Keeplock (31 page)

Eddie took his place behind the wheel. I got in next to him, trying not to think about what was going to happen next. Then the van began to move and I felt the weight of what I’d done fall on me like a brick tossed from the top of a Lower East Side tenement. Rats are the lowest form of life in the Institution. Baby rapers do easier time than rats. M.O.’s who kill their grandmothers do easier time than rats. All my life, I’d fought to maintain the image of a warrior. The image was my armor and now I was naked.

I might have chickened out, but there was no way to stop it. Condon and Rico would be waiting on the platform. Avi was already in custody. It was a done deal.

“You ready, cuz?”

“Let’s do it.”

Eddie pulled up behind Stern’s like any other customer about to retrieve a large purchase. The area seemed deserted, no cars, trucks, or workers in sight.

“Could it be better, cuz? Huh? Could it be better?” Eddie’s voice was joyous.

“I don’t see how.”

“Morasso, take these.” He casually tossed a pair of 12-gauge shotgun shells into the back of the van. “Pete, let’s go.”

I tried to stay a half step behind him as we climbed the four steps to the floor of the loading dock. Condon had told me that the platform would be clear. He wanted us to walk through the open doorway into the back. That way Morasso wouldn’t be able to see us when we were taken, which lessened the risk of a shoot-out.

“Anybody here?” Eddie called. He actually managed to sound friendly. “Yoo-hoo.”

We stepped through the doorway, from daylight into shadow. It took a few seconds before my eyes adjusted. It would have been a perfect time for Condon and Rico to strike, but all I saw was a young black man sporting a t-shirt imprinted with the map of Africa.

“Yo,” he said, “you got your sales slip?”

“Sure,” Eddie said, “right here.” He hauled out his automatic and put it under the man’s chin. “You wanna live?”

“Don’t kill me, man. Please, don’t kill me.”

“How many other workers you got on the platform?”

“One.”

“Get him out here. Anything goes wrong, you’re dead.”

“Sure, man, whatever you say. Just don’t kill me.
Elroy, come on out here
.”

I was in a state of shock. Eddie had his piece in his hand. If Condon and Rico showed up now, there’d be blood on the concrete. My blood, most likely. I remembered the 9mm and drew it out.

“Wha’chu want, Sam? Ah’m takin’ a goddamn shit.”

Sam looked up at Eddie. He shrugged his shoulders helplessly. “What you want me to do?”

Eddie responded by walking over to a door. “This the crapper?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“Good.”

Eddie kicked out and the door flew open. The boy sitting on the toilet was reading a newspaper. He hadn’t even bothered to take his pants down.

“Oh, that’s bad,” Eddie said. “You’re fuckin’ off. You could lose ya job for that. Right, nigger?”

Elroy was a little slow on the uptake. “Who the fuck are you?” he asked.

Eddie answered by ramming the gun barrel into the Elroy’s face. It missed Elroy’s mouth, catching him on the cheekbone just below the left eye. The blood began to flow before Eddie pulled the gun back.

I kept my own piece trained on Sam, but my eyes were wandering through the work area, searching for the cops. I kept running over answers to the obvious question. Maybe Condon and Rico would be in the armored car when it pulled up. Maybe they’d be wearing the guards’ uniforms. Maybe they’d decided to take us in the Bronx when we made the split. None of the answers made sense, and I might have gone on trying to find a reasonable explanation if Eddie hadn’t yanked me back to reality.

“Get the other nigger in here, cuz. Let’s go.”

I put my hand on Elroy’s back and pushed him into the tiny room. Whatever game Condon and Rico were playing, I couldn’t afford to waste my energy thinking about it. Sam was moaning and cursing; Elroy was shaking and crying. Eddie shoved them both onto the floor and cuffed their hands around a water pipe running from the floor to the sink.

“Now look here, little monkeys. Listen real fuckin’ close. You don’t wanna try to get outta here and you don’t wanna make a sound. ’Cause if this door should happen to open before we’re finished, I’m gonna kill the both of you. I won’t give a shit about who done what. I’ll kill the both of you. Understand what I’m sayin’?”

He didn’t wait for an answer. He backed out of the room, motioned for me to follow, then closed the door. We took up posts just inside the doorway leading to the outside platform. Lost in the shadows, we’d be invisible until the Chapman guards were right on top of us.

“How ya feeling’, cuz?” Eddie was grinning like a circus clown.

“Feelin’ strong, Eddie.” What I was actually feeling was disoriented. And what I needed to do was ground myself in the present. There was no point in trying to analyze the situation. Condon and Rico weren’t here, and “here” is where the action was. The man standing across from me was carrying a short-barreled Colt .45, an automatic with a special twelve-round clip. He wouldn’t hesitate to use it on me or anybody else who got between him and the sacks of money locked inside Chapman Security truck number 345. Plus, the Chapman guards, when they arrived, would be armed, including the one locked in the back of the truck and, worst of all, Tony Morasso had already loaded a sawed-off 12 gauge shotgun.

I squeezed myself down, narrowing my focus until the universe shrunk to the size of a sun-drenched parking lot.

We might have been standing there for two minutes or two hours. I had no sense of time. But the waiting didn’t bother me. I’d been there before and I knew what to expect. The Chapman truck, when it finally lumbered around the corner of the building, seemed as big as a battleship. I searched out the faces of the men in the cab, looking for Condon and Rico. They weren’t there. The truck was being operated by the same two men we’d been following all afternoon.

The truck parked with the rear doors facing the platform. The guards stepped out, their weapons holstered, and strolled across the parking lot, chatting back and forth. We waited until they were on the stairs leading up to the dock before we stepped out into the light. They froze for a moment, then let their hands drop slightly. It was a reflex action, but Eddie took it badly.

“Your hands touch them guns, you’re a couple of dead motherfuckers.”

Eddie was in a semi-crouch, two hands supporting the Colt. The barrel was less than five feet from the closer of the two men. The guards hesitated, looked at each other, then gave it up. They went through the transitions so smoothly, I was sure that surrender had been part of their training.

“Ya do this right, nobody gotta get hurt. You fuck it up, you’ll never see ya kids again. Put your hands on top of your head and turn the fuck around.”

They complied without hesitation. Until Tony Morasso and the shotgun came into view. When they saw his swollen face, they stopped, realizing, maybe, that they’d made a mistake.

“Keep movin’.”

It was too late for them, too late to fix it up. With us behind and Tony in front and their hands on top of their heads, they had all the control of a pair of gnats in a hurricane. Both men were shaking.

I disarmed the two of them, praying that Tony Morasso wouldn’t decide to pick this particular moment to lose control. I was right in the line of fire, as was Eddie. If Morasso let loose with that 12-gauge, he’d most likely kill everybody on the platform.

Morasso advanced until he was right on top of the taller of the two guards. He yanked the man off the steps, kicked him as he went down, then kicked him again.

Shepherding Tony through the job was my responsibility. I left Eddie with the second guard and jumped down off the platform. “Let him up. What the fuck is the matter with you?”

I pulled the guard to his feet and shoved him toward the truck. Morasso accepted my direction, urging the guard forward by jabbing the shotgun into his back. When they were right up against the truck, he laid both barrels against the side of the guard’s head and pushed the man’s face against the bulletproof window.

“Uhhhhhhhh,” he said. “Uhhhhhhhhhh.” It was as close as Tony could come to intelligible speech.

I looked into the back of the truck. The guard inside was pressed against the rear wall, a shotgun in his hands. “Open the door and nobody gets hurt,” I shouted. He shook his head slowly. I could smell his fear through two inches of steel armor. “You don’t open it, your buddy’s gonna lose his fuckin’ head. Throw down the shotgun and open the door.”

Tony continued to grunt. Sooner or later he was going to pull those triggers, and the only thing I could do about it was get that door opened in a hurry.

“You, inside the truck,” I screamed, “you’re not gonna get another chance. You wanna let your buddy die to protect Chapman Security’s money? What does Chapman Security mean to you, anyway? A paycheck? A pension? Open the door and nobody gets hurt.”

Eddie came up behind me. Without speaking, he pushed the second guard’s head against the glass.

“Think about it,” I continued. “These guys are your pals. You’re together five days a week. You know the names of their children, their wives. Can you let them die and live with it? Open the door and we’ll be out of here in five minutes. Don’t be a fool.”

I saw him hesitate, his eyes flicking from Tony’s face to the faces of his co-workers. There was no way he could look at Tony and still think we might be bluffing. On the other hand, he could easily believe that opening the door would result in a bloodbath.

“You’re not gonna get hurt. Just open it. All we want is the money. If you don’t open, we’ll burn this fucking truck with
you
inside it. Open the fucking door.”

Something clicked. Maybe he finally realized that opening the door was his
only
chance to survive. Maybe he was acting out of loyalty, putting himself at risk to protect his buddies. Whatever the reason, he dropped his weapon, walked to the front of the truck, unlocked the door, and pushed it open. Tony Morasso rewarded him by jamming the shotgun into his belly and pulling both triggers.

T
HE GUARD’S BODY JACKKNIFED
as he flew into the back of the van. One of his companions, the one Tony was holding, shouted, “Chuck, Chuck, Chuck.” The last guard turned and started to run. I grabbed him by the shoulder and threw him down on the asphalt.

“Just stay there, motherfucker. If you wanna live, stay on the ground.” I wasn’t worried about Tony. With no more shells for the shotgun, he was just another defanged snake. Eddie, on the other hand, would have killed the man before he got fifteen feet.

“Get in the truck, Tony,” Eddie said. His voice was calm and steady. “Toss out the bags.”

If Eddie had ever meant to carry out his threat to kill Morasso on the spot, the sight of those canvas bags washed his resolution away. I stood over the two guards, keeping them quiet, while Morasso threw bags of money to Eddie, who threw them to Parker in the back of the van. Several of the canvas bags were covered with blood.

Five minutes later, Eddie slammed the van into gear and we tore up the ramp. He slowed it down once we were on the street, following the light traffic over the Expressway and onto the Cross Island Parkway. Nobody said a word until he passed through the toll on the Bronx end of the Throgs Neck Bridge.

“I fucked it up, didn’t I?” Morasso said.

“It don’t matter,” Eddie declared. “One more body ain’t gonna mean shit. We’re in the clear. There ain’t no way they can find us now.”

“But I fucked it up.”

I think Tony finally realized that he was the only one in the van without a weapon. Not that I gave a shit. I was thinking about the guard in the back of the truck, of the astonishing quantity of blood pumping from his gut, of the two cops who were supposed to prevent his death.

“Well, John,” Eddie said, “whatta ya think? Did we do it or what?”

Parker was sitting on top of a small mountain of canvas bags. He looked stunned, like a high-diver coming down on an empty swimming pool. “Why did Tony shoot that man? What was point of that?”

“Bad things happen to good people, cuz.” Eddie grinned. “I want you and Tony to combine those bags. Break the contents down, toss out the checks. And don’t get any blood on ya clothes if ya can help it.”

Tony lifted up his hands. They were covered with rapidly drying blood. “I already got it on me,” he said.

“C’mon, Pete,” Eddie said, “give us a smile. Ya gonna be a rich man.”

I managed a weak grimace. Despite the fact that I knew Condon and Rico were going to be waiting in the garage. They’d arrested Avi, then decided to take us when we made the split. There was no other explanation, outside of two unexpected heart attacks, that made any sense. I didn’t know why they’d decided to wait or how they’d explain it to their superiors. I just knew they’d be waiting.

I said a quick prayer of thanks for Simon Cooper. There was an awful lot of blood in the back of that armored car. The media would cover it, even on an afternoon when the Pope was in town. Condon and Rico would be tempted to invent a scenario which included no prior knowledge of the crime. Maybe they’d resurrect the proverbial “anonymous informant.”

Acting on information received from an anonymous source, Detectives Rico and Condon proceeded to a schoolyard in Bay side where they apprehended one Avraham Stern. After waiving his rights, Avraham Stern led Detectives Rico and Condon to a garage in the Throgs Neck Section of the Bronx where four other suspects were placed under arrest.

They couldn’t very well play that game now. Not without my cooperation. The only question for me was how I was going to react when they made their appearance. The garage had a small room in the back. I suppose it’d once been used as a work space, but now it was empty except for a kitchen table. The plan called for us to divide the money on the table where everyone could see what was happening. Except for Tony, of course. I was supposed to kill him as soon as we got inside the garage.

I screwed the silencer into the 9mm while Parker and Tony were busy with the money. Eddie gave me a slight nod of encouragement.