They were driving through River Row in Lincoln’s Samson Drifter at night, following a van packed with furs and three men—a driver and two others on the bench seat beside him—who they had to assume were armed, given the value of their cargo.
“Not so close! They’ll get suspicious!”
“Jesus, Giorgi, this isn’t my first job!” Ellis snapped. “I know how to tail a mark!”
He wasn’t happy about being here, in Lincoln’s car, on Vito Scaletta’s turf, about to rob a man who funneled a lot of money into his girlfriend’s organization. But he had no choice. And he fucking hated not having choices.
“I’ll follow just long enough to make sure they’re taking the same route your guys say they always take, then we’ll break off and get ahead of them so we can lie in wait at the ambush point.” The van mostly stuck to well-traveled roads, but River Row was an industrial area, and the warehouse it was headed for was on the other side of a section full of vacant buildings; going around would have been safer but would also make the trip that much longer, and the driver apparently thought what he made up for in time was worth any associated risk.
Giorgi’s scouts had identified a spot where they could cut off the van in between two of those vacant buildings, and a couple of guys already in position could push some dumpsters into place behind it to keep the driver from backing up. Then they could pick the truck’s crew off at their leisure and take the van to one of Sal’s warehouses. Fastoche.
It was a good plan, really; all the better for its simplicity. No one would get hurt, and the donor would never know what—or who—hit him.
But Ellis had pulled jobs with Giorgi and Danny before. He knew there would be some kind of hitch, no matter how good the plan. There was always a hitch.
“Okay, okay. I’ll back off and let you do your thing. No need to be so damned touchy about it. We’ll be done and back in time for Danny to get it on with Boobs McFarland.”
“Fuck you, man, her name is Wanda. And we’d better be. She doesn’t like it when I’m late, and it’s not like a girl like her doesn’t have other options.”
“Hell, Danny, she’s not the only one with options—you need to remember that. Besides, maybe you grab one of the furs out of the van to give her as a little present. She’ll forgive you for being late then. Probably do you right then and there and not care who’s watching.”
As Giorgi and Danny tried to imagine exactly what lewd form Wanda’s gratitude might take, Ellis peeled off down a side street and headed for the ambush spot. He was almost there when red lights flashed in front of him and a long, low whistle sounded.
“What the fuck?” Giorgi spluttered, taking notice of their surroundings for the first time in a while. “A fucking train? Why didn’t we know there was going to be one at this time? Didn’t you check the schedule once you saw our route was crossing railroad tracks?”
Ellis hadn’t, but he wasn’t about to admit that to Giorgi.
“These damn things are never on time; you should know that. Maybe it will be a short one.”
It wasn’t. Ellis counted 212 cars plus a caboose before the arm went up and they were able to cross the tracks.
“Well, hell. Now what?”
“Now we have to do this the hard way,” Giorgi replied. “We go to the warehouse.”
• • •
Ellis hadn’t memorized the route to the warehouse, since he was never supposed to have to drive that far, so Giorgi guided him there. This area was better lit than where they’d planned to hit the van, but the warehouses on either side appeared to be closed up tight; apparently they didn’t get shipments at night.
The van was sitting in the loading bay in front of an open roll-up door. One man stood sentry beside it; there was no sign of the others.
“That’s a huge building,” Danny said, “Is the whole thing full of furs? Maybe we’re thinking too small.”
Giorgi shrugged. “Fucker owns a whole chain of stores across the southeast, so maybe it is all his. You’ve probably seen his ads—calls himself the King of Furs, wears a half-assed crown. But if he just rents space here, then the rest of the place will be locked up, maybe have its own guards. That’s why I didn’t want to come here.” He glared at Ellis when he said it; Ellis took the glare and gave it right back. No way was Giorgi laying this one at his feet. He hadn’t wanted to do the job at all.
“Well, come on. Let’s get this over with.”
Giorgi led the way toward the open bay, keeping to the shadows along the side of the building. They approached from the side of the van opposite from where the guard was. It meant he couldn’t see them coming, but they also couldn’t see what he was doing; he could appear from either the front or the back of the van at any moment. And they still didn’t know where the other guy was. Or the driver, for that matter.
They reached the van without incident. Giorgi motioned for Danny to go around to the far side and take care of the man there while he and Ellis crept into the warehouse through the open roll-up door.
As Giorgi had predicted, the place was sectioned off with chain link fencing, behind which were a myriad of different goods: furniture, bicycles, elaborate lace-and-pearl wedding dresses in plastic. Some partitions held boxes stacked almost to the ceiling with no hint of what might be inside them. Ellis thought there must be millions of dollars worth of merchandise in here. Maybe Danny was right; maybe they were thinking too small.
Then they heard footsteps, and he and Giorgi had to hurry and duck around a corner of the dress-filled partition as the other man came strolling into view.
“Yo, Jimmy! I did something to my back—it’s killing me. Why don’t you take this next load?” There was a pause. “Jimmy?”
Ellis and Giorgi looked at each other. Ellis nodded, and they moved out from behind their white frilly cover. As they crept up on the man, he drew his gun, his attention focused on the open bay door and the nonresponsive Jimmy.
Giorgi had his own gun out, pointed straight at the guy’s aching back, but Ellis drew his own gun, reversed it, and, moving in before Giorgi could take the shot, he slammed the butt of the weapon down against the base of the man’s skull. The man dropped to the concrete with a grunt and a clatter, his own gun falling from his hand. Ellis knelt and picked it up, stuffing it into the waistband of his pants as he stood. When he straightened, Giorgi was glaring at him again.
“What? We don’t know who else is in here. You fire that thing, you could bring a whole mess of shit down on our heads. You can shoot him later, once we know the building’s clear, if you really want to. It’s not like he saw our faces or anything.”
Giorgi glared for a moment longer, then shrugged, either unable or unwilling to refute Ellis’s argument. Danny appeared from around the van, having used Ellis’s tactic on the other guard.
“Let’s get these guys tied up before they come to,” Giorgi said to Danny.
“What’s he going to do?” Danny protested, pointing at Ellis.
“I’m going to make sure there aren’t any other guards in the building,” Ellis answered. “So your skinny white ass doesn’t wind up in prison. Then I’ll bring back the other furs Jimmy’s buddy here already unloaded, so we can get the hell out of here.”
Ellis gave a mock salute with the barrel of his gun and headed down the aisle the second guard had come from. He didn’t really expect there to be any other guards; he just hadn’t wanted Giorgi to kill the man for no reason. Vanessa was really starting to rub off on him. There were ways to get what you wanted that didn’t include violence or even the threat of it. There were ways to live that didn’t include crime, he was learning. Maybe not for him—he was who he was, after all, and that would never change. But Vanessa was having an effect on him that he hadn’t anticipated, making him look at the world in a different way.
He rounded a corner to find one of the chain link sections open and the furs hanging inside, along with hundreds more. For a moment, he considered taking more than what had been in the shipment—it would give him seed money to start a new life with Vanessa—but he quickly discarded the idea. If she knew where the money had come from, she wouldn’t want to have anything to do with him. Instead, he loaded the new furs in their clean plastic onto the empty cart sitting next to the rack and left the furs in the dusty plastic hang where they were. He was just placing the last of the furs on the cart when a voice called out from behind him.
“Who the hell are you? Where’s Chuck?”
Ellis spun, gun raised, to see a heavyset white man in a dark suit standing in the doorway to the partition. His complexion paled when he caught sight of Ellis’s weapon.
“I’m the guy who’s robbing you. You’re the guy who’s going to come over here, kneel down, shut up, and stay out of my way, if he knows what’s good for him.”
The man moved into the partition where Ellis motioned and knelt on the concrete floor.
“Take your tie off.”
“Are you going to kill me?”
“Pretty sure I told you to shut up.”
The man closed his mouth and took off his tie. Ellis moved over to him and grabbed the tie, intending to truss him up like a Christmas turkey.
“I know you,” the man said suddenly, his eyes narrowing. Ellis felt his heart jump into his throat. “You were with that Marcano boy. I see him all the time at the yacht club, holding court with his slimeball of a father. Never thought I’d see him doing something decent at a civil rights rally. Now I know why he was there.”
“Listen, you need to forget you ever saw him, or me, or anyone associated with the Marcanos at that rally,” Ellis warned. “Say you never got a good look at the robbers, collect your insurance money, and be done with it.”
“Yeah? Why should I do that?”
Just then, a shot rang out in the distance, followed by two others. Then there was an ominous silence.
“Because that’s what the Marcanos do to people who recognize them when they don’t want to be recognized. That was Jimmy, and Chuck, and the driver of the van, and if you don’t want it to be you, too, you’d best do as I say.”
Ellis knew he should just shoot the guy, but he couldn’t. Visions of Vanessa kept swimming in front of his eyes, an accusing and disappointed look on her face. What would she think of him if he did something like that? Killed a man in cold blood when he didn’t have to? When he could scare him into not talking?
He heard footsteps approaching.
“Look, I’m really sorry about this,” he said, then took the butt of his gun and slammed it into the man’s temple. The donor slid soundlessly to the floor. Ellis quickly tied him up, then searched him for keys.
Giorgi and Danny rounded the corner. Giorgi’s gun was still in his hand, and Ellis figured he was the one who’d done the shooting.
“Who’s that?” Giorgi asked.
“The owner,” Ellis said, grabbing the cart and pulling it out of the partition. He pulled the door shut behind him.
“Wait, what about all those?” Danny demanded.
“No time. Owner said something about a second shipment. We need to get out of here before it arrives.”
He padlocked the door, then went through the keys until he found the right one and locked the donor in with his furs. Then he turned and threw the key ring as far into the warehouse as he could.
“All right, let’s blow this joint.”
They hurried through the warehouse and loaded up the van with the rest of the furs, Ellis trying hard not to look at the three dead bodies lined up just inside the roll-up door as they did. Then Danny climbed behind the wheel of the van and took off, and Giorgi and Ellis closed the loading bay door, headed for Lincoln’s car, and did the same.
“You done good tonight, Ellis.” Giorgi said, holding out his hand. “I don’t know how I could’ve done it without you.”
“You couldn’t, Giorgi.”
“We’re even, man. More than.”
Ellis took his hand and shook it.
No, Giorgi, he thought. We’re not even. Not even close. You’re my friend, and you’ll run the Marcano family someday, but you’ll always be a trigger-happy punk. I’m going to be someone who deserves to be with Vanessa.