The two men stood there and watched. It appeared as if Yoshiaki was making a neat pile of his clothes. The next moment he was gone.
Without any talking, Carlo and Brennan, each holding a gun in one hand and a flashlight in the other, made a mad dash toward the end of the pier. As they neared, both slowed, fearful it might be some sort of trick to lure them in close. At a hesitant walk, they moved ahead, holding their guns directed ahead at the ready.
Brennan heard the splashing first, and he yelled, “He’s in the water!” as he sprinted ahead, passing the tidy pile of clothes carefully placed on top of the pair of shoes. The shoes were oriented exactly parallel to the pier.
Brennan rushed to the very end of the pier. Yoshiaki could just be seen sloshing forward with an awkward head-out-of-the-water stroke, turning his face from side to side as he reached out with one hand and then the other. Brennan trained his flashlight beam on him as Carlo came up to Brennan’s side. Both men trained their automatics on Yoshiaki and rapidly emptied their magazines. As the sound of the last shot faded away, along with its echoes from the dark neighboring buildings and piers, Brennan and Carlo stared at the spot where moments earlier Yoshiaki had been desperately thrashing about while attempting to swim to Manhattan. Now, like the rest of the river, it was as still as a pool of crude oil, reflecting the peaceful Manhattan skyline.
First for five minutes, then for ten, and finally for fifteen, Brennan and Carlo kept their flashlights trained on the spot, hoping it was the end of the embarrassing affair. At one time there was a sudden rapid swirl at the spot, suggesting the presence of some large creature, giving both men a scare, but Yoshiaki did not loom up for a sudden, desperate lungful of air. It was clear he was a goner.
“We must have hit him,” Carlo said, breaking the silence.
“It seems that way. That was too close for comfort. If he’d gotten away, Louie would have had our heads.”
“Now why don’t you swim out there and retrieve the body?” Carlo said.
“Hell I will!” Brennan snapped with true emotion. Just the thought of entering the black, oily river with whatever it was hiding was enough to give Brennan gooseflesh.
“I was just kidding,” Carlo said, slapping Brennan on the back hard enough to make the man step forward to prevent a fall.
Brennan grabbed Carlo’s forearm before Carlo could retract it out of the way. “I have told you not to hit me,” Brennan snarled, pushing his face in close to Carlo’s. The tenseness of the preceding events made him overreact to this recurring provocation.
Carlo pushed him away roughly. “Oh, grow up. I was just kidding, for chrissake, about you swimming out there. You’d never find the body in a million years. With the currents here, the body’s probably two hundred feet or so downriver.” Carlo bent over to pick up Yoshiaki’s clothes and shoes. “Let’s get back and check on Arthur. We’ll probably have to do an emergency run before we head out to the Narrows to get rid of Susumu.”
The two men walked quickly back along the pier. Every so often the water beneath them emitted a swirling sound around the piles, attesting to the strength of the current.
“Louie is not going to be happy about Yoshiaki,” Carlo said.
“Tell me about it,” Brennan said, having cooled down a degree. “But the situation would have been ten times worse if the guy had made it to Manhattan.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t bring it up unless he asks. Hell, as strong as the current is, who knows where he’ll end up. He might even make it to the ocean, where he was supposed to end up.”
Brennan cast a quick glance in Carlo’s direction. “It’s your call. It’s your job to communicate to the capo, but if you’re asking if I would go behind your back and tell him, that wouldn’t happen.”
“Good,” Carlo said. “Then I won’t tell him unless he asks.”
“How are you going to explain Arthur?”
“I’ll tell him the truth. These Japanese guys are wild, which is why we wanted to get rid of them. They don’t think twice about taking out their pieces and blasting away. Hell, Arthur’s a good example.”
Back at the car they found everything was okay. Ted had bandaged Arthur’s wound with the arm of Arthur’s shirt, and there was only slight bleeding. The main problem was that Arthur was in serious discomfort. Although initially it hadn’t bothered him much, once the numbness wore off, he claimed the pain was terrible.
Stashing Susumu’s body in a body bag and then into the rear storage area of the SUV, the men piled back into the vehicle and made their way out of the American Fruit Company’s compound and headed back to Elmhurst. As soon as they were on the expressway, Carlo called Louie.
When Louie disconnected the phone line from talking to Carlo, he didn’t know whether to be angry or relieved. From experience he knew that hits could go well or they could go bad. He was relieved to a degree that it was over but upset that Arthur had been wounded. Four against two seemed to have been more than adequate odds.
Without hanging up the handset, Louie pulled his address book out of his desk’s center drawer and got the number for Dr. Louis Trevino. Doc, as he was known, had been the doctor for the Vaccarro family for many years. He’d been recruited from St. Mary’s Hospital, where he’d done an internship and had handled most of the Vaccarro crime family’s needs over the years, including a number of clandestine gunshot wounds.
The phone rang many times before a tired voice answered.
“Doc, it’s Louie. We got a problem with Arthur.”
“What is it?”
“A gunshot wound to the right upper arm, through and through.”
“The bone involved?”
“I don’t think so.”
“That’s a blessing. How about the major vessels?”
“Negative again, or so it seems so far.”
“Where is he?”
“I told them to go straight to Saint Mary’s. I’d guesstimate they’ll be there in, say, a half-hour.”
“I’ll meet them in the ER,” Trevino said, and hung up.
“Thanks, Doc,” Louie said, even though he knew it was too late.
With the call to Doc out of the way, Louie sat at his desk and prepared for the next call. He knew what message he wanted to convey but wasn’t sure of the words. As he pondered, he glanced out the window of his study off the living room of his grand waterside house in Whitestone, New York. With no leaves on the trees, he had a partial view across a neighbor’s yard of the graceful Whitestone Bridge with its illuminated cables. Looking at the bridge reminded him of his much better view of the Throgs Neck Bridge from the living room, which faced in the opposite direction down his sweeping lawn to his dock. Thinking of his dock reminded him that it was soon going to be time to get his boat out of winter storage.
Pulling his mind back to the issue at hand, calling Hideki Shimoda to deflect any suspicion of Vaccarro involvement in Susumu’s and Yoshiaki’s disappearance as Paulie had cleverly suggested, Louie wanted to get it right. The key ingredient, he was aware, was that he had to act truly pissed off.
Galvanizing his courage, Louie made the call. To his surprise, the phone was picked up with a simple “Hai” after a single ring, as if Hideki had been sleeping with his hand on the receiver.
“All right, Hideki, what’s the fucking story, and I don’t want any bullshit,” Louie roared. “I just got a call from my guys, who are still hanging around fucking Union Square waiting for your fucking guys to arrive. What’s the fucking story?”
Louie rarely used profanity, but he had pulled out all the stops, thinking Hideki would expect it. The response was less than he hoped for. “Excuse me, I think you want to talk with my husband.”
Louie rolled his eyes as a gruff Hideki came on the line. Louie tried to repeat the opening salvo but with significantly less profanity. After the mistake of not ascertaining who’d picked up the phone, it was the best he could do.
“Is this Barbera-san?” Hideki questioned.
“Who else do you think would be calling you at this hour?” Louie demanded, sounding as irritable as he could manage.
“You say Susumu and Yoshiaki not show up tonight?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying. And I want to remind you that this operation was being done for your
