Chasers

by Lorenzo Carcaterra

  Dead-Eye did a quick duck behind the driver’s barrier, heard the bullets ping against the front end of the bus and then lunged out of his seat, guns in both hands, firing at the two men. Quincy jumped into the rear stairwell and shot off rounds from both his guns at the sitting man. The inside of the bus was now a hot and shuttered fire zone, as a dozen bullets flew in four different directions. The four men held their ground, each prepared to die.

  The man standing in the middle of the bus, his back to Quincy and pegging rapid-fire shots at Dead-Eye, was the first to go down. The gun slipped away from his hand and he fell slowly to his knees, a large dark hole in his cheek holding the fatal slug. He rocked back and forth for several seconds, bringing the action around him to a halt, then dropped flat on his face, a blood mass forming around his neck.

  Quincy did a quick clip reload, and Dead-Eye moved away from the driver’s side and down the aisle, their guns aimed at the remaining man, sitting now with his back pressed against a cracked window. “You don’t need to die,” Dead-Eye said to him. “You only need to drop your piece and get your ass off this bus.”

  Police sirens exploded around them, traffic and crowds swarmed and stalled around the bus, locking it in place. “He’s not the only one,” Quincy said. “We got less than two minutes to get lost before we’re pinned in for good.”

  Dead-Eye walked down the aisle, stepped over the body of the first shooter, and rested the barrel of his gun on the man’s chest. “If I’m going to get arrested on this bus, it’s going to be for two murders,” he said to the man, his voice low and direct. “It’s your call to make, but you need to make it now.”

  The man nodded and slowly slid his weapon back inside the front flap of his jacket. “You win, at least for today,” he said, watching as Dead-Eye backed away, moving to the rear doors next to Quincy. “We’ll be back for our money. Only next time, you’ll be facing more than two of us.”

  “Good,” Quincy said. “I’m always up for a party.”

  The shooter stood and ran toward the front doors, his left hand reaching for the lever that slid them open. He jumped off the bus, gave one final look to his fallen partner, and ran out into the crowd and the traffic.

  Dead-Eye grabbed one of the duffel bags and tossed it to Quincy. He picked up the other and together they pushed open the rear rubber doors and stepped out onto the crowded street. “Is there any plan if one of us gets nabbed?” Quincy asked.

  “You’re holding two hundred thousand in neatly bundled bills in a duffel bag,” Dead-Eye said. “That should be more than enough to buy you a sweet-talking lawyer and still have some left over to skim a few held-out palms.”

  “Is that the best you can offer?” Quincy asked.

  “You can always float your way over to Plan B,” Dead-Eye said, making his way around a blocked cab and three stalled pedestrians.

  “Which is what?” Quincy asked, stepping over the bumper of a UPS truck landlocked alongside a battered Chrysler Cordoba.

  “Bust your way out of Rikers,” Dead-Eye said. “You may not make it, but we would be more than impressed by the attempt.”

  Quincy laughed, waved, and disappeared into the thick fog of cars and people, black-and-whites and fire engines flooding the outskirts of the area. Dead-Eye watched him fade away as he slowly made his way east toward Lexington Avenue. He looked back, smiled, and shook his head. He stopped at a corner, waited for a red light to turn green, and gave a nod to two uniformed patrolmen heading toward the chaos at his back. The duffel bag in his right hand, he walked away with another dent in Angel’s daily cash flow.

  25

  Boomer and Buttercup ran together, moving at their briskest clip, breath escaping in painful spurts from two sets of damaged lungs. They turned a sharp corner and veered down a tight alley, thick black garbage bags lining both sides, hot blasts of steam shooting from the rusty mouths of aluminum chutes. Four gunmen were fast on them, semis held low, shoes and boots stepping into small mounds of waste and thick puddles of oil mixed with stagnant water. Boomer looked down the long alley, past the low-hanging clothesline crammed with stained napkins and sheets, at the streetlights half a block away and came to a quick stop. Buttercup came to an equally rapid halt, her tongue hanging out one side of her mouth, white foam dripping from her jowls, and cast a steady gaze up at Boomer. A thick rain washed over them both, mixing with the hot sweat pouring off their bodies. Boomer ran a wet hand across the police dog’s soggy head. “It’s not like you to run from a fight,” he said to her. “Not like me, either. If you’re up to taking one down, I’ll make on the other three.”

  Buttercup turned away from Boomer and stepped in front of him, her eyes focused now on the four gunmen making their way toward them down the alleyway, her rear paws digging into the mud and soot of the wet ground, looking for traction, her muscular torso coiled and tight, her mouth open and small, warm puffs of white air forming around her nostrils. Boomer pulled two guns from his waistband and moved to his left, using the hanging wet sheets as cover. Buttercup stood her ground, waiting for the first of the gunmen to get close enough for her to pounce, aware of the loaded weapon in his hand and the crazed look in his eyes.

  The lead gunman wiped the rain from his face, searching out Boomer through the heavy rainfall. The loud noise of half a dozen crammed restaurant kitchens, minimum-wage workers washing and rinsing dishes, echoed through the alley. Added to the noisy mix were radios blaring songs from three different continents. Every so often, a pail of dirty dishwater tossed out of an open doorway would splash across the black stones of the alley.

  The lead gunman never saw Buttercup.

  The police dog waited until he was only a short leap away and made her move. The first bite was quick and meant to bring him down, a fast, sharp snap to the left ankle. The jolt of pain brought the gunman to the ground, his weapon sliding out of his hand and landing against a half-filled crate of pearl onions. He landed face forward, the blow causing his nose and chin to bleed, the bone in his left leg snapped beyond fixing.

  Buttercup turned and hovered over her fallen foe. The man lifted his right hand and made a feeble attempt to slap the dog away, his other hand reaching for the gun several feet beyond his grasp. Boomer stepped in from out of the shadows, raised one of his guns, and put two heavy blows to the face side of the man’s head, leaving him stiff and cold. He then dropped to both knees, straddling the unconscious man. He pointed his two arms out and opened fire, the sparks, smoke, and pop from his guns adding to the noise and confusion of the bustling alleyway. He pulled on the two triggers until all he heard was empty clicks.

  Boomer then rolled over toward a grimy wall and jumped up, reaching for the bottom rung of a fire-escape ladder. He pulled it down and hoisted himself up. He reached the first landing, raced to the far edge, and looked down through the rain, smoke, and dust. One of the gunmen was down, and it looked as if he would need more than time to get back up. The other two had their guns out and were silently inching forward, not sure from which direction the next rounds would come. Boomer waited until the one to his right was close to the fire escape. He lifted himself up on the rusty edge, checked to see where Buttercup had positioned herself, and then made his jump.

  He landed on the gunman’s back and both did a hard-and-fast roll on the soiled turf, their hands, heads, and clothes drenched in soot and rain. Boomer reached around and clasped a forearm across the man’s throat, using a three-deep mountain of black garbage bags as leverage, his boots digging into the dark cobblestones, his back arched, the full force of his strength sapping the gunman of what was left of his. Boomer leaned away from the wall and lifted the man’s head up, then gave it a final and vicious twist, snapping his neck bone and windpipe. He moved his arm off the man and eased his head down onto one of the garbage bags, turning away to make a grab for the semiautomatic that had fallen from his hand.

  He never heard the fourth gunman.

  He came up behind Boomer and pressed his gun hard against the b
ack of his neck. “If you’re smart as they say, throw a signal to that fuckin’ sixteen-wheel dog of yours to stay wherever the fuck it is,” the man said.

  “Forget the dog,” Boomer said, “and tell me what it is you think I need to hear.”

  “What makes you think I got anything to say to you?” the man asked.

  “You were sent after me, the four of you, to deliver a message,” Boomer said. “The other three aren’t in any kind of shoot-the-shit mood. That just leaves you. So let’s hear it.”

  “Five million,” the man said. “That’s how much you, the dog, and the other gimps in your crew can take home just by stepping the fuck out of this and let the business go on without you.”

  “That’s a lot of cash for a priest to be hauling around,” Boomer said. “Don’t you think?”

  “Better in your pockets than in his, is how I would look at it,” the man said. “Either way, I need to walk from here with an answer, good or bad.”

  “And if it’s not an answer you want to hear?” Boomer said. “What then?”

  “I kill you and the mutt,” the man said.

  “You really don’t like dogs, do you?” Boomer said.

  “Five million in cash or one bullet to the head,” the man said.

  “Do you have the money with you?” Boomer asked. “Or do they only trust you with the bullets?”

  “Decide now,” the man said, moving the gun from the base of Boomer’s neck to the back of his head.

  Boomer lowered his head, his hands resting flat on the wet ground, and nodded. “I’ve never been any good with money,” he said. Boomer pressed down on both hands, lifted his feet off the ground, and pushed them hard against the trigger man’s ankles. The force of the push, coupled with the slippery wet turf, threw the man off balance, the gun pointing up at the sky, his body arching at an angle toward a pile of crushed cardboard boxes. Boomer turned and reached a hand behind him, his fingers searching through the mud and grime for the rain-soaked semiautomatic. The trigger man rolled off the cardboard boxes, jumped to his feet, and raised his gun in Boomer’s direction, his finger wrapped around the trigger. Boomer, his back to the gunman, placed his right hand and fingers on the semi and did a fast ground roll, quick to avoid the first stream of bullets. The blasts skimmed the ground around him, sending thick specks of wet dirt and rock slapping against a far wall.

  The gunman was now on his feet and looking down at Boomer, still fighting to get a grip on the slippery semi. “You could have walked away a very rich man,” he said to Boomer. “Instead, you’re going to die a poor man in a shithole of an alley. Just like any other loser of a cop.”

  The pointed end of the knife went into the gunman’s back hard and with precision, and he dropped to the ground with a muted thud, his clear eyes opened wide and a stream of blood flowing from his mouth as his teeth jammed down on his tongue. The gunman teetered back and forth, his body in the throes of a death tremble, his face drained of color and life. He landed flush against the wall, his dying body propped up by a thick pile of garbage bags.

  Boomer stood and walked past the gunman and toward the young man standing in the lit entryway to a restaurant’s hot and smoky kitchen. “You always stick a knife in somebody who’s blocking your doorway?” he asked him.

  “I do if he’s aiming to kill a friend,” the young man said, stepping deeper into the doorway and away from the heavy raindrops.

  “We’re a dozen miles away from calling each other friend,” Boomer said, looking down as Buttercup stepped up next to him. “I don’t even know your name.”

  “There’s no need for you to know it,” the young man said. “It was just important that I knew yours, and that I picked up earlier today.”

  “Who passed it on?” Boomer asked.

  “My friend,” the young man said, turning away and disappearing into the heat of his kitchen. “Tony Rigs.”

  26

  Boomer stood in the middle of Nunzio’s ruined restaurant, the outside shell dark and smoking, the interior smoldering and destroyed. In the center of what had been a bustling dining room, less than a dozen feet from where the bar had stood, the charred remains of Nunzio Goldman were nailed to a beam that had managed to withstand the worst of the blaze. Rev. Jim sat by himself in a corner of the restaurant, his black jacket pressed against a still warm wall. Quincy paced in a tight circle, his hands at his sides, his head lowered, lost in deep thought. Buttercup sat next to Nunzio’s body, her front paws folded one over the other, her large eyes tired and worn, her brown coat darkened by the layers of soot on the ground. Ash was hunched over a series of burnt wires, her fingers gently easing their way from the burnt cords to the wall unit, the search for the cause of the fire not requiring any of her skills.

  Dead-Eye stared at Nunzio, losing the battle against his tears. “He didn’t have a part in this,” Dead-Eye said. “If that was one of us up there, I would feel the hurt but I would understand the why. But Nunzio had earned a better way out.”

  “They got to him because they knew it would get to us,” Boomer said. “That’s who they are and it’s what they do. If we didn’t know that before today, we better know that now.”

  “They didn’t do anything to hide their intentions,” Ash said. “If I did a scan of this place, I bet I’d find everything—from prints to DNA. It’s all here except for a paper trail.”

  “We knew who it was before we walked in here,” Quincy said. “Question now is where do we take it?”

  “First we need to bury our friend,” Rev. Jim said.

  “And after we do that?” Ash asked. “Do we still keep to the current plan, or do we take it a step higher?”

  Boomer turned to face the other Apaches, his back to Nunzio’s remains. “It’s not enough anymore just to put a dent in their operations,” he said. “We need to take them out. We need to take them all out. Angel and his crew, the G-Men, and anyone else eager to line up on their side have got to go down.”

  “How’s that plan play out?” Rev. Jim said. “I’m willing to shoot until I die, but there’s a shitload more of them than there are of us. The numbers don’t stack to our side.”

  “Up until now, we’ve been bending the rules,” Boomer said. “Making side deals with Tony Rigs, asking some of the other crews to step back or lend a hand, knowing they would profit in the long run if we found any success.”

  “And not everybody in here was comfortable with those alliances,” Dead-Eye said. “Myself included. That’s because we were still thinking like cops—retired, disabled, or not. We can’t think like that anymore. Ever again. We’re not cops, and we haven’t been for a long time.”

  “If we’re going to get these bastards, we need to forget the badge and the bag of rules that comes with it,” Boomer said. “Because this isn’t a job for cops, never was. We only kidded ourselves into thinking that way.”

  “And if we’re not cops, what are we?” Ash asked.

  Boomer tugged on the question for a moment. Turning away from them all, he said, “We’re killers.”

  3

  Will you partake of that last offered cup Or disappear into the potter’s ground?

  —JOHNNY CASH “THE MAN COMES AROUND”

  1

  Dead-Eye stood staring out across the empty racetrack, the early-morning mist fading fast with the arrival of the postdawn sun. Boomer stood next to him, back to the quarter-horse racetrack, long since abandoned to decay and indecision by executives low on cash and lacking in incentive. He gazed up at the grandstand, the once clean white seats and ornate poles coated now with a harsh tint of rust. “It’s a shame to see what’s happened to this place,” Boomer said. “I remember when the gates first opened; it was as beautiful and elegant as any palace you could imagine. Now, it just sits back and waits for the wrecking ball.”

  “You know what’s even more of a shame?” Dead-Eye said. “At least to me?”

  Boomer looked over and shook his head. “Tell me,” he said.

  “A gr
eat cop, maybe the best ever, tossing all the good he ever did away for a woman he has no business being near,” Dead-Eye said, anger seething through every word. “To me, that’s a lot worse than any racetrack on its last legs.”

  Boomer stayed silent for several moments. “I know what I’m doing, Dead-Eye,” he finally said. “I don’t need you to tell me otherwise.”

  “You think so?” Dead-Eye asked, stepping away from the railing. “Well, then, let me clue you in, partner. You are so knee-deep with this broad, you can’t see more than five feet in front of you. Shit, man, this isn’t a fucking prom queen we’re talking about here; this is a top-of-the-line crime boss. And she will fucking waste you soon as look at you, no matter how much in love you think she is. Which, by the by, she isn’t. People like her never fall in love, and if they do, it’s never with someone like you.”

  “I’ve been seeing her—that part is true,” Boomer said. “But I’m not in love with her. I know what’s at stake here, and I know what’s real and what isn’t. And I would never mix up the two.”

  “Look, we’ve crossed every line a cop can cross and still, at the end of the day, we could hang on to our shields, knowing we did right by them,” Dead-Eye said. “But this is one line, Boomer, that you cannot cross. There is no way back. I’m not telling you this to break your heart. I’m telling you this because there’s still time to save it. We can never help who we fall in love with. But in this case you have to turn and walk away from it.”

  “We need her help,” Boomer said, “and she’ll give it because I’ll ask for it. After this is done, and if we’re still around, she goes her way and I go mine. And that’s how it’s going to play.”

  Dead-Eye leaned back and took a deep breath, letting the coolness of the morning wash over his face. “There’s no need for the others to know about this,” he said, his voice lower, calmer. “This should stay where it belongs—and that’s between the two of you.”