Feeling like there was an electric current running through me, I forced myself to go into Garth's kitchen and make a. pot of coffee, just to give myself something to do while I struggled to calm myself down. Then I sat at the kitchen table, sipped coffee, and tried to think. It didn't take me long to reach a decision as to what I was going to do next, and it gave me a chill that the hot coffee couldn't touch.
Still concentrating on calming and centering myself for what lay ahead of me in the day, I made myself eggs, bacon, and toast, ate slowly. By the time I had finished eating and cleaning up the dishes, the sun was coming up, glowing reddish-orange, lending some warmth to what looked from Garth's kitchen window to be a very cold day. I went to the bank of windows in the living room and looked down on Fifty-sixth Street; the black limousine was there, parked across the street. I certainly hoped it was Tanker Thompson's day off, and that whoever was manning this shift was no more than a third of the ex-football player's size. I also fervently hoped there was only one.
I rummaged through Garth's kitchen drawers until I found the item I wanted, put it in my pocket. Then I went upstairs to my own apartment. I hadn't carried a gun for more than a year, since there hadn't been any need. Now there was. I took out both my Beretta and my Seecamp; they had been carefully cleaned and oiled before I'd put them away, but I went through the same procedure all over again. I loaded both guns, strapped the Seecamp to my ankle, and put the Beretta in my shoulder holster. Then I put on my coat and went down to the basement garage.
I drove Beloved up and out of the garage at a leisurely pace, punched at the garage door control hanging on the visor as I turned left. I drove three blocks, just to make sure my tail was awake and taking care of business. He was. Still driving at a leisurely pace, I headed toward the West Side Highway. There was virtually no traffic on the streets on this early Sunday morning, so the limousine was always clearly in sight in my rearview mirror-and he wasn't far behind.
This total lack of guile made me suspect that the driver of the other car was none other than Tanker Thompson. Just what I needed for my nerves.
I went up the ramp onto the West Side Highway, heading north. The limousine came up right behind me, no more than two or three car lengths behind. I knew exactly where I wanted to go, and what I wanted to do when I got there, but the timing was going to be very tricky. The on-again, off-again Westway project, designed to replace the crumbling West Side Highway and Henry Hudson Drive with a six-lane expressway, had left in its wake a checkerboard of cleared areas and aborted projects in various stages of construction beneath the present highway, closer to the river. Four months before, in the course of acting as liaison in some very delicate negotiations between federal prosecutors and a certain Mafia don who was willing to inform on the family that had put out a contract on his life, I had met said Mafia don in an isolated, half-finished parking garage-really no more than a concrete slab with a corrugated steel roof-on a landfill jutting out into the river in the upper Eighties. That was where I was going.
Three-quarters of a mile from the exit, I stomped on Beloved's accelerator, and the well-tuned 360 Mercedes-Benz engine under the Rabbit's hood-a little indulgence I'd allowed myself in honor of my newfound wealth-roared to life. Beloved's tires spun, gripped, and the black limousine began to recede rapidly in the distance. Perhaps too rapidly. I let up on the accelerator, watched in the rearview mirror as the Cadillac gained ground, then sped up again. I slowed slightly before the exit, turned off on it, went around a corner, and immediately braked hard. When I saw the nose of the limousine appear in the rearview mirror, I yanked the wheel to the right, sped around a wooden barrier, knocked over a no exit sign, and bounced down a badly rutted road leading to the river and landfill. At the bottom was a concrete ramp with a hairpin turn leading onto the concrete platform that was to have been the first floor of the parking garage. I braked hard, skidded around the turn; Beloved skidded twenty feet sideways and came to rest across the entrance.
Perfect-I hoped.
Bidding good-bye to Beloved, assuring her that she was being sacrificed in a good cause, I jumped out and sprinted toward a concrete support column fifteen yards away, to the left of the entrance. I reached the column just as the air was filled with the tortured scream of brakes being applied full force-and too late. The driver of the limousine, not knowing where he was going, had-as I'd hoped-come speeding out of the blind turn, and by the time he saw Beloved it was too late to stop. The brakes continued to scream as the Cadillac, its rear tires billowing black smoke, slid across the concrete and rammed hard into Beloved, driving her like a billiard ball ten yards down the length of the platform and up against a support column, where she burst into flame.
I drew my Beretta from the shoulder holster and sprinted to the limousine. All of the car's windows had exploded on impact in bursts of white powder, and I could see Tanker Thompson, blood streaming from a gash on his forehead, slumped over the wheel. But Tanker Thompson was certain to have a hard head, and he was already beginning to mumble and stir by the time I reached the driver's side. I shoved the Beretta into a pocket in my parka and took out the tube of Krazy Glue I had taken from Garth's kitchen. Quickly, I squirted some of the liquid on Thompson's left ear, reached around the back of his head and squirted more on the right ear. I reached in, threaded his left arm through the steering wheel, slapped the palm of his hand against his ear. I did the same to his right arm and palm.
Now we were ready to talk turkey.
Tanker Thompson wasn't going to be making any big moves now-not unless he wanted to end up holding his ears in his hands. Feeling rather smug with my cleverness, I casually ambled around to the other side of the car, where the passenger's door was sprung off its hinges. I slid into the front seat over a glistening carpet of powdered glass, once again took out my Beretta, and tapped Tanker Thompson once, smartly, on the top of his shaved head. Acrid black smoke from the burning wreckage of Beloved swept through the shattered front windshield, making my eyes sting. I wasn't sure how long it would be before police and fire trucks arrived, so I was in a bit of a hurry.
"You awake, Thompson?"
The giant with the mashed nose and bruise-colored face grunted, tried to sit up, grunted even louder when he discovered that his palms were securely glued to his ears. He raised his right elbow slightly, shifted in his seat, and studied me with small, black eyes that seemed oddly lifeless, like lumps of coal in the smear of blood that covered his face. I didn't like those eyes; they belonged in an animal, not a human. He mumbled something, of which I understood only the words "fucking dwarf."
"Tut-tut. That's no way for a God-fearing man to talk."
"What have you done to me?" he asked, his deep voice rumbling in his chest with the ominous sound of distant thunder.
"Nothing that I can't undo. Just sit still and answer my questions. If I like what I hear, I'll see if I can't scare up some nail polish remover to dissolve that glue on your ears. Where are you keeping my brother?"
"What's the matter with you two?" Tanker Thompson said with what sounded like genuine confusion and indignation. 'Why are you so unreasonable?"
"Huh?" The question itself, and his injured tone of voice, took me completely by surprise. "Why are we so unreasonable?"
"Yes," the huge man said in the same indignant tone. "You wanted to make sure that Vicky wasn't going to be hurt anymore. She's not. I saw to that. Then why are you continuing to try to thwart God's will?"
I shook my head slightly. "You're admitting you killed William Kenecky?"