“So what do you want to do?” he asked.
“Go after him,” I said.
His dark eyes seemed to warm from the inside. “Really.”
“What else can I do? Hide the rest of my life? Hide all the people around me? Look over my shoulder because this freak has it in for me? No. I’m not going to stand around while I or people close to me get shot at or beaten or killed.”
“You’re going to kill Marco Di Pietra.”
I took a deep breath and listened to the words echo inside me. They rang absolutely true. It made me feel like I had lost my moral compass. Like I’d dropped it under my heel and ground it back into sand.
“Yes,” I said. “If it’s me or him, it might as well be him.”
“You’re going to do this alone?”
“Not too many people I can ask for help.”
He put his pizza down and wiped his hands on a paper towel. “Cara made something very clear to me tonight. The only way to get back with my family is to find another line of work. But my thing isn’t something you just walk away from. The kind of exit program we have, you don’t wanna know.”
“No one leaves?”
“Made guys, never. They take an oath that their thing will always come first: before family, before the law, before their own lives. Some old guys are allowed to step down when they get sick—like Vinnie Nickels if he’d hurry the fuck up—as long as they’re not under indictment or active investigation. You know they’re not going to flip.”
“But you’re not made.”
“No, I’m what they call an associate. Like I’m some fucking greeter at Wal-Mart. But even though I never took the oath, I might as well have. I know where bodies are buried. Literally. Any that weren’t burned or dumped, I fucking buried.”
“And if Marco was gone?”
“His brother Vito would take over for sure. I’ve only ever worked for Marco, no one else, so I might be able to work things out with Vito. I got no beefs with him. No loyalties to anyone else. No legal problems hanging over me. Nothing he’d have to worry about. Maybe he’d let me retire.” He pulled out his cigarettes. “Mind?” he asked.
I had eaten enough for the moment. I went and got the ashtray.
“So are you throwing in with me?” I asked.
“Answer one question first. Where’s the gun I gave you?”
“Um …”
“Don’t tell me.”
“Sorry. It’s still in the trunk of the car.”
“Man, what are you gonna do if someone shows up with a gun? Excuse yourself while you run down eighteen floors?”
“I forgot.”
“You know your kung fu shit won’t stop a bullet, right? You’re not delusional on that point?”
“Not on that one, no.”
“It’s a hell of a piece, Geller. Costs like a grand on the street.”
“I’ll tuck it in my underwear tonight.”
“Get serious. How are you going to kill a depraved fucker like Marco if you won’t even handle a gun?”
Since I had no logical answer, I was relieved to hear someone knock three times on my door. Ryan had his Glock out before the third knock. He put his finger to his lips and pointed to the door. We both got up and moved toward it. He motioned me to the left side, where the handle was, and braced himself against the wall on the right, gun up beside him. I peered out through the peephole and saw no one.
“Who is it?” I called.
“Katherine Hollinger.”
Oh, God. The good detective sergeant at my door. I was giddy enough around her with just Percocet in my system. Now there was half a bottle of Barolo in me too, not to mention the wild-card stool softeners. “Just a minute,” I said.
Ryan looked at me inquisitively. I nodded at the balcony door. He put his gun away and padded quietly to the door and slipped outside. I opened the front door and there Hollinger was, in jeans and a T-shirt under a coral linen jacket. Her black hair was out of its clip and framed her face like a pair of loving hands.
“Hello, Jonah.”
“Hi.”
She looked at me as though expecting to be invited in, but I stayed parked in the threshold.
“Got a minute?” she asked.
“Sure.”
“You going to ask me in?”
“Uh-uh.”
She looked past me at the coffee table and saw the pizza, the wine, the two glasses. “Oh,” she said. “Company?”
“You’re good,” I said.
“You still have no idea.”
She was starting to acquire a tan. By midsummer there’d be dusky skin to go with her jet-black hair and lioness eyes. Eyes I couldn’t stop looking at. I hadn’t come up with the right colour yet, having pondered hazel, honey and caramel. I was determined to keep trying.
“What’s up, Detective?” was the best I could say.
“That’s Detective Sergeant to you. Just wondering if you’d given any more thought to who tried to kill you.”
“I’m not convinced that’s what happened.”
“I am,” she said.
I was feeling giddier as we spoke. It was either the Percocet and Barolo or the eyes. Whatever their true colour was, looking into them was still painless. “Kate,” I said. “Katie. Were you worried about me?”
“Geller, please.”
“I think you were, a little.”
“I’m a police officer. It’s my job to worry about persons who might be the target of a violent offence.”
“Thank you,” I said.
She said, “You’re welcome. And on that note, I’ll leave you to your date.” She looked out at the balcony again. “I’m surprised.”
“What?”
“That he’s a smoker.”
“Who?”
“Your … companion?”
“What makes you think it’s a he?”
Hollinger nodded at the picture window behind me. Broken rings of smoke were drifting into the night. “I’ve seen a thousand women smoke in my life. I’ve never seen one blow smoke rings like that.”
“You are good.”
“I told you. Enjoy the rest of your evening, Geller.”
“You too, Kate. Or can I call you Katie?”
“Not when I’m working,” she said.
“Please tell me, please, you’re not fucking her.”
“Not that it’s your business, but why not?”
“She’s a cop, isn’t she?”
“You could tell that from the balcony?”
His shrug was both immodest and condescending. “From across the street, I could. I got an extremely developed nose for the law.”
“Well, just to make you feel better, she’s not just a cop. She’s a sergeant in Homicide.”
“Jesus Christ,” he said. “Or what is it you people say? Oy?”
“If I was sleeping with Katherine Hollinger,” I said, “oy wouldn’t even begin to cover it.”
“So why else was she here at this hour? Last I heard, they were clamping down on overtime.”
“She’s worried about me,” I said.
“You should consider wiping that idiot grin off your face.”
“You grin like that when you talk about Carlo.”
“As I should. He’s so quick, so smart. He’s at that age where they learn something new every second of every day. You should see him do a puzzle. I know he’s done them before, but he finishes them so fast, his little brain whirring along, so proud ’cause Daddy’s watching. I tell you, this kid … I was watching cartoons with him when you called, me on the couch and him lying on my chest. I could feel him breathe, smell his hair. He’d had his bath and he was all clean in his PJs, this sweet little package. And I couldn’t help wondering, how do people get so fucked up? How does someone like Marco start out smelling like shampoo and toothpaste and turn into a rabid fucking wolf?”
Rabid. The perfect word for Marco. And you can’t let rabid animals live among you. They have to be killed. Shot down as they cross t
he town line.
“So Cara would take you back if you could quit.”
“She still loves me. I could tell today, the way we sat and talked. For the first time in a long time, we stopped talking at each other and both listened a bit. We actually communicated, like she was Oprah and I was fucking Dr. Phil.”
I almost made a crack about him fucking Dr. Phil but decided to go on living instead. “What did you decide?”
“That I need to get out. Retire undefeated. Do whatever it takes to keep my little unit together. I never had that with my mother. I want Carlo to have it with us.”
“Anything else you can do to make a living?”
“I don’t know. Run a restaurant maybe. Hey, don’t you smirk,” he said. “My day job, you want to call it that, I run the restaurant in the plaza we went to today.”
“Where you sent the guy?”
“It’s mostly a paper arrangement. I need a legitimate-looking income on my tax return. A manager runs it day-to-day but I hang around. I pick up things. Tell you something else might surprise you.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m not a half-bad cook. My mother was fantastic and I learned a lot from her.”
“Doesn’t surprise me at all,” I said.
“No?”
“Nope. The OPP warned me you were good with a knife.”
“You’re not as cute as you think, Geller.”
“Katie Hollinger thinks I’m cute.”
“Katie? Oh, Christ, the sergeant.”
“She does, I can tell.”
“Great. My partner wants to dick a homicide dick.”
“We’re partners?”
“On this particular venture.”
“The killing of Marco Di Pietra.”
“It’s either that or wait to see if Vito tries,” Ryan said.
“You think he will?”
“If Vinnie Nickels doesn’t get off the fence soon and make a pronouncement, there’s a war coming for sure. Vito associates me with Marco so he might decide I’m worth killing once it starts.”
“Or before.”
“True. If, on the other hand, we get rid of Marco, Vito would have less incentive to mess with me. He might let me go. He fucking has to.” He tried and failed to keep his emotion out of his voice. “This life I made for myself … ever since this thing with the Silver boy … fuck, getting out is all I can think of. I can’t keep waking up in a cruddy hotel, living out of my car. Not that I blame Cara for kicking me out. Who wants to live with me and my ghosts?”
I’d been asking myself the same thing since the day I flew home from Israel.
CHAPTER 33
Toronto: Friday, June 30
Roni and I walk through a narrow alley between cinder-block buildings. The sun is directly above us, blazing hot, making me squint so hard my head starts to hurt. There are more soldiers patrolling ahead of us and behind us, part of a sweep through the camp to clear it of militants before Passover, when their attacks usually surge.
There are no adults in the alley. None we can see. Just Palestinian children lined up against the walls on both sides, calling out to us first in Arabic, then Hebrew, asking for money, chocolate, cigarettes. Many have bandages around their heads, their hands, their ears. Some have a crutch or a stick to lean on.
“Chuparim,” they cry, using the Hebrew word for goodies or treats. “Tan lanu chuparim.” Give us treats.
Roni has a cigarette going and one boy, bolder than the others, steps in his path and holds out his hand. “Come on,” the boy says in perfect Hebrew. “One cigarette. A fair price to let a Jew devil pass.”
Roni can’t help but smile at him. The boy looks twelve or thirteen, not a whisker on his cheeks, a young Sal Mineo with full, soft lips and unspoiled skin. Roni cradles his M-16 in his arms and reaches into his pocket for his Royals. As he does, the largest of the beggar kids, a stocky kid about sixteen with his arm in a sling, jumps on Roni’s back. He pulls a long thin blade out of the sling and stabs Roni in the neck. A second assailant, no more than eighteen, swings a stout walking stick at my head. I sidestep his lunge and club him to the ground with the stock of my gun. This is madness, they’re nothing but kids. But there Roni is on the ground, blood streaming from his neck as he fights to keep control of his gun. Children swarm him, clawing at his rifle and his sidearm, tearing at his helmet, trying to pull it off, swinging sticks and crutches at his body. Half a dozen rush at me too. I try to call for help—other soldiers from our unit are no more than a hundred yards away—but saliva pools at the back of my throat and I have to keep swallowing. Words won’t form. I kick at the children to back them off and raise my M-16, fire a burst of three. Hebrew voices crackle over my radio. Other patrols converge from both ends of the alley, their boots thudding on ancient stone. I yell at the children to get away from Roni. The boy who looks like Sal Mineo swings a crutch at my gun barrel, trying to knock it from my hands. I kick him in the stomach and send him crashing to the ground. Suddenly men come spilling out of adjacent doorways. Hard men, unshaven, holding knives, machetes and hatchets. They don’t seem to care that I have an M-gun levelled at them. I shout “Halt” in Arabic. The young Mineo gets up and throws himself at me again, grabbing my gun barrel. I head-butt him with my helmet, shattering his nose, and he falls to the ground choking on blood. As the first assailant raises his hatchet I fire a three-shot burst into his midsection and he goes down. The others pause and I back away fast, breathing hard, my finger depressing the trigger halfway. I hear running footsteps behind me, and I turn to see four soldiers coming up fast behind me. As I turn back I see a man hack at Roni’s body with a machete. Trying to sever his head. I don’t even shout a warning. I point my Mikutzrar and pull the trigger. The first burst slams him against the wall of the alley; the second keeps him dancing herky-jerky. I hold the trigger and keep firing. I can’t kill him any more than I already have but I can’t stop. He falls to the ground and the last few bursts tear into the wall behind him, blasting chips of stone into the air. One child screams and clutches her face and blood pours out over her knuckles and down the backs of her hands. A woman runs out from a doorway and gathers up the child, wailing as loudly as the child herself. Roni Galil lies on the ground, a dark blood stain spreading over his shoulder and chest. His neck is cut completely open. His vest didn’t protect him there. There’s pink froth on his lips. I hear a voice, moaning and crying as if in terrible pain.
I can’t tell if it’s him or me.
“You okay?”
“Wha—?”
“Are you okay?” Dante Ryan asked. I blinked and focused on the image before me: Ryan with a tea towel draped over one shoulder, offering me a cup of coffee.
I sat up, got a sharp pain in my side for my trouble, and looked at my bedside clock: 5:54 a.m.
“I been up a while,” he said. “Tidying a little.”
“Knock yourself out.”
Ryan left the coffee with me and went down the hall to the kitchen. I shuddered, trying to shake off the last vestiges of the dream. It was the closest I had ever come to reliving what really happened in that brutally hot alley, how we had almost been overwhelmed by children sent to fight us. Like Ryan, I felt the threat against the Silvers was dredging up feelings and images faster than I could tamp them back down: Roni’s savage death; young Mineo with the broken nose; the girl hit by debris or a ricochet from my gun; Dalia’s naked body glistening in a moonlit orchard after making love; Dalia’s leg—bloody, dusty, bones exposed—nearly sheared off by a concrete missile.
I made it into the bathroom before the crying started. Grieving for Roni and Dalia. Raging at men who used children to fight their war without end. I ran water to drown out the sound as I leaned sobbing against the cool tile wall. Tears spilled down my face into the sink, where they mixed with water and swirled down the drain.
When the crying was done, I blew my nose and washed my face. If Ryan made one smart remark, he was going off the balcony, guns and all.
&n
bsp; CHAPTER 34
Believing one should never commit one’s first premeditated murder without a nutritious breakfast, I took Ryan to the Family Restaurant. He had bacon and eggs and I had the same heart-stopping ham-and-eggs special I’d had the day before.
At a quarter to eight, I dropped him at the long-term parking lot at Pearson International Airport, then parked his Volvo in the short-term lot and waited. Eighteen minutes later he pulled up in a black late-model Altima. He got out and handed me a pair of thin leather driving gloves. “Don’t touch anything in or on the car without these on,” he said. “Case we have to ditch it unexpectedly.”
He transferred his metal photographer’s case from the trunk of the Volvo to the Altima, along with a brown canvas sports bag.
“A long gun,” I said.
“Not just a long gun. A Remington 700 PSS. The weapon of choice of better police services everywhere. If it’s good enough for an FBI sniper, it’s good enough for me. Accurate, reliable, comes with a scope and takes a suppressor if you need one. Plus the recoil is manageable if you stay away from magnum rounds.”
“And we need this because …?”
“In your haste to rid yourself of Marco Di Pietra, and the burden he has become, you fail to consider one important factor.”
“Yes, Professor?”
“Call it the carnage factor. Unless we can find Marco alone, we have to take out whoever we find him with, be it a bodyguard, a hooker or anyone else. How many people you prepared to kill?”
He was right. Shit. My focus had been on eliminating the threat Marco posed to me and everyone around me. I had to start seeing the bigger picture.
“You want to keep casualties to a minimum?” he asked.
“Of course.”
“The closer we have to get, the messier it’s going to be. The long gun gives us a chance, understand?”
God help me, I did.
We left the airport via a narrow road where a work crew was regrading a roadbed in the fierce heat, images of the men rippling above the hot asphalt like waves in a mirage.
Buffalo Jump Page 20
