Marco to come out alone to see what’s in the trunk. I open the trunk, you act dopey and scared, I pop him right there. You get out, he goes in, we go inside and take care of the others.”
“They won’t come running when you shoot Marco?”
“Not with the right tool.” He opened his jacket. Sewn into the lining was a slim sheath from which the cross- hatched butt of a handgun showed. He turned so no one at the window-shutter place could see anything and eased out a slim long-barrelled gun with a silencer threaded into the barrel. “It’s a subsonic. 22,” he said. “With the suppressor on it, all you’ll hear is the dry-fire. You could cover the sound with a cough.”
“Do we have to go inside? Can’t we just drive away with him?”
“After I’ve shown myself? Haven’t you been listening? Geller, we have to do what we have to do and not make mistakes. One shred of evidence links it back to us, we’re both dead. Tits up in a field somewhere.”
“Why would Vito care? We’d be doing him a favour.”
“He’d still have to avenge Marco. For the family’s honour, and to keep people from thinking he did it.”
“What’s the third scenario?”
“Marco wants to come see what’s in the trunk but the others come too. In which case, I’ll bring them out and open the trunk. You act scared.”
“I won’t be acting.”
“I take you out of the trunk and walk you inside. Might have to kick you around again.”
“You enjoy that part, admit it.”
“Better me than Marco. As soon as we’re in the door, you get the rope off your hands and pull the Beretta and we shoot the shit out of anything that moves.”
“You’re going to get into a gunfight with that popgun?”
“Relax,” Dante Ryan said. He opened the other side of his jacket and there under his left arm was his Glock 20 in a breakaway shoulder rig. “If we go toe-to-toe with them, fuck the suppressor. I’m not going to care who hears what.”
We tucked the Beretta Cougar in my pants at the small of my back, a load in the chamber, the safety off. I climbed into the trunk. As Ryan closed it I told him to watch for speed bumps and potholes. “You hit one with this gun where it is, the crack in my ass will have company.”
The car pulled out of the lot, made two left turns and stopped again. The driver’s door opened and closed and footsteps receded into the distance. I was in virtual darkness. The trunk was uncomfortably hot. No, hell was uncomfortably hot. The trunk was baking me like a chicken. No air conditioning. Precious little air of any kind. The coarse carpet stung my face and neck where sweat was running freely. I tried to take my mind off the discomfort by visualizing the moment I would rip my wrists free of the rope, pull the gun out of my pants and point it at whoever was closest to me.
I tried not to visualize much after that.
Then the door to the building creaked open and banged closed. Footsteps approached. I tried to determine whether there was one person or more. It sounded like one, which likely meant Ryan hadn’t liked the odds and we were calling off our raid.
I thanked God silently-a knee-jerk reaction from my upbringing. Or maybe there are no atheists in car trunks.
When the trunk opened, light burst into the pitch-black space and blinded me for a moment. I squinted at the silhouette standing over me. There was no need to act scared as I was coming by it quite naturally. But there was definitely just the one man there, and as my eyes adjusted, I could tell it was Ryan. He held out a hand to help me out of the trunk.
“What?” I whispered.
“Scenario four,” he said and started back toward the office, his black loafers kicking up swirls of dust.
CHAPTER 36
Tommy Vetere was an indistinct man with pockmarked skin and hair the colour of wet cardboard. He hadn’t shaved in at least a few days and hadn’t been that careful the last time he did. His short-sleeved white polo shirt rode up on his paunch, showing more hair and gut than most visitors would likely want to see. There were two bullet holes in his chest a few inches apart and another in the middle of his forehead, black stippling around it from unburned gunpowder that had blasted straight out of the gun barrel into his skin. Two shots knocking him off his feet and onto his back, the third to make it official. The pool of blood around him was tacky near the outside edges. He’d been dead for hours.
Phil didn’t look any better. He was face down in the hallway that led from the main area to the back room, two bullet holes in his back and a certain kill shot where his neck met his spine.
We found Marco in the small room Ryan had mentioned. It was the size of a child’s bedroom with a single bed, a side table, a beer fridge and a television set on a wooden crate. Marco lay on his back, his right arm and hand held in the shake position by the cast around his fractured elbow. There was a hole in his chest, where his heart would have been if he’d had one. Another in his head, the same coup de grace Tommy had received, with visible tattooing around the wound. Marco had been asleep when he got it and I could see why. On the side table was an empty bottle of vodka, next to that a vial of Percocet. Same dose as mine. I tried to find it in my heart to feel sorry for Marco, shot down in his sleep without a chance to defend himself. After a few minutes I gave up and went to try it on Tommy and Phil.
Dante Ryan had a cigarette going. “For the smell,” he said. “They won’t mind if you don’t.” It was hot in the office and a nasty odour came from Tommy in particular, a combination of coppery blood and the contents of his bowels, which must have given way when he knew he would die.
At the centre of the room was a round table that could seat seven card players, covered with crusted Chinese food containers and plates, empty beer bottles and glasses, ashtrays, and bowls with chip and pretzel crumbs. There was a big-screen TV in one corner with a satellite receiver-handy for a bookie-and a couch and two recliners grouped around it. One corner of the room was set up as an actual workspace: desk, filing cabinets, three hooks in the wall on which sets of keys could be hung. One set was missing. There was also a large corkboard, where waybills, gas receipts and miscellaneous paperwork were thumbtacked.
“So Vito got to him first,” I said.
“Looks like.”
“You think he did the actual shooting?”
He shook his head. “Vito’s not your man of action. He’s a big mother, don’t get me wrong, but big like Herman Munster. Or the guy who was Raymond’s brother on TV, the cop with the sad eyes and the hanging jaw. A clumsy guy. Not much of an athlete or a fighter. You ask me, he hired it out.”
“What will his father do?”
“What can he do? The man can’t get out of bed. It’s Buffalo that Vito has to worry about. If he was their choice for boss, he’ll get a coronation. If not? Could be his funeral.”
“Who do you think they’d back?”
“Depends if they wanted a hand grenade or a puppet. But it’s decided now and maybe that’s best. What do they say? Nature hates a vacuum?”
“Abhors it.”
“Yeah, well, so does Buffalo.”
“Hey,” I said. “You think Vito brought in this Ricky the Clip for the job?”
“If this is his work,” Ryan said, “he might be better than I thought.”
We drove back to the airport to drop the Altima, then started a slow creep southward on the 427 in Ryan’s Dadmobile.
“What now?” I asked.
“Wait for the news about Marco to get out.”
“What about the contract on the Silvers? Does this give you leeway?”
“Short-term, sure. There’s confusion. A void. No communication from the top. No one should expect me to carry out a hit I might not get paid for.”
