Mr. Conger said, “All I was doing was trying to take care of my own guys. I still have two dead men, and three others sitting in county jail for almost a week, waiting to see if they’ll even get bailed out. What I did was to make sure they knew I wouldn’t abandon them. I wanted them to be respected while they were locked up, and they would be if I let people know I stood by them. The guy I hired to do that was a first-rate guy, and he was taking care of it. You all knew Sealy. What happened to him was a fluke.”
Noore was much younger than Mr. Conger, but he was very large, at least six feet six and three hundred pounds, and that gave him a sort of aristocracy conferred by nature. “You went after Jerry Pinsky. People love Jerry Pinsky. He isn’t some little jerk who’s getting above himself wearing a two hundred thousand dollar watch and driving a Rolls to the supermarket. The minute you sent a crew to rob him you made sure the police weren’t going to be able to ignore it. What happened to your guys doesn’t matter. You brought trouble down on all of us.”
Mr. Conger believed he could still gain control of this. He assumed a smile and turned it on each of the others, one at a time. He felt the solution was to rely on his reputation and reassert his authority. “I’ve been here for a long time. I know what works and what doesn’t.”
Ducky Sanders spoke up. “What’s been working is making them believe the robberies were being done by small groups of young guys who were friends and happened to see all the rich bastards sitting at outdoor tables in the afternoon drinking wine under umbrellas. Now they think we’re the Mafia.”
Mr. Conger said, “I get your pitch. You think I’m going to pay all of you damages for bringing you bad publicity. I’m not going to do that.”
Mick Noore, Ducky Sanders, and Vaughn Pineda all suddenly held pistols in their hands.
“What is this?” Mr. Conger said. “Some kind of joke?”
“No, it’s like a firing squad,” Pineda said. “When it’s over nobody knows who fired the shot that killed you. Nobody’s to blame. Nobody’s a hero.”