Jubal Pugh lived at the northern end of the Shenandoah Valley, about ten miles from the city of Winchester, Virginia, and five miles from the West Virginia state border. The area around Pugh’s farm was surrounded by apple orchards and low hills thickly covered with hickory and oak. Small creeks, no more than a couple of feet wide, seemed to be everywhere, cutting though the hillsides, running alongside the roads.
To Danny DeMarco, who rarely left New York City, the place was incredibly, hilariously rustic. He passed roads called Frog Eye Lane and Quail Run and saw at one point that he was less than ten miles from a place called Capon Bridge, West Virginia. He thought a capon was some sort of nutless chicken, but what did he know.
Following the directions given to him by his cousin, he found Pugh’s farm—estate—whatever the hell it was. He could see a house sitting back in the woods, a good two hundred yards from the gate. The house was a big white clapboard place with two chimneys and a rooster weather vane on the roof. Or maybe it was a capon. There were half a dozen outbuildings near the main house—small garages or toolsheds—and a bunch of cars, six or seven vehicles in the yard in front of the house. Old broken-down cars appeared to be some sort of redneck collector’s item; half the houses he’d seen on his way out to Pugh’s had rusted vehicles in the front yard, up on cinder blocks, the tires missing.
Danny got out of his rental car, a crummy Taurus because he couldn’t afford better. He walked up to the gate and gave a tug on the big padlock, even though he could see it was locked, then walked back to his car, planted his butt on the hood, and lit a cigarette. The DEA agent, that tough little cookie, had told him that eventually someone would come out and ask what he was doing.
Danny was wearing a camel-hair topcoat, a gray suit, a blue shirt with a big white collar, and a silk Versace tie that Marie had given him and that had cost more than a hundred and fifty bucks. He had on a pinky ring with a good-sized cubic zirconia stone, and on his feet were black Gucci loafers with tassels, the shoes already covered with a thin layer of dust just from walking from his car to the gate and back again.
Ten minutes later he saw a jeep pull away from the house and drive up the road in his direction. The jeep stopped on the other side of the gate and a man got out. The man was wearing jeans and scuffedup work boots and, even though it was cold out, a plain dark-blue T-shirt. He was about six feet tall and not exactly skinny, but there was no extra fat on him either. His arms were corded with stringy muscles, the kind you get from doing real work and not from lifting weights to pump up for show. He had a raw, reddish complexion, as if his skin was permanently windburned, and hard high cheekbones, as if he had a walnut in each cheek. On his head was a dirty white baseball cap with the word PETERBILT emblazoned on it. Danny knew Peterbilt was a type of truck, not some kind of dick joke, but why the hell would anyone want to wear a hat like that? Lastly, Danny noticed the prison tats inked onto the knuckles of the man’s hands, a bunch of stupid little x’s, and he knew, without a doubt, that in the pen this huckleberry had belonged to the Aryan Brotherhood or some other Nazi fuckin’ gang.
“What the hell do you want?” the guy said to Danny.
What a friendly bastard. “My name’s Danny DeMarco and I’m here to see Mr. Pugh. Tell him I work for Tony Benedetto in New York and I have a business proposition for him.”
The man spat, the glob of saliva coming fairly close to Danny’s right shoe. The guy had a mouth like a cannon. He stared at Danny for about thirty seconds, giving him his cell-block you’re-my-bitch glare, then finally pulled a phone out of his back pocket and made a call. A minute later, he walked slowly back to the gate, spat again, and unlocked the padlock.
Jubal Pugh’s once-red hair was beginning to turn an unattractive orange-gray color. He had small blue eyes under thick red brows, a long sharp nose with a small bump in the middle, and a weak chin that was somewhat hidden by a week’s worth of grayish-red whiskers. He was not a handsome man. He was wearing corduroy pants and a long-sleeved denim shirt. On his feet were white socks and house slippers, fluffy, comfy-looking dark blue ones.
Pugh shook Danny’s hand when Danny introduced himself, then sat down on a blue leather couch that was about ten feet long. He pointed Danny to a recliner that matched the couch; separating them was a glass-topped coffee table with legs the size of an elephant’s. They were in a room that appeared to be Pugh’s living room, filled with large expensive pieces of furniture. There was an enormous plasma-screen TV, and on the walls were paintings in ornate gilded frames. One portrait dominated the room, a picture of a stag in a forest glen with an enormous rack of antlers. Danny concluded that Pugh had spent a lot of money furnishing the room but didn’t have the good sense to hire an interior decorator.
The hard case with the Peterbilt cap took up a position against the wall near the stag picture and crossed his arms over his chest. When he’d escorted Danny to Pugh’s living room, Danny had seen an automatic—a walnut-handled .45—sticking out the back of the guy’s jeans.
Pugh studied Danny for a moment and his lips twitched briefly as if he was amused, by either Danny or his big-city attire. “You told Randy you were sent here by a Mr. Benny-Detto,” he said.
“Well, I don’t know no Mr. Benny-Detto,” Pugh continued. “I don’t think I know anybody in New York. Visited there once, though. Noisy, stinky kinda place, if you ask me, but lots of good-lookin’ women, I’ll give it that.”
“Yeah, more than you can say for Worstchester,” Danny said, “or whatever the hell the name of that place is where I’m stayin’.”
Pugh smiled. He had small stubby teeth. “That’s Winchester, son, like the rifle, and I’m fond of the place.”
“Whatever,” Danny said. “The reason I’m here is Mr. Benedetto needs a meth supplier, a big one, and—”
“Whoa!” Pugh said. Turning to Randy, eyes wide with false astonishment, Pugh said, “Can you believe this fella? He walks into a man’s house, a man he don’t even know, and starts talkin’ about drugs. I got a good mind to call the sheriff.”
“Yeah, right,” Danny said, and saw Pugh’s jaw clench. Maybe he should watch his mouth a little. “Look,” Danny said, “I know you don’t know me from Adam, Mr. Pugh. And I don’t expect you to say anything in front of me because for all you know I could be a narc wearing a wire. So don’t say anything. But before you toss me outta here, just listen to what I have to say.”
When Pugh didn’t respond, Danny continued.
“Mr. Benedetto is the man in Queens.”
“The man?” Pugh said.
“He belongs to one of the families that runs things in New York. He’s mob, okay?”
Pugh shrugged his shoulders; he couldn’t have cared less.
“There’s a Jamaican posse in Queens that’s about to go out of business. They deal crack and meth and grass. When this gang is wrapped up by the cops, which should happen in less than a month, Mr. Benedetto’s gonna move in and take over their action. But he needs somebody that’s got a large-scale lab to supply the meth, not a smalltime operation that some strung-out yahoo and his junkie girlfriend run outta their basement. And he doesn’t want the lab close to home because if it’s anywhere up near New York—New Jersey, Connecticut, any of those places—it’ll get sniffed out by either New York narcs or the DEA. That’s what always happens. So he wants a guy out of the area to provide product, somebody who knows what he’s doing.”
“Son,” Pugh said, “I think you’ve been misinformed about a whole bunch of things. And you’re insultin’ me. I got a good mind to have Randy take you outside and rearrange your pretty face.”
“Yeah, well, let me show you something before you do that,” Danny said.
He picked up the briefcase he’d brought with him into the house, placed it on his knees, but before he could open it Pugh said, “Hold on there … what’d you say your name was again?”
“DeMarco. Danny DeMarco.”
“Yeah, well, Danny, why don’t you let Randy open that briefcase. Okay?”
“Sure,” Danny said, spreading his arms wide, palms out, not a thing to hide.
Randy took the briefcase from Danny and took it over to a side table and opened it. “Nothin’ but paper,” he said to Pugh. Pugh nodded, and Randy handed the open briefcase back to Danny.
Danny reached inside the briefcase, took out a manila file folder, and slid it across the coffee table toward Pugh. Pugh didn’t touch it. “In that folder,” Danny said, “you’ll find a copy of my NYPD arrest record. There’s also a list of ten people that I did time with up at Altona. I did two years there for fencing stolen goods.”
And that was true.
“If you don’t wanna call any of those ten guys, pick anyone you want who was up there from ’95 to ’97. Someone will know me—if they’re white, that is. There’s also a copy of a story from The New York Daily News saying I popped a guy named Charlie Logan—which I did. There’s an article from yesterday’s paper saying how they had to let me go because the witness recanted, which the old bitch did. There’s another picture in there, also from the News, of my boss, Tony Benedetto. You wanna talk to Tony, his phone number’s there, cell and home. You wanna make sure you’re really talking to Tony and not some cop, call up anyone you know in New York and tell them to go to Tony’s house in Queens and your guy can ID that it’s Tony on the phone. And Tony’s phones are bug free, because he pays to keep them that way.”
Danny stood up.
“If it’s okay with you and ol’ Randy here, I’m gonna leave now, Mr. Pugh. But before I go I’ll tell you what we’re offering. We’re offering to buy a million to a million and a half bucks’ worth of product from you every quarter, provided you have a big enough operation to deliver that amount and keep on delivering. But we can’t afford a shortage.”
Patsy Hall had told him to say quarter, not every three months, for some reason.
“Now, my boss knows all about you,” Danny said. “He has two guys in the DEA that he pays to find guys like you. He knows you’re smart and you’re careful and you don’t get busted. On the front cover of that folder is my cell phone number and the name of the place where I’m staying in Winchester. I’m gonna be there all day tomorrow since I know it’ll take you some time to check me and Mr. Benedetto out, but if I don’t hear from you by the day after tomorrow, I’m movin’ on down to South Carolina where there’s another guy just like you.”
Danny drove back to his motel in Winchester, the whole time thinking that if Pugh didn’t take the deal he was screwed. He was going to spend the next fifteen years in jail being … well, just screwed. There were times it was a liability to be so good lookin’.
He asked at the front desk if he had any messages and then flirted for a while with the cute chick behind the counter, a foxy little blonde with a good set of lungs. Inside his room, he turned up the heat and took off his suit and flopped down on the bed in his underwear, then used the motel’s phone to call Joe’s cell phone. He didn’t know where his cousin was staying because Joe wouldn’t tell him.
“It went okay,” Danny said. “I thought the guy’s eyes were gonna pop out of his head when I told him we wanted a million bucks’ worth of shit every three months. So either I’ll hear from him tomorrow or I won’t, but he seemed interested.”
Patsy Hall had told Joe that Pugh normally did business only with people he knew, and when he did hire outsiders he did an extensive background check on them. But Hall also said that if the payoff was big enough, Pugh might do just about anything. So Joe had figured that Pugh might go for a deal that was worth five million a year if the people he was dealing with were known, successful criminals—for example, a guy like Tony Benedetto. All Danny could do at this point was hope that Joe was right.
“Good,” Joe said. “Stay in your room tonight. If you have to eat, order a pizza. I don’t want you going out. You’ll just get drunk and in trouble.”
“Hey,” Danny said, “I know what’s at stake here. And I’m a pro.”
“You’re a professional sleazebag. Stay in your room,” Joe said, and hung up.
Geez, the guy really hated him.