Chasers

by Lorenzo Carcaterra

  Nunzio sat on a leather-covered stool, his back to the wall, a flat-screen TV hanging just above his head tuned to a sports recap, and watched as his friends disappeared around a tight corner. He sipped from a tall glass of Fernet Branca coated with ice and took in a slow, deep breath. He checked the time on his watch and signaled the bartender to pass him a black phone resting under the central cash register. He slowly punched in the seven digits and waited through five rings before he heard a click and a voice. “It’s a go,” he said. “For them and for us.” He paused briefly before he pulled the phone from his ear and rested it back in its cradle.

  His friends were about to start a street war.

  9

  The white van was parked in front of a loading area, its back doors swung open and wide, two men standing in the hold leaning against stacks of thick wooden crates. They were wearing long white smocks, hands jammed inside the pockets, the thin barrels of submachine guns sneaking through the open slots. They each wore an earpiece, and their eyes were doing quick scans of both the pedestrian and the street traffic. It was ten minutes past noon, a light rain falling and dark clouds hovering, on an otherwise peaceful morning in a slow-moving section of Long Island City in the borough of Queens.

  “They may be aces with those guns they’re holding,” Rev. Jim said. “But these Boy Scouts could use a blend-in crash course, that’s for certain.”

  “They’re nothing but black crows set out to scare the field mice,” Dead-Eye said. “The big birds are lying in wait in a darker place, hanging back to take out any city rats that may come their way.”

  “And you know this how, Obi-Wan?” Rev. Jim asked with a smile.

  “For the very same reason you should know it, Rev.,” Dead-Eye said. “This ain’t our first time at the barbecue pit.”

  The three Apaches were sitting in a Chevy Impala parked on a side street across from an abandoned parking lot and in front of a gated two-family house whose aluminum siding had seen better decades. The white van was up the block from them, partially obscured by a double-parked UPS truck, its red taillights flashing. “You figure we can say the same about our three new friends?” Rev. Jim asked. “That this isn’t the first time they came to chow down on a pull-pork hero?”

  “We’ll find out soon enough,” Boomer said.

  Stephanie was walking with Buttercup, the thick leash latched to the collar wrapped around the dog’s neck hanging loose in her right hand. She was fifty feet away from the parked white van and shielded her eyes from the raindrops as she inched closer. The dog kept her head down, her breath slow and dragged low by a heavy wheeze as she sniffed and pawed at the filthy street and mutilated gutter. Stephanie looked over at the UPS truck and saw Andy struggling with several oversized boxes he was loading onto his cart. “Be great to see how Ash reacts if that dog takes a major shit right in front of the van,” Rev. Jim said with a short laugh.

  “Whose ass did you pull Ash out of?” Dead-Eye asked, turning in the front passenger seat of the car.

  “I put a call in to a friend of mine works in the Fire Department, did a few joint cases with her when she was on the job,” Rev. Jim said. “It’s the nickname some of the other cops toe-tagged on her.”

  “He give you a why to go along with it?” Boomer asked.

  “Not really,” Rev. Jim said. “But mostly she worked her arsons harder than any other cop on the squad, almost as if she took each one as a personal attack. It seems she spent so much time at the burn scene that she would invariably get some of the dust, soot, and ash on her clothes or hair. And I don’t have to sell anyone in this piece of shit car on how cops are when it comes to nicknames.”

  “She okay with it?” Dead-Eye asked.

  “Seems to be,” Rev. Jim said with a shrug. “She answers to it, most of the time at any rate, and if she’s ever coldcocked anybody who called her that I haven’t caught wind of it.”

  “That may well be true,” Dead-Eye said. “But if it is, it’s only because she hasn’t spent all that much time around you as yet.”

  Boomer sat up straight in his seat. Dead-Eye turned away from Rev. Jim and pulled his service revolver from its holster and jammed it into the right front pocket of his thin black leather jacket. Rev. Jim crouched closer to the front seat and peered through the windshield.

  “Let it all play out,” Boomer said in a low voice. “We only move when Quincy gives us the signal, remember that.”

  “I know we will,” Rev. Jim said. “We just have to hope he does.”

  “He’ll be good. He’s never pulled a panic attack before, no reason he should start working on one now.”

  “He’s only gone up against dead people before,” Rev. Jim said. “These zombies walk, talk, and shoot. This is his first big-league at bat inside a big ballpark and anything can happen, most of it bad.”

  “I’m guessing you’re probably one of those the-glass-is-half-empty kind of guys,” Dead-Eye said.

  “I’m one of those glass-is-empty kind of guys,” Rev. Jim said. “I go in expecting it to be the worst, and most of the time the worst is what I manage to get.”

  “You hands down missed your calling, Rev.,” Dead-Eye said, checking the ammo clip in his gun. “You would have made one great motivational speaker. Or you could have taken a few spins at being the warm, soothing voice working the other end of a late-night suicide jumper’s call.”

  “If you come into a situation looking to die, don’t come to me and expect to hear a lie,” Rev. Jim said. “That’s all I’m saying on the subject.”

  Boomer snapped open the car door and rested one foot on the sidewalk, his eyes on the van and the UPS truck. “If only your aim is as good as your timing, we might well walk away from this one,” he said. “Lock them up. It’s just about showtime.”

  The two men with the hidden guns jumped down from the back of the van as soon as they spotted Andy walking toward them. Stephanie was on the other side of the street, Buttercup’s leash folded in her back pocket, sitting with the dog on the top step of a brown cement stoop.

  Andy was walking slowly, rolling a two-wheeled cart filled with large UPS packages along the rickety street. “Hey there, fellas,” he said to them with a smile, taking a couple of seconds to wipe a line of sweat from his brow with the sleeve of his uniform shirt, his eyes doing a quick check on Boomer’s unmarked car and on Stephanie and Buttercup. “You wouldn’t happen to know where the hell Forty-seventh Avenue is, would you? Can you believe this shit? My first day alone working the big truck and here they go sending me out to a place in Queens I didn’t even know was in Queens.”

  “You go two blocks up and then make your first quick right,” the younger of the men said, his words garbled by a Latin accent. “Near PS 1 and across from a gas station.”

  “If you can’t read a sign, you’ll miss it,” the second man said, his words less coated with any hints of his background. “Otherwise, shouldn’t be a problem to find.”

  “Looks like you’ve got some big deliveries yourselves,” Andy said, resting the handcart and nodding up toward the back of the van. “There must be about thirty crates crammed inside there, maybe more. What are you moving?”

  “You asked about Forty-seventh Avenue and we told you where the fuck it was,” the second man said, his minuscule fuse nearly burned through. “And that’s the end of it. Worry about your boxes and let us worry about ours.”

  “I didn’t mean anything by it,” Andy said, stepping in closer to the two men and leaving the handcart standing at his back. “Was just curious, is all.”

  “Don’t be,” the first man said.

  “It’s just that you don’t look like deliverymen,” Andy said. “And you sure as shit don’t dress the job. Which means you either got a couple of off-the-books heading your way set to unload or you’re waiting to start and finish a handoff. You know the drill, I’m sure. You toss a strange face keys to the van, and in return he leaves behind a suitcase loaded with tens and twenties for you to bring back to th
e pound and hand over to the master of the house.”

  The two men turned and traded confused looks, not sure quite what to make of the UPS man, who was now standing close enough for them to shake hands. “Finish your deliveries,” the second man said to Andy. “And forget that you were here and you ever saw us. This way, you get to go home alive.”

  “That’s exactly what I plan to do,” Andy said to them, his hands spread out, a wide smile spread across his face. “Especially since I only have one delivery left to make and the rest of the day and night will belong to me.”

  “You won’t finish it standing here,” the first man said. “That’s for damn sure.”

  “I’m on it, believe you me,” Andy said. “Don’t you let it worry you one bit. But to be totally up front with you, I could use a little help. No heavy lifting—nothing like that. Just a little favor.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” the first man asked, his face flushed red, his upper lip beaded with sudden sweat, his pocket hand wrapped around the trigger of the semi dangling under his white coat. “You are going to die on this street, mister, you don’t step off.”

  “That’s a good line,” Andy said with a nod. “Now let’s get serious, we’re all busy men. Just hand over the keys to your van and then you can be off and on your way. I’ll give you some heads-up time so you can come up with a cool excuse for Angel as to why you left the drop point with no cash in hand and no drugs.”

  The two men lifted their guns toward Andy, thin barrels pointed at his chest. They froze in place when they felt two guns jammed against their spines.

  “Your hands move another inch and my finger dances with the trigger,” Boomer said, talking to both men, Dead-Eye by his side, gun pressed under the edge of the Kevlar vest worn by the taller of the two hitters. “Be smart and live. Let the UPS man do what he came here to do.”

  “Time to face the facts,” Dead-Eye said. “He’s better with deliveries than either one of you, so let him at it.”

  “You’ll all be dead before any of you ever get to see what’s inside those crates,” the younger of the two men said, his confidence and swagger not at all diminished by the gun barrel resting on his spine. “And if I have any luck the bullets that bring your sad life to an end will come from my weapon.”

  “Now, if you had any luck at all you wouldn’t have found yourselves on the nasty end of our bad,” Dead-Eye said. “So start your move the fuck away from the van and let those semis slide down slow and loose off your shoulders, to the ground. Don’t go any faster than I can blink, otherwise those expensive coats you’re wearing are going to be filled with pockets.”

  “You should do what he tells you,” Boomer said, pushing his gun barrel harder against his target’s spine. “Before the UPS guy loses his cool and wipes the street with all of us.”

  Andy waited until the two men slipped the semis off their shoulders and let them fall to the sidewalk. He bent over, picked up both weapons, and jumped in behind the wheel of the unlocked van, spotted the keys still in the ignition, turned over the engine, and kicked the vehicle into gear. Dead-Eye slammed the rear doors shut and stood back and watched the van pull away.

  “How soon before the drop car gets here?” Boomer asked the two men, his gun resting at his side now.

  “Go fuck yourself, the both of you,” one of the men said. “Kill us if it makes you feel like men. What difference does it make now? Angel is going to chop and pop us both for screwing up, and he’s going to do a whole lot worse to you two for screwing him. And what that all totals out to is we don’t need to tell you or your spook friend shit.”

  “Black Caddy doing a crawl over by the gas station,” Dead-Eye said, gazing over the two men’s shoulders. “They pulled in but didn’t stop for gas or to use the shitter. Driver and his co-pilot making eyes only for us.”

  “You going to kill them, too?” one of the men asked. “That the great Brink’s job idea you woke up with today? Leave four dead bodies in the middle of Jackson Avenue and bank on no eyeballs looking your way? That true, then you two old pistols are way past dumb town.”

  “There’s no reason we can think of that would make us want to kill them,” Boomer said, smiling and snapping his gun back into his hip holster. “I mean, why the hell would we? Those two guys in that car are going to hand over all their money to a friend of ours and—this is my favorite part of the whole episode—one of them, not sure yet which, is even going to take our dog for a walk. Why would we want to shoot anybody who does all that for us, just for the asking?”

  The two hitters looked at Boomer and Dead-Eye and then turned toward the far corner of Jackson Avenue, their eyes on the late-model black Cadillac doing an idle spin in the middle lane of a Mobil gas station. “If they do end up doing even a thin slice of that,” the taller man said, “you won’t need to shoot me or my partner. Just hand over your gun and let us pump the bullets into each other. Better to go out that way than with Angel having at us.”

  “Why die if you can lie?” Dead-Eye said.

  “I don’t follow,” the taller man said.

  “There’s a shocker,” Boomer said.

  “Let me A, B, and C it for you,” Dead-Eye said. “But first I need one or two answers to one or two questions, and I need them heart-attack fast, before that Caddy moves away from that station and that lady and her dog make their play.”

  The two men gave each other a quick glance and an even quicker nod. “What do you need to know?” the taller man asked, looking from Boomer to Dead-Eye.

  “The duo in the Caddy,” Boomer said. “You laid eyeballs on them before, or they on you?”

  “Wouldn’t know them if they died in my arms,” the taller man said. “We were supposed to hand the keys to the van over to two dudes in a black Caddy and they would toss out a loaded suitcase. That’s all we were told, and that’s the full run of what we were going to do.”

  “Either one of you deals with Angel face-to-face, or is it all worked through the ranks?” Dead-Eye asked.

  The taller man pointed to the young man standing several feet to his right. “Manuel has met him,” he said. “I saw him once, from a distance. I like it better that way.”

  “How good a liar would you say you are, Manuel?” Dead-Eye asked. “And tell me the truth.”

  “I can bullshit better than most, but if you’re asking about Angel, then that’s a whole other religion,” Manuel said. “You try a line on him and he can smell it out even before the words get past your teeth.”

  “This his first deal with the two in the Caddy?” Boomer asked. “Or he trade powder for cash with them before?”

  “First one I been a part of, that much I can sell you,” Manuel said. “But from the way they acting, and the way this was all set to go down, it has that blind-date feel to it.”

  “Then Angel has more reason to trust you and not them,” Boomer said. “Now, it’s what you two do with that level of trust that will be the difference between a forgive-and-forget and your bodies ending up under the expressway.”

  “You want us to tell Angel they double-dealt us—that the ride you want me and Manuel to get on?” the taller man asked.

  “That’s it, hard on the head,” Dead-Eye said. “They got the drop on you, kept the cash, and took the van and all the goodies inside. If you’re guilty of anything, it’s of not being in gear for a betray move. Now, Angel might well be pissed about that, no doubt. But not as steam angry as he will be at being taken off by a crew he trusted. You two flowing with this, or am I moving at warp speed?”

  “We hear you,” Manuel said. “You two are invisible. You take the dope and the cash and walk from it clean. Let Angel and the other crew have a dustup about it, each calling out the other.”

  “It’s all one big fucking lie festival,” Dead-Eye said. “There won’t be a word of truth passing across anybody’s lips.”

  “The big question is still left to hang out there,” Manuel said. “Why the fuck should we lift finger one to
let you walk, leaving us with empty hands looking up at an out-for-blood-and-bone Angel?”

  “If it were just about that, then that’s a question with a slam-dunk answer,” Boomer said. “But what we’re putting out for you to grab has everything to do with keeping you alive. Because no matter what else happens, we’re going to get clean away with it, cash and dope in our back pockets. And if we find ourselves with a little extra time, we might even cash out the van.”

  “If Angel don’t bite down on what we have to tell him, if we get off on poor feet from the first step, then we’re looking at the inside of a meat grinder for sure,” the younger man said, sweat now forming on his forehead and his upper lip. “And I don’t know if I got it in me to sell a man like him a box of wolf tickets.”

  “Then you’ll both die,” Boomer said. “Which was going to happen anyway, however you decide to turn the wheel. I figure if you follow our map, you might be able to buy yourself a little bit of time.”

  “We’re not giving you any late-breaking news here,” Dead-Eye said. “You walked into a line of work that doesn’t come with any pension plans or golden parachutes. The only way out for you is with a cold bullet on a warm night. You want to live to see grandkids, go sell life insurance or old cars.”

  “The same holds true for the two of you?” Manuel asked.

  “Everybody dies in this game, player,” Boomer said. “There are no survivors.”

  Stephanie walked up to the black Cadillac, approaching the driver’s side, Buttercup walking leash-free beside her. She smiled at the heavyset man sitting behind the wheel of the car, which was parked next to the gas-station entrance. “Why does a sweet flower like you keep time with a big, ugly dog like that?” he asked, his smile showing a thick line of crooked brown teeth. “You should have a poodle or one of those little shits look like rats.”