“Sure,” Dioguardi replied.
Luther handed the mob boss his coat, draped a blanket over Beaumont’s shoulders, and piloted the wheelchair back through the garage, Dioguardi following.
As they started to stroll the grounds, Cynthia entered the room where they had met. She was nude, wearing only a pair of white gloves and a surgical mask.
Cynthia stripped the butcher paper from the right arm of the chair Dioguardi had occupied, and carried it over to the desk. There she laid out a bottle of white paste, a small brush, and a pair of scissors. Seating herself, she trimmed the butcher paper, using a sheet of typing paper as a template. Then she carefully opened a manila folder, laying it flat on the desktop. Quick, quick! she commanded herself, fingers flying.
One by one, she pasted words cut from the Locke City Compass onto the butcher paper.
We have the boy
we Just want a faVor
Put ad in the Compass PERSONALS
John Please call DIAnne
put in A phone number
WE will CALL you
NO cops or it is OVER
She folded the paper neatly, and placed it inside a stamped envelope, already addressed with letters and numbers cut from the same newspaper. Careful, now… She sealed the envelope, using a dampened sponge. Then she reached for the telephone.
1959 October 09 Friday 16:59
A beige ’57 Plymouth two-door sedan tore across the back roads behind the Beaumont estate in what looked like one continuous controlled slide. The driver was a young man with a bullet-shaped head and jug ears. His small mouth was exaggerated by pursed lips, as if he were getting ready to whistle. His hands were light and assured on the wheel, carving corners like a surgeon’s scalpel.
The Plymouth fishtailed slightly as it merged with the highway. The driver picked up cover behind a highballing semi, checked his rearview mirror, slipped into the passing lane, spotted a clot of cars ahead, and fed the Plymouth more gas.
No tickets! played across the screen of his mind, as he smoothly took the exit marked LOCKE CITY, his eyes burning evangelically.
1959 October 09 Friday 17:11
“How’d it go, boss?” the man seated next to Dioguardi in the back seat asked.
“You know what, Carmine? I think he’s all done.”
“Beaumont? You’ve got to be kidding. He’s been the man around here for-”
“He’s not the same. Not the same at all. I braced him about the guys we lost. I was watching his eyes when I did it. I can tell when a man’s lying to me. And he wasn’t.”
“You mean it wasn’t his boys who-?”
“No. That’s what he said, and I believed him. In fact, he said he thought we did that.”
“What?”
“Yeah. Beaumont, he said that Lorenzo had been talking to the feds.”
“That’s a lot of-”
“Don’t be so sure,” Dioguardi said. “Because I’m not. You know what convinced me? He never even asked about that collector of his, Hacker.”
“That’s ’cause, the way we did it, he couldn’t know if Hacker just took off with the loot. That’s one body that’s never going to be found, so he’ll never know. Not for sure.”
“Right. And that’s why we did it that way, remember? If we left him in the street, like a message, there wouldn’t have been any doubt. Now they can never know the truth, just guess at it. But there was something else, too, Carmine. He wants to go partners.”
“Let us in?”
“Not that,” Dioguardi said. “He wants to keep everything here for himself. But he wants to go into the dope business. And he wants us to be the suppliers.”
“But if we’re pulling out…”
“He thinks we’re coming back. After the elections. He didn’t say it out loud, but that’s what he was thinking. So he figures, he makes a deal with us-for the dope, I mean-there’s no reason for us to come back here, see? Not when we’d be making more by staying away.”
“Yeah. I guess. But… I don’t know, boss.”
“I do,” Dioguardi said, confidently. “Beaumont’s a big fish in a little pond. And he knows, if we wanted to, we could put enough men together to pave him over like a fucking parking lot. He’s just trying to survive. He can’t blast us out, so he makes a deal for us to leave peaceful. And he can’t keep us out, so he makes another deal, so we stay away. You see what I’m saying?”
“Yeah. I’m just not so-”
“You’ll see, Carmine. A couple of years from now, we’ll be making more money out of this burg than we ever could’ve by taking it over.”
1959 October 09 Friday 17:40
The beige Plymouth pulled to the curb. The driver exited, and started walking. When he spotted the stolen Dodge, he changed course, so that he was approaching it from the front.
“That’s Jody!” Harley said. He reached his hand out the side window and waved a signal.
The driver climbed in behind Dett and Harley. He reached into his jacket, extracted an envelope, and handed it to Dett.
“You remembered,” Harley said, approvingly, noting the driver’s gloved hand.
“I remember everything,” the driver said. His voice was high and thin, but as steady as his hands. “When you get out, I’ll be right behind you. Whichever way you go, front or back, I’ll be there.”
“We don’t need a getaway man,” Harley said. “This car we’re in, it can’t be traced.”
“Then leave it where it is,” the driver said. “They won’t be able to trace the one I’ve got, either. And if something goes wrong, they’ll never catch it. I’ll get you to the switch car in the garage, and then I’ll take off. Let the cops chase me, they think they have a chance.”
“We can handle it,” Harley said.
“I’m in,” the driver said, gripping the back of the front seat with both hands. “If you don’t want me to drive you, I’ll be the crash car.”
The men in the front seat were silent, staring out the windshield.
“I’m bound to do it,” the driver said. “I got to be in on this.”
“Why?” Dett asked, coldly.
“He’s Jody Hacker,” Harley explained. “It was his brother Dioguardi’s men killed.”
“My big brother,” the driver said. “I know some people say he just run off, with the money. They don’t say it to me, but I know they say it, some of them. Mr. Beaumont, he never thought that of my brother, never. He told me my time would come. And this here is it.”
“You drive,” Dett said.
1959 October 09 Friday 17:53
The dark blue Cadillac sedan turned the corner, picked up by three pairs of eyes.
“Going around back,” Harley said. “They’ll have to circle the block first.”
The driver was already out the back door.
“He’ll be there?” Dett asked.
“Jody? Bet your life.”
“Let’s go, then,” Dett said. “Drive over and park as close to the front of the joint as you can, and we’ll walk from there.”
Harley started the car. “I can’t see any empty space,” he said, anxiously.
“Double-park,” Dett told him.
Harley pulled up so they were partially blocking two other cars at the curb. He looked over at Dett. “Okay?”
“Yeah,” Dett said. He reached into the satchel on the floor between his legs and threw a switch. “We’ve got five minutes.”
The two men got out of the stolen car and walked to the corner. Harley carried a gym bag. Dett’s gloved hands were empty. They turned the corner and started down the alley just as the Cadillac backed into the space always kept vacant for it. Dett’s left hand went into his outside coat pocket, his right reached under his arm. He stepped into his private tunnel, and the world shifted to slow-motion.
The driver of the Cadillac got out, and reached for the handle to the back door. Dett drew his.45 with his left hand and shot him in the spine.
Harley raced toward the rear door of the restaurant.
Dett wrenched open the back door of the Cadillac and emptied both barrels of his sawed-off shotgun into the two men seated there. The explosion was deafening in the enclosed space.