Hit #29, page 19
He nodded.
I was trying to make small talk. Now that I knew the spot, I wanted to get rid of the tail. How? “How’s your mother doin’?”
“Better,” he said. “The doctor said it wasn’t a heart attack really, just a warning.”
“That’s scary enough,” I said.
He agreed. “You know, Joey,” he said after a pause, “we really haven’t been that friendly over the years, but I’m glad it was you out there tonight. I have to tell you something. I was nervous as hell sitting there. I really thought it was a setup. I felt better when I saw it was you.”
These were all nice words, but I knew they were bullshit. If he felt so good about seeing me he would have released the tail. He was trying to lead me into some sort of corner. “Yeah, well, I was glad when Jackie told me it was you who was gonna be here tonight, too,” I agreed.
I leaned forward and looked in the mirror. “Listen babe,” I said, “I don’t want to scare you or anything, but I think we got company.”
He made a big show of leaning over and looking in the mirror. “You sure?”
“No, not exactly. It’s just that there’s a car that’s been right behind us the whole trip.”
“I doubt they’re following us.”
“Not us,” I said, “me. I told you I had some problems. Well, I think somebody is trying to solve them tonight.”
Squillante simply did not know what to do. He couldn’t admit that the boys on his tail were his because this was a legitimate job for him and he could be in real trouble for bringing other people on business. “I don’t think they’re following us,” he tried to bluff.
“Let’s find out. Make the next right.” It was 112th Street in Manhattan. I had him make the standard four rights in succession. The Chevy stayed right behind us. “I told you, those fuckers are after me,” I said as convincingly as I could.
“Son of a bitch,” he said almost as believably.
“Okay, let’s lose ’em,” I cheered.
He didn’t seem to want to do that. “How?”
“Like this.” Without a warning I leaned across and jammed my left foot down on top of his right foot, sending the accelerator to the floorboard. The car jerked forward and then took off.
“TAKE YOUR FOOT OFF. TAKE YOUR FOOT OFF!” I took my foot off. We were going about 50 down the street when I moved back. Squillante understood what I had in mind. He also understood that I wasn’t kidding around. He made a few quick turns, made a few yellow lights, and lost the Chevy, someplace in the wilds of Spanish Harlem.
We were alone.
The silence got louder and louder as we drove toward the bridge. “What are you gonna do to this guy when I point him out?” he broke in.
I shrugged my shoulders. “Nothin’ tonight. I just want to know who he is.”
“I’ll tell you why, ’cause if you’re gonna burn him, I don’t want any part of it. I’m not a getaway driver, I’m a controller.”
I reassured him. “Don’t worry, Joe, you won’t be driving any getaway car tonight.” I paused. “And what makes you think I do heavyweight work?”
He kind of edged his head from side to side. “Well, you know, the word around the neighborhood was, you know, that you did. And things I hear from people now and then, you know, you got a reputation. I mean, like, I don’t really know, but I know.”
I chuckled. What he knew was going to hurt him. “Yeah, I guess so. The word gets around, doesn’t it?”
He agreed that it did.
“Then how come you didn’t fire when you saw it was me? I mean, how did you know I wasn’t sent by whoever you pissed off?”
“I didn’t. I just took a chance.” Bullshit. He chickened out. “I just couldn’t pull the trigger when I saw it was you.” That I believed.
As we drove over the 59th Street Bridge, the Queensboro Bridge officially, I wondered what was going on in his mind. Did he know? Did he suspect? I stared at his head and picked out one small spot, just behind his right ear, that I would fire at. Normally I don’t like to be this close to my target, three feet is usually plenty close enough and I was less than two feet away. In fact, if I reached my arm out, I would be at point blank range. I didn’t want his head to explode all over me, that would make getting away clean a little more difficult.
I reached my hand into my jacket and checked to see that the silencer was still attached tightly to the gun. It was. Squillante was babbling on about the old neighborhood. I should have killed him just for being boring.
“… gamble,” he said. I wasn’t paying attention, so I only caught the last word. “Do you?”
“What?” I asked.
“Lose a lot when you gamble? Get way behind?”
“I can’t afford it. Make this right here,” I said, and then I told him exactly where we were going. I named the restaurant. “You ever been there?”
He said he hadn’t.
“You should try it someday,” I told him. “It’s a whole meal for one price. All you can eat. And the food is pretty decent. You should take the old lady there one day.”
“I will.” We both were lying. I knew he wasn’t going to live long enough ever to go there. He thought he would be leaving for Europe two days from now.
I really couldn’t imagine him in Europe. When mob people run they almost always stay in the country. Very few leave these hospitable shores. I doubted if he would make it over there even if he had lived to get away. I laughed inside. Here I was sitting next to this guy who was breathing, who was alive, and already I was thinking of him in the past tense.
The last hour had been a tough one for a man in my profession. I like things orderly and absolutely nothing had gone right. And worst of all, I had lost the killing emotion, I was relaxing. Now, as we got closer to the restaurant, I started letting it build up inside me, just staring at Squillante.
“You know, I was thinking that …” he started to say.
I stared right at him. “Not now, huh? Just shut it for awhile.”
He looked at me and then looked straight ahead. I think that at that moment, for one brief second, just an instant in time, he knew. Then he denied it to himself.
We reached the restaurant just past midnight. “Pull way in the back of the lot,” I told him. He drove to the rear and started pulling in next to another car. “Not here,” I ordered. “Move it over there, in that dark spot. I don’t want anyone to know we’re here.”
He started to protest. “Nobody knows this car.”
“Just do it, huh? That’s what you’re being paid for right? To listen to me? So listen to me.”
As he moved into the parking spot I reached into my jacket and got a good solid grip on the new .38. I was looking around the parking lot quickly, my instincts once again sharp, trying to spot someone, anyone, who might be a potential witness. One car was just pulling out of the place, all the way on the other side of the lot. No way they could spot anything. The lot itself was well lit, but the spot we moved into was shaded and dark.
I kept the gun inside my jacket until he had stopped the car, put it in park, turned the engine off, turned the lights off, and then turned to face me. Then I took it out and pointed it right at him. He saw the gun and froze. I mean froze solid.
Panic strikes people in different ways. Some individuals immediately understand the situation, realize the hopelessness, and accept it as the final irony. Others start to scream. Some try but nothing comes out. From Squillante I got fear. In the one split second before I started to pump bullets into his head he crunched his body up, leaned hard against the door, and stuck both his hands out toward me as if in an effort to ward off the bullets. He knew. At the last second he knew.
“So long, Joe,” I said in that brief moment. I don’t know why I said anything. I can’t remember ever saying anything on a job before, but I can distinctly remember myself saying, “so long, Joe,” to him. It was the only sound before the shots and the words sounded tremendously loud.
Then I started firing into his head. The spot I had selected was turned away from me when he cringed, so I just fired randomly into his skull. The .38 made a muffled “pop” as I fired, the silencer almost completely covering the gunshots. No one standing outside the car could have heard anything.
The force of the first bullet drove his head to the left and against the window. The second bullet and the third bullet made his body jerk, but I’m quite sure he was dead when the first bullet smashed into his brain. All three hit their mark because, at that distance, it would have been impossible to miss.
There was no great spurt of blood all over the place, but a hard, steady stream flowed down the front of his face, running alongside his nose and then veering off to the side of his mouth.
After I stopped firing the momentum of the bullets made his body slump down, straight down, then against his door. For a slight moment I thought he was going to hit the horn, which was something I neither needed nor wanted, but he missed the steering wheel completely.
I sat in the car and unscrewed the silencer. I put it in one pocket and the fired .38 in the other.
Before getting out of the car I made sure Squillante’s body was lying low enough so that no one who wasn’t standing right next to the car could see it. Then I turned around to see if there was anybody in the parking lot. There was a group of four people walking into the restaurant. I sat there and watched as they disappeared inside the rear entrance. Then I got out of the car and, staying in the rear of the lot, keeping to the shadows, I walked away.
I never looked back.
AFTER THE BALL IS OVER
Getting the job done was only half the fun. Even a well-executed hit is going to bring little satisfaction if you get caught before getting rid of the evidence: in this case, the new .38 and the silencer.
There are some people who do not pay too much attention to getting rid of the piece they work with. They heave it in the woods or throw it in the water or hide it behind their underwear in their top drawer. In the trade we have a word to describe people who do things like that: convicts. Guns have a way of coming back to haunt you. Not too many people know it, but the New York City Police Department has a special squad of skin divers that do nothing but look for things like guns. I can assure them they will never find one with my fingerprints on it.
I know that the only thing that can connect me to Squillante is the .38-with-silencer I have tucked in my jacket pocket. I’m not going to get rid of it simply and risk some kid accidentally finding it, I’m going to destroy it completely and for good. Once the job itself is done, that is my primary objective.
As soon as Squillante slumped over on the front seat I stopped thinking about him. He was finished as far as both of us were concerned. I walked out of the parking lot, trying to figure a way to get back to Manhattan and my own car. I wasn’t worried about the car I left back at Bronx Park. There was nothing in it to connect it with me. I was going to drop it anyway, now I would just leave it there. Let the police find it.
As I walked I did my best to check my clothing out in the bad light. I wanted to make sure I hadn’t ended up with any of his blood on me. I hadn’t.
My problem was getting back to New York City without meeting anybody. I certainly couldn’t hitch, I didn’t want anybody picking me up anywhere near the parking lot. And I didn’t want to grab a cab in the middle of nowhere. Most cabbies will remember if they pick somebody up walking along the road late at night, and I didn’t want anyone remembering me. So I walked toward lights. I really didn’t know the neighborhood too well, but I figured if I could find an open bar I could call a cab and the driver wouldn’t think anything about it. My first choice would have been the subway to Manhattan, but I was a long way from any subway station.
I walked about 20 minutes. The whole trip I was thinking how this was just another foul-up in what had been the worst hit I ever made. And then, just to top everything off wonderfully well, it started raining again.
I found my bar and I sat down and had a quick beer before doing anything. Then I called a local cab company that had its name pasted on the phone and ordered a taxi. It arrived about ten minutes and a second beer later.
I took this cab into mid-Manhattan, then I grabbed a second cab back up to the all-night garage in the Bronx. Finally, almost an hour and a half after burning Squillante, I got into my own car. All I wanted to do was get rid of the weapon, as far as I was concerned I had been holding it too long already. The first thing I did after pulling out of the garage was turn the radio on. Music calms the savage beast—and it also relaxes the hell out of a hit man. I headed back down into Manhattan, toward the lower tip, the Battery. I had very specific plans on how I was going to get rid of the gun and silencer.
I took the East River Drive downtown because I was pretty sure I wouldn’t have to fight traffic at that hour. I tend to get uptight and angry when I’m caught in a traffic jam, and uptight and angry was something I didn’t want to be. On the way down I reviewed the job once again. It wasn’t the smoothest in the history of the world, but it was done. I wondered if Jackie was still struggling to get his hands free. I doubted it very much. I knew my treatment was not going to increase his great love for me, but there really wasn’t very much else I could do under the circumstances. I figured I might hear some nasty words from the Fat Man, but business, as they say, is business.
By the time I reached the Battery it was almost two-thirty in the morning. New York City is really a beautiful place at that hour, especially after it’s been raining for awhile. All the grime and dirt is hidden by the dark or washed away and the lights from the buildings reflect on the water. It really is an ideal, mystic time, a time for romantic people, of which I am not one.
I figured with good luck Squillante’s body would not be discovered until the next morning. With bad luck somebody leaving the restaurant had to take a piss and went near the car and found what was left. I figured as long as I got rid of everything before Sunday noon I would have no problems. I knew there was a slim chance I would be hustled by the cops. Every time there’s a gang hit they round up some “knowns,” so the papers can make it look like they are doing something.
I parked my car in the lot right near the ferry landing and waited to board the boat to Staten Island. I wasn’t nervous or upset at all. Also, interestingly enough, I wasn’t the slightest bit cold, even though it was much colder down by the water than it had been in the Bronx. In fact, I felt one long bead of sweat wind its way slowly down my spine.
The ferry left for Staten Island on the hour. Most of the people on the boat were kids, couples taking a traditional Saturday night ride on the ferry. There was one couple in particular I didn’t understand. A real faggy looking guy, skinny, long hair, bell-bottomed trousers, rings on almost all his fingers, and he was with this super-beautiful chick. This broad had a body that would stop a war. I couldn’t understand what a looker like that was doing with a skinny nothing like him. Little did I know then, in 1968, that the fag look was going to get so popular. I stared but I didn’t really care, to each his own.
I stood by myself near the railing. Nobody paid the slightest attention to me. When we were halfway to the Island dock I reached into my pocket and pulled out the silencer. Plunk! I dropped it casually into the river and watched as it sunk right to the bottom. If the million-to-one shot hits and the police find the silencer, what do they have? A rusty silencer and no gun to connect it with.
Why did I bother to throw the silencer away after spending good money for it? I just don’t want the thing to be found around me after I’ve used it. Especially after the law discovers somebody got hit in the parking lot of a busy restaurant, and since nobody heard the shots, they got to figure they’re looking for a silencer. It’s really just another safety precaution for my own piece of mind. I knew the currents would eventually pick it up and deposit it far away. The gun, which is a lot heavier, would have laid there longer. I held onto it. I had plans for it.
I got off the ferry for a minute and then got right back on. At that hour there are a lot of people who do exactly that, people just out for a boatride, so nobody pays any attention. Under normal conditions five minutes on Staten Island is too long, and these were certainly not normal circumstances. When we docked at the Battery, I picked up my car and headed back to the Bronx.
My exact destination was the South Bronx. A friend of mine has a small machine shop to which I hold one key, to be used on just such occasions as this. The place wasn’t big, but it was spooky quiet. I get more nervous in places like this than I do before gunning an individual. The quiet bothers me. I like noise, I like people, I like things happening. In this case, all I wanted to do was finish my work as quickly as possible.
The only light I put on in the place was the fluorescent lamp he had over his workbench. From the outside no one could tell it wasn’t an interior light left on all night to scare away burglars.
The first thing I went to work on was the barrel. I grabbed an electrical hack saw and cut it right off at the base. Then I cut it in two pieces the long way, down the seam. Next, I took each of those pieces and cut them in half, lengthwise again. Now what was once the barrel was just four long pieces of metal.
Then I went after the hammer. I was right at home with these tools. I always had the ability to work with my hands and make nice things in the shop. The few times I’ve seriously thought about retirement I always end up looking for something to do with tools.
I propped the piece up on the workbench, opened the hammer and then smashed the shit out of it with a heavy hand hammer. There was absolutely no way that gun was going to come back to haunt me. I smashed the firing pin because, even if the coppers come up with the cartridges, without a firing pin there is absolutely no way they can match it up to a gun. I finally had the whole thing dismantled.
I took all the pieces and put them in a paper bag. I got back in my car and started touring the Bronx, looking for sewers. Looking for sewers in the Bronx at 2 A.M. Sunday morning is not my favorite occupation in the world, so I tried to make it brief. Every time I found another sewer, I would carefully wipe all fingerprints off one individual piece and deposit that piece into the sewer for posterity. I threw the cylinder in one place. The stock went in another. Then each part of the barrel. There simply ain’t no one in the world who could find all those pieces and put them back together.
