His rant helped cover our sound as we crept upstream. Just as he stopped to take a breath, Ryan’s foot slipped on a wet rock. The splash seemed as loud as a right whale breaching. Two shots came at us almost simultaneously. Two muzzle flashes. Two pocking sounds in the trees. So they both had guns. Two men with guns and a flashlight versus two unarmed men, one of them half blind. Our only chance lay a hundred yards away. I reached for Ryan’s hand and we started moving again.
“Come on out, guys,” Ricky called. “Come meet the new generation.” His voice was almost lost amid the rushing sounds of the river and traffic. “I heard you’re good with a knife, Ryan, that true? Say the word, I’ll put down my gun and we’ll go mano-a-mano, blade against blade, what do you say? You like to dance, Ryan? Not answering? That’s okay. You’ll make a fine trophy. I already know what I’m going to cut off the Jew, but you—I have to think about what part I’m going to take as a souvenir.”
The other man still hadn’t said a word. Maybe too dumb to think of anything to say. Or maybe the smart one.
“A little farther,” I whispered to Ryan.
“What’s there?”
“A lifesaver,” I said.
I peered through the foliage at the road. Saw nothing but dark green leaves and the black sky beyond. We kept going. Branches scratched my arms and face. Ryan’s hand felt wet and clammy in mine.
“There!” I hissed. A flash of orange in the trees. The life-saving station with the long metal pole. Time to put the equipment to good use.
“Wait here,” I told Ryan.
“For what?”
“You want Ricky?.”
I crawled up the bank as quietly as I could. Judging by their flashlight beam, they were maybe twenty yards down the road. I picked up a rock and threw it as far as I could upstream. It hit some brush and landed in the water with a loud splash, drawing more gunfire.
“Up there,” Ricky urged.
As they started up the road, I crept up to the lifesaving station and silently eased the pole off its hook. I waited in the shadows, hoping my pounding heart wasn’t making as much noise outside my chest as it was inside. The men drew closer. The flashlight beam grew brighter. I could hear their shoes scraping the surface of the road. One man murmured something I couldn’t hear.
“We’ll get them,” I heard Ricky say.
I kept the pole steady, careful not to snag any branches overhead. I breathed in and out, calming my body. The footsteps grew louder. The moon was hidden by clouds but tungsten lights on tall black stands lined the Parkway. I saw their cold light glint on gunmetal. Then I saw a hand holding the gun, then the arm.
Now!
As Ricky came into view I slipped the ring of the lifesaving pole over his head and yanked it as hard as I could. He gave a strangled cry and tumbled down the riverbank to where Ryan was waiting.
The other man yelled, “Ricky!”
The Clip’s gun landed on the road a few feet in front of me. I was reaching for it when the other gun roared and a bullet smacked the pavement inches from my hand. I dove down the bank, rolling through brush. My right wrist hit a rock as I landed and went numb. I could hear Ryan and Ricky struggling in the water. There was the sound of a fist smacking something and one of them cried out. Which one?
A cedar had toppled over at the edge of the riverbank, its exposed root system creating a wall of dirt I could hide behind. I huddled there, wondering if I could make it across the river without getting shot in the back. A line of large stones made a natural walkway to the far side, and the water level was low at this time of year. The rocks looked either dry or just barely submerged. Up the opposite bank were railway tracks that led back to a crossing at Pottery Road, not far from Ryan’s car and his case full of guns.
No. No way. I’d be in the open too long. If the man on the road was any kind of shot, he’d drop me before I made it halfway. I crouched beneath some brush and waited for him to make a move, listening to the splashing sounds where Ryan and the Clip were struggling. The numbness in my wrist started to give way to pain. I wondered if it was broken.
“Ricky!” the other man called. “Ricky, answer me.”
I peered up through the leaves. I could see his arm and chest, his gun pointed at the water where Ryan and the Clip were entwined. No way he’d shoot; he’d be as likely to hit one as the other. As he watched them, I smeared more mud on my face and arms and started up the bank. My bad wrist made crawling awkward. I felt a gnarled root tear the skin of my belly as I dragged myself over it.
I reached the top and peered over the edge. Across the road metal glinted in the cold light. Something I could use as a weapon? No. A shopping cart miles from nowhere.
In the water behind me someone grunted loudly. There was a thrashing sound like a gator taking down its prey.
As I neared the top of the embankment, I could see the second gunman bracing himself against the trunk of an oak twice as thick as he was, pushing branches aside to get a better view of the water. I closed my left hand around a stone the size of a tennis ball and eased myself up onto the road. I stood looking at the gunman’s profile. Like Roni Galil had said to me once in firearms training: you could be our King David, our Melech David, going up against Goliath with a slingshot. I wished I could get closer but the more I moved, the more noise I might make. I breathed in slowly, trying to blend in with the background and stay out of his peripheral vision. Just envision a catcher’s mitt where his head is, I told myself, and whip it sidearm. An accurate shot would knock him out or kill him. And if it didn’t kill him, I was fortunate to have on hand someone with the necessary skills, experience and tools to finish the job.
As I cocked my wrist to throw the stone, something rustled behind me in the bushes along the riverbank. The gunman turned to see it and swung his pistol my way, holding it in both hands, firing twice. I hit the road, scraping my hands and elbows. Eyes flashed in the darkness behind me as a red fox dashed across the road to the Parkway embankment and disappeared near the base of a willow.
The gunman looked at me, half-naked, smeared with mud, lying on the road. “Don’t move,” he said. “I’ll shoot you, I swear.”
I stayed where I was. I could see all of him now and he certainly wasn’t Vito Di Pietra. He was all of five-five, slightly built and well dressed. Fine features. Delicate hands. It was the earnest young man I had seen at Meadowvale arguing with Alice Stockwell. His eyes were wide and the hand holding the gun on me didn’t look steady.
“So you’re Geller,” he said.
“And you’re Stefano Di Pietra,” I said. “Also known as Steven Stone.”
“Make one move and I’ll kill you.”
“I believe you.”
The thrashing in the river had stopped; there was just the sound of shallow water moving over rocks. The sound of traffic. The sound of Stefano’s breathing and mine.
“Ricky!” he called. “Are you okay?”
The silence was comforting to a point. If the Clip was dead, Ryan might be able to take Stefano down before he shot me. But even if Ryan were still alive, he only had one good eye. In the land of the blind that might make him hot shit, but here and now I couldn’t count on him. That left just three possible outcomes: rescue my own damn ass; pray to God to drop an anvil on Stefano’s head; or take it like a man and hope that Katherine Hollinger would avenge me like a demented angel.
“Ricky?” he brayed. No answer. “Ricky!” Still nothing. “God help you if he’s hurt,” Stefano said.
I had to keep him looking at me, not down at the river where Ryan might be moving. If he was moving. I stood up. Stefano pointed the gun at me. I held my ground and kept my hands where he could see them. I said, “It’s been you all along, hasn’t it? The little brother. The one who wasn’t supposed to be a player.”
“Only because they never let me.”
“Your brothers?”
“My father, too. Morons, all of them. They’d look at a truck full of medication and think, ‘Hijack it.�
� I looked at the same truck and envisioned a fleet crossing the border.”
“Your father should have put you in charge.”
“Damn right. He named me for Don Magaddino, you know, because I was born the year he died. But I was small and sick a lot and mysteriously prone to being beaten up by my brothers. So my father made me the family bookkeeper, adding up numbers while my brothers ran the crews and made all the money. Got all the women. Played with the toys.”
“You hooked up with Jay Silver when you did your MBA?”
“Taking that course was the smartest thing I ever did. I started to really see how things could work if they were run by a businessman instead of a thug. I truly understood how huge the market could be for good, clean Canadian pills.”
“But when the law changed, you needed your brothers to keep the business going.”
“My brothers? What do they have to do with this?”
“Isn’t Vista Mar owned by all of you?”
“No. The Vista Mar Care Group is owned and operated by me.”
“But what about Buffalo?”
“What about it?”
“Who was running the operation on that side?”
“You still don’t get it, do you? When I say I run this show, I mean I conceived, coordinated and carried out the entire production.”
Executed would have been a good word too. I was glad he didn’t use it.
“My brothers never knew about it. Their confreres in Buffalo never knew about it.”
“Then how did Ricky—”
“Ricky was with me, you idiot! Me. Not Marco, not Vito, not anyone in Buffalo.”
“You could handle all the distribution with just one guy?”
“We didn’t need a big infrastructure,” Stefano said. “That was the beauty of it. It was already in place. This New Fifty club has chapters all over the Northeast. Full of people who’d go broke if they had to pay full fare for their meds.”
Only then did I solve the mystery Dante Ryan had engaged me to investigate. Stefano had put the hit on the Silvers. Killing Page had not had the desired effect. It only pushed Jay Silver into committing the same rash act: telling Stefano he wanted out. Maybe Silver was counting on their school ties to shield him from harm. He had probably never seen Stefano as I saw him now; coldly murderous and without affect.
Now I just had to live long enough to tell Ryan the news.
“Why did you hire out Jay’s killing?” I asked him. “Why pay fifty grand when Ricky could have done it free?”
“I wanted Silver and his family dead. I wanted the other pharmacists to know what would happen if they threatened me. And I wanted Dante Ryan kept busy while we took care of Marco. I was always afraid of Dante Ryan,” he said. “He never hit me or did anything bad to me—he never even threatened me—but there was something about him. The way he looked at me.”
“He looks at everyone that way.”
Stefano’s eyes darted toward the river and back at me. The silence was unnerving, but not to me. The longer it stayed quiet, the more sure I felt that Ryan had prevailed over Ricky. But where was he? Could he even see what was going on?
“Ricky killed Marco and his men?”
“I helped,” Stefano smiled. “Ricky shot Tommy and Phil when we came in, but we both shot Marco. Ricky shot him in the chest and I shot him in the head.”
“While he was asleep.”
“Asleep or drunk, it was hard to tell.”
“Good thing you were there to help,”
“Shut up! Every shitty thing he ever did to me—every time he beat me up or put me down or embarrassed me in front of friends because I was different—he’s lucky all I did was shoot him in his sleep.”
I heard a faint rumbling sound behind me and a light behind me cast my shadow along the road. Stefano looked over my shoulder and I turned too. A westbound train was coming around the bend, following the curve of the river. I looked back at Stefano and in the light cast by the train I saw a dark figure move up the riverbank behind him.
“Is Vito dead too?” I asked.
He nodded. “We took care of him just before we came to see you. Made it look like a robbery at a club he owns. Dad’s going to be awfully upset when he hears about it, the old vegetable. I might have to water him extra to help him get over the shock.”
I stood shivering in the rain, looking at this cold little bastard in his trim suit and polished shoes. The sound of the train grew louder. Then behind Stefano I saw Dante Ryan steal across the road, near the embankment that led up to the Parkway. What was he doing? Bailing on me?
The train blew a long loud whistle as it approached the level crossing. I heard bells ringing: the barrier lowering across Pottery Road. Ryan was behind the abandoned shopping cart, pushing it out of the weeds onto the road.
“Was Christine Staples in on it from the beginning?”
“Not quite,” Stefano said. “She actually did her job at first, tried to stop us from bringing goods across. But she turned out to be a most impressive woman. She saw things the way I saw them. She understood what the future could hold.”
Ryan was closing the gap between him and Stefano as the train drew closer, the sound of it getting louder, the light on Stefano’s face growing brighter. When Ryan was ten or twelve feet behind Stefano, he broke into a run. Whatever noise the cart wheels made was drowned out by the sounds of the approaching train, the river and the Parkway. Stefano never heard it coming. The cart slammed into his back at full speed. The gun flew out of his hand. As his slight body lurched forward toward me, I stepped forward and kicked him hard in the chest. He staggered backward. I kicked him again and he sailed off the road and landed on his back in the river with a splash and a groan.
Ryan leaned on the cart. I asked if he was okay and he nodded.
“And the Clip?”
“Dead. Drowned. Busted his head with a rock and held him under.”
“Saving my life is becoming a habit with you,” I said. “Don’t feel any need to kick it.”
“We’re not done,” Ryan said. “We can’t leave this one alive.”
I swallowed hard. Killing someone in a fight was one thing. Doing it while he lay helpless was another.
Ryan picked up Stefano’s gun.
“Just make it quick,” I said.
“I’m not going to shoot him,” Ryan said.
“No?”
“No,” he said, extending the gun-butt to me. “You are.”
CHAPTER 50
For the second time that day, I found myself questioning Ryan’s sanity. The words fucking and crazy featured prominently in my remarks.
“I can’t shoot an unarmed man,” I hissed.
“But I can?”
“It’s what you do.”
“Nice, Geller. Real nice.”
“I didn’t mean it that way.”
“The fuck you didn’t.”
“Come on.”
“I should have let Staples shoot you. Or Stefano. Or Marco. How many times do I have to save your ass before you wake the fuck up?”
“But why?” I asked. “Why do I have to?”
“Because sooner or later, I’m going to have to face the old man, Vinnie Nickels. I’m going to have to look him in the eye and tell him I didn’t do his boys, and it’d be easier if it was true. But the real reason is if I do it, you’ll have witnessed three killings. Staples, Ricky and Stefano. You’ll have that on me the rest of my life. I like you, Jonah, and I trust you, much as I do anyone. But how do I know what you’d say if the cops bring you in? How do I know you won’t flip? You finish Stefano, at least we have something on each other.”
“I would never say a word against you.”
“You say it now and I believe you. Or at least I believe that you believe it. But it’s different when the cops start sweating you, laying charges on you.”
“So if I do it, I’m a co-conspirator. If I don’t, I’m a witness. Is that it?”
“Yes.”
“And yo
u don’t leave witnesses.”
“Don’t go there, Jonah. Please.”
I looked down toward the river. I thought I could make out the dark shape of Ricky Messina’s body in the water, partially obscured by fallen cedar boughs. Stefano Di Pietra was lying on the stepping stones that led from one side to the other. He wasn’t moving. Maybe he was already dead and talk of killing him could stop. Then I heard him call out faintly for help. There would be no easy way out.
I looked at Dante Ryan. His left eye was horribly swollen. Blood was drying on his cheek. He had to tilt up his chin to look at me.
“I’m making my break,” he said. “I’m going home to my wife and my son. I’m going to clean myself up and hope I don’t lose my eye. I’m going to play with my boy, lie down with my wife and sleep for a week. Or until Vinnie Nickels calls me.”
I said nothing.
Ryan laid the gun on the ground. “You do whatever you want with Stefano. Kill him or don’t. If his life means that much to you, let him live. As long as you understand we’ll both be dead in twenty-four hours.”
Ryan started walking down the road toward the gate.
I picked up the gun and made my way down the river-bank, hoping Stefano would expire on his own or slip into an irreversible coma.
He was lying spread-eagled in the river, water lapping at his sides. There were large granite rocks under him, one with a sharp edge, as if it had cleaved off a larger boulder. The edge was right under Stefano’s neck. The tungsten lights brought out the pink of the granite. The water around him had a pink tinge too.
“I can’t move,” he said. “I can’t feel anything.”
I waded into the river and sat down on a rock beside him. The water level was halfway up his face, covering his ears. His eyes were glassy, unfocused. His hands bobbed in the water, palms up. Blood seeped out of a large gash in the back of his head, mixing in the water. Another pollutant fouling the Don.
“You should know Staples is dead.”
He moved his eyes to where I was. Strained to bring me into focus. “No …”
Buffalo Jump Page 30
