At 5 Golf Avenue the next day, they report to Ouimette that Sciarra has nine lives. Deuce figures it can’t be that simple, but he shuts up. He had misgivings to begin with, and the ill-fated cat-and-mouse game at The Helm has left him queasy. There’s something wrong with this whole thing, he figures. Sciarra should have been easy. Nobody gets so lucky as to have a cop just show up out of nowhere at precisely the right moment. Then minutes later, the target makes the car that’s following him? Only a sucker believes in coincidence. He wishes he had stayed in his faux jail cell in Greenfield.
The crew develops a second plan to take out Sciarra. Byrnes reports that after several days of following the hit man, it is clearly Sciarra’s habit to sit in the same spot at The Helm—on a stool at the end of the bar, which is near the hallway leading to the men’s room. Deuce is to be the spotter. He will go to The Helm carrying two 9 mm pistols and order a meal that includes wine chilling in an ice bucket. When Sciarra shows up, Deuce will go to the pay phone and call a room at the nearby Howard Johnson’s Motor Lodge, where Tillinghast, Flynn, and Danese will be waiting.
Danese will walk into The Helm and find a spot near Sciarra. Flynn will come in, the sawed-off shotgun under his jacket, go straight to the men’s room, and slip on a mask and gloves. As soon as Chucky walks by, Deuce will wipe down his silverware and drop the utensils into the ice bucket. Chucky will come out of the men’s room, walk up behind Sciarra, and blow his head off. Danese will kill anyone accompanying Sciarra. As the two men leave the restaurant, Deuce will cover them with his two handguns.
The plan might work if Sciarra shows up, but he is nowhere to be found.
The men try the same plan a couple of nights later. This time they find Sciarra, but the killer has company. He’s dining with his lawyer, one of the mob’s best. If he were to be collateral damage there would be hell to pay. The men turn tail. By now Deuce is convinced nothing is ever going to come of this game. Worse, it feels to him that, as complicated as it may be, the fix is in; nothing is meant to happen. It’s the only thing that makes any sense, but he can’t even be sure of that, so he remains uneasy.
John Ouimette tells Chucky and his crew that at 1:00 p.m. on the same day every week, Sciarra goes to Village Auto Body in Wakefield, Rhode Island, picks up a payoff, visits for a while, and then leaves. Byrnes will stake out the garage.
When Sciarra shows up, Byrnes will signal Danese, Flynn, and Deuce, who will be waiting with Tillinghast nearby. The four of them will put on masks and gloves, then two will enter the body shop from the front, two through the back, and all four men will round up the workers and any customers. They will demand money and in the course of the holdup find an excuse to shoot Sciarra.
But once again, Sciarra breaks the pattern. He didn’t get to be one of Il Padrino’s best by being careless. He fails to show up at the garage.
The gang is incensed. The men return to the hideout in East Providence, grousing over Sciarra’s good fortune and cursing their own bad luck. Deuce doesn’t know what to think now. He’s idly watching the evening news on television when the broadcast shows none other than Rudy Sciarra being arrested only hours earlier on a charge that he had helped plan a prisoner escape from the state prison months earlier.
The room groans in unison. Deuce shakes his head. He doesn’t believe in coincidence. Hidden agendas, unseen forces, yes; but coincidence, never. He tries to chalk it all up to bad luck in a state that surely must be one of God’s forsaken, but that doesn’t quite work either.