Felipe nodded. “I’m with you, Ben,” he said, squeezing the man’s hand tighter to his chest.
“That prick Sunshine came here for the money,” Ben said. “And he left as empty as when he first walked in. Asshole.”
“Why didn’t you let him have it?” Felipe asked. “How much could there have been in the till? It ain’t worth dying for less than a hundred dollars.”
“How about one hundred thousand dollars?” Ben asked. “Is that something you would die for?”
“I don’t know anybody with that kind of money,” Felipe said.
“You’re looking at somebody with that kind of money,” Ben said, the blood now running down the front of his face, blurring the vision in one of his eyes.
“Shit,” Felipe said. “You’re moving a lot more beer and burgers than I thought.”
“Five years ago, me and three other guys were in on a heist,” Ben said, talking in slow spurts. “We got away clean, divided the money into four shares, and hid the dough, acting like none of us even had it. We were going to wait the seven years, then pull it out and treat it like our own.”
“Was Charlie Sunshine one of the four?” Felipe asked.
Ben snorted out what sounded like a laugh. “Charlie Sunshine couldn’t find his ass with both hands,” he said. “About six months after the job, one of the crew got nabbed on a break-and-enter in Brooklyn. It should have been a short stretch, but the cops had a bug up their ass about that first hit and tried to squeeze him to give up what he knew. He kept quiet and won a six-to-ten as his reward. Ended up at Comstock. Same tier as Charlie, who knew him from the neighborhood.”
“And he told Charlie about the robbery?” Felipe asked. He reached his hands into the slop sink, rinsed out a cold cloth, and rested it on one side of Ben’s head. “That how he found out about the money?”
“Nobody on my crew talks,” Ben said. “That’s why we pulled as many jobs as we did. We do the hits and then turn deaf and dumb. But Sunshine had hooked up with some of those White Power assholes in the joint, and they caught my buddy in a bad way. Beat him and cut him until he told Charlie what he wanted to hear. After that, they dumped him back in his cell and let the bulls find him there at morning call, dead.”
“Sunshine’s been out what—three, maybe four weeks?” Felipe asked. “Why’d he wait so long to come to you?”
“He played it cute at first,” Ben said. “Started coming in, buying beers, sometimes a meal, acting for all the world like we was asshole buddies, me and him. I figured he was sniffing around and I had heard it was him that had done the punk city to my buddy.”
“So why didn’t you move on him?” Felipe asked.
“Maybe I’m not as tough or as smart as I like to think,” Ben said. “And I sure as shit am older and slower than I want to believe. Or maybe I thought I could play him, laying it out that a slab of meat like Sunshine didn’t have the onions to come and do what he did. I guess a hundred grand can buy you a crotch packed with balls.”
“How’d you two leave it?”
“He said if he couldn’t have the money, then he’d make sure I wouldn’t live to spend it,” Ben said. “Left me like you found me.”
“I spotted him outside,” Felipe said. “Watched him jump into somebody’s car and head for the Deegan. He was holding his side, leaving drops wherever he walked.”
“I broke a Dewar’s bottle across the bar and sliced the side of his stomach with it,” Ben said. “Ten, even five years ago, I would have been washing the floor with his blood. No sense crying over it now, though, he made the move and I let him. I just wish I had peeled a couple of hundreds off my stash and got one of those crazy Spanish kids up in Yonkers to blender Sunshine soon as he walked out of the joint.”
“You want me to try and get you into the back room?” Felipe asked. “Get you to your bed?”
“No,” Ben said. “I’m good where I am. But here’s what you can do. Run around the bar, slap the closed sign on the front, and lock the door. Then, come back to me.”
Felipe nodded, jumped to his feet, scooted around the bar, and ran toward the door. He was back by Ben’s side in less than two minutes. “I pulled the shades over the front glass, too,” he said. “This way nobody can look in.”
“Good work,” Ben said. “Now look behind you and reach a hand out for the center keg under the beer pit. Just roll it out and let it fall to the floor.”
“Those things are heavy,” Felipe said. “I don’t know if I can move it all by myself.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Ben said. “This one you can move.”
Felipe walked toward the beer dispenser and crouched down, putting one hand on top of a large silver keg and wedging the other against its side. He tilted it toward him and watched as it fell with a tinny bang onto the wooden slabs. He turned back to Ben. “It’s empty,” the boy said.
“Not quite,” Ben said. “Pull the top toward you. Unless it’s jammed, it should just slide off.”
Felipe nudged and twisted the top of the keg until the lid slipped off, rolling to the side, next to his black sneaker. He bent over to look inside the keg and saw three large yellow mailing envelopes, thick rubber bands double-wrapped around each one. “Grab what you see and bring them to me,” Ben said.
Felipe shoved his head and arms deep into the pit of the barrel and pulled out the three envelopes, stood and walked them over to Ben. The bleeding man held the envelopes to his chest, staining them with his blood, a wide smile on his face. “This is what Charlie came to take away,” he said. “And what he’ll never have. Least not while I still have a say in the business.”
“What are you going to do with it?” Felipe asked.
“Give it to you,” Ben said, looking away from the money and up at the boy. “This way I’ll know it’s safe.”
“Me?” Felipe said, stunned. “I don’t have a place to keep my clothes. You’re going to ask me to stash a hundred thousand dollars? There has gotta be somebody else you can trust. Somebody that’s not me.”
“Here’s the deal,” Ben said, ignoring the boy’s plea. “You stash the cash until I’m well enough to move and until I figure a way to get Sunshine in a place where somebody who gives a shit brings him flowers every Sunday. Where it is I don’t need to know, so long as it’s safe and so long as you’re the only one can find it.”
“I can’t even think of where that would be, Ben,” Felipe said, a slight tinge of panic in his voice. “This is a huge haul. I don’t want to be the one that messes it up for you. Not after all you went through to hide it.”
“Don’t worry,” Ben said. “You won’t. You’ll figure a place for it. A good one. And now remember, you can’t touch any of the money. Not a single dollar.”
“I won’t ever do that to you,” Felipe said. “You’re my friend and I don’t steal from friends.”
“It’s not why I’m saying it,” Ben said. “You’re straight up solid, or I wouldn’t have taken it this far with you. Sunshine’s gonna be back, looking for that dough. So are the cops and any one of the other hoods chasing Charlie. This is a small neighborhood with a big mouth, especially where it comes to money. Word gets out that a homeless kid came into some dough, they’ll all come looking for you. So you can’t touch the money or even talk about it. Not to anyone. You readin’ me on this?”
“You’re covered, Ben,” Felipe said. “Sleep easy on it.”
“Then, when the time is right, I figure a little less than two years from now, give or take, you come find me and bring the money with you,” Ben said. “Not all of it. Just half of what’s there.”
“What about the other half?” Felipe asked. “What am I supposed to do with that?”
“Give yourself a start, that’s what,” Ben said, looking up at the boy, wiping a stream of blood from his line of vision. “Get off the street and go fresh, find a place as far from here as you can. Don’t be stupid with it. That’s a lot of dough I’m resting on your lap, but you have no idea how fast
cash like that can fly from your hand into someone else’s pockets. Make it last and make it mean something.”
Felipe took a few seconds to digest the plan. He didn’t entirely believe it, though he had no reason to think he was being steered in the wrong direction. Ben had always treated him well, offering him a full meal for a few hours of backroom work cleaning up dirty dishes and washing down soiled rest rooms. But something about it all just didn’t feel right: a hard-liner like Ben Murphy using a homeless kid to help skim away heist money from Charlie Sunshine and his messed-up crew. Felipe appreciated being trusted, but it all happened too fast and too easy. And if a move for the money was made, he would be in no position to fend it off, especially if Sunshine came at him with more than just the back of his hand.
“Why you picking me?” he asked. “Not like we’re family or blood. Yeah, we’re friends, but I know you have to be hooked up with a truckload of other people that are closer to you than I am. And I could split tomorrow, not say a word, leave you waiting out your two years only to find out that I’m in the wind. That’s some chance you’re taking with a lot of money.”
“I picked you because you’re in the here and now,” Ben said. “None of the other people I know came walking through that door to watch me bleed. You did. That puts you at the head of a short line. And I need to make a move with the dough this second. Be nice if I had the time to come up with a Super Bowl game plan, but I don’t. So it’s you I’m forced to turn to and you that I’m counting on to hide the money. You don’t want in, just say so and I’ll go out another way. But decide fast and decide now.”
“I won’t skip on you—don’t worry,” Felipe said, reaching over and turning on the Bud sign above the bar, bringing a neon glow to the darkened room. “That was me running my mouth and putting it out there for you to see. But you needed to know it could happen but that it won’t.”
“I’m not worried,” Ben said. “If I even had a twitch you were off the clock, I would have sat here and bled out, leaving the money to die alone with me. But if I hear you right—and even with all this blood loss, I think I did—you’re in this now. Which makes you and me partners.”
“I’m with you, Ben,” Felipe said, reaching over and shaking the bar owner’s hand. Even with the beating he took, bleeding as much as he had been, the grip was still firm and the boy knew there was a time when those hands were used for actions far more dangerous than a handshake. “I’ll keep the money safe in a place no one but me will ever find.”
“All right then,” Ben said, releasing his grip. “Now you can call that ambulance you were so eager to call when you first walked in. Then take this money and disappear with it before anybody gets here.”
“When I find a good place for it,” Felipe said, “I’ll let you know.”
“I told you not to tell anybody about it,” Ben said. “That includes me.”
“You don’t want to know where it is?” Felipe asked. “What if I pick the wrong place?”
“That would be a terrible mistake,” Ben said, his voice a little harder now, the words thicker, not as slurred. “More for you than for me. Besides, I don’t need to know where it is. All I need to know is where you are. Think of yourself as a map, kid. My map.”
Felipe stared at Ben and nodded. He got to his feet and reached for the phone under the bar. “You care which hospital they take you to?” he asked, his back to the bleeding man.
“Any one with doctors will do,” Ben Murphy said. He was holding the three packets of money, gazing down at them, a weak smile on his face.
13
JENNIFER LED THE WAY out of Ciccino’s, the Eastchester restaurant where she had just spent the past three hours having lunch with Lo Manto. “It’s supposed to be a meal,” she said over her shoulder, heading toward her unmarked car parked in the alley behind the building, “not a freakin’ career move.”
“I believe it is why so many of you Americans die so young,” Lo Manto said, sliding on a pair of black wraparound sunglasses, keeping pace with Jennifer’s fast-forward walk. He paused briefly and dropped to one knee, pulling up his socks and catching a glance at the passenger-side mirror of a parked car. The charcoal gray late-model sedan was still parked in the lot across the way, engine running, two men inside, one behind the wheel, the other in the rear, his face and shoulder braced against the raised window. Lo Manto had first noticed the car from inside the restaurant as he complimented the owner on the excellent variety and quality of the four-course meal. He looked briefly from the car, graciously accepted a complimentary after-lunch drink, and caught a quick glimpse of Jennifer rolling her eyes, out of boredom and dismay. He figured them to be professionals, shooters not robbers, after either him or Jennifer but not the restaurant. It was much too early in the day to count on any kind of a haul from the registers, and a broad-daylight robbery, even on a quiet stretch of road, was bound to catch someone’s attention. Lo Manto also ruled out the possibility that the two men might be scouts, assigned to follow them, reporting their steps back to a cash customer. If that were the case, there would have been no reason for them to keep the car running, especially given how many hours the two cops had spent inside the restaurant. To Lo Manto’s way of thinking, the entire situation was positioned to be a hit, and he was the most likely target. And if the two hit men had worked their end the right way, they would have narrowed down the area and zeroed in on the hot zone for their hit. That could only be the narrow walkway in the alley before he and Jennifer got to the car, and Lo Manto had less than a minute to make his move.
“Do you eat this big a lunch every day?” Jennifer asked, her back still to him. “You ask me, I don’t think there’s any way you could, not without showing up at the squad room looking like John Goodman.”
“Who is John Goodman?” Lo Manto asked. “A policeman you know?”
He turned and saw the car’s rear lights come on. They were moving in reverse out of the parking lot, looking to make a U-turn onto White Plains Road. A hard hit to the gas would get them across the narrow two-lane road and into the restaurant’s driveway in the time it takes a light to change from yellow to red. That would leave either cop just enough time to get to the unmarked, which was lodged in a corner of the tight alley, parked between a dumpster and a new Lexus.
“He’s an actor,” Jennifer said. “A terrific actor, but not somebody you’d describe as on the skinny side.”
She turned when she heard the squealing tires of an oncoming car, a four-door sedan moving at high speed past the empty intersection and into the restaurant’s narrow driveway. She looked at Lo Manto, who reached for her hand and pulled her along with him as they both ran toward the unmarked. “Get between the car and the wall,” he told her, the first time he spoke without any hint of an Italian accent. “And if you have a drop gun on you, it’d be a good idea to let me have it.”
“You speak English?” she said, brushing past the trunk of the car, looking to wedge herself against the smooth concrete wall. “I mean real English. Not that choppy shit you’ve been handing me all day.”
“Actually, I speak four languages,” Lo Manto said, his back against the wall, his knees pressed against the side of the unmarked. “We can talk about that later. But what I could really use now is a drop gun.”
Jennifer hesitated. The car came at them at full speed, driver bearing down hard on the unmarked, the passenger in the backseat trying to get a bead on them with a nine-millimeter revolver. She pulled her service gun from her hip holster and crouched down, across from Lo Manto, aiming the barrel at the oncoming. “It’s against regulations,” she said without looking at him. “I could get into a big jackpot if I let you anywhere near it.”
“And we can both die if you don’t,” Lo Manto said. “It’s your call, Detective. But whatever you decide, do it now.”
Armand Castioni and his cousin, George, had been following Jennifer’s car since their initial stop at the bar in the East Bronx. “This guy’s got some sack on him to just walk i
nto that place,” Armand had said. “Acting like he couldn’t give a shit who owns it and whose turf he’s stepping on.”
“Maybe he don’t know,” George said. “Maybe he’s just thirsty.”
“And maybe one day you’ll start to figure things out on your own,” Armand said. “No, this guy’s gotta have some muscle, enough to make the bosses nervous and put me and you to work.”
“The broad with him is kinda cute, don’t you think?” George asked. “I always figured women cops for dykes, but she looks way too good to go that way.”
“Don’t kid yourself, cousin,” Armand said. “Half the good-looking women in this world, if not more than that, like to go swimming down by the shallow end of the lake. Been my experience, anyway.”
“It’s a shame if that’s true,” George said.
They followed the unmarked up into Eastchester and parked in a strip mall across the street from a small restaurant with blue stucco walls. Armand put the car in park and left the engine running, air conditioner on full blast. “This cop knows how to live,” he said with a touch of frustration in his voice. “First a bar and now a restaurant. The badges in Naples must have it real sweet if he’s any example. And I bet it’s all on the arm. He ain’t putting out of his pocket for nobody. Letting the broad pick up the tabs.”
“He probably has a movie picked out,” George said. “For after lunch.”
Armand looked over at his cousin and shook his head. “He’s not gonna have time for a movie,” he said. “Or for anything else, for that matter. We do him when he comes out of the place. This is a perfect setup: one way into the driveway and one way out. We can make the hit and be on the road in less than two minutes, full out of the picture. Hop into the backseat and start to get ready. Soon as they move, we move.”
George leaned over, looking out at the tight street, the half-moon strip mall not exactly bustling with activity. “It’s the middle of the day,” he said. “All anybody with eyes needs to do is look and they’ll spot us easy. Why not wait till their next stop? Maybe it’ll be dark out by then.”
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