“Someday I might like maybe to travel. See New Jersey.”
“Yeah. Well, that’s not a bad idea. No doubt about it, the best way to see New Jersey is from the inside of a Mercedes. But it’s too late. I gave the car to Julio to dispose of.”
Abe sagged. “Chop shop?”
Jack nodded. “He’s going to shop it around for quick cash. Figures another ten grand, minimum, maybe twenty.”
A take of sixty seventy K so far from one visit to Tram’s laundry. Which meant that Jack would be returning Tram’s down payment and giving him a free ride on this job. Which was fine for Tram’s bank account, but Jack didn’t know what his next step was. He’d shaken things up down there. Now maybe it would be best to sit back and watch what fell out of the trees.
He headed for Gia’s. He kept to the windy shadows as he walked along, kept looking over his shoulder. Cirlot had seemed to know where he was going, and when he’d be there. Was he watching him now?
Jack didn’t like being on this end of the game.
But how did Cirlot know? That was what ate at him. Jack knew his apartment wasn’t bugged – the place was like a fortress. Besides, Cirlot didn’t know where he lived. And even if he did, he couldn’t get inside to place a bug. Yet he seemed to know Jack’s moves. How, dammit?
Jack made a full circuit of Gia’s block and cut through an alley before he felt it was safe to enter her apartment house.
Two fish eye peepholes nippled Gia’s door. Jack had installed them himself. One was the usual height, and one was Vicky height. He knocked and stood there, pressing his thumb over the lower peephole as he waited.
“Jack, is that you?” said a child’s voice from the other side.
He pulled his thumb away and grinned into the convex glass.
“Ta daaa!”
The deadbolt slid back, the door swung inward, and suddenly he was holding a bony seven-year-old girl in his arms. She had long dark hair, blue eyes, and a blinding smile.
“Jack! Whatcha bring me?”
He pointed to the breast pocket of his fatigue jacket. Vicky reached inside and pulled out a packet of bubblegum cards.
“Football cards! Neat! You think there’s any Jets in this one?”
“Only one way to find out.”
He carried her inside and put her down. He locked the door behind them as she fumbled with the wrapper.
“Jack!” she said, her voiced hushed with wonder. “They’re all Jets! All Jets! Oh, this is so neat!”
Gia stepped into the living room. “The only eight-year old in New York who says ‘neat.’ Wonder where she got that from?”
She kissed him lightly and he slid an arm around her waist, pulling her close to him. She shared her daughter’s blue eyes and bright smile, but her hair was blonde. She brightened up the whole room for Jack.
“I don’t know about you,” he said, “but I think it’s pretty neat to get five – five – members of your favorite team in a single pack of bubblegum. I don’t know anybody else who’s got that kind of luck.”
Jack had gone through a dozen packs of cards before coming up with those five Jets, then he had slipped them into a single wrapper and glued the flaps back in place. Vicky had developed a thing for the Jets, simply because she liked their green and white jerseys – which was as good a reason as any to be a Jets fan.
“Start dinner yet?” he asked.
Gia shook her head. “Just getting ready to. Why?”
“Have to take a raincheck. I’ve got a few things I’ve got to do tonight.”
She frowned. “Nothing dangerous, I hope.”
“Nah.”
“That’s what you always say.”
“Well, sure. I mean, after surviving the blue meanies last year, everything else is a piece of cake.”
“Don’t mention those things!” Gia shuddered and hugged him. “Promise you’ll call me when you’re back home?”
“Yes, mother.”
“I’m serious. I worry about you.”
“You just made my day.”
She broke away and picked up a slim cardboard box from the couch. “Land’s End” was written across one end.
“Your order arrived today.”
“Neat.” He pulled out a bright red jacket with navy blue lining. He pulled off the fatigue jacket and tried it on. “Perfect. How do I look?”
“Like every third person in Manhattan,” Gia said.
“Great!”
“All you need is a Hard Rock Cafe sweat shirt and the picture will be complete.”
Jack worked at being ordinary, at being indistinguishable from everybody else, just another face in the crowd. To do that, he had to keep up with what the crowd was wearing. Since he didn’t have a charge card, Gia had ordered the jacket for him on hers.
“I’d better turn off the oven,” Gia said.
“I’ll treat tomorrow night. Chinese. For sure.”
“Sure,” she said. “I’ll believe it when I smell it.”
Jack stood there in the tiny living room, watching Vicky spread out her football cards, listening to Gia move about the kitchen over the drone of Eyewitness News, drinking in the rustle and bustle and noises and silences of a home. The domestic feel of this tiny apartment – he wanted it. But it seemed so out of reach. He could come and visit and warm himself by the fire, but he couldn’t stay. As much as he wanted to, he couldn’t gather it up and take it with him.
His work was the problem. He had never asked Gia to marry him because he knew the answer would be no. Because of what he did for a living. And he wouldn’t ask her for the same reason: Because of what he did for a living. Marriage would make him vulnerable. He couldn’t expose Gia and Vicky to risk like that. He’d have to retire first. But he wasn’t even forty. Besides go crazy, what would he do for the next thirty or forty years?
Become a citizen? Get a day job? How would he do that? How would he explain why there was no record of his existence up till now? No job history, no Social Security hours, no file of 1040’s. The IRS would want to know if he was an illegal alien or a Gulag refugee or something. And if he wasn’t, they’d ask a lot of questions he wouldn’t want to answer.
He wondered if he had started something he couldn’t stop.
And then he was looking out through the picture window in Gia’s dining room at the roof of the apartment house across the street and remembering the bullets tearing through the hotel room less than twenty four hours ago. His skin tingled with alarm. He felt vulnerable here. And worse, he was exposing Gia and Vicky to his own danger. Quickly he made his apologies and good byes, kissed them both, and hurried back to the street.
He stood outside the apartment house, slowly walking back and forth before the front door.
Come on, you son of a bitch! Do you know I’m here? Take a shot! Let me know!
No shot. Nothing fell from the roof.
Jack stretched his cramped fingers out from the tight fists he had made. He imagined some vicious bastard like Cirlot finding out about Gia and Vicky, threatening them, maybe hurting them...it almost put him over the edge.
He began walking back toward his own apartment. He moved quickly along the pavement, then broke into a run, trying to work off the anger, the mounting frustration.
This had to stop. And it was going to stop. Tonight, if he had anything to say about it.
*
Jack stopped at a pay phone and called Tram. The Vietnamese told him that Aldo and his bodyguard had limped out and found a cab, swearing vengeance on the punk who had busted them up. Tram was worried that Aldo might take his wrath out on him if he couldn’t find Jack. That worried Jack, too. He called his answering machine but found nothing of interest on it