Viz shook his head. “Can’t tell, but it doesn’t make any difference. I’ll lose them once I get into Manhattan.” He looked over. “That’s where you want to go, right? After Hicks?”
“I’m thinking, maybe not. If we corner Hicks and then he runs to whoever hired him, they’ll be ready for us. I’m thinking we go after somebody who’s got nobody to run to.”
“And that means?”
“Shake whoever may be tailing us, and head north.”
CHAPTER 55
Why isn’t Strubb hiding out?” Viz wondered aloud as he pulled to the curb across the street and half a block away from the Jupiter Club at the edge of downtown Albany.
“Because if the police could’ve made him for the murder of Gilbert,” Gage said, “they would’ve already.”
Viz looked over at Gage. “I hope his apartment manager didn’t drop a dime on us and tell him we came looking for him.”
Gage stared ahead at the broken neon sign tacked to the brick facade of the bar, the J burned out and “upiter” flashing in red.
“He probably didn’t,” Gage said. “There’s too many people coming by looking for Strubb-probation officers and parole agents and cops-that he doesn’t bother anymore.”
Two leather-chapped men walked into the recessed entrance. Muted light flooded the shadow as they opened the door and was eclipsed as it swung closed behind them.
Opening the SUV door, Gage said, “I’ll go around to the back of the building just in case he tries to slip out that way.” He stepped down in the slush mounding up from the street and over the curb and then looked back into the cab. “On second thought, if you’re getting a raise, maybe you should be the one to chill your bones out here instead of me.”
“That’s fine with me. I’d rather do that than what you have in mind for me.” Viz smiled. “If he doesn’t come out of there in the next half hour, you’re gonna want me to go inside and dance with somebody.”
“Shoot,” Gage said, smiling back. “I was going to make that a surprise.”
Viz reached into his jacket and pulled out Hennessy’s SIM and memory card, then said, “I’ll try to do some work on these while we’re waiting.”
Gage closed the door, made his way down the sidewalk, turned left at a corner store, and then looped around to the alley. The far streetlight backlit two men smoking next to a dumpster by the rear door to the Jupiter Club. They stamped their feet as they smoked, their wool-capped heads clouded in gray swirls. Even in puff jackets they seemed too thin to be Strubb, and although wearing motorcycle boots, they seemed too short. One after the other, they flicked their cigarettes in high arcs like single streams of fireworks that exploded when they hit the rear wall of the building across the alley.
Just after the men reentered the bar, Gage angled to the other side, then worked his way along the trash cans and delivery trucks until he obtained a straight-on view of the back door through the muck-splattered passenger and driver’s windows of a cargo van.
A man came out alone, lit up, and then reached for his cell phone and made a call.
“Hey. It’s me… I’m out in the back. It’s dead as dead can be except for Eddie.” The man laughed. “He thinks he’s gonna hook up with Strubb and Pike, but there’s no fucking way that’s gonna happen… That’s what I told him.” The man laughed again. “Three-way Eddie will be going it alone tonight… No, his phone got turned off. You want to talk to him?… I’ll get him.”
The man opened the back door and yelled inside.
“Strubb. My buddy wants to talk to you.”
Strubb filled the doorway ten seconds later. He held a beer bottle in one hand and a pool cue in the other. He traded the cue for the phone and stepped outside.
“Who’s this?” Strubb asked, then listened for a few seconds. “Yeah, I’m kinda between jobs. The last one went sour so I’m not working with Davey no more. Guy’s an asshole. Stiffed me. He shows up here again, I’m gonna kick his butt back to NYC… Sure. What’s the gig?… Yeah. I can do that… I’m good. Only had one beer. Pick me up out front in ten minutes.”
Gage reached for his cell phone as soon as the door closed behind Strubb.
“He’ll be coming out in a couple of minutes,” Gage told Viz. “Waiting for someone to pick him up. Blue jacket. Jeans. Work boots. The voice recorder is cued up to the right spot. Come up on him from the east. Soon as you reach him, I’ll head in from the west.”
Gage worked his way back to the corner market and waited until Strubb appeared. He watched Viz step out of the SUV, and then stroll up the block and stop next to Strubb. Viz set himself so that Strubb’s back would be facing Gage as he walked up.
Ten feet away, Gage heard his own voice on the recorder:
No reason to get yourself kicked in the head for something I’ll find out anyway. Then Strubb’s.
Gilbert. Tony Gilbert. Works out of New York City. Strubb backed away from Viz. Then Gage’s voice again.
This is what you’re going to do. You’re going to tell Gilbert and his pals to stay away from me.
Strubb spun and took a step. He jerked to a stop when he spotted Gage, who grabbed his jacket front and took him down to the sidewalk. Viz locked down Strubb’s legs before he could start kicking, then Gage froze him with a wrist lock and they pulled him to his feet.
“Say anything and I’ll break your arm,” Gage said to Strubb, and then looked at his watch and said to Viz, “His pal will be here in a minute or two.”
Gage and Viz marched Strubb across the street and down the block to the SUV. Viz frisked him, then they waited in its shadow as a pickup truck pulled to a stop in front of the bar. It waited a minute, then the driver honked twice, then leaned on the horn for a long one. Finally the driver walked inside the bar. He came out thirty seconds later.
Gage pulled up on Strubb’s arm, a reminder.
The driver looked up and down the street, braced his hands on his waist, then kicked at the slush and climbed back into the cab of the truck and drove off.
Gage watched him fishtail around the corner, then pushed Strubb against a storefront.
Gage wasn’t too worried about traffic passing by. The storefronts along the blocks heading toward downtown were empty except for yellowing “Going Out of Business” signs and dusty counters. And the bungalows and apartments in the opposite direction were more boards than windows, more bare wood than paint, and more cracks than concrete covering the driveways. It was a neighborhood that commuters sped through during the day and in which night drivers feared stoplights that set them up for carjackers. It was also one in which curious residents had learned not to stay curious for long.
“Remember what you said to me last time?” Gage asked.
“Fucking asshole,” Strubb answered over his shoulder, his cheek pressed against the glass. “What did I say to you?”
“You said just stay cool. If everything checks out, we’ll be on our way in a couple of minutes. We’ll just call it no harm, no foul.”
“And I was pissing blood for a week.”
Gage pressed against Strubb’s ribs. Strubb winced.
“Good,” Gage said. “It’ll be easy to hit the same spot again.”
“Just tell me what you want.”
“I want to know who hired Anthony Gilbert.”
“How the fuck should I know? I told him what you said and he paid me off and we went our separate ways.”
“You went your separate ways all right, but you left Gilbert laying dead in a dumpster.”
Strubb rocked his face against the glass, trying to shake his head. “It wasn’t me. It was some guys from the bar. He was calling us fags and stuff and they went after him.”
