Shotgun Opera

by Victor Gischler

  Back out on the street, Nikki whistled for a cab, loaded her cases into the trunk, and told the driver to take her to the Plaza Hotel.

  * * *

  Nikki waited until room service dropped off the Caesar salad and the pot of French roast coffee before opening the cases and spreading her new weapons across her king-size bed. The guns were spotless and new, but Nikki wanted to be familiar with them. She broke down each firearm, checked each piece, and put them back together again. She packed the guns back into the cases and put the cases in the closet. She kept out only the 9mm Beretta and slid it snuggly into a lightweight nylon shoulder holster.

  She picked at the salad, but made half the pot of coffee disappear within ten minutes. Her caffeine addiction was a minor weakness she could easily tolerate in herself. A flaw in her character to prove her humanity.

  She changed into red bicycle shorts, Reeboks, a sports bra, and a gray athletic tank top. She went to the Plaza’s gym and ran five miles at 8 mph on the treadmill. She drew admiring looks from some of the other patrons, incredulous looks from others. She worked multiple reps with light weights on several of the Nautilus machines.

  On the way back to her room, she stopped at the coffee bar for a double espresso. Twenty-five minutes later she was showered, dressed smartly in a blue pin-striped power suit, the Beretta and holster under her light jacket.

  Nikki double-checked the address she’d scribbled on a yellow Post-it. Above the address, she’d written the name Andrew Foley. She hailed a cab, told the driver a different address exactly five blocks from Foley’s residence. She’d walk the rest of the way, keeping an eye peeled for a tail. Probably not necessary, but why risk it?

  Her hand drifted into her jacket. She touched the butt of the pistol as if making sure it was still there. She found the touch comforting.

  Nikki Enders was armed, fully caffeinated, and ready to do business.

  8

  The morning sun came in through the bus window and slapped Andrew Foley awake. He was sore as hell from sleeping on the bus all night, and an egg salad sandwich he’d purchased when changing buses in St. Louis ground away at his gut like it hated him. He asked the guy sitting next to him where they were. They’d just passed Claremore, Oklahoma, and Tulsa was twenty minutes away.

  The inside of his mouth tasted bad. Very bad.

  The fear must be fading, he thought, if he was concerned about things like food and comfort and brushing his teeth. Just yesterday he’d been scared shitless. He chuckled. Riding the goddamn bus had trumped his fear of death.

  Maybe he would check into the Motel 6 and sleep a day before calling his uncle. Or maybe he was being dumb. He didn’t want to get complacent. He needed to take this situation seriously, but it was difficult to believe a hired killer was on his ass when New York was hours and miles behind him. He’d feel pretty foolish if all this was some kind of big mistake. It was probably nothing. If he hadn’t been so trouser-shitting paranoid, letting Vincent spook him so easily, he could be in his apartment asleep in his comfy bed right now.

  * * *

  It was later that afternoon that Nikki Enders sat on Andrew Foley’s comfy bed, wondering if she should wait and shoot him when he came home or if she should come back and kill him later.

  Later she would be busy. Very busy. But she didn’t like the idea of waiting in the dingy apartment all afternoon only to come up empty.

  She decided to search the place. She didn’t like what she found.

  Bare hangers in the closet. Socks and underwear missing from Foley’s dresser drawers. No toothbrush or deodorant in the bathroom. She looked for luggage but didn’t find any. It could be a simple coincidence that Andrew Foley happened to take a trip at the same time Nikki had come to end him. Maybe.

  Had someone tipped Foley off? He was a student and prone to keep an irregular schedule. She supposed it was possible his departure had nothing to do with her arrival, but to Nikki it just didn’t feel right.

  She continued searching, hoping to find a day planner or an address book. No such luck.

  “Son of a bitch.” She stood in the middle of the apartment, turned slowly, fists on hips, scanning the space for anything that stood out or looked informative.

  Her gaze landed on a black-and-white photograph. She took two quick steps and snatched it up, frowned at it. Two men, both clearly too old now to be Andrew Foley, who probably wasn’t even born when this shot was taken. The photo was yellowing, frayed at the corners. There was something intriguing about the men’s expressions. She flipped the photo over. A phone number.

  The ink was fading, and it seemed unlikely the number was of any importance. But she had found the picture near the phone, so it was possible Foley had dialed the number recently. It was possible Foley had taken a trip out of town to visit a relative, a grandfather perhaps.

  She stashed the photo in her pocket.

  Nikki Enders took one more quick look around the apartment but found nothing to tell her where Andrew Foley might have gone or when he’d return.

  Enough. She was wasting time. Foley would have to wait. In the meantime, Nikki moved to the next name on her kill list.

  * * *

  Vincent Minelli sat at a small table in a back room at the Eighty-seventh Street Social Club. Two wiseguys in silk shirts sat on either side of him smoking cigarettes. Vincent shoveled pasta into his mouth. Occasionally, he’d pause to jam in a wad of garlic bread or chase it all down with a slurp of Chianti.

  The door swung open and Big Billy Romano thundered in. He wore a purple jogging suit and enough gold chains and necklaces to sink a battleship. Big Billy was big. Six-foot-four and 320 pounds.

  Billy pointed a finger the size of a bratwurst at Vincent. “You, get up and follow me.”

  Vincent blinked, a little sauce dripping down his chin. “What? I didn’t do nothing.”

  “Just get the fuck in here.”

  Vincent jumped up, his napkin still tucked in his belt, and followed Billy, the two wiseguys trailing behind. They crowded down the hall to the front entrance of the club, where two more of Billy’s men held a terrified pizza delivery boy facefirst against the wall. He wore a green vest that said CARLITO’S FAMOUS PIZZA. A large pizza box sat on the floor. Vincent sniffed. Sausage. Mushrooms.

  “You order this pizza?” Billy asked.

  Vincent made a What? Me? face at Billy.

  “You ever seen this guy before?”

  Vincent squinted at the pizza boy. “I dunno. His face is all mashed up against the wall.”

  One of the goons pulled the pizza boy off the drywall, turned him to face Vincent. “How about now?”

  “Never seen him before.”

  Big Billy Romano grabbed the pizza boy by the vest, tossed him out the front door. “Nobody ordered nothing. Get out of here.”

  “But that’s twelve-fifty for the pizza,” the kid said.

  Billy flung the pizza out the door like a big sausage Frisbee. It landed next to the kid. “Hit the road. We didn’t order it.” He slammed the door.

  “What was that all about?” Vincent asked.

  “Jesus. Can you believe this guy?” Billy asked his goons.

  The goons laughed on cue, shook their heads.

  Billy put a giant hand on Vincent’s shoulder. “Look. Your dad’s trusting me to keep you in one piece. You want somebody to sneak in here with a poison pizza? Or maybe there ain’t no pizza in the box at all. Maybe it’s Smith & Wesson, then you come to the door to see about this pizza and this motherfucker blows your goddamn head off.”

  Vincent was pretty sure he’d smelled sausage and mushrooms, not Smith & Wesson, but he wisely said nothing.

  “Look,” Billy told him, “you go back to your pasta and leave it all to me, okay? I got ten of my best boys in here, so nobody’s going to get at you as long as we stay smart and keep both eyes open. We got our people out there right now getting to the bottom of this shit. We’re going to find that cocksucker that killed Juice Luciano and remind everybody that there are some people in this world you just do not f
uck with.”

  Vincent nodded. “Okay, Billy. Thanks.”

  Billy slapped him lightly on the cheek. “Hey, you’re a good kid. You’ll be fine.”

  And Vincent actually did feel better. Big Billy was right. It was this other guy who should be worried. Who the fuck did he think he was, messing with people like Juice Luciano and Big Billy Romano? Vincent almost felt sorry for him, whoever he was. The guy was fucking toast.

  Vincent went back to his meal, surrendered himself to the soothing qualities of Chianti, garlic, and marinara.

  9

  Nikki Enders had seen enough. And she’d heard enough too. She sat in the rented Town Car across the street from Billy Romano’s building, watching the front door through a small but powerful set of binoculars and listening with the handheld “Big Ear” dish she had pointed at the front door. She’d seen most and heard all of Billy’s encounter with the pizza boy.

  The rough treatment and frisking the pizza boy got all but announced that Vincent Minelli was holed up at Billy’s place, as Nikki had suspected. Then Romano had stupidly called Vincent to the front door to take a look at the pizza boy. Why not just push Vincent out into the street with a bull’s-eye on his chest?

  If Romano really expected to protect the kid, he should have him on the second floor. It was a three-story building. She’d have put men on the first floor, then more men on the third floor and on the roof, keeping Vincent Minelli in a locked room in the middle.

  But Nikki wasn’t there to give Romano pointers. She was there to kill Vincent Minelli and anyone else who got in the way. She checked her weapons.

  She’d moved the Beretta to a clip-on holster at the small of her back. The Glocks hung from shoulder holsters beneath a light suit jacket, the spare clips fitting snugly into interior jacket pockets she’d sewn herself. She also had a British Commando knife in a sheath on her right calf.

  The math bothered her a little. Two men on the door, another eight spread around the building, plus Billy Romano and Vincent Minelli. But she couldn’t wait. After five, the place would fill up with wiseguys stopping in for a quick drink or to play cards or dominos or to do business with Romano. So it had to be now.

  She formed and rejected several elaborate schemes to enter the building and find Vincent. She considered rappelling from a taller, adjacent building and dropping onto the roof of Romano’s club. She’d need access to the building next door, rope, grappling equipment, special boots, and—

  Oh, fuck it.

  She got out of the car and walked straight to the front door and knocked. One of the bruisers opened it halfway, looked down at her. “What do you—”

  He never finished the sentence. Nikki’s hand lashed out, her fist flattening the guy’s nose. She felt it pop, blood and snot flowing down over his lips. He screamed, both hands going to his face. She kicked him in the gut, and he fell back. She followed him in, moving like a leopard.

  The other goon was already coming out of his chair, a big automatic flashing in his hand. She dropped into a crouch, swept his legs from under him. He upended, landed on his back, the air whuffing out of him. He fired a wild shot into the ceiling, the thunderclap of the .45 shaking the room.

  She sprang back to her feet, knocked the guy cold with a bootheel to the head.

  The gunshot would bring the rest of them. She drew the Glocks, slapped in the thirty-round magazines.

  Showtime.

  * * *

  Vincent burped, pushed away from the table.

  “You want me to call back to the kitchen?” Billy asked. “Get you another plate? There’s a good minestrone.”

  “Full.” Vincent rubbed his belly. Tight. Now maybe a little nap.

  Billy Romano poured the last few dribbles of Chianti into his glass. He put the glass to his lips, tilted it back. The gunshot made him jump, and he spilled wine down the front of his jogging suit. “What the fuck was that?”

  His goons were already on their feet, pistols ready. One looked at Billy Romano and raised his eyebrows. “Boss?”

  “Well, go see what it is, for fuck’s sake.”

  The goon lumbered to the hall door, threw it open. He was shredded by a hail of gunfire, his belly and chest blossoming in little splashes of blood.

  “Shit!” Billy overturned the table, glimpsing a lithe figure in black dart into the room. He ran for the back door, jerked Vincent along with him by the sleeve. He risked a quick glance over his shoulder, saw his other man convulse as bullets tore across his chest. Billy ran through the back door, more bullets splintering the doorframe, biting dusty chunks out of the drywall. He slammed the door closed behind him, yelled at Vincent, “Come on! Haul ass!”

  They ran up a back staircase. Vincent felt like he was going to puke, pasta and wine sloshing around in his gut, but he heard the door slam open behind him and ran faster.

  They just made it out of the stairwell and onto the second floor, more bullets chewing up the hall behind them. They ran into the closest bedroom, shut the door, twisted the lock. Billy pressed himself flat against the wall just to the side of the door. Vincent backed up all the way across the room until his butt was pressed against the room’s only window. He turned quickly, tried to open it. Maybe they could get down the fire escape. He tried to open the window, grunted until his face turned purple. Painted shut. “Motherfucker!”

  Billy whispered, “You got a gun?”

  Vincent shook his head. The revolver was still in his jacket pocket, but the jacket was hanging in a closet downstairs. “Motherfucker, motherfucker, motherfucker.”

  “I can’t carry a gun in this jogging suit,” Billy said. “It won’t stay in the elastic band.”

  Motherfuckermotherfuckermotherfuckermotherfucker.

  “I tried a clip-on holster,” Billy whispered, still pressed against the wall and watching the door. “But it kept pulling my pants down. I got this jogging suit on sale. It’s usually like a three-hundred-dollar outfit, but I got it from a guy I know for seventy-five. People think I wear jogging suits because of my belly, but I think they look pretty sharp.”

  He’s babbling, Vincent realized. He’s scared shitless and he’s babbling like a fucking idiot. Is this really it? This is the best the mob can do, this fat dumb-ass in a purple jogging suit? This giant, greasy plum? This was the guy who was supposed to protect him?

  Vincent looked around the room for something he could use to smash the window. No chairs. No lamps. What stingy son of a bitch furnished this place? He reared back, preparing to punch his fist through the glass, when the doorknob rattled.

  They froze. Billy put a finger to his lips in a shhh motion.

  Motherfuckermotherfuckermotherfucker.

  A pause. Silence stretched. The tension started to leak out of Vincent.

  Gunfire erupted on the other side of the door, three quick bursts. Bullets ripped through the door and lock. Vincent yelled, dove onto the floor next to the bed.

  She kicked the door in, rushed into the room, a smoking machine pistol in each hand. Her face didn’t seem human, like some kind of killer bitch Terminator robot. A strange sound was coming out of his throat. A whimper. He tried to crawl under the bed.

  Billy grabbed her by the wrist, tried to wrestle one of the guns away.

  She grunted, dropped the pistol, but brought the other one around, pressed it into Billy’s soft belly and squeezed the trigger. Billy shook and jerked like a thousand volts were coursing through him. He coughed blood. His eyes rolled up, and the Terminator bitch stepped back and the great Billy Romano, feared among wiseguys, dropped into a big purple blob.