by Derek Haas
“I’m telling you this has nothing to do with you, Jake.”
“Bullshit.”
“What do you want me to say? You need to drop it.” I could feel my anger rising like boiled water.
This was our first row and I discovered she wasn’t one to back down. “Drop what? How can I drop something when you won’t even tell me what I’m supposed to be dropping?”
I started to answer but she interrupted, “I’d expect this from some people, but not you. Since the day I met you, we’ve been nothing but honest with each other. That’s what having a relationship, a real relationship, is all about. You have to trust me and I have to trust you. There isn’t any other way to do it—not a way that works, that really works.”
She was right, but my hands were tied. “You’re right, I’m sorry.”
I could see her eyes soften, but she held firm. “You’re apologizing but I don’t even know what you’re apologizing for. This isn’t communicating. This is me talking to a brick wall.”
“I said I’m sorry, Jake. I’m trying to figure some things out, but you have to believe that the problems I’m having aren’t about us. The only thing . . . the only thing I depend on each day is us. I know that’s not a satisfying answer but I need you to accept it . . . I’ll get down and beg you to accept it if that’s what it takes. But I can’t handle you going sour on me, too. I just . . . can’t. When the time is right, I’ll tell you everything.”
Whatever defenses she had melted away. “You promise?” she said, weakly.
“I promise.”
“You trust me? Completely?”
“You’re the only one I do trust on this planet.”
“I love you.”
When I answered her with the same three words, I meant them fully.
CHAPTER 7
MY next assignment was a disaster. The name on the top of the page was Richard Levine, a numbers runner on the east side. Vespucci had done his homework, but even the homework had gaping holes in it, gaping holes due to a very specific reason: I was working a job where the target knew I was coming.
Levine was a five-foot-two slight figure with chronic headaches and a short fuse. He had made a fortune working the rackets among the union workers down by Boston Harbor, and as his bank account increased, so did the list of his enemies. A cautious man, he had a regular staff of five bodyguards . . . professional guys, former cops, men who hadn’t had a chance to go soft. He lived in a large house near Beacon Hill and rarely went out any more, letting his minions work the books, deliver the payouts, and make the collections. A handful of guys were entrusted to enter his door, and all of these guys were known faces, fellas who had been on his payroll for ten-plus years. None of these men left the business either; the only way to get away from Levine was to die or disappear.
Vespucci didn’t have schematics on the inside of his house; they had mysteriously vanished from the Department of Records downtown. My fence also knew better than to talk to any of Levine’s men. I had eight weeks and very little information. But it was the last sentence in the file that got my attention: “Mark knows he has a price tag on his head.”
The son-of-a-bitch knew, knew someone had been hired to kill him, knew bullets were being loaded into cylinders at this very moment, intended to strike him dead.
What I had to do, what Vespucci inherently knew I must do, was to get inside the head of my mark, realize the connection so I could sever the connection, as he said. But how could I crack Levine if I couldn’t get close to him?
I started by jogging down his street wearing a Boston College T-shirt and some athletic shorts I’d purchased from a bookstore close to the school. I’m sure I looked like every other out-of-breath runner, cutting through neighborhoods near the park to break a sweat and get the ol’ heart rate up.
His street was common, lined with expensive homes, the standout feature being Levine’s house at the end of the block. Gated, with an expansive lawn, it was a two-story Tudor mansion looking down on the rest of the homes like a pedantic schoolteacher in front of a classroom. I didn’t stop to tie a shoelace and get more of a look; it was too early in the game to raise any eyebrows.
From the file Vespucci gave me, I pulled out a chart with the names and faces of Levine’s pigeons, the low-level guys who handled the sports books around town. Vespucci had also included the name of a bar in Little Italy where a couple of the guys liked to whittle away time instead of going home to their wives. It wasn’t much, but it was a start.
I eased into Antonio’s on Stuart Street, just down from Maggiano’s. It was a small place, dimly lit, with a long oak bar covering the length of the back wall. A couple of dartboards, a jukebox, three tables, a television tuned in to the Sox, and a fat Irishman pouring drinks for an eclectic crowd of locals, college kids, and tourists.
Two of Levine’s bookies were at a table near the box, drinking beer and watching the game through jaded eyes. I tried to pick up snippets of conversation, but most of it revolved around the fuckin’ Sox this and the fuckin’ Sox that.
I watched the final out as the Boston cleanup hitter grounded weakly to the pitcher. “Fuck!” I said loudly, and followed it with, “That cost me a grand.” I didn’t have to turn around to know my words had found their mark. As I downed the last of my beer, I heard chairs scraping over the wooden floor, then heavy footsteps, and finally two sets of eyeballs appeared on either side of me.
“You bet the Sox, kid?”
I turned around with a frown on my face, and made eye contact with the shorter of the two guys, the one I knew was named Ponts.
“Yeah. Shit. I know you should never bet your heart . . . but I had a feeling tonight.”
Ponts snorted. “Happens to all of us.”
The taller of the two, a bookie who I knew was named Gorti, jumped in with, “Shit, don’t it?”
“What you drinking, kid?” Ponts asked.
“Me?” I looked at the bottle like I didn’t know. “ Budweiser.”
Ponts called out to the bartender. “Three Buds, Seamus . . .”
“You don’t have to—”
“Christ, you just lost a grand on the goddamn Sox. It’s the least I could do.”
The beers appeared in front of us in a hurry. “Thanks, then . . .” I said.
“Who you bet with, kid?”
I pulled down the bottle from my mouth and looked at Ponts suspiciously.
“Bet with?”
“Who’s your bookmaker?”
“You guys cops?”
They looked at each other and started chuckling. “Nah, kid. We ain’t cops.”
“We are far from cops, I can guarantee you that,” added Gorti.
“Well, just the same . . . thanks for the beer. But I should—”
Ponts didn’t let me finish the sentence, “Kid, the reason I’m asking is because Ben Gorti here and me, Stu Ponts, Ben and me run book right out of this bar.”
“Oh, yeah?” I tried to look pleasantly surprised.
“That’s right. And lemme guess, you’re still using your daddy’s bookie somewhere back wherever home is?”
I let out a smile like he was right on the money.
“Well, what d’ya say you let your old man run his own game and you start running one with us?”
“Really, I should—”
“Tell you what . . . what’s your typical lay?”
“How much you bet, kid?” added Gorti, as if to clarify.
“I usually go five hundred. Unless I’m feeling it. Then, who knows . . .” I tried to sound like a fish who had just bitten on the worm and gotten the hook.
Ponts’s grin widened. “Well, I’ll give you your first $500 bet on the house, and a five-thousand-dollar credit line. Does your dad’s bookie give you that?”
“No, sir.”
“Call me Ponts.”
“Okay. . . .”
He clasped me on the back with a beefy hand. “Now, who you like this week in the Miami game?”
THERE is a common misconception following a successful assassination. Often, the people closest to the target will say they never got a look at the hired killer, they don’t know how the assassin could have gotten close to their boss; the man came in like a ghost and put a bullet in their friend, husband, co-worker without disturbing the dust in the air. They’ll say someone in their midst must have betrayed him, they’ll look at each other with skeptical eyes, they’ll check over their shoulders every time a shadow moves across a doorway, every time they cross in front of a dark alley.
But the truth is they’ve often known the face of the trigger man, they’ve probably shaken hands with him, probably done business with him, hell, probably bought him a beer in a small sports bar in Little Italy.
If I couldn’t know Levine, if I couldn’t make a connection with him, I could watch his pigeons, I could get to know his roots, where he came from before he lived in the big house on the hill at the end of the street. He got to where he was by being the best at what Ponts and Gorti did now. My guess is he was more ruthless, less forgiving then the typical runner. I didn’t know if he demanded the same of his employees, but I intended to find out.
IT didn’t all go wrong on the day of the hit; it happened the night before I pulled the trigger. I was into the guys for most of my nut, the initial amount of credit they gave me to hook me. I played stupidly right off the bat; I didn’t have time to make casual bets. I started with sucker plays, parlays, rolling any wins I stumbled upon, pushing the limits, and Ponts lapped it up like a stray cat with a fresh bottle of milk. In three weeks, I flopped on enough games to be into the fat man for forty-eight hundred.
I met up with him as he was coming out of Antonio’s.
“Say, kid . . .”
“Hey, Ponts. Can I get on a parlay this weekend?”
“How much?”
“Double up, catch up.”
He let out a low whistle. “Forty-eight?”
“Might as well make it an even five.”
“What say you give me the forty-eight you already owe, and we’ll go from there?”
“Come on, Ponts . . . you said a five-grand credit line.”
“But, kid—”
“Forty-eight is not five.”
“Yeah, but you want to go in for ten—”
“Not if I win—”
“I don’t know, kid.”
“Fine . . . I’ll just put two hundred on a three-way parlay . . . B.C. getting three, the over, and Virginia Tech over Michigan.”
“You just want two hundred?”
“I want five dimes, but you said you’ll only give me two potatoes.”
He looked at me sideways and pulled out a small notepad. “The kid wants five dimes . . . I’ll give the kid five dimes. Five to win fifteen on the parlay. Let’s just hope your luck turns, buddy.”
“I got a feeling this time.”
He smiled and winked. “I hope so.”
I hit the B.C. game but lost both Tech and the over. Now, I owed Ponts and Gorti ninety-eight hundred and I would get my first impression of how they ticked when wound up. I stayed away from Antonio’s for two weeks, just to get their engines into the red. Maybe they thought I’d run out on them. Maybe they thought I wasn’t coming back.
When I showed up at the bar, Ponts’s mouth disappeared into a thin line. All hints of camaraderie and companionship were gone. I was not his friend; this was business.
“Where’s the ninety-eight hundred?” he said as I sidled up to the bar. Gorti took a position on the other side of me.
“Let me finish my beer.” I was playing the spoiled college kid for all it was worth.
Ponts took the beer bottle out of my hand and downed it in front of me in two quick gulps. “Now you’re finished. Where’s my money?”
I pulled out a roll of bills from my pocket. “I got five large here. If you’ll just let me place it on tonight’s game . . .”
The fat man snatched it out of my hand, quickly handed it to Gorti, who began to thumb through it. After a quick count, he nodded back to Ponts.
“You got five days to come up with the other forty-eight.”
“Come on . . . why so hostile . . . ?”
“You think this is hostile? Hostile is Friday morning if you don’t have my money.”
“Jesus. I went out of town for a few days. Here I am and I paid you.”
“You paid me half.”
“I don’t see why . . .”
And then my voice trailed off, the words choking in my throat. The last thing I was expecting, and the very thing Vespucci had warned me about, rose up and stung me.
Jake walked into the bar with a friend of hers.
Now, my plan had been to show up on Friday and ask for an extension, to claim poor, to see how physical Ponts would get with me when I didn’t have the money. I was beginning to understand why Vespucci preached making a connection with the target; it was my job to seek out the evil in people. Everyone has a dark side, and once I find that dark side, it is my job to home in on it, manipulate it, exploit it, enlarge it. I must see the evil in the target, taste it, put my finger in it the way Thomas did to the wound of Christ, so that the act of killing becomes diminished, becomes necessary. It is a trick of sorts, an illusion created by the mind to keep the horrors of the job at bay. I wanted to see what Ponts would do to me, so that when I killed Levine, I would understand what he had done to others. Then I could walk away from it like a vigilante instead of a hired gun, at peace with my decision to take someone’s life.
But all that changed the moment Jake walked into the bar and saw me.
She immediately made a beeline over to where I was standing and kissed my lips, saying my name . . . a different name than what I had given Ponts and Gorti.
I started to say something to get her to walk away, but Ponts read me like a book and interrupted before any words could come out of my mouth, addressing Jake directly.
“Hello, there! I’m Ponts and this is Gorti . . . we’re friends of your boyfriend. What’s your name, beautiful?”
She turned to them warmly. “Jake. Jake Owens.”
Ponts grinned so large I thought he was going to swallow her. “You go to school here, Jake Owens?”
She nodded. “Almost finished at B.C. How do you boys know each other?”
“We’re old friends from way back, aren’t we?” and he said my name, the one Jake had handed to him.
“Yeah,” I mumbled. “You know, Jake . . . let me finish up with these fellas and I’ll come sit with you.”
“Okay,” she said, like she knew she had interrupted something she shouldn’t have.
“It was nice meeting you, Jake Owens from B.C.” Ponts said, holding the words like he didn’t want to let them go.
As soon as she was gone, his eyes hardened. “I don’t care you gave us a bum name, I don’t care you think you’re so fucking smart you can game us like a couple of fruits. What I do care about is the forty-eight big you owe us. Now you know that we know about Jake Owens from B.C. We get the money on Friday or somebody’s day gets ruined. We understand each other?”
I nodded. “Yeah . . . sure, Ponts.”
“Don’t do anything dumb again, kid.” He patted the side of my face and turned back to the bar like the conversation was over.
I was sweating. I sat in my apartment, the window open, a nice breeze blowing in off the water, and yet I was sweating, like the room had nothing but stale air trapped inside.
I had ignored Vespucci’s advice, I had kept up my relationship with a girl who loved me, and now she was involved. Two low-level bag men for my primary target knew her name and even worse . . . knew mine.
I was going to have to rectify the situation. Rectify it myself, without telling Vespucci what I planned. And I felt it had to be as soon as possible, money or no money. I didn’t know what Ponts and Gorti would do to warn me, to send me a message even before Friday’s deadline, so I had to compress my six weeks into that moment.
; I sat in the shadows of a neighboring stoop, watching the front door of Antonio’s. An intermittent rain was falling, and drops pooled on the lid of my black baseball cap before collecting into a puddle at my feet. My eyes were sharp, hard, focused. I waited, ignoring everything but the front door of the restaurant, not even stamping my feet to shake off the chill wind blowing in from the east.
At midnight, Ponts and Gorti shuffled out of the bar. They weren’t stumbling; I’d noticed neither man ever drank more than a couple of beers the whole time they were at Antonio’s. They wanted to look like they were there to have a good time, but Antonio’s was a job to them, as mundane as any cubicle at any office in America. So when they left the bar, they were both sober.
From casing them over the last couple of weeks, I knew they both rode together in a four-door Oldsmobile, the kind of car only the elderly and ex-cons purchase with any regularity. As soon as they both settled into the front seat, I flipped open the rear door and slid in behind them.
They both spun to get a look at me, surprised.
“What’ya doin’, kid?” Gorti asked, a moment before I shot him through the passenger seat. He gasped for air—the bullet shattered his left lung—but I was no longer concerned with him, I just turned the gun on Ponts, who was hunched uncomfortably behind the steering wheel, breathing raspily.
“Jesus fuckin’ Christ, kid, don’t shoot me.”
“Just drive.”
“I got a wife at home—”
“I said drive.”
“Sure, kid. Sure.”
He turned on the ignition and put the car into gear, then slowly pulled it out onto the street. Little Italy was dark and empty at this time of night, the cold and the rain keeping the pedestrians at bay.
“Take the highway south. I’ll tell you when to get off.”
PONTS tried to make small talk along the way. Told me it was only five grand and he could chalk that up to sour business. Told me his wife was talking about finally having a baby this year. Told me he didn’t even remember my girlfriend’s name if that was what this was about.
