• • •
GERONIMO WAS ON his knees, a short wire in his hand, a thick ball of plastique stuck to the door lock leading into the apartment. Mrs. Columbo and Pins were against the wall on either side of him, guns drawn, eyes on the stairwell and the other apartment doors.
“You going to make this?” Mrs. Columbo asked, looking down, watching Geronimo circle the coil wire into the plastique.
“It’s easier taking them apart, that’s for sure,” Geronimo said, his voice as calm as his manner.
“How long’s that fuse gotta burn for?” Pins asked.
“Ten seconds.” Geronimo pulled a lighter from his jacket pocket and looked up at Pins. “If I did it right.”
“What if you didn’t do it right?” Pins said with just a bit of an edge. “And it doesn’t blow?”
“Then we knock,” Geronimo said, “and hope they let us in.”
• • •
INSIDE THE APARTMENT, Albert, the man with the knife, stared down at the cooing infant. The man across from him, the sleeves of his white shirt rolled to the elbows, rubbed a palm full of Johnson’s baby oil over the infant’s chest. Albert scratched at his chin with the pointed edge of the knife, waiting for the soft skin to finish being coated. The baby’s eyes were bright and clear blue and the man with the knife couldn’t help but smile at the child he was seconds away from slicing open.
Albert nodded to his partner, Freddie, who pressed an oily hand across the baby’s mouth, silencing his coo. The other men in the kitchen continued with the mundane task of wrapping cocaine, taping it shut, and preparing it for transfer.
As the blade of the knife touched the baby’s breastbone, Albert’s eyes focused, his hands as steady as a surgeon’s. He looked up at his partner across from him, felt Freddie’s hand press down harder on the baby’s mouth, saw him nod and smile with anticipation.
“Do him, Albeit,” Freddie said. “Do him now.”
“I don’t know how much more of this I can do,” Albert said back. “I’m startin’ to see their faces in my dreams.”
“Now,” Freddie said. “Otherwise, we’re gonna miss our plane and then somebody’s gonna have to fly up here to do us. Dream about that.”
“This is my last one,” Albert told him. “I swear to God, it’s my last one.”
“Then make it your best one,” Freddie said.
• • •
THE FRONT DOOR blew out and exploded into six large chunks, taking out parts of the wall on both sides. Plaster, shards of tile, and blasts of dust whirled past the small foyer and out into the kitchen. The shudder of the bomb shook the apartment to its foundation and sent the men by the kitchen sink scrambling for cover.
Albert fell across the table, the front half of his body on top of the baby, the knife slipping from his hand to the floor. Freddie fell over backward, hitting his head against a plate shelf, a thin line of blood coloring the back of his neck.
Sprawled on the floor against cracked walls and toppled tables, the men were still quick enough to recover, drawing and cocking double-action revolvers, holding them out, arms extended.
Albert lifted himself from the table and grabbed the baby with one arm. He turned and looked toward the dust. His eyes made out three figures standing in front of where the door had been thirty seconds earlier. He planted his feet, aimed his gun, and fired off four rounds. The three shadows scattered, hidden by the safety net of dust and debris.
“Shit. I hate this,” Pins muttered, crunched down in a corner of the foyer, using the top of a small end table as his shield. “You think they’d want to know who they’re shooting at before they start to blast away.”
“They know who we are,” Geronimo said, flat down on the stained linoleum floor, his .38 Special held forward with both hands. “We’re the guys who just blew up half their fuckin’ apartment.”
“I told you that would only go and make them mad,” Mrs. Columbo said. Her back was against the doorjamb, her legs up, gun aimed and pointed through the haze.
“I figure it’s too late to apologize,” Geronimo said, checking his watch and trying to make out the faces in the smoke and the dark. “So stay ready. Thirty seconds till Boomer.”
• • •
BOOMER AND DEAD-EYE both flinched when they heard the blast. But they held their position on the fire escape, waiting the agreed-upon ninety seconds for the dust to clear and for Geronimo, Pins, and Mrs. Columbo to stake out a solid post. The glass above them had cracked from the explosion, but they could still see into the kitchen to watch the men regroup. Albert held the baby in one arm, clearly more for his own protection than that of the child.
“You feeling young yet?” Boomer asked Dead-Eye, who was pulling his guns from their holsters.
“Young enough to be in love,” Dead-Eye told him.
Boomer lifted the kitchen window to waist level with the heel of one hand, letting out gusts of white smoke. He crouched down, pointing his gun into the open window. “Then it’s time to show them we’re back.”
“And find out if anybody gives a shit,” Dead-Eye said, following him in.
• • •
REV. JIM HEARD the rumble of the explosion and sat up, waiting for Gregor to bolt from his car. He had both his guns aimed at the back of the man’s head, expecting him to jump out and hit the stairs to the house at full pace. Instead, Gregor held his place, cigar still stuck in the corner of his mouth, the interior of his car awash in smoke.
If the explosion didn’t faze him, the quick clips of the four shots that came from Albert’s gun made Gregor sit bolt upright behind the steering wheel. He rolled his window down, stuck his head out, and looked up at the apartment. His neck was glazed with sweat, his mouth was dry, yet he let the gun on the passenger seat rest there untouched. This was not part of the deal. He hadn’t left Greece to be buried in America.
Gregor pulled his head back into the car, tossed the cigar on the sidewalk, rolled up the window, turned the ignition over, and pulled out of his parking spot. Rev. Jim smiled as he watched him speed off into the Queens night. Then he hopped out of the Gremlin, guns in hand, heading for the door of the apartment building. Rev. Jim turned and glanced down the street, the red taillights of Gregor’s car still in his line of sight. He wondered if maybe the frightened driver with the hunger for American dollars just didn’t have the right idea after all.
At least, this one night, he wasn’t going to die.
• • •
BOOMER CAME ROLLING out of the window and clicked off two rounds, hitting Freddie in the right shoulder and chest, sending him sprawling back to the floor. Dead-Eye, fast behind Boomer, jumped out of a crouched postion right behind Albert, jamming the barrels of both guns on the sides of his neck.
“That baby gets upset,” Dead-Eye whispered in his ear, “your head’s gonna roll out the door.”
Geronimo and Mrs. Columbo fired eight rounds at the two men by the sink, three of the bullets clipping kitchen cabinets and lodging inside thick wall beams. Five bullets found their mark and sent the men sprawling to the ground.
Rev. Jim stood in the doorway, legs spread, two guns aimed into the apartment, looking for any movement. He exchanged a quick glance with Pins, who still held his position behind the end table, his gun by his side.
“Take the drugs,” Albert said in a calm voice, seemingly unfazed by the shooting and the massacred bodies around him. “Take whatever you want.”
“You heard the man,” Boomer said, nodding to the four Apaches by the door. “Take the drugs.”
Mrs. Columbo and Geronimo immediately holstered their guns as they walked toward the sink and the thick piles of cocaine. They took out Swiss Army knives, stepped around the bodies lying faceup on the ground, and sliced the cellophane packs down the center. Then they dumped the kilos into the sink, turned on the faucets, and let cold water take the powder down the drain.
“That’s more than two hundred thousand you’re throwin’ away,” Albert said. He sounded more dis
tressed over the disposal of the cocaine than over the loss of the lives around him.
“What’s the time?” Boomer asked.
“We got three minutes till the cops show,” Pins said, the gun in his hand now replaced by a police scanner that allowed him to pick up all monitored calls. “Maybe a few seconds less.”
Boomer walked over to stand across from Albert. He looked into Albert’s eyes, then over at the baby, legs wiggling, calm amid a sea of smoke, blood, and death.
“Are there clothes for the baby?” Boomer asked.
“In the bedroom.” Albert nodded as Mrs. Columbo headed into the back room.
“Who the hell are you?” Albert asked, his eyes focused now on Boomer.
“I got the clothes,” Mrs. Columbo said, coming back from the bedroom holding an armful of small blue pajamas, diapers, a T-shirt the size of a handkerchief, and tissue-thin white lace socks. “Now all I need is the baby to put in them.”
“You heard the lady.” Dead-Eye moved his guns from Albert’s neck to the insides of his ears. “She wants the baby.”
“One minute,” Pins said. “We better motor-out now. You can’t count on them being right on time.”
Boomer took the baby from Albert’s arms and handed him to Mrs. Columbo. “Put him under your jacket,” he told her. “You can dress him in the car.”
Dead-Eye pulled the guns from Albert’s ears and holstered them. Boomer took one last look around the apartment, then nodded to the others. They left through the open window, Geronimo first, followed by Pins, Mrs. Columbo, the baby, and Rev. Jim. Dead-Eye stood with one leg on the fire escape and the other on the kitchen linoleum.
“He lives?” Dead-Eye asked Boomer, nodding toward Albert.
“He lives,” Boomer said with a smile, still looking at Albert. “Just long enough to tell Lucia what happened.”
For the first time all night, Albert’s eyes betrayed him. Hearing Lucia’s name washed away the cold facade of the career criminal. Now there was only fear.
“She’s going to love to hear how you stood there and watched two strangers flush two hundred thou of her drugs down a kitchen sink,” Boomer said, walking away from Albert and putting a leg out through the open window. “I can’t figure if she’ll have you shot or beaten to death. But, then again, you know her better than I do.”
Boomer climbed out the window, but as he started to close it he leaned his head in. “The cops sure as shit aren’t gonna believe your story either,” Boomer said to Albert. “Whatever that story is gonna be. You have a good night now.”
Boomer closed the window behind him and disappeared into the darkness, leaving Albert standing in an apartment filled only with the dead. He listened as police sirens wailed in the distance. His future was now as clear to him as the bodies that lay sprawled by his side.
• • •
LUCIA PUT THE receiver back in its cradle and stared down at the phone for several minutes. The midday Arizona sun filtered through the open screen doors, the gleam off the swimming pool casting her face in its warm glow. Her hair was wet and pulled back tight; gold clips held two curled-up buns in place. She stood in the center of her living room, tanned and glistening with sweat, the straps of her two-piece designer bathing suit hanging loose from her shoulders, a calm woman at peace with herself and her surroundings.
Only her eyes and her shallow breathing betrayed the rage within.
Lucia ran a manicured hand over the smooth surface of the phone as if caressing the arm of a lover. She then reached down with both hands, lifted the phone off the polished wood coffee table, and with four violent tugs yanked it free from its wall socket. She spun around and threw the phone across the room, past the open screen doors. With a splash it landed in the shallow end of her forty-foot swimming pool.
The noise brought in her two bodyguards, who’d been sunning themselves by the edge of the deck.
“Get us on a plane,” she told them, her voice eerily quiet. “The next one out.”
“Out where?” asked the bodyguard with the trim black goatee and a tattoo of Lucia’s face on his right forearm.
“New York.” Lucia stood, legs apart, hands folded on her hips, staring out at the pool. “I want to be there by tonight.”
“We takin’ cargo?” the other bodyguard asked. He was as burly and muscular as the first, with a sharp razor cut and a long, ragged scar running down his hairless chest.
“No.” Lucia turned her gaze toward him. “No cargo. But arrange to have some of your tools shipped ahead. We may have to fix a few items.”
The two bodyguards nodded and left the room to tend to their tasks. Lucia paced about in bare feet, sun still beaming off her face, forcing herself to regain focus. The raid on the drug den in Queens was the first move ever attempted against her crew, and its wake left much more than a bitter taste. It left behind questions. And in the drug business, questions were as dangerous as a loaded weapon.
The team that made the hit on the apartment were pros. No prints had been left behind. The shell casings came out of the chambers of street guns. They had their timing down, from the bomb latched to the door to the precision shooting. These weren’t the actions of either low-level dealers looking to ice a big score or a renegade outfit tied into an existing crew. Albert would have picked up on those. He had been in the drug trade long enough to have done business with everybody working the streets, from first-rate groups to bottom-tier wannabes.
Lucia lit a cigarette and walked out onto the sun-bleached deck, blowing a stream of smoke into the hot desert air. She sat down and placed her feet in the crystal-blue chlorinated water, calmer now than she had been since Albert called her with the news. She lifted her face to the sun and played the heist over in her mind as it was relayed to her.
Other than walking out with the baby, the thieves hadn’t stolen anything. They had washed two hundred thousand in cocaine down a sink without even a second’s hesitation. So it wasn’t money or drugs that piqued their interest. And they certainly didn’t need to shoot their way into a Queens apartment to steal a baby she had paid a hooker $600 for three months earlier.
No, there was a professional logic to the attack.
That meant it was personal.
Whoever it was, they were coming after Lucia and they weren’t being coy. They wanted her to know. Maybe they were backed by somebody bigger or maybe they were lone wolves out looking for a name to match the bravado. Or maybe it went even deeper.
Maybe someone Lucia had touched, a young girl perhaps, or the relative of a child, now wanted to touch her back.
It didn’t really matter to her. She would do all that she could to find them and erase them from sight. Lucia Carney was sitting on the crest of a six-hundred-million-dollar mountaintop and had come too far over too many long nights to let anybody throw her off.
The group that shot up the safe house had come out gunning for a battle.
Lucia was going to give them a war.
She tossed the cigarette into the clean pool, looked down at her reflection, and smiled, once again a happy woman.
The smell of death was in the air.
15
BOOMER LEANED THE back of his chair against the wall and watched Mrs. Columbo feed the baby a bottle of warm formula. The other Apaches sat around a table in the main dining room at Nunzio’s, nursing their drinks and replaying the actions of the night over in their minds.
“You look good with a baby in your arms,” Boomer said, smiling.
“It’s been a long time since I held one this close.”
She thought back to when Frankie was the same age as the baby she held, Joe following the two of them everywhere they went, armed with a smile and a camera. It was a happy time for all three, filled only with warm feelings. She wished they could someday get back to that.
Boomer held his smile and stared at Mrs. Columbo and the baby, thinking only about what might have been.
“You make the call to social services yet?” Geronimo asked. r />
“We don’t need social services.” Boomer answered the question without looking away from Mrs. Columbo, the baby serene and content in her arms.
“You sure as shit got a full plate planned out for us, Boomer,” Rev. Jim said. “We break a drug ring and we babysit. You can’t find a squad like us anywhere.”
“We look like a couple to you guys?” Boomer walked over to Mrs. Columbo and put his arm around her.
“A couple of what?” Pins asked, finishing off a glass of tap beer.
“I’d buy into it,” Dead-Eye said, understanding without being told what Boomer was really asking. “Married since high school, two other kids grown and out of the house, money a little short, and then, the last thing you need, a surprise baby.”
“Is that what you doormen do with all your days?” Rev. Jim asked him. “Watch soaps?”
“I work nights,” Dead-Eye said. “And I listen to the radio.”
“Me and the wife here got ourselves a kid we can’t afford,” Boomer said, walking slowly around the table. “We’re way low on cash and there’s no way we can keep him. But we wanna make sure our baby has a good home to grow up in and good people to raise him. So where do we go for something like that? Who we gonna turn to?”
“I’ll take Lucia for forty, Alex,” Rev. Jim said.
“Holy shit,” Pins said. “You guys are fuckin’ crazy.”
“Maybe,” Boomer said, stopping at the table between Geronimo and Pins. “But I don’t see it any other way.”
Mrs. Columbo instinctively held the baby tighter to her body. “Are you really going to sell him back to Lucia?” she asked.
“Only way to get our foot in her door,” Dead-Eye said.
“There’s a lot of layers between her and the sale,” Geronimo pointed out. “It’s not like walking into J. C. Penney’s and finding her behind the counter. Lucia’s never near the buy and always far away from the kill.”
“We take it one step at a time,” Boomer said. “We start at the bottom of her outfit and work our way up.”
“Where the hell’s the bottom?” Pins asked. “It’s not like this crew takes out ads.”