Chasers

by Lorenzo Carcaterra

  The unmarked was a few hundred yards away from the three sedans parked in a tight cluster next to one another, their doors open, six men with machine guns standing next to their respective cars. A second chase car was now closing in on Rev. Jim and Ash, the four men inside firing off rounds as if on a clay shoot. “Drop your guns and hang on,” he shouted up to Ash.

  “What are you going to do now?” Ash shouted back down, shoving her guns into her waistband.

  “You really don’t want to know,” Rev. Jim said.

  Rev. Jim slammed on the brake, turned the steering wheel hard to the left, and then gunned the engine, doing a full turn, kicking up rocks and debris, his front end nicking the side of the white van and sending one of the shooters flying out the open rear. He landed headfirst against a row of rusty pilings. Ash hung tight, fingers and the edge of her sneakers wedged into the door sockets, her body bouncing up and down against the roof of the car like a flattened handball, upper body coated in dust, right wrist nicked by a sharp piece of rock and bleeding.

  Rev. Jim drove straight for the second crash car, the driver frantically weaving in reverse, doing all he could to avoid the inevitable collision. The other three men in the car continued to rain bullets down on the unmarked, one shot hitting Rev. Jim on his left arm. As blood streamed down the right side of his face from a glass cut to his cheek, Rev. Jim pulled a .44 from his waist and fired off a series of rounds as he inched closer to the chase car.

  Ash reached for a .38 she kept in an ankle holster and did a slow crawl off the roof of the car, slithering down toward the windshield, her hands sliced and diced from the maneuver. Rev. Jim watched as she eased herself down the front of the bullet-riddled glass, smearing it with her blood, the front end of his car following the chase vehicle as it revved in reverse, looking to steer it against a pile of cars resting on the back end of the chop shop. Bullets were coming at them from all directions, and the front seat was riddled with holes, the engine block smoking and hissing, a rear tire running flat and on its rim. Rev. Jim tossed aside the .44, reached under his seat for a double-pump sawed-off, and aimed it out his window. He and Ash did a quick eye exchange and both nodded as Rev. Jim came nose to nose with the chase car, both doing about forty and moving fast and steady toward a small mountain of smashed cars.

  Ash fired first, getting off two rounds and clipping the driver in the shoulder, causing him to lose control of the wheel. Rev. Jim unloaded his shots and blew out the right side of the windshield, killing the shooter on the passenger side. He eased his foot over to the brake and slowed the unmarked down, watching as the chase vehicle, now with a badly wounded man behind the wheel, slammed into the shaky mound of rusty hulks. A half dozen of them collapsed on top of the crash car, pinning the surviving passengers deep inside.

  Ash threw herself to the ground and slowly rose to her feet, her head and body thick with soot and smeared with blood. Rev. Jim put the car into park and left it running, stepping out of the glass-and-blood-strewn front seat and walking over to where Ash stood. “I have to figure you feel a lot better than you look,” he said to her. “Am I right on that?”

  “There is just no end to your charm,” she said. “I’m fine, for now. But I’m down in bullets and we still have that van to worry about.”

  “Don’t lose any sleep over it,” Rev. Jim said. “Or blood.” He turned, looking past the glare of the sun at the white van, now surrounded by the shooters from the three parked sedans. “Especially since that van is of no concern to us.”

  “Is there a part of this plan you didn’t share?” Ash asked. She looked back and saw the men from the sedan tossing bodies out of the van and stepping inside to pop open a few of the stacked crates to check on the merchandise.

  “What’s a party without a surprise?” Rev. Jim said. “The hired guns in the sedans were supposed to be G-Men holding the cash to transfer to Angel’s crew in return for the stash of drugs inside that van. That would have been the start and the finish of a mid-six-figure transaction. In other words, a nice paycheck for one side and a big street score for the other.”

  “Looks like the Donner Party beat them to it,” Ash said. “How about I take a guess?”

  “I always let a lady go first,” Rev. Jim said. “And if you put the last piece to the puzzle the right way, then dinner will be my treat—soon as you shower and get all that glass out of your hair.”

  “You tipped off Tony Rigs as to the where and the when of the give-and-take,” Ash said with a smile, wiping blood off her lips with the sleeve of her jean jacket.

  “Ready for the Double Jeopardy round,” Rev. Jim said, doing a quick return on the smile.

  “And he arranged for the G-Men to fade while we were leading the chase cars and the van his way,” Ash said. “Now, for my money there’s no better spot anywhere in this city than a chop shop if you’re looking to rid yourself of a few dead drug dealers.”

  “It’s a low-end risk for a high-end score,” Rev. Jim said. “The kind of deal Tony Rigs wouldn’t turn down if his own mother was driving one of the crash cars.”

  “And none of the heat flows his way,” Ash said. “Angel and the G-Men aren’t going to cast blame on anyone but us. Meanwhile, Tony Rigs takes a walk with both the drugs and the cash.”

  “The drugs, yes,” Rev. Jim said. “We don’t touch that end of it. But the money comes to us. We’re not Mobil Oil, baby. We have to pay for this little party of ours somehow, and who better than Angel to cough up into our empty pot?”

  “Then we’re done here,” Ash said. “You okay with me doing the driving on the way back?”

  Rev. Jim turned and started walking toward the shattered fence and out to the East Bronx streets. “If we had a ride, I would be all-for-one on it,” he said to Ash. “But we need to leave the cars and the cash behind. Rigs will have the money delivered our way when the time is right, along with a fresh set of wheels. Which means it’s the subway for us.”

  “A cab might be a better way to go,” Ash said. “We get on the number two looking like this, caked with dirt and blood with glass sprinkled on our heads and shoulders, it might catch a curious eye.”

  Rev. Jim laughed, rested a hand on the small of her back, and pulled out his detective’s shield, which was hanging from a chain under his pullover. “You and me were anywhere else, that might present itself as a problem,” he said. “But we’re in New York City. In this town, the insane and the cops ride free of charge.”

  23

  Hector Gonzalez and his main muscle man, Robles, stood over the bloody man, his upper body hanging over the side of a grime-filled sidewalk, his legs half wrapped around a dripping fire hydrant. Robles held a small black iron pipe in his left hand and had a lit cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth. He leaned against a parked Ford Taurus and looked over at Gonzalez. “This the third straight week he’s been behind on his payouts and the third straight week he’s caught a beating,” Robles said. “We’re running on a reverse track with this loser, getting nowhere in a hurry.”

  “Maybe it’s not him we should be touching,” Gonzalez said. “Man’s got a chubby wife and two fresh daughters. We retool them up a bit, then maybe he would be a lot quicker to cough up the cash he owes.”

  “Are you hearing any of this?” Robles asked the bleeding man, whose lips were kissing the street. “You don’t come across with the pesos, we’re going to have to head in there, pull out our muscle tool, and bump bellies with your wife and chicas. We do that, then maybe we slice about fifteen percent off of what you owe. If we make you watch, then maybe we shave off another five.”

  The man fought to lift his head off the sidewalk and rest it on the rear bumper of a late-model Suburban. “Doing that won’t get you your money,” he said. “Nothing will until I can get my business in the shape it once was, and that’s not going to happen until you get that fucking priest off my back.”

  Hector Gonzalez gave a head nod to Robles. “Stand him up and pull him closer,” he said. “I wan
t to make sure I hear all his words.”

  Robles grabbed the front of the man’s floral print shirt, thick splotches of fresh blood smeared across his chest and shoulders, and yanked him to his feet, tossing him against the hood of a Chevy Impala. “There, now that’s better,” Robles said. “You feeling comfy now, Quinto?”

  “How much a week are you shaving to the priest?” Gonzalez asked, his dark, soulless eyes giving the street around them a quick look. He stood close enough to Quinto to see the blood pour off his wounds and smell the sweat running down his body. “And how long have you been feeding him?”

  “He takes the skim,” Quinto said, his lower lip shaking like a faulty brake pedal. “Leaves enough for me to stay even on a good week, fall back some on a slow. Been coming in steady for about a month now, give or take a day.”

  “And why you wait till now to pass it on to me?” Gonzalez asked. “He tell you not to say, or did you find that street on your own?”

  “He said he would kill me and my family if I put even word one in front of you,” Quinto said.

  “And what do you think I will do?” Gonzalez asked, grabbing the cheeks of Quinto’s chunky face in his right hand and pressing them together hard.

  “Sounds like he wets his pants a lot more when he hears from that ex-priest than he does when the words come at him from our side, Papi,” Robles said, standing now right next to Gonzalez. “We need to change the color of that shit, and fast, before it spreads to the rest of the neighborhood.”

  Hector Gonzalez looked over at the shivering Quinto and shook his head. “You know I can’t have that happen,” he said. “It doesn’t take a lot for word to get out that the G-Men lost their grip and let any low-ride pussy with a gun and a posse come in and piss on their land. This starts with you, Quinto, and it’s going to end with you.”

  “I won’t let it happen again,” Quinto said. “I won’t give the priest any more of the money. I’ll stand up to him, make him turn away with empty hands. I swear to it.”

  “If you had any balls, Quinto, you would have done that the first time he stepped into your place,” Gonzalez said. “Spit in his face and tell him he was one shit shy of a pot of luck. But you covered yourself, made the priest a blanket for you and your family, in case he made a move our way and it paid off.”

  “Give me one more chance, Hector,” Quinto said, his hands clasped, his body close to doing a full crumple. “I beg you to please do that, for all the years I have worked for you. I will do anything. Please.”

  “Fair enough,” Gonzalez said. “You been with us from day one, Quinto, so it’s only right for me to give your rope less of a tug. Go back inside your shop and bring your two girls out here to see me. I’ll take it from there.”

  “This is between us,” Quinto said, the panic in his voice taking a back seat to the rising anger. “My family has nothing to do with what goes on out here.”

  “We’re all one family, no?” Gonzalez asked. “Me, you, Robles, your wife, your daughters. To make it work, we all need to work. And that’s what the girls will do. They will work off the money you owe us, and if they taste anywhere near as good as they look, then you’ll be in the red chips in no time. You should be happy, not upset.”

  “I can’t let you do this,” Quinto said. “No father could.”

  “I understand,” Gonzalez said, stepping closer to Quinto. “Believe me, I hear what you’re trying to say. You just didn’t grasp what it is I’ve been running off at the mouth about. But that’s okay, it’s not the first time I’ve run into this situation. My man Robles here is right. He’s always telling me I don’t make myself easy to understand.”

  The long blade slid down the side of Gonzalez’s jacket and slipped into the palm of his right hand, fingers quick to curl around the thick wood handle. Gonzalez didn’t flinch as he jammed the knife hard and deep into Quinto’s stomach and held him in place with his other hand, watching as he crumpled from the biting pain, his eyes bulging, warm blood oozing onto his hand and jacket, choking on the blood rushing up into his throat. With surgical skill, Gonzalez twisted the blade and pushed it up through artery, fat, and muscle, carving a slow and bloody arc. He held Quinto in check all the way through the death rattle and then stepped away, releasing his grip on the blade handle and watching as the man fell to the ground in a dead heap. “Go inside and bring those two bitches out here,” he said to Robles. “Show them their father and then tell them what they need to do unless they want to find their fat-ass mother the same way.”

  “How soon you want them to start?” Robles asked.

  “They’re on the clock as of now,” Gonzalez said. “They need to make up the money this piece of shit owed me before I sit down to dinner.”

  “Okay if I break them in?” Robles asked, walking toward the store. “Show them what they’ll be expected to do?”

  “As long as the money’s on my table before I cut into my steak,” Gonzalez said. He moved toward his parked sedan, the dead man’s blood running down his right arm and hand, dripping onto the sidewalk.

  “You want me to save one for you?” Robles asked. “Or bring her out to your car?”

  “Not this time,” Gonzalez said. “I got a date of my own, and this is one I don’t want to be late on.”

  “You might want to stop and wash that blood off first,” Robles said. “That shit could be a big turnoff for a chick.”

  “Not with this Russian,” Gonzalez said, swinging open the door of his black Cadillac. “She’s got the hunger for blood. The two of us together, it’s a marriage made in hell.”

  24

  The cross-town bus came to a slow stop in the middle of the street in front of Madison Green. The front doors swished open and two men in leather coats, carrying duffel bags, stepped in and paid their fares. They walked down the aisle and sat across from each other six rows deep. There was one other passenger on the bus, a man hunkered down in the corner seat of the last row, hat covering his face, the lip of his jacket serving as a blanket as he looked to sleep off a long night of heavy drink.

  The doors closed and the bus slipped out, moving like a tired snake toward Madison Avenue, then taking a left turn uptown. One of the men stared out at the passing street action, his neck arched to catch a glimpse of the next scheduled stop. He smiled when he spotted a man in a white raincoat and a blue baseball cap holding a large gift-wrapped package in his arms. He turned away and gave the man sitting across from him a quick nod. “So far,” he whispered with a slight smile.

  The smile disappeared when the bus moved past the stop and ran through a yellow light and kept sliding up Madison, the driver oblivious to the error. “Hey,” the man shouted up to the driver. “You just missed a stop. Weren’t you watching?”

  “Too late for that now, chief,” the driver said. “You can get off the next time I stop, not to worry.”

  “There was a passenger at that other stop,” the man said, his voice barely under a shout. “You’re supposed to pick him up. It’s your fucking job.”

  “Maybe so,” the driver said with a chuckle. “But this is only my second day behind the wheel and a man can only learn to do so much so fast, you understand. I think I got the driving part of it down, but the rest of it may take me a little time.”

  The bus stopped at a red light, riding in the center of three lanes, far removed from any shelters where small groups of passengers were gathered. The other man, silent until now, leaped to his feet, pulled a heavy-caliber handgun from his jacket pocket, and took several steps toward the driver. “Pull this fuckin’ bus over to the side and do it now,” he said to the driver.

  The driver looked in the rearview mirror and glanced at the man with the gun standing less than five feet away. “Tell you what,” the driver, Dead-Eye, said. “I’ll cook you a deal. And I promise I’ll make it one that’s on the fair and square for all four of us.”

  “What the fuck are you running off at the mouth about?” the man with the gun said. “There’s no deal and there�
��s no four of anything in this shit, it’s just the two of us and you.”

  “I knew I should have RSVP’d,” Quincy, the man at the back of the bus, said with a shrug. He was standing halfway down the aisle, two .38 Specials in his hands, feet braced against the steel base of the seats. “I always suck at that kind of shit. Chalk it up to bad manners.”

  “You guys are on the salary end of the business, not the profit end,” Dead-Eye said, easing the bus forward, careful not to veer too close to an off-duty taxi shifting lanes. “Same holds for the fool lugging that heavy gift box of cocaine a few stops back. So play it smart and give yourself a chance to live and breathe a few more days. I drop you off at a safe and cozy spot on my route and you walk off free and with a breeze to your back.”

  “Just so long as you leave the two duffel bags behind,” Quincy said. “You have to throw that into the mix as well.”

  “Oh, right,” Dead-Eye said. “I forgot to mention that one tiny little detail. What the money boys like to call the deal breaker.”

  “We can’t leave the bags,” the man with the gun said. “And we won’t.”

  “Take a second,” Dead-Eye said, letting go of the steering wheel, his eyes off the road and on the two men, the bus parked in the middle of a busy avenue, his voice as serious as an illness. “Take a long, hard second before you make that your final call.”

  The man sitting, the duffel bag resting against his left leg, made the first move. With his left hand he threw the bag toward Quincy, pulled a.44 bulldog out of his jacket with his right, and started firing shots at Dead-Eye. The man standing whirled and fired off two quick rounds at Quincy.