Night and Day (Book 3): Bandit's Moon (17 page)

“These latest pictures,” I said.
“They were taken yesterday?”

Mario nodded. “Yeah, Acorns puts
‘em on one of them little whatchamacallits, the little card things in the
camera. Sends the card here, we print ‘em, we send them over to Bedford for
Terry to take a look.”
 

“Would it be possible for me to go
over there, where Eichhorn is, and talk to him about them?”

“Sure, I can run you over there
myself.”

Before Angelo could chime in and
lock me into something again, I said, “How about if I follow you over in my
Jeep? I might be there a while, and I don’t want to tie you up.”

“Whatever you want. Lemme get my
keys.”

After he left, I looked at Angelo.
“You can give Eddie a call and have Vic pick you up,” I said. “I think I’m
okay on my own from here.”

Angelo shook his head solemnly.
“Sorry, Mr. Welles. Can’t do that. Ed told me to stick to you like rubber
cement till you were done here. I don’t think he wants to disappoint his
friend.”

His friend. Northport. I thought
that was Eddie’s biggest secret, not to be shared with anybody, not even
his bodyguard. But before I could say anything about it, Mario stuck his
head in the doorway. “Let’s go.”

Angelo and I drove in silence for
five minutes, behind Mario’s beat-up red Toyota. Then I glanced at him and
said, “What did you mean about Eddie’s friend?”

He smiled. “I don’t think I have to
tell you, Mr. Welles. He’s a friend of yours too. Works in midtown, in a
five story building on Cypress Avenue.”

“I didn’t think Eddie talked about
that friend.”

“He doesn’t,” Angelo said. “But I’m
his bodyguard. And his friend. I usually go where he goes, and when I
don’t, I still go anyway, if you know what I mean. Ed might not think he
always needs me, but I’m not going to be someplace else if he
does.”

“You’re okay with it?”

“I’m Ed’s man,” he said. “What’s
okay with him is okay with me.” He paused. “Ed Gabriel’s been real good to
me, Mr. Welles. Yeah, I keep an eye on him, but there’s a hundred guys who
could do that. After the camp, he could have said thank you very much and
left me to go back to work for Frankie the Wino. And working for Lavino was
no treat. Frankie was a coward and a pig, and he treated the help like
shit.” He paused again. “But like I told you, Ed’s a good friend, loyal. I
mean, I’m no brain. I’m not smart enough help him with his business. But
still he pays me good, he gives me a place to live in his own home, and he
keeps an eye out for my little brother, Frankie.” He smiled. “Even if he
does think Frankie’s a bum.”

“I don’t know, Angelo, you seem
pretty smart. You’re certainly well spoken, a lot more than most of the
guys in your line of work.” Including his boss, Eddie Gee.

Angelo was silent for a moment,
then said, “When I was working for Lavino, you know what they called
me?”

I shook my head.

“Uh Uh Angelo,” he said. “I had a
stutter. A bad one. Lavino treated me like I was some kind of retard.” He
stared out the window. “In the camp, there was this doctor, this speech
doctor, in the same building as me. And he helped me with the stutter.
Every day, an hour or two a day. Eventually it got better. And then it went
away. Now I talk the way he taught me to talk, clear, thinking about what
I’m going to say before I say it. No more Uh Uh Angelo.”

“He did a real good job with you,”
I said. “I never would have known.”

“Yeah, I wish I could show him how
well I’m doing, but he had a bad ticker, and finally they had to send him
to the camp hospital.”

The camp hospital. Eddie and Angelo
weren’t in Camp Delta-5, where I was. But whatever camp they were in, it
wouldn’t have been all that that different. And at Delta-5, a trip to the
camp hospital was a trip to some Vee’s dinner table. Didn’t matter how sick
you were, or what was wrong with you. Didn’t matter what was in your blood.
TB. AIDS. Cancer. All the same to the Vees. Blood was blood.

“That’s tough,” I said, as Mario
made the turn onto McLendon ahead of us.

“Yeah,” Angelo said. “Life’s
tough.”

Mario slowed and eased the Toyota
to the curb just short of an alley on the right. As I followed, somebody
came running out of the alley. It took me a second to recognize him. It was
the short, gravel-voiced guy from Eichhorn’s crew, Pirelli.

He saw Mario and darted toward his
car. Behind him, somebody else came out of the alley. Somebody carrying an
AK-47.

Chapter
Eleven

Mario came out of his car, pistol
in hand. He started to fire at the man in the mouth of the
alley.

The guy let off a burst in return
and Mario went down. Angelo climbed out of the car, pulling his pistol from
inside his jacket. “Paulie!” he yelled.

Pirelli started running in our
direction. Angelo raised the pistol and began to fire at the man in the
alley. Evenly spaced shots, one every second or so. The guy fired a quick
burst at Angelo and pulled back into the alley.

There was nobody else on the
street, and the storefronts on the other side of McLendon were either
closed or empty. The gunfire hadn’t attracted the cops yet, but when it
did, it would get ugly fast.

As Pirelli reached us, Angelo
said, “Front seat.” Then he started away from the Jeep, pistol extended,
walking steadily to where Mario lay in the street.

Pirelli threw himself into the
front seat. “
Maron
,” he muttered.

I ignored him and kept my eye on
Angelo. When he reached the end of Mario’s Toyota, the guy in the alley
stuck his head out and Angelo fired again, two quick shots. The guy fell
forward, his AK skittering across the sidewalk.

Angelo squatted, grabbed Mario and
slung him over his shoulder. He backed slowly to the Jeep, pistol still
extended in the direction of the alley. As I twisted around to unlock the
back door, he fired three more times. I looked at the alley, but didn’t see
anything.

He opened the door, tossed Mario
inside, and climbed in beside him. “Drive.”

I threw it in reverse and stomped
on the gas, my eyes on the rearview mirror. There was another burst of fire
from the mouth of the alley, but it didn’t hit the Jeep. Then we were into
the intersection with 59
^th
. I spun the wheel hard, jammed it
into drive and floored it.

“Eastside General is about five
minutes away,” I said. “He gonna make it?”

“No hospital,” Angelo said. “Go
back to Werkle’s.”

I wasn’t going to argue with him.
Whatever Mario’s condition, we’d been lucky that the cops hadn’t shown up.
Arriving at a hospital with Mario, victim of a gunshot wound or dead, would
definitely bring cops into it. And I didn’t have time to waste with the
questions they’d ask.
 

“What happened back there?” I asked
Pirelli.

“Dunno,” he said. “I was back in
the kitchen, Acorns and Jack were up front. Then all of a sudden there’s
shootin’, the door flies open, and a bunch of them
strunzos
from the
Floresta comes chargin’ in. Like five or six ‘em. So I beat feet for the
stairs.”

Cut and run. Mob loyalty. Of
course, in his situation, I probably would have done the exact same thing.
Sometimes you have to decide who’s worth dying for.

“I get downstairs, and there’s more
of ‘em inside the empty store, headin’ for the back. So I go out the back
door and run. One of ‘em chases me. Takes a shot, but misses. Then I come
outta the alley and you guys are there.”

In the back seat, Mario
groaned.

“Easy,” Angelo said. “It isn’t that
bad.”

“Yeah,” Mario his usual rasp even
raspier. “Where we goin’?”

“Don Alfredo’s.”

“Good.” Mario was silent for a
moment. “Hey, Angie, stop and call ahead, would ya?”

“Sure, Mario,” he said. He leaned
forward. “Next bar you see, pull over. I’ll run in and make a call so they
have a doc ready when we get there.”

I nodded. “How’s he doing?” There
was a lot of blood, but I couldn’t tell how serious the wounds
were.

“He’s fine,” Angelo said, leaning
back in the seat. “Doc will have him patched up good as new in no
time.”

My eyes met his in the rearview
mirror. I saw him shake his head, almost imperceptibly. Maybe not so fine
after all.

I saw a splash of red neon ahead on
the right. Before the war, the place had been called Buster’s. Now it was
Butch’s. It was still a neighborhood watering hole. And it would have a
phone. I pulled to the curb and Angelo got out.

“Any idea what happened to Eichhorn
and Brewster?” I asked Pirelli.

He shook his head. “Nah, I was too
busy tryin’ to keep somethin’ from happenin’ to me,” he said. “I mean, I
like Jimmy and Jack, but I don’t like nobody enough to take a bullet in the
head, ya know what I’m sayin’?”

I knew exactly what he was
saying.

“Was there shooting after you went
down the stairs?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Maybe.” He
paused. “I dunno. They was shootin’ at me, for sure.”

Angelo came out of Butch’s and
climbed into the back seat. “Go.”.

I drove fast. Not break the law
fast, but fast enough.

As we got close to the gatehouse at
Lakeside Glen, the guard opened the gates. Somebody had apparently called
ahead to let him know we were coming. And I was impressed to see a hospital
gurney beside the three guys waiting under the portico of Werkle’s
house.

At least until Pirelli muttered,
“Bringin’ out the food cart for Mario. That ain’t good.”

I stopped the Jeep and the three
guys pushed the gurney around the other side, opened the back door, pulled
Mario out and tossed him on the gurney. They quickly disappeared into the
house.

The same young guy who’d parked my
car the night before came out and after a quick look, opened my door and
the back door for Angelo. Pirelli was left to open his own.

As we got out of the Jeep, Werkle’s
son stepped onto the porch. “Poppa wants to see you in his office.” He
paused, his eyes on Pirelli. “All of you.”

Angelo nodded. “There’s blood in
the back seat of Mr. Welles’s car,” he said to the teenager. “Make sure it
gets cleaned up good.”

“No problem,” he said. He got into
the Jeep and drove away.

“Terrible thing about Mario,” Alfie
said as he led us through the house. “I hope he pulls through.”

“He’s a tough old bastard,” Angelo
said. “There’s a chance he might make it.”

“Bad?”

“Couple of bullets in the chest is
always bad,” Angelo replied.

Alfie’s father was behind his desk
when we came into the office. He was sipping from a little tea cup, his
pinky sticking out as he lifted it to his lips. When he lowered it, there
was a droplet of blood on his upper lip, quickly swept away by the tip of
his tongue.

“Alfie, you go back and stay with
Mario,” he said. “Soon as you know somethin’, you let me know.”

“Okay, Poppa,” Alfie said. He
closed the door behind him when he left.

Werkle stared Pirelli. “So what the
fuck happened, Paulie?”

“I dunno, Mr. Werkle,” he said
quickly. “Earlier this mornin’, Jack was at the window. He said he thought
he saw somebody watchin’ him from the fourth floor, you know, with
binoculars. But when Jimmy went over to take a look, he didn’t see nobody,
so we figured it was just nerves, you know.”

Werkle nodded.

“So ‘bout ten or so, I was just
eatin’ a little breakfast before I took my turn at the window. I’m sittin’
there in the kitchen when I hear like a machinegun in the livin’ room. I
get up and look and the stairs door comes flyin’ open and a bunch of them
jamooks from across the street come pilin’ in, wavin’ AKs and shit and
hollerin’.” He paused. “There was too many of ‘em, Mr. Werkle. So I ran to
the stairs in the back and went down. Only there was more in the shop. When
I came down, they saw me and started yellin’ and wavin’ their guns around.
So I figured I better get out while I could. I’m sorry.”

“You did the right thing,” Werkle
said, taking another sip of blood from the teacup. “No point in getting
yourself whacked.” He put down the teacup. “Then?”

Paulie nodded. “Then I ran around
and down the alley. One of ‘em followed me, took a couple of shots. I came
out of the alley on McLendon, and Mario and these gentlemen was there.
Mario started shootin’ at the guy behind me and got hit. Then Mr. Vitale
called me over to Mr. Welles’s car and I got in.”

“I killed the guy that shot Mario,”
Angelo said. “Another one showed up a couple of seconds later, but I
couldn’t get a good shot. Grabbed Mario, tossed him in Charlie’s Jeep, and
we came back here.”

“I appreciate you going back for
Mario,” Werkle said.

Angelo shrugged. “He’s an old
friend. I wasn’t going to leave him behind.”