Hit #29, page 17
I splashed cold water on my face, more from habit than anything else, just to make sure I was completely awake. At about 8:30 I started getting ready. I don’t have any special clothes I wear when I’m on a job—you wear the same thing too many times and you’re liable to get yourself connected with a number of different jobs—but I do like to dress conservatively when doing heavyweight work. I picked out a pair of dark gray slacks and a plain, dark shirt. I would have liked to wear a sweater, but in case I had to get to my gun quickly the sweater might get in the way. The one concession I made to the cold was to bring a dark blue scarf my sister-in-law knitted for me. Dark socks, why not, and a pair of soft-soled shoes, the better not to be heard, or to slip on wet grass. I made sure I put on skin-tight gloves—to keep my fingerprints off everything. I topped it all off with a loose-fitting, dark lumber jacket. I own jackets that would have been warmer, but I wanted one I could move around easily in.
I took off my ring but left a plain, cheap watch around my wrist. I wound it up and checked it against the kitchen clock, which runs on Old Lady Time—15 minutes fast so my wife won’t be late for any appointments.
In general I looked very normal, which is precisely what I wanted. This is how you really dress to kill. The idea is not to look too conspicuous, but also not to look too inconspicuous either. In actuality, I would never wear these particular pants and that particular shirt together, because they really don’t match. But I wasn’t going to the senior prom.
The last thing I did before leaving the house was check my arsenal. Because I didn’t want to make it obvious to my wife what I was doing, I picked up my weapons while she was out of the bedroom and locked myself in the bathroom. I planned to carry three weapons with me: the new .38 which I would actually use on Squillante; the .38 I always carry in case I ended up in a situation where I needed extra firepower; and my miniature shotgun, in case I had to shoot quickly and hit something 30 feet away. It might just give me enough extra time to aim the .38. I loaded all the guns in the bathroom. At one time I would wait until I was actually at the location before loading, but then I heard a scary story about a hit man I once knew. He worked just like I did, loading at the scene of the crime-to-be. Unfortunately, one night he started loading and the bullets fell right through the chamber. He had grabbed the wrong ammunition, and blew the job. So I load before I leave.
I filled one pocket with about a dozen extra shells and stuck the silencer in the other pocket, picked up the flashlight and checked its batteries, took a good long piss, grabbed my rubber gloves and left my apartment about a quarter of nine.
“What time will you be home?” my wife asked, sounding more curious than concerned.
“Late,” I said.
“What does that mean?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “When I get done I’ll be home.”
She turned her back and walked away from me. “Don’t wake me when you come home.” That was the least I could promise her.
Under normal circumstances I would have taken a cab to the garage to pick up my borrowed car. But it was still raining pretty hard, and the forecast called for more rain, so I decided to take my own car. With the rain it might be tough to get a cab when I needed one. I don’t like the additional worry about where I left my own car. Although I’ve never heard of it happening, I wouldn’t want to have New York City’s finest tow my car away because I parked near a hydrant while I was making a killing. In this case I was planning to leave my car in the 24-hour garage.
As I drove over I wondered exactly what Squillante was doing. I assumed he was probably just finishing his last supper.
I put my rubber gloves on before I got near the stolen car. Its engine turned right over. The gas tank read almost full, but I made a quick stop to top off the tank anyway. Seventy-eight cents worth of high test. I’m glad I didn’t ask the attendant to clean the windshield.
It took me about 25 minutes to get over to 182nd Street and Boston Road from my house. Normally it’s a shorter trip, but I was going very slowly. When I got there I drove as if I was just passing through. I looked around and saw nothing extraordinary. Then I drove through again. And a third time. It looked very peaceful, very quiet.
I turned the car around and came back in the other direction. Again, peaceful and quiet. I parked the car and sat there for a few moments, just looking around. The rain had stopped and the water made the streets shine as if they had just been scrubbed clean, leaving little puddles here and there. It was cold and there didn’t seem to be a single person on the streets. I was totally alone.
It was a perfect night for killing.
BUT FIRST A BRIEF WORD FROM MY SPONSOR
I waited.
And I started thinking. About Squillante. About Sweetlips. About the next two hours. Like a boxer in the last few moments before walking into the ring, or football players huddled in the locker room before kickoff, I mentally prepared myself for killing Joseph Squillante.
I can kill a man with absolutely no remorse, but I have to build myself into a certain emotional state to do it. I never really understood that until recently, when I started trying to analyze how I can do what I do without any feeling, when I started trying to understand what kind of person I am.
I know it is unusual to be able to work like this and the reason I can do these things, I believe, is that there is a lot of fuckin’ hatred inside me for these people that I work with every day. People like Sweetlips. That may come as a surprise, but I think it’s very true. Even though I associate with them, I laugh with them, I go with them, deep inside I hate them. I hate them not because of what they done to me, but because of what they did to my first wife. Many people can’t accept the fact that, basically, I am not a bad individual. I am not an evil person. I like most people I come in contact with.
But I have learned one thing. When you kill somebody, you’ve really got to hate them. So, subconsciously, I guess when I’m pulling the trigger, what I’m really doing is killing the people who killed my first wife all over again. Killing these people … it just doesn’t faze me. And Squillante was one of these people, no matter how well he dressed or how polite he was.
As I sat there, building emotion, all this subconsciously raced through my mind. The surface was calm. I felt very ready.
I parked the car, as I told Sweetlips I was going to do, approximately 20 yards from where I expected Squillante to park, and in a spot where I could watch it from the back door of the apartment house.
After I checked my weapons one more time to make sure they were as ready as I was, I got out of the car and started walking through the area. I walked very casually, looking around, taking in everything. The excitement, that sort of intensity, kept growing inside me. No matter how many hits you make, and this was going to be the 29th time I pulled the trigger, there is an incredible feeling of power that surges through you. I was beginning to feel its growth as I walked and waited for Squillante to arrive.
I knew he would be there on time. You can always depend on numbers controllers to be prompt. They have to be because they usually have so many places to cover that if they miss one meeting they throw their entire schedule off. So being on time gets to be a habit. Although I didn’t know for sure where he was coming from, my guess was that it would be from his own apartment. In that case, at 10:15 I figured he was just getting into his car to drive on over.
I didn’t see anything of great interest in the area. One thing I was particularly looking for was anybody who looked like he might be a friend of Squillante’s, or an employee of Sweetlips’s. But there just didn’t seem to be anyone there at all.
I thought about Sweetlips. He knew I would be arriving at the spot early. If he was going to hit me this evening he would have to be getting there soon himself.
Finally I walked over to the apartment building. As expected, it was open. The bulb had not been replaced and so the hall was dark. I stepped inside and stood watch, out of the cold. It was 10:25.
I was watching everything. The exhilaration was growing. It is almost sexual, like one huge orgasm. Just growing and growing until it all lets loose. Within me I know I am playing judge, jury, executioner and God. I felt like I was 15 feet off the ground and I was doing my best to contain it, to control it, to keep my senses sharp and alert. But it is difficult. In a situation like this you are aware that, for one individual, you are heaven and hell, you are the ultimate.
The adrenaline just flowed right through my whole body, putting me in a super-sensitive state. I was attuned to everything. I was completely and totally aware of everything around me, every sound, every smell, every slight movement of a leaf. I could hear sounds the average person can’t hear and that ordinarily I couldn’t hear. There is a point at which thinking ceases and movement and reaction begins. I was building toward that point.
And I waited. And it grew. The thoughts I had were fleeting and disconnected. I thought of my first wife and I let that build inside me. I thought of my weapon, this beautiful piece of precision machinery, and exactly what would happen when I pulled the trigger. In a microsecond all the moving parts would mesh together to push a solid piece of metal forward and into Squillante’s skull. The supreme result of the industrialization of the world. It seemed a magnificent thought.
Slowly all of these faded and my mind began the blanking-out process. If a human being can go back through the ages and bring back all his animal instincts, it is at a time like this. There are no thoughts of business or duty, or money or a job, I was past all that. Now it was the most basic of all: survival of the fittest. Me.
This phase builds to a peak and then, then it begins to fade. Thoughts come back and you settle into a middle ground, half-thinking, half-reacting. The perfect time to pull the trigger.
At 19 minutes before 11 a car came down 182nd Street and slowed down. As it passed by my car it slowed almost to a stop and then continued up Boston Road. It went another 15 yards or so, just out of my vision through the door, and stopped.
I opened the door slightly so I could see what the car was doing.
Nothing. The driver was just sitting there. It was not Squillante and, in the dark, I could not distinguish exactly who it was. Carefully and silently I slid out of the door and, moving quickly and keeping my back against the building, I slid toward my car.
I reached into my belt and pulled out the new .38 as the driver’s door opened and an individual hopped out and began walking toward my car. I reached into my jacket pocket, pulled out the silencer, and screwed it on. As he had opened the door the interior light of the car went on for a brief second. Long enough for me to recognize this not-so-unexpected visitor.
Jackie Sweetlips had come to say good-bye.
I stood silently as he walked toward my car. Immediately I knew what he expected to find: my body slumped in my car. Evidently his killer was supposed to be there before me and have done the work by now. I waited to see his reaction when he realized I wasn’t dead in that car.
As he came closer to the car he put his hands up, almost in a gesture of surrender. This puzzled me. He walked to the car and peered in. In one quick, abrupt motion he jerked his head up. He knew I was alive and, at that moment, I’m sure he knew I had him dead in the sights of my weapon.
He stepped back from the car, but didn’t start to retreat. Instead he looked around, slowly at first, but then faster and faster. I moved down the building even closer to him, keeping my body against the darkened wall and making no sound. By the time I reached the corner of the building I was no more than eight yards from the car. But he was standing on the other side, in the street, a mass of Detroit steel between him and me. I could do absolutely nothing but wait silently. I felt supremely confident. Whatever his plan had been, it had not worked. I was alive and about to destroy him.
He put his hands in his pockets and began moving toward the rear of the car. I picked a spot about five feet behind the car. When he reached that spot I would blast him.
He walked slowly and casually, not seeming to be in any great hurry, yet obviously nervous. He continued moving his head from side to side, then rocking on his heels and turning around to see if I was moving in behind him. He moved closer to my spot.
I switched the safety off the gun and leveled it. He was still moving.
Suddenly, and unexpectedly, he stopped. Then in a low, very urgent voice, looking off into the park where he obviously thought I was hiding, he called “Joey! Joey, where the fuck are you?” It saved his life.
Staying completely in the dark I called back, also in a low monotone, “Get your hands straight up in the air and walk into the middle of the street.” In the silence our voices sounded very loud.
As he moved away from the car, hands held high in the air, I darted out behind him and grabbed the neck of his coat by the collar. I almost threw him across the hood of the car.
“Hey! Take it …”
I stuck the gun right at his temple. “I’m gonna give you ten seconds to save your life. If you don’t have a super-reason for being here, you’re dead.”
He started to stand up. “What the fu …”
I pushed him back down. “Ten. Nine.” I wasn’t kidding. I had no doubts he was there to kill me and I wasn’t about to give him the chance. As I started counting I took a quick glance behind me. I didn’t want anyone sneaking up on me while I was holding Sweetlips.
“Lemme turn around, will ya. Ease up Joey. What are you, crazy? I’m not the guy …”
I realized he was right, he couldn’t talk with his mouth being pushed into the hood of the car. I let him stand up, but not turn around. “You got six. Five.”
He rubbed the back of his neck. I couldn’t see his mouth, but I could guess that his tongue was working furiously. “I came to tell you Squillante is bringing help with him tonight.”
I stopped counting. “Go on.”
“One of the two hoods who were doing his stick-ups reported in to me today and said that Squillante hired him for a job tonight.”
The cold air turned our breath into puffs of white smoke as we spoke. Sweetlips was really scared, I could hear it in his breathing.
“Whattya mean?” I demanded.
“Whattya mean, whatta I mean? I mean just like I said. Squillante told them to get guns because they were driving back-up to a meeting he had to go to.”
It made sense. It was a smart precaution. Things had been too easy for Squillante not to have some sort of emergency system planned. I knew he couldn’t be that stupid.
“Why the fuck didn’t you get in contact with me?” I asked.
“I tried,” he said, “I tried. I been calling Petey all fuckin’ afternoon and evening to contact you. I couldn’t get in touch with him and I don’t know how the fuck to reach you. So I came here myself.”
I didn’t know whether to believe him or not. There were a whole bunch of unanswered questions that seemed to form a picture. Now he was telling me it was the wrong picture.
“What about the cab driver?” I asked him.
“What cab driver? What are you talkin’ about?”
“Don’t fuck with me baby,” I warned, “because the safest thing for me to do right now would be to make holes in you.” It was, and I was really tempted. “You know what cab driver. The fuckin’ guy you had try to run me down, that’s what cab driver.”
“Run you down? Hey, Joey, you’re seeing shadows. When I settle with somebody, I do it myself, I don’t hire muscle to settle personal beefs.”
For an individual whose life was hanging by a thread he was doing a good job answering the questions. He was keeping himself alive, but I still wasn’t sure if he was leveling. I didn’t know what to do, but I knew I had to do it quickly. Squillante was due any minute and all I needed was to have him drive up and see me standing there holding a gun on Sweetlips. He wouldn’t stop running until he was so safe even his mother couldn’t find him. So I decided I’d better move. With Sweetlips.
“Turn around, but keep your hands up high.” He turned around and I patted him down quickly.
“Go ahead, look,” he said, “I ain’t even packing a weapon.” He wasn’t. All of a sudden he seemed to realize something. “Hey, what is this? You don’t think …”
I stopped him. “Look Sweetlips. I don’t like you. You don’t like me. You been threatening to get even with me for a long time.”
He laughed cautiously. “And you thought?”
“I still think,” I said. We understood each other completely. I was running a hundred things through my head just as quickly as I could. If Squillante didn’t show I would know Sweetlips was lying about the entire project. Then I would definitely have to kill him. “Take your belt off,” I told him.
“My pants’ll fall down,” he started protesting.
“OFF!” I wasn’t in any mood to argue. I took his belt and tied his hands behind his back just as tightly as I could. It wasn’t a very strong bond, but he would not be able to move quickly with the belt on. That would give me extra time. “Move,” I prodded. We walked over to his car and turned it off. I took the keys and put them in my pocket. I wasn’t worried about leaving the car there, Squillante would never know it was not supposed to be there.
“Let me tell you something. When the Fat Man hears …”
“Shut up. Just move.” I pushed him to the rear of the building and brought him into the hallway with me. “Sit down!”
“It’s fuckin’ wet.”
I pushed him down. Then I leaned over and pointed the gun right between his eyes. His tongue was wearing away his lips. “I got some questions,” I said quietly, “and you better have some answers. Who’s been tailing me when I picked up on Squillante?”
“The two hoods. They told me tonight. Squillante has been having them tail him for over a week. They picked you up, but they told Squillante it wasn’t a tail, just a coincidence.”
“Why’d they tell him that?”
He seemed to be gaining some control over his fear. His only problem was that the muddy water on the floor was spreading over his pants. “Joey,” he pleaded, “don’t you understand? Those guys are working for us now. The Fat Man scared the shit out of them. They know that when Squillante’s dead they’ll go free. They ain’t gonna help him.”
I took off my ring but left a plain, cheap watch around my wrist. I wound it up and checked it against the kitchen clock, which runs on Old Lady Time—15 minutes fast so my wife won’t be late for any appointments.
In general I looked very normal, which is precisely what I wanted. This is how you really dress to kill. The idea is not to look too conspicuous, but also not to look too inconspicuous either. In actuality, I would never wear these particular pants and that particular shirt together, because they really don’t match. But I wasn’t going to the senior prom.
The last thing I did before leaving the house was check my arsenal. Because I didn’t want to make it obvious to my wife what I was doing, I picked up my weapons while she was out of the bedroom and locked myself in the bathroom. I planned to carry three weapons with me: the new .38 which I would actually use on Squillante; the .38 I always carry in case I ended up in a situation where I needed extra firepower; and my miniature shotgun, in case I had to shoot quickly and hit something 30 feet away. It might just give me enough extra time to aim the .38. I loaded all the guns in the bathroom. At one time I would wait until I was actually at the location before loading, but then I heard a scary story about a hit man I once knew. He worked just like I did, loading at the scene of the crime-to-be. Unfortunately, one night he started loading and the bullets fell right through the chamber. He had grabbed the wrong ammunition, and blew the job. So I load before I leave.
I filled one pocket with about a dozen extra shells and stuck the silencer in the other pocket, picked up the flashlight and checked its batteries, took a good long piss, grabbed my rubber gloves and left my apartment about a quarter of nine.
“What time will you be home?” my wife asked, sounding more curious than concerned.
“Late,” I said.
“What does that mean?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “When I get done I’ll be home.”
She turned her back and walked away from me. “Don’t wake me when you come home.” That was the least I could promise her.
Under normal circumstances I would have taken a cab to the garage to pick up my borrowed car. But it was still raining pretty hard, and the forecast called for more rain, so I decided to take my own car. With the rain it might be tough to get a cab when I needed one. I don’t like the additional worry about where I left my own car. Although I’ve never heard of it happening, I wouldn’t want to have New York City’s finest tow my car away because I parked near a hydrant while I was making a killing. In this case I was planning to leave my car in the 24-hour garage.
As I drove over I wondered exactly what Squillante was doing. I assumed he was probably just finishing his last supper.
I put my rubber gloves on before I got near the stolen car. Its engine turned right over. The gas tank read almost full, but I made a quick stop to top off the tank anyway. Seventy-eight cents worth of high test. I’m glad I didn’t ask the attendant to clean the windshield.
It took me about 25 minutes to get over to 182nd Street and Boston Road from my house. Normally it’s a shorter trip, but I was going very slowly. When I got there I drove as if I was just passing through. I looked around and saw nothing extraordinary. Then I drove through again. And a third time. It looked very peaceful, very quiet.
I turned the car around and came back in the other direction. Again, peaceful and quiet. I parked the car and sat there for a few moments, just looking around. The rain had stopped and the water made the streets shine as if they had just been scrubbed clean, leaving little puddles here and there. It was cold and there didn’t seem to be a single person on the streets. I was totally alone.
It was a perfect night for killing.
BUT FIRST A BRIEF WORD FROM MY SPONSOR
I waited.
And I started thinking. About Squillante. About Sweetlips. About the next two hours. Like a boxer in the last few moments before walking into the ring, or football players huddled in the locker room before kickoff, I mentally prepared myself for killing Joseph Squillante.
I can kill a man with absolutely no remorse, but I have to build myself into a certain emotional state to do it. I never really understood that until recently, when I started trying to analyze how I can do what I do without any feeling, when I started trying to understand what kind of person I am.
I know it is unusual to be able to work like this and the reason I can do these things, I believe, is that there is a lot of fuckin’ hatred inside me for these people that I work with every day. People like Sweetlips. That may come as a surprise, but I think it’s very true. Even though I associate with them, I laugh with them, I go with them, deep inside I hate them. I hate them not because of what they done to me, but because of what they did to my first wife. Many people can’t accept the fact that, basically, I am not a bad individual. I am not an evil person. I like most people I come in contact with.
But I have learned one thing. When you kill somebody, you’ve really got to hate them. So, subconsciously, I guess when I’m pulling the trigger, what I’m really doing is killing the people who killed my first wife all over again. Killing these people … it just doesn’t faze me. And Squillante was one of these people, no matter how well he dressed or how polite he was.
As I sat there, building emotion, all this subconsciously raced through my mind. The surface was calm. I felt very ready.
I parked the car, as I told Sweetlips I was going to do, approximately 20 yards from where I expected Squillante to park, and in a spot where I could watch it from the back door of the apartment house.
After I checked my weapons one more time to make sure they were as ready as I was, I got out of the car and started walking through the area. I walked very casually, looking around, taking in everything. The excitement, that sort of intensity, kept growing inside me. No matter how many hits you make, and this was going to be the 29th time I pulled the trigger, there is an incredible feeling of power that surges through you. I was beginning to feel its growth as I walked and waited for Squillante to arrive.
I knew he would be there on time. You can always depend on numbers controllers to be prompt. They have to be because they usually have so many places to cover that if they miss one meeting they throw their entire schedule off. So being on time gets to be a habit. Although I didn’t know for sure where he was coming from, my guess was that it would be from his own apartment. In that case, at 10:15 I figured he was just getting into his car to drive on over.
I didn’t see anything of great interest in the area. One thing I was particularly looking for was anybody who looked like he might be a friend of Squillante’s, or an employee of Sweetlips’s. But there just didn’t seem to be anyone there at all.
I thought about Sweetlips. He knew I would be arriving at the spot early. If he was going to hit me this evening he would have to be getting there soon himself.
Finally I walked over to the apartment building. As expected, it was open. The bulb had not been replaced and so the hall was dark. I stepped inside and stood watch, out of the cold. It was 10:25.
I was watching everything. The exhilaration was growing. It is almost sexual, like one huge orgasm. Just growing and growing until it all lets loose. Within me I know I am playing judge, jury, executioner and God. I felt like I was 15 feet off the ground and I was doing my best to contain it, to control it, to keep my senses sharp and alert. But it is difficult. In a situation like this you are aware that, for one individual, you are heaven and hell, you are the ultimate.
The adrenaline just flowed right through my whole body, putting me in a super-sensitive state. I was attuned to everything. I was completely and totally aware of everything around me, every sound, every smell, every slight movement of a leaf. I could hear sounds the average person can’t hear and that ordinarily I couldn’t hear. There is a point at which thinking ceases and movement and reaction begins. I was building toward that point.
And I waited. And it grew. The thoughts I had were fleeting and disconnected. I thought of my first wife and I let that build inside me. I thought of my weapon, this beautiful piece of precision machinery, and exactly what would happen when I pulled the trigger. In a microsecond all the moving parts would mesh together to push a solid piece of metal forward and into Squillante’s skull. The supreme result of the industrialization of the world. It seemed a magnificent thought.
Slowly all of these faded and my mind began the blanking-out process. If a human being can go back through the ages and bring back all his animal instincts, it is at a time like this. There are no thoughts of business or duty, or money or a job, I was past all that. Now it was the most basic of all: survival of the fittest. Me.
This phase builds to a peak and then, then it begins to fade. Thoughts come back and you settle into a middle ground, half-thinking, half-reacting. The perfect time to pull the trigger.
At 19 minutes before 11 a car came down 182nd Street and slowed down. As it passed by my car it slowed almost to a stop and then continued up Boston Road. It went another 15 yards or so, just out of my vision through the door, and stopped.
I opened the door slightly so I could see what the car was doing.
Nothing. The driver was just sitting there. It was not Squillante and, in the dark, I could not distinguish exactly who it was. Carefully and silently I slid out of the door and, moving quickly and keeping my back against the building, I slid toward my car.
I reached into my belt and pulled out the new .38 as the driver’s door opened and an individual hopped out and began walking toward my car. I reached into my jacket pocket, pulled out the silencer, and screwed it on. As he had opened the door the interior light of the car went on for a brief second. Long enough for me to recognize this not-so-unexpected visitor.
Jackie Sweetlips had come to say good-bye.
I stood silently as he walked toward my car. Immediately I knew what he expected to find: my body slumped in my car. Evidently his killer was supposed to be there before me and have done the work by now. I waited to see his reaction when he realized I wasn’t dead in that car.
As he came closer to the car he put his hands up, almost in a gesture of surrender. This puzzled me. He walked to the car and peered in. In one quick, abrupt motion he jerked his head up. He knew I was alive and, at that moment, I’m sure he knew I had him dead in the sights of my weapon.
He stepped back from the car, but didn’t start to retreat. Instead he looked around, slowly at first, but then faster and faster. I moved down the building even closer to him, keeping my body against the darkened wall and making no sound. By the time I reached the corner of the building I was no more than eight yards from the car. But he was standing on the other side, in the street, a mass of Detroit steel between him and me. I could do absolutely nothing but wait silently. I felt supremely confident. Whatever his plan had been, it had not worked. I was alive and about to destroy him.
He put his hands in his pockets and began moving toward the rear of the car. I picked a spot about five feet behind the car. When he reached that spot I would blast him.
He walked slowly and casually, not seeming to be in any great hurry, yet obviously nervous. He continued moving his head from side to side, then rocking on his heels and turning around to see if I was moving in behind him. He moved closer to my spot.
I switched the safety off the gun and leveled it. He was still moving.
Suddenly, and unexpectedly, he stopped. Then in a low, very urgent voice, looking off into the park where he obviously thought I was hiding, he called “Joey! Joey, where the fuck are you?” It saved his life.
Staying completely in the dark I called back, also in a low monotone, “Get your hands straight up in the air and walk into the middle of the street.” In the silence our voices sounded very loud.
As he moved away from the car, hands held high in the air, I darted out behind him and grabbed the neck of his coat by the collar. I almost threw him across the hood of the car.
“Hey! Take it …”
I stuck the gun right at his temple. “I’m gonna give you ten seconds to save your life. If you don’t have a super-reason for being here, you’re dead.”
He started to stand up. “What the fu …”
I pushed him back down. “Ten. Nine.” I wasn’t kidding. I had no doubts he was there to kill me and I wasn’t about to give him the chance. As I started counting I took a quick glance behind me. I didn’t want anyone sneaking up on me while I was holding Sweetlips.
“Lemme turn around, will ya. Ease up Joey. What are you, crazy? I’m not the guy …”
I realized he was right, he couldn’t talk with his mouth being pushed into the hood of the car. I let him stand up, but not turn around. “You got six. Five.”
He rubbed the back of his neck. I couldn’t see his mouth, but I could guess that his tongue was working furiously. “I came to tell you Squillante is bringing help with him tonight.”
I stopped counting. “Go on.”
“One of the two hoods who were doing his stick-ups reported in to me today and said that Squillante hired him for a job tonight.”
The cold air turned our breath into puffs of white smoke as we spoke. Sweetlips was really scared, I could hear it in his breathing.
“Whattya mean?” I demanded.
“Whattya mean, whatta I mean? I mean just like I said. Squillante told them to get guns because they were driving back-up to a meeting he had to go to.”
It made sense. It was a smart precaution. Things had been too easy for Squillante not to have some sort of emergency system planned. I knew he couldn’t be that stupid.
“Why the fuck didn’t you get in contact with me?” I asked.
“I tried,” he said, “I tried. I been calling Petey all fuckin’ afternoon and evening to contact you. I couldn’t get in touch with him and I don’t know how the fuck to reach you. So I came here myself.”
I didn’t know whether to believe him or not. There were a whole bunch of unanswered questions that seemed to form a picture. Now he was telling me it was the wrong picture.
“What about the cab driver?” I asked him.
“What cab driver? What are you talkin’ about?”
“Don’t fuck with me baby,” I warned, “because the safest thing for me to do right now would be to make holes in you.” It was, and I was really tempted. “You know what cab driver. The fuckin’ guy you had try to run me down, that’s what cab driver.”
“Run you down? Hey, Joey, you’re seeing shadows. When I settle with somebody, I do it myself, I don’t hire muscle to settle personal beefs.”
For an individual whose life was hanging by a thread he was doing a good job answering the questions. He was keeping himself alive, but I still wasn’t sure if he was leveling. I didn’t know what to do, but I knew I had to do it quickly. Squillante was due any minute and all I needed was to have him drive up and see me standing there holding a gun on Sweetlips. He wouldn’t stop running until he was so safe even his mother couldn’t find him. So I decided I’d better move. With Sweetlips.
“Turn around, but keep your hands up high.” He turned around and I patted him down quickly.
“Go ahead, look,” he said, “I ain’t even packing a weapon.” He wasn’t. All of a sudden he seemed to realize something. “Hey, what is this? You don’t think …”
I stopped him. “Look Sweetlips. I don’t like you. You don’t like me. You been threatening to get even with me for a long time.”
He laughed cautiously. “And you thought?”
“I still think,” I said. We understood each other completely. I was running a hundred things through my head just as quickly as I could. If Squillante didn’t show I would know Sweetlips was lying about the entire project. Then I would definitely have to kill him. “Take your belt off,” I told him.
“My pants’ll fall down,” he started protesting.
“OFF!” I wasn’t in any mood to argue. I took his belt and tied his hands behind his back just as tightly as I could. It wasn’t a very strong bond, but he would not be able to move quickly with the belt on. That would give me extra time. “Move,” I prodded. We walked over to his car and turned it off. I took the keys and put them in my pocket. I wasn’t worried about leaving the car there, Squillante would never know it was not supposed to be there.
“Let me tell you something. When the Fat Man hears …”
“Shut up. Just move.” I pushed him to the rear of the building and brought him into the hallway with me. “Sit down!”
“It’s fuckin’ wet.”
I pushed him down. Then I leaned over and pointed the gun right between his eyes. His tongue was wearing away his lips. “I got some questions,” I said quietly, “and you better have some answers. Who’s been tailing me when I picked up on Squillante?”
“The two hoods. They told me tonight. Squillante has been having them tail him for over a week. They picked you up, but they told Squillante it wasn’t a tail, just a coincidence.”
“Why’d they tell him that?”
He seemed to be gaining some control over his fear. His only problem was that the muddy water on the floor was spreading over his pants. “Joey,” he pleaded, “don’t you understand? Those guys are working for us now. The Fat Man scared the shit out of them. They know that when Squillante’s dead they’ll go free. They ain’t gonna help him.”
