“You looked too frail for that,” he said. “I thought you’d die on us if we did that.”
It was a valid point. I closed the trunk on both of them.
The car was dented in front but still drivable. I got in the driver’s seat and headed off to Winthrop.
chapter 27
1992
She’s bundled up in a heavy green winter parka, but from her shoes and the little I can see of her uniform, I’m guessing she’s a nurse. She’s young, and her stare keeps moving from Marzone lying dead on the pavement to me standing over him. Her face is so pale in the moonlight. She wants to scream but she’s too horrified to do so. I just feel sick inside as I watch her, wishing that there was some other way than what I was going to have to do.
Finally the terror releases her enough to let her move. She starts running, but she has those heels on, and there’s ice on the ground, and it’s not too long before she falls and lands on one knee. She’s crying now. I don’t think she has the strength to try running again. My stomach is all knotted up as I walk over to her. I take out the. 32 caliber and place the muzzle so it’s a few inches from her temple. Her mouth is gaping so wide open that when she cries thick strands of saliva drip from it. Oh Christ. I can’t pull the trigger. I just can’t do that to her face, not that type of damage. Instead I try hushing her and end up suffocating her, then lower her lifeless body to the ground. At least she looks undisturbed this way. Like she could be sleeping.
For the first time I look around to see where I am, and realize Marzone led me to the back parking lot of a small shopping plaza. There must be a hospital nearby, and this girl was probably cutting through the parking lot as a shortcut home after a late shift. This was all supposed to go down in a desolate warehouse parking lot with the Luger having an attached silencer. Instead I shot off three rounds with a. 32, and for all the fuck I know neighbors nearby have already called the police about gunshots. I have to get out of there but I can’t leave the girl’s body with Marzone. Lombard’s furious enough with how this has gone so far and having this nurse’s death tied to Marzone would put him over the top.
I jog over to an old rusted Ford station wagon. When I’m on a job like this, I always carry a slim jim and a screwdriver on me. It takes only seconds to unlock the driver’s door, and not much longer than that to strip and hotwire the ignition. I drive the car over to the dead nurse and, after popping the trunk, drop her body inside.
The police still haven’t shown up, no sirens either, which means I’ve caught one break tonight. My hands are shaking as I drive away.
I feel so damn cold inside my skull. At first I think about leaving her body someplace where it could be found so her family can have a funeral for her, but I realize how risky that is. I have to make sure her body disappears for good, which isn’t hard, but still, I hate the idea of it. I hate the thought of how I’m going to be spending the next few hours.
It takes me an hour to drive where I have to go. The coldness deep in my head has traveled to the pit of my stomach, and it just keeps getting worse. By the time I stop the car, I’m drenched in a sickly cold sweat, and that stench of death nearly overpowers me.
I open the trunk and lift her body from it, except she comes alive in my arms and starts fighting me. Somehow I hadn’t killed her the first time, and I feel even sicker inside knowing that I have to do it now for real.
chapter 28
present
The only light inside the house came from the kitchen. I crouched outside one of the windows and watched while a man in his thirties sat alone at a small Formica table, one of his legs tapping anxiously as he chain-smoked his way through half a pack of cigarettes. He had a much skinnier body type than Sal Lombard, but there was enough resemblance in his face – especially that familiar cruel mouth – to know he was Lombard’s son. It was possible there were other people inside the house, but I didn’t think it was likely. Anyway, it didn’t much matter if there were.
I went back to the front door and knocked. I heard footsteps, then the same voice that had been calling me on my cell phone yelling through the door, “Yeah?”
I muffled my voice with my coat, and doing my best to impersonate one of the wiseguys, said, “Fucksake, Nick, it’s Joey. We got your merchandise. Open the fucking door.”
“You got a death wish talking to me like that?” the man inside yelled back out. There was nothing but mottled fury in his face as the door flung open, then a stunned dumbness as he stood staring at me. Before he could react I tapped him on the forehead with the butt of the gun I was holding, and he sat down hard on the floor. I let myself in and closed the door behind me.
“Hands behind your neck.”
He blinked stupidly at me for a few seconds before complying. I patted him down but he wasn’t carrying.
His eyes darted left and right before settling on me. He asked, “Where are my men?”
“They’re in their car,” I said, “and they’re not in any position to help you.”
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he demanded, trying poorly to force a bravado. I raised a finger to silence him.
“It’s not going to work that way,” I said. “Right now I either kill you, or the two of us figure out a way so I don’t have to.”
The way his lips twisted, he was about to make a snide comment, but something about my expression made him look away from me instead.
“What do you suggest?” he asked without much hope.
“First some questions. Why’d you wait until now?”
His mouth weakened momentarily. He lowered his gaze. “The FBI was watching you,” he said. “They were using you as bait hoping I’d go after you. It was only last week when I found out from my source that they dropped their operation.”
I remembered the blue Chevy sedan that Sophie had run up to warn me about. I could almost see the faces of the two men in it. I remembered the other times I’d catch glimpses of other cars waiting for me after work. It made sense that it would’ve been the Feds watching over me.
“Why wait even a week?” I asked.
He made a face. “I wasn’t sure until today I was going to go through with this. I was trying to get past what you did, ratting us out and putting my pop and my brother Al away, but then seeing you being built up like a hero was too much.”
“Did your boys search my apartment?”
“I don’t know where you live,” he said. “If someone searched your place it wasn’t us. Probably the Feds.”
I considered that for a moment, then asked, “Was the plan tonight to torture and kill me?”
A hitch showed at the side of his mouth. “I was first going to get some information out of you,” he said.
“That office building hired me for you?”
He nodded. He was trying hard to keep his composure, but he was cracking. His voice wasn’t quite right, and a tic had started to pull at his left eye.
“Why the anonymous calls to my cell phone?” I asked.
He shrugged. “I was trying to let off steam, but it didn’t do much good. In the end I had to have you brought here.” He hesitated for a few seconds, then asked, “Any ideas yet so you don’t have to kill me?”
His skin color wasn’t looking too good, neither was that tic pulling on his eye. If I kept him sitting there much longer he was going to expire on me. I had him get up and sit on a loveseat, and I pulled up a wooden chair so I could sit opposite him.
I said, “The only thing I can think of is for you to give me something incriminating enough so you can’t afford to let anything happen to me.”
He gave it some thought and nodded. “I’ve got something like that,” he said. “It’s back at my house.”
“You also have to pay me something. A lot actually. How much cash can you get your hands on tonight?”
“Maybe twenty grand,” he said.
I whistled softly. “Twenty grand? That’s how little you value your life?”
I raised the gun to
level it at his chest and his eyes bulged at the sight of it. He told me then that he had over a hundred grand that he could give me. “It’s buried right in this basement,” he said in a voice that showed fear, but also how disgusted he was with himself. “I keep it there as an emergency fund.”
I followed him downstairs and watched as he pulled back a section of the carpeting. He then removed a part of the subflooring that had earlier been cut away and started digging with a shovel. The stress of the situation was getting to him, weakening him, and it wasn’t too long before he was sweating and his arms were shaking like they were made of rubber.
“Take a deep breath,” I said. “Concentrate on what you’re doing. As long as the money’s there and you’re not lying to me you have nothing to worry about.”
“The money’s there,” he grunted. His breathing remained labored as he struggled to lift each shovelful of dirt. “You should rot in hell,” he said angrily, tears mixing with his sweat. “Pop died in prison because of you. After everything he did for you, you gonna betray him like that? He gave you a Rolex, even had it personally inscribed, you rotten sonofabitch!”
“Yeah, he did,” I said. “It was a nice one too. And someone in his organization tipped off the Boston Police to what was going down at the docks. So fuck your pop, and fuck your brother Al, too.”
Nick’s face was locked in a hard grimace. Sweat poured off of him as he shook his head. “The tip didn’t come from us, you paranoid fuck,” he said. “It came from South Boston.”
I thought about what he said and decided it probably made sense, but still, Lombard should’ve had better control of the operation and not shared it with the South Boston crowd.
“Well, my mistake, then,” I said. “But fuck it, no use now crying over spilt milk. And watch your goddamn mouth with me. I’m not warning you again.”
He clamped his mouth shut after that and focused on his digging. It was another twenty minutes before he hit a wood plank. He pried it out with the shovel, then reached in and pulled out a valise. Inside were packets of bills wrapped in cellophane.
“You can count it if you’d like,” he said. “There’s over a hundred grand in there.”
“I’ll take your word for it. Let’s go get your incriminating evidence.”
I followed him up the stairs and out of the house. Nick Lombard saw the Cadillac parked off in the distance.
“Let me check on my guys,” he said. “I want to see they’re okay.”
I waved my gun at him, dismissing the idea. “For now they’ll keep where they are.”
He had a red Mercedes sports coupe convertible parked off to the side. I took the passenger seat while he got behind the wheel. It was a shame it was too cold to put the top down. When we drove past the Cadillac, I could see the worried glance he gave it.
chapter 29
1992
Sal Lombard pours both of us glasses of Dewar’s. While I’m sipping my scotch, he takes a couple of Montecristos from a box and offers me one. I decline and he cuts the end off his and lights up. After several puffs, the room’s clouding up with the pungent smell of tobacco. I was never one for cigars. Not much for scotch either.
Sal and I are alone, although he’s got several of his boys in the room next door. The two of us both went through a lot of trouble to make sure we weren’t followed to this hotel suite. It’s important that we keep our association hidden from the authorities, which is why we rarely meet face to face. When we do, it’s usually at a suite like this one. Lombard has several of them rented anonymously throughout the city, and he takes the necessary precautions to make sure the Feds don’t have a clue about them.
“Lenny, what’s so fucking urgent?” he asks, his eyes bugging out to show his impatience.
I can’t help feeling that he already knows what I’m going to tell him, and I remember the other hit man in his employ that I took out years ago. I know he’s not going to let me retire. I know why his boys are sitting in the room next door. Still, Sal’s smart enough to know that before they’d get to me I’d have his jugular sliced open.
I drain my scotch and start to tell him how screwed up things went with Marzone.
“Don’t worry about it, Lenny,” he says. “Marzone was always a slippery fucker, but you finished the job. That’s all that matters.”
I shake my head. “This job was cursed from the beginning,” I say. “When I finally catch up to him my piece of shit Luger jams on me. Then the sonofabitch takes off and runs me a good mile through the streets of East Boston before I catch up with him for the second time. How the fuck I wasn’t spotted that night, I still don’t know. Sal, I think this was a sign for me to quit this shit.”
I sit quietly after that with my hangdog expression. I don’t tell him about the girl in the bulky green parka, or what I had to do to her. I don’t tell him how young and innocent she looked or how I’m haunted every night now by the memory of what I had to do to dispose of her body. Or how hard it is for me now to close my eyes without seeing her. If I told him any of that I’d be dead. We’d both be dead.
Sal’s appraising me quietly. All at once he breaks out laughing. It’s a quiet laugh, his body convulsing with it. It’s a while before his body stops shaking like jelly. Once that happens, he wipes a few tears from his eye and smiles broadly at me.
“You telling me because of a couple of bad breaks you want to quit?” he says. “I don’t believe it, Lenny. I know you, I know what’s in your blood. You can’t quit this. You’d be fucking miserable.”
“It’s a sign, Sal-” I try telling him.
“Fuck that. It was a few tough breaks, but you nailed the motherfucker in the end. Right now you’re feeling sorry for yourself. You’ll snap out of it. Take your wife and kids to Florida for a few weeks. You’ll be as good as new when you come back.”
I shake my head. “I can’t do this any more. I’m sorry.”
He grows very quiet, his eyes nearly lifeless as he studies me. Finally, he says, “I can’t let you quit, Lenny. I know you’re smart enough to know that.”
I nod, but don’t bother saying anything. We’re both staring at each other now. He knows what I’m thinking just as I know what he is. He knows what will happen if he calls out for his boys in the next room.
“Where does this leave us?” he asks softly.
“I don’t know.”
“Is it only the hits you don’t want to do? What about still working for me?”
“It depends. What do you have in mind?”
Sal pours himself a fresh glass of Dewar’s. He takes his time drinking it, all the while giving me a hard look.
“I’m starting up a new business by the docks,” he says. “It needs a smart guy in charge, which you fucking are even if you’re going to give me this bullshit about you not being a killer any more. You still up to some rough stuff if necessary?”
“If necessary.”
“Okay then.”
He fills up my glass and we drink a toast to our new venture. Whatever moment of danger that had existed between us has passed.
chapter 30
present
Sophie had an ancient-looking Volvo parked outside the coffee shop Saturday morning. I threw an overnight bag into the back seat, then joined her up front. She handed me a large coffee and a muffin that she had bought earlier at the shop, which I gladly took from her. The weather had turned colder – the type of cold where you can see your breath – and I held the coffee with both hands to warm them.
“Thanks for this,” I said, acknowledging the food and coffee. I looked hesitantly at the interior of the car, adding, “You sure this tin can can drive? This car has got to be at least thirty years old.”
Sophie smiled at that. It was a nice smile. With no makeup on, her thick hair pulled back into a pony tail, and wearing a ratty sweatshirt and a torn pair of jeans, she still looked more gorgeous than most women would look dolled-up and dressed to the nines.
“Not to worry,” she said. “My
friend promised me it will get us there and back. I also rented us a laptop computer. As long as we can figure out how to use it we’ll be playing writer this weekend. Excited?”
“Sure.”
She put her hand on my arm and gave me a slight squeeze. “You don’t look too excited. Come on, Leonard, cheer up, this is going to be fun. An adventure.”
“I am glad we’re doing this,” I said.
“So am I,” she said. She handed me a piece of paper with hand-written directions scrawled on it. “The first few hours we’re just going straight up Route 93, then the directions get a little complicated and I’ll need your help… Leonard, darling, what’s so amusing?”
I waved it off. “Nothing,” I said. “Just some random thought.”
She gave me a funny look. “Save those for the book,” she said. “A little humor won’t hurt.”
She had a small stack of cassette tapes, and smiled as she told me they came with the car. She asked me what I wanted to listen to and I told her to choose, and she plugged in The Grateful Dead. For most of the trip I sat back deep in thought over what had happened during the past few days and what was going to be happening in the near future, and was barely aware of the music Sophie was playing or the scenery we were passing. Every once in a while I’d look over at Sophie. The excitement burning on her was palpable, and I don’t think she had ever looked more beautiful.
After we got off Route 93, the directions did get a little tricky, but we were able to navigate to the cabin, which really was in the middle of nowhere. I ignored Sophie’s protests, and loaded myself up with the laptop and all the other baggage and food that she had brought, leaving her to carry only her handbag.
“This is ridiculous, Leonard,” she told me. “I’m not some weakling. I can carry some of that.”
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