Wiseguys: Blast From the Past (6 page)

A group of people crossed the street in front of the van. Most of them were the kind of party people Tony would have expected. Three of them weren't.

"Think Sewell bought our story?" Tony asked.

"What we told him?" Carter asked.

"Or what he's been told."

Tony watched the three guys. All were in their mid to late thirties, all trying very hard to blend in but not doing that great of a job. It was like watching a panther at the zoo trying to blend in with a bunch of flamingos.

"Bess sticks to what she said, then yeah, the sheriff don't have a choice," Carter said. "Unless he comes up with something on his own, and not something from Frick and Frack back there."

The Munroe brothers didn't strike Tony as the most reliable witnesses, but he wouldn't make the mistake of underestimating the sheriff. Clifford Sewell was far from a local yokel just barely doing his job. He knew Carter and Tony were more than they appeared, he just couldn't prove it. Both of them had been vigilant about keeping their noses clean. This was the first time they'd been compelled to do something that wasn't strictly legal. Tony hoped that the fact they actually rescued Bess would go a long ways toward making the sheriff focus his attention elsewhere, like on the idiots who kidnapped her.

The three men had reached the sidewalk on the other side of the street. The one Tony pegged as the leader moved with a quiet kind of menace. He had dark hair that would have been slicked straight back from his forehead in Jersey, but here he'd parted it neatly on the side with just an attempt to comb it away from his face. He was clean shaven, his dark slacks pressed, and the silk tee-shirt he wore under his sports jacket was just a cut above high-class tourist. He didn't look directly at the van, but Tony was pretty sure the guy had seen them just the same.

More importantly, Tony had seen him.

The light turned green, and Carter made a left turn. They were about a half mile from their house. After a block, they left the bars and lounges of the main drag behind. Houses took the place of stores, most of them single family homes more than fifty years old. Thirty foot, forty foot pines crowded front yards strewn with bicycles and swing sets and abandoned dolls and soccer balls. The cars here had seen better days, just like the old guy sitting in a wife beater and shorts on his front porch, illuminated only by the pale light from a television in his living room. Ten years ago the old guy and the cars and even the houses would have been something to see.

"They did it, didn't they?" Carter said. It wasn't really a question.

Tony looked at him.

"Those guys," Carter said. "They're the assholes who busted the window."

Tony didn't need to answer, but he said yeah anyway.

Earlier in the year, the Munroe brothers had thrown a rock through the front window of the deli. At the time, Tony didn't know it was them. He'd had only seen the back end of a pickup truck speeding away and caught a part of the license plate number. He'd recognized the truck parked in the Munroe's driveway.

"You shoulda let me take care of them back then," Carter said. "Would've saved everyone the trouble this time around."

Carter had wanted to bust heads when their window had been broken. He'd wanted to treat the busted window like he would have any other insult against the family, which meant he wanted to take care of things the way Uncle Sid used to have him take care of things. Tony had said no. They weren't the same people here that they'd been back in Jersey, and besides, the busted window had been personal, not business. It had been a hate crime done by cowards. Carter had let the subject drop.

Then the Munroe brothers had decided to up the ante.

The minute Tony had figured out who'd taken Bess, he'd made a decision to do whatever it took to get her back alive and unhurt. It hadn't been guts alone that made him take on a guy with a shotgun; it had been guilt. Bess had been kidnapped because of them. Because of who they were together.

Tony leaned his head back, more tired than he could remember being in a long time. "It wouldn't have changed anything," he said. "If you'd taken care of them back then, we'd still be right here today."

"What the fuck are you talking about?"

"You bust their heads then, they still would have done something stupid, they just would have done it sooner. You saw that guy I shot. If he could have got up out of his chair, he would have tried to ram that shotgun down my throat."

"My old man didn't teach me much, but he did teach me this. Some guys you gotta beat quick and beat hard so they don't get up again. You don't, and they think they're invincible." Carter punctuated his words by thumping a fist on the steering wheel. "You don't bust their heads so bad they can't remember who they are, then they go and do stupid stuff like kidnap an old lady because they think nobody'll do anything about it."

"I'm telling you, it wouldn't have changed anything, not unless you killed them, then you'd be in jail," Tony said. "That's never gonna happen, not if I have anything to say about it."

They drove the next block in silence. Tony was right, but Carter was right, too. The Munroe brothers would be trouble again -- not for a while, not until they healed up and made bail, if they could make bail -- but they'd be trouble. Them or somebody like them.

"We did what we did," Tony said. "What matters now is we don't let it happen again."

"So we bust heads next time?"

Tony looked out at the quiet neighborhood. It wasn't much different than any other run down neighborhood, full of reminders of the good old days that maybe weren't that good to begin with. Tony and Carter drove down this street every day on the way to the deli. Tony was used to these streets, just like he was used to the old man sitting on the dark front porch in his wife beater. He was used to Norman and Bess and Julie, who worked for them to help support her mom.

Life was good here, but it wasn't good enough to risk their freedom or the safety of any of their friends.

"Next time," Tony said. "We move on."

They didn't make love that night.

It was the first night they hadn't made love since they'd been in Idaho. Tony wanted to, but Carter insisted Tony needed sleep more than sex. Tony was too tired and too sore to argue.

The sheriff had confiscated Tony's gun. Tony had expected worse. Carter hadn't exactly bought any of their arsenal at Norman's sporting goods store. Instead of arresting him for possession of an unregistered firearm, the sheriff had told Tony it was strike one and to keep his nose clean. Tony figured if they hadn't rescued Bess, he would have been spending the night in jail.

Not that the loss of one gun mattered all that much. Carter had procured enough weapons for a small army. Tony had a different handgun within easy reaching distance on his night stand. He dry swallowed two aspirin instead of taking the pain pills the E.R. doctor gave him. He didn't want his head muddled; he just wanted to take the edge off the pain.

He closed his eyes and tried to float away, but sleep wouldn't come. The bed was too empty without Carter's comforting bulk, and the emptiness had an unsettling feel to it. The same night the deli's window had been busted, Tony and Carter had vowed to each other that they'd always have the other's back. It was as close as the two of them would ever come to getting married, and Tony was good with that. But tonight he'd felt a chill that he didn't think was entirely in his head.

Carter didn't like sitting back and waiting. He didn't like letting assholes get away with the kind of shit the Munroes had back when they'd busted the window. He probably didn't like that Tony hadn't told him who the Munroes were when he'd first figured it out back at the farmhouse. But if Tony had, Carter might have killed both of the brothers instead of just breaking the one's nose. If that had happened, no matter what Bess told the sheriff, they'd probably both be spending the night in jail.

Finesse, that's what Uncle Sid had taught Tony. "Guys like Carter, they're just muscle. No brains. You gotta be the brains, and to be the brains, you gotta think ahead. Don't let nobody disrespect you, but don't you go disrespecting yourself by acting stupid."

Of course, as far as Uncle Sid was concerned, Tony letting Carter fuck him up the ass wouldn't exactly be a sign of proper respect, either. But Tony had news for Uncle Sid. Getting fucked up the ass by Carter was the ultimate sign of respect. And love.

And he fucking missed it.

Tony shifted on the bed and winced at the twinge of pain in his side. He had to think of something else or he'd end up with a hard on the size of Detroit. The problem was, every time he shut his eyes, he kept seeing their friends' faces.

Bess's face when Carter kicked in the door, her eyes wide and round, and a knife at her throat.

Norman's face at the hospital, tears brimming in his eyes as he held Bess' hand while the doctor patched up the cut on her neck. It hadn't been a bad cut, no stitches required, but Norman had been more scared for Bess than he'd been for himself during the robbery.

And the worst thing -- Norman thanking Tony and Carter over and over again for bringing his girl back safe.

The two of them had never had to deal with something like that back in Jersey. Wiseguys didn't go after wives. They didn't go after girlfriends or daughters or the women who ran their own businesses and served whoever frequented their place, no matter what family they belonged to. Sure, when turf wars got out of control, innocents sometimes got caught in the crossfire, but nobody snatched women or kids to use as bargaining chips. By the time Bess and Norman finally left the hospital, Tony felt like he needed to either punch someone or explode. Carter probably felt worse.

After he'd spent an hour trying unsuccessfully to get some sleep, Tony finally gave in and got up. A nice, steady pounding had taken up residence inside his skull. He needed Carter, even if it was just to be in the same room with him. Tony took the handgun and padded down the hall on bare feet toward the living room.

"You're early," Carter said, his voice a low rumble. He was in the same chair as the night before, a solid mass of dangerous, implacable menace in their dark living room.

"Couldn't sleep." Tony glanced out the front window, half expecting to see the dark-haired guy from the crosswalk hiding in the shadows across the street, but the street was empty and quiet.

"Need something?"

A clear conscience. Funny thing for a wiseguy to wish for.

"We kidding ourselves about fitting in here?" Tony asked.

Carter took his eyes off the front window for a split second. "Today was nothing. We been through worse."

"Not here."

The first day they'd been here, when they'd stopped the robbery in Norman's store, Carter had been shot. They'd been lucky, the bullet had just grazed him. They'd been luckier today, and that had been against a couple of hicks who only hated them because they didn't hide the fact they were a couple.

"They took Bess because she's our friend," Tony said. "Is Julie gonna be next?"

"That's gonna happen anywhere we go. We could be in the gay capital of the world and somebody's gonna take a swing at us just to prove they're tough guys. That's been happening to me my whole life. The only way to deal is to stand your ground."

Carter was looking back out the window again, but his voice had a hard edge that Tony didn't think was entirely directed at the homophobes of the world. The same chill he'd felt in his empty bed had infiltrated the room.

"You mad at me?" Tony asked. "Because I said we'd move on?"

Carter took a minute before he answered. "You and me, we're tight," he said finally. "My arms are the ones gonna hold you at night, and I'll stand by you 'til the day I die, you know that, but I don't like to run."

"We ran away from Jersey."

"We stayed there, we're dead men."

"We might be dead men here, too."

Outside in the night a dog barked, a high
yipyipyip
. Tony shifted away from the window, and Carter tensed. From where he stood, Tony could still see the street, silvery and quiet in the faint light of the streetlights. After a few moments, a cat streaked out from beneath a Toyota parked across the street. Tony let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.

"Why we even talking about this?" Carter said. "How come you're thinking about running from guys like those idiots that took Bess when we're sitting here waiting for guys from back home to make their move? If we're gonna run, why ain't we running?"

It was an honest question. Tony wished he had a straightforward reason.

"All I know is it would be the wrong thing to do," he said. "We got a life here that has nothing to do with what went down in Jersey, and I'm not about to give that up because somebody got sent out here to take us down when we were minding our own business. Guys like the Munroes, that's different. That's because of who we are, in this life, not what we were." He took his gaze off the street long enough to glance at Carter. "There's no fighting that. I don't want anybody we care about hurt because of who we are now."

A red dot bloomed on Carter's chest a split second before Tony caught movement in the shadows out of the corner of his eye.

"Move!" he yelled at Carter, even as he ducked down beneath the window.

Carter dove out of the chair the same instant a bullet hole blossomed in the window with the sound of breaking glass.

The bullet thumped into the chair just over Carter's shoulder. Two more followed in quick succession. The bullet holes in the living room window formed a nice, neat, circular pattern just about the size of a man's heart. The shooter was good.

Tony's gun didn't have a suppressor. Neither did Carter's. The guy shooting at them did. He also had to have night vision gear. No way could he have seen inside the house otherwise, and that was no lucky shot.

"How many?" Carter asked.

Tony could just barely make out where Carter was hunched on the floor, out of sight of the guy with the gun. He didn't look like he'd been hit, and he didn't sound like he was in pain.