by Thomas Laird
*
I think about Rita virtually all the time. She said I had baggage, and I can see it from her point of view, but all I know is that we were happy together, and I also know that the passion she showed toward me wasn’t false. It was the real thing, and I wonder how many times in my life I’ll ever feel the way I felt toward her toward anyone else. You don’t get shots at real emotion very often, I know. I have a feeling for the job and for my kids and for my departed wife, Erin. After that, I can’t think of anybody or anything that I’ve been moved by as much as I was by them.
And by Rita. When she left I felt as though I had been cheated out of a last chance, a final lost opportunity.
I know she’s never going to come round my way again.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
San Francisco, 1985
The long hair is gone and the beard has come on nicely in salt-and-pepper contrast, and with a baseball cap and shades, I can walk around in the Wharf District with very little notice from anybody on the street. In fact I can walk by Costello’s Italian–American club on Harbor View with no notice at all.
Then I cross the street and sit outside at a Lebanese coffee shop that has tables and chairs, and I can keep an eye on the club. I see Tommy coming in around 11:30 a.m. He’s got two of his personal bulldogs accompanying him, and they’re wearing sport coats with bulges under their left arms. The bodyguards are both super-sized—six-five, six-four, maybe—and they both look the part with slicked-back jelled hairdos, and the slightly taller one has a silver ring in his right earlobe. I suppose he figures he’s a pirate, but he isn’t sporting an eye patch. They hold themselves as if they’ve had some military experience, but they could also just be seasoned killers.
It’d be difficult to get to Tommy when he’s guarded this way, but I figure I’d have to kill all three, anyway. I’ll never see Costello walking alone. His balls are with his gunners. I’ve never heard that Tommy made his bones with a kill when he was a punk. Seems like he lets other guys do his wet work.
I sit at the table across the street for two more hours, but Costello doesn’t come outside. I’m not going to be able to walk in and do him the way I did the two drug guards at his coke bank, a while ago.
I’m living in a one-room flop in a neighborhood about a half mile from here. I wanted to be within walking distance of him because I don’t want to be trapped in a car or a bus or a taxi. There’s no way out in a vehicle, and if I’m on foot there are always escape routes.
Getting to Costello means that I’ll have to take him where he feels safest, and that’s in his penthouse apartment in the upscale part of this city. There won’t be as many front men to deal with because the hotel where he stays yearlong is filled with civilians, and they’re likely not going to allow even Tommy to populate the halls with his hitmen. His guards will have to be inside the penthouse, and maybe one or two out in the hall.
*
The Sheridan Hotel has room service since it’s a five-star setup, so I go around to the back alley and I find the entrance to the kitchen, out by the garbage cans and the dumpsters. I wait until someone rushes out with a load of refuse to be dumped, and when one of the kitchen help obliges me by heading toward the receptacle, I walk right into the kitchen area.
There are uniforms for the bellboys and the wait staff hanging on hooks inside, and the cooks and the chef are so busy with their concoctions for the Sheridan’s world-rep restaurant, I’m able to grab a coat and some pants that I hope will fit me. I wore a white dress shirt that I never wear because I figured I might need it, and then I go to the lobby and find the men’s room. I put on the pants and I leave my blue jeans on the floor of a toilet stall, and then I get into the pants which are only a little short and a bit snug, and then I put the jacket on. It’s black and red and the sleeves are slightly short, but the clothes are passable.
I brought a black bow tie with me because I walked through the lobby once, a few days ago, to get a picture of what would be in front of me when I went after Tommy here, and the bellboys wear the black bow ties. I bought one at Sears, yesterday. I also got a pair of black shoes there because I noticed they all wear black footwear. I must have looked strange wearing the shoes with blue jeans, but shit, this is Frisco.
The .22 is stuffed in my already tight pants as I find an elevator and as I push the button for the penthouse. When I ascend the thirty-two floors, the doors open slowly, and I see Tommy’s door on my right. His is the only apartment on this floor, and the good news is that there’s only one greaseball standing at his entryway.
“Can I help you?” he says. But he says it in a belligerent tone.
He must find the bald guy with the beard in a bellboy’s Outfit a little odd, but he doesn’t appear wary or afraid.
The worst thing you can do in an assault is talk, so when he moves aggressively at me, I punch him in the throat, and then I follow with a straight left to his heart. The air huffs out of him, and down he goes, but he’s not out, so I kick him viciously in the face four times. His nose is broken, and I think I heard the crunch of teeth. But he’s out cold now, and I don’t hesitate and I press the doorbell. The goddam thing makes a loud bong sound, and it startles me a little.
Another guy with a bulge under his navy blue sport coat and who has the usual jelled-back black hairstyle cracks open the door.
“Matty, I told you not to ring the—”
I pop him in the mouth with a straight right, but he doesn’t go down. He pulls out a .45 automatic, and I slap his gun hand to the right, and I kick him in the groin, but again he does not go down. He straightens up and smiles with a split, bleeding lip, and by this time I’ve torn the .22 out of my overly snug waistband, but before I can pull the trigger the wide and stocky greaser kicks me in the thigh, and I go down on one knee. Then he dislodges the .22 with another foot to my forearm, and he drops his own piece on the floor and smiles at me.
“You lookin’ for Tommy, Azrael? Because, awww, you just missed him. He’s on his way to Chicago to visit a friend. But this is as far as you go because I’m going to beat you to death. You ain’t worth a bullet, you ex-Army slob.”
The pistols are on the carpet, and I really think he thinks he’s going to do me with his hands. The guy is built like a fireplug. There’s no spare baggage on him. He rips off the sports coat, and the blood is still drooling down his pale blue shirt in front.
I get up, but my arm’s still hurting, and I’m a little wobbly.
He moves back into the center of the little entryway. It’s clear of furniture, and I have room to maneuver. He puts up his hands like a boxer in a prize fight, and I kick him in the shins, and this time I’ve hurt him. It appears I’ve broken the rules, but I kick him in the left knee, and it bends him over.
“You little piece of--!” he spits red at me.
Then he tries a bull rush, and I step aside and trip him as he flings himself at me. The boxing idea has passed, and now he wants to muscle me, so I kick him on the back of his left thigh as he spurts past me, and he’s flung face first into the door. The sound is like someone pounded the wood with a ball bat very loudly, and I hear him grunt as if I’ve punched him in the stomach and knocked all the air out of him. He spins about, then, and tries to get to his feet, but I kick him in the throat once and then land a foot against his temple on the left side, and he goes face first onto the tile that precedes the carpet.
I hear him groaning, but I have to end it, and I don’t want him getting up again to get at me. So I retrieve his .45 and I pull the trigger twice and his head explodes like a melon with the blasts. There’s a major mess in the doorway.
I walk throughout the expansive, lavish penthouse, and I find out he was telling some of the truth, anyway. Tommy Costello is nowhere inside. I cover the three bedrooms and the living room and even the balcony patio he’s got past his sliding glass doors.
The place is deserted, except for the mostly headless corpse by the door.
I kick the fireplug out of my way,
and I step over the pool of gore under his face, and then I pop the guy outside in the forehead with the fireplug’s piece, and finally I throw the .45 back inside before I replace my .22 at the small of my back.
I go to the elevator, hit the button, and a little later I’m headed back down to the lobby.
I stop back in the men’s room and my jeans are still in the stall, so I lose the bellhop coat and pants and I throw them into the toilet, and once I’ve got rid of both items, I slide back into my Levi’s.
All the backsplash of the blood went onto the bellhop uniform, and even my new black shoes managed to stay clean, so when I walk down the street in front of the Sheridan Hotel, I try to sort out what just happened.
I saw Costello walk into the Sheridan, but he must’ve snuck out another exit. He was smart enough to know that sooner or later I’d be behind him, and he got out and set the trap for me at the penthouse. The guy at the door was the sacrificial lamb with a piece in his wool, but the man inside was the one who was supposed to finish me.
It’s hard to tell if the line about Tommy being headed to Chicago is true or not, but the fireplug might have been overconfident enough to let it slip. He figured I’d be dead and it wouldn’t do me any good to know where his boss had fled to.
What was in Chicago? Steven James was still there, the last I knew. The Outfit is in the Windy City as well, and he might have flown there to seek the protection of his crew. It might actually be true that he’s headed to the Midwest to give him time to locate me before I place Costello. Tommy may have figured it’d be a good idea to make himself scarce until someone dispatched me for him. It was a pretty good tactical move, after all. It was a retreat, and it made sense. So I took the word of a dead man, and my next stop would be Chicago. Even if Tommy wasn’t there, Steven James might be, and I could locate Costello after I’d crossed off the last name from Dia Nguc.
*
I get back to my apartment after I bought a bag of ice from the liquor store down the block from me. When I get inside my solitary room, I take off my jeans and shoes and white shirt, I ice the parts of me that he caught with his hands and his feet, and there are already black and blue patches popping up on me. The ice abates the swelling, but the color will be with me for a while.
*
I take a cab back across the bridge to Sausalito. He drops me off in front of Greenberg’s. When I knock on his door and when he opens up, he looks at my bald head and beard with surprise.
“Who the hell are you, mister?” he grins, and then he ushers me quickly inside.
We sit on his three-section couch.
“I thought you weren’t ever coming back, like I told you not to.” He grins sadly.
“I wasn’t going to, but I had to ask you something in person,” I reply. “You heard that Tommy Costello is headed for Chicago?”
“No. I haven’t heard anything.”
“Is there somebody you’d know to ask?”
“What happened?” he demands.
I explain the trip to the penthouse, and his face goes ashen.
“Let me make a few calls. I’ll be right back.”
He heads toward his bedroom. I hear a woman’s voice, but I also hear him tell her to shut up. I can’t understand how women put up with him, but he’s always got one around, somewhere.
He comes back to me in about fifteen minutes, and the lady friend is with him.
“He’s headed there, yeah,” he tells me.
The woman is beautiful, and she’s wearing a red halter top and shorts that are so brief they almost look like bikini panties.
“You want a pop?” Greenberg asks me.
“What?”
“I said do you want to jump her? I’ve got her paid for all night, and I can’t handle her all by myself.”
“Thanks, but no.”
The lush whore smiles at me. She’s a strawberry-blonde with enormous breasts that don’t match the rest of her tanned, thin body.
“You like my tits?” She smiles. “I had them done three months ago in San Diego.”
“They’re beautiful,” I tell her because I don’t know what else to tell her.
“Go on back in the bedroom. I have to charge back up.”
“It’s your dime,” she giggles, and she heads back toward the bedroom.
“You need to learn how to relax, William.”
“The name’s Matthew Carson, remember?”
“I’m rotten with names. It’s a healthy trait, in our business. You don’t want to go to Chicago, Matthew, William, Evan, whoever.”
“Your concern is very gratifying.”
“You can’t kill this guy. Haven’t you been paying attention? It’s like you’re trying to rewrite the end of that book about the whale. The guy with the stump gets killed, every time you get to the end.”
“Who does Costello know in Chicago? You got any names? I’ll give you five thousand to find out. Easiest money you ever made.”
“You’d be paying me with Tommy’s drug money.”
“So?”
“What if it’s marked?”
“It isn’t. The serial numbers are random. I checked the bills. It’s straight from the streets, Greenberg. This wasn’t a bank job.” I smile at him.
“For five, I’ll do it.”
“You’re ever the businessman.”
“Just don’t get me killed along with you, Evan.”
“I like it when you call me by my given name.”
“Look. You need to get the hell out of here. Give me a phone number where I can—”
“No chance. How long will it take? Then I’ll call you.”
“All right. Don’t you trust me, Evan?”
“No. I like you because you’re a crazy son of a bitch, but I don’t trust you.”
“Why? Because I’m a Jew?”
“No.”
“Then why?” he asks.
“Because you’re breathing.”
“Give me two days. Then call me on the third at night, past nine. You got my number, so call.”
I get up.
“Sure you don’t want some of that?” He points to the bedroom.
I shake my head.
I walk out and then down his street to the bus stop about a half mile away. I don’t want to use the same transport twice. The cabbie saw the way I look now, and you can’t tell what people remember. The bus driver will only see me once the way I am now, too.
I ache from the hits I took, and I’m not going to underestimate Tommy Costello a second time.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
San Francisco, 1985
I won’t be flying to Chicago because the airport has too many eyes on it, and I can’t take the chance that a disguise will work anymore because the cops and the Costellos have probably already covered that dodge and will be looking for me sporting different hair and all the other cosmetic changes I can come up with.
So I’ll have to drive.
Greenberg calls me and tells me to come over to his place at an ungodly hour—3:45 a.m. He says it’s the least likely time anybody will be watching him, but even with surveillance, the cops outside his place, if there are any, will be cooping and asleep at that pre-crack of dawn. And he’s not sure that there are cops or Costello’s people watching him at the moment. He tells me he’s been vigilant and that he hasn’t seen any unusual rides parked up and down his block. But he’s taking no chances.
I’m there on time, and he lets me inside and closes his door quickly behind me.
We sit on that blue couch of his in the front room with one window lamp barely illuminating the room. He’s cheap with the wattage, and the heavy drapes are closed.
“Costello is with Pietro Parisi—Pete Parisi—in Chicago. Word is that he’s trying to lure you there because he knows about Steven James.”
“How would he know about James?”
“He’s got a lot of ears and eyes, Evan. He has better intel than the FBI or CIA, and he knows about all those soldiers you killed.”
I nod.
“So you’re nuts if you try to go after either one of them. The cops are waiting for you—if they don’t catch you walking out my goddam door in a few minutes—and Costello’s got a nice array of thugs who are just waiting to get their crosshairs on you. It’s a sucker move. There’s absolutely no upside or percentage, kid.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
He shrugs and then shakes his head.
“I figured you’d be this way.”
He hands me an envelope. I look inside and find the 5K I gave him to find out about Costello and Chicago.
“Screw this blood money,” he says. There’s no emotion in his voice. He says it kind of matter-of-factly.
“Take it. I don’t need it.”
“You take that goddam cash and buy yourself a ticket to some very remote island. Now get the hell out of here.”
“You didn’t give me an address.”
“Pete Parisi isn’t hard to find. Ask any addict on the north side of Chicago. He supplies punks in Old Town, too, I hear, but I haven’t got his street address for you, Evan. He ain’t listed.”
I smile at him. “Why have you helped me like you have?”
“I got a hard-on for you.”
“Sure. You haven’t got enough of a hard-on to take care of all the whores who float through here.”
“Are you mental, Evan? Is that what the problem is?”
I look at my hands sitting on my thighs.
“We wiped out a little village in Vietnam. It was small, so tiny that it wasn’t even on the map. Three of the kills were legitimate—they were VC honchos who shot people who didn’t go commie. So screw them, I was okay with popping them. They killed plenty of us, so I never lost any sleep over doing them. But when we started in on the women and the old men and the kids… That was the second I left that miserable bitch of a war. Something popped inside me, and I was done. I never pulled the trigger on the civilians—I was wounded when all that other shit went down. But I heard the screams, Greenberg. It was like a mini version of what happened to the Jews in Europe. To your guys. So when I got out of the hospital, I boogied. I lived with some Hmong and we moved all over the place. Then it was time to get out. I didn’t really belong to them. I don’t really belong to anybody, anywhere, but I almost did, for a little while in Upstate New York. Her name was Li, but the baby never had time to get a name. Willy Costello took care of that. He was there to get me, but he started shooting and he never even looked at who he was blowing up.”