Last Chance for Glory (39 page)

“Just a little blood,” the male nurse announced. He paused at the foot of the bed, as if expecting an answer. Kosinski tried to oblige, couldn’t produce more than a hoarse croak. Not with half his throat torn away, his jaw splintered.

“Now, now, don’t you try to talk. You’re goin’ for an operation.”

The nurse probed at Kosinski’s right wrist for a moment, then raised a bloody plastic vial in triumph. “Got the good hands,” he bragged. “Velvet fingers. You ready for a pain shot?”

When Kosinski nodded, a bolt of fire (which he should have anticipated) shot from his jaw into his brain, leaving him dizzy and disoriented. The morphine brought him all the way back, running into every cell in his body. Smoothing the wrinkles. He knew that any one of the hourly injections might contain a lethal dose, had attended the bodies of overdosed junkies hundreds of times.

Hell, he thought, every junkie’s seen another junkie die. It doesn’t stop ’em, doesn’t even slow ’em down. Why should I be different?

He closed his eyes, felt his mind light up with dreams, images from the past that, no matter how gruesome, entertained him. He saw small charred bodies scattered about the top floor of a crumbling tenement; the boy in the closet, chained there for days at a time by his crack-addicted parents; a stripper-whore at a department racket bouncing from lap to lap; a dusty photograph in a black metal frame, a wedding photo taken in Berlin. He stared at the photo for a moment, held it in his mind. The soldier, a goofy smile plastered to his face, looked back at him; the blond woman stared off into space.

I should have known!

The words echoed in the empty spaces—
should have known, should have known, should have known, should have known.
They repeated until he realized they were coming from Marty Blake’s mouth.

Kosinski opened his eyes, looked around. The room was empty.

Well, he concluded, it doesn’t matter whether Marty Blake should have known or not. Knowing doesn’t have shit to do with it.

He closed his eyes again, saw his wife, Ingrid. She’d grown up in the hell of post-WWII Berlin, told of crawling through the rubble in search of food, her older sisters trading themselves for canned hams, sacks of sugar.

Knowing doesn’t have shit to do with it, he repeated.

A key turned in the lock, roused the snake until he shouted his annoyance. Kosinski wondered if it was time for another injection. Could an hour have gone by? Maybe they were coming to get him ready for his operation. Or for new X rays.

He saw Tommy Brannigan standing in the open doorway and thought, Or maybe they don’t like me any more.

Brannigan closed the door, walked over, stared into his eyes. “It’s always sad when partners part,” he said.

Kosinski wanted to answer. He framed a number of snappy comebacks, selected, “You can’t get more together than this.” But when he tried to speak, all he managed was an odd hum:
uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
The sound struck him as purely mechanical, a complement, really, to the regular hiss of the respirator as it pumped life into his body.

“Can’t talk?” Brannigan shook his head. “Too bad, too bad.” He sat on the edge of the bed, folded his arms. “But maybe we can work something out. Maybe worse doesn’t have to come to worst. If you understand what I’m sayin’, blink once.”

Kosinski took a minute to think it over, then blinked eight times, the comatose man’s version of a snappy comeback. Brannigan shrugged, then nodded.

“How did I know?” he asked before slapping Kosinski in the face.

The pain was ferocious, a rabid animal gnawing its way through his skull. It ate until it was no longer hungry, until Kosinski could open his eyes, see through the tears, hear Tommy Brannigan’s soft laughter.

“Somehow I think I already know how you’re gonna answer this question, but let’s do it again for the record. If you understand me, blink once.”

Kosinski wanted to say, That’s not a question. Instead, he blinked once.

“Good.” Brannigan stood up, began to pace the room. “Christ, what a mess. Look at yourself, Bell. Look what you did to yourself. I’m not gonna ask you why because you couldn’t answer anyway, but you still oughta think about it. I mean in these last few minutes of your miserable fucking life.”

But there was nothing to think about. There were no moves to be made, no maneuvers, no manipulations; Bell Kosinski was absolutely helpless. Not that he minded all that much. Not that he was surprised. The way he figured it, he’d already gotten more than his share of extra time. He’d already gotten his fifteen minutes and the rest was pure gravy.

“See,” Brannigan explained, “it’s not about good guys and bad guys. That’s because the good guys don’t exist. Good guys are something bad guys made up to keep the assholes in line. Ya know what I’m sayin’ here, Bell? Bad guys and assholes, that’s what it’s all about.” He came back to the bed, examined the IV tube, then sat down. “We can’t seem to find your partner, Bell. Marty Blake, he’s disappeared. That scares us. I mean the lawyer’s up in his office bein’ a good boy. You know—thinkin’ up new ways to screw the system. But your buddy … it’s like he dropped off the face of the Earth and what I gotta know is this: Is Marty Blake the same kind of asshole you are? Blink once for yes, twice for no.”

Kosinski blinked twice, wondering if the lie would show on his face.

“And you don’t know where he is, either?”

Kosinski blinked once, steeled himself against the pain, felt his head explode.

It took a long time. That was the most Bell Kosinski could say when it was finally over. He was aware of drifting into and out of consciousness, of blinking again and again, of maintaining the lie. He was standing up for Marty Blake, of course, but there was more to it than that. How could he live out his whole life only to cave in to a piece of shit like Tommy Brannigan at the very end? Nobody who knew him would buy it, not at any price.

“All right, Bell. I didn’t think it would work, but I got bosses that don’t know you.” Brannigan rose, fished a syringe out of his jacket pocket, held it up for inspection. “Know what this is?”

Kosinski wanted to say, A pain shot, how thoughtful.

“It’s potassium. Like comes in bananas. Only when you inject a lot of it at one time, it stops the heart in its tracks. Boom! Just like that.” He uncapped the syringe. “It metabolizes so fast that it’s hard to find even in the test tube, but the best part is that you can’t tell anything from looking. You been there, Bell, so you know exactly what I’m talkin’ about. The ME’s gonna take out your heart, examine it and say, ‘Kosinski’s heart gave up the ghost due to trauma from multiple gunshot wounds.’ Or words to that effect. Me, I think it’s too good for you. I told Grogan, ‘This guy deserves to die hard. Let’s give ’em …’”

A sharp knock at the door interrupted Brannigan’s soliloquy. He re-capped the syringe, stuck it in his pocket, called out, “What the fuck do you want?”

The door opened slightly and a uniformed correction officer stuck his head into the room. “You got a phone call. The man says it’s important, says I should interrupt. You can take it right here in the hall.”

Kosinski didn’t try to raise his head, didn’t dare. But he could hear well enough.

First Brannigan said, “Brannigan,” into the phone, then there was a long pause, then he said, “Sorry, Chief, it’s too late. I was just leavin’.” Then he hung up.

“Nothin’ but headaches, right, Bell? The fuckin’ silks never wanna give you room to operate.” The door slammed shut as Brannigan strode back into the room. All business, he uncapped the syringe, jammed it into a port on the IV line, depressed the plunger.

The last thing Bela Kosinski felt was surprise. Surprise at how stupid he’d been not to have grasped the truth long before this. Because the truth—and he had to admit it—was that he’d loved it all along. Every day, every minute. He’d loved it and he couldn’t get it back.

“A
CHECK?” VINNIE CAPPOLINO’S
long, horsey face curled into a petulant frown. He looked, to Marty Blake, like a child denied a birthday wish. “It’s Saturday. The banks don’t open till Monday. What if the check’s no good?”

“You think I’d bounce a check on you, Vinnie?”

“In a fuckin’ heartbeat.” Cappolino’s fingers traced the long narrow scar on his forehead, then ran the length of his flattened nose. “Face it, Marty, for what you got in mind there’s no tomorrow.”

Blake nodded agreement, tried to laugh, failed. “What could I say? When you’re right, you’re right. I
would
lie, if that’s what it took, but in this case I don’t have to. The money’s there.” He paused, then smiled. “Vinnie, we both know you’re gonna charge me five times what the job’s worth. High risks go with high rewards. That’s the way the game is played.”

“You got a point, but … see, Marty, when Linda first came to work for us—before she and Walter got married—she sat us down and explained what bein’ a mercenary is all about. After she finished, I knew what I was for the first time. I’m a whore, Marty. I don’t spread my legs unless I get paid for it.” He let his jaw drop onto his chest, pointed at the bald spot on the back of his head. “Plus I’m thirty-three years old and I gotta worry about my future. I’m not gettin’ any younger.”

The solution was simple, if painful. Blake had just over six thousand dollars in his checking account, most of it Steinberg’s money. Vinnie, once he knew the balance, would take it all.

“How ’bout this,” Blake said. “How ’bout we find an ATM and check the account balance. If I don’t have enough to cover your fee, you can just walk away.”

Cappolino’s dark eyes glistened. Blake tried for a read, couldn’t decide whether he saw mischief or satisfaction.

“What about the bank card?” Vinnie asked. “You could pull out five hundred bucks a day. That
could
leave me fifteen hundred short. Depending on how much you got in the account.”

“I’ll tear up the card.”

Cappolino sat back in his swivel chair, rocked for a moment, then put his feet on the desk. “Yeah, that might be okay. Only, if ya don’t mind, let’s break it down into three smaller checks. In case someone beats me to the bank on Monday morning. Now, whatta ya say we get down to the details?”

Blake pulled the list out of his shirt pocket and passed it over. “I want federal tax returns for the first four, home addresses and phone numbers for the other two. If any of the returns show income from a privately held corporation, I want the corporate filings as well.”

“I can get the addresses in a couple of minutes, but I can’t do the tax returns here.” He ran his finger down the list of names. “Gotta send it out. Gotta get social security numbers, too.”

“Where you do it doesn’t interest me. Fast is what I’m after. Like tonight.”

“No problem. Anything else?”

“Yeah, a set of picks and some tools. Chisels, hammer, screwdrivers, volt meter, wire cutters—you know the routine.”

Cappolino spread his hands. “That shit I got right here in the office. What else?”

“Firepower, Vinnie. Like I already said, I don’t know how many people are gonna come after me, but it won’t be one on one.”

“You familiar with automatic weapons? Ever work an M40?”

“Hell, man, I don’t even know what an M40 is.”

“Marty, if computers shot lightning bolts, you’d be Dirty Harry.” He chortled happily. “But I do have a little piece that fits your abilities one hundred percent. This is all gonna happen in a small space, right?”

“Right.”

Cappolino got up, still grinning, and strolled into a back room. A moment later, he came back with a pistol-grip shotgun and two boxes of shells.

“It’s a Benelli M3, semiautomatic, fires as fast as you can pull the trigger. Holds seven, 12-gauge rounds.”

“Will it penetrate a vest?”

“Now, that’s the beauty of it, Marty.” He held up the ammo for Blake’s inspection. “These bad boys are loaded with fléchettes. Picture them as little arrows, little flesh eaters. The only thing that’ll stop these babies is bone. When they hit bone, they distort and ricochet. The rounds are packed twenty fléchettes to the shell. They came to me by way of a juicehead master sergeant at the Tobyhanna Army Depot.”

Blake picked up the shotgun. He was surprised at the soft grip; he’d expected wood or a hardened plastic, but the pebbled surface molded beneath his fingers.

“Don’t worry about sighting it,” Cappolino explained. “In a small room, all you gotta do is pull the trigger and hold on. At ten yards, she’ll throw a fifteen-inch pattern. You can’t miss.”

Blake worked the pump, nodded once. “How much, Vinnie? For the package.”

“Well …”

“Why don’t we save some time here? I’ve got a little over six thousand dollars in my checking account. And that’s
all
I’ve got.”

“Six grand?” Cappolino flashed his petulant frown again. “I was thinkin’ more like fifteen.”

“Six, Vinnie. And don’t bullshit me because I know you’re not putting out more than two, even if you paid full retail for the shotgun, which you didn’t.” When Cappolino hesitated, Blake shifted into his first outright lie of the conversation. “Look, the
only
reason I came to you is because I’m in a big hurry. But if I have to, I’ll shift my plans, take my time, put it together on my own.”

“Awright, awright.” Cappolino dropped the frown. “Christ, you were always a prick, Marty. What you oughta do is grow up. Like I did.”

Blake rolled down the Nissan’s window as he drove along Northern Boulevard toward the Fifty-ninth-Street Bridge. He leaned his head into the cool rushing air, took a deep breath, decided that congratulations were in order. Congratulations for a decision he’d made years before. In the mid-Eighties, the S&Ls and the banks had mailed preapproved credit-card applications to virtually anyone who already owned a credit card. Blake had kept seven, had been sure to use each of them at least once a year. He’d seen them as an insurance policy, a quick fix for life’s little emergencies. Now, he felt like a prophet. If it wasn’t for the cards, he’d be dead in the water.

It took him the better part of an hour to negotiate the five miles to his destination, the Surveillance Shop, on First Avenue and Sixty-first Street. Most of the lanes on the bridge were closed for construction, as they had been for nearly fifteen years. The traffic came as no surprise, but that didn’t mean the delay wasn’t torture for a man in a hurry. By the time Blake parked his car and walked into the store, he was ready to bite the head off a New York City rat.