All he'd done today was camp in this damn car in this rich neighborhood and smoke while they waited for this woman to show. He was stiff, restless, bored, and an unbroken chain of cigarettes had left his tongue feeling like soggy cardboard. The Lincoln was comfortable to drive, but he felt as if he'd moved into it. He checked his bleached hair in the rearview mirror. Dark roots were starting to poke through; he was going to need a touch-up soon.
"How many times are you going to check your hair?" said Ivo from the passenger seat. "Afraid it's going to fall out?"
"Not mine, old friend." He glanced at Ivo's dark but thinning hair. "I'll still have plenty when you're as bald as an egg."
"At least I won't look like a girlie-man."
Vuk laughed to hide his irritation at the remark. If anyone in this car was a woman it was Ivo—an old woman. "The ladies love the color."
Ivo grunted.
They'd met in the Yugoslav Army and later had gone through the Kosovo cleanup together. With the army and the country in shambles after that, they'd hired on with Dragovic.
Vuk stared at the woman's door. Look at this neighborhood. Elegant brick-fronted town houses on an almost private block that dead-ended at a little park overlooking the East River. No places like this back home, unless you were high in the regime. He tried to imagine what it cost to live here.
"I hate this waiting."
Ivo sighed. "Could be worse. We could still be in Belgrade waiting for our back pay."
Vuk laughed again. "Or waiting on line for a gallon of gas."
"Do you ever think about home?" Ivo said, his voice softer.
"Only when I think about the war." And he thought about that every day.
Such a time. How many woman had he taken? How many men, some KLA, most simply able-bodied males, had he marched into fields or stood against walls and shot dead? Too many to count. How powerful he'd felt—a master of life and death, surrounded by cries and wails and pleas for mercy, a master whose whim decided who lived and who died, and how they died. He'd felt like a god.
Vuk missed those days, missed them so much at times it nearly brought him to tears.
"I try not to."
Vuk glanced at his companion but said nothing. Ivo had always been soft, and now he was going softer. This was what happened when you lived in America. You went soft.
I'm going soft too, Vuk admitted. I used to be a proud soldier. Now what am I? A bodyguard to a gangster—a Serb by birth, yes, but more American than Serb—and sent on wild-goose chases like this one. But he knew he was better off than others of his generation still in Belgrade.
"Do you think this DiLawopizda has any connection with last night?" Vuk said, reluctantly moving their talk back from the past to the present.
"Could be," Ivo said. "But even if she is, she seems gone for the holiday, just like everyone else around here."
All they'd seen in their many hours on watch were a few children with their nannies. Vuk had checked in twice with the East Hampton house to report that nothing was happening, hoping they'd be called back. Instead they'd been instructed to stay right where they were.
"We're wasting our time," Vuk said.
"You got us into this."
"Me? How?"
"You had to identify the man on the video." He mimicked Vuk's voice: " 'I know him. He's the one we chased off the beach.' You never know when to shut up."
Vuk had turned, ready to give Ivo hell, when he saw him straighten in his seat.
A delivery truck with no markings had turned into Sutton Square. It rattled toward them, then angled sharply toward the curb.
"He must be lost," Ivo said, easing back into his seat.
Vuk agreed. The truck might have been white once, but now it was so dented and scraped and covered with grime he could only guess at the original color. The driver had a thick white beard and wore a baseball cap pulled low over his forehead. His features were blurry through the windshield. Vuk watched him pull out a map and look at it.
Dumb, Vuk thought. How do you get lost in a city where the streets and avenues are all numbered?
But the driver apparently found what he was looking for, because he began moving again, pulling head-on into the opposite curb. As the truck began backing into the second leg of a three-point turn, Vuk noticed that its rear loading platform was lowered and riding about two feet off the ground. But instead of stopping or even slowing when it had reversed to the middle of the street, the truck picked up speed and kept coming.
Vuk leaned on the horn and pressed back in the seat as he saw the rear corner of the truck angle around and loom larger and larger in the windshield.
"He's going to hit us!" Ivo shouted.
Vuk covered his eyes and braced himself. The impact jarred him forward but wasn't as bad as he'd expected. When he opened his eyes he realized that the corner of the lift platform had punched into the grille. Their car had been spared the full impact of the truck itself.
"Sranje!" Vuk shouted.
Ivo too was cursing a blue streak as they pushed open their doors. This idiot driver was going to wish he'd never turned in here.
But the truck was moving again. This time forward.
"He's taking off!" Ivo shouted.
Vuk sprinted after it, but it was picking up speed too quickly. He motioned Ivo back into the car. The truck ran the red light across Sutton Place and headed up Fifty-eighth—wrong way against the traffic.
"He's insane!" Ivo cried as they watched the truck weave a zigzag course as it dodged cars in the oncoming traffic. Tires screeched, horns blared, but the truck kept going.
Vuk wasn't about to let some old govno in a rust-bucket truck outmaneuver him. "Jebi se!" he shouted. "So am I!"
High beams on and horn blaring, he gunned the Lincoln across the street and up Fifty-eighth. Luckily there wasn't much traffic, but still it was scary.
Up ahead the truck had made a right on First Avenue, and they got there just in time to see it make a left onto Fifty-ninth.
"He's heading for the bridge!" Ivo said.
Vuk followed and spotted the truck taking the on-ramp to the Queensboro Bridge.
He floored the Lincoln up the incline, screeched into the turn, and pulled onto the span.
Ivo pointed straight ahead. "There he is!"
Vuk grinned. Did this old fool really think he could outrun them?
He accelerated up behind the truck and was about to pull alongside when the car started bucking.
"What's wrong?" Ivo said.
Vuk looked at the dashboard and saw that the temperature gauge was into the red.
"We're overheating!"
The engine coughed, bucked, and, with an agonized whine, died. The Lincoln ground to a halt.
"Sranje!" Vuk pounded on the steering wheel. Through the haze of steam rising from under the hood he watched the truck disappear over the arch of the bridge. "Sranje! Sranje! Sranje!"
Ivo was already out of the car and moving toward the front. Vuk got out and joined him. Horns blared as traffic backed up behind them.
"There's the problem," Ivo said, pointing to the smashed-in grille. "Big hole in the radiator."
"Bastard!" Vuk shouted, slamming his hand on the steaming hood. "The lucky bastard!"
"Was it luck?" Ivo said, staring along the bridge to where they had last seen the truck.
"You think that old govno did it on purpose?"
"Why do you say old? Because he had a white beard? It could have come from a Santa Claus costume."
"You think it was the man from the beach?"
Ivo shrugged. "I'm just thinking, that's all. I'm thinking that if it was the man from the beach, and if he wanted to remove us from the front of his house, he succeeded very well, didn't he."
Vuk was fuming. He wanted to punch Ivo for looking so calm. Instead he spit.