“Phone in the trunk now,” I said as I covered the rest of the space between Luca Perino and me. His huge hands groped for the Glock as it got closer, but they retracted when my steel toe bit into his long shin bone.
The gun was in his ear as I pulled the cell phone free from his tight grip. I threw the phone into the trunk and shut the lid as music grew louder over the roar of the approaching engine. Through the tinted panes of the Escalade, still diagonal in the lot behind the parking spaces, I could make out a pair of headlights. The car stopped, and doors opened and slammed.
The engine stayed on and music poured out of the vehicle. I saw a break in the light streaming through the dark car glass — someone had walked in front of the headlights. I grabbed Luca by the belt, pushing the gun harder into his ear. I dragged him back between the Mercedes and the Dodge Shadow. When my back touched the brick of the building, I used my foot on the back of Luca's knee to put him quietly down on the pavement.
From in between the cars, I could see two bodies at the back door of Ave Maria. In the dim light, I could see that one of the men was tall like Luca, but this one was more solid. Beside him was a smaller figure in a hat that was turned sideways on his head. I could tell without getting any closer that it was Mickey and Ralphy. The two at the door probably meant that Gonzo was the one keeping the music on in the car. He wouldn't be much good for walking in the shape I left his foot in. His presence in the car and the headlights illuminating the lot kept us pinned down.
The car still belted out music while Mickey and Ralphy banged on the back door. They didn't pound on it with any urgency. Ralphy hit the door rhythmically using both hands and the toe of his shoe. Mickey nodded his head with the beat and then murmured something to Ralphy. He started the beat again with greater intensity, and Mickey bopped his head along with the faster modified drumbeat. The punks hit the door with familiarity — it wasn't the knock of a first-timer. Something was off, those doped-up leg breakers should have been scared shitless to hit a mob door like that, but the two of them showed no hesitation or second thoughts.
The door never opened. I figured the woman inside, behind the counter, knew to stay away from the back door and the type of customers who would use it. Her job was the front door of the front, and judging by the closed back door, she stuck to it.
“Why are Julian's guys here at your door?” I said in Luca's ear. He didn't answer, he just shook his head back and forth letting me know he wasn't going to say a word. It wasn't much of a head shake. The gun in his ear made part of the motion impossible.
“Why are they here?”
He just shook his head harder. I didn't need him to answer. Julian's guys were here because they were after me. They were here just like they were at Bombedieri's. But something nagged at me. At Bombedieri's they were waiting outside. Here, they were at the door, knocking to get in. Who would let those two into a back room that served as a criminal front? Mickey and Ralphy were street level; there was no way they should be high enough on the food chain to get into a neighbourhood boss's backroom office. They would be met on the street by someone under the boss to keep everything separate.
Whatever their reason for being at the door, the whole situation was turning to shit around me. Julian was pushing to kill me and he seemed to know everywhere I would be before I did. Julian was two for two in interference, and I couldn't keep surviving our encounters if my hands were tied. I had the info Paolo asked for. I had Marco on tape explaining that Luca was behind what happened to Army and Nicky. It was half of what Paolo wanted; the other half was deniability. Paolo didn't want anyone to know that he was looking into his own people. He especially didn't want anyone to know he was using me to do it. To keep Paolo in the shadows, and get me out of the line of fire, I had to make it out of the parking lot alive.
With that thought, any instinct to hold off, to try to keep Luca Perino breathing, went out the window. My hands were free of red tape — I was disconnected again, and it felt good. Luca couldn't see me grin behind his back. My face didn't change at all when I pulled the Glock from his ear and buried it in his back — right behind his heart. I pulled the trigger and I was moving before his body hit the pavement.
The music from the car on the other side of the Escalade obscured the shot, but it wasn't loud enough. The shot was sure to bring Mickey and Ralphy over to investigate.
I flattened myself on the pavement and slid under Luca's Escalade. The darkness under the SUV was total, and my shadow disappeared once I was underneath. I held the Glock in my right hand and the Mercedes keys in my left.
I watched from my stomach as two sets of feet walked towards the Escalade. No feet emerged from the vehicle on the street. The music didn't slow down or quiet — it just pumped out a loud, constant drone. It probably made the gunshot non-existent inside the vehicle.
I opened the trunk with the fob when the two sets of shoes got within feet of the Mercedes. I took deep breaths and visualized what I had to do while I waited for their discovery.
Ralphy saw it first. “Holy dhit, Mick! Deck it out, dere's a dody in the dunk. Dhit, man, dere's one over dere too. It's ducking Luca P., man.”
As soon as I heard the recognition, I hit the panic button. The feet beside the SUV jumped and moved around in circles as Mickey and Ralphy looked in every direction. I slid out on the other side of the Escalade and ran at the headlights in front of me. The Glock in my hand fired three times, in a quick burst, at the windshield. In half a second, I put a bullet in the centre of the driver's, middle, and passenger's side of what I finally saw as not a car, but a large blue van.
I thought for a second that I was shot while I was in motion towards the van, but each step dulled the pain into decreasing stabs of agony. There was no bullet hole — it was my back reminding me of the beating the three punks in the parking lot had laid on me. The reminder made pulling the trigger easy.
No one returned fire from the van as I crossed the headlights to the driver's side. The bright beams left my vision scarred by a constantly returning bright blotch every time I blinked. Underneath the blotch and over the sight of the Glock, I saw Gonzo slumped against the passenger-side door. I got into the van and had it in reverse by the time Mickey and Ralphy ran out from behind the Escalade. I tried to crouch down while I drove, but my ribs and back made it impossible. I had to lay sideways, my head in the lap of the bleeding Gonzo, as I drove away.
Bullets punched the side of the van as I blindly spun the wheel, shifted into drive, and slammed the accelerator to the floor. Once the metal-on-metal thuds stopped, I pulled myself up, keeping my eye on the sucking sound coming from Gonzo's chest and the gun he dropped to the floor below him.
“You had me fooled, Gonzo,” I said. “That fat bastard made me think he was out, and that you and your friends were the only help he could find. Nah, he used you because no one would ever see you coming. Especially not Army and Nicky.”
Gonzo let out a low laugh over the sucking sound from his chest wound. He laughed low and hysterically until he died. Two minutes later, I was outside Domenica's.