Inside Out (3 page)

Winter had left Nemo at home that day, and when they got back to the house the dog planted his nose against Rush's chest. He growled fiercely for a long time, the fur over his spine standing like quills. Winter had been afraid at first that he was going to bite the boy, and, when he tried to pull his son away, the usually gentle dog had snapped at Winter. His behavior seemed to be a chastisement for allowing Rush so close to something that smelled like an enemy of children. Nemo's breed originated in South Africa. Some ancient warning had obviously risen up within the dog.

“How are you feeling?” Winter asked his son.

“Fine. Why?”

“Gram said you moped around all day, went to bed early.”

“Is a bracelet for a man?” Rush asked, avoiding the question.

Winter saw a corner of one of his late wife's bandanas peeking out from under Rush's pillow. They had been one of Eleanor's trademarks; she'd used them to keep her long blond hair under control when she was outdoors or working on the house. Rush had taken to carrying one in his pocket. After three years, he was down from a half dozen to a pair; one red and one blue. When it was absolutely necessary, he washed them by hand and laid them on a towel to dry.

“Sure. I.D. bracelets are for men. Lion-hair bracelets are strictly for men who need some luck. So why the moping?”

“Well, Angus is mowing yards next summer and when I said I would help, he said if I took a tin cup and some pencils downtown, people would buy them.”

“That was mean.”

“No, Angus didn't mean it like that. We were talking about ways to make money, but it made me think a lot about what I'm going to do someday. It sure as heck won't be selling pencils.”

“No, it won't. But you need to get some sleep.” Winter kissed his son's cheek, tucked him in, hung Nemo's Seeing-Eye harness on the chair, and walked out. Nemo was supposed to sleep in the harness, but tonight Rush had merely leashed him to the bed, a minor violation of the rules for Seeing-Eye dogs. In the hallway he paused to look at the picture of Eleanor standing under the wing of a Cessna 120 she had soloed in at sixteen. He kept a picture of another Cessna, the one the insurance company sent him, in his file cabinet. He still couldn't look at it without feeling lost, like being pinned under tons of earth and rocks.

He lay down on his bed in the dark. A few weeks after Eleanor's death, he had changed the room, bought a new bed, moved the furniture. He kept her jewelry in his gun safe, thinking he'd give it to his son's wife someday. Eleanor had three gold bracelets, a small strand of cultured pearls, a wedding ring, a Seiko tank watch, her flight chronometer, and a pendant made from Winter's Kappa Alpha Order fraternity pin. Nothing worth putting in a bank vault. Her favorite piece had been a pin that Rush picked out in a Walgreens. It was small, shaped like a soldier's medal, and said
MOTHER
on the gold-toned bar at the top, with a pink plastic heart hanging by a ribbon. Winter had asked the funeral director to pin it to her gown before the casket was closed, because she would have wanted it close to her.

Winter had not looked at his wife's body after she stopped breathing. He had not left her side from the moment he was ushered into her hospital room until he gave the nod to pull the plug and she ceased to exist. Her face had been so swollen that she hadn't looked like Eleanor, which had allowed him to imagine that some stranger was in her bed, dying or dead. She was breathing, but not on her own, and for no good purpose except to keep her organs alive for someone else. At that point he knew that he was on the edge of exactly how much he could endure.

He had managed to get through his wife's funeral by convincing himself that the casket was empty, that Eleanor was waiting for him at home, that some other woman had crashed the plane. After all, his wife was a master pilot, an instructor. In a glider she was a thing of the air, knew the secret winds, soaring on the thermals with the arrogance of a hawk. He had only once sat in front of her in a glider. He'd been certain the wings would fold up as she performed lazy loops so high above the earth. But he had loved every second of the sensation, sharing her passion.

Rush had stayed in the hospital for a full month after the crash and spent months after that adjusting to his blindness. He seemed resilient and began testing the limits of his handicap almost immediately.

Before Rush was blinded, the dark had been the one thing he was afraid of. Since he was first put into his own bedroom at the age of two, he had slept with the door open a crack, a night-light in the hallway illuminating the way to his parents' bedroom. Since the accident, Rush hadn't cared whether the door was left open or closed. Another small thing that feasted on Winter's heart.

5

New York, New York

It was almost eleven when a gimp-gaited Herman Hoffman walked up from the subway stop at 72nd and Broadway and started making his way toward the meeting. As he turned the corner, he spotted an elegant gray Towncar parked across the narrow street from the small coffeehouse. He ignored it, knowing that the driver was studying him, relaying to the man inside the shop on his mobile phone that Herman was approaching, without backup. A sign on the door said that the small business was closed. As he approached, a large man unlocked the door from the inside. As Herman slipped into the coffeehouse, he caught a reflection in the window—a small, ancient man wearing a tweed jacket, whose body seemed shaped like a question mark—the man he had become.

Herman's limp was his badge of honor, the visible remains of his courage—compliments of an ill-mannered Stasi agent who had used a wood-carver's mallet on his knee in a futile attempt to elicit information. Men like Herman knew that torture rarely led to useful information. He was seventy-eight and his face looked like a cadaver's. The smell of ointment wafted from him. He looked like a man on the edge of the grave, not someone who held the reins to organized death and destruction.

The New Orleanian he'd come to meet, Johnny Russo, was Sam Manelli's nephew-in-law, operations manager, enforcer, trusted messenger, and heir apparent to Sam's crime empire. Russo sat at a table in the rear, wearing an expensive sports jacket that shone like wet fish scales. With his buzz cut, his high-tech wire rims and patent-leather boots, he might have been mistaken for a forty-something art gallery owner instead of the savage he really was.

Herman sat directly across from Russo, who closed his magazine, laid it aside, and folded his hands together. “Mr. Hoffman,” Russo said, concentrating his attention on the old man. “Coffee?”

“Hello, John.” Herman allowed his face to communicate a flicker of amusement. “Too late for coffee.” He pursed his lips, shrugged his narrow shoulders and placed a small plastic box on the table. The green light set into its surface blinked a steady beat.

“What's that?” Johnny Russo asked.

Herman slipped the apparatus back into his coat pocket. “It's a little bird that chirps in the presence of any electronic devices like transmitters, even recorders.”

“Where can I get one of those?”

“They're not available. Is everything in order?”

Russo raised his eyebrows. “Sam said yes to the figure. Who the hell's he going to shop prices with at this late date, right? I mean, it isn't like he has any choice.”

“Things are in place.”

“Sam wants out of that place like you wouldn't believe. He's hot as a two-dollar pistol over all this. All of the fee up front and he didn't even flinch. I guess three million for a single hit is some kind of a record.”

“Nowhere near it.” Herman forced himself to smile. “Certainty always costs more than maybe. This is a complicated, expensive operation. Sam will get his freedom. You will get what you want. And I will get the satisfaction of performing the impossible—one last time.”

“And three million, tax free.” Russo's eyes shifted focus and Herman realized that the mobster was staring at the large flakes of dead skin on the shoulders of his jacket. The disease that ravaged his skin was humiliating, especially considering the man he had once been. When their eyes met, Russo peered over Herman's shoulder at his man near the door and then gave Herman a we-are-going-to-rule-the-world smile. “When is this gonna happen? Sam wants it real soon. Every day he's in that jail is like a year to most people.”

“I can't give anybody outside my group the date of an operation, John. My people have not failed once in fifty years. I know where the marshals have Devlin. You can assure Sam that the trial is never going to take place. Dylan won't even make it to testify before the ‘secret' congressional committee on organized crime. My people are already staging. That's all you need to know.”

Russo's eyes danced with excitement. “That's great! If everybody gets the message that there is no safe place to hide if they betray me . . . The feds are gonna be hugely pissed.”

“They'll know Sam was behind it, but they will never prove it unless you, Sam, or I talk.”

Herman knew Russo well enough to understand that he was no Sam Manelli and when this self-important turd didn't have Sam on his shoulder, the empire was doomed. Of all the alliances Herman had ever formed, this one was singularly unpalatable.

“Where is it?” Herman asked.

“What?”

Herman stared down at his hands again as if he were memorizing the liver spots. “The three-million-dollar fee.”

Russo snapped his fingers. “Spiro!” The muscle man by the door strode over carrying an attaché case and placed it on the table. Russo popped the locks and rotated the case to expose a stack of engraved documents.

Herman thumbed the edges of the bearer bonds, not counting to confirm there were sixty of them, just making sure they were real. With so much at stake Johnny Russo wouldn't dare hand Herman bogus paper, but Russo might have been screwed over by someone else. He looked at his watch and stood up. “I have a subway to catch.”

“You want me to send Spiro and the car to make sure you get home with that?”

Herman stared down at Russo. “You're kidding, right?” Herman wasn't about to have Russo know where his home was. Personal danger had nothing to do with it.

Herman rode the nearly deserted subway with the stainless-steel briefcase on the floor beside him. He sat patiently with his eyes closed.

He had dealt with some of the country's most infamous gangsters from the late 1940s. No matter what talent each possessed that had elevated them to their positions of leadership, not one in a thousand rose above the level of an expensively dressed ape. Herman had always admired Sam Manelli. He was remarkably intelligent, utterly ruthless, and knew more about human nature than anyone. He was also a man of his word. He would rather be tortured to death than inform on anyone. When Sam was gone, the last of the honorable crime bosses was gone, which was just as well. Even if a code of silence was possible with these new gangsters, modern electronics were making secrets a thing of the past.

At his stop Herman picked up the briefcase, got off the train, and walked slowly up the steps out onto the street. His building was near the Stock Exchange, Battery Park, and Trinity Church, and although the neighborhood was teeming with people during the week, it was fairly deserted after five-thirty and a ghost town on Saturday nights, when all the office buildings were empty.

Herman walked casually, swinging the briefcase containing 3 million dollars' worth of paper—every bit as negotiable as cash. He saw two men seated on a stoop in front of a closed deli a block away. He didn't make any attempt to cross to the other side of the street—he maintained a course that would place him an arm's length from them. He didn't look at the two men until they stood and made it impossible for him to pass without stepping off the curb.

One of the men was large and dark as pitch, with a deep scar that gave his cheek the appearance of buttocks. His clothes smelled like something that had been pulled from a muddy ditch and left wadded up for a few days. “Hey, man. You got the time?”

Herman stopped and looked at his watch. “Twelve-ten.”

“Nice watch, old man.”

The smaller man moved around and stood slightly behind Herman.

“It's platinum,” Herman said. “Do we share an appreciation for fine Swiss timepieces?”

The man behind him was a stocky, bandy-legged Mexican.

“You got a couple dollars?” the Mexican asked. “We han't eat all today.”

“Would you gentlemen use my money to buy food or crack rocks?”

The large man laughed. “What do you care? You're a rich man.”

“I certainly wouldn't stay that way if I gave it to every periodontally challenged crackhead I encountered.”

“Whas een jur shiny little suitcase?” the man behind Herman asked.

“Bearer bonds.” Herman took his right hand from his coat pocket. He held it up so both men could see the thick stack of bills in it, fixing their attention to one spot. “I have around two thousand dollars here. How about I let you have this, you forget the briefcase and go get all cracked up for a couple of days, and I'll just go on my way?”

Herman saw the large man's eyes flash a signal and he knew the smaller man behind him was moving to smash his skull or something equally unimaginative. If he hadn't been so tired he would have enjoyed this encounter. In the years he had lived in Paris, London, Washington, and now New York, he had never been robbed, never even been menaced by street thugs. He had anticipated the remote possibility of Russo's greed getting the better of his good sense, perhaps setting up something to steal back his money. But these two were just hungry cats who'd had a mouse walk right up to them.

“How about you give me the cash, the watch so I know what time it is, and the little suitcase for carrying stuff.”

“Ralph?” Herman said.

“Yes, sir?” the answer came.

Herman saw the large man's ravenous expression change at the sound of the new voice. Herman turned to see that the smaller of the two was looking to his right, where a man dressed entirely in black had materialized. Ralph had the small man's wrist in his left hand, and the knife in the Mexican's fist was quivering like the hind leg of a dying rabbit. There was a silenced pistol in Ralph's left hand that was aimed at the large man's heart.

“Or how about this?” Herman suggested as he slid the money back into his pocket. “I keep my cash, and Ralph teaches you scions of the alleyway one final lesson.”

Herman sidestepped the larger man and walked down Pine Street swinging the metal attaché. He didn't look back. He knew that the cops would soon come upon two very unpleasant, drug-addicted thugs lying on the sidewalk who had squabbled over something and killed each other with a single cheap knife.

Of all his men, there were only two he trusted totally—Ralph and Lewis.