“No. Tell me where he is.”
“I don’t know.”
“Wrong answer.”
This time he fired another round into his son’s other leg. All the while he kept his eyes on the other two shifty-looking fellas who looked as if they were ready to make a move. He could see the staff wanted a piece of him. One guy was eyeing a wheeled, steel pizza cutter on the counter, the other something behind the oven. The owner’s son was writhing in agony, blood smearing the floor. It hadn’t been the first time blood had been spilled under that roof. The owner held his son, tears running down his face, a mix of anger and pain.
“The next one goes in his skull.”
Through gritted teeth the owner spoke, “It’s you, isn’t it?”
Jack cocked his head, frowning.
“The Butcher.” His words came out almost as a whisper before he said, “Jack Winchester. I heard you were dead.”
He hadn’t heard anyone from New Jersey call him the Butcher in a long time. Jack squinted, trying to place his face, wondering if he knew the man. Then it hit him. “Tommy Riggs?”
He remembered him as a young kid but he was thin then, well dressed, nothing like this bulbous guy before him. They were never at odds with one another, hell, he’d always liked his father. Jack nodded. “Your father. Francesco. Still alive?”
He shook his head. “Died six years ago. I run this place now.” He looked at his son Carlos and ran a hand over his face. “Please. Let me call an ambulance. He’s all I’ve got.”
In days gone by Jack would have felt empathy but it was gone. She was gone. And with it what little good remained. He couldn’t feel it. That nagging pull towards mercy. All he felt now was rage and hate, and all he wanted was vengeance.
Stabbing his gun forward he bellowed, “Where is he?”
“Port of Newark,” Tommy spat out. “The tank terminal.”
“Cocaine,” Jack muttered. “He’s transporting it out using fuel tanks?”
Tommy nodded. “He showed up here a few months ago. He’s been doing the rounds, picking up where his old man left off. Said he’s gonna change things. Rebuild. He used the phone here a few times. We took messages for him. That’s all. I swear, Jack.” He looked back at his son and for a second Jack felt a twinge of regret. It vanished in an instant as one of the staff went for whatever was behind the oven. He shot out of view and Jack pushed forward, firing two rounds, one of which killed the guy who went for the cutter, before Jack dropped and shot the second guy in the leg beneath the raised oven. The man collapsed with a shotgun in hand.
Tommy bounced up but Jack was too fast. He fired two shots into his back before he could go for a weapon. Tommy collapsed a few feet from his son. No father would sit by and do nothing, especially not a New Jersey boy. Getting up, Jack walked over to the guy writhing on the floor behind the oven, gripping his mangled leg. “No. No.” Jack squeezed the trigger and a round exited his skull.
The only one alive was Tommy’s son. Two injured kneecaps. A witness to murder. He walked over and looked at him. Jack thought back to Vincent, the son of the first man he’d ever killed. It came back to haunt him. He wouldn’t make that same mistake again. The kid revealed in his stare the same grit, defiance and acceptance he expected in the face of death. “Sorry, kid. Maybe in another life.”
A flash from the muzzle. One more round echoed before Jack scooped up the sawed-off shotgun, yanked the security footage and exited to the sound of a distant siren.
21
The ports of New York and Newark had long served as the backdrop for mob activity. Port workers were easy to shake down and extort through fear and intimidation, and many a supervisor found their way onto the payroll of Gafino. For years cocaine arrived in shipping containers before it hit the streets. It seemed fitting after all this time that Angelo would begin there. He knew that whoever controlled the port, controlled the bulk of street narcotics. It was fast, easy money, and the quickest way to re-establish his name.
The familiar sight of sidewalk steam swirling into the air, pastrami delis and the steel of a busy port made him feel comfortable, like slipping into a warm bath. The underbelly of New Jersey was like revisiting an addiction, the honking of horns got under his skin and the smog stuck to him like filthy grime. Before he left the city he had grown to hate it, but time had given him a new appreciation.
Jack breathed in the salty air, his pulse beating steady and strong as he parked the SUV in a separate parking lot across the street. He tucked the shotgun under his jacket, keeping a firm grip on it through the pocket as he jogged across the street, down a narrow alley that brought him around to the front. Stopping at the corner he observed a crew of three men milling around a filling station where a large tanker was being filled.
The weather had taken a turn for the worse with a light rain beginning to fall. Seagulls squawked as they wheeled over a yard of shipping containers. Large floodlights lit up areas of the yard, and the front of a large warehouse. Tanker trucks drove between the facility and an international cargo ship.
“Where are you?” Jack muttered under his breath.
One of them waved in the next fuel tanker.
“Take this one down to the ship,” one of the men said. “Then get the next three ready. Speed it up. He wants this out tonight.” Jack pulled the sawed-off shotgun and held it low as he pressed his back to the building and stayed in the darkness.
Flashes of memories from the past rushed in, the words of Gafino, the men he’d
