Chasers

by Lorenzo Carcaterra

  “So it’s only personal, then,” he said, “if my lips are reading you the right way.”

  “Very,” Boomer said. “Personal is the only road I take these days. I have no time for anything else.”

  The pockmarked man sat quietly for a few minutes and then smiled across at Boomer, exposing a bottom rung of tobacco-stained teeth. “I go in wrong on this, I’ll be the first to get iced,” he said. “I know you may not give a flying fuck, but it is something that gives me pause.”

  “And you could sit there, sell me a line of cheap shit, and slide out of the booth with the full intent of dropping me in a waste disposal,” Boomer said. “We take chances every day, more of them in this line than in most, but if you don’t make a move then you got nothing to prove.”

  “How good is that pie you been munching on?” the pockmarked man asked.

  “The best you’ll ever have this side of a mother’s kitchen,” Boomer said. “Toss in a fresh cup of brew and you got yourself a deal that’s sealed in the heavens. Or, in your case, in hell.”

  19

  The interior of the shuttered pizzeria and the condemned tenement had undergone a radical makeover in less than a week’s time. A double coat of Benjamin Moore and some crisp two-by-four planks gave the walls a fresh new feel. Office equipment filled the center of the two large rooms, computer screens, printers, and fax machines eating up large chunks of the open floor space. A map of the city with pushpins dominated the wall closest to the still functioning pizza oven, and police reports, BOLO requests, case files, and rap sheets were spread out across four oak tables situated in the center of the room. A multiline phone bank covered the front counter. “The top two floors should be ready in a day or so,” Boomer said to the rest of the team. “And that should give us all we need to work out of here twenty-four-seven until this is at an end.”

  “So what happened?” Quincy asked. “You guys hit a Home Depot and didn’t clue me in?”

  “We got friends on the construction end of the ledger,” Dead-Eye said. “And they have a few friends who know where to get computers and printers. Put it all together and we end up making chicken salad out of chicken shit.”

  “I hope we have a friend who’s an exterminator,” Rev. Jim said. “I just checked out the basement and stepped into the middle of a rat convention.”

  “I got a cousin coming in early next week,” Dead-Eye said. “The guy’s killed so many rats they had wanted posters made up of the little bastard.”

  Boomer pulled back a chair and sat at one of the oak tables, large coffee mug in his right hand, Buttercup fast on his heel. Quincy and Ash followed the lead and sat across from him. Dead-Eye and Rev. Jim leaned against the wall closest to the group. Boomer took a long sip of his coffee and gazed up at the faces around him. “We’ve put it all out there now,” he said. “We’re juggling more balls than a circus act, but it’s the only way I can figure for us to at least make Angel flinch the second he hears our names.”

  “We’re giving out trust to a lot of people who probably shouldn’t be trusted at all,” Quincy said. “I mean, okay, the G-Men pit boss claims they’ll fly around us in circles, let us do our damage. It doesn’t mean that they’ll hold to that position.”

  “And it also doesn’t mean they’re right now not sitting across a table from Angel halfway to working a sellout,” Ash said. “We butted heads with these crews while we were on the job, even put some of them behind bars for long runs. Now, all of a sudden, we’re Lucy to their Ricky. It’s a risk with plenty of damage potential to it.”

  “You’re right on target with that shot,” Dead-Eye said. “But none of us are on the job at the moment and won’t ever be again, unless the department puts out the word and sets up a disabled unit. We have to deal with the real of the here and now, which means we reach out to any hands, clean or marked, that help put our asses in the end zone.”

  “All the while happily ignoring the clear fact that we can’t trust any of the people we’re standing next to?” Quincy asked. “That any one of these bastards would cut our fucking necks as easy as they’d carve a late-night roast?”

  “You jump into a vat of oil, you’re bound to catch a few splatter stains,” Boomer said. “We’re playing on a hard surface here, pitting one group against another, all the while trying to make it look like we’re holding up our end of a devil’s bargain. We’re going to catch a bite in the ass somewhere on the trail, no doubt, but it’s the only way I can figure to make any of this work. Any one of you have a better road map, now’s the time to spread it out and share it. Otherwise, this is what we know and this is how we go.”

  “Best-case scenario is we bought ourselves a little time and I suggest we put it to the utmost use,” Dead-Eye said. “Angel will send his boys out gunning for us, you can bet your pensions on that. But until that dark cloud crosses our path, we need to reach in and slap at them heavy and hard. Put a fender bender in their cash flow and put a hole in their drug bag, leave them in a place where they’re running in circles just to catch up and not know whether to shit or wind their fucking watch.”

  “We’re going to split our little crew here into three teams of two,” Boomer said, reaching for one of the thick folders stacked to his left. “Not on every job, but on enough of them to cause Angel a second of pause. Let him wonder if there are more of us lined up against him than he’s been led to believe. And in every case, whenever possible, we make sure the drugs are destroyed and the cash goes missing.”

  “We’ll mix and match, depending on the operation, look to blend whatever’s left of our skills into as much of a Pearl Harbor scenario as we can muster,” Dead-Eye said. “The goal is simple: disrupt and disarm, and get away with it enough times that the evil bastard loses his cool and his focus. That happens, we will have his ass on the run.”

  “And if none of that happens?” Ash asked, skimming through a DEA folder. “What’s the lay of the land look like, then?”

  “Then game, set, match will go to Angel,” Boomer said. “And we lose both the game and probably our lives.”

  “You certainly do know how to charge up a room, Boomer,” Rev. Jim said, moving away from the wall and toward one of the large PCs. “Now, I don’t know about the rest of you guys, but I am more than ready to begin my Mission: Impossible turn at the wheel.”

  “What’s Tony Rigs bring to our team?” Quincy asked. “Other than supplying the lumber and hardware around us here in central HQ. Should we only look his way as a quiet and noble sideline benefactor? Or is he another reach-out by us to the dark side?”

  “He’s an organized-crime boss, somebody me and Dead-Eye did a rumble and a tumble with for a lot of years,” Boomer said, tossing aside the folder. “Sometimes we got the better of it and sometimes he did. And maybe down the road we might resume that battle and see where it takes us. But for now, for this particular war against this particular foe, Tony Rigs should be considered a friend. And one we can trust.”

  “He’ll step into the void when and if Angel takes the fall, whether it’s at our hands or not,” Dead-Eye said. “It’s what Tony does and who he is, and no one here is preaching a different tale. But to get to that place where he stands tall on SA turf, he will go the extra yards to ensure that we have a few helping hands at our backs.”

  “He’s a gangster, but he flows with the street rules,” Rev. Jim said. “He stepped into it in a big way for me back in my narc days. I was butting heads with a low-life dealer with some solid Upper East Side money backing his play. The guy had more connections than I had buttons on my shirts, even some high rankers down at central command.”

  “That song gets a lot of play on the jukebox,” Ash said. “It would be nice to run up someday against one of these top-tier guys who don’t have a hook deep inside the department.”

  “How did Tony come into it for you?” Dead-Eye asked. “Was the dealer moving in on his ground?”

  “Not directly,” Rev. Jim said. “He was his own best customer, it turn
ed out, and, like a lot of these clowns who toss a large chunk of their profits up their nose, his ugly side rose to the surface. He was into masks, chains, and whip sex, regardless of whether the lady on the receiving end was so inclined.”

  “Did he touch one of the young ladies in Tony’s stable?” Boomer said. “Or did he cross the line?”

  “He erased the line,” Rev. Jim said. “He tossed a few free bags of Special K coke to a group of kids winding down on their prom night in some Chelsea club. Not too many hours later, the party had ventured into the dealer’s loft a few blocks away. By the time the sun came up, we had ourselves a full-blown crime scene. There was one blood-soaked overdose, two rapes, and a beating severe enough to land one of the ladies in an emergency room, where it was more touch than go for a few hours.”

  “That should have been enough to jam him for a double-decade stretch upstate easy,” Ash said. “Or am I thinking like a Girl Scout here?”

  “Spot on, Nancy Drew,” Rev. Jim said. “Maybe in the real world that would happen, but none of us are lucky enough to live there. The scumbag got boned out by his friends with three names and a Tiffany coke box with their initials stenciled across the top. He was let off free and easy even before the ADA on the case had read either the folder or the DD-5 report. Let off by the powers that be, that is. He wasn’t counting on Tony Rigs’s heavy shadows stepping across his front door.”

  “Which one of the kids belonged to Tony Rigs?” Dead-Eye asked.

  “The girl who landed in the emergency room was his goddaughter, and you don’t need the Pope to spell out how serious Italian guys, on the legal end of the ledger or not, take that kind of shit,” Rev. Jim said. “And there’s no amount of Upper East Side bling-bling that can pull your ass out of that particular fire.”

  “Which put your dealer where?” Ash asked.

  “Depends on which body part you went looking for,” Rev. Jim said. “His head was nailed to the front door of an Upper East Side brownstone belonging to the deep-pocket dude that had paid for his lawyer. And—this has always been my favorite part of the tale—his hands were express-mailed to the dealer’s business partner. I saw it as a not-too-subtle way to imply he get his ass the fuck out of town.”

  “I have to admit,” Ash said, “I’m a sucker for happy endings.”

  Boomer shoved his chair back and walked toward a corkboard that was hanging to the right of the oak tables. There were a series of different-colored index cards pushpinned in a straight line on the board. “For the last few years, Angel has had three large shipments of coke brought into the country, each crossing the border at different entry points,” he said. “He’s no innovator when it comes to this end of the business—standard transport methods, all of which we’ve come across in our time. He prefers mules, car rocker panels, pets, dummy liners on suitcases, and double-wrapped kilos buried deep inside shipping and trucking supplies.”

  “Does he send the money back the same way?” Quincy asked.

  “Half of it, yes,” Boomer said. “The other half he has transported to a series of banks for deposit and safe houses for expenses. The entire operation, from the packing of the drugs to the return of the cash, is always done in under twenty-four hours. He likes to come in fast and go out faster.”

  “How many of his deliveries manage to get through?” Dead-Eye asked.

  “He’s at a ninety-one-percent completion ratio,” Boomer said. “Which puts him on the high side of the ledger. Some of it you can write off to luck and skill, and some to cracks in the INS and DEA stop-and-seize wall. But let’s give the credit where the credit should be given. Angel never uses the same mule more than three times. The transport cars he chooses are always owned by people with Mister Clean police files and young children they want to see stay alive. The trucks and vans are rented out by third parties or stolen from pump-and-dump operations whose owners would rather have a stroke than call in a lifted piece of equipment. Add it up and it totals out to a guy who is crazy smart but not stupid.”

  “How much does each of the hauls bring in?” Rev. Jim asked. “The ballpark on his cut—what’s it come out to be?”

  “Depends on who you believe,” Boomer said. “DEA has him running at a six-hundred-thousand-a-month profit margin. Some of the street narcs I’ve reached out to tell me the number is double that, easy. And Tony Rigs puts it at a million per, not a nickel more or less.”

  “Either way, the guy’s working off a hefty take-home,” Dead-Eye said. “And he’s not going to crack a smile if those numbers quicksand into five-digit land. Now, we flecked a few jabs his way and come away neat and clean. That’s mostly due to him not expecting to be swung at from our end. On the next beach assault, he’ll be locked in and waiting to haul us in.”

  “He figures our group to be small and underfinanced,” Boomer said. “That’s why he’s not too worried about sustaining multiple losses for too long a period. These next few days will change his thinking on that approach. And then he’ll not only look for us but try to put the puzzle pieces together and get a picture of who it is might be feeding us and run their ass through a meat grinder as well.”

  “Where is it we want him to turn his eye?” Ash asked.

  “The logical look will be toward the G-Men,” Boomer said. “He’s already getting red-flagged for encroaching on their turf, and so far he’s brought himself a little peace and quiet by dropping a few coins in their weekly collection plate. But if we pull off a few heavy-target hits these next couple of days, the padre’s going to be eager to dole out last rites to the two brothers and their crew.”

  “How do you know when the drugs are coming in? Not even DEA has wind of that,” Ash said. “Or INS, for that matter. If they did, I would be tossing out a guess and figure they’d do something about crashing that party.”

  “Most times, cops, especially on the federal level, are a lot like the open-eyed husband,” Boomer said. “Always the last to know. Not everybody’s happy to see the SAs walk into town and treat it as a suburb of their home turf. The unhappiest ones like to point and sometimes talk. If I’m lucky, I’m there to offer a degree of comfort.”

  “There are a solid half-dozen crews in the city want them out of the way,” Dead-Eye said. “And I’m talking about balls-to-the-floor unforgiving bastards with the men and the guns to back up their talk. One reason they haven’t moved to this point is that it can be to their advantage not to do anything, at least for the foreseeable.”

  “How’s that work in their favor?” Ash asked.

  “All cop attention—city, state, and federal—is pointed down South American way,” Dead-Eye said. “That leaves the Italians, Russians, and the blacks and Hispanics to work their magic under the radar, so long as they stay clear of the drug trade. They rake in their profits and don’t have to do a duck-and-wince every time they hear a police siren.”

  “But while that makes sound and sensible business sense, it would be insane to think it would last,” Boomer said. “Gangsters are, if nothing else, greedy sons of bitches, and the very thought of someone making bigger illegal scores than they are night in and night out is enough for them to pull their pieces and go out looking to cut into that pie.”

  “And that’s where we step in,” Dead-Eye said. “The more we can get these different crews to square off against Angel and his wild eyes, the easier it will be to work our way through his army of dealers. Look, it’s not like they trust or even like each other from the tip-off. All we’re doing is putting a light to the fuse and taking a step back when it goes off.”

  “And what happens if they sit pat and none of this help comes flowing down our way?” Quincy asked.

  “Even if they do and every imaginable break falls to our side, there’s still no win in this war for us,” Boomer said, his voice hard and direct, his eyes moving from one Apache to the next. “Now, if any of you are even close to thinking that, it’s best to erase the thought right away. And if we do end up with no help, or so little we won’t even not
ice it, the end of our trail will arrive all that much sooner. That’s why we have to hit Angel so hard and so heavy and make him guess where the hell it’s all coming from and why. Take as many of them down as we can before we start our fall.”

  “Well, shit, I don’t know how the rest of the group feels, but speaking for myself, I just can’t wait to go out there and get wasted by a whacked-on-high-test coke dealer,” Rev. Jim said, slapping his hands together. “Now which of you lucky bastards gets to team with me on the way down to Death Street?”

  “On this next one, you go with Ash,” Boomer said. “Dead-Eye matches up with Quincy. And Buttercup rolls with me.”

  “And for you newbies in the group, you remember all the rules and regs hammered into you while you were in the PD?” Dead-Eye asked. “Like, never shoot at a fleeing suspect, search-and-seizure procedures, don’t pull your weapon on an unarmed suspect. Shit like that?”

  “Sure we do,” Ash said, throwing a look toward Quincy. “How could we forget them? We would get tossed out on our ass, faces plastered in the tabs and on the six o’clock news we forgot even one of them.”

  “Forget them all,” Dead-Eye said. “And forget them now. If you don’t, sure as there’s a rat in every sewer, you won’t ever live to see the six o’clock news.”

  “Grab your folders,” Boomer said, pushing his chair back and heading for one of the upstairs rooms. “And read up on your assignments. It’s time for us to get Angel’s party started.”

  20

  Nunzio Goldman hung from a meat hook in the back of the empty meat locker, arms and chest red and bruised, face dripping blood, right eye swollen shut. His head hung to one side, his breaths becoming white clouds in the ice-cold room. He looked down at the ground that was filled with gold sawdust and saw the small circle of blood forming at his bare feet. He shook his head slowly and for the first time in his life felt old and foolish.