He’d ordered someone to steal Carmine’s car from in front of Lady M’s dive and brought to him. Then he stuck Joe’s body in the trunk and drove the Plymouth back to where he’d found it-right in front of Lady M’s.
The result? Joey was dead. Carmine was going to jail for his murder and Mimi was put on notice. And Doyle gets his money back. Hell, Doyle had even gotten Howard Rothmann to sign off on the whole thing. Why not? It gave Chief Carmichael a chance to show the city he was a crime fighter after all. Score one for the good guys.
But Quinn had learned long ago that there were no good guys and bad guys in The Life. Just guys out to make a buck and guys who died trying.
Guys like Archie Doyle and men like Terry Quinn who worked for them.
He drained his coffee and paid his tab. He’d just gotten outside the coffee shop when he heard the sirens of the squad cars racing along 14th Street. He walked to the corner and saw the cops had already opened the trunk of Carmine Rizzo’s Plymouth. He saw Joey’s body was inside, just like Quinn had left it.
He watched another group of cops drag Mimi and Carmine into the street in handcuffs. The Van Dorn brat wobbled out last.
Mimi was wailing, this time for real. It took three cops to push Carmine into the back of the squad car. The Van Dorn punk just looked woozy and ridiculous. Handcuffs and tuxes went together just about as well as cops and dead men in trunks.
A couple of uniforms recognized Quinn and waved. Why not? He was on Doyle’s payroll, too. Just a friend, standing on the corner in the middle of the night. With a suitcase in his hand.
Quinn smiled and waved back. Then hailed a cab going the other way.
Spill Site by Matthew C. Funk
Big Dan got the bad news from Eric Delacey, his Service Manager, just as a knock hammered his front door. He lowered the cell-Delacey still booming on about the spill site-and shot a look across his living room. Rain hit hard enough to almost dent the windows. He hoped it would wash away whoever was knocking.
“So how bad is bad, Eric?”
“About as bad as it gets. Storm’s taken the waste right over our levees. Twenty years of dumping is pouring right for the lot.”
'For the lot' meant for Big Dan’s house, right next door. He blew air through his broke-veined nose to clear the pinch in his chest. It didn’t help. Neither did the knocking.
Big Dan considered switching his den light off. The knocker might get the message.
“EPA going to get involved in this?”
“You kidding me? We’ll be lucky if the showroom isn’t a swimming pool of ethylene glycol and sulfuric acid.”
Turning off the lamp turned the knocking into a slamming.
“So how do we contain this, Eric?”
Silence. For the hundredth time this year, Big Dan wondered why he bothered paying apes like Delacey. If he could run the Chevy dealership himself, they’d all be out on their dumb asses.
“Call me back when you have a fucking answer.” Big Dan hung up. He lumbered to the door, worked both deadbolts and yanked open the oversized knob.
The roar of the storm barged in, bringing water by the bucket to spatter his slippers. It hazed the figure into a ghost. For a moment, Big Dan could have sworn he was looking at his daughter, Andrea, from decades back.
But Andrea knew better than to visit.
“Who’re you?” His tone left no question that the answer would only piss him off more.
“Papa,” the girl said, forcing a smile while the rest of her shivered in a soaked-through hoodie, water pouring up from inside her Vans. “It’s Darlene.”
“Darly?” Big Dan was surprised to feel the brick in his chest soften. The sensation was like a wish he’d long forgotten being answered. He nearly smiled. “What the hell are you doing out in this weather?”
“I’m on my own now,” she said, tucking hands embedded in her sweatshirt pockets tighter about her middle. “Mama and I had a parting of the ways.”
Big Dan grunted. The kid was probably looking for charity, ducking out on her welfare mother for a taste of her grandpa the dealership owner’s wealth.
Still, Darly could be a welcome distraction. Ten years parted left a lot of catching up to do. Besides, anything that would rile Andrea suited him fine.
“Come on in, then,” Big Dan said, waving her on. He considered wrapping an arm around her willow-branch body, something to soothe that shivering, but thought better. It would only soak them both. “Kick your shoes off, though.”
She did. Big Dan scowled to see a dark rainbow of chemicals fringing their soles. The rogue’s gallery of toxic waste Delacey had listed echoed: Carburetor cleaner, transmission fluid, battery acid, antifreeze, oil.
All headed out of the Mississippi mire to swamp his business. His house. Him.
Big Dan gave a wistful look across the street to where the dealership sign should have glowed. The storm had stolen the power, but he imagined it, lit and looming bigger than one of those faggy euro coupes. Potter Chevrolet of Wiggins-a declaration of dominance over his plot of land.
He slammed the door rather than look at the flood swallowing that land a moment longer.
Darly was pivoting, taking in Big Dan’s den with baby-doll eyes wide under the seaweed fringe of her black-dyed hair. He ate up her awe-her wonder at the garfish with its prehistoric snarl jutting over the mantle, the out-sized furniture of imported leather and antique wood, the clusters of photos, fleur-de-lis and American flags.
He’d enjoy his castle as long as he could. To hell with the doubters-his dead wife, his pastor, the Sheriff. It was fucking great to be the king.
“So, Darly,” he said, clasping her shoulder and steering her shocked face around for his stare to savor. “Tell me how your bitch of a mother is.”
The photo albums were all organized, but Big Dan yanked them from the cupboards and stacked them on his teak coffee table. They tiered in towers, forty years of family memories and booming business. It reminded him of the Norman fortresses he used to model out of hub cabs behind his old man’s scrapyard.
“We don’t really have to do this, Papa,” Darly said, “if you need to sleep, I mean.”
He turned to her and sipped Dewar’s through his smile. It felt odd to smile without bitterness on the backs of his teeth. The whole sensation-genuine happiness-felt odd, a warm softness running from his neck to his bulging belly, like the filling of a birthday cake.
“I’m a night owl and an early bird both, Darly, don’t you worry.” He put a canny bend in his grin. The girl mirrored it. Big Dan figured this apple fell right onto the roots of the tree.
“Okay, then.” She perked her plucked eyebrows. “Think I could have a scotch, though?”
He chuckled in time with a wagging finger. The girl had his guts, too.
Her hair was dark, but Big Dan bet there’d be his rye-colored roots under the dye. Her jaw was slender, but her chin had the same die-cut square. Her sharp eyes, her hard brow, her high cheeks-all pieces of his mirror turned into something beautiful.
“You’ll settle with that coffee, kiddo.”
Darly shrugged and rubbed her arm. She’d insisted on keeping the hoodie on. Big Dan insisted she at least change into dry jeans, for the sake of his couch if nothing else. He wondered if she’d kept her damp panties on or went bare.
Was that wrong to wonder about his granddaughter? Big Dan smirked to himself as he sorted out an album. As if he gave a tin shit about “wrong.”
“Here we go,” he said, raising up from popping knees and ambling over to Darly with the album. “2002. Your last visit, right?”
“I was six, so, yeah, I guess so.” She fixed a hopeful look on him. “Is Grandma in this one?”
He nodded. They paged through it. Image after image of his wife, his pairs of sons and daughters, his four grandkids. They huddled together on picnic tables at the park ground on the 4th of July, stood before the Christmas tree’s glister, crammed around the Thanksgiving spread. Every picture gleamed with tight smiles and flashbulb happiness.