"It ain't for sale, trade, or donation. I can sleep like a baby knowing it's in quick reach."
"Speaking of which, any heartburn if I park over there by the entrance?"
"As long as you're a memory by sunup, no sir."
"Some rack time is all I want."
"Sweet dreams, Tommy Mack."
As Big Jamal clattered shut the side door to button up his private boxcar, I trooped back to the coupé to bed down, but without capturing any of the sweet dreams that he'd wished on me.
D
awn gave visibility to the old switchyard, the grittiest spot where I'd ever slept, and I'd bunked in some real armpits. No coyotes barked as I ranged out of the coupé and flogged my log by the tailpipe. An entire night had gone by with no hot lead flying at me. Extending that streak shaped up as today's goal. At a short glance, I saw the old boxcar across the maze of rusty tracks still had its side door closed. Big Jamal had opted to sleep in this morning, and I suspected he did that more often than not.
I kindled the coupé's engine and headed off. A chipper lady DJ reported the motorists in SUVs and hybrids were gridlocked on I-66, I-95, I-395, and I-495. She said many of the commuters spent up to 62 hours a year languishing in traffic. Even so, I bet they didn't play hide-and-seek with a sociopathic crime boss like I did, and that was saying a lot for them.
I pit-stopped at a cut-rate gas station and barricaded myself in the Men's room. A disposable razor and a thin lather rubbed up from the hand soap bar served my shaving needs. Taking a hobo’s bath tempted me, but I didn't press my luck, so I rinsed and dried. My mental roster of public phone locations arose. So many of them had gone the way of the 8-track tape, the rest soon to follow. A curmudgeon Korean grocer had preserved the phone kiosk found just outside his shop door. After being left 50¢ poorer, I cringed at each ring jangling in my ear as if an electrical current charged up my arm.
"Yeah?" Mr. Ogg's rough greeting doubled the voltage shocking me.
"Tommy Mack here."
"Well…damn…where are you, kid?"
"If I play it smart, where you can't ever reach me."
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"You masterminded the frame job on me for Gwen's murder."
"Come again?"
"It's simple. I ain't your whipping boy."
"Come on, of course I'm PO'ed, but I realize you're not her killer."
"No blackmailer ever hassled Gwen. The information on it you gave me is a sham."
"I must've given you the wrong envelope."
"You angled to put me at her townhouse."
"Quit yelling at me. Christ. Now, was she already dead when you arrived?"
"That's my story."
"Okay, I can buy that. Why do I get all this enmity?"
"Your dark suits are swarming to nail me."
He laughed at me. "No-no, that's just your acute paranoia talking, Tommy Mack."
"Are you saying it ain't so?"
"Uh-huh. Calm down, man. Drop by for a cup of coffee, and we'll talk."
"Do I have your word no heat is on me?"
"Word."
"All right then, be on the lookout for me in a few."
"I look forward to it, Tommy Mack."
Never trust a dude whose hustle is shadier than your own. I'd gotten that piece of advice from a fortune cookie or horoscope, and I sure wasn't trusting Mr. Ogg. He'd manipulated me to play the pawn in his murder scheme, and I felt more betrayed than ever. My wary trek over the backstreets came as the street lamps blinked off, and the morning's first bright sunrays trickled their golden beneficence down onto the suburbs.
The amber lights illuminated the residents' windows, and I pictured them performing their bleak rituals to prepare and depart for their cubicles and offices. One young wife performing a quick breast self-exam in the shower rubbed across a thimble-sized lump. One young wife, sighing, plundered her lingerie drawer in a quest for any panties without the elastic band shot. One young wife, her eyes clamped tight, pleasured her husband who'd also do her kid sister that afternoon at a hot-sheets motel. I broke off my imaginings.
Hispanic day laborers clotted at the rim of Home Depot's paved lot. I'd soon number in their jobless ranks, but only if I could dodge Mr. Ogg’s dragnet. As I gnawed on a piece of beef jerky I'd dug out of the glove compartment, I circled the periphery of Mr. Ogg's neighborhood. My flyby paid off in dividends when I spotted six dark suits in parked navy blue sedans, all idling there to pounce on me when I arrived for my cup of coffee. One of the sedans was leaving, so I sped up to dog it, growing certain the lone driver was none other than my old pal Arky.
My smoky glass windows veiled my face as he signaled a turn into a nearby Gas-N-Sip. He braked, and I nosed up to brake within a few inches of his rear bumper before I timed our exits to coincide. Vigilance wasn't his hottest priority. He moved toward the Gas-N-Sip's door where I overtook him and yanked him around to face me.
"Yo, Arky."
After his flash of shock, he chalked on a smile. "Tommy Mack, fancy bumping into you again this soon."
"Why did I see you parked back there on the street?"
"I was making a cell phone call."
"Don't piss in my ear and tell me it's raining, Arky."
"What's gotten under your skin?"
"You and your pals want to bushwhack me."
Arky jerked his head back and forth. "No. No. You're talking crazy."
"Then why did I count you and five dark suits out guarding Mr. Ogg's shanty? Who was it that saw me at the bodega and raced off and ratted to him I was still around town?"
"I told you that I don't work for him no more."
"Just make like a statue." I ran a hasty pat down, and he was clean. I channeled my eyes on his car. Of course he wouldn't carry on his person. "Are you tooled up, Arky?"
"A parole beef like that sends me back to jail."
"Move it." I marched him back to his sedan, and we halted by the driver's door. "Unlock it."
He stalled. "Look, I stow a sawed-off shotgun under my car seat."
"Unlock it."
"You can't take enough precautions is how I like to operate."
"Unlock it."
Sending me a sullen glower, he fished out his keys and used the fob to bleep off the door lock. We stood alone in the lot. I wrested out his rear door, retrieved his sawed-off, and placed it inside the coupé.
"Has Mr. Ogg slapped a hefty bounty on me?" I asked. "Is that what you hope to collect on by toting a sawed-off?"
"No, but I tried to warn you of trouble."
"Shut up," I said. "Where's your cell phone?"
"Why don't you take my wallet, too, and clean me out?"
"Good idea. I'll take both along with your car keys. Your following me is no good."
Surly, he forked it all over to me.
"Now stand pat and count to fifty before you stir a muscle. Fair warning. I'll pop you if I see you again."
He nodded. "Today I'm hauling ass.
Old
Yvor
City
is getting too unhealthy for me."
He didn't know yet how correct he was. I yanked the coupé door shut behind me at the wheel and cranked the engine. I snaked my hand around the front seat and lifted his sawed-off. The chamber I'd inspected was loaded for bear. This would go down noisy and messy, but still effective. His big mouth had enabled Mr. Ogg's pursuit and set the ambush back there for me.
Before I finished powering down my window, the spooked Arky broke into a sprint across the lot. I gassed it and took off after him. His eye whites flared looking back at me as I stuck out his sawed-off. He registered the muzzle flash before the 00-buckshot volley yapping out took a fireman's axe to rent apart his upper back just below his flamboyant dragon tattoo.
He didn't fly forward from the 12-gauge's blast force like seen in the shoot-'em-ups, but he caved at the knees and crumbled on the spot. I knew I'd just sabotaged my chance at taking out Mr. Ogg when the sawed-off's loud blast alerted the dark suits lulling on the street behind me. The motorcade revved up their engines, screeched tire rubber on the asphalt, and moved out to converge here. As I gassed off down the street, I checked in the rearview mirror at the three navy blue sedans slamming into the Gas-N-Sip's lot where I'd just vacated.
They'd collect their pal Arky, gunned down and bleeding out. They'd catch on that I was a serious player to reckon with in their high stakes game. They'd see how savage I turned when I got backed into a corner. This incident was the opening salvo to Mr. Ogg's
Waterloo
.
I
slammed the coupé through the labyrinth of side lanes, traffic circles, and parking lot cut-throughs. I added in my backtracking to also flummox any pursuit. My edgy glances at the three mirrors didn't snag any ominous glimpses of the dark suits in their navy blue sedans. Feeling securer for the time being, I choked my jets to cruise at the posted speed limit. I rubbed at my red skin rash contracted from holding the sawed-off's steel barrel to do Arky. Then I blazed a
Blue
Castle
to curb my skin allergy and jangled nerves.
One fact was solid: Mr. Ogg had painted a bull's-eye on me. My temptation was to flee down the interstate, but wasn't that gambit just a short term plan? After you antagonized Mr. Ogg, he never quit coming at you. I knew that firsthand. Paid a fee, I had flown off to far-flung corners of the nation and erased problems like I was now in his eyes. I flicked away the cigarette puffed down to its filter and matched up a new
Blue
Castle
.
My brain rioted, looking for an out—any out—to escape this jam. My simple answer circled back to obliterating the alpha wolf of the pack. If Mr. Ogg went down, there'd be no crime boss left ordering the contract on me. I yearned for breathing the air of an unmarked man, and I yearned for reclaiming my old life.
I was a somebody not deserving this fate. I possessed a unique talent to add value to the outfit. I was the closer. I made the wrong things right. My track record had been flawless for two decades, and I was going stronger than ever. Nobody did it better. I'd grown indispensible.
All good things ran their course, and I was ready to concede that was me some day, but not today. Age 54 wasn't so old. Hell, Satchel Paige hurled in the big leagues at 59 and fanned Hall of Famer Yaz. Julio Franco had played major league ball until 51. Hammering Hank still slugged home runs at 42. I also excelled, and I wasn't ready to hang it up. I hadn't lost a step, and my aim was still true dead center. My fired shots never shanked wide of the target. Foremost, I'd never bungled an assignment.
That wasn't what this was about. If Mr. Ogg saw me as a slacker or felt I was slipping, he'd let me resign. No big deal. We'd discussed my retirement plan was to go loaf on a beach, say, down in Daytona,
Key West
, or
Hawaii
. But finding Gwen shot dead had torn away my blinders. Left as nothing except a piece of garbage to chuck into the dumpster, I was written off as expendable.
What transgression had Gwen done to enrage her uncle enough to kill her? Embezzled his money? No, she'd never get her mitts on that much lucre. Had she banged his most reviled foe, say, out of spite? That was possible, but the likelihood wore thin. I doubted if she cared about his business associates, as long as his money spigot went on gushing into her purse. Or his wrath stemmed from learning that she'd gotten pregnant and then had the fetus aborted. That'd do it all right.
I examined the booty I'd lifted off Arky. The cell phone was my new communications tool, except I did not intend to use it. I turned it over in my palm, appalled by its tiny Dick Tracy screen. I ensured it was turned off, and no dark suit had a means to zero in on me since cell phones were homing beacons. The cell phone went back on the dashboard, and I rifled through his wallet. The four Andy Jacksons beefed up my gas money fund, and I tossed the wallet out the window.
As I settled back in the coupé's seat while driving, I trained my mental powers to conjure up any happier days, if there were indeed any happier days. One weekend had shown golden potential, but then it soured. I knew why. The job touched—and then poisoned—every single aspect of my life, no matter where I went or what I did.