Chapter 5: Getaway
A week passes after Jollie pays us and I start to get worried that maybe we did something wrong in not retrieving the guitar. But then one day I’m driving a passenger across town when my cell rings and it’s Jollie.
“What’s up?” I say into my phone.
“Hey, Jackie, can you and Tony swing by my place tonight?” Jollie asks.
“I don’t think that would be a problem,” I say. “Everything all right?”
There’s hesitation on the other end. “Well, I kind of got a situation.”
Uh oh. I don’t like situations. “Look, Jollie, I’m sorry we didn’t get the guitar back from --”
“Oh, no, nothing like that,” Jollie says with a quick laugh. But then the laugh dies away real quick. “I just need to talk with you guys in person.”
“So we’re cool about the guitar?”
Another quick laugh. “Yeah, that bozo paid up quick the next day. Was glad to send me his money.”
“Okay, cool, then. Uh, I’ll talk to Tony and we’ll swing by tonight.”
“Swell.”
So I talk to Tony and we swing by at night.
It’s not late, though it is dark, and Jollie’s shop is closed up for the night when we get there. We park behind the place and knock on the back door, which snaps open right away, as if Jollie had been waiting right by the door for us.
The old guy sticks his head out and scans the surroundings. “Anybody follow you?”
Tony and I trade glances.
“I don’t think so,” I say. “Should we be on the lookout for somebody?”
“Not necessarily,” Jollie says. “Just making sure.”
He backs away then and beckons us indoors. Tony and I follow, and I make sure to close the door behind me.
We find ourselves in Jollie’s back storage room once more, surrounded by tons of gear.
“Okay, what’s going on?” Tony asks, looking a little perturbed. “Jackie told me you called, and it sounds like you were a little freaked out.”
For a moment Jollie doesn’t say anything, like he’s afraid to speak, then he creaks back on an old stool and sighs as if the worries of the world are upon his shoulders. “Look, you guys know I don’t cross anybody. I don’t take sides, right?”
“Right,” I say. And it’s the truth. Jollie has always been neutral, supplying all sides, all the different groups of the Family, and sometimes a few other folks as long as their business never interfered with the Family.
“Okay,” Jollie goes on. “It’s like this. I got a special order today. There’s this guy, he wants a sports car, an Italian sports car.”
Tony’s eyebrows rise up a little. “Go on.”
“Unfortunately,” Jollie says, “the make and model he wants, there’s only one of them in the city.”
Tony and me, we trade glances. We know where this is going. Or so we think.
“The guy,” Jollie says, “he’s one of Frank Sardona’s heavy hitters, name of Mike Varl.”
Yeah, I didn’t expect that, and from the look on his face, I don’t think Tony did either.
“So this hitter wants my car?” Tony asks.
“I didn’t say that,” Jollie says, raising his hands as if to back us off. “He never said he wanted your car specifically, just that he wants one the same make and model and color as yours.”
“Like you said, there ain’t another one in the city like mine,” Tony says.
The old guy nods. “That’s right, and I’m not about to cross you. You know that, Tony. In fact, I shouldn’t even be telling you all this, because it could look like I’m siding with the Carcinnis, which I ain’t.”
“Then why are you telling us?” I ask.
Jollie looks like a man nearly broken. “Because I don’t know what else to do. This guy wants his car, and I was stupid and agreed to get it for him before finding out exactly what kind of car. Now I owe him one, or I’m in bad with Sardona. But, Tony, I sure as hell ain’t stupid enough to try to take your car. I don’t want to get on the wrong side of the Carcinnis, but I also don’t want to wind up dead. Get my drift?”
“We get you,” Tony says.
“So what do I do?” Jollie asks as if he doesn’t really expect an answer. “I thought about trying to get a car from out of town, but that costs money, and this guy, if he wanted to pay full price, he would have just bought one legit, ya know?”
Yeah, we know.
I swat Tony on a shoulder to get his attention. “Hey, you know of anybody else with an Italian job like yours?”
“In town?” Tony asks.
“No, no,” I say. Jollie already cleared that one up. There ain’t no other car in the city like Tony’s. “I mean, you wouldn’t happen to know somebody not in the Family who has one? Isn’t there a club for guys with sports cars or something?”
Tony thinks for a minute, then, “Sorry, nope. The things ain’t exactly easy to come by. Most of the people who drive one are sitting pretty with their piggy bank, if you know what I mean.”
“Well, if there’s not another one nearby,” I say, “then there’s only one other thing to do.”
“What’s that?” Jollie asks.
“We take out Sardona’s guy,” I say.
My words bring the room to a pause. What I was suggesting was not something to be taken lightly. If me and Tony hit one of Frankie Sardona’s boys and Frankie Sardona knows it was us who did it, this could start a war within the Family. Hell, the Carcinnis wouldn’t even be happy if me and Tony did this on our own. But if we could do it without getting caught, without even being seen, then nobody could pin anything on us.
Jollie throws up his hands and turns away. “I don’t want to hear this, none of it!”
Tony grabs me by an elbow and pulls me toward the exit. “Jollie, we’ll catch you later. Don’t do nothing. Me and Jackie will get back with you in a day or two.”
The old guy exits out toward the front of his place while Tony pulls me outside, slamming the back door shut between us and Jollie.
Out by his car, he spins on me, his face red. “What the hell’s wrong with you? Talking about stuff like that in front of Jollie?”
It might have looked like I had made a mistake, talking about making a hit in front of somebody not a member of the Family, but it was not a mistake. I had done so on purpose. I still didn’t know who had taken shots at me, and it was bugging me. I wanted a war with the Sardona clan. If this was how it had to start, then so be it. Bringing it up in front of Jollie sort of pressed the issue on Tony, which wasn’t totally fair, I’ll admit, but something had to be done.
“Look,” I say, trying to calm Tony down, “there’s no other way out of this, not without driving who knows the hell where to find another sports car like yours. We do this and make sure it doesn’t look like we did it.”
“Yeah, you numbskull, but now Jollie will know,” Tony says, “and if Sardona gets it in his head to put the hurt on Jollie, the old guy is going to sing. You know that!”
“We take our chances,” I say.
My words are nearly enough for Tony to blow his top. His face goes all red again, redder than before, and he fusses and fumes, kicks at the ground, turns away from me and slaps at the hood of his car. For several long minutes he stands unmoving with his back to me, staring across the parking lot to the traffic lights. Then he slowly turns around and glares at me.
“If we do this,” he says, “nobody can know it was us. You understand?”
I nod.
“Good,” he says, “ ’cause I know where this Varl guy shacks up with a girl from time to time, pretty regular like, and there’s a decent chance we can find him there tonight, get this thing over with.”
“How do you want to do it?” I ask. “We could stop by Mo’s for --”
Tony cuts me off. “No. No guns. If we go in shooting, they’ll know it was somebody from the Family. They’ll know it was a pro hit.”
“Then what do we do?”
/> Tony reaches in his pocket and pulls out his car’s keys. His thumb jabs the little black fob and there’s a beep, then the trunk of his car pops open. On his face is a grin that would do the Devil himself proud.
“I was saving this,” he says as he rounds to the back of the car. “I was thinking of giving it to you as a welcome-home present. But now ... well, we’ve got a need.”
I watch as he reaches in the trunk and with both hands gingerly lifts out a long, slender item covered with a black, silk cloth.
“Take it,” he says to me.
I shrug and take it. As soon as it lands in my hands, I know what I’m holding.
Tugging away the silk cloth, I toss it into the trunk. Gripped in my right hand is a black, lacquered casing for a samurai sword.
Tony’s grin has grown bigger. “Draw it.”
I pull the sword free of its cover, the long steel blade unfolding into the night air like a silver snake wanting to be free of a cave. I stare at my own reflection in the mirrored blade. My smile is nearly as big as Tony’s.
“Nobody will know it was us,” he says. “Hell, they might even think it was the Triad or somebody out of Hong Kong, or the Yakuza from Tokyo.”
I keep right on smiling. If we do this right, it won’t start a war, but it will almost be like a little piece of revenge for me for the shooting a while back. Who knows? I might even get lucky and find out who it was that tried to waste me. Maybe it was even Mike Varl himself.
But Tony and I aren’t complete morons. We aren’t going into a hot situation without a piece, despite what he was saying a few moments ago. Tony always keeps a little snub-nosed .38 in the glove department of his sports car, and he retrieves the gun before we climb into my cab.
The place where Mike Varl is possibly holed up isn’t too far away, just a half dozen or so blocks from Jollie’s shop, down in a cul de sac of old brownstone buildings, most of them old hotels that had been converted into apartments decades ago. There are cars, mostly beaters, parked all around the circle. There is not a space available for us, so I pull through a driveway into one of the parking spots behind one of the old buildings. Nobody’s going to call a tow truck on a cab.
“You ready?” Tony asks as he checks to make sure his revolver is loaded.
I reach in the back seat and retrieve the sheathed samurai sword. “Oh, yeah.”
Both of us are grinning like idiots.
Out in the night wind, Tony points and tells me where the place is, a couple of buildings over. We have to cross some parking lots to get there, but that doesn’t bother us too much, giving us time to make sure there are no Sardona guys on the watch.
Not finding any tough guys around, we go through a back door and up some steps, Tony having told me the room was on the third floor. Elevators are death traps. Never take an elevator when going to a hit.
All the way up the stairs we never see a person. The only sounds are the occasional subdued noises of televisions behind apartment doors and every now and then a honk from a car in the circle ahead of the building. It’s like we have the whole place to ourselves.
Until we get to the third floor.
A long, well-lit hallway stretches before us, thin carpet, beat-up doors lining both walls. It looks just like the other two floors we’d seen. Except here there is a guy standing at the far end of the hall, at the top of the steps on that side of the building, the front. His back is to us. He wears a black hoodie.
Coincidence that he wears the hoodie? Maybe. But I don’t believe in coincidences. Coincidences get people killed.
But I keep my cool. I almost cry out, and maybe I would have if I’d been the guy with the gun instead of Tony, but as things stand, I stay calm and place a hand on Tony’s chest to bring him up short. My partner stares at me, confused.
What I might have said next is lost as black hoodie suddenly turns around at the other end of the hall.
“Oh shit!” he shouts.
Then he takes off running, almost falling down the steps at the other end.
“Cut him off!” I yell, pushing Tony toward the steps on our side. I take off at a charge, racing across the long hall. It’s a good thing I’m still young and don’t smoke regular.
Making it to the other end, I hear black hoodie making it to the bottom of the stairwell. I had known I wouldn’t be able to catch him, but I wanted one of us on this end of the building in case he should try to make his way back up. But I don’t let his head start get me down. I bound down the steps, jumping the railings as soon as I can.
When I reach the bottom, I almost run into Tony, both of us huffing and puffing as we skid to a stop in front of one another, my sword still sheathed and hanging from a hand, his little gun tucked into one of his pockets.
“Which way?” I ask. Tony was on the bottom floor before me. He had to see something.
But he’s winded and can’t talk yet. Doesn’t stop him, though. He motions toward the front of the place.
We take off running again.
Out the door, all we catch are the glowing red tail lights of some old ’80s muscle car peeling away from the cul de sac. There’s no way we can catch this guy. By the time we could get back to my cab and hit the road, he’s going to be long gone. But we’ll remember the car.
I look to Tony. “What do you think? We still going after Mike?”
Tony shakes his head. “Not now. Guy is probably upstairs on the phone as we speak. Our cover’s blown. He might not know we’re here for him, but he’s going to know something’s going on. No, we need to get the hell out of here before more Sardona boys show.”
So, we get the hell out of there before more Sardona boys show.
We never saw Mike Varl that night, but driving Tony back home, I had to wonder about the black hoodie guy. I still hadn’t got a good look at his face, if it even had been the same guy who had taken shots at me, but I thought I might recognize him again if I saw him. Maybe. He wasn’t a real big guy, looked young, younger than Tony and me even. And he wore dark shades, even at night. Kind of silly, like something a punk or teenager would do. I’d have to remember that. Also, Black hoodie had recognized me. That’s why he had run. I guess he either hadn’t had a piece on him, or he’d been too chickenshit to face me man to man. Didn’t matter. I had his number. I would be hunting him. And his recognition, that’s what made me think it was the same guy.
As for Jollie and his situation, we’d have to deal with that later. For the night, Tony and I needed to lay low. We didn’t know if black hoodie knew our names or not, but it wasn’t impossible word would spread to Sardona that boys of the Carcinni gang had been in the vicinity of Mike Varl.