Now, a much older man, he smiled again at the memory.
He opened his eyes and glanced around. He liked this Mercedes. It was a comfortable car, damn near the top of the line, and probably three years old. Cruz hated new cars. The new car smell made him sick to his stomach. This car was perfect. It didn’t smell like anything and had that kind of smooth ride where the bumps in the road were like a rumor you had heard years ago. You couldn’t hear the outside at all.
Quiet as a tomb.
The car was cruising the highways somewhere in New England. It didn’t matter where right now. They had passed Hartford a little while back. The kids up front were supposed to wake him up when they entered Maine. From behind his shades, he noticed the color on the trees along the highway – reds, yellows, orange.
Cruz was tired. He had flown in from New Orleans on about two hours sleep. At La Guardia, he bought a small tin of Vivarin caffeine pills, crushed two up, and snorted them for breakfast. The limo – a big Lincoln Town Car – snatched him at the airport and whisked him straight into the city. The driver – an old Polack or Russian – gave him his next gun, his next Glock. It came in a handsome padded traveling case that Cruz threw into a garbage can before they even left the airport. Cruz didn’t care about presentation – he planned to carry the gun, loaded, ready to pop.
The driver also gave him the dossier for this job, sealed for Cruz’s eyes only. The same dossier was now at Cruz’s feet. He read it while the limo took him across the Tri-Borough Bridge into Manhattan, then down the FDR Drive. He would read it again before they got to Portland. Gave him everything he needed to know about this guy Smoke Dugan, as well as the two young guys he would ride along with on this trip.
The meeting in Manhattan had been short and sweet. It was at a coffee shop on Fifth Avenue in Greenwich Village, just up from the park. They moved around all the time, staying one step ahead of the bugs. Big Vito and Mr. C.
Mr. C never spoke. Just in case the bugs were already in place. After a lifetime on the outside, he was not going to die in prison. He sat there wrapped in a long wool coat, his thin hair slicked back, his face old and lined and unshaven, his eyes bright, sharp and aware. At all times, he held an unlit Havana in his liver-spotted and palsied hand. The world had changed and now cigars were bad for you. Mr. C would regard that cigar at the end of his fingers and sigh. Sometimes he nodded at something that was said. Sometimes he managed a ghost of a smile.
“You gonna eat?” Big Vito said. In person, his voice sounded like gravel pouring from the back of a dump truck. His nose was wide and flat. It had been broken so many times, it looked like a lump of mashed potatoes. Above it, his eyes were like twin lasers. His eyebrows were gray. His hair was gray shot through with white.
Fantastic Four, getting old himself. Cruz imagined those big stone hands choking the life out of someone. The legend was that’s how Big Vito used to do it to you. Strangle you with his bare hands.
“I don’t know. How’s the food?”
“Would we be here if it was bad? Come on, Cruz. You gotta eat. Keep up your strength.” He looked to Mr. C for confirmation. Mr. C nodded his agreement.
“All right, I’ll eat.”
Vito waved over the skirt.
Cruz looked at the menu. He spoke in a quiet voice. “Three eggs, scrambled. With Swiss cheese. Sausage. Corned beef hash. Black coffee.”
“That’s what you’re gonna eat?”
“What’d you think, a fruit cup?”
“Nah, it’s just, you know. They got healthier items. Look. Egg whites. Turkey bacon. Anything you want.”
Cruz put the menu down. “I think I’ll stick with what I said.”
The girl went away.
“We read the paper today,” Vito went on without preamble. “You know, got the box scores. Checked everything out.”
“Yeah? What do you think?”
“Good. We’re happy the home team won.”
Mr. C. nodded, licked his lips, gave his cigar a long look.
“Very pleased,” Vito said.
“Good,” Cruz said. “I want everybody to be happy.”
“Everybody is.”
There was a pause. “You looked at what we left you? The driver gave it to you?”
“Yeah. Not sure I get it, but… ”
“What’s to get? It’s in plain English, right?”
“Oh yeah, that’s not it. It just seems like, maybe a little lightweight. Retrieval isn’t my thing. I’m usually in, how do you want to call it, disposal.”
“It ain’t lightweight. You let us worry about the thinking end of it. You just make it happen.” Vito wrote something on a napkin and passed it across to Cruz. 63 and Lex. Black Mercedes. Massachusetts plates.
“I’ll make it happen,” Cruz said.
The girl was coming with the food. The two men got up to leave. “Enjoy your breakfast.”
“You guys ain’t gonna stay?”
“You know, we got business. Never ends.”
Cruz looked at the breakfast. It made his stomach turn.
Mr. C eyed him closely.
“Hey Cruz,” Vito said. “How ya feeling?”
“All right.”
“You know, because you look like shit. We worry about you. Maybe you need some time away, like down in the islands. Maybe when things slow down a little.”
“Yeah,” Cruz said. “That sounds good.” He dug into the food.
Now, in the Mercedes, he watched the two young men up front with some interest.
The dossier at his feet included information about both these two kids. The driver was a big muscle guy, wore a leather cap and black sunglasses. The other one was skinny and missing three fingers on his right hand. Jesus, who were they hiring nowadays? Cruz was wary of the whole thing. He had worked on his own for years, and now they gave him this babysitting job, with these kids to drive him. He didn’t like it.
The one in the passenger seat was Ray “Fingers” Pachonka. He had lost those fingers playing with explosives. Lucky to be alive after a fuck-up like that.
The driver was Roland Moss. Late twentysomething. Former bouncer, former legbreaker. Barely two years in the murder business, and he had been in on a dozen hits.
Roland is strong as an ox. He likes to hurt people. Likes to make them talk.
That’s what the dossier said.
Cruz watched them carefully, mostly because he didn’t trust them. Cruz had learned early on that it was best not to trust anybody, especially young men who believed themselves to be on the rise. He had learned this from himself.
He listened in to their conversation for a moment.
“So they sent us to do this jigaboo one time,” the skinny one, Fingers, said. He spoke rapid fire, like a machine gun, or the heartbeat of a rabbit. Bippity, bippity, bippity. “The guy had ripped somebody off. I don’t remember the details. Different job, same bullshit. Right?”
“Yeah,” said the big one, Roland Moss. The guy could be a pro wrestler, Cruz thought. His broad shoulders extended past the edges of his bucket seat. His neck was a trunk line, his head sitting perched on top like a pomegranate. The muscles in his neck stood out and flexed like cables.
“They sent us to Gary fucking Indiana, just outside Chicago.” Fingers paused, seemingly for effect. “I mean we fucking drove out there. Me and Sticks. You know Sticks? Little guy, smokes a lot. Pissed off, always wants to cut somebody. Somebody doesn’t signal in the car ahead of him, he wants to cut the guy. You know him, right?”
Moss nodded. He spoke slowly, like syrup pouring from a bottle. “Yeah, I know him. Did a couple jobs with him. Saw him cut a man’s eyes out once.” He sounded like he was giving it a taste of the South. The dossier said he
