The barrel of the Uzi was inches from his face, and he could feel its heat, see little tendrils of smoke curling up from the flat, staring eye.
The gunner loomed above him like a giant in the colored, swirling smoke, bending over and speaking softly, barely loud enough for Vargas to make out his words.
'I'm back. Somebody knows why. Spread the word.'
Something dropped onto Vargas's chest, making him flinch and close his eyes, ready for death, but when he opened them a moment later, he was all alone.
Alone with the dead.
Straining, fighting off the pain from his shoulder, he craned his neck and glanced down, squinting at the object glittering on his bloodstained shirtfront, trying to make recognition through the haze that fogged his mind.
And in an instant Vargas knew precisely what it was, although he could not hope to grasp its meaning.
The object on his chest was a marksman's medal.
LeRoy Withers — alias Mustaffa ben-Keladi — lounged behind a battered desk in his back-room office of the Club Uhuru. He studied the briefcase on his desk top as he cracked his knuckles nervously.
He was waiting for a man that he had never seen before to take the satchel off his hands... and to leave something else in return.
The Club Uhuru was closed and one of his men was positioned out front to meet the contact when he showed. Another gun was close by Withers, in the office — just in case.
A guy had to be careful these days, he mused, what with all that bad shit going down in Miami. It was getting so that businessmen could not conduct their deals without an escort any more. As a man with many deals in progress, he had much to fear.
The hit on Tommy Drake had been a shock, but Withers was used to rolling with the punches as they came. He learned that early, growing up on ghetto streets, and he had been an avid student of survival. There were new connections everywhere, and it had not taken long to find a new supplier.
Not long at all.
In fact the hit on Drake might wind up being good for business — at least for his own business. A resourceful man could move up quickly in a vacuum, and LeRoy had been considering for some time now that all that Cosa Nostra crap had outlived its usefulness. It might be time for a righteous brother to assert himself, kick some ass and bring in the respect he had deserved for so damned long.
Of course, he would have to show a little style along the way. A little steel and muscle, if it came to that.
And LeRoy Withers knew that he was equal to the task.
A sharp knock sounded on the office door. Beside him, LeRoy's man slid a hand inside his velvet jacket, finding iron beneath his arm. Satisfied, Withers kicked back in his swivel chair.
'In!'
The door swung open to admit a tall white dude, decked out in sharp expensive threads, aviator's shades and carrying a briefcase.
LeRoy grinned.
And the grin became a beaming smile as he thought about exactly what the white man would have inside that briefcase, bagged and ready for him. 'Snow' in the middle of summer, damned right.
'What is it, my man?'
'It's business,' the stranger replied, unsmiling, and Withers reflected once again that whites seemed not to have a sense of humor.
The new arrival placed his case on top of Withers's desk, then glanced around, found LeRoy's backup watching from the open office doorway with his hand braced on a hip, six inches from gun leather.
'You got what I need, man?' LeRoy asked him.
And LeRoy noticed for the first time since the dude entered the office, he smiled — a chilling, icy grimace,
'Right here,' he replied.
The briefcase latches sounded like explosive charges shattering the stillness of the room. The lid was up, the dude was reaching inside — and LeRoy craned his neck, anxious for a look at the cocaine that he had bargained for by phone but had not sampled yet.
Perhaps a couple of snorts, just to make certain it was good enough for his high-priced clientele.
But no white powder, no plastic bag emerged from the briefcase. Instead, the man was brandishing a long silver handgun, looking better than a foot long as it hung there, a yard from LeRoy's face. He gaped at it for what seemed like a lifetime, but in fact mere seconds passed before the still life burst into explosive action.
The tall stranger swiveled, reaching out with his blaster and almost touching the muzzle to the nearest gunner's cheek before he pulled the trigger. A thunderous explosion echoed through the Club Uhuru, and the gunner's face and head disintegrated, dispatching tiny fragments all over the room. His headless body tumbled backward, hitting the floor with a resounding thud.
Beyond the door, LeRoy's other backup gun was already digging for hardware, backpedaling and looking for cover. The cannon roared again, lifting him off his feet, the force of one heavy round impacting on his chest, hurling him back several yards. He touched down by the empty bar with a single twitch before he came to final rest.
LeRoy was wearing a pistol in his belt, with another in the desk drawer for emergencies like this. Except there had never been such an incident, and in the panic of the moment he could think of only one thing.
Survival.
Clearly, drawing down on this bad-ass dude was certain suicide. And Withers was not feeling suicidal. Not in the least.
The cannon's muzzle was directly in his face now, looking larger than an oil drum at point-blank range. Withers half imagined he could crawl inside it if he tried, and hide there from the man who plainly meant to kill him.
But the gunner did not fire. Instead he fished around inside a pocket of his flashy jacket, coming out with something small and silver, which he dropped in the middle of LeRoy's cluttered desk top.
'Spread the word,' the man growled, his voice graveyard cold. 'I'm back. Somebody knows why.'
And LeRoy watched him retreat out of there with the satchel — LeRoy's goddamned satchel full of twenties and fifties — the blaster never wavering off its kill zone as he cleared the doorway, backing right across the club room on his way to the exit.
Withers kept his eyes riveted on that pistol until the dude was out of there and clear. He made no move to follow, never seriously considering going after him and trying to retrieve the cash.
LeRoy glanced around at the wasted bodies of his soldiers, then down at the spreading moisture in the crotch of his own maroon slacks.
Some damn fine mess, yeah. Hell! But he was alive, still kicking, and now his job would be to stay that way. His hand was shaking as he reached for the telephone and started dialing.
Spreading the word.
11
The ten-year-old Cadillac cruised slowly eastward along Eighth Avenue. The driver kept a careful eye on other motorists and the flow of erratic pedestrians around him, while his three companions took in every detail of the boulevard.
Eighth Avenue.
The locals called it
