Something in Cruz’s voice made Oskar stop what he was doing. He stood very still for a moment, no longer looking at whatever paperwork he held in his gloved hand. Then his back slumped. It had to be a disappointment for things to end in this way.
“It’s like that then, is it?”
“It is.” Cruz felt something well up in his eye. He brushed it away, whatever it was or might be.
Oskar turned around slowly. He gazed wistfully at his Ruger, just out of reach on the table. He made no move toward it.
“You got your two hundred,” Cruz said.
“Yes, I did. Somehow, it no longer tastes very sweet.”
“You were the best,” Cruz said.
“A cold comfort, I’m afraid.”
The two friends stared at each other for a long moment. “A final lesson, if you haven’t moved beyond learning,” Oskar said.
Cruz shook his head. Of course there was time for one last word from the teacher. If only time could stop in this moment. “I haven’t.”
“Avoid the mistakes I’ve made. For one, never try to retire. I gather now that it cannot be done. For two, never flatter yourself into believing you are not expendable. You are. And three, never turn your back on a young man in your charge. Especially one with great potential. Especially one that you loved like a son.”
Cruz nodded.
“End of lesson,” Oskar said.
Cruz shot him four times. The first bullet entered his brain and killed him. Without pain, Cruz hoped. The next three were insurance.
Years before, the first lesson, delivered in Oskar’s clipped no nonsense tone, had gone as follows: when you kill a man, make sure he is dead.
They didn’t call him Fingers just because he was missing some.
One of the things he prided himself on was being able to steal just about any American-made, late model sedan in less than two minutes.
They were in a small seafood restaurant along the waterfront. Nets and lobster traps hung from the ceiling. A huge old steering wheel was mounted on one wall. An ancient anchor stood upright, mounted on a pedestal when you walked in. Fingers had already finished a platter of fried fish, French fries and cole slaw, and Moss was still demolishing the bread bowl that some New England clam chowder had come in.
In a little while, they would head out to the airport and Fingers would pick up a work car out of the long-term parking lot. The Mercedes wasn’t for work – it was for maximum comfort while driving up here. For work, they needed something nondescript, with local plates, maybe five years old but with a good solid engine. Something with a little bit of go power. The body had to be good, no rust, but the paint a little faded, a real middle-class blubber boat. Left there by some hard-working citizen who had parked his car and flown out to see his sister in Ohio for two weeks.
Fingers looked forward to it. In fact, he could hardly sit still. He loved these missions, and no doubt he liked to whack people. But one of his favorite things, although he would never tell a guy like Moss, was stealing cars. Moss would probably relegate grabbing a car to the scrap heap of STUFF THAT HAD TO GET DONE, like reading your dossier, like ditching evidence, like getting to the fucking airport on time. Not Fingers. He loved it when he had to take a car – it was what he had come up doing as a kid – and he liked to show his stuff. At one time, he had practically lived for it. That feeling of moving low and fast, his sneakers barely touching the concrete, his eyes darting, sizing up the cars on the fly. This one? A blue 1995 Oldsmobile Achieva?
Nah.
This one? Yeah, that’s the one. A green 1999 Chevy Impala.
Yeah.
After he snatched them a car, he and Moss would see about this wetback who cleaned Dugan’s apartment. Put her through her paces. For now, however, it was dinner time. And dinner time was downtime.
“I tell you what,” Roland Moss said in a long, lazy drawl.
Fingers sat across the table from Moss and waited for the rest of his statement. It could be a while before the big man decided to finish it. If there was one thing Fingers knew about Moss after the last couple of jobs he had pulled with him, it was that Moss always talked slow.
He did everything slow. It wasn’t that he couldn’t move fast – he could. Fingers had seen him move with sudden lightning speed. It was almost as if Moss did everything slow on purpose, to allow people to let down their guard.
Fingers watched him destroy the bread bowl, slowly, deliberately tearing its remains apart, and putting them in his mouth. Here was a big lumbering creature of a man. Everything about him said SLOW. He even talked slow – sometimes pausing for what seemed like a very long time between words and even syllables. He claimed that he talked slow so that everyone – even the simplest of simpletons – would understand.
And his sheer size and the crazy mayhem in his eyes meant that his patience was rarely tested. Clerks were terrified of him. His two monstrous hands on the counter, the epic bulk of his shoulders and upper body leaning forward, his body relaxed but the brow of his forehead creased with mild annoyance…
“Son,” he might drawl, letting that word linger, the time stretching out between himself and the startled mouse of a desk clerk below him, “I hope you’re gonna go on and do what I ask.”
This was enough. This was more than enough.
Fingers had seen it happen. Times when he, Fingers, would practically have to throw a tantrum to get what he wanted – and he was a hired killer, for Christ’s sake – Moss merely had to clench his jaw in disapproval.
Six months ago, Fingers had watched Moss break a man’s neck with the same bland expression on his face that he wore right now while eating his dinner. It was a mixture of boredom and detached concentration.
Moss chewed the bread with near infinite care. “The thing is,” he said, his impassive eyes roaming the restaurant, soaking in the other early dinner patrons. “I’m not sure I like that boy.” He nodded, as if in agreement with himself. “It’s his attitude. Rubs me the wrong way.”
“Cruz?” Fingers said, to make sure they were on the same page.
Moss raised his eyebrows, as if to say, “Who else?”
“That’s probably why he works alone, right?” Fingers said.
Moss motioned to the waitress. “Well, he ain’t working alone on this job. If he’s gonna act this way, he might need a talking to.” He cracked his mighty knuckles for emphasis. The waitress, a blond with a young, firm body, and a face and voice that were middle aged from years of smoking, came over.
“Darling,” Moss said, “may I have a cup of coffee and a dessert menu? Any time you get a moment.”
Over his apple pie with whipped cream on top, and two cups of coffee, Moss half-listened as the little monkey chattered away. Hell, let the boy talk. He was just working out his nerves before the job.
“You know what it is?” Fingers said, talking low and fast, glancing around between every statement to see who was looking. “It’s this: I like killing people. That’s why I feel like I got the best job in the world, you know? I go out on a mission, and I know we’re gonna do somebody, I’m like right there, man. I’m ready. I look forward to it.”
That’s how the monkey sometimes talked. He called them “missions.”
“Look at this fucking hand,” Fingers said. He held up the hand with the three missing fingers. He touched his pinky to his thumb, rapidly, three times, like a crab with its pincers. The hand was permanently discolored, an angry lobster red.
“I like this hand. You know why? Because it’s a war wound. I ever tell you how I fucked up this hand?”
Of course he had. Probably three times. But here it came again.
“I blew it up, see? I had a fucking bomb in my hand. And it blew up.” He pointed at Moss with the angry red pinky. “But that’s the kind of life I lead. Action. Everybody should lead such a life. I like to go out on missions where I know there’s gonna be some action.”