Panic Attack (10 page)

Or did they?
Carlos started upstairs. The stairs were creaking, more than Johnny liked, and then they heard the noise. Johnny knew Carlos had heard it, too, because he suddenly stood still and cut off his flashlight. Johnny did the same and immediately stuck his hand in his pocket and gripped his piece.
Johnny tried to convince himself that it was just the wind, the house settling, but he knew exactly what he’d heard: footsteps. Somebody was up there.
Carlos wasn’t packing. Johnny had wanted him to, but Carlos had said,“Why do I need a piece when there’s gonna be nobody in the house to shoot?”
Johnny was aiming his gun toward the top of the staircase. His eyes hadn’t adjusted yet, and he could barely see. If he saw someone, anything, and had a clear shot, he was going to take it.
The only light in the room was coming from the streetlights outside and maybe some dim light from a night- light or something upstairs. Now Johnny could see the front door, the windows, and the outline of the staircase. He couldn’t see anything upstairs yet, but he was just starting to see Carlos, standing there, about halfway up the stairs.
Then Carlos started heading up again.
Johnny wanted to scream,
What the fuck’re you doing?
The guy wasn’t carry ing, and somebody was up there. He had to know somebody was up there.
Then Johnny heard movement, maybe the floor creaking. Shit.
Carlos said, “Please don’t shoot me,” and then the shots came. Two first, then a bunch all at once. Jesus, the shooter was opening up on Carlos,
the fuck was going on
? Johnny saw Carlos fall back a little, trying to steady himself by grabbing the railing, but then he lost his balance and fell to the bottom of the stairwell.
The whole thing had happened so fast, maybe like
three
seconds total, that Johnny didn’t have any time to think about what to do. He was about to fire at the staircase— he saw somebody there now, looked like a guy in a T-shirt and boxers— but did he really want to get into a shootout?
He took a couple of steps toward the door then heard, “Get the hell outta here or I’ll shoot!”
It sounded like some rich, middle- aged white guy trying to be tough. Johnny would’ve bet any amount the guy was full of shit; he’d probably spent his whole round and was standing there shitting bricks with nothing but a handful of metal. If Johnny had taken a few seconds to think it over, he would’ve blown the guy away, but his instincts told him to get the hell out before this thing went from bad to worse.
Instead of going all the way back through the house to the back door and then having to go through the backyard, all the way around the driveway, he went toward the front door. His eyes had adjusted more, and there was enough light there from the streetlights outside to see what he was doing as he unbolted two locks and unchained the door. He wasn’t afraid the guy would shoot him in the back because he knew, he just knew, the guy had been bullshitting.
A few seconds later Johnny was sprinting down the driveway, and then he turned onto the main street and ran toward the Forest Hills gates. He heard sirens and immediately slowed, taking off his ski mask and gloves and walking at a normal pace as a police car sped by in the opposite direction.
Johnny felt like shit for ditching Carlos. Yeah, it looked like those bullets got him, probably got shot in the head the way he fell back, but what if he was wrong and Carlos had just gotten hit in the arm or something? Maybe if Johnny hadn’t taken off, if he’d opened up on the middle- aged guy instead, he could’ve pulled Carlos out. Instead Johnny had saved his own ass instead of trying to help his brother, a guy who’d helped him so many times before.
Johnny went down to the subway. The platform was pretty much empty— just a homeless guy, sleeping sprawled out on a bench. It wasn’t the same homeless guy he’d seen earlier on the street, though. Johnny was going to take the first train that came, but at this time of night, past two in the morning, he had no idea how long that would take. He listened for a rumbling in the tunnels, but there was nothing. He had to get the hell out of Forest Hills. The cops were definitely at the house now; how long would it be before they checked the subway station? Johnny figured he had five, ten minutes, if that.
He wasn’t going to take any chances. He jogged to the end of the platform, then jumped onto the tracks and headed into the tunnel. He hadn’t been in a subway tunnel in years, but as kids he and his friends used to walk the tracks all the time. One New Year’s Eve, he and Carlos and a couple of other guys from St. John’s had walked along the 6 train tracks from Grand Central to Union Square. When trains came they’d stood in the space between the tracks and the wall.
Johnny walked along the tracks as fast he could, occasionally jogging and even running. There was enough light to see anyway, but to make his path even more visible he shined his flashlight ahead of him, scaring away rats here and there.
It only took him about ten minutes or so to reach the Sixty- seventh Avenue station. He was going to continue through the tunnel to the next train, but he heard a train coming from behind him and climbed onto the platform. It was an R— heading toward Manhattan and Brooklyn. Johnny got on and sat in a seat in the corner, finally able to catch his breath.
Less than an hour later, he arrived at his tiny studio apartment in a walk- up tenement on Van Brunt Street in Red Hook, all the way out near the river. He still felt bad about maybe ditching Carlos, but he kept telling himself that he’d done the right thing. Even if Carlos had been alive he would’ve been seriously injured, bleeding like hell, and it would’ve been impossible to get him out of the house. But no matter how hard Johnny tried to rationalize and reassure himself, he couldn’t help feeling like a big wimp.
He took a long shower, thinking about all the ifs. If it hadn’t started to rain that night in the city, if he hadn’t gone into the Molly Wee Pub, if he hadn’t picked up that girl Theresa, if he hadn’t gone to the diner with Carlos, if he’d just said “No thanks” at any point. He felt like a total idiot, but now his biggest concern was not messing up his life even more. He knew that with his prettyboy looks he couldn’t survive jail again— especially a long stretch. He’d kill himself before he had to be a sissy for all those guys again.
Johnny didn’t think the cops would find a connection between him and Carlos. Before running into each other in Astoria that night, they hadn’t seen each other in years, and Johnny had been careful to not talk to Carlos on his cell or any other way that could be traced. Assuming Carlos had been smart enough not to shoot his mouth off about the robbery— and Johnny didn’t think he had— the only one Johnny had to worry about was Carlos’s girlfriend, Gabriela.
What had Carlos said her last name was? He’d mentioned it the other night, when they got together in the city, on that bench in Battery Park, and went over the robbery plans for the final time. Was it Madena? Madano? Madeno? With the hot water beating down on his head, Johnny racked his brain, trying to remember the name, and then he thought,
Moreno.
Yeah, that was definitely it.
There were probably dozens of ways the cops could connect Gabriela to Carlos. Carlos had sworn to Johnny that Gabriela didn’t know anything about Johnny, that she didn’t even know his name, but what if Carlos had been bullshitting just to get Johnny to go along with the robbery? Was Johnny supposed to take Carlos’s word for it now, when he’d been wrong about the house being empty tonight, when Johnny’s ass, literally, was on the line? And if Gabriela did know about Johnny, what was to stop her from ratting him out to the cops, making some kind of deal with them?
Johnny got out of the shower and, with a towel around his waist, called 411 and got the address of Gabriela Moreno in Jackson Heights. That was easy. He put on his usual outfit, the Johnny Long uniform— dark jeans, skintight black tee, worn black leather jacket— tucked his piece under his jeans, safety on— didn’t want to blow his dick off; what would he do without it?— and was out the door.
The sun was starting to rise when Johnny stood on the subway platform, waiting for an F train. To get to Jackson Heights in Queens, he had to change trains twice in the city. It would’ve been faster to steal a car or take a livery cab, but as always Johnny played the percentages. Getting busted for grand theft auto or having a cabdriver finger him in the courtroom would have been the stupidest ways to go down. He figured he had a little time to play with anyway. The cops would have to ID Carlos, figure out exactly who he was, then make the connection to Gabriela. Johnny had told Carlos to be careful, not to talk to Gabriela on his cell, et cetera, so hopefully the guy had listened.
Johnny got out at Eighty- second Street in Jackson Heights. He had Gabriela’s address, but he had no idea how to get there. He had GPS on his phone, but he knew the cops could trace that shit. So he asked a guy outside the station for directions. The guy— he was old with very thick glasses, so Johnny thought he would have a hard time ID- ing him later— told Johnny where to go. It was farther than he’d thought, sounded like it would be a ten- minute walk at least. After walking for about twenty minutes Johnny knew something was wrong. He asked a teenager, a black kid on his way to school, for directions, and the kid kind of laughed and told Johnny he’d walked way out of the way. Johnny had to jog back about ten blocks and ask somebody else for directions before he finally found Gabriela’s apartment building.
It was past seven thirty— about five hours since the robbery. The cops, if they’d moved fast, could’ve already gotten to her. A good sign: Johnny looked around and didn’t see any police cars, marked or unmarked.
Unmarked,
that always cracked Johnny up. The cops always thought they were so undercover in their unmarked cars; meanwhile the unmarked cars were always black Impalas or Chargers that screamed “cop.” If they wanted to be unmarked, why didn’t they drive beat- up Chevys with Puerto Rican flags all over them? Sometimes Johnny thought cops had to be the biggest bunch of idiots in the world.
Johnny pressed the apartment with g. moreno on it— didn’t anybody ever tell her not to put her name on the buzzer?— and when she answered he said, “Police,” and she let him right up.
On the stairwell he stopped and attached the sound suppressor to the end of the barrel, then put the gun back in his inside jacket pocket and continued up to her apartment. He rang the bell, and she answered, looking scared, like she thought she was about to get busted. Well, she was about to get busted, just not the way she thought.
Johnny was surprised, though; she was actually a really good- looking woman. Yeah, overweight, but she had a pretty South American look and big light brown eyes. How had Carlos gotten a woman this hot?
“You Gabriela?” Johnny asked.
She nodded, and he shot her in the face. She fell back a little, then crumpled onto the floor, the blood puddle spreading around her mouth. He checked to make sure none of her blood was on him, and then he stood back and put a couple into her chest to make sure she was gone for good.
He took a quick look around, spotted her pocketbook. He took twentythree dollars, then tossed the pocketbook onto the floor and got the hell out of there.
Heading back toward the city on the 7 train— it was crowded with com muters— Johnny stood at the end of the car, facing his reflection in the door, replaying the shootings. He thought it had all gone pretty well. He didn’t think he’d been seen entering or leaving, and he’d been careful not to leave any evidence behind. He knew that because of Gabriela’s job the cops would try to make a connection between her shooting and the shooting and robbery in Forest Hills, but he didn’t see any way the police could get to him. There was no way that Gabriela and Carlos would’ve talked about the robbery with anybody else, and hopefully the purse on the floor would be enough to throw the stupid cops off.
It felt so good to finally be able to relax. Johnny had been on edge pretty much nonstop since meeting Carlos in Forest Hills, and he was looking forward to getting back to Brooklyn, maybe stopping at a diner for a big breakfast, and then getting into bed and sleeping for as long as possible.
But then, when he was switching for the F train at Thirty- fourth Street, he got all tensed up again, thinking,
What if Carlos is still alive
? Maybe Carlos was in a hospital, hooked up to machines, and the police were questioning him right now. Johnny didn’t think Carlos would talk to the cops— St. John’s brothers didn’t rat each other out— but then again you never know what a guy will do when the cops start hanging twenty- five to life over his ass.
In Brooklyn, Johnny realized he had lost his appetite and decided to skip the diner and head straight home. He turned on the TV to the local news station, and there it was, the top story, the robbery and shooting in Forest Hills. The reporter said Carlos Sanchez had been shot and killed by the owner of the house.
“Thank fucking God,” Johnny said, and he leaned back on his sofa and relaxed again.
He was totally in the clear. There was no way the cops would ever catch on to him. All he had to do was lie low for a while and everything would be okay.
On the TV, they were showing the guy, Dr. Adam Bloom. Johnny thought,
Doctor? What kind of doctor is he?
Johnny hated the way the guy was acting all smug and proud of himself, talking about how he did the right thing shooting Carlos, saying, “I’d do it all over again” and “I think anybody in my position would’ve done what I did.” Man, Johnny wished he’d just shot the guy last night, blown him away.
The report ended, and Johnny shut off the TV and got into bed. He tried to fall asleep, but he kept thinking about the time when he was fifteen years old and these gangbangers were kicking the shit out of him in a schoolyard and everybody was standing around letting it happen, except Carlos. He came right over, pulled a blade, put it up to the biggest guy’s face, and said, “Mess with my boy, you miss with this.” It wasn’t the only time Carlos had saved Johnny’s ass from a beating— Johnny might not’ve survived being a teenager if it wasn’t for Carlos. So now it just didn’t seem right that Carlos was going into a box in the ground, probably in Potter’s Field, where the city buried people who had no families, and that cocky bastard, Dr. Bloom, got to go on living with his happy family in his big, fancy house.