, as much a part of him as the guns in his holsters and the tin in his pocket.
He led the men across Amsterdam, forcing them to cross against oncoming traffic, and made his way to the Seventy-second Street subway station and the ride downtown. He took them to be more than a set of rover’s eyes sent to report back on his daily activities—they looked too hard and seasoned to be relegated to such a mundane chore. These were hitters with a mandate to bring him down.
Dead-Eye waited as a small array of passengers stepped off the train, brushing against one another as they shoved their way to their next destination. He then stepped into the third car of the ten-car train and walked across to the other side, standing with his back to the shuttered doors. The three men tailing him were the last to get on, seconds before the doors rolled to a close. Dead-Eye rested his hands at the base of his spine, fingers feeling for the gun he kept in a waist holster, his head down but his eyes catching the huskier of the three men as he ran a hand along the right side of his jacket, making sure his piece was in place.
The train inched forward and the three men started to move in his direction, breaking off and locking in on Dead-Eye from three sides of the car. The train picked up speed and rumbled through the darkened tunnel, interior lights flashing on and off, casting all in an eerie glow. Dead-Eye pushed himself from the door, wrapped a hand around a pole, and moved toward the rear of the car, head down, body poised. He paused in front of the back door, peered through the glass into the next car, snapped open the handle, and stepped into the rattling void outside the train, lights speeding past, blue volts popping off the skidding rails, red and yellow signals rushing by him in a blur. The train was about thirty seconds away from the Fifty-ninth Street stop when he pulled two guns out of their shoulder holsters and held them down low and against his legs. The three men behind him in the car had inched closer to the rear door, the cocked and loaded Lugers in their hands half hidden by the folds of their jackets.
Dead-Eye jumped off the subway car and onto the platform, his momentum taking him toward the white-brick wall at the station’s edge. He streaked to a fast halt and turned, the three men off the train now and coming at him with guns visible, passengers running past them, heading up the stairs or onto the train before the doors closed. The husky man raised his gun hand, aimed it at Dead-Eye, and let off two rounds, each chipping pieces of brick. Dead-Eye turned a tight corner, kicked open a men’s-room door, and disappeared inside, the three gunners fast on his heels.
They stepped into the men’s room, two in
ches of old water coating the tiled floors, three stalls with their doors shut on one side, two urinals rusty and running, and a set of ivory sinks, one half hanging off its cracked base. The sharp odor that filled the tight space was enough to make breathing a chore. There were no windows and no other way in or out.
The three stepped deeper into the room, their guns and eyes focused on the stall closest to the far wall. They moved in tight, tossing quick glances at one another, the husky man working off hand signals and placing them in the best positions to take out Dead-Eye. They were seconds removed from turning the wreck of a subway-station restroom into a high-intensity shooting gallery.
The door leading into the room swung open with a violent thud. The three shooters turned, weapons focused now on a drunk standing on shaky footing in the narrow entryway. The drunk looked down at the small water well soaking through a pair of torn and tattered sneakers and then back up at the three gunmen. “You’re supposed to piss in the bowl,” he hissed, the words a series of slow slurs. “I’m fucking drunk and I know shit like that. Bad enough my pants are soiled, now my fucking shoes, too?”
“Get the hell out of here,” the husky man said, waving his gun at the drunk. “Go look for another bathroom. Or go piss against a wall. I don’t give a fuck what, just get out of here and do it now.”
“This is my bathroom, little brother,” the drunk said, walking into the room, getting in closer to the husky man with the gun. “And besides, I didn’t come in here to piss. Came in to wash up.”
The husky man was now inches away from the drunk. “I’m not going to tell you again,” he said, speaking through clenched teeth. “Get the fuck out.”
The drunk lowered his head and dropped his arms to his sides. “I’m what the doctors call an EDP, and you need to be very careful how you talk to somebody’s got something like that.”