Shadow of a Thief

by Norman Green

  Not a chance, she told him.

  He hadn’t taken defeat easily. He had a certain kind of fat guy charm, she had to admit it, and he certainly had the green, but she wasn’t interested. Angered and insulted, for a while he’d told everyone who would listen that she was a rug-muncher. She hadn’t minded that, but when he began speculating, aloud, how unnatural it was for a Puerto Rican chick like her to be so cold, she’d had a short and pointed conversation with the man.

  She watched a new victim come forward—guy looked like an off-duty cop, young, big guns, Republican haircut. Looked like the kind of guy who let his size win most of his arguments. He approached the table, quarters in his hand. “May I have the plea sure?” he asked her. She looked at him, nodded, and he stuck the coins into the slot. The balls grumbled down into the tray beneath the table.

  “Carlo,” he said, holding out his hand. “You mind if I rack?”

  “Alessandra,” she said, and she shook his hand. “And I’m feeling so good tonight, I’m gonna let you break. How about that?”

  “Beautiful thing,” he said.

  He got lucky, sank a ball off the break, then two more in quick succession before faltering. “Left you tough,” he told her, backing away. “I don’t think you have a move.”

  She chuckled softly, chalked the end of her stick, and then she ran the table on him. Carlo leaned against a column and watched in silence until it was over. “Twenty bucks,” he said, reaching into his pocket. “That the standard bet?”

  She shook her head. “Don’t want you feeling like you been hustled.”

  “No, no,” Carlo said. “Call it a lesson. You do this for a living?”

  “Strictly amateur,” she said, watching him. Her habit of making direct eye contact, together with her looks, intimidated a lot of men. Not this one, though.

  “Listen,” he said. “If I buy you a drink, will you show me how you drew the cue ball back on that last corner shot? I thought you were gonna scratch for sure.”

  She looked past him, caught a glimpse of Marty Stiles over at the bar, a sour look on his face as he downed a shot and picked up the beer chaser. She knew what Marty really wanted. He really wanted her to tell the guy to get lost, that she was taken, in love, going steady, head over heels crazy with this pudgy gentleman who—

  “Cutty on the rocks,” she said.

  Carlo pulled a wad of bills out of his pocket, peeled off a twenty, and laid it on the table. “Right back,” he said.

  She felt Marty’s eyes on her as she walked out of the place with Carlo about an hour later. Carlo’s car was parked in two spots on the far side of the lot. She couldn’t really blame him, it was a yellow Lamborghini Murcielago, a two-seat Italian sports car that optioned out for just north of three hundred grand, and it would be criminal, not to mention expensive, to find it with a ding from some meathead flinging his pickup door open.

  “You like it?” he asked her.

  “I love it,” she told him. It was the truth.

  “Climb in,” he said. He put his hand on her butt and caressed her over to the passenger side door. “Let me take you for a ride.”

  They didn’t get halfway across the lot before Marty Stiles stepped out from between two cars and stood directly in their path.

  “Who is this guy?” Carlo said.

  “Beats me,” she said.

  No one moved for about twenty seconds. Then Carlo blipped his throttle once. Twelve cylinders and five hundred and seventy-two horses murmured their impatience. Marty seemed to think it over for another ten seconds, then took a single step back, gave them just enough room to squeak by.

  Carlo eased the car forward.

  They passed by Stiles, his bellied shirt the only part of him visible, a hand-width away. He thumped his fist down on the car’s roof as it passed.

  Carlo stomped the brake. Marty backed away, groping for something under his jacket.

  Carlo was cool, Al had to give him that. He didn’t pop out of the car like an enraged prairie dog, he opened the door slowly and climbed out calmly. Marty walked unsteadily backward.

  Carlo followed him five or six steps. “Exactly what,” he said, his voice pitched low and hard, “is your fucking problem?”

  Up ahead, a Pontiac GTO pulled up to the front door of the joint and stopped. The driver and his young female passenger got out, paused to watched the unfolding drama. “You oughta watch where the hell you’re going,” Marty snarled. “You almost ran over my foot!”

  “You fat piece of shit.” Carlo took another step in Marty’s direction. “I am gonna—”

  He was barely six feet away when Al made her move. Gripping the windowsill and the seat-back hard, she jackknifed her legs up out of the footwell, and, butt in the air, knees in her face, she levered herself over into the driver’s seat. Nice, she thought. But it’s a damn good thing this baby isn’t a quarter of an inch shorter . . . She didn’t bother to close the driver’s-side door, she just tapped the magnesium shift paddle, eased on the throttle, let the door close itself. The V-12 murmured sweet lies in her ear as she pulled away slowly. She could just make out Carlo’s shout, looked in the mirror, saw him running madly after her, saw Marty Stiles, red-faced, bent over laughing in the background. She toyed with Carlo, kept the Lambo just out of his reach, slid past the GTO, past the long, pink, phallic club awning where the Pontiac’s occupants stood watching in amusement. She eased on the gas a little more when she hit the street, left Carlo standing there, hands on knees, sucking wind.

  Aw, come on, Al, an inner voice whispered. The guy had his hand all over your ass, you owe him . . . She toggled off the traction control, stood on the gas. The engine bellowed in finest Italian operatic tradition; the Lambo spun madly. She did not have to fight it, it was now a living thing, a coconspirator, something you did not steer, you pled with it, you urged it with your knees and your hips, you let it feel your desire . . . The acceleration pressed her back into the seat as the car exploded down the street. Carlo dived for the safety of the ditch on the far side of the sidewalk as Alessandra and her new friend ripped off two beautiful tire-shredding donuts right where he’d been standing.

  And then she rocketed away.

  God, it was almost like the thing breathed for her, as though she could feel the air pouring over her painted skin, feel the soles of her shoes sliding on the pavement.

  You shouldn’t have done that, she thought, and the car slowed.

  It was pointless, she thought, and stupid. The Lambo took the next corner calmly, almost quietly.

  Oh, please, the inner voice said. What’s the point of stealing a supercar if you can’t behave like Supergirl, if only for a minute or so? Pete, the tow driver, was parked up on the next block. With intense regret, she slid up behind the big flatbed. It was already tilted down to the ground, Pete standing behind it with a cable in his hand. He was an older guy, gray ponytail and goatee, couple days’ growth of beard, balding on the top.

  Good-bye, doll, she thought, and she caressed the steering wheel. I’m really sorry to walk out on you this way, but it never would have worked. I can’t afford you, honey, you’re way too hot for me. I know, I know, it’s a lame and tired excuse, but it’s the truth.

  It wasn’t you, baby. It was me.

  She opened the door and climbed out. “Hook it up, Petey baby, and let’s get the hell out of here.”

  Just then Pete’s phone went off, and she could hear Marty Stiles’s voice shouting, right on the edge of panic. “Mayday! Mayday!” he yelled. “The mark jacked that GTO and he’s headed in your direction!” In the distance she heard the basso profundo roar of an American V-8, with cop sirens singing soprano harmony in the background.

  Here we go, she thought, and she cracked her knuckles. Here we go . . . “Hook that mother, Petey, get that bitch onto the truck and she’s ours. I’ll deal with this guy . . .”

  It was all over by the time Stiles got there. Alessandra leaned her butt against the fender of the cruiser, her arms crossed i
n front. She watched Stiles by the flashing lights of the police car and the ambulance. He horsed himself out of his car, looked at her and shook his head, but he kept his distance. She knew he was standing over there trying to figure a way to make this all her fault. It’s your job, she told him silently, you’re the guy who’s supposed to give the mark the standard speech: “Nothing personal, my man, but you don’t make the payments, Lambo takes their car back, so just chill, no point in anybody going to jail over this . . .”

  The yellow Lamborghini sat up high on the flatbed. A blue-uniformed policeman watched two EMTs who were trying to attend to the Lambo’s driver, but the guy couldn’t hold still, he was down on his knees in the street, puking. He held his shaking right arm awkwardly away from his body. The cop’s partner was over behind the cruiser, talking to Pete, who pitched his voice loud enough for her to hear.

  “Well, Officer, she pulls up in the car, right, I get it hooked up, then we hear this yoyo one block over, he musta seen my flashers. So he comes screaming up, right, jumps out, but he don’t care about the car anymore, he goes right for Martillo. He’s gotta be twice her size, right, he makes a grab for her, I’m wondering how much of a pussy I am for not jumping in, then I hear this funny noise, sounds like when you bite a piece of celery, right, then the guy’s fucking screaming. I mean, he’s not yelling like a man, he’s screaming like my wife after I track dog shit on the carpet. He had a piece, right, but when he tries to pull it out, she kicks him on the outside of his knee, he goes down, she takes the piece and tosses it under the truck. Which is where it still is. Whole thing took maybe ten seconds.”

  “She wasn’t armed?”

  “No, sir. I seen the whole thing. She done it just like I told you.”

  Another cruiser rolled up behind the tow. More lights, Al thought. Just in case someone wants to see us from the freakin’ moon. Two cops got out, walked right past her, over to where the EMTs were trying to splint the Lambo driver’s broken fingers. She shook her head. I do all the freakin’ work, she thought, and what do I get? I get to stand here and wait while the big boys figure things out.

  Same old shit.

  Stiles stood over by his car. She ignored him, watched the EMTs. She knew he was staring, but the man just couldn’t help himself.

  Chapter Two

  Marty Stiles, elbows on the table, watched the dancer at the other end of the stage. She didn’t look half bad, at least not from that distance. Be careful, he thought. You’ve had too much to drink tonight to be able to think regular . . . He didn’t look at Daniel Caughlan, the man sitting next to him. “I’d love to do it for you,” he said. “Problem is, Al is the best man I got. I put her full time on this, I gotta hire another broad for the office, then I gotta find another guy to do what Al does out in the field. You know what I’m sayin’? So it ain’t like I just gotta replace the one guy. An’ I don’t know where I would get somebody else like her. This business takes a special kinda person. Al has a real feel for it.” He finally glanced in Caughlan’s direction. Fucking guy, Marty thought, he’s watching me like a cat watching a parakeet.

  “I’ll make it worth your trouble,” Caughlan said.

  Marty Stiles shivered. He had known Daniel “Mickey” Caughlan for years. Stiles had been a rookie cop when he’d first run across the guy. Caughlan had been one of the few to survive the immolation of the Irish gangs that had once haunted the neighborhood of Hell’s Kitchen on Manhattan’s west side. He had been just another body back then, just another face. Perhaps smarter and without question luckier than his betters, he had survived, left alone at the reins of something called Pennsylvania Transfer Corporation when his silent partners all wound up dead or serving long prison sentences. The last of them, Patrick Donleavy, had disappeared without a trace. Donleavy had been Caughlan’s friend and patron, but Rudolph Giuliani, then a prominent DA making his bones on the backs of the mobsters in New York City, had been hard on Donleavy’s trail, and if Donleavy had fallen, Caughlan would have been next. After Donleavy’s disappearance, the hounds had snapped at Caughlan’s heels for the next six months or so, but the trail was cold, and eventually they wandered off to seek other amusements. Stiles had no direct evidence of what may have happened to Donleavy, but he knew what his gut told him. What he did know for a fact was that in the years since, Caughlan, using the ruthless tactics taught to him by Donleavy and his compatriots, had built Pennsylvania Transfer into a major interstate shipping firm.

  Caughlan stared back at him, his face blank. “Look,” he said, “I got a situation and I gotta do something about it, Marty, but I can’t have you stomping around in my life with those big feet of yours. No offense, but you got the finesse of a hippopotamus with a bad case of hemorrhoids. I’ve heard about your girl Alessandra, and she’s the one I want. Don’t worry, you’ll be working this, too. There are some elements to this that are gonna require your special talents. You got the contacts and you got the moves. And there might be some serious money in it.”

  Stiles could hardly hear him over the noise of the music and the shouted conversations going on around them. That’s why he picked this place, Marty thought, his stomach turning over. The FBI could have a bug stuck right up Caughlan’s ass, but they still couldn’t hear a word, not over the roar in this place. Whatever Caughlan wants done, it can’t be anything good. He thought for a second or two, wondering how bad he wanted Mickey Caughlan’s money.

  Caughlan put a hand on Stiles’s shoulder, sending a chill all the way through him. Stiles tore his eyes away from the dancer, shifted in his seat, and took a long look at Mickey Caughlan. “How serious?”

  Caughlan shrugged. “I’m thinking we’re probably talking low six figures here.”

  Marty’s eyes went wide. “No shit.”

  “Watch the girl, there.” Caughlan gestured with his chin. “I think she likes you.”

  Stiles turned back to the stage. The dancer was still a long way off, but there was another one standing right next to him. Late twenties, he figured, blue eyes, dirty-blond hair, heavy breasts bursting out of a sequined bra. As he turned in her direction, he felt Caughlan press a folded piece of paper into his right hand. Glancing at it, he was astonished to see a hundred-dollar bill materialize in his fist. “Ben Franklin,” he said to the girl. “My favorite president.”

  “Mine, too,” she told him. She leaned up close, stuck her hand in his crotch. She whispered in his ear. “You like to dance, baby? Dead Benny always makes me feel like dancing.” She massaged his growing erection through his pants.

  Marty could hear a trace of the woman’s Slavic origins. “Me, too,” he told her. “But I prolly need some lessons.”

  She reached across with her other hand, plucked the bill out of his grasp, gave him one final squeeze. “Past the men’s room door,” she told him. “Go through the blue doorway. First room on the right. When you finish your business here, I’ll be waiting for you.” She leaned up close again, touched the tip of her tongue to his eyebrow, then released him. She stepped back slowly, turned her back, and walked away.

  Marty swallowed, then looked back at Caughlan. “She come courtesy of you?” he said.

  “Not me,” Caughlan said. “Seen her coming, though. Man, I love this place.”

  “You kidding? You didn’t pay her off?”

  “All right,” Caughlan said. “Maybe I tipped her on the way in. Maybe I told her about this lonesome and generous businessman I was meeting here tonight.”

  Stiles’s head swam. “Just what is it you want me to do, Mickey?”

  Caughlan glanced past Stiles at the departing blonde. “All right,” he said again. “Listen up. Six, seven months ago, one of my trucks picked up a container off a ship down in Port Newark. No big deal, we do that all the time. According to the bill of lading, the thing was supposed to be a load of blue jeans headed for some discounter in Chicago. Okay? So the truck gets hijacked. We find it down by the river in Jersey City a couple days later. Container is empty, except for the drive
r; poor bastard was inside, deader than last year’s Christmas goose.”

  “I didn’t hear nothing about it,” Marty said. “It musta not made the papers.”

  Caughlan shook his head. “We kept it quiet,” he said. “There was some brown goo on the floor of the container.”

  “Goo?”

  “Corn syrup, like. Thick and oily.”

  “Yeah.” Marty Stiles felt the hair on the back of his neck rising. “What was it?”

  “Chemist I sent it to said it was opium base,” Caughlan said. “Stuff is like crude oil. Couple steps away from gasoline, but still damned expensive. You get me?”

  “Yeah, I get you. What’d you do about it?”

  Caughlan shook his head. “Nothing. Stuck our heads back in the sand. Hoped it would all go away.”

  Stiles stared at him. “For real, man. What did you do?”

  “We waited. Figured whoever belonged to that shit would come looking for it, but they never showed.”

  “So you’re off the hook.”

  “I don’t think so. I got a tip, there’s a secret grand jury looking into Penn Transfer. And into me.”

  “Over this? Over dope?”

  “Don’t know for sure,” Caughlan said. “But I wouldn’t want to bet against it.”

  I don’t want to ask this question, Marty thought, but I have to, because Caughlan knows I should ask it. “You into dope? You get a piece of what moves through Port Newark?”

  For a second, Caughlan looked like what Marty knew him to be: hard, cold, merciless. Then he looked away, caught a waitress’s eye, waved his empty glass. He looked back at Stiles. “You and I go way back, Marty,” he said. “You know I never been a altar boy. Joint like this one, maybe the cops think it’s a brothel, and maybe it is, but I ask you: man can’t get drunk and get his ashes hauled, what’s the use in living? I ask you, where’s the harm done? But the drug trade burns everyone it touches. I always kept my distance.”