Buy Back

by Wiprud, Brian M

  “I’ll stay as low as I can.”

  “Make it lower.” He hung up.

  I instructed the driver to pass the green loft slowly three times before we pulled up in front. I rang Bridget. Just a few people walking their dogs on the street.

  “Coast is clear. I’m out front.”

  I looked at the time and hoped Atkins’s wife, Jan, was close to the museum with those paintings. The museum gala for the board wouldn’t last all night. Atkins would need that distraction to make good on tucking the Mondrians into storage.

  The car door opened, and Bridget climbed in next to me.

  Jimmy Robay climbed in after her. “Driver, to the scrap yard.”

  The car lurched forward, and the driver said, “Boss!”

  I looked at Bridget and Robay. “What’s what?”

  Robay just smiled like he had a seed stuck in his teeth, and Bridget tried to look anywhere but at me.

  “Boss! This is the one.”

  I locked eyes with Bridget, then with the driver in the rearview.

  “I tell you, boss. This is the one I pick up on Sunday, the one at the Donut House.”

  Bridget was in her red beret and scarf.

  I looked out the rear window. There was a car following right on our bumper.

  “Sit tight, Davin.” Robay smirked.

  My stomach felt like it was full of gravel.

  Bridget was Ms. French.

  Bridget was Molly Lee.

  CHAPTER

  FORTY-TWO

  “SO LET ME GET THIS straight, Jimmy.” The dull night glow of industrial Brooklyn out the window was quiet as a cemetery. The town car passed under the subway trestle. The scrap yard was ahead on the left, the Gowanus Expressway twinkling in the sky beyond it.

  “McCracken was in a jam and had read about Dunwoody Exports in the news, knew they reproduced paintings and were shady. She came to Molly Lee here to replace two missing Mondrians with fakes. Molly helps her, but then you put the squeeze on McCracken, the way the mob does, and threaten to expose the fakes on the wall unless she continues to do business with you. Or maybe McCracken isn’t so innocent, and it was a business deal for McCracken to make ends meet at the museum. Doesn’t matter. Same difference. McCracken was feeding you guys the occasional art from museum storage while trying to hold on to the collection and not dig her own grave. Or in the case of the four Henris that were stolen through the roof hatch, McCracken grabbed three to sell to Molly and said all seven were stolen.

  “Molly here is under the radar after last year’s publicity over Dunwoody. She’s gone back to her previous profession—not too much of a stretch to think anybody who ran massage parlors knew the business from the ground up. She does this to make ends meet until the next scam, or until this one is over, meanwhile speculating on industrial property waiting for zoning changes. Along comes Huey, a customer at the green loft, who spills the beans about his Whitbread heist. So Bridget hijacks the heist to get at some of the Whitbread’s main collection, the good stuff on display, not just the art in storage, so you call Sheila. McCracken shows up to make Atkins pull the guards, and she goes into the closet and just brings them to you. A lot safer than letting the goofballs take them. Huey gets the payoff from you at Billy Bank, puts it in storage, but Bridget filches the key when he drops by for some afternoon delight. Then Huey gets killed. It looks like a pattern with Jo-Ball’s death, and I’m the common factor, so I must be at the center of it. So you both got close to me to see what I was up to. Kootie and Frank panic and look unreliable, so you paid them off to bring them close and then sent guys to tweak them once you had them tagged. They knew the paintings never left the museum.”

  They didn’t say anything.

  They didn’t have to. I was really just laying it out for myself, so I could understand it, finally. If I was wrong about any of it, I was sure they wouldn’t have told me. Why would they? Didn’t matter to them anyway. I was on a ride to a necktie party.

  Necktie party? That’s dark humor. The necktie is a noose. That’s figurative, which means that I didn’t think they meant to hang me, just kill me.

  “Then realizing I’m a loose cannon, Bridget contacts me and brings me in close to where she can keep an eye on me. Even has me move in with her. Then the fake letter from Ariel, the call about being in danger. Cute.”

  Bridget kept her eyes down but whispered, “You had to be a good guy, didn’t you? Like your dad. Which is how you’ll end up.”

  Neither of them would look at me. Robay seemed tense but confident. Bridget Molly Lee French had her arms folded. Hell with it: I’m going back to calling her Bridget. Bridget didn’t want to be there, to be an accessory to murder, but I could see why Jimmy would want her there. If he was going to tweak me, she would have to be there, too, to make it one big happy conspiracy, nobody tells on nobody. Robay was there to make sure Eye Bags didn’t let me get away. Like a good businessman, Jimmy was there to oversee the completion of a crucial detail personally. I thought briefly about trying to appeal to his business side, but he was no dummy. Once you take a guy for a ride, there’s no letting him go, it’s a done deal.

  Gab wouldn’t get me out of this. I was going to have to find a mousehole to squeeze through. Where I’d find that hole I didn’t have any idea; I’d just have to play it by ear. Which sucked.

  Ahead the giant grabbers were lit by spotlights, motionless, their giant claws resting on mountains of shredded rusty steel ten stories high.

  Monday night I had come down to meditate at the scrap yard, the night I found the cats gone. I had seen Gustav that night for the first time. He could have killed me right there, but he was just tracking me, hoping I would lead him to Yvette.

  Monday. The scrap yard was karmic, the circle of life, a whole of parts, destruction and renewal, positive energy.

  Friday. The grabbers eyed me from the heaps, executioners, negative energy.

  I was probably going to be fed to one of these monsters, my body buried under ten thousand tons of rusty metal for a trip to a smelting plant in China. The flies and maggots would have a leisurely time taking my body apart over that long sea voyage.

  My situation was transformative, and I was forcing myself not to experience anxiety that would obstruct the flow of energy. My ace in the hole was my strength and size. Of course, like I said, a gun can trump that card.

  “Pull up at the scrap yard gate.” Jimmy patted the driver on the shoulder and handed him a hundred-dollar bill. “You never saw me, you never saw her, you never saw him.”

  “Yes, boss.”

  “I ever hear or see of you again and you die, but first you watch your family die. Got it?”

  The poor little Pakistani driver was trembling so violently that he couldn’t even answer.

  At the gate, I found Eye Bags was standing at my door, wearing one of those foam neck braces. He flashed a gun, then held it back under his coat.

  I got out and stood next to him.

  “Sorry about the sucker punch. Better than pushing you on the tracks, am I right?”

  Eye Bags wasn’t in a talking mood either.

  It was that blue Lincoln that had been following our car, and it pulled to the curb.

  Just like art theft isn’t like you see in the movies, neither is the business of killing. I was finding out firsthand. There was no room for discussion, for bartering. It was common knowledge that the mob would kill people by acting like a friend. Get close, and when the victim’s guard is down, make the move from behind. I had been moving around too much for them to surprise me, much less pretend to be my friend. Though maybe that was why Bridget didn’t want me going out again. Instead, they had to bait me with Bridget, hook me in the town car, and reel me in to the scrap yard.

  The town car zoomed away. From the blue Lincoln, two members of the broken nose squad made for the gate. Jimmy was under a streetlight next to the driveway. Bridget was to the side. There was a loud buzz, and the sheet metal fence began to roll up.

 
; I looked behind me at the gas station a hundred or more feet away. There was a car or two at the pumps, someone inside the mini mart at the register, but they had no reason to look past the shadows to where the scrap yard was. The back of the gas station was in deep shadow.

  Eye Bags jabbed me in the ribs with the gun. Move.

  I stepped forward and stopped at the curb, next to the streetlight.

  Eye Bags gave me another jab. Keep moving.

  The gates rattled and locked into place, the mountains of scrap and the grabbers wide before me.

  If I went in those gates, I was dead. I had to previsualize a way out. If I could manage to twist and not take a fatal shot from Eye Bags’s gun, the other goons would have a hard time drawing and targeting me from any distance. What little I know about pistols is that people usually can’t hit anything with them beyond twenty feet. Unless they practice. Most hoods don’t rely on finesse, so they don’t need to practice.

  There was an orange flash from behind me.

  The right side of the gate support exploded in flame. So did the goon standing next to it—shrapnel tore through his trench coat and his scalp. He fell flat, a puff of his hair floating in the smoke where he had just been standing.

  I fell flat, too, only I was still in one piece and aimed to stay that way if I could.

  Guns ratcheted on all sides.

  In front of me was the mob with pistols; behind me was Gustav the lovesick assassin with a grenade launcher. That’s what I call a rock and a hard place.

  I heard only one gun go off before a bunch of orange flashes boomed back by the gas station and I heard the gate and fence exploding, sparks like fireworks in the air, sheet metal clattering to the ground. I felt a jolt to my calf, like I’d been whipped with a rope, and my leg went numb. That would mean I was hit.

  Heart pounding, I listened to see if I was going to hear my pulse stop, and then feel myself fade into whatever is on the other side. I almost hoped so, because so far whatever had happened didn’t hurt too bad. Yet.

  The explosions had stopped, a wave of spent grenade shrapnel falling onto the pavement all around me. Ringing in my ears drowned out my heartbeat. It was my cell phone ringing. Probably Atkins.

  When the phone stopped ringing I heard footsteps.

  They approached from the direction of the gas station.

  Gustav.

  I rolled on my side.

  Yup, here came the punk kid from the shadows behind the gas station, with what looked like a giant black revolver cradled in his arms. The weapon was about the size of a sawed-off shotgun, with a bucket-sized ammunition drum on the underside. Smoke from the gun trailed behind him as he limped toward me. White surgical taped crisscrossed the left side of his face and ear, across the chin and right neck. Only one of those rosy cheeks was showing.

  I could hear people at the gas station, across Smith Street, saying:

  Did you see that?

  That dude blew up that fence.

  Whoa!

  My leg was stinging. I tried to look at it, but the streetlight was out. I looked at the fence, where the grabbers and the mountains of scrap loomed. The gate was in tatters, and nobody was standing. I couldn’t make out what was what, but there seemed to besome heaps that were probably Robay, the goons, and Bridget. Sparks were drizzling down from the busted streetlight, which was bent and leaning out over me.

  The footsteps stopped.

  Gustav was standing over me, his spiked hair silhouetted by the light of the gas station, the roar of the Gowanus Expressway beyond. Sparks from the streetlight flecked his watery eyes with fire.

  Man, this really sucked.

  Breathe slowly in through the nose; close the eyes.

  Breathe slowly out through the lips; stroke back my face where the beard used to be.

  Breathe slowly in through the nose; open the eyes.

  Breathe slowly out through the lips; focus on the punk kid who was about to shoot me full of fragmenting explosives.

  “What is this you do, Yop?” he said, one eye cocked. His voice was unexpectedly deep. I would have thought he’d sound like a teenager, kind of squeaky.

  “It’s a tantric exercise I do to improve the energy flow from my head to my heart. I’m experiencing some anxiety right now.”

  A car slowed as it passed us, the driver looking out curiously but not stopping.

  He says, “A last time, hm? Tell to me, Yop the Ogre, where is my Yvette?”

  So I says, “Miami. She was just arrested there. That’s all I know. I tried to send her your messages, but she was kind of hard to reach in jail. Can I ask why you have to call me Yop the Ogre?”

  “That is your name now. I am Girp. So Gorta is arrest? Police?”

  “Gorta? You mean Yvette?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “She was staying with friends who were growing grass in the basement.”

  “Grass?” Another car passed slowly, the occupants wide-eyed at Gustav’s gun.

  “Pot. You know, marijuana.”

  His forehead creased. “This sounds like something that would happen to my Gorta.”

  “It does, doesn’t it? I have to tell you, Gustav, that Gorta is no end of trouble.”

  “You are telling this to me, Yop?” He gestured toward the shredded fence and crumpled bodies. Then he pointed at his bandaged face. “Hm?”

  “So you know.” I sighed. My leg was aching, and I hoped it wasn’t bleeding too much. I didn’t want to pass out while I had the kid going. “A little advice, Gustav? She isn’t worth it. No woman is worth all this destruction, which, if I do say so, is not doing your karma a lot of good.”

  “Karma? What is this?”

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Of course.”

  “Do you think good things happen to good people?”

  “My father, he spoke of this.” Gustav cocked his head, grimacing philosophically. “Blood washes your enemy into the pit of hell.”

  “Never mind. How are the cats?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Well, you know, the one is not eat, and the other is not go in the box, and the other has the shots. Hm?”

  I laughed, weakly. “The Fuzz Face Four are a pain in the neck, aren’t they?”

  “Yes. The other one is make food from stomach on bed.” Gustav smiled. “Are you bad injured?”

  “I don’t know.” I growled as I moved my leg. “I can’t tell for sure.”

  “Should I kill you?”

  I had to chuckle at that, longer than maybe I should have.

  “What is so fun?” He sounded serious again, not conversational, as he waved another gawking car past us. “In my tradition, it is courtesy to ask.”

  “I just thought the question was sort of ironic, Girp. Had you asked Yop the Ogre that question a month ago, when Gorta left, he would have said go ahead, sure, do me a favor. Now, I dunno. I just about had Gorta out of my life until you came around. It was a good feeling. Well, do what you have to. I’m exhausted. Careful, though. Better step back if you’re going to shoot me with that cannon. You’ll hurt yourself.”

  There was a zap-pop overhead, and a fresh cascade of sparks rained down on me from the streetlight bulb, Gustav and his grenade launcher shimmering before me in a fluttery glow. Real pretty in a way, sort of like how dark clouds sometimes light up red just before sunset.

  A shout came from the gas station. “Hey, man, you need the cops over there?”

  Gustav looked back toward the gas station.

  The streetlight croaked, then whooshed.

  Half the streetlight crashed down across the road next to Gustav, and he fell backward into the road. I heard the gun clatter onto the pavement, a car screech and honk.

  My leg wasn’t too badly injured. How did I know? Because it was under me, taking me past the splayed bodies of Robay and his goons and into the scrap yard. Why into the scrap yard? It was the only place to go where Gustav wouldn’t have a clear shot at me with his automatic cannon.

>   Ahead were the mountains of scrap; the monster grabbers eyed me from above. I veered right, behind a welding truck and next to a metal shed.

  BOOM.

  Fire erupted from the mountain of rust, one of the grenades sending scrap high into the air.

  Someone screamed, and it wasn’t me.

  It was Bridget. In the half-light, I could see her face was bloody but couldn’t tell if it was her blood, Robay’s, or one of the goons’.

  I grabbed her around the waist and slung her over my shoulder. Bridget was hitting me, but the pounding of her little fists on my back felt like a massage. I guess she thought I was hostile toward her. Well, maybe I would be later. No sense in any more people getting killed.

  The scrap was so spread out it was piled up to the side of the metal shed and up to the top of a wall beyond. At the top of the heap I stood on the wall. Below me was a sand pit, part of a concrete mixing plant. Beyond that, a conveyor belt up to the gravel mixer, and cement silos. A few cement trucks were parked on the other side, and at the canal bulkhead was a Cat excavator for unloading barges of gravel.

  BOOM.

  WHAM.

  The sky lit up behind me, and the force of the explosion pushed me over the wall. I tossed Bridget to one side. We both landed on our backs on the sand, sliding down the pile.

  Flame, debris, and black smoke rolled over the wall where we’d been standing. I guessed the tanks in the welding trucks had exploded. Gustav must have heard me climbing the scrap pile and fired in that direction.

  I rolled the rest of the way down the sand pile and tried to get Bridget to her feet. She kept collapsing, so I threw her over my shoulder again.

  Flames towering behind me, I trotted toward the canal, hoping there was a path along the bulkhead that would take me up to Hamilton Avenue and the drawbridge there. I heard Gustav yelling.

  “Yop! Yop!”

  I jogged behind the Cat excavator to catch my breath in the shadows. I tested Bridget’s neck pulse. She had one.