forehead.
“Good-bye, Pop. Say hello to Carmine for me.”
“I will, son. Don’t stay out too late.”
The slug slammed above the bridge of the old man’s nose, precisely at the point where his dark eyebrows just failed to meet. The impact rocked the chair against the wall, and the old man slumped to the floor. Wesley picked him up in his arms. He was carrying the old man’s body toward the door to the first floor when he noticed the deep trench cut into the concrete. He laid the old man on his back in the trench and pressed the still-warm Beretta into his hand. Wesley shoveled the earth back into the trench until it was ten inches from the top. Then he began to mix the new batch of concrete.
It was all finished inside of an hour, the floor now smoothed and drying in the heat of the 3400K spotlights attached to the back beams.
Wesley went over and sat in the old man’s chair. He watched the concrete harden, fingering Pet’s cutoff shotgun.
65/
The kid let himself into the garage the next day, silently and quickly, as he had been taught. For the first time in his memory, the old man wasn’t there. He heard the slightest of sounds and whirled in the opposite direction, hitting the floor, his tiny Colt Cobra up and ready. He saw nothing.
“Too slow, kid.”
“Wesley?” the kid questioned, as the other man emerged from the shadows, now dressed in the outfit he last wore on the roof.
“Yeah. Put the piece down.”
“Where’s Pet?”
“He’s gone home, kid.”
“Like he wanted to in the...?”
“You knew, huh? Good. Yeah, like that. Now it’s just me.”
“And me, right?”
“If you want.”
“What else could I...?”
“It’s different now, kid. We got all of them and there’s something else to work on. You know what?”
“I figure I’ll learn that from you.”
“Where’s your father?”
“My father’s been dead for twenty years. At least that’s what they said.”
“Your mother?”
“She went after him.”
“Who raised you?”
“The State.”
“Okay. From now on, you live here. You handle the cars. Pet taught you, right?”
“Last time I was here he said he taught me all he knew ... and that you’d teach me the rest.”
“The rest of what
“I know.”
“From now on, I’m the outside-man, right? You’re gone—nobody sees you, got it?”
“Yes.”
“You got your stuff?”
“All the weapons are here already, except my carry-piece. All my clothes, too.”
Wesley led the kid to the now-indistinguishable spot on the floor under which the old man lay buried.
“The old man’s there,” he said, pointing.
“Seems like he should have—”
“What? A fucking headstone? A monument? He left his monument on Chrystie Street.”
“I know.”
“Then act like you know.”
The kid turned away without another word. He walked toward the row of waiting cars. “Who fucked up the Ford? It’s too shiny for—”
“Fix it. Fix all of them. You know what to do.”
“You going to do what Pet did?”
“I can’t. I can’t talk to people like that. But for right now I don’t have to.... You know all the systems?”
