American Blood (18 page)
“Pretty fast.” Lloyd shrugged one shoulder. “Means nothing.”
“It might if you’re the one getting shot.”
Lloyd didn’t answer.
Marshall said, “We can try it, if you like.”
Lloyd held the stare, propped an arm up on the back of his seat. He said, “I wouldn’t threaten me. That’d be pretty fucking stupid.” Still nice and smooth, taking a leaf from Tony’s book.
“Why, you going to tell Dad?”
Lloyd laughed. “Wouldn’t be Dad. Might be his cleaner, though. You heard of the Dallas Man?”
Marshall said, “Can’t say I have.”
“Yeah, well. My father uses him for the tough jobs. People just end up dead without knowing it. Pays to just behave yourself. Otherwise.” He clicked his fingers. “Sometimes shit just happens.”
Marshall nodded slowly, looked out his window like he was slowly grasping the concept. He said, “Lloyd, if I killed you, I’d want you to know all about it.”
Lloyd didn’t answer. No change in expression, he reached in his jacket and drew a snub-nose .38 and put it against Marshall’s forehead.
Jimmy Wheels said, “Ooooo, shit, Lloyd. That’s not a good idea on the road.”
Lloyd cocked the hammer. A faint metallic creaking as the cylinder stepped round, lining up a shell. “You got all the right lines, but you don’t know your place. That’s the difference between you and me.” He smiled. “I put a bullet in you, no one cares. Other way round, you probably can’t say the same.”
With the gun right in his face it was hard not to look at it, but he forced himself to keep his eyes with Lloyd.
Marshall said, “You kill me and you’re going to get pretty well acquainted with NYPD. Probably lockup, too.”
Lloyd said, “Maybe. I didn’t think they’d be all that bothered by bent cops dying. Maybe they’d just think I’d done them a favor. Who knows.”
Marshall didn’t answer.
Lloyd said, “Not for you to have to worry about anyway. This sort of distance, you wouldn’t have much brain left.”
They held the pose a few more seconds. The muzzle cool on his skin and the car gliding swiftly through the bright electric night in a trail of yellow cabs, and he and Lloyd swaying gently with the motion.
Lloyd lowered the hammer and withdrew the gun. He looked at Marshall a moment longer and then he turned in his seat. “Let’s put it on record, Jim. Marsh doesn’t know his place.”
Jimmy Wheels said, “It’s on the record, Lloyd.”
Lloyd reached up and turned the mirror so he could see Marshall’s reflection. He touched his forehead. “Should get a tattoo of where the muzzle was, like one of those religious dots. Remind you who’s in charge.”
* * *
They followed West Street down into the Battery Tunnel and took 278 through the western edge of Brooklyn. Jimmy exited at Eighty-sixth and headed east toward Bensonhurst. They passed the Dyker Beach Golf Course on their right.
Jimmy Wheels hiked a thumb. “Could drop him in here. Some bunkers pretty close, could even bury him. Imagine that: someone plays a shot out of the sand, take a bit too much, boom, the fuck is this?”
Lloyd said, “I like the idea of the bridge.”
“What, the West End line?”
“Yeah, one that goes over Eighty-sixth.”
“Whatever. Don’t say I don’t give good options though.”
They could see it when they reached the light at Eighteenth Avenue. The huge steel bridgework of the train line where it curved out of the leftward distance to lurk on huge frames above the Eighty-sixth Street traffic. Driving now beneath the soot-grimed underbelly with its vaulted gussets and massive girder matrix all rust-streaked, and the rivets in studded rows without end. He remembered the shattering iron clatter of the D train rushing through in its great howl of wind, trash dancing in the eddies.
Coming up to Twentieth Avenue, the light went red. Jimmy hit the gas and snuck through. No traffic coming toward them. Lloyd turned in his seat and checked the road behind, but it was all cars headed north/south on Twentieth.
“Okay stop, stop, this’ll do.”
Jimmy braked and the front of the car dipped hard as they slowed. Lloyd’s belt was already off. He got out and ran to the rear and opened the door and dragged Mikhail out onto the road. The thump as he landed, nothing else. Lloyd slammed the back door and then ran up front, jumped in, and they were off, the Escalade roaring through the gears, and in the rear window the guy was just a suited jumble with the huge bridge truss like some giant portal framed above him.
Lloyd breathing hard with the rush, the car swerving slightly as Jimmy turned to check behind.
Marshall glanced over the back of the seat again. All that blood, the guy can’t have been conscious. How long you could last with a nine-mil bullet in your gut, he didn’t know.
They stopped at Twenty-first Street, traffic backed up at a red light.
Lloyd, still short of wind, said, “Even better than that time you took out that guy over in Queens, Jim.”
Jimmy Wheels said, “Oh, yeah. Forgot about that. In that old Lincoln, weren’t we?”
Marshall ran a hand through his hair. They’d be talking shit all the way back to Manhattan. He wasn’t sure he could take it. He opened his door.
Lloyd turned and looked at him. “Hey, what’re you doing?”
“That’s enough for me for one night.”
He slid out and threw his door closed, caught Lloyd calling out: “You just remember all that. Step out of line, I’ll turn you into roadkill on Eighty-sixth.” He wagged a finger, like he still had the .38. “You tell your uncle that, too. He owes us money, don’t want him ending up like this guy.”
The light went green. Marshall stepped back as the Escalade took off. He could picture Lloyd watching him across his shoulder, Marshall’s figure receding as the black car bore him away.
* * *
He headed back west along Eighty-sixth to where they’d made the drop-off, called Ashcroft on his cell phone while he walked.
He said, “I’ve got a problem. Asaro had a meeting tonight with Victor Bradlik, things got rough, I ended up shooting his backup guy.”
“What? Bradlik’s backup guy?”
“Yeah. I don’t think he’s dead, but he’s heading there.”
“Where are you?”
“Eighty-sixth Street in Bensonhurst.”
“Shit, you got an ambulance there or something?”
Up ahead: a stopped car and three people standing in the street, just silhouettes against the headlights.
Please don’t be dead.
Marshall said, “There’s one on the way.”
“What happened?”
Marshall leaned on the roller door of a Radio Shack and ran it down for him. He said, “Lee, I want to come in tomorrow. Get those Bureau guys, too. This is crazy.”
“Marshall—”
“No, I think I probably just killed a guy. I need to come in or I swear, next call I make is to Tony Asaro, tell him what the situation is. Jesus Christ, Lloyd almost patted me down for my wire.”
“Marshall—”
“Tomorrow.”
“Shut the fuck up and listen a minute. Give it two days. You need to just chill out, give it some time, act normal. Otherwise stuff comes apart.”
Marshall said, “Tell them I want a meeting or I’m gone.”
He hung up and kept walking.
* * *
He caught a D train at Twentieth and got off at Atlantic Avenue and waited for a Q train.
Standing at the platform with his shoulder against a column and the tracks fading into the dark of the tunnel he looked down and saw a rat: coal-black fur in wet spikes sleek on its bloated form, the finger-thick tail dragging ropelike as it crawled across the rail. All that trash down there, begging for plunder.
One
A.M
. now.
When the train arrived he stood in the aisle of an empty car, no handhold, swaying on his feet with the motion. The clatter and rush of the crazy free-fall speed through tunnels, car rocking with the pace, the sudden quiet as they breezed through bright and empty stations.
He got off at Parkside and walked up Flatbush Avenue. His uncle’s place was the corner unit of an old block of brownstones, the barber downstairs, accommodation on the floor above.
Marshall stood at the front window and called him on the cell, looking at his reflection as he stood there,
EDDIE’S
in an arch of white letters on the glass, bordered by red, white, and blue.
“Marsh, what’s up?”
“I’m downstairs. Come let me in.”
He clicked off. A minute’s wait and then Eddie was at the door, a ding of the bell as it opened. Marshall walked over and stepped inside.
“I just saw Lloyd Asaro.”
“Yeah. And?” He closed the door. No lights on, the pair of them just shadows.
“And he says you owe them money.”
“Why’d he tell you that?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he doesn’t like having debtors.”
“Look, Marsh. You don’t need to worry about it. It’s mine to figure out.”
“How much do you owe?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“How much do you owe?”
“Marsh, it’s not your business, seriously.”
“Are we going to do this all night? Because I’m patient.”
“Jesus. All right.” He made a motion with one hand, stirring up the words. “Sixteen grand.”
“Sixteen. Ah, shit. How’d you manage that?”
“I don’t know, it’s easy. They keep bringing me all this money to try and put through my books, clean it up, thought I should just take a bit more here and there. Not all at once, but it just adds up, you know. ’Fore you know it, yeah. Sixteen grand.”
Marshall didn’t answer. He stood at the window and looked out at the street. Sixteen grand, just like Vicki B. He couldn’t hold back Lloyd’s last jab:
Roadkill on Eighty-sixth.
Marshall said, “How long have you got?”
Rojas
Carnage.
Dante spread-eagled, the toppled IV stand lying beside him, a bag of clear fluid tethered to the crook of his arm. Eyes round and vacant like the fatal wound. An oval pool of blood creeping radially, a brass shell caught in the mess, the Colt Anaconda only just on dry land. Vance sat with his back to the wall, Rojas arranged similarly, propped against the TV.
Vance lit a cigarette as Leon walked in.
Vance said, “Can’t believe you fucking killed him.”
The cigarette fell off his lip, rolled through a short arc on the floor. He didn’t pick it up, didn’t close his mouth either.
Leon stood by the coffee table. No shirt, faded jeans with the .22 Ruger in the waistband at the small of his back. Rojas didn’t get this no-shirt policy. Maybe it reminded them of the ’Stan. Leon crouched and used Dante’s Visa to push some of the coke around, build up a short line. Delicate click of plastic on glass, leaning this way and that to check the symmetry. He dipped his head and snorted and rocked back on his heels with the hit, rose to his feet.
He said, “What, you think you were going to patch him up, get the pellets out? Not a chance. Would’ve bled to death before you were done. I mean, look at the floor. The leg one probably got his femoral.”
“So he needed a hospital.”
Leon still had the credit card. He flicked it backhand out of two fingers, sent it spinning dead flat on a beeline across the room. It hit the wall above Vance’s head and skittered across the floor. Vance didn’t flinch.
Leon said, “Sending him to the ER would have worked out well for everyone, I’m sure.”
“And your answer was to shoot him in the head? Holy shit. You’re a wacko.”
Leon didn’t answer, just stood there square, hands in pockets. A real
I dare you
stance. He smiled and pointed at the IV bag, draped across the center pole of the stand. “Looks like a fat guy climbing through a window.”
He glanced at Rojas, looking for a laugh. No joy: he was lost in his own head, picturing the wanted posters.
Leon said, “Gone a bit white under the tan there, Troy.”
Rojas surfaced, put the words together. He said, “You would too, if you took a cop at gunpoint and someone let her get away.”
Leon said, “Now, now. Let’s not have a blame culture. You could have taken responsibility.”
Rojas didn’t answer.
Vance kept his eyes on Leon, felt around for the cigarette, stuck it back in his mouth. He leaned over and picked up the Anaconda.
Leon said, “What, you’re going to shoot me? Good plan.”
“Yeah. I thought so, too.”
Leon said, “You’ll need a round in there.”
“Cut your shit, Leon. You killed my friend.”
Leon knuckled his nostril, sniffed. “Yeah. Because he fucked up.”
Vance turned out his pockets, looking for a shell. Some cable ties and his set of bump keys fell in a jumble. He saw the box of .44s sitting by the couch and leaned and tipped it over, bullets rolling in a wide spread with a sound like marbles. He picked one up and swung the cylinder out of the gun.
Rojas could see him shaking, eyes wet. Cool Vance had checked out for the day.
Leon stood watching from beside the coffee table and said, “What are you doing, dipshit?”
“Take a guess.”
“Right. And what are you going to do when I’m dead? I run this thing, Vance. If I’m gone, you’re done.”
Vance didn’t answer, busy thumbing the shell home. He flicked his wrist and flipped the cylinder back into the frame. Leon could see where the bullet was seated, just left of the muzzle. Looking from the danger end, Colt cylinders step round counterclockwise: he was safe for five pulls. He didn’t blink when Vance aimed one-handed and squeezed.
Click.
Vance kept the gun up, one eye shut. He said, “Pow.”
Even with coke, Leon never seemed wired. Rojas thought he must pop downers to stay mellow.
Leon said, “After that mess tonight you’re going to have state, federal, everyone looking for you. And you’re going to find yourself in shit without me watching your back.”
Vance squeezed the trigger again. Click. “I’ve got pretty good at looking after myself, gonna need some better reasons than that. Come on. Three more squeezes and then you’re dog food.”
Click.
“Oops. Two.”
Leon seemed pretty confident about where everything would end up. He said, “You think you’re hot shit, Vance, but you don’t know how to live in the world. You know how to kill people, and that’s it. I’m the only reason you get by without the other half of the equation.”