It was a valid point. I closed the trunk on both of them.
The car was dented in front but still drivable. I got in the driver’s seat and headed off to Winthrop.
chapter 27
1992
She’s bundled up in a heavy green winter parka, but from her shoes and the little I can see of her uniform, I’m guessing she’s a nurse. She’s young, and her stare keeps moving from Marzone lying dead on the pavement to me standing over him. Her face is so pale in the moonlight. She wants to scream but she’s too horrified to do so. I just feel sick inside as I watch her, wishing that there was some other way than what I was going to have to do.
Finally the terror releases her enough to let her move. She starts running, but she has those heels on, and there’s ice on the ground, and it’s not too long before she falls and lands on one knee. She’s crying now. I don’t think she has the strength to try running again. My stomach is all knotted up as I walk over to her. I take out the. 32 caliber and place the muzzle so it’s a few inches from her temple. Her mouth is gaping so wide open that when she cries thick strands of saliva drip from it. Oh Christ. I can’t pull the trigger. I just can’t do that to her face, not that type of damage. Instead I try hushing her and end up suffocating her, then lower her lifeless body to the ground. At least she looks undisturbed this way. Like she could be sleeping.
For the first time I look around to see where I am, and realize Marzone led me to the back parking lot of a small shopping plaza. There must be a hospital nearby, and this girl was probably cutting through the parking lot as a shortcut home after a late shift. This was all supposed to go down in a desolate warehouse parking lot with the Luger having an attached silencer. Instead I shot off three rounds with a. 32, and for all the fuck I know neighbors nearby have already called the police about gunshots. I have to get out of there but I can’t leave the girl’s body with Marzone. Lombard’s furious enough with how this has gone so far and having this nurse’s death tied to Marzone would put him over the top.
I jog over to an old rusted Ford station wagon. When I’m on a job like this, I always carry a slim jim and a screwdriver on me. It takes only seconds to unlock the driver’s door, and not much longer than that to strip and hotwire the ignition. I drive the car over to the dead nurse and, after popping the trunk, drop her body inside.
The police still haven’t shown up, no sirens either, which means I’ve caught one break tonight. My hands are shaking as I drive away.
I feel so damn cold inside my skull. At first I think about leaving her body someplace where it could be found so her family can have a funeral for her, but I realize how risky that is. I have to make sure her body disappears for good, which isn’t hard, but still, I hate the idea of it. I hate the thought of how I’m going to be spending the next few hours.
It takes me an hour to drive where I have to go. The coldness deep in my head has traveled to the pit of my stomach, and it just keeps getting worse. By the time I stop the car, I’m drenched in a sickly cold sweat, and that stench of death nearly overpowers me.
I open the trunk and lift her body from it, except she comes alive in my arms and starts fighting me. Somehow I hadn’t killed her the first time, and I feel even sicker inside knowing that I have to do it now for real.
chapter 28
present
The only light inside the house came from the kitchen. I crouched outside one of the windows and watched while a man in his thirties sat alone at a small Formica table, one of his legs tapping anxiously as he chain-smoked his way through half a pack of cigarettes. He had a much skinnier body type than Sal Lombard, but there was enough resemblance in his face – especially that familiar cruel mouth – to know he was Lombard’s son. It was possible there were other people inside the house, but I didn’t think it was likely. Anyway, it didn’t much matter if there were.
I went back to the front door and knocked. I heard footsteps, then the same voice that had been calling me on my cell phone yelling through the door, “Yeah?”
I muffled my voice with my coat, and doing my best to impersonate one of the wiseguys, said, “Fucksake, Nick, it’s Joey. We got your merchandise. Open the fucking door.”
“You got a death wish talking to me like that?” the man inside yelled back out. There was nothing but mottled fury in his face as the door flung open, then a stunned dumbness as he stood staring at me. Before he could react I tapped him on the forehead with the butt of the gun I was holding, and he sat down hard on the floor. I let myself in and closed the door behind me.
“Hands behind your neck.”
He blinked stupidly at me for a few seconds before complying. I patted him down but he wasn’t carrying.
His eyes darted left and right before settling on me. He asked, “Where are my men?”
“They’re in their car,” I said, “and they’re not in any position to help you.”
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he demanded, trying poorly to force a bravado. I raised a finger to silence him.
“It’s not going to work that way,” I said. “Right now I either kill you, or the two of us figure out a way so I don’t have to.”
The way his lips twisted, he was about to make a snide comment, but something about my expression made him look away from me instead.
“What do you suggest?” he asked without much hope.
“First some questions. Why’d you wait until now?”
His mouth weakened momentarily. He lowered his gaze. “The FBI was watching you,” he said. “They were using you as bait hoping I’d go after you. It was only last week when I found out from my source that they dropped their operation.”
I remembered the blue Chevy sedan that Sophie had run up to warn me about. I could almost see the faces of the two men in it. I remembered the other times I’d catch glimpses of other cars waiting for me after work. It made sense that it would’ve been the Feds watching over me.
“Why wait even a week?” I asked.
He made a face. “I wasn’t sure until today I was going to go through with this. I was trying to get past what you did, ratting us out and putting my pop and my brother Al away, but then seeing you being built up like a hero was too much.”
“Did your boys search my apartment?”
“I don’t know where you live,” he said. “If someone searched your place it wasn’t us. Probably the Feds.”
I considered that for a moment, then asked, “Was the plan tonight to torture and kill me?”
A hitch showed at the side of his mouth. “I was first going to get some information out of you,” he said.
“That office building hired me for you?”
He nodded. He was trying hard to keep his composure, but he was cracking. His voice wasn’t quite right, and a tic had started to pull at his left eye.
“Why the anonymous calls to my cell phone?” I asked.
He shrugged. “I was trying to let off steam, but it didn’t do much good. In the end I had to have you brought here.” He hesitated for a few seconds, then asked, “Any ideas yet so you don’t have to kill me?”
His skin color wasn’t looking too good, neither was that tic pulling on his eye. If I kept him sitting there much longer he was going to expire on me. I had him get up and sit on a loveseat, and I pulled up a wooden chair so I could sit opposite him.
I said, “The only thing I can think of is for you to give me something incriminating enough so you can’t afford to let anything happen to me.”
He gave it some thought and nodded. “I’ve got something like that,” he said. “It’s back at my house.”
“You also have to pay me something. A lot actually. How much cash can you get your hands on tonight?”
“Maybe twenty grand,” he said.
I whistled softly. “Twenty grand? That’s how little you value your life?”