Willy planned his escape years before he felt the need. A safety hatch prepared for the day when he required a sudden leave of absence.
Mythologies were prevalent in the culture. Some based on reality, others on fantasy. One mob myth implied that if you ran, the mob would hunt you down to the ends of the earth and find you. That was only true, in Willy’s observances through decades, when the person on the lam was a complete idiot. The movies put someone in a bus depot laying eyes on someone on the run. Phoning in the tip for a cheap bottle of gin. In reality, if someone with a brain wanted to hide from the mob, all he had to do was use his brain and hide from the mob. Proven often, although the wise guys didn’t repeat those stories. They didn’t want word getting out.
The Mafia was not the RCMP, the FBI, the CIA or Scotland Yard. Those guys had resources. Cameras everywhere and credit card receipts, phone and bank records. If they felt the need, they could post photographs on the moon. The mob had none of that. Slipping free from their grasp, in reality, was as easy as slipping free from their grasp. A man had only to be smart and careful. Calling up your best buddy to request a loan was decidedly stupid. Some guys did that. Calling your mother or your girlfriend to say you were all right and were going to change was strictly a dumbass move. Willy knew that if the day came when he had to run, he’d vanish into the woodwork where even the carpenter ants couldn’t find him. He’d be smart enough not to advise the Post Office where to forward his mail or ask a utility company to reconnect the power under his regular name.
Hard to believe, but some guys did that. Flaming idiots. They deserved the dismembering they received.
Willy was both on the run and sticking around. He needed to meet with opposing forces, then be invisible between visits. Already that was working. He knew where mob guys hung out. He avoided those districts and the adjacent ones. The clothes he put on for a meeting were not the clothes he wore otherwise. He acquired hats. Not those that made him look suspicious, but hats that altered his appearance and suggested a cultural background not his own. In the past he’d resembled a nondescript gent in the evening, a proper businessman by day. His preference was for black suits, white shirts and polished shoes. All gone by the wayside. He wore plaid at night, cotton tees by day. Jeans and work boots. Shades in daylight and ball caps. When he did enter a district for a meeting with tough guys, he might start out wearing a hardhat, as if he had work to do. Switch over in his car. Not into a cape like Superman, but back into the black suit people expected him to wear. Switch back again after he left. The car he drove on the last leg to the meeting would never be his own. He parked it legally where it was well hidden and departed when the coast was clear, sometimes on a bus. Mafia henchmen were not riding the bus. He took care of the car or cars later. He had ID for the rental nobody knew about. That ID declared his true identity, that also nobody knew about. Not even the cops knew him by his real name, and by now the men who originally hired him were retired or dead.
Of course, there were others who knew him, too. He kept them informed.
He was north of Montreal, eating lunch in a middle-class town that had grown out of itself and become a suburb to the city. The news came up on the black-and-white TV behind the counter. Faces of the victims were covered, although their bodies looked familiar. The reporter announced that they were ‘known to police’. Pasquale was a big man with a distinctive build. He was huge and incredibly round at the waist, merely lumpy elsewhere. That had to be him on the ground. Five will get your ten, Le Gris slept alongside him. His body was not distinctive, but he was wearing the same clothes he had on the other day in a car with Willy.
Willy had not killed the two men, but he might as well have. He’d advised Ciampini that if anyone feared him for his knowledge, that individual would want him dead, because that individual was the mole inside the mob. More than just one, apparently. Willy would bet his bottom dollar that Ciampini had taken his own guys out.
Who else would dare?
Pasquale and The Gray, had they turned? Seen the writing on the wall? Thrown in with the Hells, or less likely, The Rabbit?
Or should they be counted among the innocent dead?
Everything was working, if not exactly as Willy planned it, then better: the way he wanted things to go.