THEY BURIED BIG EDDIE in Calvary, the vast cemetery in Queens, a city of the dead within the city, with over three million souls, from Civil War veterans on down to Eddie, fallen on a Brooklyn sidewalk in the line of duty. The endless rows of gravestones created their own landscape, a necropolis mirroring, or perhaps mocking, the Manhattan skyline that blared triumphantly, and vainly, in the background: from ornate mausoleums proclaiming the persistence of ego beyond death, to the family crypts, layered generation over generation, to the crumbling forgotten stones of the poor, their names erased by weather as by history, to the lost traces of the past, sleeping under our feet. Everyone striving, fighting, buying, selling, loving, hating, and feverishly living in those towers across the river that reached for the sun would soon end up here, if there was still room for them. If some even worse fate hadn’t already taken us.
After the interment, Carol took the car and went to help Annette get food and drinks ready for the mourners who’d be filling the family house with their sympathy. Gio lingered, to walk and talk with Joe, safe with those secret-keepers, who truly understood the code of silence. Nero waited by the car, finally enjoying a smoke, among those beyond caring about their health, or his.
“How’s the back?” Joe asked, as the last mourners got into cars and left.
Gio waved it off. “Fine. Hurts. But I’ll live. Unlike some.” He looked at Joe. “So it’s Anton? That Russian motherfucker double-crossed us.”
“Looks that way. Hard to see how anyone could be running that operation in his territory, with Russian talent, without him knowing. And they were ready for us. They had a sniper on point and an ambush waiting. Someone told them we’d be coming sooner or later. Someone from that meeting at Rebbe’s. Who else could it be?”
“I knew it. I never liked that prick. First of all, those cigarettes he smokes stink like burning dog shit. And who smokes inside, in a windowless room, with other people? And talk about milking a joke. You ever notice that? Every time I say something that gets a laugh he has to try and top it.”
“Sounds like the death penalty to me.”
“Petty bullshit I know. But my point is, I never liked him, but I held my tongue, and my temper. Now we have no choice. He hit first. We unite, all of us, and we take him out for good.”
“Not yet,” Joe said. “You’ve got to hold it a little longer.”
“Why?”
“Even if we are sure Anton is running White Angel, he is not the one behind those attacks. Or the ambush last night. Those police reports Fusco gave you? Nero showed them to me and I read them in the car. The bomb in Alonzo’s car was high-tech military stuff. The attack on Maria’s crew used high-velocity sniper rounds fired from a distance by a sharpshooter. Last night they fired armor-piercing rounds at us.”
“So?”
“That’s the shit they shoot at tanks. It cut through the refrigerated truck like butter. I’m pretty sure they had infrared heat detectors on us too. Full body armor . . .”
“I get you,” Gio said, nodding now, calmer.
“The guys at the service today? Sure they’d march into battle for you or for Eddie. But I don’t care how tough they are. They’re still street guys. These were trained soldiers.”
“Army? Spies? Who?”
“Mercenaries. Just like the ones we ran across in Afghanistan. The way I figure it, Wildwater and their accomplices are behind the whole Zahir thing, using it as a cover to steal dope, smuggle it, and make money to finance whatever shady shit they’re up to, corporate, political . . .”
“CIA?”
Joe shrugged. “Why not? Wouldn’t be the first time. And Yelena made a Russian spy at the Wildwater building. Let’s say that’s the connection to Anton. They bring him in to run their New York distribution, handle the street crews.”
“And he’s clever about it,” Gio adds. “He knows the shit’s so good he can expand fast, move in on new territory, but he hires neighborhood people to sling it on the corners, so it doesn’t connect back to him.”
“Right. These local crews don’t even know who they’re working for, just a smoking package and muscle if they need it. But the security, the deep security anyway, is Wildwater people. Has to be.”
“And with all that money flowing in and all that firepower behind him, Anton figures it was time to step up and move against us.”
“Or he knew that with us looking into Zahir, we’d get to him eventually. So he struck first.”
“And you hit back hard last night. The street value of that stash once they cut it? You cost him millions. Not a knockout but you hurt him. Why back off now?”
“Not back off, stop to figure the next shot. Like you said, we hurt him, financially. And it is going to be hard to hold all that territory with no product. So what does he care about most right now? The next shipment. That’s the key. How are they getting the stuff in? Until we figure that out, we can’t cut the head off the monster.” Joe shrugged. “Even if we wiped out Anton and his whole gang today, you’d still have that pipeline and that private army loose in the city, just looking for their next front man.”
Gio nodded. “Yeah. You’re right. It’s not a local gang war anymore. It’s an invasion. So . . . if we don’t whack Anton, what do we do?”
“I wish I knew,” Joe said. “I’m thinking about it.”
“Think fast, brother. We are both walking on these graves instead of lying in one by luck and a couple of inches.”
Joe smiled at him. “But hey no pressure, right?”
Gio laughed and clapped his old friend on the back. “That’s right. Fuck it, we’re alive today. Let’s find Nero and go back to Eddie’s house. Annette’s aunt made eggplant parm. She can barely tell right from left, and her lips move when she reads, but I’m telling you, that woman is a genius.”