“SO WHAT’S YOUR story, Mike?” Tara said, smiling. “I read about you in
I laughed at that.
“Oh, sure,” I said. “Me and Brad and Angelina are heading to George’s Lake Como villa tonight on the G6. Doing anything?”
She touched my arm and looked into my eyes.
“You’re still as fun and funny as I remember, Mike. That was some weekend we had way back when, if memory serves me right.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. It was almost embarrassing how attracted we were to each other after all this time. There was a lot of eye and physical contact. So much that even I was picking up on things. That’s what funerals did sometimes, I knew. Nothing like the yawning abyss of death to make you want to cling to something-or, more specifically, someone.
Soon the Irish music was replaced with some quiet stuff over the sound system. It was nice sitting there with Tara as Ray Charles sang, “You Don’t Know Me.” After a minute or so, I took another sip of Irish whiskey and sat up, blinking. I was here to mourn my friend, after all, not put the moves on his cousin, no matter how attractive she was.
As Ray brought the song to a soft, weepy close, there was another sound from outside. It wasn’t so romantic. It was car horns honking, several of them blaring on and on without letup. In addition to the honking, there was loud, manic music and police whistles.
CHAPTER 23
THE BAR IMMEDIATELY cleared. When I finally stepped out into the street behind the crowd, I could see that the honking was coming from the parking lot of a bank across the street. A couple of dark-colored SUVs, a kitted- out Hummer, and a sparkly-rimmed Cadillac Escalade were leaning on their horns.
As I stepped off the curb, I saw that Hughie’s brother Fergus was already across the street trying to pull open the Hummer’s driver’s-side door.
“Off that frigging horn, jackass!” Fergus was yelling. His face was red with sorrow and drink. He kneed the door. “You crazy or stupid? Can’t you see this is a funeral? People are in mourning. Cut that shit off!”
When he kneed the door again, the smoked-glass window slowly zipped down. At the wheel was a small, young, almost pretty-looking Hispanic guy in a wifebeater. There were two older and tougher-looking Hispanic men sitting beside him, and several more in the back.
My radar went off immediately. This felt wrong. The men looked expressionless. What the hell was this? I thought.
“Is this where it’s happening?” the pretty-boy driver said, stroking his goatee as he smiled.
“Where what’s happening?” said Eamon, now standing beside Fergus with rage in his face.
“The roast,” the Hispanic guy said as he placed a large revolver between Fergus’s wide eyes. “The Irish pig roast.”
There was movement and a bunch of clicking sounds, and suddenly the gangbangers in the Hummer and Escalade were holding guns. Not just regular guns, either. They were tactical shotguns and AK-47 assault rifles. A guy in the backseat had an AR-15 with what looked like a grenade launcher attachment. It was completely surreal. How was this happening? Who would threaten people with assault weapons at a cop’s wake?
Out came my Glock. Around me, I saw at least half a dozen other cops and DEA guys from the wake draw as well. Even one of the pipe-band guys had a piece out, a.45, pointed at the Escalade’s windshield.
“Drop it! Drop it! Drop it!” everyone was yelling.
“Listen to me,” the pretty-boy gangbanger said. “We got a warning to you from our king. He’s not going to stand for this shit. You want to live? You want your family to live, you better wise up. Bad shit is about to go down. Kind you never seen before. You understand? You got all that? Message received? Now back off before we put you in a pine box next to your friend.”
When I turned, I saw Patrick Zaretski, the DEA SWAT guy, with his SIG Sauer leveled at the driver’s temple. The safety was off, and his finger was firmly on the trigger. I could tell by the look in his eye that he was more than ready to blow the driver away.
“Not here, Patrick,” I said. “Look at the heavy weapons they have. There are too many innocent people here. Better to let them roll, and we’ll call it in.”
After a moment, he reluctantly nodded and stood down, along with the rest of the outraged cops.
As the gangbanger SUVs pulled out onto McLean Avenue, a motorcycle roared up behind them, a huge black Suzuki Hayabusa. Its rider flicked down the helmet visor as the bike passed. I caught a glimpse of a face-a fine- boned face with black hair and gold eyes-and then the bike was screaming as it streaked away.
That was the worst outrage of all, I thought as I stood there with my mouth open, watching the woman who had killed Hughie roar away.
As the SUVs tore down McLean Avenue behind the motorcycle, we all jumped on our cell phones to call in a car stop. Twenty minutes later, we heard that the local precinct found the expensive cars abandoned five blocks away. It turned out both SUVs were stolen, and the men had probably switched cars.
It had been an elaborate operation. All for what? To warn us? To intimidate us? It had worked. I was definitely shaken up. My friend’s wake had come incredibly close to becoming a bloody massacre.
“What does it mean?” Tara asked me back in Rory Dolan’s, as I ordered another Jameson’s-a double this time. “Why would these men do this? Why come here? Haven’t they done enough?”
I shrugged my shoulders. I had been a cop for a long time, but I couldn’t deny how scary this felt. It seemed like I was looking at something entirely new.
“I don’t know, Tara,” I finally said, truthfully. “I have absolutely no freaking clue.”
NOT TOO FAR from SoHo and Wall Street, the MCC, or Metropolitan Correctional Center, is a twelve-story concrete bunker located on Park Row, behind the Thurgood Marshall Courthouse at Foley Square.
In a break room on the eighth floor, Manuel Perrine, the Sun King, flicked an imaginary dust speck from the sleeve of his baggy prison jumpsuit as he listened to a phone call. He nodded, and nodded again, then said, “Very good,” and thumbed off the iPhone.
With the phone’s video FaceTime feature, he’d just watched the whole incident at the cop’s wake in the Bronx. The chaos, the baffled-looking cops. In real time, no less. It was as though he’d been there himself. Good com was essential to all operations. What field marshal would have it any other way?
Being in jail was no excuse to avoid strategizing. Already there were planes taking off and packages being delivered, arrangements being set in motion. He was still in a position to put his considerable resources to good use.
Still, the indignity of every moment spent in this place was such an unforgivable offense. The steel grid embedded into an air shaft that passed for a window in his cell; the metal bunk beds and white brick walls. The amount of money he had spent on the operation in bribes alone, so that he could sneak in and out of the country, was insane. And yet here he was, back where he started, in a squalid rat cage. All of it was for nothing.
He’d already ordered the death of his old friend Candelerio and his entire family. He would then kill Candelerio’s crew after all was said and done. They needed to be taught, brutally taught. Everyone involved would be held up as an example of what happened when a king was crossed. Every knee would bend for the crime of his being put in this unclean box in this concrete coffin of a city.
He tapped his nose where the cop had shattered it. There was tape over the gauze now, a ridiculous X, like the
