Hit #29, page 11
He could have avoided this by staying off main thoroughfares until late at night. Whenever possible I use side streets because I know I can always get through. But there are some things that you simply can’t plan for. I blasted a guy in Brooklyn one time, dropped the car I was driving, walked two blocks to the New Lots Avenue subway and got on a train to the Bronx. That should have been it.
But the train got stuck in the tunnel. This was in the middle of summer and I’m wearing a sports jacket because I’ve got a cannon tucked into my shirt. So I’m sitting on that train with a just-fired piece which I’m looking to dump, and it’s digging into my body. I’m sweating like a stuck pig but there is absolutely no way I can take the jacket off. There is nothing for me to do but sit there and wonder why the train was stuck. Naturally the first thing that popped into my creative mind was that someone had seen me pull the trigger and tailed me to the station and then called the coppers. And they stopped the entire New York City transit system just to get me. It was possible. Eventually the train started moving and there proved to be nothing to worry about. They had stopped for a body on the tracks or something. But my point is that there was absolutely no way I could have planned for that natural mishap.
In looking over my list of potential places to do my work, my first choice had been Hunts Point, but the more I thought about it the less I liked it. The place itself was good, the timing was bad. When he was in the area there was a lot of truck traffic and it was too congested for me to get out as quickly as I thought necessary. Still, a possibility.
His girlfriend’s house also had potential but tough problems. She lived on a one-way street which led almost directly to a stop sign and then onto a main thoroughfare. This means I might have to sit there waiting for traffic to let up. Also the Throgs Neck Expressway went right by there, which created much more traffic than I care for. The final thing, which just about eliminated the project from consideration, was the overabundance of kids living in the area. You can never tell when one of them is going to pop up out of nowhere and see something bad for his or her eyes.
The candy store is also a bad traffic area. You have to go down 174th Street which is particularly busy at that hour, and there are a number of one-way streets which cuts down on my choices if I should have to get away quickly. One problem I don’t need is the possibility of a head-on collision while I’m trying to leave.
I could have hit him easily when he came out of his apartment building, but I have strong feelings about violating a man’s home. I guess it goes back to my own personal experience. I believe a man’s home is his sanctuary and that includes areas around it. To me, there is not much difference between hitting a man in his living room, which is forbidden by organization custom, or on his front lawn, which is not.
That left the social club which seemed to have interesting possibilities. There was a good traffic flow. After dark there were not too many people on the streets. Those street lights that still worked were dim. The timing was good in that, according to Sweetlips, he usually left the place after dark. And there were dark doorways I could wait in.
But the negatives outweighed the positives. Number one, I couldn’t be sure exactly when he was going to be at the club or when he would leave. He didn’t seem to go there at any specific time or stay for any predetermined length. Number two, I saw him leave with another person. This may have been a fluke or Squillante may be a nice guy who drives people home. If it can be avoided you never make a hit when there is only one person with your target. That one person is going to be looking right at you. A restaurant or crowded area is different. There people will usually panic and give 15 different descriptions of you.
Number three, the thing that really eliminated the club was that I remembered it was owned by Jimmy “Blue Eyes” Alio. I don’t think he would be too thrilled if somebody got gunned coming out of his place. Bad for business, naturally. Even though he himself was in the can at this particular time, these were his people running the place and out of respect for him I crossed the social club off my list.
This did not leave me with much. In reality, each of these places had something to offer, as well as drawbacks. I’m positive I could have done the job in any of these places and gotten away with it, but none of them gave me the one thing I was looking for: the dependable edge. The advantage that made the job an unstoppable certainty. With his mundane existence, Joe Squillante was making my work difficult.
Squillante didn’t go anywhere alone on a regular basis at night. I would have loved that. Not that I can’t work in the daylight. I can and I have. I can work anywhere and anytime. But dark is better for all the obvious reasons. I had absolutely no way of predicting what he did at night. Unless I drew him out and had him come to me.
The more I thought about it the more appealing that idea became. Normally I don’t like to do this for two reasons. Whenever you set a guy up you force him to alter his schedule and this in itself may make him wary. Particularly an individual like Squillante, who had a lot to be wary about. And when a man is wary he is on edge and hence much more difficult to surprise.
Second, and worse, setting a person up usually means involving at least one other man and I did not like that at all. Particularly in this case. I don’t like other people knowing what I’m doing and, more importantly, when I’m doing it. Specially when those “other people” are Jackie Sweetlips.
Besides the possibility of the double-cross, other people are simply not reliable. I once had a man delivered to me in a vacant field and the jerk who dropped him off just let him out of the car, then drove away. The target took one look around, realized what was happening, and took off like a scared murder victim. I had to run the Kentucky Derby to catch him. When you work by yourself these are problems you just don’t have.
So I sat there for an hour weighing the advantages of different areas and different times. I would not really know if I had made the right decision until long after the job had been forgotten. That was always the key. If the job was forgotten I did it right. The wrong decision could cost me a long stay in the Graybar and a reputation amongst my employers that I was getting sloppy. Tentatively I decided to bring him to me. I wasn’t sure where, but the Bronx is chock-full of wonderful isolated little pockets that have been used as meeting grounds and body dumpings for more years than I’ve been around. The thing I had to be careful about was setting myself up for Jackie Sweetlips while I was busy setting up Squillante for the job. I decided to meet with Jackie on Tuesday and see if his fish would swallow my bait.
I called him about fifth thing in the afternoon: Tuesday was a busy day. First and most important on this day, I planned to service my bettors. When they lose I expect them to pay on time and when they win they have every right to expect likewise. Therefore, except on rare occasions, I do not miss.
Tuesday was almost a rare occasion. Very rare.
Before leaving my apartment Tuesday morning I debated changing cars to give me an edge over whoever was trailing me. It would take them some time to pick me up. But I realized I already had an edge: I knew they were there. So I decided to stick with my aging, but comfortable, automobile.
I walked out of my apartment and started toward my car. As I walked I was checking the cars parked up and down the road, seeing if the Chevy was waiting for me. It wasn’t in sight.
As I stepped out between two parked cars to cross the street, a yellow cab turned the corner and started down the block. I noticed that the driver had his light on, meaning he had no passengers, and that he was staring right at me. I waited.
He came closer and I took a step back, this guy seemed to be hogging the side of the road I was standing on. He kept coming closer.
He was looking right at me when I knew he was trying to run me down. He couldn’t have been more than 75 feet away and I would guess he was traveling about 40 miles per hour. My memory is that he accelerated that last 75 feet.
My reactions were good. I threw my entire body on the hood of the car just behind me, brushing my leg as I landed. I used the momentum of my leap to continue rolling across the hood, until I dropped off the car onto the pavement on the other side. I hit the ground and grabbed the loaded .38 I was carrying.
The cab screeched to a halt, leaving a trail of rubber in the street maybe 30 feet long. The driver came jumping out of the cab and ran towards me. I put my finger on the trigger and aimed.
“Hey, Mac, are you okay?” the driver screamed. Then he saw the gun resting on the hood of the car. He stopped dead in his tracks.
“Don’t make a move or I’ll blow you away,” I said as calmly as I could. He stuck his hands straight up in the air, like somebody had just rammed a broomstick up his ass.
“Hey, man, I’m really sorry. I’ve been …”
“Shut up!” I ordered. “Lean forward on the car, stretch both your hands out onto the hood.” He did just what I told him and then I walked around and gave him a quick shakedown. Nothing on him. I walked to his cab, still keeping an eye on him, and made a perfunctory and fruitless search.
“What the hell was that all about?” I demanded. “You’re very lucky to be alive right now.” He was in his late forties, I would guess, with graying sideburns and a weathered face. He still had his beret on.
He started to turn around as he began talking. “What happened was …”
“Don’t move,” I said. “I can hear you.”
“… was I’ve been driving since seven o’clock last night and I guess I just went into a trance. I’m lucky I didn’t kill you,” he said.
I wasn’t sure I believed him. “What are you doing in the Bronx?”
“I had a passenger. I just dropped him off.”
“Where?” He named a nearby street. It was a legitimate place. His story did seem believable, but he had come too close to killing me. It just would have been too convenient for Sweetlips.
I walked over to his cab door again, reached in and pulled out the hack license. The face in the photograph was lean, had a big mustache and a full head of hair. I looked at the driver. I looked back at the photograph. The driver had no mustache, but he could have shaved it. It could have been his picture. I reached over and pulled off his beret.
He was as bald as a cue ball.
I put the gun into his left ear. “Who the fuck are you?”
“I told you,” he said, “I was just …”
I pressed the barrel into his ear, twisting it just a touch. Quietly I asked, “If you’re the driver then who the fuck is this?” I shoved the license in his face.
He was really scared. “That’s my brother-in-law. This is his cab. I take it out some nights. That’s all, honest, that’s all, I swear.”
I just didn’t know whether to believe him or not. I stood there, doing nothing.
He kept talking. “Listen, buddy, if I tried to run you down, why would I stop? I woulda kept going if I was trying.”
“Maybe you wanted to shoot me.”
“Are you crazy? Shoot? Me? Man, I never fired a gun in my life. I don’t own a gun! Look, call my brother-in-law and he’ll tell you just what I told you.”
I released the trigger. He might be telling the truth. There was just no way I could prove it one way or the other. So I had to mark it down as a dangerous accident.
It shook me up a little. I was spending so much time thinking about what Squillante was doing and what Sweetlips might be doing that I was losing touch with what was actually going on. This served as a dangerous reminder.
“Go on,” I said testily, “get the fuck out of here. If there’s a next time, you’re dead.” I put the gun away. The cabbie ran to his cab and zoomed down the block. I looked both ways before crossing to my car.
This incident slowed me down a bit. If it was set up by Sweetlips, it was done damn cleverly, and I missed a few of my early customers thinking about it. I did my best to work my way down my sheet. I busted my hump paying and collecting.
And I saved my one problem, Sorry Solly from the garment district, for last. Solly had not been around at the beginning of the previous week for some reason, but he got on the phone when I called Thursday and guaranteed he would have the $3000 he owed me by Tuesday. Now it’s Tuesday and I’m calling and I’m being told he isn’t in. I knew I was getting the run-around, so I went visiting.
His place was on the third floor of an old building on 29th Street just off Seventh Avenue. He was standing right in the showroom, displaying some merchandise for a customer, when I walked in. When he saw me he was obviously unhappy but there was no great display of emotions. He just excused himself from his customer and took me into his office.
Physically, Solly was just what you would expect in the garment district. He was about five-feet six-inches tall, thin and had a full head of white hair. I would guess he was in his early sixties, but there was really no way of telling.
“Look,” I said, “I don’t like to come up to a guy’s place unless …”
He interrupted me. “It’s okay. Listen, I got a problem. I don’t have your money.” It was obvious he didn’t want to waste any time either. “See, I had to borrow money for my spring line which is doing well, but people just aren’t paying their bills on time.”
“You could’ve told me that three weeks ago. What the hell you been putting me off for?” Now I’m getting mad but I’m still trying not to lose my temper.
He shrugged his shoulders. “I kept expecting the money to come in. And it’s coming, but I’ve got to pay my suppliers too, you know.”
“I know, I know,” I said. “But if you knew you couldn’t pay what the fuck did you keep betting for? You’re costing me time and money. What do I need you for?”
“If I knew why I kept betting I’d stop betting and then I wouldn’t owe you the money, right?” He paused. “Listen, you got to give me one more week. Next week …”
That was exactly what I didn’t want to hear. I guess the strain of my near accident finally came out. “I don’t want to hear any more of that next week crap. I want my money and I want it now.”
“I don’t have it. What are you going to do, kill me for three thousand bucks?” All of a sudden he’s a wiseguy.
“Okay smartass. I ain’t gonna kill you. I’m gonna do you a favor. I’ll be back Thursday afternoon and I’m gonna take you to meet a man who is going to lend you the money you owe me. And then …”
He cut in. “You mean a shylock? I will not …”
“Don’t interrupt me when I’m telling you something. I ain’t askin’, I’m tellin’. I’m gonna take you to meet this guy and you and I are gonna settle up for good. I don’t want you betting with me no more.” I started to get up. “Let me tell you something else. If you had been a gentleman about this thing, if you had answered my phone calls today or told me the story three weeks ago, I woulda worked something out with you. Now you can go fuck yourself. You be here Thursday afternoon.”
Solly sat there sort of stunned. I don’t think he was used to having people give him orders. And we both knew I wasn’t kidding. I walked out and left him sitting here.
I drove over to Jackie’s lot and he wasn’t there. So I left word that a friend of Petey’s had been by to see him and wanted to talk about a possible deal, and that I would meet him at the Half Moon around 11 P.M.
Thus far it had been a very frustrating day and I really needed something to get my rocks off. I needed to fire a gun. So this was a perfect time to test fire the weapon that I planned to kill Squillante with. The test firing would take place in a safe basement in Yonkers. But before I went I decided to take a quick swing by Squillante’s place and see if my boy was home safely.
On the way I continually checked my rear-view mirror, but there didn’t seem to be anyone on my tail.
When I reached Squillante’s apartment I double-parked under a tree, hiding myself within its shadow so Mrs. Gibson couldn’t see me, and watched. I sat there maybe five minutes and then the door opened and someone walked out. In the shadow of the building it was difficult to see who it was, but for some reason the walk looked familiar. I watched as he got closer, feeling safe because my car was completely hidden. He came closer and closer, although he didn’t look in my direction. He didn’t have to.
He was about 30 yards away when I recognized him.
Jackie Sweetlips was leaving Squillante’s apartment!
THE BEST LAID PLANS
There is a well-known basement in the city of Yonkers which is virtually soundproof. This basement belongs to an individual named Charlie who had the foresight to soundproof the walls when he purchased a brand new split-level home in the early 1960s. Charlie is an amiable sort of fellow who will let people use his basement for a small fee. For an additional small fee he will even cater your affair. From time to time people who have run into problems with other people have been taken down to Charlie’s basement for a discussion. I use the place for percussion.
I wanted to test the gun I had gotten from Cockeyed Jimmy to find out what I could expect from it. I wanted to know how dependable it was. Normally I go up to Charlie’s maybe four times a year, even when I have nothing on tap, to fire a few rounds from different weapons just to keep them in working shape. So Charlie did not think there was anything unusual happening when I called and asked him if his basement was busy. He said it wasn’t and invited me to visit.
I stopped back at my place and picked up the new gun and three different types of ammunition. At this point in history I kept a lot of ammunition in my dresser drawer because I had some trouble finding a steady supplier in New York City. Since gunshops in New York were required to take your name and address when they sold you ammunition, I used to have to go way upstate to a little place outside Monticello to stock up. (This is the supplier who makes the special cartridges for my hand shotgun.) Since I had only used a few rounds in the last couple of months I had plenty of ammo on hand.
