Torres knew right off what the little prick wanted. With that in mind, he slipped both hands into the pockets of his coveralls. “Wha’d I do now?” he asked as he approached the booth.
“Who was that?” Rossi asked gruffly.
“A friend of a friend. Why?”
“Don’t give me that shit,” Rossi muttered dismissively.
Taking care to leave the small electronic device wrapped in a wedge of crisp, new one hundred — dollar bills behind, Torres pulled his hands out of his pockets and threw them up in the air. “Hey, how many times do I have to tell you I’m off the junk? You wanna give me another piss test, be my guest. But you’ll be wasting my time and yours, not to mention keeping me from checking out Mr. Caprio’s Lincoln.”
When the dispatcher didn’t give in right off, Torres shrugged. “Fine. But when Mr. Caprio comes down here to find out why that thumping he complained about last time isn’t fixed, you’re gonna be the one doin’ all the explaining, not me.”
Doing his best to keep from showing any sign that he was concerned over having to do so, Rossi continued to glare at him. Torres, who wasn’t about to let the little shit stare him down, returned the shop foreman’s unflinching glare, all but daring him to call him a liar. In the end, it was Rossi who gave in first, not because he was convinced Torres was telling him the truth about being clean. Rather, the idea of sending a car to pick up Daniel Caprio and his wife that wasn’t in tip-top shape was as near a fireable offense as he wanted to go. So he sucked in a deep breath before telling Torres he’d better be damned sure whatever was wrong with the Lincoln Town Car was fixed, or it would be his ass in the sling.
Torres waited until he was well out of earshot before muttering, “Asshole,” under his breath. He waited even longer before pulling the small device out of his pocket and inspecting it. He’d been paid to install it in the Town Car reserved for Daniel Caprio that night. He’d been told it was nothing more than a tracking device by the man he pegged to be a Jamaican. Never having seen anything like it before, he looked for some kind of manufacturing markings or ID. When he found none, he concluded either the people who were interested in keeping track of the notorious lawyer’s whereabouts tonight didn’t want the device tracked back to them or, more likely, the manufacturer had no wish to be named as a coconspirator in a case involving illegal snooping. Not that it mattered to the mechanic. He’d been paid well to do a ten-minute job that, if done right, could be the beginning of a new and profitable business relationship with the well-spoken Jamaican.
Rossi was about to climb down from his perch and head over to where Torres was working on Caprio’s car to ask him why he was under the hood and not checking out the vehicle’s suspension when the dispatcher entered the booth through a door leading to the company’s front office whilst holding a phone to his ear. Clamping a hand over the handset’s microphone, the dispatcher informed Rossi that Daniel Caprio was on the line. “He says he’s decided to have dinner out before going to the theater and wants his car to pick him up early.”
“How early?” Rossi asked.
“He says he’s got reservations at a place in the Village in half an hour.”
Rossi rolled his eyes. “You better tell him he ain’t gonna make it.”
The dispatcher held the phone out to Rossi, taking care to keep his hand over the microphone. “Here, you tell him.”
Knowing better than turning down a request from a man like Daniel Caprio, Rossi took a quick glance out onto the garage floor over to where Torres was still tinkering with the car the lawyer usually used. Upon seeing the mechanic wasn’t finished with it, Rossi drew in a deep breath. “Fine,” he growled as he turned his attention back to the dispatcher. “Just tell Mr. Caprio it’s not going to be his usual car.”
Relieved he wouldn’t be incurring the wrath of a man who was widely known to be the legal mouthpiece for some of New York City’s most notorious figures, the dispatcher brought the phone up to his ear and informed the lawyer a car was on the way even as Rossi was calling out to a driver who had been scheduled to pick up some Brit media big shot later in the evening that he’d be driving Daniel Caprio instead.
Spotting the bodyguard left to keep an eye on both the car and its driver made it easy for the Belizean Creole to keep them from noticing him as he casually walked by the Lincoln Town Car parked outside the theater. After allowing his eyes to linger on the vehicle’s license plates as long as he dared without stopping, the man headed back up the way he had come, where he climbed into the front seat of a yellow cab parked on the opposite side of the street.
“You sure it’s the right one?” the cabbie asked as the Creole took up the remote control unit from the middle of the front seat and set it on his lap.
“I assure you, it is the right car,” he muttered with an accent most New Yorkers would have mistaken as being Jamaican. This included the cabbie, a native of the city who knew its ins and outs as well as how to make a quick buck on the side.
“Did you test that thing to make sure it’s working?” the cabbie asked.
“It works,” the Creole snapped, annoyed by the cabbie’s incessant need to talk when there was no need to. “You’ve no need to worry about what I do. Just keep as close as you can to the car I pointed out to you when we go.”
Though he was still unconvinced the stranger he’d been saddled with for this job knew what he was doing, the cabbie decided it would be best if he kept his peace. If anyone was going to screw up, it wasn’t going to be him. After dodging New York traffic for eight years without a serious mishap or official complaint, he was one of the most reliable people various cartels like Los Zetas had in the city. Of course, most of the time, all he did was pick up packages at local airports or serve as a guide and driver for various contractors sent north to handle a job, much like the man next to him. His current assignment, that of participating in a carjacking without actually being in the stolen vehicle, was something entirely new. Whether he would have taken the job was a question he probably would have asked himself had he known what the Creole actually intended to do. He didn’t, of course. Like most of the people he dealt with, they told him only what he needed to know, and he kept from asking them anything other than when, where, and how much.
A tapping on the passenger window of the cab startled both men, who had been focused on watching the crowd as it emerged from the theater. Snapping his head about, the Creole saw a fussily dressed middle-aged man bending over, staring at him through the partially open window.
“Excuse me, but are you available?” the gringo asked.
“No,” the Creole snapped.
“If you’re not available, why is your light on?” the would-be passenger asked brusquely even as his eyes were darting about, first toward the cabbie’s face and then to the remote control the Creole was holding on his lap.
“We are not free,” the Creole growled. “Piss off.”
Offended, the man on the street pulled back. He was about to tell the little Jamaican off when the cabbie called out to the Creole. “Is that him?”
Having been distracted by the would-be fare, the Creole didn’t get a good look at the passenger of the Lincoln Town Car before the man was in it and the driver was sliding in behind the wheel. “Go! Go!” was all that the Creole managed to spit out by way of response.
Flummoxed and more than a little annoyed, the man on the street watched as the cab pulled away from the curb and took off, but not before he managed to take the cab’s medallion number. “No one tells me to piss off and gets away with it,” the man muttered to himself as he watched the taxi disappear around the corner behind a black Town Car.