Toughs Page 38

  Vince nodded in the direction of the speakeasy. "Somebody'll come out of there drunk soon enough. We'll follow him back to his car."

  "What if he's not driving?"

  "Then we'll follow him back to wherever he's going and hope he's got a phone so we can call Lottie."

  Loretto pulled his legs closer to his chin, huddled into himself. Something about Vince's plan made him angry. It was as if he were upset because the plan might work and they wouldn't have to freeze to death or get filled full of lead by Dutch's boys. He asked, "How bad do you think Gina's hurt?" When he turned to look at Vince, they were so close they were practically touching.

  "She got hit in the face." Vince covered his own face with his hands as if the memory of Gina getting shot pained him. "I saw her get hit. She took a bullet in the jaw. It won't kill her." He lowered his hands. "She may not be as pretty as she was before."

  Loretto only nodded. The extreme cold seemed to make everything dull and slow, even his memories, even his feelings. "Patsy's dead. It looked like half his face was gone. His woman, too. Maria."

  "And Mike's brother, Freddie. He got it in the back of the head." Vince watched the bottom of the stoop as if recalling the shootings, trying to see them again. "I don't know about Paul," he said. "He got hit trying to get out the window."

  "Mike?"

  "He was still breathing when we left. He took a bullet in the right side of the chest."

  "You think it was Dutch's guys?"

  "Probably," Vince said. "Probably Dutch hired some out-of-town boys to do the job for him. That's like Dutch."

  Loretto shivered, his body convulsing as if he had the shakes. He pulled his knees tighter to his chest and Vince put his arm around his shoulders. It surprised Loretto, Vince putting his arm around his shoulders and pulling him closer. It wasn't like Vince to touch anyone, even when they were kids, back in the dorm, when they might sit side by side on one of their cots, reading a comic book. There was always some distance between them. He couldn't ever remember actually touching Vince, except once, when they were kids, after a fight, when Vince had helped him up. One of the bigger kids had pinned Loretto to the ground. He was sitting on him and throwing punches at his face, relentless. Then Vince was there, with Pete. Vince knocked the kid off him, and Pete pummeled him, sent him running. Loretto remembered Vince leaning over him, extending his hand, helping him up, and then he put his arm around him and they walked off, the three of them, Vince on one side of him with his arm around his shoulders, Pete on the other side.

  Loretto said, "How'd we get here?" and took a deep breath to tamp down the roiling feeling building in his stomach.

  "What do you mean?" Vince answered. "We got here through the alleys. Sometimes it's like," he went on, dismissing Loretto's question, "it's like there's only one thing that matters to me anymore now, and it's that I get to kill Dutch." He was quiet then, as if he wanted to say more and was trying to come up with the words—but a door opened across 2nd and he jumped to peer out from under the stoop.

  He was a little guy, the mug coming out of the speak and onto the street, clutching a frayed peacoat by the lapels, wrapping it around him tighter. He was wearing one of those crazy Russian hats that look you've got a live animal on your head, a big black woolly thing pulled down to just above his eyes.

  Vince said, "Get a load of this guy." He pushed a garbage pail aside and scurried out from under the stoop with Loretto following. "If a car comes by, we go for the alleys again." He stepped out of the shadows and onto the sidewalk.

  Loretto kept pace alongside Vince as they followed the little guy, who was walking briskly on the opposite side of the street, his hands shoved in his pockets and his shoulders hunched forward, making him appear even shorter. Loretto figured he couldn't have been more than five four.

  "We're in luck," Vince said as the figure with the funny hat stepped into the street and crossed to the driver's side of a black Ford coup. "Hey, fella!" he called.

  By the time the guy turned around to look, Vince had him by the neck with one hand, and with his free hand he relieved him of his keys. "We need to borrow your car," he said with a big smile. "Sorry for the inconvenience."

  "Well, you can't borrow my car!" The big voice that came out of that small frame was startling. "Give me those keys!" he boomed, and he lunged at Vince.

  Vince hit the guy once with a right that knocked him down—but he was up again immediately. He threw his head into Vince's gut and wrapped his arms around his waist as if he might upend Vince and throw him to the ground.

  Vince snatched the guy's hat off, took him by the hair, and yanked him off his feet. He threw him back against the car and hit him several vicious blows to the gut, which doubled the guy over and left him flat on his face on the street, where he tried to crawl under the car for protection. Vince dragged him by the feet, pulled him out from under the car, lifted him by the waist, and carried him to the sidewalk, where he picked him up high over his head and plunged him down in sitting position onto a spear picket fence. The scream that issued from the guy then was loud enough to be heard for blocks. Vince hurried to the car and drove off with Loretto beside him and the guy still yowling and screaming as he struggled to extricate himself from the picket fence.

  Vince turned quickly onto a side street and piloted the car through a maze of narrow cobblestone roads. Loretto figured he was trying to avoid the main thoroughfares, where they were more likely to run into Dutch's boys. After a while, he saw that they were heading out of the Bronx, up toward Westchester. "Where are we going?"

  "To Lottie," Vince said. "I got another car there."

  "You're not taking me back to my place?"

  "Too dangerous."

  "Dangerous? Why?"

  "Give me a minute," Vince said. "I'm still thinking." He leaned close to the steering wheel, his eyes on the road.

  Loretto tried to figure why it might be too dangerous to go back to his apartment in Brooklyn. He closed his eyes and sank down into his seat. "Jesus Christ," he said. "Jimmy Brennan."

  "Yeah," Vince said. "That's what it looks like—but we don't know for sure."

  "My money." Loretto pictured the cardboard box in his closet, all his money neatly stacked and banded in piles. "Christ, it was Jimmy," he said. It seemed obvious to him now: Jimmy staying behind, the gunmen showing up so soon after they'd arrived at the party.

  "Probably," Vince said.

  My money, Loretto thought. For a second, he let himself hope that he might be wrong, that Jimmy might not have turned on them, that his money might still be there in the closet waiting—but he quickly let that notion go. No. Jimmy had turned on them, and his money was gone. He felt oddly distanced from the realization—as if it didn't matter. He leaned his head against the window. He would have liked to fall asleep, but he knew he wouldn't. He'd stay where he was, in a dark space, moving, with everything hovering around him, just outside the range of thought.

  1:00 a.m.

  Lottie woke to the sound of a car pulling up the drive. She sat up in

  bed as headlights flashed through the bedroom, throwing a bright light on the plaster ceiling before racing down the walls and then leaving the room locked in darkness again as the engine cut out and quiet returned. She reached for the light on the night table and then thought better of it. Instead, she felt around under the bed until she found the sawed-off shotgun Vince had left for her there. She pulled it under the covers and turned on her back with the shotgun pointed at the bedroom door. There was no lock on the farmhouse door, and now she regretted not propping a chair under the knob. Outside, she heard the car doors open and close. She listened, her body tensed toward the quiet, hoping to hear a familiar voice.

  The room was cold and she was sleeping in her robe under a quilt and a pair of red flannel blankets, the coverings mounded over her. Before going to bed, she'd smoked some tea with a glass of wine to help her sleep—but as she waited in the dark, listening, she didn't feel anything other than sober. Her hea
rt wasn't racing, though her arms and legs were tingly, the way they got when she was afraid. She held the shotgun with both hands, her finger on the trigger, and when the lights went on beyond her closed door and someone climbed the stairs toward the bedroom, she snuggled down into the pillows with her eyes squinted closed and tried to look like she was sleeping. Then the door opened and the light went on and it was Vince standing in the doorway.

  "Jesus H. Christ," she said, the words tumbling out of her. "You scared the hell out of me! You said you were spending the night in the city." Only after she'd spoken did it register that his shirt and jacket were bloodstained. "What happened?" She tossed the heavy covers aside and stepped onto the cold hardwood floor.

  Vince glanced at the barrel of the shotgun sticking out from under the covers. "Get dressed and packed," he said. "We're leaving tonight for Niagara Falls."

  Lottie pulled Vince's jacket open, examining the bloodstains on his shirt.

  "Not my blood," he said. "Loretto's downstairs getting cleaned up." He gently pushed her aside and made his way to the bathroom as he stripped out of his clothes. "Bring Loretto one of my suits. His is a mess."

  Lottie followed him into the bathroom and watched as he sat on the john and pulled off the rest of his clothes. "Are you going to tell me what happened?"

  "We got ambushed." He leaned over the sink and took a washcloth to his face and chest. "Mike wanted to go see his sister, Gina. She was having some kind of a party. We didn't want him to go alone, so we all went with him. Everybody but Jimmy Brennan." He opened a cabinet door under the sink, found a clean towel, and dried himself off. "A couple of minutes after we get there, a carload of Dutch's boys bust through the door." He shrugged as if he didn't want to tell the rest of the story. He went back into the bedroom and started getting dressed.

  Lottie watched Vince as he pulled on underwear and an undershirt and then moved to the closet to pick out a suit. "Who got hit?" she asked. "Whose blood is that?"

  Vince didn't answer right away. He put on his pants and slipped into his shirt before he turned to face her. "Patsy's gone," he said, buttoning up his shirt. "Mike and Paul got hit. We left them there."

  Lottie looked as if she had a sudden headache. She sat on the edge of the mattress, next to the shotgun.

  "Mike's brother Freddie got it, too," Vince said, and he pulled a jacket from the closet. "And Maria, Patsy's woman. They're all dead. I don't know about Mike and Paul."

  "Jesus," Lottie said. "Anybody else?"

  "Gina got hit in the face. And, I don't know, there was a broad under Freddie. She might have got hit, too. I never saw her before."

  "God Almighty," Lottie said. She took a moment to think and then asked, "Is it all over now? Are we on the run?"

  "You ever known me to run?" Vince snatched a suit from the closet and tossed it at Lottie. "Take this to Loretto like I asked you. Go on."

  "Where are you going?"

  "We got some business to take care of."

  "What kind of business?"

  "Jimmy Brennan business. He ratted us out to Dutch." He stared at Lottie where she stood with the suit draped over her arm. "I got to ask you a third time?"

  "If he squealed on you," Lottie said, "don't you think he'll be expecting you? You can't go after him now. You'll get yourself killed."

  Vince rubbed his chin like he was trying to hurt himself. Then he snatched Lottie by the back of her robe, yanked her across the room, threw her out of the bedroom, and slammed the door behind her.

  In the hallway, Lottie clutched the suit to her breast. When she saw Loretto at the bottom of the stairs, she hurried down to him. He had a bath towel wrapped around his waist and a second one slung over his shoulder. His hair was wet and still dripping. "Jesus, get dressed before you freeze to death." She handed him the suit.

  Loretto looked up to the closed bedroom door. "Everything all right?"

  "Sorry about Gina," Lottie said. She pushed Loretto back toward the bathroom.

  "She'll be okay," Loretto said as if he was sure of it. "She got hit in the jaw." He stepped into the bathroom, and Lottie followed him in.

  "Go on, get dressed." Lottie took a seat on the edge of the tub, her feet in the tub, looking away from Loretto. "Vince says you're going after Brennan. Don't you think that's pretty crazy?"

  "Not really." Loretto stepped into Vince's pants. They were big on him, but then he wasn't going anyplace where style mattered. He tucked the shirt in and cinched the belt tight.

  Lottie said, "I thought you were the smart one? Jimmy'll be looking for you to come after him."

  "Not if he thinks we're dead."

  "Yeah, but what if he doesn't?" Lottie said. "What if he knows you and Vince got out?"

  Before Loretto could answer, Vince appeared in the doorway. He was wearing a winter coat, gloves, and a hat, and he had a second coat slung over his arm and a second hat in hand. "You can turn around," he said to Lottie. "He's all dressed."

  "Jesus, Vince," she said when she saw him. "We should just go, right now, the three of us. We can meet Florence and Joe and figure out what to do next from there."

  Vince handed Loretto the coat and hat and then took a Super .38 from under his belt and slipped it into Loretto's holster. To Lottie he said, "Do what I just told you to do. Get dressed. Get packed. As soon as I get back, I want you ready to go out the door."

  "Vince, honey—" Lottie sounded as if she was going to try one last time to convince him not to go after Jimmy, but Vince snatched her by the neck, lifted her close to him, and slapped her across the face.

  "Soon as I get back," he said, and he tossed her down into the bathtub, where she landed awkwardly on her back.

  For a second, Lottie thought she might cry, but then something different rose up inside her, something huge and angry, and she wrapped her arms around herself to keep it contained. It was as if the slap had detonated an explosion—and then an instant later another part of herself had clicked into gear, a part that was mechanical and calculating. She counted the dead and wounded: Patsy, Mike, and Paul. She counted the missing: Domini and the Evangelista brothers. She added Jimmy Brennan to the calculations as a traitor, probably gone over to Dutch and the Combine. That left only Vince and Loretto, and now Vince was flying out of control. These calculation happened in an instant, but she didn't look up until she heard Vince leave the bathroom. She caught Loretto glancing back at her just before he followed Vince out the door to the cars. He had a mystifed look on his face, as if he had no idea what was going on. He'd opened his mouth, and she'd thought he was going to say something, but he only turned and followed Vince, and then Lottie was alone in the big farmhouse again. When she heard two cars start up and pull away, she switched off the bathroom light and closed the door and sat down on the john in the darkness and tried to think.

  1:45 a.m.

  Acouple of miles out from Westchester, Loretto ditched the stolen Ford

  and drove the rest of the way into Brooklyn with Vince in his Buick. Brennan owned a couple of houses side by side on Ainslie Street in a quiet Italian neighborhood. Before the fre, he'd had a steady job as a welder, and he'd pulled in money on the side as a shylock. His wife had worked at home as a seamstress. Loretto knew all this from conversations with Brennan, who was proud of owning two houses. His family had come from County Donegal, same as Vince's family, and the only thing they'd ever owned was debt and misery. With a few drinks in him, Brennan talked freely about his life, about growing up one of six brothers and three sisters, about working in factories from the time he was a child, too young even to know how to read, about the fights he'd had with his old man, who was good-hearted but with a weakness for drink and women, about his mother who was a scold and a shrew and beat all the boys while pampering the girls, about the years he'd lived in Mount Loretto because his family couldn't afford to feed him and couldn't find anyplace to put him to work, about how he'd been in and out of trouble with the law. He talked about everything but the fire that killed his wif
e and children. About that he'd never uttered a word.

  "That's it," Vince said, and he pulled over on a quiet street of two-family houses, under a tree with branches that reached out toward the rooftops. Down the block, a lamppost cast its yellow light over a slate sidewalk and a cobblestone street. "That's the one that burned," he said, gesturing across the street toward a house with a basement apartment under a wooden stoop and a second apartment on the upper level. "You can still see the scorch marks by the windows."

  Loretto crouched down to get a better look at the building. "I don't see any lights."

  Vince buttoned up his coat. "Feckin' coldest night of the year. You ready?"

  Loretto nodded, but Vince kept his eyes on him. "If you're still thinking about what happened at Gina's, don't," he said. "Don't think. Just keep moving." He waited another moment, watching Loretto, before he got out of the car and started across the street.