Chasers (27 page)

“There are a solid half-dozen crews in the city want them out of the way,” Dead-Eye said. “And I’m talking about balls-to-the-floor unforgiving bastards with the men and the guns to back up their talk. One reason they haven’t moved to this point is that it can be to their advantage not to do anything, at least for the foreseeable.”

“How’s that work in their favor?” Ash asked.

“All cop attention—city, state, and federal—is pointed down South American way,” Dead-Eye said. “That leaves the Italians, Russians, and the blacks and Hispanics to work their magic under the radar, so long as they stay clear of the drug trade. They rake in their profits and don’t have to do a duck-and-wince every time they hear a police siren.”

“But while that makes sound and sensible business sense, it would be insane to think it would last,” Boomer said. “Gangsters are, if nothing else, greedy sons of bitches, and the very thought of someone making bigger illegal scores than they are night in and night out is enough for them to pull their pieces and go out looking to cut into that pie.”

“And that’s where we step in,” Dead-Eye said. “The more we can get these different crews to square off against Angel and his wild eyes, the easier it will be to work our way through his army of dealers. Look, it’s not like they trust or even like each other from the tip-off. All we’re doing is putting a light to the fuse and taking a step back when it goes off.”

“And what happens if they sit pat and none of this help comes flowing down our way?” Quincy asked.

“Even if they do and every imaginable break falls to our side, there’s still no win in this war for us,” Boomer said, his voice hard and direct, his eyes moving from one Apache to the next. “Now, if any of you are even close to thinking that, it’s best to erase the thought right away. And if we do end up with no help, or so little we won’t even notice it, the end of our trail will arrive all that much sooner. That’s why we have to hit Angel so hard and so heavy and make him guess where the hell it’s all coming from and why. Take as many of them down as we can before we start our fall.”

“Well, shit, I don’t know how the rest of the group feels, but speaking for myself, I just can’t wait to go out there and get wasted by a whacked-on-high-test coke dealer,” Rev. Jim said, slapping his hands together. “Now which of you lucky bastards gets to team with me on the way down to Death Street?”

“On this next one, you go with Ash,” Boomer said. “Dead-Eye matches up with Quincy. And Buttercup rolls with me.”

“And for you newbies in the group, you remember all the rules and regs hammered into you while you were in the PD?” Dead-Eye asked. “Like, never shoot at a fleeing suspect, search-and-seizure procedures, don’t pull your weapon on an unarmed suspect. Shit like that?”

“Sure we do,” Ash said, throwing a look toward Quincy. “How could we forget them? We would get tossed out on our ass, faces plastered in the tabs and on the six o’clock news we forgot even one of them.”

“Forget them all,” Dead-Eye said. “And forget them
now.
If you don’t, sure as there’s a rat in every sewer, you won’t ever live to
see
the six o’clock news.”

“Grab your folders,” Boomer said, pushing his chair back and heading for one of the upstairs rooms. “And read up on your assignments. It’s time for us to get Angel’s party started.”

20

Nunzio Goldman hung from a meat hook in the back of the empty meat locker, arms and chest red and bruised, face dripping blood, right eye swollen shut. His head hung to one side, his breaths becoming white clouds in the ice-cold room. He looked down at the ground that was filled with gold sawdust and saw the small circle of blood forming at his bare feet. He shook his head slowly and for the first time in his life felt old and foolish.

He was walking on a downtown street, crisscrossing the main square off Fourteenth, his back to the Old Homestead Steakhouse, when he was grabbed by two men with thick hands and thicker accents. He felt their guns in his rib cage and let them lead him across the avenue toward the parked sedan with the engine running. He was tossed headfirst into the back seat and taken for a two-block ride toward the rear entrance of what had once been Murray Baker’s old slaughterhouse and had now morphed into a high-end wholesale meat distributor. He was pulled out of the car, dragged down a flight of steep steps, and shoved through thick aluminum-tinted double doors, doing a hard landing on the concrete floor, his mouth and eyes feeling the tinge of sawdust. The two men stripped him of his jacket, shirt, shoes and socks, tossing them all in a rumpled heap in a corner of the well-lit room. They wrapped and locked a bicycle chain around his neck and hoisted him onto a meat-locker hook, the sharp edge jabbing into his neck. And in that moment Nunzio Goldman and Angel put eyes on each other for the first time.

“This will be a very painful last day for you, regardless of what you do or do not tell me,” Angel said to him, stepping away from under the glare of the sharp overhead lights toward Nunzio. He was wearing a long white butcher’s smock that only partially covered a pair of razor-creased slacks and matching polo shirt. His black shoes were so shiny they glared like headlights. “I thought it only fitting for you to die in a meat locker. The childhood memories such a place brings to light might prove to be of some comfort to you during these next hours of agony.”

“I would tell you to go fuck yourself ten ways till sundown,” Nunzio said. “But I was taught never to curse in front of a priest. Low-life scumbag or not.”

Angel smiled, thin lips barely exposing any teeth, and nodded toward the two men standing on either side of Nunzio. “I’ll be back in an hour,” he said to them. “He’s yours until I return.” Angel stepped up closer to Nunzio and wrapped his fingers around his face, their eyes separated by lashes. “You will beg me to give you your last rites,” he said.

The two men removed their jackets, rolled up their sleeves, and went to work on Nunzio Goldman. Both in their mid-thirties now, they had mastered their torture rituals at a young age and were proficient in the pain trade. Throughout the entire brutal and ceaseless ordeal, Nunzio never uttered a sound or made a plea for them to stop. He had spent his life in the company of hard men on both sides of the law and had learned well the lessons they passed his way.

The greatest of all those lessons was to know when death was at hand and to accept its arrival.

Nunzio opened his one good eye and stared at Angel, back now, standing in front of him, a thin lit cigar in his mouth. “Give me their names,” Angel said, “and I will put an end to your pain with a bullet. You have my word.”

Nunzio smiled, his upper row of teeth loose, a warm stream of blood running from his mouth down to his chin. “What they say about you is spot-on true,” he said to Angel. “I didn’t buy into it wholesale at first. But then I got a look at you and there’s no doubt about it.”

“Humor me,” Angel said.

“You never get your hands dirty,” Nunzio said. “Most hair balls work up to that, but you can always look back to a time when they were bone breakers. But you’re not them, padre. You got manicured hands in a callous business.”

“Interesting,” Angel said, blowing a thin line of smoke into Nunzio’s face. “And I wish you and I could have enough time to give such a topic the attention it so demands. But we must get to the important question of the moment. What are their names?”

“You know the other mistake you made?” Nunzio asked, sharp bolts of pain coursing through his upper body, his head light and his vision blurry from the heavy loss of blood. “I’d ask you to guess, but you sound like you’re a little pressed.”

Angel grabbed one of the men and tossed him against Nunzio. “Take one finger off each hand,” he said to him, his eyes on Boomer and Dead-Eye’s best friend. “Perhaps that will help him better understand my question.”

Nunzio’s screams echoed through the empty meat locker, his eyes bulging, his body shaking without control, sweat flowing in torrents. Angel stepped into the large puddles of blood at Nunzio’s feet and leaned into his wet and bloody face. “I want their names,” he whispered.

Nunzio was taking heavy breaths, his mind light as a rain cloud, his eyes rimmed with hot tears. He looked at Angel and nodded. “I don’t know them all,” he gasped, “but I think they call the bald one Curly.”

Angel took a step back and his face hardened. “Torch his restaurant, along with anything and anyone in it,” he said to the two men. “And have him watch until it goes down. Then torch him and leave his body where it can easily be found.”

Nunzio looked at Angel, his body weak but his heart still gangster strong. “You don’t need their names,” he said. “And you don’t need to go looking for them. They’ll come find you. And when they do, my name will be the one you hear just before you die.”

21

Natalie and Boomer were sitting in the back row of an empty movie theater in the East Bronx, the wide screen in front of them covered by a thick velvet curtain. “Do they still show movies in here?” she asked. “Or is it as abandoned as it looks?”

“In her time, she was one of the greats, gave even a horrible movie a shot at looking good,” Boomer said. “She’s older now, but she can still kick it. The owner runs retrospectives during the week and Spanish-only movies on weekends.”

Natalie rested her head against the back of the battered old theater chair, then lifted her legs and crossed them over the top of the seat in front of her. She was dressed in a thin black leather jacket that partially hid a black cotton shirt, blue jeans sharp, and crisp black leather boots that reached just above her ankles. Her full black hair shielded her face, rich dark eyes shining like a cat’s under the theater lights. She was the most lethal woman Boomer had ever met, and the most beautiful.

“I love movies,” she said to him. “So did my father. We would watch as many as three a week. That was our time together—like you and your father and the fishing boat.”

“I don’t know much about Russian movies,” Boomer said. “They any good?”

“A few are great,” she said, “but there isn’t much in the way of money to get many of them made. So I grew up watching mostly American and British movies.”

“You see them on television, you mean?”

“There are only two channels worth watching in Russia, and neither one shows movies,” Natalie said, giving Boomer a warm smile and clutching his hand in hers. “No, we got our movies the way we get everything else in my country—on the black market. We lead the planet in bootleg movies, and my father earned quite a bit of money feeding the demand on the street for American product.”

“A crime boss
and
a studio boss,” Boomer said.

“Something along those lines,” Natalie said. She sat up in her chair and eased in closer to Boomer. “Let me see how compatible we really are. If you had to pick, which would you choose and why? Bogart or Cagney?”

“Cagney,” Boomer said. “He not only acted it, he lived it, too. Bogart was great, don’t read me wrong, but he was only
pretending
to be tough. Cagney was the real.”

“The Beatles or the Rolling Stones?” she asked.

“You got them over there, too?” he asked.

“You make it, we steal it,” Natalie said. “Now pick.”

“The Stones,” Boomer said. “I like their music and their style. The only Beatle I ever cared for was Lennon. He seemed to have a core, even if it was a bit skewered when he hooked up with the screamer.”

“No one seems to like Yoko,” Natalie said with a warm smile. “Not here and not in my country. Some women just hit you a certain way and it sticks forever.”

“John seemed to like her,” Boomer said. “And he was the only one she really needed to impress.”

“Now here it comes,” Natalie said, “the true test. Frank Sinatra or Dean Martin?”

“The Rat Pack, too,” Boomer said. “Now stealing them from us,
that’s
a crime.”

“If anyone would appreciate it,” Natalie said, “they would. So which of the two sits in your corner?”

“There’s no splitting those two up,” Boomer said. “In my mind, they come at you as a package. Frank runs the pack, but they’re both sitting on the top shelf, by themselves. Still, there is a time when Frank does take a little bit of a lead.”

“Which is when?” Natalie asked.

“I got my head down, a dark day behind me and a dark night ahead, it’s Sinatra’s voice I want coming off my radio,” Boomer said. “Nobody—and I mean
nobody
—deals with the hook and jab of pain and loneliness the way he does. Those are the only moments I give Sinatra the edge. Other than that, they come in as one and one-A in my little book.” Natalie stood, shoved her hands in the slit pockets of her leather jacket, and looked down at Boomer.

“So,” he said, gazing up at her, “did I pass the pop quiz or do I need to sign up for a refresher course?”

“There was no right or wrong,” Natalie said. “There were only answers.”

“And what story did those answers tell you?” he asked.

“You’re stubborn, like to go your own way, and don’t want to be told what to do by anybody,” she said.

“Are those good traits or bad, you figure?” Boomer asked.

“Excellent, at least from where I stand,” Natalie said, stepping out into the aisle and turning up toward an exit sign partially hidden by a low-hanging curtain. “Tells me all it is I need to know.”

“Which is what, exactly?” Boomer asked.

“We are more alike than either of us would want to think,” Natalie said. “And you
will
need my help against the crews you’re going to fight. And when you do come to me and ask for it, that help will be there.”

“And what if I never ask?” Boomer said. “What do you take away from that?”

“That I overestimated Angel and the G-Men and their ability to take out a band of rogues,” Natalie said with a shrug. “And I also underestimated the damage a man like you could do.”

“Would you be disappointed if that were to happen?”

“No,” Natalie said as she moved toward the exit sign, wrapping an arm around Boomer’s back. “I would be impressed.”

“If we leave now, we’ll miss the movie,” Boomer said. “They got a good one today. Cagney in
White Heat.
”

Natalie looked at Boomer, her sleek body sheathed in shadow. “He dies at the end of that, am I right?” she asked.

“Dies big-time,” Boomer said.

“I hate sad endings,” Natalie said. “I always like the movie so much better when the bad guys walk away with a win.”

“I always root for the cops, myself,” Boomer said. “From when I was a kid to now. It seemed the right way to go.”

“Well,” she said, “I’m rooting for a cop now.”