What you gotta do, you gotta do.
Basically that pretty much sums up the wiseguy philosophy of life. The fact is that sometimes you just can’t fugetaboutit. Not if you’re a stand-up guy. And everybody knew that Bobby Blue Eyes was a stand-up guy.
As he drove with Little Eddie toward Brighton Beach, he didn’t waste time considering the consequences of his actions. He didn’t bother trying to balance his right to revenge with the precepts of tradition. Bobby knew well that even if he survived the next few hours, the actions he was about to take might get him whacked. He was going up against the interests of some powerful people. None of that mattered to him; if he didn’t do it, he couldn’t live with himself. What was at stake was his honor.
They didn’t talk much in the car. Little Eddie hadn’t hesitated when Bobby told him he needed his help. He’d asked a few questions, but “why” was not one of them. If Bobby asked, Bobby got. He had earned that respect from Eddie. And that didn’t change even when Bobby told him, “Bring Myrtle.” Myrtle being Eddie’s favorite semiautomatic weapon. They used to joke that he took it out only on holidays—like St. Valentine’s Day.
Bobby hadn’t had time to work out any kind of plan. Pretty much, he was going in there naked. Whatever happened, happened. It had been only a few hours since the two FBI agents showed up at the front door of the social club. He’d been sitting at the card table, lost in his private sadness, when Georgie One-Time told him the feds were outside and wanted to talk to him. He described them as “a fucking clown” and “a bitch with some smart mouth.” Normally Bobby would not have spoken to law enforcement without an attorney on his hip, but there was nothing normal about the last few days. Bobby had a lot of different things going on, and this visit could have been about any one of them. He was curious enough to walk to the door and find out what they wanted.
The guy agent was a real schlump. From his messy hair to his scuffed shoes there was not one thing about his appearance that looked like he’d put any thought into it; it was sort of like he was dressed out of focus. After introducing himself and his girl partner, this agent said, “There’s a couple of questions we’d like to ask you, Bobby . . .”
While the guy made his pitch, Bobby took a look at the female agent. Maybe on other days he would have been more attentive to her—she was definitely attractive enough—but today wasn’t that day. Today there was little room in his heart for that.
They asked him politely to take a walk with them. Initially he turned them down, telling them just as politely, “This really’s not such a great time.” But then the girl agent had taken hold of his hand and squeezed it gently. He couldn’t tell if that was meant as sympathy or seduction, but either way it got his attention. If an FBI agent was desperate enough to flirt with him, it had to be really important.
Before they had taken three steps, he asked the proper legal questions. If he had gotten the wrong answers, he wouldn’t have taken a fourth step. In response they told him they weren’t wired and agreed that everything he said would be off the record, meaning they wouldn’t use it against him. While that didn’t provide any solid legal protection, if they were taping him, a jury would hear them lying, pretty much destroying their credibility.
O’Brien, the male agent, asked the first question. “You ever hear of a Professor Peter Gradinsky?”
The professor? Of course, Bobby thought, that’s why the one name sounded sort of familiar. These were the agents that that long-faced secretary, something Simon, had told him about. Yeah, right, the nice-looking girl and the grumpy-looking guy. A young Walter Matthau, that’s how she’d described him. These people were also out there looking for Gradinsky. Had he ever heard of him? Cute, very cute. They already knew the answer to that question. But he made the decision that he wasn’t going to help them. “Gradinsky, huh?” He repeated the name as if he’d never heard it before. “Gradinsky? No, it doesn’t sound familiar. What kind of professor is he?”
They played the game, telling him what he already knew. Then they asked him if he knew Anthony Cosentino. Anthony? They sounded like a talking newspaper story. Mr. Anthony Cosentino. He couldn’t help but smile. “You know how it is, maybe I met him once or twice to shake hands. Seems like a nice enough guy. We got some friends in common, that’s all.” This was total bullshit and he knew it and they knew it. So he asked them, “What game we playing here?”
O’Brien made a joke out of it, responding, “Clue, it looks like to me. You know, Uncle Tony’s in the basement with a hammer.”
A regular fucking comedian, Bobby thought. Don fucking Rickles. Then the agent asked if he knew Skinny Al. Alphonse D’Angelo. Bobby decided to throw him a bone. “Sure, who didn’t know him?” he lied. “Everybody knew that fat slob. Even the mayor, Koch, he knew him from when he was a councilman, I’ll bet.” That’ll get them running to the grand jury. Mayor Koch friendly with a wiseguy? Whoa, stop the presses. Bobby chuckled to himself. This whole thing was actually sort of amusing. On a day like today he needed it.
The girl agent was talking now. He looked her over again. Okay, he noticed, that Simon was right, she was nice-looking. She had some style too. She was wearing just the right amount of makeup; when you looked at her, you didn’t notice right away that she was wearing makeup. Perfect.
And then her words ripped through him. “What do you know about the murder of Pamela Fox?”
Jesus fucking Christ. Keep walking, he ordered himself, just keep moving. Don’t stop. Don’t let them know nothing. Prick bastards. How the fuck did they find out about it so quickly? Keep walking, don’t look at them. That Gradinsky bullshit, it wasn’t about that at all.
And then, suddenly, he decided to confront them. They didn’t have the right to come to him about this. This wasn’t their fucking business. He stopped and whirled to face them. “Fuck you,” he spit at them. “Who the fuck do you think you are, talking to me like that?” His anger was growing. He balled his hands into fists, digging his fingernails into his palms, his old way of making sure he didn’t hit the wrong person. Maintaining control. A couple of people walking past stopped, then got out of there as fast as they could. Bobby pointed a warning finger at O’Brien, then practically screamed, “I don’t care who the fuck you are. Come near me again, I swear to God you’re gonna be real unhappy. Now, you got any more questions, you call my fucking lawyer.”
Then he walked right between them, right between the two of them, like a defensive lineman going through the line after the quarterback, practically shoving both of them off to the side. Who the fuck did they think they were?
What the fuck was he doing talking to them in the first place? That was the mistake. That was what happens when you try to be a nice guy. They fuck you over. The fucking agent was yelling something at his back. A Russian name, Vasily someshit. At that moment Bobby didn’t give a flying fuck about anything the FBI had to say to him. Only when he heard the agent call the guy “a real lady killer” did he get the message.
That was a lot more information than necessary to ask that question. Bobby stopped and spun halfway around. “What’d you say?” They couldn’t intentionally be telling him what they were telling him. Not the Fucking Bunch of Idiots.
The guy was blabbing. “I asked if you knew this Russian guy, Vasily Kuznetzov. Maybe I can refresh your memory. He runs this bootleg fuel business out of a gas station on Brighton Beach Boulevard—1405, I think it is.” They walked toward him. The guy had a real shit-eating grin on his face. He was talking to his partner but looking directly at Bobby. “That’s it, right, partner—1405 Brighton Beach Boulevard?”
That was the right address, she said. Bobby just stood there, stunned into silence. They were actually giving up Pam’s killer to him. He didn’t have the slightest doubt about that. Holy fucking shit, this was an amazing thing. The FBI giving up a killer to the family. Somebody dig up Ripley, ’cause no one was gonna believe this one. 1405 Brighton Beach Boulevard. A gas station. Easy to remember. “There’s a room hidden in the back. You have to go through the men’s room to get there? Doesn’t ring any bells, huh?”
They were giving him the road map. Telling him everything. Who would have figured? The FBI asking for help from him. Basically asking him to do the heavyweight work. He couldn’t help smiling at that thought. The world gets pretty strange sometimes.
The guy continued talking, pretending he was talking to the girl but looking right at Bobby. “And doesn’t he have this psycho partner works there too, Russo? Ivan something?”
The meaning of that was pretty obvious. They were warning him to watch out for the little fucker. The broad-shouldered guy. Even at the funeral the guy looked like a walking problem.
There was no question about what these feds were doing; the real question was, why were they doing it? The female agent, Russo, was still talking about the crazy guy, Chernanko. Shit, they were all crazy, those Russians; that one was just a little crazier than the rest of them. “. . . always fighting with Skinny Al at the meetings between Tony Cosentino and the Russians,” she was saying. “The one who swore he was going to kill him someday?”
Kill him? Holy Mother. Bobby relaxed his fists. For just an instant his mind flashed back on the funeral. It was like he was standing right there again, a few feet away, watching the two Russians kissing Tony Cosentino. And the Hammer, the motherfucking Hammer, was laughing along with them. So they were the producers, he thought. They had made the funeral possible—by killing the featured guest. These thoughts were racing through his head at lightning-bolt speed. And then he settled on the one that mattered: Did Cosentino know?
Jesus.
He looked at the girl and saw the cold determination in her eyes. She knew exactly what she was doing. She was pushing him to kill the Russians. Both of them, her and her partner, they were putting the gun in his hand. Why? What was in it for them? If they had all this information, they probably had enough to make their bones in the bureau. This was stuff for the front page of the Daily News. The bureau loved this stuff as much as the reporters, they loved the publicity. And this situation? Pretty much your average Joe Citizen liked the Mafia, but there was nobody who liked the Russian mob. Not even the Russians. They were the enemy, the commies. So why didn’t the bureau take them down themselves? Pam maybe? Getting even for Pam? Was it possible the FBI had a heart? That they wanted to do the right thing? That thought made him smile. Not in this lifetime. But nothing else made sense.
The guy came a few steps closer and said, “I think that’s what Professor Gradinsky said when we spoke to him last night. Remember? Was that before or after he told us that they were meeting there tonight?”
The professor? They had the professor? If they expected that to have an impact on him, they were going to be real disappointed. At that moment the professor was maybe the last person in the world that he cared about. He was going to find Gradinsky for Cosentino? That story was very old news.
The fact that the big meeting was being held that night wasn’t much of a surprise either. It was pretty obvious that was the reason Cosentino was pushing so hard to find him. He needed him before this meeting. It was almost funny. None of that mattered anymore, none of it. Finding the professor, the million-dollar deals, none of it. By the time he got done tonight, it would all be a sad memory.
He had all the information he needed. Whatever their reasons, the FBI had given him the name of Pam’s killer and told him where to find him. Game over. Dealing with these agents was complicated. He owed them big-time. Maybe he should be thankful: Without their assistance he wouldn’t be walking into a potential bloodbath. He wouldn’t be putting his own life up for grabs. Fine, he thought, I’ll buy them a table at the annual Mafia Dinner Dance.
It had been a long time since he’d slept. Seemed like a couple of years, at least. He took off his hat and brushed back his hair. He closed his eyes and for a split second he almost fell asleep on his feet. His head dropped forward but he quickly jerked it back. Then he put his hat back on, adjusted it to a jaunty angle, and walked away.
Fuck ’em, he thought.
A fender bender on the Belt Parkway had cost them a few minutes, but Bobby wasn’t in a big hurry. There was no possible way the meeting with Cosentino was going to start before ten o’clock and probably it was going to be much later than that. Dinner first, always. He used the time on the road to explain the situation to Little Eddie. When he started telling him about Pam, he couldn’t help it, his eyes teared up. As he had anticipated, Eddie didn’t say too much in response, mostly a few “bastards” and “motherfuckers.”
Eddie ignored Bobby’s tears. They never happened. Talking about personal problems always made him uncomfortable. He much preferred situations that could be handled with a baseball bat, or in the extreme, with Myrtle and her friends. He was curious, though, wondering what they had done to Bobby’s girl. He figured Bobby probably wanted to know too, almost as much as he didn’t want to know.
Bobby drove past the gas station three times to check it out. The first time he went by the place Eddie said in surprise, “Gees, look at that, willya?”
Bobby glanced at the gas station but saw nothing unusual. “What? What?”
“High-test’s only a dollar five. That’s pretty fucking cheap.”
Bobby ignored him. After the third drive-by he turned the corner and parked as far as possible from the streetlights. They were too far from the station to be noticed but close enough to watch the place. They sat there and they watched. It was impossible to see what was going on inside, but out in front a steady stream of customers took advantage of the low price. Bobby counted two attendants. A little after eight o’clock the outside lights were turned off. A couple of minutes later most of the lights in the office also went out. And a few minutes after that one of the attendants, an old-looking guy, came out of the office, got in a beat-up Chevy, and drove away. “He didn’t lock it,” Eddie noted.
“The other guy’s still inside,” Bobby pointed out. While they waited, Bobby checked out the entire area, watching for guards, cops, cameras, surveillance, or security of any kind. If it was there, he couldn’t find it.
“How long?” Eddie asked. He affectionately patted his stomach. “You know, I gotta feed this thing every few hours.”
Bobby couldn’t help laughing. Little Eddie definitely had his priorities in order: friendship, food, then killing. In that order. Friendship first, always. Bobby didn’t like to eat when he was in this kind of waiting situation. If he ate, he wanted something to drink. If he had something to drink, he was going to have to take a piss. If he had to take a piss, he either went into a soda bottle or had to get out of the car. If he took a piss in a bottle, he had to carry it away with him or leave it at the scene for the cops. Since he didn’t like pissing in a bottle and he didn’t want to get out of the car and give up his stakeout, he didn’t eat.
Eddie was different. Eddie had cast-iron kidneys. He could drink a six-pack and pee next week. He was amazing. So Bobby was about to suggest that Eddie walk over to a deli they’d passed about a block away when the charcoal Firebird stopped at a traffic light almost directly in front of them. “Look at that,” he said urgently, “look, look.”
It was impossible to see who was in the car. The light changed and the Firebird went about thirty yards, then made a right turn into the gas station. It disappeared around the back. Bobby and Eddie watched and waited, but whoever was inside never reappeared. Bobby assumed whoever it was went through the bathroom into the secret hidden special room.
They waited in the car until Eddie’s stomach growled. “Hey, don’t blame me,” he said, holding up his hands. “It speaks for itself.”
“All right,” Bobby said. He reached across the front seat and opened the glove compartment. Eddie had to push back in the passenger seat to give him stomach clearance. Bobby shoveled everything out of the box and onto the floor, then pulled open the false back. He took hold of the gun that was hidden there, then checked it to make certain it was loaded. “Ready?”
Little Eddie nodded toward the gun. “You got a silencer for that?”
Most people don’t know it, but it’s considerably more difficult to get a silencer for a gun than to get the gun. A lot of people improvise. If you know what you’re doing, for example, it’s possible to make a functional silencer from a plastic soda bottle. Or a cushion or a pillow. Bobby shook his head. “I didn’t have enough time.” He thought about it. “Maybe there’s something in the trunk.”
Once again he reached across the seat, this time pressing a button and popping open the trunk. As Eddie checked Myrtle, Bobby dug into the trunk. He was smiling when he got back in the car.
“What the fuck is that?” Eddie asked.
“What’s it look like?” Bobby said. “It’s the last one of those Cabbage Patch Kids I had, ’member?” He read the name on the “birth certificate.” “This is Penny Nichols.” He held up the doll. “Penny, say hello to your Uncle Eddie.”
“Great,” Eddie said, “fucking Looney Tunes. Now, what are you gonna do with that thing? Ask them to babysit?”
“Watch.” Bobby carried a penknife on his key chain. He stuck the knife into the doll between its legs and cut it open. Then he reached in and pulled out some of the rag stuffing. Almost immediately the strong scent of turpentine filled the car.
“Open the fucking window,” Eddie ordered. “That stuff stinks.”
Bobby opened his window. “These is counterfeit, I guess.” He tossed the rags out the window. Then he took his gun and twisted its barrel into the hole he’d dug. He waved the gun through the air and the Cabbage Patch Kid appeared to dance on it. “This’ll work,” he said, pleased.
Little Eddie started getting out of the car. “Yeah, the smell alone’ll kill them.”
Bobby took the ignition key off his key chain and put it on the floor, under the mat. If they had to get out of there quickly, he didn’t want to waste time fumbling with his keys trying to find it. For the same reason, he didn’t lock the car.
The gas station was in the middle of the block. The stores on either side of it were closed. Bobby and Eddie stayed on the far side of the street and walked down the entire block. Bobby’s gun was in his coat pocket, the doll stuck headfirst into the other pocket, its legs sticking up in the air. Myrtle was concealed under Eddie’s unzipped jacket. There was some traffic on that portion of Brighton Beach Boulevard, but few pedestrians. They passed a woman walking two dogs and a young couple holding hands and giggling. They looked across the street at the gas station. They didn’t see anybody moving around at all.
At the far end of the block they crossed the street and turned right, walking back toward the gas station. The men’s room was on its left, the side closest to them as they approached.
“Let’s do it,” Bobby said, and they walked purposefully, side by side, toward the station. They ducked behind the pumps, where they could not be seen from the office. Once they were safely in the shadows, Bobby took out his gun and Penny Nichols, then twisted the barrel of the gun between the doll’s legs. Eddie took out Myrtle, checking to make sure the safety was off. And then the two men went to work.
Bobby led the way toward the office. At times like this you never know what to expect, so you expect everything. All of your senses are primed; you hear every sound, see the slightest movement; some people claim you can even smell your adrenaline pumping. The important thing is not to hesitate. To move with confidence. To keep going forward.
The office was empty. The room was dimly lit by a low-wattage bulb in a gooseneck lamp on the desk. They didn’t bother trying the door, assuming there was some kind of bell or buzzer system. They moved past the garage doors. Somewhat surprisingly, all of the single-pane rectangular windows were covered with sheets of white paper. Somebody obviously did not want people to know what was going on inside the garage. Scribbled in black marker on one of these white sheets was the notice “Lifts Broken. No Repairs.”
But as they moved past the last window, Bobby saw that the paper covering it had flopped back. It was being held in place by a piece of tape on the bottom corner, allowing him to see inside. The lights were on. It was a typically drab auto mechanics work area. There were two old-fashioned hydraulic lifts, the type with two parallel long metal skids to support a car. The two ramps of the lift on the left were lying flat on the cement floor, but the lift on the right was holding a car about four feet in the air. Chest-high. It did not appear to be broken, just shut down for the night with the car left raised in position. Although Bobby’s field of vision was limited, he scanned as much of the garage as possible. And that’s when it caught his attention.
There was a wooden workbench against the back wall. Scattered on the bench top were well-used tools, grease-covered auto parts, filthy rags, and a telephone. Stored on the lower shelf were more tools, more parts, and more filthy rags. And one other thing. Bundled into a ball, just another rag, and shoved into a corner was something bright powder blue. Whatever it was, its color stood out against the drab work materials like carousel horses in the desert. The color was unmistakable: It was the corporate blue used by Pan Am, as recognizable as Coca-Cola’s red or Camel’s camel. In fact, it was the precise color of a stewardess’s uniform.
Bobby put a restraining hand on Eddie’s stomach and whispered, “I gotta check something.” He backtracked to the office door. Very slowly he pushed it open a few inches, waiting to hear an alarm. Nothing. He pushed it open a few more inches, then slipped inside. Holding the door still, he reached up and grasped the cluster of bells hanging on the back of the door. The alarm system. Holding them tightly in his hand, he opened the door and let Eddie inside. A large, noisy space heater warmed the office, indicating the attendant would be returning. Bobby pointed to the door, silently telling Eddie to stand guard. Eddie nodded. He stepped into the protection of the shadows and stood there, Myrtle warm against his chest.
A doorway separated the office from the garage. If there had ever been a door there, all evidence of it was gone. Bobby stepped through it and took one step down into the cold garage. He went directly to the uncovered window and refastened the paper, figuring no one outside would notice. Little actions like that can sometimes save a life. That done, he turned and took a good long look at the place. No matter where he looked, though, that ball of blue under the workbench wouldn’t go away. In his mind it just grew larger and larger. He knew what it was, he just wasn’t ready to confront it.
He ran out of time. Carefully avoiding the black signal hose that rang when stepped on, he walked to the back, to the bench. And he reached down and grasped it. He knew instantly. It was a Pan Am flight attendant’s skirt, Pam’s skirt. It had a couple of grease spots on it and was ripped in several places, but it was her skirt. He held it close to his chest. She had been here. Here, in this garage. They had probably grabbed her just as she was getting ready to take that flight to Paris. She was dressed for work. Fifteen minutes more, twenty maybe, she would have been out of there. Safe. Alive. He held on to her skirt, but he didn’t want to think about her. What they did to her. What made her scream like that. He looked at the variety of pulling and hammering tools, he looked at the torch, at the hooks and the cutting tools. At all of them. And wondered. And then he neatly folded her skirt and placed it on the bench.
Seconds later he knew the answer. As he turned around, he was facing the front of a car four feet in the air, resting on the metal skids. He took one deep cleansing breath, then headed back to the office. It was time to get even. He took four or five steps and stopped. Just stopped. It was the color, again, that got his attention. Caught in the hinged joint of one of the skids was a small ragged piece of Pan Am blue fabric. A piece that had been torn from her skirt. And he knew then what they had done to her. The cop had said it. “They crushed her,” he’d said, “limb by limb. Her feet, her hands, arms, and legs.” In his mind he heard that cop again and again. They crushed her. They crushed her.
Control, he thought. Control. A mammoth sorrow threatened to overwhelm him, smother him, but he wouldn’t let that happen. This was a time to focus. He took two steps backward, but his shoes stuck briefly to the cement floor. Fucking grease, he figured. When he looked down, though, he knew how terribly wrong he was. He was standing in a coagulating puddle of a deep red substance.
If he was going to lose control, this would be the moment. Instead, he closed his eyes, feeling his despair being transformed into pure white rage. And rather than compelling him to strike out mindlessly, this rage empowered him. It took away his fears. It bestowed on him the invincibility of a man beyond caring.
Whatever happened, happened.
“Now,” he said to Eddie. Taking hold of the bells once again, Bobby opened the door and they slipped outside. They moved in the shadows. At the corner of the building he paused, an infantryman on patrol. He looked around the side of the building. Clear. Both men stayed close to the wall as they approached the bathroom door.
They stood directly in front of the door. Bobby pushed the barrel of his gun deeper into the doll. He checked again to make sure his safety was off. Then he turned to Eddie, who whispered, “Fuck ’em.”
Holding the gun in his right hand, he turned the doorknob with his left hand. As the door opened, he put his left hand on the doll’s head to hold it in place. A large man was sitting on the toilet seat, fully clothed, an automatic weapon resting on his lap. When the man looked up in surprise, Bobby saw the gold crowns on his front teeth. The only thought Bobby had time for was how much this man reminded him of James Bond’s Oddjob.
The attendant scrambled for his gun. Bobby coolly raised his right arm, aimed his Cabbage Patch Kid, and fired. One shot. Pstew. The doll ate most of the noise. Bits of cloth flew all over the bathroom. The bullet smashed through the attendant’s gold teeth and exited the back of his head. He still appeared to be looking at Bobby, but he was already dead. His body slumped to the right, his fall stopped by the wall. He remained seated on the toilet, his dead eyes still open. The filthy tiled wall behind him was covered with blood spatter and tiny bits of brain matter.
Bobby watched the stain spreading with curiosity. Some people were superstitious about the blood patterns they created and examined them closely. Supposedly one wiseguy saw the Virgin Mary in a blood spatter pattern and never fired another shot. To Bobby this one looked mostly like a work from Picasso’s abstract period.
Eddie pushed inside the bathroom behind Bobby and shut the door. Bobby took a quick look around. The place was pretty awful, so disgusting that even a dead body on the toilet didn’t make it much worse. It looked like it hadn’t been cleaned since the Flood. He glanced at the ceiling and the corners, searching for a security camera. If this bathroom was being watched, the camera was well hidden. His eyes professionally swept the room. Tiles were missing from the floor and the walls, there was a layer of caked dirt on the floor, both the toilet and sink were cracked. The sink was dry and stained brown. A filthy cotton towel hung limply from a broken dispenser. There was, however, a full roll of toilet paper sitting on the cracked toilet lid. Fortunately the familiar smell of gunpowder dampened the stench of urine.
“What’re you, sightseeing?” Eddie whispered urgently. “Where’s the fucking door?”
At first Bobby didn’t see it. Then he looked at the drab, dirty raincoat hanging on the wall directly opposite the toilet. “There,” he said. He pushed the raincoat aside, and beneath it, as he figured, was the doorknob. He took a few seconds to shove the remnants of Penny Nichols back down on the barrel of his gun, then put his left hand on the faded silver doorknob. “Ready?” he whispered.
“Just fucking go,” Little Eddie told him impatiently, waving Myrtle toward the meeting room.
Bobby guessed it wasn’t locked. There really wasn’t any reason to lock it. The room was hidden and protected by a hulking armed guard; putting a lock on it wasn’t going to make much difference.
He turned the doorknob without pushing open the door. It turned easily. “I’m going right and down,” Bobby whispered.
Eddie was getting irritated. “Yeah yeah, just go, huh?”
Bobby pushed open the door to another world. Hidden in the rear of the dilapidated gas station was a high-tech conference room that more properly belonged in a Park Avenue law firm. High-back leather chairs were set around a highly polished oval mahogany conference table. A second row of chairs was arranged several feet behind this table. The walls were paneled in dark wood. There were no windows, but the room was brightly lit by mostly recessed lighting that gave it a warm reddish tint. For an instant Bobby was stunned by the contradiction in rooms, but recovered almost immediately and got out of the doorway, ducking down and to his right. Moving at full speed, Eddie followed him through the open door.
There were three men in the room. Two of them were sitting at the table, obviously waiting for the meeting to begin, their shoes resting comfortably on the mahogany. They reacted almost immediately. One of them screamed a single word in Russian. And then Bobby and Eddie began firing. Bobby’s first shot hit the man closest to him, a fat, balding man sitting less than six feet away, in his left shoulder. The doll burst open, hurtling off the gun. The force of the bullet ripping through the Russian’s body at close range caused his chair to begin spinning counterclockwise. Bobby fired again, through the back of the chair. The chair just about completed a full revolution and slowed to a stop. It was the Wheel of Misfortune. The Russian was dead before it stopped moving.
Simultaneously Eddie sprayed the room, laying a track of bullet holes the length of the table and straight up the far wall. The second man at the table, the stocky Russian with a blond flattop, dived off his chair and onto the floor. The third Russian, tall and thin, was standing on the far side of the table next to an open minirefrigerator. He reacted first. Whether he recognized Bobby or saw the guns, he was the one who shouted the one word of warning, then dived for the light switch on the wall. The recessed lighting went off, leaving lit only two floor lamps—one on either side of the room.
Seconds later the Russian on the floor began firing back. It was defensive fire, shots fired rapidly and wildly, firing to force the aggressor to take cover. As the Russian was firing up from beneath the table, most of the shots hit the top of the wall or the ceiling.
Eddie calmly moved out of the light. He figured it would be ridiculous for a man as big as he was to try to take cover, so he didn’t bother. Instead, he laid down a rain of fire.
Wiseguys aren’t Superman. Although just about every soldier is knowledgeable and comfortable with a wide variety of guns, they’re not John Wayne. So most hits are pretty basic. Boom in the back of the head. That kind of thing. Nobody can practice for a gunfight.
Actual gunfights are extremely rare and almost never last longer than a few seconds—but for the shooters it will be the longest few seconds of their lives. Bobby had a big advantage: He was already ducking down to get out of Eddie’s range of fire, so when the lights went off, he just kept going. He hit the ground, lay down flat, and kept firing. That meant his direct line of fire was below the table.
Nobody had time to aim. So what happened was pretty much luck. The stocky Russian was trying to scramble to his feet, still firing wildly, when Bobby’s fourth or fifth shot hit him directly between his legs, taking off the head of his penis and one testicle. It was as if someone had burst a balloon full of blood; the blood just poured out of him. Frantically he tried to stop the bleeding by squeezing his penis. The excruciating pain forced him to try to rise up, but as he did, he smashed his head into the bottom of the table. He was unconscious when he hit the ground, falling face-first into a pool of his own blood. The coroner would not be able to determine if he died from the gunshot wound or choked to death in his own blood.
Little Eddie got the third one, the tall one, Vaseline. Once bullets start flying, it’s impossible to predict their path with any accuracy. For example, bullets will bounce off the ground, one of the reasons that hiding behind a car when someone is shooting at you may not provide adequate protection. One of Eddie’s shots bounced off the door of the minifridge, angled almost straight up, and smashed a bottle of vodka. The bottle exploded, and razorlike slivers of glass sprayed Vasily in the face. In that one instant he looked as if he’d just had the worst shave in history. His face was marked with dozens of small cuts. And when the vodka hit that raw skin, his face began burning terribly. He threw up his hand to try to wipe away the vodka and blood, and as he did, another bullet tore through his hand. It literally made a hole he could look right through.
“Quit! Quit!” he screamed. “Quit!” Seconds later he tossed his gun on the remnants of the table. Eddie had a hunch, yelling, “Throw the other one too.” And after a brief pause a second gun landed with a clunk on the table. “Stand the fuck up,” Eddie ordered. “Get in the light.”
The entire shoot-out had taken no more than fifteen seconds. In about the time it takes to sneeze three times two men were dead, a third was wounded.
The Russian was obviously in tremendous pain. He stood up, holding his wounded right hand with his left hand, stuffing a handkerchief into his palm to stanch the bleeding. Curiously his hand did not bleed excessively. But rivulets of blood flowed down his face, the blood dripping onto the carpet like drops of water from melting icicles. A cloud of gun smoke hung over the room and everybody’s ears were ringing. The floor was covered with shell casings. Neither Bobby nor Eddie bothered to pick them up. It didn’t matter that they could be linked to specific weapons, since by the end of the night those weapons would no longer exist.
The Russian was muttering something to himself. Whatever he was saying, to Bobby it just sounded like gibberish. It didn’t matter. In the same heavily accented English Bobby recognized from the phone call to the Freemont, Vasily asked for another handkerchief, for something to wipe his face.
Bobby picked up the remains of the Cabbage Patch Kid. The head was gone and what remained of the torso was practically ripped in half just above the midsection. It was still smoking. “Sure,” he said, pulling out a turpentine-soaked rag and tossing it across the conference table. Vasily picked it up and used it to wipe his face.
Bobby waited patiently. Only after Vasily began screaming did he smile.
“You want me to do it?” Little Eddie yelled. Eddie was shouting because he could barely hear a word. It sounded like the Hunchback of Notre Dame was practicing the bells in his ears.
Vasily’s screams dampened to a whimper. “Fuck you,” he shouted at Bobby. Bobby did have to admire him. There he was, standing there with blood dripping from his face and hand, two guys dead on the carpet, another guy dead on the toilet, and he hadn’t lost a whit of his arrogance. “That motherfucker Cosentino he cut off your fucking balls you kill me.”
Bobby appeared to be considering that. “Maybe,” he agreed.
“Fuck that, Bobby,” Eddie shouted dismissively. “Don’t listen to that asshole.”
“Get your hands behind your back,” he ordered the Russian.
Vasily looked at him smugly as he did exactly as ordered, believing that Bobby had taken his warning seriously.
Bobby yanked a telephone cord out of the wall, then pulled the other end out of the phone. He wrapped it around the Russian’s wrists. “Move,” he said, poking him forward with his gun. Vasily started talking, blabbing something about Cosentino, fuel oil, you and me, but Bobby wasn’t listening. Instead, he picked up one of the doll’s severed arms, grabbed a hank of the Russian’s hair, and pulled back his head. When Vasily opened his mouth, Bobby shoved the doll’s arm down his throat, shutting him up. As the Russian gagged, struggling to cough it out of his mouth, Bobby pushed him forward.
“What’re you gonna do with this piece of shit?”
“Watch.” They moved through the bathroom. The dead attendant had slumped off the toilet seat and appeared to be wedged between the bowl and the wall. The first flies had already appeared and were buzzing around the hole in his head. Bobby pushed Vasily out of the door. Vasily continued struggling to get the arm out of his mouth. Bobby held on to the Russian’s hair with his left hand and prodded him forward with the gun in his right hand. He stayed in the dark as much as possible and pretty much pushed and prodded him around to the front of the gas station. He probably realized what was about to happen to him when Bobby pushed him into the office.
With his hands still bound behind him, he whirled around, lowered his shoulder, and charged into Bobby, trying to force him backward into Eddie. Trying to do anything to change the equation. Bobby fell back a couple of feet into Eddie, but Eddie was a wall. Bobby just stopped. The Russian charged again, but this time, just before he slammed into Bobby, Bobby smashed him in the head with the butt of his gun. He really didn’t want to hurt him too badly; he wanted the Russian fully conscious.
The blow staggered the Russian. Bobby went right at him, kicking him hard in the balls, literally lifting him off the ground. He landed on his stomach; unable to cushion his fall with his hands, his face smashed into the concrete floor. His nose must have been splintered because blood immediately began gushing out of it. Bobby stepped over him and took hold of one of his feet, then dragged him into the garage, his face leaving a trail of blood on the floor.
At some point the doll’s arm was jarred loose. The Russian started screaming in a mix of Russian, English and agony, the English consisting mostly of “motherfucker” this and “motherfucker” that. The actual threats—Bobby assumed they were threats from the tone—were screamed in Russian. Bobby paid no attention to him.
Eddie had no idea what Bobby intended to do, but nothing would have surprised him or, in fact, horrified him. In his career he’d seen some pretty brutal things done to people. Once even he had cut up a body with a hacksaw, then dropped the various pieces in different sewers. Bobby’s reason for torturing this guy was a little light on the details, but that made no difference. He played on Bobby’s team and Bobby knew the rules. Besides, it was just some Russians, and whatever they were doing, it probably wasn’t right.
When Bobby dragged the guy into the garage, Eddie figured that whatever he had planned, it probably had something to do with the tools in there; he’d heard about some real crazy things people had done with tools. And why else drag the guy in there? It doesn’t matter where you shoot somebody. The Russian in the bathroom was just as dead as the two Russians in the conference room.
Vasily was squirming and kicking like a hooked fish. He eventually managed to turn over onto his back. That was just fine with Bobby; he wanted this fuck to see every single thing that was happening to him.
Bobby dragged him across the floor until he was directly under one of the skids. He knew exactly where he wanted him to be—lying in that sticky deep red puddle. As soon as he let him go, though, the Russian began cursing at him—and used his legs to wriggle out from under the hydraulic lift. In response Bobby took a long orange extension cord off the bench. While Eddie stepped on the Russian’s face to keep him still, Bobby methodically wrapped the cord around his legs tight as a mummy. When he finished, Eddie asked loudly—his ears were still ringing—“Where do you want him?”
Bobby looked at the hydraulic, and Eddie knew. Now, that’s creative, he thought. He liked the whole idea. Following Bobby’s instructions, he dragged the guy back, until he was right under the lift. “Here?” Eddie had a little problem moving around because his shoes were sticking to whatever that crap was on the floor. And when he stepped on the guy’s face, the sole of his shoe left a purple splotch on his skin.
“No, no, no. Just his feet,” Bobby directed, standing by the hydraulic control lever.
“Gees, Bobby,” Eddie said with admiration, “you got some fucking sense of humor.” Eddie turned the Russian about ninety degrees and pulled him back a few feet. He still wasn’t certain he had him positioned exactly right. “Go ahead and try it,” he suggested. “Let’s see.”
Bobby pressed down on the lever, and the lift began descending, bringing down with it a 3,577-pound Buick LeSabre. The Russian started shrieking in terror, struggling desperately to get loose. Once again Eddie put his foot firmly on the Russian’s neck and pushed down hard. The Russian stopped squirming. His eyes opened wide in absolute terror as the skid came down lower and lower and lower. The skid was about a yard above his feet when Bobby shut it down. The Russian closed his eyes in relief. “Now what’s the problem?” Eddie asked.
Bobby walked over to the bench and retrieved Pam’s Pan Am blue skirt. He stuffed as much of it as he could manage into the Russian’s mouth. “I can’t stand that screeching,” he said. Then he went back to the controls and once again pushed down on the lever. As it turned out, Eddie had positioned the Russian perfectly. The metal ramp carrying the Buick came down directly on both of his feet. He tried to splay them to the side with only limited success. The lift barely slowed as it crushed his feet. If the breaking bones made any sound, neither Bobby nor Eddie heard it. After squashing both feet the skid began pressing into his legs.
Bobby stopped the lift again. He wasn’t feeling good or bad; at most he felt a small sense of satisfaction. He was doing what had to be done, putting the world right. The bad guy was being punished. This was simply an act of revenge.
He raised the lift up a few feet, then ordered Eddie, “Move him down a little more.” The Russian was writhing in pain, his agonized cries muffled by the mouthful of cloth. Bobby tried hard not to think about Pam lying there, caught in this same torturous situation, but that proved impossible.
Eddie put a shoe on the Russian’s shoulder and shoved him down two or three feet. The Russian was in too much pain to resist. The second time Bobby lowered the steel skid it came down directly on Kuznetzov’s hips. Neither Bobby nor Eddie knew anything about physiology, so they didn’t know exactly what kind of damage was being done. They didn’t know if it would be fatal. They didn’t even know if the skid was pushing his hips apart or crushing them straight down. It didn’t make any difference. As Eddie watched, one thing he knew for sure was that this guy wasn’t going to be dancing any time soon.
What they did know was that the hydraulic lift exerted a tremendous amount of downward force per square inch, and as a result the Russian killer was literally being squashed into the cement. It was like lowering a cinder block on a grape.
Bobby let the skid continue to press down on the Russian’s hips until he stopped screaming. The lift had literally pressed the air out of his lungs.
And then he raised it again. By then the Russian was semiconscious. His lips were moving, but the only sound coming from him was a low guttural moan. Bobby had next intended to crush his chest, but that no longer seemed to have any real purpose. For a few seconds he even considered just leaving the Russian there to either live in excruciating pain or die slowly. But he pretty quickly dismissed that thought, knowing that if the Russian somehow lived, his only reason to keep breathing would be to kill Bobby. “All the way under,” he shouted at Eddie.
Eddie grimaced. This was a pretty tough thing that Bobby was going to do. Not that it bothered him. He figured, what the hell difference does it make how you go so long as you go? And obviously this was how they made Skinny Al skinny. Once again he put a sticky shoe on the Russian’s shoulder and jostled him a little bit farther under the hydraulic lift, until his head was directly beneath the left skid. And then Bobby pushed the lever down. All the way down.
Only the top half of the Russian’s head was actually under the skid, and it provided no more resistance than an egg. Like everybody in the business, Eddie knew the legendary story of the big-mouth wiseguy whose head was crushed in a vise until his eyes popped out and rolled across the floor, and he had wondered if that was really possible. As it turned out, this didn’t help him answer that question, because the Russian’s eyes were covered by the skid. Bobby could actually hear his skull cracking when the lift pressed down on it. It sort of crackled like a piece of wood breaking. The only sound the Russian made as the skid smashed down on his skull was a high-pitched whine. But that stopped abruptly, sort of in midwhine, like somebody had pulled out his plug.
Eddie was absolutely fascinated by the whole thing. As he watched, a mass of reddish pulpy material oozed out from beneath the skid, blending into the substance already there. To Eddie it looked like the highway crap he usually referred to as roadkill soup. While nothing ever repulsed Eddie, admittedly this did make his stomach a little queasy.
Bobby had to force himself to keep his eyes locked on the Russian’s face. It was like being in a horror movie. If he had felt even the slightest tinge of compassion for the Russian, he would not have been able to watch. As almost two tons of steel pressed down on the Russian’s head, his entire body seemed to arch upward. The skin on the lower part of his face was stretched when the skid pressed down on the upper half, causing his upper teeth and gums to be exposed. Then Bobby looked at the Russian’s tightly clenched hands. When they opened, exposing the bullet hole, he knew the Russian was dead. It was really important to him that he saw him die.
He turned off the lift. The bottom half of the face was still visible, his upper teeth bared like a skeleton’s. “Ugh,” Eddie chuckled defensively. “That’s some fucking headache. Man, I’m not gonna be able to eat nothing for an hour.”
Bobby spit at the dead Russian, who was lying on the cement in a spreading pool of blood and brain. “C’mon.”
“You just wanna leave him there like that?” Eddie asked curiously. He wasn’t used to leaving his work behind.
“You wanna scrape him up, go ahead. That fucking prick doesn’t deserve it, though . . .” Bobby stood there staring at the remains of the Russian gangster. There was no reason to hide the body or clean up the garage. Bobby wasn’t worried about the cops. Nobody was going to report this killing. The people who needed to know who did it would know. And if things got a little warm, if the law put some heat on him, there were these two FBI agents he knew who might just want to put in a good word for him.
The last thing Eddie wanted to do was scrape him up. “It’s our funeral, I guess,” he said, and laughed. He picked up Myrtle from the top of the bench, checked to make sure the safety was on, then shoved the barrel down into his waistband. His sports jacket covered the weapon. “Let’s go.”
Bobby was absolutely exhausted. This had been the longest few days of his life. Whatever was going to happen next, there wasn’t anything he could do about it. The train was going full speed down the mountain. As they walked out of the office, Bobby said firmly, “Thanks for that. I owe you.”
Eddie beamed. Tonight was one of those experiences that bonded men together forever. This wasn’t an ordinary hit; this one people were going to be talking about for a long time. And they had done it together. Eddie was a realist, he knew his own limitations. He was a camel, a proud soldier who carried the load for other people and made a nice living from it. And that was fine with him. He didn’t want or need the problems that came with being a boss. But Bobby . . . Bobby was smarter than most of the other guys. Bobby had a real shot at making it—and if he did, after tonight, Eddie was going with him. They made a great team. “It’s nothing,” he murmured.
They were still in the shadows, walking away from the pumps, when the first guy stepped out in front of them. “Stand still,” he ordered. He was pretty much hidden in darkness, but Bobby assumed he was holding a gun. “Keep your hands where they are,” said a second man, standing behind them.
Bobby instantly ran through the possibilities: No way they were cops, either NYPD or feds. They would have identified themselves immediately. That was the law; they had to admit who they were. So they weren’t law. And they didn’t speak with any accent, so they weren’t Russians. That meant they were wiseguys. Almost for sure Cosentino’s people.
“Oh fuck,” Eddie sighed softly. He just hadn’t expected forever to be so brief.
Bobby didn’t back off. “Who the fuck are you guys?” he demanded. He had nothing to gain by being cute. Their only hope was to come right at him. Whatever they were going to do, they were going to do, and at this particular moment there wasn’t jack shit he could do about it.
“Just wait,” the guy ordered.
Bobby thought he recognized the voice. He decided to take a shot, “That you . . . Jimmy?”
“Shut the fuck up,” Jimmy Smiles ordered.
Shutting the fuck up wasn’t going to save his life. “I want to talk to Mr. Cosentino.”
Tony Cosentino appeared almost magically, moving through the shadows. Bobby didn’t even try to guess how long he’d been there and how much he knew. One thing was obvious: He was pissed off. He came right up to Bobby and jabbed his finger in his chest. “I fucking warned you, didn’t I? Didn’t I tell you to stay away?”
“Yeah,” Bobby admitted, “you did.”
“I told you that you didn’t know what was going on, didn’t I? Didn’t I tell you that?”
Bobby nodded and took a deep apologetic breath.
“Now, you tell me, asshole, where the fuck is the Russian?”
Bobby hesitated. Within a few seconds Cosentino would know that the Russian was dead. There was nothing he could do to prevent that. In a conversational tone he said, “Well, see, Mr. Cosentino, I don’t think he’s going to be talking to you. The truth is he’s under a lot of pressure right now.”
Eddie’s mouth opened. He looked at Bobby with awe and admiration. Holy fucking shit, he thought, here this guy is looking death right in the eyes and he’s got the balls to James Bond him.
“That supposed to be funny?” Cosentino said. It was not a rhetorical question.
Another guy came walking back from the office. “Tony,” he said with a shudder in his voice, “you better come see this. They fucking squashed the guy’s head under that thing . . . you know, whattya call that thing that lifts cars up in the air? They dropped it on his head.” Then he made some kind of sound indicating his disgust.
“You fucker!” Cosentino snapped, getting right up in Bobby’s face. His anger was so intense, so complete, that his only outlet was a kind of disbelieving laughter. Not only had Bobby disobeyed him, a capital crime, he had betrayed him. He had destroyed the biggest deal anybody could ever imagine. Even if he could whack him two times, three times, even then he wouldn’t be close to even.
Bobby stood his ground, wondering for an instant if the Hammer might be a little jealous that he’d never tried this method. Actually he was pretty surprised to discover that he wasn’t the slightest bit afraid of Cosentino. He figured that maybe because he was resigned to his fate he didn’t have to worry about getting hurt. He already knew he was going to get hurt. That was a given. He was going to get hurt bad. And there wasn’t too much he could do to stop it. So his heart was barely pounding. “Mr. Cosentino . . . ,” he began.
“Shut the fuck up,” Cosentino screamed at him.
Bobby knew he had nothing to lose. “The guy whacked Skinny Al.”
“I fucking said . . . ,” Cosentino warned, then stopped. Just stopped cold. Until that moment Bobby had never completely believed that you could see hatred. But that’s what he was looking at, inches away. Pure white hatred. Cosentino finally took a step back, trying to figure out what to do. Jackie Fats was standing a few feet away. Jimmy Smiles was there. Three other guys were close enough to hear him. They all heard Bobby make that claim. And if he was telling the truth, he had every right to kill the Russian and anybody who tried to stop him. More than that, he had an obligation. It was a family matter.
Looking straight into Cosentino’s eyes at that moment, Bobby learned one other thing: Cosentino knew that. He knew the whole deal and he took it. Cosentino had averted his eyes, looked down, looked away in shame. He knew that the Russian asshole had killed D’Angelo, and he had done absolutely nothing about it. If that could be proved, Cosentino was a dead man. A boss who allowed a member of his crew to be whacked and did nothing to avenge that killing betrayed the tradition. A boss who would sell the life of one of his people lost his honor, and without that he was nothing. A piece of shit.
Cosentino had to put up a defense. “How the fuck you know that?” he challenged him.
“I got people,” Bobby told him. He couldn’t exactly tell him that the FBI had provided that information. Nobody standing there was going to believe anything said by the FBI.
For his own safety Cosentino needed to end this conversation fast. He didn’t know how much Bobby really knew, and with members of his crew standing right there he wasn’t about to dig too deeply. He just might be digging his own grave. So once again he waved a warning finger at Bobby. “You better be fucking right about that. I’m warning you.”
“I’m right,” Bobby said confidently.
Cosentino looked around anxiously. There was no doubt in Bobby’s mind that Cosentino desperately wanted to whack both him and Eddie right where they stood, but that would make people too curious for his future health. “I’m gonna find out,” he promised, “and I swear to God, I swear, if you ain’t right, I’m gonna break fucking parts you don’t even know you got.” He turned to Jackie Fats. “Let’s get the fuck outta here.”
Jackie Fats indicated the garage. “You wanna leave him there?”
“What the fuck do I care?” He pointed at Bobby and Eddie. “It’s their problem.”
Bobby and Eddie watched Cosentino and his crew walk away, walking backward, their guns still aimed at them. Only after they were out of sight did Eddie dare speak. And he laughed, he laughed incredulously. “He’s under a lot of pressure? Are you out of your fucking mind? Are you nuts? I couldn’t fucking believe it.”
Bobby was feeling okay, which was about the most he could expect for a while. Pam was dead and nothing was going to change that. But so were the people who killed her, and the big one died hard. Eventually, he knew, Cosentino would be coming after him. No question. As long as Bobby was alive he remained a danger to him. And when that happened, he’d be ready for him. He’d deal with it. But Cosentino had to let some time pass first; he’d have to give people time to forget.
And Bobby was never going to forget. What you gotta do, you gotta do.