He was walking on a downtown street, crisscrossing the main square off Fourteenth, his back to the Old Homestead Steakhouse, when he was grabbed by two men with thick hands and thicker accents. He felt their guns in his rib cage and let them lead him across the avenue toward the parked sedan with the engine running. He was tossed headfirst into the back seat and taken for a two-block ride toward the rear entrance of what had once been Murray Baker’s old slaughterhouse and had now morphed into a high-end wholesale meat distributor. He was pulled out of the car, dragged down a flight of steep steps, and shoved through thick aluminum-tinted double doors, doing a hard landing on the concrete floor, his mouth and eyes feeling the tinge of sawdust. The two men stripped him of his jacket, shirt, shoes and socks, tossing them all in a rumpled heap in a corner of the well-lit room. They wrapped and locked a bicycle chain around his neck and hoisted him onto a meat-locker hook, the sharp edge jabbing into his neck. And in that moment Nunzio Goldman and Angel put eyes on each other for the first time.
“This will be a very painful last day for you, regardless of what you do or do not tell me,” Angel said to him, stepping away from under the glare of the sharp overhead lights toward Nunzio. He was wearing a long white butcher’s smock that only partially covered a pair of razor-creased slacks and matching polo shirt. His black shoes were so shiny they glared like headlights. “I thought it only fitting for you to die in a meat locker. The childhood memories such a place brings to light might prove to be of some comfort to you during these next hours of agony.”
“I would tell you to go fuck yourself ten ways till sundown,” Nunzio said. “But I was taught never to curse in front of a priest. Low-life scumbag or not.”
Angel smiled, thin lips barely exposing any teeth, and nodded toward the two men standing on either side of Nunzio. “I’ll be back in an hour,” he said to them. “He’s yours until I return.” Angel stepped up closer to Nunzio and wrapped his fingers around his face, their eyes separated by lashes. “You will beg me to give you your last rites,” he said.
The two men removed their jackets, rolled up their sleeves, and went to work on Nunzio Goldman. Both in their mid-thirties now, they had mastered their torture rituals at a young age and were proficient in the pain trade. Throughout the entire brutal and ceaseless ordeal, Nunzio never uttered a sound or made a plea for them to stop. He had spent his life in the company of hard men on both sides of the law and had learned well the lessons they passed his way.
The greatest of all those lessons was to know when death was at hand and to accept its arrival.
Nunzio opened his one good eye and stared at Angel, back now, standing in front of him, a thin lit cigar in his mouth. “Give me their names,” Angel said, “and I will put an end to your pain with a bullet. You have my word.”
Nunzio smiled, his upper row of teeth loose, a warm stream of blood running from his mouth down to his chin. “What they say about you is spot-on true,” he said to Angel. “I didn’t buy into it wholesale at first. But then I got a look at you and there’s no doubt about it.”
“Humor me,” Angel said.
“You never get your hands dirty,” Nunzio said. “Most hair balls work up to that, but you can always look back to a time when they were bone breakers. But you’re not them, padre. You got manicured hands in a callous business.”
“Interesting,” Angel said, blowing a thin line of smoke into Nunzio’s face. “And I wish you and I could have enough time to give such a topic the attention it so demands. But we must get to the important question of the moment. What are their names?”
“You know the other mistake you made?” Nunzio asked, sharp bolts of pain coursing through his upper body, his head light and his vision blurry from the heavy loss of blood. “I’d ask you to guess, but you sound like you’re a little pressed.”
Angel grabbed one of the men and tossed him against Nunzio. “Take one finger off each hand,” he said to him, his eyes on Boomer and Dead-Eye’s best friend. “Perhaps that will help him better understand my question.”
Nunzio’s screams echoed through the empty meat locker, his eyes bulging, his body shaking without control, sweat flowing in torrents. Angel stepped into the large puddles of blood at Nunzio’s feet and leaned into his wet and bloody face. “I want their names,” he whispered.
Nunzio was taking heavy breaths, his mind light as a rain cloud, his eyes rimmed with hot tears. He looked at Angel and nodded. “I don’t know them all,” he gasped, “but I think they call the bald one Curly.”
Angel took a step back and his face hardened. “Torch his restaurant, along with anything and anyone in it,” he said to the two men. “And have him watch until it goes down. Then torch him and leave his body where it can easily be found.”
Nunzio looked at Angel, his body weak but his heart still gangster strong. “You don’t need their names,” he said. “And you don’t need to go looking for them. They’ll come find you. And when they do, my name will be the one you hear just before you die.”
21
Natalie and Boomer were sitting in the back row of an empty movie theater in the East Bronx, the wide screen in front of them covered by a thick velvet curtain. “Do they still show movies in here?” she asked. “Or is it as abandoned as it looks?”
“In her time, she was one of the greats, gave even a horrible movie a shot at looking good,” Boomer said. “She’s older now, but she can still kick it. The owner runs retrospectives during the week and Spanish-only movies on weekends.”
Natalie rested her head against the back of the battered old theater chair, then lifted her legs and crossed them over the top of the seat in front of her. She was dressed in a thin black leather jacket that partially hid a black cotton shirt, blue jeans sharp, and crisp black leather boots that reached just above her ankles. Her full black hair shielded her face, rich dark eyes shining like a cat’s under the theater lights. She was the most lethal woman Boomer had ever met, and the most beautiful.
“I love movies,” she said to him. “So did my father. We would watch as many as three a week. That was our time together—like you and your father and the fishing boat.”
“I don’t know much about Russian movies,” Boomer said. “They any good?”
“A few are great,” she said, “but there isn’t much in the way of money to get many of them made. So I grew up watching mostly American and British movies.”
“You see them on television, you mean?”
“There are only two channels worth watching in Russia, and neither one shows movies,” Natalie said, giving Boomer a warm smile and clutching his hand in hers. “No, we got our movies the way we get everything else in my country—on the black market. We lead the planet in bootleg movies, and my father earned quite a bit of money feeding the demand on the street for American product.”
“A crime boss and a studio boss,” Boomer said.
“Something along those lines,” Natalie said. She sat up in her chair and eased in closer to Boomer. “Let me see how compatible we really are. If you had to pick, which would you choose and why? Bogart or Cagney?”
“Cagney,” Boomer said. “He not only acted it, he lived it, too. Bogart was great, don’t read me wrong, but he was only pretending to be tough. Cagney was the real.”
“The Beatles or the Rolling Stones?” she asked.
“You got them over there, too?” he asked.
“You make it, we steal it,” Natalie said. “Now pick.”
“The Stones,” Boomer said. “I like their music and their style. The only Beatle I ever cared for was Lennon. He seemed to have a core, even if it was a bit skewered when he hooked up with the screamer.”
“No one seems to like Yoko,” Natalie said with a warm smile. “Not here and not in my country. Some women just hit you a certain way and it sticks forever.”
“John seemed to like her,” Boomer said. “And he was the only one she really needed to impress.”
“Now here it comes,” Natalie said, “the
true test. Frank Sinatra or Dean Martin?”
“The Rat Pack, too,” Boomer said. “Now stealing them from us, that’s a crime.”
“If anyone would appreciate it,” Natalie said, “they would. So which of the two sits in your corner?”
“There’s no splitting those two up,” Boomer said. “In my mind, they come at you as a package. Frank runs the pack, but they’re both sitting on the top shelf, by themselves. Still, there is a time when Frank does take a little bit of a lead.”
“Which is when?” Natalie asked.
“I got my head down, a dark day behind me and a dark night ahead, it’s Sinatra’s voice I want coming off my radio,” Boomer said. “Nobody—and I mean nobody—deals with the hook and jab of pain and loneliness the way he does. Those are the only moments I give Sinatra the edge. Other than that, they come in as one and one-A in my little book.” Natalie stood, shoved her hands in the slit pockets of her leather jacket, and looked down at Boomer.
“So,” he said, gazing up at her, “did I pass the pop quiz or do I need to sign up for a refresher course?”
“There was no right or wrong,” Natalie said. “There were only answers.”
“And what story did those answers tell you?” he asked.
“You’re stubborn, like to go your own way, and don’t want to be told what to do by anybody,” she said.
“Are those good traits or bad, you figure?” Boomer asked.
“Excellent, at least from where I stand,” Natalie said, stepping out into the aisle and turning up toward an exit sign partially hidden by a low-hanging curtain. “Tells me all it is I need to know.”
“Which is what, exactly?” Boomer asked.
“We are more alike than either of us would want to think,” Natalie said. “And you will need my help against the crews you’re going to fight. And when you do come to me and ask for it, that help will be there.”
“And what if I never ask?” Boomer said. “What do you take away from that?”
“That I overestimated Angel and the G-Men and their ability to take out a band of rogues,” Natalie said with a shrug. “And I also underestimated the damage a man like you could do.”
“Would you be disappointed if that were to happen?”
“No,” Natalie said as she moved toward the exit sign, wrapping an arm around Boomer’s back. “I would be impressed.”
“If we leave now, we’ll miss the movie,” Boomer said. “They got a good one today. Cagney in White Heat.”
Natalie looked at Boomer, her sleek body sheathed in shadow. “He dies at the end of that, am I right?” she asked.
“Dies big-time,” Boomer said.
“I hate sad endings,” Natalie said. “I always like the movie so much better when the bad guys walk away with a win.”
“I always root for the cops, myself,” Boomer said. “From when I was a kid to now. It seemed the right way to go.”
“Well,” she said, “I’m rooting for a cop now.”
22
Rev. Jim brought the dark blue sedan to a stop at the red light, the harsh rays of a setting sun hitting his windshield, the rattle of the elevated subway drowning out a Bob Dylan song playing on the radio. He glanced in the rearview mirror and then turned to Ash, sitting shotgun. “There are four of them in the lead car,” he said. “The white van behind them with the goods should have two in the front and two more in the rear. That means, if nothing else, you better be as good with a gun in your hand as I think I am.”
“Okay if I ask you a stupid question?” Ash asked.
“If this is the part where I’m supposed to say there’s no such thing as a stupid question, then you’re in the wrong car,” Rev. Jim said, inching the car forward on White Plains Road as the overhead light shifted to green. “But ask anyway.”
“I’ll keep it short,” Ash said. “We’re supposed to take their van—which, if our intel is on the money, is jammed tight with the hottest high-grade street coke on the market. Am I right, so far?”
“Perfect score,” Rev. Jim said. “Just as an FYI, though, the street calls the new brand of coke Terminator. A couple of sleigh-ride hits on the pipe and you’ll be back for more.”
“If that’s the case, then why are we in the lead car?” Ash said. “I realize I’m one of the new kids on the Apache block, but wouldn’t it make just a little bit more sense if we were the ones chasing them?”
“We are chasing them, Ash,” Rev. Jim said, doing a quick eye check on the slow-moving traffic that was working both sides of the wide avenue. “We’re just riding the pace car for now. We’re about three blocks away from the next light, and that’s when I’ll make a quick right-hand that will put us smack in the heart of Gasoline Alley—and that’s when all the fun should start.”
“That’s where the money end of the deal is supposed to be waiting,” Ash said. “Which should put four more guns, at the very least, aimed right at us. And here I sit, up front and all smiles, stuck in the middle with you.”
“Can’t ask for much more than that out of any one day,” Rev. Jim said. “Best seats in the house, action ready to rain on us from both ends of the street, good against bad, and a small bushel of lives on the line.”
Ash looked in the side-view mirror and then turned back to Rev. Jim. “They’re riding so close to the bumper they might as well be in our back seat,” she said. “That could mean they’ve already fingered us for trouble or they just drive like shit.”
“Little bit of both is where I would toss my five-dollar chip,” Rev. Jim said. “Not that it matters all that much what the hell they think. In less than a minute, we will remove any trace of the unknown.”
Rev. Jim turned a sharp right at the corner of East 241st Street and White Plains Road and gunned the eight-cylinder engine to full throttle. Overhead, the IRT number 2 train screeched to a halt, making the last stop on the East Bronx line before its return trip to Manhattan. Ash pulled two .38 Specials from her shoulder holster and took a deep breath. “Don’t worry about keeping the wheel steady, which will be hard enough to do on these streets, especially as you rev it up,” she said to Rev. Jim. “I’ll get a clear shot at the driver, and I’ll get it no matter how much you swerve.”
“Good to know, Batgirl,” Rev. Jim said, bouncing from one large crater-size pothole to another. “But keep your head down all the same, because aim won’t mean much once we get in tighter quarters. They’ll be pegging eight shots to your two.”
Rev. Jim shifted gears and turned the car onto a dead-end street, veering toward a double-gated open-air chop shop, three sedans parked in a semicircle two hundred yards beyond the chain-link fence. The two cars and a battered white van were several feet away from his tailpipe, thin clouds of smoke coming off their rear tires, two men holding semis in both hands doing a half-hang outside the back windows and taking shake-and-bake aim at the hard-chugging unmarked just ahead of them. “This isn’t the Indy 500, Ash,” Rev. Jim said to her, “so don’t be waiting for anybody to come out swinging a checkered flag giving you the go sign.”
A stream of bullets sprayed the street close to the car, two of them pinging off the trunk of the unmarked. “Stay cool, Rev.,” Ash said, her voice as calm as her outward demeanor. “Just keep your eyes on the road and give me a shout a couple of ticks before you blast through that chain-link.”
“Where are you going to be while I’m doing all the heavy lifting?” he asked. “Or you one of those Annie Oakley cops likes to put on a blindfold before she shoots off a few rounds? Just to show me how much better your aim is than mine.”
“It’s a little stuffy in here, with your Taco Bell smell,” she said. “So I thought I’d go out and get myself some air.”
Ash jammed the .38 Specials into her waistband and lifted the door handle, using her right foot to swing it out wide. She eased herself out of the car, stepped on the rocker panels, and then propped her feet on the open windowsill. Three bullets rang past her as she bent her knees and hoisted herself onto the roof
of the car, resting flat on the curved surface, fingers stretched out and wrapped around the thin edges of the beat-up Chevy’s upper body. The lead chase vehicle was close enough for her to see the faces of the men sitting up front and the two in the rear hanging out through the open window slots, their semis pointed in her direction. “How’s the weather up there?” Rev. Jim shouted, slicing close to a parked car and avoiding a pothole the size of a moon crater.
“Cut the cute and jam on that horn before you ram the fence,” Ash shouted back, releasing one hand from the upper lip of the car and pulling a .38 Special from her waistband. The harsh wind whipped her hair across her eyes, partially blocking her view. Two-story dump warehouses, with their graffiti-riddled doors rolled open, mingled in working-class discomfort with aluminum-sided mom-and-pops, but they all became blurs as the two ex-cops zoomed past at a hurried clip. “Get ready,” Rev. Jim shouted. “You’re looking at less than a ten-second count.”
Ash closed her eyes and released her other hand from the side of the roof, using her sneakers as leverage to steady her body, the car swinging and swerving down the carved-up street, aimed dead straight for the gates of the chop shop. She pulled the second gun from her waistband and pointed them out toward the chase car. She opened her eyes and pressed her fingers to the triggers.
The car smashed through the gates, sending pieces of lock and links flying, front tires and bumper landing hard against a three-foot break in the ground and setting off a series of sparks as it rose back up. Ash’s legs swung to the right and dangled off the front side of the car, partially blocking Rev. Jim’s view as he kept a hard grip on the steering wheel. Ash had fired off ten rounds and three had found their mark, wounding the driver of the chase car with one and killing the shooter in the front seat with the other two. The chase car veered to the right, slowing its pace, the two men in the back popping open the doors and joining the hunt on foot, semis clutched in their hands. The van came up alongside the unmarked, its back doors open wide, two men with shotguns bracing their bodies against the rusty walls, waiting for a chance to pump out a stream of bullets against the two Apaches.