Levin turned to Brice. “I guess you’re off the hook.”
“Hey, you know what?” Brice said. “Fuck the both of you.”
Flynn mumbled something under his breath before walking away. Levin pulled a dollar bill from his pants pocket and motioned at the frankfurter vendor. “Two more,” he said.
A member of the Army’s Green Beret, Darrel Stebenow was part of a search-and-destroy mission outside the village of Dak To in early November 1967. The North Vietnamese had begun a border battle strategy attacking from villages along western Kontum Province. Hill 1338 was the dominant hill mass south of Dak To and where several bodies of a South Vietnam Civilian Irregular Defense Group unit were discovered during a reconnaissance patrol. Shortly after securing themselves in a position at the base of the hill, Stebenow’s unit came under heavy fire. The unit was immediately pinned down and within hours they were overrun. Stebenow was forced to cover himself with the bodies of colleagues to survive and spent the next several hours nearly motionless waiting for a chance to escape. Fighting went on throughout the night, but when two NVA troops began scavenging the bodies Stebenow was shielding himself with, he quickly and stealthily broke their necks and found his way off Hill 1338.
He’d snapped both men’s necks in such a way as to sever the spinal nerve pathways above the heart and lungs, insuring death. Stebenow had killed other enemy combatants during the war, but never with his hands. As it turned out, the two he killed with his hands were the last. Three months after his escape from Hill 1338, Stebenow’s tour of duty was over and he returned to the States.
Now he observed Detective Sean Kelly looking cocky sitting across from his expensive attorney inside the small conference room in a subbasement of the Brooklyn House of Detention. Stebenow had expected United States marshals to guard Kelly, but there weren’t any. Unless they hadn’t arrived yet and were on their way, Kelly’s only protection right then was a single Department of Corrections officer.
Stebenow had managed to avoid Detective Levin and Special Agent in Charge Flynn as they argued in the lobby by conversing with a defense attorney on his way to visit a client. After flashing his credentials to access the subbasement, Stebenow went to a tiny kitchen area where he poured himself a cup of coffee. He stirred in some sugar while he observed Kelly and his attorney.
The attorney stepped out of the small room to use the bathroom around the hallway corner. Stebenow waited a few seconds, then crossed the short hallway and approached the corrections officer.
“Some guy just went down in the men’s room,” he said.
“Excuse me?” the corrections officer said.
“Some guy in a suit. Might be a heart attack.”
The officer took a quick look into the conference room and saw Kelly had put his legs up on the corner of the table.
Stebenow flashed phony identification. “I got this,” he said. “Go ’head.”
The corrections officer nodded before heading for the bathroom. Stebenow counted three full beats before he stepped inside the conference room.
Epilogue
“I think I miss your ponytail,” Nancy said. “I’m not used to your hair short like this.”
Louis was watching the engine temperature gauge to the left of the odometer on the dashboard and getting nervous about the needle edging back toward hot. The Cadillac had already overheated once since they’d left New York.
“Then again, now it’ll match your balls,” Nancy said. “And I do like that look.”
They were heading south on the New Jersey turnpike and were less than thirty miles from Delaware. Half an hour after Jimmy’s Deep Throat enthusiast had turned down buying the Fleetwood Eldorado, Louis had stopped for a crew cut at a barbershop on Queens Boulevard and in walked Nancy. She’d followed him, she told him, from when he dropped off little Miss Ohio.
“Oklahoma,” Louis had told her. “And she was a runner up.”
Nancy didn’t have much money with her, but Louis knew she had some stashed in a bank she could get to in the morning. The problem was he couldn’t wait overnight, not with Jimmy and two bookies knowing he was flush with newfound money. Sooner or later word would get back to Eddie Vento’s crew.
Nancy said she could always sneak back to New York and withdraw the money another time, maybe when she visited her son. Louis wasn’t about to argue with her. All he wanted now was to get far enough away from New York so he could sell the bootlegged films he still had.
It was after one in the morning and they had been on the road since after sunset, stopping three times in total; once for dinner, once to fill the Cadillac’s huge gas tank and once to let the radiator cool down after it overheated outside Trenton.
“I’m excited about this,” Nancy said. “A new start and all. It’ll be good for us.”
Louis turned the radio on to drown out her overenthusiastic conversation. He wasn’t about to tell her about the money they didn’t have.
“And here’s a song that debuted back in June of this year,” the announcer said. “‘Manu Dibango, Soul Makossa’.”
“What the hell is that?” Nancy asked.
Louis listened to the repetitive lyrics and felt himself starting to relax.
“Mama what?” Nancy said. “What’s he saying?”
“I don’t know, but I like it,” Louis said.
“Sounds like jungle music.”
“It is. Guy’s from Africa somewhere.”
“You know this song?”
“I’ve heard it before. I like it.”
“Sounds like nonsense to me. I don’t get it.”
“I can’t hear it, you keep yapping.”
“Excuse me.”
She hadn’t shut up since they left the gas station in Brooklyn. Louis had just over a few grand in cash, what was left after he’d been scammed into paying off his gambling debts and buying a car he didn’t need. Nancy was potentially worth a lot more, but he wasn’t sure he could put up with her perky spirit another thousand miles, what was left before they reached Florida.
“I’ll bet this song is big in Bed-Stuy,” Nancy said.
Louis tried to ignore her commentary. He was thinking about the films he could sell once he was comfortable with the distance they’d traveled from New York. That would take at least another few hundred miles, but would mean some extra cash.
“Can I at least change stations when this shit is over?” Nancy said.
“Yeah, fine,” Louis said.
“Honestly, I don’t know how you stand it.”
“I can’t hear it.”
“What’s to hear. Mumbo jumbo. Mama bama Aunt Jemima.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“Jungle music is all it is. What, are you into black now?”
“Go ’head, change it, you want.”
He had to keep her happy or she’d make it impossible for him to finish the trip with her. He’d already thought about leaving her when they made the last stop. He would’ve if he still had half the money he’d had before he tried to buy and sell the car. He didn’t, though. Not anymore.
Louis hadn’t doubted she’d leave the kid behind and was surprised about the note she’d left John.
“I wrote I’d come up to see Little Jack at least once a year and that he could always come and stay with us for the summer once school was out,” Nancy had said.
“The summer, huh?” Louis said.
“He is my son.”
She hadn’t even mentioned the note until they were through the Holland tunnel. He wondered if she’d even felt guilty about the kid.
Now she changed stations while he thought about it again, leaving her someplace.