I walked away from Kit without looking back. The crowd parted like the Red Sea to let me through. Then I was out in the cold again, wishing for someone to hit.
Chapter 18. Gettin’ a Crew
“I need six guys,” I said, willing my voice not to crack. I may have been on the far side of don’t-give-a-shit, but even that didn’t make me wholly comfortable with meeting the beady-eyed gaze of Joey the Slob.
“Six guys.” Said beady-eyed gaze was leveled at me with an unmistakable expression of “You talkin’ to me? Who the fuck are you to talk to me?” It was a caricature, and it would have been comical if it hadn’t been on the face of a guy who could have my guts pulled out my asshole with little more than a nod and a flick of his fingers. He didn’t have Benedict’s kind of power—or mine—but he had dozens of thugs all too happy to do the unspeakable on his behalf, and that was plenty.
The Slob gnawed his toothpick and waited for me to flinch. “Yeah” was all I said. Seconds crawled by with all the speed of continental drift. Idly, I wondered if Joey lived here at the club. To my knowledge, nobody had ever seen him anywhere else. I wondered if that meant he did his dirty work right here, when he wanted to do it personally. The thought didn’t ease my nerves. “Bennie cool with this?”
“He didn’t tell y—”
“I’m askin’ you.”
I shifted uncomfortably in my chair—I couldn’t help it. If Joey thought I was disrespecting Benedict, a world wouldn’t be enough to contain all the hurt I was in. “Yeah,” I said. “He’s cool with it.”
“Bennie says you’re my guy, now.”
I said nothing.
“The fuck do I want with you? I dunno what to do with you fuckin’ people.” He waved his hand at me in something that I guessed was supposed to be the sign of the evil eye, which went a long way toward helping me figure out what he meant by “you fuckin’ people.”
“You don’t have to worry about any of that stuff.”
“Oh, I don’t, do I? That’s incredibly fuckin’ gracious. Thank you.” I kept the wince off my face, somehow. Talking with the Slob was like playing Russian roulette with all the chambers of the gun loaded but one. “The fuck do I want you for?” he asked again.
“I’m gonna take care of one of our problems,” I said, with more bravado than I felt.
“The same problem Bennie’s been workin’ on for just about fuckin’ forever?”
“That’s the one.”
“Bennie can’t do it. What makes you think you can?”
I smiled. “I can do a few things Benedict can’t.”
Damned if the Slob didn’t give me the evil eye again. “Yeah. That’s what I hear.” Another long pause, but I felt steadier now, and the Slob’s tongue darted out a couple of times to moisten his lips while he tried to stare me down. Maybe Benedict had told him a few things, or maybe this was simply a topic he was uncomfortable with, but either way, the ground he’d been standing on had gotten more than a little uncertain. I hoped that meant he’d give me what I wanted rather than having me chopped into little bits.
“All right, Shrimp,” he said at last. “You can have any five guys who’ll put up with you, plus Tink.”
Say what? Made guys didn’t take orders from regular schlubs—not ever. The Slob must have wanted somebody to keep an eye on me, but even so, this was pretty irregular. Nonetheless, I kept my mouth firmly shut.
“Hey!” the Slob shouted. “Tinkerbell! Get over here!”
Tink came over from the pool table, where he was surely dismantling anyone stupid enough to play him for money. He mopped sweat from his forehead with his hat. I wondered where he got the sweat from. Joey didn’t spring for much in the way of heat, and the place felt like it was forty fucking degrees.
“What’s up, Joey?” Made guys called Joey Joey. I didn’t know what the hell I was supposed to call him.
“This walking heap of dirty laundry wants to run a crew.”
Tink looked me over blandly and put his hat back on. “Don’t everybody?”
“Yeah, well, he’s gonna get to.”
One of Tink’s eyebrows twitched in a way that could have been mistaken for interest in a dim enough room. “Good for him.”
“You’re on it.”
I had a second to wonder if this was a setup—Joey provoking a showdown of some kind to put me in my place—but if Tink was surprised or miffed it sure didn’t show. He just grinned and straightened his hat.
“So keep an eye on him,” the Slob continued, “and show him how it’s done. Don’t need some snotnose punk just off the tit to embarrass us, you know?”
“I got it, Joey.”
“Good. Now get the fuck outta here, both of ya.”
I didn’t need to be told twice. I was halfway to the door when Joey shouted at me.
“Hey, Shrimp!” I turned, of course. “That’s ten large a week you owe me, starting Friday.”
I smiled weakly and did my best not to walk the rest of the way to the door like I’d been sucker-punched.
* * *
“Joey must like you,” Tink confided as we got in my car.
“How’s that?” I was still staggering under the weight of the ten large Joey’d just dumped on me. Didn’t he know there was a war on? I’d have been hard-pressed to come up with that kind of scratch on a normal day, let alone in the middle of this shit.
Tink slammed the door, causing a thin sheet of ice to break free and rattle down the side of the car. “Nobody gets a crew for just asking. You earn it, build it from the ground up.” I glanced at him for signs of resentment, but his voice was even, and there was nothing sinister lurking in his expression. He was simply stating facts. “Whatdja tell him?”
“Told him I wanted a crew.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And I told him I’m gonna take care of Benedict’s problem.”
“What, you’re gonna hide all the world’s whiskey?”
That startled me into laughter, though it wasn’t really funny. If the other guys had noticed Benedict drinking, it was only a matter of time before somebody threw him a beating, just to get the message across. Addictions were levers, and levers could be used to crack open the whole family. Now that I thought of it, it was probably only Benedict’s special status that had protected him this long. “Benedict’s other problem,” I said.
“Oh. Good. Great.” He sounded about as enthusiastic as if I’d told him there was a dirty toilet he was supposed to go clean, and I can’t say I blamed him. Tough luck, though. Nobody was enjoying that week.
I pushed the gas pedal and headed out, glancing at Tink from time to time. For a guy who’d just received an unprecedented demotion, he seemed totally at ease. I couldn’t figure it out. “You cool with this?”
“Cool enough,” he said affably. “The Slob’s pissed at me, so I figured I’d be doin’ penance one way or the other pretty soon. Far as I’m concerned, a little babysittin’ ain’t so bad.” He grinned. “No offense.”
“What did you do to piss him off?”
“I was balls-deep in a hooker and somebody swiped my bag.” He said it in the same tone most people would have talked about getting a cup of coffee at the Dunkin’ Donuts. “Course it was full of cash from a pickup, so I felt plenty stupid about that. I figured Joey’d rant and shout and be generally pissed off, but I made my nut without it, and I was the one looked like a chump, you know? I thought I’d get a reaming, and that’d be the end of it, but did I? Shit, no. Joey went off his goddamn gourd, shoutin’ and screamin’ until he turned so red I thought he was gonna have a heart attack and his head was gonna burst at the same time. Came at me with a fuckin’ pretzel bowl. I mean, picture this, right? Three hundred pounds of lard, whackin’ me all over the head and shoulders and back with a fuckin’ pretzel bowl, howlin’ like it’s the full moon. I mean, what the fuck?”
Tink gave me a good long look, making sure I had enough time to fully appreciate the image. A slight grin found its way onto my face.
/> “Anyway, he’s shoutin’ all this incomprehensible shit, and it takes me about two hundred, maybe two hundred fifty whacks with the goddamn pretzel bowl, while we’re runnin’ around the table and he’s pantin’ like a sled dog in July, before I finally figure out what the hell he’s talkin’ about. Turns out he’s pissed about the fuckin’ bag. He didn’t give a damn about the cash, but the bag he gave me for the pickup belonged to his great-aunt or some shit. A fuckin’ bowling bag, of all things.
“So, anyway, he’s been pissed at me ever since. His great-aunt must be one scary lady, I tell you what.”
I snorted laughter through my nose. “You got beaten with a pretzel bowl for losing an old lady’s bowling bag?”
“Yep. Course, that’s not even the worst part.”
“No?”
“Nope. Hooker gave me crabs.”
I laughed again, giving Tink enough time to take a few breaths before launching into another tale of misery and woe, then another. His stories all seemed to prominently feature some screwup of his, all told in the same matter-of-fact tone. He was easy to like, which probably accounts for what I did next.
“Anyway,” Tink was saying, “I figure you and I will do all right. Scare up some cash for Joey, and it’ll come out all right.”
I slowed the car, pulled up to the nearest curb, and parked, leaving the engine running. Then I looked Tink carefully in the eye. “I’m not going after cash this week,” I said.
“Joey will be so excited.” He rubbed at his nose, peering over his fist at me. “You have other plans, I guess?”
“They burned my dad,” I said. I hadn’t been planning to, but Tink was the first sympathetic person I’d met in it seemed like forever.
“Yeah,” he said softly. “I heard.”
“Joey wants ten grand by Friday, which is fucking impossible if we’re supposed to be keeping our heads down. And if we’re not keeping our heads down, I’m going to fuckin’ war, just like we should have from the beginning. No more of this hiding out waiting for shit to happen. I’m all done with that. Fuck the ten grand. If Joey wants to fuck me up over ten grand, he’s welcome to it, but in the next four days—I’m going to war.”
Tink’s face barely changed, only a slight deepening of the creases around his eyes, like he was evaluating something, or calculating. “This isn’t like the movies, kid,” he said at last. “This was never about wiping the Russians out. We fight for a while, both sides get pissed off and hurt, and then the family comes to a new agreement with Old Man Chebyshev, and then we all calm down and get back to business. That’s it. That’s what we mean by ‘war.’”
“That ain’t what I mean by war,” I said. “Better get used to the idea.”
He turned away, staring out the windshield past a pile of bulging black plastic garbage bags on the curb. “Okay,” he said without looking at me. “You’re the boss.” Silence. Ahead, a rat wriggled out from beneath the trash.
Tink nodded, seemingly to himself, then turned back to me. “Well, if that’s the way you wanna play it, can I make some recommendations for who to put on your crew?”
* * *
We scheduled a meeting for that night at my apartment. That wasn’t the world’s hottest idea—I didn’t know if the police had me under surveillance, and I certainly couldn’t rule it out—but we were low on options. I didn’t want to discuss this business at the club, and there was no way in hell I wanted to do it at Benedict’s.
The possibility of surveillance was the least of my worries, though. I waited for the guys to show up with mounting unease, pacing the apartment with the faintest smell of burning tickling my nostrils. I walked through half a dozen times, checking the oven, the radiator, the wiring behind the refrigerator. None of those were the problem—I knew that at a level just below what I’d let into my conscious brain—but I kept walking around sniffing the air anyway, hoping to find something that would prove me wrong. After half an hour of this, I started glimpsing something at the corner of my eye as I left each room, something charred black and man-shaped that was gone every time I tried to look for it.
“Come on out, you fucker!” I shouted, but my voice shook, and sweat slicked my brow. Why now? I mean, I didn’t think the thing was real—I was pretty sure—but that didn’t make it any more welcome, and I didn’t remember having this problem before, at least not when I was wide awake. Maybe it was my old man’s accident, reminding me of shit I’d rather not think about. That must have been it. Burning was becoming a hideous theme in my life.
“I’ll show ’em a fucking burning,” I muttered, not sure myself who I meant. Somebody. Everybody.
When the first knock came at the door, I jumped. The words to my favorite fire incantation leapt to my lips, and I almost slagged the door. Instead, I made myself stand down, and I checked the peephole. Tink, with a couple of knuckleheads I’d seen around. Looked like the party was getting started. I let ’em in.
* * *
There were seven of us in all, and I was five chairs short. There was some good-natured bitching about that, but I had enough beer to go around, so they stopped complaining pretty quick. We ended up standing around in the kitchen, with some of the guys sitting on the counter, others leaning against the wall. All staring at me.
Tink had assembled a rough crew, there was no doubt about that. Three of them were from Tink’s own former crew, a fact which gave me pause when I noticed. If there were any problems or conflicts, Tink and his loyal guys outnumbered the rest of us. I filed that line of thought in the back of my mind in a box labeled “paranoia” and tried to let it go, but the lid kept popping up from time to time and something with glaring red eyes peered out at me.
In any event, Tink had chosen the right guys. They were called—I shit you not—Tommy-gun Tommy, Alfie Teeth, and Cliff. Cliff’s real name was John, but everybody called him Cliff because he looked like one, tall, craggy, and broad. He wasn’t a made guy—a black guy from Louisiana, he probably wasn’t quite Italian enough—but I heard he was good to have at your back in a fight. Tommy was a squat little guy who got his name for his ridiculous choice of weapon, obviously. Then there was Alfie. Don’t ask how Alfie got his nickname. Just trust me when I say he was the craziest one of the lot, and they were all some hard, crazy motherfuckers.
For my part, I’d brought in Skinny Steve, who I’d done a few jobs with. He was built like a pair of broom handles tied together, but he was ungodly fast and good with a knife.
And lastly, Lazzaro. I’d debated with myself quite a bit before calling him. For one thing, he was nuts, and for another, I was afraid he’d take it personally that I’d gotten a crew and either get pissy with me and blow me off, or worse, join up and then get pissy with me in front of the guys. But there was really no way around it. If I didn’t invite him, he’d definitely take it personally.
And, in the end, I needed him. I had one piss-poor plan, and I needed Lazzaro to make it happen.
Now Lazzaro stood slouched against the fridge, beer in hand, watching the proceedings with a kind of feral glee that lit a blaze in his eyes and peeled his lips back in a hungry grin. That was probably the best I could hope for.
I looked around the room, and six of the meanest bastards I ever met looked back at me.
“All right, guys,” I said. “Here it is. You probably all heard of an asshole named Kelsen, who’s about the biggest pain in the ass we got right now. He’s been killing our guys for months, and he killed another one the other night. Starting right now, we don’t stop until that motherfucker is dead, until his fucking head is on my kitchen table.” I didn’t know where that last bit had come from. It had just spilled out of my mouth, but judging from the grimly enthusiastic nodding of the men in the room, it had the right kind of impact. Alfie Teeth grinned in a way I didn’t want to look at for too long, and I kept my gaze moving.
“I thought Bennie was gonna take care of him,” Tommy said, hesitation in his voice. I knew he was thinking the same thing the Slob had told
me. If Benedict couldn’t take him down, what made me think I could?
“Not anymore,” I said. “Benedict’s had—he’s had a rough time with this one.”
Lazzaro snorted. “Fuckin’ right, he has.”
“So we’re going to do it.” Six faces, one word etched on all of them: How? I picked a little contraption off the counter and held it up. Two crossed chicken bones, string dangling from them and suspending a third. Glyphs were carved in the first two. The third was wrapped in a scrap of paper, held cleverly in place with Scotch tape.
The scrap of paper was the one with the partial diagram on it, the one Kit had given me. Maybe she wouldn’t give me a hit list, but she’d given me plenty.
The suspended bone pointed easterly, no matter which way I turned the others.
Lazzaro’s hungry grin got hungrier as he recognized what I’d done. “Fuckin’ A,” he said. The others just looked puzzled.
“No matter where he goes, no matter how far he goes, we can find him with this,” I said. Most of them had seen Benedict do something equally strange at one time or another, so none of them appeared to doubt my words. I doubted them a little—for example, I had no idea if the charm had a range limit or not—but I wasn’t about to convey that. I did know, or at least suspected, that the charm would only last as long as somebody kept it in the back of their mind, feeding it energy, and it might fade out anyway after a while. More information they didn’t need. “So here’s the deal. We work in two teams, in twelve-hour shifts. Kelsen’s had the last good night of sleep he’s ever going to get. Any time he goes down for a nap, any time he holds still long enough to get a bead on him, we hit him. Pipe bombs, Molotov cocktails, guns, I don’t care. Whatever you think might do the job.” I smiled. “A few days of that, and either he’ll get sloppy, or he’ll go hide in a bunker so far underground we’ll never see him again.”
The Price Page 16