“Have to take a raincheck. I’ve got a few things I’ve got to do tonight.”
She frowned. “Nothing dangerous, I hope.”
“Nah.”
“That’s what you always say.”
“Well, sure. I mean, after surviving the blue meanies last year, everything else is a piece of cake.”
“Don’t mention those things!” Gia shuddered and hugged him. “Promise you’ll call me when you’re back home?”
“Yes, mother.”
“I’m serious. I worry about you.”
“You just made my day.”
She broke away and picked up a slim cardboard box from the couch. “Land’s End” was written across one end.
“Your order arrived today.”
“Neat.” He pulled out a bright red jacket with navy blue lining. He pulled off the fatigue jacket and tried it on. “Perfect. How do I look?”
“Like every third person in Manhattan,” Gia said.
“Great!”
“All you need is a Hard Rock Cafe sweat shirt and the picture will be complete.”
Jack worked at being ordinary, at being indistinguishable from everybody else, just another face in the crowd. To do that, he had to keep up with what the crowd was wearing. Since he didn’t have a charge card, Gia had ordered the jacket for him on hers.
“I’d better turn off the oven,” Gia said.
“I’ll treat tomorrow night. Chinese. For sure.”
“Sure,” she said. “I’ll believe it when I smell it.”
Jack stood there in the tiny living room, watching Vicky spread out her football cards, listening to Gia move about the kitchen over the drone of Eyewitness News, drinking in the rustle and bustle and noises and silences of a home. The domestic feel of this tiny apartment – he wanted it. But it seemed so out of reach. He could come and visit and warm himself by the fire, but he couldn’t stay. As much as he wanted to, he couldn’t gather it up and take it with him.
His work was the problem. He had never asked Gia to marry him because he knew the answer would be no. Because of what he did for a living. And he wouldn’t ask her for the same reason: Because of what he did for a living. Marriage would make him vulnerable. He couldn’t expose Gia and Vicky to risk like that. He’d have to retire first. But he wasn’t even forty. Besides go crazy, what would he do for the next thirty or forty years?
Become a citizen? Get a day job? How would he do that? How would he explain why there was no record of his existence up till now? No job history, no Social Security hours, no file of 1040’s. The IRS would want to know if he was an illegal alien or a Gulag refugee or something. And if he wasn’t, they’d ask a lot of questions he wouldn’t want to answer.
He wondered if he had started something he couldn’t stop.
And then he was looking out through the picture window in Gia’s dining room at the roof of the apartment house across the street and remembering the bullets tearing through the hotel room less than twenty four hours ago. His skin tingled with alarm. He felt vulnerable here. And worse, he was exposing Gia and Vicky to his own danger. Quickly he made his apologies and good byes, kissed them both, and hurried back to the street.
He stood outside the apartment house, slowly walking back and forth before the front door.
Come on, you son of a bitch! Do you know I’m here? Take a shot! Let me know!
No shot. Nothing fell from the roof.
Jack stretched his cramped fingers out from the tight fists he had made. He imagined some vicious bastard like Cirlot finding out about Gia and Vicky, threatening them, maybe hurting them...it almost put him over the edge.
He began walking back toward his own apartment. He moved quickly along the pavement, then broke into a run, trying to work off the anger, the mounting frustration.
This had to stop. And it was going to stop. Tonight, if he had anything to say about it.
*
Jack stopped at a pay phone and called Tram. The Vietnamese told him that Aldo and his bodyguard had limped out and found a cab, swearing vengeance on the punk who had busted them up. Tram was worried that Aldo might take his wrath out on him if he couldn’t find Jack. That worried Jack, too. He called his answering machine but found nothing of interest on it
As he hung up he remembered something: Cirlot and phones. Yes. That was how the blackmailer had got his hooks into his victims. The guy was an ace wiretapper.
Jack trotted back to his brownstone. But instead of going up to his apartment, he slipped down to the utility closet. He pulled open the phone box and spotted the tap immediately: jumper wires attached to a tiny high frequency transmitter. Cirlot probably had a voice activated recorder stashed not too far from here.
Now things were starting to make sense. Cirlot had learned from Levinson that Jack met customers at Julio’s. He’d hung around outside until he spotted Jack, then tailed him home.
Jack clucked to himself. He was getting careless in his old age.
Soon after that, Cirlot had shown up, probably as a phone man, inserted the tap, and sat back and listened. Jack had used his apartment phone to reserve the room at the Lucky Hotel...and he had called Julio this morning to tell him he’d be over by ten thirty. It all fit.
Jack closed the phone box, leaving the tap in place.
Two could play this game.
*
Jack sprawled amid the clutter of Victorian oak and bric a brac that filled the front room of his apartment and called George at the diner. This was his second such call in half an hour, except that the first had been made from a public phone. He had told George to expect this call, and had told him what to say.
“Hello, George,” he said when the Greek picked up the other end. “You got the next payment together from your merchants association?”
“Yeah. We got it. In cash like usual.”
“Good deal. I’ll be by around midnight to pick it up.”
“I’ll be here,” George said.
Jack hung up and sat there, thinking. The bait was out. If Cirlot was listening, chances were good he’d set up another ambush somewhere in the neighborhood of the Highwater Diner at around midnight. But Jack planned to be there first to see if he could catch Cirlot setting up. And then they would settle things. For good. Jack wasn’t going to have anybody dogging his steps back to Gia and Vicky, especially someone who had chopped a couple of toes off a former customer.
On his way downtown an hour later, Jack called his answering machine again. He heard a message from George asking him to call right away. When he did, he heard a strange story.
“I asked you to what?” Jack said.
“Meet you in the old Borden building next door. You said there’d been a change of plans and it was probably safer if you didn’t show up at the diner. So I was to meet you next door at ten thirty and hand over the money.”
Jack had to smile. This Cirlot was slicker than he’d thought.
“Did it sound like me?”
“Hard to say. The connection was bad.”
“What did you say?”
“I agreed, but I thought it was fishy because it wasn’t the way we had set it up before. And because you said you’d be wearing a ski mask like last night. That sounded fishy, too.”
“Good man. I appreciate the call. Call me again if you hear from anyone who says he’s me.”
“Will do.”
Jack hung up. Instead of hailing a cab to go downtown, he ducked into a nearby tavern and ordered a draft of Amsterdam.
Curiouser and curiouser.
Cirlot seemed more interested in ripping him off than knocking him off – at least tonight. Tom Levinson’s words came back: Gonna make you look like shit, then he’s gonna ice you.
So that was it. Another piece fell into place. The bag of cement had missed him. Okay – no one could expect much accuracy against a moving target with a heavy, cumbersome object like that. But the shooter outside the Lucky Hotel had had a telescopic sight. Jack had been a sitting duck. The guy sh
ouldn’t have missed.
Unless he’d wanted to. That had to be it. Cirlot was playing head games with him, getting him off balance until he had a chance to humiliate him, expose him, make him look like a jerk. He wanted to payback in kind before he killed Jack.
Ripping off one of his fees would be a good start.
Jack’s anger was tinged with amusement.
He’s playing my own game against me.
But not for long. Jack was the old hand here. It was his game. He’d invented it, and he’d be damned if he’d let Cirlot outplay him. The simplest thing to do was to confront Cirlot in that old wreck of a building and have a showdown.
Simple, direct, effective, but lacking in style. He needed to come up with something very neat here. A masterstroke, even.
And then, as he lifted his glass to drain the final ounces of his draft, he had it.
*
Reilly was waiting his turn at the pool table. He didn’t feel like shooting much. With Reece and Jerry dead, everybody was down and pissed. All they’d talked about since last night was finding that jack o lantern guy. The only laugh they’d had all day was when they learned that Reece’s real name was Maurice.
Just then Gus called over from the bar. He was holding the phone receiver in the air.
“Yo! Reilly! You’re wanted!”
“Yeah? Who?”
“Said to tell you it’s Pumpkinhead.”
Reilly nearly tripped over his stick getting to the phone. Cheeks and the others were right behind him.
“Gonna find you, fucker!” he said as soon as he got the receiver to his head.
“I know you are,” said the voice on the other end. “Because I’m gonna tell you where I am. We need a meet. Tonight. You lost two men and I almost got killed last time we tangled. What do you say to a truce? We can find some way to divide things up so we both come out ahead.”
Reilly was silent while he controlled himself. Was this fucker crazy? A truce? After what he did last night?
“Sure,” he managed to say. “We can talk.”
“Good. Just you and me.”
“Okay.” Riiiiight. “Where?”
“The old place were we in last night – next to the Highwater. Ten thirty okay?”
Reilly looked at his watch. That gave him an hour and a half. Plenty of time.
“Sure.”
“Good. And remember, Reilly: Come alone or the truce is off.”
“Yeah.”
He hung up and turned to his battered boys. They didn’t look like much, what with Rafe, Tony, and Cheeks all bandaged up, and Cheeks’ hand in a cast. Hard to believe only one guy had done all this. But that one guy was a mean dude, full of tricks. So they weren’t going to take any chances this time. No talk. No deals. No hesitation. No reprieve. They were going to throw everything they had at him tonight.
“That really him?” Cheeks asked.
“Yeah,” said Reilly, smiling. “And tonight we’re gonna have us some punkin pie!”
*
“Aldo, this man insists on speaking to you!”
Aldo D’Amico glared at his wife and removed the ice pack from his face. He had a brutal headache from the bruises and stitches in his scalp. His nose was killing him. Broken in two places. The swelling made him sound like he had a bad cold.
He wondered for the hundredth time about that punk in the laundry. Had the gook set them up? Aldo wanted to believe it, but it just didn’t wash. If he’d been laying for Aldo, he’d have had his store filled with some sort of gook army, not one white guy. But Christ the way that one guy moved! Fast. Like liquid lightning. A butt and a kick and Joey was down and then he’d been on Aldo, his face crazy. No. It hadn’t been a set up. Just some stunad punk. But that didn’t make it any easier to take.
“I told you, Maria, no calls!”
Bad enough he’d be laughed at all over town for being such a gavone to allow some nobody to bust him up and steal his car, and even worse that his balls were on the line for the missing money and shit, so why couldn’t Maria follow a simple order? He never should have come home tonight. He’d have been better off at Franny’s loft on Greene Street. Franny did what she was told. She damn well better. He paid her rent.
“But he says he has information on your car.”
Aldo’s hand shot out. “Gimme that! Hello!”
“Mr. D’Amico, sir,” said a very deferential voice on the other end. “I’m very sorry about what happened today at that laundry. If I’da known it was someone like you, I wouldn’a caused no trouble. But I didn’t know, y’see, an I got this real bad temper, so like I’m sorry–”
“Where’s the car?” Aldo said in a low voice.
“I got it safe and I wanna return it to you along with the money I took and the, uh, other laundry and the, uh, stuff in the trunk, if you know what I mean and I think you do.”
The little shit was scared. Good. Scared enough to want to give everything back. Even better. Aldo sighed with relief.
“Where is it?”
“I’m in it now. Like I’m talkin’ on you car phone. But I’m gonna leave it somewhere and tell you where you can find it.”
“Don’t do that!” Aldo said quickly.
His mind raced. Getting the car back was number one priority, but he wanted to get this punk, too. If he didn’t even the score, it would be a damn long time before he could hold his head up on the street.
“Don’t leave it anywhere! Someone might rip it off before I get there, and that’ll be on your head! We’ll meet–”
“Oh, no! I’m not getting plugged full of holes!”
Yes, you are, Aldo thought, remembering the punk pointing Joey’s magnum in his face.
“Hey, don’t worry about that,” Aldo said softly. “You’ve apologized and you’re returning the car. It was an accident. We’ll call it even. As a matter of fact, I like the way you move. You made Joey look like he was in slow motion. Actually, you did me a favor. Made me see how bad my security is.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I could use a guy like you. How’d you like to replace Joey?”
“Y’mean be your bodyguard? I don’t know, Mr. D’Amico.”
“Think about it. We’ll talk about it when I see you tonight. Where we gonna meet?”
“Uuuuh, how about by the Highwater Diner? It’s down on–”
“I know where it is.”
“Yeah, well there’s an old abandoned building right next door. How about if I meet you there?”
“Great. When?”
“Ten thirty.”
“That’s kinda soon–”
“I know. But I’ll feel safer.”
“Hey, don’t worry! When Aldo D’Amico gives his word, you can take it to the bank!”
And I promise you, punk, you’re a dead man!
“Yeah, well, just in case we don’t hit it off, I’ll be wearing a ski mask. I figure you didn’t get a real good look at me in that laundry and I don’t want you getting a better one.”
“Have it your way. See you at ten thirty.”
He hung up and called to his wife. “Maria! Get Joey on the phone. Tell him to get over here now!”
Aldo went to his desk drawer and pulled out his little Jennings .22 automatic. He hefted it. Small, light, and loaded with high velocity longs. It did the job at close range. And Aldo intended to be real close when he used this.
*
A little before ten, Jack climbed up to the roof of the Highwater Diner and sat facing the old Borden building. He watched Reilly and five of his boys – the whole crew – arrive shortly afterwards. They entered the building from the rear. Two of them carried large duffel bags. They appeared to have come loaded for bear. Not too long after them came Aldo and three wiseguys. They took up positions outside in the alley below and out of sight on the far side.
No one, it seemed, wanted to be fashionably late.
At 10:30 sharp, a lone figure in a dark coat, jeans, and what looked like a knit watch cap strolled
along the sidewalk in front of the Highwater. He paused a moment to stare in through the front window. Jack hoped George was out of sight like he had told him to be. The dark figure continued on. When he reached the front of the Borden building, he glanced around, then started toward it. As he approached the gaping front entry, he stretched the cap down over his face. Jack couldn’t see the design clearly but it appeared to be a crude copy of the one he’d worn last night. All it took was some orange paint...
Do you really want to play Repairman Jack tonight, pal?
For an instant he flirted with the idea of shouting out a warning and aborting the set up. But he called up thoughts of life in a wheelchair due to a falling cement bag, of Levinson’s missing toes, of bullets screaming through Gia and Vicky’s apartment.
He kept silent.
He watched the figure push in through the remains of the front door and disappear inside. In the alley, Aldo and Joey rose from their hiding places and shrugged to each other in the moonlight. Jack knew what Aldo was thinking: Where’s my car?
But they leapt for cover when the gunfire began. It was a brief roar, but very loud and concentrated. Jack picked out the sound of single rounds, bursts from a pair of assault pistols, and at least two, maybe three shotguns, all blasting away simultaneously. Barely more than a single prolonged flash from within. Then silence.
Slowly, cautiously, Aldo and his boys came out of hiding, whispering, making baffled gestures. One of them was carrying an Uzi, another held a sawed off. Jack watched them slip inside, heard shouts, even picked out the word “car.”
Then all hell broke loose.
It looked as if a very small, very violent thunderstorm had got itself trapped on the first floor of the old Borden building. The racket was deafening, the flashes through the glassless windows like half a dozen strobe lights going at once. It went on full force for what seemed like twenty minutes but ticked out to slightly less than five on Jack’s watch. Then it tapered and died. Finally… quiet. Nothing moved.
No. Check that. Someone was crawling out a side window and falling into the alley. Jack went down to see.
Reilly. He was bleeding from his mouth, his nose, and his gut. And he was hurting.
“Get me a ambulance, man!” he grunted as Jack crouched over him. His voice was barely audible.