Gradually, recognition focused Eddie’s eyes. “You done fucked up. No one touches Eddie the Axe and gets away with…”
Cole slammed a fist into his gut. A lungful of stale whiskey breath washed over him as Eddie first bent in half and then began to crumple. Cole held him up. “Let’s try this again. How many of your boys you got up there waiting for me?”
“Three. Three, okay? And they’re only there to offer you a job.” Cole scoffed and Eddie held up both hands, palms out. “Honest. It’s sort of like a ‘we know where you live’ kind of offer. It’s an offer you’d be stupid to say no to.”
“Didn’t we go over this before? You know, how I rarely get accused of being smart?” He shoved Eddie to his knees and stuck the gun to his head. “You have one minute; start praying.” He meant it. In his mind this was not murder, this was self-defense. Cole knew how these thugs worked. Once he finished with the job they had in mind for him, they’d kill him. Plain and simple. Theirs was a “no loose ends” industry.
Eddie was a cool customer. He sniffed up blood and said, “You do what you gotta do, but I don’t think the girl is gonna thank you none.” When Cole drew back slightly, Eddie grinned, showing bloody teeth. “Oh yeah. We picked her up as a little insurance policy, you know, just in case.”
“Where is she?” Cole demanded, digging the bore of the Forino into Eddie’s ear, making him grimace.
“Somewhere safe and she’ll remain safe as long as you do this little job for us. If not…well, I hate to think about what will happen to her. Some of the boys like ‘em young, if you know what I mean.”
Cole pushed the gun harder into Eddie’s ear, forcing his face into the side of the car. Then he dug the gun sight around like it was a screwdriver. “I don’t know what you mean. Tell me. Tell me all about it.”
Blood covered the first two inches of the bore now and Eddie was grimacing and cursing. “Fuck! Fuckin’ stop that! They ain’t gonna hurt her. She’s under my protection.”
“Yeah, and who’s protecting you? I’m going to give you one chance to tell me where she is and then I’m going to start hurting you.” Eddie’s small mouth puckered and a muscle beneath his eye began to twitch. “No? Have it your way.” Cole threw him down onto the grimy sidewalk face first, straddled him and then cuffed his hands behind his back.
Cole rifled his pockets and found a fine .32 caliber Crown, a switchblade, and just over two-hundred dollars in cash. He also had a silk hanky, which Cole balled up and crushed down into Eddie’s mouth, tying it in place with a shoelace. He then searched the car and discovered some rope and a pillowcase with bloodstains on the inside.
He had the greatest desire to torch the car with the two gangsters inside, and if it hadn’t been for Corrina, he would have—and still wouldn’t have considered it murder. War had been declared against him and he would use every means available to him to fight it. This included terrorism on a small scale, and he was going to start with the gangsters. He believed Eddie when he had said he had three men waiting for him. The Rambler would only fit so many men; four seemed like overkill and two wasn’t enough to take on a man like Cole Younger.
After pushing the half-conscious driver to the side, he took the Rambler down the alley and slid it up under his window three stories up. He then laid on the horn. With no other car in a half-mile radius, he quickly got the attention of everyone in the building. The apartments that had windows facing north pulled back their lead shutters to glance down at the mob-mobile. Most didn’t want to know what was happening and quickly shut their windows again.
Cole saw his own window open and he hammered the horn again in an urgent get your ass down here kind of manner. The three men were well-trained monkeys and were hustling out the front door seconds later. None of them were expecting Cole to pop up from behind the car with his gun drawn.
“Freeze!”
Comically, they froze, each in the same position: one leg forward, their right hands held inches from the holsters hidden beneath their suit coats. They looked one to another and then tried to peer in at the Rambler. “I got Eddie safe and sound,” Cole told them. “Now, turn around. There you go, face the building with your hands in the air. One at a time, I want you to reach into your coat and take out your guns and drop them on the sidewalk.”
In no time he had them disarmed. So far so good.
With two helping Eddie and the third propping up the bleeding driver, he marched them back inside at gunpoint. Easily a dozen people saw what was happening and not one called the police. In typical New York fashion, his neighbors all decided it was better not to get involved. Cole wished he had that same choice. Every step he took only got him deeper into a murderous bog from which his chances of emerging unscathed were quickly diminishing.
“It’s game time,” he said as soon as he shut the door to his apartment.
From the floor, Eddie mumbled broken curses around the hanky. His face was an angry purple.
“We ain’t sayin’ shit,” one of the mobsters declared, standing boldly in front of Cole. He opened his mouth to go on, but took the butt of Cole’s Forino in his teeth before he could. While he was spitting out splinters, Cole kicked his feet out from under him and then stepped on his throat.
He grinned as the man gurgled and gasped. “This is what happens to those that won’t speak. Well, it’s the beginning of what will happen. Trust me, it will not end until I find out where the girl is.”
“If we tell you, you’ll just kill us,” another said.
“Or one of the Fantuccis will,” the driver added. “It’s the code. We took an oath, and if we say anything, they’ll kill all of us.”
Cole decided to take his foot off the man’s throat. He lifted his heel and smashed it down on the man’s ankle. “Looks like you boys are fucked even worse than me. You see, I’m no one’s bitch.” He kicked the man in the kidney and watched as he writhed in agony. “I’m my own boss. I don’t have to kill you. And none of you have to die. If you tell me where she is and I retrieve her safe and sound, we can all go our separate ways. You guys can just tell your boss that you never saw me. Everybody lives and everybody’s happy. Or…”
Another kick, this time in the groin. Cole didn’t hold back and the man was practically in tears now.
“Okay, who’s next?” He aimed the gun at the oldest of them. The man looked like he was maybe thirty. His hair was slicked across his head in an attempt to cover how thin it had become on top. On his left hand was a silver band that was pitted with tiny black speckles. These were the first indication that it was tarnishing. Cole guessed it was maybe three years old. The ring announced that he had a wife, the circles under his eyes suggested he had a kid.
“Look at me,” Cole snapped. “Where’s the girl? Tell me where she is, or I pull the trigger.”
“I-I-I can’t. They’ll k-kill me.”
“Or maybe they’ll kill you either way,” Cole told him. “If you don’t talk, I’ll leave you alive. I’ll shoot you through the knee and I’ll tell old man Fantucci that you told me everything, but we had to make it look good. How far do you think you’ll be able to make it with one leg and a wife…”
Another of them interrupted, hissing, “Don’t tell him shit, Davey!”
Cole’s Crown thundered as he shot him through the left knee. Like it was a tea saucer, the bone cracked into a hundred pieces and the slick dropped to the floor, howling. Cole grabbed Davey and shoved his face down toward his friend’s wound. “It’s going to be you next, Davey. Where is she!”
The smell from the barrel of the gun, fused with his sudden panic and Davey lost his head. “At Eddie’s!” he screeched. “She’s at his sister’s place. She’s tied up in her basement.” Eddie snarled and furiously tried to lash out at Davey with his feet. Clearly, Davey was telling the truth. Now, Cole just needed an address. With barely a prod, Davey spilled it while staring at the floor. “On 30th and 3rd Ave. She’s got the only brick place left on the block. Now, now, you gotta let me go. I
told you everything, I promise.”
“Yeah. I told you I would, but you know your life isn’t going to be worth anything if these mugs turn you in. The question is, will they?” All eyes shot to Davey. He nodded, making the man with the hole through his knee groan in new pain. “Go stand over there.” Cole pointed across the room to where his TV sat cold and black. Once Davey shuffled to the other end of the room, Cole swept the gun at the others. “Who else wants to live?” he asked. Once more ratty eyes shot around the room, then one hand went up. A second later, they were all up, except for Eddie’s. Even if he wanted to raise his hand, something Cole doubted, he couldn’t as they were still cuffed behind his back. “That’s what I thought. What about you, Eddie? You ready to let bygones be bygones?”
Eddie glared, which actually surprised Cole. Cole thought he would at least attempt to lie. “Well, I’m shocked. You’re willing to die for your principles. That would be kinda heroic if you actually had principles. But you don’t. You have a kill or be killed mentality. You got the ethics of a scorpion.”
In truth, the others were no better, but Cole needed to end this and killing five of Fantucci’s men in his own living room was not the way to go about it. He paced in front of his captives as he worked out a plan. “Here’s the story you’re going to tell your boss; you had a run-in with another gang. You guys got into a big fight, dick-wad over there got shot, some of you got busted up, and Eddie drove off and you haven’t seen him since. You never saw me or the girl. We go our separate ways, easy-peasy.”
“What are you gonna do to Eddie?” Davey asked.
This was the part of the plan that wasn’t easy-peasy. “Eddie’s going to have to disappear, which means he is going to have to die, and you guys are going to do it, right here, right now. It’s the only way I’ll know you’ll stay silent. It’s either that or I kill all of you.” The glanced at each other, each shrugging or nodding. No one said a word in Eddie’s defense.
The driver raised a hand and asked, “How you want it done? I say knife him in the guts. You can still get away if you get knifed in the guts. I knew a guy…remember Vinny?”
“Vinny G?” Davey asked.
“Naw, Vinny Minetti. Some of the oldsters called him Mini-Vinny because his salami wasn’t all that big. One of the money-honeys said it was like a dandelion, the poor guy…”
Cole slammed his hand on the wall. “Enough! Just do it. All of you. And that includes you,” he said to the man he had shot through the knee. “Each of you grab a limb and Davey you do it. You broke first. It’s only fair.” The other three agreed and as Cole tossed Eddie’s switchblade to Davey, they reached out for Eddie. He began kicking, making a high grunting in the back of his throat. Cole didn’t want to watch. As gruff and mean as he was, he hated cruelty even when it was necessary and deserved. Davey muttered an apology, made a fist around the handle of the knife, and then slammed the blade deep three times.
Eddie rolled into a ball as soon as they let go of him, still making that high grunting sound.
The four mobsters pushed themselves to their feet and stood over Eddie. When he didn’t die right away, Eddie’s driver muttered through his swollen lips, “I’d give him one in the kidneys, just to be sure.”
Davey went down on one knee, offered up another useless apology and jabbed him once with the knife in the soft spot to the left of his spine. For half a minute Eddie looked as though he was attached to a live wire. He was frozen in a stiff contortion as the five men stared.
Cole could practically hear the thought that went through the driver’s mind; it was like a large stone being thrown into mud. “We should give him another poke.”
“No,” Cole said. “Wrap him in the carpet and carry him down to the Rambler.” They were used to following orders and without a word, the driver and Davey hauled Eddie down the stairs, while the other two mobsters limped slowly along. Cole kept pace, his gun at the ready. Once on the street he directed them to stuff Eddie, carpet and all, into the back seat. He unloaded the guns he’d taken from them and tossed them in the gutter, saying, “Remember, if any of Fantucci’s boys catch up to me, I’ll sing. So, make your story good.”
They nodded and stood back until Cole sped off, heading east to 3rd Avenue, his hands white knuckling it. It wouldn’t be long before those jokers behind him started second-guessing what they had done to Eddie. Lies rarely held up. They knew it. They knew that someone would get drunk and whisper what had really happened to Eddie. If they got smart, they’d call Eddie’s sister and have her waiting for him with a scattergun in hand and a couple of goons lurking in the shadows.
The other reason his hands were so hard on the wheel and his foot so heavy on the gas was that he couldn’t help picturing Corrina, shackled to a radiator, her face battered purple and black. The image made his gut burn with anger.
The Rambler roared down the dark streets, dodging cabbies and the occasional bicyclist. He didn’t bother trying to avoid hitting the many potholes that dotted the street like landmines. The car banged and scraped with such violence that Eddie’s wrapped body was thrown off the back seat. He lay in the footwell whimpering. “Sorry, pal,” Cole muttered. “I wish…shit!”
He had just raced past a police car doing over seventy miles an hour.
“This is not going to be good,” he whispered, peering through the rearview mirror. The list of laws he was breaking at that moment was enough to stretch his neck: criminal endangerment, possession of illegal weapons, grand-theft auto, and soon enough, murder—it didn’t get much worse than that. He held his breath for an entire block and was just starting to relax when the squad car’s lights kicked on.
Chapter 5
Cole had only three choices: run, fight, or pray. They were terrible choices. The Rambler might’ve had an engine that could power a locomotive, but it was also nineteen feet long. It cornered like an ocean liner. And with its undercarriage barely eight inches off the ground, Cole was already playing with fire at the speed he was going. Anything faster and he could tear out his own engine.
This left fighting or praying.
As a part-time Catholic, he knew that the benefits of prayer existed in the hereafter as opposed to the here and now. For him, God was purely theoretical and so far, praying had got him little to nothing. Of course, fighting the police would get him even less. They went about prepared for battle, wearing armor and carrying semiautomatic rifles.
For anyone other than Cole Younger, there would be a fourth option: the bribe. A body in the backseat of a stolen mob car would mean a tax of at least a thousand dollars, but with Cole, no amount of money would suffice. He had once been a police officer; the White Knight of the 7th Precinct. He had made enemies simply by not taking bribes and refusing to look the other way when vamps and politicians raped and murdered. He had been shot by his own partner and that still wasn’t good enough for them.
Cole decided to use a mixture of his first three choices. “I’m gonna need a little help with this one, God,” he whispered, pulling to the side of the street and sliding the Forino out. The squad car slid in thirty feet behind him and turned on its high-powered search light, blinding him. “Fuck! I’m gonna need more help than that.”
The help came in the form of the tiniest bit of inspiration. He leaned over and popped the glovebox open. A pair of heavy sunglasses sat right there. Everyone called them “gangster glasses.” It was rarely sunny enough in New York to make them necessary and few people had the money to shell out for extravagances. Like the ugly pork pie hats, pretty much only gangsters wore sunglasses.
He slid them on and counted to three before he opened the driver door. The search light burned into his retinas and yet he saw the outline of the car as if it were a ghost against a black background. The outline grew bolder the further from the light and it was especially clear lower down. Cole dropped to one knee and lined up the sights of the Forino on the front driver’s side tire. It was a small target, six inches high and twelve across, and it might hav
e been a difficult shot for someone who didn’t spend three hundred dollars a year on ammo for target practice.
Cole hit the tire with both shots, and the squad car immediately settled towards that quarter. The two officers in the car had just been climbing out; not an easy process with their armor and choice of weapons. Thinking that they were being targeted, they flung themselves back in and huddled below the dash until they heard the Rambler gun its pulsing engine and speed out of there.
Spitting curses, they untangled themselves and climbed out of the car just as Cole was taking the laborious turn at the end of the block. Some nobody slag was smack-dab in the middle of the intersection, struck with indecision, not knowing whether to go on or back. He looked like he was doing some sort of jittery dance as Cole laid on the horn. Then he froze as the police began to fire their guns—they weren’t good shots and more bullets missed the Rambler than hit it.
The street erupted in screams and finally the slag ran back the way he’d come, giving Cole the chance to turn up the street. He accelerated with his hand still on the horn and a new wind ripping over him. A dozen bullets had blasted out his windows, passing through the car without touching him. He would’ve called it divine intervention, except he had seen three people on the street bleeding as he careened through the intersection.
That was not how the God he’d been raised on was supposed to work. As far as he knew, God wasn’t supposed to play favorites.
He slowed slightly and heaved the car into another turn. The Rambler’s tires screamed in chorus with a gaggle of women who had decided to ignore the horn and were crossing the street as if the car was made out of cotton candy instead of three tons of iron. “Shut up!” Cole barked as he sent them scattering like chickens. “Yeah, I see you. Morons.” He drove on, taking more turns, still traveling generally in the direction of 30th and 3rd Avenue.
Dead Eye Hunt (Book 2): Into The Rad Lands Page 4
