beams dance between two-by-fours, listening to two men discuss their task as they went about it-installing wiring behind fresh drywall for a bug that would attempt to record incriminating conversations regarding a certain Carmine Delanotte.
“I heard Delanotte owns a dozen of these,” one of the men said.
“My brother-in-law’s in real estate,” said the other. “Says everything around here will be worth a fortune once they push the spics and the blacks out. Buy low, fix ’em up, sell high.”
“This wire’s a waste of time, you know? Delanotte’s too smart.”
“Maybe. But I heard they’re close to turning one of his lieutenants around.”
“Yeah, well. They try and turn a lot of ’em, but most don’t talk. They throw everything they’ve got at these guys-mindfucks, blackmail, even the occasional beatdown. The fucking guys don’t talk.”
“Must be one very strange job.”
“What?”
“Trying to make guys talk. Cracking hard cases. You can’t just beat the shit out of ’em, right? You got to be smoother than that, you know?”
“There are guys who know how to do it, though. Interrogators, specialists-they know how to make people open up.”
As the two men-FBI techs, presumably-continued talking, Geiger lay in the darkness and felt the birth of something. It was a weightless, free-floating thing, but it was potent enough to muster his instincts toward a direction and a course of action. He’d felt this bloom and pull once before; standing outside the dilapidated Harlem brownstone, an urge had risen up in him as if from a molecular level. He felt it this time, too, a kind of genetic calling, a sense as powerful and thoughtless as an avalanche destroying everything in its path.
3
Harry Boddicker stared up at the brightly lit, tensile webs of the Brooklyn Bridge, and then at a helicopter as it glided over the East River, humming in the indigo summer sky like a giant firefly.
He glanced back at the dark blue van parked beneath the FDR Drive. The Jones was in the back, gagged, tied, and taped up inside a metal trunk. He was one of Carmine’s bagmen. Fifteen minutes ago, when three of Carmine’s men had made the delivery, they had informed Harry that when they’d picked up the guy-they’d snatched him while he was screwing his girlfriend in her apartment-they’d had to put the hammer down hard. They’d given him two black eyes and maybe a broken nose and a couple of busted ribs.
Now Harry had to call Geiger. The last time they’d gotten a damaged Jones-a business manager from Providence-Geiger had gone on about necessary states, compromised origins, and diminished potential, his satin voice never rising or falling, and then called the job off. Because Carmine would be getting his usual discount, this gig was worth only twelve grand, but the thought of losing his share, three thousand dollars, went straight from Harry’s brain to his stomach and pumped a bitter bubble of gas up his esophagus. They hadn’t had a job in five days. He popped two more Pepcid Completes. Whatever they’d added to the chalky mix to make the old stuff “new and improved” didn’t seem to matter to his gut. It still roiled and grumbled as always.
He walked a little farther away from the van and jabbed at his cell phone. Geiger would pick up after the third ring. Not one or two, not four. Always three.
“What is it, Harry?” Geiger answered.
“About tonight. There’s an issue. Damaged goods.”
“Details, Harry.”
Harry sighed. “One eye’s swollen shut. Nose might be broken. Ribs.”
After a brief pause, Geiger said, “Change of location, Harry. Take him to the Bronx instead.”
“Right,” Harry said, his eyes closing with relief. Geiger was willing to take the job.
“And use propofol instead of Brevital. Two cc’s.”
“Right. Propofol. Two cc’s.”
When Harry called, Geiger was in his backyard doing one-armed push-ups: fifty with the left arm, fifty with the right, then forty, then thirty, the breeze drying the sweat on his naked body. The yard was a twenty-by-fifteen- foot green oasis in the midst of a dense urban sprawl of geometric concrete, brick, and asphalt. The patch of grass, backed by an oak bench and a modest Norway maple, was surrounded on three sides by a tall wooden fence that Geiger had built with over one hundred ten-foot vertical slats. The fence’s longest side, opposite the back of the house, ran east-west, and Geiger had cut the top of each slat to a specific length and then shaved or carved each board so that when viewed from the back stoop the entire span was a perfect, to-scale replica of the jagged skyline of the buildings looming directly behind it.
Earlier, Geiger had studied the Jones’s file and built a scenario in his head. John “Jackie Cats” Massimo-one of Carmine’s men and a hard case by any measure-was forty-two, heavyset but muscular, and comfortable with physical violence. In his younger days he’d been knifed in the chest and had taken a shotgun blast in the thigh. And he was a cat lover: he had six of them. But now Massimo was already in physical pain and might have impaired vision, so Geiger would have to rework everything-the session room, tactics, methodology. He didn’t even think of canceling the job, however, because he wouldn’t do that to Carmine.
Carmine had given Geiger his first job in IR, eleven years ago. The day after Geiger overheard the conversation between the FBI techs, he had gone to an Internet cafe and found a photo of Carmine Vincent Delanotte, reputed mob boss, as well as the address of his restaurant, La Bella Ristorante, in Little Italy. Geiger read several articles about Carmine and learned that he was something of a visionary. In the early 1980s, he had started buying run-down brownstones throughout the boroughs for practically nothing. Apparently he had grasped all the possibilities-the houses provided him with a legitimate front, laundering venues, and kickback contracts-and fifteen years later a flood of cash had started coming his way. One of the articles quoted a source at the FBI who claimed that lately Carmine had been making more money in real estate than in loan-sharking and gambling combined.
That evening, Geiger had walked into Carmine’s restaurant and handed the maitre d’ a sealed envelope.
“Give this letter to Mr. Delanotte,” Geiger said.
Perhaps Geiger’s manner had an immediate impact, or perhaps the maitre d’ often delivered envelopes to the owner; in any case, he took the letter without a word and walked away. Geiger picked out Carmine at a table in a corner with three other men. The gleam of his blue eyes and his silver-streaked hair flashed with every tilt of his head, as if he had an alternating current running through him.
The maitre d’ leaned down to his boss, whispered in his ear, and held out the letter. Carmine looked at the offering, then turned his gaze toward Geiger. The cool stare measured him, and Geiger saw a flat look of nonrecognition give rise to a glint of curiosity in the man’s wide, cerulean eyes. Carmine opened the envelope with a flourish of his polished thumbnail, took out the single sheet of paper, and read it. He folded the paper methodically, tore it in half, and then tore the letter a second and third time. He dropped the bits of paper into a porcelain cup on the table, lit a match, and set them on fire.
His lips moved and the words put bodies in motion. The maitre d’ stepped away, and Carmine’s three colleagues rose and stood behind him against a blood-red brocade wall. Carmine looked again at Geiger and raised two thick fingers; flicking them, he gave Geiger an imperial command to approach.
When Geiger was three feet away, Carmine pointed at him. Geiger halted. Carmine leaned to the burning paper and blew out the flames. Smoke rose in languid puffs from the cup, and Carmine waved some of it toward his face and took in a deep, sensuous breath. Then he looked up at Geiger.
“I’m not allowed to smoke anymore,” he said in a voice that rumbled with the echo of thousands of deeply drawn cigarettes. He shrugged ruefully and sat back. “Guys…” he said. The three sentinels strolled to the bar.
“Sit down,” said Carmine. Geiger slid into a chair and Carmine poured himself two inches of Chivas. He put the bottle down in front of Geiger.
“I don’t drink,” said Geiger.
Carmine raised his glass and took a small sip. “Three years and I still can’t get used to Chivas without a Lucky.” He put his glass down. “What do you make on the late shift? What do I pay you?”
