'And do what?'
'You send a message.'
'What's the message?'
'You don't say anything. You terrorize.'
'Who's gonna be in the car. Guys have guns?'
'No, no, it's a couple, three Mexicans. No guns. Nothing to worry about.'
'I'm terrorizing Mexicans?'
'We want them very scared. We want them to never go back to this business again. We want the message sent that they better stop what they are doing immediately.'
'But you don't want me to talk to them?'
'No-the actual message will be sent another way. All you do is terrorize.'
'You care how I do it?'
'No.'
'You want creative terrorism?'
'I don't care what kind of fucking terrorism it is, so long as nobody is left around to talk about it.'
'You want no talking afterward.'
'Yes. We want a long period of silence. Like forever. But it can't look like a hit. No guns.'
'You want these people dead.'
'We want endless silence.'
'Fuck you and your mystery bullshit. I want endless gas station profits, let's be very clear about that. And speaking of terrorism, you sure these aren't some kind of Islamic motherfuckers? I don't want to start messing around with that shit, we got all kinds of funky little mosques all over Brooklyn now, you never know where these guys are. I heard those guys are building bombs.'
'Naw, it's just a couple of Mexicans in service uniforms. Don't say anything, just scare them to death. Send a message to their whole organization.'
So he did. He had Richie ready with an old beater tanker with stolen plates and all the business lettering scraped off. The truck barely drove anymore and he needed to get rid of it anyway. They'd switched around a watery tankload from Queens. Richie had been told to strain the load, get out all the pieces of paper, tampons, anything that could identify it. Pure shit, Vic had told him, I want nothing but pure shit. Then Vic had positioned his pickup truck at Sixth Avenue and Forty-eighth Street in Manhattan, gotten the call that the Toyota two-door with Georgia license plate beginning with H7M had pulled down Fifth Avenue at Fifty-second. Victor had eased over to Fifth along Forty-eighth and looked to his left, north up Fifth Avenue. All he could see were sets of headlights, but the hour was so late that they were irregular, the traffic down the avenue running light. No one was behind him so he sat at the green light, waiting for the downtown traffic on Fifth to get caught by the red light, which it did. Then he spotted the Toyota two-door. Piece of cake. He pulled out as it passed, ignoring the red light. He'd followed it downtown, then east on Canal Street, over the Manhattan Bridge, looping around to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, onto the Gowanus Expressway toward Bay Ridge, then the Belt Parkway through Bath Beach, Gravesend, Sheepshead Bay. The car stayed in the right lane, was being driven both cautiously and inexpertly, the speed varying. He hung back most of the time, then blew past to have a look. The car had smoked glass, tough to see in. He thought he saw two, maybe three figures, though, caught a tail of music out the top of the window. He eased off, let the Toyota pass him, let a car get between them, then moved up again and called Richie on the cell. Richie had the truck ready, knew how to get to the lot. And then-well, Victor remembered what happened next. Who wouldn't? The figures inside the car, flailing at the glass. Too bad that they were girls. That was unexpected. Ears should have told him but had been smart not to. Because Vic wouldn't have taken the job. But there it was, a done thing. They'd driven the old truck out to Riverhead that same night, dumped the rest of the load in the morning, then driven it into Queens, taken off the stolen plates, and sold it to a scrap dealer for $400. Dirt cheap, no questions asked. The dealer wanted the truck for the tank, and the rest of it went to a yard. That truck was gone, forever, chewed to pellets and sent in a hopper by rail to Pennsylvania for recycling.
But Victor had a bad feeling. The strange phone call telling him that the caller knew what he did. The also very strange phone call for Richie from 'his cousin.' Richie had never mentioned a cousin! The way Richie had been acting, like he knew something was up. The way some of the Mexican workers looked at Vic. He didn't like it. He got the feeling there was a problem.
But the worst thing was the light in the bedroom last night. He was right about that, too. Somebody had been in the house. Cleaning up with Clorox, fucking around with the vacuum cleaner. After he left with Sharon and before he came back. He could smell the Clorox. He'd gone over everything carefully before putting Richie in the bag. Found the basement door cut open. That was the clincher. Somebody had been there, checking Richie out, doing something no good, knew about what had happened.
Which is what Vic wanted to talk about with Ears now, in a general way. The baseball-field bleachers were the best place to meet again. In the open air. Safe, low-key. So he'd put in the call that morning, and now Ears appeared at the edge of the grass, shielded his eyes, and shambled slowly toward the bleachers. A big man with big ears and hands and knees. A gut that exploded. Fat-bango, your stomach is huge. The kielbasy and pasta and beer and steaks and clams marinara sloshing around in there like his stomach was a washing machine, with a little porthole window like Victor's mother's machine used to have. He'd put a cat in there once as a kid, and when it was dead, he cut off the head and slipped it into a kid's lunch box at school. Nice. You used to be a nice boy, his mother had said, but they both knew she was lying. I was never nice, Vic reflected, I never had the chance.
Now Ears climbed the bleacher steps.
'Hey.'
'Fucking knees,' said Ears, sitting down. 'Since when do I come to you?'
'Since I asked.'
'Let's say we ran into one another.'
'You can say anything you like.'
'What's the problem, why the attitude? I know I got to pay you tonight.'
'Someone's on to me, Ears.'
'Who?'
'Don't know. Your guy?' said Victor.
'Not my guy. If it was my guy, you'd be dead by now.'
'Thanks a fucking lot.'
'Those girls actually died.'
'I guess they did,' Victor said.
'But just two Mexican girls.'
'You seen Richie around?' asked Victor. 'He missed work.'
'Nope.'
'So I think whoever set this thing up is, like, getting anxious about it. Afraid it's going to come back to them.'
Ears shrugged. 'You think that, why?'
'Like I said, somebody is on to it.'
'What's that got to do with your dear old friend Ears?'
'I want you to tell me who set this up.'
'Originally? I don't know. It came down from above. The moon, the stars.'
Victor stared at him. 'Who spoke to you, Ears?'
'You know I don't have to answer that.'
'I got my theories.'
Ears shrugged.
'Some guy is hunting me. How did he find me? Somebody is setting me up. Maybe he wants my gas station for himself, you know what I'm saying?'
'Hey, Victor, this is sounding, what, a little wacko, you know?'
Victor sat still, not answering. Maybe Ears knew something, maybe he didn't. Somebody was nosing around. Not a cop, but someone else. Somebody working for somebody. Somebody you never heard of, Victor, which is exactly what you always were afraid of. Seemed to know his way around. Not good. Victor didn't like it. He had a
