“Because you’re gonna do it again. Long distance. From the roof.”
Jack added a quaver to his voice. “N-no, wait. W-we can—”
“We can nothin’, fuck face!” He sidled in an arc to Jack’s right and cocked his head toward the door. “Move. We got us some stairs to climb.”
Jack shook his head. “N-no. I ain’t goin’.”
“Fuck you ain’t!” He stepped closer, extending the pistol toward Jack’s midsection. “Shoot you right here an’ be done with it!”
A little closer… just a little closer…
“What are you so mad about?” He jutted his chin toward the love doll on the floor. “Not like I raped your girl or nothin’!”
Scotty’s gaze flicked toward the doll. His face reddened, then whitened.
“That does it!”
The muzzle pushed forward. Jack’s hand darted out and grabbed the top of the pistol. Wrapped his fingers around the cylinder. Clutched it in a death grip.
“Hey!”
Scotty pulled on the trigger. But the cylinder had to rotate before the hammer could fall. Jack had the cylinder locked in place.
Yanked on the gun, bringing Scotty closer. The fence’s eyes wild with shock, confusion. Kept yanking on the trigger but getting no result. When Jack had him close enough, he let loose a vicious head butt, crushing Scotty’s nose. The sound of collapsing bone and cartilage echoed through Jack’s skull.
Music.
Scotty’s head snapped back. Blood flowed from his flattened nose. But he didn’t let go of the gun. So Jack reeled him back in for another butt. Scotty tried to use his free hand to fend him off. Jack slapped it aside and butted him again. Harder this time.
That did it. Scotty’s knees buckled, his grip loosened, and Jack had the pistol all to himself.
But Scotty wasn’t finished. With the loss of his weapon he became a wobbly, panicked, fist-swinging dynamo. Must have thought Jack was going to shoot him. Not the plan. Too much noise.
Ducked or blocked the fence’s wild swings until he had an opening, then slammed the pistol against the side of his skull. Opened a gash but he didn’t go down. Guy must have an iron skull. Leaped at Jack, slammed into him and got his arms around him. They went down, landing on the love doll. It popped and deflated with a loud hiss.
Scotty took a wild swing at Jack. This one connected. The flash of pain through Jack’s chin released something within him. Dropped the gun. Grabbed one of the doll’s deflated legs. Wrapped it around Scotty’s throat and pulled. Felt a fierce joy, building toward exaltation, then rapture, finally exploding into a black consuming ecstasy as he tightened the plastic noose further and further—
Until he heard a small, weak, strangled voice whimper, “Please… you’re killin’ me… please… killin’…”
Jack stopped and saw Scotty’s face. Felt the dark joy boil away. Let go and backed off, scrabbling away on palms and heels. And sat and stared at what he’d done.
A pressure built in his chest, then released. He heard a sound like a sob. And realized it had come from him.
Jesus, what’s wrong with me?
The fence opened his left eye—the right was swollen shut—and looked at Jack.
“You crying?” he croaked. “You beat the shit outta me and almost choke me t’death and then you cry about it? Motherfuck, what’s wrong with you?”
Jack wished he knew. He closed his eyes and felt tears squeeze between the lids.
He opened them to find the fence sneaking a hand toward the pistol lying on the floor between them. Jack stomped on the hand with the heel of his boot and heard a bone snap. The fenced wailed as he snatched it back and cradled it on his chest.
Jack sobbed again.
* * *
WEDNESDAY
1
The New York City Morgue… in the basement of Bellevue Hospital…
I’m seeing far too much of this place, Jack thought.
Just six weeks or so ago he’d walked this same hallway. The tiled walls and floor drains looked too familiar.
He’d picked up Tom at the hotel and they cabbed over. Jack would have preferred walking. It would take longer. He wasn’t in any hurry to see his father’s corpse. Again.
“That’s one hell of a welcome sign they’ve got back there,” Tom whispered as they followed an attendant. Something about this place made you whisper.
“Welcome sign? Where?”
Tom jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Back there. It says Hic locus est ubi mors gaudet succurrere vitae.”
“Which means?”
“It’s Latin. ‘Here is where death delights to teach the living.’“
“You know Latin?”
“I’ve picked up some. Unavoidable in my profession. A dead language comes in handy when you want to confound and confuse the hoi polloi. Hence its use by lawyers and doctors.”
Jack noticed that Tom’s ruddy complexion of yesterday and earlier this morning had faded to gray. His skin glistened with a sheen of sweat that reflected the harsh overhead fluorescents.
“You all right?”
Tom nodded. “Yeah. Fine.” A heartbeat later he shook his head. “No. Not really. This has all been abstract until now. Surreal. Like a fever dream. Ever since you called I could almost pretend it hadn’t really happened. But after filling out those papers…”
“Now it all becomes real.”
It was already real for Jack. He’d seen Dad lying on the air terminal floor, seen the blood, his slack face, his dead eyes… all without a grace period to brace himself.
Tom swallowed. “I’ll be okay. I’ve seen dead bodies before. It’s just that none of them was my father.”
Just then Jack spotted a painfully thin guy with pale, shoulder-length hair and a goatee coming their way. He wore green scrubs.
Oh, hell. Ron Clarkson. One of the attendants. Maybe he wouldn’t see—
“Jack?” Ron smiled. “What’re you doing here, man? You’re getting to be a regular.”
Jack kept walking. “Here to pick up somebody.”
“One of our boarders?”
“Yeah.”
Ron fell into step with him. “Which one? Maybe I can—”
“Thanks, Ron.” He pointed to the other attendant walking two steps ahead of him. “It’s all taken care of.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Ron… this is a private thing. I appreciate your concern, but everything is arranged, okay?”
“Okay, man. But you need anything, you let me know, okay?”
“Right.”
If paid enough, Ron would do just about anything. And on those rare occasions when Jack needed a body part for a fix-it, Ron supplied it. For cash.
Ron turned and continued on in his original direction.
Tom glanced over his shoulder at the retreating figure. “You know people here?”
“Just him.”
“What was that crack about being a regular?”
“I had to… identify someone last month.”
“Really? Who?”
“Just somebody.”
“You were a bit rough on him, don’t you think?”
“He’s a nosy busybody.”
Jack hadn’t wanted Ron to know that the “boarder” he was picking up was his father. Ron would then know Jack’s real last name. That used to matter a lot—he hadn’t wanted anyone from his past to find his present, and no one in his present to know his past—not for his sake but for his family’s. Now, with his past encroaching on the present, he didn’t know if it mattered much. Still, better to keep things the way they were, especially where a weasel like Ron Clarkson was concerned.
Up ahead the attendant pushed through a pair of swinging doors and held one open for them. Jack propelled his brother ahead of him. Tom had completed all the paperwork upstairs. All that remained now was the official identification of the body and a final signature—Tom’s.
As he stepped into the room, Jack heard a voice to his left.
> “Jack? That you?”
Who now?
He turned and saw Joey Castles standing by a gurney as an attendant zipped up a black body bag. He was short, maybe five-five, Jack’s age, with black hair and dark eyes; the surname on his birth certificate had not been “Castles.” He wore a black sport coat, gray slacks, and a black polo shirt. His hair, usually blow-dry perfect and sprayed granite hard, was in disarray today. His eyes looked red and puffy.
Jack stepped closer and extended his hand.
“Joey. Jeez, what happened? Who—?”
His Adam’s apple worked, his voice sounded choked. “Frankie… the La Guardia thing.”
Jack gave his hand an extra squeeze.
“Oh, no. Christ, I’m sorry.”
Joey and his brother Frankie came from a long line of scammers, most prominent among them their father, Frank Castellano Sr.
“He was coming back from visiting Dad—he’s got this big place in the Keys—and I was supposed to pick him up but I was late and…”
The words choked off.
“How’s your dad taking it?”
Joey shook his head. “You ever hear a grown man cry? Especially your father. It’s…” He shook his head again. “A son shouldn’t have to hear that. And a father shouldn’t have to hear that his oldest son was shot down like a dog on his way home from visiting him. Merda! You know what kind of guilt he’s going through?”
“Yeah, I know,” Jack said.
Joey looked at him. “You in the same boat? Who?”
Jack hesitated, then decided he could trust Joey with the truth. Joey wasn’t a nosy sort? and didn’t know or care enough about Jack to check it out.
“My dad.”
“Oh, shit, Jack. Fucking shit. I’m sorry.”
“Yeah.”
Joey’s features hardened. “You know that story going ‘round about cyanide bullets? True.”
Jack felt his gut tighten. “How do you know?”
“Got a connection who got a little look-see at some reports and says it was cyanide-filled hollow-points.” His features tightened, his lips drew into a tight line. “Frankie got clipped in the shoulder, Jack. That’s all. He might’ve lived through that whole mess he hadn’t been poisoned too.” Joey bared his teeth. “Wrath of Allah can kiss my ass. Like to show them where they can stick their—”
“Whoa. Wrath of Allah? What’s that?”
“Didn’t you hear? Some group of stronzos called the Times and the three networks this morning saying they did it and that’s only the beginning. They’re gonna keep it up till the enemies of God and helpers of Satan are cleansed from the face of the earth. Or some such shit.”
Jack hadn’t turned on the TV this morning. He’d figured they’d only be talking about today being a national day of mourning and he’d heard all he wanted to about that.
He squeezed his eyes shut. So it was an Arab thing after all…
“Jeez.”
He felt a bloom of rage, but Joey was way ahead of him.
“Dirty, rat-fucking—”
“Hey, Jack?” Tom’s voice behind him.
Jack turned and saw his brother, face whiter than ever, lips almost blue, motioning him over.
“They’re bringing him out and I don’t want to do this alone.”
As Jack stepped away, Joey gave his upper arm a squeeze. “Hang in there, Jack. And don’t take off right away. Got a little something I want to talk to you about.”
Jack nodded and moved toward Tom, thinking about cyanide bullets. Dad had caught one in his thigh, a flesh wound that under normal circumstances would—
Listen to me… “normal circumstances”… shit, what was normal about being shot while waiting for your baggage?
He had little doubt that Dad, like Frankie Castles, would have survived a wound like that from a normal bullet.
Jack’s jaw muscles ached from clenching his teeth as he stood next to Tom and watched them wheel out a body bag on a gurney. The attendant, a black guy with short spiky dreads, looked bored. Jack wanted to punch him.
He steeled himself as the guy grabbed the zipper tab and pulled. When he’d opened an eighteen-inch gap, he spread the sides to reveal someone’s head.
For an awful instant Jack thought it might not be Dad, that somehow his body had been misidentified or gone missing or been spirited away. But no, there he was. He looked better than yesterday, his eyes closed, his mouth shut, his features more composed.
But still very dead.
Jack heard the air whoosh out of Tom.
“Oh, shit,” he croaked. “Oh, shit, it’s him. It’s really him.”
Jack said nothing. He couldn’t.
* * *
2
When they stepped outside, the sky was as clear and blue as Gia’s eyes, but the wind flowing down First Avenue had developed a cold, sharp edge.
“What next?” Tom said.
“I have to call the Knight Funeral Home. Soon as I confirm the body’s been released, they’ll send a car to pick him up and take him back to Johnson.”
Tom sighed. “I guess that’s the best course. Bury him next to Mom.”
Jack looked at him. “Was there ever a question in your mind?”
“Until now there’s never been a reason for the question to be in my mind.”
“Yeah. I hear you.”
He looked around and saw Joey Castles waiting down on the sidewalk. Despite the wind he looked comfortable inside a full-length black leather coat.
Jack turned to Tom as they reached the bottom of the steps. “Wait here. I need to talk to someone.”
Tom made a face. “Can’t it wait? It’s cold out here.”
Jack pointed across the sidewalk to a pushcart by the curb. A plastic banner proclaiming HOT COFFEE & BAGLES waved in the breeze.
“Maybe his coffee is better than his spelling. Give it a try while I see what this guy wants.”
“Jack,” Joey said when he came up to him. He lowered his voice as he hooked Jack’s arm and drew him closer. “You gonna do anything about this?”
Jack stiffened. “What do you mean?”
“I need payback. Need it real bad.”
Jack knew the feeling. “Don’t we all.”
“You don’t have to play cute with me. I don’t know exactly what you’re into, but I can make guesses. Word gets around and word is you ain’t no guy to mess with.”
Jack kept his underworld contacts and acquaintances in the dark as to the details of how he made his living, but every so often he’d drop hints to leave the impression that he had his hand in some smuggling and fencing with a little grift thrown in just for fun.
He shrugged. “Can’t believe everything you hear.”
Joey’s smile was tight. “Okay. Play it your way. Just let me know you hear anything. You decide to mix it up, I want in on the damage. Big time.”
Jack slapped him on the upper arm. “You’ll be the first guy I call.”
“About what?”
Jack turned and saw Tom standing behind his right shoulder, sipping coffee from a paper cup.
Joey smiled. “This guy’s got to be your brother, right?”
Jack felt as if he’d been slapped.
“What? Yeah. Joey, Tom. Tom, Joey Castles.” As they shook hands Jack said, “How come he’s ‘got to be’ my brother?”
Joey’s eyebrows shot up. “You kidding? Like peas in a pod, man. Shit, you two could be identical twins except for, well, I mean, okay, Tom here is a little older and a little, um, bigger—”
A lot bigger, Jack wanted to say.
“—but no question you’re brothers. Hey, what’re you looking at me like that for? You can’t see it?”
Jack shook his head and glanced at Tom who was shaking his head.
“I’m better looking,” Tom said. “But what’ll you be the first to know about?”
Joey stared at Tom. “You want in? You may look like Jack, but can you hack what he hacks?” He grinned. “Hey. I’m a poet.”
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“‘Hack’?”